A Baby For The Sheriff

He shrugged into his coat that had hung on a hook by the door.

Doctor Grant handed Jet the new bottle, which she’d filled with the contents of the other bottle. Then she walked over to Russ. “But I thought we... I thought you and I...”

Then they disappeared out into her stairway, closing the door, leaving the sheriff to tend to the more important person in the room: baby Lily.

* * *

ONCE RUSS KNIGHTLY made up his mind about something, he was the type of man who couldn’t be budged...a trait that under normal circumstances, Coco admired...just not tonight.

He couldn’t get out of there fast enough. He’d left in such a hurry, she hadn’t even gotten the chance to kiss him goodbye before he was out the door and down the stairs.

“Are you sure you want to leave in all this snow? You might get stuck and have to walk back here, anyway,” she called after him from the open doorway, having followed him down to the front door of her clinic.

Without even turning around, he said, “I’ve got four-wheel drive, and a snowplow on the front of my truck. I can get through anything.”

And in the next few seconds he jumped into his oversize truck, turned over the ignition, lowered the plow and took off into the night.

She could have been upset as she closed the door, might have even thought that he’d been rude to leave so abruptly in the middle of things. She even could have decided that just maybe she might be dating the wrong man. But all she could focus on was the silence...the absolute and complete silence.

She quickly ascended the stairs to her apartment, wondering about baby Lily and worrying about the sheriff. Would he call the local hospital asking how to set up a volunteer nursing mom for Lily? Not that she knew exactly how that would work for an actual baby. She’d set it up for infant livestock before, but that was with the cooperation of local ranchers...

When she finally opened the door, somewhat out of breath from her rush to learn the truth, emotion gripped the back of her throat. She couldn’t help the tears that cascaded down her cheeks.

“Oh, my gosh! She’s taking it?” she whispered, fingers wiping her tears away. Seeing that tiny baby, eagerly drinking the bottle of formula, nestled in Sheriff Wilson’s strong arms, while he took up all the space on her tan-colored overstuffed chair, was almost more than Coco could take in. For all his bluster, Coco now knew he was warm and fuzzy on the inside.

And as a bonus, Punky had curled up at Sheriff Wilson’s feet, and aside from momentarily picking up his tiny head to watch Coco come back into the apartment, he seemed as though he wasn’t about to budge.

“Hope you don’t mind, but I let your dog out of the bathroom. I heard it whining so I figured it wanted out.”

“Meet Punky. And he usually doesn’t trust men. Did you give him a cookie or something?”

“Nope, just a little lovin’. He was lonely.”

Punky normally didn’t like strangers and tended to keep his distance. Heck, he didn’t even like Russ, so this was some sort of miracle to say the least.

She almost couldn’t believe what lay right before her eyes, and wondered if Russ could have been so gentle and loving with Lily if the sheriff hadn’t shown up. Maybe that accounted for Russ’s early retreat... He’d felt intimidated by the sheriff and would have been as compassionate if he’d only gotten the chance. Russ was a compassionate and caring man. He’d merely been in a hurry to beat the snow or he would be sitting in that very chair right now instead of the sheriff...who she had absolutely nothing in common with.

Except for baby Lily.

But other than that, they were as different as rain and sunshine.

“And what about Lily? Did you give her some lovin’, as well?”

“It was just a matter of getting everything lined up right. The little sweetheart here was hungry. That tummy of hers probably hurt, plus I think it took her a while to settle into not having her mama feeding her. I don’t want to speculate on why a woman gives up her baby, but whatever the reason, it sure is tough on the child.”

“That goes for animals, as well. They get depressed, sometimes to the point of not wanting to eat. Plus, they cry a lot.”

“Exactly like Lily.”

“Well, she’s not crying now.”

“She’s one content little girl who’s getting sleepy. But I have to make sure she doesn’t have any gas in that tummy of hers before she sleeps.”

Coco watched as six feet four inches of muscled alpha male expertly tucked tiny baby Lily onto his receiving blanket–covered shoulder and rubbed her back as she squirmed and fretted over the loss of her food. Within moments a couple of hearty burps erupted, and Sheriff Wilson once again cradled Lily in his arms to feed her the rest of her bottle.

