Deputy Daddy

by Patricia Johns

  Behind her, the bell above the door tinkled, and she turned to see Bryce step inside. He saw her at the same time, and a smile broke over his face.

  “Hi,” he said. “Fancy seeing you here.”

  Her cup trembled in her hand, and he stepped forward to take it from her. His hand brushed hers as he took the cup from her fingers, and she gratefully adjusted Emily into a more comfortable position.

  “Thanks.” She shot him a smile, and they went to a table together. “Are you getting anything?”

  “I’ll be back,” he said once she was settled, and he went to give his order at the counter. The cluster of women followed Bryce with their eyes, and Lily stifled a smile. Not much happened in this town, and a man with Bryce’s chiseled good looks was bound to draw attention. She could just overhear them talking about someone’s grandson, from what she could make out. Apparently, his marriage was on the rocks.

  “I saw your brother today,” he said when he returned to the table with a mug of steaming coffee. “I think he’s got a girlfriend.”

  “Which brother?” she asked with a wry smile.

  “Randy.”

  “Oh, yes. Jen. She’s a nice girl.” Lily smiled wanly. “At sixteen, I don’t think he’s old enough to date, but Mom can’t very well stop him.” She paused, winced. Why was it that she kept blurting out all their family business? “Where did you see him?”

  “At the corner store by the high school.” He shrugged. “Nothing too interesting. I have to tell you, patrolling this town is like watching paint dry.”

  “I suppose that’s a good thing,” she said. “I don’t think we want to be interesting in that way.”

  From the table of women, Lily could make out their conversation more clearly now. They were older women who didn’t hear as well as they used to, so they also talked louder than they used to, too.

  “...no, no, she’s the illegitimate one.”

  “Oh, that’s right. Well, I find it odd that she’s the one that turned out. Those boys are headed nowhere good.”

  They were discussing her. Nice. She tried to keep a composed expression.

  “Smoking and drinking.” There was sharp disapproval in that voice. “And then their mother drags them off to church one Sunday a month and they sit in a row looking like they all need haircuts.”

  Lily felt the heat rise in her cheeks. They might be her elders, but she had half a mind to march over there and inform them that church was where her brothers belonged—and that they needed grace, not judgment. As for haircuts, those cost money, too, and talking behind their backs wouldn’t help nearly so much as offering to pay for those haircuts. She knew what Comfort Creek thought of her family, so this wasn’t exactly surprising, but being discussed so loudly was downright insulting.

  In front of Bryce. That was the worst part of it—that Bryce would hear the worst.

  Bryce glanced behind him toward the women, then leaned closer to Lily. “Who are they talking about?” he whispered.

  “Me,” she said with a tight smile. “I’m the illegitimate one, by the way.”

  There was no use hiding it. It was out there now. Bryce looked at her for a moment, then back at the women. They’d lowered their voices again. He wordlessly plucked Lily’s cup out of her hand and strode to the counter.

  “Could we get this to go, please?” he asked. The girl roused herself from the novel she’d been reading and complied, and then Bryce came back to the table.

  “You drink your coffee, and I’ll carry Piglet,” he said brusquely. “Let’s walk.”

  It wasn’t a terrible idea, and as she passed the baby to Bryce, she saw the entire table of church ladies looking at them in open curiosity.

  “By the way, ladies,” Bryce said, turning toward them with a warm smile on his face that looked just a hair too sweet to be sincere, “you should gossip more quietly. We heard all of that.”

  Faces blanched, and several of them turned their eyes quickly toward the table. One simply stared at Lily with regret written all over her face. She’d get some phone calls tonight from some apologetic gossips, she was sure.

  Bryce led the way outside, and Lily followed. Out on the street, the sun was warm on her shoulders, and she took a sip of her latte.

  “Thank you,” she said with wry smile. “That was one way to do it.”

  “Better than simmering, right?” he asked with a cheerful grin. “Admit it, that felt good.”

  Lily laughed and shook her head. It actually had. On her own, she would have shoved all those angry feelings into the pit of her stomach and choked back her latte. She wouldn’t have enjoyed a sip of it.

  They ambled together down the sidewalk, past a stationery store, a meat shop, and then a bakery that poured the scent of fresh bread out into the street. Large planters of pink and purple flowers sat at each corner of the downtown sector of Comfort Creek, a blaze of color that Lily always looked forward to each spring. Across the street and past the stop sign and the flowers stood the police station in the shade of ancient elms.

  “I thought your dad passed away in that accident,” Bryce said after a moment.

  “He was the only dad I ever knew,” she said. “But not my biological father. My mom got pregnant with me at sixteen. She married my stepdad when I was five, and they started having the boys. But a place this size doesn’t forget the pregnant sixteen-year-old.”

  “Yeah, apparently.” He met her gaze with a sad smile. “Sorry about all that.”

  “What can you do?” she asked with a weak shrug.

  He looked relaxed standing there in uniform with Emily dozing in his arms. Comfort Creek would never forget that Emily had arrived on a doorstep, but she’d never let Comfort Creek forget that she’d chosen this little girl with her whole heart. Emily needed a mom who could understand that kind of stigma.

