The Sheriff’s Christmas Surprise

by Marie Ferrarella

  Her eyes crinkled a little as she said, “You have siblings.” It wasn’t a question.

  Rick began to tuck the handkerchief back into his pocket and was surprised when Olivia put out her hand for it. He surrendered it to her and watched as she spread it over her left shoulder.

  “One,” he told her. “A younger sister.”

  “We have that in common then.” Placing Bobby against her shoulder, Olivia gently began to pat the baby’s back, waiting for the obligatory burp. “Except that your sister is probably one of those superresponsible types.”

  He had no idea how she had guessed that. “She is.” Then he explained, “Abuela wouldn’t have allowed her to be anything else.”

  “Abuela,” Olivia repeated slowly, searching for a match in her memory banks. And then she brightened just as Bobby burped. She kept him there a little longer, in case more was going to come up. She didn’t want to risk her suit getting more stained than it already was. Her dry cleaner would probably tear out what little hair he had left when he saw what she wanted him to clean this time.

  “That’s ‘grandmother’ in Spanish,” she said, pleased that she remembered.

  He had no idea why it would matter to him one way or another that she spoke Spanish. After all, it wasn’t exactly that unusual. For more than half the population of the state, Spanish was either a first or second language. But it did.

  “That it is.”

  Olivia gleaned a few things from his tone, putting her own interpretation to it. “Your grandmother raised you, didn’t she?”

  He was ordinarily the one asking the questions, not answering them, but he indulged her. For now. “She did.”

  If his grandmother had raised him, that meant that his parents hadn’t been around to do it. Did she have more in common with him than she thought?

  “Did your parents pass away, too?” she asked quietly, as if the occurrence demanded reverence.

  For a moment Rick thought of ignoring the question, or acting as if he hadn’t heard her. But she’d probably only ask again. Besides, he wasn’t ashamed of his background and everyone around town knew his history anyway. That was both the good thing and the bad thing about living in a town the size of a small, above-ground pool. Everyone knew everyone else’s business.

  That being the case, there didn’t seem to be much point to being secretive. Even if this woman was just passing through.

  “I haven’t the slightest idea,” he answered.

  Olivia was quiet for a moment, digesting his answer and taking it apart. She was right, she thought. The sheriff had looked particularly incensed when he thought her sister had willfully abandoned Bobby. Undoubtedly that was because he’d been abandoned himself.

  Though her expression didn’t change, she found herself feeling for him. Her parents had had no choice in the matter. What kind of a mother willingly walks out on her child?

  Olivia lowered her eyes, cradling Bobby in her arms. “Oh.”

  For reasons he didn’t quite fathom, he wasn’t annoyed, he was amused. “That was a really pregnant ‘oh.’”

  Olivia shrugged, pretending to be engrossed in cleaning away the telltale signs of Bobby’s last burp from his little round face. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”

  The hell she didn’t. “You said you were a lawyer, right?”

  This time, she did raise her eyes and look at him. “Yes.”

  “Isn’t that inherent in your nature, then? To pry?” He rephrased it to seem less hostile. “To find things out?”

  “I’m not being a lawyer right now,” she told him, letting down her guard. His sharing something private with her had stirred her compassion. “I’m just a worried aunt and sister.” She paused for a moment. “And I’m sorry about your parents.”

  He eyed her quizzically. “What about my parents?”

  Maybe she shouldn’t have ventured onto this ground, but for a moment, there had been a connection, a kindred feeling. And, since she had opened this door, she might as well walk through the doorway with dignity.

  “About them not being there for you,” she told him. “I know what that feels like.”

  He didn’t doubt that she thought she knew what that felt like. But their situations were ultimately very different. “How old were you when your parents—”

  “Nineteen,” Olivia answered quickly.

  “Then you don’t know,” he said matter-of-factly. “I was eleven.” The world looked a lot different to an eleven-year-old than it did to someone who was mostly grown. “My sister was six. My father had been long gone by then. One day my mother dropped us off with her mother-in-law, saying she’d be back soon,” he recounted, trying his best to separate himself from his words. “Turns out that she and my grandmother had a difference of opinion when it came to the meaning of the word ‘soon.’ To my grandmother it meant a couple of days at the most.” Rick shrugged. “Probably less.”

  “And to your mother?” She had a feeling she knew the answer.

  He set his mouth grimly. His eyes were steely as he said, “Fourteen years.”

  That was still less time than she’d thought, Olivia said to herself.

  “Hey, Sheriff,” Alma called from the next room.

  Rick straightened, moving away from the table. He was glad for the interruption. He wasn’t sure what had come over him, but he’d shared far too much with this woman who’d been a complete stranger to him an hour ago. Shared a hell of a lot more than he normally did with people he actually knew.

  He had no idea what had compelled him to run off at the mouth like that, except that there was something about her eyes, something that transcended rules and decorum and seemed to pull the words out of him.

  Though it sounded absurd, it was as if the woman was looking right into his soul.

  Asking him to look into hers.

