Falling for the Sheriff

So, she was single, too? That thought cheered him more than it should. He didn’t even know her name. Nonetheless, he grinned broadly.

She returned the smile, but then ducked her gaze to the sodden napkins in her hand. “I, uh, should throw these away.” As she walked toward the trash can, he couldn’t help but appreciate the fit of her denim shorts.

Quit leering—there are children present. Well, one of his children, anyway. He turned to see if Alyssa had forgiven him yet. In his peripheral vision, he caught the blonde’s son pressing a quick finger to his lips as if sharing a secret with Alyssa. The boy quickly dropped his hand and moved away. Alyssa frowned at her purse.

“Sorry again about the soda.” The blonde was back, her tone brisk, as if she wanted to put their encounter behind her. “And good luck with the parenting.”

Cole hated to let her go. He wanted to know who she was and why she was here. Was she visiting someone in Cupid’s Bow or simply passing through on her way elsewhere? Maybe he would have asked if she hadn’t seemed so anxious to go. Or if he weren’t busy puzzling over Alyssa’s strange expression.

“Good luck to you, too,” he said.

With a nod, the blonde walked away, holding the door open for her son.

“Can we go now?” Mandy rejoined them, bouncing on the balls of her feet. “I’m starving!”

“Same here.” He ruffled her hair, but kept his gaze on his other daughter. “What about you, Alyssa?”

She jerked her gaze up from her purse, a flush staining her cheeks. Even someone without Cole’s training in suspicious behavior would have spotted the guilt in her eyes.

“What have you got in your purse?” he asked.

“N-nothing.” She clutched the small sequined bag to her body.

He held out his hand, making it clear he wanted to see for himself.

Tears welled in her eyes as she pulled a candy bar from her purse. “B-but I didn’t take it! That boy gave me it.”

Cole’s blood pressure skyrocketed. Alyssa was, by nature, a sweet, quiet girl, but throughout her kindergarten year—after every field trip or class party where other students had mothers present—she’d grown increasingly unpredictable. The teacher who had once praised his daughter’s reading skill and eager-to-please disposition had started calling Cole about behavior problems, including a memorable graffiti incident. Now some punk was trying to turn Alyssa into a shoplifter, too? Hell, no.

* * *

“HEY!”

Kate jumped at the angry boom, nearly dropping her car keys. She turned to see Cole Trent, the single dad who’d melted her insides with his smile. He wasn’t smiling now.

He strode across the parking lot like a man on a mission. One of his daughters was sobbing. The other looked grimly fascinated, as if she’d never expected a simple pit stop to be so eventful.

“Aw, crap.” Luke’s barely audible words—and the resignation in them—caused Kate’s heart to sink.

Not again. Not here! In her mind, she’d built up Cupid’s Bow as a safe haven. But how could you escape trouble when it was riding shotgun?

“What did you do?” she demanded in a low voice.

He slouched, not meeting her eyes. “It was only an eighty-nine cent candy bar. Jeez.”

Cole reached them in time to hear her son’s careless dismissal, his blue eyes bright with righteous fury. “It’s more than a candy bar, young man. It’s stealing.”

Kate’s stomach churned. “You stole?”

Cole’s gaze momentarily softened as he glanced at her, registering her stress. When he spoke again, his tone was calmer. “Perhaps I should reintroduce myself. I’m Sheriff Cole Trent. What’s your name, son?”

“Luke,” he muttered.

“And did you put that candy bar in Alyssa’s purse?” the sheriff asked in an unyielding, don’t-even-think-about-lying tone.

The boy hunched his shoulders. “I felt bad for her.”

Was that even true, Kate wondered, or had her son simply seized an opportunity for petty defiance?

Cole gave his sniffling daughter a stern look. “Luke may have been the one to take the candy bar, but you should have put it back. Or told me what happened. Other people’s bad behavior is no excuse for acting badly yourself.”

Terrific. Now her son was a cautionary tale for younger children.

“The two of you are going back inside to admit what you did and apologize to Mr. Jacobs,” Cole said.

His daughter gulped. The man behind the counter had smiled pleasantly at Kate, but she could see where his towering height, all black clothing and tattooed arms might intimidate a little girl.

