The Lawman's Runaway Bride

by Patricia Johns

  “I told you—authentic.” Nana was pleased that she’d noticed—she could tell.

  The funny thing was that seeing this dollhouse again felt like home in a deeper way than anything else in Comfort Creek. She’d spent so many solitary hours staring into these rooms, imagining the family that lived there, their dramas and quarrels, their victories and quiet Sunday evenings spent all together in the tiny sitting room in front of the fireplace...

  The mother in this house never left. She doted over her offspring and cooked lavish meals in the kitchen. The father came home every day at the exact same time, and he picked up a tiny newspaper from the sideboard in the hallway. Any mess left about—like the toys on the children’s bedroom floor—was carefully orchestrated to be attractive. This house was perfection, frozen in an imaginary time where nothing could go so wrong that it couldn’t be set right again.

  “I added a telephone in the kitchen.” Nana pointed to a pale pink rotary phone on the wall. “I found that one at the bottom of a bin in the craft shop. Liz could see how excited I was, and she charged me double, I’m sure. Oh! And I’ve been working on making sure that every single book in the library is real. I’ve found a tutorial online for making books that open. I tried making them with four or five pages each, but they just fanned open. It was very annoying. So I used thick cardstock on both sides, so that each book opens to the center.” Nana paused. “I was hoping you’d help me choose which books to include in the library. Maybe a few of your favorites, Sadie.”

  Sadie rose and shot her grandmother a look of surprise. “Did you say you found a tutorial online?”

  When Sadie left, Nana hadn’t exactly been tech savvy. She could email, but she was a strict telephone chatter. There was no video chatting with Nana, and for the most part, she tended to stay pretty old-school.

  “It’s how it’s done these days, dear.” But her cheeks pinked in pleasure. “Okay, truth be told, last month, Ginny Carson’s grandson showed me how the tutorials worked. So I’m still new at it.”

  “Ah.” Sadie shot her grandmother a smile. “I’m still impressed.”

  “Welcome home, dear girl. Now you sit yourself down and get reacquainted with the old place, and I’ll go sort out some supper.”

  Sadie was thirty-two, and this old dollhouse still soothed a part of her heart that nothing else could touch. This was the part of her that had softened to Noah—the part of her that longed for a perfect life with a picket fence. Noah had offered a picture-perfect existence here in Comfort Creek—a handsome man to come home to at the same time every day and pick up the paper off a sideboard table...

  But it hadn’t been enough, because she didn’t love him enough, and she wasn’t sure that she was the kind of woman who could stay content with so much monotony, anyway. In the real world, with real emotions, real hardships, the life Noah offered wasn’t enough to fill her heart, after all. But he should have been, and if she’d been a little less like her flighty mother, he would have been. That knowledge had been nagging at her for the last five years. No man was perfect, and relationships didn’t stay in the honeymoon phase. Noah, his house, his family, this town—it all should have been enough.

  Nothing had ever been enough for Mom. No boyfriend. No job. No town. They’d bounced from place to place, from romance to romance for her mom. And no matter how nice the guy, her mother always found a reason to cut him loose and they’d leave again... No one had been enough to fill that hole in her mother’s heart, and she feared that she might be the same. At least looking back on it all. She had been when it came to jobs around town.

  If she could be faced with a sweet guy like Noah and the perfect life and still walk away from it all because she felt a rush of emotion with another man, maybe she deserved a life alone.

  God rest Noah’s soul.

  Chapter Three

  The coffee they made at the station was about as thick as boiled tar, but it was also concentrated caffeine, which the officers took strange pride in gulping down. Chance, however, appreciated a fine cup of coffee, and over the years he’d gotten more particular about how he liked it. He brewed his own at home and brought it in a thermos that no one was allowed to touch upon pain of traffic detail. He was sipping his own brew Monday morning as he headed through the bull pen toward his office.

  “Chief, could I get a signature?”

  Bryce Camden was their newest recruit to the Comfort Creek police force. He was newly married, his wedding ring still shiny, and he fiddled with it when his hands were free.

