He couldn’t utter a rational response. Not around the lump in his throat. He muttered a goodbye to Julia, gathered his things and went to a coffee shop to spend the next ninety minutes alone. With old rock music playing in the background, and folks coming in and out, he could bask in obscurity until he showed up at work. Mercifully, working would help him through the next forty-eight hours.
A call to back up Zach Harrison on a possible breaking and entering case came midway through his shift. He drove toward the lower east side of Kirkwood Lake just after dusk.
He pulled up to the address, spotted Zach’s cruiser off to the side and rolled to a stop alongside him. He lowered his window so they could talk without radios. “What have you got?”
“B and E, two kids, a possible third, looting side-by-side merchants.”
“You want front or back?”
“I’ll take front. Chalmers should be right along.”
“They know they’ve been spotted?”
Zach shook his head. “I’m blocked by the trees. A neighbor in the upstairs apartment over the nail salon called it in. And it’s dark now, so they’re less likely to see us.”
Chalmers pulled up then, and the three men eased out of their SUVs. Tanner circled left while Chalmers joined Zach as they approached the front of the building. Zach stopped, waited for Tanner to make it around back, then yelled, “New York State Troopers! Come out with your hands up!”
They came out, but not with the intention of getting caught. Two darted out the back, straight at Tanner. He raised his hands. “Stop. Now.”
One kid did. The other dodged right, then the first one thought that might be a good idea, and darted left. Tanner pinned him against the wall while talking to Zach and Chalmers through his radio. “One suspect heading east, about five-eight, leather jacket, clean-shaven, tight blue jeans, black boots.”
Zach’s voice came through the radio. “I’ve got visual.”
The next thing Tanner heard was a dash, then a scuffle, followed by a moan of pain. Zach was in trouble. He half dragged his cuffed perp around the front of the building, then groaned.
Zach lay sprawled in hip-deep snow. Chalmers had both youths lying on the ground, his weapon drawn as he barked a request for an ambulance into the radio. And from the look of Zach’s lower leg, his ankle went one way and the leg went the other.
Julia Harrison was going to kill Tanner for not protecting her brother. And he wouldn’t blame her one bit.
She rushed into the ER twenty minutes later with Zach’s wife, Piper, and a big, broad man that must be Zach’s father, Marty. He was taller than Julia, with the same blond hair, and he threw a frustrated look at Zach. “First her.” He jerked a thumb at Julia. “Now you. I assumed this whole parenthood thing got easier once you grew up. Clearly I was mistaken.”
“Are you okay?” Julia asked while Piper grabbed hold of Zach and burst into tears.
Zach sent his father a questioning look because anyone who knew Piper McKinney Harrison knew she didn’t cry. Ever.
Marty Harrison made a face, surprised.
Julia shrugged. “Don’t look at me. I figured it was just an ankle and not a bullet, but then I’m hard-hearted.”
“Compared to Piper?” Tanner scratched the back of his head. “No one’s tougher than Piper, are they?”
Julia started to speak, then paused.
Zach winced in pain, then caught her look. “Piper? Are you...? I mean, are we expecting again?”
“Yes.” She nodded against his chest, and Tanner’s gut did a weird little twist when Zach’s hand tightened protectively over his wife’s neck. “I was going to tell you tonight, I had it all planned and it was going to be very romantic—”
“Seems it already was,” noted Julia. Her easy humor made Tanner feel better, but for a guy who avoided pregnancy and children purposely, he’d been unexpectedly bombarded by both for the past twenty-four hours.
“And then they called and said you were hurt,” Piper continued, “and the first thing I thought was you were shot.”
“But I wasn’t.”
“Well, you could have been,” she insisted.
“Only if Tanner shot me. Or Chalmers. Unfortunately I was bested by a decorative rock path buried under a monumental snowdrift. I went one way. My foot went the other.”
“How bad is it?” Julia asked. She lifted the blanket, grimaced and set the woven throw back down gingerly. “Oh, that’ll need an operation, bro. When is that expected to happen?”
A doctor strode into the room. “Right now. We just called in an ortho specialist. I’m Dr. Laramie, hey, wait.” He stared at Tanner, then Julia, then Zach. “Didn’t I see you Three Musketeers in here last night?”
“Guilty as charged,” Tanner admitted. “Last night it was her fault.” He pointed Julia’s way and ignored her little squawk of protest. “This one’s on me.”
“It’s on a rock path and a snowstorm and three brats who wanted to steal old folks’ pensions to support a drug habit.” Zach held Piper’s hand between two of his and stared at Tanner. “You had two-on-one at the back. You did what you needed to do. I tripped, plain and simple.”
Tanner couldn’t let it go that easily. “If he’d come around the other way, you’d have been clear and there’d be no injury. Now you’re busted, your wife’s expecting and you won’t be around to back me up for six—”
“Eight,” said Zach’s father.
Julia scoffed. “Ten, minimal.”
“Twelve weeks, most likely,” the doctor advised cheerfully. He held up an X-ray. “This snazzy black-and-white photo of your bones shows multiple breaks that are going to be surgically repaired by installing some pretty inventive hardware in your ankle. The nuts and bolts will hold things together as they heal, but the tough part isn’t the four breaks in the bone.”
