The Cop, the Puppy and Me

Sullivan extricated himself from the call before the chief thought of any more ways to make his life miserable.

He got out of his car. Through the open screen door of Della’s house—a house so like Sarah’s it should have spooked him—he could hear his nephews, Jet, four, and Ralf, eighteen and half months, running wild. He climbed the steps, and tugged the door.

Unlocked.

He went inside and stepped over an overturned basket of laundry and a plastic tricycle. His sister had once been a total neat freak, her need for order triggered by the death of their parents, just as it had triggered his need for control.

He supposed that meant the mess was a good thing, and he was happy for her, moving on, having a normal life, despite it all.

Sullivan found his sister in her kitchen. The two boys pushed by him, first Jet at a dead run, chortling, tormenting Ralf by holding Ralf’s teddy bear high out of his brother’s reach. Ralf toddled after him, determined, not understanding the futility of his determination was fueling his brother’s glee.

Della started when she turned from a cookie sheet, still steaming from the oven, and saw Sullivan standing in her kitchen door well. “You scared me.”

“You told me to come at five. For dinner.”

“I lost track of time.”

“You’re lucky it was me. You should lock the door,” he told her.

She gave him a look that in no way appreciated his brotherly concern for her. In fact, her look left him in no doubt that she had tuned into the Tally Hukas show for the afternoon.

“All Sarah McDougall is trying to do is help the town,” Della said accusingly.

Jet raced by, cackling, toy high. Sullivan snagged it from him, and gave it to Ralf. Blessedly, the decibel level was instantly reduced to something that would not cause permanent damage to the human ear.

Sullivan’s eyes caught on a neatly bagged package of chocolate chip cookies on the counter. His sister usually sent him home with a goodie bag after she provided him with a home-cooked meal.

“Are those for me?” he asked hopefully, hoping she would take the hint that he didn’t want to talk about Sarah McDougall.

His sister had never been one to take hints.

“Not now, they aren’t,” she said sharply.

“Come on, Della. The chief is already punishing me,” he groaned.

“How?” she said, skeptical, apparently, that the chief could come up with a suitable enough punishment for Sullivan refusing to do his part to revitalize the town.

“Let’s just say it looks like there’s a lot of puke in my future.”

“Humph.” She was a woman who dealt with puke on a nearly daily basis. She was not impressed. She took the bagged cookies and put them out of sight. “I’m going to donate these to the bake sale in support of Summer Fest.”

“Come on, Della.”

“No, you come on. Kettle Bend is your new home. Sarah’s right. It needs something. People to care. Everyone’s so selfish. Me. Me. Me. Indifferent to their larger world. What happened to Kennedy? Think not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country?”

“We’re talking about a summer festival, not the future of our nation,” he reminded her, but he felt the smallest niggle of something astonishing. Was it guilt?

“We’re talking about an attitude! Change starts small!”

His sister was given to these rants now that she had children and she felt responsible for making good citizens of the world.

Casting a glance at Jet, who was using sweet talk to rewin his brother’s trust and therefore get close to Bubba the bear, Sullivan saw it as a monumental task she had undertaken. With a crow of delight, Jet took the bear. She obviously had some way to go.

If she was going to work on Sullivan, too, her mission was definitely doomed.

“Why on earth wouldn’t you do a few interviews if it would help the town out?” Della pressed him.

“I’m not convinced four days of summer merriment will help the town out,” he said patiently. “I haven’t been here long, but it seems to me what Kettle Bend needs is jobs.”

“At least Summer Fest is an effort,” Della said stubbornly. “It would bring in people and money.”

“Temporarily.”

“It’s better than nothing. And one person acting on an idea might lead other people to action.”

Sullivan considered his sister’s words and the earnest look on her face. Had he been too quick to say no? Strangely, the chief going after him had not even begun to change his mind. But his sister looking at him with disapproval was something else.

It was also the wrong time to remember the tears sparkling behind Sarah McDougall’s astonishing eyes.

But that’s what he thought of.

“I don’t like dealing with the press,” he said finally. “They always manage to twist what you say. After the Algard case, if I never do another interview again it will be too soon.”

Something shifted in his sister’s face as he referred to the case that had finished him as a detective. Maybe even as a human being.

At any other time he might have taken advantage of her sympathy to get hold of those cookies. But it was suddenly there between them, the darkness that he had seen that separated him from this world of cookies and children’s laughter that she inhabited.

They had faced the darkness, together, once before. Their parents had been murdered in a case of mistaken identity.

Della had been the one who had held what remained of their family—her and him—together.

She was the one who had kept him on the right track when it would have been so easy to let everything fall apart.

Only then, when she had made sure he finished school, had she chosen to flee her former life, the big city, the ugliness of human lives lost to violence.

And what had he done? Immersed himself in it.

“How could they twist what you had to say about saving a dog?” she asked, but her voice was softer.

“I don’t present well,” he said. “I come across as cold. Heartless.”

“No, you don’t.” But she said it with a trace of doubtfulness.

“It’s going to come out that I don’t even like dogs.”

“So you’ll come across as a guy who cares only about himself. Self-centered,” she concluded.

“Colossally,” he agreed.

“One hundred percent pure guy.”

