River's Bend

by JoAnn Ross

  “It is difficult,” she admitted. “It seems as if we’re hardly ever alone, and then, even when we are—”

  “You’re racing the clock. Literally, tonight,” he said with a frustrated look toward the clock. “Along with the calendar.”

  She nodded and looked inclined to say something when his phone buzzed.

  Damn. Cooper had discovered that unlike when he’d been a city cop, one problem with being sheriff of a town the size of River’s Bend was that it tended to be an around-the-clock job. People who’d never bother their banker or doctor outside of office hours felt perfectly free to track him down with their personal grievances.

  Having appointed Cal chief deputy six months ago had made little difference. People in River’s Bend were used to having Cooper Murphy solve their problems. The same way his father and grandfather had done.

  The news wasn’t good. But not as bad as it might have been.

  “Jake got drunk and showed up at Mel Skinner’s house again,” he told Rachel after ending the call. “Cal’s got him in a cell to sleep it off.”

  “Oh, dear.” Her eyes filled with a very real concern. “He’s been doing so well.”

  “The government set the date for the auction. I suppose that’s what set him off.”

  “No doubt. I know all too well how upsetting it can be to lose everything. When is it?”

  “December twenty-third.”

  “That’s terrible timing. You’d think they could have waited until after Christmas.”

  “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? I keep hoping some proof of the payment he swears he made will turn up. If only we had more time.”

  They exchanged a bleak look. “Perhaps I could talk with him,” Rachel suggested. “Sometimes it helps to know that someone understand what you’re going through. And I definitely know how it feels to lose my home.”

  Cooper shrugged. “It sure couldn’t hurt. Jake likes you. A lot.”

  “I like him, too.”

  “He keeps telling me that I’m not good enough for you.”

  Despite the seriousness of the topic, Rachel smiled up at him. “Why don’t we let me be the judge of that?”

  “Good idea. I don’t suppose you’d be open to a little personal lobbying for my case?”

  “Feel free to give it your best shot, Sheriff.”

  “I’ve never been one to turn down a challenge.”

  Cooper forced himself to linger over the kiss, even as he felt the now familiar flare of heat rising. They couldn’t keep it banked for long, he knew as he tasted her lips from one silky corner to the other, feeling her tremble in his arms. Not from nerves, but the same emotions that were burning through him.

  As he finally backed away, he considered that when they finally did make love, the challenge would be to keep the flames from consuming them both.

  26

  Dr. Ryan Murphy had set up shop in a historical building two blocks north of Front Street on Eureka Way. Quarried from Rogue River Valley sandstone, it had originally been built as an inn and restaurant by Wong Kee, a Chinese miner who had deposited over a million dollars in gold dust in various Oregon banks.

  When restrictive anti-Chinese legislation forced Wong to return to China with his fortune, it had become a bordello that transformed into a speakeasy during Prohibition. After liquor became legal again, the building spent three decades as a boarding house before finally falling into disrepair.

  While Cooper and his brothers had been growing up, like probably every other kid in River’s Bend, they’d sneak into the boarded up Victorian, scaring themselves spitless with ghostly tales of twin prostitutes who’d supposedly been murdered in one of the second floor bedrooms.

  Then damned if Ryan hadn’t returned to town, cash in hand, and surprised everyone, Cooper included, by restoring the building with the colorful, not always legitimate past. His medical offices were on the first floor with living quarters on the second. The jury was still out about whether the ghosts had stuck around during all the construction.

  After dropping Scott off at the New Chance, as he did every weekday, Cooper drove to his brother’s office/home. As soon as he turned off Front Street, Hummer, who’d been sprawled lazily in the back seat, leaped up and began to bark.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Cooper muttered. “We’re going to visit Layla.”

  Layla Longstreet—Ryan’s partner, Nurse Practitioner, office manager, ill child soother, and keeper of dog biscuits—stood up from behind the antique counter as Hummer came dashing into the office, his nails clattering on the wood plank floor.

