Desire and Protect: a small town romantic suspense novel (Heroes of Evers, TX Book 5)

by Lori Ryan

  “That’s all right. Take your time. Ashley and Beverly are taking care of everything at the house.” There was a gathering for mourners at the house, but Elliot hadn’t been up to being a part of organizing that. No one blamed him, and no one expected him to. The town librarian, Ashley Hensley, had taken charge and the neighbors had arranged for potluck style refreshments. “I’ll wait here until you’re ready to go.”

  Miriam moved off to her own car and Shane saw her sit in it for a few minutes as though working to compose herself before starting the car and driving away.

  Shane’s mother, May, approached with her friend Josh Samuels and Shane’s brother, Cade, by her side. She leaned heavily on the cane she relied on after the accident that took their father’s life and much of her health and mobility.

  “You’ll be staying with Elliot until he’s ready to go?” May spoke quietly and Shane had a feeling she knew the answer, but he nodded anyway.

  “We’ll see you at the house, then.” Cade put a hand on May’s back and led her to the car where Cade’s wife, Laura waited with their daughter, Jamie May. Laura had spent most of the time during the burial service following Jamie around the cemetery as Jamie played. She was too young to understand what was happening that day.

  Laura had told Shane she thought about leaving Jamie with a sitter for the day, but Fiona had often told her how much joy she got in seeing the young girl.

  When they drove away, Shane and Elliot were left alone except for the two workers finishing up and the lone figure standing under a tree several yards away. Shane wasn’t sure Elliot had seen him. As far as Shane knew, Aengus O’Malley and Elliot were not good friends, but he never thought they were enemies either. Perhaps O’Malley was just giving Elliot space today.

  Aengus and Fiona had been divorced years before she and Elliot met. Shane didn’t think the divorce had been particularly contentious, and Aengus came to town occasionally for his work. Aengus and Fiona had visited from time to time when Aengus came through.

  Shane wondered now if he should approach the man and see if he was all right, but before he could make up his mind, Aengus turned and walked away.

  Shane didn’t mind the next forty-five minutes he spent waiting for Elliot. When Fiona’s boyfriend finally did turn with a silent nod to Shane, the two walked away with the sound of quiet crying accompanying them as Elliot continued to grieve.

  7

  Scary things are worth doing.

  Fiona O’Malley’s Journal

  Phoebe knew it was silly, but she was avoiding Shane like the plague. It turned out, even though she loved her job and the town, she was already putting everything she’d found here at risk by having a stupid crush on her boss.

  She had dated her bosses before. In fact, she’d probably done it one too many times and she knew where that went. When the relationship was over, so was the job. Granted, she was usually the one to leave both of those things, but she didn’t want to do that in this case. She wanted to build something more here. She wanted to belong to this town as much as everyone in it seemed to belong to one another, from what she’d seen so far.

  So, when Shane came to her door looking for someone to keep him company at lunchtime, she made an excuse. “I was planning to just work through lunch today. I’m working on tagging some of the old documents in the system with different search terms that we can use when we need something. It should save time in the long run.”

  Shane raised a brow at her, crossing his arms and leaning against the jamb of her office door. Why did he have to look like he just stepped out of a magazine spread?

  “All the more reason to go to lunch with me. You can tell me all about it. Besides, you’ve been working too much lately.”

  Phoebe couldn’t have held back the snort of laughter at that if she tried. “Wow. Nice to meet you, Pot. I’m Kettle.”

  The smile she got in response was of the panty melting variety. As much as she enjoyed ribbing him, she needed to make a mental note not to elicit any more of those smiles.

  “Come on. I’m your boss and I’m ordering you to take a lunch break.”

  Phoebe shook her head, but grabbed her purse and walked with him. When he held the door for her at the front of the building, the torment began. She had known it would. It always started that way, with him holding the door so the proximity of his body as she walked past him would cause her breath to catch.

