Falling for the Lawman

Piper wouldn’t. She’d already put heart and soul into saving this place. Give an inch and folks wanted a mile. Not on her watch. And avoiding Zach’s flirty look was easier when she remembered how good Hunter had been with those long, intent gazes.

She’d been young then. She felt plenty old now, with her father gone, the farm to run, kids to watch and her brothers haranguing her on a regular basis. “There must be some way to block the noise. Or switch shifts. You could work days,” she suggested.

Lucia coughed a sound of warning. Cops made her nervous. The twins’ mother had gone to jail as a teen, and that never sat right with Lucia. Going toe-to-toe with a trooper who now happened to live next door would worry her.

“We’re shorthanded at the moment, so my schedule varies,” Zach explained. “Days. Nights. Afternoons.” He shrugged. “It will be like that for a while. That’s a long stretch to work on no sleep.”

He was being nice. Not demanding. Simply stating his case, and that made Piper more willing to compromise. For the moment. “I’ll put the boys in the far pen tomorrow. On separate sides, or they’ll fight. But I can’t put them in the hutch in these temperatures. They’re heat-sensitive.”

“Me, too.” Zach stood, smiling. Upright, his presence filled the room. His height, the broad shoulders, the uniform that made him stand out in a crowd...

He stood out here, too. Piper rose and followed him to the door. He glanced at his watch. “I expect you need some sleep yourself. Milking comes early.”

Did he know that from personal experience, she wondered?

“It does.” Piper offered her hand, glad she’d gotten cleaned up as soon as she came in. Although why she should care was something to examine later. Much later. “Let me know how tomorrow goes. If having the roosters in the barn pen helps.”

“I will.” He tipped his gaze down, his expression warm. Grateful. A little teasing.

She didn’t want to smile back. Hold his attention. But she did, and for long, pointed seconds neither one breathed, caught in the moment, her hand melded with his.

Lucia coughed again.

The sound brought Piper back to reality. He might be the nicest guy in the world, but she’d learned her lesson. Cops were in her “high risk” category, and flirting with a neighbor?

If things went bad, you still lived next door. No way could the situation end well.

She extricated her hand, stepped back and pasted a small, polite smile into place. “Have a good night.”

He swept her outfit a quick glance and a grin. “You, too.”

Tired and surprised by his unexpected visit, she’d forgotten the faded Scooby-Doo pajama pants and matching T-shirt.

Great. She looked like a twelve-year-old. And her hair was half wet, half dry, a bedraggled mess.

She shut the door and turned.

Lucia rose from the recliner in the adjoining living room. She shot a dark look toward the door as Zach’s engine rumbled to life outside. “You want trouble again? Another broken heart?”

“Luce—”

Lucia’s firm gaze stopped Piper’s argument. “I know, I am not your mother.”

She spoke the truth. Piper’s mother had divorced her father when Piper was still in grade school. She’d moved away with a massive share of the heritage farm in her pocket, a share that put the farm in the red from that day forward. She’d never looked back.

Her father married Luce months later, his quick remarriage inciting plenty of small-town talk. He adopted Rainey as a child, bringing the beautiful girl into the fold. But when Rainey went on her wild-child sprees as a teen, tongues wagged faster. Chas and Colin were in college by then, but Piper had been here, helping hold down the fort. It hadn’t been easy.

“We have had our differences,” Luce acknowledged. “But that does not change my love for you. You had your heart broken once by an officer. And I had mine broken when they took my daughter to jail.”

“Luce, you can’t blame the police for what Rainey did.” The last thing Piper wanted to do was hurt Luce’s feelings, but where Rainey was concerned, Luce’s judgment proved faulty. “She broke the law. But she paid her price, and who knows?” Piper closed the space between them and embraced the older woman. “Maybe she’s clean now. Maybe she’s gotten her act together and she’ll come back, ready to be part of the family again.”

Luce didn’t return the hug. She stood stiff and straight, fighting emotion. “And what do we do if this happens? Trust her? Welcome her? Hand the girls over as if it is okay to leave your babies for years?” Eyes wet, she stepped back. “I don’t know what to wish for. My daughter to return? Or my daughter to stay away and leave those babies in peace?”

