Montana Sheriff

In either case, his face still made her heart skip a beat before launching into double time.

No, that hadn’t changed any no matter how much she’d tried to convince herself that it would.

Oh, but so many other things had changed. Her whole world had changed and it wasn’t because she’d gone on to college, or gotten a business degree, or now worked in one of the larger, more prestigious advertising firms in Seattle. It also had nothing to do with her carefully decorated high-rise apartment in the shadow of the Space Needle and everything to do with the little boy who lived in it with her.

Christopher, the little boy she hadn’t wanted to bring to Redemption with her, but knew she had to. Leaving her son behind with the woman who looked after him every day after kindergarten was not an option. Oh, Naomi had even volunteered to have him stay with her for the duration, saying she would be more than happy to do it. Heaven knew that the woman was very good with Christopher and Christopher liked Naomi. But there was no way she was going to leave her son behind, especially since she really wasn’t sure exactly how long she would be gone.

The occasional overnight trips that her company sent her on were one thing. Christopher thought of it as “camping out” when he stayed at Naomi’s house. But an open-ended trip like this one promised to be was something else entirely. So she had brought the five-year-old with her, hoping that his presence would somehow help to rally her father’s alarmingly low spirits.

Meanwhile, Ronnie was struggling to do her best and ignore the stress that having Christopher here with her in Redemption inadvertently generated.

The one thing she clung to was that the boy looked like her.

And not like his father.

Forcing a smile to her lips, Ronnie waited half a beat while the rest of the surrounding area pulled itself out of the encroaching darkness and slowly came back into focus.

She couldn’t wait until her knees came back from their semiliquid state. If she took too long to respond, Cole would be able to see the effect he still had on her. And that was the very last thing in the world she wanted.

It was bad enough that he probably suspected as much. She didn’t want to confirm the impression.

So she forced a smile to her lips and returned his greeting. “Hello, Cole.”

Her eyes slid down to take in the shiny piece of metal pinned to the khaki-colored, long-sleeved shirt that Cole wore. Had her father mentioned this development to her in one of his visits to Seattle? She couldn’t remember but she really didn’t think so. She would have remembered if he had.

In a rare display of sensitivity, her father went out of his way to avoid all references to Cole whenever they talked. He never even asked if Cole was the father of his grandson. Amos McCloud was a firm believer that everyone was entitled to their privacy. It was basically a policy of don’t ask, don’t tell. She didn’t ask and her father didn’t tell—even though there were times when she ached to know what Cole was doing these days.

She still didn’t ask. Because if her father had said that Cole had gotten married, or worse, gotten married and started a family, the news would have sliced through her heart like the sharp blade of a cutlass. No, not knowing anything was the far better way for her to go.

But that had left her entirely unprepared for this first encounter.

Ronnie struggled against the feeling that her soul was suddenly completely exposed.

“So, you’re the town sheriff now,” she acknowledged pleasantly, silently congratulating herself on being able to mask all the feelings that rushed to the surface. “When did that happen?”

Cole’s reply was sparsely worded. Just long enough to get the answer across. “Four years ago. The old sheriff got sick. Decided he needed to be someplace warmer. Nobody would take the job, so I did.” He punctuated the final sentence with a careless half shrug.

She could feel every one of his movements echoing inside of her. Get a grip, Ronnie, or you’re going to blow this.

“He’s being modest,” Ed told her, cutting in. “The whole town took a vote when Paul left and just about everyone cast their ballot for Cole here. Couldn’t ask for a better sheriff, either,” Ed said, beaming his approval in the town’s choice. “Painfully honest, this boy. Won’t even take a cup of coffee when it’s offered to him at the diner without paying for it.” Ed chuckled as he shook his head, his wide waist undulating ever so slightly as he did so. “Gives graft a bad name, Cole does.” And then the Emporium owner sobered just a shade. “We’re all lucky to have him here.”

Ronnie looked at Cole for a long moment. She could see why Ed and the other citizens of Redemption would feel that way. Something about Cole exuded strength.

