Page 26 of Mistletoe

Chapter Eight

Hal

Sweetwater Point

Sheriff’s Office

Hal waited the entire day.

People came and went from the sheriff’s office. Not one of them was Emma. The older man she rode in the wagon with—likely her father—entered the building only to exit with a scowl on his face.

When night fell, he was done with waiting.

The overnight shift consisted of one deputy. Hal worried about how to neutralize the deputy, but the man solved that problem by falling asleep on the job.

Emma was in the basement. Hal could not say how he knew, but he knew. An invisible ribbon connected them, drawing him down the stairs. Each step down stoked his anger until he was a bubbling caldron of fury.

A basement in the winter? Dank and cold, the wood-burning stove failed to take the bitter chill out of the air. She had one blanket. One. Wrapped around her, it was barely adequate.

“You’re trouble, Hal,” she said, rising to her feet. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“Youshouldn’t be here.”

Clutching the blanket around her shoulders with one hand, she waved her free hand dismissively. “It’s not so bad.”

It was.

Concrete crumbled where the iron bars were embedded, either from age or poor construction. It would be nothing to tug on the bars?—

“What are you doing? Stop that.” Emma swatted at his hands.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he repeated. He intended to fix that.

“No, I mean in the sheriff’s office filled with deputies? That’s a great way to get yourself captured.”

“I won’t be caged,” he insisted. Not again. Not ever.

“Well, this situation seems ill-advised then.”

“There’s one deputy. He’s asleep.” He wrapped his hand around the bars, the palms of his hands tingling at the contact.

She swatted at his hands again. “Are you seriously trying to bust me out of jail?”

Obviously.

His expression must have conveyed his intentions because Emma said, “And how do you think that’s gonna turn out? The sheriff knows who I am. She knows where I live. I escape, then I’m a fugitive. She catches me because I do not have the innate ability or desire to live as a fugitive, and I wind up with worse charges. Right now, I hit a man who grabbed me in a room full of witnesses. It’s self-defense.”

Her words made him pause, yet he did not release his hold on the flimsy iron bars. Immediate release was his objective. He had not considered the complications of a jailbreak.

“This is my fault. I started a fight,” he said. He heard distress in Emma’s voice, and his ability to make rational choices vanished.

Emma reached for him through the bars, touching his hand.

Willingly.

With a smile on her face.

If Hal wasn’t already besotted, he was now completely and fully devoted to her. He’d spend the rest of his days brawling in bar fights and breaking her out of jail. Whatever she required, though he secretly yearned for something a bit duller.

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