Support Your Local Sheriff

by Melinda Curtis

  Those in the bakery knew whose son Duke was. They looked back and forth from Julie to Nate.

  She gave them her cop smile. Polite. Unflappable. Mirthless. Combined with the scary way she looked, they should all give her a wide berth. And space was what she needed given her visit to Harmony Valley so far could be labeled as one big fail after another.

  “Peeps. Return to your regularly scheduled lives.” When customers began to converse again, the barista waved Julie toward the display cases. “Sugar fix? Coffee fix?”

  “Let’s start with the necessities. Coffee. Large and black.” Julie eyed the sugary options and wishing they weren’t so large and each didn’t hold so many calories.

  “Want dat.” Duke pointed to a large muffin closest to him and imbibed his words with the threat of a toddler tantrum. “Dat. Dat. Dat.”

  Julie read the flavor card. “Horseradish spice muffin?” It didn’t sound kid friendly, which meant it wouldn’t rid her nephew of the morning grumps.

  “It’s kind of like—” the blonde flashed an infectious smile “—carrot cake. Without the carrots.”

  That didn’t sound bad. “We’ll take one of those and a bear claw.”

  “Milk for the little guy?”

  “Yes.” Julie set Duke’s sippy cup on the counter.

  “Yoo-hoo!” The elderly woman with short purplish-gray hair waved to them. Her hot-pink tracksuit was more eye-opening than the mug of hot coffee the barista was pouring. Her window seat was flanked on either side with smaller tables. The toddler Julie had recognized sat near her neon green sneakers, playing with blocks. “Join us over here. The boys can play while you drink your coffee.”

  “Fend.” Duke strained at his seat belt at the sight of the other boy.

  “I accept.” Julie unbuckled him, relieved she had an excuse not to sit with Nate. “That’s sweet.”

  “Hi, fend.” Duke ran to the toys and got to his knees, scooting himself closer to the action with his hands.

  “First time here, the coffee is on me.” The blonde loaded their order on a tray. “I’m Tracy. And they’ve been wondering about you.” She gestured to the room at large.

  “Great.” Julie paid for the pastries and joined the woman at the window seat, latching onto her coffee when she’d sat down. Caffeine took precedence over sugar.

  “Don’t be shy with Eunice,” Tracy said. “And we have free Wi-Fi. You can read our blog.”

  “Horseradish Is the New Superfood.” Eunice set her reading glasses on top of her red and yellow quilt squares in the window seat. And then she fluffed her purplish-gray bangs. “That’s the title of the blog today. It’s about horseradish. It grows on Parish Hill.”

  “On my property,” Rutgar said in a too-loud, too-grumbly voice.

  Nate almost grinned with both sides of his face. How odd it must be to live like that—anchoring half his smile as if he didn’t deserve a full measure of happiness.

  “Horseradish makes the bakery unique.” Tracy might work the counter, but she ruled the room with a knowing glance, a friendly smile and—in Rutgar’s case—a horseradish spice muffin. “No matter where we find it. Or who brings it to us.”

  “Yes...well... Horseradish grows wild along the road, too.” Eunice blushed and blinked at Julie the way people do when they’ve been caught with their hand in the horseradish patch. “Local vegetation aside, Gregory is a handful. I hardly have a minute of peace until naptime.”

  Duke and Gregory stacked blocks between them. So good-natured. So peaceful. Julie didn’t trust it to last.

  Julie angled her body to Eunice’s, putting the colorful old woman—and only the colorful old woman—in her line of sight. “Is he your grandchild?”

  “Godchild. He’s Jessica’s. She owns the bakery.” Eunice opened her violet-brown eyes wide and then blinked in big swoops of mascara-dredged eyelashes. “I thought it was such an honor until the poopy pants got...well...poopier.”

  “We all get out of diapers someday,” Julie said, mesmerized by the wide-eyed blinking.

  Eunice smiled and fingered the cotton fabric of her quilt squares. “I shouldn’t complain. I never had a chance to be a mother. But no matter what I do, his parents are always his favorite.”