  He was applying for this job in Dallas just in time. A few more months in Forever and he’d be ready for the loony bin. Maybe sooner. There was absolutely no earthly reason for him to be waxing philosophical like this.

  People who sat around spinning theories about why someone did or didn’t do something ordinarily annoyed the hell out of him—and here he was, voluntarily joining the ranks.

  Definitely time for a change of scenery, a change of venue.

  Rick got his mind back on business and away from wondering what other threads he and the woman with the hypnotic blue eyes had in common.

  “Coming,” he called back to Alma.

  Before he could cross to her, Alma told him, “I think I found a match.”

  Olivia’s heart leaped into her throat. She had no idea why a feeling of dread suddenly washed over her. This was what she wanted, to find her sister. Why then was she afraid to hear what the sheriff’s female deputy had to say?

  Feeling as if she was getting up on borrowed legs, Olivia rose to her feet and followed the sheriff into the main room, every step she took resounding in her head and body.

  “That was fast,” Rick commented to Alma. He glanced at the monitor beside her computer.

  “People remember a red Mustang,” Alma said. “Especially one that crashed into a utility pole.”

  “Crashed?” Olivia cried, struggling to rein in the deep fear that seized her heart.

  For a second, she couldn’t breathe. That was the anxiety kicking in, she told herself, trying to work her way out of the terror that threatened to overwhelm her.

  She wasn’t going to pass out, she told herself firmly. She wasn’t.

  All she needed to do was just hang on for a second and the room would stop spinning and settle back into place. Silently, she talked to herself the way she did to a nervous witness when she was taking a deposition. Calmly. Soothingly.

  “Yeah,” Alma said in response to the single-word question. The deputy shifted her chair so that both Rick and the woman with him could clearly see what was on her monitor. She pointed to the bottom of the monitor, where the short notification started. “It says here that there was an
accident.” She began to read. “A 2004 red Mustang, heading northwest, was clocked going about ninety-five miles an hour when it suddenly swerved and careened into a utility pole.”

  Holding Bobby tightly against her, Olivia stared at the screen. She tried to read, but none of the words sank in.

  “Does it say if they—if they—”

  Olivia couldn’t bring herself to say the words that were tantamount to ushering in death. Instead, she went at the information from another angle.

  “Does it say if they’re all right?”

  Standing behind her, Rick had quickly scanned the report himself. It wasn’t very long.

  Turning toward her, he said, “Looks like you’re not going to be having any more trouble with your sister’s boyfriend.”

  She knew what that meant, but she needed to hear him say it. “Don’s dead?”

  The sheriff nodded. “Says here he died instantly at the scene.”

  Oh God, oh God, oh God. She couldn’t stand the man, but she hadn’t wanted to see him dead—just gone. Her mouth felt utterly dry as she pushed the next words out. “And my sister? Tina? Was she—”

  He spared her the agony of finishing the question. “She was badly injured. They took her to Pine Ridge.”

  She didn’t understand. “But it says here that the accident happened in Beaumont.”

  “It did,” he told her. “But Pine Ridge is the site of the closest hospital.”

  That meant that her sister was alive. They didn’t transport dead people to the hospital; they took them to the morgue.

  She looked at the sheriff, her heart pounding. “But she’s alive, isn’t she?” she asked in a whisper. If she raised her voice she knew it would crack.

  He nodded, and his voice was gentle as he answered, “According to the feedback.”

  It was a noncommittal answer, but she’d take it. She desperately needed to hang on to something while she pulled all the threads together—again.

  “Okay,” Olivia said, trying to center herself, to gather the thoughts that were scattered in all different directions. “Okay,” she repeated. “We’ll go to Pine Ridge. Bobby and I will,” she clarified.

  “You’ll need directions,” he told her.

  No, she thought, she’d need strength, but there was no handy dispenser lying around to give her some of that. She had to dig it up and tap into it.

  In response to his observation, she shook her head. “No, I don’t need directions, I’ve got a GPS. I’ll be all right.” And, please God, let Tina be the same. “Thanks for all your help,” she said as she quickly hurried out of the office.

  Chapter Five

  Rick wouldn’t have been able to say why he followed her outside. Maybe it was a sense of duty mingled with curiosity. He’d already decided that she was a stubborn woman and, for the most part, stubborn people both irritated him and turned him off.

  But not her.

  And if asked, he wouldn’t have been able to explain exactly why.

  Maybe that was where the curiosity part came in.

  She looked around, as if to decide which direction to take in order to find the diner. It was obvious that she wasn’t exactly a tracker.

  Amusement pulled at the corners of his mouth. Common sense kept it from surfacing. “At least let me drive you over to the diner,” he offered.

  She would have wanted to say no, but that would be living up to the old adage about cutting off her nose to spite her face. She wasn’t sure which way to go to get to the diner and she didn’t want to ask the sheriff because it would make her seem stupid. The people around here were probably born tracking.

  “That would be very nice of you,” Olivia said. “Thank you.”

  “No problem.” He opened the rear passenger door so she could deposit the infant seat and then the infant.

  Ultimately it took almost less time for him to drive back to the diner than it did for Olivia to secure the infant seat in the rear of the police car. She remained in the back with her nephew for the short hop back.