“Seems like you’ve done this a few times before,” Coco told him, amazed at his gentleness and ease with Lily. She was certain she’d be all nerves and frets if she had to feed her. Feeding a kitten or a baby goat or an abandoned foal was one thing, but a fragile baby was something entirely different.

“A few,” he told her, but she could tell he didn’t want to talk about it.

That never stopped her before. “Younger brothers and sisters?”

“None.”

“Nieces and nephews?”

“No siblings of any age.”

Coco perched herself on the edge of the sofa, intrigued now. “Then how...”

“One of the families I lived with consisted of a baby and a toddler, along with several other children. The older kids, like me, knew how to take care of themselves, but neither the baby nor the toddler got very much attention, which caused them to cry a lot. It was merely a matter of necessity. In order for me to get any of my homework done, I learned how to keep them content.”

“Where were their parents?”

“Like me, and like Lily here, their parents, for whatever reason, had abandoned them.”

Coco’s heart instantly shattered. She’d had no idea. “So you grew up in foster care?”

“Yep. From the time I was six years old, but that’s not anything to concern yourself with. What we need to think about now—” his voice spiraled down into a whisper “—is Lily.”

“The snow hasn’t let up at since you got here,” she whispered, thankful that Lily had finally fallen asleep. “I know you want to get her to Child Welfare or maybe to Valley Hospital, but the roads look treacherous.”

“What are you proposing?” He asked the question, but didn’t take his eyes off Lily.

She knew the sheriff was a stickler for the law, but she was hopeful that maybe he could bend the rules if she framed her idea exactly right. Besides Lily, her menagerie of animals downstairs was definitely not legal within city limits. Maybe if she offered to keep Lily for the night, he wouldn’t go snooping around her clinic, and even if he did, he’d let her slide without a fine...at least for now.

“Since it’s not safe out there for either you or Lily, you both can stay here for the night...if you want. Of course, I’m not trying to step on your toes when it comes to your authority. All I’m saying is, it’s a long way to Valley Hospital and then back to your apartment. Instead, I can put Lily down in her soft bassinet on my bed for the night and make up the sofa for you. I have a spare bedroom, but it’s for storage.”

He thought about it for a moment, as if his brain had to wrap itself around the idea that her proposal might come with illegal strings he couldn’t see.

“While you think about that,” she said, “can I get you anything to drink? Water? Coffee? Milk?”

“Actually, I’d take a shot of that scotch if I was going to stay. It’s been one heck of a night on a lot of counts.” He stood. “But I can’t stay. I tell you what. I’ll leave Lily in your care for the night, but I should get going while I can still do that. I’ll come by to pick her up in the morning once the roads are clear and I know for certain who will take her.”

“You don’t know that yet?”

“No. With the weather being what it is, the person I spoke to wasn’t really sure how to handle it.”

No way was Coco willing to let that baby go under those ambiguous circumstances.

“Then I’d be more than happy to take care of her tonight, and again, you’re more than welcome to stay, as well.”

“Thanks for the offer of your sofa.” He gazed over at it, looking skeptical.

“Okay, so maybe you wouldn’t be comfortable on my sofa. But if you slept on your side and bent your knees, five feet would be a perfectly acceptable fit.”

“I appreciate the offer, but that SUV can get through just about anything. Now, let’s get Lily settled in her bed.”

Coco picked up Lily’s cloth bassinet by the handles and made her way to the bedroom, where she placed it on the bed. Then, ever so carefully, the sheriff put Lily down on her back and expertly swaddled her with the blankets. Lily didn’t even stir, but let out a long sigh.

Then he did something she’d seen her own dad do a million times to each of his children, always feeling the love her dad had for his family. The only difference now was what the sheriff said...

He leaned over and gently kissed baby Lily on the forehead, tenderly stroked the top of her head and whispered, “Sleep well, Lily. You’re safe now.”

Then he exited the room, leaving Coco to wonder: Who are you and what have you done with by-the-book Sheriff Wilson?

