The Sheriff’s Runaway Bride

by Arlene James

  “No one’s pleased but us,” Cade said, squeezing Jasmine’s hand, “and no one’s more unhappy about that than we are. But Jasmine and I know something that no one else can.”

  “Which is?” Zach demanded suspiciously.

  Cade looked at Jasmine, and the love shining in his eyes made a lump rise in Kylie’s throat. “That we belong together and that getting married is absolutely right for us. We’ll just have to keep praying for hearts and minds to change.”

  Jasmine clasped his hand with both of hers, beaming. Kylie realized suddenly that she had never once looked at Vincent that way and that she never would have. These kids, she thought, had more going for them than she’d even imagined. Stepping forward, she placed a hand on Jasmine’s shoulder.

  “I’ll put some ideas together, and we can talk in a few days.”

  “Oh, thank you!” Jasmine exclaimed, breaking free of Cade long enough to hug Kylie.

  Smiling, Cade gave Zach a respectful nod before linking hands with Jasmine again. They left the room talking softly together.

  Kylie waited until they passed out of sight before turning to Zach. “They’re obviously in love.”

  “I can’t fault their approach to this whole business,” he grumbled. “At least they’re honest, and they’re obviously trying to be patient, but as for love…” He shook his head. “Who knows?”

  “I guess you’ve never been in love then,” Kylie heard herself say.

  His gaze settled on her face, and for a long moment she couldn’t seem to breathe. Finally, he murmured, “Thought I might be a time or two, but no.” His gaze sharpened. “What about you?”

  She had to be as honest as he had been. “Same. Seemed possible a few times but just never happened.”

  “Not even with Vincent?”

  “No. I thought we’d established that fact.”

  “Mm. And I thought we’d concurred that Jasmine and Cade are too young for marriage.”

  “You don’t like that I agreed to help them,” Kylie surmised softly.

  “I don’t like anything about this.”

  “Has anyone seen Reverend West?”

  Kylie’s attention jerked to the doorway again. Darlene and Macy Perry stood there.

  “He was supposed to sign a letter for me this evening,” Darlene went on, “so I could drop it in the mail first thing tomorrow morning.”

  “Sorry, haven’t seen him,” Kylie said, shaking her head. “But the youth Bible study let out a little while ago. Maybe he’s in the youth room.”

  “Okay. I’ll have a look. Thanks.” She glanced down at Macy, asking, “Want to wait here for me?” The young girl nodded shyly. Darlene looked to Kylie and then Zach. “Do you mind?”

  “Not a bit,” Kylie replied.

  “It would be our pleasure,” Zach said, smiling at the girl.

  “I won’t be a minute,” Darlene promised, moving away. The woman looked too fragile to be standing upright, but she somehow managed to work most days in the church office.

  Macy stood off to the side, nervously twirling a lock of blond hair around her finger as she looked over at Zach.

  “So what have you been up to?” he asked, trying to break the ice.

  “I’m helping Mama secretary,” the girl replied solemnly. “She gets real tired, so I fold stuff and put on stamps and staple pages together, things like that. Sometimes she lets me play games on the computer.”

  “Cool.”

  “I’m lousy at typing,” she confessed self-consciously.

  “Me, too. I think you’ll get better, though,” Zach said.

  “I think you will, too,” she said.

  “Not a chance.” He held up his hands, waggling his fingers. “All thumbs.”

  Macy giggled, and Zach traded a look with Kylie, showing how pleased he was to make inroads with the beleaguered young girl.

  “So your Mama’s tired a lot, is she?”

  The sparkle left her pretty blue eyes. “Yes. But I help, and the reverend says she can rest when she wants. It’s a blessing of a job, Mama says.”

  “That’s good.”

  She shuffled her feet. “So how come you’re not wearing your sheriff shirt?” she asked, clearly anxious to change the subject.

  “Needs washing,” Zach said, glancing up at Kylie. She had to bite her lip to keep from chuckling aloud.

  “Oh,” Macy said, tentatively patting his shoulder. “I like this one.”

