She couldn’t help her feelings, but she didn’t have to chase them down the nearest rabbit hole and through the inevitable maze of things she should or shouldn’t have said.

It was almost New Year’s, after all. A time for new beginnings and second chances.

Who knew what might happen?

BAILEY’S WAS PULSING with laughter, music and people when Eli dropped by around 7 p.m., on his dinner break. He wasn’t dressed up, since he was technically on duty, but he was wearing his newest uniform, having picked it up at the dry cleaner’s earlier in the day.

So far, it had been a quiet night, so Festus was riding shotgun. With a pang of guilt, Eli had left the mutt in the SUV, with a couple of windows rolled partway down so he’d have plenty of air; as an ordinary dog, a civilian so to speak, he wasn’t legally allowed to enter any public establishments, particularly restaurants.

Festus had whimpered a little when Eli left him—he’d had to park several blocks from Bailey’s, since every space was full. Once Eli had promised him what amounted to a doggy bag, the critter sighed and curled up in the passenger seat, as if to snooze.

Now, a minute or two later, Eli was about to step inside the restaurant. He’d make sure everybody was behaving themselves—most of the rowdy action was likely to bust out over at Sully’s, rather than here—but municipal police, like the sheriff’s department, were chronically understaffed, so it couldn’t hurt to keep an eye on things.

The glass in the restaurant’s front door was fogged over, and the people inside looked like colorful smears—except for one, that is.

Brynne was standing near the counter, chatting with several of her customers as they perused the extensive offerings at the long line of buffet tables.

Eli’s breath caught, the way it did sometimes when he rode out alone, just him and the horse, and stopped to admire a sweeping view of timber and plains, a herd of deer or elk, a sunrise or sunset.

She was wearing an ivory-colored dress, shimmering with shining beads of some kind, and her platinum blond hair was done up in a loose bun, with some slippage going on around her cheeks and the nape of her neck.

Her smile was so radiant that it nearly threw Eli back on the heels of his boots.

“Come in or go out, Sheriff,” one of the older men called jovially. “You’ll freeze us all to death, standing there with the door open!”

The remark drew Brynne’s attention, and Eli, a grown man, the very competent sheriff of an entire county, damn it, instantly regressed to age fourteen. Testosterone, never in short supply, surged through him, and he wouldn’t have been surprised by an instantaneous outbreak of acne.