“Lucky. I’d be happy to keep anything on him,” Samantha said with a little sigh. “I’ve had a crush on the man forever. With those blue, blue eyes, he’s always reminded me of Paul Newman in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. If Paul Newman had dark hair, anyway. But don’t you dare tell Katrina, okay? She would freak if she had any idea I’m seriously in lust with her big brother.”
“I won’t tell. I promise.”
“You two would make a great couple,” Megan said. “He’s always been so serious. He needs to laugh more and those adorable kids of yours would melt even the hardest heart.”
“Yes, they would. But we’re not a couple,” she stressed.
“But look how cute they are together,” Megan said. She pointed to Marshall, who was bent over on his crutches listening to her kids as they appeared to be arguing the merits of certain ornaments over others.
Her heart gave a little twist. They were cute together. Despite their rocky beginnings, both Will and Chloe obviously adored him.
She was coming to, as well. Entirely too much.
“It looks like the note cards Louise painted are almost sold out,” she said, trying to change the subject.
“They’ve been really popular this year.”
“Because she’s wonderful. I’ll buy the last box.”
By the time they paid for their purchases, Andie could see Marshall had overdone things—just as she knew he would never admit to it, even if tortured. He kept shifting on his crutches, mouth tight and his expression remote.
She resolved to usher them all to her vehicle quickly and get him home, where he could elevate his leg.
The crowd seemed to be even heavier as they made their way out of the warm tent and the unnaturally mild temperatures had begun to drop with the cold front forecasters said would be moving down from Canada later that night.
The going was tough for him on the crutches and he had to stop several times when people moved in front of him without paying any attention.
“Sorry about this. I thought the crowd would thin by now.”
“I’m doing fine. We’re almost to the end of the row.”
Just before they reached the last few tents, she spotted Charlene and Mike coming the other direction. They saw them at the same time and made their way through the mass of people.
“Oh, you’re still here!” Charlene exclaimed. “I thought for sure you would have left for Snow Angel Cove by now.”
“We’re heading to the car now,” she started to say.
Before she could squeeze out the last word, she heard a grunt at the same moment she became aware of movement out of the corner of her eye.
She turned instinctively and reached out a hand, an instant too late to help Marshall, who seemed to have lost his balance and was toppling forward—directly onto his broken leg in the protective boot.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
HE MANAGED TO keep most of his weight off the leg as he toppled, but it still banged into the frozen ground and pain growled through him, hot and vicious.
He rolled to his back and started to curse, then caught himself when he saw Chloe and Will looking down at him with big, frightened eyes.
His mother looked just as frightened. “Somebody call an ambulance!” Charlene shrieked.
“On it,” Uncle Mike said, reaching for his cell phone.
Marshall managed to breathe through the pain and held up a hand. “Stop. Don’t call an ambulance. I’m okay. Honest.”
“You are not okay,” Andie said, kneeling on the concrete beside him. Though her eyes were a deep, concerned green and he didn’t miss the flickers of panic in them, her voice sounded remarkably calm.
“I will be, as soon as we both get up from the cold ground.”
“I don’t think we should move you until the paramedics come!” Charlene said. “Mike, call 911.”
His uncle looked like he was in an impossible position, forced to choose between two conflicting orders.
“Don’t call the ambulance, Mike,” he said firmly, hoping common sense would overrule the man’s desire to please his new bride. “I’m fine, I promise. Just stabilize the crutch so I can pull myself up. Andie, he might need help.”
Though in his sixties, Mike was strong as a plow horse from his years of manual labor at the body shop. As he hoped, though, Andie quickly rose from the cold concrete to grip the crutches.
This was so humiliating, finding himself on the ground like that, but he had a bigger concern and couldn’t stay here like a turtle that had landed on its shell.
He grabbed the crutches as high as he could reach and pulled himself up, cursing the awkwardness of the heavy brace that he was already so damn sick of. He supposed it beat a plaster cast, but not by much.
When he was once more balanced on his good leg, he reached into the pocket of his coat, aware his fingers were shaking a little in reaction to the pain that made him feel weak and helpless.
“You’re making a phone call? Now?” Andie exclaimed when he pulled it out. “You can barely stand up! Can’t it wait until we get to the car?”
“No. I thought I saw Ruben earlier and I need to find him. I don’t know if he can hear me with all the crowd noise, but I have to try.”
He dialed his friend’s number, but it went straight to voice mail. He frowned, wondering if he ought to try Cade. Haven Point was his jurisdiction, after all, even if the incident was part of an ongoing investigation.
As he was dialing Cade’s number, though, he spotted Ruben back at the opening of the Helping Hands tent, talking to Samantha Fremont and Meg Hamilton.
“There’s Ruben. I need to see if I can catch him.”
Andie glared at him. “Stay here. If it’s so important that you have to talk to him right this minute, I’ll grab him.”