  “How’s Piglet?” Chance asked. Piglet was the nickname Bryce gave his adopted daughter—now eight months old—because of her dedication to finishing a bottle. They were all attached to that baby since she’d been dumped on the station doorstep as a newborn.

  “Growing like a weed,” Bryce said with a grin. “She’s trying to say ‘Dada’—I’m sure of it.”

  “Yeah?” Chance scanned the forms that Bryce handed him, and he jotted down his initials where required and signed the bottom, then handed them back. “Isn’t it kind of early for that?”

  “She’s a genius, what can I say?” Bryce spread his hands and grinned. “I’ve got video proof on my cell phone, if you don’t believe me.”

  “Later,” Chance chuckled. “I’ve got a meeting to prepare for.”

  “Much later, then,” Bryce said. “I’m just leaving on patrol.”

  Bryce had certainly settled into family life, and Chance felt a pang of envy. That was the goal, wasn’t it? Beautiful wife, a couple of kids, a home with a woman’s touch around the place... Somehow he’d managed to avoid the comfortable life all this time, and he was pushing forty. Part of it was that he hadn’t met a woman who intrigued him enough to get married, and living in a town this small, there weren’t a lot of fresh options. The other part of it was guilt. He and his brother hadn’t had a lot in common—except their taste in women. The one woman to make him sit up and take notice had been his own brother’s fiancée. There was a whole lot wrong with that.

  Chance headed into his office and paused for a sip of coffee, then slid into his chair and turned on the computer. He had a fair amount of paperwork to get through today, plus there was the meeting with Sadie. He’d asked her to come by early so that he could get it out of the way and stop worrying about it. Sadie might have been the one woman to catch his attention over the years, but she was also at the root of his deepest grief, and his unresolved guilt. If she’d just stayed in the city...

  There was a tap on his door.

  “Come in.” His tone was gruff, and he looked up as the door eased open to reveal Sadie. He glanced at his watch. Was it nine already? Almost. She was five minutes early.

  “Good morning, Chance.”

  They weren’t going to be hung up on formalities, apparently. She wore a pair of jeans this time, and a white turtleneck under a puffy red jacket. She had a tablet in one hand, a purse over her shoulder. He nodded her in, and she closed the door behind herself without being asked. She was right, though—the last thing they needed right now was an audience. This was awkward enough, already.

  “Have a seat,” Chance said, clicking his emails shut once more. “So how are you?”

  “Do you really care?” Her tone was quiet, but her gaze met his in challenge. “I’m not used to being left at a table on my own.”

  Ouch. Yeah, he’d regretted that as he’d walked out, and he’d had the weekend to kick himself for it. He’d been frustrated and eager to get some breathing space, but he’d known it was the wrong call.

  “I’m sorry about that,” he said. “I thought I’d dealt with Noah’s death, and it’s all coming back on me again. I’m not at my best.”

  “Okay.” She nodded. “I get it. I’m probably a reminder of the old days.”

  “Yeah, you could say that.” She was reminder of a whole lot of frustration that he’d kept hammering do
wn into the pit of his stomach over the years.

  “So let’s just get the work part over with—”

  “So how much did the mayor tell you about my feelings toward this ceremony?” Chance planted his elbows on his desk.

  “He mentioned you weren’t keen on the idea.” She licked her lips. “Personality conflict, maybe?”

  “We’ve never really gotten along. We grate on each other.” He sighed. “I’ll level with you—Mayor Scott wants this big personal ceremony, and I don’t. My brother isn’t a bit of sentimental propaganda. And I don’t like private grief being offered up for public consumption.”

  “You aren’t the only one who loved Noah,” she countered.

  “Including yourself in that?” he asked coolly.

  Color rose in her cheeks. “I did love him, Chance. I wasn’t some monster who took advantage of Noah. I loved him.”

  If she’d loved Noah like she claimed, she could have been kinder in her rejection of him.

  “And you want this ceremony?” he demanded.

