Montana Sheriff

Ronnie knew she wouldn’t have been able to live with that kind of a question weighing her down.

What she’d done was better.

Not that Cole would ever see it that way.

But that was his problem, not hers, she thought, pushing down on the accelerator.

COLE WATCHED HER CAR BECOME smaller and smaller until it disappeared entirely, then he went back to his office on the next street.

He’d barely sat down at his desk after muttering a few words to Tim—the overly eager deputy he’d hired last year after Al St. John retired—before the door opened again and his mother walked in.

Midge James was a lively woman, short in stature but large of heart. Over the years she’d gone from being exceedingly thin to somewhat on the heavyset side. But each time she tried to make a go of a diet, her husband Pete, Cole’s father, would tell her that she was perfect just the way she was and that he really appreciated having “a little something to hang on to.”

Eventually she stopped trying to get down to the size where she could fit back into her wedding dress. She figured if she was lucky enough to have a man who loved her no matter what her size, she should just enjoy it. And him. So she did.

As she walked in now, Cole saw that his mother was carrying a basket before her. A very aromatic basket that announced it was filled with baked goods—muffins most likely—before she even set the basket down and drew back the cloth she’d placed over the top.

“Something wrong, Ma?” Cole asked as he started to rise to his feet.

“Sit, sit, sit,” Midge instructed, waving her hand at her son in case he hadn’t picked up on her words. “Nothing’s wrong,” she assured him. “Why?” she asked. “Can’t a mother visit her favorite son without there being something wrong?”

Cole’s lips curved in a tolerant smile. “I’m your only son, Ma.”

“Makes the choice easier, I admit,” Midge responded, punctuating her statement with her trademark cherubic smile. Crossing to his desk, she placed the basket smack in the middle. “Just thought you might like a snack.” She pulled the cloth all the way back. Beneath it were at least two dozen miniature muffins. “They’re tiny. Makes it kind of seem like you’re eating less,” she explained, one of the many diet-cheating tricks she’d picked up along the way.

Glancing at the deputy who was eyeing the basket contents longingly from where he sat, she assured him, “There’s enough for you, too, Tim.”

She didn’t need to say any more. Tim was on his feet, his lanky legs bringing him to Cole’s desk in less than four steps. And less than another second later, he was peeling paper away from his first of several muffins. His eyes glowed as he bit into his prize.

“Good,” he managed to mumble, his mouth filled with rich cake and raisins.

Midge beamed. “Glad you approve, Tim.” She pushed the basket closer to her son. “Have one, Cole,” she coaxed him.

Cole eyed the contents and then selected a golden muffin. There were also chocolate ones and he suspected several butterscotch muffins in the batch, as well. His mother never did do things in half measures.

“Not that I don’t appreciate you trying to fatten me up, Ma,” he said, “but why are you really here?”

The expression on his mother’s face was the last word in innocence as she lifted her small shoulders and let them fall again. “I just felt like baking today, and then, well, you know what happens if I leave this much food around. I get tempted and I absolutely refuse to go up another dress size.”

He eyed the basket. “You could have given them to Will,” he pointed out, mentioning the ranch foreman.

Midge dismissed his suggestion. Been there, already done that. “Don’t worry, Will and the other hands already got their share.”

Cole regarded the muffin in his hand for a long moment.

“It tastes better if you eat it without the paper around it,” Midge prompted in a pseudo stage whisper.

For a moment, he wrestled with his thoughts. And then Cole raised his eyes to his mother’s kindly, understanding face.

“You know, don’t you?” he asked.

For a brief moment, Midge contemplated continuing to play innocent. But Cole was too smart to be fooled for long—she doubted if she’d succeeded in fooling him even now. With a shrug, she decided to let the pretense drop. After all, she’d come here to offer him a little comfort if comfort turned out to be necessary. And if Cole let her.

God knew Cole was as self-contained as his father had been. Her son certainly didn’t get his stoicism from her. She had always been more than willing to talk about what was bothering her.

“Yes,” she admitted quietly.

“How long have you known?” he asked. Just because she lived on a ranch didn’t mean that his mother was out of the loop. Hell, she was the loop.

“Not long. I stopped by Amos’s place late yesterday afternoon to see how he was getting along.” Amos had been there for her to offer his support when her husband had passed away; it was only right that she return the favor. “I saw her car pulling up as I was leaving.”

Cole nodded slowly as he took her words in. His expression gave none of his thoughts away. “Did you talk to her?” he finally asked.

She’d debated stopping to exchange a few words, then quickly decided against it. Midge shook her head in response now.

