The High Country Rancher by Jan Hambright

dealt with.
    The interrogation-room door opened and Mariah stepped out, followed by Wendell Cranston and his black suitcase of lie detector paraphernalia. He turned left and disappeared into the station.
    Baylor stood up, trying to gauge the look on Mariah’s face, but got nothing. Caution hedged his bet on the outcome, and a pang of anxiety chased through him.
    “Put me out of my misery,” he said, glad when she finally looked him in the eye.
    “Wendell ruled it inconclusive. Your answer spikes to the control questions match your answer spikes to the relevant questions. You’re either a fabulous liar, or the most truthful suspect I’ve ever met.”
    He didn’t know whether to demand a retake or be content with inconclusive. Either way he was back at square one with her. He reached out and grasped her elbow, steering her toward the door. He needed her alone, needed to touch her, to coax her, to make her understand, to make her believe, but she stopped short and pulled out of his grasp.
    “The odds are pretty good I’ll be pulled off this case by morning.”
    Caution settled around his nerves and he suddenly understood why she’d been so hopeful that the polygraph would produce a positive result. “I’ll be bait for the next detective who’d like nothing better than to prove I had something to do with Endicott’s disappearance?”
    The downcast glance of her eyes told him he was spot-on. “Is this your choice, Mariah?”
    She looked straight at him and his heart slammed against his ribs.
    “I’ve lost my objectivity…” her voice dropped to a whisper “…where you’re concerned. I can’t do my job when I’m around you.”
    Desire, hot and all consuming, ignited in his body and he reached out for her. She didn’t resist, but took his hand and steered him across the hall into theviewing room. The door shut and he heard the lock engage. Gone were the last of the emotional restraints that boxed him in. He knew at that moment she felt the fire, too. Experienced the primal burn of need heating them to white-hot.
    Mariah’s breath caught in her throat. She focused on the feel of Baylor’s hands moving over her body with slow seductive precision. Everywhere he touched he left her skin humming with the need for more.
    She raised her mouth to his and he pinned her to the door with his body. It was crazy, it was sane, it was everything in between, and she needed him like she needed air. She breathed him in, trying to reconcile her emotions with her primal physical response to his heated touch. A small sigh escaped from her as he deepened the kiss, demanding more without words.
    The thud of rushed footsteps in the hall outside of the viewing room pulled her from the lust-induced haze, and she ended the kiss.
    Baylor groaned.
    “Did you hear that?” she asked, reluctantly stepping back from him and smoothing her hair.
    His eyes had darkened and still smoldered with a desire so palpable she felt like she could reach out and touch it, or bring it back to life in an instant.
    Three loud raps on the door sounded and echoed in the tiny room. Baylor moved in front of the mirrored glass and leaned against it, crossing his arms over his chest.
    Mariah pulled open the door, spotting a uniformed officer as he was poised to enter the interrogation room.
    “What’s going on?”
    “Dispatch just got a couple of 911 calls for the rural fire department. There’s a structure fire on the Bellwether Ranch.”
    Panic zipped through her as she pulled the door all the way open and stepped out into the corridor with Baylor on her heels.
    “Did they say what kind of structure?” she asked.
    “A barn, I think. I thought McCullough should know.” The officer headed back toward the station.
    Baylor pushed past her and headed for the door. It took everything he had not to run.
    Fires in the backcountry were hard to fight. There were no hydrants to hook onto. The water would have to be trucked in, in a tanker that usually arrived