Free Reflection Point: An Eternity Springs Novel by Emily March Page B

too-familiar blend of disapproval and disgust. “I keep an eye on what happens in my town.”
    Bitterness washed through her. From the moment she’d discovered who had yanked her away from the point at Lover’s Leap, she’d known this would happen. Was there some sort of lawman homing beacon embedded in her butt?
    The sheriff’s lips twisted in a sneer as he added, “I’m putting you on notice that if you’re thinking to grow anything other than geraniums in Eternity Springs, you’ll be answering to me.”
    “Oh, for heaven’s sake. What is this? The Cartoon Channel? Showdown at the Purple Ink Corral?”
    “Try the reality of being on probation. What did you do to warrant unsupervised probation, anyway?”
    “What? You think I screwed a cop or something like that? Typical.” She pivoted and headed for the door, calling over her shoulder. “Guess what, Barney—traditionally it’s the other way around.”
    She almost could hear his teeth grinding. She was halfwayto the outside door when he said, “What’s your story, Georgia?”
    She stopped and whirled on him. “What do you mean, ‘What’s my story’? It’s all there in the databases, isn’t it?”
    “The bare facts are there, yes. I know you were convicted of cultivation and distribution of a controlled substance and served six years in a Georgia women’s prison. What I don’t know is why.”
    “Why should you think you get to know why? You don’t have a right to any information about me beyond what you can look up on your computer. I haven’t forfeited all of my rights just because I’m a felon. I think I still have the right of privacy.”
    If this were the Cartoon Channel, she’d see steam coming out of his ears, she decided. He braced his hands on his hips and declared, “I despise drugs. They destroy families. They destroy communities. They destroy lives. I won’t let you hurt people I care about. I won’t let you hurt this town.”
    Emotion rolled through her, the familiar combination of rage and pain and helplessness that she’d first felt shortly before her scheduled wedding day. Fierce, hot, and mean, it was a sensation she’d sworn she’d never again experience. Damn you, Zach Turner .
    She faced him, folded her arms, and in a voice dripping with scorn asked, “What do you think I’m going to do? Peddle weed across from the elementary school? I was in prison for six years, Sheriff Turner. Six years! If you think I’ll do anything that might put my freedom at risk, then you’re even dumber than the one-bullet wonder.”
    “The what?”
    “You need to bone up on your TV trivia. Sheriff Andy only let his deputy have one bullet for his gun.”
    “If you don’t stop with this Barney Fife business …”
    “What? You’ll arrest me for hitting too close to home?”
    With that, she turned her back on him, marched to her car, and slammed the door. It took every ounce of her self-control to refrain from gunning the engine and spinning her wheels on the gravel road as she left, but she wouldn’t put it past Zach Turner to dash to his patrol car, chase her down, and arrest her for reckless driving.
    Savannah held the wheel in a white-knuckled grip and blinked back tears as she drove sedately back to town. “What a first-class jerk,” she muttered. “I went out there to help him! Leave it up to Deputy Doofus to be the poster boy for looking a gift horse in the mouth.”
    Although she wasn’t exactly the brightest crayon in the box herself. She had gone out to Reflection Point. Talk about stupid. She’d let peer pressure—literally, Sarah Murphy’s elbow—make her do something she absolutely hadn’t wanted to do. “This is what you get for trying to fit in. For trying to make friends. For trying to be a friend. Did you learn nothing in six years at Emmanuel? You can’t afford to care about anyone other than yourself.”
    She needed to remember that after Zach spread the word about her past. Of course he’d do just