The Sheriff (Men of the White Sandy Book 5)

by Sarah M. Anderson

  This was not the right way to ask a man if he was interested in a summer fling. She knew that. “If I’m going to be responsible for Georgey, I should understand him a little better. I mean, there are certain things all teenage boys have in common, but culturally I don’t know what it means to be a Lakota.” She swallowed and forced herself to look at him.

  He was listening intently. “I could help you with that, if you wanted,” he said. “I’ve lived here my whole life and I know this reservation like the back of my hand.”

  “Oh?” she teased. Teasing she could do. Having a sense of humor was essential to maintaining control of a classroom. “Can you describe the back of your hand?”

  “It’s brown,” he fired back without hesitation. “And I’ve got a long scar on the back of my left hand.” He held it out, palm down, for her to look at.

  He did have an absolutely huge scar that ran the length of his hand—far bigger and meaner-looking than any accidental cut ever could look. She reached out and, after a moment’s hesitation, traced her finger over the rough skin. “What happened?” She felt more than saw his body tense up. There it was again, that something.

  Now it was his turn to shrug. “On-the-job hazard. Not a big deal.”

  She gaped up at him, then stared at the angry scar again. She could see where it’d been stitched closed—and there were a lot of stitches. “Are you serious?”

  He shoved his hand into his pocket. “You may find this hard to believe, but most people don’t like being arrested.” He cleared his throat and changed the subject. “You’re more than welcome to stay with me as long as you’d like. Will your boyfriend be okay with that?”

  She leaned back in her chair and let the question hang for a second. If she wasn’t mistaken, a certain sheriff had just fished to see if she was interested in a summer fling. Her heart began to beat a notch faster and it took everything she had to not stare at his hips. Or other parts. “I don’t have a boyfriend. And you? I don’t want to cause problems…”

  He was absolutely still and she could imagine him staking out some sort of nefarious bad guy, watching and waiting and putting himself in harm’s way to protect his land.

  She’d never dated a cop before. Maybe it was time.

  “I’m not seeing anyone,” he said in a voice that was almost soft.

  “Oh, good. Then this won’t be a problem?” When he didn’t respond immediately, she began to panic. What if she’d misread the signals? Crap. She didn’t want to make a fool out of herself. She added nervously, “I mean, if you don’t mind putting up with me?”

  “No,” he said, something in his eyes changing—deepening. Heat began to shimmer through her body as he stared down at her. “I don’t mind at all.”

  ***

  Tim unlocked the door to his house and shoved it open with his shoulder. He didn’t usually bring people back to his place, so things like sticky doors and uneven floors didn’t bother him normally.

  But today was anything but normal.

  True, he’d had Georgey sleeping on his couch for a week and a half, but the boy didn’t give a damn about the finer points of home decorating. Summer Collins, however, probably did. Tim knew his house was one of the nicer ones on the reservation, but that wasn’t what she was going to see. For the first time in a very long time—maybe forever—he was embarrassed by his place.

  And she hadn’t even gotten inside yet.

  “Let me get the light,” he said, walking into the dark room and heading toward the table lamp next to his recliner. He reached it without a problem—he could walk around this house blindfolded—but something made him turn back before he flipped the switch.

  Summer stood in the doorway, the last dregs of daylight silhouetting her against the darkness. He couldn’t see her face, just her outline, and it made her seem smaller somehow. He wanted to go to her and pull her in his arms, but then Georgey popped up behind her and Tim remembered this was not about him and her, but about that kid.

  Or was it? Because there had been the conversation back at the police station where he told her to stay as long as she wanted and basically asked her to go to a pow wow with him. And that had nothing to do with the kid.

  Tim flipped on the switch, illuminating his shabby—but clean—home. “Well, here we are. Georgey, you can sleep on either the floor or in the recliner.”

