CHAPTER 1

C HAPTER 1

"Kidnapped anyone lately?" asked the man behind Reese Darnell.

Reese froze and then had to immediately unfreeze so she could turn around and face the person who'd just posed that question.

Well, heck.

There were embarrassing things from her past that she wasn't anxious to relive, but this tall, dark-haired guy with the dreamy blue eyes had just brought up the World Series of embarrassing moments.

Zack Caldwell.

He was still just as tall, just as dark haired, and his eyes were just as dreamy blue as she recalled. Rock star looks, all showcased by his great-fitting jeans, a gray shirt, and boots. A cowboy to the core.

Cowboy plus, she quickly amended.

Along with being her former "captive," Zack was apparently now the sheriff of this small town of Loveland, Texas. Either that or the shiny sheriff's badge pinned to his shirt was some kind of prop meant to add to the humiliation that had flashed from her hair roots to her toenails. Along with the humiliation, there was also something else doing some flashing.

A whole lot of heat.

Mercy, she'd felt attraction for hot guys before, but this seemed to be attraction on steroids. Lust at first sight. And her face might have been registering that, too. Hard to tamp down this kind of carnal kick. Of course, this particular kick was coupled with the whole embarrassment thing.

She glanced around the squad room of the Loveland PD and hoped no one was witnessing this humiliating trip down memory lane. There were four deputies in or near their desks, and the perky looking receptionist-dispatcher wearing an elf outfit. The deputies and the elf seemed to be going above and beyond to do anything other than look at their boss and her.

Which meant they were probably listening to every word.

Reese hoped one of them didn't volunteer to arrest her.

"Well?" Zack muttered, one of his dark eyebrows lifting. "Are you here to kidnap me?"

Normally that wouldn't have been a serious question, and it might not have been now, but sadly, he did have the right to ask. Because, hey, she'd succeeded at kidnapping him before. Technically anyway.

Reese attempted a smile, one that she hoped dismissed the whole kidnapping thing for what it was: A Texas-sized mistake.

That particular blunder had happened six years ago when Reese had attended a Fifty Shades of Grey masquerade party at the pub owned by her then-boyfriend, Paul. On that night, Reese had donned a trench coat over her skimpy lace undies along with the requisite mask, and she'd threaded her way through the partiers to a dark corner where she thought she'd spotted Paul in his own mask.

Emphasis on dark .

She had launched herself at her man and immediately proceeded to do very naughty things to him. It had started with some murmuring in his ear. Specifically, I've kidnapped you and now you're my plaything . Reese had followed that declaration up with a French kiss that was long, hot, and deep. Her captive had gone still for a couple of seconds, then responded with a long, hot, and deep kiss of his own. It hadn't lasted though, because he'd eased away from her and dropped the bombshell question.

Uh, who are you?

The kisses, touches, and dirty murmurs had come to a quick halt, and what had followed could only be described as utter humiliation, complete with garbled apologies. And snapping her trench coat shut.

During the garbling she'd learned he was Zack Caldwell, an old friend of Paul's who'd just dropped by to catch up and had been provided with a mask for the party. Zack was someone who should have been merely an embarrassing blip in her memory.

Even now though, Reese could recall the taste of him.

Not good.

And the reminder of that not good was enough to prompt her to clear her throat, shove aside the lustful heat, and get down to business. She took out the PI license that she'd already shown the dispatcher.

His eyebrow lifted again. "During your short stint as a kidnapper-dominatrix, you were a paralegal."

That must have been something Paul had mentioned to him, because Reese certainly hadn't volunteered anything like that. Once she'd realized she hadn't been French kissing her boyfriend, she'd gotten the heck out of there. Unfortunately, not before Paul had appeared and demanded to know what was going on. After rattling off an excuse of mistaken identity, Reese had left to try to restore a shred of her dignity. Then she'd put the whole ordeal behind her.

Except for remembering way too much about Zack's taste.

"I got my PI license three years ago, and one of my cases brought me here to Loveland," she responded, trying to sound professional. "I didn't know you were the sheriff," she added in a mumble. If she had known, she would have tried to do all of this over the phone or internet.

"I've been sheriff for the past five years. I was a deputy here before that," he explained.

She'd heard Paul mention the deputy part, and somehow Reese had stopped herself from doing any searches on social media for Zack, even after Paul had told her Zack's name. For one thing, Reese hadn't wanted to relive her humiliation by poring over the man's details.

"We can talk in my office," Zack said, tipping his head to an open door trimmed with twinkling Christmas lights.

Actually, every door, wall, and desk in the place had them, along with some tinsel and, oddly, small posters of a red-lipsticked mouth pursed for a kiss. They'd been taped up about three feet apart and had been strung with lights to accentuate them, like mini movie marquees.

Reese stepped into a room where Christmas reigned. A floor-to-ceiling tree in the corner. Another smaller one on a filing cabinet, and shiny silver sleighbell ornaments scattered on any and all available surfaces. She made a cursory count of six baskets that had big red bows on the handles and were filled with pine cones and holly. The room smelled like cinnamon, candy canes, and coffee.

"My mom did some decorating," Zack muttered as he followed her gaze. "She's a fan of the season."