* * *

WHEN JET STEPPED back outside into the quiet night, leaving the warmth of Doctor Grant and baby Lily behind, the cold wind instantly sent a shiver down his spine. The thought of trying to drive through all this heavy snow only to get back to the drafty, lonely jail made him a combination of angry and sad.

Angry at himself for not taking the doctor up on her kind offer to sleep on her sofa, and sad that his life had come to sleeping inside a jail cell on a hard cot.

He shook his head as he made his way to his rig, which was somehow completely packed in snow. Still, he told himself if Russ could make it out of there, so could he.

One problem.

He would need a good-sized shovel to dig his way out. It looked as though a snowplow had purposely shoved snow all around his SUV, making it impossible for him to get out.

But who would do such an inconsiderate thing to the sheriff’s rig?

At this point it didn’t matter. What did matter was that he’d made a big deal about not spending the night with the doctor.

He corrected himself. Not with the doctor, but at the doctor’s apartment. Was that the reason he didn’t take her up on her offer of the sofa? Didn’t he trust himself? Maybe he didn’t trust her? If she and Russ had an “open relationship,” would she try to seduce him?

He told himself that was plain silly.

He’d merely done the stand-up thing and left. Nothing more to it.

But now he was in a pickle, and had no choice but to take her up on that sofa offer.

“Fine,” he said aloud as he trudged back to her front door, the snow and cold wind blasting his face and hands with its bitter sting. He hated nights like this, nights when Mother Nature reminded him of her power, and when memories of his childhood came crashing back. He wished he could talk to Lily’s mom and tell her of the life that Lily more than likely would have. He’d like to somehow help Lily’s mom with whatever reason brought her to abandoning her child. But most of all, he hated that Lily would now be a ward of the state and he would be the one to hand her over.

The irony was too real. By the time he’d graduated from high school he’d lived with twelve different families. Most of them were good people, but a few of them were borderline abusive or simply neglectful. Those were the kinds of households that he hoped Lily would never run across, but he knew the odds were stacked against her. Once she went into the system, there was no telling who would be her temporary parents.

Life sure could stink at times, he thought as he made his way back up the three steps to Doctor Grant’s front porch, but before he was able to ring the bell for her apartment, she swung open the door and handed him that shot of scotch.

“Thanks,” he said after he drank it down. “I really needed that.”

“I figured as much,” she said, her voice low and sultry, feet bare, pretty little toes painted a bright pink.

No doubt about it, he was in for it now.

Chapter Three

“I know these animals legally aren’t supposed to be here, but there was nowhere else I could take them, especially after it started snowing,” Coco told the sheriff as he helped her clean out their cages and pens.

Coco had slipped out of her lacy black dress, and instead donned jeans, rubber boots and an oversize red plaid shirt. She wore rubber gloves and had offered a pair of gloves to the sheriff, which he surprisingly took. She’d set up one of her many portable baby monitors, which she used for her animals, inside her bedroom, so she had baby Lily in her sights at all times.

As for the sheriff’s part, he’d left his gun holstered and locked in a dresser drawer in the spare bedroom, his badge and cream-colored cowboy hat sat on a side table next to her sofa.

Medium-sized cages lined one wall of the room, where sibling calico kittens played with a brown-and-white bulldog puppy, who eagerly rolled around with each of them, while a large tortoise watched the activities from the shelter of its hard shell. Fortunately, aside from the need of an occasional heat lamp and a meal of greens and maybe a strawberry or two, a tortoise was low maintenance. Unlike the rest of her critters, which required not only basic needs but some loving and human interaction. Otherwise they’d never be comfortable around people.

The area smelled of a combination of manure, fresh hay and animal fur, a scent that had lost its impact on Coco some time ago. Since her renovation, this part of the clinic was now separated from her apartment on the second floor of the original main building. This new clinic took up most of the empty lot that had been behind her house. She’d bought this property precisely because she knew she’d be able to expand her business. The closest house on her street was at least fifty yards away.

“I understand,” the sheriff said as he scooped up goat dung and hay from the large pen at the end of the large room.

Those two words caught her by complete surprise as she stared at him and dumped the waste material into a big plastic trash can.

