I Caught the Sheriff

  I Caught the Sheriff

  Cerise DeLand

  There’s a new sheriff in town with a strong need to show folks who’s boss. But rancher Lex Coltrane has steered things his way too long to let the sassy redhead with the curvy bod run wild. He figures he’d better catch the luscious sheriff and lay down the law.

  Lana jumps at the chance to get Lex into her bed and show him what’s really beneath her badge. Show him how she wants him—tough, tender, attentive. Show him how she needs him— fierce, eager and dominant.

  Lana knows Lex is always in charge in bed. But who will be in charge out of it?

  Ellora’s Cave Publishing

  www.ellorascave.com

  I Caught the Sheriff

  ISBN 9781419932601

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  I Caught the Sheriff Copyright © 2011 Cerise DeLand

  Edited by Helen Woodall

  Cover art by Syneca

  Electronic book publication February 2011

  The terms Romantica® and Quickies® are registered trademarks of Ellora’s Cave Publishing.

  With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.® 1056 Home Avenue, Akron OH 44310-3502.

  Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the publisher’s permission. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000. (http://www.fbi.gov/ipr/). Please purchase only authorized electronic or print editions and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted material. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  I Caught the Sheriff

  Cerise DeLand

  Dedicated to my buddies…

  Desiree Holt, Delilah Devlin and Shayla Kersten!

  Thanks for the laughter and the help!

  Trademarks Acknowledgement

  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

  4-H: Future Farmers of America DBA National FFA Organization

  Men’s Health: Rodale Inc.

  Stetson: John B. Stetson Company

  Texas A&M: Texas A&M University

  Chapter One

  On a one-hundred-degree Fourth of July in south Texas, Lex Coltrane gazed out upon his two burning problems. One stood across the street glaring back at him. He was the crusty old dude who’d bought the ranch down the road a piece and hogged all the water in High Maria Creek. The other headed toward Lex on a horse. She was a long, tall drink of cool tea by the name of “Red” Foster, the newly appointed local sheriff, who filled out a pair of jeans like she’d been born in them and who, if she did not help him soon with his neighbor, needed a whipping something bad.

  “And I am just the man to give it to you, too,” Lex murmured as he watched her ride past, waving to the Fourth of July crowd like a prize filly at a beauty pageant.

  “Nice piece of horseflesh.” Lex’s buddy Zack Christianson nodded toward the redhead who sat her quarter horse as regal as the barrel-racing queen she had been at fifteen. “She looks even better than when she was the captain of the cheerleading squad. That was more than ten years ago. How does she do that?”

  “She’s used to the saddle, Zack.” The way her thighs hug that mount, she’s an expert at controlling animals. Too bad she has failed to ride herd on my new idiot neighbor. “Working as a deputy down in Zapata County, she patrolled the Rio Grande border every day on horseback.” Lex knew because he sat on the county council that had reviewed her resume.

  Zack cocked a brow. “She could patrol me every day and I’d be just fine about it.”

  “Dream on, man.” I do. Shifting to calm his cock, Lex watched her pass and kept his eyes glued to her firm little ass. “Word around town is she’s not looking for a man to keep her bed warm at night.”

  Zack pushed his white Stetson up his forehead and grinned. “Hell, that’s fine by me. I just want a taste of that sugar, not an all-night meal.”

  “Your divorce has got you down, Zack. Not good to limit your time with a woman before you’ve even talked to her. Come on,” Lex urged his friend, “let me buy you a beer over at the fairgrounds. I want to take a look at a few of the entries in the 4-H competition.”

  “I never refuse the offer of a beer and I’m always looking for good stock.” Zack fell in step beside Lex as they strode through town toward the pens on the fairgrounds.

  The crowds were thick, and it just so happened that Lex and Zack kept pace right behind the end of the parade. This, Lex noted with a twist of his lips, allowed him a continuing view of the rear end of the Bandera County Sheriff’s Posse and the tight butt of their new boss lady.

  But Ted Plumber stepped right in front of him and obstructed his vision.

  “Hey, hey, hey, Red!” he called to her above the din of the brass band and the happy crowd. “Hey, baby!”

  “Drunk at eleven in the morning?” Zack winced. “Hell, Ted’s getting worse every day.”

  Lex saw him reach up to pull the sexy sheriff from her saddle. “Oh, brother. Look out now. She won’t stand for that.”

  Zack growled. “She shouldn’t either. The long arm of the law doesn’t want to be cuddled.”

  “Or manhandled. Come on.” Lex thumped his buddy on the shoulder and plowed his way through the crowd to get to Lana Foster.

  He and Zack got to her side just as their very drunk pal was tugging at her long, white shirt sleeve.

  “Sir!” She leaned over in the saddle to frown at the man who plucked at her clothes. “Take your hands off me.”

  “Lana! Baby!” Ted grinned like a slobbering kid. “Come on down here, girl, and gimme a big smacker. Right…” He tapped his puckered lips. “Here.”

  “Sir, I am very sorry,” she told him in a no-nonsense tone, “but please remove your hands from me.”