“While you’re there,” Kate told Luke, “ask what you can do to make up for it.” He was too young for an official part-time job, but it was clear Kate needed to find ways to keep him busy and out of trouble. “Maybe they could use a volunteer to come by a few times a week and pick up litter in the parking lot.”

Cole’s gaze swung to her. “A few times a week? So you aren’t just passing through or visiting? You’re sticking around?”

Was that surprise she heard in his voice, or dread? Given his duty to maintain law and order in the county, he probably didn’t relish the idea of a juvenile delinquent moving to town. And Gram deserved better than a great-grandson who caused her problems in the community. Was this experiment doomed to fail?

“We’re staying with family in the area. Indefinitely.” She forced a smile and tried to sound reassuring. “But I plan to stay out of public until I learn how to properly carry sodas, and Luke may be grounded for the rest of the summer. So you don’t have to worry about us menacing the populace, I promise.”

The size of Cupid’s Bow might make it difficult to avoid someone, but she was willing to try. Between the terrible impression her son had made and Kate’s aversion to being around cops since Damon’s death, she rather desperately hoped never to see Sheriff Trent again.

Chapter Two

After Luke and his unwitting accomplice apologized to the gruff but fair Mr. Jacobs, Kate and her son resumed their journey. He had the good sense not to resume his complaining.

It wasn’t until they were jostling along the private dirt road that led up to Gram’s house that Luke spoke again. “Are you going to tell her about the gas station? And the sheriff?”

She sighed. “Well, it wasn’t going to be my opening. I thought we’d say hi first and thank her profusely for taking us under her roof before we hit her with news of your exciting new criminal activities.”

“I apologized,” Luke grumbled. “I even paid the guy, although no one ended up with the candy bar.”

“‘The guy’ is Mr. Jacobs, and you’re going to treat him with respect when you see him next weekend.” It turned out that the inked man with the gravelly voice visited the pediatric ward of the hospital once a month and gave a magic show. Luke’s penance was that he would sacrifice a Saturday morning to work as the man’s assistant. “And paying for what you took after the fact doesn’t justify what you did. You know better than to steal! Your own father was a policeman, who—”

“My father is gone,” he said flatly.

She parked the car, and turned to look at her son. “I miss him, too. And I get angry—at him, at the man who shot him, at the unfairness of life. But lashing out and doing dumb things won’t bring your dad back. It only drives a wedge between you and me. I’m still here for you, kiddo. Try to remember that?”

Without responding, he climbed out of the car.

She blinked against the sting of tears, preferring to meet her grandmother with a smile. Joan Denby had lost her husband even more recently than Kate. The two women were supposed to bolster each other, not drag each other further down.

Either Gram had been watching for them, or Patch, the eight-year-old German shepherd, had barked notice of their arrival. Kate had barely removed her seatbelt before Gram hurried out onto the wraparound porch to greet them. In a pair of purple capris and a polo shirt striped with hot pink, Joan Denby was a splash of vivid color against the white wood railing. She looked much the same as she had all those summers when Kate visited as a girl, except that the cloud of once-dark hair framing Gram’s face was silver and her lively hazel eyes now peered at the world through a pair of bifocals. Still, few would guess that she was the great-grandmother of a teenager.

“Luke! Katie!” The exuberant welcome in her voice carried on the breeze, and the knot in Kate’s stomach unraveled.

Home. Whatever happened during the next few weeks of transition, Kate was suddenly 100 percent certain this was where she was supposed to be. Her vision blurred again, but this time with happy tears. She jumped out of the car, not even bothering to shut the door before rushing to hug her grandmother.

“I’ve missed you,” she whispered fiercely. Even though she now stood taller than the woman who’d been equal parts mom and grandmother to her, Gram’s embrace still made Kate feel safer, just as it had when she’d woken from nightmares as a girl or been rattled by a Texas thunderstorm.

“Missed you, too, Katie. So much.” Gram patted her on the back, then pulled away to reach for Luke. “And you! I can’t believe how tall you’re getting. Strong enough to help with farm chores, I reckon. But don’t worry,” she added with a smile, “I promise to make sure you’re well-compensated with your favorite desserts.”

“Anything but candy bars,” he mumbled.

Kate suppressed a groan at the reminder of their inauspicious entry to town. “We should start bringing in bags,” she told her son. “The car’s not going to unpack itself.”

