Free Lawman's Perfect Surrender by Jennifer Morey Page A

different.” Much different.
    With the long silence, Ford suspected she’d surmised something significant had happened, something that had made him distant with women.
    “Have you ever been married?”
    He didn’t answer. He couldn’t. Thinking of Wynona was too painful. The way he’d lost her…
    “You don’t have to talk about it,” she said.
    Again, she defused his tension. She wasn’t going to corner him. She’d recognized his difficulty and backed off. She couldn’t know what that meant to him. Her insight was keen. Her consideration for his feelings was more than that. No other woman he’d been with had trod so lightly on the tragedies of his past. It went a long way to lowering his defenses, which could turn out to be bad if he wasn’t careful.
    Crawling closer to him, she rested her head on his chest and put her hand on his stomach. Warmth spread as unexpectedly as when he’d had sex with her. Letting his head sink into the fluffy pillow, he curled his arm around her.
    “I grew up with my real mother, but she wasn’t much of a mother to me,” she said quietly.
    The sweetness of her offering worked its way deeper into his defenses. He couldn’t talk about his past, but she would tell him about hers. No strings. No conditions, only honesty and selfless acceptance of his unwillingness to share the same.
    “My dad left before I was born,” she went on. “My sister remembers him but I never met him.”
    Ford began rubbing her arm with slow, gentle strokes. “You and your mother weren’t close?”
    Gemma grunted with derision. “No. She needed someone to take care of her. Unfortunately, she didn’t have anything to offer a man. She couldn’t hold a job and she wasn’t very smart. She was raised by a bartender and a drug addict. Never made it through high school. My sister thinks she tried to trick our dad into marrying her and taking care of her. He wasn’t anything special, either. He worked at a gas station. Sometimes I thought she blamed me and my sister for driving him away. She always said he didn’t want kids. We grew up poor. I barely graduated from high school and started working in restaurants. Never made it far with that, though. You know the rest.”
    “Jed Johnson is an orthopedic surgeon.”
    She didn’t question how he knew that. “So I’m sure you can imagine my star-glazed eyes when I met him.”
    “You married him because he was successful?”
    “You’re a nice man for not saying rich. ”
    He chuckled. He sure liked her good-humored wit. “That explains the fountain.”
    A breathy laugh answered his. “And the cases of tonic water in the shed. And the house and everything in it. I like spending his money. When it’s all gone, I’ll get a job. I don’t want to be like my mother, with nothing to offer. I read a lot. Always have. I try to stay educated, even though I never went to college.”
    She didn’t care about the money. Not in a materialistic way. But most in Cold Plains wouldn’t know that. As far as they saw, she blended into the culture. Grayson’s culture. She’d come to town with a lot of money, a young, beautiful, healthy woman.
    Ford let that be the end of his questions for now. Like her, he wasn’t the type to pry. Damn if he didn’t really like that about her. Most people found his dark, tragic history too fascinating to leave alone. Despite how painful it still was for him to talk about, they kept digging for more. Not Gemma. More relaxed than ever, he cautioned himself. Don’t get too comfortable with her. And above all else, don’t fall in love.
    * * *
    Gemma tried not to feel disappointed when Ford didn’t kiss her goodbye before she left his Escalade and headed for the front doors of Cold Plains Coffee. They were in public. He was on duty.
    She’d fallen asleep against him last night, after talking the way they had. Or she had. He hadn’t talked much. That didn’t matter, though. She sensed his need for her to take it slow where his