The Deputy's Perfect Match

by Lisa Carter

  Evy swallowed against her fear. “Any advice, Blake?”

  “Go with the flow.” Blake lifted his chin. “Don’t fight the sway. Adjust your body to the horse.”

  Sawyer smiled as they plodded past the boy. “I couldn’t have said it better myself.”

  Under his child-sized Stetson, Blake’s eyes shone with pride. The good kind of pride. And schooling herself to follow his advice, she loosened her stranglehold on the reins. She inhaled and exhaled to steady her nerves.

  “Take your gaze off the ground. Keep your eyes fixed on the direction you want to go.” Sawyer’s breath made puffs in the frost-tinged October air. “The horse will follow your lead.”

  She fixed her eyes on rounding the circuit of the corral. “Good advice for life.”

  He threw her a grin. “I guess it is. Never thought of it that way before.”

  She forced her body to imitate the horse’s rocking motion. She took her eyes off how far she could fall and instead focused on the view from her lofty perch. She scanned the ring of children who’d become so dear to her.

  Her gaze flickered toward the hip-roofed barn. Past the pastures and fence line. To the flume of dust beneath the wheels of an incoming vehicle. She admired the farmhouse across the barnyard. And the glorious red-and-yellow tapestry of the trees.

  Latasha clapped her hands together. “You’re doing it, Miss Evy!”

  Blake waved his hat in the air. “Ride ’em, cowgirl.”

  She laughed until she noticed Sawyer had let go of the lead. He leaned against a post, arms crossed across his denim jacket, a proud smile on his face.

  “Wait—” She half turned in the saddle as the horse plodded by. “If you’re not—then—oh, no—I can’t ride by myself...” Her heart leaped into her throat.

  “Too late.” Sawyer gave her a crooked smile. “You are riding by yourself.”

  “B-but...” The horse slogged forward. A car door slammed.

  “Like learning to ride a bike.” He nudged his hat higher on his forehead. “At some point, the training wheels have to come off.”

  “Easy for you to say,” she huffed and held on for dear life. “You ever try learning to ride a bike in San Francisco?” She clenched her jaw. “Let me tell you, mister. It’s one giant whoosh downhill. Next stop, Japan.” The horse lumbered on. “S-Sawyer...”

  “Breathe, Evy. You’re doing great.”

  She sucked in a breath at the strange sensation of her name on his lips. Something wasn’t right about Sawyer calling her Evy. But the name he used to call her eluded Evy.

  The horse completed its circle around the corral and stopped beside Sawyer. Her eyes cut to Sawyer. The horse whinnied.

  She’d done it. She’d really done it. Ridden a horse all by herself.

  “I did it,” she whispered.

  He cocked his head. “I have a feeling anything you set your mind to do, you do.”

  Giddy with accomplishment, she soaked in his approval.

  “We’ll have you cantering around the meadow before you know it.”

  “Quite the man of faith, aren’t you?”

  He grinned. “Practice makes perfect.”

  She returned his grin. Who’d have thought? Evy Shaw, a horse-riding librarian. She straightened her shoulders.

  Taking hold of the bridle, he led Evy to the gate. “That’s enough for today. Don’t want to overdo it. I have a feeling tomorrow morning you won’t thank me for the aching muscles you never knew you had.”

  He tied off the rope and reached for her. Hands planted on her waist, he swung Evy off the horse. She eased to the ground.

  “Great job, Evy.”

  Her legs felt like mush. She held on to his forearm to get her bearings as the earth tilted for a second.

  “Give yourself a minute to recover your land legs.”

  “Like getting off a boat?”

  “Exactly.”

  She heaved a sigh of relief. “It wasn’t as bad as I thought.”

  “Now there’s a ringing endorsement of my training skills.”

  “I didn’t mean—” She flushed and glanced up.

  His light blue eyes twinkled. He was teasing her. Like he used to.

  A palpable memory shot through Evy so quickly she almost failed to capture it. Of a much younger Sawyer and her towheaded self as a child. A grimy sofa. A television screen.

