Free Run Wild With Me by Sandra Chastain Page B

statement that it was he that he was worried about still hung in the silence. “You?” she finally said. “I can’t imagine anything worrying you. You’re a man who lives his life on the edge. I couldn’t do that—without falling over.”
    “You think that I don’t? Well, you’re wrong. I’ve done that, and I climbed back out again and moved on. It’s the challenge that keeps life interesting, darlin’ ”
    “Maybe, but I couldn’t take the constant battle. I don’t put disaster behind me that easily.”
    “Maybe I don’t either anymore.”
    “Maybe we both need to change our image,”Andrea said unsteadily. “I hope you don’t mind having a salad for lunch,” she said, carrying the dishes to a shaded porch off the kitchen. “It’s too hot for anything heavy.”
    “Uh, no. A salad is fine.” She was right about the heat, but Sam didn’t think either a salad or the air conditioner would cool off either of them. He followed her and sat down at a small table covered with a checked cloth. “Tell me about yourself, Chief. How’d you get to be the head honcho?”
    “Buck broke his leg in a wreck, chasing a speeder. I was appointed to the job as an economy measure. I’m already on the payroll.”
    “How come the police car wasn’t wrecked?”
    “Buck was driving our Bronco—on his day off.”
    “And you,” Sam finally asked. “What do you do when you aren’t being a police officer?”
    “Nothing exciting, I’m afraid. I run city hall, collect water bills, pay bills, whatever needs doing. I’m just a simple country girl.”
    “I doubt there’s anything simple about you, Chief.”
    They ate quietly for a time. Only the movement of a determined bumble bee buzzing around the flower beds beyond the porch broke the stillness.
    “What about you, Sam? How’d you get to be a carpenter?”
    “I learned woodworking in school. That’s what they do to the tough guys, put them in shop classes. Funny thing, I found out I liked it. On a construction site it isn’t who you are that counts, it’s how good you do the job.”
    He reached out and brushed a cracker crumbfrom her upper lip. His unexpected touch was electric, and Andrea knew he heard her gasp.
    “In Arcadia,” she admitted, “it’s who you are
and
what you do. We may not always approve, but if you’re one of ours, we care.”
    “I don’t think my mother believed that.”
    Andrea didn’t know how to answer him. “I’m sorry, Sam. I don’t know what happened there. None of us understand.”
    “I do. She had me, and they threw her out. She spent the rest of her life wishing for this place. I never understood why it was so important to her.”
    “I think,” Andrea said slowly, “that it’s because our roots nourish us, become an anchor when the storms come. Maybe your mother needed that.”
    “An anchor in the storm. I’ll have to remember that. I’ve never been around people who accepted your weaknesses. In fact—” he hesitated for a long moment, “I’m not sure I believe they exist.”
    “Believe it, Sam. People in Arcadia care about each other in a way that outsiders don’t understand.”
    “ ‘Outsiders’? My mother was an insider, and she didn’t belong either.”

Five
    Andrea began to stack the dishes. David had been an outsider too. She didn’t know why he kept coming to mind. He was part of her past, a part that was finished long ago.
    “I have to get back to work,” she said with a sigh.
    “Ah, shucks,” Sam teased, sorry that he’d said something to draw her back to the present. “Must we? Couldn’t you take the afternoon off? We could go fishing?”
    “Afternoon off? Absolutely not!” Andrea protested as she went back into the kitchen. “Sam, you have to understand that you just can’t come in here and expect me to …”
    “To what?” He ambled after her, closing the distance between them. “Why do you move away from me whenever I start to get close?”
    “I …” She could