Read the book: «Branded by the Sheriff»

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Copyright

Imagine a family tree that includes Texas cowboys, Choctaw and Cherokee Indians, a Louisiana pirate and a Scottish rebel who battled side by side with William Wallace. With ancestors like that, it’s easy to understand why Texas author and former air force captain Delores Fossen feels as if she were genetically predisposed to writing romances. Along the way to fulfilling her DNA destiny, Delores married an air force top gun who just happens to be of Viking descent. With all those romantic bases covered, she doesn’t have to look too far for inspiration.

To Debbie Gafford, thanks for always being there for me.

Chapter One

LaMesa Springs, Texas

A killer was in the house.

Sheriff Beck Tanner drew his weapon and eased out of his SUV. He hadn’t planned on a showdown tonight, but he was ready for it.

Beck stopped at the edge of the yard that was more dirt than grass. He listened for a moment.

The light in the back of the small Craftsman-style house indicated someone was there, but he didn’t want that someone sneaking out and ambushing him. After all, Darin Matthews had already claimed two victims, his own mother and sister. Since this was Darin’s family home, Beck figured sooner or later the man would come back.

Apparently he had.

Around him, the January wind whipped through the bare tree branches. That was the only sound Beck could hear. The house was at the end of the sparsely populated County Line Road, barely in the city limits and a full half mile away from any neighboring house.

There was a hint of smoke in the air, and thanks to a hunter’s moon, Beck spotted the source: the rough stone chimney anchored against the left side of the house. Wispy gray coils of smoke rose into the air, the wind scattering them almost as quickly as they appeared.

He inched closer to the house and kept his gun ready.

His boots crunched on the icy gravel of the driveway. No garage. No car. Just a light stabbing through the darkness. Since the place was supposed to be vacant, he’d noticed the light during a routine patrol of the neighborhood. Beck had also glanced inside the filmy bedroom window and spotted discarded clothes on the bed.

The bedroom wasn’t the source of the light though. It was coming from the adjacent bathroom and gave him just enough illumination to see.

Staying in the shadows, Beck hurried through the yard and went to the back of the house. He tried to keep his footsteps light on the wooden porch, but each rickety board creaked under his weight. He knew the knob would open because the lock was broken. He’d discovered that two months earlier when he checked out the place after the murder of the home’s owner.

Beck eased open the door just a fraction and heard the water running in the bathroom. “A killer in the shower,” he said to himself. All in all, not a bad place for an arrest.

He made his way through the kitchen and into the living room. All the furniture was draped in white sheets, giving the place an eerie feel.

Beck had that same eerie feeling in the pit of his stomach.

He’d been sheriff of LaMesa Springs for eight years, since he’d turned twenty-four, and he’d been the deputy for the two years before that. But because his town wasn’t a hotbed for serious crime, this would be the first time he’d have to take down a killer.

The thought had no sooner formed in his head when the water in the bathroom stopped. He had to make his move now.

Beck gripped his pistol, keeping it aimed.

He nudged the ajar bathroom door with the toe of his boot, and sticky, warm steam and dull, milky light spilled over him.

Since the bathroom was small, he could take in the room in one glance. Outdated avocado tile—some cracked and chipped. A claw-footed tub encased by an opaque shower curtain. There was one frosted glass window to his right that was too small to use to escape.

Beck latched on to the curtain and gave it a hard jerk to the left. The metal hooks rattled, and the sheet of yellowed vinyl slithered around the circular bar that supported it.

“Sheriff Beck Tanner,” he identified himself.

But his name died on his lips when he saw the person standing in the tub. It certainly wasn’t Darin Matthews.

It was a wet, naked woman.

A scream bubbled up from her throat. Beck cursed. He didn’t know which one of them was more surprised.

Well, she wasn’t armed. That was the first thing he noticed after the “naked” part. There wasn’t a gun anywhere in sight. Just her.

Suddenly, that seemed more than enough.

Water slid off her face, her entire body, and her midnight-black hair clung to her neck and shoulders.

