The Sheriff And The Impostor Bride

Letter to Reader Title Page Acknowledgments About the Author Dedication Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Teaser chapter Copyright

Powerful, prominent, proud—the Oklahoma Wentworths’ greatest fortune was family. So when they discovered that pregnant mom-to-be Sabrina Jensen was carrying the newest Wentworth heir—and had vanished without a trace—they vowed to...Follow That Baby!

Rachel Jensen: The wild twin with a penchant for scrapes, she’d always found gentle words and comforting hugs from Sabrina. But now her straight-and-narrow sister was alone—and expecting—so Rachel transformed herself into the take-charge twin whose only weakness was...

Riley Hunter: This small-town sheriff craved more than desk duty drudgery, so the prospect of a mom-to-be on the hoof was particularly enticing. But when he met the alleged runaway face-to-face, he discovered he was in way over his head....

Sabrina Jensen: With precious little time before her baby’s birth, Sabrina was still keeping mum about her mystery nest and keeping fit with Lamaze classes, where a fellow first-timer felt moved to alert the mighty Wentworths....

Don’t miss

THE MILLIONAIRE AND THE PREGNANT PAUPER

by Christie Ridgway, next month’s Follow That Baby

title, available in Yours Truly.

Dear Reader,

All of us at Silhouette Desire send you our best wishes for a joyful holiday season. December brings six original, deeply touching love stories warm enough to melt your heart!

This month, bestselling author Cait London continues her beloved miniseries THE TALLCHIEFS with the story of MAN OF THE MONTH Nick Palladin in The Perfect Fit. This corporate cowboy’s attempt to escape his family’s matchmaking has him escorting a Tallchief down the aisle. Silhouette Desire welcomes the cross-line continuity FOLLOW THAT BABY to the line with Elizabeth Bevarly’s The Sheriff and the Impostor Bride. And those irresistible bad-boy James brothers return in Cindy Gerald’s Marriage, Outlaw Style, part of the OUTLAW HEARTS miniseries. When a headstrong bachelor and his brassy-but-beautiful childhood rival get stranded, they wind up in a 61b., 12oz. bundle of trouble!

Talented author Susan Crosby’s third book in THE LONE WOLVES miniseries, His Ultimate Temptation, will entrance you with this hero’s primitive, unyielding desire to protect his once-wife and their willful daughter. A rich playboy sweeps a sensible heroine from her humdrum life in Shawna Delacorte’s Cinderella story, The Millionaire’s Christmas Wish. And Eileen Wilks weaves an emotional, edge-of-your-seat drama about a fierce cop and the delicate lady who poses as his newlywed bride in Just a Little Bit Married?

These poignant, sensuous books fill any Christmas stocking—and every reader’s heart with the glow of holiday romance.

Enjoy!

Best regards,

Joan Marlow Golan

Senior Editor

Please address questions and book requests to:

Silhouette Reader Service

U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

The Sheriff and the Impostor Bride

Elizabeth Bevarly

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Special thanks and acknowledgment are given to Elizabeth Bevarly for her contribution to the Follow That Baby series.

ELIZABETH BEVARLY

is an honors graduate of the University of Louisville and achieved her dream of writing full-time before she even turned thirty! At heart, she is also an avid voyager who once helped navigate a friend’s thirty-five-foot sailboat across the Bermuda Triangle. “I really love to travel,” says this self-avowed beach burn. “To me, it’s the best education a person can give to herself.” Her dream is to one day have her own sailboat, a beautifully renovated older model forty-two-footer, and to enjoy the freedom and tranquillity seafaring can bring. Elizabeth likes to think she has a lot in common with the characters she creates—people who know love and life go hand in hand. And she’s getting some firsthand experience with motherhood, as well—she and her husband have a four-year-old son, Eli.

For Mom and Aunt Dot—

my favorite set of twins.

One

Lost in thought as he scribbled down his latest report on the notorious howling Barker family, Sheriff Riley Hunter jerked open the bottom right-hand drawer of his desk, felt around blindly, then frowned when his fingers encountered nothing but a stack of Louis L’Amour paperbacks. He pushed his chair away from the desk, shoved his ink black, razor-straight, shoulder-length hair out of his eyes, and gazed down at the drawer. The big empty space beside the battered novels, exactly the size of a box of Lorna Doone cookies, attested to the severity of the crime.

