Her Valentine Sheriff

by Deb Kastner

  For once, Eli didn’t appear to mind following her instructions. The high-toned baby voice he was using was absolutely adorable—or rather, the man doing the speaking was adorable, though she was fairly certain he wouldn’t want to know that. Could she help it if her heart skipped a beat or two?

  “That was awesome,” he called out enthusiastically as Bullet returned the ball to him. He didn’t hesitate to take the ball out of the dog’s mouth. In fact, he didn’t even appear to notice he was doing so. That was an enormous improvement from his first day, and a big check mark on Mary’s review clipboard.

  “It kind of was, wasn’t it?” Her pulse was racing. She was catching the unit’s excitement.

  “Can we do it again?”

  Enthusiasm. Check.

  “Absolutely. I’ve already dug a few holes just up the road here. I buried boxes there early this morning. All we have to do is move the drug box up to the hole I’ve hollowed out for it and spread a little dirt around it for cover.”

  Eli picked up the marked box and they started up the road in companionable silence. It was especially gratifying to see Bullet padding along at Eli’s heel instead of hers. Apparently the dog was learning how to trust the man. She was glad their mutual dependence on each other was growing.

  When they arrived at the open hole, Eli dropped the box, hid the tennis ball inside and brushed dirt over the top. Then they returned to where Mary had marked the beginning of the course, and Eli and Bullet began a new scan.

  Mary gave herself a mental pat on the back. Eli and Bullet made it look easy, but Mary knew from experience how much skill it took to properly search with a K-9. For a man who appeared less than enthusiastic about his new position on the K-9 unit, he certainly had a knack for it. There was something inherently natural and organic about the way the two moved in synchronicity. Bullet was completely focused on Eli’s command, and Eli didn’t waver.

  When they neared the marked box, Bullet immediately marked the hit, sitting prettily. When the dog’s rump momentarily left the ground in his excitement, Eli gently corrected him, and then bounced the ball for him, lining the air with his high-pitched praise.

  When Mary approached, Eli picked her up by the waist and turned her around with an exuberant whoop. “We’ve got it!”

  “You’ve got it,” she agreed with light laughter, her heart revving like a race car. He was still holding her well above the ground, with her feet dangling in the air. The woodsy scent of his aftershave colored her senses, making her breathless and light-headed. “You’ve still got me, too.”

  He beamed down at her and then his eyes widened. For the first moment after their gazes locked, there was just the two of them, breathing as one. The air was thick and alive between them. Every one of her senses expanded and flittered wildly, rooted only in Eli. There was something...more...between them. Mary felt that unexplained something. It was there in Eli’s warm gaze. Slowly, carefully, he lowered her to the ground, his arms lingering around her waist even after she was back on her feet.

  “I...er...sorry,” he stammered. “I guess I got a little too caught up in the moment. I apologize.”

  “Nothing to apologize for,” she assured him, straightening her silk scarf over her royal-blue cardigan and wondering if he noticed the blush on her cheeks. And did he know he’d put it there? She laughed nervously and fought the urge to cover her face with her palms.

  She had never felt so discombobulated in all of her life. Happy, sad, confused, excited, despondent and yet with a singular, joyfully vivid portrait of what had happened between them. She couldn’t stay here, in this emotional place—not without risking much more than just her business.

  “I’m glad to see some enthusiasm out of you for a change.” Distance. She needed to put distance between them, if only in her words.

  “I’m just happy to be doing real work. For a change,” he quipped back, quirking that adorable grin of his. Apparently he hadn’t been as affected by what had happened as she had been, which led her to question if she might have imagined the whole moment altogether. Was it all in her head?

  Of course it was. You’re not his type. You never have been.

  She was ashamed of herself for making something out of nothing. Now she wanted to move on—and away from her own idiocy.