That had always been the case.

Having him in a position of authority allowed people to sleep better at night, she imagined. He made them feel safe. She had certainly felt that way when she was with him. Right up until the end. But then, the threat had come from her own feelings at that point, not from him.

“Where else would he be?” she asked quietly. She’d meant her question to have a touch of humor in it, but it had come out deadly serious. “He never wanted to be anyplace but here.”

To the outside observer, the comment seemed to be addressed to the shop owner. But her eyes never left Cole’s.

His eyes were still hypnotic, she thought. Even after all this time, they hadn’t lost their ability to pull her in. To make her long for things that just didn’t have a prayer of working out.

In the end, that last turbulent summer where they seemed to argue all the time, it came down to a matter of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object. She wanted him to leave Redemption, to test his wings and fly away with her, and he wanted her to stay with him. Wanted her to start a life with him in earnest.

So, he had stayed and she had gone.

But not before taking a part of Cole James along with her.

And that, along with the radio silence that followed, was something she knew Cole would never forgive her for. There wasn’t any point in thinking about it, or any of her reasons—good reasons—for having done what she had.

Forcing herself to look away, Ronnie turned her attention back to Ed. “So, you’ll deliver the order to the ranch today?” she asked, referring to the items she had just paid for.

“I’ll get on it right away,” Ed promised. “You’ll have it by this afternoon.” He beamed at her, his brown eyes regarding her kindly. “Nice seeing you again, Veronica. You do your father proud.”

Ronnie inclined her head, feeling a little embarrassed by the compliment. “Family does what it has to do,” was all she said, deflecting any further words of praise.

Right now, all she wanted to do was get back into her car and drive away. Quickly. Before her knees melted away altogether.

Cole surprised her by asking, “Mind if I walk you out?”

The words sounded so formal, so stilted. So unlike anything that had ever been exchanged between them before, even going back to the time when they were kids. She couldn’t remember a time when they hadn’t known one another.

And now, now they were just strangers, feeling awkward in each other’s presence.

Strangers with a past.

If she wanted to get through this with her sanity intact, she would have to treat Cole James the way she treated a client. Politely, competently, but always with preset boundaries.

Never once had she mixed business with her private life. Mainly because her private life was all about Christopher.

“Of course not,” she finally replied. “I wouldn’t want to say no to the sheriff.”

This time the smile that rose to her lips came of its own accord. The idea of Cole being the sheriff of the town they had grown up in just didn’t seem real to her. It was more like something they would pretend in one of their elaborate games.

Cole opened the door for her and held it. The bell just above the door rang softly, ushering them out.

She barely heard it, listening instead to the sound of her heart pounding.

Breathe, Ronnie, breathe. You knew he was going to be around.

The thing was, she’d expected him to be on his ranch. Which cut the chances of running into him down rather drastically.

“What happened to you being a rancher?” she asked him.

“Town needed a sheriff,” Cole said. “And my mother got a really good man to help her run the ranch,” he added. After a moment, he shrugged. “I still help out once in a while, during branding season, if Will’s short-handed.”

Ronnie tried to put a face with the first name. “Will?”

“Will Jeffers,” he clarified. “The man my mother hired to help run the ranch after …” Cole’s voice trailed off for a moment, his discomfort with the topic more than mildly evident.

Ronnie pressed her lips together. She hadn’t meant to inadvertently dredge up a painful subject for him. Cole’s father had died suddenly last year, coming down with and succumbing so quickly to ALS no one even knew what was happening until it was almost all over. Her father had told her about that last night, after she’d put Christopher to bed.

“I was sorry to hear about your dad,” Ronnie said haltingly.

She had to stifle the urge to put her hand on his shoulder, to communicate with Cole the way she used to, with a simple look, a touch. They’d had their own unique way of “speaking” without words once. Back when the world was new and their paths hadn’t diverged so very sharply and far apart.

