“No, you can’t.” She came to him then, wrapping her arms around his neck from the back, resting her chin on top of his head. “Maybe I could.” Though she couldn’t imagine loving anyone enough to make the choice. “But I understand you can’t. What I don’t understand is why if you love her, and you want her, you can’t sit her down and make her explain it. You deserve to know.”

“I’m not going to make her do anything, not only because I don’t work that way but because I have a feeling the man she’s married to did plenty of making her.”

“Zack.” Ripley turned her head so that her cheek rested on his hair. “Did it ever occur to you that she’s afraid to divorce him?”

“Yeah.” His stomach did a quick, nasty pitch. “I came around to that about three o’clock in the morning. If it’s true, I’ve got plenty of feelings to punch into that bag. But it doesn’t change what is. She’s married, she didn’t tell me. She doesn’t trust me enough to be there for her, whatever it takes.”

He reached up, closed his hand around hers.

That’s how Nell saw them when she opened the door, holding on to each other. And she saw the beam of blame shoot out of Ripley’s eyes even as the shutters came down on Zack’s.

“I need to speak with you. Alone. Please.”

Instinctively Ripley tightened her grip, but Zack gave her hand a squeeze. “Ripley was just heading out on patrol.”

“Yeah, sure, toss me out just when it’s getting good.” She was shrugging into her jacket, contemplating that this was what it felt like when people said you could cut the tension with a knife, when Betsy poked her head in the door.

“Sheriff—Hi, Nell, Ripley. Sheriff, Bill and Ed Sutter are starting to mix it up out in front of the hotel. It looks like it could get messy.”

“I’ll take care of it.”

“No.” Zack got up at Ripley’s statement. “We’ll take care of it.”

The Sutter brothers vacillated between staunch family loyalty and hating each other like poison. Since they were both bullheaded and built like the same animal, he thought it best not to let Ripley get into a two-on-one situation. He gave Nell a brief glance as he walked outside. “You’ll have to wait.”

So cold, she thought, rubbing her arms. It was hard to accept ice from a man who had such warmth. He wasn’t going to make this easy. Oddly enough, even after the worst of it the evening before, she’d convinced herself that he would.

He would let her talk. He would sympathize, understand, hold her.

Standing alone in the station house, Nell watched that little fantasy crack in two and disappear.