Sarah And The Sheriff

He felt the impact like a sucker punch to the kidneys.

He’d only known one woman with eyes that particular shade.

The principal pushed open the door. “Pardon the interruption, Miss Clay,” he said, ushering Eli inside. “This is your new student, Eli Scalise. Eli, this is Miss Clay.”

Max stood rooted to the floor outside the doorway.

Sarah.

She was no longer looking at him with those eyes that were as translucent as the Wyoming winter sky, but at Eli.

Her smile was warm. Slightly crooked. And it made Max wonder if he’d imagined the frigid way she’d looked at him through the window.

“Eli,” she greeted. “Come on in. Take off your coat. Can’t have you roasting to death on your first day here.” She gestured at the line of coats hanging on pegs. “We do our roasting only on Wednesdays.”

Eli shot Max a studiously bored look. But Max still saw the twitch of Eli’s lips.

A good sign. Maybe he wouldn’t have to worry about Eli, after all.

He looked back at Sarah again.

What the hell was she doing here? A teacher of all things. When they’d been involved—

He cut off the thought.

She gave him no more attention than she gave the principal as she showed Eli where to sit, and after assuring herself that he had the usual school supplies, she moved back to the front of the class. Without a glance their way, she picked up right where she’d left off. “Okay, so if the tornado is spinning to the right,” she turned on her heels and the braid she’d woven her hair into swayed out from her spine.

Max started when Joe Gage headed out of the classroom and pulled the door closed, cutting off whatever else Professor Sarah was imparting. “She’s a good teacher,” Joe said. “Strict. But she really cares about her kids.”

Max headed back up the corridor with Joe. “How long has she been here?”

“This will be her sixth year. So, Donna tells me you’ve already completed all the paperwork for Eli. You put your mom down as his caretaker? Is Genna up to that?”

He could have asked a dozen questions about Sarah Clay.

He asked none.

“Eli doesn’t need a lot of care. He’s pretty independent. He’ll do as much taking care of her as she does him.” He didn’t like feeling as though he had to explain himself. “With the job I might not always be available. You know. If Eli got sick or something, my mother can make decisions about him.”

“Fine, fine.” Joe accepted the explanation without a qualm. “I’ll be glad when Genna can make it back to work here. So, I know Eli lost his mother a year or so back. I’m sorry to hear it. Anything else in your personal life that he’s dealing with that we might need to know?”

Max shrugged. “He’s annoyed as hell that I took him out of his regular school to come here.”

Joe smiled. “That’s not too surprising.” He stopped outside the office. “Any questions you have?”

None that he intended to ask Joe Gage. He shook his head and stuck out his hand. “Good to see you again.”

“Deputy.” Donna waved at him from her desk. “The sheriff just called here looking for you.”

Not surprising. “I’m on my way over to the station house.”

“I’ll let him know for you,” she offered.

“Don’t worry about Eli,” Joe told him. “He’s in good hands.”

Sarah Clay’s hands, Max thought, as he headed out to his SUV.

It might have been seven years, but he still remembered the feel of those particular hands.

He climbed in the truck, and started it up, only to notice the brown bag sitting on the floor. Eli’s lunch.

Dammit.

He grabbed it and strode back inside, right on past the office, around two corners, to the third door. He knocked on the window.

Once again, inside the classroom, Sarah stopped and looked at him.

The glass protected him from the fallout of that glacial look. He definitely hadn’t imagined it, then.

She moved across the room and opened the door. “What is it, Deputy?”

He held up the lunch sack. “Eli forgot this.”

Her eyes seemed to focus somewhere around his left ear. She snatched the bag from his fingers and turned away.

He started to say her name. But the door closed in his face.

Chapter Two

By the end of the day, Sarah felt as if she’d been through the wringer. She didn’t have to look hard for the reason why, either.

Not when he sat in the chair next to her desk, a sullen expression on his young face. The rest of the students had already been dismissed for the day.

She pushed aside the stack of papers on her desk and folded her hands together on the surface, leaning toward him. All day, she’d been searching for some physical resemblance between him and his father, and it annoyed her to no end.