“It’s not?” Zach asked.
“Soft tissue damage,” the doctor reported. “That’s why we’re looking at twice the healing time. Tendons and ligaments grow slowly, so you’ll be spending the entire spring out of commission.”
Zach looked like someone just kicked him in the teeth, and Tanner knew just how he felt. Twelve weeks of immobility?
A killer.
Zach turned toward his sister. “Julia. The clinic.” His face darkened. “Oh, man. You were counting on me, and you need to have that work done on time for the grant money to be disbursed.”
She waved his concern off as if it was nothing, and that garnered Tanner’s respect because Zach had explained that if the work didn’t get done, the grant money went to someone else.
“You think you’re indispensable or something?” Julia shrugged as if this wasn’t a big deal, but Tanner knew better. “We’ll get someone else to help us get the clinic ready for business.”
“I know what your budget’s like and you were counting on me,” Zach lamented. “And we can’t have Piper working in a zone that might have asbestos. Jules, really, I’m so sorry.”
“I’ll help” Tanner offered. It was the last thing he wanted to do, to be caught in a work zone with midwives and doctors and pregnant women, but they should be done with the work before too many young mothers came around. “I’m decent with a hammer and I like fixing things. And it’s not bragging to say I’m better than your brother.”
Zach started to protest, but Tanner stopped him. “Save your breath. If I’d been between the kids and that alley, the second kid wouldn’t have gone that way and you’d be doing paperwork right now. As it is, Chalmers is doing paperwork and I’m...” He took a deep breath. “Going to help build walls for a women’s health clinic in a crime-riddled strip mall.”
“Not necessary,” Julia said coolly. “But thank you. I’m sure I’ll have plenty of help, and didn’t we confirm last night that accidents happen to everyone? No one’s fa
ult, then or now.” Her expression said she didn’t need his help or like his attitude. But he knew what he needed to do.
“I will help, it’s useless to argue,” Tanner offered mildly. “And who’s got your boys and little Jackson if you’re all here?”
“My mother.” Piper kissed Zach’s cheek as the doctor returned with papers to sign. “She’s having the time of her life, and she can’t wait to be a grandma again.”
Tanner had had enough talk of babies and clinics. He’d been so happy to get the call-in today, glad to push thoughts of this anniversary aside, but that was hard when pregnancy chatter surrounded him. He took a step backward. “Zach, I’m heading out to help Chalmers. I’ll do whatever you need, and again, I’m sorry, man.”
Zach waved him off. Tanner started to head toward Julia, but her expression said their conversation was over.
It wasn’t over, it had barely begun, and he had every intention of helping with her women’s health center. Why it had to be in his patrol area was a quirk of fate he didn’t need, but out of his control.
He strode out the door, determined. Like it or not, Zach had gotten hurt because he’d messed up. Now he’d help pick up the slack his mistake had caused. Whether Julia liked it or not.
Chapter Three
Julia stopped by her house on the way home from the hospital. The emergency enclosure firm had battened down the hatches and the firefighters had removed the tree and secured the electric lines, but it would be weeks before her house was habitable. She hurried upstairs, grabbed clothing and toiletries she’d need for herself and the boys, then saw the message light flashing on her landline as she descended the stairs.
She hit the message code. The unexpected tones of her ex-husband’s voice made her chest ache. “Ignoring me, Julia? Doing what you do best, hiding your head in the sand to avoid reality? Well here’s the deal, Martin and Connor are my kids as much as yours, and if I have to go to a judge to enforce my visitation rights, I’ll do it. Don’t make me bring you to court, Julia. Call me and set up a time for me to have my sons. We’ll meet somewhere in the middle.”
Julia’s heart froze solid, the phone in her hand.
Meet in the middle?
Did Vic expect her to drive halfway to Ithaca and hand Martin and Connor over to him after he’d spent the past two years ignoring them?
Not gonna happen.
Ice pulsed through her veins as she smacked down the phone. The sound of his voice was antagonistic, and condescending, as if distancing herself from his affairs was an over-reaction on her part.
She paced the long living room, examining her options.
Vic had visitation rights, but he’d never bothered to use them. He’d shrugged off her moving to Kirkwood Lake two years ago, and other than the infrequent child support checks, he’d stayed out of their lives.
Until now.
Why now?
She didn’t have a clue. Her head hurt but she wasn’t about to take one of those pain pills and cloud her thinking.
The phone rang.
She jumped, stared at the caller ID and heaved a sigh of relief when her father’s number flashed. “Hey, Dad.”
“Hey yourself. You okay? I thought you just had to grab a few things. Need me to come around that way?”
“No, but thanks. I’m fine.”
“You don’t sound fine, Jules.” Her father wasn’t the kind of guy anyone fooled for long. “You sound like you’re ready to pop someone in the jaw.”
Her father knew her well.
“Is your head hurting? Do you need me to drive you back here?”
“No, nothing like that.” She paused, then blew out a breath. “Vic called.”
Marty Harrison growled. “He hasn’t contacted you in over a year.”