She hurried back the way they had come and returned a minute later with his deputy.
“What’s going on? Andrea said you just fell. Do you need help getting to your car? Do I need to call an ambulance?”
His mother and the kids were still watching with wide eyes. Charlene would completely freak if she heard what he needed to tell his deputy, so Marsh jerked his head away from the group and started walking a few steps away for privacy.
“I did fall,” he said, when they were out of earshot of the rest, “but it wasn’t an accident. Somebody very deliberately came up behind me and kicked my crutch out from under me.”
Ruben looked alarmed. “Are you sure? It’s a big crowd. Somebody could have just bumped you.”
“Positive. The first time didn’t do it so they kicked again.”
“Did you see anybody?”
“No. I thought the first kick was an accident, too, so I didn’t turn around until the second one. I thought I saw somebody heading through the gap in the tents where we were, but all I could make out was a dark shape rushing away.”
“You’re thinking this was connected to the hit-and-run.”
“What else?”
He could tell Ruben didn’t quite believe him. He would have thought he was crazy, too, if not for that second sharp kick. “I saw Wall and Kramer earlier, talking to Bill Newbold. None of them looked happy to see me.”
“You think it might have been one of them?”
“Who else?”
“What do you need from me?”
“Ask around. See if you can find a witness, maybe somebody who’s running the booths in this area. Somebody had to have seen something.”
“You got it.”
Ruben took off and Marsh watched him go for a moment before returning to Andie and the others.
“Darling, are you sure we can’t call an ambulance?” his mother pressed.
“No. I’ll be fine.”
Andie gave him a close look and
he was quite sure she didn’t miss that he didn’t say he was fine but spoke instead in the future tense.
“Let’s get you to the car and I’ll take you home,” Andie said.
“What about the party?” Chloe complained.
“We’ll get there eventually,” Andie said.
“Maddie said she was waiting for me, though,” Chloe complained. “She wants to show me their new puppies!”
“She can wait a few moments longer.”
“We can take the children with us,” Charlene suggested. “You can meet us there after you take Marshall home.”
If his leg hadn’t still been howling with pain, he might have found it amusing that his mother didn’t offer to take him home instead of Andie doing it.
Because he hadn’t yet confessed that he had misled her, she still thought something was going on between them. He should probably come clean, but the truth was Charlene completely exhausted him, while Andie’s presence filled him with an odd sort of peace.
“Good idea,” he said instead. “Thanks, Mom.”
“You don’t have booster seats for the kids,” Andie protested.
“We can grab yours. No problem,” Mike said. “I would feel better anyway if we walk with you back to the parking lot to make sure Mr. Wobbly Knees here doesn’t decide to take another header.”
Andie looked as if she wanted to argue, but she must have decided the combined force of three Baileys was more than she could take on.
“Are you sure you’re ready?” she asked him.
As ever. He nodded and swung the crutches forward, keeping a careful eye on the crowd for potential threats.
Just before they left the collection of booths, he spotted Ken Kramer in a knot of people standing around one of the propane heaters and enjoying a slice of pizza.
He could swear the deputy smirked as he watched Marshall make his slow way on the crutches. Hot anger burned through him and he hoped to hell Ruben could find something.
Ten minutes later, they were all settled in their respective vehicles and Andie pulled out of the parking lot and headed in the direction of Riverbend Road.
“How are you really feeling?” she asked when they were finally on their way.
He wanted to lie but didn’t see much point. “Hurts like hell,” he admitted.
“Maybe you need another X-ray so we can be sure you didn’t do more damage in there when you fell.”
He didn’t even want to think about that possibility. “Cade is supposed to be off tomorrow and was planning on coming over. If it still hurts, I’ll have him take me.”
Her mouth tightened. “I was afraid the festival would be too much for you, but I never expected you to reinjure your leg.”
“It’s fine, really,” he assured her. “Don’t worry about me.”
“That’s not as easy as it sounds,” she answered, just as his phone buzzed with a text.
He pulled it out and frowned at the message from Ruben.
“I’m still not clear on what exactly happened. I saw you go down, but I didn’t see what happened just before that. Did your crutches hit an uneven spot on the sidewalk or something? And why did you need to talk to Deputy Morales?”
He debated about telling her. She didn’t need more worry. That hardly seemed fair, though, when she had done so much to help him.
“It wasn’t an accident,” he said with conviction. “Somebody kicked my crutch out from under me.”
She jerked her gaze from the road just for an instant, but it was enough for him to see the shock and dismay on her features. “That’s impossible! I’m sure you must be mistaken. Somebody behind you probably stumbled into you. That’s all.”
“Exactly what Ruben said. And as I told him, once might have been a mistake. The first time I was able to stay upright, so they kicked it again.”
“That’s why you tried to call him,” she said, turning onto Riverbend Road.
He nodded. “I asked Ruben to talk to vendors in that area to see if anybody saw anything. He just texted me that he came up empty.”