“No, I thought it’d be better if she just saw her father first. After all, Ronnie had just come much too close to losing both him and her brother. She would have,” Midge emphasized, “if it hadn’t been for you.”

Taking credit, even when he deserved it, wasn’t what he was about. “Maybe,” Cole allowed vaguely.

“No maybe about it,” Tim piped up jovially from his corner of the office. He looked at the man he considered to be his role model. “Folks are saying you’re a regular hero, Sheriff.”

Cole had never cared for labels, and praise had always made him uncomfortable. Now was no different.

“And what’s an irregular hero, Tim?” he asked.

Caught off guard, Tim opened his mouth to answer and couldn’t even begin to form one. He blinked, summarily confused. “What?”

“Don’t mind him, Tim,” Midge told the younger man. “He’s just being surly.” Looking at her son, the woman shook her head. “Don’t know what that girl ever saw in you, Cole.” Her exasperation with her son could only last a few moments, if that much. He was as close to perfect as a man could be. Just like his father before him, she thought with a pang. “Must have been your charm and your silver tongue.”

“Must’ve been,” Cole deadpanned, finally taking a bite out of the muffin he’d selected. As always, the muffin all but melted on his tongue. His mother had a knack for making baked goods that turned out to be practically lighter than air. But Cole wasn’t given to gushing effusively. Instead, he gave her an approving nod. “Not bad.”

“You always did lay on the flattery,” Midge told him with a laugh. “I swear, Cole, you’re getting to be more and more like your father every day.”

And that only reminded her how much she still missed her late husband.

Squaring her small shoulders, Midge left the basket where she’d placed it and took a couple of steps toward the front door.

“Leaving?” Cole asked, finishing the muffin. Rolling the paper that was left between his thumb and the first two fingers of his hand, he tossed the small ball into the wastebasket.

“Well, if you don’t feel like talking, I figured I’d better be getting back to the ranch.” And then a thought occurred to her. “Come over for dinner tonight,” she told her son. “I’ll make your favorite,” Midge added to seal the deal.

Cole sighed. He knew what she was up to. She was trying to draw him out of what she referred to as his “shell.” She’d all but undertaken a crusade to accomplish that the summer Ronnie took off.

“I’m okay, Ma,” he insisted.

The very innocent look was back. “Didn’t say you weren’t,” Midge replied.

She looked at the deputy as she walked past his desk. Tim McGuire hardly looked old enough to shave despite the fact that he was edging his way toward his twenty-second birthday.

“Tell your mother and father I said hello,” she told him.

“Sure will,” the deputy cheerfully assured her. As he spoke, a golden crumb broke away from the muffin he was in the midst of consuming and fell onto his shirt. Looking down sheepishly, Tim laughed and brushed the crumb—and several others—off. “You sure do bake the best things, Mrs. James. I wish you’d teach my mother how you make these.”

Unlike her son, Midge absorbed praise, fully enjoying each compliment.

“I’m sure she does fine without my input, Tim.” Her bright blue eyes danced as she paused at the door, one hand on the doorknob. “But I can teach you anytime you’d like.”

“Me?” the deputy asked incredulously.

He glanced up at the sheriff’s mother, stunned. Tim was the stereotypical male who had yet to master the art of boiling water—not that he felt he had to. He still lived at home and thought that was what mothers were for—among other things.

“Nothing wrong with a man knowing his way around a stove, Tim,” Midge told him.

Cole rolled his eyes. “That’s all I need,” he grumbled. “A deputy in an apron, his face smeared with blueberries as he’s burning the muffins he’s trying to make.” With a shake of his head, Cole slanted a sidelong glance toward his mother. And then he raised another muffin as if to toast her with it. “Thanks for bringing these.”

“Don’t mention it. And don’t forget about dinner tonight,” she pressed, opening the door. “Six-thirty. Don’t be late.”

“Or what, you’ll start without me?” Cole teased.

“Don’t get fresh,” his mother warned. But she was smiling at him as she said it. “Goodbye, Tim,” she called out.

“Goodbye, Mrs. James,” Tim responded with enthusiasm.

“Your mom really is a nice lady,” the deputy said with feeling, his eyes on his task. He was preparing to eliminate his third muffin.

Cole marveled at the way Tim could put food away and still look like a walking stick. Had to be all that enthusiasm he kept displaying, Cole thought.

“Yeah, I know,” he replied.

He took a bite out of his muffin, thinking. It occurred to him that this wasn’t the first time his mother had mentioned stopping by Amos McCloud’s place. Seemed to him that she was doing that quite a lot.

