Montana Sheriff

by Marie Ferrarella

  God knew Cole was as self-contained as his father had been. Her son certainly didn’t get his stoicism from her. She had always been more than willing to talk about what was bothering her.

  “Yes,” she admitted quietly.

  “How long have you known?” he asked. Just because she lived on a ranch didn’t mean that his mother was out of the loop. Hell, she was the loop.

  “Not long. I stopped by Amos’s place late yesterday afternoon to see how he was getting along.” Amos had been there for her to offer his support when her husband had passed away; it was only right that she return the favor. “I saw her car pulling up as I was leaving.”

  Cole nodded slowly as he took her words in. His expression gave none of his thoughts away. “Did you talk to her?” he finally asked.

  She’d debated stopping to exchange a few words, then quickly decided against it. Midge shook her head in response now.

  “No, I thought it’d be better if she just saw her father first. After all, Ronnie had just come much too close to losing both him and her brother. She would have,” Midge emphasized, “if it hadn’t been for you.”

  Taking credit, even when he deserved it, wasn’t what he was about. “Maybe,” Cole allowed vaguely.

  “No maybe about it,” Tim piped up jovially from his corner of the office. He looked at the man he considered to be his role model. “Folks are saying you’re a regular hero, Sheriff.”

  Cole had never cared for labels, and praise had always made him uncomfortable. Now was no different.

  “And what’s an irregular hero, Tim?” he asked.

  Caught off guard, Tim opened his mouth to answer and couldn’t even begin to form one. He blinked, summarily confused. “What?”

  “Don’t mind him, Tim,” Midge told the younger man. “He’s just being surly.” Looking at her son, the woman shook her head. “Don’t know what that girl ever saw in you, Cole.” Her exasperation with her son could only last a few moments, if that much. He was as close to perfect as a man could be. Just like his father before him, she thought with a pang. “Must have been your charm and your silver tongue.”

  “Must’ve been,” Cole deadpanned, finally taking a bite out of the muffin he’d selected. As always, the muffin all but melted on his tongue. His mother had a knack for making baked goods that turned out to be practically lighter than air. But Cole wasn’t given to gushing effusively. Instead, he gave her an approving nod. “Not bad.”

  “You always did lay on the flattery,” Midge told him with a laugh. “I swear, Cole, you’re getting to be more and more like your father every day.”

  And that only reminded her how much she still missed her late husband.

  Squaring her small shoulders, Midge left the basket where she’d placed it and took a couple of steps toward the front door.

  “Leaving?” Cole asked, finishing the muffin. Rolling the paper that was left between his thumb and the first two fingers of his hand, he tossed the small ball into the wastebasket.

  “Well, if you don’t feel like talking, I figured I’d better be getting back to the ranch.” And then a thought occurred to her. “Come over for dinner tonight,” she told her son. “I’ll make your favorite,” Midge added to seal the deal.

  Cole sighed. He knew what she was up to. She was trying to draw him out of what she referred to as his “shell.” She’d all but undertaken a crusade to accomplish that the summer Ronnie took off.

  “I’m okay, Ma,” he insisted.

  The very innocent look was back. “Didn’t say you weren’t,” Midge replied.

  She looked at the deputy as she walked past his desk. Tim McGuire hardly looked old enough to shave despite the fact that he was edging his way toward his twenty-second birthday.

  “Tell your mother and father I said hello,” she told him.

  “Sure will,” the deputy cheerfully assured her. As he spoke, a golden crumb broke away from the muffin he was in the midst of consuming and fell onto his shirt. Looking down sheepishly, Tim laughed and brushed the crumb—and several others—off. “You sure do bake the best things, Mrs. James. I wish you’d teach my mother how you make these.”

  Unlike her son, Midge absorbed praise, fully enjoying each compliment.

  “I’m sure she does fine without my input, Tim.” Her bright blue eyes danced as she paused at the door, one hand on the doorknob. “But I can teach you anytime you’d like.”

  “Me?” the deputy asked incredulously.