  “Me, too,” Kylie had to say.

  “Thanks,” Zach said, smoothing a hand over his chest. “Blue’s my favorite color. What’s yours?”

  “Hot pink!” she grinned, pointing to her plastic eyeglasses.

  “What’s yours?” Zach asked Kylie then. “Hm. Turquoise.”

  “Yeah, that’s good, too,” Macy agreed. “I really like pink and turquoise together.”

  Again, Zach and Kylie traded amused glances. Darlene came back into the room a few moments later. “Found him. The reverend will take care of everything so we can sleep in tomorrow. Thanks, guys.”

  “You’re welcome,” Kylie said cheerfully.

  Darlene held out a hand to her daughter, “Let’s go, sweetie. Oh, and by the way, I’ve reset the locks for the evening. You’ll be able to leave the building, but you won’t be able to get back in.”

  “No problem,” Zach said.

  Macy ran around the table to take her mother’s hand. “Bye!”

  “Bye-bye.”

  “See ya.”

  Mother and daughter waved and went out.

  Zach shook his head, remarking softly, “That’s another troubling situation.”

  “Darlene’s very ill, isn’t she?”

  Zach nodded. “Darlene has asked Brooke to take custody of Macy when the time comes that she can no longer take care of the girl on her own.”

  “Oh, wow. I didn’t know it was that serious. Brooke’s going to do it, of course.”

  “Of course. Macy is practically family already.” He cocked his head, murmuring, “In fact, she looks so much like Brooke did as a little girl that she could almost be family.”

  “Isn’t it funny how God works?” Kylie remarked. “What are the chances of that, do you suppose?”

  “Slim,” Zach answered with a ruminating frown. “About as slim as Jasmine and Cade making a successful marriage, I’d say.”

  Kylie bit her tongue. She hated being at odds with him. He was a kind, decent man, and he displayed a lot of good sense, but Kylie had begun to think that Jasmine and Cade had a better chance of making a life together than most couples. Still, she could understand the family’s doubts.

  What she couldn’t understand was the sense of trepidation and sadness that she felt because of a simple difference of opinion about a matter that neither she nor Zach could control.

  The fact that he could do nothing to change Jasmine’s mind or the Perrys’ situation irked Zach. Taking control of tricky situations and finding reasonable, effective solutions had become a habit with him. Unfortunately, these two cases stumped him. That didn’t keep him from brooding on the matter, though.

  While Kylie took down information provided by a concerned church member about a poor family apparently living out of a tent on public land, Zach worried about Jasmine and the Perrys. Even as he and Kylie signed out on the computer and left the now silent building, allowing the door to lock behind them, his thoughts remained troubled.

  He should have been able to reason with Jasmine, but as long as she remained enthralled with Cade, he didn’t expect her to listen. Zach couldn’t quite dislike Cade now that he’d met the boy, but he couldn’t quite trust him either. Even if Cade hadn’t been one of Samuel’s grandsons, he was still too young to be anyone’s husband, just as Jasmine was too young to be anyone’s wife. Unfortunately, Colorado law said they were old enough to make such decisions, and without the law to back him up, Zach felt powerless.

  As for Darlene Perry’s health, Zach felt totally out of his depth. He only had prayer to offer
in that case. Macy’s resemblance to Brooke bothered him on some level that he couldn’t quite identify, but every time he drew near to crystallizing his thoughts on the matter, something held him back. He had the same problem when trying to think about what had happened in Miami.

  He and Kylie walked out to the Wrangler. While he handed her up into the passenger seat, her gaze did not quite meet his, but Zach’s preoccupation led him to assume that she felt uncomfortable with the windowless doors.

  “Buckle in,” he ordered mechanically, wondering why he couldn’t quite think about Miami.

  God knew that he’d told the story of what had happened often enough; department policy had made it mandatory. Once he’d fulfilled police and city requirements, however, the whole incident had fled his conscious mind. Almost. It hovered there, just on the edge of his thoughts, like a mosquito that buzzed around his head, out of sight, but there nonetheless. He dared not really “look” at it or anything that reminded him of it.

