by Zoe Chant
"Bailey!" Verity said, smiling despite herself. But a coldness crept through her at the idea of Maddox leaving. He could leave now, she thought. If the threat to the town was over, was there anything to keep him around?
"Are you planning on leaving?" Bailey asked, the plaintiveness in her voice reflecting Verity's own thoughts.
Maddox's hand slid over Verity's, and he said quietly, "I think that's up to your Aunt Verity, if she wants me to stay or not."
"Of course I want you to stay!" Verity exclaimed, shocked. "Why wouldn't I want you to stay? Don't be ridiculous."
"Just didn't want to presume," Maddox said, but she could hear the smile in his voice.
Bailey's happy squeal was loud enough that Verity hushed her so they wouldn't bother the rest of the guests. Then there was a surprised huff from Maddox and Verity grinned at the mental image of the girl throwing her arms around him. He was, she thought, not a man who was used to being hugged.
"Uh, thanks," he said, as small shuffling noises indicated he was peeling Bailey off him. Verity braced herself, guessing what was coming, and she wasn't wrong, as her niece hugged her next.
"We should celebrate," Bailey declared. "Actually, we should go out and explore. Can we? Please? I know it's kinda late, but I've only been to Phoenix once on a band trip, and we didn't get to go anywhere."
"I can take 'em, if you want to stay here," Maddox told Verity.
"No," she said. "No, I think we should go out together. As a family. But let me get some clothes on first, okay? You kids go down and wait for us in the lobby. We'll be down soon."
"You better not get up to hanky-panky in here and make us wait," Bailey declared, and then the door shut behind them.
Verity laughed and got up, feeling around for the suitcase Bailey had brought. Her heart clutched when she discovered that her niece had packed her suitcase in exactly the way she liked it, with everything compartmentalized neatly by clothing type, and had also brought her some toiletry things.
"She's such a sweet kid," she said to Maddox, sitting on the bed as she brushed out her hair.
"I know. They both are. There's just one problem," Maddox said with an embarrassed laugh. "I don't have a single dollar to my name. Not on me. Everything I had is under half a mountain right now."
Verity stood up and smoothed down her skirt, then held out her arm. "Let's just walk around, then. We just ate, so we don't have to eat again. We can just be tourists. If the kids want any souvenirs, they can buy them for themselves."
His arm slid smoothly under hers, as if it was meant to be there. "Will you enjoy it? Sightseeing? Though I guess it's not sightseeing for you, not exactly."
"I think I will." New smells, new places to explore—and somewhere to go back to, after all of it. Someone to support her, and guide her when she needed it, and stand by to catch her if she wanted to go it alone. The more she thought about it, the more excited she was to explore a city where she'd never been, despite living just a few hours' drive from it all her life. "I'm really looking forward to 'seeing' it."
As a family.
Epilogue: Finding the Way Home
"Congratulations to the new sheriff!"
Maddox ducked his head, flattered and embarrassed. The patrons in the Whistlestop Café cheered, and cheered even more when the waitress brought free slices of warm strawberry pie, piled high with vanilla ice cream.
"Congratulations," she said warmly, passing pie around the table to Verity, Bailey, and Luke. "You'll be a much better sheriff than that other guy. I can tell already."
She left, and Maddox tried to pretend that his face wasn't as blazing hot as the desert sun, and probably as red as if he'd been hiking in the desert for days.
"I still can't believe people voted for me," he admitted, digging a fork into his pie. Verity squeezed his hand, and then found her own plate and fork with her fingertips.
"Well, you are the only candidate," Luke said from across the table in their booth. Bailey smacked him. "What? It's true!"
"You're gonna be a great sheriff, Maddox," Bailey declared through a mouthful of pie. She and Luke had dug in with the appetites of active teenagers; their pie was half gone already.
"I don't even know how."
"We'll help you!" Bailey said. "Won't we, Aunt Verity?"
Verity smiled. "I think your first priority needs to be finishing your junior year and looking into colleges. Then we'll talk."
