haven’t had a spare second since.” She gave Patsy a curious look. “Everything okay between you and my cousin?”
“Of course,” Patsy said a little too quickly. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
“I just thought there might be some residual suspiciousness because of that incident when you first arrived. Justin’s like a dog with a bone when things don’t add up to him.”
Patsy’s hand stilled with the coffee halfway to her mouth. She regarded Sharon Lynn warily. “And you think things don’t add up with me?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But you believe Justin has doubts.”
“He’s a cop. Doubts are second nature to him. It doesn’t mean I think he’s right.”
Fear streaked through her. What if Justin hadn’t let things rest, after all? What if he’d dug up something? What if he knew all about her past and was waiting for her to open up and admit the trouble she was in? What if...?
“Has he said something?” she asked cautiously.
“No, but I’ve watched him around you. One second he looks like a man who’s falling hard for a woman, the next he gets this wary expression in his eyes.”
Patsy couldn’t deny Sharon Lynn’s perception. She’d seen the same reactions all too often herself.
“I’m sorry,” Sharon Lynn said. “I shouldn’t have said anything. I didn’t mean to upset you. I don’t want you to be on your guard every time he’s around.”
“I’m not upset. I can’t blame Justin for the way he feels. I was shoplifting when he first saw me. I offered to move on, to leave Los Piños. He assured me he could forget what happened, but maybe he can’t. Maybe I should go.”
Sharon Lynn looked thunderstruck. “No, absolutely not. Where would you go?”
“I don’t know,” Patsy admitted.
“Then put that idea right out of your head. Nobody wants you to leave.”
“Leave? Who’s leaving?” Justin demanded, walking up behind them.
Patsy turned slowly. “I thought maybe it would be for the best if I did.”
“Well, it wouldn’t,” he said succinctly.
His sharp response hung in the air. For the longest time no one said anything.
“I’ll be in the back if anyone needs me,” Sharon Lynn said finally, but neither Justin nor Patsy spared her a glance.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to go?” she asked, searching his face.
“Yes, I’m sure. I just wish...” His voice trailed off.
“Wish what?”
“That you felt you could be honest with me.”
Patsy wished that, too, more than she could say. She knew, too, that he could get most of the answers he craved just by running her license tag number. Obviously he hadn’t, or he’d want to know why she’d lied about her name being Gresham, not Longhorn. Either he was waiting for her to come to him with the truth on her own or he was afraid of it.
“I can’t,” she said simply. “I wish I could, but I can’t.”
“Will you tell me one thing?”
“If I can.”
“Have you broken any laws?”
“No,” she said honestly. Not unless Will had manufactured a crime out of her leaving with their son.
Relief washed some of the tension out of his expression. “Then we’ll leave it at that.”
She grinned. “For now.”
He chuckled at her repetition of his favorite warning. “Who knows? Maybe I’ll just drop it for good. Maybe I’ll just take it on faith that you’ll tell me the whole story when you feel you can.”
Patsy regarded him skeptically. “Can you do that?”
He started to answer, then sighed. “Probably not,” he admitted regretfully.
“That’s what makes you a good cop, Deputy.”
“Maybe it doesn’t make me such a terrific man. I ought to trust you. I want to.”
“I’ve given you plenty of cause not to.”
He lifted his hand, hesitated, then, looking as if he wanted to do so much more, he gently grazed her cheek with his knuckles. “You know what I wish more than anything?”
Dazed by the look of pure longing in his eyes, Patsy shook her head.
“I wish that I knew whether I had any right at all to kiss you.”
She shuddered with a longing that was equal to his, then finally looked away.
Justin sighed. “That pretty much answers my question, doesn’t it?”
With her eyes squeezed tightly shut to keep the tears from falling, she said softly, “Yes, I suppose it does.”
It was only a tiny hint at the whole truth, but it was enough to put a bleak expression on Justin’s face and send him striding out of Dolan’s without a backward glance.
It was also more than enough to break Patsy’s heart in two.
Chapter Seven
With Justin gone, Patsy was left all alone to battle