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“Oh, she forces me, all right. In hopes I’ll take back my ex-husband.” Leona retreated into the foyer where her hair seemed less blue and her countenance less sharp. “Or join one of Harmony Valley’s many causes.”
“Too much information for our guests,” Reggie muttered.
“My offer of a place to stay still stands,” Nate said to Julie. He had a studio apartment above the sheriff’s office.
“I’ll face the music of my own making, thank you.” Lugging Duke, Julie followed Reggie up the steps. “You’d best do the same.”
Nate noted Julie’s slow, measured steps. Her uneven breathing as she ascended the stairs. Her rigid posture and the tender way she held Duke. What had torn her apart?
Cancer?
She’d been favoring her left shoulder.
Breast cancer?
Nate bounded up the stairs, suddenly afraid Julie might collapse.
“I could like Ms. Smith.” Leona gave Julie a knowing smile. “She has a way with the sheriff. But—” she tilted her head and filled her expression with cheerful remorse “—the reservation was for one.”
“Casa Landry has room for two,” Nate said, if he slept downstairs on the cot in the jail cell.
“Poaching my business.” Reggie tsked and tried to look like there was much business to poach. “Bad form, Sheriff. Children under six stay free, Grandmother.”
“Want bed,” Duke crooned.
“As soon as we check in, little man.” But Julie didn’t move toward the door in her usual take-no-prisoners style. She blew out a labored breath and planted her boots on the porch as if it was an accomplishment just to make it that far. “Reservation for Smith.”
“Reggie needs your credit card.” Leona tried to smile, although it made her look as if she was having indigestion. “I need your assurance that your party won’t disrupt other guests.”
“By other guests, she means herself.” Reggie softened the remark with a more natural smile. “Thankfully, without her hearing aids she can only hear you if you scream. She hasn’t been disturbed at night yet.”
Julie was a woman of action, but she was loitering on the porch as if this was a social call and she wasn’t swaying with fatigue. Why? Because cancer was making a buffet of her strength. Nate was certain of it now. His certainty hollowed him with a sense of impending loss.
“Excuse me.” A man’s voice reached them from the sidewalk. “Is this the Lambridge Bed & Breakfast?”
“It is.” Reggie shoved the diaper bag into Nate’s chest. “Grandmother, show the Smiths to their room.”
“Yes,” Nate said firmly. “Show us now.”
* * *
WHEN JULIE WAS a kid, she’d had boundless energy. It was as if she’d gotten her share of energy, plus April’s.
April had asthma. April had painful growth spurts. April had flat feet, poor eyesight, lactose intolerance, skin that burned, toes prone to warts. You name it, April suffered through it. Not with Julie’s spunk, but with a gentle smile and a well-meaning joke.
Five days ago, Julie had been shot in the soft flesh near her shoulder. She’d lost a lot of blood.
Standing and carrying Duke. Fighting with Nate. Being out of bed. How quickly it all drained her reserves. She wanted to collapse on the chair just inside the front door. She didn’t want to carry her nephew and follow the Bride of Frankenstein up the stairs to a bedroom.
Seriously. Leona was a dead ringer for the black-and-white film icon. Give her a couple of neck bolts, tease up her hair, and she’d be ready for Halloween.
She was out of place in the house, which was beautiful and serene. It was like stepping back in time. Bead board. Wood floors. Old fixtures. Antique furniture. All lovingly cared for. By Reggie, no doubt.
“I’m curious.” Nate stared at Reggie and the man on the sidewalk. And then he turned to look at Leona. “You’re singing in Rose’s production of Annie for the Spring Festival?”
There was a shift in Leona’s posture, a preening. “Rose said no one else could play Miss Hannigan.”
Nate’s half smile twitched. He adjusted his hold on the load he carried. “Can you give us a sample?”
“I don’t do requests.” With a toss of her head, Leona led them with slow steps that made the creaking stairs wail as plaintively as Duke had outside.
The music from Psycho played once more in Julie’s head, but this time she was smiling as she climbed.
The pain meds are making me loopy.
