The Sheriff's Surrender by Marilyn Pappano Page B

farming, moving in again while he worked in the oilfields and out again when he’d scraped together every penny he could to open the garage. Working with engines, it turned out, was where Del excelled, but even steady work and good money hadn’t been enough to make Lena Harlowe settle down with a lowly grease monkey. Since she hadn’t come around in twenty years or so, Reese assumed she’d found someonewho made good money and had clean fingernails, too. He’d been glad to see her go.
    â€œThe first marriage was before I was born, and I don’t know anything about it except that he’s hated the name Karen ever since. Then came the on-again, off-again thing with my mother. The second marriage was doomed from the start. They’d been seeing each other awhile. She wanted to get married, and he didn’t. They took a little trip one Memorial Day weekend—did a lot of partying. He woke up when the weekend was over with Lou Ann in his bed and a marriage certificate on the nightstand. The next April he woke up after another rowdy weekend to find that Lou Ann had filed for divorce and run off with someone else—which explains why, to this day, Tax Day is the high holy day of Del Barnett’s nonreligious life.”
    â€œAnd number three?” Neely sounded vaguely amused, more like the woman who’d knocked him for a loop ten years ago by doing nothing more than walking into a courtroom, tripping over a loose board and dropping an armload of files at his feet. She hadn’t been embarrassed, hadn’t blamed the county or the faulty board, but had laughed instead, and that quick, he’d been a goner.
    â€œShe was a souvenir from a trip to Las Vegas. Her name was Georgie, she was only four years older than me, and she was an exotic dancer. She looked like a stripper, dressed like a stripper, stood out like a peacock in a flock of doves and generated gossip everywhere she went. She damn near wore him out before she got a calling to go help the less fortunate in South America.” He smiled at the memory of Georgie with her magenta hair, multiple piercings, dramatic makeup and eyebrow-raising clothes. “She’s the one he misses the most.”
    â€œAnd you miss your mother most.”
    His smile slowly faded into a frown. “Not at all. I miss Georgie, too. She kept things stirred up. I never really knew Lena—my mother. About the time we’d start to get acquainted, she’d take off for a few months or a few years. By the time she wandered back, we’d have to start all over again.Then one day, when I was fifteen or so, she took off and never came back. By then I didn’t care if I ever saw her again. That was somewhere in between Lou Ann and Georgie.”
    â€œSo your dad’s been alone a long time.”
    â€œNot alone. Just single. There’s a difference.” Turning his back on her, he stared out the window again, at grass in need of mowing, blackjacks and a thin blue sky. He was the one who’d been alone a lot. Thanks to Neely, he knew the difference intimately.
    Thanks to her, he might never know anything different.

Chapter 4
    T here was another storm Tuesday evening that took out the power with the first lightning strike and left Neely and Reese in warm, muggy darkness. She was stretched out on the sofa, her skirt pulled up to expose her legs, with a magazine clutched in one hand to languidly fan herself, and he was comfortably slumped in the chair-and-a-half, with his bare feet propped on the ottoman.
    Wishing for shorts and a T-shirt, a piña colada and a cooling breeze, she asked, “Does your electricity go off every time it storms?”
    â€œNah. Sometimes I lose the phone instead. Sometimes all it takes is one lightning strike and the power will be off for hours. On the other hand, last month a tornado passed between the house and the barn, and the lights didn’t even so much as flicker.”
    â€œAnd