Unlike Max, who was as dark as Lucifer, his son was blond-haired and blue-eyed and had the appearance of an angel. But he’d been an absolute terror.

Nevertheless, she was determined to keep her voice calm and friendly. “Eli, you’ve had a lot of changes in your life lately. And I know that starting at a new school can be difficult. Why don’t you tell me what your days were like at your last school?”

“Better ’n here,” he said.

She held back a sigh. She’d be phoning his last school as soon as possible. “Better how?”

“We had real desks, for one thing.”

She looked at the tables. The only difference between a desk and the table was the storage, which was taken care of by cubbies that were affixed to each side of the table. “Do you prefer sitting at your own table?”

He lifted one shoulder, not answering.

“If you do, then all you have to do is say so. We both know that you won’t be sitting next to Jonathan tomorrow.”

“He’s a tool.” His expression indicated what a condemnation that was.

“He’s a student in my class, the same as you are and doesn’t deserve to be picked on all afternoon by anyone.”

“I wasn’t picking on him.”

She lifted her eyebrows. “Really?”

“I don’t care what he said.”

“Actually, Jonathan didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. Eli, I saw you poking at him. You were messing with his papers. You even hid his lunch from him. And then on the playground after lunch, you deliberately hit him with the ball. So, what gives?”

“He didn’t dodge fast ’nuff or he wouldn’t have got hit.”

“This isn’t the best way to start off here, you know.”

“So call my dad and tell him that.”

She had no desire whatsoever to speak to his father. Just seeing Max in person for a brief five minutes had been more than enough for her. “Let’s make a deal, shall we? Tomorrow is a brand-new day. We’ll all start fresh. Or, we can add your name to the list on the board.” She gestured to the corner of the board where two other names were already written. “You know how that works. The first time, you get your name on the board. The second time, you get a check mark and a visit to the principal. If you get another check mark, you’re out of my class.” Something that had never once occurred, but it was the commonly accepted practice at her school.

Eli looked glum. “That was Mr. Frederick’s rule, too.”

“Mr. Frederick was your last teacher? Did you think that system was unfair?”

The boy lifted his shoulder again, not looking at her.

She propped her chin on her palm. “I want you to enjoy class, Eli. It’s no fun for any of us if one of our class members is miserable. But the fact of it is, if you’re caught trying to deliberately hurt another student, there’s not going to be anything I can do to help you. Principal Gage has very clear rules about behavior. What you did on the playground today was wrong.”

“The ball hardly hit him.”

“Only because he wasn’t standing still. And don’t act as if you were playing a game of dodgeball, because I know you weren’t.”

His face scrunched up, like he’d swallowed something bitter. “Sorry,” he mumbled.

“It’s Jonathan who deserves the apology. You can use my phone here to call him, if you’d like.”

His lips parted. “Now?”

She could almost have let herself be amused by his appalled expression. “No time like the present. And I’ll bet that Jonathan is home by now since he lives just around the corner.” She plopped the phone on the corner of her desk in front of Eli and pulled out the phone list. “Ready?”

Eli morosely picked up the phone and dialed the number that she recited.

Deciding to give him at least the illusion of some privacy, she rose and moved away from her desk, crossing the room to straighten the art supplies still scattered across the counter. The students had been painting Thanksgiving turkeys that afternoon.

Behind her, she heard Eli deliver his apology. Short. Brief. About what she’d expected.

But at least he’d offered it.

She hadn’t been sure he would, given his mutinous attitude that afternoon.

She tapped the ends of her handful of paintbrushes on the counter, then dropped them into the canning jar where they fanned out like some arty bouquet. She turned around to face Eli and caught him surreptitiously swiping his cheek.

Tension and irritation drained out of her the same way it always did when it came to working with kids.

Evidently, Eli—son of Max Scalise or not—was no exception.

“Remember that tomorrow is a brand-new day,” she said to him. “All fresh. Right?”

He didn’t exactly jump up and down in agreement. But he didn’t roll his eyes, either.

“Come on. I’ll walk you out. Is—is your dad supposed to pick you up?”

He shook his head. “I gotta walk.”

This time she didn’t hold back the urge to smile slightly. He made walking sound like a fate worse than death. “To your grandmother’s house?”

