The Lawman's Runaway Bride

by Patricia Johns

  “Yeah. I’ll—” He sucked in a breath. “I’ll see what we can do.”

  “Thank you.” The mayor nodded. “It’s appreciated.”

  “Sorry for the intrusion, sir,” Chance said. “I’ll see myself out.”

  Chance met Susan in the hallway, she saw him to the door. She gave him a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

  “Nice to see you again, Chief,” she said. “How are you keeping?”

  “I’m alright,” he said with a smile. “And you?”

  She crossed her arms over her stomach. “This time of year...it’s the hardest for me. It was in January that Ryan died.”

  “Hang in there, Mrs. Scott,” Chance said quietly. “It gets better.”

  She didn’t answer him, and he didn’t press her. Chance opened the door and stepped outside into the crisp winter air. He heard the door shut behind him as he headed toward his cruiser. All of this would be so much easier if it were just about an egotistical mayor and his desire to control the whole event.

  Maybe Chance would have to be more flexible, after all. He hated to admit to Sadie being right about something, but she’d said that he wasn’t the only one who was grieving, and he obviously wasn’t. They’d have to find a way to make the ceremony a healing experience for everyone.

  Maybe even for him, too.

  * * *

  The next day, Sadie pushed her cart across the snowy parking lot of Comfort Creek’s grocery store. Her car wasn’t far away, but the snow made the small cart wheels stick, so she had to throw her weight behind it, everything in the cart jiggling so much that she was worried about the eggs. The day was overcast and a cold wind whipped her hair into her face and then back again, leaving a few strands stuck to her lip gloss. It was one of those days where she wished she could go back to bed.

  “Sadie Jenkins?”

  Sadie looked toward the voice and spotted her old friend Harper Kemp. She stood on the sidewalk next to the parking lot, shading her eyes with one gloved hand. Her fiery curls poked out from under a snug cloche hat. They’d been best friends, but that had changed.

  Sadie inwardly grimaced. She hadn’t seen Harper since the wedding. Harper had been her maid of honor, and she’d been waiting at the church with everyone else when Sadie changed her mind. Sadie had sent her a few emails after she’d left, but there was a chill between them ever since Sadie’s disappearing act, and she couldn’t even blame her. Harper was about three years younger than she was, and while the difference in their ages hadn’t seemed to matter in their friendship, it might have started to matter a little more when it came down to life experience. Harper just couldn’t understand.

  “Harper!” Sadie forced a smile. She’d have to do this sooner or later.

  “I’d heard you were back in town,” the younger woman said, stepping over the curb and heading in Sadie’s direction. “I’d hoped you’d call.”

  Seriously? So had five years been enough for Harper to forgive her? That would be a nice change of pace. Sadie stopped at her car and popped the trunk to load the groceries.

  “Sorry,” Sadie said, lifting the first bag into her trunk. “I’ve been working since pretty much as soon as I got back, so I haven’t had the chance to touch base. How are you doing?” Sadie leaned over and gave her friend a hug. “How’s the store?”

  Harper’s family ran Blessings Bridal, the only bridal shop until Fort Collins, which was sixty miles east. Sadie had spent hours in that store, searching for the right gown with Harper...as much as that was worth now. Sadie now owned a boxed wedding dress that she’d worn for all of an hour while talking herself out of her own wedding.

  “Everything’s great.” Harper smiled and pushed her red curls away from her eyes. “I’m managing the store now and Dad has fully retired.”

  Sadie shot her friend a smile. “That’s good news.”

  “Yep.” Harper nodded, and there was a beat of silence.

  “Are you free for a coffee right now?” Sadie asked, and as soon as the words were out of her mouth, she regretted them. She wasn’t sure how much more rejection she could handle, and she was almost certain that Harper would turn her down.

  Harper glanced at her watch. “Sure. I could make the time.”