Because he considered himself a gentleman, Beck tried not to notice her small, firm breasts and the triangular patch of hair at the juncture of her thighs.

But because he was a man, and because she was there right in front of him, he noticed despite his efforts to stop himself.

“Beckett Tanner,” she spat out like profanity. She swept her left hand over various parts to cover herself while she groped for the white towel dangling over the nearby sink. “What the devil are you doing here?”

Did he know her? Because she obviously knew him.

Beck examined her face and picked through all that wet hair and water to see her features.

Oh, hell.

She was obviously older than the last time he’d seen her, which was…when? Just a little more than ten years ago when she was eighteen. Since then, her body and face had filled out, but those copper brown eyes were the same.

The last time he’d seen those eyes, she’d been silently hurtling insults at him. She was still doing that now.

“Faith Matthews,” Beck grumbled. “What the devil are you doing here?”

She draped the towel in front of her and stepped from the tub. “I own the place.”

Yeah. She did. Thanks to her mother’s and sister’s murders. Since her mother had legally disowned Faith’s brother, the house had passed to Faith by default.

“The DA said you wanted to keep moving back quiet,” Beck commented. “But he also said you wouldn’t arrive in town until early next month.”

Beck figured he’d need every minute of that month, too, so he could prepare his family for Faith’s return. It was going to hit his sister-in-law particularly hard. That, in turn, meant it’d hit him hard.

What someone did to his family, they did to him.

And Faith Matthews had done a real number on the Tanners.

“I obviously came early.” As if in a fierce battle with the terry cloth, she wound the towel around her.

“I didn’t see your car,” he pointed out.

She huffed. “Because I took a taxi from the Austin airport, all right? My car arrives tomorrow. Now that I’ve explained why I’m in my own home and how I got here, please tell me why you’re trespassing.”

She sounded like a lawyer. And was. Or rather a lawyer who was about to become the county’s new assistant district attorney.

Beck had tried to convince the DA to turn down her job application, but the DA said she was the best qualified applicant and had hired her. That was the reason she was moving back. She wasn’t moving back alone, either. She had a kid. A toddler named Aubrey, he’d heard. Not that motherhood would change his opinion of her. That opinion would always be low. And because LaMesa Springs was the county seat, that meant Faith would be living right under his nose, again. Worse, he’d have to work with her to get cases prosecuted.

Yeah, he needed that month to come to terms with that.

“I’m trespassing because I thought your brother was here,” he explained. “The clerk at the convenience store on Sadler Street said he saw someone matching Darin’s description night before last. The Rangers are still analyzing the surveillance video, and when they’re done, I figure it’ll be a match. So I came here because I wanted to arrest a killer.”

“An alleged killer,” she corrected. “Darin is innocent.” The towel slipped, and he caught a glimpse of her right breast again. Her rose-colored nipple, too. She quickly righted the towel and mumbled something under her breath. “Before I got in the shower, I checked the doors and windows and made sure they were all locked. How’d you get in?”

“The back lock’s broken. I noticed it when I came out here with the Texas Rangers. They assisted me with the investigation after your mother was killed.”

Her intense stare conveyed her displeasure with his presence. “And you just happened to be in the neighborhood again tonight?”

Beck made sure his scowl conveyed some displeasure, too. “As I already said, I want to arrest a killer. I figure Darin will eventually come here. You did. So I’ve been driving by each night on my way home from work to see if he’ll turn up.”

She huffed and walked past him. Not a good idea. The doorway was small, and they brushed against each other, her butt against his thigh.

He ignored the pull he felt deep within his belly.

Yes, Faith was attractive, always had been, but she’d come within a hair of destroying his family. No amount of attraction would override that.

Besides, Faith had been his brother’s one-night stand. She’d slept with a married man, and that encounter had nearly ruined his brother’s marriage.

That alone made her his enemy.

Faith snatched up her clothes from the bed. “Well, now that you know Darin’s not here, you can leave the same way you came in.”

“I will. First though, I need to ask some questions.” In the back of his mind, he wondered if that was a good idea. She was only a few feet away…and naked under the towel. But Beck decided it was best to put his discomfort aside and worry less about her body and more about getting a killer off the streets.

