Naughty by Nature

by J. M. Madden

  “Yes I did, baby and I apologize. Mama’s had a bad day. We need to have a family meeting when we get home.”

  Grace’s eyes widened almost comically. Family meetings were big deals. The last had come when Grace herself had decided to walk to Granpa Lowell’s house. And it hadn’t ended well for her, Cheyenne remembered.

  “It’s nothing you did, Grace.”

  Just then the sheriff walked in, though, and Cheyenne thought Grace’s eyes were going to pop out of her head. The last time Grace had seen the sheriff he’d been hauling her home in his gold sheriff’s department truck. If the situation had been different she would have laughed.

  Sheridan must have seen her reaction too because he lifted an authoritative eyebrow at her. “Miss Grace. Anything I need to know about?”

  Grace shook her head until her pigtails flew. “No, sir. I been pretty good for a while. Well,” she frowned, “I broke Carolyn’s school project and told her the dog did it.”

  “Grace Elaina,” Cheyenne gasped. “You lied to us? Again? We’re going to have to talk about this at the meeting young lady.”

  Grace’s big eyes reddened with tears but she didn’t let them fall. “Yes ma’am.”

  Poor Carolyn had worked on that project for hours.

  Sheridan leaned against her heavy oak desk. “You know lying is wrong,” he murmured, deep voice rumbling. “And you know you always get caught.”

  “Not always,” her daughter whispered as if she couldn’t help herself.

  Cheyenne didn’t ask her to repeat that. She’d heard enough. And honestly, she probably would have laughed if she wasn’t so frustrated.

  By chance she caught Sheridan’s eye. They were dancing with humor as well.

  Cheyenne suddenly felt like she was part of a team. It was a hard business being both mother and father to three impressionable young girls and it was hard emotionally always having to be the disciplinarian. Sometimes when she was faced with dilemmas on how to correct them or guide them, she wished there was a parenting manual or something to help her out, because she was feeling her way blind.

  Wade had left before he’d had a chance to be much of a role model. Her father and brothers were good for certain things, but they were always afraid of overstepping their bounds. And she appreciated that, but sometimes she wished they would do more.

  It was probably just as hard for Sheridan right now. Olivia was sixteen, one of the most difficult ages for a girl. Cheyenne remembered that time in her life well. Emotional and hyperaware of so many things. It was amazing women survived adolescence with their wits intact.

  She needed her sanity now more than ever.

  Carolyn came into the room, her eyes widening when she saw the sheriff. “What did you do now, Grace?”

  Grace scowled ferociously. “Nothing, Nag.”

  Carolyn shifted the pack on her shoulders, thumping it onto Cheyenne’s clean desk. “Right.”

  “That’s enough you two,” Cheyenne murmured absently. “Where’s your sister?”

  Savannah came in then, her eyes widening behind her wire-framed glasses before turning to Grace. She widened her eyes theatrically, but didn’t say anything. Moving to stand next to her older sister, she thumped her bag on the desk as well.

  Sheridan moved to pull the classroom door closed, then returned to lean against the doorjamb.

  Cheyenne knew she needed to explain what was going on, because she could see the anxiety in her girls’ eyes, but she had no idea where to even start.

  “Can we see that picture again, Sheriff?”

  Reaching into his pocket, Sheridan removed his phone, paging through a few screens. When he found what he wanted, he handed it to her.

  Cheyenne knew it was psychological, but she didn’t even want to be this close to her ex. Forcing her hand to move, to grip the phone, she took a breath. “Have you girls seen this man recently?”

  She turned the phone to them. All three girls leaned in. Carolyn’s eyes flipped up to hers in alarm. “Is that…”

  “That’s the man from the library,” Grace confirmed.

  Cheyenne thought she was going to be sick. “Are you sure, baby?”

  She nodded her head three times. “Yup. He was right outside the doors the other day, when I was helping Ms. Katie. I remember because I wanted to get closer to see his tattoos but he turned around and walked away. He must have realized it was a library and he didn’t look like a book person.”