  He realized suddenly that he’d walked around Miami like a blind man, not daring to see what was around him. Had he felt that leaving would allow him to see clearly again? Maybe it would, in time. Maybe that’s what his recurring dreams meant. Maybe he could finally work his way toward conscious, rational thought about the shooting without his emotions overwhelming him.

  He made his way to Waxwing Road.

  “It’s about two miles now,” Kylie told him. He glanced at the odometer, nodding. Night quickly enveloped them, broken only by the beams of the headlamps. A few minutes later she said, “This is it.”

  He turned through a cattle guard and followed a graveled drive into the dusty yard of a sprawling log home. Warm yellow light lit the windows, and tall trees framed the setting. He glimpsed the shape of an old-fashioned barn in the middle distance and then a swath of silvery grass running like a broad river between the barn and the dark spires of the mountains. A lovely place, it was just the kind of home that he’d like to own one day.

  The thought occurred to him that, if the conditions of Grandpa George’s will were met, a place such as this would not be out of his reach. An unexpected excitement quickened. For the first time, the inheritance—a quarter-million dollars and five hundred acres for each of the heirs—actually meant something to Zach. Then he thought of Lucas, the one least likely to make the move back to Clayton.

  It was no secret how passionately Lucas had resisted their grandfather’s attempts to get him back to Colorado. Some of the family wondered if he had disappeared so he couldn’t be pressed to return now, but no one really believed that. Something had gone wrong with Lucas. Otherwise, one of them would have heard from him by now. Zach’s unease about the situation increased daily.

  Lord, let him be safe, Zach silently prayed.

  That prayer had become a mantra since Zach had returned to Clayton.

  He brought the Jeep to a halt, and the instant the tires stopped rolling Kylie blurted, “Zach, don’t be mad at me.”

  What? A moment passed before her meaning sunk in. Momentarily dumbfounded, he killed the engine and twisted in his seat to face her. “I’m not mad at you.”

  “Look, I know you think they’re too young,” she said quickly, “and maybe they are.”

  “Jasmine and Cade, you mean.”

  Kylie released her safety belt, nodding. “The thing is, though, no one can keep them from getting married, so why shouldn’t I give them the benefit of my expertise?”

  “Kylie, I’m not angry with you.”

  “You’re not?” she breathed.

  “No.”

  “It’s just that you’ve been so quiet. I thought maybe you were upset with me for agreeing to help with the wedding.”

  “I’m troubled, yes, but I’m not mad.”

  “Oh.” She relaxed back into her seat.

  “I’ll admit that I’d rather this wedding didn’t take place,” Zach went on. “I just think it’s a bad decision on Jasmine’s part.”

  “Would you feel so strongly about it if Cade wasn’t Samuel’s grandson?”

  “You mean, am I prejudiced against Cade because of Samuel and Charley? Yeah, probably so. But for good reason.” He ran a hand over the top of his head. “On the other hand, I have plenty of reasons to question my own judgment.”

  “Somehow I doubt that,” Kylie said with wry skepticism.

  “If you only knew,” he muttered, recalling the nightmare from the night before. Maybe he couldn’t think rationally about what had happened in Miami, but he certainly could dream about it. Last night, he’d awakened in the middle of the incident, watching in horror as it all unfolded again in slow motion. He’d jerked awake at the pivotal moment and sat bolt upright in bed, sweating profusely, his lungs pumping like bellows. Thankfully he hadn’t cried out. “In fact, I dream about my mistakes,” he heard himself say.

  “Well, that stinks,” Kylie said, smiling sympathetically. “I can’t imagine that you’ve made more mistakes than I have, though.”

  Maybe not more mistakes, he thought, just bigger ones. He opened his mouth to tell her the truth of it, remembering just in time that he did not particularly want anyone else, especially her, to know.

  “I dream about being a big wedding planner in Denver,” she confessed, “and instead I’m stuck here in Clayton.”

  “This place has kind of grown on me,” he said, surprised to hear himself say it.

  “It’s not the place to become famous for your fabulous ideas and unique sense of style,” she told him dryly.

