The Lawman's Romance Lesson (Forever, Tx. Series Book 20) Read online

  Turning around to look at the deputy, Shania asked, “What?”

  And then she had the answer to the question she’d asked, even though Daniel didn’t say anything in response. Instead he slipped one hand behind her, cupping the back of her head just enough to bring her a shade closer to him.

  And then he kissed her.

  The very air in her lungs felt as if it had backed up as every single nerve ending within her was instantly alert—and waiting for more.

  Shania could feel all sorts of feelings waking up within her. Dormant feelings she hadn’t even realized had gone to sleep until this very second.

  She laced her arms around his neck, absorbing every nuance of what was happening to her.

  She couldn’t explain what it was—she was only aware that it was, and that she liked it.

  Liked him.

  And that she didn’t want this to just be an isolated incident.

  Even as Daniel deepened the kiss, he could feel guilt seeping in.

  This wasn’t like him. He never lost control of himself, not even for a split second. And he read signs first, made certain that he wasn’t presuming things. Before he even kissed a woman, he knew for a fact that she wanted him to kiss her.

  He didn’t know anything here.

  He was like a blind man feeling his way around in a world that was completely hidden from him. He’d kissed Shania because he felt this compelling need to kiss her and that was all that seemed to matter.

  Daniel drew back from Shania even as he felt his heart going into double time.

  “Sorry,” he apologized.

  By all rights, she could have easily read him the riot act if she wanted to, but she didn’t. And because she didn’t, his own guilt increased.

  “I didn’t mean to do that,” he told her.

  Shania stiffened and just like that, a beautiful moment seemed to just vanish into nothingness as if it had never existed.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” she told him formally. “Thank you for the ride.”

  She got out of the car quickly and made it to her front door while Daniel continued to remain sitting where he was, still struggling to figure out what had just happened.

  He felt the need to go after her and apologize again, but Shania had already gone inside the house.

  There was something very final sounding about the way she’d closed her door.

  Idiot! Daniel upbraided himself.

  He’d never behaved like that, even in his teens. What had come over him? He had no doubt that he had just single-handedly ruined whatever slim chance he might have had to see Shania socially.

  Well, he couldn’t sit here and brood about it, he thought, annoyed with himself. If he wasted any more time like this, he would not only be looking at the ashes of a relationship that never even had a chance to take root, but he’d also be out looking for a new job. Forever being what it was, that wouldn’t exactly be a piece of cake, even for a former deputy.

  He knew that as a last resort, he could take Elena with him and move to one of the larger cities in Texas, but that would probably involve tying his sister up and dragging her with him. And that didn’t even take into consideration the fact that unlike so many other people his age in Forever, he had no desire to pull up his roots and plant them somewhere else.

  He liked the small-town feel of Forever now that he had found his niche in it.

  When had things gotten so complicated? Daniel wondered.

  Okay, Tallchief, no more thinking. You need to get to work before the sheriff realizes that he can do without you.

  Securing his seat belt again, Daniel turned his key in the ignition and felt the vehicle come back to life. Thinking only of the mechanics of driving and nothing more, he turned his vehicle around to head back to the sheriff’s office.

  Just before he took his foot off the brake to shift it to the gas pedal again, he looked one last time toward Shania’s house.

  The lights were all on the lower level, but with the drapes drawn, he wasn’t able to make out any silhouettes. Or actually, the one particular silhouette he was looking for.

  Just as well. He sure as hell didn’t need any more visual aids to set him off again.

  What he needed, he told himself, was to get his mind back on work as well as his body back to the job.

  End of story.

  But was it? he couldn’t help wondering. Or was there more to the story, something that he was going to find out before too soon?

  He really wished that Miss Joan hadn’t suddenly decided to play cupid. He liked his life uncomplicated and it didn’t look like it was going to be that way, at least not for a long, long time.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Gabe Rodriguez, the deputy who had been hired before Daniel, decided after watching Daniel for more than a week that he needed to speak up. To him it was like deciding to come to aid a wounded, slightly feral, animal.

  He waited until Daniel went to get a cup of coffee from the small lunch nook, gave him until the count of ten and then came up behind him.

  Rather than bother with small talk, Gabe went straight for the heart of the matter.

  “You know, I don’t make it a habit to stick my nose into someone else’s business,” Gabe said quietly.

  “A very admirable quality,” Daniel said, commending the other deputy.

  Although he was just about to fill up his cup, Daniel left the coffeepot where it was and turned on his heel, heading back to his desk.

  Now that he’d made the decision to say something, Gabe wasn’t about to just let it go. Abandoning his own unfilled cup next to Daniel’s, he followed the other deputy back to his desk.

  “But I’ve been watching you for over a week now—” Gabe continued as if there hadn’t been a notable pause.

  Daniel sat down at his desk. It was obvious to him that Gabe was not about to cease and desist. He didn’t need any more unsolicited advice.

  “Maybe you should ask the sheriff to give you something to do that could utilize those special skills of yours,” Daniel suggested, hoping Gabe would take the hint and back off.

