The Sheriff And The Impostor Bride

He nodded. “It was in the latest APB we received about you. When are you due?”

Something—surely it wasn’t relief—crossed her face, and she swallowed hard. “I, uh...” she began. But nothing more was forthcoming.

“Yes?” he spurred her.

But the only response she offered was another long, drawn out “Uh...”

“Miss Jensen?”

“Uh-huh?”

Hey, she was up to two syllables, Riley noted. Good for her. “You are pregnant, aren’t you?”

She nodded quickly. “Uh, yes. Yes, I am.”

Whoa, she was even using real words now, he thought. “When are you due?”

“In, uh, about, um...” She seemed to be thinking about something, then said, “June. I’m due in June. I’m three months along.” To illustrate, she held up one hand, index, middle and ring fingers extended, as if she were a preschooler identifying her age. “This many,” she said, enhancing the image. “Three. I’m three months. Yepper. That’s how pregnant I am. Three months.”

Riley nodded. Hoo-kay. Whatever. Nobody ever said beauty and brains went hand in hand, right? “Well, no offense, ma’am, but I’m not sure you’re supposed to be drinking coffee. Not that I’m an expert or anything, but—”

“Oh, I’m not, either,” she piped up. “An expert, I mean. This is my first time. Being pregnant, I mean. I’m sure the coffee is... I mean... Gee, I can’t seem to stop saying, ‘I mean,’ can I?” She laughed, a nervous little trill that he found very suspicious. “I mean—oops, there I go again—ahem. That is to say—” She smiled, having conquered her problem by introducing a new phrase. “I know the coffee is decaf. Would you like some?”

He still hadn’t quite recovered from the chill outside—or the prattling inside—so he nodded gratefully. Anything to give her something to do that would calm her down. But aloud, he only said, “Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”

Even before he completed the sentence, Miss Jensen had shot up from her seat and fled to the kitchen. Of course, seeing as how the kitchen was less than two feet away, it wasn’t much of a flight. Strangely, Riley found that he was grateful for that, too. For some reason, he didn’t want Sabrina Jensen out of eyeshot.

Of course, that was because she was part of a case right now, he assured himself—and not because she was just a good-looking woman he’d like to get to know better. He had no intention of getting to know her better. Not like that, anyway. Not...intimately. She was pregnant, for God’s sake, something that tended to make a man think twice about involvement. For one thing, babies could put a real cramp in all that getting-to-know-you stuff. For another thing, it meant that she had a vested interest in another man.

Riley might have done some foolish things in his life where women were concerned, but he sure as shootin’ wasn’t about to infringe on another man’s, uh...connubial jurisdiction. Of course, Miss Jensen was a self-professed Miss, reinforcing his suspicion that she wasn’t married to whoever had sired that little nipper inside her, but still. The genesis of life tended to be a pretty major bond for people, didn’t it? Even if the baby’s father wasn’t around, it was a good bet she still had fond feelings for the guy, and that the guy likewise still had a thing for her. Hey, baby or no baby, what man in his right mind would let a woman like Sabrina Jensen out of his sight?

“Aha,” she said, bringing his attention around. When he looked up, he saw her standing in front of an open cabinet, a can of coffee in one hand.

“See?” she said, looking triumphant for some reason. “It is decaf. I told you so.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied, not sure why she should count the observation as such a coup. “You surely did.”

She smiled as she closed the cabinet and moved toward the coffeemaker. And in spite of his earlier admonitions to himself, Riley found that he was more than a little interested in her movements. Everything she did was marked by a graceful efficiency and an easiness of motion that put his mind at peace. At least, her motions were efficient and easy—until she looked up and caught him watching her. Then all hell broke loose. The little plastic scoop full of coffee that she held in her hand went clattering onto the counter, scattering grounds everywhere, and when she scrambled to retrieve it, she bonked her head on the kitchen cabinet beside her.

“Ouch,” she muttered as she lifted a hand to the injury. Unfortunately, it was the hand holding the coffee scoop, and she poked herself in the eye with it when she did.

“Ow,” she muttered again.

“Here,” Riley said, jumping up from the settee. “Let me help you.” He did, after all, feel somewhat responsible for what had happened—he was the one who’d wanted coffee.

But the moment he took one step in Miss Jensen’s direction, she leapt backward, an action that propelled her right into the refrigerator. Once again, her head snapped backward and bore the brunt of a blow, and he instinctively moved toward her, hands extended, in an effort to help her. But somehow his foot hit hers, and he, too, went sailing forward. By now, there were coffee grounds everywhere, Miss Jensen was suffering from a full-blown fit of embarrassment, and Riley wasn’t sure what to do with his hands.

Ultimately, his hands took the decision, well, out of his hands, because they opted to land flat on the refrigerator door behind her, one on each side of Sabrina Jensen’s head. And then the two of them stood quite literally face-to-face. And torso to torso. And libido to libido. And that was when the most bizarre thing popped into Riley’s head.

He wanted to kiss Sabrina Jensen.

And that, he decided very quickly, would be a truly spectacular mistake. In spite of his decision, though, he couldn’t quite bring himself to pull away from her just yet. Not because something in her eyes held him in thrall, and not because the heat of her surrounded him like a soothing balm, and not because she smelled just so damned good—like a field full of fragrant flowers.