  She started to correct him, but then closed her mouth without saying a word. She could talk until she was blue in the face and never convince him that tossing a tennis ball was work. At least he was beginning to associate it with rewarding Bullet for a job well done. If that wasn’t work, she didn’t know what was, but there was no sense in arguing with him about it. Besides, there’d been amusement in his tone. Maybe he was just teasing her. He still had that undecipherable gleam in those blue eyes—the one she inevitably misinterpreted.

  Reality? Check, please.

  “What’s next?” he asked eagerly, bouncing on his toes in roughly the same rhythm as Bullet’s wagging tail.

  “As you’ve witnessed, I’ve trained Bullet to associate his tennis ball with the scent of illegal drugs. Now we’ll get Bullet to mark a hit on the drugs without the use of his ball—except as his reward, of course.

  “There are a couple of junked autos farther up this road. I’ve planted the scent in one of them, but I’m not going to tell you which one. You and Bullet will have to search the vehicles to find the plant. It’s probably one of the more frequent actions you will have to perform on the police force, since you will be the only K-9 unit available for miles around.”

  “At least until you get contracts with the other departments,” he reminded her, wagging his eyebrows. His face was virtually radiating with another stellar grin.

  “Thank you for the vote of confidence.” She didn’t know if she could stand it if he smiled at her again. Her heart just kept leaping, as if on his command, no matter how she reprimanded it. Where Eli was concerned, she simply had no control over her emotions. Which meant working with him was the most dangerous—and painful—thing she’d ever done.

  “Believe it,” Eli assured her, tossing the ball ahead of him down the road for Bullet to fetch.

  “Thank you,” she repeated, feeling foolish for not having something clever to say. “Are you ready for this next go-round with Bullet?”

  His lips twitched. “I don’t know. It depends. I’ve never been very good at tests. Is that what this is?”

  * * *

  Eli’s skin prickled as he noted the extended pause before Mary answered him. And she wouldn’t meet his eyes—never a good sign.

  “I’m not testing you, exactly,” she promised him. “I’m trying to mimic what you’re likely to face in the field. A lot rides on how well you and Bullet are able to execute your orders together as a unit. You aren’t going to know whether or not drugs are present when you’re searching a parking lot full of cars or the lockers at the high school.”

  “You have a point,” Eli admitted. He felt like his performance had improved with the day’s work, but he didn’t want to ruin it by blowing this next search. If he was going to be graded, that upped the ante. He wasn’t happy with any less than the best score possible, which meant he had to ace this exercise.

  He was fairly positive he hadn’t given Bullet any body language clues during the past two searches, but he had known where the drugs were hidden, so anything was possible. Now he had to rely entirely on the interplay between himself and Bullet, and he wasn’t entirely confident they would succeed.

  It all came down to one thing—he was being forced to trust the dog.

  Now, there was irony. He never would have imagined himself in this situation, and yet here he was. Not only working with a dog but depending on him.

  “It’s about a half mile. Do you want to hop in my vehicle and drive down the road, or would you rather walk?” Mary asked.

  Eli removed the ball
from Bullet’s jaws and heaved it as hard as he could into the brush. Bullet bounded after it, his tail wagging. He was no longer white-knuckled every time his hand got near the dog’s chops, which was really saying something. “We can walk. It’s a nice day out.”

  “I think so, too. Sometimes I bring Sebastian out here to walk and spend some quiet time with God.”

  As they started down the road, Eli glanced in her direction, but she wasn’t looking at him. In fact, she seemed to be looking anywhere but at him, lost in whatever it was that she was ruminating over. His gaze swept over the curl of her light brown hair and lingered on the dimple in her chin that perfectly divided her heart-shaped face. She was a pretty woman—not with the striking look-at-me way her sister, Natalie, had about her—but with a gentle, unassuming beauty that snuck up on a man and grabbed him from behind, and then wouldn’t let go.

  “What are you thinking about?” he asked, his voice taking on a low, husky timbre.

  She glanced up at him, surprise widening her emerald gaze.