  She gasped at the clarity of the image. Her lips parted. She quivered from head to toe.

  And something flickered across Sawyer’s face, too. He dropped his hands. Staggered.

  Chest heaving, his eyes darted, looking everywhere but at Evy. He scrubbed the back of his neck. “Who’s next? Latasha? Blake? Rayna?”

  Hands shot into the air. “Me.”

  “Me.”

  “Me.”

  He moved toward the children. And when he did, Evy got a clear view of the driveway. Where Honey Kole stood motionless at the edge of the barn.

  Evy took a step toward Honey, but Honey headed toward the cabins. That moment between Evy and Sawyer—Honey could have easily gotten the wrong idea. A mistaken impression.

  She hurried after Honey, who despite her advanced state of pregnancy gave the shorter-limbed Evy a run for her money to catch up. “Honey, wait...” She followed Honey inside the girls’ cabin.

  Honey busied herself straightening the bunk beds. “Why are you always here playing at being Sawyer’s new best buddy?”

  Evy closed the cabin door behind her in case the children heard voices and came looking for her or Honey.

  Honey crossed her arms. “Why can’t you leave my family alone?”

  “Sawyer was trying to help me get over my fear of horses for the children’s sake.”

  “The children?” Honey’s eyes blazed. “How dare you use those innocent children in whatever game you’re playing.” She laid her hand over her abdomen. “This is my life. My life and Sawyer’s.”

  “You have it wrong.”

  “I don’t think so.” Honey’s face contorted as if she were fighting tears. “From the minute you set foot in Kiptohanock, you’ve done nothing but insinuate yourself in my family’s business.” Honey’s mouth twisted. “You may have temporarily beguiled Charlie Pruitt with your four-eyed, high-heeled little-girl-lost routine, but I see right through you to the manipulative—”

  “Manipulative?” Voice rising, Evy planted her hands on her hips. “You want to talk about manipulative, Honey Duer? What about what happened between you and Charlie? How you strung him along between Sawyer’s Shore assignments?”

  “How dare you? You know nothing about me or my relationship with Charlie or with my husband, either.” She jutted her chin. “And it’s Honey Kole.”

  “I know plenty,” Evy sneered. “I’m sick of girls like you. The helpless Southern belle when it suits you. The iron hand in the not-so-velvet glove when it doesn’t.”

  “There’s no room in my life or Sawyer’s for someone like you.”

  Evy curled her lip. “You may be the most self-serving, selfish human being I’ve ever met in my life. What a good guy like Sawyer sees in you is beyond my comprehension.”

  Honey’s nostrils flared. “I’ve tried—God knows I’ve tried—to tolerate you for the sake of the children. But coexistence is no longer an option. I’m sick and tired of ‘why can’t we be friends and get along,’ Evy Shaw.” Honey’s brows furrowed into a V. “If that’s even your real name.”

  “It’s my name.”

  Evy frowned. Wasn’t it? The only one she had, anyway.

  “Get out,” Honey jabbed her finger at the door. “Get out of this program. Get out of my life. No one wants you here.”

  Evy choked at her words.

  And something rose in Evy. Something she woul
dn’t have believed was there. Like a smoldering ember bursting into flame.

  Snatching one of the pillows from a bunk bed, she threw it at Honey’s head.

  Evy almost laughed at the wide-eyed disbelief in Honey’s eyes. Then it registered what she’d done. She’d thrown a pillow at a pregnant woman.

  Honey grabbed the pillow and threw it at Evy. It bounced to the rug. Evy retrieved it as Honey yanked another pillow off a bed. “I won’t let you hurt my family.”

  Pillow held high, Honey came at Evy from across the room like some blue-painted Scot from Braveheart. Evy blocked Honey’s downward arc with an upward sweep of her own pillow.

  “Take that!” Honey yelled.

  With a whack—the pillows collided. Parrying and thrusting. Tit for tat. Careful to keep contact away from the baby, she and Honey jousted around the cabin.

  “You take that,” Evy shouted.