Theft, plain and simple, had come to Wallace Canyon, Oklahoma. What was the world coming to?

Who the hell had run off with his stash of Lorna Doones? Riley wondered, his anger compounding. Virgil, doubtless, he decided. His deputy sheriff had an even bigger sweet tooth than Riley had, and regardless of the fact that Virgil Bybee was sworn to uphold the law, he’d probably figured that a crime like Lorna Doone pilfering would go unnoticed in a dinky little community like Wallace Canyon.

And who had named it Wallace Canyon anyway? Riley wondered further, not for the first time since his self-inflicted relocation here six months earlier. There were no canyons in the Oklahoma panhandle. Wallace Flat would have been much more appropriate. Still, he’d learned almost right away that in Wallace Canyon, not a whole lot made sense. Mainly because not a whole lot happened.

“Virgil!” he called out as he unfolded his slim, six-foot frame from behind his desk. “Where the hell are my Lorna Doones?”

Riley cocked his head to listen for any incriminating sounds of cookie crunching or falling crumb, but the only thing he heard was the faint crackle of Rosario’s radio down the hall, tuned to the only country-western station—hell, the only radio station, period—within earshot of the tiny town. The soft, easy crooning of a female voice soothed him some. Patsy Cline, he realized with a fond smile when he listened harder. Wasn’t nobody singing today who could touch that woman. No, sir.

“Virgil!” he tried again, pushing the thought away.

The slow scuff of boots along the linoleum outside Riley’s office eventually found its way down the hall. Then Virgil Bybee’s head appeared in Riley’s doorway, halfway down, as if the younger man were bent at the waist and unwilling to reveal anything below the neck.

Incriminating behavior if ever there was such a thing, Riley decided, his instincts, as always, unimpeachable. He hadn’t survived almost ten years on the Tulsa PD because of his good luck and good looks alone, after all.

“You bellowed?” Virgil asked mildly.

“Where the hell are my Lorna Doones?” Riley demanded again without preamble.

“Shoot, Riley, how should I know?” But anxiously, Virgil swiped his fingers across his upper lip.

Riley reared his head back, settled one hand on a trim hip, the other on the butt of his pistol, and noticed that Virgil duly noted the stance. For one long moment, he said nothing. Then he stated with all the menace he could muster, “Virgil, I want those cookies apprehended and returned to my jurisdiction—namely this here drawer—” he pointed down at the cookies’ usual resting place “—no later than three o’clock this afternoon. You got that?”

Virgil nodded silently, his shaggy blond hair falling over his forehead with the gesture, his blue eyes widening at the warning. Then, before Riley had a chance to comment further, the deputy flung his arm out, rattling the piece of flimsy paper attached to his hand. “This came in over the fax a few minutes ago,” he announced as he straightened, fairly dancing with excitement.

Riley narrowed his dark eyes as he stepped around his desk. Not much came over the Wallace Canyon PD fax machine. Mostly things meant for other fax machines that the sender had misdialed. “What is it?”

“It looks like an APB,” Virgil said eagerly, finally moving fully into the doorway. “A regular manhunt.”

Riley took a moment to note that there was no evidence of cookie crumbs on the deputy’s uniform—identical to his own—of khaki shirt and trousers, but you never knew about some people. Although Riley’s trusting nature had gotten him into trouble on more than one occasion, he decided to give Virgil the benefit of the doubt on this one. The man’s agitation was clearly the result of the notice in his hand, and not some sugar-induced rush. Besides, Rosario, their receptionist-secretary-dispatcher was a notorious shortbread lover, herself. There was no end to the list of possible suspects.

“A manhunt?” Riley repeated, crossing the tiny office in a half-dozen long-legged strides.

Virgil nodded his head vigorously, his eyes sparkling. “Actually, it’s even better. A womanhunt. And according to Rosario, the perp is right here in Wallace Canyon.”

Riley shook his head slowly in bemusement. First cookie stealing, and now Virgil Bybee using the word perp. All in one day. Could his decrepit, thirty-two-year-old heart handle all this excitement?