  He glanced in the rearview mirror, his eyes meeting hers. “She’s going to be all right,” he assured her with quiet confidence.

  Had there been something in the report he hadn’t mentioned? “How do you know that?” she asked.

  “I don’t,” he admitted. She felt her spirits dip drastically. “I just know it helps to keep a positive thought.”

  “Right,” she murmured, looking out the window. All the positive thoughts in the world hadn’t kept her sister from running off with that lowlife.

  Bringing the vehicle to a stop, he was quick to get out. Rick rounded the hood and was at the rear passenger door, opening it for her before she had a chance to remove the seat belt she’d secured around Bobby’s infant seat.

  He stuck his head in and nodded toward the baby. “Let me take him for you.”

  She was about to say that she didn’t need his help. The words rose automatically to her lips. But while that might be true in this instance, letting the sheriff take the baby allowed her to exit the vehicle with some semblance of modesty, rather than just sliding out with the baby in her arms and her skirt up somewhere between her thighs and her waist.

  Once she was out, rather than hand over the baby to her, Rick walked to her car. There were now several other cars parked in front of the diner, but he had no trouble finding hers. Even if he hadn’t seen her retrieving the bottle and formula from the cooler, he would have known the vehicle was hers. They tended toward practical cars around here, mostly four-wheel drive and all-terrain vehicles.

  No one in Forever had an expensive car that was just for show. Certainly not a Mercedes.

  A sense of practicality didn’t keep him from admiring her car, though. It was a beauty.

  Like the woman who drove it.

  Where the hell had that snuck in from? he wondered, caught off guard. It seemed to him that he was paying a hell of a lot of attention to someone who was, at best, just passing through. It wasn’t like him.

  Still, he was a servant of the people. Or so it said somewhere in his job description. The term that was used was “people” not “just the citizens of Forever.” That meant, in an odd sort of way, he was her “servant” as well.

  So he asked the kind of question a concerned servant was wont to ask.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to take you to Pine Ridge? It’s easy to get lost around these parts. Some of the towns around here never even make it to a map. Just a cluster of a few buildings with a handful of people in them.”

  Having opened the rear passenger door, Olivia was trying to secure the infant seat to the cushion and having less than complete success. Why was she all thumbs like this?

  The sharp pain in her heart told her that she knew the answer to that. Olivia didn’t want to go there. She did anyway, albeit involuntarily. She wasn’t thinking straight because she was worried about Tina. Worried that, even now, it might be too late. That Tina was dying this very minute.

  Olivia banished the notion from her mind. Instead, she addressed the sheriff’s offer. Maybe another time, she might have let him drive her. But right now, she wanted to be alone. In case she cried. She didn’t want any witnesses.

  “Pine Ridge is large enough for a hospital, right?” she asked, tossing the words over her shoulder as, kneeling on the backseat, she continued to struggle with the infant seat.

  Rick found that he had to exercise extreme control to keep from staring at what might have been the best well rounded posterior he had seen in a very long time. Forcing himself to blink, he raised his eyes up toward the back of her head.

  He was in time to witness part of her hair coming undone as she hit her head against the inside of the roof. Several bobby pins came raining down, as did another section of her hair.

  Still on her knees, she stopped what she was doing and turned around in the car to look at him. “Right?” she asked again.

  It took him a second to vaguely recall the initial question. Something about
Pine Ridge and being big enough for a hospital. “Right.”

  “Then it should be on the map.” She sighed, wiggling back out again. “That seems pretty secure,” she said, more to herself than to him.

  She’d drive just under the speed limit, she told herself. The infant seat—and its precious cargo—would be fine if she kept a steady pace.

  Even so, for good measure she stuck the cooler on the floor just beneath where the infant seat was. That should keep it wedged in, even without the belts.

  “If I could have my nephew back,” she said, the corners of her mouth curving just a little. The sheriff looked rather comfortable holding Bobby. She caught herself wondering if he was married and how many children he had. Not that it mattered.

  Rick surrendered the baby, placing Bobby in her arms.

  “Hang in there, sweetie,” she said to Bobby.

  Turning, she ducked back into the rear seat, this time to secure her nephew into his seat. And once again, Rick found himself captivated, staring at her shapely anatomy and trying very hard not to let his imagination take over. He reminded himself that, after all, he was the sheriff. But then again, sheriffs were not plaster saints.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Miss Joan at the diner window, looking out on to the parking area. Observing him with a knowing smile.

  That old woman needed a hobby, Rick thought. One that didn’t involve turning everything she saw into gossip.

  As Olivia ducked back out of the rear of the vehicle, he reached into his breast pocket and retrieved a business card. He’d had fifty printed up when he first took the position some four years ago. He still had close to that number left. The phone number to the sheriff’s department was a matter of record. Other than numbers taking the place of the initial two call letters, the department’s number hadn’t changed. People knew it by heart.

  But she didn’t.

  “Here.” He held the beige card out to her. “It’s the department’s number,” he explained. “In case you find you need help with getting your sister home.”