Last Stand Sheriff

by Tyler Anne Snell

  Declan took the lead, trotting ahead with eyes peeled and gun in one hand.

  No one moved.

  He led them to the side of the barn facing away from the house and jumped off his horse. Remi followed suit. She hung back as he moved around the corner to look inside the barn.

  Blood was in the aisle between the stalls. Two spots of them on opposite ends. There was no one inside to match them.

  “The barn nearest the house is empty,” he said down to his pocket so Caleb could hear through the speakerphone that was still on. Caleb said he understood.

  “Des and I are coming up the drive now.”

  Declan could feel Remi’s anxiety mounting as he peered around what used to be a door, splintered off the hinges and facing the house.

  “No movement.”

  Caleb repeated the sentiment when they made it to the end of the driveway opposite them.

  “Let’s clear the house,” Declan ordered. “Be careful.”

  Remi stuck to Declan’s back as they moved to the house in a hurry. For the next few minutes the four of them went from room to room, only to clarify it was empty.

  The men and Lydia were gone.

  And the only things they’d left behind were blood and Gale Hudson.

  Sirens blared up the driveway when they finally made it to the upstairs bathroom the Hudson patriarch was in.

  It wasn’t a pretty sight.

  Remi cried out, pure anguish breaking down every part of the woman. She reached out for her father before she’d even cleared the doorway. Declan grabbed her, trying to shield her from a terrifying reality if only for a few seconds longer.

  Even if he didn’t know what had happened in the bathroom, it was clear that Gale had fought. Blood was smeared everywhere, the man himself in the middle of it all and as still as still could be.

  Remi fought against Declan’s chest.

  Desmond ran past them and knelt beside Gale. He checked his pulse.

  He didn’t shake his head, but he didn’t look relieved, either.

  * * *

  UNLIKE THE LAST time chaos had reigned within their orbit, Declan didn’t leave Remi’s side once.

  From Heartland to the hospital to roaming the halls of the hospital to even standing outside of the bathroom door, the sheriff kept his cowboy hat on but metaphorically seemed to take his badge off.

  “Go do what you need to,” Remi had said after Josh had first gone into surgery. Declan had shaken his head. She’d noticed for the first time that day that dark stubble was lining his chin.

  “I’m with you now,” was all he’d said in response.

  These were words that were comforting in an increasingly uncertain world, and words he stayed true to.

  He made and answered phone calls, spoke to his brothers, deputies and chief deputy in person, and when it was time for her to relay everything that had happened at Heartland, he was the one who took her statement personally.

  Remi had been ready to ride solo back to the ranch to try to save her dad but now she was grateful for the close proximity. Especially when, hours later, Jonah met them next to a vending machine in the lobby.

  He ran a hand through his hair. He was exhausted.

  “I just talked to the doctor about Dad.”

  Remi perked up at that. She’d been hovering around the hallways in the hopes of talking to a doctor sometime soon. Her father was still alive, a miracle by all accounts, and had gone through a series of touch-and-go surgeries. He’d only been sent to a room an hour ago. Josh, who had undergone his own surgery, had been out for four. He’d regained consciousness only to ask about them and then the “new fling” Jonah had told Remi about.

  After a deputy had found and brought their phones to the hospital, Remi had made sure to call the woman after she realized how important she was to her brother. They had all been surprised when a brightly dressed, extremely expressive woman named Lilianna had rushed into the hospital and immediately to his bedside. Talking to the woman, seeing how worried she was, had eased Remi’s guilt at leaving Josh’s side.

  It had given her more time to worry about their father.

  “How is he?” Remi asked, heart jumping back into her throat. “Does he have to have another surgery?”

  Jonah shook his head. Then he did something she’d truly not seen coming. He smiled.

  “His rehab is going to be extensive and he’ll have to take it easy for a long while to come, but the doc said he should be out of the woods now. He’s stable and both surgeries did exactly what they wanted them to do.” Remi threw her arms around her brother in an embrace. He spoke into her hair. “If you hadn’t gotten him help as fast as you did, it would be a different story.”

  Remi squeezed and then pulled away. She looked him in the eye with certainty.

  “And if you hadn’t gotten Josh here as fast as you did, he would have been in worse trouble, too.”

  Jonah took the truth with a smile that waned.

  “But if I’d never gone out with Lydia—” he started.

  “They would have still probably come,” Declan finished.

  They’d already had this conversation while waiting for Josh and their dad’s surgeries to finish. Jonah told Declan and Caleb everything he knew about Lydia, which hadn’t been much. She’d been nice and funny and had done a good job at pulling Jonah in with limited interaction.

  The truth was, no one blamed him one bit, yet Remi could see he’d be blaming himself for a long while despite that fact.

  Jonah shook himself a little.

  “Did you talk to Mom?”

  “Yeah. Her flight got grounded because of the weather and it took all I had to convince her and Dave not to drive through it instead. She only relented after hearing that Josh and Dad would be okay. She’ll call one of us tomorrow with an update but said you better call her soon.”

