Sweet Devotion

Praise for

#1 Blackboard Bestselling Author

FELICIA MASON

“Mason is a superb storyteller…she creates magic.”

—Publishers Weekly

“[Mason] places the Christian theme front and center while also making room for a touching portrait of human desires and frailties.”

—Booklist

“Felicia Mason…will make the reader sigh, cry, then shout for joy at the triumphant, healing power of true love.”

—Romantic Times

Sweet Devotion

Felicia Mason

www.millsandboon.co.uk

This book is for all of the Ambers

who seek shelter, peace and hope.

A portion of the proceeds of this book

is being donated to Transitions Family

Violence Services, an organization

that supports women and children in crisis.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Author Note

Chapter One

Armed with a carving knife, Amber Montgomery took cover as a metal folding chair hurtled her way. The chair crashed against the edge of a white-draped carving table, taking out the end of the serving station where she’d been carving beef at the Wayside Revelers’ Annual Dinner Dance.

She watched in horror as eight pounds of beets splattered to the floor sending deep red beet juice splashing up and out like a demented geyser.

She’d known, of course, that taking this catering job carried a certain amount of risk. The Wayside Revelers tended to revel a bit too much at their functions. But after their last fiasco at the VFW hall, Amber thought they’d mellowed and would be on their best behavior tonight.

That, obviously, wasn’t the case.

She didn’t know how this melée started, but she needed to—

“Watch out!” someone yelled.

Amber ducked just a moment before another chair came within inches of taking her out.

This was getting personal!

She jumped up. “Hey, I’m the caterer. Why are you attacking me?”

But no one heard her or paid any attention. They were too busy destroying the hall and themselves—and having a great time doing so. The scene in front of her looked like a barroom brawl in the wild wild West. Except, this wasn’t the eighteen-hundreds frontier. It was peaceful little Wayside, Oregon, population 17,800, in the twenty-first century.

Over the commotion, Amber heard what sounded like police sirens. Help was on the way!

Maybe she could salvage the trays of lemon meringue tarts—six hours of work. Amber inched toward the desserts, but someone else spied them at the same time. An elderly man grabbed one in each hand and smiled.

“Don’t you have any respect for food?” she demanded.

Unmindful of the scene playing out behind him, the man shook his head, grinned a toothless smile and aimed.

“Don’t you dare!” Amber said, holding a hand up in front of her face.

“Lighten up, honey,” he said. “It’s just a pastry.”

And then her own lemon meringue hit her in the face. Amber shrieked and whirled around—

“Hold it right there.”

With one hand Amber wiped pie from her face. She cleared her vision enough to see the pie thrower scuttle off to the side and disappear into the crowd. She wiped away more meringue and the shadow in front of her came into focus, the details registering. Tall, with broad shoulders, a slim waist and feet planted apart, he scowled at her. A very big, very threatening cop stood not three feet away.

“You’re under arrest, lady.”

“Me? What did I do? I’m the one being attacked. Arrest one of them,” she demanded, waving the carving knife toward the Revelers now merrily flinging the rest of her lemon tarts at each other.

The cop didn’t spare a glance at the havoc being wrought behind him. “Drop the knife now.”

Amber tensed at the tone. Then she looked up at the cop. His eyes glinted and she realized that his hand hovered near his revolver.

“What knife?”

He took a menacing step forward, and Amber whimpered. The carving knife she’d forgotten she clutched in her hand clattered to the floor. In the next moment, the cop was all over her. He grabbed her arm, yanking it around her back.

“You’re hurting me.”

He didn’t answer. Instead, she felt the cold steel of handcuffs clamp on her wrist.

Something snapped in her then, and Amber fought. A fragment of the self-defense she’d been taught flickered through her. She kicked out at him. “No! You can’t do this. I won’t let you do this…”

One of her kicks connected and she heard his intake of breath. Her small victory, however, was short-lived. He held her tightly and secured the other wrist.

“Lady, if you don’t settle down,” he said, his voice a deceptively calm growl, “I’m going to add resisting arrest to your charges.”