He made a mental note to ask her about that the next time he got a chance. He didn’t recall his mother and Amos being all that close before.

But then, loss had a way of bringing people together, and his mother wasn’t the type who liked being alone. He could recall her taking part in whatever needed doing around the ranch, never worrying about getting her hands dirty or complaining about having to work too hard.

In that respect she was a lot like Ronnie, he mused, breaking off another piece of the muffin.

Except that, growing up, Ronnie had been even more so. Part of the reason, he knew, was because she’d grown up without a mother. Margaret McCloud had died shortly after giving birth to Ronnie. Never a strong woman, according to his mother, one morning Margaret just didn’t get out of bed. When Amos came in to see why she wasn’t up yet, or at least tending to the baby, who was screaming her lungs out—Ronnie was loud even then—Amos found that his wife was dead.

The doctor who had to be called in from the neighboring town said she’d suffered from a ruptured aneurysm. Just like that, she was gone.

Life could change in an instant.

Cole got up. “I’ll be back in a while,” he told Tim as he walked out.

“What’s ‘a while’?” Tim called out after him.

“Longer than a minute,” Cole called back. And then he was gone.

Chapter Four

Ordinarily, patrolling Redemption and the area just outside its perimeter helped Cole clear his mind whenever he found it too cluttered.

Ordinarily.

But not this time.

This time the tension he felt from the moment he merely thought he saw Ronnie had increased and refused to dissipate. This would take a lot of patience. He would just have to wait it out, work through it and give himself some time.

What bothered him the most was that he couldn’t simply shake the effects of seeing Ronnie off or block them out. The feeling hung in there, wrapping its tendrils around him like a vine determined to grow a hundred times its size.

Ronnie had always been his Achilles’ heel.

Everybody had a cross to bear and this was his.

As he drove slowly up one street and down another, patrolling the town, everything seemed to be in order—rather an interesting aspect seeing as how his whole world had been turned upside down. But nothing was going on in Redemption today that required his attention.

No visible disputes to mediate the way there sometimes were when tempers flared up between friends and neighbors. Not even Mrs. Miller’s damn cat to coax out of a tree.

As he passed the woman’s Prized Antique Furniture Shop, Cole could see Lucien, Mrs. Miller’s smoke-gray Persian cat, curled up on a rocking chair just to the left of the large bay window. Lucien was sound asleep.

He’d lost count how many times that cat had to be rescued out of a tree. And the one time he needed the feline to act accordingly, it was sleeping.

Figured.

Cole sighed impatiently. There was nothing to divert his mind from—

The string of muttered curses scissored through his thoughts. Had he not had his windows down, Cole was pretty sure he wouldn’t have been able to hear them. But he definitely would have noticed the distressed looking store owner outside of the Livestock Feed Emporium, kicking one of the tires of the truck that had the store’s logo painted on the side.

Cole stopped his vehicle in front of the all-too-recent scene of the assault on his soul.

It was obvious that Ed was at odds with the store’s truck.

Cole stuck his head out of the driver’s-side window. “Something wrong, Mr. Haney?” he asked the man mildly.

Ed’s head jerked up. For a second, he appeared surprised that he’d been overheard. And then he scowled. Deeply.

“Two somethings,” he corrected, annoyed. “First the truck won’t start, and then Billy calls in. He only works part-time for me,” Ed explained. “Says he’s got a cold and he’s taking a sick day. You ask me, he just wants to spend time with that girl of his, Judith Something-or-other—”

“Julie,” Cole corrected. “Julie Gannon.”

It still astonished him, though he gave no indication, how much his memory seemed to have sharpened ever since he’d become sheriff. It was almost as if the responsibility had caused him to suddenly pay attention to the comings and goings of all the locals—something he’d never had time for or interest in before.

As for names, up until four years ago, they usually eluded him. They were incidental, beside the point. Only faces had left an impression. Now every face had a name and a history.

“Yeah, her,” Ed agreed, waving his hand vaguely. “Point is that I’ve got this here order for Ronnie’s dad and nobody to take it out to the ranch.” He raised his eyes to Cole’s at the end of the statement, as if he was waiting for something. When Cole maintained his silence, Ed prodded a little. “You wouldn’t be going out that way anytime today now, would you, Sheriff?”

Cole had wondered how long it would take for the store owner to get around to this. “Wasn’t planning on it,” he replied.

“Oh.”

Had he not heard it himself, Cole wouldn’t have thought it was possible to pack that much emotion and distress into a single two-letter word.

With a sigh, he decided to put the man out of his misery.

