He held the door for her. Did that make it a date, or were they merely colleagues sharing a meal? He respected her knowledge, consulting her when she didn’t sense he often asked for help. He appreciated her sense of humor, responded to her repartee. He wanted to be done with the other relationship—he’d said so. He just needed the right woman. Who better than one who already understood so well?
The girl behind the counter noticed Jonah the minute he walked in. They were fourth in line, but suddenly everything the young blonde did was for his benefit. Or maybe, Liz admitted, she was projecting her own feelings.
A man heading out with his order nodded. “Chief.”
“Morning, Don.”
“Ma’am.”
She smiled.
They reached the counter, and the girl looked up at Jonah with a mixed expression, waving a hand over her wares. “Strictly regulation. Not a contraband item in the case.”
“I’m not here on reconnaissance, Piper.”
She smiled brightly. “Then what can I get you?”
“Liz?”
She studied the choices laid out temptingly. “I haven’t had a bear claw in years.”
“That’s us,” Piper said, “a bastion of the obsolete.” She pulled a tissue square from the box.
“Make that two obsolete bears claws,” Jonah said. “And coffee, please.”
Liz ordered coffee too.
Piper poured and handed over their cups. “How’s Sarge?”
“Still touch and go. Things okay here?”
“You kidding? No one yelling at me? Well, except you.”
Liz raised her eyebrows.
“I didn’t yell.”
“Your face did.”
“I’ll have a talk with it.”
Her giggle made her sound half Jonah’s age. Piper handed over their pastries. “Seven ninety-five.”
Jonah paid, and it felt … nice, Liz thought, warmth spreading through her chest. They took a table for two at the window. She set down her mug and pastry, then braced herself between the chair and the small square table to sit. Jonah didn’t comment on her awkwardness.
She tore open a tiny tub of creamer for her coffee. “Nice girl.”
Jonah glanced over. “Don’t let her sweetness fool you. She’s a force. Aside from the odd jobs given to me, Sarge has never hired anyone. Now Piper runs the place.”
“Why did you yell at her?”
He sighed. “I need to question someone, and she’s running interference. Plus mucking around in the animal investigation.”
Liz felt a stab of annoyance. That was her connection. “How is she involved?”
“She found the first pair. But she’s not involved. I’m trying to get that across to her.” He bit into his bear claw. “And I didn’t yell.”
Liz quirked the corner of her mouth. “She has a crush on you.”
“Don’t even start.”
She took a bite of her pastry. “Mmm.”
“Yeah, she can bake. And you might not think it, but she works hard. Even Sarge admits that much.”
“Sarge?”
“I forget you’re new here.” Jonah took a drink of coffee. “Sarge is a fixture. He’s owned this bakery thirty—” His glance went to the window and froze there.
Liz looked from Jonah to the window where Tia hovered a moment, then changed course for her shop next-door. In that moment, it all fell into place. The candles on his mantel. The old flame.
She swallowed. It would take someone like Tia to hold him, someone who ran deeper than one might imagine. She’d sensed it with only one encounter, the way her personality hung and permeated like one of her scents. “You were saying?”
“Um. Sorry.” Jonah checked his watch. “I hate to eat and run, but I need to get in.”
“Sure.” Liz sipped her coffee. “Go ahead.”
Something had flashed in Liz’s eyes. Surprise, irritation—neither quite fit, although both would be understandable. You don’t buy someone breakfast and then leave them sitting there, not without an emergency. Certainly not because Tia had looked startled, stunned, wounded like a bird striking a window.
He went directly into his office, catching a look between Ruth and Newly as he passed. Speculation would fly. What’s got the chief in a twist? He closed the door behind him. He had let his personal life intrude—worse, his personal fantasy. Tia wasn’t even reality.
What did Tia care if he took Liz to breakfast? He should make it a real date, dinner, dancing—or maybe not with her handicap—then back to his place. Have a drink or two or twelve.
But that was before. Though still tempted, he saw the emptiness of those choices. Getting drunk and sleeping with a woman he didn’t love would sicken him, weaken him, plunge him into places he’d been, places of condemnation, of looking into the mirror and seeing his father. But why?
Because he held fidelity above gratification? He pressed his eyes shut and opened himself in silence to God, the higher power, the strength outside himself from whom fortitude and grace emanated. Unlike Jay, he didn’t want an excuse to avoid commitment. He wanted stability, completion. God knew that, knew him, the longings, the failings, the faults.
“You’re a coward and a fake. When are you going to be a man?”
That wasn’t God. Through his fingers, Jonah stared at the wall that still bore the fade marks of photos he’d removed. The last thing he’d wanted was the old man staring at him while he did the job.
“You act tough, but you’re soft as pudding inside, softer than your mother. You’re a little girl.”
That was the last time his dad had seen him cry, no matter how long the punishment lasted. Jonah leaned back in his chair. Tia had punished him for nine years, and he wasn’t crying. But when did the time come to man up and move on?