  He glanced up at the sheriff’s mother, stunned. Tim was the stereotypical male who had yet to master the art of boiling water—not that he felt he had to. He still lived at home and thought that was what mothers were for—among other things.

  “Nothing wrong with a man knowing his way around a stove, Tim,” Midge told him.

  Cole rolled his eyes. “That’s all I need,” he grumbled. “A deputy in an apron, his face smeared with blueberries as he’s burning the muffins he’s trying to make.” With a shake of his head, Cole slanted a sidelong glance toward his mother. And then he raised another muffin as if to toast her with it. “Thanks for bringing these.”

  “Don’t mention it. And don’t forget about dinner tonight,” she pressed, opening the door. “Six-thirty. Don’t be late.”

  “Or what, you’ll start without me?” Cole teased.

  “Don’t get fresh,” his mother warned. But she was smiling at him as she said it. “Goodbye, Tim,” she called out.

  “Goodbye, Mrs. James,” Tim responded with enthusiasm.

  “Your mom really is a nice lady,” the deputy said with feeling, his eyes on his task. He was preparing to eliminate his third muffin.

  Cole marveled at the way Tim could put food away and still look like a walking stick. Had to be all that enthusiasm he kept displaying, Cole thought.

  “Yeah, I know,” he replied.

  He took a bite out of his muffin, thinking. It occurred to him that this wasn’t the first time his mother had mentioned stopping by Amos McCloud’s place. Seemed to him that she was doing that quite a lot.

  He made a mental note to ask her about that the next time he got a chance. He didn’t recall his mother and Amos being all that close before.

  But then, loss had a way of bringing people together, and his mother wasn’t the type who liked being alone. He could recall her taking part in whatever needed doing around the ranch, never worrying about getting her hands dirty or complaining about having to work too hard.

  In that respect she was a lot like Ronnie, he mused, breaking off another piece of the muffin.

  Except that, growing up, Ronnie had been even more so. Part of the reason, he knew, was because she’d grown up without a mother. Margaret McCloud had died shortly after giving birth to Ronnie. Never a strong woman, according to his mother, one morning Margaret just didn’t get out of bed. When Amos came in to see why she wasn’t up yet, or at least tending to the baby, who was screaming her lungs out—Ronnie was loud even then—Amos found that his wife was dead.

  The doctor who had to be called in from the neighboring town said she’d suffered from a ruptured aneurysm. Just like that, she was gone.

  Life could change in an instant.

  Cole got up. “I’ll be back in a while,” he told Tim as he walked out.

  “What’s ‘a while’?” Tim called out after him.

  “Longer than a minute,” Cole called back. And then he was gone.

  Chapter Four

  Ordinarily, patrolling Redemption and the area just outside its perimeter helped Cole clear his mind whenever he found it too cluttered.

  Ordinarily.

  But not this time.

  This time the tension he felt from the moment he merely thought he saw Ronnie had increased and refused to dissipate. This would take a lot of patience. He would just have to wait it out, work through it and give himself some time.

  What bothered him the most was that he couldn’t simply shake the effects of seeing Ronnie off or block them out. The feeling hung in the
re, wrapping its tendrils around him like a vine determined to grow a hundred times its size.

  Ronnie had always been his Achilles’ heel.

  Everybody had a cross to bear and this was his.

  As he drove slowly up one street and down another, patrolling the town, everything seemed to be in order—rather an interesting aspect seeing as how his whole world had been turned upside down. But nothing was going on in Redemption today that required his atten tion. No visible disputes to mediate the way there sometimes were when tempers flared up between friends and neighbors. Not even Mrs. Miller’s damn cat to coax out of a tree.

  As he passed the woman’s Prized Antique Furniture Shop, Cole could see Lucien, Mrs. Miller’s smoke-gray Persian cat, curled up on a rocking chair just to the left of the large bay window. Lucien was sound asleep.

  He’d lost count how many times that cat had to be rescued out of a tree. And the one time he needed the feline to act accordingly, it was sleeping.

  Figured.