  “Like making garlands out of tree leaves and grasses,” he surmised, remembering what Jasmine had said.

  “Hey, you work with what you’ve got. Actually it was small tree branches, stripped of their bark and twisted into a kind of rope with grasses woven in to cover what the leaves didn’t.”

  “That’s certainly unique.”

  “And it was very pretty, too, if I do say so myself.”

  Impressed, Zach leaned sideways. “You know, you don’t have to be in Denver to market that kind of idea. I see people selling how-to stuff on the Internet all the time.”

  She lifted her eyebrows. “I hadn’t thought of that.” She considered for a moment. “That just might work.” Leaning closer, she smiled at him. “Thanks for the idea.”

  He should have replied to that, but he couldn’t think of the appropriate words. He couldn’t think of anything except the shape of her lips as she had spoken. She might have spoken again. He couldn’t be sure. The thundering of his heart drowned out the sound of her voice, but he registered every other detail: the lemony smell of the long ponytail lying against her neck, the smoothness of her skin, the delicate flare of her nostrils, the width of her slender shoulders beneath his arm.

  What? When had he put his arm around her? He pulled back, completely disoriented. What was happening?

  He knew suddenly what he wanted to happen. “How about having dinner at my house tomorrow night? Uh, Brooke, Gabe and A.J. will be there, too.”

  Kylie’s face clouded. “Oh, Zach, I’m sorry. I already have plans.”

  Reality smacked him in the head with a decided clunk.

  “Right.” He sat back in his seat and reached for the steering wheel with both hands. Plans. She had plans. A date. That’s what she meant. She already had a date. Well, it had to happen sooner or later. “Another time,” he managed, striving for a light tone.

  “Sure,” she said, opening the door. “I’d like that.” He nodded, but he couldn’t quite make himself look at her. “Okay. Well…thanks for the ride.”

  “You bet.”

  “Good night,” she murmured.

  “G’night.”

  She swiveled and slid off her seat. He’d started the engine before her feet hit the ground.

  She waved goodbye and he curtly nodded at her. Then he wheeled the Wrangler around, feeling like the world’s biggest fool. When last he glanced into his rearview mirror before turning toward town, she still stood there in the soft red glow of his
taillights, in front of that inviting log house that had first made him think of having a real home.

  “Not likely,” he reminded himself.

  Any of the remaining three heirs—Vivienne, Mei or Lucas—could fail to fulfill the stipulations of the will. Even with Mei and Lucas’s mom, Lisette, still living in town, Zach wasn’t sure that Lucas would return. Besides, Zach would probably be moving on himself after his year here. To a new town and a new job. One that didn’t require uniforms.

  The thought did not please as it should have. Somehow, in a matter of days, he’d started to think of Clayton as home again. Just as he’d started to think of Kylie as…almost his.

  That notion was even more stupid than almost kissing her. Again! He didn’t need the kind of trouble that being with her would bring. Vincent hated him enough already. Besides, she’d as good as said that she had started seeing somebody else.

  The idea opened a hole in him. Nevertheless, he would do everything in his power to stay away from her.

  Chapter Seven

  Gabe Wesson pulled up in front of Zach’s office late on Monday afternoon at almost the same instant as Zach did. Sighing inwardly, Zach realized that his neighbor and future brother-in-law had not come on a social call. The job had been this way for days. Nonstop.

  The action had started before five o’clock that morning. It was Friday when the dispatch office had called out every available deputy to assist with a manhunt when an inmate at the county jail went missing. The inmate had turned up in the mess hall kitchen an hour later, making himself breakfast. Since then, Zach had served three warrants, assisted in two arrests and helped dismantle a drug lab in other parts of the county. Today he’d been dispatched to transport a suspected arsonist arrested by the Forest Service. That had necessitated use of the county car.

  Zach got out, listening to the door creak on the old heap. Gabe met him at the front bumper.

  “What’s up?”

  “Well, Deputy, you told me that I ought to be documenting everything that happens out at the mine, so I’m here to file a report.”