  “Well, look who’s here,” she said, bending down to pat him. “The handsomest male in all of River’s Bend.” She scratched the dog behind his ear.

  “Damn mutt broke my eardrum about a block away,” Cooper said. “He may be the laziest animal God ever put on this green earth, but there’s no denying that he has excellent taste in women.”

  “Flatterer,” she laughed as she reached into a ceramic jar and pulled out a MilkBone the size of a small tree limb. She tossed it up, clapping in approval as Hummer snatched it out of the air.

  “It’s not flattery if it’s true.”

  And it was. Tall, with a wild mass of auburn hair laced with lighter gold, and a face that could have earned her a fortune had she decided to try her luck in Hollywood, she’d been Ellen’s best friend since first grade.

  In a rare act of rebellion for a “good” girl who always made honor roll, her senior year she’d started going out with motorcycle riding, black-leather-jacket-wearing Keifer Foster, who, on the rare occasion he worked, was a planer at the sawmill outside of town.

  Instead of going off to Oregon State to major in pre-med as planned, Layla was two months pregnant when she married her bad boy the day after high school graduation.

  Cooper had been on his second tour in Iraq when his dad arrested Foster for domestic violence. Which had him suspecting that Layla’s husband could have been responsible for that miscarriage she’d suffered a few weeks after their quickie wedding.

  Whatever, apparently finally realizing that some people couldn’t be redeemed, Layla divorced the loser, took back her maiden name and returned to school. After receiving a B.S. and MNP, she set up a nurse practitioner office in a small retail space next to the bookstore and had been doing a brisk business when Ryan had returned home and offered her a partnership.

  They made a good team and somehow Layla managed to do the work of three people without breaking a sweat or losing that dazzling Julia Roberts smile.

  “So,” she said, “I hear you’ve been busy.”

  “No more than usual,” he said. “Though Cal did catch Tyler Parker papering the maple in the Young’s front yard last night.”

  “I thought Tyler had a thing for Heather Young.”

  “He does. According to the report Cal wrote up, Madison Parker told her brother that Heather would never go for him because she was team Edward. Which, I have to admit, makes no sense to me.”

  “Hello.” She waved a hand in front of his face. “What planet have you been living on? It’s a mega book and movie series centered around an innocent, virginal girl who has to choose between a beautiful, sparkly bad boy vampire or a kind and caring werewolf.”

  “Edward’s the vampire,” Cooper guessed.

  “Got it in one. Jacob’s the werewolf. My guess would be that after Madison told Tyler that he was playing for the wrong team, the kid decided he needed to do something dramatically bad to get her attention.”

  “Like get arrested for papering her house?” Despite having been one himself, Cooper had long ago tried to figure out the workings of any teenage boy’s mind. He also hoped Heather had switched to team Jacob.

  “Well, you can’t deny he got her attention,” Layla said with a laugh and a shake of her head. “And girls do tend to be attracted to bad boys.” She sighed, suggesting she was thinking back on her own bad boy. “I wouldn’t want to relive my high school days for anything.”

&nbs
p; “Me neither. But there were some good times,” he said, remembering parking with Ellen on a bluff overlooking the river one warm summer’s night. The wide sky had been filled with stars and a full moon had cast a silver streak on dark water as Clay Walker sang about a woman who could hypnotize the moon on his pickup’s radio. That was the night he’d first made love to the girl who’d become his wife.

  “You and Ellen had a lot of good times,” Layla agreed. “That was so unfair, what happened to her.”

  “Won’t get any argument from me.”

  A reflective silence stretched between them.

  “I’m really glad you’re back,” Cooper said.

  “I’m glad I’m back, too. I’m also glad to hear your love life is finally picking up.”

  “Small towns,” he murmured, thinking about all the interwoven circles and connections.

  “Nothing stays secret for long,” she agreed.

  Their stroll down memory lane ended as Mrs. Johnson, who’d been Cooper’s father’s English teacher, entered the reception area/front parlor from the door leading to the examination rooms.