Or they would be if I’d taken the pain meds.
When they reached the second floor, Leona gestured to an open door. “This is your bathroom.”
It was completely tiled and completely white. Not the best choice for the dirt little boys tended to bring inside.
Blessedly, a few steps later they were at a bedroom. The four-poster bed was huge, and the room was still large enough for a Tae Kwon Do match.
Julie set Duke down on the bed. Only the presence of Nate kept her from collapsing next to him.
She’d played sports in high school and trained in martial arts. She knew how to play through pain. But exhaustion. Exhaustion was different. Exhaustion took you out of the game.
“Breakfast is from 8:30 a.m. to 9:00 a.m.” Leona raised her eyebrows at Nate. “Visiting hours end at 9:00 p.m.”
Nate dropped Julie’s duffel on the chair near the cherry desk, placing the rest of her things around it on the floor, including the backpack with the custody papers. “That gives me ten minutes.”
Leona checked her slim gold watch. “Nine minutes.”
A smile snuck past Julie’s defenses again. Maybe she and Leona would get along after all. She could probably give Julie pointers on how to put Nate in his place.
Leona gave Julie what might have been a charitable smile if Julie was feeling charitable. “Credit card?” When she had it, Leona left. Her heels clacked briskly against the hardwood.
Nate picked up Duke’s dinosaur bedroll and shook it out on top of the bed, surrounding it with pillows. “Don’t let Leona get under your skin. She senses weakness like a wolf smells blood.”
“I could take her,” Julie joked, unable to get her eyes off Nate. She’d forgotten how nice he could be. He was supposed to be a jerk when she told him about Duke. He was supposed to reject Duke as his. He was supposed to be angry and insensitive. Julie could deal with angry, insensitive jerks all day long. It was the nice guys who undid her.
She needed her anger, if only for nine more minutes. “Don’t think I’m going to hand Duke over to you and walk away. You still have to prove you’ll be a good father.”
“Says who?” There was some of the anger she sought. A spark in dark eyes. A set to his jaw.
His reaction energized her. “It was April’s last wish.”
“Want bed,” Duke crooned, crawling toward the bedroll.
Nate stared at his son with wonder in his eyes.
Julie had to turn away. She should change Duke’s diaper and brush his teeth. She should go downstairs and sign the check-in paperwork. She should get a key to her room. She shouldn’t be thinking that Nate’s reaction to Duke made him Dadworthy.
She checked her cell phone. Seven more minutes.
She heard Nate remove Duke’s shoes. Heard him tuck Duke into the bedroll. Heard him whisper, “Sweet dreams.”
Nice. Nate had always been nice. Nice to those he worked with. Nice to those who obeyed the law. Nice. Until the day he’d asked to speak to April alone in the church vestibule. Until the week after that when he’d quit the Sacramento PD and moved away. Until he wasn’t by April’s side as she wasted away and whispered her last wishes.
How could a man who was so upstanding at work be so unreliable in his personal life?
Julie drew a labored breath.
“We need to talk.” Nate was behind her, being civil.
This wasn’t a civil situation. Julie turned on legs as stiff and unyielding as green two-by-fours. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”
He studied her the way they’d been trained at the academy, looking for signs of stress or emotional imbalance.
She forced her lips to make the journey upward toward superiority. “Tomorrow.”
After a moment, he nodded. “Breakfast. El Rosal. I’m buying.”
“We have a free breakfast here.” Needing something to do, she dug out a diaper from the bag, as if she was going to be a stellar caregiver and wake up Duke to change him.
Nada on that. The little man was hell on wheels when he woke up too soon.
His gaze turned as soft as one of Duke’s baby blankets. “It’s good to see you, Jules.”
“Don’t call me that, Landry.”
He gave her a rueful half smile, glanced at Duke one last time and then left.
She listened to his footsteps recede. She listened to the front door open and close. She listened to him drive away. Nate thought of himself as a good guy. And good guys sometimes did an about-face and came back to check on someone they thought was in need. Only when Julie was positive he’d left did she sink to the floor, resting her back against the footboard.