“When’s the last time you saw your brother?” he asked, without waiting to see if she’d agree to the impromptu interrogation.

With a death grip on the towel, she stared at him. Frowned. The frown deepened with each passing second. “Go stand over there,” she said, pointing to the pair of front windows that were divided by a bare scarred oak dresser. “And turn your back. I want to get dressed, and I’d rather not do that with you gawking at me.”

It was true. He had indeed gawked, and he wasn’t proud of it. But then he wasn’t proud of the way she’d stirred him up.

“Strange, I hadn’t figured you for being modest,” he mumbled, strolling toward the windows. He could see his SUV parked out front. It was something to keep his focus on, especially since he didn’t want to angle his eyes in any direction in case he caught a glimpse of her naked reflection in the glass.

“Strange?” she repeated as if this insult had actually gotten to her. “I’d say it’s equally strange that Beckett Tanner would still be making assumptions.”

“What does that mean?” he fired back.

Her response was a figure-it-out-yourself grunt. “To answer your original question, I haven’t seen Darin in nearly a year.” Her words were clipped and angry. “That’s in the statement I gave the Texas Rangers two months ago. I’m sure you read it.”

Heck, he’d memorized it.

The part about her brother. Her sister’s ex. Her estranged relationship with all members of her family. When the Rangers had asked her if Aubrey’s father, Faith’s own ex, could have some part in this, she’d adamantly denied it, claiming the man had never even seen Aubrey.

All of that had been in her statement, but over the years he’d learned that a written response wasn’t nearly as good as the real thing.

“You haven’t seen your brother in a long time, yet you don’t think he’s guilty?”

Silence.

Beck wished he’d waited to ask that particular question because he would have liked to have seen her reaction, but there wasn’t any way he was going to turn around while she was dressing.

“Darin wouldn’t hurt me,” she finally said.

He rolled his eyes. “I’ll bet your mother and sister thought the same thing.”

“I don’t think he killed them.” Her opinion wasn’t news to him. She had said the same in her interview with the Texas Rangers. “My sister’s ex-boyfriend killed them.”

Nolan Wheeler. Beck knew him because the man used to live in LaMesa Springs. He was as low-life as they came, and Beck along with the Texas Rangers had been looking for Nolan, who’d seemingly disappeared after giving his statement to the police in Austin.

Well, at least Faith hadn’t changed her story over the past two months. But then Beck hadn’t changed his theory. “Nolan Wheeler has alibis for the murders.”

“Thin alibis,” Faith supplied. “Friends of questionable integrity who’ll vouch for him.”

“That’s more than your brother has. According to what I read about Darin, he’s mentally unstable, has been in and out of psychiatric hospitals for years, and he resented your mom and sister. On occasion, he threatened to kill them. He carried through on those threats, though I’ll admit he might have had Nolan Wheeler’s help.”

“Now you think my brother had an accomplice?” Faith asked.

He was betting she had a snarky expression to go along with that snarky question. “It’s possible. Darin isn’t that organized.”

Or that bright. The man was too scatterbrained and perhaps too mentally ill to have conceived a plan to murder two women without witnesses or physical evidence to link him to the crimes. And there was plenty of potential for physical evidence since both victims had been first shot with tranquilizer darts and then strangled. Darin didn’t impress him as the sort of man who could carry out multistep murders or remember to wear latex gloves when strangling his victims.

Beck heard an odd sound and risked looking in her direction. She was dressed, thank goodness, in black pants and a taupe sweater. Simple but classy.

The sound had come from her kneeling to open a suitcase. She pulled out a pair of flat black shoes and slipped them on. Faith also took out a plush armadillo before standing, and she clutched onto it when she faced him head-on. She was about five-six. A good eight inches shorter than he was, and with the flats, Beck felt as if he towered over her.

“My brother has problems,” she said as if being extra mindful of her word choice. “I don’t need to tell you that we didn’t have a stellar upbringing, and it affected Darin in a negative way.”