  “Well, Mrs. Johnson,” Layla said as she ran the Medicare card, “I hope Dr. Murphy took good care of you.”

  “Boy’s a fine doctor,” the elderly woman said. “Always takes time to talk and hear a person out. Not like some who are always on the run and talk so fast without a break that you forget what you were going to say. Which is why I always write my complaints down,” she said, lifting up a small yellow sheet of paper, “though some don’t pay any mind to that, either. They’re just out to make a quick buck by treating folks like cattle.”

  “Well, we definitely don’t believe our patients are livestock.” Layla printed out the patient instructions that Ryan had sent to her computer. “Now, you’ll want to get this prescription for lotion filled at Parker’s Drugs. And follow these instructions. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to call. Any time.

  “He’s done for the day,” Layla said as Mrs. Johnson shuffled out the door Cooper held open for her. “You can go on back.”

  Cooper found his brother in his office, which had once been a formal parlor where scantily dressed women had served drinks to men who’d come to pay for pleasure.

  “You actually look like a doctor in that white coat,” he said.

  “I am a doctor, and I wear it to help counter the rumor that all us Murphys are crazy.”

  “Mrs. Johnson certainly sings your praises.”

  Ryan shrugged as he took off the coat and hung it on a rack next to a wall of framed diplomas with embossed gold seals. “She’s lonely. I listen to her, which, along with a prescription lotion for dry skin is all she needs. Woman’s in her nineties and healthy as a horse.”

  “She calls the station two, three times a week,” Cooper said. “The latest was a complaint about people ringing her doorbell, but whenever she’d look through the peephole, they’d be gone.”

  “What was it? Kids doing a ring and run?”

  “No. Being the brilliant cop in the family, I solved the crime before I even rang the bell. Turns out the UPS guy had been leaving packages on her front porch, which she couldn’t see through the peephole. Apparently she’d ordered a bunch of stuff online, then forget about it.”

  “Actually, that’s important for me to know.” Ryan opened a file on his computer and typed in a note. “I’ll have Layla call her back in for a dementia test.”

  That bit of physician business done with, he turned back to Cooper. “So, you do know you’re overdue for your flu shot?”

  “Yeah, yeah. I’ll get to that. Meanwhile, I wanted to give you a head’s up on something.”

  Ryan leaned back in his chair. “This sounds personal.”

  “It is. I may be bringing someone to Thanksgiving dinner.”

  “The widow and her son. Whom you took on that train ride.”

  “That would be them.”

  “I’ve been away and may have missed it, but except for Ellen, I don’t recall you ever taking a woman to the ranch.”

  “Rachel’s different. I’m halfway in love with her.”

  “The fact that you even came by to tell me about her suggests you’ve crossed the line over halfway. And that she’s not just another quick lay like those out-of-town women you were sneaking off to visit.”

  “How the hell did you know about them?”

  “Word gets around.”

  All the way to freaking Afghanistan?

  “It wasn’t as bad as it sounds.” Cooper threw his body into the chair on the visitor’s side of the desk. “But yeah, she’s the one.”

  “Well, it’s about time. The family’s been worried that you were planning to keep Ellen up on that pedestal forever.”

  “It wasn’t so much that I’d put her on a pedestal. More that I was choosy. What she and her husband had was the real thing. I wasn’t willing to settle for anything less.”

  “So this should be good news. Why am I hearing a but in your announcement?”

  “She’s not quite ready to move on.”

  “The woman moved all the way across the country, took on a job that would’ve sent most people running for the hills, and from what I hear, she’s doing a bang-up job of not only refurbishing the New Chance, but turning it into an actual restaurant. To me that suggests she’s come a long way.”

  “She has. But the damn place is taking all her attention. Well, almost.” She certainly didn’t seem to be thinking about the café whenever she was kissing him. “The thing is, she’s not the kind of woman to go for a no-strings affair and with Scott being involved in the equation, I’m willing to give her more time to realize that we’re perfect together.”

  “Well, good luck with that.”