“To the station house.”

“Well, that’s even closer.” She pushed a mammoth amount of papers and books into her oversized book bag and grabbed her own coat off the hook. “Have you met the sheriff yet?”

Eli shook his head.

“He’s not too scary,” Sarah confided. “He’s my uncle.”

At that, the boy looked slightly interested. He hitched his backpack over his shoulder and followed her into the hallway. “You got relatives here?”

“Lots and lots. Can’t swing a cat without hitting a member of the Clay family.”

“Gross. Who’d wanna swing a cat?”

She chuckled. “Well, nobody, I guess.”

“There you are.”

Her chuckle caught in her throat at the sight of Max standing in the middle of the corridor. His dark, slashing brows were drawn together over his eyes. They varied from brown to green, depending on his mood.

Currently, they looked green and far from happy.

She looked down at Eli beside her. “Guess you won’t have to make that walk after all.”

The corner of his lips turned down. “Think I was better off if I’d’a had to,” he muttered.

She curled her fingers around the webbed strap of her book bag to keep from tousling his hair. Terror or not, there was something about the boy that got to her.

Not that most kids didn’t, she hurriedly reminded herself.

“You’re late,” Max said. His voice hadn’t changed. It was still deep. Still slightly abrupt. As if he spoke only because he had to.

“Only about ten minutes. He had some questions we needed to take care of,” Sarah said, answering before Eli could. The boy shot her a surprised look that she ignored.

Max’s eyes narrowed. He still had the longest lashes she’d ever seen on a man. Long and thick, and as darkly colored as the hair on his head. “What kind of questions?”

She decided to let Eli handle that one.

“About, uh, sports,” he finally said.

Max looked suspicious. “Truck’s in the parking lot,” he said after a moment. “Go wait for me.”

Eli gave that little shrug of his and headed down the hall. “See ya tomorrow, Miz Clay.”

“See you, Eli.” Her hand was strangling the web strap. “Deputy.” She barely looked at Max as she turned on her heel, intending to head out the other way. She could wend her way through the school to a different exit.

“Sarah—”

Every nerve she possessed tightened. She felt it from the prickling in her scalp to the curling in her toes. And though she would have liked to keep walking—no, she would have loved to keep walking—she stopped and looked at him over her shoulder.

After all, he was the parent of her newest student. She would have to deal with him on that level no matter what her personal feelings were.

“Yes?”

His lips compressed for a moment. “I…how are you?”

She didn’t know what she might have expected him to say, but it definitely hadn’t been that. “Busy,” she said evenly. “Did you need to discuss something about Eli?”

“I’m sorry he was late this morning. It won’t happen again.”

“Okay.” When it seemed as if he had nothing further to say, she started to turn again.

“I didn’t expect to see you here.”

Which meant she’d never been a hot topic of conversation between him and his mother, since she’d been working with Genna for some time now. “I can say the same thing about you.”

She felt certain that she imagined the flicker in his eyes at that. Wishful thinking on her part that he might feel something, anything, about what had happened all those years ago. He’d made his feelings then perfectly clear, even though he’d never been perfectly clear about anything else.

And darnitall, that fact still stung even though she’d made herself believe that it was all water beneath the bridge.

She shifted the weight of her book bag to her other shoulder. “Coming down a little in the world, aren’t you? From detective to deputy?”

“The job meets my needs for now.”

She didn’t want to know what his needs might be. “Then you have my congratulations.” Her tone said the contrary, however. “Excuse me. I have things I need to do.” She turned again and strode down the corridor, the click of her shoes sounding brisk and hollow.

Max’s hands curled as he watched the bounce of that long, thick braid as Sarah strode away from him.

He didn’t make the mistake of speaking her name again.

She hated him.

Well, could he blame her?

When it came to Sarah Clay, he pretty much hated himself, too.

God, but he still couldn’t believe she was here. In Weaver.

Aware that Eli was still waiting for him, he headed out to the SUV. His son was fiddling with the scanner when he climbed in the truck.

“She tell ya?” Eli sat back in his seat as Max reset the equipment.