  Sadie smiled. That was unexpected, and coffee with a friend would be nice right about now. She loaded the last of her groceries into the trunk, looked down Main Street toward the coffee shop. It wasn’t far.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t try more,” Harper said as they walked down the sidewalk together. “I should have put a little more effort into keeping in touch.”

  “It’s okay.” Sadie pushed her gloved hands into the pockets of her red, woolen coat. It had hurt a lot when Harper hadn’t been more supportive, but she understood it. She’d hurt a good man, and a lot of people would probably think she should have just gone through and married him at that point.

  “I didn’t understand then,” Harper went on. “I do now, though.”

  “You do?” Sadie looked over cautiously.

  “My brother got divorced last year,” Harper said. The news took Sadie by surprise. Martin’s wedding had been the talk of the town for years after the event.

  “Martin’s divorced?” Sadie shook her head.

  They’d brought in a horse-drawn carriage, and Martin’s wife, Laney, was dressed in a princess-style ball gown. It was all so over-the-top compared to Comfort Creek’s usual fare that there were people who’d kept their bonbonnières from the day and still brought them out for conversation. She was surprised her grandmother hadn’t told her about this.

  “What happened?” Sadie asked.

  “Martin said she kept pulling her parents into all their arguments,” Harper said. “And then there was the debt from the wedding. Martin wanted to pay it off as fast as possible and Laney wanted the big house right away. Her parents wanted to give them a down payment for the house, but Martin didn’t want to take it. It was just stress on top of stress.”

  Laney had wanted all the things that Noah had offered Sadie...the wedding, the house, the stability. She could see the irony there. Some women wanted exactly that—so badly, that they’d ruined their marriages over it, apparently. Sadie had been willing to walk away from all of it in order to avoid marrying the wrong man. But that’s what Harper thought Sadie would be like as a married woman? It wasn’t a flattering view.

  “And this makes you understand me how?” Sadie asked cautiously. She wasn’t even sure she wanted an honest answer to that. But then, she hadn’t stayed to defend herself, so maybe she shouldn’t be too offended.

  “The divorce was awful. Bitter, painful. They went at each other’s throats,” Harper said. “It was worse than a canceled wedding, I can tell you that. I can see why you decided to end it sooner rather than later. I should have been more supportive of that.”

  She felt a surge of relief. Harper was the first person besides Nana to say that.

  “Thank you.” Sadie blinked back an unexpected mist of tears. “I’m sorry for Martin. And Laney, too, for that matter.”

  “Me, too.” Harper smiled wanly.

  “Chance doesn’t see it your way, though,” Sadie added as they took a long step over a slushy puddle.

  “What do you mean?” Harper asked, stopping at the door to the coffee shop.

  “He’s furious I left. Period.” Sadie shook her head. “And no amount of logic seems to change that.”

  It was personal for Chance. She’d left all of them in his eyes—at least that’s how it seemed to Sadie. He also thought she’d pushed Noah into the army. And maybe she had... That was the worst part. She’d blamed herself for breaking his heart, for walking away, for not seeing that their relationship wouldn’t work sooner. She’d blamed herself for an awful lot, but until she’d gotten back here, she’d never seen any reason to blame herself for her ex-fiancé’s death.
/>   They opened the door and headed into the coffee-scented warmth. The women stamped the snow from their boots and Sadie unwound her scarf from her neck.

  “Everyone grieves differently, I suppose,” Harper said, but she cast Sadie a sympathetic glance.

  They placed their orders for two large coffees with cream, then headed for a table in a far corner that seemed relatively private. The table overlooked the snowy street, and Sadie remembered that the last time she’d been in this shop, she’d been butting heads with Chance over the ceremony plans.

  “Chance took it really hard when you left,” Harper said.

  “He was mad, I know that,” Sadie agreed.

  “No, I mean—” Harper sighed. “Noah had to clean out all your stuff from the house. So I came by with my dad’s truck to pick it up and bring it to your grandmother’s place. You know, the kitchen stuff you were moving in, that dresser that you’d refinished...”