She texted her mother to tell her they’d arrived safely, assuring her she was all right. What a liar she’d become.
Leona appeared in the doorway, her eyes slanted with disapproval. “Are you sleeping on the floor?”
“No. I’m about to do my exercises for my back.” It wasn’t a lie if she was joking, right? “You can leave the key on the dresser with my receipt.”
“You don’t need a key.” Leona placed a handwritten receipt on the dresser with Julie’s credit card. “We don’t have locks.” She closed the door behind her.
“No key,” Julie murmured. No privacy. No way to lock Duke in here with her to prevent him wandering if he awoke at midnight. No pain killers. No revenge. No signed custody agreement. What a bust of a day.
Julie unbuttoned her shirt, drawing it carefully over her injured shoulder. Blood trickled from her collarbone. She peeled the bandage off, opened the diaper and shoved it under her bra strap.
She’d sit a few more minutes to gather her strength. And then she’d take her med kit into the bathroom, being careful not to bleed all over those white tiles.
Just a few more minutes...
CHAPTER FOUR (#u93cfa53e-af90-59b1-9de3-bf5d9987b2bd)
AFTER LEAVING THE BED-AND-BREAKFAST, Nate drove around town, ostensibly to make his nightly rounds.
But it was more than worry for the town that kept him from bed. His mind was as jumbled as a box of well-used Scrabble tiles. As if being blindsided by Doris wasn’t bad enough...
I’m a father.
And April was dead. He’d need to visit her grave and pay his respects, maybe make a donation to a cancer-related charity.
I’m a father.
And Julie looked like she’d been run over by a bus. He’d need to contact a few of their mutual friends on the force and find out how bad her cancer was. He didn’t want to repeat the mistake he’d made with April. But that mistake hadn’t been one-sided. April had had a lot to say on their wedding day and she’d known...
I’m a father.
As were many of his friends in Harmony Valley. But unlike them, he didn’t know his son’s middle name. He didn’t know what he’d looked like as a baby. He didn’t even know his son’s birth date. Birthdays meant a lot to kids. They tended to remember birthdays as they got older.
Nate had been given a gun for his eighth birthday. It was a wreck of a weapon. The stock was duct-taped. The barrel scraped and the sight bent forward as if someone had used it for a cane. But it was a real rifle, not a BB gun like Matthew Freitas had gotten for his eighth birthday.
“Time you start acting like a man,” his father had said in a voice that boomed in their small kitchen. He’d stared at his wife making pancakes for Nate’s birthday breakfast with an arrogant grin. “Duck-hunting season is coming up.”
Nate longed to go duck hunting. They lived in Willows, California, where everyone hunted. It was practically a law.
“Bring your gun. Let’s go shoot.” There was a sly note to Dad’s voice that Nate didn’t understand.
Not that he cared. He’d played shooting video games at Tony Arno’s house down the block. Nate was a good shot. Wait until he showed Dad!
“No.” Mom sounded a little panicked, like she did when she didn’t have dinner ready and Dad pulled into the driveway. She came to stand behind Nate, drawing him to her with fingers that dug through to bone.
His little sister’s eyes were big. She tugged at the skirt of her Sunday school dress.
Nate bet Molly was jealous. She never got to do anything with Dad.
But Nate was eight. He was a man now. That meant Dad would take him hunting. There’d be no more cleaning toilets for Nate. No more dishes. No more dusting. No more butt-stinging whuppings.
Dad glowered at the women in the household. “The boy’s coming with me.”
Nate had naively stepped forward.
Someone stepped into the beam of Nate’s headlights and then leaped back.
A slender African American man stood on the sidewalk in a bathrobe, shuffling his bunny-slippered feet.
Nate slammed on his brakes. The truck shuddered to a halt, but Nate’s limbs continued to quake. He rammed the truck in Park and jumped out, bellowing, “Terrance! What are you doing out here?”
“Evening, Nate.” The tall, elderly man shoved his hands into his burgundy terry-cloth pockets. “You didn’t have to stop so...so quickly.”