  Then they’d walk the two blocks to the diner together, with his arm occasionally touching her shoulder. That set off a little spin cycle in her belly that got her so flustered, she forgot to say anything until she started filling the silence with all kinds of asinine comments.

  Here comes one now. “Messages from the dead shouldn’t go unread.” The words slipped out before Phoebe had a chance to stop them.

  Oh great. This one actually rhymed.

  This caused Shane to stumble to a stop. Not that that was a surprise. “Excuse me?”

  “She never came back for the journal.”

  Shane looked up and down the sidewalk as though searching for some explanation that would let him know what the conversation was about.

  Phoebe tried to explain. “Emmaline. She never came back to get Fiona’s journal, did she?”

  “Oh.” Shane started walking again and she fell in line beside him. “No. I thought she might too, but she never did.”

  “It’s just not right, not reading something that your mother left for you. I would love to have something from my mom.”

  “Your mom died?” She had come to realize he was a very sensitive person and the softness in his voice reflected that. As much as he put on a show in trying to live up to every expectation the town might have of its one attorney, he wasn’t the stodgy conservative man he tried to be.

  “No,” she said.

  He held the door to the diner for her as they walked in. Several minutes passed while they greeted Gina and Tina and said hello to other customers while making their way back to the booth in the corner. When they sat, he looked at her as though the conversation had only stopped that second and he was waiting for her to continue.

  “She left when I was young. She was interested in me long enough to have me and to put her name on the birth certificate, but not much more after that. She left me on my dad’s doorstep when I was one month old and he raised me from there.”

  She looked up and saw Shane watching her. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  She waved away his apology. It’s not like he had anything to do with her mother’s maternal failings and truthfully, she never liked talking about the rejection with people.

  “I just meant, I would have loved to have something from her. If there was something she wanted me to read, or something she wanted me to know, I would’ve taken the time to read it. It just seems sad that Emmaline seems so… Well, I guess she seemed so angry.”

  They stopped long enough to put in their order before picking up the conversation.

  “Things were strained between her mom and her over the last few years. Well,” he frowned, “longer than that, I guess. She was never able to accept Elliot in her mom’s life the way most people had, but there was strain on the relationship before then.”

  “Was Fiona a widow or were she and Emmaline’s dad divorced?”

  “Divorced.” Shane sipped the sweet tea Gina had dropped at the table for him while Phoebe doctored her coffee.

  She didn’t know why she’d asked. Either way, Emmaline would have reason, at least from her perspective, to resent her mother’s new boyfriend. Especially a boyfriend so much younger than her mom. Elliot was maybe ten years Emmaline’s senior. That had to be strange.

  Shane continued. “Aengus comes around now and again. He works in agriculture equipment financing.”

  Phoebe laughed. “That sounds exciting.”

  Shane smiled at her joke. “Yeah.” He shrugged. “Anyway, I think Fiona and Aengus had moved past the divorce, but I’m not sure Emmaline ever did. In fact, I think Fiona saw
more of Aengus that she did of her daughter.”

  They sat in silence for a minute, before Shane changed the conversation away from death, divorce, and the havoc those things can bring to peoples’ lives. “So, tell me about the project you were working on at the office.”

  Phoebe was glad for the shift in conversation. Her thoughts had strayed to the idea of mothers and daughters and that wasn’t one that ever sat well with her.

  “It’s not much, really. I’m just going through the documents you’ve created in the last year and tagging them, starting with the trusts and estates docs. I can tag things like any special terms or a type of trust that you set up or even things like the number of kids or grandkids. That way, when someone needs a new estate package set up, I can use the tags to pull out documents you’ve created that suit the needs of the new client, then use those to set up the new document. All you’ll need to do is review it and sign off.”