  But Gabe didn’t.

  “And you’ve been acting surlier than usual,” Gabe told him. “Something crawl down your throat and die there?”

  Daniel looked at him darkly. “No, but thanks for asking.”

  The cryptic comment was meant to end the exchange, but much to Daniel’s annoyance, Gabe just refused to take the hint.

  “Then what is bothering you, Tallchief?” Gabe asked. “Because something is definitely bothering you.”

  Daniel’s look just grew darker. “Other than you?” he asked Gabe.

  “Other than me,” Gabe replied good-naturedly. The man had a really thick hide, Daniel thought, because Rodriguez just wasn’t taking the hint. “Maybe I can help.”

  “I don’t need any help,” Daniel retorted, then added, “And nothing’s bothering me.”

  A third party joined the discussion. “That’s not what I heard,” Joe Lone Wolf said.

  Because he’d been quiet as usual and oblivious to the conversation, both men had forgotten that Joe was even there. Now that he had spoken up, Gabe turned to Joe as a potential ally.

  Looking delighted that Joe might have something additional that could be used as ammunition, Gabe slid his chair across the common area, using his feet to propel his chair over to Joe’s desk.

  Gabe’s eyes almost gleamed brightly as he asked, “And what was it that you heard?”

  The expression on Joe’s face didn’t change. For all the emotion there, he might as well have been reading that day’s menu from the diner.

  “That Miss Joan got Daniel to break bread with that really pretty high school teacher, the one who’s putting in extra time tutoring his sister,” Joe told the other deputy.

  Daniel
glanced up sharply. “It’s not just Elena. There are other students in that class that she’s tutoring,” he said defensively.

  “I’m sure there are,” Joe answered mildly, looking back at the report on his desk that he was reviewing. “Shania Stewart’s a dedicated educator. Wish we had more like her.”

  Nodding his head, Gabe turned his attention back to Daniel. “So what’s the deal with you two?”

  What little patience Daniel had left was quickly evaporating. “There is no ‘deal.’”

  “Is that the problem?” Gabe asked sympathetically. “There is no deal?”

  “If I were you, I’d try to seal one,” Joe advised mildly, not looking up this time. “I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of the men in Forever would like to get closer to her, maybe even become teacher’s pet,” he added.

  Daniel didn’t welcome having all this attention focused on him, especially given the subject of that focus.

  “You two have entirely too much time on your hands,” he fairly growled at the other two deputies in disgust. On his feet now, he headed for the door.

  “Just looking out for you, that’s all,” Gabe said, calling after Daniel.

  Daniel’s parting words just as he crossed the threshold were, “I don’t need anyone looking out for me. Clear?”

  He thought he heard Joe say, “That’s your opinion.” But he wasn’t about to double back to find out if he was right. Right now, he just wanted to walk off the full head of steam he’d been building up before he wound up saying something they’d all regret.

  Daniel chose a path that didn’t run through the heart of the town, a path where he could be alone with his thoughts without having to stop to either exchange pleasantries with someone or answer any spur-of-the-moment questions put to him by one of Forever’s citizens.

  It had been a full week since he’d kissed Shania. A full week since he’d actually seen her, as well. And rather than have things get better—and by better he just wanted it all to fade away—they got worse.

  Thoughts of Shania kept invading his mind. The way she’d looked, the way her lips had felt beneath his. The way he had almost felt her body yielding to his.

  The only good thing about the incident was that it seemed to have no repercussions, at least not as far as Shania working with Elena was concerned. Shania went on preparing Elena, along with the other students, for her PSATs.

  His sister didn’t seem to know anything had happened between her teacher and him. If she did, Daniel was certain that Elena would have gone into a full rant about it because of the embarrassment that she’d claim was attached to her brother socially seeing her teacher. That she said nothing proved to him that Shania had not alluded to what had happened between them in his car.

  But while he was grateful that she hadn’t, it didn’t alleviate what he was feeling. If anything, it seemed to make the itch he was experiencing even worse.

  Not to mention that it seemed to confuse things even more.

  He needed to resolve this. Now, before it ate away at him any further.

  Daniel was back at his desk twenty minutes later. Apparently having gotten the message, Joe and Gabe left him alone and to his own devices, each working on the tedious reports that periodically needed to be filed.

  He did the same.

  * * *

  Daniel waited until he was fairly sure that the after-school class was over—and then he tacked on an extra fifteen minutes to that just in case there was a straggler or two who was still in Shania’s classroom, asking her questions or working on one of the sample tests.

  Pulling up in his official vehicle, Daniel waited outside the school building just in case Shania had decided to leave early, but she hadn’t.

  The woman was most definitely married to her job, he thought, finally entering the building.

  Taking the stairs, Daniel quickly went up to the third floor where Shania’s classroom was located. At this hour, the school was almost empty. The building was rather quiet. He could hear the echo of his own footsteps as he went down the hall.

  All the classroom doors were closed and presumably locked, except for one. That door was open. He came up to it, knocked on it once before walking in.