Piper understood the dilemma. Rainey’s teenage antics had finally resulted in prison time. She’d straightened herself out and started her associate’s degree in prison. She’d stayed squeaky-clean, no drinking, no smoking, no drugs, obeying her parole. She’d gone to church and sang with them, her beautiful voice soaring on the words of ageless hymns.

Then something had pushed the headstrong girl beyond her limits. She got pregnant, had the twins, then disappeared before the girls’ second birthday, leaving only a short note.

They’d heard nothing since. Three years of not knowing. Was she alive? Safe? Straight? Or had she fallen back into the vicious cycle that had claimed her teen years?

Piper kept it simple. “We pray. God’s bigger and stronger than any force on earth. We pray for her and for the girls. And us.”

Luce nodded, fighting emotion. “All right.” She dashed an apron to her eyes and moved toward the kitchen. “If you and Berto need help in the morning, call me.”

She said that same thing every night, because she didn’t trust Piper’s brother to show up. Chas hated the farm.

He despised being in the fields, so she put him in charge of the milk production room, where fresh, ultrapasteurized dairy products were bottled for sale under cool conditions while she labored in the hot sun. He had two people working with him, and still whined about it all, the narrow profit margins, the uselessness of tempting people with vintage-style glass bottles of fresh milk products.

Piper knew that thin profit margins beat zero-profit margins. She bit her tongue on a regular basis, not wanting to fight with her older brothers.

She loved the farm.

They didn’t.

But they couldn’t sell without her permission. Unless she went under. And no way was she about to let that happen.

Chapter Two

“Missing something?”

Zach’s questioning voice rumbled, ripe with wry humor.

Piper forced herself to maintain an outer calm she didn’t feel and looked up from a tractor seal that seemed determined to give her a hard time. She saw Zach holding the girls’ Nigerian dwarf goat, a favored pet. The brown-and-white miniature creature looked quite content in the big man’s arms. “Beansy? Where did you find him?”

“In what used to be my vegetable garden.”

First the roosters. Now the goat. Piper winced until she read the humor in Zach’s eyes. “You haven’t lived there long enough to have a vegetable garden.”

“It appears he didn’t know that. How’d he get out?”

“The better question is, where are the twins? And did they engineer his escape or escape right along with him?” She jumped down from the huge wheel and strode toward the barn door as she spoke, using the sides of her jeans as grease rags. Thin streaks of motor oil left telltale marks. “He was in your yard? And before you answer that, why aren’t you sleeping? It’s after twelve. Too hot? Or did the roosters wake you? Because I penned them and I haven’t heard them crowing, but I can block the sound. Was it them? They wake you?”

“My current dilemma is which question to answer first,” he drawled, his slow talk making a valid point. She tended to jabber in stream-of-consciousness fashion. Maybe she’d slow down someday when she didn’t have to cram thirty hours of work into a twenty-four-hour day.

“Yes, he was in the yard,” Zach continued. “My father noticed him. And I did catch a quick nap, but something’s come up. I’m taking the next couple of weeks off, so I didn’t need to get more than that today.”

“You’ll be ruing that choice tonight,” Piper supposed over her shoulder. “Dorrie! Sonya? Where are you?”

Silence answered. She reached into her pocket and withdrew her cell phone. When Lucia answered, she put out an APB on the girls.

“Berto’s got them,” Lucia assured her. “He’s giving them a ride on the hay wagon before lunch. Why? What have they done now?”

Piper wasn’t sure they’d done anything, but from the look on Zach’s face, she figured the two girls may or may not have been trying to catch a glimpse of their new favorite policeman.

He’d been in uniform both times she saw him yesterday. Tall. Broad. Strong. Dark hair. Bright blue eyes that warmed with humor.

Today?

Better, if possible. He wore a short-sleeved T-shirt that proclaimed him the winner in last year’s October breast cancer run, along with well-worn blue jeans. Piper noted his pants with a glance. “Jeans? In this weather?”

“I’m a farm kid,” he admitted, which surprised her because she’d noted reluctance in his gaze as he scanned the farm the day before. “You always wear jeans on a farm.”

“True.” She slipped the phone back into her pocket and turned toward the barn, noting the fresh oil streaks on her work pants with a grimace. “Denim’s handy when you forget to grab a stack of rags while doing engine maintenance. Luce will have something to say about this, no doubt.”

Her look of repentance made him smile. “Where would you like Beansy?”