Bailey rolled her eyes and jammed her fork into her mouth with the last bite of pie. "Can Luke and I take his truck out to the lake this afternoon?"
"Yes, if you're back by sundown."
Bailey rose out of her seat and leaned across to kiss Verity's cheek, and then Maddox's, to his surprise. "Thanks! Love you guys!"
Luke made his polite goodbyes and then was off with Bailey dragging him by the hand, before Maddox could quite get over his shock. He knew Bailey liked him, and Verity had been clear that he was part of the family, but this was the first time she'd ever told him she loved him.
"At least these days, I can be confident they actually are going to the lake, instead of taking on the town's corrupt power structure single-handedly." Verity shook her head. "Though, come to think of it, I remember what we used to get up to at that lake when we were kids. Maybe they'd be better off chasing crooked city officials."
"You don't mean that."
"No," she said, her smile widening. "No, I don't. I'm so glad she's able to have a normal, carefree childhood at last. And the repairs on the shop are coming along nicely ... what is it?"
Maddox, without thinking about it, had reached out to brush her face with his fingertips. "You've got ice cream on your nose."
"Well," she said, leaning forward, "shouldn't you do something about that?"
He lightly kissed it off.
"Excuse me? Mr. Murphy?"
Maddox jerked away and grinned sheepishly at the elderly couple craning around from the next table over. It turned out they wanted to shake his hand for winning the election. After that, there was a steady stream of well-wishers, including nearly every person who came into the café.
"I kinda miss being a nobody," Maddox admitted during a lull. The waitress brought them fresh coffee, on the house. These days, they kept coffee at home, but he had to admit it ... he was starting to get used to tea.
"Oh, enjoy your ten minutes of fame," Verity said, leaning against his arm. "Pretty soon you'll be missing the days when all you had to do was sit around and eat free pie."
They went out to the parking lot, angling toward Maddox's new truck. He'd bought it with some of the money from the out-of-court settlement they'd reached with Ducker's company, with the help of Darius's lawyers. Some of the rest of the money was going toward repairs to Verity's shop, while the remainder had been put into a savings account for Bailey's college fund.
Maddox still felt a sense of unreality sometimes, that this was really his life. He had a home, and family, and neighbors who liked him and came over with cookies, and his mate who loved him, that he got to go to bed with every night.
Putting on a sheriff's badge wouldn't make up for everything he'd done wrong in his life. But he realized he was looking forward to it anyway.
People like him weren't supposed to have happy endings like this.
But sometimes they got them.
"Well, now what?" Verity asked. "It looks like we have an evening all to ourselves. I have some tea orders to fill, but ..." She smiled. "I think they can wait until later, if you have any ideas for other ways we might fill the time."
"Actually," he said, "I do."
Not too long later, the truck was bumping over the ruts in a rural road. Verity clung to her seat. "You know," she said, "I'm not sure this is what I had in mind."
"Just wait a little bit. We're almost there."
He stopped the truck at a wide place and got out, then gave Verity a hand down to the sand. The afternoon sun was winter-cool, and Maddox handed Verity her jacket before shrugging in
to his own. The fragrance of the desert rose up to greet them.
"Where are we?" Verity asked, turning her head.
"Not too far out of town. I asked around town, if I wanted to look around some old mines, what might be some that I could look at. This is on Jim Doherty's land—you know, guy that owns the gas station, but he said if we wanted to poke around, it was fine with him."
They picked their way up a winding path to the old mine, and he watched, entranced, as Verity explored the entrance with her fingers, running her hands across the old timbers and stopping to marvel at old initials carved into the wood.
Maddox sat on a weathered, broken-down wheelbarrow and waited for her to find what he wanted her to find, while the sun sank lower and the chilly wind coming down from the mountains left him glad of his jacket and wishing he'd brought gloves. It was still disconcerting to find that the desert could be cold, but there was snow on the upper peaks of the mountains now, and he was looking forward to seeing what Verity had told him, that it occasionally snowed in Silvermine on particularly cold days.