  “Aw. You remember me! Ted! From high school! Math class. You were so good.” He swept his wide-brimmed cowboy hat from his head in a gentleman’s gesture of respect. “A kiss. Let’s get to it.”

  “Ted!” Lex looped an arm under Ted’s while Zack took the man’s other arm. “What say we take you home?”

  “No! Party’s jush getting started, Lex. Lemme go.” He tugged to get loose.

  Lex held him tighter. “You are making a scene here, Ted. Time to go.”

  In a wrench that broke him free of Lex and Zack, Ted lurched toward Lana Foster who had, in the meantime, climbed down from her horse.

  This time when Ted went to grab her, he got her around the neck.

  She yelped, but braced her legs and in a lightning move, shrugged and threw the man off her back. Zap. Ted was on the dusty ground, scrambling up, dirty and mad as a wet hen.

  “You bitch!” He sprang for her, catching the end of her long red ponytail.

  Lex caught him by the scruff and let him dangle like a rag doll from his hand. “Home. Now.”

  “I’ll take him, Lex.” Zack grabbed the man’s arm. “Let’s go, buddy.”

  “You sure you can handle him?” Lex wondered if one man was enough to control their burly friend.

  Ted was rubbing his arms where he’d scraped them and seemed to have so
bered up after the fall. “Yeah. He can. Let’s go, Zack.”

  Lex turned for Lana who was brushing dust off her jeans and her black Stetson. “You okay?”

  “’Course I am.” She met his gaze with those huge, incredible sky-blue eyes that had stopped him in his tracks the first time he’d seen her and every time since.

  “Just want to be sure. Ted is pretty big.”

  She paused to stare at him. “I am not a weakling but a one-hundred-and-thirty-pound fully trained law enforcement officer.”

  “No need to get your back up with me, Sheriff.” Although I know you remember how opposed I was to your appointment on the basis of your young age alone. “I just wanted to be a concerned citizen.”

  She plunked her hat on her head and glared at him with more than a hint of challenge in her eyes. “You’ve made your point.”

  Her prickly attitude pierced his good intentions. “Just because we quarreled the other day, ma’am, does not mean that I’m rude, crude or indifferent to a lady’s dilemma. Ted Plumber can be a clumsy old drunk. If you don’t want any man’s protection that is just fine, but do not snap at me when, in fact, you should be saying thank you.” He jammed his hat on his head and swung around to walk away.

  She caught him with a hand to his arm. “I’m sorry, Mr. Coltrane. Please. You’re right.” She took a few steps around him to face him and this time, she looked up at him with those magnificent baby blues and melted his guts. “Thank you for your kind help. I do appreciate it.”

  The voice was smooth, smoky bourbon and just as intoxicating. The look on her face was serene and warm. She put her hand out. “Can we start again? Forget now and the other day in my office?”

  He’d stormed in to her little lair, loaded for bear, ready to yell about his new neighbor. She had been kind, professional, asking for just the facts. She had listened to Lex with rapt attention. Then she had shown him the door, saying she would look into the problem of the rhinestone cowboy who dammed up the creek and deprived Lex’s cows of water.

  The failure of that meeting had been his. His and his bad temper. He could be a reasonable man. Had always been, until six years ago when his wife and son died out on Highway 90 in a rainstorm, hit by a tractor-trailer. That’s when his reason rode out and abandoned him, returning only recently with greater frequency.

  “Sure. Any disagreement has a fifty-fifty fault line. I’d like a peace treaty.” He took her hand, surprised by its fragility and liking its warmth. “Are you going to the celebration with anyone? Maybe I can make up to you for my wild-ass behavior last week by buying you lunch?”

  She nodded, a tendril of her long, fiery hair escaping its band to slide over her cheek and down inside the open vee of her starched-to-a-fare-thee-well, white denim shirt. “You can. But I warn you, Mr. Coltrane—”

  “Lex.”

  “Lex. I’m hungry and I take my time eating.”

  I do, too. He narrowed his eyes just to keep from running them down that toned, come-to-papa body. Down, boy. She’s looking for company not a hook-up. “I’ve got money.”

  “Oh, I’m buying,” she announced, her mouth twitching when he questioned her with raised brows. “Wouldn’t want anyone to think you could buy me things and get any special treatment.”

  What if I want it? And I just come and get it?

  “You’ll be safe with me,” he reassured her, while he scolded himself for X-rated visions of her bare-ass naked and spread-eagle on his kitchen counter.

  “No temper tantrums today?” she tossed the challenge at him with raised brows.

  “None. Just tell me what you do want and I’ll be a good boy and oblige.”

  She picked up the reins of her mount and gestured to him to walk beside her toward the oak trees where the sheriff department’s other horses were being tied and hobbled. “Thanks.” Her gaze danced over him like twinkling blue-white diamonds. “That’s an offer I’ll take from the most powerful rancher in the county.”

  Damn. He was in trouble. He couldn’t tell if she was teasing him or flirting with him. Been so long without a woman, Coltrane, you can’t be friends with a lady you find hot as sin? “What is it you do want from me?”

