Free The Lawman's Nanny Op by Carla Cassidy

or heard from him. I also spoke to Joe Castle who says last week he lent his truck to his son, who lives in Oklahoma City.”
    She narrowed her eyes. “Sounds a bit suspicious, doesn’t it?”
    “I thought so. I have the authorities there checking it out. I should hear something by tomorrow. Walt Tolliver also owns a black pickup and I went to his place to check on it, but it was undamaged.”
    She smiled. “Walt is too busy seeing aliens to worry about trying to kill me. Besides, he and I have never exchanged a cross word.”
    He shrugged. “He’s a bit out of it most of the time. I thought maybe he’d hit your car accidentally while prowling for his aliens, but it wasn’t him. Oh, and I had a talk with Eric Willowby. You know he’s still in love with you.” He watched her expression closely, but at that moment the teakettle whistled and she jumped up from the table.
    “Eric is a nice man,” she said as she poured the hot water over the tea bag in her cup. After a moment she pulled her tea bag and added a dollop of milk and then returned to the table. “He’ll make somebody a terrific husband.”
    “Then why didn’t you keep dating him?” he asked.
    She took a sip of her tea and eyed him over the rim of the cup. She released a small sigh as she lowered the cup back to the table. “Because he wasn’t the one.”
    “The one?”
    A whisper of impatience flashed in her eyes. “You know, the one I want to go to bed with each night. The one I want to wake up to each morning. He wasn’t the one I wanted to tell my hopes and dreams to.” She shrugged. “As nice as he is, as well as he treated me, he just wasn’t the one.”
    “Maybe you’re looking for somebody who doesn’t exist.”
    “Then I’ll just stay single because I don’t intend to settle,” she exclaimed. “Besides, why are you asking me these questions? You certainly aren’t an example of marital bliss.”
    “At least I got closer than you have been,” he replied and felt the burn of anger that thoughts of Laura always evoked.
    “I didn’t know we were in a contest.” She took another sip of her tea.
    “We’re not,” he replied easily. “I was just curious, that’s all.”
    “What happened with you and Laura? I heard through the grapevine that the two of you had set a date for a wedding and the next thing I heard was that she’d left town.”
    He hadn’t told anyone about what had transpired between him and Laura and he sure didn’t intend to tell Portia now. “It just didn’t work out.” He forced a smile to his lips. “She just wasn’t the one.”
    Portia stared down into her cup and then looked back at him. “Like I wasn’t the one?”
    He sat back in his chair, surprised that she’d bring up their past and equally surprised by the faint surge of resentment that filled him at her words.
    Her cheeks flushed with color and she averted her gaze from his. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that,” she said. “The last thing I want to do is rehash the past. I have enough to worry about with the here and now.”
    “I agree, although there is a little bit of our past I wouldn’t mind rehashing.” His gaze slid down the length of her and he knew there would be no question in her mind about what he meant.
    Why not let her know he still desired her? They weren’t kids anymore, but rather two consenting adults who didn’t need promises of forever to indulge in a little shared passion.
    He leaned forward and breathed in her scent, that delicious burst of sweet floral and clean soap. “I think about prom night sometimes,” he admitted.
    Her eyes shimmered with an emotion he couldn’t begin to identify. “Sometimes I think about it, too. But we were nothing but kids, Caleb, and what we shared that night was magical because it was our first time.” She finished her tea and got up from the table and carried her cup to the sink. “There’s no way to recapture that magic, Caleb,” she said as she turned to face