Support Your Local Sheriff

by Melinda Curtis

  “Ignore my sister,” April said in a voice as easygoing as sugar on toast. “I’ve been doing it for years.” And then April had looked up at Nate with Julie’s gray eyes and Julie’s wide smile.

  Only she wasn’t Julie. He didn’t work with her. And April had won a bout with cancer, but wouldn’t be able to have children.

  “Oh, I don’t know.” He’d given April a soft half smile. “I think your sister is onto something.”

  * * *

  “SO HERE’S HOW it’s going to go,” Julie said firmly, trying not to flinch when Duke dropped his head to her injured shoulder again. “I’m taking a couple of weeks off to see what kind of dad you’ll be.” That was a bluff. She wanted Nate to sign over custody of Duke to her tonight. The papers were in her backpack.

  “A couple of weeks?” Nate’s dark gaze drilled for the truth. “How did you get that much time off?”

  “It’s a combination of bereavement and vacation time,” she lied. Why wasn’t he focusing on what was important? Why wasn’t he squirming out of being a dad? “I’ve booked a room at the bed-and-breakfast in town.” For one night. When she’d walked into the church, she’d doubted she’d need to stay at all.

  Nate drew back as if he’d gotten a whiff of dirty diaper. “Why don’t you stay with me?”

  “With...” Nate’s offer jammed words in her throat. He should have been saying there was no reason to stay. That he didn’t want to be a dad. “Not a chance.” Bunk with the enemy?

  Duke yawned. It was nearly eight o’clock, past his bedtime. Julie was spent, too, more energy draining every minute.

  Nate placed a tentative hand on Duke’s wild curls. “He’s really... I can’t believe it.”

  “Up.” Duke, being April’s kid and having never met a stranger he didn’t like, reached for Nate and fell forward in that all-in way of his. He’d leave with the mailman if Julie didn’t watch out.

  He’d leave with Nate if Julie didn’t watch out.

  Nate caught him, placing Duke on his hip as if he’d been carrying rug rats around all his life.

  The town council, mayor and Flynn spoke softly on the pulpit. The last of the attendees filed out the door with friendly smiles their way. Julie’s hopes for a deep stab of revenge and a tidy wrap-up of loose ends went out with them.

  “I tall.” Duke gazed around, yawning. He dropped his head to Nate’s shoulder and closed his eyes.

  Nate stood very still. His lips were pursed, but his jaw worked, as if he was wrestling words that wanted to be given voice.

  Julie gave him time to reject the little boy in his arms, time to stand by his rote words from years gone by.

  Seconds ticked by and still nothing.

  “Give me his jacket,” Nate said finally, settling Duke closer. “I’ll walk you out.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  “YOU DIDN’T HAVE to follow us over.” Julie’s tone was as nippy as the evening air.

  Nate deserved the cold shoulder for the choices he’d made regarding April. Deserved, yes. Enjoyed, no.

  This was not how he’d envisioned seeing Julie again. Oh, he’d imagined her trying to rip him a new one. And he’d imagined himself standing and taking it. But a kid...

  It wasn’t that he didn’t like kids or didn’t spend time around them. In fact, he’d just returned from a weekend with his sister, Molly, and her toddler. But one of his own? The answer should be no, thanks.

  Julie undid the straps on his son’s safety seat.

  He wanted her to hurry. He wanted to have his son in his arms once more. It made no sense. He wasn’t like Molly or even Flynn. He hadn’t longed for a child.

  He stared up at the stately forest green Victorian that was the bed-and-breakfast, and Harmony Valley’s only hotel. “Have you checked in yet?”

  “No.”

  Unable to wait any longer, Nate edged Julie aside and picked up Duke.

  “Want bed.” Short, sturdy arms wrapped around Nate’s neck.

  Nate hugged him closer, drinking in the smell of toddler—sweat and dirty clothes and the essence of his son.

  Julie had moved to the rear of the red SUV. She unloaded an open bag of diapers with a tub of wipes stuffed in it. A dinosaur-print bedroll came next, followed by a duffel bag and a backpack. She closed the hatch, groaning almost as much as the hinges on the hatch. Was she recovering from the flu?