It wasn’t so much what he said as the way the words sounded that got to her. They held a rumbled warning of coming pain. She knew that tone, knew what would happen to her if she defied him again. She’d tried to fight. She’d tried to remember she didn’t have to be a victim. She’d also tried to remember how to defend herself.

But he had the physical advantage of height and weight and strength. Resistance was futile, she realized. Why did it always have to be this way?

Amber closed her eyes and surrendered to the inevitable.

The handcuffed woman went limp, and Paul had to move fast to catch her before she hit the floor.

Police Chief Paul Evans commanded a force of forty sworn officers and a full complement of dispatchers, secretaries and other civilians whose job it was to maintain the peace in Wayside. He’d been warned that the Wayside Revelers had a tendency to get out of hand at their events. So he’d been on patrol in the vicinity of the community center.

When he heard first a shout and then breaking glass, he’d called for backup and rushed in, just in time to have a small, blond beauty threaten him with a wicked-looking blade.

Even now, with the hellion subdued at his side, his officers swarmed the building rounding up rabble-rousers.

He turned to call one of the officers—

Thwack!

A mound of potatoes au gratin hit his forehead. Paul spotted the culprit, a little old man who quickly ditched the serving spoon he’d used as a missile launcher. The man then snatched up a serving tray lid and used it as a shield against the lemon tarts hurled his way.

“Jones!” Paul bellowed.

The cop sprinted forward.

“You there,” Paul ordered the old man. “Stop it.”

The devilish gleam in the elderly man’s eyes was replaced by an expression of innocence and fake senility. “Me?”

“Yeah, you.”

Dragging along a remarkably subdued knife wielder, Paul unlocked a second pair of cuffs.

“You’re arresting me?”

“That’s right, sir.”

“Hot diggity!” The little man stepped quickly to don the cuffs, showing pretty amazing dexterity for someone his age. Paul put him at close to eighty.

“Take these two out to my squad car,” he said to the young officer. “I’ll go round up some more of them.” He wiped his brow, shook potato goo from his hand and glared at the old man who was still grinning at him.

“Assaulting an officer could earn you some jail time, sir.”

“As long as you have cable, that’s fine by me. I like to watch wrestling.”

“I’ll just bet you do,” Paul muttered, walking away and stepping around a huge puddle of beets. The whole place was a wreck.

In the police car, Amber stared out the window, her face an expressionless mask.

“Isn’t this fun?” the little man asked.

It took a moment for the question to sink in and for Amber to comprehend that the pain hadn’t kicked in yet. She turned toward the voice, expecting to see her tormentor. Instead, she came eye-to-eye with an elf. Her eyes widened and her mouth, a thin line, began to tremble.

The man looked alarmed. “Aw, please don’t be mad. It was just a little pastry. It didn’t hurt, did it?”

Amber opened her mouth but no words came forth. Her tongue felt like sandpaper. She blinked once. Then again. And then the tears she’d hoped to hold back started to fall.

The man moved as if to comfort her, then, too late, remembered his hands were cuffed. He almost toppled into her lap. Amber squealed and pressed her back to the door. The little man righted himself.

“Oh, honey. It’s not that bad. Really. They’ll just take us down, do some fingerprints and then give us a good lecture. I missed last year’s dinner-dance, but that’s what I’m told happened.”

Amber just moaned.

To the casual observer, the Main Street district of Wayside, Oregon, might look a whole lot like Mayberry, R.F.D., but the police bureau was a reminder that crime happened in the town just like it did in every other American locality.

Once inside the large oak and cherry doors of the police bureau, it was apparent to any visitor that despite Wayside’s size, it had a state-of-the-art police department, fully equipped to handle any twenty-first century criminal activity and to protect the town’s citizens from such.

A long line of Revelers was herded past the intake desk and into lockup.

Amber stood in the midst of about thirty-five food-stained wretches, most of them incredibly self-satisfied over this bonus extension of their night’s festivities.

“My name’s Silas,” someone said.