  Sheridan stepped forward. “Are you very super sure, Grace? It’s important.”

  She nodded again, crossing her arms over her small chest. “I’m sure. Do you know him, Mama?”

  When Cheyenne didn’t say anything, Carolyn leaned forward. “That’s our dad, twit.”

  Chapter 5

  Sheridan glanced into the rearview mirror. Cheyenne was behind him, following right on his bumper as he led her to the office. They would leave her car there in the secured lot and he would drive them to his house. Picking up his phone, he dialed Marlene.

  “Grace confirmed it,” he told her when she picked up. “She spotted Wade at the library two days ago. Let everyone know to be on the lookout. Consider him armed and dangerous and not to be approached without back-up.”

  “Gotcha, boss. I’ll pass it along. At least now we know.”

  “Yes, I suppose. Until notified otherwise Cheyenne and the girls will be at my house.”

  “Oh, that’s smart,” Marlene told him approvingly. “This would be too much for Garrett and Francine to deal with right now.”

  “Yes,” he agreed. “Hopefully we can get this all straightened out before Garrett even knows anything is going on.”

  His next call was to his daughter, to let her know their house was about to be invaded.

  “Why do they have to come here?” Olivia demanded.

  Sheridan winced, knowing this was going to be an issue. “Because the man attacked her and is now in the area again. The eight-year old spotted him. If they go home, there’s a very strong chance that something bad will happen, and we’re too spread out across the county to get there fast.”

  Olivia huffed. “This seems excessive. Since when are you in the protection business?”

  “Since a good friend of mine is in trouble.”

  She snorted. “Sounds like someone is getting hard up. I know you’ve got a thing for her.”

  “Olivia!” He snapped. “I don’t know where this mouthieness is coming from, but you’re going to stow it. You will be polite and welcoming to our guests, do you understand me?”

  She sighed as if her life were ending and he could almost hear the eye roll. “Whatever.”

  She hung up without a goodbye and he wished he could rewind the clock about three years. Olivia had been a wonderful little girl then, articulate and humble. When the hormones had started rolling, though, that had all changed.

  When he and Nora had found out they were having a girl they’d been ecstatic. It had been understood though that Nora would deal with the female things and Sheridan would deal with the boy things. They’d planned on having more kids, hopefully boys among them, but after the first pregnancy things had gone down hill. Nora had suffered through three miscarriages before they’d shelved the idea of more kids for a while. They’d waited several years until Olivia was in school before they started talking about trying to have another baby. It hadn’t been that easy. For several years they tried to have another baby, even resorting to in-vitro after a while, but nothing had worked.

  Nora had devoted her attention to raising Olivia to be the best little person she possibly could and they had moved on with their lives. They finally accepted that Olivia would be their only child. She’d been eight by then, and their little family of three had done well together.

  After they moved to Honeywell for him to take a job at the department, they’d decided to take a little weekend retreat, just the two of them, before Nora started looking for a job. Nora’s parents took care of Olivia. That escape was when he had fe
lt something a little different with his wife’s breast. They’d had an active sex life until that year and he was very familiar with her body, so the swelling and redness was immediately noticeable. It had seemed like such a cosmic joke that when they’d escaped for a little reconnection time, their lives had fallen even further apart.

  Nora hadn’t panicked, though. As soon as they’d returned home she’d made an appointment with her doctor. But the diagnosis had been devastating— Inflammatory Breast Cancer, rare and extremely aggressive.

  Sheridan had carried a lot of guilt for that because he had been the one to find the difference. He should have found it sooner, because within six months of the diagnosis she was gone from their lives. Maybe if he had focused on her sooner, better, they would have caught it in time for a different outcome.

  His head told him it wouldn’t have changed anything, but his heart wouldn’t let it rest.