  Julie’s stomach churned at the truth of Eunice’s statement. She’d always be Juju to Duke. She could never take away the mommy title from April. If Nate signed the custody papers, she’d be taking away his parental rights. The thought didn’t settle her stomach. It should have. Hadn’t that been the point in coming here? In taking the time off? And to appease her mom.

  Her gaze drifted to Nate once more. To the shoulders that could bear many burdens and the steady gaze that never seemed to judge. How would he react to know she’d clutched his worry stone all night long? Inexplicably, having Nate near her now eased the need to hold the worry stone in her hand.

  But that was a false sense of security. Nate wasn’t the type to stick by anyone through thick and thin. And she needed more than a rock or a half smile to beat the nightmares. And she had to beat them. Or she had to give Duke up. To Nate.

  Her stomach roiled again.

  Duke stopped playing with blocks and stood, peering at the plates on the table. He reached for the bear claw.

  “Hey, little man.” Julie rearranged the plates so his muffin was within reach. “This is yours.”

  “Not dat.” Duke made a face, apparently not as sold on horseradish as he’d been earlier. He pointed at Julie’s bear claw. “Want dat.”

  Eunice gasped dramatically. “You don’t want your horseradish spice muffin? That’s based on my mother’s recipe. It’s very good. If you don’t want it, I’ll take it.” She reached for the plate with a delicate hand, an age-old ploy designed to get Duke to defend his treat.

  Julie respected the effort even as Duke let the elderly woman take possession of the muffin.

  “That didn’t work out the way I’d planned.” Eunice returned the muffin to the plate.

  Nate appeared next to Duke in his blue jeans and blue checked shirt, which seemed to be his sheriff uniform. “Instead of calling it the terrible twos, they should have called it the fickle twos.” He sat on the floor, folding his long legs and eliciting sighs of appreciation from the bakery audience. “I have cupcake pops.” He handed each boy a stick with a small round cupcake on it. “Later, we’ll stop by El Rosal for some bacon.”

  “I should kick you out for that,” Tracy said from behind the counter. “This is the home of carbs.”

  “Ba-con,” Duke crooned and leaned his head briefly against Nate’s arm, the picture of a strong father-son bond Julie had been certain couldn’t possibly exist.

  “Real men eat meat and protein for breakfast,” Nate said to Julie with a straight face.

  Eunice fluffed her hair and fluttered her eyelashes. “I’ve always appreciated a man with an appetite.”

  “I suppose real men also eat green vegetables,” Julie said, finding it easier to point out Nate’s weaknesses than admit her own. “Although I didn’t see you cooking any last night.”

  “We had a vegetable.” Nate looked offended, but the effect was ruined by the twitch of a smile at his cheek.

  Julie had to fight a smile of her own. “Potatoes are starch. And starch goes directly to a woman’s thighs.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Nate said primly, giving Duke a playful poke in the belly. “Not being a woman.”

  Laughter filled the bakery, but it couldn’t fill the shadowy places in Julie’s heart.

  “Hey. Fend.” Duke leaned into Gregory’s space. “Pay? Park?” And then he turned big soulful eyes to Nate. “Nay? Pay? Park?”

  He’d asked Nate, not Julie. She slumped and hid her face in her coffee cup.

  “You want to go play at the park?” Nate grinned, nothing half about i
t. The two sides of his face matched in upturned delight.

  Julie almost fell over. That full grin. She wasn’t sure she’d ever seen it before. It upped him from handsome to gorgeous. He should smile like that all the time.

  Strike that. If he smiled like that all the time, he’d be irresistible. To women. To...to...to her.

  Deep inside Julie’s chest something shifted, something fit. And it fit as easily as her thumb on Nate’s worry stone. She slurped her coffee and looked away, refusing to name or acknowledge or think about what that something was.

  But that grin. It made her wonder. What made Nate so reserved? April couldn’t have known or she wouldn’t have created the Daddy Test, which was designed to make Nate reveal his past. So far, all Julie had learned was that Nate and his father didn’t get along.

  “The park,” Eunice said wistfully. “I love how tired Gregory gets after going to the park.”

  Gregory stood on sturdy jeans-clad legs. “I go park.” He was a little older than Duke and had the three-word sentences down.