  Cole sighed impatiently. There was nothing to divert his mind from—

  The string of muttered curses scissored through his thoughts. Had he not had his windows down, Cole was pretty sure he wouldn’t have been able to hear them. But he definitely would have noticed the distressed looking store owner outside of the Livestock Feed Emporium, kicking one of the tires of the truck that had the store’s logo painted on the side.

  Cole stopped his vehicle in front of the all-too-recent scene of the assault on his soul.

  It was obvious that Ed was at odds with the store’s truck.

  Cole stuck his head out of the driver’s-side window. “Something wrong, Mr. Haney?” he asked the man mildly.

  Ed’s head jerked up. For a second, he appeared surprised that he’d been overheard. And then he scowled. Deeply.

  “Two somethings,” he corrected, annoyed. “First the truck won’t start, and then Billy calls in. He only works part-time for me,” Ed explained. “Says he’s got a cold and he’s taking a sick day. You ask me, he just wants to spend time with that girl of his, Judith Something-or-other—”

  “Julie,” Cole corrected. “Julie Gannon.”

  It still astonished him, though he gave no indication, how much his memory seemed to have sharpened ever since he’d become sheriff. It was almost as if the responsibility had caused him to suddenly pay attention to the comings and goings of all the locals—something he’d never had time for or interest in before.

  As for names, up until four years ago, they usually eluded him. They were incidental, beside the point. Only faces had left an impression. Now every face had a name and a history.

  “Yeah, her,” Ed agreed, waving his hand vaguely. “Point is that I’ve got this here order for Ronnie’s dad and nobody to take it out to the ranch.” He raised his eyes to Cole’s at the end of the statement, as if he was waiting for something. When Cole maintained his silence, Ed prodded a little. “You wouldn’t be going out that way anytime today now, would you, Sheriff?”

  Cole had wondered how long it would take for the store owner to get around to this. “Wasn’t planning on it,” he replied.

  “Oh.”

  Had he not heard it himself, Cole wouldn’t have thought it was possible to pack that much emotion and distress into a single two-letter word.

  With a sigh, he decided to put the man out of his misery.

  “Guess I could look in on Amos,” Cole allowed. “Seeing as how there doesn’t seem to be anything going on in Redemption that needs my immediate attention.”

  Ed instantly brightened. “You’d be doing me a huge, huge favor, Sheriff.” He beamed at the younger man. “I told everybody that you were the right man for the job.”

  Now the man was going a little overboard. “Being sheriff doesn’t include making deliveries for the local stores,” Cole pointed out.

  “No,” Ed readily agreed. “But looking out for the town citizens and going that extra mile—or ten—for them kinda does.” He moved in closer, dropping his voice as if he was sharing a timeless secret with him. “People remember a man who looks out for them. You never know when that might come in handy.”

  Cole laughed shortly. “First snow hasn’t come down yet and you’re already busy shuffling, Mr. Haney,” he marveled. “Okay, you want me to send Hank on over to take a look at your truck, see what’s wrong?” Approaching the back of the defunct vehicle, Cole began transferring the load that was intended for Ronnie’s ranch from Ed’s truck to his.

  Ed joined in, eager to get the job done before Cole had a chance to change his mind. “No, no, I’ll give him a call myself. You’re already doing way more than I’ve got a right to expect.”

  Humor quirked the corners of his mouth. “You remember that, Mr. Haney,” Cole told him.

  And that was how, fifteen minutes later, Cole found himself on the road to the McCloud ranch despite the fact that after this morning’s run-in with Ronnie, he’d had absolutely no intention of going anywhere near the sprawling horse ranch.

  Damn, who the hell was he kidding? Nobody ever made him do anything he didn’t want to do at least somewhere deep down in his soul. Being a pushover was for men without spines or convictions, and he had always possessed both—in spades. If he had wanted to avoid seeing Ronnie again, he wouldn’t have agreed to take Haney’s order over to the ranch.

  Truth was that he was in the market for an excuse so he could put himself in her path again. To give her yet another opportunity to explain why she’d taken off that way six years ago. Because up until that devastating day, he’d thought she loved him. Been convinced she loved him. He damn well knew that he loved her.

