Roan by Jennifer Blake

made through his own hard effort, and was damned proud of it. She respected that in him. It was a great deal more attractive than Harrell’s ambition to marry into old money as a stepping stone to an obscene fortune.
    As she remained silent, exasperation crossed the sheriff’s face. “Right, let me guess. You just don’t know. You’ve no idea who might care enough about you to dig up a few hundred grand, or maybe more.”
    â€œSorry…” The catch in her voice was real enough. It was possible no one cared that much.
    â€œSure you are,” the sheriff answered.
    The weary defeat in his voice touched her as nothing had until that moment. She looked at him closely, seeing, finally, the exhaustion that grooved the lean, bronze planes of his face and the creases in his tailored uniform that made it appear he might have slept in it. Doc Watkins had said he’d been at the hospital all night, and it was now almost noon. Had he been near her all that time as she lay sleeping? And was a part of the warm blood that coursed through her veins really his? It made her feel odd to think so, and yet there was a tenuous sense of connection, almost an intimacy, about it.
    In defense against useless compassion and obligation, she said, “I might be of more help to you if you hadn’t put a hole through me.”
    He let out his short, winded breath. The look he sent her was dark with anger and something more she couldn’t define. Long seconds passed.
    Abruptly, he threw up his hands. “All right,” he said in rasping self-blame. “I’m sorry I shot you, okay? I didn’t know you were a woman. I didn’t know you wouldn’t use the weapon in your hand. I had no idea what I’d done until I saw you lying there with my bullet in you, looking battered and bruised and so roughed up that you might have been pulled through a brier thicket backward. And even then, you were so…”
    She stared at him as he stopped in midsentence and swung away from her. An apology was the last thing she’d expected. “So…what?” She asked, her voice husky.
    He squared his shoulders, but didn’t turn. “Nothing.”
    She lifted her hand to touch the scrape on her cheek, then ran experimental fingertips along the bruise on the lineof her jaw. That damage, added to the knot on her forehead, blood loss, and long days in the back of the van without a bath or hairbrush probably had left her looking like warmed over death. But the simple truth was that it could have been worse. Much worse.
    In brittle irony, she said, “You’re forgiven. I think.”
    This time she had surprised him, or so it seemed. The look he turned on her was assessing, as if he might be rearranging his thoughts. Finally, he said, “I don’t make a habit of shooting females, but I didn’t have time to check for sex clues and you held your weapon as if you knew what to do with it.”
    â€œMaybe I do,” she said, “but that doesn’t make me a crook. Anyway, I doubt I was thinking straight or I wouldn’t have pointed it at you. All I had on my mind, to the best of my remembrance was—getting away.”
    â€œYou were still extremely lucky. I could have killed you, and might have if the light had been better or if you’d been moving even a fraction slower.”
    There was no bravado in his words, only a statement of fact impressive in its simplicity. “Yes. I imagine so.”
    â€œI’m glad I didn’t.”
    She studied the taut contours of his face and the tucked corners of his firm lips, and thought that she needed to adjust her thinking. For him to apologize and take responsibility for what he’d done was a huge concession. Was it out of his personal code? Or did it stem from some Southern gentleman mentality left over from the previous century and kept alive in this Louisiana backcountry?
    Regardless, she needed to take