Excerpt from the second in the Hawk Point romances, sensual contemporary Western Perilous Promises
Chapter 1
The protesters were back.
Perris slammed on the brakes of her shiny new crossover SUV. Pounding her fist on the steering wheel, she watched the picketers link arms and form a line to stop her from getting through. It wasn’t yet seven in the morning on a cloudless spring day. She’d thought that by leaving early she could avoid the protesters, but overnight a tent city had sprung up in Wyoming’s high desert.
Blustery March weather had previously held the demonstration at bay. But during the first two weeks of April the weather warmed and the protest against Red Bluffs Mining had gathered steam, led by a young environmental guru who’d appeared out of nowhere to attract lurid, screaming headlines that had begun to immeasurably complicate Perris’s life.
Raptor season started in the middle of March, so this was her busiest time of year. She really didn’t have time to deal with Benjamin Collins and his so-called protest this morning. And yet there he stood, blocking the road, chanting the catchy slogans he’d coined, and smiling at her.
Smiling at her. Benjamin Collins was ruining her life for the sake of getting his name in the news, and he thought it all highly amusing.
Perris would admit the situation was ironic, if not humorous. At one time she might have found herself in agreement with Benjamin Collins and his negative opinion of open pit coal mining. But she’d matured since her college days, concluding she really needed a job in order to continue living and paying the bills, and it was probably a bit much to ask the world’s populace to live without cars or central heating or electricity while waiting to catch up to carbonless power generation.
Reality had set in for Perris with the need to earn her own living. She had scrambled for three years to get this job of environmental services officer at Red Bluffs Mining, moving from one lowly position to the next, one power plant to the next, until the job she wanted finally opened. Her duties entailed mitigating the impact the mine made on the environment, and she was proud of her role in protecting her birds of prey. She thought she’d found a way to put her beliefs to work in the business world, something she’d never thought possible in her college days when everything was more simple, all black and white.
But Perris’s efforts weren’t good enough for Benjamin Collins or his group, One Natural World. Whenever he had sporadically appeared at the mine site over the last month, she and Collins had come to vociferously agree to disagree. In her opinion, Benjamin Collins was a dangerous fanatic. He’d threatened her, but only at a distance. So far, he’d kept his attacks on her and the mine where she worked to the media.
She gritted her teeth as a uniformed officer approached her SUV, his face shaded by the wide brim of his brown Stetson. The Powell County Sheriff’s Department did a passable job of keeping the peace, although she couldn’t count on them twenty-four hours a day. Most of the officers remembered her or at least knew who she was. They were distantly friendly, and when they did show up in the mornings on the road to the mine, they got her through the picket line.
As angry as she was, something about this officer’s gait caught her eye. The tall, muscular man in the uniform approached with a familiar confident stride. Perris pushed aside dawning recognition along with an accompanying dizzy rush of gladness.
But she wasn’t sure. The finger she used to press the window button wasn’t shaking yet. She expected the officer to say something diplomatic like, It will be a few minutes before we can get the road cleared, ma’am.
Instead the voice said softly, “Hello, Perri. It’s been a long time.”Once she heard the familiar timbre that still haunted her dreams, she couldn’t fool herself anymore that it wasn’t really Noah standing there. Her whole body commenced trembling.
Noah pushed the brim of his brown Stetson back. His lengthy perusal brought him to the realization that Perri looked good this morning. Real good. Anger had always given a tinge of healthy color to her cheeks and made her green eyes sparkle, almost akin to the look she had after a vigorous session in bed. She was as beautiful as ever. He knew a hello kiss with a tongue-mating session to get reacquainted was probably out of order, and so he meant to just drink his fill of the sight of her while he had the chance.
Perris gripped the steering wheel to still her quivering fingers. She remembered all too well the familiar intimacy in Noah’s voice. For a moment she forced herself to keep looking through the front windshield at the yelling protesters as she fought to control her breathing. Her heart beat frantically, like a sparrow trapped in her chest. That low resonance in his voice had once been enough to have her eagerly shedding her clothes while he grinned and tugged off his own. She could still feel his hands on her, hot on cool flesh, and the memory of what his hands had once done to her was enough to make beads of perspiration pop out and begin to trickle down between her breasts.
