Shelter from the Storm

“From what I could tell, the damage seemed to be mostly bloody noses and a couple of black eyes. The paramedics showed up just in case but I appeared to get the worst of it.”

“I imagine Mickey’s not too crazy about having his bar ripped apart.”

“You know Mickey. He was right in the middle of it all.”

She probed the edge of his wound and he couldn’t hide a grimace.

“Sorry,” she murmured, stepping away. “I’m going to have to clean it up a little before I can put in any stitches. Sit tight while I grab a suture kit and some antiseptic.”

“No problem.”

The moment she left the room, he huffed out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. Okay, so this hadn’t been one of his better ideas. He should have just accepted his fate and driven into Park City, to hell with the jam it would put in his schedule.

Being here alone in the medical clinic with Lauren after hours was far too intimate, much too dangerous for his peace of mind.

He sighed, frustrated once again at this tension that always simmered between them.

It hadn’t always been this way, but the events of five years earlier had changed everything. Lauren was still cordial, unfailingly polite, but she didn’t treat him with the same warmth she gave everyone else. Every interaction between them seemed awkward and tense.

Though they grew up a few blocks away from each other, they may as well have been on different planets when they were kids. For one thing, she was three years younger. At thirty and thirty-three, now that didn’t seem to make much difference. But when he was thirteen and trying his best to find his place in the world, a ten-year-old girl held about as much interest to him as learning the fox-trot.

Beyond that, they had been worlds apart demographically. She had been the smart and beautiful daughter of the town mayor—his dad’s boss—and he had been the son of Mexican immigrants who never had enough of anything to go around but love.

He had tried to cross that social divide only once, the year he finished out his football scholarship and graduated from college. He had come home to work construction at her father’s company for the summer before starting his police-officer training in the fall and he suddenly couldn’t help noticing smart, pretty little Lauren Maxwell had grown into a beautiful college freshman, home for the summer between terms.

One night she had stopped by her father’s office at the same time he dropped in after a job to pick up his paycheck. They had talked a little, flirted a little—though in retrospect, that had been one-sided on his part—and he had ended up asking her to dinner.

She had refused him firmly and decisively, almost horror-stricken, leaving him no room at all to maneuver around his abruptly deflated ego.

He could survive a little rejection. Hell, it had probably been good for him, a college jock far too full of himself.

If that had been the end of it, he imagined they could have salvaged at least a casual friendship over the years, especially after they both returned to settle in Moose Springs. She was the town’s only doctor and he was the sheriff, so they were bound to interact sometimes.

But what came after had effectively destroyed any chance he had of claiming even that.

There was too much history between them, too many secrets, for anything but this awkwardness.

He wasn’t sure how much she knew. Enough, obviously, for her to simmer about it. If she knew the whole truth, she would despise him even more. Somehow that knowledge did nothing to squash the attraction that always seethed under his skin, the edginess he couldn’t seem to shake.

The door opened suddenly and she returned carrying a tray of bandages and suture supplies. He must have done a credible job of hiding his thoughts. She gave him a smile that almost looked genuine—until he saw the murkiness in her blue eyes.

“You’ll have to sit down so I can reach your arm. You can rest it on this table.”

He hesitated only a moment before he sat down where she indicated and thrust out his arm. The cut was jagged and ugly and still stung like hell, but he knew it looked worse than it really was.

Still, he winced when she pulled out a needle to numb the area. He would far rather face a dozen broken beer bottles than a needle. She caught his expression and gave him a reassuring smile. “It will only sting for a minute, I promise.”

Feeling foolish and itchy at her nearness, he stoically endured the shot, then the gentle brush of her hands as she washed off the blood with Betadine and went to work stitching him up. He finally had to focus on a painting on the wall of two children on a beach eating ice cream and couldn’t help wishing for a little cold refreshment to offset the heat of her fingers touching his skin.

“You’re very good at that.”

She didn’t look up from her careful suturing. “Thanks. I considered a surgical specialty when I was in med school but I decided I wanted to see more of my patients than their insides.”

“Lucky for us, I guess.”

She didn’t answer and the silence stretched between them. He scrambled around for another topic of conversation and grabbed the first one that came to him. “How’s your mother?”

This time her gaze did flash to his, her expression unreadable. “Good. The warm St. George climate agrees with her. She’s become quite a rabid golfer now that she can play all year.”

He tried to picture soft and prim Janine Maxwell ripping up the golf course and couldn’t quite get a handle on it. But then he never would have pictured Lauren Maxwell choosing to practice in quiet Moose Springs, when she could have gone anywhere else in the world.

Oddly, she seemed to follow his train of thought. “Mom wants me to sell the clinic and open up another one in southern Utah.”

He didn’t like the sudden panic spurting through him at the thought of her leaving. “Will you?”

Her hair brushed his arm as she shook her head. “Not a chance,” she said firmly. “Moose Springs is my home and I’m not going anywhere.”

He didn’t miss the defiance in her voice and he fully understood the reason for it. Things couldn’t always be easy for her here—he knew there were some in town who would rather drive the thirty-five minutes to Park City for their medical care than walk through the doors of any clinic run by the daughter of the town’s biggest crook.

The good people of Moose Springs hadn’t taken R. J. Maxwell’s embezzlement of more than a million dollars of their hard-earned money very kindly. Even five years after his death, there were those who still carried a pretty hefty grudge.

Most people in town didn’t blame the daughter for the father’s sins, but he had heard enough whispers and veiled innuendos to know most didn’t mean all. A certain percentage of the population wasn’t as fair-minded.

If the full story ever emerged, he knew that percentage would probably increase dramatically.

Lauren’s own mother had been quick to escape Moose Springs after the scandal broke. He couldn’t understand why Lauren seemed determined to remain in town despite the ugly blotches on her family’s laundry.

“That should do it,” she said after a moment, affixing a bandage to the spot. “I’ll write you a prescription for a painkiller and an antibiotic, just to be on the safe side.”

“Just the antibiotic,” he said, shrugging back into his ruined uniform shirt.

“That’s a nasty laceration. You might be surprised at the residual pain tomorrow.”

“I’ll take an aspirin if it gets too bad.”

She rolled her eyes but before she could speak, his communicator buzzed with static and a moment later he heard his dispatcher’s voice.

“Chief, I’ve got Dale Richins on the line,” Peggy Wardell said. “Says he was driving home from his sister’s in Park City and blew a tire.”

“He need help with it?”

“Not with the tire. But when he went in the back to get the spare, he found a girl hiding in the camper shell of his pickup.”

He blinked at that unexpected bit of information. “A girl?”

“Right. She’s beat up pretty good, Dale says, and tried to escape when he found her but she collapsed before she could get far. She only hablas the español, apparently. Thought I’d better let you know.”

He grabbed for his blood-soaked coat, sudden dread congealing in his gut. One of the hazards of working in a small town was the fear every time a call like this came in, he didn’t know who he might find at the scene.