“Guess I could look in on Amos,” Cole allowed. “Seeing as how there doesn’t seem to be anything going on in Redemption that needs my immediate attention.”

Ed instantly brightened. “You’d be doing me a huge, huge favor, Sheriff.” He beamed at the younger man. “I told everybody that you were the right man for the job.”

Now the man was going a little overboard. “Being sheriff doesn’t include making deliveries for the local stores,” Cole pointed out.

“No,” Ed readily agreed. “But looking out for the town citizens and going that extra mile—or ten—for them kinda does.” He moved in closer, dropping his voice as if he was sharing a timeless secret with him. “People remember a man who looks out for them. You never know when that might come in handy.”

Cole laughed shortly. “First snow hasn’t come down yet and you’re already busy shuffling, Mr. Haney,” he marveled. “Okay, you want me to send Hank on over to take a look at your truck, see what’s wrong?” Approaching the back of the defunct vehicle, Cole began transferring the load that was intended for Ronnie’s ranch from Ed’s truck to his.

Ed joined in, eager to get the job done before Cole had a chance to change his mind. “No, no, I’ll give him a call myself. You’re already doing way more than I’ve got a right to expect.”

Humor quirked the corners of his mouth. “You remember that, Mr. Haney,” Cole told him.

And that was how, fifteen minutes later, Cole found himself on the road to the McCloud ranch despite the fact that after this morning’s run-in with Ronnie, he’d had absolutely no intention of going anywhere near the sprawling horse ranch.

Damn, who the hell was he kidding? Nobody ever made him do anything he didn’t want to do at least somewhere deep down in his soul. Being a pushover was for men without spines or convictions, and he had always possessed both—in spades. If he had wanted to avoid seeing Ronnie again, he wouldn’t have agreed to take Haney’s order over to the ranch.

Truth was that he was in the market for an excuse so he could put himself in her path again. To give her yet another opportunity to explain why she’d taken off that way six years ago. Because up until that devastating day, he’d thought she loved him. Been convinced she loved him. He damn well knew that he loved her.

But she’d taken off without saying a word. Love meant talking things out, at least once in a while, didn’t it?

Apparently not for Ronnie.

Glancing down at the speedometer, Cole saw he was pushing his truck hard without realizing it. The intensity of his thoughts telegraphed themselves through his body, making him press down on the accelerator. He was going ninety-one miles an hour. Cole eased back on the pedal.

There was nothing else out on the open road—mostly a given in these parts—but still, if someone did suddenly come around and clock him, how would it look to see the sheriff going more than twenty-five miles over what was posted as the speed limit?

Cole frowned and kept one eye on the speedometer. Being the sheriff of the town could be really confining.

RONNIE WAS DEFINITELY NOT looking forward to the long drive to Helena, not coming so soon on the heels of her marathon drive over from Seattle. She really wanted to curl up somewhere and take a very long nap. After seeing Cole, she felt drained.

But then, she also felt incredibly wired. Cole had always managed to do that to her, to get everything inside of her moving at top speed with just a look or a touch.

Especially a touch, she remembered, her mind drifting.

She wasn’t here for a reunion, Ronnie reminded herself sternly. She was here to help her father run the ranch while he—and Wayne—recovered. And she was here for Wayne.

To see her older brother before—

No, there was not going to be a “before,” she upbraided herself. Wayne would be fine. Just fine.

Positive thoughts, she would only have positive thoughts, Ronnie silently ordered herself. She wasn’t one of those people who believed in transmitting energy or “vibes” or any of that kind of far-out nonsense, but on the other hand, keeping a good thought couldn’t exactly hurt, right?

At this point, she wasn’t about to rule out trying anything short of waving a chicken over Wayne’s head and chanting some kind of strange, unfathomable incantation.

Wayne was going to be fine, he was going to be fine, she silently insisted again. No reason to think otherwise.

Glancing over her shoulder, Ronnie looked in the direction of the house. She’d left Christopher to entertain her father—the boy had actually succeeded in making her father smile a couple of times since they got there.

She’d also left Juanita, the housekeeper who had been with the family for as long as she could remember, watching over her father and her son. That freed her up to go see her brother.

She had to brace herself, she thought, for what she might see. She’d never known a day when Wayne, six foot four, tanned with wide shoulders, a small waist and powerful arms, wasn’t the absolute picture of robust health and strength. Seeing him any other way would be a shock to her system.

But she couldn’t let on that it was because, despite the fact that he was still in a coma, she felt that on some level, he would be able to see her reaction. She didn’t want anything daunting his spirits and keep them from rallying.

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