  “You have a lot of pressures here, don’t you?” he said.

  “Pressures?” She paused, considering the word. “Well, my family is here, and they rely on me.”

  “It seems like the police department relies on you, too,” he said, looking down at Emily.

  “I’m popular when they need something,” she joked.

  “Can I help?” he asked, blue eyes meeting hers. “I feel like I’m just one more burden for you.”

  “You aren’t a burden.” She shook her head. “You’re my guest, Bryce.”

  His expression froze for a second, then he gave a quick nod. That hadn’t been what she meant. Why was it that she could manage a professional distance at the very moment she didn’t want one? He wasn’t just a guest, but he also wasn’t a problem to be solved, and she didn’t know exactly how to categorize him.

  “I didn’t mean it quite like that,” she said quietly. “You aren’t a problem. You’re—” she smiled uncertainly “—really, really nice.”

  Nice. That didn’t cover what she meant, either, but he seemed to hear what she meant in her voice, because he shot her a rueful smile.

  “So are you, Miss Ellison.” His voice was deep and warm, and as his eyes met hers, she saw tenderness in them. “Let me walk you back to your car.”

  Lily took a swig from her latte, and as they walked together back down Main Street, sauntering through the aroma of baking bread and the sweet scent of flowers, she realized that she didn’t much care what Comfort Creek thought of her family.

  There were some things a town would never forget, and there were other things that she’d never stop reminding them of, either. Emily would always be the baby left on a step, and Lily would always be the mother who loved her, if God would allow it. Her brothers might always be thought of as the troublemaking teens, but she’d always be the sister who defended them. There would be town opinion, and then there would be her opinion, and she’d strive every day to make sure that to a few very special pe
ople, her opinion would always matter more.

  Chapter Twelve

  The next morning, Bryce sat in the visitor’s chair in Chief Morgan’s office. The chief pushed a hot mug of coffee toward him. The room was relatively cool, and Bryce gave the chief a nod of thanks as he picked up his drink and took a sip.

  “How have you been?” Chief Morgan asked.

  “Fine, thanks.”

  “Using the notebook I gave you?”

  Bryce patted his pocket, and his stomach sank. His front shirt pocket—where he’d been keeping the notebook—was empty. He grimaced.

  “I forgot it this morning, but I’ve been using it. I promise you that.”

  The chief didn’t look bothered, and he shrugged. “The point is that you’ve been using it.”

  Bryce felt a rush of relief. He’d hate to have the chief think he wasn’t taking this seriously and send him to the binders for the rest of the week. Now, that would be punishment.

  “So you were writing down the times that you felt like you were pretending to be something you weren’t,” the chief went on. “Writing it down is simply an exercise that makes you take note of it—makes you stop and think. So when did you find yourself faking it the most?”

  He hated this. He hardly knew Chief Morgan, and talking about things this personal didn’t come naturally to him. He was the bottling-up kind of guy, which apparently hadn’t been working out for him that well. He shifted in his chair uncomfortably.

  “I catch myself pretending to fit in here,” he said.

  “In what way?” the chief prodded.

  Bryce frowned. “Slowing down, taking some interest in the locals...”

  “And your interest in the locals...that isn’t sincere?”

  “No, it is.” An image of Lily popped up in his mind, and his interest in her was very sincere. “But I’m a city cop, and I don’t actually fit into things here. But I fake it. As I should, I suppose.”

  The chief nodded. “How about the minivan?”

  “I truly loathe that vehicle, sir.”

  A grin broke over the other man’s face and he laughed softly. “And when you drove it, did you act just a little bit tougher to compensate?”

  Bryce considered for a moment, and perhaps he did. He was a big man, and he didn’t normally need to pretend anything when it came to being intimidating with perps, but a minivan was demoralizing in a whole new way that he was sure he’d find funny later.

  “That wasn’t the biggest thing,” Bryce said after a moment. “It was the baby.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Chief Morgan leaned forward. “How so?”

  “Well, I’m terrible with kids, but Lily—” he shook his head, trying to gather his thoughts “—she doesn’t get that. She just kept passing me the baby, and what was I supposed to do? I’m boarding at her B and B, and she’s around and so is the baby... She can’t exactly cook and all that with a baby in her arms—”

  “What did you do?”

  Bryce smiled wryly. “I held the baby.”

  “And pretended that you weren’t quite so terrible with kids?” the chief prodded.

  “Yeah, I guess so,” Bryce said. “So what’s the point of this, sir? To prove that we’re all a bunch of fakes and liars?”

  “In a way,” the chief replied. “True strength is flexible. It bends and changes when pressure is applied. When something is too rigid, it breaks under pressure.”

  Rigid—like him, apparently. He’d certainly snapped when he decked Leroy. Bryce didn’t say anything, just sat and waited.

  “So back in Fort Collins,” the chief said. “When you punched your coworker... What was it that you were faking then?”

