Page 315 of Dirty Discipline, Vol. 2

Sighing, she turned around.

Barney Fife was still on the front porch of his station. He’d turned to face her now too, not even bothering to hide the way he continued to study her.

Waiting for her to screw up so he could put her in handcuffs and cart her off to jail again.

May as well nip this in the bud.

Holding her head high, the heat of her growing humiliation burning her hotter than the sun as she deliberately crossed the street to his side and headed straight for the police station.

“That was jaywalking,” he said mildly as she crossed his small parking lot, not stopping until she was standing at the bottom of the steps.

She didn’t dignify that with a remark. “I’m not sure where this address is. Can you help me, Sheriff…” Jackass. She managed to keep that last part locked behind her teeth as she looked at his name tag. “Barnes.”

Which was so damn close to Barney that it had to be kismet.

The broad rim of his gray Stetson hat dipped as he nodded. “Sure. Where are you trying to go?”

He held out his hand for her prison release card, but she wasn’t about to hand it over. She told him the house number instead.

“You’re looking for the old motel.” He gestured to the street that ran through town. “You’re already on Main, so all you’ve got to do is follow it about four-five blocks, past the last stop sign—”

She wouldn’t have thought this place big enough for one stop sign, much less multiple.

“—it’ll curve sharp to the left, and you’ll see it after about a mile. It’s the last building in town. Well… except, way up in the distance, you’ll also see a gas station, but it’s completely abandoned. It’s nothing but walls now that the roof’s blown off, and of course there’s the posts where the pumps used to be.”

Like she needed to know any of that.

“Thanks,” she said flatly, and walked away with Sheriff Barnes’s eyes burning hotter than the sun into her back every step of the way. They weren’t friends, and she was fine with letting her attitude show that she knew it.

Welcome to Starvation.

She couldn’t wait for her three years to be over so she could leave again.

Chapter Two

Tabby took one look at what qualified as a halfway house in this tiny little town of Starvation and judged it instantly. It wasn’t even a half-step up from prison.

The old motel had all of the architectural earmarks of having been built in the 1950s. Even from a distance, she was willing to bet it hadn’t been updated since. Not on the outside, anyway. A weathered sign planted at the edge of the parking lot read, Female Residential Reentry Facility.

She walked into the main office, a small room divided by a high desk that blocked her access to the dark haired man sitting on the other side. Cowboy boots kicked up on one corner of the desk, legs crossed at the ankles, toes tapping slightly to the upbeat country music playing on the 1980s boombox half buried under books and paperwork on the long, narrow table tucked under the window behind him. Through plain white curtains, the straight single-story line of motel rooms stretched out into twenty-odd private rooms.

Leaning all the way back in his chair, he lowered the newspaper crossword puzzle he had been filling in. With pen, no less. He must be good at them.

If he assessed her, it was only for the span of mere seconds. Then, dropping the folded newspaper onto his desk, he lowered his feet to the floor and stood up.

Significantly taller than she was, he held out his hand, waiting until she put her card into it. She couldn’t see his eyes, they were shaded by sunglasses so silver and shiny that they mirrored her and completely hid his gaze. The chord that struck inside her as she stood staring at her reflection while a corner of his handsome mouth curled slightly in response felt dangerous. He was a cowboy in black—black long-sleeved shirt, black jeans, his only splash of color being the white of his hat and the brown of his boots and the engraved belt around his waist, the shiny metal buckle almost as reflective as his sunglasses.

She shifted on her feet, trying not to let him intensify her already out of control nerves while he read her card. It took far longer than the slight information she knew was written on it.

Was he still reading, or was he looking at her?

She just couldn’t tell.

“Tabitha Markle,” he finally drawled, in a tone as smooth as honey and every bit as sexy as the form of him suggested he could be, beneath the stretch of his form-fitting navy blue button-down shirt. His shoulders were broad, his chest was too. “I was starting to wonder when you might get here.”

He flashed her a smile. Did he mean it to help put her at ease, because it didn’t. Her stomach tensed, tightening every bit as sharply as it had while she’d forced herself to walk right up to Sheriff Barnes. That man had been dangerous to her. If this was the warden at this, her newest prison, then he was every bit as dangerous.

As if in afterthought, he offered his hand over the high desk. “Travis. I’m your parole officer. Let me show you to your room and I’ll explain the rules of the house as we go.”

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