The Sheriff of Shelter Valley

He’d seen her at the drugstore once, and at Shelter Valley’s annual Fourth of July celebration.

But he’d never seen her at home.

The duplex was not far from Zack and Randi Foster’s place. But it didn’t resemble that couple’s home with its garden and white-picket fence. Her place was very small. One bedroom—the door was shut—a full bath squished into a half-bath space, a living room with a kitchen on the other end. And a closet that would fit either coats or the stackable laundry unit Beth had purchased. But not both.

The closet had washer-dryer hook-ups, and a clothes bar and single door, both of which had to be removed to fit the washer and dryer. The door he could rehang. The clothes bar’s removal would be permanent for as long as the closet remained a laundry room.

The entire house was meticulous.

“Where’d you say you lived before coming to Shelter Valley?” Greg asked as, pliers in hand, he attached a dryer vent to the opening on the back of the appliance.

“I didn’t say.”

“That?” Beth’s two-year-old son was standing beside Greg’s toolbox.

“It’s a hammer,” Beth said.

“That?”

“A level.”

“That?”

“A screwdriver.”

Glancing between the top rack of the toolbox and the little boy, Greg frowned. “How do you know which tool he’s referring to?”

Ryan hadn’t pointed at anything. His index finger had been in his mouth ever since Greg had collected Beth and her son more than an hour before.

She shrugged, hoisting Ryan onto her hip. “I could see where he was looking,” she said.

“You don’t have to hold him.” Greg returned to the metal ring he was tightening on the outside of the vent. “He’s welcome to help.”

She held the boy, anyway, as defensive about her son as she was about herself.

Greg still liked her.

“Here, Ryan,” he said, standing to give the little boy his wrench. “Can you hang on to this and give it to me when I ask for it?”

After a very long, silent stare, the toddler finally nodded and took the tool. He needed both hands to handle the weight of it, meaning that finger finally came out of his mouth—but he didn’t seem to mind the sacrifice.

“You changed.”

Beth’s words threw him. “Changed?” he asked. “How?”

“Out of your uniform.”

“I’m off duty.”

“I’ve never seen you out of uniform.”

He hadn’t thought about that, but supposed she was right. He’d been on duty the Fourth of July. And just coming off duty each time he’d stopped in at Little Spirits. She hadn’t been there the afternoon he’d spent building the sandbox on the patio of the day care.

“You look different.”

Giving the dryer vent a tug, satisfied that it was securely in place, Greg moved down to the washer. “Good different?” he asked. The jeans were his favorite, washed so many times they were faded and malleable, just the way he liked them.

“Less…official.”

He screwed the washer tubing to the cold-water spigot. “So, you going to tell me where you’re from?”

“You going to tell me why you’re so nosy?”

“I’m a cop. It’s my job to be nosy.”

“I thought you were off duty.”

“Touché.” Leaning around the edge of the washer, he grinned at her.

Beth wasn’t grinning back. Her expression showed both anger and hurt. And defensiveness—again. She hugged Ryan closer, almost knocking the wrench out of the little guy’s hands, but the boy didn’t complain. He just held on tighter.

Ryan Allen was one of the quietest toddlers Greg had ever met.

“You think I’m some kind of threat to the people of Shelter Valley?” she asked.

“Of course not!” Greg would’ve laughed out loud if he wasn’t so surprised by the tension that had suddenly entered the room. “I’m interested, okay?” he said, eager to clarify himself before the evening dived into dismal failure. “As a guy, not as a cop.”

“Interested.” Her hold on the boy loosened, but not much.

“Yeah, you know, interested.” He went back to the job at hand, thinking it was probably his safest move. “Men do that,” he grunted. He could tell the water spigots hadn’t been used in a while. If ever. He was having one helluva time persuading the faucet to turn. “They get interested in women who attract them.”

“I attract you?”

An entirely different note had entered her voice. Though the sound of battle hadn’t left, he was no longer sure he was the target.

“I haven’t made that perfectly obvious by now?”

The room had gone too still. Greg glanced around the washer once more, half thinking he might find he was alone, and his gaze locked with Beth’s.

“I need to be more obvious?” he asked. He’d never worked so hard for a woman in his life. Not that he’d had that many. His life had taken unexpected turns, been filled with unexpected responsibilities, but when he’d wanted a woman, he hadn’t had to work at it.