  But she’d taken off without saying a word. Love meant talking things out, at least once in a while, didn’t it?

  Apparently not for Ronnie.

  Glancing down at the speedometer, Cole saw he was pushing his truck hard without realizing it. The intensity of his thoughts telegraphed themselves through his body, making him press down on the accelerator. He was going ninety-one miles an hour. Cole eased back on the pedal.

  There was nothing else out on the open road—mostly a given in these parts—but still, if someone did suddenly come around and clock him, how would it look to see the sheriff going more than twenty-five miles over what was posted as the speed limit?

  Cole frowned and kept one eye on the speedometer. Being the sheriff of the town could be really confining.

  RONNIE WAS DEFINITELY NOT looking forward to the long drive to Helena, not coming so soon on the heels of her marathon drive over from Seattle. She really wanted to curl up somewhere and take a very long nap. After seeing Cole, she felt drained.

  But then, she also felt incredibly wired. Cole had always managed to do that to her, to get everything inside of her moving at top speed with just a look or a touch.

  Especially a touch, she remembered, her mind drifting.

  She wasn’t here for a reunion, Ronnie reminded herself sternly. She was here to help her father run the ranch while he—and Wayne—recovered. And she was here for Wayne.

  To see her older brother before—

  No, there was not going to be a “before,” she upbraided herself. Wayne would be fine. Just fine.

  Positive thoughts, she would only have positive thoughts, Ronnie silently ordered herself. She wasn’t one of those people who believed in transmitting energy or “vibes” or any of that kind of far-out nonsense, but on the other hand, keeping a good thought couldn’t exactly hurt, right?

  At this point, she wasn’t about to rule out trying any thing short of waving a chicken over Wayne’s head and chanting some kind of strange, unfathomable incantation.

  Wayne was going to be fine, he was going to be fine, she silently insisted again. No reason to think otherwise.

  Glancing over her shoulder, Ronnie looked in the direction of the house. She’d left Christopher to entertain her father—the boy had actually succeeded in making her father smile a couple of times since they got there.

&n
bsp; She’d also left Juanita, the housekeeper who had been with the family for as long as she could remember, watching over her father and her son. That freed her up to go see her brother.

  She had to brace herself, she thought, for what she might see. She’d never known a day when Wayne, six foot four, tanned with wide shoulders, a small waist and powerful arms, wasn’t the absolute picture of robust health and strength. Seeing him any other way would be a shock to her system.

  But she couldn’t let on that it was because, despite the fact that he was still in a coma, she felt that on some level, he would be able to see her reaction. She didn’t want anything daunting his spirits and keep them from rallying.

  Ronnie opened the door to her sedan and then stopped dead.

  Cole’s truck came up the road toward her. Trucks were as plentiful in and around Redemption as storm clouds in January, but she would have known that beaten up grill anywhere, even at this distance. She’d been with him when it had gotten that dent. Jared Calloway’s prize bull had gotten loose and the animal had rammed them before Calloway and her father had manage to divert the bull and finally get him penned up.

  What was Cole doing, coming here?

  Ronnie felt her heart start accelerating.

  This was absurd. She wasn’t a teenager. She was a grown woman. A woman with a business degree and a career, not to mention a child.

  His child.

  That meant maturity, didn’t it? And mature women didn’t react like dewy-eyed adolescent girls eyeing their first major crush.

  With supreme effort, she got herself to move. Closing her door again, Ronnie walked a few steps away from her vehicle to meet him.

  As he pulled up closer, she called out, “Something wrong, Cole?”

  You mean other than you being here, messing with my mind? He left his first response unsaid.

  “Ed’s truck broke down and his driver called in sick. He was worried that you needed the order you placed this morning right away.”

  “So you volunteered to bring it?” she asked incredulously.

  Once upon a time, he would have volunteered without hesitation. But “once upon a time” had faded away a long time ago. And after their conversation this morning, she would have bet money that Cole would have gone out of his way to keep from having their paths cross again.