  Shane didn’t say anything so Phoebe continued. “I mean, I could set up a whole bunch of sample docs for each situation and pull from those when I need to, but this is a lot less set up and accomplishes the same thing. It also means you can tag something any time you set something up that you think we might want to use again in the future. We can do it with all kinds of things. Titles, deeds, real estate transactions, leases …” Now she was babbling. Leases were real estate transactions. So were titles and deeds, for that matter.

  Shane looked a little stunned. “You can tag word documents?”

  Phoebe laughed. “Yes.”

  “I think I love you.”

  It was Phoebe’s turn to be stunned, and it wasn’t by his words. She knew he didn’t mean them. It was by the way his words made her feel. By the little back handspring her heart did at them. She covered it by laughing and throwing the crumpled sugar packet she’d been fingering at him. Probably not something one was supposed to do with your boss, but it made him offer one of those grins. The grin. The one she loved to bring out in him.

  “I’ll show you how to do it when we get back to the office,” she said, just as their food arrived.

  They finished their meal and exited the diner. “They need more restaurants in town,” Phoebe said.

  Shane looked at her in mock shock that she’d dare to utter the words, but she laughed. “I’m serious. Either that, or I need to start bringing a lunch more often. If I keep eating at Tiny’s and the diner, I’ll need to buy a new wardrobe soon.”

  She’d been introduced to Tiny’s Barbecue the day before with Ashley, Laura, and Katelyn, who she was quickly realizing she liked a lot. Laura was married to Shane’s brother and Katelyn had married John Davies, who was the county’s sheriff. The three women had welcomed her into their group as though they’d known her for years.

  Shane looked like he was about to respond, but a shout cut into their conversation, causing Phoebe to jump.

  “Bishop! Don’t keep blowing me off, Bishop!” A red-faced man came up behind them and Shane stepped forward, careful to keep the man from getting too close to Phoebe. She appreciated the gesture. The guy was big.

  “Tim, I’ve told you already, the next time we talk, it’s going to be in front of a judge if you keep this up.”

  “Screw you, Bishop! You think you’re so high and mighty, walking around here like you own the damned place, like you can control other people’s lives. Fuck you. Fuck you and your high and mighty freaking legal bullshit.” The man poked a fat finger into Shane’s chest.

  Shane didn’t appear to be ruffled at all. He waited a beat before speaking and when he did, his voice was low, controlled. “Tim, take your hand off me and take yourself home. Calm yourself down, then call your lawyer. If you have a problem with the restraining order, you need to take it up with your lawyer and let him explain your options to you.”

  Phoebe barely had time to step backward when she saw the man’s fist come up. One minute the man was inches away from hitting Shane and the next minute Shane had him flat on his back with his arm in some kind of hold and a squeal coming from him. A string of curses followed the squeal as several people came out of the diner offering help.

  “We’re fine,” Shane said as he stood. “Tim just came over to talk and he fell.”

  It was abundantly clear to everyone that Tim hadn’t fallen down, but Phoebe realized Shane was giving him an out. A way to get out of the situation without airing his dirty laundry to everyone.

  Tim glared, as Shane offered a hand to help him up. The other man stood without the help and stalked in the other direction, shaking off anyone who tried to talk to him.

  Shane’s hand was steady when he placed it on Phoebe’s back as they walked toward the office.

  “What was that about?” She whispered when they were out of earshot. She was still a little shaky from watching it. She couldn’t imagine how Shane was so unaffected.

  “Tim’s going through a rough time. We represent his wife in their divorce. He isn’t exactly in agreement about the need for a divorce and he’s been harassing her.” He looked back over his shoulder. “Honestly, I was surprised when he started all this. I used to think he was a good guy, but he’s gotten so out-of-hand, I had to get her a restraining order a few days ago. He’s a little ticked off, it seems.”

  They rounded the corner onto Jefferson Avenue, where the law office was located and he dropped the hand on her back. She missed its presence.

  Shane shook his head. “I’ll call his lawyer and see if he can get Tim settled down. I’d hate to see this escalate, but at this point, I have to watch out for Maryann.”

