First Comes Love

by Heather Heyford

  Also by Heather Heyford

  The Sweet Spot

  The Oregon Wine Country Romances

  Kisses Sweeter Than Wine

  Intoxicating

  The Crush

  The Napa Wine Heiresses Romances

  A Taste of Sake

  A Taste of Sauvignon

  A Taste of Merlot

  A Taste of Chardonnay

  First Comes Love

  A Willamette Valley Romance

  Heather Heyford

  LYRICAL PRESS

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Also by

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Epilogue

  LYRICAL PRESS BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2018 by Heather Heyford

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.

  If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the Publisher and neither the Author nor the Publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  Lyrical and the Lyrical logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  ISBN: 978-1-5161-0257-0

  First Electronic Edition: June 2018

  eISBN-13: 978-1-5161-0260-0

  eISBN-10: 1-5161-0260-6

  For Lee, the middle child, who was never far from my mind while I was writing this book.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  “Write what you know,” goes the old adage. If I stuck to that too literally all I’d ever write about would be sauvignon blanc and kittens.

  The fact is that writers don’t just write what we know. We write about what perplexes us in order to make sense of the world.

  Of course, for answers to questions such as what kind of gun a detective typically carries, the Internet is the place to go. (Answer: 9mm for a semi-automatic pistol or a .38 caliber. Thank you, crimefictionbook. com.)

  When you can’t find a satisfactory answer online, though, sometimes you have to resort to asking a real human. I always hesitate to bother friends and family with book questions. But when I do, I’m often rewarded with a glimpse into a part of their lives I wouldn’t otherwise see. Like the time I texted my sister, who works in law enforcement, asking what she does with her service weapon when she gets home from work, and tacked on to the end of her reply she added that she always takes her shoes off on the porch because she NEVER tracks into her own home what she has walked through in the course of her workday.

  Or the thoughtful pauses leading up to answers peppered with legalese like “probable cause” and “reasonable suspicion” from my friend Kathy, a former state trooper. That’s not how she talks when we’re sipping wine by her pool.

  Any errors that slipped through are entirely my own.

  Thanks to Lee, Kathy, Art, and everyone else who made it possible for me to write First Comes Love. I’m blessed to have you in my life.

  Chapter One

  Alex Walker stared at the woman fielding reporters’ questions outside the county courthouse. Along the lower edge of the TV screen scrolled a continuous line of text: Breaking news—Newberry business exec found not guilty of embezzlement.

  Kerry O’Hearn! Alex had known her when she was a bright young thing at Portland’s most prestigious law firm. Now, apparently, she was working her legal charms here, in Newberry.

  He squinted hard at the screen. It couldn’t be her. But it was. The dark-framed eyeglasses were new, but that was definitely Kerry. Even after all this time, he’d recognize her anywhere.

  Just his no-good, miserable, rotten luck.

  A commercial came on and he tore his gaze away from the TV suspended above the bar, just as a woman slid onto the stool parked at a forty-five-degree angle from his.

  She slipped off her glasses, folded them, and laid them on the bar. “I’ll have the house Riesling,” she told Laurel, the bartender, tucking a curtain of golden brown hair behind her ear.

  One glimpse at her straight-nosed profile and Alex’s blood began raging in his ears, drowning out the buzz of conversation and Taylor Swift’s “Begin Again,” playing in the background of the tavern.

  The woman appeared to have sensed something, too, because she glanced at him from the corner of her eye.

  Those navy-blue eyes . . . the resolute line of those lips . . . the ever-present lock of hair running diagonally across her brow . . . confirmation hit him like a jab to the sternum.

  He tipped his glass to his lips, his thoughts on fast rewind. The case that had pitted the State of Oregon against Kerry and her crack team of trial lawyers was, to a great extent, to blame for his losing his taste for the fast, furious life of a city cop. He’d hung in a few years longer, his dissatisfaction growing until finally he’d gone on the hunt for a sheltered little town in which to wind up his career. Newberry seemed to fit the bill. But now, it seemed he was right back where he’d started.

  Does she remember me?

  If she did, she didn’t let on.

  Then again, he wouldn’t want to play poker with her.

  Unlike Kerry, whose telegenic face had been plastered all over the Portland news media, Alex’s public role in the long-ago trial was that of a bit player. Even though he’d spent countless hours investigating the crime behind the scenes, he’d been on the stand all of an hour and a half. After testifying, he’d slipped back into the courtroom to watch the proceedings every chance he got. But Kerry wouldn’t have noticed him sitting there, in the back row. To her, he was just another blue uniform.