It was the old bad blood between them that made him want to remind her that her family was responsible for the poor choices they’d made over the years.

Including what happened that December night ten years ago.

Even now, all these years later, Beck could still see Faith coming out of the Sound End motel with his drunk brother and shoving him into her car. She, however, had been as sober as a judge. Beck should know since, as a deputy at that time, he’d been the one to give her a Breathalyzer. She’d denied having sex with his brother, but there’d been a lot of evidence to the contrary, including his own brother’s statement.

“You got something to say to me?” Faith challenged.

Not now. It could wait.

Instead, he glanced at the stuffed baby armadillo. It had a tag from a gift shop in the Austin airport and sported a pink bow around its neck. “I heard you had a baby.” Because he was feeling ornery, he glanced at her bare ring finger.

“Yes.” Those copper eyes drilled into him. “She’s sixteen months old. And, no, I’m not married.” The corner of her mouth lifted. Not a smile of humor though. “I guess that just confirms your opinion that I have questionable morals.”

He lifted a shoulder and let it stand as his response about that. “You think it’s wise to bring a child to LaMesa Springs with a killer at large?”

She mimicked him by lifting her own shoulder, and she let the seconds drag on several moments before she continued. “I have a security company rep coming out first thing in the morning to install some equipment. Once he’s finished, I’ll call the nanny and have her bring my daughter. We’ll stay at the hotel until I have some other repairs and updates done to the house.” She glanced around the austere room before her gaze came back to his. “I intend to make this place a home for her.”

That’s what Beck was afraid she was going to say. This wasn’t just about her new job. It was Faith Matthews’s homecoming. Something he’d dreaded for ten years. “Even with all the bad memories, you still want to be here?”

Her mouth quivered. “Ah. Is this the part where you tell me I should think of living elsewhere? That I’m not welcome here in your town?”

He took a moment with his word selection as well. “You being here will make it hard for my family.”

She had the decency to look uncomfortable about that. “I wish I could change that.” And she sounded sincere. “But I can’t go back and undo history. I can only move forward, and being assistant DA is a dream job for me. I won’t walk away from that just because the Tanners don’t want me here.”

He could tell from the resolve in her eyes that he wasn’t going to change her mind. Not that he thought he could anyway. At least he’d gotten his point across that there was still a lot of water under the bridge that his brother and she had built ten years ago in that motel.

But there was another point he had to make. “Even with security measures, it might not be safe for you or your daughter. The man who killed your mother and sister is still out there.”

Oh, she was about to disagree. He could almost hear the argument they were about to have. Maybe that wasn’t a bad thing. A little air clearing. Except the old stench was so thick between them that it’d take more than an argument to clear it.

She opened her mouth. At the exact moment that Beck caught movement out of the corner of his eye.

Outside the window.

Front yard.

Going on gut instinct, Beck dove at Faith and tackled her onto the bed. He lifted his head and saw the shadowy figure. And worse, it looked as if their visitor had a gun pointed right at Faith and him.

Chapter Two

Faith managed a muffled gasp, but she couldn’t ask Beck what the heck was going on. The tackle onto the bed knocked the breath from her.

She fought for air and failed. Beck had her pinned down. He was literally lying on her back, and his solid weight pushed her chest right into the hard mattress.

“Someone’s out there,” Beck warned. “I think he had a gun.”

Just like that, she stopped struggling and considered who might be out there. None of the scenarios that came to mind were good. It was too late and too cold for a neighbor to drop by. Besides, she didn’t have any nearby neighbors, especially anyone who’d want to pay her a friendly visit. Plus, there was Beck’s reaction. He obviously thought this might turn dangerous.

She didn’t have to wait long for that to be confirmed.

A sound blasted through the room. Shattering glass. A split-second later, something thudded onto the floor.

“A rock,” Beck let her know.

A rock. Not exactly lethal in itself, but the person who’d thrown it could be a threat. And he might have a weapon.

Who had done this?

Better yet, why was Beckett Tanner sheltering her? He had put himself in between her and potential danger, and once she could breathe, Faith figured that maneuver would make more sense than it did now.

