The Lawman's Second Chance

by Ruth Logan Herne

  Alex had trusted and prayed and fought the good fight and lost the war.

  Evan had given up, turned his back and run.

  Alex’s wife had died.

  Lisa had lived.

  Lisa couldn’t see the rationale in either scenario. Who made these decisions? God? Inexplicable destiny? Genetic branding from the moment of conception?

  She’d prayed to live and she did. But every day people prayed the same prayer and lost their lives. Young people. Old people. Babies. Why?

  No answers came. She’d grown up believing in God’s perfect timing, but had a hard time rationalizing what had happened to Alex. To her mother.

  Pain washed over her, piercing. Knife-like.

  She missed her mother. Maggie’s constant cheer had bolstered her through so much.

  And now she’d kissed Alex Steele, a mind-bending, soul-searching kiss that opened a wealth of possibilities. Now that she knew what she’d been missing, keeping her distance would only prove harder.

  * * *

  He’d kissed Lisa Fitzgerald. Thoroughly. Convincingly.

  And he intended to do it again.

  But first Alex needed to catch some sleep and be grateful tonight’s standoff had ended without incident. Their negotiator had done an admirable job of defusing the guy with a gun, and Alex would put a note of commendation in her folder on Monday.

  But today’s schedule embraced sleep, church, gardening and... He tried but couldn’t come up with a reason to draw Lisa over to the house on what would be a frantically busy Sunday at the garden center.

  You need a reason? After that kiss?

  It was an excellent kiss, he admitted to himself, and being a purposeful man he figured he might be able to tempt her over with the promise of another. The allure of that would work for him, hands down.

  Women are different.

  Oh, he got that. Which meant he needed a battle strategy. A plan. And Alex hadn’t climbed the ladder of the New York State Troopers without a step-by-step process laid out years ago.

  Finding her farm equipment might help gain you serious points.

  The mental reminder smacked him as he pulled into the driveway. They’d had no further leads in the case, and each day made a quiet theft harder to solve. Dark of night, no witnesses, and precious little evidence other than flattened grass, an oil smear and a part of a tractor tire tread. Not enough of anything to steer the investigation in a solid direction despite the information he’d gleaned from Miss Mavis.

  Sensor lights flooded the front yard as he walked to the side door and let himself into a clean house. Short weeks ago Nancy’s help would have insulted him.

  Today, after spending the day at the station, the evening working outside with Lisa and the kids, and the rush to a dangerous intervention on a little side street in Cuba, New York, he was grateful to see the clean countertops. A crumb-less table. Toys put away in the family room. Laundry neatly folded in a white plastic basket.

  Nancy tiptoed toward him from the living room. “A long night.”

  A few weeks back he’d have hunted for censure in her tone.

  Not tonight. Maybe he was maturing. Or adjusting. Or just plain accepting the fact that he didn’t have to be Super Dad or anything more than he was. Accepting that might give him time to breathe. “Yeah. Thank you for straightening up.”

  “I commandeered the children.”

  The image made him smile. “I’ve been trying to do better with that myself.”

  Nancy’s expression agreed. “I think losing Jenny made me feel like I needed to spoil them to protect them. Now I realize I was acting on emotion, not instinct. Because Jenny would have laughed at that notion.”

  “Yes.” Alex gestured toward the extra bedroom. “You’re welcome to stay. It’s late to head back to the condo.”

  She considered his offer before she moved toward the door. “No, I’ll go back for the night. But I promised Lisa I’d help the kids mulch the gardens tomorrow afternoon. If that’s all right?”

  “I’d be grateful.” Alex held the door open for her. “And have supper here with us. We’ll make it family dinner Sunday.”

  Her eyes brightened. Her smile went wide, and Alex kicked himself internally. Why had he let things get out of hand with his mother-in-law? She was a good person, he knew that. Yet he’d let walls spring up between them. Time to pull out the sledgehammer and knock them down to size.

  “I’ll make lasagna.”

  Nancy’s mouthwatering lasagna had been a Sunday tradition before Jenny got sick. Now it could become a new custom, here, in Allegany County. “Perfect.”