  Summer stepped into the room, her eyes taking in everything that was wrong with his place. The green and maroon plaid couch was threadbare and didn’t match the yellow recliner. He didn’t even have a coffee table, just a small side table wedged in the corner between the recliner and the couch, that held his books and the lamp. The lamp had a shade, but there were brown spots on the fabric where it’d been singed by the bulb.

  The walls were an unnatural shade of light green and the floor was bare wood. He didn’t even have a television—something Georgey bitched about endlessly. But when he was home, he slept. And he wasn’t home that much. He basically lived at the station.

  Looking around this room, it showed.

  “This is nice,” Summer said in a tone of voice that made it clear she was just being polite.

  The hell of it was, it was nice. It had doors and windows and running water and electricity and a roof that didn’t leak. Compared to a lot of the homes on the White Sandy, this place was a freaking palace.

  But compared to what she was probably used to? Yeah, this was a dump.

  Georgey cut around her, melodramatically groaning as he hefted the small bag she had packed. “Can I put this down or do I need to hold it some more?”

  Tim rolled his eyes—but Summer merely shot the boy a tight smile. “Is it too heavy for you?” she asked gently. “I didn’t have any problem carrying it…”

  Tim bit back a snort of laughter as Georgey straightened up and stuck out his chest. Tim had to hand it to her—she had a way of subtly manipulating the boy.

  Maybe this would work. He didn’t necessarily want Georgey off the rez, but he wanted the boy to have a shot and Tim knew that he wouldn’t get that shot here. He wouldn’t get that shot living with his mother or even his grandmother, who did her best. A teenage boy needed someone more than a sick grandmother.

  Summer Collins just might be the answer to Georgey’s prayers. Not that Georgey knew it yet.

  “Put her bag back on the bed,” he told Georgey. “Then get cleaned up. You reek.”

  He’d been talking like that to Georgey for a week and a half now and it had never bothered the boy before. But unexpectedly, Georgey’s cheeks shot red and too late, Tim realized he had embarrassed the kid in front of Summer. Damn.

  “I’m not the only one,” Georgey muttered as he trudged down the narrow hall.

  Tim scowled after him then turned to apologize to Summer, only to find her laughing. “What?”

  “At least he didn’t say ‘I know you are but what am I’,” she giggled. “I’m sorry,” she quickly added. “It’s been a long day.”

  Tim did not have much to offer guests but he had the bare necessities. “You want a beer?”

  Her lips parted as she exhaled gently. “Oh, that would be wonderful. Is it okay, do you think? To drink in front of Georgey?”

  Tim was pretty sure he heard the kid snort from the hallway, but then the bathroom door clicked shut. “He’ll probably be in there for a good thirty, forty minutes—you’ve got time.” He walked back through the open space that was his living room, dining room and kitchen all in one and opened the small fridge. “I only have a couple of Beaumont beers—I hope that’s okay?”

  “That’s fine.”

  Tim grabbed two longnecks out and popped the caps.

  “So you live here all alone?”

  “I know it’s not much.” He’d never wanted anything more—well, maybe that wasn’t entirely true. But he never needed anything more before.

  “If I tell you it’s fine again, will you tell me it’s not a third time?” As she asked the question, her gaze didn’t leave his fa
ce. Then she lifted the beer bottle to her lips and took a drink. “Because we can keep doing this all night, if you want.”

  He grimaced. “No, I don’t particularly want that.” Other things, though—yeah, he might like to do a few things all night with her.

  Her eyes swept around the room again and he pulled his mind out of the gutter. He wasn’t making a good impression but the thing was, he didn’t know how to do better.

  “I have these hazy memories of my dad’s place when I came to see him. It was loud and crowded—like you said, there were people sleeping on the floors. I didn’t think much of it at the time, except there wasn’t any television. But looking back now…” She took another drink. “I think he lived in a hovel. I remember my mom being horrified. But I thought it was fun that we had to go to the bathroom outside.” Her cheeks colored prettily at this last statement. “I mean, it was like camping or something.”

  Tim nodded. “Yeah, that’s more common here than most people realize.”

