The Lawman's Noelle (Men of the West Book 31) Page 6

  She shook her head. “Never. Since I moved up here to Nevada, I haven’t traveled anywhere. It’s been four years.”

  “Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.”

  Frowning slightly, she looked at him. “What does that mean?”

  “It just means that you don’t seem like the traveling sort. You’re more of the stay-at-home type. Am I right?”

  Damn, this man seemed to have a knack for summing her up and getting it right. He was also making Noelle realize things about herself that she’d never thought about before. Like how much she’d isolated herself on the ranch since she’d come to Nevada.

  “You are right,” she admitted. “I like the quiet.”

  You like hiding, too. Because you don’t have the courage to step back into the land of the living. Because you don’t want to give yourself the chance to meet a man you could love and build a future with.

  Hating the little mocking voice in her head, she did her best to silence it, while across the seat, Evan grinned, totally unaware that he was shaking up her senses in ways that they’d never been shaken before.

  “Well, my grandparents aren’t exactly the quiet sort,” he said. “They’re always doing something. I hope you’ll like them.”

  Relieved that he hadn’t followed up on her remark with a more personal question, she smiled back at him. “I’m looking forward to meeting them.”

  * * *

  For the next half hour, they passed through bald hills covered with boulders, sagebrush and tall tufts of dead grass. In places, granite cliffs had been carved by the relentless weather, while in others, low, scrubby evergreens dotted the loamy soil. At one point, a large herd of mule deer was grazing off to the west of the highway, and Evan slowed the truck to give Noelle a better look at the wildlife.

  Bending forward in the seat, she peered out the driver’s window. “They’re beautiful,” she said softly. “In fact, this whole area is lovely. I’m glad you took me on this route.”

  Evan couldn’t help but notice how the gentle appreciation on her face softened her features. Somewhere, beneath all the toughness she’d displayed that day in the gulch, was a sweet, feminine woman. And he was going to do his best to peel away the protective layers until he found her. But then what? Would he find that Noelle was a woman he could get serious about? He didn’t yet know the answers to those questions. And he wasn’t about to ruin the day by dwelling on them.

  “Have you ever been to Washoe Lake?” he asked.

  She straightened in her seat, and Evan immediately missed the sweet, flowery scent of her skin. “No. Never had any reason to go there.”

  He grunted with amusement. “You need a reason?”

  She shrugged. “Well, fuel is expensive. And I don’t have time for sightseeing. Besides, it would seem kind of silly, driving around by myself and looking at things just to be looking.”

  “Hmm. Are you always so practical?”

  Out of the corner of his eye, he could see her frowning. He figured it had been a long time since anyone had taken the time or effort to bother her about anything.

  She asked, “Do you always pester people with so many questions?”

  He chuckled. “I’m a detective. How else am I going to get to the truth?”

  Her frown deepened. “The truth? I’m not hiding anything.”

  He cast a pointed smile at her. “We all hide things, Noelle. Some of us just hide them deeper than others.”

  * * *

  Fifteen minutes later, they passed through the tiny mining town of Silver City. Four miles north, they entered Virginia City. Since Noelle had confessed to him that she’d never visited the town before, he drove slowly through the main drag and pointed out a few historic spots.

  “Back in the eighteen hundreds, during its mining heyday, this old town was wiped out by fire at least four or five times. I suppose it survived because there were enough folks determined to stick around and rebuild no matter what,” he told her.

  “I’d say that was determination,” she replied as she gazed out at the board sidewalks and quaint little shops mostly catering to the flocks of tourists that visited each year. “Must have been something around here that made them want to risk everything to stay,” she commented.

  Signs of Christmas were everywhere, from the angels and stars hanging from the streetlamps to the twinkling lights and decorated trees in the store windows. For Evan, it was the time of year when he and his brothers were drawn even closer together. His home on the Silver Horn was adorned with decorations, the kitchen was full of rich food, and in the family room, gifts were piled high beneath a dazzling twelve-foot fir tree.

  But not everyone was as lucky as he was, Evan thought. His line of work never failed to show him the ugly side of the season, when added stresses and strained finances caused abusive explosions in families, and thieves took advantage of the blessed holiday to steal a child’s Christmas dreams.

  “The something that held most folks around here was gold and silver,” he said wryly.

  “Well, the desert mountains are charming. I like it here. I might have wanted to stay, too, if I’d sunk my roots here first.”

  Intrigued by her comment, Evan glanced over at her profile. Because her attention was on the town, he had a chance to study the lovely line of her throat and the way her stubborn little chin curved into a pair of full, dusky pink lips.

  The more time he spent with the woman, the more he wanted to know about her. But Evan had learned that patience was the key to gathering information. And he’d already decided that questioning this woman outright wasn’t going to produce many answers. It would have to be her own idea to open up and really talk to him.

  “Actually, Granddad Tuck was born on the place where he and Grandmother live now,” he told her. “A midwife delivered him during a raging blizzard. My great-grandparents lived too far out of town to make it to Virginia City and the doctor. So I guess you could say his roots are deep in these mountains.”

  She looked at him, and Evan was struck by the faint melancholy shadows in her eyes.