  He went upstairs, less tired than he thought he’d be, and more at peace than he’d been in years.

  Chapter Eight

  Lisa balanced a tray of cupcakes and cookies while Sabrina followed with a hot water carafe on Tuesday evening. “Amy, can you shift the stuff off that table, please?”

  “Sure.” Amy Jankowski moved stacks of papers to the old oak sideboard, then scooped up a pile of gardening catalogs. “Busy these days?”

  “I knew you guys wouldn’t care if straightening up the living room didn’t make my to-do list,” Lisa confessed. “This time of year I’m lucky to be in the house at all. Dad keeps suggesting a housekeeper, but that seems awkward.”

  Amy glanced around and hiked a brow of disbelief. “Like this isn’t?”

  “I know,” Lisa admitted, making a face. “A part of me would feel better if everything was in its place like when Mom was here. Another part doesn’t want anyone touching our stuff. Which is silly because I hate the clutter.”

  “My sister does housecleaning for people and businesses.” Sabrina addressed Lisa but her gaze included the whole group. “And when you’re sick, it’s easy to let stupid things weigh on you. Like dust bunnies under the beds and bathrooms that need scrubbing but you’re too sick to care.”

  “Or down in the dumps,” a middle-aged woman added. Her comment drew a communal nod.

  “My nemesis is organizing the kids’ clothing,” one young mother confessed. She reached up to adjust the thin knit hat covering her bald head. “We’ve had two changes of seasons between my chemo and surgery and I have piles of clothing everywhere. Wrong sizes, wrong seasons, wrong kid. It’s driving me crazy,” she admitted. “If your sister is available to help with stuff like that, I’d hire her in a heartbeat.”

  “And if anyone is tight on money and doesn’t mind an old lady volunteering, I’m available.” Viola Mannington reached for the carafe and offered to pour for others with a tilt of her head. “I can’t get up and down in folks’ gardens the way my sister Twila can, but I can clean and organize inside as good as ever. Well.” She angled them a sweet old lady smile and lifted one shoulder. “Almost.”

  The gathered women returned her smile. Viola was a three-decade survivor and, other than a mild case of lymphedema swelling in her left arm, the stout woman had done well. Her milestones offered hope to the newly diagnosed.

  Lisa perched on the sofa arm and surveyed the room. “Before we do anything else, I want to thank you all for coming tonight, especially on such short notice.”

  “Well, it makes sense to start a group,” Viola cut in from the sideboard. “Shoulda done this long ago, but now’s as good a time as any.”

  A murmur of consent rounded the circle of eleven women, all breast cancer patients or survivors. The fact that six of the women were under age forty wasn’t lost on anyone.

  Lisa nodded. “We can do this formally or not, our choice. There are pros and cons to both, but I think it’s easier to get the word out to other patients and survivors if we formalize the group. What do—”

  The doorbell cut her off. She rose to answer it, but Caro came through the kitchen arch. “I’m about to bathe a really messy kid before t
aking her home. I’ll let them in, ladies.”

  She waved to the group as she cut through the living room. Short seconds later she reappeared, with Alex close behind.

  Alex.

  Here.

  Now.

  His eyes caught Lisa’s as Caro headed back to Rosie in the kitchen. His smile went wide, engaging. Contagious. And then he glanced around.

  Realization stole the grin. His gaze shaded as he took in the circle of women. Chemo hats. Pink shirts. Bandannas. Pink ribbons.

  And Caro had made pink-frosted cupcakes, glistening with white sparkling sugar and rose-toned sprinkles.

  “Alex.” Lisa rose, determined to bridge the moment, someway, somehow. “Do you have news about the equipment?”

  A true cop, he regained his composure in a heartbeat, but she saw. She knew. Faced with this stupid disease, he’d cringed and Lisa had faced that look too often with Evan. At least this time, she recognized the symptoms. Once bitten, twice shy. She waggled a Yankee-pinstriped pink baseball cap at him. “How cool that I can support two causes at once?”