But because she had dropped both coffee and scoop into the sink, and now she had her hands bunched fiercely in the khaki fabric of his shirt. Even more interesting, however, was the fact that instead of pushing him away—something he told himself any normal woman would do when faced by a complete stranger in such a way—she seemed to be pulling him nearer. Even more interesting was the way in which she was tilting her head back just a fraction of an inch, parting her lips as if she’d read his mind and, by golly, she wanted to kiss him, too.

“Uh, Miss Jensen?”

She had those luscious green eyes fixed on his face, and she seemed to be taking an inordinate amount of time studying each of his features. Though, when he got right down to it, Riley supposed she seemed to be most captivated by his...mouth? Uh-oh. They both really were thinking about the same thing, about how it would feel to—

“Uh, Miss Jensen?” he began again.

But she remained so preoccupied by her study of his face that all she offered in response to his query was a softly uttered “Hmm?”

He swallowed hard. “You, uh... Are you okay?”

Her gaze wandered over his features until her eyes finally met his. But again, all she managed in reply was a quietly murmured “Mmm.”

He inhaled a deep breath and was immediately troubled by the shakiness of it. “Well, then, ma’am,” he said softly, “would you mind letting go of my shirt?”

For a moment, he didn’t think she’d heard him, and he wondered again about the state of her hearing. Then her eyes widened in surprise, her cheeks flushed that becoming shade of pink again, her lips parted more, as if she couldn’t quite get enough air, and...

And she continued to hold fast to his shirt. So Riley circled her wrists with gentle fingers and, with no small effort, pried them loose. Only then did it finally seem to hit Miss Sabrina Jensen exactly what was going on. And it also seemed to hit her just how tenuous the situation was.

“Oh,” she said softly. “Oh, dear. I am so sorry....”

She dropped her gaze to the hands he held in his and awkwardly yanked them free. Then, with quick, jerky movements. she began to smooth out the wrinkles in his shirt that her insistent grip had created. And at once, Riley wished he hadn’t released her hands. Because the only thing more unsettling than having her fingers tangled in his shirt was having her fingers skittering lightly over his chest.

“I’m sorry,” she said again, flattening her palms and pressing harder on his chest in an effort to iron out a few more places. “I have no idea how that happened. The coffee just slipped right out of my hands, and—”

Deftly, he caught her wrists in his hands again, and, startled, she glanced up into his eyes. For one long, lingering moment, he came this close to simply dipping his head to hers and kissing her, a good, solid, why-don’t-we-just-dispense-with-the-formalities kiss, the way his instincts commanded him to. Then, somehow, he came to his senses and set her gently away.

“That’s all right,” he said, the words coming out a bit rougher than he’d intended. “Forget about the coffee. I’m not nearly as...uh...thirsty...as I was a few minutes ago.”

Boy, that had been close. He’d almost told her he wasn’t nearly as cold as he had been a few minutes ago, that being in close quarters with her had just heated him right up, and was she busy this evening, because he really wanted to get to know her and her hands better.

With no small effort, he forced himself to take a step backward in retreat. Then, somehow, he managed to take another. And then another. And another, and another, until he was as far away from Sabrina Jensen as he could be in the tiny confines of the trailer. Unfortunately, what stopped him was the entryway to her bedroom, something he discovered when his shoulder went slamming into the doorjamb, and he turned around to see what had impeded his progress.

“Damn,” he muttered out loud when the sight of the small, intimate-looking bed had him spinning quickly back around. Trailers were just too damned small for a sheriff to be able to properly interrogate a beautiful woman. Now what was he supposed to do?

When he looked at Miss Jensen again, she didn’t offer any answers. Instead, she was staring at him in a way that made his heart pound like a wild animal. Well, shoot. Nothing like being fiercely, irreversibly turned on by a total stranger, he thought. Especially one who was acting mighty suspicious about something and expecting another man’s baby. What the hell was going on? Nothing like this had ever happened to him before. Hastily, Riley reminded himself of all the reasons why he shouldn’t be attracted to Sabrina Jensen.

Number one, she was pregnant. That was a pretty major reason in and of itself to keep his distance. But just to be sure, he heaped on a few more. Number two, in spite of that come-hither look in her eyes right now, she was probably in love with whoever had fathered her baby, another very good reason to avoid her. Number three, she’d been acting awfully funny ever since he entered the trailer—she obviously had something to hide. Number four, she’d lied about at least one thing, so who was to say she wouldn’t lie about everything?

And number five, even without all of the above, Riley had sworn a looong time ago that it was going to take more than a beautiful face and a strong hormonal reaction to lure him into a relationship. When he started seeing a woman seriously again, it would be because she had wit, intelligence, integrity, honor and a strong sense of commitment. Miss Sabrina Jensen, so far, was showing signs of none of those things. And he’d be damned if he’d fall head over heels again just because of all that zinging of his heart strings. Hell, it had been bad enough when he was twenty-two, and Miss Caroline Merilee Dewhurst had—

He stopped himself before the memories of that ill-fated chapter of his life began to tumble into his brain. There was no reason to dwell on that right now, he told himself. Or ever again. Especially when the current chapter of his life was fast becoming a real page-turner.

“Miss Jensen,” he said, trying again to jump-start the conversation, “would you mind coming down to the station with me so I can ask you a few questions?”