  Sadie nodded. She’d been trying to put her mark on that house, but no matter what she brought into it, it still hadn’t felt like home.

  “So while they were loading up the truck, Noah threw a key chain into a box, and Chance pulled it out again. He told Noah that one day he’d want to remember you.”

  A lump rose in Sadie’s throat. It was hard to listen to this—to hear about how Noah had swept his home clean of her. She and Noah had shared lots of happy memories in that house, including barbecues they’d hosted and getting it ready for her to move in after the wedding. They’d been happy together—happy enough, at least. And while she could understand Noah needing to purge himself of memories in order to heal...

  “I’m sorry,” Harper said with a wince. “The point of the story was that Chance hadn’t wanted to just wipe you out of their memories. He wanted them to remember you.”

  “What did the key chain look like?” she asked numbly.

  “It was metal. Engraved. I didn’t get a really close look. Chance pocketed it.”

  He’d kept it anyway? Sadie sighed. She’d given Noah that key chain on his birthday just before their wedding. She’d gotten Chance to give her a ride out to where Noah was working so that she could surprise him. She remembered how she used to chip away at his reserved personality, and she knew she could take liberties with that serious cop that no one else could because she was special to him. Like a little sister. But after that moment on the porch when they’d almost kissed, she would never have been able to see him as just a brother again.

  “I missed him, you know,” Sadie said softly.

  “Of course you would,” Harper replied. “You almost married him.”

  But she wasn’t talking about Noah. She meant Chance. She’d grieved her relationship with Noah, and then she’d grieved his death when she learned of it, but somehow, she hadn’t been able to grieve for the rest of it—for the friendship she’d had with her soon-to-be brother-in-law, for example. She hadn’t expected to miss Chance like that, either. But he’d given her more than she’d realized—propped up the relationship with his brother that hadn’t ever been enough to really fulfill her. Noah and his family were an attractive package, but she knew it was wrong to rely on all of them like that. Noah should have been enough on his own, and if she’d needed Chance in the picture to make her marriage to his brother work, well, that was just wrong, and she recognized that.

  “Well...” Sadie pulled herself together. “It was a long time ago. I’m actually starting up an event planning business here in town.”

  Harper’s eyebrows rose in interest. “I’d heard that. So you settled on something, then?”

  “What can I say? I finally found something I liked enough to stick with.”

  “So what’s your plan?”

  The rest of the conversation revolved around both women’s businesses. When she’d lived in Comfort Creek before, she’d worked various jobs—a night clerk at the hotel along the highway, a baking assistant at the bakery, an activities coordinator for a nursing home. But now that she was back in town, she was proud to be building a career that relied upon her creative strengths. She was in her early thirties now, and she wasn’t just a woman with a job, she was a woman building a business—she liked that distinction.

  She needed to make her life here about something else—not her history with the town’s chief of police.

  Chapter Six

  When Chance and Noah were teenagers, they’d competed fiercely about everything from grades to backyard football matches. That changed when they reached adulthood and started following their own career paths, but there had always been a tinge of competition between them even as men. Thanksgiving was never complete without a little touch football...which quickly turned into full contact. They both enjoyed lifting weights to keep in shape, and they’d text each other with joking trash talk. In fact, his brother’s text was often the spur Chance needed to get himself out the door and to the gym on a frigid winter morning. If he missed a workout, he’d never hear the end of it. Slept late, huh? Meeting the girls for brunch, or something?

  There were a couple of women on the force who could flatten Noah for talk like that, and then go to brunch afterward. But that had been their brotherly dynamic. It didn’t help that they had similar taste in women, either. When it came to Sadie, Chance might have tried to turn her attention, except that he saw something different in the way Noah looked at her. His brother was smitten, and competition was one thing, but when it came down to the stuff that mattered, he had his brother’s back. And Sadie mattered to Noah.