They both laughed, her reluctantly, but still coming around. Not enough to take the cookies out of the cupboard, though. He made a little bet with himself that he’d have those cookies by the time he left here.

Wouldn’t that surprise the troublemaker? That he could be charming if he chose to be?

There it was. He was thinking about her again. And he didn’t like it one little bit. Not one.

“You should think about it,” his sister persisted.

It occurred to him that if he dealt with the press, his life would be uncomfortable for a few minutes.

If he didn’t appease his sister—and his boss—his life could be miserable for a lot longer than that.

“I think,” Della said, having given him ten seconds or so to think about it, “that you should say yes.”

“For the good of the town,” he said a little sourly.

“For your own good, too.”

There was something about his sister that always required him to be a better man. And then there was a truth that she, and she alone, knew.

He would do anything for her.

Yet she never took advantage of that. She rarely asked him for anything.

Sullivan sighed heavily. He had a feeling he was being pushed in a direction that he did not want to go in.

At all.

CHAPTER THREE

THE phone couldn’t have rung at a worse moment. Sarah was trying to shovel her latest batch of rhubarb jam into jars. How had her grandmother done this without getting jam everywhere? It was dripping down the outside of the jars, ruining the labels. She had managed to get sticky globs everywhere, including her hair!

Frisky? Sarah felt utterly exhausted.

Her phone had been ringing more than normal because of the free time on the Tally Hukas radio show yesterday, but still, she had the thought she had had every single time her phone had rung since she moved here to Kettle Bend.

She hoped it was Mike. She hoped he was phoning to beg her forgiveness. She hoped he was phoning to beg her to come back!

“I can’t wait to tell him no,” Sarah said, wiping goo off her hand before picking up the receiver.

Her ex-fiancé begging her forgiveness would go a long way in erasing the sourness of a heartache!

“Miss McDougall?”

It was definitely not her philandering ex-fiancé calling—Sarah would recognize that voice anywhere! She froze, licked a tiny trace of rhubarb jam off her wrist. Her heart was pounding unreasonably.

The jam seemed a little too tart.

Just like him.

“Oliver?” she said. She used his first name deliberately, hoping to aggravate him. No doubt, he was not calling voluntarily. Forced into it by the notoriety he had come into yesterday as a result of that radio show.

She enjoyed the sensation of having the upper hand.

But she also liked the way his name sounded on her lips. She had liked his name ever since she’d seen that video on the internet, and heard his name for the first time.

And this just in, fantastic footage out of Kettle Bend, Wisconsin, of Officer Oliver Sullivan …

His silence satisfied her. Then the silence was shattered by the shriek of a baby. For a stunned moment, she allowed that Oliver Sullivan might be married. There had been no ring on his finger. But lots of men did not wear rings. Especially if their line of work might make wearing them a hazard.

Sarah considered the downward swoop of her stomach with amazement. Why would she feel bereft if Oliver Sullivan was married?

“I’m having an emergency,” he said, after a moment. “I’ve tried everything. I can’t stop the baby from crying.”

“Wh-wh-what baby?”

He had her off balance, again. He was supposed to be caving to pressure, begging her to let him do some interviews!

“My nephew, Ralf. My sister takes pity on my bachelor state—”

Bachelor state. How silly that it felt as if the light was going back on in her world!

Her world, she reminded herself sternly, was jam and Summer Fest.

“—and has me over for dinner when I’m off. But she’s had a family emergency last night. Her husband was in a car accident on his way home from work. She had to leave suddenly. I don’t want to call her at the hospital and tell her the baby won’t stop crying. She’s got enough on her plate already.”

Sarah felt a faint thrill of vindication. She had just known this kind of man was lurking behind that remote facade he presented. The kind of man who would rescue a dog. Who would shield his sister from more anxiety.

“How is your brother-in-law?”

“Jonathon is fine. The injury is not life-threatening. It’s just a complicated fracture that needs surgery. It’s serious enough that she’s not leaving him.”

He would be like that, too, Sarah thought with a shiver. Fiercely devoted. If he ever allowed anything or anyone to get by his guard. Which seemed unlikely. Except this phone call would have seemed unlikely, too—yet here it was.

“And here I am,” he said. His voice was unreasonably sexy. “Jet, get down from there! With a four-year-old nephew who is climbing the curtains and hanging off the rod. And with a baby who won’t stop crying. Not knowing who to call.”

Sarah was surprised to hear, beyond the sexiness, the faintest note of something else in his voice. Panic? Surely not?

“And why call me?” she asked, softly. Imagining he might say, I saw something in your face I could not forget. You are the kind of woman a man dreams of having children with. Did you know you have a tender beauty in your eyes?

“Your front door was open when I came by to see you the other day. I saw the framed magazines on your wall. I figured you must be some kind of expert on babies. Though, Ralf’s not today’s baby, exactly. He’s eighteen months old.”

“Oh.” Again, not what she’d expected.

“Ah, also, I figured I had a bargaining chip with you.”

“A bargaining chip?”

“You want me to do a few interviews. You have the credentials of a baby expert. Maybe we could work a trade.”

It wasn’t begging exactly, but it was a stunning capitulation.

Still, it was so far from her fantasy of what he might say that she burst out laughing. “I have to warn you, my knowledge of babies is pretty much theoretical.” Sadly

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