“Thanks,” she told him, but she wanted to give him a big hug.

“Don’t tell me you take care of all these guys by yourself?”

The piglet and all the other critters required time and care. She could never do it alone.

“Not exactly. One of my neighbors, Drew Gillian, helps out whenever she can. Normally she’ll take in the cats and a couple dogs if we have them, but this time, she already has two pups and a kitten. I couldn’t burden her with any more, so I’m keeping them here for a few days, at least until the weather clears up.”

“You did what you had to do, Doctor Grant,” he said, sounding official. This new attitude of his had to stop if they were going to make it through the night without her thinking that perhaps the sheriff was redeemable.

“Why don’t you call me Coco,” she told him, wanting to be on more friendly terms. After all, the man was helping her clean out the cages for animals that he knew being here were completely illegal.

He gazed over at her, a smile lighting up his normally stern-looking face. “And you can call me Jet, at least for tonight.”

“And after tonight?” She stopped cleaning and looked over at him, grinning while the two goats kept rubbing up against him, wanting the bottles of milk she’d been warming in the large bottle warmer she kept in the other room.

“Protocol dictates the more formal name, and I wouldn’t want you to think that just because we spent the night together...er, I mean, just because we slept... Yes, Jet will be fine.”

She chuckled under her breath at the sheriff’s—at Jet’s—obvious awkwardness with the situation. It was almost as though he’d never spent the night with a woman before, at least not on a platonic basis. The thought caused her to snicker even more.

“Am I missing something?” he asked, obviously catching her hidden laughter.

“It’s the llamas. They keep nipping at my shirt collar.” Which they were.

The pen was fairly large, about fifteen by eighteen feet, but it wasn’t enough room for them to run and play in, so she was getting all their extra energy. They kept rubbing up against her, then running around in a circle only to do it again. One was chocolate brown, the male, and the other almost pure white, a female.

“They seem kind of aggressive. Shouldn’t they be in a barn somewhere, instead of cooped up in that pen?”

Jet was absolutely right, but she’d had no choice. They’d been left on her doorstep at a most inopportune time.

“They’re not aggressive, more playful than anything else. Llamas are the sweetest animals you can ever have on a ranch. Plus, they’re better protectors against coyotes or hawks or even possums. They only arrived this afternoon or I would have brought them out to my parents’ ranch until I could find a home for them. Problem was, I couldn’t risk driving all the way out there and getting stuck on my way back, so instead I decided to keep them here for a bit. I should be able to move them out tomorrow or the next day at most.”

He gave one of the goats a pat on the head before it danced off, then loved up the other one when it nudged his leg. From all that she’d seen so far that night, Sheriff Jet Wilson was not the brute she had made him out to be. Jet Wilson seemed to be as soft and cuddly underneath that hard outer shell as any of her critters. A fact she would try to remember the next time he fined her for one of her forbidden country animals.

“No worries. Really. I understand.”

Now she really didn’t understand him, not even remotely. Who was this guy? How could she have misread him so badly?

“Why the change of heart? Why aren’t you writing up a ticket? What changed?”

He turned to her and shrugged. “It’s not your fault the people of this town have decided to abandon their animals...and now their babies...on your doorstep. I guess I never understood what that meant before. These little guys deserve a break, deserve a new start, and apparently the townsfolk think you can give it to them. You’re quite the protector, Doctor...I mean Coco...and everyone seems to know that.”

“Does that mean you’ll dismiss my pending fines?”

Now that he’d seemed to have a change of heart, she felt hopeful about asking for those dang fines to go away.

He stood up straight and looked directly into her eyes, wearing his official deadpan expression again. As if he could switch that authoritarian look on and off at will. “No,” he said with certainty. “It just means I won’t give you another fine for this group... That’s contingent upon your finding a place for the goats and llamas as soon as the weather clears up. A place outside city limits.”

She stuck a fist to her hip, somewhat peeved he couldn’t let those fines go, but underneath all her hope, she was beginning to understand his tough position.

“Well, that’s something. I guess.”

“It’s the least I can do seeing as how you’ve taken in Lily.”