"Oh!" Verity exclaimed, and Maddox looked over with a smile. She was just stepping back from the mine entrance, holding the little box she'd found wedged into a crack in the weathered wood. She turned it over in her hands, touching it all over, a small antique tin box that he'd picked up cheaply in an antique store in town.
"Maddox, look what I found!"
"Do you think there's anything in it?" he asked, rising with a grunt of effort as his hip took his weight.
"I don't know." She shook it and held it close to her ear. "It sounds like there's something rattling around in there."
"Open it and find out."
She had to feel her way around the box's catch before figuring out how to open it. Maddox was now in a frenzy of impatience. He had to shove his hands into his pockets to stop himself from reaching out to help her.
"Oh, how odd," she murmured, touching the inside of the box. "All that's in here is ... it feels like a bit of wire perhaps? Or, no ... some sort of ... ring ..."
He could see the moment when the penny dropped for her, and she turned her face towards him, her gray eyes wide and shocked. Maddox reached out and took her hands gently, and she didn't stop him as he took the ring from the box and slid it onto her finger.
"About time," he said. "Thought we were gonna be out here all night."
"Maddox." Her voice was barely above a whisper.
"Don't you start crying on me now, lady."
"I'm not," she murmured, her voice tremulous. When he started to pull his hands back, she grabbed them and squeezed. "Aren't you going to say it?"
"Will you marry me?"
"Yes," she breathed out, and stood on tiptoe and kissed him until he was breathless. "Yes. A thousand times, yes."
***
"It's like a whole new world that I was never interested in before," she said as they sat in the mine entrance on a blanket Maddox had brought up from the truck, passing a bottle of water back and forth. She kept touching the ring, caressing it. The sun was low and red on the horizon. "I knew there were all these old ruins around, but I guess I didn't think there was anything for me in them. I didn't think it would be fun for me. But ..."
"You do like it."
"I do," she said, grinning at him. In the ruddy light of the setting sun, loose strands of hair from her braid curled around her face. "I don't think I'd want to come up here alone, but Bailey's already said there's a ghost town not too far outside Silvermine that she'd love to take me to. And if you don't mind—I don't plan to drag you deep into any caves, but just maybe poking around a little ..."
"It sounds fun." And it did. As long as they didn't go deep; he still remembered the oppressive closeness of those pitch-black tunnels.
But darkness was Verity's entire world. In time, he thought he might learn to like it, too. She had never wanted to travel before meeting him, and now he was glorying in watching her world open up a little wider every day. It seemed only fair to meet her halfway, and share a little of her world with her.
For now, though ... "It's getting dark," he said, and Verity laughed. "Yeah, well, you don't have to drive in it. We'd better head back."
"Of course." She took his hand and he helped her up, then brushed the sand off the blanket and folded it under his arm. They walked back to the truck in the gathering dusk, Verity touching the ring on her finger every so often as if to be sure it was still there.
Men like him weren't supposed to get happy endings. But sometimes you could earn one.
A note from Zoe Chant
Thank you for buying my book! I hope you enjoyed it. If you’d like to be emailed when I release my next book, please click here to be added to my mailing list. You can also visit my webpage, or follow me on Facebook or Twitter. You are also invited to join my VIP Readers Group on Facebook!
If you enjoyed this book and would like to read more about these characters, here’s the complete series in order:
Bearista (Derek and Gaby’s book)
Pet Rescue Panther (Ben and Tessa’s book)
Bear in a Bookshop (Gunnar and Melody’s book)
Day Care Dragon (Darius and Loretta’s book)
Bull in a Tea Shop (Maddox and Verity’s book)
Dancer Dragon, Bodyguard Shifters #6, Heikon’s book, will be out later in 2019.
Please consider reviewing Bull in a Tea Shop, even if you only write a line or two. I appreciate all reviews, whether positive or negative.