“No,” she said, looking down. From his silent vantage point, Ryan stared up at her, as though following the conversation with interest. “I, um…guess—” her eyes returned to his “—you have to be looking to see the obvious, don’t you?”

“You’re trying to tell me you aren’t looking. Period.” He couldn’t deny his disappointment.

“No. Yes.” She set her son down. “I’m saying maybe I didn’t notice your, um, interest because I wasn’t looking.”

The woman challenged him at every turn—something he particularly liked about her—and yet she’d never, until that moment, been difficult to follow. Just difficult to get any information from.

Of course, she’d been hurt, was wary. Probably loath to risk letting anyone get close again. Greg could understand that. It had taken him a long time to open up after Shelby left.

“And now that I’ve pointed it out to you?”

“I know.”

“And?”

“I don’t know.” As Ryan toddled toward Greg to see what he was doing, Beth leaned over the washer. “How’s it going back there?”

Greg twisted the faucet again and it gave immediately. Probably because exasperation had added strength to his grip. “Good,” he told her. “Another five minutes and you can throw in your first load.”

“Can I have the wrench, Ryan?” he asked, surprised when he turned his head to see the little guy so close to him, staring him right in the eye. Without blinking, the boy handed over the wrench.

“He’s a man of few words,” Greg said to Beth.

“We’re working on that.”

With his only living relative in the day care business, Greg knew a lot about kids. “He’ll talk when he’s ready.”

“I hope so.”

Greg made one more adjustment. “Here you go, little bud,” he said, handing the wrench back to Beth’s son. “You want to drop that in the toolbox for me?”

Ryan put the tool down on top of the hammer.

“I’ll bet he has more to say when it’s just the two of you,” he said as he slid the appliances in place against the wall.

“Not really.”

She sounded worried. Greg figured it had to be hard for her, a single mother—all alone in the world, as far as he could tell. She had no one to share the worries and heartaches with, to calm the fears, to share the mammoth responsibility of child-rearing.

More than ever, he wanted to change that.

If she’d let him.

“Did you get to the Mathers’?” she asked as he packed up his toolbox.

Greg nodded. It had been just as difficult as he’d expected.

“Bad news?”

“A sheriff rarely gets to deliver good news.”

“Clara told me they lost a daughter.”

Resting a foot on his toolbox, Greg leaned his forearm on his leg. “It’s been almost twenty years,” he told her, nowhere near ready to leave. Ryan was sitting on the floor a few feet away, a toy on his lap, pulled from a neat stack of colorful objects in the bottom drawer of the end table. The boy was obviously occupied, but Greg lowered his voice, anyway. “She and some friends were in a boat on Canyon Lake. They hit a rock. She was thrown and ended up underneath the boat.”

Beth’s eyes clouded. “They have pictures of a boy in their bedroom. I’m assuming they have a son, too?”

Greg nodded.

“Is he still around?”

“He’s still alive.” Greg sighed. The Mathers had physically deflated as he’d told them about the latest trouble Bob had gotten into. “After Molly, their daughter, was killed, they focused everything they had on Bob. He became their reason for living. He was a rebellious kid, but they pinned all their hope, love and energy on him.”

“You knew Bob?”

“We graduated in the same class.”

“Is he good to them?”

Greg wasn’t surprised by the compassion he read on Beth’s face. He’d been touched by her natural warmth the first time he’d run into her at the day care. He hadn’t needed his sister’s priming—her point-blank match-making attempts—to get his attention. Odd how someone could be so closed off and yet emanate such caring.

“Bob somehow came out of it all believing that the world owes him a living. He’s a conniver who works too little and drinks too much.”

“He’s not good to them.”

Most of what Greg knew, he wasn’t at liberty to say. “He hasn’t been home to see them in over five years.” He could tell her that much.

“What a shame. They’re such nice people.”

“They are.”

“It’s not right, you know,” she said softly, her arms wrapped around her middle as she leaned back against the wall, facing him and the room where her son played.

“What’s that?”

“Life, I guess. You have people like the Mathers, filled with unconditional love, great parents in an empty house, and their son, a jerk who’s completely wasting one of the greatest gifts he’ll ever get in this life. I’d literally give a limb to have what he’s just throwing away.”