She turned her head slowly, as if afraid her rigid neck would break if she made too sudden a move in Noah’s presence. She looked at a familiar brawny chest straining the seams of a crisp white uniform shirt, and then her eyes traveled up the column of his corded neck. A square, smooth-shaven jaw framed generous lips curved into a smile tilted at one corner. Above a slim, straight nose were light blue eyes gone steel gray in the early morning sunlight. She remembered those odd, changeable eyes. Eyes that could glint silver with concern, or melt her with a baby blue gaze. Their present flat steel tint indicated strongly to Perris that Noah, too, was hiding his true feelings.
She hadn’t expected to see those mercurial eyes up close ever again. Or that lean jaw, thick blond hair, strong arms and long legs...Dammit, would you stop it! she chided herself. Just stop repeating that litany right now. You don’t miss Noah. You don’t need him, or any man, in your life.
Noah stared at Perris across a distance of years and two much changed lives. But five long years weren’t enough to prepare her to meet him once again. She realized with another jolt to her battered heart, that if she told the truth, maybe the rest of her life wouldn’t be long enough to forget Noah Dalton.
She dropped her eyes again to his immaculate white shirt with three stars on each collar point and the big silver star over his heart. She knew the significance of that shirt. Why hadn’t she seen its crisp whiteness coming toward her, recognized the meaning of the color that distinguished his rank from the tan shirts of his deputies?
Probably because Noah hadn’t been wearing white when she decided to leave him. When Perris divorced Noah five years before, he’d worn tan. He hadn’t yet been elected sheriff of Powell County.
She realized she still didn’t know what to say. She had no words, even after all this time, to explain the hurt panic that had sent her into precipitate flight. And maybe it was too late for explanations. If Noah wasn’t the same person she had left, Perris wasn’t the woman who’d been Deputy Noah Dalton’s wife either. A lot of changes had taken place in those years, not the least of which was that she was her own woman now.
A woman who took charge, got her way, bulled her way through if she had to. Without help from any man. Especially a big, strong, blond lawman who had thought it his duty while married to her to rescue her at every turn.
The protesters were back.
Perris slammed on the brakes of her shiny new crossover SUV. Pounding her fist on the steering wheel, she watched the picketers link arms and form a line to stop her from getting through. It wasn’t yet seven in the morning on a cloudless spring day. She’d thought that by leaving early she could avoid the protesters, but overnight a tent city had sprung up in Wyoming’s high desert.
Blustery March weather had previously held the demonstration at bay. But during the first two weeks of April the weather warmed and the protest against Red Bluffs Mining had gathered steam, led by a young environmental guru who’d appeared out of nowhere to attract lurid, screaming headlines that had begun to immeasurably complicate Perris’s life.
Raptor season started in the middle of March, so this was her busiest time of year. She really didn’t have time to deal with Benjamin Collins and his so-called protest this morning. And yet there he stood, blocking the road, chanting the catchy slogans he’d coined, and smiling at her.
Smiling at her. Benjamin Collins was ruining her life for the sake of getting his name in the news, and he thought it all highly amusing.
Perris would admit the situation was ironic, if not humorous. At one time she might have found herself in agreement with Benjamin Collins and his negative opinion of open pit coal mining. But she’d matured since her college days, concluding she really needed a job in order to continue living and paying the bills, and it was probably a bit much to ask the world’s populace to live without cars or central heating or electricity while waiting to catch up to carbonless power generation.
Reality had set in for Perris with the need to earn her own living. She had scrambled for three years to get this job of environmental services officer at Red Bluffs Mining, moving from one lowly position to the next, one power plant to the next, until the job she wanted finally opened. Her duties entailed mitigating the impact the mine made on the environment, and she was proud of her role in protecting her birds of prey. She thought she’d found a way to put her beliefs to work in the business world, something she’d never thought possible in her college days when everything was more simple, all black and white.
But Perris’s efforts weren’t good enough for Benjamin Collins or his group, One Natural World. Whenever he had sporadically appeared at the mine site over the last month, she and Collins had come to vociferously agree to disagree. In her opinion, Benjamin Collins was a dangerous fanatic. He’d threatened her, but only at a distance. So far, he’d kept his attacks on her and the mine where she worked to the media.