She growled and led Zach and the goat through an adjacent barn. Calf pens lined the semishaded side of the building. One pen sat to the side. The perimeter fencing was decked out with trinkets and miniature signs done in little-kid scrawl. Beansy the Goat read one. Beware of Goat said another. A half dozen similar signs swung strategically around the enclosure, leaving no doubt about the ownership. “Here we go, Beans. Scoot in there and bleat real loud if they take you out again.” Piper scratched the little fellow’s head, and Zach was pretty sure the tiny creature preened.

“Beans is a pet, I take it.”

Piper hemmed and hawed, then nodded. “I’m a softie and I have a hard time saying no to those girls.”

Zach laughed out loud. “Well, who wouldn’t? They’re the cutest things I’ve ever seen. So Beansy is theirs?”

“Beansy was left behind by folks who moved away and abandoned their animals. Luke Campbell brought him by last spring.”

Luke Campbell was a deputy sheriff for the county. But did Luke’s visit here mean he and Piper had something going? And why should Zach care if they did? One glance her way said he had a grocery list of reasons to back away from this attraction, but the look on her face made him wish the list away. “But Beansy is just a baby.”

Piper shook her head. “He’s not. He’s a small breed, and he’s smaller yet because he wasn’t properly fed, but he’s probably two years old. Luke thought the girls would love him. And he was right. We have room. And forage. And he’s so little and cute.” Her voice went soft. Sweet. Maternal. But one snap of her hand to her thigh brought back the dogged farmer within the pretty, petite woman. And Zach had enough of farms and farmers growing up to last a lifetime. “I’ve got to get back to that oil leak. Zach, I appreciate what you did.” She tipped her hat and held up her grease-stained hands as evidence. “I’d shake your hand but that’s pretty undesirable right now, so I’ll just thank you again for Beansy’s safe return.”

* * *

Despite the sheen of grease on her palms, Zach didn’t find her hands one bit unbecoming, but he shoved that opinion into his “don’t go there” file. “You’re welcome.” He started walking away, but something―manners, interest, guilt―made him turn back. “Do you need help, Piper? I know a few things about tractors.”

She turned and met his look. For long seconds they stood separated by a matter of ten feet, but the look in her eyes said they might as well be light-years apart. “You’re kind, but no. I’m fine.”

Cool. Concise. As if she were shouldering him off because she loved working with smelly, greasy engines?

No.

Because she didn’t want to work on the engine with him.

Zach reached into Beansy’s enclosure, gave the fuzzy fellow a nice ear rub, then headed toward his house. Helping on a farm ranked dead last on his list, so most of him was glad she’d rejected his offer. But he’d glimpsed the tired, frustrated look in her eyes when she first turned his way in the barn. And it had deepened when she’d been unsure of the girls’ whereabouts.

A part of him longed to ease that frustration, but he’d grown up witnessing that look on his father’s face. It wasn’t a game he ever wanted to play again.

* * *

“You didn’t need to take time off.” Marty Harrison poured a cup of coffee, gaze down, grinding the words that evening. “I don’t need a babysitter.”

“Dad, I—”

“And I don’t need someone hovering over me 24/7. What I need is...” Marty stared out at the fields beyond, the adjacent dairy farm a reminder of all he’d lost due to a medical error, a mistake that had triggered a bunch of wrong decisions. Decisions made by Zach.

His father’s grim expression increased Zach’s guilt. “I didn’t take the time off because of you, precisely. I realized that if I’m going to get that deck done out back, I’d better do it before summer ends. I thought I might be able to enlist your help with it. If you want to, that is.”

“Keep the old man busy?” Bitterness deepened his father’s already cryptic tone. “That way I won’t get into any trouble?”

Easing Marty back into a semblance of normalcy was going to be harder than he expected, Zach realized. His father’s flat gaze deepened Zach’s concern, but other than good old-fashioned time, how could he help Marty’s mental and physical recovery? “We could drive down to the lake,” Zach suggested. “Or take a walk.”

“A walk to nothing is still nothing.”

Zach knew that wasn’t true. He’d often walked on his own as a kid. He continued the habit now, as an adult. Quiet walking time cleared his head. Eased his mind. The measured pace allowed him to be at peace. Notice the birds, the winged creatures chronically busy but generally unworried.