Amber looked beside her. There stood her pie thrower, the little man from the police car. Having recovered enough to speak, Amber opened her mouth to give him what-for. But a voice boomed out over the general hubbub, drowning out her first words.

“Listen up, people.”

Amber’s skin prickled at the voice. She turned toward the voice and got another jolt when she looked at the man who’d cuffed and arrested her.

“My name’s Paul Evans and I’m the police chief here.”

“Hi, Chief Evans.” A couple of the Revelers called out the cheery greeting.

“Welcome to Wayside,” the little man at Amber’s side hollered.

Amber watched the big cop shake his head in bemusement. She rubbed her wrists. Though the handcuffs had been removed she still felt the weight of the shackles on her spirit. Taking a much-needed deep breath, Amber fought for the calm she knew she could find if she just took it slow. Keep it light, she coached herself. One breath at a time.

“We’ll be processing each one of you. After that, you’re free to go until your court date.”

“What about the lecture about being responsible citizens?” one of the Revelers asked.

The cop folded his arms across his chest. Amber watched muscles bunch and constrict, the blue fabric of his uniform pulled taut. Her study of the man missed no detail. From the black hiking boots at his feet, to the gleaming hardware on his gun belt.

His face matched the rest of him. Clean-shaven, angular. She paused at his eyes. Something wasn’t right about his eyes. A deep, almost piercing blue, they fit his face, but… Amber tilted her head a fraction, getting another view. At just that second, his gaze connected with hers.

She caught her breath.

He watched her for a moment, then turned his attention back to the group. “You want a lecture about acting like six-year-olds? The community center is completely trashed thanks to your food fight. Who’s in charge of you people?”

The crowd in lockup parted. Amber edged forward so she was near the front.

“I don’t belong in here,” she said. “You’ve made a mistake.”

Paul’s eyes narrowed in on her.

“About you, lady, there was no mistake.”

“I’m the grand marshal,” a man said, stepping forward and poking his chest out.

If it hadn’t been for the meringue in his hair, the potatoes on his tie and a missing shoe, he might have passed for “grand.”

Chuckling at the assembly, a couple of cops walked up behind the police chief, surveying the mass in lockup.

“What are you doing here, Amber?” Sergeant Caleb Jenkins asked.

“Caleb. Thank God.” Relief poured through Amber. “That’s the same thing I’ve been trying to find out. That lug head you call a police chief hauled me in here.”

People behind her snickered.

A muscle flickered angrily in Paul’s jaw. Though locked bars separated them, Amber stepped back.

“Lug head?”

“Uh,” Caleb started. “I, uh… He’s not a…” The sergeant didn’t meet her gaze, focusing instead on something on his boots.

“There’s been some kind of mix-up, Chief,” the sergeant said, marshaling his vocabulary and coming to her defense. “This is Amber Montgomery. She’s not a Reveler. She’s a caterer.”

Paul didn’t look convinced of her innocence. “You threatened me with a knife.”

Amber glared up at him, not letting the physical disparity of their heights dissuade her. “I am a caterer. If you’d done any kind of police work, you’d know that that was a carving knife. But how could you do any real police work—you were too busy shoving me around.”

Amber thrust her wrists in front of him. “Look.” Two bruises marred her pale skin.

Paul looked horrified. “What happened to you? Did somebody in the cage do that to you?”

“No, Chief Evans. You did. And you better believe that I’m filing a formal complaint.”

She whirled back toward Caleb. “Who hires the police chief?”

“Uh.” He looked from Amber to Paul. “Uh…”

“The mayor,” Paul supplied.

Just then a commotion in the hallway interrupted them. The main doors burst open. Wayside’s mayor strode in, followed by a reporter and a photographer from the Wayside Gazette and a frantic-looking Haley Brandon-Dumaine.

“Amber!”

“Paul,” the mayor bellowed. “What is going on in here?”

It took a good ten minutes to sort through what had happened.

“I’m pretty disappointed with you, Randall,” the mayor told the Revelers’ grand marshal. “I thought you all learned your lesson the last time.”

The Revelers’ last dinner-dance had resulted in a lifetime ban from the VFW hall.