“Yeah, well, these things happen,” Cole replied, his voice distant as he made an attempt to shrug off her sympathy.

He didn’t want sympathy from Ronnie. He didn’t want anything at all from her.

And then he made the mistake of looking directly at her again.

Cole could almost feel her getting under his skin, shaking his world down to its foundations. Just the way she always used to. Searching for some way to distract himself, he asked, “When did you get in?”

What went unsaid was that he was surprised that he hadn’t heard about her arrival. Redemption was a small town and most information became general knowledge within the space of a few hours. Usually less.

“Late last night. My father didn’t even let me know about the accident until just two days ago.” When she’d received the call from her father, she’d known, the moment she heard his voice, that something was terribly, terribly wrong. She vaguely remembered sinking onto the sofa, both hands wrapped around the receiver to keep it from dropping to the floor as she listened to her father tell her about the accident.

He told her about Wayne being in a coma. The moment she’d hung up, she’d galvanized into action. Calling the company where she worked, she cited a family emergency and put in for a leave of absence. Then, packing up everything she thought she would need, she’d strapped Christopher into his car seat and then drove straight from Seattle to Redemption, covering close to six hundred miles in just a little over nine hours.

She’d been too wired to be exhausted until after she’d put Christopher to bed and talked at length to her father who was surprised that she’d driven all the way to Montana to see them.

Ronnie shook her head as remnants of disbelief still clung to her. “A whole two weeks and he didn’t think to call me.” She and her father were closer than this. Or at least she’d thought they were. Now it felt as if she didn’t know anything.

“You know your dad,” Cole told her. “He’s a stubborn son of a gun. Doesn’t want help from anyone.” He looked at her pointedly. “Not even you.”

For a split second, some of the hurt, the anger and especially the fear she’d been harboring since she’d received the phone call—harboring and trying to deal with—surfaced and flashed in her eyes.

“I’m not anyone,” Ronnie retorted. “I’m his daughter,” she emphasized, then struggled to get her temper, her feelings under control. “I’m his family,” she said in a softer, but no less emphatic voice. “He’s supposed to call me when something like this happens. I’m not supposed to learn that he and Wayne were nearly killed because I just happened to call to ask him what he wanted for his birthday.”

He could see why she was upset, but he was having trouble dealing with his own issues, his own hurt feelings, so it was difficult for him to be sympathetic about what she’d gone through.

“Yeah, well, maybe Amos lost that page in the father’s handbook for a while.” And then he told her something he wasn’t sure she was aware of. “Your father’s been busy beating himself up because he was the one behind the wheel, driving the truck, and he feels responsible for what happened to Wayne.”

Cole saw her clench her hand into a fist at her side. He could all but see the tension dancing through her. “Wayne’s going to be all right,” she declared stubbornly. “I called Wayne’s attending surgeon as soon as I got off the phone with my father. Dr. Nichols said all my brother’s reflexes seem to be in working order and that sometimes a coma is just the body’s way of trying to focus on doing nothing but healing itself.”

Cole saw no reason to contradict her or point out that a lot of people never woke up from a coma. She was dealing with enough as it was. Besides, what she thought or felt was no longer any concern of his outside the realm of her being a citizen of Redemption—or a former citizen of Redemption, he amended.

“Have you been to see your brother yet?” he asked as they walked past his truck.

“No. Not yet. But I’m going this afternoon,” she added quickly. She’d wanted to go the second she’d arrived in Montana, but there was more than just herself to take into account. She had Christopher to take care of. No one had ever told her, all those years ago when she had so desperately longed to become an adult, that being a mother required so much patience. “I wanted to get a couple of things squared away for my dad first,” she added.

Ronnie took a deep breath, debating whether or not to continue. The easy thing would be to terminate the conversation here. But in all good conscience she couldn’t ignore the particulars that had been involved in the aftermath of the accident.

She approached the topic cautiously. “Dad said that you were the first one on the scene after the accident.”