  “That must be very nice,” she said. “When I was a young girl, I never knew whether my parents would stay in one place for long. I think that’s one of the reasons I preferred to stay with my aunt and uncle. They had roots, and I always knew they’d be in the same place if I needed them. The same house. That was comforting to me.”

  Without needing to ask, Evan understood she was speaking of the aunt and uncle who’d willed her the little ranch she lived on now. When she spoke of them, there was warm affection in her voice, along with a sense of loss.

  “Change can be upsetting,” he said. “I think that’s part of the reason why Grandfather Bart never wanted me to be a lawman. He didn’t want anyone in his family to change—to be something different. When he first learned I was going to college in law enforcement, he had a walleyed fit. And later, after I went to work for the sheriff’s office, he argued and demanded that I quit. He even tried to bribe me with money, vehicles—anything he thought might sway me to his way of thinking. He couldn’t get it through his head that all I wanted was to wear a badge and enforce the law.”

  As the last of the town appeared in the rearview mirror, he could feel her curious gaze on the side of his face. It left him feeling warm and strange, as though she was seeing parts of him that no one else had ever seen before.

  “So you and your paternal grandfather don’t see eye to eye,” she said thoughtfully. “Do your brothers get along with him?”

  “For the most part. Clancy—he’s the oldest—gets on well with Grandfather. So does Rafe. He’s the middle of the five brothers, the ranch foreman. Finn—he’s younger than Rafe—is over the horses. His relationship with Grandfather is strained at times, but they usually get along. As for our little Bowie, it’s hard to say. He’s been away in the
marines for so long now, I honestly don’t know how the two of them would get on if they were together for more than a day at a time.”

  “Oh. You have a brother in the military. So you’re not the only one who strayed from ranching.”

  “No. And believe me, Grandfather Bart didn’t like Bowie’s choice of profession, either. But there wasn’t much he could do about it.” Evan gestured toward the stand of mountains in the near distance. “That’s where we’re going. It won’t be long now.”

  Minutes later, the landscape began to change from bald desert mountains to those covered with tall ever­greens. Along the foothills, enormous cottonwoods were now bare limbed, but in the summer, the trees shaded smaller willows and blooming sage. Evan had been over this road more times than he could count, and each time, he felt a sense of homecoming. Maybe that was because, like Noelle and her aunt and uncle, he’d always known his grandparents would be in the same place, the same house, waiting with open and loving arms.

  * * *

  As a child of socialite parents, Noelle had met all sorts of people in all types of places. The idea of being introduced to strangers had never made her nervous or doubtful about her appearance or conversation skills. But something about meeting Evan’s grandparents was making her anxious. She’d met Evan only a few days ago. What were they going to think about him bringing her into their home? They might even get the idea that she’d jumped at the chance to snare a rich man. And telling them that she’d already gotten rid of one rich husband would be even more awkward.

  Noelle was trying to convince herself that she had nothing to worry about when the truck rounded a deep curve and the Reeves home came into view. A two-story farmhouse nestled at the foot of a mountain in a copse of bare cottonwoods. The frame structure was painted a pale green, while the gingerbread trim was a darker hunter-green.

  Evan drove down the short gravel drive to the house, and Noelle spotted a Nativity scene out on the lawn. As they drew closer, the beauty of the little stable with the animals gathered around it caught Noelle’s complete attention.

  “Oh, how lovely,” she murmured. “I can’t remember the last time I saw a Nativity scene with the shepherds and animals and all the wise men! And the little lean-to stable is made of real wooden boards!”

  “Granddad will be happy to hear how much you appreciate the scene. It’s something he’s worked on for a long time. He made the stable first and then the manger holding baby Jesus. After that, each year he kept adding a piece or two. He had trouble finding just the right camel he wanted, though. Eventually, he located one in a town down in southern California, then drove all the way over there to collect it. He didn’t trust a freight truck to get the camel safely up here to him.”

  This from a man who’d spent years of his life as a sheriff? The notion struck a spot so deep in Noelle that she felt a little dazed. Her own father had never lifted a finger to decorate anything for Christmas. If he had, things might have been a whole lot different for their family, she couldn’t help thinking.

  “Your granddad obviously put in a lot of work to build the Nativity scene.”

  “Believe me, Noelle, for him it was a labor of love.”

  A labor of love. Yes, it was obvious that Tuck Reeves was a man full of love. But as a sheriff had he ever made mistakes, she wondered, and hurt an innocent person?

  Everyone makes mistakes, Noelle. You’ve made plenty of them. And you’re making a mistake right now by trying to judge a man before you even meet him. Just like you were judging Evan that day in the gulch when he flashed his badge at you.

  Noelle was listening so intently to the mocking voice in her head that Evan was already parking the truck behind a pair of vehicles in an open carport before she noticed the vehicle had come to a stop.

  As he shut off the engine and removed his seat belt, he said, “Now that we’re on the subject of Christmas, I’ve been wondering if you were named for the holiday. Or was Noelle just a name your parents liked?”