He reached for the bulletin and quickly scanned it, then glanced back up at his deputy with as much patience as he could muster. “Virgil,” he said quietly.

“Yeah, Riley?”

“She’s not a perp. She’s a missing person. And this is all old news. We got a fax about her...must’ve been a few weeks ago. I faxed ’em back and asked ’em to send me some more details, because Rosario told me she saw a woman here in Wallace Canyon who fit the description, but I never heard back so I figured they found her somewhere else. Looks like the fax machine’s running a little slow. Again. This—” he waved the paper in the air again “—is evidently the details.”

Virgil gaped at him. “Old news? It’s the first I’ve heard about it. There’s been all this excitement goin’ on, and y’all didn’t even bother to tell me about it? Why am I always left in the dark this way? Why am I always the last person to know? Y’all never tell me anything around here.”

Riley rolled his eyes. “There was nothin’ to tell, Virgil.” But his deputy continued to pout, so, taking pity on him, Riley clarified, “The first time it came over the fax must’ve been back when you were in Guymon over Thanksgiving. A notice that this woman—” He glanced back down at the fax in an effort to locate her name. “Sabrina Jensen,” he said when he found it. “It said she was wanted by the Freemont Springs Police Department over there by Tulsa. But not because she’s a perp, Virge. She’s been reported as a missing person.” He rattled the paper in his hand for emphasis. “It says so right here.”

The deputy’s lower lip ceased thrusting out so much, but he was still obviously disappointed—probably because they wouldn’t be calling out the hound dogs for a search. “Oh,” he muttered. “I guess I didn’t read that far. I just saw the part about her being wanted.”

Riley continued to read the notice, uttering his observations aloud this time, so Virgil could grasp more fully the reality of the situation. “Says Miss Jensen has been missing for months and is believed to be on the run. But this here’s the part I can’t figure out, Virge. The Wentworth family is looking for her. The Wentworths. And I just can’t understand how she warrants that. I mean, they didn’t even seem to know much about her before, but suddenly, I’ve got all this information. Now how do you figure that?”

“Should I know who you’re talking about?” Virgil asked. “Who are the Wentworths?”

Riley shook his head when he remembered where he was. “They’re sort of famous-slash-infamous in that part of the state, but I can see how Wallace Canyon would have missed out on all the fuss.” Hell, he could see how Wallace Canyon would have missed out on the Cuban Missile Crisis and that whole Tickle-Me Elmo thing.

Aloud, Riley continued, “I know about them because I grew up just outside Tulsa. Big ol’ oil family in Freemont Springs whose reputation, as they say, has always preceded them. Rich. Powerful. Pampered kids. That kind of thing. In fact, I had a runin with the younger boy once, when he was drunk and disorderly at a frat party. Nothing major—just had to give him a stern warning. And I heard the older boy died—real recent, too, if memory serves—during some kind of explosion.”

“But this woman’s name is Jensen,” Virgil indicated unnecessarily.

Riley nodded knowingly. “Yeah, and like I said, they didn’t know that much about her when they sent that last fax. But suddenly, I now know that she’s—” he returned his attention to the fax and read word for word “‘—Twenty-four years old, approximately five-foot-seven, medium build, dark brown hair, green eyes. All departments should be made aware—’”

His voice halted as he realized the answer to his own question was right there in black and white. “Ah-ha,” he said.

“Ah-what?” Virgil asked.

“Looks like the reason there’s all this sudden information about Miss Jensen is because she’s been seein’ an obstetrician who’s just now comin’ forward with the particulars of her situation.”

“An obstetrician?” Virgil asked. “Now, what difference would it make if she wears glasses or not?”

“No, Virgil,” Riley groaned. “Not an optometrist. An obstetrician. A doctor who delivers babies. Says here, and I quote, ‘Ms. Jensen is also pregnant, due to deliver in—”’ he glanced up at Virgil, paper held aloft “—Where’s the rest of it?” he asked.

The deputy sheriff scrunched up his shoulders and let them drop. “That’s all that came over the fax,” he said. “Right after the photo of her.”

“Well, there should be at least another page,” Riley stated. “It’s cut off midsentence here, and it doesn’t even say why the Wentworths are looking for her.”