He opened the file Newly had left, probably expecting to update him verbally on Tom Caldwell. Since the DA had dropped the charges for lack of evidence, they’d kept up a loose surveillance, mainly Newly or McCarthy earning overtime staking out the house after dark. They had little to report.
Jonah closed the file. Someone else had called in the lawyer and cleaned up the property. That was the one he wanted, but no luck. Phone records had turned up no one named Greggor. He hated when a case ground to a halt or got sideswiped by attorneys.
Ruth buzzed the intercom.
“Yes.”
“Mayor’s on the line.”
Jonah answered to City Manager Dave Wolton, but the mayor liked to play in his sandbox too. Owen Buckley had a hearty appetite for attention. Jonah picked up the phone. “What can I do for you, Mayor?”
His father had enjoyed a good-old-boy camaraderie with all the officials, but Jonah still felt like an upstart dealing with the old man’s cronies.
Tia set up the worktable she had moved into the newly available space near the front counter. She had poured a dozen candles the night before that she could decorate while she watched the shop, replenishing her stock. She tried to focus on that, but seeing Jonah with the vet, sitting where he’d sat with Reba, had upset her.
He had every right to move on, and it shouldn’t surprise her that he’d chosen someone similar in type to Reba, but it didn’t make seeing it easier. She closed her eyes, then looked up as the fingerprint man came through the door. Wonderful.
He had told Piper he didn’t mean to wreck her shop. She’d said the same, assuming she would never see the big guy again, yet here he was. Just in case, she limped to the counter where she’d left her cell phone.
“You’re hurt,” he informed her.
“The sculpture hit my leg. When you bumped it.” The skin had turned purple, and the bruise throbbed with every step. She slipped her phone into the loose pocket of her cotton poncho-style top.
His big hands opened and closed beneath the immaculate cuffs of his starched, blue dress shirt. “You changed things.”
“I removed the damaged merchandise and displays.”
“It’s not so crowded,” h
e said with sincere relief. “That’s better. Much better.”
She lowered her chin. “Can I help you?”
“The tapers broke. When they fell.” His shoulders hunched. “I need them.”
“Thankfully that display wasn’t damaged.”
He turned and headed to the side wall, inspected and chose a pair of linked tapers. He brought them to the counter. “They make a very nice gift.”
Was it possible he had blocked out his part in the incident, rewound to the point right before his panic? Could this be a redo? She felt a keen kinship, a stab of hope for his success. “Would you like them wrapped?”
“No.” He took out his wallet. “Just like that.”
With a sense of déjà vu, Tia saw her hand brushing his, the chaos that had followed. With everything in her she willed this time to be different. If he could do it … “Miles?”
He startled, surprised she knew his name.
“Why does touching bother you?”
He stiffened. “People don’t touch. People—”
“Touch all the time.”
He dropped the wallet and put his hands to his ears.
Was she trying to set him off? He’d taken a chance just by coming back. “I’m sorry.” She used her Hopeline tone. “Sometimes talking helps.” And sometimes, it obviously didn’t.
He didn’t know or care about her education, her degrees, or all the good Carolyn thought she could do. He wanted to be left alone. She took the cash for the tapers, put the change into the pouch, and laid his wallet on the counter beside the candles.
Not quite willing to give up, she set a Hopeline card beside his wallet. “I’m here if you ever do want to talk.”
He snatched everything up and hurried for the door. She watched him leave, sad that he only knew human contact as a threat. But was he so different from her? Or just more honest.
As if her mood couldn’t get worse, Jonah entered the shop, all six feet drawn up taut. “Don’t even try to tell me that wasn’t the guy who busted up your store.”
“Okay, I won’t.” He must have seen Miles leaving.
“I guess you forgot he’s dangerous?”
“I don’t think he is.”
“Oh, and you’re the expert?”
More than he knew. She limped to the worktable and plunked the hypodermic filled with shimmery gold wax back into the hot water. “He’s just a guy with issues.”
“If you had called when he came in, I could have shown up to determine that.”
“Look.” She turned. “It was like a seizure that first time. That’s how much control he had over it.”
“What if he has a seizure at the bakery? Attacks Piper?”
“He can’t touch people.”
“You’re still limping from the way he couldn’t touch you.”
She sighed. “If it was Helen Henratty’s shop he’d tossed, would you be this tenacious?”
“Helen Henratty would cooperate. She would want compensation for her losses.”
“And you’d feel as personally committed as you do now?”
He crowded her. “You know the answer to that.”
“Jonah, I don’t want special treatment. Just trust me. He’s not the psychopath you’re looking for.”
Jonah hung his hands on his hips. “Why was he here?”
“He wanted candles.”
“He came in to shop?” Aggravation gathered his features again.
“The other tapers broke. He needed to replace them.”
“Tia …” He seemed lost for words.
“You’re taking it too seriously.”
“This isn’t only about you. There are other people, other shop owners to consider. If he can come back to shop after what he did to you—”
“He didn’t do it with intent, Jonah. And I just … couldn’t bring you down on him.”
He looked as though she’d struck him. “Bring me down on him?”
She swallowed. “I know how you get.”
His eyes narrowed. “How I get?”
