Page 1 of Mack

Chapter One

The amber glow of stage lights washed over Mallory Nichols as she stepped onto the raised wooden platform, and Dewey’s Bar swelled around her, the tang of spilled beer and sawdust, the low rumble of people who’d come to forget their week. Her heart hammered against her ribs. She’d sung here a dozen times, yet the butterflies never quite settled. She loved the way her voice felt soaring into that haze-filled room, but the vulnerability of it still made her throat close.

She was here for Shane. Her brother was the soul of this band, always coaxing applause and encores, always chasing the idea of Nashville just beyond reach. He had Lois and two little girls to consider, and Mallory suspected his wife would never risk uprooting their family for a dream. Still, Shane clung to hope, and he clung to Mallory, his standby, his sister, ready to fill in whenever his lead singer Wendy vanished into illness or missed rehearsal without warning. Tonight was one of those nights.

A tap on her shoulder. Shane leaned in, guitar strap worn soft from years of use. “Ready, sis?” he asked over the noise.

She forced a shaky smile. “Never am.” She brushed a strand of dark hair from her face and glanced toward the back of the room, where the neon EXIT sign blinked slow and patient. T.J. would be up past his bedtime, her parents on the couch instead of her. “This is my last one, Shane. You need to find someone else for when Wendy flakes.”

He sighed, running a hand through hair as midnight black as her own. “I’ll find someone. But tonight, you’re it.” He nodded toward the crowd. “They come looking for that female voice.”

Mallory turned back to the mic. “Then you’d better find her fast,” she said, “or next time you’ll be looking at an empty stage.”

She wrapped her fingers around the microphone, closed her eyes, and let the opening notes of Trisha Yearwood’s How Do I Live? carry her somewhere simpler. The melody curled around her, and she poured everything into it: every divided feeling, every mile between here and wherever she’d rather be. The crowd leaned in, and she felt it, that particular warmth that only a room full of strangers, all listening at once, can give you.

Opening her eyes mid-chorus, Mallory’s gaze locked onto a lone figure at the bar. He stood

with one booted foot propped on the footrail, cowboy hat tipped low, most of his face lost in shadow. What she could see was enough; a strong jaw, dark stubble, the kind of stillness that didn’t belong to someone just passing through. His right hand hovered near a holstered weapon at his hip, his left elbow resting on the polished wood, his silhouette carved by the neon beer signs behind him. Something in his steady focus made her heart lurch.

He turned when the bartender set a cup of coffee in front of him, and Mallory’s breath resumed its rhythm. She watched him lift it, the rising steam catching the light as he sipped, and then his gaze drifted back to the stage. Her pulse fluttered. She couldn’t see more than the broadness of his shoulders, the lower half of his face, the brim of that hat.

The band transitioned into Lauren Alaina’s The Road Less Traveled, its upbeat tempo pulling dancers to the floor. Mallory sang, but her thoughts kept drifting to the stranger, to the shape of his jaw, and she had to drag herself back to the lyric, back to the performance, note by careful note.

By the song’s end he straightened, slid a bill across the bar, and gave a curt nod to the bartender. He was leaving. Mallory exhaled, half-relieved, half-disappointed, wishing he’d taken just a few more steps toward the light.

The thought had barely formed when he moved. He parted the crowd of dancers without slowing, a head taller than nearly everyone he passed, and Mallory felt her heart slam against her ribs. The stage lights blurred warm around her, the microphone cold and heavy in her hand. He kept his head tipped down until he reached the edge of the platform, then stopped and raised his face to look at her.

She forgot every word of the song.

He was older than she’d guessed, early to mid-forties maybe, but every line and shadow on his face only made him more compelling. His khaki shirt stretched across broad shoulders, a gold badge catching the stage light above a crisply pleated pocket. The leather holster sat easy on his hip, and his boots, scuffed at the toes, looked like they’d covered real ground. His jeans were worn just enough to suggest the kind of strength that didn’t come from a gym. Light gray eyes, stormy and still, rested on her, and the faint creases at their corners deepened as a slight smirk lifted one corner of his mouth. She ached to drag her fingers along that stubbled jaw. Those lips.

He touched the brim of his Stetson, nodded once, and melted back into the crowd, disappearing through the double doors as though he’d never been there.

“Sis?”

Shane’s voice yanked her back.

“Huh?” She blinked. The music was still going. Dozens of curious faces had turned toward her, and she forced a breathless smile.

“Sorry, lost my place,” she said, and the crowd laughed with relief.

But she couldn’t shake him. No matter how many notes she hit, he stayed right behind her eyes. One look from a stranger, and she felt heat move through her veins, a craving she hadn’t known in years. It startled her, how eager she was. She was not an eager person. Not anymore. Not since Troy.

She made herself think of Troy when that warmth started to feel too good. It helped.

She’d thought he was something, too, in the beginning. Broad-shouldered, charming, the kind of man who filled a room. What she hadn’t seen yet was the other side of him, the one that surfaced on their wedding night. She was so scared that she never told anyone. Not even her parents. She was so ashamed. Now she wove back into the melody, but her voice felt hollow. The stranger would not leave her thoughts. She’d played Dewey’s countless times and never noticed him before. She didn’t expect to see him again.

But oh, how she wanted to.

****

Mack Reinhardt’s boots crunched against the asphalt as he approached his white SUV cruiser, the gold sheriff’s star on the door gleaming under the streetlight. Night shift again. He had four more days before switching to days come Monday.

He still wasn’t sure he’d stay in this role much longer. He was helping a friend out, that was all. Sheriff Sam Garrett had needed someone to fill the gap when Deputy Paul Dixon left for Butte to help his ailing father run a horse ranch. Paul was where he needed to be. Mack was still figuring out where that was for him.

Every morning, he inhaled the crisp pine-scented air of Clifton and looked up at the granite peaks catching the dawn light, all that green glowing against the rock, and he almost convinced himself this could be enough. But law enforcement felt like a closed chapter. He’d walked away from twenty-two years with the US Marshals for a woman, and two weeks after he turned in his credentials she told him she was leaving...

“I left my job for you, Ariana,” he’d said, jaw tight.