But Virgil was insistent. “I’m telling you, Riley, that’s all that came over the fax.”

Riley nodded again, sighing heavily. It had happened before. Like everything else at the Wallace Canyon police station, the fax machine was old, moody, unpredictable and in need of either a major overhaul or a total replacement—much like Wallace Canyon itself, he couldn’t help but muse.

“All right,” he finally conceded. “As long as we’ve got her photo and vitals, I guess this is enough to go on. Did Rosario see the photo?”

Virgil nodded. “Yup. That’s why I said the perp...er, the missing person...is here in town. The minute Rosario saw that picture, she said that’s definitely the woman she saw over in Westport. Then she went out to get some lunch.”

Riley thought for a minute. “The only thing over in Westport is the trailer park.”

Virgil’s features wrinkled as he gave that some consideration, though why he should make such an effort, Riley couldn’t imagine. “I don’t think trailer park is the politically correct term, Riley,” the deputy finally said. “I think they call them mobile home communities now.”

First perp and now politically correct. What was Virgil reading these days? “Fine,” Riley said. “There’s nothing over in Westport except the mobile home community. That must be where Rosario saw her, ’cause that’s where her sister lives.”

Riley reached for the chocolate brown Stetson hanging on the coatrack near the door and settled it on his head, then shrugged a shearling jacket over his khaki uniform and began to button himself up. “Where’s the photo of the woman?” he asked.

Virgil jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. “It’s out on Rosario’s desk.”

“I’ll take it and head over to Westport myself. Oh, and Virgil,” he added as he passed by his deputy, “don’t forget about those Lorna Doones. Because I sure as hell won’t.”

He wasn’t sure if he imagined Virgil’s seemingly heightened color or not, but Riley figured it never hurt to add a little emphasis. “Three o’clock,” he repeated his earlier admonition. “I’ll be back in the office by then, and those cookies better be waiting for me.”

And with one final tug of the Stetson that brought it down low on his forehead, Riley turned and made his way toward Rosario’s desk.

Rachel Jensen tossed a limp, wayward strand of tinsel back on the little plastic Christmas tree that squatted in her twin sister’s rented picture window, and sighed with melodramatic melancholy. The single string of tiny, variegated lights wound around the tree flickered in an irregular rhythm, off and on, off... and...on...off-and-on, their flamboyant, if meager, celebration of color reflected on the window behind.

The view on the other side of the glass, however, was anything but merry and colorful. To the left, the flat, brown Oklahoma landscape stretched into oblivion beneath a thick, slate sky—not a hill or dale or tree in sight. Every few seconds a dry, fat snowflake interrupted the monotony, swirling up and around, dancing in the gusty wind that buffeted the rented mobile home.

Rachel had traveled all over the country with her truck-driving father, Frank, and her identical twin, Sabrina, from the time that the two girls were tots. But she’d never seen anything more predictable—or more boring—man the Oklahoma panhandle in the winter. Windy. Cloudy. Brown. Day after day. And now here it was, a little over a week before Christmas, and there wasn’t a comfort or joy in sight.

“Merry daggone Christmas,” she muttered to no one in particular.

She shifted her gaze to the right a bit, and was rewarded with a new sight for her trouble. The mobile home next door to Sabrina’s was at least splashed with a bit of color, trimmed in yellow with a green front door, a scattering of plastic red geraniums swinging at regular intervals from its overhang. Having been in Wallace Canyon for less than two days, Rachel hadn’t had the opportunity to meet any of Sabrina’s rented neighbors. But at least one of them sure seemed to be fighting back against the landscape.

She ran a restive hand through her bangs, trailing her fingers back over her straight, dark brown, shoulder-length hair. Then she turned her back on the dubious vista outside Sabrina’s window—not to mention on her sister’s crummy excuse for a Christmas tree.

Had she not already known it, Rachel would have guessed that the mobile home to which her twin had summoned her was a rental, because it was furnished in traditional rental style—ugly. Brown furniture, brown paneling, brown carpeting, brown cabinetry... with a little tan and beige thrown in here and there for good measure. Rachel swore that if she ever got out of Wallace Canyon—and by golly, she would get out of Wallace Canyon, the moment she located Sabrina—she was never going to buy anything brown again.