  “Oh... I... Well,” she stammered before looking away again. “I don’t think I ought to say.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to intrude upon your privacy.” Eli chastised himself, but in the same instant, he also felt the slap of rejection. Irrational, but there it was.

  “It’s not that.” Her cheeks took on a lovely rose hue. “I just don’t— I was thinking about Natalie,” she blurted.

  “Oh.” Eli’s heart slammed to a halt in his chest.

  “See? Now I’m the one who is sorry. I’m sure her name is the last you’d like to hear right now. Or ever.”

  That much was true enough, but it wasn’t Mary’s fault she was related to a self-absorbed shrew like Natalie.

  “It’s okay for you to talk about her to me,” he said. “She’s not my favorite subject, sure, but I can’t pretend nothing ever happened between me and Natalie, or that she is not your sister.” He swallowed the well of humiliation bubbling in his throat. “Family is family, and blood is blood. You can’t walk away from those kinds of bonds. I get that.”

  “It was just so unfair of her to do that to you.”

  Eli let out a surprised chuckle. For some reason, he hadn’t expected Natalie’s own sister to side with him. He’d assumed she would think, as most of the town did, that he was somehow at fault for the sudden breakup.

  “You think so?” he asked, amazed by where this conversation was leading.

  “I know so,” she replied adamantly. “Natalie may be beautiful on the outside, but she has a real selfish streak. Even when she was a little girl, she never thought of anyone but herself. I can’t say I was completely surprised that she dropped you like a hot potato when a better offer came along.”

  Ouch. Her words stung, even if she was telling the truth.

  She sucked in an audible breath and clapped her hands over her mouth, groaning from deep in her throat.

  “Oh, I am so sorry. That did not come out the way I intended.”

  Eli dropped one shoulder and scoffed. “No biggie.”

  “Yes, it is. Eli—” She stopped walking and reached for his arm, pulling him to face her. “That man is not the better catch. Natalie saw nothing but the dollar signs in his eyes and the cash protruding from his pocket. She didn’t care what kind of man she was getting—or giving up. I think she passed up the best thing that ever happened to her when she walked away from you, but I can’t be angry with her for that—she’ll realize what she lost someday, and that’ll be punishment enough. What still makes me mad is her lack of kindness in the matter. She was downright cruel to you, and there’s no excuse for that.”

  Eli felt a genuine smile curl his lips. He cleared his throat, which suddenly felt grazed and thick with emotion. “Well, I’m glad you think so.”

  Her normally pale complexion turned a deep shade of burnished red, and the apples of her cheeks were the colors of—well, apples. Though she was obviously embarrassed that she’d spoken so passionately, he couldn’t help but feel pleased, both at her clear opinion that he was the better man and at her anger on his behalf over the way he’d been treated. It was nice to know she cared.

  She gave an uneasy nod and pointed across the grassland. “We go off-road from here for about another quarter of a mile.”

  Eli turned in the direction she indicated, focusing on where he placed his steps. The terrain was difficult. Black-tailed prairie dogs had spread out over the area, their colony marked at odd intervals by holes and mounds. He was wearing steel-toed work boots, which made navigation relatively easy, but Mary was wearing some kind of dainty slip-on shoe, which made her walk far more treacherous.

  “Be careful,” Eli warned, reaching for her hand. “The footing is a little tricky in some spots. These prairie-dog holes are everywhere.”

  Mary laughed. “Thank you, but I’m practically a mountain goat. I come out here all the time to— Oh!”

  She sidestepped a prairie-dog hole, only to have her foot land squarely on a patch of loose gravel. Her ankle turned, and it was only thanks to the fact that Eli had his hand in hers that she didn’t land on her backside.

  “Are you okay?” Eli asked, lowering her gently to the ground.

  She scoffed and shook her head. “Other than my dignity? Yeah, I’m okay.”

  Eli knelt to examine her ankle, which was already swelling and turning a concerning color of purple.

  “I don’t think so,” Eli contended. “If I’m not mistaken, you’ve sprained it pretty bad. Hopefully it’s not worse than that.”