  Jonah glanced at Declan. He lowered his voice.

  “Does she know? About the...you know?”

  Remi felt Declan’s gaze switch to her. She shook her head.

  “I want to tell her in person.”

  “She’d like that.” Jonah let out a loud, long sigh. “What she wouldn’t like is you running yourself into the ground while pregnant with her only claim to a grandkid.” He fixed her with a mock stern expression. “Get out of here and get some rest.”

  Remi opened her mouth to complain, but he cut her off.

  “I called Rick, Dad’s friend, and he said he wants to come up here and stay the night with Dad while I stay with Josh. There’s no reason you need to stay here, too.” He looked to Declan. “I’m assuming Remi has a place to stay with you, though?”

  “She does.”

  “But what if—” Remi tried.

  Jonah still wasn’t having it.

  “But what if nothing. I’ll let you know if anything happens. Plus, it’s not like the ranch is that far from here anyways.” He put his hands on her shoulders to focus her attention so that it stayed solely on him and his next words. “You shot a man to get us off the ranch and then went right back to it to get Dad. Let me do this very simple task of watching over everyone here.” His expression softened. “Give me this, Remi. I need it.”

  So, she did.

  Then, before she knew it, Remi was standing in Declan’s bathroom back on the Nash Family Ranch and staring at a mirror that was starting to steam over from the shower heating up behind her. She’d already stripped naked but couldn’t get her feet to move from the tile floor.

  All because of the stain on her skin.

  Blood from her father or her brother that had seeped through her shirt.

  Remi knew they were okay now, but that crimson smear held too much power still.

  Way too much.

  It wasn’t until two beautiful green eyes met her gaze head-on that Remi realized she
was sobbing.

  And it wasn’t until Declan’s arms wrapped around her naked body that she realized how much she needed the man.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Sometime in the dark of late night or early morning, Remi woke up in bed alone. It wasn’t her bed, and she sussed that out pretty quickly through the haze of sleep thanks to the way the pillow smelled beneath her still-wet hair.

  It smelled like spice and the woods and Declan Nash.

  Remi rolled over and felt the empty space next to her.

  After her breakdown in the bathroom, Declan had gone above and beyond the call of supportive. Not only had he taken her into the shower with his jeans still on, he’d scrubbed the blood off her skin and held her while she cried some more. Only after she’d regained her composure, or enough of it to stop crying, did the man dry her off, put a too-big shirt over her head and deposit her like a child in bed.

  Remi had been so exhausted from her outburst to the adrenaline-filled day she’d had that sleep had overtaken her within the space of two blinks.

  Now she guessed that the man who had saved her from herself hadn’t gotten beneath those same sheets next to her.

  Remi rolled back over and found her phone on the nightstand. No new calls or texts from Jonah. She took that as good news and slowly got out of bed. She flushed when she realized she was wearing a pair of boxers. She didn’t remember putting those on.

  Declan surely was a caring and sly man.

  If he hadn’t already seen her as naked as naked could be, she might have been so embarrassed that she’d try to escape. Instead, she opened the door between the bedroom and living room with all the hope in the world of seeing the sheriff.

  She wasn’t disappointed.

  Declan looked up from his laptop on the coffee table with alarm. That alarm softened after a moment. He smiled.

  “Hey, Huds.”

  It was such a simple greeting, yet it shifted something inside of her that had already been moving.

  “Hey, Sheriff.”

  Remi settled in the chair kitty-corner to the couch so she could face him the best she could.

  “Thank you for earlier, by the way. I kind of lost it, lost it.”

  Declan waved off the apology.

  “I only did what I could do to help.” He sighed and glanced at the computer. “I just wish I could do more.”

  “I take that to mean no one has found Lydia and the men?”

  He ran a hand over the stubble along his jaw. Whatever had softened his expression was now gone. Stress and frustration took its place.

  “No. We’ve checked all the hospitals in the county, and even reached out past it, to see if we can’t locate the guy you got. We have so many APBs out on them and the three who pulled what they pulled on Main Street that the gossip mill is about to shatter. Mom said that Cooper Mann’s grandmother let her know in no uncertain terms that Overlook is losing faith in the department. In me. And, honestly, I can’t blame them.” He dragged his gaze to hers. “We have so many weird little pieces to this chaotic puzzle, and I just can’t seem to find a way to force them to fit. For a moment I’ll think I have something and then it gets lost in the chaos. It’s driving me crazy.”

  Remi didn’t say anything right away. She knew the man well enough that telling him everything was going to be okay, telling him that he would get all of the bad guys in the end, wasn’t actually going to help him.

  So, instead, she told him a story.