  Julie felt a twinge of Mom Jealousy. She wished Duke would leap to his feet and repeat Gregory’s sentence.

  Duke picked his nose.

  Leaning over to wipe the evidence away with a napkin, Julie wished she wasn’t so competitive.

  “I’ll take them to the town square.” Nate’s grin became almost angelic as Duke hugged him. “Terrance can come, too. That way you and Eunice can finish your coffee.”

  Julie stared into her half-empty coffee mug, feeling the cold nip of loneliness. Nate was blossoming with Duke, while she was withering away inside.

  “How sweet of the sheriff.” Eunice leaned toward Julie, but didn’t lower her voice. “That’s the sign of a keeper.”

  “I’m not fishing,” Julie said quickly, unable to look at Nate for fear he’d still look full-on handsome.

  Another wave of laughter filled the room. Julie was beginning to see the appeal of El Rosal. Conversations weren’t as public there.

  “Somebody didn’t sleep well last night,” Nate said while Eunice went to get Gregory’s stroller and sweatshirt from the back, and the boys jumped around enthusiastically. “And I don’t mean Duke.”

  “I don’t sleep well in strange beds,” Julie lied and immediately felt bad for doing so. “We have to go home today.” Panic managed to creep into her voice.

  Nate’s smile vanished as he picked up on her angst. He angled closer, lowering his voice. “Why?”

  “Maybe she’s homesick?” someone hypothesized.

  “Maybe Leona raised her prices again?” someone else suggested.

  “She got kicked out of Leona’s,” Agnes said, unabashedly eavesdropping from a few tables away.

  “No, I...I have an evaluation today. They moved it up. I can’t miss it.” Julie tried to lie, but the universe was apparently done with her fibbing. She flinched when her phone chirped with a message, one that took away her alibi, as it turned out. She tucked the cell into her pocket. “My eval was just postponed until next week.”

  “Therefore, you need a place to stay.” Nate’s face was so near her own that Julie felt his warm breath on her cheek. “My offer still stands. Rutgar’s going home today. I’ll have an extra bed. I’ll even let you choose—jail cell or my apartment.”

  Duke would love sleeping in jail. Julie’s imagination went a little wild as she pictured Duke growing up here and living with Nate. Her nephew’s sleepovers would be the most popular in town. What little boy wouldn’t want to play cops and robbers with a real jail cell? Julie couldn’t compete with that.

  Eunice bumped Gregory’s stroller against the table leg. “I love a man who isn’t afraid to proposition a woman in front of others.”

  “I should go home.” Julie could get her mother to sleep over until the nightmares faded. If they persisted, she’d...she’d...

  “You made a promise.” Nate brushed a lock of hair from her forehead.

  “You’ve made promises you didn’t keep,” Julie countered, breathless from his touch, wishing she felt as righteous as she had when she’d arrived in town.

  Doris burst into the bakery, her gaze falling on Julie. “Thank heavens I caught you. I heard you were homeless. I insist you stay with me. Free of charge.”

  “Don’t do that to yourself, Jules.” Nate pulled back, staring Doris down. “Even if I locked you in my jail cell, you’d be happier.”

  “Sheriff, that’s just one reason why you are completely unfit to serve.” Doris didn’t waddle so much as chop her steps. She parked herself next to Julie and put her hands on her Chihuahua-covered hips. She wore a red tunic with black Chihuahua heads dotted across it.

  Until she’d met Doris, Julie had never realized how big Chihuahua fashion really was.

  “The air in this place suddenly turned stale.” Rutgar worked his way to Nate’s side on his crutches, looking clear-eyed and steady. He spared Doris a disdainful glance. “Nate, give these women a break and take those boys for a walk.”

  Nate’s gaze pinned Julie, trying to trap her to the promise she’d made to stay. Her only hope was that he’d fail the Daddy Test. Today. If only she knew exactly what was pass or fail.

  “I’ll stay one more night,” Julie allowed. “With Doris.” She’d put Duke in a bedroom and sleep on the couch.

  “Ha!” Doris smirked at everyone in the bakery, but mostly at Nate.