  “Let me carry those,” Nate offered.

  “No,” Julie snapped, but it was a weary snap.

  “Juju.” Duke leaned toward her, small arms outstretched, near tears. “Want bed.”

  “Soon.” Julie slung the duffel over a shoulder (a sharp intake of breath), held the bedroll under an arm (a wince) and clutched the bag of diapers in her hand (looking like she might topple).

  “Let me help you.” Nate lowered Duke to the ground and snagged the backpack.

  Wailing, the toddler staggered dramatically to Julie and latched onto her leg.

  “Duke.” Julie looked like she wanted to wail, too.

  Without a word, Nate took the duffel, bedroll and diaper bag from her.

  The front door opened. Leona Lambridge, the original proprietor of the bed-and-breakfast, stood in the doorway. Her thin-bladed features were sharper than surgical knives. She wore a simple navy dress that cast the gray in her tightly bound hair an eerie blue. She stared at them—an overloaded sheriff, a spent-looking aunt and a hysterical child—clasping her hands as if it helped her withhold verbal judgment.

  Leona wasn’t a people person. Why she’d opened a bed-and-breakfast was a mystery to Nate.

  Julie knelt, gathered Duke with her left arm and muttered, “The music from Psycho is playing in my head.” Cop humor. Meant to diffuse stress.

  “Pay no attention to my grandmother.” Reggie, Leona’s granddaughter, edged past the old woman and hurried down the stairs to greet them. “I’m running the Lambridge B and B now.” Poor Reggie. She had to be working her fingers to the bone. She looked thin and haggard. Her long brown hair listless and her pert nose less than pert.

  “She’ll run it until something better comes along,” Leona quipped. “She’s left me once already.”

  “Your patrons missed me when I was gone.” Reggie took the diaper bag from Nate and smiled hard at Julie. “She’s friendlier than she’d like you to believe.”

  Having known Leona a few years, Nate withheld comment.

  Reggie scowled at him when he didn’t back her up. “Grandmother has friends in town. She’s retired. It’s not like I have to force her out of the house.”

  “Oh, she forces me, all right. In hopes I’ll take back my ex-husband.” Leona retreated into the foyer where her hair seemed less blue and her countenance less sharp. “Or join one of Harmony Valley’s many causes.”

  “Too much information for our guests,” Reggie muttered.

  “My offer of a place to stay still stands,” Nate said to Julie. He had a studio apartment above the sheriff’s office.

  “I’ll face the music of my own making, thank you.” Lugging Duke, Julie followed Reggie up the steps. “You’d best do the same.”

  Nate noted Julie’s slow, measured steps. Her uneven breathing as she ascended the stairs. Her rigid posture and the tender way she held Duke. What had torn her apart?

  Cancer?

  She’d been favoring her left shoulder.

  Breast cancer?

  Nate bounded up the stairs, suddenly afraid Julie might collapse.

  “I could like Ms. Smith.” Leona gave Julie a knowing smile. “She has a way with the sheriff. But—” she tilted her head and filled her expression with cheerful remorse “—the reservation was for one.”

  “Casa Landry has room for two,” Nate said, if he slept downstairs on the cot in the jail cell.

>   “Poaching my business.” Reggie tsked and tried to look like there was much business to poach. “Bad form, Sheriff. Children under six stay free, Grandmother.”

  “Want bed,” Duke crooned.

  “As soon as we check in, little man.” But Julie didn’t move toward the door in her usual take-no-prisoners style. She blew out a labored breath and planted her boots on the porch as if it was an accomplishment just to make it that far. “Reservation for Smith.”

  “Reggie needs your credit card.” Leona tried to smile, although it made her look as if she was having indigestion. “I need your assurance that your party won’t disrupt other guests.”

  “By other guests, she means herself.” Reggie softened the remark with a more natural smile. “Thankfully, without her hearing aids she can only hear you if you scream. She hasn’t been disturbed at night yet.”

