Someone pulled the plug on Conway and flipped on the lights just as the other contender, Hayden Dean, delivered a blow to Emmett’s jaw that connected and sent him staggering into the crowd. Dylan wasn’t surprised to see Emmett involved. On a good day, Emmett was a mean son of a bitch with a little man’s complex, and this didn’t look like a good day. He stood five-seven in his custom-made boots and was built like a pit bull. Add alcohol into the mix, and Emmett was just one big beer muscle waiting to be flexed.

Dylan signaled to the owner of the bar, who grabbed Hayden in a big bear hug. Burley Morton hadn’t come by his nickname because he’d born small.

Dylan stepped in front of Emmett and put a restraining hand on the man’s chest. “Fight’s over,” he said.

“Get out of my way, Sheriff!” Emmett hollered, his eyes glazed with anger. “I’m not through kicking Hayden’s bony ass.”

“Why don’t you just calm down?”

Instead, Emmett smashed his fist just beneath Dylan’s left eye. The impact rocked Dylan’s head back, knocked his hat off, and shot needles of pain through his head. He blocked the next shot with his forearm and punched Emmett in the belly. The air whooshed from the other man’s lungs, doubling him over, and Dylan took full advantage of his position and slammed an uppercut to Emmett’s face that sent him to the ground. Without giving Emmett a chance to recover, he rolled him onto his stomach and cuffed him behind his back. “Now, you just lie there and exercise your right to be silent,” he said as he patted down Emmett’s pockets and found them empty.

He stood, placed his booted foot in the middle of Emmett’s back, and threw a second set of cuffs to Burley, who had no problem slapping them on the much skinnier Hayden.

“Okay,” Dylan addressed the suddenly silent crowd, “what happened here?” He raised his hand to his cheekbone and winced.

Several people talked at once.

“Emmett bought her a round.”

“She said something to him and he started hassling her.”

“That’s when Hayden stepped in.”

Emmett squirmed and Dylan pressed his bootheel into his spine until he quit moving. “Who?” He looked at his fingertips. He wasn’t bleeding, but he’d have a brilliant shiner in the morning.

Everyone in the bar pointed to a booth several feet away. “Her.” And there, standing on top of the table, frozen to the wall like a deer caught in a headlight, was Ms. Hope Spencer. Her eyes were huge, her top small, and there was beer spilled everywhere. She clutched a fistful of napkins to her chest.

“Get up, and I’ll hogtie you,” he told Emmett, stepping over him. He knew from past experience with Emmett that once he was down, the threat of getting his hands and feet shackled together usually subdued him.

Dylan walked toward Hope and held out his hand. “Why don’t you hop on down from there, ma’am?” She took three hesitant steps to the edge of the table and shoved the napkins into a fanny pack she had strapped around her hips. She placed her palms on his shoulders, and his hands reached up and curved around her bare waist. As he looked into her blue eyes glassy with fright, his thumbs just naturally brushed her soft skin and pressed into her flat stomach. He lifted her from the table and slowly set her on her feet before him.

“Are you all right?” he asked. His gaze lowered from her face to his hands resting on her waist. The heat of her bare skin warmed his palms, and he kept them there, right there against that soft, soft skin. She smelled of beer, and of the Buckhorn, and of flowers, too. Lust rolled through his belly and curled his fingers, and he finally dropped his hands to his sides.

“I thought he was going to hit me,” she said, tightening her grasp on his shoulders. “Last year I took self-defense classes, and I thought I could take care of myself. But I froze. I’m not the Terminator.” Her breathing was shallow, and with each little gasp, her breasts rose in that little top.

He looked into her face, absent of cosmetics and color, her normal cool facade gone. “You don’t look like the Terminator.”

She shook her head and it didn’t appear like she was going to get over her panic any time soon. “That was my nickname in class. I was very fierce.”

“Are you going to pass out?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

“Why don’t you go ahead and take a deep breath anyway?”

She did as he asked and he watched her suck in several even breaths. She probably wasn’t aware that she held onto him, but he was very aware of the weight of her touch. He felt it all over, warming him as if they were more than strangers. As if the most natural thing in the world would be for him to lower his mouth to hers and kiss her until he made her eyes a bit more glassy, her breathing a lot more choppy. Dylan reached for her hands and removed them.

“You feeling better?” he asked, figuring it had been way too long since he’d been with a woman if a touch on his shoulders got him hot.

She nodded.

“Why don’t you tell me what happened?”