In a job that dealt with the seamier side of humanity too often, walking soothed him. If Marty Harrison wasn’t walking to something, to be somewhere, the walk wouldn’t make sense. But things were different now, and—

Marty’s shoulders squared. His jaw softened. He held the coffee cup higher. Tighter.

The sound of children laughing drifted across the evening air. A host of them, from what Zach could hear. Another shout of laughter had Zach noting the time. Almost eight o’clock. That must mean ice cream at the dairy store. He moved to the back door and swung it wide. “Dad, come on. Let’s go get some ice cream.”

“I’m not walking down to the lake for ice cream.” His father’s ludicrous look said Zach was crazy and annoying. “It’s nearly a mile.”

“Come on.” Zach pointed southeast and gave his father a lazy smile. “I’ve got a surprise for you.”

Marty’s face darkened. His eyes looked down for several beats, but Zach had outwaited tougher guys than his father lots of times. He stood, patient and persevering, allowing his father time to take that first step forward. Shouts of childish laughter tempted Marty outside. By the time they skirted the near pasture and worked their way around the closest barn, the sight of children laughing, playing and shrieking paused Marty’s step.

“What are they doing here?” he asked.

“Ice cream after the game.” Zach pointed toward the dairy store tucked on the protected side of the barn they’d just rounded. “Just like you did with us when we were kids.”

Not exactly. His father hadn’t been a mainstay at soccer games or Friday night football. On a farm there was always something to do, fix or tend. Running kids to games had fallen to his mother.

That brought to mind Piper that afternoon, hanging over the tractor, trying to put big, heavy things right when she should have been spraying crops or turning cut hay. Guilt speared him for not taking the time to help. He knew farm equipment. And his size made tractor parts a whole lot easier to handle, although she’d probably jab him in the solar plexus if he suggested such a thing. And she’d done all right on her own to this point, so why was he torturing himself about it?

Kids of all ages dashed here and there. Some sported baseball attire. Others were dressed in soccer gear. Parents sat or stood in small circles across the wide yard, watching the antics with small-town comfort. “I wonder if they’ve got Parkerhouse cherry?”

Marty’s hopeful expression made Zach wince inside. Whatever this cherry thing was, he was pretty sure the inviting ice cream window was about to disappoint his father. Frankly, Zach wasn’t sure how many more downturns his father could handle, which was exactly why he’d taken emergency leave for the next couple of weeks. Maybe just having Zach around would help Marty through the worst of this adjustment period.

The short lines moved quickly. Lights lit up the parking area, while the scattered picnic tables set beneath sprawling farmyard trees remained more shadowed. When they got to the front of the line, Zach was surprised to see Piper, Lucia and the same college girl he’d seen yesterday all inside the window. “You work here at night?”

The sound of his voice got her attention, and unless Zach had lost his policing skills in the twelve hours he’d been off duty, she looked happy to see him. Excited, even.

Which made two of them.

Her smile inspired his, but he felt a moment of abject fear when Lucia asked, “What can we get for you, gentlemen?” Zach dreaded the thought of Marty’s disappointment over something as simple as ice cream.

“You got Parkerhouse?”

Lucia’s quiet frown said they didn’t. Zach was ready to point out the long list of flavors they did have, but Piper’s voice interrupted him. “Sir, do you like amaretto-based Parkerhouse or vanilla?”

Marty’s eyes lit up. “The almond stuff.”

She threw him a smile, winked and scooped a generous serving onto a cold stone set off to her left. Taking a tong’s worth of cherries with just a little juice, she worked the ice cream between two flat paddles for about thirty seconds. She arched a glance back toward Marty. “Did you say cone or dish?”

“I didn’t,” he replied, the more appreciative tone in his voice making Zach breathe easier. “A cone,” he decided. “One of those.” He pointed to the waffle cones and Piper’s smile said she approved.

“These waffle cones are the best,” she told him as she plied the ice cream mix into the cone. “In my humble opinion...”

Lucia’s cough said Piper’s opinions might not be as humble as she thought. Her timing deepened Marty’s smile, which then eased some of Zach’s concern.

“...the cone makes the treat,” Piper declared. She sent Marty an arch look. “Too soft, too sweet, too well-done.” She shrugged narrow shoulders clad in a T-shirt beneath the ice cream apron. “The best ice cream deserves a solid cone.”

