Bachelor Cop

Too bad, she thought. She’d seen the surprising gentleness he’d shown with Brody, and she suspected he’d make a good father.

He turned to leave. “I’ll see what I can do about finding Wolf.”

It had stopped raining, and the hint of a moon was trying to peek out from behind a bank of clouds. Jill could just glimpse it over the tops of the trees. “I appreciate what you did tonight, but I wouldn’t think finding lost dogs would exactly be in the line of duty.”

He turned back to her. “I promised a little boy,” he said softly.

Jill only stared at him. Brody had had more than his share of broken promises lately. From his father. And for a moment Jill didn’t know what to say to this man. “Thank you,” she finally managed to say.

He shrugged off her thanks and started down the porch steps. At the bottom he stopped and glanced back at her. “Wolf—just what kind of a dog are we talking here?” he asked.

He made a gesture with his hands, approximating the height of a Great Dane or maybe a boxer.

Jill shook her head. “Maybe you should start your search a little closer to the ground,” she suggested.

He adjusted his hand’s height downward, then lower still.

“Try dachshund height,” she said.

Chapter Two (#ulink_10ec926f-3dea-5ef1-997f-16ab59d92dd5)

Wolf.

Whit found the sawed-off runt of a creature shortly before going off duty, having spotted him loping along the interstate at five a.m. But he wasn’t sure he’d ever live down the razzing he’d taken when a trooper friend of his happened by about that time and heard him calling to the animal and trying to lure him into the squad car with a hardened piece of jelly doughnut.

He’d wanted nothing more than to return Wolf to his home and forget this whole miserable night, but when he’d driven by Jill Harper’s house a short while later he’d found the place dark, leaving Whit with no choice but to take the little runaway home with him.

He just wanted a few hours of peaceful shut-eye, and then he would return the dog to Brody.

But at ten in the morning Wolf began whining to go outdoors. “I’m not about to chase you for six blocks, you miserable mutt,” Whit growled and rolled over onto his stomach, his body begging for a few more hours of much-needed sleep.

But guilt nagged at him, reminding him there was a small boy waiting for his dog. With a groan he crawled out of bed and pulled on his jeans, buttoning them up as he searched around the bedroom for a pair of shoes.

“Come on, hotfoot,” he said to the dog. “I’ll buy you breakfast, then take you for a walk.”

He and Wolf shared toast in the kitchen, then Whit tied a piece of rope to the dog’s collar as a leash and introduced him to a few trees in the neighborhood. A dog, one adorable little boy and his even more adorable mother added up to trouble in Whit’s book. The kind he didn’t need.

So why hadn’t he been able to get Jill Harper off his mind?

He’d been all too ready to jump to the conclusion that she was a bad parent. In his job he often had to size up a situation quickly—and accurately—but unless he’d missed his guess, the pint-size woman he’d met last night would walk through fire for her son.

And maybe she already had.

He thought he’d seen pain and a soft vulnerability in those wide-set green eyes of hers. And he found that he hated the possibility that someone might have hurt her.

Or Brody.

“Come on, pooch,” he said, giving Wolf’s makeshift leash a determined tug. “It’s time to take you home. And, you sawed-off excuse for a dog, it wouldn’t hurt you to learn a few of the finer points of protecting your family, instead of making these late-night forays of yours.”

Jill didn’t know what to do about Brody. For the past hour he’d been sitting on the front porch step, watching up and down the block for the big policeman he’d talked incessantly about all morning. He was convinced his new friend would be driving up any minute now, the missing Wolf in tow.

Officer Whit Tanner had made quite an impression on her young son. He had brought her child home safely—and for that she was grateful to him. But the missing Wolf could be anywhere—and she wished the man hadn’t made a promise he didn’t know he could keep.

She stepped out onto the porch and sat down beside Brody, wishing she knew some way to distract him from his front porch vigil. Earlier she’d fixed him his favorite breakfast of pancakes, but he’d barely touched them. She’d suggested he try his new Nintendo game she’d bought him last week, but he’d given her a quiet shake of his head and, instead, carried Wolf’s food dish outside, placing it beside him on the porch.

“Wolf will be hungry when he comes home,” he explained.

His hope nearly broke Jill’s heart.

It was already past eleven, and so far there’d been no sign of Whit, no sign of the dog, and Jill feared the worst. She put an arm around her son’s small shoulders. “Brody, honey, I know Officer Tanner said he would find Wolf for you, but. he may not be able to. Wolf could be a long way away, somewhere the policeman wouldn’t know to look for him.”

Brody shook his red head with a vehemence. “No, Mommy. He said he would bring Wolf, and he will—just like he promised. You’ll see.”

Jill knew all about promises made to little boys—they seemed to be the kind most easily forgotten. How many times had she tried to make it up to Brody for the broken promises of his father? How many times had Michael Harper been “busy” with a court case he needed to prepare for, too busy for a trip to the zoo with his son or even a night out for an ice cream?

“Look, sweetie…Wolf is such a little dog, and there are lots of streets, lots of places he might have gone. I just don’t want you to get your hopes up, that’s all.”

“It’s okay, Mommy. Don’t worry. The policeman will find him.” Her son patted her on the arm. A child reassuring his parent—that gave Jill a moment’s pause.

With a sigh she knew she couldn’t shake her fouryear-old’s faith, his belief that Officer Tanner would prevail against all odds and find the missing Wolf:

At that moment she could have happily wrung the big cop’s neck. And it would have been better than he deserved.

Brody needed someone to look up to, someone strong and big he could believe in. A hero. And right now, to Brody, that hero was Whit Tanner.

Mommies were all right as far as they went. They worked well for patching up skinned knees or telling bedtime stories, but there were times when a mommy just wasn’t enough.

Jill felt a pang of pain at the knowledge and vowed to talk to Michael once again about giving his son a little fatherly attention. Though she doubted it would do much good. The man had his own agenda, one which unfortunately left little time for parenting.

She gave Brody a hug. “Maybe I’ll fix us each a glass of lemonade. Would you like that?”

Brody nodded that he would, and Jill left him there, staring off down the block.

Her heart squeezed in her chest as she headed toward the kitchen. Brody was such a little boy, and she knew she couldn’t protect him from every hurt in life. Still she tried.

She’d even bought Wolf for him as a way of assuaging his disappointment over being stood up by his father two weeks earlier. Now, in hindsight, she wasn’t so sure getting the dog for Brody had been a good idea. Her son had ventured outdoors late at night, something he never would have done had it not been for Wolf. And now the little runaway was lost, and Brody would be heartbroken if he wasn’t found.

Jill had just reached for the fresh lemons in the fridge when she heard Brody’s excited yelp from the porch. “He’s here, Mommy, he’s here! The policeman’s here with Wolf!” came his jubilant small voice.

There was a God after all, Jill thought, and dropped the bag of lemons to dart to the front door. She arrived just in time to see the hunk of a cop, out of uniform this time, emerge from a black Jeep Cherokee, a squalling, wriggling dachshund tucked unceremoniously under one arm.

Brody raced toward him, and Whit ruffled the boy’s red hair, while Wolf lathered Brody’s piquant face with exuberant licks.

“I told Mommy you’d come. I told her,” Brody said, bubbling over.

Whit laughed, a deep male sound that rumbled up from his chest. “You did, pardner? And where is this mommy of yours?”

Jill stepped out onto the porch. She tried to keep her gaze off the devastating look of the man in his soft-worn jeans and faded black sweatshirt. If he’d been all male last night in that uniform, he was every bit as dangerously so today.