Hard Rain Read Online Free PDF

bore the same name as a boy she had loved.
    “Here you go.” Lurie set plates before them. Jesse’s “usual’’ was a king-size cheeseburger, a side of onion rings and a double chocolate shake. Lurie slipped a bottle of Tabasco sauce out of her apron pocket, put it beside his plate. Amy stopped smiling. She’d known only one other person in her lifetime who put hot sauce on his hamburger. She watched him unscrew the top, lift up the bun and splash the sauce on his burger. He replaced the bun, brought the burger to his mouth and took a big bite. He glanced at her untouched plate. “Something wrong?” he asked, chewing.
    “The hot sauce on your hamburger…” She didn’t know what she was trying to say.
    “Heavenly.” He took another big bite. “Obviously one of those true Texan habits that hasn’t hit the West Coast yet.” He tipped his head. Amy looked around. At every station, a similar bottle of hot sauce stood beside the catsup bottle. “Of course, when it does, you Californians will claim you all started the trend and take the credit.”
    Amy smiled wanly, feeling foolish. She looked down at her food, but her appetite was gone.
    “So, you’re married?” she asked bluntly.
    He seemed to have trouble swallowing. “No, I’m not. Your image of a true Texas sheriff may remain intact.” He picked up an onion ring. “And I, darlin’, am free to flirt with whomever I want.”
    Jesse didn’t ask if she were married. He didn’t have to. Still, sitting beside her, he wondered if she’d ever dreamed the things he had in the years they’d been apart. Had she dreamed of them holding each other, kissing in the soft moonlight? Dreamed of their naked bodies…?
    He leaned back, wiped his mouth and dropped the napkin onto his empty plate. “Excuse me.” He rose from the counter and headed to the rest room.
    Amy watched him, too many questions still forming in her mind. Lurie came over and picked up Jesse’s plate. Amy turned to her, pushed her own plate towardthe edge of the counter. Lurie looked at the half-eaten sandwich as she stacked the plate atop the other. “Was everything okay?”
    “Oh, yes, fine,” Amy assured her. “I’m just not terribly hungry.”
    Lurie cocked a hip, balancing both plates in one hand as she gathered used napkins and Amy’s empty glass in the other. “I’ve been trying to get the sheriff to smile like that for two years.”
    Amy looked at her, interested.
    “Hell’s bells, half the single women in the county have been trying to get their claws into the good sheriff.”
    “He doesn’t date?”
    “Oh, he dates all right. Probably been through most of the single women in a twenty-mile radius and then some.”
    “He’s charming…” Amy noted.
    Lurie crossed her arms across her arresting bosom and gave a slow nod of agreement.
    “But he doesn’t strike me as the playboy type,” Amy concluded.
    Lurie leaned on the counter, settling in. “That’s exactly the problem, Doc. He’s a real gentleman and a wonderful date, but if things start heating up, getting too serious, he slows it down or calls it quits altogether. He refuses to go to the next level.”
    “You and he…?”
    Lurie nodded. “We dated. And he was upfront about what to expect from the first. He didn’t lead me on. He’ll let you know he enjoys your company and treatsyou right, but if a woman is looking for the cozy cottage and the rest of the enchilada, she’s got the wrong man. Of course, like most woman, I thought I could change him.” She paused, studied her fingertips with their crescent moons. “I didn’t.” She met Amy’s gaze.
    “A lot of men are afraid of commitment, settling down, Lurie.”
    Lurie shook her head. “It’s different with Jesse. I can’t explain. It’s like he lives with a ghost. When we were dating, he’d look at me, but I sensed he was looking at someone else. Or for someone else. And no matter how hard he looked, he couldn’t find her.”
    The waitress