  Time took its toll. You could go for years feeling invincible, and then one day your barber starts dropping hints that maybe you should go high and tight to give the illusion of more hair, and you take a long, hard look in the mirror and that’s wh
en it hits you that you’re not the youngest guy on the force anymore. Not by a long shot.

  It didn’t take a trained observer to see that time had taken its subtle toll on her, too. Her curves had softened a bit and, apparently, his barber wasn’t the only one who believed in lopping off length once you hit a certain birthday. Fine lines extended horizontally from the outer corners of her eyes. But the eyes themselves still glittered like cold, hard sapphires.

  * * *

  Kerry was sure they’d never been formally introduced, and yet there was something familiar about the guy sitting kitty-corner from her at the Turning Point Tavern.

  Maybe it wasn’t who he was so much as what they had in common. Amid the animated small talk punctuated by occasional bursts of laughter, he and Kerry each nursed their drinks, solo. Like her, the man was in the crowd, yet not of it.

  There was a time, back when she was an assistant DA still learning the ropes, that she’d been a card-carrying member of the happy hour tribe. Out every night, getting to know the right people, finding her niche in the big city. Back then, she’d thought she’d said good-bye to her pastoral hometown for good.

  An elbow thumped her in the back, sloshing wine over the edge of the glass in her hand.

  “Sorry.” A young woman in a dress with spaghetti straps—a style that, regrettably, Kerry no longer had the arms for—smiled wryly and raised her glass in apology as best she could. She was hemmed in by an HVAC technician with DAN and HARMON’S ELECTRIC embroidered on his chest and a man who had already loosened his tie and was now undoing his top button.

  Relax. Kerry blew out a breath, dabbed her fingers with her bar napkin, and forced her shoulders down. In the twenty years she’d been gone from Newberry, the wine boom had brought an influx of new residents. In addition to the newbies, there were no doubt a couple of old acquaintances in here she didn’t recognize due to the passage of time. Still, she felt a kinship with these people that went beyond living in the same town. All of them radiated the same low-grade anxiety that comes from sacrificing forty hours a week, fifty weeks a year to putting a roof over the heads and shoes on the feet of those who depended on them.

  “Ready for another?” asked the bartender, bottle poised to pour.

  “No, thanks.” She put her hand over the top of her glass. “One and done.”

  She had to pick up the kids at the Community Center in less than an hour. She pictured Chloé’s and Ella’s moon faces smiling up at her and was engulfed in a wave of maternal protectiveness, followed instantly by a sinking feeling when she recalled that morning, when Shay, her oldest, had flat-out refused to change out of her too-short skirt.

  But the skirt was the least of Kerry’s concerns. According to Shay, twelve going on thirteen was way too old to be enrolled in the after-school program. Kerry got it. She did. But she refused to let Shay go home to an empty house by herself. She’d been practicing law too long, seen too much.

  As hard as it was being a single, working mom, those kids meant everything to her. In a matter of minutes, little Ella would come barreling into her arms, threatening to topple her off her conservative, two-inch heels, while Chloé, in sixth grade but mature beyond her years, would sling her purple backpack over her shoulder and yak to Kerry all the way out to their 4Runner, as if she had saved up all her thoughts from the whole day and couldn’t hold them in another minute. Bless Chloé’s heart. Being raised without a father affected every kid differently. Chloé had become glued to Kerry’s hip. She couldn’t care less if her classmates caught her holding her hand.

  As for Shay, Kerry would be lucky if she merited brief eye contact.

  “That trial’s all anyone’s been talking about for weeks,” said the bartender.

  “I hadn’t figured on an embezzlement case being headline news. Back in Portland, it would have been buried beneath a story about the latest protest march or the homeless problem they can never seem to get a grip on.”

  But she knew the talk around town wasn’t 100 percent positive. Not guilty wasn’t the same thing as innocent. Whether the woman had actually diverted company funds into her own account, it had been Kerry’s job to defend her, and she had come through with flying colors. Some people had a problem with that.

  Maybe that explained the furtive glances of the guy next to her. He had started frowning into his pinot as intently as a wine critic when she caught him looking at her.

  And here she’d had the tiniest spark of hope that maybe, just maybe, his interest might be more than idle curiosity over the trial.

  Kerry had had her share of admirers in her thirty-eight years, including one who’d actually cared enough to walk down the aisle with her. But parenting three kids by herself while juggling a high-profile caseload had taken its toll. Lately she’d started to feel invisible . . . sexless. It had been a long time since a man had given her a second glance.