Cover art: © Depositphoto.com
***
More Paranormal Romance by Zoe Chant
Bearista (Bodyguard Shifters # 1). A tough bear shifter bodyguard undercover in a coffee shop + a curvy barista with an adorable 5-year-old + a deadly shifter assassin = a scorching thrill ride of a romance!
Pet Rescue Panther (Bodyguard Shifters #2). What's hotter than a sexy man holding an adorable kitten? How about a sexy, protective panther shifter cop holding five adorable kittens! Ben must protect curvy cat-rescue volunteer Tessa (and her box of kittens) from the dragon assassin who has sworn to kill her.
Bear in a Bookshop (Bodyguard Shifters #3). He’s all wrong for her. So why do his arms feel so right? Shy bookworm Melody never dreamed she’d find love in the arms of a tattooed ex-con, but a danger from their pasts threatens to tear them apart.
Day Care Dragon (Bodyguard Shifters #4). Dragon billionaire Darius, Ben and Melody’s father, is about to meet his match in a curvy day care worker. If Loretta can keep two dozen rowdy preschoolers in line, a control-freak alpha dragon shouldn't be a problem ... right?
Sheriff Bear. (Bears of Pinerock County # 1). A small-town sheriff + a wrongly accused BBW on the run + deadly enemies and dangerous passions = a sizzling forbidden love!
Bad Boy Bear. (Bears of Pinerock County # 2). Biker bear on the open road + a BBW runaway-bride hitchhiker + evil motorcycle gang = an unforgettable red-hot road trip!
Alpha Rancher Bear. (Bears of Pinerock County # 3). A take-charge alpha with commitment issues + a midwife who's not about to give up control of her well-ordered life + a roadside winter disaster = an explosive romance that's about to blow up everything they both thought they wanted!
Mountain Guardian Bear. (Bears of Pinerock County # 4). A mountain man with a tragic past + a curvy amnesiac + two deadly secrets = one explosive romance!
Hired Bear. (Bears of Pinerock County # 5). A curvy farmer deep in debt + a lonely rancher hoping to open his heart + a family farm hiding a hidden treasure = a red-hot rural romance!
A Pinerock Bear Christmas. (Bears of Pinerock County # 6). Revisit the ranch at Pinerock County in this heartwarming holiday romance.
Bodyguard Bear. (Protection, Inc. # 1). A BBW witness to a murder + the sexy bear shifter bodyguard sworn to protect her with his life + firefights and fiery passion = one hot thrill ride!
Defender Dragon. (Protection, Inc. # 2). A curvy backpacker who loses a shoe at a ball + a lonely dragon prince facing an arranged marriage to
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Protector Panther. (Protection, Inc. # 3). A curvy paramedic who doesn’t know the meaning of fear + a mysterious panther shifter bodyguard with the power to inflict terror + sinister experiments and desperate passion = one heart-pounding romance!
Warrior Wolf. (Protection, Inc. # 4). A runaway dragon princess who wants to experience life outside of castle walls + an ex-gangster werewolf bodyguard with a chip on his shoulder the size of Texas + uptown parties, downtown nightclubs, and deadly assassins = one explosive good girl/bad boy romance!
Leader Lion. (Protection, Inc. # 5). A tough lion shifter bodyguard hiding a lonely heart + the determined stage manager he'll protect with his life + deadly danger behind the scenes = one sizzling thrill ride of a romance!
Tropical Tiger Spy. (Shifting Sands Resort # 1). A unique shifter in search of her past + a tiger shifter spy on an undercover mission + a shifters-only resort with secrets to hide = a dangerous and thrilling romantic adventure!
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Tropical Bartender Bear. (Shifting Sands Resort # 3). A curvy black woman in disguise + a hot bartender bear shifter + a male beauty pageant at a shifters-only resort = a romantic adventure that bares it all!
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Hunter Bear. (Enforcer Bears # 2). A BBW artist who fears she's lost her muse + a scarred, reclusive bear shifter hunting danger + a mysterious treasure map = one adventurous romance!