Clearly. But it wasn't just Christmas stuff in here. There was a poster of the kissing mouth like the ones in the squad room. Beneath it was a sticky note with the number 162.

"So, what's the case you're working on?" Zack asked, motioning for her to take a seat. He didn't sit. He sort of leaned, resting his rather superior butt against the edge of his desk.

Reese released the breath that'd been pent up in her chest. Good, they were going to move away from memories of kidnapping, superior butts, and French kissing and go on to business.

"Happy Harry," she said, and then realized she needed to back up a bit. "I'm trying to locate this man," she added, taking out her phone to show Zack the picture she'd copied.

As pictures went, it sucked. Plain and simple. It was a grainy shot of a man and woman taken on a beach. The woman had a big beaming smile, but at the exact moment the photo had been snapped, a seagull had seemingly divebombed the man, who was in the process of ducking and batting it away. Even with the enhancement of the image, the only part of him that was visible was his chin and right ear. Because he was wearing a hat, you couldn't even see his hair.

Zack looked at the picture, frowned, and his eyebrow lifted again. "Please tell me you have a better photo of this guy."

She had to shake her head. Her great-aunt Sylvia had lost everything in a house fire thirty-four years ago, around the same time Reese was born.

"I do have this though." Reese took out a copy of the document from her purse. "It's a marriage license for my great-aunt Sylvia Darnell and Harry Smith. AKA, Happy Harry."

Reese watched as Zack read through the license, which thankfully didn't suck in print quality. The info was clearly visible. Just over sixty years ago, when her great-aunt had been nineteen, she'd married Harry Smith, who'd been twenty.

Or rather he had claimed to be.

Harry hadn't been exactly Honest Abe about, well, anything.

Reese took out a thick envelope with more documents. "Those are two more licenses showing other women that Harry Smith wed in the decade following his marriage to my great-aunt. For these, he used the surnames Miller and Jones, but both of them called him by his nickname, Happy Harry. And since he didn't divorce any of these women before he married the next one, that means that while Harry might indeed be happy, he's also a serial bigamist."

Zack met her gaze, and she saw the flat look of a cop's skepticism in the dreamy blue of his eyes. "How do these women know it's the same man?"

Oh, this was not going to be fun to answer. "Poly-orchidism," she said, pronouncing it the way she'd practiced from hearing it on the internet.

His look went even flatter. Not a surprise to her. "What?" he asked.

She huffed and spelled it out. "Balls. He has three of them, and it's a very rare disorder."

That didn't erase his flat look, but his eyebrow rose again. "Do the other two women have better photos of him? Not of his balls," he tacked on. "But pictures of his face?"

Reese had to shake her head. "Both women were furious when Happy Harry walked out on them, and they ended up destroying any and all photos and memorabilia. One by dumping the stuff into an old outhouse on her family's property, and the other by throwing them into the Gulf of Mexico."

"And how exactly did these women find out about each other?" Zack pressed.

Reese gathered her breath and gave him a thumbnail. "An online group for women who've had painful or embarrassing episodes in their lives. Don't," she warned him when that eyebrow rose again. "I'm not part of the group. My great-aunt Sylvia is, and apparently after months of chatter, the two women and my aunt figured out their painful and embarrassing episodes were caused by the three-balled Happy Harry."

She hadn't meant to be so blunt with the last part, but Happy Harry riled her to the core. And he probably hadn't stopped with the trio of broken hearts that she knew about. There could be others.

"Did any of these women end up divorcing this guy?" Zack asked.

"The other two did, but it took them years, since they couldn't find him to serve the papers, and the final decree for wife number two didn't happen before Happy Harry married wife number three. My great-aunt didn't go through with a divorce. She was with him for two years, and when he left, she insisted that she never wanted to risk another broken heart."

He nodded, glanced over the marriage licenses again. "What makes you think he's here in Loveland?"

"All three women recall him mentioning he was born here. Of course, that doesn't mean he came back here, but I thought it was a good starting point." Reese took out another piece of paper and handed it to him. "Those are the names of six possible candidates. All were born here in Loveland about eighty years ago, give or take five years, and have given names that are variations of Harry. Henry, Hank, Hal," she supplied.

"How'd you come up with all of these?" he asked.

"Not easily. I did a lot of internet searches, land records, mentions on social media, newspaper articles, and birth and marriage records on ancestry sites. I was even able to access some old school files." She paused. "Do you know them?"

He set the copies of the licenses on his desk to take the paper, and after glancing at it, he nodded. Then sighed. "I have to ask: What do you intend to do with this man if you find him? If you're looking for an arrest, it's possible the statute of limitations will prevent that."

"I don't want him arrested," Reese was quick to say because she'd already discussed this with her great-aunt and the other two women. "I just want him to explain to his wives why he did what he did." She put wives in air quotes. "I want to try to give them some closure." She paused. "Are all six of those men still alive?"

"They are," he verified. "I'm guessing you'll want to pay these men visits?"

"Absolutely." Reese stood and gathered up the licenses she'd shown him. "I just didn't want to start knocking on doors without talking to you first. Or rather, talking to the sheriff. I didn't know it'd be you," she added. If she had known, she might have skipped the nicety of letting the locals know they had a PI on their turf.