She stopped, stepped away from the wall and busied herself with closing the closet door and picking up the packaging from the dryer vent, the papers she’d been given with the appliances.

She’d said more than she’d meant to. He could tell by the stiffness in her back. The way she wouldn’t look at him. Greg knew the signs well. He’d seen them again and again over the years as he’d questioned suspects. Could tell when just another push or two would wring the confession he was seeking.

“How about we take this little guy out for ice cream?” he asked, walking toward Ryan.

“Cweam?” the boy echoed, staring up at his mother.

“He’s messy,” Beth warned.

It wasn’t a no. Greg was elated. Probably far beyond what the situation warranted.

“Messiness is an unwritten rule when you’re two,” he said lightly.

He could read the uncertainty in her face. Which only made him want her capitulation that much more.

If he was a nice guy, he’d give up. Go away and leave her alone, quit bugging her, as she seemed to want. Except, Greg didn’t feel at all sure that was what she wanted. From the very beginning, whenever their eyes met, which she didn’t allow often, he’d felt the communication between them.

Something about this woman kept bringing him back, in spite of her refusal to have anything to do with him. And he had a pretty strong suspicion that she was drawn to him, too.

Her mouth said no. But he wasn’t convinced the rest of her agreed.

“Aren’t you worried about what people will think?” she said in a low voice.

As excuses went, it wasn’t one of her better ones. “It isn’t against the law for sheriffs to eat ice cream with messy kids.”

“Cweam?” Ryan asked again. Beth picked him up.

“Greg—” She stopped abruptly.

It was the first time she’d called him by his first name. He liked it. Too much.

“You know what I mean,” she said, her shoulders dropping. “I’ve only been here six months and don’t know many people, but I’ve certainly seen how well-oiled the gossip wheel is in this town. It might make things uncomfortable for you if you’re seen with the cleaning lady.”

“We aren’t snobs in Shelter Valley.”

“I know, but I’m a nobody who cleans houses and you’re the boss of the entire county.”

“I don’t think Mayor Smith would be too happy to hear you say that.”

“Even I know that Junior Smith is just a figurehead in this town.”

“Cweam?”

The boy might not talk a lot, but he was persistent. Greg liked that.

“Why don’t you tell me the real reason you’re so hesitant to be seen with me,” he said.

She didn’t. But he had a pretty good idea that she wanted to. Her eyes were telling him so much, frustrating him because, as hard as he tried, he couldn’t translate those messages.

She’d mentioned gossip. “You’re worried that they’re going to see us together once and start planning the wedding.”

“I might worry about it if I believed for one second that anyone would think I was good enough for you.”

“Bonnie’s been trying to hook us up for two months.”

“No way!”

“Yes, way. She’s invited you to dinner every Sunday for the past five weeks.”

“So?”

“I was invited, too.”

“Cweam?”

“Just a minute, Ry,” Beth said softly, kissing the top of the boy’s curly head.

“That’s just a coincidence,” she told Greg, adjusting her son on her hip. Ryan slid a finger into his mouth.

Katie would’ve been crying by now, demanding ice cream. Beth’s son didn’t seem to demand much at all. Something he had in common with his mother.

“Trust me, there are no coincidences with my sister,” Greg told her, prepared to stay there arguing the point all night if necessary. “And she wouldn’t leave something as important as this to chance, anyway. She’s not the least bit subtle or embarrassed about how adamant she is to change my marital status. Nor has she been subtle about telling me what a fool I’d be if I let you get away—I’d be missing my chance of a lifetime.” He mimicked the little sister he adored.

“So you’re doing this for her.”

Greg took more hope from the disappointment he heard in her voice than any other thing she’d said or done since he’d met her.

“No.”

He had no idea what had tied Beth Allen up in knots so tight they were choking her, but it bothered the hell out of him. She shouldn’t have to fight this hard all the time.

“I noticed you before Bonnie said a word,” he said, telling her something he would normally have kept to himself. “In fact, I’d already tried to get you to go out with me before she told me there was someone I ‘just had to meet.’”

“Oh.”

“Cweam?” Ryan said around the finger in his mouth.