“Almost eighteen months, and that was to explain why he couldn’t take the boys for their two-week summer visit because he was too busy finishing up his course work to become a school administrator.”
“I remember. What does he want?”
“He wants the boys over spring break. And he says he wants his one weekend a month like the court promised.”
“Now? After all this time? Why?”
Julia had no answers. Only more questions. “I don’t know.”
Her father breathed deeply, then offered typical Marty Harrison wisdom. “Well, we know he wants something. Vic is nothing if not predictable, but there’s no sense worrying about it tonight. You need to sleep and we’ll tackle this tomorrow. Let him stew on it overnight, Jules.”
“Which means we both stew on it.”
“Trials of parenthood, honey. No one said it would be easy.”
True, but then no one warned her that her good-looking, high school teacher husband would stray outside their marriage. Call her naive, but being raised in the Harrison house, good men didn’t do things like that. Which meant she’d either placed her trust foolishly...
Put a check in the yes column on that one!
Or she wasn’t as slim or attractive as she’d been when they dated nine years before.
Another check in the yes column, with a helping of self-recrimination poured on top, like chocolate glaze on a doughnut.
“And stop beating yourself up, Julia. That’s not how I raised you.”
“My spunk’s on low tonight, Dad. It’s been a rough forty-eight hours.”
“You escaped two car wrecks and a falling tree with nothing more than a couple of cuts, bruises and bangs. Pretty positive result in my book, kid.”
She laughed because he was absolutely right. “Two of which were not my fault, of course.”
“And neither was the broken marriage,” Marty told her bluntly. “We’ll figure this out in the morning. I love you, honey.”
“Love you back. I’ll be at your place in a few minutes.”
She hung up and stared at boarded up wall in front of her.
Broken and battered. Her heart had felt like that wall when she’d realized Vic had cheated for the second time.
Was she unlovable? Not pretty enough? Not thin enough? Gone too much? What did these other women have that she didn’t?
Why does it have to be about you? Why can’t it be about him? Maybe some guys are just jerks?
Rational argument said Vic Gentry was a two-timing jerk. But in the cold light of day, her heart knew what her head denied: he hadn’t just turned to others.
He’d turned away from her. And she wasn’t at all sure she wasn’t somewhat to blame for that.
* * *
“Oh. ’Scuse me!”
A miniature version of Julia’s blue eyes under a mop of blond curls met Tanner’s eyes as they collided at Zach’s side door the next afternoon. “Whoa. I gotcha, bud.”
“Connor? Are you okay?” Julia’s voice called from somewhere inside Zach’s house.
The little boy rolled his eyes. “I’m fine! I’m going to see if Beansy’s friend had her babies yet.”
“Go across lots, not around the road.”
“Mom, I know all this stuff. I’m five! I’m not a baby.”
“Didn’t say you were, and—” Julia stopped as she got to the side door, looking surprised to see him. “Tanner. I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were here.”
“Julia.” He nodded toward the kid. “Yours?”
“On good days.” She grinned at the boy and laid her hand on top of his head. “Be good for Grandpa, okay?”
“Grandpa and me work together on weekends.” He pulled a knit hat down on his head and stood as tall and straight as a kid could while he addressed Tanner. “He’s teaching me everything about farming.”
“I expect he’s mighty pleased to have a helper like you around,” Tanner said.
“Two helpers.” Connor shoved his feet
into old-fashioned rubber farm boots. “Martin’s already over there, checking on the mommy goat, but I had to practice my reading words. Which was kinda dumb because I knew them all already.” He darted a dark glance at his mother, a look she ignored completely. He raced out the door, then stopped and stuck out a little hand in Tanner’s direction.
“I’m Connor.”
“My name’s Tanner. Nice to meet you.”
“Do you like goats?”
“More than life itself,” Tanner replied with a quick side smile toward Julia.
Connor leaned in as if sharing a very big secret. “We’re going to have baby goats soon. And baby goats are called kids just like kids are called kids.”
Tanner offered the boy an exaggerated look of surprise, as if Connor’s revelation was truly amazing.
“And they’re going to get born, like, any day now. Maybe even today.” He gave Julia a miffed look. “My mom delivers babies but she says Daisy is better having her babies on her own because goats know how to do those kind of things. Do you think they do?”
He shrugged. “It makes sense, I guess.”
“Well, I hope so because I’ve been waiting for these babies a very long time.” Connor’s serious expression mirrored his words. “Every day I pray and pray for these babies, and she hasn’t had them yet.”
“Animals have been giving birth forever.” Julia’s calm tone said nature would prevail. “I expect Miss Daisy will be fine, Connor. And if there’s an emergency, I can be on call, okay?”
“Except she’s all alone at night,” the boy muttered as he pushed out the door. “So I don’t know who’s going to take care of her then and I know Grandpa’d let us bring her in the basement. Just until.”
“God will take care of her,” Julia suggested as if God could be counted on for everything.
Tanner knew better.
The boy’s scowl said he sided with Tanner. The door banged shut behind him as Julia stepped aside. “The patient awaits. Zach was excited that you were coming over.”
Healing the Lawman's Heart Page 3
