Julie’s eyes narrowed. She was still going to hate him eight days from now. Signing the papers would make it easier on both of them, but nothing in his life had ever been easy.
Rutgar said something to Duke, too soft to catch beyond the deep rumble of his voice.
Duke giggled again.
Nate waited, heartened.
“I have a psych evaluation in two days.” She hadn’t said no.
“You won’t pass.” The therapist would take one look at her and see she wasn’t ready to return to duty of any kind. Failing would make it harder for Julie to pass the next time. “Call and reschedule.”
“Stay here and hide?” She rubbed her injured shoulder, caught him watching her and scowled. “Appear weak? You’d never do that.”
He ignored the ploy to change the subject. “Heal, not hide. Eight days from now you’ll have your strength back and your head on straight.”
“You sound like my mother.” Now it was her turn to wash a hand over her face. “You’re going to bankrupt me.”
“You can stay with me rent-free.” When she still didn’t capitulate to his terms, Nate put the pressure on. “Those are April’s questions. She wanted my answers.” He stopped himself short of pressing harder.
“And Duke? What are your intentions toward him?”
If he told her, she’d bolt. “We’ll talk after the test.”
Nate glanced over his shoulder into the jail cell and then back to Julie. “Let’s go outside.” Where Rutgar wouldn’t hear. The old man might be a recluse, but he was as gossipy as anyone in Harmony Valley, not to mention a member of the phone tree.
Nate led Julie to a bench near the curb. The sun was shining and the sky a clear blue. It was that quiet time midafternoon when folks were at work, busy visiting friends, home watching television or napping. While she settled opposite him, Nate cast about his memories for something to fit her questions.
“My dad was brutally honest,” Nate began, keeping his body facing forward, not to her. It was hard enough to talk about his dad without seeing the horror and pity he was sure would come to her face.
“Was?” Julie picked up on his word choice immediately. “Is he dead?”
“No.” Nate couldn’t get that lucky. “We don’t talk anymore.”
The garden club had planted flowers beneath a tree a short distance away. A hummingbird flitted around the red buds. Normal. Carefree.
“My dad used to tell me what happens in the family stays in the family.” There was an empty shop across the street with Santa, his sleigh and reindeer painted on the window. Santa’s colors were faded and his face had cracked with age. But he, like the myth of Saint Nick, had weathered many a storm. “Dad felt whatever problems we had with each other would only be complicated if we told anyone else.” Like the pastor, the police or child protective services.
“Do you think he was right?”
“I think he thought he was right.” About teaching his kids to shut up and wipe away tears and lock their feelings away. Sometimes it’d helped, mostly it hadn’t.
“And yet, you don’t talk about your past, so you must agree with him.” Whereas before she’d been angry, now there was cool interest in her voice.
Good thing Julie wasn’t part of the phone tree.
Privacy. It was one of the few things Dad had gotten right.
“And the second example?” she prompted, her gaze registering every tic in his expression.
The only thing that came to mind was his wedding day. Had April wanted him to share his side of the story with Julie? It was clear to him from her accusations last night that Julie didn’t know the entire truth. But the truth about his conversation with April on their wedding day would only hurt her.
He suspected Julie would settle for nothing less than an answer that involved her sister and the wedding. “Did April tell you what happened that day?”
“You mean your wedding day?” Julie’s tone had enough hot sarcasm to propel a steam engine. “Only what you told her. That the wedding was off.”
Nate wanted to angle his knees toward Julie, to take one of her hands between both of his. He remained facing forward, facing Santa and the myth of happily-ever-afters. “She texted me, asking to see me before the ceremony. I thought it was a sign. I’d been having doubts.”
Joe Messina drove by in his tow truck and waved.
“Hang on.” Julie curled her fingers around Nate’s arm, unaware of how her touch made his stomach tie up in knots. “April asked you? But when you got to the church, you asked me if you could talk to her.”
Only because she’d seen him come in. Or more precisely, he’d seen Julie and been stopped in his tracks. She’d worn a plum-colored dress that traced her feminine curves in a way no patrol uniform had ever outlined. Julie’s blond hair had been braided around her head like a crown and when she’d smiled... He’d had no idea why April wanted to talk to him, but he’d known it wouldn’t go well by how hard Julie’s appearance impacted him. “There was a traffic jam on the highway. I got there closer to the ceremony than I would’ve liked to. And then you stopped me.”
Her hand slipped away. “So you went in to see her and...”
“April started talking. We discussed some things.” Nate returned his gaze to Santa. What could he tell Julie about that day? “I admitted I didn’t love April as much as she deserved to be loved.”
“You got that right.” Julie’s voice trembled with anger. “You led her on. You acted like—”
“She said she knew.” There was no way to sugarcoat his words as Santa might have done. He had to look at Julie and let her see the honesty in his eyes. She’d see the pain, too. And the guilt.
Julie rocked back, as if struck, shaking her head. “No.”
“I loved her,” Nate reiterated in case she’d missed that part yesterday. “Just not as deeply as a groom should love his bride. I asked April if she still wanted to go through with the wedding and—”
“She did not say no.” Julie’s head shaking had become a slow pendulum swing. “She did not. April was crushed when you dumped her. She barely talked to anyone, not even me.”