“I concur.” Marty took a taste of the cone she handed him. She watched, waiting, clearly hoping she’d pleased him, and in that moment Zach discovered more to like about her. Patience in an impatient world. Concern, as if Marty’s satisfaction mattered. And a hinted joy as if she loved the task at hand, taking care of business after working in hot fields and barns all day.

“Delicious. And an almost perfect balance of cherries to ice cream.” Marty smiled at her, and Zach was pretty sure that was the first genuine smile he’d seen since bringing his father home postsurgery five days before, even though the smile was accompanied by veiled criticism with the word almost.

Zach had lived with those “almosts” for a long time. Almost smart enough, almost good enough, almost strong enough...

But Piper just laughed out loud. “You come back tomorrow or whenever and I’ll add more, okay? Although the secret to a perfect Parkerhouse cherry ice cream—” she shortened the distance between them by leaning out the window. Marty bent closer “—is to make the palate long for that next bite of fruit. Too much and the texture is messed up. It’s all about ratio, but you come back,” she repeated, “and I’ll use more cherries. Deal?”

“Deal.” Marty confirmed the pact with a brisk nod.

“Zach. What can I get for you?” She turned her attention his way while Lucia and the girl handled two other customers.

“Vanilla.”

She almost burst out laughing, but held it in with effort. “You’re serious? That’s it? With thirty-one flavors at your disposal?”

“I’m very serious about my ice cream, Piper. Why taint a perfect blend with nonessential additives?”

“Oh, brother.” Skeptical, she made a face, reached for a cone, then paused. “Clearly I’m forgetting myself when you’re around. Or maybe your adorable father has me flustered. Cone or dish?”

Adorable? Marty Harrison? Industrious, ambitious, driven, forceful, yes, Zach reasoned mentally.

But nothing about the hard-core farmer could be labeled adorable. Could it? “First, I like that I fluster you. Second, you’ve made my father’s night and that makes me grateful beyond words. Third, I’d like the same kind of cone my dad has because you did a great sales job.”

She angled him a saucy “I do what I can” kind of smile.

“And fourth, does Luke Campbell come around to bring you animal gifts on a regular basis?”

* * *

Piper’s hand paused.

So did her heart.

And when it started again, she knew exactly what he was asking, and why all she wanted to do was flirt right back with him.

But her emotional scars stopped her.

Intellectually, she knew her former fiancé’s misdeeds had nothing to do with the broad-shouldered trooper at her ice cream window, but family embarrassment had dogged Piper for over a decade. She couldn’t―wouldn’t―put herself in the hot seat again. When she put cops in the “no dating” category, she’d meant it. But Zach didn’t know that, and she could simply let his assumption about Luke ride. Easier on both of them.

And so she smiled softly and said, “Luke’s a great guy, isn’t he?”

Zach’s gaze scanned her face. His eyes took in her easy expression, her gentle smile, and she let him read what she wanted him to see. Let him think she was off-limits. Because, despite the fact that Luke was just a good friend who lived on the opposite side of Kirkwood Lake, she was okay having Zach consider her off the market because she utterly refused to be fooled by a cop ever again. No matter how nicely he smiled.

Chapter Three

“There is a bicentennial committee meeting tonight.” Lucia tapped the calendar page with one blunt finger the following morning. Her voice said attending the meeting didn’t make her short list, but they both knew one of them needed to be there to represent their farm.

“We can have Noreen stay late and help at the ice cream window.” Piper tugged on socks, hating the heat but knowing her boots would chafe if she didn’t layer up. “Can you check with her, see if that’s okay? I’ll go to the meeting,” she continued. Lucia’s quick smile rewarded her decision. “It’s at seven, so just make sure I don’t forget. And remind me in time to grab a quick shower, okay?”

“I’ll text you. And Piper...” Lucia compressed her lips, a sure sign of trouble.

“What? What’s happened?”

Lucia dipped her chin toward the west-facing window. “The Hogans are putting their farm on the market.”

No.

Lucia breathed deep, watching her, because she understood the implications. Kirkwood Lake was becoming more populated. The beautiful lake, nestled between the rise of Enchanted Mountains and the lake plains of Lake Erie, had been overlooked for years during a depressed economy, but Piper had been approached by developers twice this past spring, both offering big bucks to turn McKinney Farm into an upscale subdivision with lake rights on the upper northwest shore.