Great. Tell me what? He started driving away from the school. “What do you think?”

His son heaved a sigh, obviously assuming the worst. “Figures. I was only kidding with the guy. How was I supposed to know his glasses would fly off like they did? At least they didn’t break or nothing, though.”

He gave his son a hard look, thinking he was glad Eli was more open than his teacher evidently was. “Did you apologize?”

“Yes. I used Miz Clay’s phone in the classroom.”

“Good. Don’t do it again.”

“How come you came to get me?”

“I told you. You were late. I was worried.”

Eli rolled his eyes. “What for? This place is dinky. I mean, geez, Dad. There’s not even a real mall!”

“Missing those afternoons you liked to spend shopping, is that it?”

His son snorted. They both knew that Eli loathed shopping. That was one trait he had gotten from Max.

He drove past the station where he’d go back on duty after Eli was settled with Genna. He drummed the steering wheel. “So, what’s your teacher like?”

“Besides a rat fink?”

Max let out an impatient breath. “She didn’t tell me anything, pal. You did that all on your own.”

“Geez.” Eli’s head hit the back of the seat. He looked out the window. “She’s all right, I guess.” He was silent for a moment. “She kinda reminds me of Mom.”

Max let that revelation finish rocking. Since Jen had died of cancer almost fourteen months earlier, Eli rarely mentioned her of his own volition. “In what way?”

“I dunno. What’s for supper?”

“Grandma’s cooking.”

“I thought we were here to take care of her.”

“We are. But she’s pretty bored sitting around all day letting her broken leg heal. She’s not used to that much inactivity.”

“Can we go skiing sometime?”

Max wanted to tell his son they could. He didn’t want Eli to be miserable the entire time they were in Weaver. “We’ll see.” Most everything would depend on how well the case went.

“Do ya even know how to ski?”

“Smart aleck. Yeah, I know.”

“Well, you just lived in California all my life.”

“All your life, bud. Not all of mine.”

“What about horses? Can we go riding horses sometime?”

Max suppressed a grimace. He and horses had never particularly gotten along. “We’ll see.”

“Did you know Miz Clay?”

The question, innocence and curiosity combined, burned. “Yeah. I knew her.”

“Did you, like, go to school with her?”

“No. She’s a lot younger than me.”

“Well, yeah.’ Cuz you’re old and she’s still pretty.”

A bark of laughter came out of him. Miz Clay was still pretty. Beautiful, in fact; all that youthful dewiness she’d possessed at twenty-one had given way to the kind of timeless looks that would last all of her life. “That’s why I keep you around, Elijah. To keep me humble.”

His son smiled faintly. “She says you can’t swing a cat without hitting someone from her family. Was she your girlfriend?”

He pulled to a sudden stop in his mother’s driveway and the tires skidded a few inches. He needed to get out the snowblower, and soon. “Just because she’s female doesn’t mean she was my girlfriend. I just told you. She’s a lot younger than me.”

“How much younger?”

God, give him patience. “I don’t know. A lot.” Liar.

“Five years?”

As if a paltry five years mattered. “Twelve.”

“Geez. You are old. Not like Grandma old, but still—”

“Enough. I’m not so old that I can’t beat your butt inside the house.”

Eli grinned and set off at a run, his backpack swaying wildly from his narrow shoulders.

Max jogged along behind him. At least one thing had gone right that day. Eli was smiling.

Just before his son bolted up the front porch, Max put on the speed and flew past him to open the storm door first.

“Dad!”

He shrugged and went inside. “Wipe your boots,” he reminded. He pulled his radio off his belt and set it on the hall table and tossed his jacket on the coatrack. “Hey, Ma.”

Genna Scalise was sixty years old and looked a good ten years less. Her hair was still dark, her face virtually unlined. And she was currently trying to poke one end of an unfolded wire hanger beneath the thigh-high edge of her cast. “Turn the heat off under the pasta.”

“Don’t poke yourself to death.” He went into the kitchen and turned off the stove burner. The churning water in the pot immediately stopped bubbling. The second pot on the stove held his mother’s homemade sauce. “Smells great, but I thought you said you were just going to throw together a casserole or something.” He went back in the family room and took the hanger from her frustrated hands. “Here. Try this.” He handed over the long-handled bamboo back scratcher that he’d picked up at the new supermarket on the far side of town.