  He noted the cap with a smile, but it was a faint imitation of the eye-catching grin he’d given her the past weekend. “I saw all the pink bats and wristbands on Mother’s Day.”

  “I bought one last year,” a middle-aged woman said.

  Alex turned her way, a polite look firmly in place. “I didn’t know they sold them.”

  She nodded. “The money goes straight to research to find the cure. You lost your wife to breast cancer, didn’t you, Lieutenant?”

  For the life of her, Lisa had no idea how the woman knew this. Her stomach clenched in sympathy for Alex, but she’d lived in a small town all her life. There was no such thing as a secret in Jamison, New York.

  “Her name was Jenny.” His face said the rest, the look of pained memory setting his jaw, his gaze. “She was beautiful. And kind. And she loved us more than life itself. I hated saying goodbye.”

  His simple, heartfelt words misted the room. Eleven women gazed up, seeing his loss in the set of his shoulders, his sorrowed expression, each one wondering how their battle would end. He stepped back, raised a hand to prevent Lisa from following him and moved toward the entry. “I’ll call you. I didn’t realize you were tied up and this can wait a few hours. Nothing major.”

  His short speech alluded to the theft, but Lisa read the meaning behind the words. He’d walked in on a big part of her life tonight, her campaign to fight an insidious disease. The look on his face said he’d fought his battle and lost. And no one could blame the man for not wanting to fight again.

  He left amid a flurry of goodbyes, words that changed to appreciation once he was out the door.

  “Talk about gorgeous.”

  “And then some.”

  Lisa had to smile because, yes...Alex was easy on the eyes.

  “And ripped,” added Sabrina. “Yum factor of off-the-charts on a one-to-ten scale.”

  “Oh, he’s that all right.” Viola grinned as she handed out a cup of tea. “He mows the lawn in his T-shirt on his day off. Twila claims she turns the fan on extra high.”

  “And what do you do when Alex mows his lawn?” Lisa wondered out loud.

  “Pretend to garden.” Viola winked as she proffered the last cup. “With my glasses on, of course.”

  “Oh, of course.” Lisa laughed outwardly, but inside? Deep inside she was wishing this stupid disease away, wishing she was whole again, wishing...

  Sabrina interrupted Lisa’s inner turmoil as she reached for her tea. “My daughter Lana is in Becky’s class. They’re in the same reading group and she says Becky talks about her mother all the time. But in the present tense, as if she was alive. She said the teacher explained it to them one day when Becky was out sick, that Becky must miss her mother a great deal to pretend like that.”

  Lisa’s heart squeezed tight at the thought of Becky’s charade. Why would she pretend? Why would she hide the loss of her mother?

  Kids hated to be different. Lisa knew that. They longed to blend, be part of the crowd. What kid wanted to be looked at? Talked about? Especially when you were the new kid in class?

  The reluctance fit Becky’s personality, her inner neediness to belong, to be special. How sad that she might think otherwise over circumstances beyond her control?

  “That’s how I knew about his wife.” Jeannie Sedgewick swept the group a knowing look. “My daughter runs the pre-school just outside Wellsville. His little boy stays late, trying to introduce Alex to all the single moms. My daughter says the little guy checks out who’s married, looking for the next Mrs. Steele.”

  The next Mrs. Steele.

  Jeannie’s words snapped Lisa back into reality. Alex’s aversion to breast cancer was understandable. He needed clean and fresh, unsullied by the travesty of disease. Maybe life didn’t come with guarantees, but there was nothing wrong with starting anew. Better for him. Better for her. A clean slate.

  “So...” She put a smile in place, an act she’d perfected during her illness and Evan’s abandonment. “How shall we set this up, ladies? Organized or loose?”

  “I vote organized,” Amy said. She raised her hand high. “And I’ve got a suggestion. How about if we kick off our announcement of this group with a breast cancer awareness float in the Fourth of July parade next month? If we borrow a farm wagon from Lisa—”

  “Consider it done.”