  “I’m not talking about myself!” she snapped. “I’m talking about his friends, his cousins, his extended family. People in Comfort Creek loved him. You aren’t the only one who lost him, you know.”

  “And they got to grieve for him—at his funeral. We’ve done the public display. It’s enough already.”

  “What about the other families?”

  Chance shook his head. “You see the stories online—some heart-wrenching news spot that features the grieving family left behind from a soldier killed in the war. People love it—they gobble it up. They shed a tear in sympathy, post it on social media, feel like they’ve done the patriotic thing. It’s entertainment.”

  “And you’re afraid this ceremony is going to be used the same way.”

  “You think it won’t?” he asked. “This isn’t for the community. This is for the mayor. It’s that simple.”

  Sadie ran her free hand through her hair, tugging it away from her face. She still had that smattering of freckles over her nose that made her look younger than she really was, and combined with her green-flecked eyes...he pulled his attention away from those details.

  “I’ve been hired to put together a commemorative ceremony for the town,” she said slowly. “I report to Mayor Scott—as do you, I believe. This isn’t about what I want, or what you want, this is about my client. I don’t have much choice.”

  “Yeah, I got that.” He leaned back in his chair. This had been what Sadie had always been like—strong, focused. “This isn’t personal to you, is it?”

  “I can’t give you an answer you’d like,” she retorted. “If I say yes, it is personal, you’ll tell me I have no right to personal feelings after what I did to Noah. If I say no, it’s just business, then I’m the heartless wretch.”

  She had a point, and he smiled wryly. He didn’t want to be friends with Sadie again. Friends had to be able to trust each other, and he didn’t trust Sadie as far as he could throw her.

  “Yesterday, you said we needed to be able to work together,” she went on. “Do you still believe that?”

  “Like I said, we don’t have much choice.”

  “I won’t take up more of your time than I have to.” She pulled a business card out of her purse and slid it across his desk. “This is my cell phone number if you need to get in touch later on.”

  “Great.” He took her card and tucked it into his front pocket, then passed her one of his own. “That’s my number.”

  “Thank you.” She tapped it against the desktop. “Should we get started, then? We’ll need to decide on a musical style, both tasteful and evocative...”

  Outside the office door, there was a scramble of feet, some raised voices and a bang as something large hit the floor. Chance jumped up and crossed the office in five quick strides. He hauled open the door and looked out.

  Toby had a teenager in cuffs, and when the boy resisted, Toby nearly lifted him off his feet as he propelled him forward. Chance knew the kid—it was Randy Ellison. Chance knew better than to undermine his officers in public, but a quiver of irritation shot through him. Randy was all of sixteen, and he didn’t need to be roughed up by the cops in his town; that wouldn’t resolve a thing for the troubled youth.

  “Officer Gillespie,” Chance called. “What seems to be the problem here?”

  “Consumption of alcohol under the legal age, public consumption, verbal abuse to an officer of the law, resisting arrest—”

  Randy shot a baleful glare over his shoulder. “My brother-in-law’s a cop, you know!”

  Randy jerked his arm, and in response Toby simply raised the cuffs a couple of inches, and Randy froze as the pain hit his shoulder. Bryce Camden wasn’t here, however; he was on patrol. Toby didn’t seem fazed by the kid’s attitude, and the only sign he showed of any kind of emotional response was a ripple in the muscle along his jaw.

  Before Chance could decide on a course of action, Sadie pushed past him.

  “Randy!” she exclaimed, marching across the bull pen. “For crying out loud, let go of him! You’re going to dislocate his shoulder doing that!”

  * * *

  Sadie knew the Ellison boys from church. She used to help out with Sunday school before she got engaged, and she’d gotten to know Randy Ellison rather well. Back then, he’d been all of eight or nine, but under that rebellious shell there had been a very tender young heart.

  The officer holding Randy’s cuffed wrists eyed her with icy distance, and when Randy’s gaze met hers, she saw the recognition.

  “Miss Jenkins?” The attitude melted away, and he was just a boy again—albeit a boy who shaved now.