“Some of us weren’t there then,” Silas called out.

It took a while, but on the mayor’s word and that of several longtime police officers, Amber was released from lockup. Haley stood with Amber as she signed the requisite forms.

“Ms. Montgomery, I’m truly sorry. It was an honest mistake,” Paul said, approaching them.

Amber’s derisive snort clearly said she wasn’t buying it.

“Will you let me formally apologize?”

Amber spun around. “You’ve got a lot of nerve, mister. First you yank me around like I’m some kind of rag doll. Now you think you can just make nice and I’ll forget about the way you treated me. Never again,” she said. “You’ll be hearing from my lawyer.”

Those were fine words coming from someone who didn’t even know a lawyer, let alone have one.

Amber’s dramatic exit from the police station sapped the rest of her energy. By the time they got to Haley’s car, Amber felt like a rag doll that had not only been yanked around and dragged across the ground but also run through a washing machine.

“Are you all right?” Haley asked.

Amber nodded, but she stared out the passenger-side window of Haley’s car. “I need to get my stuff. My van is still at the community center.”

Haley winced. “I don’t think you’ll be able to get it. At least not tonight. Chief Evans isn’t letting anyone near there until they get photos of all the damage. When I drove by, your van was inside the crime scene tape.”

“Great, just great. How am I supposed to make my deliveries tomorrow?”

“You can take my car if you need it. I’ll have Matt drop me off at school.” Haley stopped at a red light and reached a hand out to her cousin. “Amber, I’m worried about you.”

Amber didn’t meet her concerned gaze. “I’m fine,” she said, trying to convince herself. “And I’m not going to have a breakdown, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

The two women rode in silence for a moment. Then Amber, in a voice that was steady and strong, said, “The only thing on my mind is making that cop pay for what he did to me.”

Haley glanced at her. “Which cop, Amber? The one here, or the one who hurt you in L.A.?”

Chapter Two

Paul Evans pulled into his driveway after a long shift. In his three months in Wayside, this had been the first time he’d experienced any rowdiness in the small town.

And he’d take what amounted to a massive food fight over the rough and tumble of the place he’d come from. Wayside, Oregon, was a world and a culture away from Los Angeles.

He’d been given a heads-up about the Wayside Revelers, so he’d been expecting a need to cruise by their dinner-dance during his patrol shift.

The Revelers were all supposed to be retirees, or at least card-carrying members of the AARP. One in particular, however, didn’t fit that profile. Paul hadn’t been prepared for the fiery beauty who stood up to him brandishing a knife.

How was he supposed to have known she was the caterer? Her eyes flashed and she looked as if she were out for blood—his in particular. In the evidence room, he’d taken a look at that knife again. Carving knife or not, it could have done some damage had it truly been used as a weapon.

On the drive home, just one thing stuck with Paul, though, nicking his conscious, pestering his peace of mind, making him doubt what he’d seen with his own two eyes: How could he have grabbed her so hard that he’d left a bruise?

That ate at him like nothing else—even the fact that she kept saying “again.” He searched his memory, but couldn’t recall arresting her in L.A. Granted, he’d arrested a lot of people in his ten years as a cop on the street there. Maybe she’d been in the number. But surely he’d remember someone who looked like Amber Montgomery—like summer and cornfields and blue skies.

She’d caught his eye, all right.

Not remembering her as a suspect in L.A., however, didn’t bother him as much as that bruise on her arm.

The other Revelers tossed food around. Messy, yes. But not necessarily deadly. The knife wielded by Amber Montgomery, well, that piece of business was another story altogether. Despite her objection, the weapon had been bagged, tagged and put into an evidence locker at the police station.

He thought he’d let go of at least some of the wariness and care that had served him well on the LAPD. But apparently, he’d not yet gotten acclimated to Wayside and its considerably lower crime rate.

If a geriatric food fight ranked as serious crime here—serious enough to roust the mayor and get him to police headquarters—Paul had definitely settled in the right place. In a city the size of Los Angeles, only crimes like mass rioting, terrorism or a high-profile celebrity slaying ranked severe enough for top public officials to make an unscheduled appearance at police headquarters.