Gram followed them. “I expected to see you hauling a trailer of stuff.”

“We brought most of our personal items, but the furniture’s in storage back in Houston.” She didn’t add that she hadn’t wanted to move it all twice in case this relocation didn’t work out.

Gram insisted on helping, and Kate gave her the lightest things she could find in the backseat. Kate faltered at the box of Luke’s art supplies. It had been sheer optimism on her part to bring them; he’d told her she could leave them in storage—or throw them away.

There’d been a time when he’d never been without a sketch pad of some kind. A few months before Damon was killed, Luke had started working on a comic book series about a superhero on another planet. The interstellar crime-fighter didn’t have a family and he’d possessed larger than life mystical powers, but the physical resemblance between Luke’s fictional champion and his dad had been unmistakable.

His earlier statement echoed in her mind. My father is gone. But he hadn’t only lost Damon. In the last two years, he seemed to have also lost his inspiration and his direction. Although there was no need to get the heavy box inside before dinner, she vowed to put the supplies in his room later. Maybe, with time and patience, he’d find his direction again.

Shifting a large satchel against her hip, she pulled a rolling suitcase from the trunk. “Am I in my usual room, Gram?” Even during her trips to the farm as an adult, Kate had stayed in the bedroom where she had so many happy childhood memories.

Her grandmother nodded. “Of course. And for Luke, I cleared out the room where Jim used to work on his model planes. It’s not huge, but it’s the least girly space in the house.”

“I’m sure it will be fine,” Kate said gently, hating the thought of Gram boxing up all of her late husband’s beloved planes alone. She wished her father was more reliable, that he lived close enough to regularly visit his widowed mother. Not that geography was any guarantee he’d pull his head out of his textbooks long enough to remember his family. The cliché “absent-minded professor” aptly described James Sullivan Jr. The last time he’d had dinner with Kate and Luke, he’d seemed sincerely shocked that his grandson wasn’t still nine years old.

Patch met them at the front door with baritone yowls and a tail wagging wildly enough to generate a windstorm. It took a few minutes to get past the excited shepherd and into the living room. Kate took in the familiar surroundings, recalling her grandfather’s good-natured complaints about the pink curtains and throw pillows on the sofa. Gram had told him that, if it made him feel better, the color was technically “country rose.” He’d also pretended to be annoyed by her collection of carousel-horse figurines, but he’d built her the gorgeous display cabinet that housed them.

The room had barely changed in the last decade. Even the warm, inviting scent was the same. Gram’s house always smelled like a combination of the lemony cleaner she used on the hardwood floors and pecan pie.

Luke raised his head, sniffing appreciatively, but it wasn’t floor cleaner and nostalgia that captured his interest. “Food!”

Gram laughed. “I have beef stew in the slow-cooker and made a batch of corn bread muffins.”

He immediately dropped the large duffel bags, as if preparing to bolt for the kitchen.

“We’re not just leaving our stuff all over Gram’s house,” Kate chided, familiar with his habits. Their home in Houston had often been an obstacle course of discarded tennis shoes, an unzipped backpack with class binders spilling out of it and dirty glasses that should have been carried to the sink. “Once you’ve got the bags in your room and washed your hands, we’ll see about dinner.” He must have been genuinely hungry because, rather than flashing one of his mutinous scowls, he dashed down the hallway.

“It’s gratifying to cook for someone other than just myself,” Gram said, a trace of sadness beneath her smile.

Kate’s heart squeezed, but she kept her tone light. “As much food as Luke puts away, you may get tired of it pretty quickly. I insist you let me help with meals. And everything else—cleaning, gardening, whatever needs to be done. I know how seriously you take hospitality, but Luke and I are roommates, not guests who have to be waited on hand and foot.”

Gram’s eyes twinkled. “Well...now that you mention it, I suppose I could use your help with a welcome party I’m hosting. Tomorrow.”

“You planned a party tomorrow?” So much for settling in slowly. Kate had hoped to sleep late, then spend the day unpacking.

“Party is probably too grandiose a term. It’s just a neighborhood cookout. I invited some friends, like the Rosses, who live down the road. You remember they used to let you ride their horses? And I figured you’d want to see Crystal Tucker. Wait—she’s Crystal Walsh now, isn’t she?” Gram shook her head. “Seems like just yesterday the two of you were sharing cotton candy at the Watermelon Festival, a couple of kids with pigtails and sticky hands. Now you’re all grown up with kids of your own!”

