Marrying the Cowboy

“Only wheels I got at the moment.”

“Your truck damaged in the storm?”

“Pretty sure since it blew away along with my house.” He tried to make light of it to keep from really dealing with the brutal fact that he was homeless, but a damn lump formed in his throat anyway.

“Oh, hell, I’m sorry.”

“Could have been worse.” He rubbed his hand along the side of Frankie’s neck. “Glad you all were spared.”

“Me, too. I don’t think I could face losing these animals.”

Most of them weren’t hers, rather those of boarders, but Glory had never met a horse she didn’t fall madly in love with on first sight.

“You going to take him out for a ride?” she asked, nodding at Frankie.

Pete shook his head. “No, too much work to do. I just wanted to make sure he was okay since I was in the area.”

She nodded in understanding. “Things settle down, you’re more than welcome to come over for a meal or a dozen.”

“Thanks.” He allowed himself a couple more minutes of the peace he felt with Frankie before he forced himself back to the cruiser and back to dealing with Mother Nature’s path of broken lives and dreams.

A couple hours later, Pete’s eyes burned from lack of sleep as he pulled into his driveway. Greg Bozeman was hooking his wrecker up to the patrol car to flip it back onto its wheels.

“You look dog tired, man,” Greg said as Pete got out of the extra patrol car the department had for when one of the others was in the shop for repairs. Or when one got demolished by a tornado.

“I feel like my eyelids are glued open and I’ve been body-slammed by the Hulk.”

“Yeah, that’s about how you look.”

Pete flipped Greg the bird, causing his friend to laugh. Considering all the destruction he’d seen in the past several hours, the laugh seemed out of place and welcome at the same time.

“Honey, you look as if you could use some strong coffee.” Verona descended her front steps with a coffee cup in one hand and an insulated beverage container in the other.

“You are my new best friend.” Pete leaned down and kissed her on the cheek.

“New? I thought I was already your best friend.”

Pete smiled. That also felt foreign, but he was thankful for her attempt at levity. He glanced toward the house. “I’m guessing Elissa went out to the nursery.”

A sadness passed over Verona’s face. “I’m not sure she slept a wink last night, and she headed out as soon as it started getting light. Only reason I didn’t go, too, is that Liam is coming over to get the tree out of the living room and put in a new window.”

“I’ll drive out there later.”

“You need to get some sleep first.”

“No time right now.”

She gave him a scolding look. “Well, whenever you do decide to get some shut-eye, come back here.”

“I don’t want to impose.”

“Don’t be silly. How many times have you cleaned out my gutters or mowed my lawn? I think I can offer you the extra bedroom.”

He nodded, too tired to argue.

The patrol car flipped over with the sound of stressed metal and breaking glass.

“I think this one’s done for,” Greg said with a shake of his head.

Yeah, it more resembled a pancake now than a patrol car. After watching Greg winch the car up onto the flatbed, Pete thanked Verona for the coffee again and headed out for round two.

By the time night rolled around again, he still hadn’t found time to drive out to the nursery. Every time he thought about it, something more pressing needed his attention. If he tried to drive anywhere now, he’d more than likely end up in a ditch.

“Come on, man,” Simon said as he stopped in front of Pete’s desk. “You can crash on our couch.”

“Nah, I’m good.”

“You sure?”

Pete nodded, though it felt as if that simple action took the last of his strength. He’d lost count of how many hours he’d been up.

After Simon headed home, leaving Connor Murphy and Jack Fritz on duty, Pete kept sitting at his desk, unable to work up enough energy to move. It wasn’t far to Verona’s, but it seemed a world away at the moment.

Sierra walked out into the hallway to the drink machine, her headset still on her head. She spoke with someone about a washed-out bridge while she slipped coins into the machine and retrieved some much-needed caffeine. She and Anne Marie had been working every bit as long as the rest of them.

When she ended the call, she walked toward him. “You look like you’re about to slip into a coma.”

“That’s pretty much what I feel like.”

“I’m so sorry about your house.”

“Yeah, me, too.” He rubbed his burning, itching eyes with the heels of his hands then glanced over at Sierra. “Listen, I’m just going to sack out in the back. I’m too dang tired to even walk to the car.”

“Okay.”

Somehow he found enough energy to push himself to his feet and head back toward the collection of holding cells. Blue Falls wasn’t exactly a hotbed of crime, so they didn’t have any residents tonight. Pete picked the first stall only because it required the fewest amount of steps to reach and collapsed onto the bunk. It wasn’t comfy by any stretch of the imagination, but he was pretty sure he’d sleep like a baby on a concrete floor at this point.

Despite his exhaustion, he stared up at the ceiling and replayed everything that had happened since he’d made a mad dash for the storm shelter he shared with Verona and Elissa, hoping they were already inside. By the time he’d seen that they weren’t, it was too late. Going back out into the storm would have been nothing more than suicide.

So he’d sat in the dark listening to the world ripping apart, his heart hammering, praying that they would be okay, cursing that he hadn’t had time to get them to the shelter, as well. That was his job, protecting people, and he’d felt like an utter failure as he could only imagine what all the noise above him meant.

Pete rubbed his aching eyes and then forced himself to keep them closed, to try to quiet his mind. But the images kept up their barrage, preventing him from getting the sleep he needed.

The swath of destroyed homes, the uprooted trees, the debris spread across what felt like the entire county. The disbelief and sorrow on Elissa’s face as she’d stared at the damaged nursery. Sure, he’d lost his home, but it was just a house, the place where he’d lived after moving out on his own. The things that hurt were those that he couldn’t replace, especially the family photos. His heart squeezed, making him wince. He couldn’t even take new photos to replace them with his parents both gone.

He shook his head, unwilling to think about that now. His thoughts drifted back to Elissa, to the shocked disbelief on her face that had seemed so out of character. It was rare to see Elissa Mason anything other than smiling or being deliberately ornery in pursuit of laughter. To see her standing there in the rain looking at the ruins of her nursery would have kicked him in the gut even if he hadn’t already been reeling from his own loss.

He considered rousting himself and going to her house to make sure she was okay, but his body just wasn’t willing to comply. It was as if everything other than his brain had temporarily forgotten how to function. As the thoughts continued to fly, he realized they were making less and less sense. The last thing he remembered before he stopped thinking altogether was the look of relief on Elissa’s face when she’d jerked open that shelter door. The edge of his lips ticked up as sleep finally claimed him.