  “One time when I was younger Dad and I went to a ranch out in Texas to visit a friend of his named Barry. The boys were too young and Mom had to stay to watch them and, to be honest, I wasn’t that excited to be the one who had to go. Dad knew it and tried to talk the place up before we even got there. He told me it was three times bigger than Heartland and had all kinds of animals everywhere you looked. I didn’t believe him—to me Heartland was massive—but then we drove the road to the main house and it felt like it took a lifetime to get there. All along the way I watched herds of cows grazing, people horseback riding, and even saw some goats running around. I was mesmerized.” Remi couldn’t help the smile that she knew passed over her face. The little-kid awe she’d felt then was hard to forget even as an adult. “So when Barry invited us to move the herd of cows to a field at the opposite end of his property, I was actually excited. We got our own horses, our own tents, and some stuff to make s’mores, and rode all day until we got them to where they needed to be. That night I passed out with chocolate on my mouth and a sore butt from riding. It was magic.”

  Declan smiled in turn at that.

  “Later that night, though, I woke up to the sound of two hundred scared cattle. I’d barely gotten on my horse before they took off in all different directions,” she continued. “I couldn’t figure out what was going on, and neither could Dad or the ranch hands who had come with us. There was too much noise, too much movement, and not enough light. And do you know what Barry did?”

  Declan raised his eyebrow in question. Remi leaned forward in her seat.

  “He took a breath, tuned the world out and reminded himself that he’d been a rancher for years and was damn good at it. That’s when he spotted the wolf.”

  Remi moved from her seat to the spot next to Declan and put her hand on his knee. She wanted to encourage him and comfort him all at the same time. She hoped that she’d at least hit one of her targets.

  Declan angled his body so he could meet her gaze more easily.

  Once again Remi marveled at how different this scene would have been if they were younger. He would have been the one talking while she listened in silence.

  “With what I know from growing up in Overlook and from what I’ve heard since I’ve been gone, chaos seems to be more frequent than not. You’ve lived in it and still live in it. You’re good at navigating it. Now you just need to take a breath, tune the world out, and trust that you’re—”

  Calling him fast was an injustice to the move he actually pulled off. In one fluid movement Declan went from a statue beneath her hand to heat against her lips.

  He cupped the side of her face and Remi leaned in to the surprise.

  She kissed the man back.

  Hard.

  Their lips parted and the taste of him was all she wanted in the world.

  When he broke the kiss, Remi was left blinking and confused.

  “You,” he rasped out.

  “Me?”

  “You,” he repeated. “That’s what I want.”

  He was back to her lips within the space of a breath. The wild boy from her childhood and teen years. The reunited friend. The good—and not mention to last—fling. The accidental father of her child. The sheriff savior.

  Declan Nash had a list of ever-evolving meanings to her.

  But what was he now? Between a night of passion that wasn’t supposed to last through the next day to always being connected through their unborn child.

  What would happen next?

  Coparenting across state lines due to her promotion?

  Getting married in no-man’s-land while her belly grew?

  Or some form of in-between?

  Remi had no idea about their future.

  But she did know something about the present.

  She looped her arms around Declan’s neck and pulled him against her until they were lying across the couch. He followed her down while never breaking their kiss. In fact, he deepened it with his tongue, trapping a moan of pleasure between them.

  Declan’s hand tangled in her hair while the other gripped her hip. She moved up and against him as he tried to maneuver himself so his body weight wasn’t solely on her. In the process Remi felt how much Declan Nash truly wanted her.

  It put fire straight through her. She dropped her hands down and went for the hem of his shirt. Remi had never wanted something gone as badly as she
wanted that shirt off.

  Declan felt her frustration. He broke their kiss and nearly ripped it in two. The shirt went flying and then he was focused on hers. Which was also his. A fact that must have encouraged him. He grabbed its hem and then tore it right up the middle.

  Cold air hit Remi’s bare chest as the two sides of the fabric fell away, but there were only flames in her blood. When he dropped his mouth down to the skin of her neck and then followed a tantalizing path to her nipple, Remi almost cussed him.

  When his hardness pushed against the boxers she was somehow still wearing and through the shorts he was somehow still wearing, Remi nearly lost it.

  The second he came up for air, she decided to end the torture.

  She pulled him back down on top of her and moaned.

  It seemed to do the trick.

  Remi moved against him as, one-handed, he took off his shorts. Then he focused on her. She moaned again as his hand, strong and warm, skimmed down the boxers on loan and then came back up her leg. Trailing heat and lust right to the spot where she wanted his attention next.

  There was no trapping her moans now.

  She yelled out in absolute bliss as he pushed inside of her and filled her with hard passion. She moved against him with uncontainable desire.

  A man and a woman desperate to be closer.

  Lips to lips.

  Skin to skin.

  Galloping heartbeats.

  Remi didn’t know what their future held but she did know one thing.

  She wanted Declan, too.

  * * *

  THE PHONE CALL didn’t wake Declan, Remi did.

  Tangled together between the sheets of his bed, she couldn’t help thrashing around to escape to the bathroom.

  Declan immediately went on high alert, fighting through the haze of the good sleep he’d fallen into with the naked woman wrapped in his arms. He followed her up and out of the bed, fists balled and eyes wild. It didn’t matter that he was as naked as the day he was born, he was going to fight tooth and nail to combat whatever had woken Remi so violently.