  Olivia was positively lost at the time. She was an eight-year-old girl with no understanding of death. Olivia still had all of her grandparents but her mother’s death had disrupted the natural order of things. There had been no easing her into it. One day Nora had been there, the next she was gone.

  Counseling had helped a little bit, but not as much as he had hoped. He showered her with love, but she’d never regained that little girl sparkle, that joy in life. It was hard for him to watch.

  Now there were four more females that needed to be watched over, and he was the man to do the job.

  Cheyenne felt so uncomfortable following Sheridan’s big sheriff’s truck. If people were looking at him they were seeing her right behind him. When they pulled into the parking lot of the sheriff’s department she gave the girls their marching orders. “Grab your stuff and let’s get to the truck. No dawdling."

  The girls seemed to sense her anxiety and did as she told them without fuss. Cheyenne gathered up her things and locked her Cherokee, then headed for Sheridan’s truck. He sat in the driver’s side, hands on the wheel, watching every move she made. When she climbed into the passenger seat he gave her a small, reassuring smile.

  Cheyenne was too caught up in her anxieties, scanning every car they passed until she thought she would go crazy. Sheridan kept the girls occupied, asking them about school.

  “Mama, wait! We can’t leave Daisy at the house alone. What if he comes there and takes her?”

  Cheyenne looked at Sheridan, a frown on her face. “Maybe I can have Brock go get her. She can stay at the ranch.”

  “Mama,” Grace cried.

  Sheridan glanced in the rearview at her daughter. “We can go get the dog. It’s not that far out of our way.”

  Actually, it was. Almost completely in the opposite direction from Sheridan’s place. “You don’t want a random dog running around your house.”

  He shrugged. “She’ll have to get along with Beowulf, which might be interesting. If they have issues, I can kennel Wulf.”

  Cheyenne was torn. It was going to be traumatic enough taking the girls from their homes and everything they were used to. If they had to lose the dog too, or God forbid something happened to her, it would be unrecoverable.

  “If you’re sure you don’t mind,” she agreed eventually. “It would definitely ease ours.”

  Sheridan turned the truck in the direction of her house. Cheyenne felt like a leech, making him work so hard for them. The man was already bending over backwards for them as it was.

  When they turned onto their road a strange, white truck with blacked-out windows passed them. Cheyenne strained forward, trying to see inside but the glass was just too dark. Sheridan grabbed a pen from his pocket and leaned forward enough to write the license plate down on the pad on the dash.

  “I don’t recognize the truck and it looks like you don’t either.”

  Cheyenne shook her head. “No, I don’t. Not unless one of my father’s hands got a new vehicle.”

  They accelerated toward her house. As Sheridan pulled into her drive he held out a restraining hand. “Why don’t you wait here just a minute? Let me check out the house.”

  Cheyenne didn’t like it but she nodded. Sheridan parked the vehicle in front of her house, opened the door and slid out of the cab. She watched him tighten the Stetson on his head as he walked toward her front porch, looking down in front of him. When he paused to look down at the ground, then removed his cell phone to take a picture of something on the ground, she leaned forward in her seat to see what he was doing.

  “What did he find?” Carolyn asked.

  “I’m not sure,” she whispered.

  She watched him move around in front of the house looking at things, and once again she was struck by how much he was putting himself out for them. This wasn’t his fight.

  Maybe it was just because of the nature of his job. He’d been hired to protect the county, and she was part of that county.

  Damn.

  As he neared the side of the house her gut clenched. She didn’t want to lose sight of him.

  When he did disappear, they all leaned forward to see better.

  “What’s taking him so long?” Savannah asked, her voice low and tight.

  “He should have been back by now,” Carolyn agreed in a whisper, like she knew.

  Cheyenne was just about to climb out of the truck to go looking for him when he reappeared, waving her out of the truck. Happiness filled her. He hadn’t been hurt.

  There was a deep frown on his face, though.

  “You girls stay here.”