  Summer dropped her gaze to the bottle in her hand. “Did you know him? My father? Because I didn’t. I don’t know if he was a good man or a bad one. I know what my mom says about him but I don’t know if that’s who he really was.”

  He opened his mouth to respond, but just then, Georgey started singing and Summer cracked an awkward smile.

  “I’ve got some chairs out back,” he offered. “We should be able to catch the last of the sunset.”

  She nodded and he led the way out the back door which, thankfully, did not require a hip check to get open. His backyard, such as it was, was nothing to write home about. He managed to keep a small square area of grass cut on the semi-regular basis and he had two old lawn chairs, plus his grill, a battered Weber. That was it.

  She paused for a second before choosing the chair on the left—it was probably the cleaner of the two. Tim did not often covet the finer things in life but right now he wished he had a nice house with tasteful furniture and clean outdoor seating that a pretty woman like Summer Collins would feel comfortable in, instead of the bare-bones stuff.

  “I knew Leonard," he said, picking up the previous conversation thread. "I don’t know what your mom has said about him, but I know he was like everyone else who walks this earth. He was good and he was bad and most days those things were balanced but some days they weren’t.”

  She thought on this for a while. “That was surprisingly philosophical from a sheriff.”

  “I’ve been doing this for twelve years. This can be a hard life on hard land. I’ve arrested friends and buried kids and…” His voice trailed off. But he couldn’t bring himself to say the words.

  “Yeah,” she said in a way that made it clear she understood what he hadn’t said.

  He'd killed people. He took no pleasure in it, but he wasn’t done yet and he wasn’t going to let some two-bit criminal with a shotgun tell him he was.

  “I suppose that’s true for Georgey, too—he’s both bad and good?”

  It felt safer talking about Georgey than it did about her father. Tim didn’t want to admit how many times Leonard Two Elks had been a guest of the White Sandy police. “He’s just a kid—not a bad one,” he added quickly. “But he doesn’t know any other way. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life putting him in jail. I hate to give up on a kid.”

  “Me, too. Some of the kids I teach…” She sighed. “They don’t have anything but the streets. They make their own families and forge identities and, like you said, you hate to give up on them. I’ve only had one or two students in the five years I’ve been teaching where I thought they really belonged in jail.”

  “And Georgey is not one of those kids.” He turned to look at her. As the top of the sun slipped below the horizon, the colors bled out of their surroundings. He couldn’t tell her eyes were hazel or her hair was a light brown. He couldn’t see her freckles at all. In the dusk, she looked like she belonged here more than ever.

  It was her profile, her cheekbones and her nose. Maybe she couldn’t see the Lakota in her, but he could. And something he didn’t understand, some whisper from deep inside his chest, told him to hold on to that. To hold on to her.

  She turned to him. “Do you really think this will work? I mean, I know a lot about teenage boys, but my mother is not going to like this and it’s going to be hard for me to provide for him on my salary alone. I’ll be moving him to a big city and if he goes to school where I teach, it’s a tough place.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” Tim said, unwilling to look away from her. “About you giving up your summer job. We’ve got a community college not too far away—Sinte Gleska. They’re always trying to get teachers who can teach GED classes. I know they couldn’t pay very much, but if you needed to stay for a few weeks…”

  He wasn’t sure why he made the offer. It was all true—Sinte Gleska really did need GED instructors because there wasn’t a high school on the reservation and too many kids didn’t see the value of riding a bus for a couple hours each day to go to a place where people would call them "dumb redskins" or worse.

  Well, he knew why he made the offer. Because he couldn’t remember the last time he sat outside drinking a beer and having a conversation with another person that didn’t revolve around arrests and death. Sure, they were still talking about Georgey—but this was different.

  She made it different.

  She studied him. “Do you do this for all your juvenile delinquents?”

  “Do what?”

  “Take them in, put them to work, give up your bed for family members, find said family members short-term jobs? Is this normal for you?”

