Read Online A Sheriff in Tennessee by Lori Handeland - Free Book Online

The air seemed difficult to breathe—hot, almost steamy.
    She was being silly. She might be attracted to him, but he considered her an annoyance, nothing more. Belle had spent most of her life as an annoyance to virtually all the men she cared about. First to her three younger brothers, who were mortified to have a sister like her, then to any boy she might have a crush on. Big Belle liking him was an embarrassment to any teenaged boy, as if her affection somehow made him less instead of more.
    Of course, things were different now, but Belle had never forgotten how it felt to be rejected, and she didn’t ever want to be again. Since Klein appeared to care for brains more than beauty and he thought she was a dim decoration, not the brightest light on the Christmas tree, she would not make a fool of herself by believing a look was anything more than a look.
    Belle jumped down from the sink just as Klein pushed away from the wall. She bumped into him. He stumbled back, hands coming up to catch her and clasping her elbows.
    â€œOuch!” she squeaked as his palm slapped against her scraped, though bandaged, skin.
    Immediately his hold gentled, but he didn’t let her go. Her nose practically pressed to the firm wall of his chest, she raised her head to find him staring at her with his familiar scowl.
    â€œIzzy,” he muttered.
    â€œHuh?”
    â€œYou look like an Izzy.”
    Klein’s mellow Georgia drawl caused a resurgence of goose bumps on her skin. When his gaze lowered to her mouth, she caught her breath.
    â€œYou can call me Izzy if you like,” she whispered.
    Something flickered in his eyes, then was goneso fast she couldn’t identify the emotion. He released her with a little shove, then slipped from the bathroom far too quickly for a man of his size.
    Belle stared at the ugly-as-sin velvet wallpaper while the pain of rejection washed over her. A long time might have gone by since a man had turned away, but the feelings were as familiar as her favorite shade of lip gloss. One touch had made her forget all her good intentions.
    Tears pricked her eyes, but she refused to let them fall. She had learned the hard way that showing people they’d hurt her only made them hurt her all the more.
    Â 
    W HAT IN HELL had come over him?
    Klein stalked down the hall and out the front door, putting as much distance as he could between Isabelle and him. He would not, could not, think of her as Izzy. In that direction lay far too much danger.
    Because Izzy was the name of the tousled, bleeding, vulnerable woman in his bathroom, the woman he’d rescued, the one who’d needed him. For Izzy he’d felt far too strong a liking, far too intense a physical longing.
    No. Better to think of her as Isabelle, as she’d asked. Isabelle, he could resist. Isabelle, he could work with and not want.
    Klein always got into trouble when he thought a woman needed him.
    He sank down on the top porch step, and Clint heaved himself to his feet with a groan. The dog’s youthful body housed an ancient soul.
    Clint padded the short distance across the porch and laid his snout on Klein’s shoulder. His sigh of commiseration blew bubbles of drool into Klein’s ear, which was the most action Klein had seen since long before moving to Pleasant Ridge.
    He sat up straighter at the thought. That was why he’d responded to Isabelle as he had, not because he’d lost his ever-lovin’ mind.
    Clint lifted his head an instant before a soft footfall announced her arrival. Klein didn’t bother to turn around. He would let her set the tone of the conversation.
    â€œWill you help me?”
    Klein sighed. What had he expected? Hot sex and eternal devotion? Right. She wanted something from him; she wasn’t going to rest until she got it.
    She must have sensed he was attracted to her, even though he’d thought he’d done a pretty good job of hiding it. Hell, he’d had years of