  Maybe her time was past. She’d had her chances at romance. And she’d blown them.

  The man lifted his glass to his lips and she stole a closer look. His uniform consisted of jeans and a gray, V-neck sweater pulled over a red T-shirt. The way his shoulders filled out the fine-gauge wool hinted of regular, serious workouts. No ring. If he’d ever been married, it’d been over long enough for the telltale narrowing at the base of his finger to fill out. Unless he was one of those guys who liked to keep his status on the down low in case something better came along. There were plenty of those around.

  No. His eyes were stormy gray and guarded. The inch-long, horizontal scar on the crest of his cheekbone said here was a man who could handle whatever life threw at him. A man who wouldn’t be toyed with, who had seen things most people would never see, if they were lucky.

  And that close-cropped, no-nonsense haircut combined with a utilitarian watch and clean shave couldn’t be more straightforward. Whoever he was, he wasn’t a player.

  He reached into his back pocket in a smooth, controlled movement, revealing the sliver of black leather and gold metal at his hip. Pulling out his phone, he answered it in a deep voice. “Walker.”

  A cop. Detective, Kerry corrected herself. Those gold shields were highly prized. Patrolmen wore blue to make their authority immediately obvious to both criminals and the public they aimed to protect. Detectives delved deeper in their work behind the scenes.

  While he propped both elbows on the bar and bit off curt replies at a low volume into his phone, Kerry leaned back slightly, letting her eyes travel from his broad shoulders down to his narrow waist.

  There it was, the hard bulge of his service weapon shoved into the small of his back beneath his sweater, only noticeable if you knew where to look.

  She should have known. He had cop written all over him. How had it taken her so long to see it? This case, combined with Shay’s issues at her new school, had really done a number on her.

  She lifted the edge of her own phone yet again. It would only take five minutes to get to the Community Center. One of the many advantages of small-town living. Back in Portland, there was never a day when there wasn’t traffic to contend with.

  The detective—Walker—ended his call and slid his phone back into his pocket.

  “You didn’t grow up in Newberry,” she heard herself say.

  Oh, Lord. When it came to hanging out in bars, she was woefully out of practice. A few sips of wine and here she was, chatting up a stranger. But cops didn’t qualify as strangers, did they? Cops were solid, steady, and true down to the core. Or they were supposed to be.

  “Don’t tell me you did.”

  What was that supposed to mean? She should have kept to herself. Too late now. She smiled mildly. “Not far from here. Ribbon Ridge. You probably never heard of it.”

  “Smallest AVA in the Willamette,” he replied without missing a beat.

  Kerry cocked a brow. Most people didn’t even know what an American Viticultural Area was. Even fewer had heard of Ribbon Ridge, precisely because it was so small.

  “The Willamette, then.
Because you don’t strike me as a tourist.”

  He fondled the underside of his balloon-shaped glass as he considered his answer. “Originally? Right over the border in Washington State.”

  A beer tap near the intersection of Kerry and the cop put Laurel in the perfect position to eavesdrop. As she waited for a pilsner glass to fill, she said to him, “That Friestatt pinot noir you’re drinking?” She tipped her head toward Kerry. “That’s her family’s place.”

  “That right?” He grunted in reluctant approval, tilting his glass, looking with renewed interest at the transparent, garnet color.

  Kerry rolled her eyes and groaned inwardly. Name-dropping wasn’t her style.

  “The Sweet Spot belongs to my cousin Hank. Well, technically, he’s my second cousin. The Friestatts and the O’Hearns are a fertile bunch. You’ll find half the valley comes from one side or the other. In some cases, both. That what brought you to the Willamette? The pinot?”

  “That,” he said, “and the quiet.”

  Ouch.

  Laurel glanced at Kerry’s empty drink. “Check, Counselor?”

  She nodded once, stood up, and felt beneath the bar for the purse hook.

  “Know why a shark won’t attack a defense attorney?” the cop asked Laurel, loud enough for Kerry to hear.

  Rummaging in her bag for her wallet, Kerry’s hand stilled.

  “Er . . . why?” Laurel replied, giving Kerry a wary look.

  “Professional courtesy.”

  Laurel laughed in the obligatory way reserved for difficult bar patrons while accepting the bills Kerry held out. “Change?”

  “Keep it.”

  Walk away, Kerry told herself. Just walk away. But the litigator in her couldn’t resist a parting shot.

  “Why does a cop always go by the numbers?” she asked.

  The server folded her arms. “Tell me.”