His expression gave nothing away, neither telling her to drop the subject nor to pursue it. “I was,” he acknowledged.

He said it without any fanfare. How very typical of Cole just to leave the statement there, she couldn’t help thinking. Another man would have thumped his chest. At the very least, he would have basked in the heroism of what he’d done, risking his very life in order to save someone else.

But this was Cole. Cole, who stoically did what he did and then just went on as if nothing out of the ordinary had taken place. Cole, who wanted no thanks, no elaborate show of gratitude, no real attention brought to him.

But she couldn’t let it go. She had to thank him, to give him credit where credit was so richly deserved.

If not for Cole, the only family she’d have at this very moment would be a five-year-old.

“He also said that if it wasn’t for you practically lifting the cab of the truck single-handedly and dragging Wayne out of the mangled vehicle, my brother—” her throat went dry as she pushed on “—would have been burned to death when that old truck of Dad’s suddenly caught fire.”

Again, Cole shrugged. And this time, he looked away. He found it easier to talk if he wasn’t looking at her face. Wasn’t fighting off feelings that were supposed to be dead by now.

“I didn’t do anything that anyone else wouldn’t do,” he told her.

“Maybe so,” Ronnie allowed, even though she sincerely doubted that many men would have rushed in to do what he’d done when faced with the definite possibility of their own death. Good people though they were in Redemption, not everyone was that brave or that selfless. “But I still want to thank you for saving my brother’s life. And saving my dad.”

Cole shoved his hands into his back pockets and stared at leaves chasing one another in a circle along the street.

“Just part of the job,” he told her.

They’d stopped walking and were standing before what, in his estimation, was undoubtedly a very expensive and utterly impractical vehicle. It was a late-model black sedan, a Mercedes, far more suited to a metropolitan area than a town that still shared its streets with horses from the surrounding ranches on occasion.

She had changed, he thought. The old Ronnie would have been the first to point out how impractical and out of place a car like that was. Was she trying to impress him and show him how very successful she’d become in her new life?

He didn’t measure success the same way she did. Something else they didn’t have in common anymore, he thought.

“You renting that?” he asked her, curious. If so, she had to have gotten it somewhere other than in Redemption. The town’s one rental agency was run by the town car mechanic and he sincerely doubted that Hank Wilson had a car like that in his possession.

“No, it’s mine,” she told him. She suddenly felt self-conscious about owning the car and told herself she was being needlessly uncomfortable. The car was reliable and she liked it. That it was also out of place here wasn’t her concern. She wasn’t about to feel guilty because she’d made something of herself. “I had a few things to bring with me,” she went on to explain, “so I drove here.”

She saw his mouth curve ever so slightly. There was a hint of a smile on his lips that she couldn’t begin to fathom.

It was official, Ronnie decided. She was on the outside, looking in. And it was by her own design.

So why did it feel so lousy?

Chapter Three

“You drove here,” Cole said, repeating what she had just stated.

“Yes.”

Ronnie said she’d just learned about the accident two days ago. That meant she had to have left almost immediately after that. No matter what else she was, the woman still had the ability to amaze him.

“All, what? Six, seven hundred miles from Seattle to here?” he asked.

“Five hundred and ninety three,” Ronnie corrected tersely.

“Oh, five hundred and ninety three,” he echoed, as if enlightened. “Big difference. And I suppose that you drove straight through.”

The tone of his voice hadn’t changed, but she could swear he was mocking her. Ronnie raised her chin, bracing herself. Waiting for a challenge or a careless statement tossed her way, which would, to her, amount to fighting words. “Yes, I did.”

Cole’s eyes held hers, as if he was looking directly into her head. “No breaks?”

Of course there had been breaks. She wasn’t a robot. Besides, she hadn’t taken the trip alone. But then, he didn’t know that, she reminded herself.

“Well, I had to stop to eat a couple of times,” she told him, then decided she wanted to know what he was up to. “Why?”