She pressed her hand to her forehead. “Do you hear yourself? Don’t you realize how intimidating you are? What it tells people you’re capable of?”
His eyes went stone cold. “What am I capable of, Ti? Blowing my dad’s head off with a shotgun?”
Her breath came sharp and quick. “No.”
“You think I’m too nice?”
She shook her head. “Stop it, Jonah.”
“You don’t know, do you? You’ve never asked.”
“I don’t need to.”
“You’ve kept a nice, safe distance, though.”
“That’s not why—”
“Ask.” The icy demand chilled her marrow. Tears burned. “I won’t.”
His teeth clenched down on a cold whisper. “Ask me.”
She swallowed hard. “Did you shoot your dad?”
“No. But I got to watch, which was almost as good.”
“Don’t.”
“What?”
“Pretend to be that person you’re not.”
“What makes you think I’m not?” His temple pulsed. “You see it. Down inside me. The rage.”
“There’s rage in every one of us.”
“Not like mine.”
“That’s a lie.” Her voice rasped.
“But you believe it.”
“No, I don’t. I have never believed you shot him.”
His throat worked. “Then why …” His pain surfaced like blisters on a burn.
She could not let it go on. “You wanted to save Reba from the backlash, told her she didn’t deserve to be shackled to a man like you. But the truth is, you shouldn’t be shackled to someone like me.”
He looked away and swore, then turned back and gripped her shoulders. “This thing, the way I feel, didn’t happen because of what we did, it’s why we did it.”
She searched his face.
“I love you. I loved you before we betrayed your sister, before I slid the ring on her finger.”
She gulped back tears. “I don’t—”
“That day on the ledge, when you followed me to the eagle nest? I wanted to make love to you. I wanted to take off your clothes and let the sun shine all over you. That’s what I was thinking while we talked about your sister.”
Her tears broke free. If that were true … “Then why …”
“I needed everyone to know I was good enough for Reba Manning.”
Her throat felt raw, her chest hollow.
“That’s what I’m capable of.” He let go and stepped back.
She felt like he’d pulled a stake from her chest and her life was pouring out. She stood unmoving as he walked away.
Fifteen
Loyalty means nothing unless it has at its heart the absolute principle of self-sacrifice.
—THOMAS WOODROW WILSON
Leaving Tia’s shop, Jonah’s mind reeled. His body shook. He had determined to hold on, but something inside snapped. He had repelled her as surely as if he’d slammed his palms into her collarbones. The ache, the need for her howled, almost driving him back inside, but he had shown her the beast, and she would only recoil.
His phone rang, and he wanted to throw it. “What?”
“Jonah Westfall?”
“Yes.” His teeth clenched.
“Sarge asked me to call.”
Sarge. It must be the nurse. What was her name? “Lauren.”
“Very good.”
“What’s up with Sarge?”
“His daughters are here. They’re moving him to a nursing home.”
“What? No.” His hand clenched. “I tried to get back to them. They never—” He rubbed his face. “Can you stall them till I get there?”
“How?”
“Tell them you need another test or the doctor has to sign something.”
“The doctor’s already spoken—”
His breathing hardened. “Just ask them to wait until I get there.”
“You better hurry. They
want to be done with it.”
Done with it. With Sarge. He wouldn’t debate the reasons for their decision, but he hoped to change their minds. Shutting the phone, Jonah sprinted to the Bronco. He put on the light and siren and kept the pedal floored.
He’d expended his emotional energy on Tia, and he hadn’t prepared for this, but it might be his only chance to give back to Sarge for the things he’d done. Maybe guilt and regret had driven the old man’s actions, but the result was the same. With the kind of anger he’d built up, Jonah could be doing time instead of fighting crime, if Sarge hadn’t stressed things like taking life head on and making his way through the trenches no matter what the enemy had planned.
Stan had taken credit for his son’s decision to join him in law enforcement. But it was Sarge who had encouraged him. “Read the enemy,” Sarge told him, “assess his strengths, then do it better, harder, and with a clear conscience.”
It all stemmed from the tragedy, from the night in the woods when their souls had intersected. In some ways, Sarge’s life had stopped that night. The clock quit ticking. He’d gone into a tunnel where nothing changed. His menu, his schedule. Hiring Piper had been a bigger step than anyone realized, certainly not the daughters who had been gone for years. Hurt, perhaps, by his inability to move out of the past, they had started over without him.
Now Sarge needed a new start, but not the one they planned. Charging out of the elevators, he encountered Lauren, looking drawn. “Where is everyone?”
She pointed to Sarge’s room. “Still there. Barely.” She looked him up and down. “You really are a cop.”
He’d worn the uniform because he was supposed to be in court this afternoon. “Did you think I was making that up?”
“Seeing is believing.”
He crooked a smile. “Thanks for calling me.” She smiled back. A lovely, hopeful smile.
Jonah reached the room and entered. The women who turned to him were fifteen or twenty years older. They probably had no memory of him. They might remember his father though, as their expressions suggested. The resemblance was striking. Especially in uniform.
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