  Julie was a woman of action, but she was loitering on the porch as if this was a social call and she wasn’t swaying with fatigue. Why? Because cancer was making a buffet of her strength. Nate was certain of it now. His certainty hollowed him with a sense of impending loss.

  “Excuse me.” A man’s voice reached them from the sidewalk. “Is this the Lambridge Bed & Breakfast?”

  “It is.” Reggie shoved the diaper bag into Nate’s chest. “Grandmother, show the Smiths to their room.”

  “Yes,” Nate said firmly. “Show us now.”

  * * *

  WHEN JULIE WAS a kid, she’d had boundless energy. It was as if she’d gotten her share of energy, plus April’s.

  April had asthma. April had painful growth spurts. April had flat feet, poor eyesight, lactose intolerance, skin that burned, toes prone to warts. You name it, April suffered through it. Not with Julie’s spunk, but with a gentle smile and a well-meaning joke.

  Five days ago, Julie had been shot in the soft flesh near her shoulder. She’d lost a lot of blood.

  Standing and carrying Duke. Fighting with Nate. Being out of bed. How quickly it all drained her reserves. She wanted to collapse on the chair just inside the front door. She didn’t want to carry her nephew and follow the Bride of Frankenstein up the stairs to a bedroom.

  Seriously. Leona was a dead ringer for the black-and-white film icon. Give her a couple of neck bolts, tease up her hair, and she’d be ready for Halloween.

  She was out of place in the house, which was beautiful and serene. It was like stepping back in time. Bead board. Wood floors. Old fixtures. Antique furniture. All lovingly cared for. By Reggie, no doubt.

  “I’m curious.” Nate stared at Reggie and the man on the sidewalk. And then he turned to look at Leona. “You’re singing in Rose’s production of Annie for the Spring Festival?”

  There was a shift in Leona’s posture, a preening. “Rose said no one else could play Miss Hannigan.”

  Nate’s half smile twitched. He adjusted his hold on the load he carried. “Can you give us a sample?”

  “I don’t do requests.” With a toss of her head, Leona led them with slow steps that made the creaking stairs wail as plaintively as Duke had outside.

  The music from Psycho played once more in Julie’s head, but this time she was smiling as she climbed.

  The pain meds are making me loopy.

  Or they would be if I’d taken the pain meds.

  When they reached the second floor, Leona gestured to an open door. “This is your bathroom.”

  It was completely tiled and completely white. Not the best choice for the dirt little boys tended to bring inside.

  Blessedly, a few steps later they were at a bedroom. The four-poster bed was huge, and the room was still large enough for a Tae Kwon Do match.

  Julie set Duke down on the bed. Only the presence of Nate kept her from collapsing next to him.

  She’d played sports in high school and trained in martial arts. She knew how to play through pain. But exhaustion. Exhaustion was different. Exhaustion took you out of the game.

  “Breakfast is from 8:30 a.m. to 9:00 a.m.” Leona raised her eyebrows at Nate. “Visiting hours end at 9:00 p.m.”

  Nate dropped Julie’s duffel on the chair near the cherry desk, placing the rest of her things around it on the floor, including the backpack with the custody papers. “That gives me ten minutes.”

  Leona checked her slim gold watch. “Nine minutes.”

  A smile snuck past Julie’s defenses again. Maybe she and Leona would get along after all. She could probably give Julie pointers on how to put Nate in his place.

  Leona gave Julie what might have been a charitable smile if Julie was feeling charitable. “Credit card?” When she had it, Leona left. Her heels clacked briskly against the hardwood.

  Nate picked up Duke’s dinosaur bedroll and shook it out on top of the bed, surrounding it with pillows. “Don’t let Leona get under your skin. She senses weakness like a wolf smells blood.”

  “I could take her,” Julie joked, unable to get her eyes off Nate. She’d forgotten how nice he could be. He was supposed to be a jerk when she told him about Duke. He was supposed to reject Duke as his. He was supposed to be angry and insensitive. Julie could deal with angry, insensitive jerks all day long. It was the nice guys who undid her.