  They moaned almost in unison but she closed the door on them and crossed the dry yard to the sheriff.

  The frown on his face scared her. “What’s wrong?”

  “There’s no one out here now, but somebody was definitely peepin’ in your windows. The grass and flowers are trampled pretty well, almost like he wanted you to know he’d been here. But none of the doors are jimmied or anything. Daisy is fine in her kennel and your horses and chickens seem fine.”

  Cheyenne moved to where she could see the damage for herself. It actually wasn’t as visible to her. His sharp cop eyes had spotted things she probably wouldn’t have under normal circumstances. Yes, there was a stalk of iris leaning crookedly beneath one window, and there was a compressed area near the spigot. The ground there was always a little mushy from the condensation on the pipe, but she could definitely see boot prints in the thicker grass.

  A chill went through her in spite of the hot sun beating down. Sheridan had told her about Wade but seeing the evidence here, with her own eyes was very different. Fear tightened her fists and made her body shudder. The last time Wade had compromised her in this way she’d been beaten and raped, and left for dead in the front yard of their house.

  “He can’t do this to me again,” she moaned. “I won’t let him. I won’t let him terrorize me anymore. I won’t, I won’t.”

  Everything around her faded away and it wasn’t until Sheridan grabbed her arms and snapped her name that Cheyenne realized she’d kind of lost it a little. She melted into him, silent tears rolling down her cheeks as she clutched at the front of his uniform shirt. Everything was going wrong in her life and she felt helpless to change it.

  Sheridan held her for a couple minutes, until she got control of her emotions. Cheyenne was surprised how good his arms felt. It had been a long time since she’d let herself be held by anyone, let alone a man. Straightening her spine she stepped away.

  “I’m sorry I broke down like that.” She looked down at the ground, unwilling to meet his gaze.

  A hard finger tipped her chin up. “I’m not. It finally gave me a chance to hold you for a minute.”

  He shrugged at her startled look. “I’ve wanted to hold you and comfort you for many years, but you never let me get close enough. Thank you for finally letting me.”

  Cheyenne didn’t know what to say to that. After the incident she’d been like a hedgehog, prickly to everyone. You were especially prickly to him, though, a voice inside her insisted. It wasn’t hi
s fault he was the one that found you.

  No, it wasn’t. She’d been holding that grudge for a long time and it was so unfair to Sheridan. “I’m sorry about that. I haven’t let anyone hold me, really, so don’t be too offended.”

  She tried to laugh it off like she did everything else, but he gave her a sad, considering look. Then looked back down at the ground. “It looks like he walked all the way around the house, peering in the windows. I’ve taken pictures of the area where he stepped. We need to go inside and make sure he didn’t enter anywhere.”

  The thought of Wade being inside her house chilled her to the bone. “Okay.”

  She followed Sheridan around the side of the house to the kitchen door where they entered the most. He fit the key in the lock and it turned easily for him. Cheyenne stepped inside expecting to see something changed, but she didn’t. The house looked exactly as they had left it this morning. She looked at every item, trying to remember if it was in the same place it had been eight hours previously, but there was no way she could do that with everything.

  It didn’t look like anything had been moved.

  They went through every single room. Sheridan looked in every closet, every cubby where a man could hide before he nodded his head. “I think the house is secure. Why don’t you get the girls in here to pack a bag?”

  Cheyenne nodded and went to the front of the house to wave the girls from the truck. They trooped inside, looking around.

  “Go pack a bag, girls. At least enough for a few days. Savannah you’ll probably be done first. Can you get a bag packed for Daisy? Enough for several days.”

  Her sharp little nine year old nodded, pushing her wire frame glasses up her narrow nose. “Yes, Mama.”

  All three took off up the stairs. Sheridan had moved to the front window to stand watch. With his arms crossed, the tan uniform shirt strained across his muscled back. Cheyenne knew she needed to go get a bag packed for herself, but she lingered, feeling like she needed to say something.