But until that time came, it looked as though she was going to have to settle for lots of it. And that time wouldn’t come until she figured out just where in the heck Sabrina was, how in the heck her sister had gotten herself into trouble, and what in the heck they were going to do to get her back out again.

Because being in trouble just wasn’t Sabrina’s style at all. Sabrina was the levelheaded one of the twin sisters, the one who had always been focused and certain, the one who knew exactly what she wanted and exactly how to go about getting it. Rachel was the one more likely to find herself in things. In dire straits, for example. Or in deep doo-doo. Or in hock. Or in over her head.

Sabrina, from all reports, had been doing great until recently. True, the two sisters weren’t in touch the way they used to be—a two-hour drive one way tended to make it difficult for them to mesh their busy lives enough to get together in person. But they did speak pretty regularly on the phone. Up until a few months ago, Sabrina’s life, by all accounts, had been full and active—and normal. She’d been working as a waitress and going to school at night, and she was this close to earning her degree in marketing. And she had all kinds of plans for after college, opening a chain of Route 66 diners that would no doubt make her a bundle someday.

Rachel, on the other hand... Well, even at the ripe old age of twenty-four, she still wasn’t quite sure what she wanted to do with her life. Sabrina’s dream of restaurants and franchises was a nice one, one she had envisioned for a long time now. But it was Sabrina’s dream. Rachel wanted a dream of her own to chase after. She just didn’t know exactly what it was yet. For the immediate future, though, it looked like her dream was to be stuck in Wallace Canyon, waiting for Sabrina to show up. And waiting. And waiting. And waiting.

The little community, for all its lack of variegation, animation, population and vegetation, was, nevertheless, Sabrina’s last known location. Two nights ago, she’d called Rachel at her job in a bustling, rough-and-tumble Oklahoma City nightspot from this very mobile home. But Eddie, the bar manager, had caught Rachel behind the bar and on the phone in the middle of the conversation—and at the height of the after-work Happy Hour crush. Before Rachel had had a chance to find out the particulars of Sabrina’s situation, he’d jabbed his thumb down on the button to cut the connection short. There had only been time for Sabrina to make Rachel promise to come to Wallace Canyon, to the Westport Mobile Home Community, where she was renting the mobile home on lot thirty-two, as soon as possible.

But when Rachel had arrived at the appointed address yesterday afternoon—losing her job in Oklahoma City in the process, because she’d been scheduled to work yesterday—Sabrina had been nowhere in sight.

The mobile home’s front door had been unlocked, though, and nothing inside seemed to have been disturbed. There was evidence of very recent habitation—a six-pack of yogurt and half gallon of skim milk in the fridge—both far from expired—and some fresh fruit, not quite ripe yet, in a basket by the window. But there were no clothes in the drawers or closets, nothing to indicate that Sabrina had been the one living here. Upon checking with the manager, Rachel had learned that her twin sister had paid her rent through the end of the year—in cash. But Sabrina herself was nowhere to be found.

At this point, Rachel didn’t know whether to stay or go. Whether Sabrina was hiding out nearby, was making her way back home to Tulsa, or had left Oklahoma entirely. All Rachel was certain about was pretty much what she’d been certain about in the beginning, a few months ago. back when Sabrina had first taken off. Squat. She was certain about squat. Except for the fact that her sister was in trouble. And alone. And on the run. And unwilling to tell anyone the particulars of her situation.

Oh, yeah. And she was pregnant, too.

Pregnant. Now that was another completely un-Sabrina thing for Sabrina to have done. If either of them had been voted by their senior class “Most Likely to Be Knocked Up and Abandoned,” it was indisputably Rachel. Not that she slept around or anything like that. But she sure did tend to fall in love—and right back out again—way more often than the average woman did.

Just like her mother, she thought before she could stop herself.

As quickly as the realization erupted in her head, Rachel shoved it back down deep inside again. Instead, she reminded herself that it was Sabrina, not Rachel, who had found herself single and in a family way. Sabrina, not Rachel, who was on the run from some shadowy threat. It was Sabrina who’d landed in trouble this time. Now if Rachel could figure out where her sister was, then maybe, just maybe, the two of them could put their identical heads together and come up with a solution.