The Sheriff's Second Chance

“Define ‘okay.’”

“Are you in need of medical assistance?”

She shook her head. “I’ll live.”

“So, you want to tell me what happened?”

She shook her head again and said, “No. Not really.”

“I need to fill out an accident report.”

Her attention shot to him. “It wasn’t an accident.”

“You put your car in a ditch on purpose?”

She rolled her eyes in exasperation. “Of course not! It died, and I was...pushing it out of the road.”

The mental picture almost made him smile. “Got away from you, did it?”

Her deadpan look was the only answer he required.

As much as he wanted to believe she deserved it, wanted to feel vindicated, she looked so damned defeated he couldn’t manage anything but pity. He’d been so busy not looking at her in the diner, he hadn’t noticed the dark circles under her eyes, or that she was thinner than he’d even seen her. Her wrists looked bony and her collarbones jutted out.

But whatever she’d suffered, or was still suffering, she’d brought it on herself. That was what he wanted to believe, anyway.

Caitie stepped forward to climb down the embankment, and without thinking he grabbed her upper arm to stop her. The instant his fingers touched her bare skin, he was hit by a zap of awareness so intense it nearly knocked him into the road.

Where in the hell had that come from?

Considering the way Caitie blinked in surprise and jerked her arm free, she must have felt it, too. “At ease, Officer.”

“You can’t go down there,” he said.

“I have to get my things.”

“It may not be safe. You should wait until the tow truck gets here.”

“I haven’t called one.”

“I did. It shouldn’t be more than an hour.”

“I don’t have an hour. I have to get back to work. And there are papers in there from the diner that my mom needs now. And I need my purse.”

“Where is it?”

“Everything was on the front passenger seat.”

With a sigh of resignation he told her, “Stay here.”

Hands propped on her hips, she scowled. “I didn’t ask for your help.”

Like it or not, she was getting it. If she went down there and wound up hurting herself, it would be his ass on the line. He picked his way down the slope into the ditch on the passenger’s side of the car, weeds twisting around his legs and clinging to his uniform pants like tentacles. Thankfully there had been no rain for a while, or he would be trudging through mud and muck.

He gave the car a firm shove, to make sure it was stable, and it didn’t budge. From this angle he could see that the hood was wedged under a large boulder at the edge of the field. This car had definitely seen its last days on the road.

“How bad is it?” she called down to him.

“Looks fatal,” he answered, and he heard her mutter something under her breath. “Sorry, I missed that.”

“I said, what next? Which in retrospect was probably a stupid idea. Why tempt fate?”

He didn’t believe in fate. Not anymore.

He tried the passenger’s side door. It resisted at first, but with one hard yank and the grating screech of metal against metal, it opened. As he leaned inside he was filled with an eerie sense of déjà vu. Somehow, despite having essentially spent the past seven years under a tarp in the garage, the car still smelled like the coconut body spray she’d used in high school.

He shook the thought away as he reached over and switched on the hazard lights.

The papers she’d mentioned lay scattered across the floor. He gathered them up, revealing an expensive-looking leather purse underneath, its contents spilled out onto the mat. He recognized the brand as one his ex-wife had often coveted but could never afford.

He had overheard his dad tell someone that Caitie had done rather well for herself in New York. It was a surprise to Nate. Not because he considered her incompetent. He had just always believed that material things didn’t interest her, that family was what she really cared about. Living in the city had obviously changed her.

Or hell, maybe he never really knew her at all.

He slid the sheets of paper—which looked to be financial forms—back into their folder and stuffed her belongings back into her purse. He gave the interior a final cursory glance, a disturbing sense of longing tugging at his soul. He shut the door and climbed out of the ditch.

“Thank you,” she said when he reached the top and handed her things over. “I could have gotten them.”

He should have let her do just that, but he had been entrusted by the town to keep its residents safe, and it was a duty he took very seriously. So, until Caitie went back to New York, she was essentially his to protect.

“I noticed your left taillight is still flickering,” he told her, looking back at the car.

“Only because someone never got around to fixing it for me,” she said sharply. “Though he promised about a hundred times.”

Resentment churned his gut. Who was this woman? The Caitie he knew had always been so sweet and accommodating, so...nice. She never had a negative thing to say about anyone. Well, almost never.

“I’m not the only one who made promises,” he reminded her. She had promised to marry him and have his children and spend the rest of her life with him.

Yet here they were, not married.

“Can I go now?” she asked.

He wasn’t sure where his reply originated, maybe from some deep dark place where the pain still simmered, but it was out of his mouth before he could stop it. “Leaving is what you do best.”

Her sharp intake of breath said the barb had struck its target. He waited for the feeling of satisfaction to release the weight that had been dragging him down since he’d first heard her voice in the diner. But treating women with respect was a virtue so deeply engrained by his parents, he felt like a jerk instead.

Her bluster and bravado seemed to leak away, filing the edge off her sharp tongue. “I didn’t want to hurt you, Nate. If you believe anything, please believe that.”

Whether she meant to or not, she had hurt him. She’d left with no regard for anyone else’s feelings. Abandoned him and all their friends with no logical explanation.