Read Online Homeplace by Joann Ross - Free Book Online

owned. Everything he might ever own. She was Xena, Warrior Princess. And she wasn’t going to put away her weapons and cease fighting until she had Sheriff Jack O’Halloran’s ass nailed to the courthouse door.
    The bubble lights on top of the fire trucks were flashing through the mist, creating a surrealistic red glow as Raine plowed straight through the yellow police tape and pulled up behind a state police cruiser.
    Fortunately, Raine noticed, the house was still standing, with no outward sign of fire damage. Normally, the sight of the weathered gray gingerbread house with its wide front porch and fish scale-roofed tower would have given her a sense of homecoming. Today, however, her mind was on other things.
    She threw open the driver’s door, then heedless of the rain, little caring that the heels of her suede pumps were sinking into the mud, she marched toward the group of uniformed men gathered together beside a black Chevy Suburban bearing the Olympic County insignia.
    She stopped in front of them, dragged a handful of wet hair out of her eyes, then splayed her hands on the hips of her soon-to-be-ruined Donna Karan suit. “So which one of you cowboys is Sheriff Jack O’Halloran?”
    Conversation came to an abrupt halt. All eyes shifted toward her before returning to the rangy man who seemed absurdly tall, standing literally head and shoulders above the others.
    “That’d be me.” Rainwater dripped off the brim of his—wouldn’t you just know it? she thought scathingly—black Stetson. He was wearing a black Gore-Tex jacket that carried the same insignia as his ridiculously macho truck. “And you must be Ms. Raine Cantrell. The New York lawyer who’s kept our county judicial system so busy the past few hours.”
    His half smile was obviously feigned, his gunmetal gray eyes offering not an iota of welcome. The tinge of sarcasm in his baritone voice frayed Raine’s last nerve.
    “If I weren’t an officer of the court, I’d hit you for what you did to those girls.” Her voice was tight with anger.
    He gave her a bland look. “Since I’m an officer of the court, if you were to hit me, I suppose I’d have no choice but to haul you in for assaulting an officer.” He shrugged. “Looks as if we’re at a stalemate, Counselor.”
    Raine thought about that. But not for long. “Not exactly. There’s still the little matter of you bombing a house with three innocent teenagers in it, Sheriff .” She heaped the same amount of sarcasm on his title as he’d used on hers.
    “A bomb?” His dark brows crashed down toward his nose. A nose that looked as if it had been broken at some time in the past. “As an officer of the court ”—there it was again, Raine thought, that damn sarcasm—“you, of all people should understand the power of an accusation. I didn’t do any such thing.”
    “And I assume that fire just started by itself?”
    “No.” He skimmed a look over her. Then turned away. She was about to demand to know where he was going, to insist he not walk away while she was talking to him, when he opened the front door of the truck and retrieved a school bus yellow rubberized poncho. “And it wasn’t really a fire. Just a lot of smoke. When the storm knocked out the power lines, the heat went out. Of course, since they were refusing to talk with me, I had no way of knowing that. Until they got cold and decided to light a fire in your grandmother’s old wood stove. Unfortunately, no one ever mentioned the advisability of opening the damper first.”
    She caught the rain gear he’d tossed toward her with a murmured, reluctant “thank you,” yanked it over her head, then followed his gaze to the back seat of the truck, where the three girls seemed none the worse for their experience.
    “And now that we’ve settled that, Counselor,” he said wearily, “I think I’ll leave the logistics of straightening out this mess to you and the juvenile-court system. Because it’s been a long day and