She gritted her teeth as a uniformed officer approached her SUV, his face shaded by the wide brim of his brown Stetson. The Powell County Sheriff’s Department did a passable job of keeping the peace, although she couldn’t count on them twenty-four hours a day. Most of the officers remembered her or at least knew who she was. They were distantly friendly, and when they did show up in the mornings on the road to the mine, they got her through the picket line.
As angry as she was, something about this officer’s gait caught her eye. The tall, muscular man in the uniform approached with a familiar confident stride. Perris pushed aside dawning recognition along with an accompanying dizzy rush of gladness.
But she wasn’t sure. The finger she used to press the window button wasn’t shaking yet. She expected the officer to say something diplomatic like, It will be a few minutes before we can get the road cleared, ma’am.
Instead the voice said softly, “Hello, Perri. It’s been a long time.”Once she heard the familiar timbre that still haunted her dreams, she couldn’t fool herself anymore that it wasn’t really Noah standing there. Her whole body commenced trembling.
Noah pushed the brim of his brown Stetson back. His lengthy perusal brought him to the realization that Perri looked good this morning. Real good. Anger had always given a tinge of healthy color to her cheeks and made her green eyes sparkle, almost akin to the look she had after a vigorous session in bed. She was as beautiful as ever. He knew a hello kiss with a tongue-mating session to get reacquainted was probably out of order, and so he meant to just drink his fill of the sight of her while he had the chance.
Perris gripped the steering wheel to still her quivering fingers. She remembered all too well the familiar intimacy in Noah’s voice. For a moment she forced herself to keep looking through the front windshield at the yelling protesters as she fought to control her breathing. Her heart beat frantically, like a sparrow trapped in her chest. That low resonance in his voice had once been enough to have her eagerly shedding her clothes while he grinned and tugged off his own. She could still feel his hands on her, hot on cool flesh, and the memory of what his hands had once done to her was enough to make beads of perspiration pop out and begin to trickle down between her breasts.
She turned her head slowly, as if afraid her rigid neck would break if she made too sudden a move in Noah’s presence. She looked at a familiar brawny chest straining the seams of a crisp white uniform shirt, and then her eyes traveled up the column of his corded neck. A square, smooth-shaven jaw framed generous lips curved into a smile tilted at one corner. Above a slim, straight nose were light blue eyes gone steel gray in the early morning sunlight. She remembered those odd, changeable eyes. Eyes that could glint silver with concern, or melt her with a baby blue gaze. Their present flat steel tint indicated strongly to Perris that Noah, too, was hiding his true feelings.
She hadn’t expected to see those mercurial eyes up close ever again. Or that lean jaw, thick blond hair, strong arms and long legs...Dammit, would you stop it! she chided herself. Just stop repeating that litany right now. You don’t miss Noah. You don’t need him, or any man, in your life.
Noah stared at Perris across a distance of years and two much changed lives. But five long years weren’t enough to prepare her to meet him once again. She realized with another jolt to her battered heart, that if she told the truth, maybe the rest of her life wouldn’t be long enough to forget Noah Dalton.
She dropped her eyes again to his immaculate white shirt with three stars on each collar point and the big silver star over his heart. She knew the significance of that shirt. Why hadn’t she seen its crisp whiteness coming toward her, recognized the meaning of the color that distinguished his rank from the tan shirts of his deputies?
Probably because Noah hadn’t been wearing white when she decided to leave him. When Perris divorced Noah five years before, he’d worn tan. He hadn’t yet been elected sheriff of Powell County.
She realized she still didn’t know what to say. She had no words, even after all this time, to explain the hurt panic that had sent her into precipitate flight. And maybe it was too late for explanations. If Noah wasn’t the same person she had left, Perris wasn’t the woman who’d been Deputy Noah Dalton’s wife either. A lot of changes had taken place in those years, not the least of which was that she was her own woman now.
A woman who took charge, got her way, bulled her way through if she had to. Without help from any man. Especially a big, strong, blond lawman who had thought it his duty while married to her to rescue her at every turn.