  Honey slammed her pillow on top of Evy’s head. The seam split. Feathers erupted.

  Evy sputtered and blew a feather away from her nose. She thwacked Honey on the head. Duck feathers flew around the room.

  Settling on the beds and on the rugs. Resting on Honey’s shoulders. Covering Evy’s head.

  Honey collapsed against the bed with laughter. “You look like a molted bird.”

  Evy laughed. “You ought to look at yourself.”

  The door to the cabin creaked open.

  “What’s all the racket in here?” Sawyer poked his head inside.

  Covered in the white down of the feathers and still laughing, Evy pivoted.

  The color drained from his face. His gaze shifted from Evy’s hair to her face. And his blue eyes went opaque.

  “Cotton?”

  Her heart thundered. A thread of memory wove through her mind.

  “Is it really you?” His voice trembled. “My little sister?”

  He raked an unsteady hand over his head, dislodging his hat. It fell to the ground. He didn’t notice. Behind him on the cabin stoop, Charlie peered over Sawyer’s shoulder.

  Sawyer fell against the doorframe. “My baby sister?”

  With her heart too full to speak, Evy nodded.

  Honey made a muted sound. She covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh, no. Oh, no.”

  In one stride, Sawyer crossed into the cabin and gathered Evy into his arms. “After all this time...thank You, Lord.”

  He hugged her as if he’d never let go.

  “We’ve found one another, Cotton. At last.”

  * * *

  “Your name is Evangeline?” Sawyer shook his head. “No wonder I couldn’t find you.” His eyes watered. “I searched for such a long time.”

  Charlie watched the play of emotion across Evy’s face. The tremulous unfolding of joy. Like a rose opening to the warmth of sunlight.

  Sawyer sat beside Evy on one of the bunk beds. A tear trekked down his cheek. “Your name was Jane. Jane Kole. Why did they change your given name?”

  Evy gazed at Sawyer through her tears. “My adopted mother decided my name was too plain.”

  She gave a brittle laugh, which hurt Charlie in a deep place inside himself. “Too plain-Jane. Literally. So she renamed me Evangeline. After the poem by Longfellow.” Evy shrugged. “As she’s such a renowned literature scholar, I’ve always been grateful it wasn’t something like Hortensia.”

  Jane.

  Charlie wondered if Evy consciously connected her fascination with Jane Austen to her real self. An attempt to keep close to her real identity? Maybe a way of surviving emotionally through the pages of the novels Jane Austen penned so long ago. A link to who she’d once been—still was—in the secret places of her soul.

  Obviously intelligent, how did her parents not grasp what they’d done to her? Severing Evy not only from her brother but also from her truest self. Forcing Evy to feel inadequate. Making her believe the only way she could belong to them was by making Jane Kole disappear.

  Adding to the undeserved guilt she’d carried all these years. For being the lucky one to be adopted. About that, Charlie wasn’t so sure. Anger surged through him.

  Silent witness to the long-awaited reunion between brother and sister, Charlie seized a broom to clean up the mess on the cabin floor. Honey remained frozen next to the braided rug.

  He shuddered inside, thinking of the mess still awaiting cleanup once Sawyer and Evy learned what he and Honey had done. The part they’d played in nearly preventing Sawyer from ever finding his sister.

  “I looked for you, too, Sawyer. I remembered only bits and pieces from before. But I found some papers the day I graduated from Stanford. They led me to Oklahoma for my graduate degree.”

  Evy’s mouth drooped. “But you’d joined the Coast Guard. As soon as I’d get a new lead on your location and follow, you’d already moved on. I was afraid I’d never find you. Or know you. Until the library job opened up here in Kiptohanock.”

  “You were five, Jane. I mean, Evy. Only five when Child Protective Services took us away from the rental house where our mother...”

  Sawyer took a ragged breath. “At first we were together. A few weeks. But then—” He ground his jaw. Evy inserted her smaller hand in his work-roughened one.

  Honey flinched. Charlie watched her gaze flit from Sawyer to Evy and back again. She was shaking harder than Evy. Unraveling before his eyes. Shocked beyond words. A rarity in his considerable experience with Honey.