Appropriate, given the circumstances. “It was her choice.”
“I have to go. I can’t—”
“Jules.” Nate reached for her hand when he should have let her go.
She jerked out of reach, face contorted with pain. “April wanted to marry you. She told me that morning she was pregnant.” Julie drew a deep breath. Her gaze swept the sidewalk, searching for answers Nate wouldn’t give. “She said she loved you. She told me she’d make any sacrifice so her baby would have two loving parents. I thought she meant she’d go through any cancer treatment, no matter how heinous, to stay alive.” Her gaze landing on Nate with gut-punching intensity. “If you loved her...she would have married you.”
The truth tried to cut its way from his heart to his mouth. Nate swallowed it back. No good ever came from knowing the full truth. “I loved her, Jules. I never met anyone so kind and thoughtful, so gentle and open. But it wasn’t the absolute be-all-end-all sort of love.” Nate still wasn’t certain he knew what that was. “And when it came down to it, April didn’t want to settle.”
Julie’s hand went to her throat. Her mouth opened and closed. And then she opened it again and spoke, spitting out the words like buckshot. “Then she did it for you. She made things easy on you.” She spun away, and then turned back, color high in her cheeks, tears in her eyes. “You couldn’t have hung in there for her? You knew the likelihood of the tumors returning was almost 100 percent. You couldn’t have made her happy for the time she had left?”
“It would’ve been wrong. We both knew it.” Nate’s throat was choked for a different reason. “She deserved someone who loved her more than life itself.”
Julie closed he
r eyes, and swiped her head from right to left.
“And she got that someone,” Nate whispered. “In Duke.”
Julie’s face crumpled. But she bit her lip and squeezed her eyes tight and resisted tears.
“I don’t expect you to forgive me.” But Nate wanted her to. He didn’t want to admit how much.
Her eyes flew open and she started to shout. “I could never—”
“No mad words.” Duke ran out of the sheriff’s office and hid his face against Julie’s leg.
“You’re right, Duke.” There were still tears in Julie’s eyes. “No mad words. Nate isn’t worth the breath. Come on. We’re going home.” She took Duke’s hand and headed toward the door and her things.
Home. She meant back to Sacramento.
Nate pushed to his feet, darting around them to block their path. “You made a promise.”
“I don’t care.” She’d stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, eyes closed, looking as if she’d topple at any moment.
“Eight days,” Nate insisted, reminding himself why he’d made the bargain. “You owe April eight days. Or you’ll never have the answers she sought.”
* * *
I WANT NATE to pay.
Julie’s words to April pinballed around her head as she pushed Duke back to the bed-and-breakfast. Maybe the memory had returned to her because she’d told April she’d wanted justice on multiple occasions. Or maybe because April had made Julie promise to give Nate a chance with Duke when she hadn’t told Julie everything.
April called off the wedding. Not Nate.
Betrayal roiled in her stomach.
It was hard to go for Nate’s jugular when she hadn’t known everything that went on between her sister and Nate. Hard when he was so good with Duke.
No mad words.
How would she honor that for another week? She wished April had never come up with the Daddy Test.
“You can’t hold a special meeting announcing candidates.” Doris was shouting in front of the bakery down the street. If smoke could come out of ears, it would have spewed from Doris’s in one angry volcanic eruption. She spotted Julie. “I’m not ready. I will not allow it!”
Agnes followed the direction of Doris’s gaze. Her gaze turned thoughtful.
Not wanting to get involved, Julie pushed the stroller faster.
She didn’t want to be sheriff of Harmony Valley. There were no threats in town, no criminal element, no troublemakers. She refused to count Doris or Leona. They weren’t gun-toting domestic abusers or petty thieves that needed to be brought to justice.
She wanted to see Nate suffer. She wanted to feel unadulterated hatred when she looked at him. But she couldn’t. And she hated herself for it. She hated April for it. She’d never have lost her grip on her anger toward him if she hadn’t promised to come here.
“No matter what you think of Nate,” April had said, propped up in bed. Her body was losing muscle, even in her cheeks. She was looking less and less like the fighter she’d once been. “He’s Duke’s father. You can’t be a part of Duke’s life while Nate raises him if you’re constantly on his case for what happened between us.”
“Who says Nate’s raising him?” Despite the venom in her words, Julie gently eased April higher in bed, sliding a pillow beneath her shoulders. “You know he doesn’t want kids.”
April touched the scar on her bare scalp where they’d removed the tumor the first time. “Men say things they don’t mean all the time.”
“Like I love you?”
April had latched on to Julie’s hand. “When you’re lying on your deathbed, you won’t be thinking about how much you made Nate suffer.”
“Wanna bet?” She’d be counting the perps she sent to jail, too.
April dug her fingers into Julie’s bones. “You’ll be thinking about the gifts you had in life and the gifts you left behind.” She tugged on Julie’s arm with more strength than she’d shown in days. “You’re such a pain in the butt.”
Julie worked her fingers beneath April’s until she clasped her hand. “You want forgiveness. I’m more about justice, like Dad.”