  “It’s nothing,” she denied, rolling onto her knees. Shaky and using Eli’s shoulder as a prop, she tried to stand. A distressed little mew escaped from her throat when she put weight on her ankle. She sank back down onto the dry grass with a discouraged sigh.

  “We’d best get you to the doctor,” Eli said, not asking for permission before scooping her into his arms. There was no way he was going to let her walk in this condition, though he knew she was stubborn enough to try. And he wasn’t going to leave her alone to go retrieve her vehicle, either.

  “Eli, you can’t carry me,” she protested against his chest.

  “I don’t see why not. We’ve got to get back to your SUV, and you aren’t going to be walking.” He started tramping back down the road.

  “I can walk. I’ll lean on you,” she protested. “I’m far too heavy for you to carry all the way back.”

  “Are you kidding me right now?” Eli snickered through his teeth. “You’re as light as a feather.” He swung her around until she squealed, just to make his point.

  He didn’t know why she was creating such a fuss. If he was having a problem with anything, it wasn’t her weight. The soft musk of her perfume was doing a number on him, but he wasn’t going to complain about that.

  Mary sighed in resignation. “At least don’t make me go to the doctor. My ankle isn’t broken, I promise. See, I can move it.”

  She rotated her ankle in a small circle. He didn’t miss the grimace of pain that crossed her face, but he didn’t comment on it, either.

  “There’s ice in the cooler I put together for our lunch,” she continued. “We can pack my ankle, and I’ll rest while we eat.”

  “That sounds good for a start,” Eli agreed. “I’m starving. But I’m declaring it to be the end of our workday today. You’re not going back out on that ankle—you ought to keep it elevated for at least the rest of the day, probably longer. At the bare minimum we need to wrap your ankle in a bandage. So after lunch, I’m taking you home. No more resistance, okay?”

  “But what about your bike? You can’t leave it out here.”

  “Sure I can. No worries. I’ll get my sister to drive me out here later to pick it up.”

  “But—”

  “Will you please stop arguing with me? I’m
a stubborn man. You aren’t going to get anywhere with me, so you may as well save your breath and accept your fate.” Her attitude was frustrating...but also oddly refreshing. He’d never had a woman argue so hard against letting him take care of her. The women he usually dated were only too willing to have him wait on them hand and foot. He had to admit, it was a pleasant change to spend time with someone who didn’t insist on her own needs coming first.

  As they reached Mary’s vehicle, he gently placed her on the open tailgate while he spread a blanket in the bed of the SUV. Bullet curled up under the tailgate and promptly went to sleep, his tennis ball still in his mouth. Eli laid out the fare she had packed for them—bread, American cheese, hard salami, turkey, ham, veggies, chips and soda. His stomach rumbled.

  She laughed. “I guess you really are hungry.”

  “Hey, I worked hard out there today. I deserve my appetite.” He wrapped some ice in a dish towel and packed it around her ankle.

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “That feel okay to you?”

  “It’s fine. Please stop fussing over me.”

  “So what if I want to fuss over you a little bit? You’re hurt. I’m here. I’m gonna take care of you. End of story.”

  She looked away, but not before he spotted tears, her eyes awash in green.

  “What’s the matter? What can I do for you? Is it your ankle? I think I have some painkillers in the glove compartment.”

  She sniffed. “No. My ankle is fine. I just—well, thank you.”

  “You already said that.”

  “I did, didn’t I? I’m starting to repeat myself, and that’s never pretty. I’m sure you don’t want to be stuck out here with a blubbering female.”

  Instead of replying, Eli stacked a sandwich for her. She was right about him not being comfortable with her tears, but that was because he didn’t know what he could do to fix her problem.

  He didn’t even know what the problem was. If she wasn’t crying because her ankle was hurting her, then why was she crying? What was wrong with her? She wasn’t going to let him take her to the doctor, and frankly, he didn’t know what else to do for her.