  “I was placed with Bradford and Ursula Shaw when they were instructors at the university in Oklahoma.”

  Sawyer nodded. “I met them. The social worker cautioned me to remain quiet. But when they saw you—” His grip tightened on Evy. “They only had eyes for you, Jane. Remarking how pretty they thought your blond hair was.”

  “That’s why you called me Cotton. I didn’t remember until just now.”

  “It became clear they only wanted you.” A bleak expression filled his eyes. “I can’t blame them. I was an angry preteen. I’d given the emergency foster parents nothing but trouble in trying to stay close to you. I was more than the Shaws were willing to take on.”

  Evy worried her lower lip between her teeth. “I’m sorry, Sawyer. Sorry they didn’t choose you, too.”

  His features softened. “Don’t be. You were their princess in a tower.”

  Evy sighed. “In the end, I think I was also more than they bargained for. They had so little understanding of children. Especially a child like me with big gaping holes in her heart.”

  Sawyer put his arm around Evy’s shoulders. “I’d hoped—prayed before I even understood what prayer was about—that you’d be loved and taken care of. Cherished.”

  “They weren’t bad people, Sawyer. In their own way, they were good to me. They kept me safe. They fed and educated me. Gave me everything except what I wanted most—my brother.”

  Honey slipped away. As superfluous to the reunion between brother and sister as Charlie.

  Evy swallowed. “I soon learned to stop asking for you. It upset them.”

  “I’m sorry, Cotton.”

  “We don’t have to be sorry anymore. God has brought us together. In His time and in His way.” She squeezed his hand. “And I for one am so thankful.”

  For the first time, Sawyer changed his focus to Charlie. “You knew?”

  Charlie shrugged. “Only for a few weeks.”

  “You’ve been a good friend to my sister. I appreciate you looking after her.”

  Charlie winced. Not as good a friend as he should have been. Once Sawyer and Evy learned the truth, would either of them ever speak to him again?

  Now was the moment to tell the truth. But this secret involved Honey. He couldn’t throw her under the bus. Not without allowing her to break the news to her husband in her own way.

 
And then he had a tempting thought. Perhaps she’d never tell Sawyer. Perhaps the truth of their interference need never come to light.

  It would serve no purpose except to hurt Evy and Sawyer. They’d found each other against all odds. Now was not the time to cause trouble. There was no good reason to come clean. Not now that the truth was out in the open.

  The truth.

  Wasn’t keeping silent the most loving thing Charlie or Honey could do? What good would come from clouding the real issue—that a brother and sister had been reunited at long last? But his conscience warred within him.

  He’d been raised to do the right thing. To value honesty above everything else. To live with integrity. The truth would set Charlie free of the lies and the insidious doubts.

  But the truth could also destroy his relationship with Evy. Was he willing to risk that?

  “I don’t remember much of that time before, Sawyer.” Evy’s voice grew softer. “But I do remember how you always took the beating our father meant for me when he was—” She choked off a sob, and her brother gathered her in his arms.

  At the picture her words painted, Charlie’s heart twisted. Just thinking about her father laying hands on sweet little girl Evy made him ache inside. Charlie’s parents were wonderful. But suppose as children he or his brothers had had to stand between an abusive parent and their sister, Anna, for instance? New respect grew within Charlie for the courage of the younger Sawyer Kole. And gratitude for saving Evy, despite everything else, from at least those kinds of scars.

  When the siblings began sharing bittersweet glimpses of lonely childhoods, he left the cabin. He justified his decision by reasoning it would be better to allow Sawyer and Evy a chance to get to know each other again before casting a stone in tranquil waters.

  Better, though, for whom?

  Chapter Fourteen

  That night, Sawyer led a combined story time with the boys and the girls by the bonfire in the meadow. From Evy’s perspective, he seemed lighter. More at ease within his own skin.

  And blessed beyond words, she marveled at the goodness of a God who’d given Evy back her brother. The only person alive who knew her before. Before she was Evy.