  Bryce’s mind went back to the locker room with Leroy’s leering face, and the laughter—it was the laughing that had gotten to him the most. Why he couldn’t take it one more time, he’d never know, but a man’s disappointment of a father wasn’t joke material. Bryce had worked hard to distance himself from his old man, and he’d worked hard to prove that he was a better man, a better cop. That kind of stigma was hard to shake, if not impossible.

  “Nothing anymore, sir,” Bryce replied. “He’d poked a sore spot. I snapped. If I’d been faking anything, I’d have just walked away, pretended it didn’t get to me. Nothing was more honest than that punch, sir.”

  “And what were you faking until you snapped?”

  Bryce considered a moment, and the truth of the matter burned up the inside of him like rising bile. “I was pretending I was nothing like my father.”

  The chief nodded slowly. “The truth can flex and spring back when pressure is applied to it. It can adjust to new situations. A lie can’t. It just snaps.”

  Bryce was silent. He’d spent his entire life pretending he was nothing like his father, trying to prove his mother’s worries wrong. He’d accepted that he was like his dad when it came to children, but maybe it went deeper than that. Maybe it was worse than he’d thought.

  “So you’re saying I’m just like him?” Bryce asked after a moment.

  “It isn’t what I think,” the chief replied. “It’s what you think. And if you can’t embrace yourself, flaws and all, you’ll just keep snapping.”

  “I’m not like him,” Bryce said, his voice a growl. “He’s my father, but I’m not his clone.”

  “True.”

  “So that was the point of all of this—to convince me that the apple didn’t fall so far from the tree?” Bryce put a cap on the anger simmering deep within him, but it was still there. “With all due respect, sir, I think I prefer the binders.”

  He’d made a mistake—one mistake in the course of his career so far. He’d lashed out in a juvenile way, but that didn’t give this relative stranger a right to judge his ability to be a cop. He’d learned from his error, and he wouldn’t be snapping like that again. He was perfectly capable of controlling himself, and he’d do that. This was a job, and they didn’t have a right to his most personal hang-ups and feelings.

  “If you want,” the chief said with a shrug. “But I was going to send you back out on patrol.”

  “For what, exactly?” Bryce retorted.

  “You’re a good cop, Bryce.”

  He was a good cop. He knew that about himself. He cared about those streets, about keeping families safe and stopping crime. He cared about protecting the innocent, and making sure that no one got taken advantage of. He even cared about the riffraff he arrested—because they were people, too, and generally, they were people with problems bigger than they could handle. He was good at this job, and one mistake in a locker room didn’t change how much he cared about the community he protected.

  But he was here to prove that. One mistake had come with consequences, and he couldn’t just walk away from those. His father had walked away from too many things in his life, starting with his family and ending with his career. Bryce wouldn’t do that—he’d stand his ground.

  “So what is your advice, then, sir?” he asked after a moment.

  “Stop pretending,” Chief Morgan replied. “Live in the light. Be who you are with integrity and honesty. It frees up all the energy you spend trying to hide things for something more useful—like your family, or your career.”

  He didn’t have a family who needed his attention, but he got what the chief was trying to say. Maybe it was time to accept facts. He was the son of Richard Camden—for all the good things and the challenges it posed. He could fight it, and he could fake it, but nothing would change the simple facts.

  “Thanks, sir,” Bryce said.

  “Now, I’ll sign off on your sensitivity training after your shift on Saturday. Then you’ll be free to head back. Have a good day on patrol.” Chief Morgan stood up and shook Bryce’s hand. “Unless you were serious about those binders...”

  Br
yce laughed softly. “I’ll take patrol, sir.”

  He had a lot to think about, and driving through the streets of Comfort Creek was the perfect way to do that. Nothing happened here anyway.

  * * *

  Lily came up the stairs with a pile of clean sheets in one arm, topped by the baby monitor and a wrapped chocolate for the pillow. In the other hand, she carried a vase with fresh daisies. She’d never liked the smell of daisies, but they were cheerful, and she thought they would go nicely on the bedside table.

  Her first guest would enjoy the best she had to offer. Bryce. Bryce would enjoy all of this, because he was her guest, and because she wanted him to feel comfortable for his last few days here before she had to say goodbye.

  That thought had been weighing on her all morning—their goodbye was coming. Bryce wasn’t here for long, and by the weekend, when Aunt Clarisse was getting married for better for worse, Bryce would be on his way back to his life in the city.

  Lily pushed open the bedroom door, and she was met with the same cleanliness she saw every morning when she came in to change the bed and do a quick dust. His suitcase was zipped shut, sitting on the seat of the chair, and the bed was already made with military precision.

  She deposited the sheets and vase on the top of the dresser, but as she turned toward the room, something fell to floor behind her. It was a small notebook—she must have knocked it off. She bent to pick it up, and it had fallen open to the first page.

  I shouldn’t read this, she told herself, but her eyes were already skimming over the words.

  The first thing was written in a different hand, and it read: Write down every time you pretend to be something you are not. This was the notebook Bryce had mentioned—that sensitivity training he’d come to Comfort Creek to complete. It wasn’t right to pry into something so personal, but somehow she couldn’t stop her eyes from absorbing the words on the page written in Bryce’s strong, confident handwriting.