  “And I’ll call the parade director and see if they’ll approve a late entry,” Viola added. “Can’t see why they wouldn’t but we all know that the committee likes its i’s dotted and its t’s crossed.”

  Their quick acceptance of Amy’s idea deepened her smile. “We can decorate it the weekend before the Fourth, and that will make us the face of breast cancer in the Southern Tier.”

  “Putting a face to something makes it harder to ignore,” another woman pointed out.

  “She’s right. I’m in.” Jeannie raised her hand halfway up. “And I’m off for the summer in two weeks, so I’ll be glad to shop for the balloons, streamers, ribbons, etcetera.”

  “Awesome.”

  A chorus of agreement rounded the room.

  Amy indicated the notepad on Lisa’s lap and lofted her electronic tablet with an overdone sigh. “I’m taking notes tonight, Lisa. With a click of a button I’ll send them all to your emails. Put that throwback-to-the-eighties paper stuff away.”

  Lisa tossed the notebook onto the floor and raised her hands in surrender. “Never let it be said I want to hog all the work. So... What shall we call ourselves? We’ll want banners to display on the float, so we need an official name. I was thinking the Southern Tier Breast Cancer Corps. What do you guys think of that?”

  Her question instigated a flurry of comments, effectively moving the attention to the basics of meeting protocol and goals. The conversation helped keep her on track while her heart pushed aside the look she’d seen on Alex’s face. He’d been startled, yes. Surprised by the circle of women. The look in his eyes said he abhorred this disease for good reason, but it was a look Lisa knew too well. And one she never wanted to face again.

  * * *

  He’d handled that poorly, Alex realized as he drove into town. And for a cop, there was no excuse. He should have worn his game face when he walked in that room, but the last thing he expected was a room full of breast cancer patients staring up at him.

  Remembering, his chest tightened. But he shook the old feeling off, knowing he’d blown it. Lisa couldn’t help the disease any more than Jenny could. Or the rest of those women. And she was willing to launch an all-out attack by raising money and awareness, teaching a community by setting a good example.

  What had he done as a result of Jenny’s hard-fought battle? He’d run, fast and hard, hoping to leave the vestiges of cancer behind. Yet here i
t was, meeting him face-to-face in a war of wills. He had no intention of allowing an intangible to best him. Which meant he better suck it up and deal with things as they came along.

  He pulled into a parking space outside the General Store, a quaint shopping experience in Jamison. He strode into the historic mercantile, greeted the owner with a brisk nod and moved straight to the candy jars. “John, may I have a half pound of those, those and those?”

  “Sure, Lieutenant.” The store owner opened a brown paper bag, old-school style. “In separate bags?”

  “All in one is fine,” Alex assured him. He grasped the bag, paid the bill and turned to leave, but John stopped him by clearing his throat. Alex turned back.

  John waved a hand westward. “Any luck with the theft of the Fitzgeralds’ equipment?”

  Alex shook his head. “Not as yet. You got any ideas?”

  “None.” John hesitated, then shrugged. “We’ve been talking, though, about what we might do to help.” His glance swept the town outside his door. “Except no one’s got cash to replace expensive stuff like that.”

  “And they most likely wouldn’t like charity,” Alex added.

  “But making a claim is as good as asking to be dropped from some insurers these days,” John went on. He walked Alex toward the door. “It’s tough when you own a small business. You become a liability real quick and that’s no good in today’s market.”

  Alex had thought Ozzie’s assessment on making a claim was overdone, but seeing the same expression in John Dennehy’s gaze told him otherwise. “We’re following leads, but they’ve been thin.”

  “Well, we’ll get the word out that folks need to think harder. Someone had to see something. The Fitzgeralds do a lot for this town.”

  Alex couldn’t disagree, but he understood the limits of deep-sleep, pre-dawn hours. Whoever took Lisa’s equipment did so in the dead of night. Not too much got noticed then, unfortunately, but this glimpse into small-town protectiveness heartened him. He wanted that for his family, a new beginning in a place that looked after its own, where kids climbed trees and sold lemonade on the sidewalk.