Greg’s eyes met Beth’s and that strange thing happened between them again. As though something inside her were conversing with something inside him….

“Not tonight, Ry,” she finally said, breaking eye contact with Greg.

But she hadn’t looked away fast enough. He’d seen the pain in her eyes as she’d turned him down. It was the most encouraging rejection he’d had yet.

“Another time, then,” he murmured.

He could’ve sworn, as he said goodbye and told her he’d be in touch, that she seemed relieved.

Yep, there was no doubt about it.

Beth Allen wanted him.

“BONNIE, CAN WE TALK?” Monday was not her usual day to volunteer at the day care, but Beth had come, anyway. She’d been thinking about this all weekend.

“Sure,” the woman said, giving Beth one of her signature cheery smiles. Other than the dark curls that sprang from all angles on her head, thirty-four-year-old Bonnie looked nothing like her older brother. Short where he was tall, plump where he was solidly fit, she could be, nevertheless, as intimidating as he when she got an idea.

Beth knew this about her and she’d only known the woman a few months. Until now, she’d liked that trait, identified with it somehow.

With Ryan in clear view, Beth followed Bonnie into her windowed office and, canvas bag still over her shoulder, sat when Bonnie closed the door.

“What’s up?”

“I want you to quit bugging Greg to ask me out.”

“Why? Greg’s great! You two would have so much fun together.”

In another life, Beth was certain she’d agree. It was precisely because she wished so badly that this was another life that she had to resist. She’d thought about it all weekend and knew she had no choice.

Yet, how she longed to be able to confide in this woman, to talk through her thoughts and fears, benefit from Bonnie’s perspective.

Almost as badly as she longed to go out with Bonnie’s brother.

“I just don’t want to be a charity case,” she said, hating how lame she sounded. “I don’t want anyone asking me out because he feels sorry for me or he’s forced into it or—”

Bonnie cut her off. “You don’t know Greg very well if you think I could force him to do anything he didn’t feel was right. Nor would he ever date a woman simply because I wanted him to. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be thirty-six years old and still single.”

“He told me you’ve been trying to get us together for months.”

“And if he’s asked you out, it has absolutely nothing to do with me.”

Bonnie’s green eyes were so clear, so sure. She was the closest thing Beth had to a friend in this town. Although she knew it would probably shock the other woman, Beth’s relationship with Bonnie meant the world to her.

“Well, just stop, okay?” she said, standing. Somehow she’d convinced herself that if Bonnie quit pushing, so would Greg.

Or was it because she secretly hoped he wouldn’t that she’d been able to take this stand?

“Sure,” Bonnie said. “But it’s not going to change anything. If Greg asked women out because I pushed them at him, he wouldn’t have had eight months—at least—without a real date.”

Beth sat back down. “He hasn’t had a date in eight months?”

“I said at least eight months. That’s how long I know about. That’s how long he’s been back in Shelter Valley.”

“Back? I thought he grew up here.” She didn’t care. Wasn’t interested. Ryan was playing happily with Bo Roberts, a three-year-old with Down syndrome. Bo, a high-functioning child, was a favorite at Little Spirits and particularly a favorite of Ryan’s.

“He did. We both did. But Greg moved to Phoenix ten years ago.”

“To be a cop?”

Hands clasped together on the desk in front of her, Bonnie shook her head, eyes grim. It wasn’t something Beth had seen very often.

“He was already a cop,” Greg’s sister said. “Our father was severely injured in a carjacking and required more care than he could get in Shelter Valley. Greg moved with him to Phoenix and looked after him until he died.”

Beth’s heart fell. A dull ache started deep inside her. She didn’t want Bonnie—or Greg—to have suffered so.

“What about your mother?”

“She died when I was twelve. From a bee sting, of all things. No one knew she was deathly allergic.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Me, too.”

Beth needed to say more. Much more. And couldn’t find anything to say at all.

“So it was just you and Greg and your dad after that?”

Bonnie nodded, and the two women were silent for a moment, each lost in her own thoughts. Bonnie, Beth supposed, was reliving those years. Beth was searching desperately for anything in her life that might help her to help Bonnie. But, as usual, she found nothing there at all.

