His Arch Enemy's Daughter

The word “love” caught in the air, and Sam just let it hang, knowing it would always be out of his reach.

He cleared his throat. “Speaking of tender feelings, because I know how much your brother loves mine, how is Chad?”

Ashlyn’s voice seemed drained of its amused energy. “He’s hardly changed since you played football in high school. Still in Switzerland, married to a very forgiving wife. Coming back someday, I’m sure.”

Again, Sam thought about the rumors concerning Chad and Meg Cassidy. But that was tired news in Kane’s Crossing. His brother ignored it, and Sam did, as well.

“So,” she continued, switching the subject. “I know I asked before, but why did you decide to come back to town? I heard you lived in D.C.”

The new conversational topic put him on guard, not only because she’d done it so jarringly, but because he was doing his best to forget about the past.

Flashes of crying children, an explosion lighting their eyes, haunted him. Echoes of screeching tires racked his brain.

“It was time for a change,” he answered gruffly.

And she didn’t push it. She must have sensed his disquietude, because she shifted her position, turning to stare out the window at the passing night. A closed-down filling station and gnarled trees streaked past, all a part of the shaded world that probably held a lot more colors and excitement for her than it did for him.

Ashlyn watched the world go by. Kane’s Crossing and the town’s Saturday Evening Post ambience could have fooled anyone with its innocence—the pristine picket fences, the daisy-petaled flower gardens, the creaking porch swings moaning about darker stories underneath their perfect facades.

The sheriff was right. It was time for a change.

But she’d never be brave enough to take a chance, to move out of her big, expensive house to explore everything outside her gates.

It was safer at home, with her own wing of the mansion, her own studio where she could create sculptures and design jewelry without anyone to tell her it was second-rate or useless. Her self-esteem wasn’t ready to face the big, bad world. Besides, she couldn’t leave her mother, not with the way she begged her only daughter to stay by her bedside, to help her get through countless illnesses.

Sometimes Ashlyn disgusted herself. Yeah, she was Ms. Muscle when it came to tearing down signs welcoming her brother home when he’d last returned from Europe. Yet, she didn’t have the guts to admit that she wanted to help someone in need. Someone like Emma Trainor.

If she had any gumption whatsoever, she’d tell her father how much it hurt every time she came in second place to Chad. Every time he glowed when he introduced the favorite son. Every time his face fell when he introduced her, if he bothered.

Stewing about it wouldn’t help. She’d known that for years. That’s why she’d gotten into the habit of ingratiating herself with the townsfolk by poking fun at her family’s royal image, cracking jokes with the old men on the general store porch while sipping bottled sodas, running with her girlfriends in the nearby creek with her dress hiked over her knees. All so very un-Spencer-like.

What they didn’t know is how the flippancy had left her feeling a little dead inside.

“Miss Spencer?”

Sam. Sam Reno. She hadn’t forgotten he was in the same car with her. And how could she forget, with his woodsy cologne faintly lingering in the air? A mix of freshly fallen leaves and spice mingling to disturb her thoughts.

“You can call me Ashlyn,” she said, still facing the window, looking to her heart’s content at his reflection. She slowly turned to face him, cuddling into the seat, seeing if he reacted to her movements.

Of course he didn’t. Had his expression always been so stony, so devoid of animation?

She sat up a little straighter, game lost. At least she’d get a response from her father tonight, whether or not it was for the best.

He bit back his words with the tightening of his mouth, and she thought about how much moving to D.C. had changed him. His Doc Martens were too new, hadn’t been broken in just yet. The same went for his clean lawman-brown jacket, his unfaded blue jeans. He looked like a city boy who’d forgotten the small town part of himself.

Through the windshield she caught sight of the Reno Center for Children as it whizzed by, lights out for the night. Then they pulled up to the sheriff’s office, where the lamp was always burning.

He set the brake on the car and cut the ignition, turning to shoot a miffed gaze her way. And, in the car’s dim light, she saw what he’d been hiding at Emma Trainor’s.

Eyes the dead-hazel shade of desolation, like the muted colors of a predawn day when nothing stirs, nothing lives.

Sam Reno was hurting, no doubt about it.

Chapter Two

In the sterile light of the sheriff’s office, Ashlyn noticed that Sam echoed the faded colors of a Remington painting, as well—the dusty oranges, browns and blues that spoke of still life and times gone by.

He led her to a seat in front of his hardwood desk, the top resembling a desert landscape with a minimum of papers and clutter. Well, if she had a desk in this place, it’d look like that, too, she supposed. All the sheriff of Kane’s Crossing usually did was baby-sit drunks and chase around Spencer’s wayward daughter anyway. The town hadn’t seen any major action since… Her heart took a swan dive.

Since Sam’s father had died in her family’s factory.

As he sat at his desk and shucked off the jacket, she noticed that his badge had rusted around the edges.

He leaned back in his chair, propping his boots on the desk, reclining his head into his hands, surveying her with detachment. “Ashlyn Spencer, I don’t know what the hell to do with you. Trespassing is illegal, no matter how honorable your intentions are.”

She started to correct his assumption about her being a good person, but was cut off.

“Lock her up,” rasped an inebriated entity from around the corner and in the back, where the holding cells were kept.

Ashlyn recognized the voice. “Not your business, Junior.”

From the deputy’s desk, the scanner came to life, putting in its two cents with an explosion of static.

Unfazed, Sam kept his gaze on Ashlyn. “I guess I could put you behind bars with Junior Crabbe, just for the fun of it.”

She couldn’t help her tart smile. “Definitely my idea of Shangri-la, Sheriff.”

Junior Crabbe and his absent Siamese trouble twin, Sonny Jenks, had hung around her brother in their younger years. They were the bane of every peace-loving citizen’s existence with their frequent drinking, brawling and carousing.

Problem was, she thought the sheriff just might put her in a cell with Junior. For fun. To teach her a lesson. To make up for the loss of Sam’s father. Whatever the reason, she deserved it for her stubbornness.

Would that ever blow her father’s top.

A whoosh of frigid air shivered over her back as the door burst open. She turned to see the new deputy, Gary Joanson, struggle in under the weight of another drunk, Sonny Jenks.

Gary’s voice reflected his strain. “Evenin’, Ashlyn. Sheriff.”

“Joanson,” said the sheriff, nodding a greeting, still eyeing his own problem for the night.

Gary, just a speck of a man, dragged the burly Sonny Jenks down the hall, where a happy Junior Crabbe’s rebel yell greeted his buddy. Cries of “Traitor!” preceded the clank of jail bars, reflecting how Gary had befriended Nick Cassidy last year and turned against his bully-brained cronies.

Ashlyn was growing nervous under the sheriff’s stare. She absently fingered her necklace, a piece of her own creation that, at times, pricked her skin with the edges of its incomplete circles.

“So,” she said, wishing she could relieve the tension that had settled over the room, “aren’t you glad to be back in Kane’s Crossing?”

His face was expressionless. “Some days more than others.”

Ashlyn slid her elbows onto the desk, one hand nestled under her chin as she smiled at him. “From what I hear, Meg Cassidy is making a lot of her blueberry ‘boyfriend’ pies over at the bakery.”