“I was just sitting there, minding my own business, and the shorter guy walked up and put another round on my table. I told him no thank you, but he sat down anyway.” A frown settled between her brows, but she didn’t offer further explanation.

“And?” Dylan prompted.

“And I tried to be nice, but he wouldn’t get the hint. So I figured I needed to make it really clear that I wasn’t in the mood for company. You know, so that there was no misunderstanding.”

Not that it mattered, but out of curiosity, Dylan asked, “What did you say to him?”

Her frown spread to the corners of her mouth. “I think I said, ‘Please remove your carcass from my booth.’ ”

“I guess he didn’t take that very well.”

“No. Then he got really mad when I suggested to him that he had a drinking problem and should enter rehab.”

“And?”

“I think that’s when he said I should fuck myself.”

“And?”

“And I said I’d rather fuck myself than a short man with a little penis.”

Dylan’s head suddenly ached like a bitch and his eye began to hurt a lot more. “Uh-huh.”

“That’s when he reached across the table and tried to grab me. I screamed and that skinnier guy grabbed the short guy and pulled him out of the booth. If it weren’t for him, I don’t know what would have happened.”

Dylan knew. Emmett probably would have smacked her around before someone put a stop to it. Dylan was going to hogtie him just for the fun of it.

“So he didn’t touch you?”

“No.”

“Threaten you with anything like a knife or a broken bottle?”

“No.”

Lewis Plummer finally entered the bar and moved through the crowd toward Dylan. “Did someone take a poke at you?”

“Yep. Go ahead and Mirandize Emmett Barnes, then charge him with aggravated assault and aggravated battery on a police officer. I didn’t find anything on him, but just to be sure, why don’t you frisk him again?”

“What about Hayden?”

Dylan returned his gaze to Hope. “Did you see who swung first?”

“The short guy.”

“Hayden can go home.”

“Are you going to come into the station?” Lewis asked.

“No. Adam is at home with a sitter, so I’ll do the paperwork in the morning.”

“See ya in the morning, then.” Lewis held up his hand in an abbreviated wave.

Dylan watched his deputy pull Emmett to his feet, then turned to look into Hope’s face. She was still a bit pale and her eyes still a bit glazed, but she didn’t appear too upset by her experience at the Buckhorn. “Do you want to go to the station and make a statement tonight, or would you prefer to come in tomorrow morning?”

“I just want to go home.”

Someone plugged the juke back in, the lights were once again turned low, and Deputy Plummer escorted Emmett Barnes from the bar. It was ten o’clock, two hours before closing time. Just enough time for those still around to polish off a few more beers.

“Are you okay to drive?” he asked Hope as Conway Twitty once again poured from the juke.

She glanced down at herself, and Dylan glanced, too. At her tight spandex shorts and sports bra. Light from a Coors sign flashed from across the bar and lit up her flat stomach. “I jogged here,” she said.

Dylan forced his gaze from the blue light shining on her belly button. “Let me get my cuffs from Burley and I’ll take you home.”

“Thank you, Sheriff.”

“Dylan,” he reminded her.

“Dylan.” Then it happened. For the first time since she’d driven her little sports car into town, she smiled at him. Her full lips curved upward and she flashed him the straightest teeth he’d seen since leaving L.A. He figured relief from her ordeal must have warmed her up. Most women tended to get real weepy or real grateful after an ordeal.

From behind, someone placed a caressing hand around Dylan’s arm, and he looked over his shoulder and down into the shadows hiding Dixie Howe’s eyes. “Here’s your hat, Dylan.”

“Thanks, Dixie.” He brushed his hair back and replaced his hat.

“You’re not leaving, are you?”

“Afraid so.”

“Can’t you stay for a game of pool? I heard you tell Lewis that Adam is home with a sitter.”

“Not tonight.” He tried to pull his arm from her grasp, but her grip tightened. She pressed one big breast into his arm, and he knew her well enough to know it wasn’t an accident. He’d known Dixie most of his life. He’d dated her sister, and he’d remembered her as a scrawny kid. Life hadn’t been real kind to either Howe sister, and he felt bad about that, about the way they’d grown up, but he felt nothing more. “I have to take Ms. Spencer home.”

Dixie cast a quick glance in Hope’s direction, then once again focused her attention on Dylan. “You remember my offer the other night?”

Of course he remembered. There hadn’t been many times in his life when a woman had walked up to him at a T-ball game and blatantly offered oral sex.