Her Cowboy Sheriff

But surely this arrangement would be brief. She padded across the hall, cracked open the door then eased into the spare room, taking care not to let the hinge squeak—which it had for her entire thirty-one years.

She was simply the babysitter until other plans could be made or Sierra got out of the hospital, not that I know what I’m doing.

As she crossed the bedroom, Annabelle dragged her growing guilt like a ball and chain. Certainly, for reasons of her own she hadn’t been that eager to take Emmie in. Just hours before Sierra had called a few weeks ago, Annabelle had paid the first half of her own tuition to attend a two-week course at a well-regarded academy in Denver that would train her to be an international tour director, a first commitment to the future she wanted for herself. Weeks before that she’d sent in her registration fee and a hefty first deposit, using part of the money her parents had left her. Annabelle tried not to feel guilty that she was using her inheritance to escape the diner. And when Sierra had mentioned coming for a visit after so many years, claiming she had loose ends to tie up in Barren, Annabelle had told her not to come. If Sierra had listened, she wouldn’t be here now lying in a hospital bed.

Emmie lay almost buried under the covers. Only her eyes showed, glowing in the near darkness, looking suspicious and confused. Annabelle had left a night-light on the nearby bureau for her, but obviously Emmie couldn’t sleep. So neither could Annabelle.

“Hey, punkin.” She heard a shuddering intake of breath. “It’s all right.”

Annabelle ventured closer to the bed.

At the hospital she’d asked Finn about a crib for Emmie. “At three she’s probably done with that,” he’d said. “Kids climb out then start roaming. They can fall and hurt themselves.”

How would Finn know? He was reportedly single—much to the delight of many other women in town—a fact helpful for Annabelle’s fantasies. As far as she knew, he had no kids.

Uncertain if he was right about the crib, Annabelle had decided to improvise. Her parents had long ago donated her baby items to charity. Two straight-backed chairs now served as a barrier to keep Emmie from tumbling out of bed and hitting her head. Rubbing her eyes, Emmie cried out. “Want my mama!”

“I know, sweetie, but she’s not here right now.”

Emmie didn’t buy that weak explanation, but Annabelle couldn’t tell her the truth. Again, the child burst into tears.

Annabelle tried her best—which apparently wasn’t enough—to comfort her. Earlier, at the hospital while she and Finn waited for an update on Sierra, neither of them saying much, Emmie had been with Finn’s deputy at the station. By then, Sierra was in surgery. Later in recovery, looking pale and horribly bruised, with tubes snaking everywhere and monitors beeping, she’d still been under the effects of the anesthesia and couldn’t talk. She seemed much worse than Annabelle had expected, and Annabelle had Sierra’s daughter to care for—or try to—tonight. As for tomorrow...what if Sierra didn’t survive?

Finn had driven them home from the sheriff’s office, Emmie in the back seat clutching her stuffed lamb while Annabelle crooned to her without quite knowing what to say. The little girl had finally relaxed in the car seat Finn had provided, and by the time they reached the house Emmie’s eyelids were fluttering.

Annabelle thought of Finn standing by the bed when he’d put a then-sleeping Emmie on the clean sheets, a slight—even wistful?—smile on his lips that made Annabelle feel weak in the knees. Finally, he’d said, “It’s late.”

When he turned from the bed, panic streaked through her. “You’re not leaving?”

She didn’t know what else she wanted then, except not to be alone with Emmie, but another blush bloomed on her cheeks. “I won’t know what to do if she wakes up.”

Her heart kept clanging against her rib cage, but Finn had only touched her shoulder as if to say you can do this then left the room. Ever since then Emmie had slept fitfully, waking every hour in this strange house, probably wondering where she was, to call out for her mama, sometimes pushing Annabelle away.

Emmie’s rosebud mouth puckered in the dim light now. “Where Mama go?”

Annabelle drew a breath, then said, “She had to stay somewhere else tonight, sweetie. She asked me if you could sleep here.”