Because there was no chance he’d put himself in real harm’s way to protect her.

“Get under the bed,” Beck ordered. “And stay there.”

He rolled off her, still keeping his body between her and the window. Starved for air, Faith dragged in an urgent breath and scrambled to the back side of the mattress so she could drop to the floor. She crawled beneath the bed amid dust bunnies and a few dead roaches.

Staying here tonight, alone, had obviously not been a good idea.

Worse, Faith didn’t know why she’d decided at the last minute to stay. Her plan had been to check in to the hotel, to wait for the renovations to be complete and for the new furniture to arrive. But after stepping inside, she thought it was best to exorcise a few demons before trying to make the place “normal.” So she’d sent the cab driver on his way, made a fire to warm up the place and got ready for bed.

Now someone had hurled a rock through her window.

There was another crashing sound. Another spray of glass. Another thud. Her stomach tightened into an acidy knot.

Beck got off the bed as well. Dropping onto the floor and staying low, he scurried to what was left of the window and peeked out.

“Can you see who’s out there?” she asked.

He didn’t answer her, but he did take a sliver-thin cell phone from his jeans pocket and called for backup. For some reason that made Faith’s heart pound even harder. If this was a situation that Beck Tanner believed he couldn’t handle alone, then it was bad.

She thought of Aubrey and was glad her little girl wasn’t here to witness this act of vandalism, or whatever it was. Faith also thought of their future, how this would affect it. If it would affect it, she corrected. And then she thought of her brother. Was he the one out there in the darkness tossing those rocks? It was a possibility—a remote one—but Beck wouldn’t believe it to be so remote.

Her brother, Darin, was Beck’s number one murder suspect. She’d read every report she could get her hands on and every newspaper article written about the murders.

She didn’t suspect Darin, though. She figured her sister’s ex, Nolan Wheeler, was behind those killings. Nolan had a multipage arrest record, and her sister had even taken out a temporary restraining order against him.

For all the good it’d done.

Even with that restraining order, her sister, Sherry, had been murdered near her apartment on the outskirts of Austin. Their mother’s death had happened twenty-four hours later in the back parking lot of the seedy liquor store where she worked in a nearby town. The murder had occurred after business hours, within minutes of her mother locking up the shop and going to her car. And even though Faith wasn’t close to either of them and hadn’t been for years, she’d mourned their loss and the brutal way their lives had ended.

Still staying low, Beck leaned over and studied one of the rocks. It was smooth, about the size and color of a baked potato, and Faith could see that it had something written on it.

“What does it say?” she asked when Beck didn’t read it aloud.

His hesitation seemed to last for hours. “It says, ‘Leave or I’ll have to kill you, too.’”

Mercy. So it was a threat. Someone didn’t want her moving back to town. She watched Beck pick up the second rock.

Beck cursed under his breath. “It’s from your brother.”

Faith shook her head. “How do you know?”

“Because it says, ‘I love you, but I can’t stop myself from killing you. Get out,’” Beck grumbled. “I don’t know how many people you know who both love you and want you dead. Darin certainly fits the bill. Of course, maybe he just wrote the message and had Wheeler toss it in here for him.”

She swallowed hard, and the lump in her throat caused her to ache. God. This couldn’t be happening.

Faith forced herself to think this through. Instead of Nolan being Darin’s accomplice, Nolan himself could be doing this to set up her brother. Still, that didn’t make it less of a threat.

“Listen for anyone coming in through the back door,” Beck instructed.

There went her breath again. If Beck had been able to break in, then a determined killer or vandal would have no trouble doing the same.

Because she had to do something other than cower and wait for the worst, Faith crawled to the end of the bed where she’d placed her suitcase. After a few run-ins with Nolan Wheeler, she’d bought a handgun. But she didn’t have it with her. However, she did have pepper spray.

She retrieved the slender can from her suitcase and inched out a little so she could see what was going on. Beck was still crouched at the window, and he had his weapon ready and aimed into the darkness.