  “That’s his wife?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Any kids?” Phoebe asked. She always hated hearing about kids being caught in the battle between divorcing couples. Of course, maybe she’d have liked it better if that had been her reality growing up, instead of knowing she’d had a mother who simply hadn’t cared enough to fight for her. Her own mother had never tried to visit, never tried to contact her.

  “No. They were only married for a year. I guess kids haven’t come into the picture yet.”

  They reached the law firm steps and he opened the door for her with a sigh. “Sorry about that.”

  Thirty minutes later, when he poked his head into her office, he pulled out the journal that had been among Fiona’s belongings.

  “What’s up?” She eyed the journal as Shane handed it across her desk to her.

  “I was thinking. Maybe you could read this. See if there’s, well, I don’t know. Maybe see if it gives you any ideas for a way to get through to Emmaline.”

  Phoebe took the journal and looked down at it, not sure what to say. She wanted to read it, for some reason, but she couldn’t really say why.

  “I just think it would be nice if there was some way we could help Emmaline come around to hearing her mom’s words. Hearing whatever message her mom wanted her to hear. I thought it might start with reading that.” He gave a nod to the journal and left.

  Phoebe opened to the first page, scanning it quickly in the soft afternoon light that came in through her window.

  June 28, 2006 Emmaline is still so angry with me. I’m not sure I know how to make her understand, and I don’t want to do anything to make her hate her father. There isn’t any reason for her to hate Aengus.

  He never did abuse me or treat me poorly. It was more that he never let me be me, but I don’t fault him for that, either. It was what it was. There’s something about going from your father’s house to your husband’s house that means you never learn to stand on your own two feet. You never learn who you are and what you want. Life becomes simply about caring for other people’s wants. I know that Aengus probably thinks he was only ever taking care of me, in his own way.

  T’is empowering to learn to take care of yourself. Empowering to figure out who you are or who you want to be. I know now that I love painting even though I’m horribly dreadful at it. And I hate gardening. Why I thought I gave a fig for it all those years, I’ll never know. M
aybe because the garden was an escape. It was my place. A place no one else could control. But who has the time for all that weeding and watering and nurturing once you don’t need that escape?

  In a sense, every day is an escape for me now. Or maybe it’s that I no longer have anything to escape from.

  Aengus is angry, too, but for him it’s his pride that’s hurt. I don’t think it ever occurred to him to think I might not be happy with him. And maybe that’s my fault for never telling him. I think that most of the fault in this, if there is in fact any need to assign blame, is mine.

  Going to try yoga this week. Also going to focus on forgiveness. Forgiving myself for not being perfect. Maybe if I can forgive myself, Emmaline will forgive me someday.

  8

  A soul that knows love knows true joy.

  Fiona O’Malley’s Journal

  June Leary was one of the Sweater Sets but also one of the Junes. There were two Junes. June Leary and June Jubie. Yes, her parents really did that to her.

  It was June Leary who was currently stroking a manicured fingernail up Shane’s arm. And it was doing squat for him besides remind him why he didn’t want one of the Sweater Sets. He'd once thought he did. It went with his plans for stability.

  Shane wasn’t an idiot. He didn’t need a shrink to tell him this all stemmed back to his father. Jim Bishop had been famous in this town before he’d struck gold on the two patents for industrial glue that had made the family rich. He’d been famous simply by virtue of being one of the Bishop family, a family that could trace its roots back to when the town was initially settled in the late 1800s.

  He’d been even more famous, or maybe infamous was the right term, because he was a rancher who would rather fiddle with inventions out in what his family called his “tinker barn” than tend to his cattle. For their mother, May Bishop, this had been who her husband was. It was why she loved him. For Cade and Shane, it meant watching their mother stress over how to feed the family and how to buy the new clothes the boys needed. Shane would bet Cade wasn’t as affected by it as he was. For whatever reason, it had always seemed to hit Shane harder.