“Anyway,” Bonnie said suddenly, spreading her arms wide, “Greg moved back here to run for Sheriff last January and hasn’t had a single date since he was elected. And it hasn’t been for lack of trying on my part, either.”

“So I’m just one in a long line to you, eh?” Beth asked, trying to lighten the tension a bit, make sure Bonnie knew there were no hard feelings, and the two women chuckled as they returned to the playroom.

Bonnie went back to supervising and Beth to finding crayons and engaging little minds in age-appropriate activities. On the surface, nothing had changed. But Beth was looking at her friend with new eyes. She’d had no idea Bonnie had led anything other than a blessed life.

There was a lesson in this.

Bonnie had suffered, and still found a way to love life. The other woman’s cheerfulness, her happiness, could not be faked. It bubbled from deep inside her, and was too consistent not to be genuine.

Beth had a new personal goal. Peace was still what mattered most—behind Ryan’s health and happiness, of course. But she didn’t plan to completely scratch happiness off her list. At least, not yet.

The next time Bonnie asked her and Ryan to Sunday dinner, she was going to accept. What was she accomplishing by denying herself friends? She literally didn’t know what she had to offer, so there was no way she could embark on an intimate relationship. But where was the harm in taking part in a family dinner? How was she ever going to create a new life for Ryan and herself if she didn’t start living?

CHAPTER THREE

LOOKING AT THE PHOTOS WAS GRUELING.

“I think we’re wasting our time here, looking in the wrong places,” Deputy Burt Culver said. Greg studied the photos, anyway.

It was the third Friday in August, and there’d been a fourth carjacking the night before. This time the victim hadn’t been so lucky. A fifty-three-year-old woman on her way home from work in Phoenix had been found dead along the side of the highway. There was still no sign of the new-model Infiniti she’d been driving.

“I understand why it’s important to you to tie these incidents together with what happened ten years ago, Greg, but you’re letting this get personal.”

Anyone but Burt would be receiving his walking papers at that moment. Eyes narrowed, Greg glanced up from the desk strewn with snapshots. “I appreciate your concern,” he said, tight-lipped, and turned back to the pictures—both old and new—of mangled cars. Of victims.

“But you’re not going to stop,” Burt said. In addition to obvious concern, there was a note of something bordering on disapproval in the other man’s voice.

Studying a photo of the smashed front end of a ten-year-old Ford Thunderbird, Greg shook his head. “I’m not going to stop.” The front end of a year-old Lexus found abandoned earlier that summer, its driver nearly dead from dehydration, unconscious in the back seat, looked strangely similar to that of the Thunderbird. They hadn’t started out looking similar. “Neither am I going to let my personal reasons for wanting this case solved interfere with the job of solving it.”

His trained eye skimmed over the image of the nearly nude young woman found in the desert ten summers before. The carjackers had become rapists that time. Her car, a newer-model Buick, had turned up twenty miles farther down the road. Also smashed.

Greg frowned. Another front-end job.

“My instincts—” He paused. “My cop instincts are telling me there’s some connection here.”

“Why?” Culver asked, barely glancing at the photos. Of course, he’d seen them all before. Many times. As had Greg. “Why these two sets only? Why not look into the rash of heists down south?”

“Those cars were being put to use.”

“So?”

“Whoever’s doing this is taking brand-new or nearly new cars, expensive ones, and smashing them up.”

“Joyriders.”

Yeah. It happened. More often than Greg liked to admit.

And yet… “Look at these front ends,” Greg said, lining up a few of the photos on another part of the desk.

Burt looked. “They’re mangled.”

“They’re identical,” Greg insisted.

“They’re smashed, Greg.” Burt wasn’t impressed.

Hell, maybe he was letting it get personal. Maybe he should agree with his deputy and back away. Still…

“They all look like they hit the same thing at the same angle and speed,” he said slowly.

Pulling at his ear—something he only did when he was feeling uncomfortable—the deputy leaned his other hand on the desk and gave the photos more than the cursory glance he’d afforded them earlier. “Could be,” he said.

It would be pretty difficult, especially after the hard time he’d just given Greg, for the older man to admit he’d missed something that might be important. Greg had no desire to belabor the issue. His eyes moved to the table behind his deputy and the partially constructed jigsaw puzzle there, which gave Burt a moment to himself.