  She stopped and faced him, her gaze frank, bold and seductive. “Aside from lunch?”

  “Yeah.” A man could always hope for big things. He nodded, enjoying the way she pouted her lush lips. “And companionship on the Fourth of July.”

  “An introduction to the movers and shakers in the county.”

  What did you expect, Coltrane? An invitation to her bed? His cock said yes. His eyes said why not. “You’ve forgotten them from your childhood?”

  She finished tying her horse to the tree limb and turned to face him, leaned really close and brushed those firm, hard nipples against his chest. “I have. People change in more than a decade. I need to get reacquainted.”

  With me, for certain. Twenty years ago I was a wild-ass guy at Texas A&M. And you were a kid here in elementary school. He inhaled, took her elbow and looked over her shoulder, away from all that pretty temptation. “Then I’m your man.”

  She had as much chance of landing Lex Coltrane in her bed as there was rain in the forecast. Both were zero. But hope sprang eternal and if getting next to him was as good as she got, she would chalk up her discretion as a job requirement. She needed to make friends here in this county where only last month she’d been appointed to replace the deceased sheriff. So hooking up with Lex Coltrane was an urge she should keep under wraps. In her panties. Her very damn wet panties.

  But few men ever challenged her. They were too stunned by the combination of her looks and her job. Yet since this man had walked into her office the other day and shown her his own hot determination and fiery good looks, he had obsessed her. His swagger in tight jeans and his broad-as-a-barn shoulders made her as horny as hell. The coal-dark hair and deep purple eyes made her purr just to look at him. The big hands weren’t bad, either. Oh lord. Could he put those hands on her? Please?

  Hold on there, Sheriff! Lana patted her horse’s mane and fell in step with the most luscious man in the county. He was a widower, too, and unattached to any one female, she’d learned from her deputy.

  “What’s your pleasure?” Lex interrupted her reverie as he led her toward the food stands. “Sausage? Tacos? Corn dogs?”

  “One of each.”

  He whistled. “Sheriff, ma’am, you better plan to work all that off fast.”

  She so liked his easy manner, all smooth-talking Texas charm and tough rawhide. “Advice from a man who knows women?”

  “I had a wife who watched every morsel she put in her mouth. Loved her to bits, but she drove me nuts counting calories.”

  Lana chuckled. Word was around town that Suzanna Coltrane had won every kind of local beauty queen crown that existed. “And I heard you were proud of her.”

  “Very.” He seemed to suppress a wince as he scanned the lines in front of the booths. “What’s first?”

  Lana dug a ten-dollar bill out of her back pocket. “Sausage on a stick.”

  He stared for an overly long second into her eyes. “Broiled or boiled?”

  “Broiled and big.”

  He cleared his throat and turned away. “Who would you like to meet first?”

  “Anyone who comes our way.”

  “That’ll be a stampede of all the single men, you realize.” His mouth hitched up at one corner in humor.

  “Maybe so. I’m not really interested in them, though.” And that was god’s honest truth. It’s only you who rile me up with your gruff looks and casual demeanor. “I’m not usually interested in men.”

  “No? Women then?”

  “Oh, no. No.” She scuffed the toe of one boot into the dirt. Why couldn’t she keep her big mouth shut instead of leading him down the garden path to sex?

  He clamped a hand over hers and she flinched at the electric charge of his hold. “Really? Well, then we’ll just take it nice and easy. Whatever the day brings.�
��

  As the zing from his touch pulsed through her body, she wondered why in tarnation she had to take this slowly. Her panties were soaked. Her pussy was throbbing. Her breasts were puckered up so high and hard, they were screaming to get out of her bra. Demanding he put his mouth on her there to lick her and bite her.

  “Oh god!” She ran a hand over her hip. “Can we just meet a few people and get this over with?”

  “You want to skip the introductions?” He frowned, confused.

  “I’d rather talk to you.”

  “Works for me,” he told her in that voice that made her heart leap like a doe in rutting season.

  She put palm to his chest. Yep. She’d been right. His heart was racing like a wild pony. She had to know if it was for her so she bit her lower lip and went for broke. “I want to celebrate Independence Day in a whole new way.”

  “Is that right?” His hand clamped down on hers while his expression went from part surprise to raw need. “I like bright ideas. What did you have in mind?”

  Courage, Sheriff. “Want to bring that sausage over to my house?”

  His brows inched upward. Amusement competed with desire as he licked his lower lip with a lazy tongue. “Theirs? Or mine?”

  “Just yours.”

  He clutched her fingers and spun, tugging her down the path toward the parking lot. “What about your horse?”

  “My boys will take care of him.” They would. They’d see she was nowhere to be found. Needing better teamwork, she’d harped for the past month about everyone covering for each other. So she raced along beside Lex and hoped to heaven no one was watching her leave with him.

  Eyes straight ahead, he picked up his pace. “Got a trailer or car here?”

  “No. John Bobbin picked me up this morning.” She was stretching her legs like a thoroughbred to keep up with Lex’s giant stride.

  “Anything else we should take care of?” He wended his way through the trucks until he opened the cab door of one and held it wide for her.