  Chance sat in his office. The snow drifted down in windy swirls outside the small window. Ice had crept along the bottom of the inside of the glass, a frosty layer that wouldn’t go away until spring. Across from him sat Toby Gillespie.

  “So how are you finding patrol in Comfort Creek?” Chance asked, pulling his mind back to the job at hand.

  “Honestly, sir, it’s a little dull,” Toby replied. “There have been a few disputes between neighbors, but other than that, it’s dead calm.”

  Chance nodded. “That’s the way we like to keep it. Lots of time to think.”

  Toby didn’t answer that one, but Comfort Creek was perfect for this program for exactly that reason. They weren’t here for teaching tactical defense strategies, they were here for the stuff that lay at the bottom of these officers—the sediment of experience and emotion that had settled long, long ago. Without some calm and some quiet, they’d never get deep enough to ever reach it.

  “So today, I want you to interview me,” Chance said.

  “I’ve been thinking about that, sir,” Toby said. “Why don’t we just have the families fill out a form or something?”

  “Because forms are cold and distant,” Chance said with a wry smile.

  “They could be...warmly written.”

  Chance chuckled. “About as warm and inviting as those binders in the basement.”

  His warning was taken to heart, because Toby smiled, ever so slightly. “Fine. So what information am I supposed to get from you?”

  Chance slid a paper across his desk toward his trainee. “It’s all on there. So let’s start.”

  Toby scanned the page, his posture straightening, his expression granite. He pulled a pen out of his pocket and gave it a click. “Okay. So let’s start with the name of the deceased.”

  They obviously had a lot of work to do. Toby’s manner was definitely removed, which could be appropriate in some police interviews—just not this kind.

  “The name of my brother,” Chance corrected him. “Besides, you don’t really need to clarify that information. You have his name. Maybe we should ease into this a little bit. You’re talking to someone who lost his twin brother a year ago. We were close, he and I. It’s better to find out what relationship that person had to the man who died.”

  “Right.” Toby cleared his throat. “So I should start with, ‘Are you a fam
ily member of—’” he looked down at his page “‘—Noah Emerson Morgan?’”

  “I am.” Chance nodded. “I was. He was my brother.”

  “What branch of military was your brother in?”

  “Army.”

  “What was his rank?” Toby asked.

  “Lieutenant. He wanted to become an officer, and he would have, if he’d lived.”

  Toby nodded and made a note. He paused. “I was an officer.”

  “Yeah?” Chance leaned back in his chair. He knew all of this, but he wanted to hear it from Toby. “How many men did you lead?”

  “Thirty. Twenty-four came back.” Toby’s gaze flickered up, then down to his page again. “I haven’t forgotten their faces. I owe it to them.”

  “That’s a heavy burden,” Chase said quietly.

  Toby sighed. “I know I made the right calls. I know that. I got twenty-four back alive, and if I’d made different choices, we might have all died out there. But the ones you lose hang on you. Which is why I didn’t want to do this—contact families.”

  “Do you think they’ll blame you?” Chance asked.

  “I blame me.” Toby tapped the page. He was silent for a couple of beats, then took a breath. “Okay, so did your brother die in action?”

  “Friendly fire during a practice exercise in Afghanistan.”

  “I think I heard about that.” Toby looked up, and for the first time Chance saw sympathy in his eyes. “Pointless.”

  “Yeah.” That was exactly how Chance felt about it, too. It wasn’t a sacrifice for his country. No ground was gained.

  “So...” Toby turned back to the sheet. “Did he earn any medals? Any honors?”

  They went through the rest of the questions, and when they were finished, Toby’s granite mask had slipped away, and in its place was a tired, sad man.

  “I’m not sure I’m the one to do this job, sir,” Toby said.

  “I disagree,” Chance said. “You understand what these men went through. That matters to a family.”

  “Every single one of those men, your brother included, had a commanding officer,” Toby said.