Montana Sheriff

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.