Her eyes lit as if he’d just told her she was going to have a second grandchild. She threaded the long piece beneath the edge of her cast and tilted back her head, blissfully. “Oh, you’re a good boy, Max.”

Eli snickered.

“How was school?”

“I got homework,” the boy said by way of answering her. “Vocabulary.”

“Well, horrors.” She smiled. “Get a start on it before we have dinner.” She withdrew the scratcher and set it on the couch, then held up her arms to Max. “Help me up, honey, so I can finish that.”

He lifted her slender form off the couch. From above, he could hear Eli moving around upstairs. Doing his homework, hopefully. “When you said you wanted to cook today, I didn’t think you meant making homemade pasta.”

“What other kind of pasta is there?” She patted his cheek and reached for her crutches.

He followed her slow progress back into the kitchen. He wasn’t used to seeing his mother have to struggle; he didn’t like it. But he knew she didn’t want him constantly helping her, either, considering they’d already had a few skirmishes on that score since his and Eli’s arrival a few days earlier. “Why didn’t you tell me Sarah Clay would be Eli’s teacher?”

Balancing herself, she sat down on the high stool that Max had put in the kitchen for her. She gave him a sidelong look. “I didn’t think about it. I assumed that you knew. Is there something wrong with her? She’s a fine teacher.”

He shook his head. He was hardly going to tell his mother about it.

She sighed and set down her long wooden spoon. “What happened with your father and the Clays was a very long time ago. The only one it still bothers seems to be you.”

What happened with Max and Sarah was a long time ago, too, yet it still felt like yesterday. “Last I heard, she was studying finance. Didn’t expect to find her here teaching third grade.”

“I like her.” Genna pointed the spoon. “Hand me the strainer.”

He shook his head and drained the pasta himself. “You’re supposed to be resting, Ma, not cooking up a storm like this.”

“Consider it good planning. We’ll have leftovers for a week.”

He heard the crackle of his radio and went out to get it. He listened to the dispatch, answered, and stuck his head back in the kitchen. “Gotta go. You okay with Eli?”

She waved her wooden spoon. “Of course. Be careful, now.”

He yelled up the stairs for Eli to mind his grandmother, and hustled out to the SUV.

The drive to the Double-C Ranch wasn’t an unfamiliar one, though it had been a helluva long time since Max had made it. The ranch was the largest and most successful spread in the vicinity. It was owned by the Clays, though as far as Max knew, Sawyer—the sheriff—had never taken an active part in running it. That was the job of Matthew Clay.

Sarah’s father.

He turned in through the gate and a short while later stopped in the curved drive behind Sawyer’s cruiser. He could count on his hands the number of times he’d been to the Double-C. The last time, he’d been barely fifteen and his father had been caught red-handed stealing Double-C cattle.

It was still burned in his memory.

He climbed out of his truck, nodding at Sawyer, who was leaning against one of the stone columns on the front porch. “Matthew,” he greeted the second man.

Sarah’s father ambled down the steps, sticking his hand out. “Max. Good to see you again.”

Max returned the greeting, looking past the man to his new boss. “What’s up?”

“Thought it best to discuss things away from the station.”

Max looked from Sawyer to his brother.

“He’s aware of the situation,” the older man said. “Let’s walk.”

“You’re surprised,” Matthew observed as they headed away from the house, cutting across the drive toward a sweeping, open area unoccupied by anything but a stand of mighty trees.

Max didn’t like feeling out of control. Sawyer might be the sheriff, but the investigation was Max’s. “It was my understanding that nobody but my superior and the sheriff knew what I was really doing here.”

“Matt’s noticed another discrepancy among his trucking records,” Sawyer told him. “This time on a shipment of stock heading to Minnesota.”

“How recent?”

“Couple weeks.” Matt settled his cowboy hat deeper over his forehead. “When I talked to Sawyer about it, he admitted the other thing that’s been going on.” His face was grim. “Bad business. Kind of thing I don’t want to see going on in Weaver.”