He nodded as if he totally got the gist of what she hadn't voiced. "Some of those men aren't likely to answer their doors, much less talk to you," Zack said. "I'll drive you out to the first couple of names on the list."

Her first instinct was to decline his offer, to put some distance between her and the source of her embarrassment. But then she thought of unanswered doors. Thought of how some people might react to a stranger trying to question them about their past.

Or their number of testes.

"Thank you," Reese said.

Zack gave another of those sighs that made her feel as if she were nothing but a pain in his superior butt, and he took a black Stetson off a wall peg. Just then, the dispatcher appeared in the doorway.

"What is it, CiCi?" he asked.

"Sorry," she muttered, not sounding at all apologetic but rather giddy. Now that Reese got a better look at her, she could indeed confirm the woman was wearing a Santa's elf outfit with Doc Martens. "Sorry," she repeated. "I just wanted to give you this." She thrust a sticky note at Zack, then bobbled around like a toddler hyped up on Christmas cookies.

Zack sighed again, went to the poster on the wall, and replaced the "162" with the new note. It read "163."

"Shia Franklin and Lizzy Gonzales," the dispatcher announced and clapped her hands. She then glanced between Reese and Zack. "Hey, you two—"

"No," Zack said, cutting her off.

Reese waited for him to explain what he'd just declined, but instead he slid on his Stetson and tipped his head, indicating she should follow him. Zack led her out a side entrance and into the small parking lot where she'd left her own car.

The blast of winter air hit her, and she felt her foot skid a little on a patch of ice. Sometimes winter in this part of Texas could be more like spring, but that wasn't the case now. Loveland and the rest of the area were going through an actual cold spell, with an ice storm in the forecast. It was the reason Reese had booked a room at the town's quaint inn, called the Love Nest. The reason, too, it had taken her a while to walk through the small parking lot, since parts of it had been like a skating rink.

"One sixty-three?" Reese asked just as Zack asked, "So, how did things work out with Paul?"

Reese was reasonably sure his answer would be a lot more interesting than hers. "You're Paul's friend so you must know," she said.

Zack shrugged and led her to a silver truck. He did the gentlemanly thing of opening her door and helping her in. The helping turned out to be more than just a hand on her back though. The step up was high, and apparently her boots weren't made for ice because she skidded again.

And Zack caught her.

A full-fledged catching, with his arms going around her and pulling her against him to anchor her. Body to body. A reminder that they'd had a similar experience when she'd kidnapped him.

She remembered his taste again, too.

Yeah, this wasn't good, and the ice wasn't helping. As she tried to maneuver, she just kept slipping, which created a whole lot of body smushing and bumping. Apparently, his boots were ice friendly because he finally scooped her up and set her on the seat of the truck.

"Paul," Zack said, obviously picking up the conversation where they'd left off, and he wasn't breathing nearly as hard as she was. "Every now and then I'll get a text from him, but other than that, he and I have sort of lost touch." He closed her door and went to his side.

Reese waited until he was in the truck before she responded. "Paul and I lost touch, too." She shrugged. "Well, we did after we divorced four years ago."

Zack started the truck but didn't drive away. "I'm sorry," he muttered. But then he stopped, shook his head, and turned in the seat to face her. "Actually, I'm only sorry if you are."

"I'm not," she blurted before giving some thought to his comment. "Why? Did you know that Paul would turn into a control freak with a penchant for lying about his so-called business-only relationships with his waitstaff?"

All right, she should have given that comment more thought, too. For Pete's sake, why was she spilling her guts to this man?

"Yes," Zack said. "And I'm sorry you didn't know."

"Oh," Reese muttered.

Zack frowned and shook his head as if he couldn't believe he was about to do some blurting of his own. "What happened during that fake kidnapping was unnerving for me, too," he said.

Reese winced. "I'm so sorry—"

"Not that kind of unnerving," Zack interrupted. He stared at her with those take-me-for-a-spin eyes. "I considered calling you and asking you out. The only thing that stopped me was because it would have been poaching on a so-called friend."

Oh, she wished he had poached, but thankfully, she didn't blab that out. Perhaps because her mouth had stopped working. Possibly her breathing, too. That had everything to do with the intense gaze Zack had on her.

"I'll admit I've given a lot of thought to those kisses," he went on, the testosterone coming off him in waves now, like a high-powered sprinkler. "And I haven't been able to forget you."

The heat came rolling through that cold truck, and it was hot enough to melt any nearby ice patches. Hot enough to send off alarm bells in her head, too. Reese knew she wasn't a woman eternally wounded by bad love as her great-aunt was. But she also wasn't a dive first, think later kind of person either.

Judging from his scowl and muttered profanity, neither was Zack.

He cleared his throat, put the paper with the names on the seat between them, started the truck, and dragged in a breath deep enough to supply air to multiple folks. "All right," he said. "Let's go pay a visit to my granddad."

That yanked Reese right out of the heat haze. "Your granddad?"

He nodded and tapped his finger on the paper before he started driving. "Harry Miller. He's the first name on your Happy Harry list."