Emmie shoved two fingers in her mouth, a built-in pacifier. Not wanting to leave her, Annabelle moved a chair aside then sat on the bed. The soft, silvery light of a full moon filtered through the room’s gauzy curtains, and in the hallway her parents’ old grandfather clock ticked in the stillness. It reminded Annabelle of all the terrifying time-outs she’d gotten, her punishment for doing something wrong, listening to the minutes march by until she would be freed. To this day she avoided that now-locked closet under the stairs.

She smoothed a tentative hand over Emmie’s blond hair, wishing she had some other means of comfort to offer, but even though Emmie needed an adult’s reassurance Annabelle had little experience. “It’ll be okay,” she kept whispering, though she wasn’t sure of that. Seeing Sierra in the recovery room hadn’t been encouraging, and Annabelle’s dreams tonight had been as troubled as Emmie’s must be.

Annabelle felt all at sea. She liked children, but she didn’t have any of her own. Still, she often gave kids treats at the diner and loved hearing their laughter. At Christmastime, for her smallest customers, she made Santa cookies with red-and-green sprinkles, but that was the limit of her contact with them.

Annabelle was happy to hand out cookies or give a pat on the head, but for now children were at the bottom of her priority list. Yes, she yearned for a good marriage someday, a family of her own, but not before she was ready. At the moment she had no prospective husband in sight—despite her feelings for him, she couldn’t count Finn since he barely knew she existed. And what if she screwed up her children as Annabelle’s parents had her? Annabelle still bore the emotional scars from that closet. No, it was better to focus first on seeing the world beyond Barren. On escaping her past to make that new future for herself. She had waited long enough.

And wouldn’t Emmie’s father, whoever he was, be a better choice to care for her? Was he a part of the little girl’s life? Emmie had Sierra’s last name, not his, and Sierra hadn’t been carrying his contact information in her wallet. But once she woke she might fill in the blanks.

Or maybe—Annabelle could hope—Sierra would soon be out of danger and on the mend, well again before Annabelle packed her bags to fly to Denver. She’d booked her flight with a hard lump of anxiety in her throat yet a wild feeling of exhilaration. This would be her “maiden voyage,” including the first plane ride of her life, and from there, once the diner did sell...the whole world would, at last, be hers.

“Mama?” Emmie’s small voice sounded panicky again.

And here came the guilt once more, creeping in to overwhelm Annabelle. Emmie must feel terrified in this unfamiliar house with this strange woman who didn’t know what she was doing, just as Annabelle had felt in the closet that had terrified her as a child. She’d been small and frightened then, huddled in the dark, trembling with fear, alone. Abandoned.

Acting on a maternal instinct she hadn’t known she possessed, she drew Emmie closer. “Baby, you’ll see her soon. Let’s try to sleep.”

Annabelle would open her diner by six o’clock, as she did every day, and even sooner than that her prep cook would be in the kitchen slicing onions and peppers for the ever-popular western omelets, mixing buttery biscuit dough and cutting fresh fruit for breakfast. The daily routine was so deeply ingrained in Annabelle that she wondered if she’d ever truly get it out—or stop feeling unappreciated.

She’d never had to think about a three-year-old child. What about diapers? she’d asked Finn, following him into the hall hours ago.

“My deputy tells me Emmie’s potty trained.”

Frozen in place, Annabelle had heard his footsteps along the upstairs hall as he’d departed, his steady tread drowning out the sound of the clock. Feeling more alone than she’d ever been in her life, she’d listened to the front door open, then he was gone, leaving her in charge. If that meant baking a cherry pie or brewing a pot of rich Ethiopian coffee, the diner’s special blend this month, that was what she knew. It was all she knew for now. Until the plane took off for Denver.

But a small child to care for? Emmie was counting on her, and she finally nestled against Annabelle as she had in the car, as if she knew they were each other’s family. Or maybe, half asleep, she’d confused Annabelle with her mother.

