Silver Bracelets: A Loveswept Contemporary Classic Romance by Sandra Chastain

have chosen a different man.”
    Sarah drove down to the shop half expecting to find Mr. Grimsley. She didn’t. She was beginning to think that she wasn’t going to hear from him again. It wouldn’t be the first time somebody brought something in and never came back for it. But she had the impression that Mr. Grimsley was very anxious about his safe. She was beginning to be a little anxious herself. Dynamite might be the only answer.
    After waiting an hour, working on various projects, Sarah gave up. She left a note taped to the window and went home. It was Saturday and she had a festival to go to.

No luck on the safe, Mr. G. Still working on it. Call me.
    By eleven o’clock she had dressed and undressed three times. The dress she’d started with made her look very proper, but she’d never be able to serve black-eyed peas wearing that. Next she’d pulled on cutoffs and a T-shirt, which she discarded as being tooinformal. Now she was wearing a short, full-cut red cotton knit skirt with a matching red top that left her midriff bare. A pair of red canvas tennis shoes and white socks completed her outfit.
    She wouldn’t have any trouble getting into Asa’s truck dressed like this.
    When she heard the horn blowing she ran to the hayloft doors and pushed one side open. Asa was standing beside the truck looking up at her. Sarah felt her heart slam against her rib cage.
    “Ready?”
    Ready? One look at him and she knew that was the right word. His gray eyes seemed lighter this morning, more in tune with the clean-shaven face and the neatly combed dark hair. He was wearing jeans, formfitting ones that covered the tops of western pointed-toe boots. His plaid shirt was red and he wore a bandana tied at the neck.
    Oh yes, she was ready. She was so ready that she was tempted to catch the rope pulley and swing out of the loft.
    “Want to come up?” she asked brightly.
    He actually grinned, running his fingers through his hair, mussing it as if he was embarrassed to be seen smiling. “I think that would be a mistake.”
    She disagreed, but now wasn’t the time to argue. Instead, she closed the door and cast a guilty look at the safe. Tomorrow she’d spend all day on it until she got it open.
    When she stepped into the sunlight Asaswallowed his grin, along with his breath. The short skirt she was wearing flared out like a tennis dress and he wondered how he would get through the morning. “What do you call that, whatever it is you’re wearing?” he asked.
    “It’s just called mix and match separates. Nothing special,” she answered, beginning to understand that the day was going to be another test in different life-styles. “Why? Don’t you like it?”
    “I’m not sure. It’s certainly different.”
    “If you’d rather, I’ll go back and put on a dress.” Sarah slid across the truck seat and leaned toward him. She would change her clothes if he insisted, but she’d make him sorry he asked.
    “Eh … no. Whatever makes you comfortable,” he managed to say.
    Sarah gave Asa a quick kiss before she moved back to her side of the truck. “Where’s your badge, Deputy?”
    “Today I’m off duty,” he replied.
    “Somehow I can’t see you serving black-eyed peas in a park, Deputy Canyon.”
    “Oh? I’ll have you know that once I worked as a short-order cook in a club called the Lucky Nugget in Vegas.”
    Sarah gave him her best “I don’t believe you” look. “What were you doing there? You don’t look like a gambler.”
    “I’m not. I only take chances on myself.”
    Sarah could believe that. Taking a chance was releasing control and she already knewthat Deputy Asa Canyon was always in control of his own fate. “What did you cook?”
    “Chili and beans, steaks, burgers.”
    “Somehow I can’t visualize you behind a stove.”
    “It didn’t last long.”
    “What happened?”
    “The manager fired me. He didn’t like my recipes.”
    “What was wrong with them?”
    “I used real meat in the