“No reason,” he said a tad too innocently. “Just guess some things never change.” Ronnie had been stubborn as a kid and she was still just as stubborn now. Maybe even more so.

Don’t go all nostalgic on her now, Cole warned himself. So she drove like a maniac to get to her father. This doesn’t change the fact that she didn’t even try to get in contact with you to say she was sorry. Hell, she’s not even saying it now. Time to give up on this and move on with your life.

As if he could.

There was something about Cole’s mouth when it quirked that way …

Belatedly, Ronnie realized that her breath had backed up in her throat. Clearing it, she began to move away. “Um, I’d better be getting back. My dad’s going to be wondering what happened to me.”

Aiming her keychain at her car, she pressed the button. The vehicle emitted a high-pitched noise and winked its lights flirtatiously as all four of its locks stood up at attention.

Cole glanced at the dark car, unimpressed. “He’d probably think that fancy car of yours broke down somewhere.”

Ronnie narrowed her eyes. Well, he wasn’t going to make her feel guilty because she’d bought a car that she had secretly fantasized about ever since she’d hit her early teens.

With a toss of her head, she informed him, “It’s a very reliable car.”

His mouth quirked again, this time a half smile gracing his lips. It was obvious he didn’t believe her. “If you say so.”

“I say so,” she retorted as she slid in behind the car’s steering wheel. Yanking the door to her, she shut it. Hard.

She knew she had to go before she found herself suddenly caught up in an argument with Cole. It was all too easy to do, and the last time that had happened, Christopher came along nine months later.

Christopher. The little boy was the absolute light of her life.

After pulling away from the curb, she glanced in the rearview mirror. Cole was still standing there, in the street, arms crossed before him, and watching her drive away.

God, the man was just too handsome for her own good.

And when he finds out you never told him about Christopher, he’s going to be one hell of an angry man.

No way around that, Ronnie told herself, sighing as she drove back to her father’s ranch.

Think about it later, she ordered herself. Right now, she needed to touch base with both her father and her son before she drove down to Helena to see Wayne in the hospital. She had too much to do to let herself get bogged down in her thoughts of what could have been and what, in actuality, really was.

One final glance in her rearview mirror, one last glimpse of Cole, and then she focused her eyes and her attention on the road before her.

But her mind insisted on remaining stuck in first gear. With Cole. And their son.

There were a lot of reasons why, six years ago, she hadn’t told Cole she was pregnant with his baby. Right now, she was damn sure that he wouldn’t accept any of them, but that didn’t change anything. Certainly didn’t change the fact that she knew she was right in doing what she had.

She knew Cole, knew how honorable he was, and how very, very stubborn he could be. If she’d told him about the baby, he would have insisted on marrying her and at the time, marriage hadn’t been in her plans.

Neither was having a baby, but there was nothing, given her convictions, that she could do about that—other than what she’d done. She adjusted and found a way to deal with it, the same way she did with everything else. Consequently, she had her baby and also went on to get her education. All she had to do in order to accomplish that was give up sleeping. Permanently.

Cole, if he’d known, would have insisted that she stay in Redemption instead of going off to college. Would have pointed out how much better it was for the boy to grow up in a place like this town rather than in a large city.

She could see the scenario unfolding before her as if it was a movie. She would have given in and stayed in Redemption. And every day she would have felt a little more trapped than the day before. And a little more resentful that she’d been made to stay.

Leaving Redemption hadn’t been an easy decision for her, even before she’d known she was pregnant. Part of her would have wanted to take the easy way out, would have wanted to stay here because, after all, this was where her family was.

And this was where the only man she’d ever loved or would love was.

But a part of her craved to explore the unknown, desperately wanted to spread her wings and fly, to see how far she could go if she pushed herself. She didn’t want to live and die in a tiny corner of Montana because she had no choice in the matter. If she decided to live in Redemption, she wanted it to be by choice, after having experienced an entire spectrum of other things—or at least something else. She didn’t want to become one of those people who died with a box full of regrets.