April shook her head. “Don’t say justice when you mean revenge.”
In Nate’s case, what was the difference?
Had Nate lied when he’d said he didn’t want kids? It seemed like it.
Julie reached the bed-and-breakfast, winded. She sat on the bottom step and freed Duke from his safety restraint. “Run on the grass, little man.” While she gathered enough strength to climb the steps to their room. The evening stretched out before her with too many unanswered questions, none of which were April’s.
Duke ran to the thick green lawn and made a slow-motion flop onto his tummy. He tucked in his arms and rolled back and forth, giggling.
Julie’s mind drifted back to April and their conversations about the Daddy Test.
“No matter what Nate answers,” Julie had said. “I won’t approve. He’s not good enough for Duke.”
“You’ll see things differently once I’m gone.”
“True that,” Julie muttered as Duke ran across the grass. What was she supposed to make of April turning Nate away? Was it pride? Had she regretted it?
A large black truck drove slowly around the corner. The windows were down, allowing the worst music ever known to mankind—a crying baby—to reach Julie’s ears. The truck slowed and pulled up to the curb in front of the bed-and-breakfast. Flynn grimaced.
Out of sympathy, Julie risked her eardrums and approached the truck. “That’s some set of lungs.” Julie had to utilize her own to be heard.
Flynn nodded and shouted back, “Colic.”
The baby’s car seat was rear facing and in the back seat.
“And now he’s exhausted and won’t sleep,” Julie surmised. She’d been there. And Nate hadn’t. A slow smile lifted her cheeks. “Have you been by the jail? Nate seems like he’s good with kids.” Evil. She was evil. She didn’t care.
“Great idea.” Flynn gave her a thumbs-up. “I need to stay away long enough for my wife to get in a good nap since I was gone most of the day.” He waved and drove off.
Duke tugged on Julie’s hand.
Still smiling, Julie looked down. Her smile faded. “What pretty flowers,” she said with false appreciation of the yellow daffodil bouquet he offered her. “Where did you get them?”
“Those are mine.” Leona stood in the bed-and-breakfast doorway, arms crossed. “Meant to be enjoyed by everyone.”
Reggie materialized behind her grandmother. “But we can always plant more.”
Leona rolled her eyes.
Duke turned and saw Leona. “Petty you.” He hurried toward the front porch steps, holding out his bouquet.
“He wants to give you his pretty flowers.” Julie followed, grabbing her backpack and dragging the stroller up the steps without folding it.
“You mean my pretty flowers.” Leona didn’t so much huff as breathe fire.
“When was the last time anyone gave you flowers, Grandmother?” Reggie wore the grin Julie was becoming familiar with, the one that said she was enjoying her grandmother’s discomfort. “You should accept them.”
Duke stopped a few feet from Leona and raised the bouquet. “Petty you?”
“Thank you,” Leona said stiffly, taking the bent-stemmed flowers from Julie’s little love. “I’ll put these in water.”
“Good fend.” Duke hugged the elderly woman’s leg with little hands that left dirt smudges on her plain green dress.
Before Leona realized she’d been sullied, Julie folded the umbrella stroller, took Duke by the hand and led him upstairs. She had to stop at the top and catch her breath. When she looked back down at Leona, she realized a miracle had occurred.
Leona stood in the foyer, smilin
g at the flowers.
CHAPTER NINE
“DID SOMEONE RUN over a cat?” Rutgar startled on the cot, sending his pillow to the floor and jostling his ankle enough that he howled like said feline. “What is that noise?”
A noise Nate could only describe as a caterwaul grew louder.
“I have no idea.” Nate had been perusing the bulletins regarding persons wanted for questioning in the county. He returned Rutgar’s pillow beneath the man’s swollen ankle, and then went to the door to find out what the ruckus outside was.
Before he got there, the volume increased as Flynn came in carrying a crying baby in his arms. “Ian has colic.”
“No kidding,” Nate replied in his outdoor voice.
“Julie reminded me you were good with babies.” Flynn handed Ian off to Nate and collapsed in Nate’s chair behind the desk. He rested his forehead on the blotter. “Nobody warned me about colic. Not even my sister.”
Ian’s little face was scrunched and scarlet. His thatch of reddish-brown hair was sweat slicked to his head. And his entire body shook with sobs.
“I don’t know what to do besides walk him.” Nate imitated Molly’s bouncy baby walk, the one she’d used to settle Camille when she’d been upset.
Terrance opened the door, took in the scene and then turned to go.
“Not so fast.” Without stopping his rocking pace, Nate halted the widower in his tracks by shouting above the baby’s cries. “You raised five kids. We need your expertise.”
“You don’t need me.” But Terrance let the door swing shut. He still wore the wrinkled clothes he’d grabbed from home last night on their way to jail. But the lost expression he’d been wearing for months? That was clearly fading. “What you need is that baby’s mother.”
They were all yelling now.
“She’s sleeping.” Flynn lifted his head and glanced at Nate’s computer screen. “Oh, man. Tell me this guy with the tattoo across his forehead isn’t on the loose here.”
“He’s not.” Nate rock-stepped to the desk and closed the computer’s window with a keystroke.
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