Kate and Crystal had bonded quickly after meeting at the community pool and renewed their friendship every summer. An only child, Kate had loved having a playmate in town. Crystal, the middle kid between two sisters, relished the comparative peace and quiet at the Denby farm. The last time they’d seen each other was Jim Denby’s funeral, but Crystal, heavily pregnant with twin boys, hadn’t been able to stay long. It would be nice to catch up with her. Kate tried to recall the age of Crystal’s oldest son, hoping the boy could be a potential friend for Luke. He needed a wholesome peer group—the sooner, the better.

With that goal in mind, she gave her grandmother a grateful smile. “I hate for you to go to trouble on our account, but I’m really glad you’re throwing the welcome party. I’m sure it will be exactly what we need.”

* * *

KATE WAS GLAD her son had the good sense not to show up at the dinner table wearing earbuds—a mandate she’d had to repeat at least once a week back in Houston—but he wasn’t the most effusive dinner companion. He wolfed down two servings of stew while barely looking up from his plate, then asked to be excused.

She sighed, wishing he showed more curiosity about their new surroundings and learning about Cupid’s Bow. Let him go. It had been a long day, and no doubt tomorrow would bring fresh battles. “You’re excused, but make sure you rinse your dishes.”

He did as asked, then paused in the doorway that led to the hall. “Dinner was awesome,” he mumbled in Gram’s general direction, the words all strung together. Then he disappeared around the corner.

Kate shook her head. “Well, that was a start, I guess. We’ll work on eye contact later.”

Gram smiled. “He’s had a tough time of it. You both have.”

“I know.” Lord, did she know. “But that doesn’t give him a permanent get-out-of-jail-free card. Losing his dad can’t become a habitual excuse for bad choices.” She ran a hand through her hair, recalling the incident at the gas station. She’d meant get-out-of-jail in a figurative sense, but if her son didn’t get off his current path...

“Katie?” Gram’s tone was thick with concern.

Glancing toward the empty doorway, Kate lowered her voice. “We had a mishap on the way to the farm...and by mishap, I mean petty larceny. He stole from Rick Jacobs, got caught shoplifting a candy bar at the gas station. Luke didn’t even want it. We’d been arguing in the car and I can’t help feeling like this was another act of rebellion because he’s mad at me. He took the candy bar for a little girl.”

Kate covered her eyes, her face heating at the mortifying memory. “He got busted stealing candy for one of Cole Trent’s daughters.”

“He stole something for the sheriff’s kid?” Gram made an odd noise that Kate belatedly identified as a snort of amusement.

“Gram! It’s not funny.”

“It sort of is. Cupid’s Bow is small, granted, but there are a couple thousand residents. Of all the people...” She tried unsuccessfully to smother another laugh. “The sheriff! Seriously?”

“Trust me, I wouldn’t joke about this. When we met him inside, we didn’t know he was a cop. Then he chased us out in the parking lot, understandably furious. I was so embarrassed.” And that was after she’d already enjoyed the super-fun humiliation of dumping her drink on him. “Frankly, I’m hoping to avoid Sheriff Trent for the next three or four...ever.”

Gram’s eyes widened. “Oh, but—surely your paths will cross again. Like I said, this is a small town. So, perhaps it would be best to get it over with sooner rather than later. Right?”

Definitely not. But since it seemed rude to argue, Kate smiled weakly. “I suppose that’s one way of looking at it.” Another way to view it was that Kate had enough on her plate already without worrying about alienating a blue-eyed pillar of the community.

* * *

CRAP. LUKE SULLIVAN scowled at the prolonged quiet on the other side of the bedroom door. They’re talking about me. He couldn’t make out any of his mom’s or great-grandmother’s words, but he knew the tense, muffled tone. His mother had used it with his therapist whenever she sent Luke out of the room so the two adults could confer privately. She’d used it a lot on the phone with her friends when she was complaining about Luke’s screw-ups.