Yeah, he’d take a food fight any day over what he’d left behind.

Drawing a deep breath, Paul shed the cares of the job in exchange for the role that brought him the greatest sense of satisfaction.

“Hi, Eunice,” he said, walking in his front door. He un-buckled his gun belt, locked both the revolver and the belt in a closet, then tucked the key away on the chain he always wore around his neck.

“Well, howdy, Chief. Busy night, huh? I heard the Revelers got out of control again.”

He nodded. “You could say that. Thanks for staying with the kids.”

She wrapped up the knitting she’d been doing, placed yarn and needles in a large quilted bag at her side. “Not a problem. Sutton and Jonathan are fast asleep, bless their little hearts. You have two fine children there, Chief.”

Paul thought so, too. “I hope they didn’t wear you out too much.”

Eunice pooh-poohed that. “If anything, it’s the other way around,” she said on a chuckle. “We had fun.”

He pulled out his wallet.

“If you hand me any money, Paul Evans, I’m going to be mighty insulted.”

“Eunice, I can’t let you do this and not pay you.”

“You’re new to Wayside,” she said, patting his hand. “You’ll get the hang of the place soon. I left a plate of cookies for you. We made gingerbread men.”

Paul smiled. Having Eunice Gallagher living right across the street was a godsend, one of many he’d encountered in Wayside. She was the secretary at Community Christian Church, where he’d transferred his membership shortly after arriving in Wayside. A native of Wayside, she’d all but adopted him and his kids.

He helped her with her coat.

“Eunice, do you know a woman by the name of Amber Montgomery?”

The older lady beamed. “Of course! Everybody knows Amber. Don’t tell me you haven’t had one of her honey pecan rolls yet.”

“Honey pecan rolls?”

Eunice laughed. “Goodness, how in the world have you lived here for three months and not had one of those yet? Tell you what, I’ll swing by the inn tomorrow and get you some if they’re not sold out by the time I get there. You’re in for a treat.”

He was still trying to understand. “Wait, so she’s the town baker?”

Eunice picked up her knitting bag. “No. She’s a gourmet chef. She runs a catering business called Appetizers & More, but most people know her for the honey pecan rolls and her lemon meringue tarts.” Eunice smacked her lips. “Talk about delicious.”

Since he’d been hit with potatoes and not tarts, Paul couldn’t agree or disagree. He thought back to Amber’s earlier behavior, though, if she hadn’t looked so dazed, he’d have sworn she’d played a tactic used by nonviolent protesters. That going limp bit had been used for decades.

“Shock,” he surmised. She had to have been in shock. Law-abiding citizens could be counted on to react in one of two ways—outrage or polite pacifism—while they waited patiently or impatiently—for things to get sorted out.

He’d spent so many years working the violent streets of South-Central L.A. that he’d forgotten about law-abiding citizens. Tonight wasn’t the first time he’d had a knife in his face. But it probably was the first time in his law enforcement career that the brandisher hadn’t tried to slice him with it.

Paul felt bad—really, really bad—about the bruise he’d put on her arm.

After he watched Eunice cross the street, open her door then flick her front porch light, Paul looked in on his sleeping children. Sutton, whose teddy bear Bentley and rag doll Angel cuddled close to her, looked like an angel herself. Her blond curls spread out over the pillow.

She looked a lot like her mom. Paul’s heart constricted at the thought.

He stood watching her for a while. Then he placed a kiss on her head and whispered “I love you” to the sleeping child.

A bathroom connected the two bedrooms, and the doors always remained open. On the countertop sat Wally, another of Sutton’s stuffed toys—this one a rainbow fish.

With a small chuckle, Paul greeted Wally. “So you’re on the night watch this evening.”

Paul walked through to Jonathan’s room where lights blazed overhead and at the boy’s desk. Sprawled on his twin bed with its cartoon-character sheets, Jonathan had, as usual, kicked all the covers off. Paul tugged the sheet and light blanket up.