A Montana Homecoming

“You’re not—”

“Capable enough to stay alone in the house where I grew up?” She crossed her arms. “I’m not crazy, Sheriff.” Not anymore.

“Nobody said you were, Laurel.” His deep voice was smooth, so incredibly smooth, that they might just as well have been exchanging pleasantries on the steps of his daddy’s church. “But this place is—”

“What?”

“Falling apart,” he said simply.

Truthfully.

The defensive balloon that had puffed up deflated, leaving her feeling off-kilter. “I’ll be all right.”

“The furnace stopped working last year. Roger never had it fixed.”

“It’s the middle of June. I won’t need the furnace yet.”

He barely waited a beat. “Yet?”

She unfolded her arms. Folded them again. She’d been debating the idea of staying since before she’d driven back into the town limits. It wasn’t as if she had anywhere else to go. Not since two weeks ago when she’d called off her own wedding at the very last minute. Finding out that Shane was still in Lucius didn’t change a thing where her plans, her nonplans, were concerned.

Did it?

“It won’t be cold for months. I’ll have plenty of time to fix the furnace,” she said more confidently than she felt.

She had time, yes. Money? That might be another matter. A matter she intended to keep to herself.

“You can’t be planning to stay.”

He actually sounded horrified, and it surprised her enough that she managed not to get defensive over the flat statement. “Why not?”

He jammed his hat on his head. “This house isn’t fit for anyone to live in it.”

“How do you know?” She highly doubted he’d spent Sunday afternoons visiting with her father.

“Because I make it my business to know what’s going on in my town.”

“Including the habitability of my father’s house.”

“Yes.”

“How sheriffy of you.”

“You’ve earned yourself a smart mouth somewhere along the way.”

She managed an even smile. But the truth was, she didn’t have a smart mouth. The only thing she’d done in her entire adult life that wasn’t agreeable and sensible was walking out on her wedding to a perfectly decent man. “Maybe I’ve picked a few things up from the third-graders I teach. You went from the Lord to the law,” she observed. “Time brings all sorts of changes to a person.”

“Time doesn’t change everything,” he said flatly.

She didn’t know what on earth to make of that, not when they were both living evidence to the contrary. So she just stood there. And the silence between them lengthened.

Thickened.

She cast about in her mind fruitlessly for something—anything—to break the silence, only to gasp right out loud when a metallic chirp sounded.

Shane made a muffled sound and pulled a minute cell phone off his belt. “Sorry,” he murmured and flipped it open. “Golightly.” His voice was brusque.

She, for one, was perfectly happy for the intrusion as she drew in a long, careful breath. His call, though, was brief, and when he snapped the phone shut, he was very much in lawman mode.

“I’ll check on you later.” He settled his hat and turned on his heel, clearly expecting no arguments from her this time as he stepped off the porch past the rotting steps.

She didn’t have the nerve to argue, anyway. Not when he looked so grimly official. Instead she stood there in the doorway, hugging her arms to her waist, and watched while his long legs strode across the tired yard toward the tan SUV parked behind the little car she’d rented at the airport in Billings.

He wasted little time backing out and driving up the road toward town, but she still had plenty of time to study the word that was emblazoned in dark-green printing on the side of his SUV: Sheriff.

Shane was the sheriff.

And it was a sheriff who’d arrested her father one hot summer night for something he hadn’t done. Something she’d never, ever believed he’d done.

The brake lights of Shane’s truck—the sheriff’s truck—disappeared and Laurel finally drew in a full, cleansing breath.

It didn’t quite stop the trembling inside her, but it helped.

She let her gaze drift up and down the road. One way, the way Shane had driven, lay the town proper. The other way, beyond a sharp curve that skirted the stand of tall, centuries-old trees, lay nothing but miles and miles of…nothing.

She’d come back to bury her father.

But once she’d done that, once she’d dealt with his belongings, with the house, there was nothing else for her here. As much “nothing” as what lay beyond the curving highway.

Unfortunately, Laurel knew as she finally turned and went back inside the house, there was nothing for her to return to in Colorado, either. No job. No home. No fiancé.

Maybe she was just as crazy as Shane probably thought.

Chapter Two

“I heard you were here, but I had to see it with my own eyes.” The voice was deep and smooth as molasses and definitely amused.

Laurel set the heavy bag of weed killer in the cart next to the bucket and cleansers she’d already put there and turned toward the voice, a smile already forming. “Reverend Golightly. I was going to call you later today.” She dashed her hand quickly down her thigh, then extended it. “It’s so good to see you.” The pleasure in her voice was real. In fact, it was the first real pleasure she’d felt in weeks, and definitely since she’d arrived in Lucius the previous day.

He cocked an eyebrow and his light-blue eyes crinkled at the corners. “Oh, Laurel, honey, we can do better than that.” He swept her up in a great hug, lifting her right to the tips of her toes there in the aisle of Lucius Hardware. “You’re the spitting image of your grandmother, do you know that?”

She laughed and very nearly cried as she hugged him back. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“It was meant as one. In her day, Lucille was the prettiest woman in five counties. Until my Holly came to town, that is.” He grinned and settled her on her feet, keeping hold of her hands and holding them wide as he stepped back to look at her. “I’m as sorry as ditch water that it took something like this to bring you home, Laurel.”

The knot in her throat grew. “Me, too.” She swallowed harder and peered up into his face. “You haven’t changed a bit, Reverend Golightly. How is your family?”

His eyes crinkled again. “Beau. And they’re all fine. Stu’s fit as a fiddle,” he told her. “Still single and he’s got a small spread outside of town a bit—Hal Calhoun’s place if you remember it—plus he runs the garage down on Main Street. Evie’s running Tiff’s. She has three kids. They’re all getting on their feet a little since she and her husband divorced.”