  “Officer—” she looked at the name badge on the broad, wall-like chest “—Gillespie.” She raised one brow and crossed her arms. “Let go of him. Now.”

  Chance came up behind her and put a solid hand on her shoulder.

  “You aren’t a commanding officer, Sadie,” he said, his voice low. “Back down.”

  “Then tell him to get his hands off of Randy!” she snapped, turning to face Chance. She knew she was putting him in a difficult position, but she was tired of all this tiptoeing. This wasn’t about her and Chase this time, it was about a kid who was being manhandled by an officer four times his size. It was outright bullying!

  The officer lowered Randy’s arms to a more comfortable position. It was something.

  “Randy, are you okay?” she asked. “What’s going on here?”

  “Nothing, miss.” Randy dropped his eyes to the carpet. She could smell the booze on his breath, and his eyes were a little glassy. She knew tipsy when she saw it. “My brother-in-law is a cop here... He’ll help me out.”

  His brother-in-law... That’s right, Lily Ellison had gotten married a few months back. Nana had told her about it. Sadie looked over at Chance, and his expression was about as icy as Officer Gillespie’s. He nodded toward the muscular cop.

  “Bring him to an interview room.”

  “Not a holding cell?” the officer asked.

  “You heard me. An interview room. And...” He stepped closer to the man and lowered his voice. “Be a bit nicer, would you?”

  Officer Gillespie blinked, then nodded, and nudged Randy toward a hallway.

  “And you—” Chance’s voice was tight, aloof.

  “What?” she demanded. She regretted the attitude that oozed out of her tone, but she was angry, and it couldn’t be helped.

  “You are not a police officer. You have no right to give orders in this station. I’m the boss here, and what I say goes. Don’t you ever try and throw your weight around on my turf again.”

  Was he really intimidated by a woman half his size? She shook her head. “He was out of line, Chance!”

  “He’s my trainee to deal with,” Chance retorted. “And that’s Chief Morgan, to you.”r />
  The officers in the bull pen stared at them in silence, and she immediately saw her mistake. She’d been angry, and for some reason she was still having trouble seeing Chance as police chief around here. He’d never been boss when she knew him, and it looked like a whole lot more had changed than she’d realized. She swallowed hard, feeling the heat rise in her cheeks.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, lowering her voice. “It’s just that I know Randy, and I know it’s been a few years, but that boy has a good heart.”

  “We all know Randy,” he retorted.

  “That officer was about to break his arm!”

  “Do you really think I’d let a teenager get roughed up on my watch?”

  Perhaps not, but he wasn’t listening to what she was saying anyway. She knew this boy—or she had known him—but that didn’t matter right now, at least not to Chance. It had been a knee-jerk reaction, and it hadn’t been her stand to take. Except Chance had been taking his sweet time in intervening—

  “Now, if you don’t mind, I have a kid to talk with in the interview room.” Chance turned to the receptionist. “Call his mother at the grocery store. Tell her to come down to the station at her earliest convenience.”

  The receptionist nodded and immediately picked up the phone, but not before casting Sadie a sidelong look. She hadn’t made any friends here today, it seemed.

  “Chance, I’m—” She swallowed the words and started again. “Chief Morgan...” It wasn’t easy to use his official title. It changed things between them—broadened the gap even more than it already was.

  “Yes?” His tone softened.

  “I’m sorry for stepping on toes. It won’t happen again.”

  Chance gave her a nod. “I appreciate that. Now, I’ve got to deal with this, so we’ll have to reschedule our meeting. I’ll call you.”

  He walked off briskly in the direction that Officer Gillespie had taken Randy, and Sadie turned back toward his office to collect her coat and bag. Chance was now police chief, and that changed more than she’d realized. They weren’t equals, and while she used to be able to cajole Chance into good humor or make demands where she saw fit, that wasn’t going to work anymore. There would be no more toes up on the dashboard of his cruiser, no more inside jokes between them. He was no longer her fiancé’s twin brother, and he most certainly wasn’t family. Chance was the commander of the entire force here in Comfort Creek, and he called the shots.