  Too quickly, both toddlers were being taken away. Julie sat in the window seat and watched Duke leave her. Her arms felt empty, the warm coffee mug cradled in her hands a poor replacement for a warm, loving boy.

  “I know how you feel.” Eunice picked up her glasses and quilt squares. “Arms empty. Alone.” She patted Julie’s thigh, surprising her with her perceptiveness. And then she added, “I know how you feel because I’m an old maid, too.”

  * * *

  “I’M NOT A baby whisperer,” Terrance said as he and Nate pushed strollers toward the town square. He’d shaved today and his gray polo shirt looked to have been ironed. “Nor do I want to be the town’s backup babysitter, much as I like these young gentlemen.”

  “Everybody’s good at something.” Nate’s reply was half-hearted. Concern for Julie gnawed at his insides. He’d hated to leave her at the bakery.

  She looked like death. She wanted to leave Harmony Valley? She’d be asleep at the wheel long before she reached Santa Rosa. If he hadn’t had an audience, he’d have taken her off to jail and locked her up so she could sleep.

  “What’s Julie good at?” Terrance asked.

  “Righting wrongs.” Although she couldn’t seem to right herself.

  “Ba-con,” Duke crooned as they passed El Rosal’s dining patio, eliciting an echoing sentiment from Gregory.

  “Once we play tag in the park,” Nate reassured him, pausing only to order two coffees and an order of bacon for their return trip. “You didn’t go on walkabout last night, did you, Terrance?” After seeing Julie to the bed-and-breakfast, Nate had stayed at the jail, watching over Rutgar instead of making his rounds.

  “I was tucked in my bed like a good boy.” Terrance sounded as annoyed as Doris often was.

  They crossed the street onto the grass in the town square. The lone oak tree stood tall in the middle. In a few weeks, the Spring Festival would be held here. Nate wondered if he’d still be sheriff. His chest constricted. He’d become more attached to the town than he’d realized.

  “Admit it.” Nate turned his attention back to Terrance. “You knew I wouldn’t be making late-night rounds last night.”

  “Or your early-morning run this morning,” Terrance said with mock sadness, mischief in his eyes. “How did you get to know me so well?”

  “I think you might have been stalking me.” Nate allowed a half grin. “No one else claimed to have seen your pajama stroll
s.”

  “Enough.” Terrance rolled his eyes. “You should be anxious about the meeting tonight. Doris will do anything to make you unemployed.”

  Nate gazed down on Duke’s dark unruly hair, at the ears so like his own. He was worried, yes. But there were other more pressing things to be worried about.

  “You’re agonizing over Julie’s health.” Terrance sat on the wrought iron bench beneath the oak tree. “You should be. She looks as if your son kept her up all night.”

  Nate knew that wasn’t true. Duke looked rested and ready for action. It was the shooting. He’d looked the event up on the internet last night. Details had been slim. A domestic violence case, which wouldn’t be unusual, except the abuser had been a woman and she’d locked herself in her house with two children for hours, threatening to kill them.

  Terrance looked at Nate as if he was a public defender who hadn’t made a solid case against a thief caught red-handed. “That woman needs your help.”

  “She doesn’t want it.”

  “She would if you charmed her a little.” The old man’s expression turned more sympathetic. “You have no moves. Did your father never teach you how to woo a woman?”

  “No.” He’d taught Nate other life lessons. “No wooing.”

  “Woo-woo!” Duke turned the word into a train whistle. “Woo-woo!”

  “Woo-woo!” Gregory echoed. The two boys shared the same thick dark hair, but Gregory had the sturdy frame of a future football player.

  The two boys giggled and did the train whistle until Nate released them from their strollers and showed them how to fly like an airplane, arms outstretched, mouths making airplane sounds.

  The boys circled the tree gleefully, negating the need to play tag.

  Nate sat next to Terrance on the wrought iron bench. “Why did you want to be a father?”

  “Because I loved Robin so much I wanted the best of both of us.” Terrance was only on the serious topic for a moment, before returning the conversation back to Julie. “If your father didn’t tell you how to get a girl, I will. You have to treat a woman right. Flowers. Food. Fun.” He gestured toward the boys. “The fun is the important part.”