  Surprised that he’d even made the connection, she looked at him. “Actually, I was born on Christmas Eve. My mother wanted to name me Holly, but Dad took one look at me and decided Noelle was a better fit for his newborn daughter.”

  One corner of his mouth curved upward in a smile as his gaze slipped over her face. “Your dad was right. Noelle fits you perfectly. So your birthday is coming up soon. How are you going to celebrate it?”

  The glint she spotted in his green eyes warmed her cheeks. “I won’t be celebrating. It’s just another day.”

  “That’s awful.”

  Each year since she’d moved to Nevada, she’d received birthday cards from her parents, but for Noelle, the acknowledgments had seemed too little, too late. Now her birthday was a reminder that she no longer had a family. “I’ve never celebrated my birthday very much,” she tried to explain. “It was always so close to Christmas that my family usually overlooked it and just let Christmas gifts do for both days.”

  He shook his head. “Well, maybe this year will be different,” he said, then gave her a little grin. “Ready to go in?”

  “Sure. If the inside of the house is decorated anything like the outside, I can’t wait to see it.”

  He smiled. “Don’t worry. There will be plenty inside for you to see. Whenever it comes to the holidays, my grandparents are like two little kids.”

  He climbed out of the truck. While he skirted the hood to reach her door, Noelle used the moment to unsnap her seat belt and collect her handbag. Once he opened the door and reached for her hand, she wasn’t at all sure she was ready to feel his warm fingers wrapping around hers. But she had no choice but to accept his help.

  Years. That was how long it had been since any man had made her so aware of every little thing about him. The touch of his warm fingers against hers, the subtle male scent drifting to her nostrils, the strength of his body as she stood close to his side. This man was shoving her senses in all sorts of intimate directions.

  The erotic observations left her slightly embarrassed, and as soon as he’d safely helped her to the ground, she eased her hand from his and stepped to one side.

  Behind them on the porch, a dog suddenly barked, and a female voice followed.

  “Evan! What a surprise! Why didn’t you tell us you were coming?”

  Noelle turned to see a petite woman dressed in red slacks and a white sweater hurrying toward them. Salt-and-pepper hair was cropped close to her head in a pixie style, and silver earrings swung from her ears. The broad smile on her face was totally genuine, and Noelle felt some of the anxiousness inside her drain away.

  Evan shut the truck door, then turned and opened his arms wide to receive his grandmother’s fierce hug. As Noelle watched him place a kiss on her cheek, she felt a foolish ball of emotions lodge in her throat.

  “I wanted to surprise you, Grandmother,” Evan told her.

  Laughing with delight, she grabbed him by the arms and pretended to give him a shake. “And what if we’d been gone somewhere? You would’ve made the drive for nothing.”

  Chuckling, Evan glanced over at Noelle and winked. “Not hardly. I know where you stash all the food.”

  With his arm around her waist, he turned his grandmother so that she was facing Noelle. “Grandmother, I want you to meet Noelle Barnes. She’s the young lady who found me in the gulch—the one I told you about. She saved my life.”

  Lady. It had been a long, long time since Noelle had thought of herself as a lady. The fact that Evan perceived her in that way more than surprised her. It left her feeling soft and feminine and almost pretty. Yet it was his last remark that really moved her. Did he honestly think she’d saved his life? Yesterday, he’d said as much to Jessi, but she’d thought he was mostly teasing. She couldn’t imagine him giving her that much credit, but apparently he’d already told his grandparents about her and the incident
in the gulch.

  Evan’s grandmother reached for both of Noelle’s hands and squeezed them tightly. “Well, it’s a real pleasure to meet you, Noelle. My name is Alice.”

  “Reeves,” Evan added for her.

  “Bah!” Alice hooted. “Who cares about last names around here? You two come on in the house. Tuck is in the kitchen. We’ve got an assembly line going.”

  As the three of them headed toward the house, Evan let out a good-natured groan. “That means she’s probably going to put us to work, Noelle.”

  “You, maybe. Not Noelle. She’s a guest, and we don’t put guests to work on their first visit.”

  “We’re more interested in eating than working,” Evan told her. “Got anything good for lunch?”

  “You’re lucky,” Alice said with a chuckle. “Tuck just happened to want chicken and dumplings today. Other­wise you’d be eating a cheese sandwich.”

  “Nothing wrong with a cheese sandwich. Especially when you make them, Grandmother. Yours are the best I’ve ever eaten.”

  Alice directed a knowing smile at Noelle. “See what a charmer he is? The worst one of the Calhoun bunch.”

  Evan laughed. “Oh, Grandmother, I couldn’t begin to compete with Rafe for that honor, and you know it. Don’t give Noelle the wrong ideas about me.”

  The wrong ideas? Ever since she’d walked up on him that day in the gulch and he’d opened those sexy green eyes, she’d been having wicked thoughts about the man. To hear Alice Reeves describe her grandson as a charmer was hardly any surprise to Noelle. He’d been steadily charming her from the very start. And like a fool, she’d been falling for it.

  But today was only one day in her life, she assured herself. After today, she seriously doubted she would ever see the man again. He wasn’t interested in her romantically. And even if he was, he’d be the last man on earth she’d let herself fall in love with.