Free The Salt Maiden by Colleen Thompson Page A

alarmed.
    Thank God for that, at least…but still, she shouldn’t be here.
    Frowning, Jay shut off his engine and climbed out into what felt like a solid wall of heat. Max burst past him, his whole body wagging in his rush to greet her, though he was usually cautious around those he didn’t know well. His caution made a lot of sense, considering that Jay had found pockmarks on the dog’s side where some mean bastard had used the stray for target practice with a pellet gun.
    “Hey, there, boy.” Dana shifted her bottle and reached down to rub the dog’s ears. “How’re you doing, Max boy?”
    Jay stood a moment, troubled by the way pleasure punchedthrough his irritation. So she had a pretty smile and the kind of body that did a clingy little T-shirt proud. He had no business being glad to see her—and no sense for thinking of the things they’d done in those damned dreams that did an end run around his self-control each night. Her presence only complicated an already tense situation. Once the news about Haz-Vestment got out, there were going to be some seriously unhappy folks in Rimrock County. Folks who might not think so clearly in their rush to assign blame.
    “You found this place,” he said as he moved nearer. “And you’re walking on that leg.”
    “I can certainly see why they hired you as sheriff. You’re an observant fellow, aren’t you?”
    “That’s not the half of it. I noticed that it’s hot, too, you’ve been cleaning, and you showed up in a different vehicle.”
    He nodded toward the far side of the house, in the direction of a gas generator’s hum. “With some serious supplies. Which means you plan on staying awhile and not just picking up your sister’s belongings and scooting home, like anybody with a lick of sense would.”
    Grin stretching, she said, “God, you are good. I had to rent the SUV in Pecos. The convertible was too small, and I thought I’d need the higher clearance to get back here.”
    “So who gave you directions?” He was surprised he hadn’t heard about it.
    “It was, uh, Bill Navarro—you remember, flower guy, snake charmer.” She wrinkled her nose as she said it. “I still had his card, so I called to ask him—and of course to say thanks for the arrangement.”
    Jay resisted the temptation to fill her in about the rumors regarding Russian brides and Bill’s history of fighting, not to mention the stories of a painkiller addiction in his past after he had injured his back in some mishap with a steer. For one thing, Bill was always on his best behavior with women. For another, Dana had too much class to string the man along.
    “So how’d you get in, anyway?” Jay asked. “Did you pry off my padlocks?”
    “That wood’s so far gone, all I had to do was pull a little and it crumbled. And it’s not as if anybody couldn’t crawl in through those windows. But listen, I’ve got some more water inside. Want some while we talk?”
    He shook his head, since he’d just finished a bottle. Even so, he squeezed past her into the leaning porch’s shade, eager to avoid the searing sun.
    Dana excused herself and ducked inside. In under a minute she returned with a small plastic tub of water, which she put down for Max to drink. After giving him a pat, she said, “Nice dog. A little skinny…”
    “We’re working on that,” Jay said. “I found him only a couple of weeks back. Or he found me—jumped inside my RV when I got out at a rest stop. I thought I’d take him to a shelter, but…” He shrugged his shoulders. “He makes for decent company.”
    “A stray, huh?” she asked before giving him a more professional appraisal. To the dog she said, “Looks like you’ve had a rough go of it, poor guy. But I don’t see anything a little TLC won’t cure.”
    Afterward she sat on one end of a rough-hewn bench as Jay took the side opposite. It was still damned hot here, but she’d run an extension cord to an oscillating fan she’d set up, and its dry