Suddenly needing noise and lots of it, Luke shoved in his earbuds and cranked up the volume on a hip-hop song. It was enough to drown out the low drone of conversation in the kitchen, but it didn’t mute the thoughts bouncing around his brain. He didn’t want to be here, in this shoebox of a room that smelled faintly of paint fumes. He liked his great-grandmother, but this was her house, not his. He missed home.

And he missed his friends.

He knew his mom didn’t like them, had specifically heard her describe Bobby as a “hoodlum,” but she didn’t get it. When he hung out with Bobby and the other eighth graders, kids looked at him with respect. Bobby was a known badass. He wasn’t universally liked, but even being regarded with contempt was better than pity. Luke hated students and teachers and neighbors eyeing him like he was a pathetic baby bird who’d fallen out of its nest and effed up its wing.

He was sick of people asking if he was “okay,” like his father’s murder was something to get over, equal to bombing a math quiz. He was tired of his mom’s stubborn attempts to get him to hang out with his old friends. And her attempts to get him to draw again. What did she care? Comic books were dumb stories that had nothing to do with real life.

In the stories Luke used to doodle, his cyborg-enhanced alien helped people by stopping natural disasters and chasing off enemies. In real life, Luke couldn’t even help cheer up a little girl. Stealing the candy had been stupid, and he certainly hadn’t meant to get her in trouble. He hated seeing girls cry.

He knew his mom cried. After his dad got shot, she’d cried a lot. They both had. But then she’d pretended to stop. He wasn’t stupid, though. He noticed when her face was blotchy. Some nights when he couldn’t sleep, he could hear the muffled noise. He hated those nights. He hated that his dad had picked such a dangerous job. He hated that he’d had to leave the only place he’d ever lived. But there wasn’t anything Luke could do about those problems.

Frustration flooded him, and he clenched his fists.

Yeah, stealing the candy bar had been a dumbass thing to do but it had seemed like such a simple solution, an easy way to make that little girl stop crying. Finally, there’d been a problem that seemed fixable! But he hadn’t been able even to fix that. So how was he going to fix the rest of his life?

* * *

AFTER THE ACHES and pains caused by loading the car and hours of driving, Kate expected to toss and turn all night. Instead, only a few minutes after her head hit the pillow, she fell into a dreamless sleep. In the morning, she woke to a wave of déjà vu triggered by the scent of coffee. She herself had never developed a taste for it, but Damon hadn’t been able to form the words good morning without a mug in his hand.

To combat the Texas summer, Gram kept the air-conditioning chugging at a temperature low enough to cool the hardwood floors. Kate slid her feet into music-note slippers given to her by a student at Christmas and padded to the kitchen to help with breakfast. She wasn’t surprised that the door to Luke’s room was still closed; he rarely got out of bed without parental prompting.

Gram, a natural morning person, beamed at her. “Sleep well, dear?”

“Like a rock, actually.” It was the best night’s rest she’d had in recent memory.

“I was just about to scramble myself some eggs. Want some?”

“You made dinner last night. It only seems fair that I make breakfast,” Kate counteroffered.

“All right. Then I can work on my shopping list. I’m running into town to pick up a few last minute items for the cookout this afternoon.”

The two women ate breakfast in companionable silence. Afterward, Gram gathered her purse and keys, saying she wouldn’t be gone long. She was just missing a few ingredients for the desserts she planned to bake.

Alone in the quiet house, Kate began unpacking some of her belongings into the closet and bureau. She’d been too drained last night. After making a substantial dent—and finding a casual green-striped sundress that seemed appropriate for today—she headed for the bathroom and showered. She used the blow-dryer with the door open, hoping the noise would jumpstart the process of waking Luke. When she knocked on his door, however, there was no answer, not even a mumbled “go away.”

She toyed with letting him sleep longer, wondering if that would improve his disposition today, but decided she wanted this opportunity while they were alone in the house to break the news about the welcome party. He might not react with enthusiasm, and she didn’t want him hurting Gram’s feelings.

“Knock, knock,” she said as she pushed the door open.

He was out cold, his breathing slow and even, his shaggy hair going in all different directions, an uneven halo against the pale blue pillowcase. Without the scowl that was rapidly becoming his trademark, he looked a lot like he had as a little boy. Her heart constricted, a tight ball in her chest. She loved her son so much and wanted nothing more than to make his life better, easier. If only he could see that!