Yet as sympathetic as she felt to Emmie’s needs tonight, she didn’t want another person counting on her just when she was about to turn her back on Barren, Kansas, and everything it represented.

* * *

FINN COULDN’T GET the images out of his head: the flashing red lights, the siren, Emmie Hartwell crying in his arms. It was always this way and he’d feel gritty eyed in the morning, which at four was almost here. He wondered if Annabelle was sleeping now or if, like him, she was lying awake.

She’d stayed close to Emmie on the way home, just as he had at the scene, and her heart appeared to be breaking—like his. But at the same time, Annabelle had clearly wanted to hand off the responsibility for Sierra Hartwell’s child to anyone else. Including him. That wouldn’t happen. Annabelle was the best option for Emmie.

Finn didn’t know much about Annabelle. Didn’t want to know, he told himself. Finn had his life here, such as it was, and with the exception of his dog, snuffling in his sleep at the foot of the bed, that didn’t include getting close to someone again. Whether that meant the little girl he’d held at the accident scene...or Annabelle Foster, he didn’t have the heart for it.

Sure, he’d noticed her—had seen the flash of awareness in her eyes, too—but Finn refused to dwell on that. It made him feel...disloyal.

She certainly tried to hide her attractiveness with plain clothes, including that ever-present apron, and carried a coffeepot at the diner as if to announce she was unavailable except to work. But she had rich, brown hair that shone like glass. Her pretty eyes could turn from brown to almost green depending on the light—and on her mood, if she had any variation in them. She was cheerful, relentlessly so. Tonight was the first time he’d seen her look shattered. He’d often wondered: Did she really like being tied to that diner, as if the popular local restaurant had apron strings, too? The for sale sign tonight told him no, like the sometimes not-quite-here look in her eyes.

Still, unlike Finn these days, she’d always seemed to be a happy person, as well as unfailingly kind. More than once he’d watched her pocket someone’s unpaid check then put the money in the drawer herself because she knew they couldn’t pay.

Earlier tonight, for the first—and probably last—time, he’d been inside her house. Finn had noted the overstuffed living room furniture with faded chintz upholstery, and the tired-looking floral wallpaper that made his apartment seem like a showcase of good design. Her place reminded him of his grandmother’s home until he’d caught a glimpse of the bright posters tacked to her bedroom walls. Venice, Paris, Barcelona...holdovers from her girlhood? Her teens? Maybe she just liked pictures of pretty places, and he was reading too much into the decor. Or were those posters an announcement of her intention not only to sell the diner but to get out of town?

Giving up on sleep, Finn got out of bed. Whether she left or stayed didn’t matter to him. He had paperwork about the accident to finish, and that wasn’t his only concern. The fate of a local cattle rustler, Derek Moran, had been churning in his gut like a lousy fast-food meal. Finn’s part in the case was done, but sooner or later Derek would step out of line again, and Finn would be waiting. In his view Moran was a bad actor who reminded him of someone else.

Eduardo Sanchez. He tried to block out the other man’s name but it zapped his brain with all the force of a taser. All Finn wanted was to see him in handcuffs, see justice served as it would be for Derek Moran.

For now, even as sheriff he couldn’t do anything about either of them. Instead, Finn wanted to take another look in Sierra Hartwell’s car. She was something of a mystery to him, one he also hoped to bring to a close.

He padded over to his bureau and yanked open the second drawer. A sudden burst of memory assailed him. More flashing red lights, another siren, two innocent people lying in pools of blood. The members of the Chicago gang that called themselves The Brothers getting away with murder.

Like the rest of his past, the top drawer was his personal no-go zone.

* * *

SOMEONE WAS CRYING.

In the bed beside her, Emmie sat up, weeping before Annabelle had cleared her mind of her latest bad dream. Sleep continued to be hard to come by, and at four thirty, when Emmie had stirred again, Annabelle finally carried her from the guest room to her own bed.