  The short answer was no. But that’s not what he said. “Depends on the kid, depends on the crime—but yeah, this isn’t the first time I’ve had someone sleeping on my couch when the only other alternative was leaving them in the cell.”

  She didn’t say anything for a long moment. She just stared at him even though he could barely make out her eyes in the deepening dark. “What did he say—Jack, your friend?”

  Tim choked on his beer. “What?”

  “At the Clinic. He said something in Lakota and you said something back and half the people laughed.” She tilted her head to one side and he knew she was appraising him. “I assume it was about me. I don’t know if Dr. Mitchell speaks Lakota, but I got the feeling people know better than to talk about her in front of her.”

  She was perceptive, he’d give her that. It shouldn’t have made Tim smile, but it did. Smart and beautiful. Which had the potential to be a major problem. “Jack told me to watch myself.”

  He saw her head tilt toward him in the shadows. “And you replied…?”

  There was a hint of edge to her voice and once again, Tim figured she was a hell of a good teacher. She talked about her rough school and her tough students but everything about her—her voice, her posture, her attitude—brooked no arguments. It might’ve been easy to run over a pretty young woman like her—but she wouldn’t allow it.

  He sighed, trying not to feel like he’d been hauled in front of the principal. “I told him he’d better watch himself instead.”

  “Ah,” she said in a voice so soft and gentle he almost didn’t hear it. She was leaning toward him and he realized almost too late that he was doing the same. The space between them was shrinking and he found himself wondering if she tasted like strawberries.

  Before he got to find out, a strange current passed over the grass, like heat lightning about to strike.

  Dammit. Tim stood quickly, scanning the darkness for any sign of the familiar shape. If Nobody Bodine scared the holy hell out of this woman, he and Tim were going to have a come-to-Jesus talk about it.

  “What is it?” She sounded worried, but not scared. That had to count for something, he figured.

  “This better be good,” Tim announced into the darkness. “You’re scaring my guest.”

  He expected Nobody to materialize out of nothing in front of him, like he always did. But that�
�s not what happened. Instead, the man walked out of the darkness on his far right. Tim barely saw the man in his peripheral vision, but Summer must’ve been staring right at him when he appeared. She let out a terrified little squeak.

  Tim spun toward Nobody as Summer flung herself out of her chair. Without thinking, Tim stepped in front of her, putting his body between her and Nobody. He thought about pulling his gun because he was that pissed that his nice, quiet evening was being interrupted. But he figured the gun would only scare Summer even more. So instead he said, “Nobody,” in his most calm, rational voice—to show her there was nothing to be afraid of.

  To his everlasting amusement, Nobody whipped his black hat off his head and nodded to where Summer was hiding behind Tim. “Ma’am,” he said in his gravelly voice. “Good to see the sheriff found you.”

  Summer made that squeaking noise again and Tim wondered what he had to do to have one freaking day without Nobody Bodine. On the other hand, he could feel the warmth from her body against his back. He stretched one hand out behind him, hoping to reassure her that she was safe with him. She grabbed his forearm with both hands and held on tight.

  “Summer, this is an associate of mine—Nobody Bodine. There’s no need to be afraid.” At least, there better not be. Then he shot a hard look at Nobody. “What.”

  “The Killerz are going after the Warriors,” Nobody said.

  Tim sighed heavily. For a few glorious minutes, he’d almost been like a regular guy—sitting in the dark, drinking a beer and having a normal conversation with a normal woman. And now those minutes were over. “Where? When?”

  “The basketball courts behind the middle school.”

  Summer was peering over his shoulder at Nobody, as if she couldn’t believe he were real and she couldn’t believe Tim was talking to him. “And you’re telling me this now because…”

  Nobody’s face was often blank and emotionless, but even in the dark Tim could see something that looked like a smile on his lips. “Because I’m not supposed to put people in jail anymore?”

  Great. Just great. Of all the time for this man to take Tim’s advice. “Fine. Does Jack know yet?”