  “Hey, being a Navy squid, you may not be acquainted with the Marine Corps concept about failure not being an option.”

  Ryan laughed, not taking offense at the derogatory nickname Marines had given the Navy. “And, as a jarhead,” he returned the insult with good humor, “you may not realize that squids just happen to be giant sea creatures who swim around the ocean crapping on lower marine life.

  “Seriously though,” he said, “we’re all rooting for you, bro. If you bring her to Thanksgiving dinner, we can plead your case.”

  “That’s all I need. You, Dad, Mitzi, Gramps and Gram putting on a full-court press. I’m already working on getting her there. So if she does show up, could you be casual about it?”

  “You’ve got it. I’ll talk to the others.”

  “Thanks.” Cooper blew out a breath. “I thought it would be weird,” he admitted. “Falling in love again. Especially since Ellen and I had grown up together, so getting married to her was inevitable and comfortable. And totally drama free.

  “But the minute I saw Rachel, I just knew. It was as if I’d been waiting just for her these past years. Then suddenly, there she was, at the New Chance, of all places.”

  “Okay.” It was Ryan’s turn to exhale. “Sounds like you’ve really got it bad.”

  “Yeah. I do.”

  And the weirdest thing was Cooper didn’t mind. At all.

  27

  After what had seemed like nonstop wheedling from Scott, Rachel accepted Mitzi’s and Dan’s Thanksgiving invitation. After conferring with Betty, she contributed a bowl of Cabernet Sauvignon orange cranberry sauce. The roasting turkey and bubbling pots filled the house with a fragrance more appealing than the most expensive perfume, the scents reminding her of holidays in Iowa.

  Extra tables, set up to accommodate all the people without family the couple had invited, groaned with a variety of dishes. Jake was there, as was Jenna Janzen, the pretty blond owner of the local bookstore who’d thoughtfully brought Scott the latest in his favorite Wimpy Kid series, and Layla Longstreet, a stunningly beautiful redhead whom Cooper introduced as his doctor brother’s Nurse Practitioner partner.

  Austin Merrill, the owner of a smaller neighboring ranch, whose cowboy husband was away riding bu
cking broncos in an Australian rodeo, had arrived bearing a lattice-topped cranberry apple pie that looked and smelled delicious. Despite Austin’s smile when she and Rachel were introduced, her eyes were shadowed with a sadness that appeared to be more than loneliness. From the way the other women hovered around her like protective mother hens, Rachel had the impression that she’d come into the middle of a personal story that wasn’t going to be shared. At least not today.

  “You’re undoubtedly horribly busy right now,” Jenna said to Rachel as they stood at the kitchen counter, drinking wine.

  “That would be an understatement,” Rachel agreed.

  “It’s good you were able to escape for the day,” Austin said as she reached for the bottle of chardonnay and topped off her glass.

  “Every time I looked at my to-do list, I resisted. But Scott and Cooper double-teamed me.”

  “Well, we’re glad you’re here,” Jenna said. “I dropped by when you arrived in town, but Cal told me you’d left to get a permit from Hester. Which, because it was lunchtime, probably took a while. Since I had to get back to the bookstore, I couldn’t wait.”

  “I take it you’ve been through Hester’s permit process.”

  Jenna nodded. “I wanted to expand my bookstore into the space that opened up when Layla went into practice with Ryan Murphy. The plan was to include a coffee bar, which probably would’ve been easy with anyone other than Hester. But I finally got it opened, and we even serve desserts, thanks to Austin.”

  Rachel glanced over at Austin. “I thought you were a rancher.”

  “I am. But money’s been tight, and since I’m a pretty good baker, I’ve managed to pick up a bit here and there selling cookies, brownies, tarts and such. Nothing fancy, like you’re probably used to. Just basic desserts.”

  “They’re hardly basic,” Jenna argued. “They’re delicious. And since Johnny didn’t serve desserts, they’ve turned out to be a super draw for the bookstore when people want coffee or tea and something sweet.”