With that part of the house covered, she shifted her attention to the bedroom door. From her angle, she could see the kitchen, and if the rock thrower took advantage of that broken lock, he’d have to come through the kitchen to get to them. Thankfully, the moonlight piercing through the back windows allowed her to see that the room was empty.

“You don’t listen very well,” Beck snarled. “I told you to stay put.”

She ignored his bark. Faith wouldn’t make herself an open target, but she wanted to be in a position to defend herself.

“Do you see anyone out there?” she barked back.

She clamped her teeth over her bottom lip to stop the trembling. Not from fear. She was more angry than afraid. But with the gaping holes in the window, the winter wind was pushing its way through the room, and she was cold.

“No. But if I were a betting man, I’d say your brother’s come back to eliminate his one and only remaining sibling—you.”

“Maybe the person outside is after you?”

He glanced back at her. So brief. A split-second look. Yet, he conveyed a lot of hard skepticism with that glimpse.

“You’re the sheriff,” she reminded him. “You must have made enemies. Besides, my mother and sister have been dead for over two months. If that’s Darin or their real killer out there, why would he wait this long to come after me? It’s common knowledge that I was living in Oklahoma City and practicing law there for the past few years. Why not just come after me there?”

“A killer doesn’t always make sense.”

True. But there were usually patterns. Her mother and sister’s killer had attacked them when they were alone. He hadn’t been bold or stupid enough to try to shoot them with a police officer nearby. Of course, maybe the killer didn’t realize that the car out front belonged to Beck, since it was his personal vehicle and not a cruiser. Therefore he wouldn’t have known that Beck was there. She certainly hadn’t been aware of it when she had been in that shower. Talk about the ultimate shock when she’d seen him standing there.

Her, stark naked.

Him, combing those smoky blue eyes all over her body.

“Dreamy eyes,” the girls in school had called him. Dreamy eyes to go with a dreamy body, that toast-brown hair and quarterback’s build.

Faith hadn’t been immune to Beck’s sizzling hot looks, either. She’d looked. But the looking stopped after the night he’d given her a Breathalyzer test at the motel.

A lot of things had stopped that night.

And there was no going back to that place. Even if those dreamy looks still made her feel all warm and willing.

“I hope you’re having second and third thoughts about bringing your daughter here,” Beck commented. He still had his attention fastened to the front of the house.

She was. But what was the alternative? If this was Darin or her sister’s slimy ex, then where could she take Aubrey so she’d be safe?

Nowhere.

That was a sobering and frightening thought.

But Beck was right about one thing. She needed to rethink this. Not the job. She wasn’t going to run away from the job. However, she could do something about making this a safe place for Aubrey. And the first thing she’d do was to catch the person who’d thrown those rocks through her window.

She could start by having the handwriting analyzed. Footprints, too. Heck, she wanted to question the taxi driver to see if he’d told anyone that he’d dropped her off at the house. Someone had certainly learned quickly enough that she was there.

“I think the guy’s gotten away by now,” Faith let Beck know.

He didn’t answer because his phone rang. Beck glanced at the screen and answered with a terse, “Where are you right now?” He paused, no doubt waiting for the answer. “Someone in front of the house threw rocks through the window. Check the area and let me know what you find.”

Good. It was backup. If Nolan Wheeler or whoever was still out there, then maybe he’d be caught. Maybe this would all be over within the next few minutes. Then she could deal with this adrenaline roaring through her veins and get on with her life.

Faith waited there with her fingers clutched so tightly around the pepper spray that her hand began to cramp. The minutes crawled by, and they were punctuated by silence and the occasional surly glance from Beck.

He still hated her.

She could see it in his face. He still blamed her for that night with his brother. Part of her wanted to shout the truth of what’d happened, but he wouldn’t believe her. Her own mother hadn’t. And over the years she’d convinced herself that it didn’t matter. That incident had given her a chip on her shoulder, and she’d used that chip and her anger to succeed. Coming back here, getting the job as the assistant district attorney, that was her proof that she’d risen above the albatross of her family’s DNA.