  She needed her anger, if only for nine more minutes. “Don’t think I’m going to hand Duke over to you and walk away. You still have to prove you’ll be a good father.”

  “Says who?” There was some of the anger she sought. A spark in dark eyes. A set to his jaw.

  His reaction energized her. “It was April’s last wish.”

  “Want bed,” Duke crooned, crawling toward the bedroll.

  Nate stared at his son with wonder in his eyes.

  Julie had to turn away. She should change Duke’s diaper and brush his teeth. She should go downstairs and sign the check-in paperwork. She should get a key to her room. She shouldn’t be thinking that Nate’s reaction to Duke made him Dadworthy.

  She checked her cell phone. Seven more minutes.

  She heard Nate remove Duke’s shoes. Heard him tuck Duke into the bedroll. Heard him whisper, “Sweet dreams.”

  Nice. Nate had always been nice. Nice to those he worked with. Nice to those who obeyed the law. Nice. Until the day he’d asked to speak to April alone in the church vestibule. Until the week after that when he’d quit the Sacramento PD and moved away. Until he wasn’t by April’s side as she wasted away and whispered her last wishes.

  How could a man who was so upstanding at work be so unreliable in his personal life?

  Julie drew a labored breath.

  “We need to talk.” Nate was behind her, being civil.

  This wasn’t a civil situation. Julie turned on legs as stiff and unyielding as green two-by-fours. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”

  He studied her the way they’d been trained at the academy, looking for signs of stress or emotional imbalance.

  She forced her lips to make the journey upward toward superiority. “Tomorrow.”

  After a moment, he nodded. “Breakfast. El Rosal. I’m buying.”

  “We have a free breakfast here.” Needing something to do, she dug out a diaper from the bag, as if she was going to be a stellar caregiver and wake up Duke to change him.

  Nada on that. The little man was hell on wheels when he woke up too soon.

  His gaze turned as soft as one of Duke’s baby blankets. “It’s good to see you, Jules.”

  “Don’t call me that, Landry.”

  He gave her a rueful half smile, glanced at Duke one last time and then left.

  She listened to his footsteps recede. She listened to the front door open and close. She listened to him drive away. Nate thought of himself as a good guy. And good guys sometimes did an about-face and came back to check on someone they thought was in need. Only when Julie was posit
ive he’d left did she sink to the floor, resting her back against the footboard.

  She texted her mother to tell her they’d arrived safely, assuring her she was all right. What a liar she’d become.

  Leona appeared in the doorway, her eyes slanted with disapproval. “Are you sleeping on the floor?”

  “No. I’m about to do my exercises for my back.” It wasn’t a lie if she was joking, right? “You can leave the key on the dresser with my receipt.”

  “You don’t need a key.” Leona placed a handwritten receipt on the dresser with Julie’s credit card. “We don’t have locks.” She closed the door behind her.

  “No key,” Julie murmured. No privacy. No way to lock Duke in here with her to prevent him wandering if he awoke at midnight. No pain killers. No revenge. No signed custody agreement. What a bust of a day.

  Julie unbuttoned her shirt, drawing it carefully over her injured shoulder. Blood trickled from her collarbone. She peeled the bandage off, opened the diaper and shoved it under her bra strap.

  She’d sit a few more minutes to gather her strength. And then she’d take her med kit into the bathroom, being careful not to bleed all over those white tiles.

  Just a few more minutes...

  CHAPTER FOUR

  AFTER LEAVING THE BED-AND-BREAKFAST, Nate drove around town, ostensibly to make his nightly rounds.

  But it was more than worry for the town that kept him from bed. His mind was as jumbled as a box of well-used Scrabble tiles. As if being blindsided by Doris wasn’t bad enough...

  I’m a father.

  And April was dead. He’d need to visit her grave and pay his respects, maybe make a donation to a cancer-related charity.

  I’m a father.

  And Julie looked like she’d been run over by a bus. He’d need to contact a few of their mutual friends on the force and find out how bad her cancer was. He didn’t want to repeat the mistake he’d made with April. But that mistake hadn’t been one-sided. April had had a lot to say on their wedding day and she’d known...