  Shania was sitting at her desk, busy making notes on a yellow pad. If this same scene was taking place in one of the larger cities where funding was not an issue the way it was here, Daniel had no doubts she would have been plugging entries into a laptop instead of using a pencil and paper.

  Finished, Shania looked up. He saw a fleeting look of surprise on her face before it disappeared. “If you’re looking for Elena in order to walk her home, she already left,” she told him primly. “She went out with Jacquelyn,” she added, mentioning one of Elena’s friends.

  Having informed him of his sister’s whereabouts, Shania looked back down at the notes she was putting together.

  “I’m not looking for Elena,” Daniel told her quietly. “I came to see you.”

  Shania raised her eyes again. He saw that the wariness was back.

  “Well, you’ve seen me,” she replied with an air of finality. “Deputy Tallchief, I have a lot of work to prepare for tomorrow, so unless there is something else, I really need to—”

  This wasn’t easy for him, but it was the right thing to do and he knew he owed it to her. “I came to tell you I’m sorry.”

  If possible, she sat up a little straighter, her shoulders braced a little more rigidly. Her voice was distant as she told him, “You already made that clear in your car.”

  He shook his head. He needed to make her understand. “No, I came to tell you that I’m sorry I said I was sorry.”

  Shania continued looking at him, a trace of confusion replacing the wariness. “Maybe you could stand to take a refresher course in English when you have the time, Deputy.”

  He inclined his head. “Maybe I’ll look into that.” And then he tried one more time to make himself clear. “When I told you I was sorry, I didn’t mean that I was sorry I kissed you—I was just sorry that I assumed that you’d want me to.”

  Shania gave up pretending to work while he was standing there. Pushing the pad and pencil aside, she looked at Daniel, trying her best to untangle what he was having such trouble saying.

  “But you did want to kiss me?” she questioned.

  He released a sigh of relief. Finally. “Yes, I did. But I didn’t have the right to just—”

  That was all she wanted to hear.

  Shania pushed her chair back from her desk. Standing up, she crossed to him in less time than it took for Daniel to realize what she was doing.

  “Shut up, Tallchief,” she told him a second before she wrapped her arms around his neck and brought her mouth up to his.

  His surprise melted away in less than a blink of an eye. Lost in the moment, Daniel went with his reflexes and pulled her closer to him.

  In an instant, Shania realized that he wasn’t just returning her kiss—he was kissing her with enough verve to completely blot out her mind, erasing everything except for him.

  The kiss was well on its way to overwhelming her, creating a tidal wave of feelings and desires that could easily make her forget who she was as well as where she was.

  Catching herself before that happened, Shania drew her head away.

  Looking down into her face, he asked, “Does this mean that you forgive me?”

  He could swear that his heart rate had sped up to the point that it was emulating the revved-up engine of a race car. Daniel kept his arms around her as he waited for his heart to slow down enough to allow him to breathe normally.

  Shania smiled up at him and he could have sworn that he felt her smile searing right into his heart.

  “Let’s just say we’ll work on it,” she told him.

  Given that it could have gone a great deal worse, he nodded. “Good enough for me.
Can I buy you dinner?”

  “I’d like that,” she told him, “but I’m going to have to take a rain check for now. I already made plans for dinner tonight.” Before he could say anything, or think that she was just brushing him off, Shania explained, “I promised my cousin Wynona I’d come over to have dinner with her and her husband and son.” She smiled. “We’re officially celebrating the fact that she’s pregnant.”

  And then she paused for a second, debating whether or not to say something. Making her decision, she said, “You’re welcome to come if you’d like. You can’t pay for anything,” she told him, knowing the way he thought. “But you can eat,” she teased.

  But Daniel shook his head. “No, this is a family occasion. It wouldn’t be right to just barge in.”

  He was surprised to hear her laugh at that. “If you knew Wynona, you’d know that you definitely wouldn’t be barging in.” Her cousin had been after her to start going out more.

  Daniel felt that she was just being nice. “I appreciate the invitation, but, um—”

  Shania nodded, reading between the lines. “One step at a time?”

  He didn’t know if he would have put it that way, but it was as good a description as any. Besides, he felt that they needed to spend a little time alone before they ventured out into the world as anything approximating a couple. Daniel was still extremely leery about taking what to him was a huge step.

  “Something like that.”

  They’d definitely made progress, she thought, and she wasn’t about to push.

  “Understood,” Shania told him. “By the way, Elena is doing great. At the rate she’s going, when the PSATs are finally given, she is going to ace them. You should be very proud of her.”

  Realizing that it was getting late, she gathered her things together, packing everything into her oversize shoulder bag.

  “And that’s all thanks to you,” Daniel told her.

  He was giving her way too much credit—and not enough to his sister, Shania thought. “I didn’t make her smart.”

  Daniel followed her out of the classroom. “No, but you made her realize that she didn’t have to be ashamed of being smart. And you made her realize that it was okay for her to apply herself so she can go to college instead of just being another example of a rebellious teen who failed to do anything with her life.”