Her hands tightened on the steering wheel. “You could have been seriously injured,” she said. “Who would want to hurt you deliberately like that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe someone who hit me with an SUV a week ago and broke my leg in the first place?”
“You think it was the same person, right there at the Lights on the Lake festival?”
“Seems to me that’s the logical answer. Either that or I’ve got an entire army of enemies out there. I don’t know... I think I like the first option better.”
She didn’t appear to like either of the possibilities.
As soon as she parked, he quickly opened his door and was halfway out of the vehicle before she could make her way around to help him with the door.
He hated being so damned needy, a guy who couldn’t even get out of a car by himself.
He wanted her to see him as more than that. The thought sidled through his head. Though he tried to dismiss it—reminding himself of all the reasons he shouldn’t want more with her—he couldn’t seem to shake it.
“You don’t have to come in,” he told her, but he didn’t add that it would probably be best if she didn’t, given his current mood.
“I’ll make sure you’re settled inside.”
He didn’t want to argue with her, so he unlocked the door and let himself into the house through the side kitchen door, with her following close behind.
“You should head straight for the sofa or the recliner, where you can elevate your leg. Where are your pain pills? I’ll grab them and some water for you before I leave.”
She sounded like his mother, like Jackie, and it suddenly pissed him off. He didn’t need her taking care of him. Not like that, anyway.
“That’s not necessary. I said I was fine.”
“Funny. You don’t sound fine and you certainly don’t look it. It’s taking every ounce of energy you have not to grimace, isn’t it? Don’t try to be a hero, Marshall. You’re in pain. Take a pill, for crying out loud.”
He scowled. He hadn’t had a pill in three days and didn’t want to backtrack, but he knew she was right.
“You’re not my nurse.”
“No.” She stepped close enough for him to catch the wildflower scent of her. “I’m your fake girlfriend, whom you’re using to keep your mother at bay.”
He thought of that weird tenderness, the ache inside him to touch her, and realized in that instant with fierce certainty that he didn’t want her to be his fake anything.
He wanted the real thing.
“As your fake girlfriend—and your genuine friend—I’m ordering you to take a pill.”
She was worried about him. The sweetness of it seemed to fill him, leaving little room for most of the pain.
“Some fake girlfriend you are,” he complained. “Seems like all I did was trade one bossy, managing female for another.”
Her laugh was quick, genuine. “You seem to be surrounded by them, aren’t you?”
“It’s a curse.”
She smiled and it took all his remaining strength not to take one more step, press her against the kitchen table and kiss every inch of that delectable mouth.
His fingers tightened on the handgrips of the crutches to keep from reaching for her. He couldn’t. Whatever he wanted, he had to think about what was best for Andie and her children.
He wasn’t it.
His life was a freaking mess right now. He couldn’t put her in harm’s way, not after everything she had endured at the hands of a fellow law enforcement officer. She was just beginning to find peace again and he couldn’t do that to her.
Beyond that, the whole situation with Christopher was a land mine, complication after complication just waiting to
explode.
“I’ll take a pill, okay? First, I need to change into more comfortable clothes. After that, I promise, I’ll take one of the damn pain pills and plop into the recliner—and then I probably won’t move until morning.”
She studied him suspiciously for a moment, as if she didn’t quite believe him. “I don’t feel right about leaving you alone when somebody out there has twice tried to cause you harm,” she said slowly. “You don’t even have a watchdog to warn you if someone tries to enter the premises.”
“You could send Sadie down, but I’m not sure she would do much good.”
“What you need is a big, tough German shepherd. I ought to call Ben and McKenzie and have them lend you Hondo, except you would have to take Rika, too, because I don’t think McKenzie’s dog lets him out of her sight for long.”
Unlike the smothering from his mother or Jackie’s somewhat neurotic worry, Andie’s concern seeped in, warming all the cold spots inside him.
“I don’t need a watchdog. They won’t come at me in my own house. This is about putting me out of commission, not causing permanent damage. Somebody doesn’t want me doing my job.”
He was sure of the what. He just didn’t yet know the who or exactly the why, though a few of his suspicions were beginning to solidify.
“So, naturally, that’s exactly what you’re determined to do.”
“I need to flush out whoever is behind this.” He shrugged. “That will be much better medicine than any pain pills.”
She sighed. “You’re a hard man to argue with, Sheriff Bailey.”
“Funny, I’ve heard that before.”
“From your other fake girlfriends, no doubt.”
“Trust me, you’re the only fake girlfriend I can handle.”
He meant the words lightly, but somehow as he smiled down at her, the mood shifted between them, became charged, electric, crackling with energy and heat and a fine-edged, seductive tension.
Her gaze shifted to his mouth, and with a hard, shocking thump of his heart, he realized she wanted him to kiss her.
He wanted to, more than he remembered wanting anything in his life.
Snowfall on Haven Point Page 21