She didn’t want him getting any ideas about her caring for Lily. Sure, she felt sorry for the poor little thing, and Lily had already made an inroad into Coco’s heart, but she couldn’t allow herself to spend too much time with the child or she would never want to let her go.

“Just for the night or until the weather clears up and the roads get plowed. With my schedule, I certainly can’t take in a baby.”

Which was true, so she latched onto that thought and held it close. It would allow her to hand Lily over to the authorities without breaking her heart. The abandoned animals were fine, but an abandoned baby caused her way too much internal grief, a grief she wasn’t prepared to spill anytime soon...especially not in front of Jet Wilson. Sure, he had a softer side, but that outer shell was as hard as steel and she had no intention of going up against it.

“Nor are you qualified to take her.”

Coco’s internal antenna went up. Did he know something about her? Was there gossip going around that she didn’t know about? “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He stepped out of the goat pen, to the dismay of both goats, slipped off his gloves and headed for the next room that contained a refrigerator, a large bottle warmer and some supplies. “Not what you’re thinking,” he shouted back. She heard him open the lid on the bottle warmer. “Idaho has rules about who can be a temporary guardian for an abandoned baby, and you aren’t certified. I checked.”

She relaxed a bit. He’d merely been referring to some law she knew little about.

“And I suppose you are?”

He stepped back into the main room, holding a large bottle of warmed milk in each hand. Large nipples cupped the tops of the bottles.

“By default, yes. But I also had to take a few classes.”

The goats bleated at the end of the pen, their heads hanging over the wire mesh, mouths open in anticipation.

“But I thought you said you knew all about caring for a baby from growing up in foster care?”

“I guess it’s a combination of both.”

He held both bottles down so the kids could nurse. They pulled down the milk as if they’d been starving, which they weren’t. She’d fed them in the morning before she’d begun her day, and now before bed. Twice a day was sufficient for these little guys. The good thing about these two was that their owner had at least disbudded them well, so their horns wouldn’t grow, a problem for domesticated goats.

“I wish I knew more about caring for babies. I only know animals,” Coco told him.

The goats pushed and knocked their bottles, wanting the milk to come out faster, but Coco had given them the appropriate nipple with the appropriate slice in the top for a controlled flow. Anything more and they’d choke.

“It’s the same thing. Neither a baby nor an animal can tell you what’s wrong. You have to use your intuition and your expertise, and hope that you’re right. I mean, look at these little guys. You manage to keep them all healthy, right?”

“Most of the time, but even with them, I can sometimes get it wrong.”

“But you strike me as the type of doctor who keeps trying until you do get it right.”

“Thanks. I like to think that I do. Yes.”

She appreciated his confidence in her. Where he’d gotten it, she didn’t know, but she sure liked it. Aside from her brother, Carson, her sisters, Kenzie, Callie and Kayla, her dad and mom, and a handful of the local ranchers, she didn’t always get that kind of respect. There were times when she’d get outright skepticism. Not that she minded it, or resented it. She understood. Those animals meant thousands of dollars to the ranchers. Sometimes a healthy animal or a sick animal stood between a rancher and bankruptcy. A vet could, at times, make or break a ranch depending on his or her diagnosis. So it had better be the correct one.

“Have you always wanted to be a vet?”

She nodded. “I think for as long as I could remember. I love my job and I’m blessed that when Doctor Graham retired, he left his practice to me. What about you? Have you always wanted to be a sheriff?”

He chuckled. “Absolutely not. I wanted to be a bus driver, or a truck driver, then a fireman, a cowboy or a rodeo star, and for a short time I wanted to be a rock star. I play a mean guitar.”

She smiled, envisioning Jet in tight black leather pants, no shirt and eyeliner. He clearly didn’t fit the image. “Then how on earth did you end up being a sheriff?”

“When I got out of the military, I didn’t know what to do with myself until I met Sheriff Perkins over in Chubbuck, who was looking for a deputy. The pay was good enough to keep me off the street, and I liked the sheriff, so I applied and got the job. He trained me, and a couple years ago when this job came up, he pushed me out of the nest and gave me a good reference. The rest, as they say, is history.”