For nearly three years, she’d dreamed of ruining Nate’s life. She should feel happy or vindicated or at peace with the world. She felt sickened.
Her mouth was dry. She got up, intending to get a drink in the bathroom, closing the door behind her. But even roughing it and drinking from the sink didn’t quench her thirst or settle the tumultuous feeling in her gut that something wasn’t right.
She wandered out to the kitchen and found a glass in the cupboard above the sink. Light from the full moon spilled through the kitchen window so she didn’t have to turn on the light and risk waking Doris.
Nails clacked across the laminate. A shadow approached from the living room. A short shadow. One about eight inches high with four legs and a tail.
“Nice doggy,” she whispered, willing it not to bark.
It didn’t bark. It lunged and nipped Julie’s ankle. Once. Twice. Not hard enough to break the skin, but stinging, angering.
“No!” Julie said in the growly voice the canine unit used, which set off a round of barking somewhere in the house. She reached for the light switch, turning on the garbage disposal instead. It growled more fiercely than the pint-size dog that bit her again. She drew back into the corner of the kitchen and shouted this time. “No!”
The dog latched onto her pants leg and growled.
Lights blinded her.
“Freeze.” Doris appeared in the kitchen doorway, her hair in pink rag curls. She wore a blue checked nightshirt, slippers with Chihuahuas embroidered over the toes, and pointed a handgun at Julie. “Oh.” She lowered the barrel, but it was still aimed at Julie’s feet. Or maybe the dog.
“Don’t point that gun at me.” Julie’s fingers flexed for a weapon of her own, making her heart beat like it wanted out of her chest. Having a gun in hand didn’t make her safe, not if she was unwilling to pull the trigger. “We can’t stay here.” Now her responsible-aunt gene reared its head?
“But it’s the middle of the night.” Doris gestured with the gun as if it was an extension of her hand. “I didn’t think you’d get up. That’s why I let Bruiser out on patrol.”
Julie took the gun from Doris and set the safety. She placed it on the white stove which had a layer of what looked like bacon grease ringing the main burner. “We’re leaving.” She walked down the hall, dragging a growling furry cling-on attached to her pants leg.
“You can’t go. You’re the perfect candidate for sheriff.” Doris followed as close to Julie’s heels as she could get without stepping on the dog. “You disarmed me.”
“It wasn’t that hard.” Julie was truly disgusted with herself. She should have known better than to trust Doris. Since the shooting, she’d been making one bad decision after another “Do you have a permit for that thing?”
That thing being the Glock.
“I don’t need a permit. I’m not a criminal.” There was that holier-than-thou note to her voice that got under Julie’s skin.
Julie wanted to thunk herself on the head. She’d thrown in her lot with a woman who didn’t think the law applied to her? She’d given her word in front of the town that she’d run for sheriff? “Everyone who owns a handgun in California needs a permit.”
“It’s just a piece of paper,” Doris explained in the same tone of voice Julie had once used to tell her dad her fender bender had resulted in just a scratch. “Besides, it’s not like I wave my gun around. I keep it in my purse.”
“That’s carrying concealed.” Two violations of the law. Julie revised her personal head-thunking wish for a Doris head-thunking wish.
“You really know your stuff.” Doris was either thicker than a layer of snow after a Sierra snowstorm or she thought Julie was. “You’re the perfect candidate for sheriff.”
“So you’ve said.” Nate would have a good laugh over this. Or maybe he’d give her that contained half smile and not say a word.
“Don’t leave me.” Doris latched onto Julie’s hand.
“I can’t stay. I can’t let Bruiser bite Duke.” Julie stood at the guest bedroom door and shook her leg, but Bruiser refused to let go. She shook her arm, but Doris refused to let go. “Get your hands off me and take your dog before I tip off Nate and he writes you enough citations to wallpaper your house, not to mention throws you in jail.”
* * *
NATE TAPPED ON the passenger window of Julie’s SUV.
The passenger seat was reclined and Julie was reclined with it. Duke lay on top of her, covered by his dinosaur bedroll. Neither one of them woke up at his knock.
Nate glanced up and down Kennedy Avenue. He couldn’t see far. Fog clung to rooftops and chilled his body to the bone. Julie’s windows were mostly clouded over and the SUV’s engine was silent. She’d been here awhile. He wouldn’t have found out she was sleeping in her vehicle if Terrance hadn’t called it in. So much for thinking the old man’s pajama-themed walkabouts had ended.
But that wasn’t Nate’s immediate problem. His immediate problem was sprawled in her SUV like someone on the run from something. This wasn’t the woman he’d worked with in Sacramento. This woman needed his patience and compassion.
Patience and compassion weren’t what Nate was feeling. No. It was anger. Anger that Julie had exposed Duke to the elements warmed his cold hands. He rapped harder on the window.
Julie startled, opening her eyes. She clutched Duke when she realized there was a man at her door.
“It’s me.” Nate motioned for her to open the window, holding his temper in check with a thin thread.
It was twenty seconds before the window slid down.
He’d counted.
“You aren’t going to win any votes as a homeless sheriff.” Nate had to keep this civil or he’d start to yell. He could feel shouts forming in his chest like cannonballs. Are you nuts? What are you doing? Didn’t you think of Duke at all? “Follow me back to the station.” His truck was parked in front of her SUV.
“We’re fine,” she said inanely, still half-asleep and looking halfway short of fine. She had a bad case of bed head and her sallow complexion in the streetlight looked certifiably corpse-like.
He leaned in the window. “We have vagrancy laws in town. It’s within my rights to haul you in.” He drew a deep breath, noting Duke shivering, noting Julie shivering, noting Julie made no move to move.
He marched around the SUV, got in behind the wheel, adjusted the seat from recline and drove them home. To jail.
“I put him down in the driver’s seat,” Julie said in a dazed voice, holding Duke in her arms. “I thought he’d be safe there.”
“With the key in the ignition?” Kudos to Nate for using his indoor voice.
“He climbed into my lap.” She didn’t seem to register the point Nate was making. “I didn’t even wake up.”
Nate wanted to shout, “Because you’re half dead!”
He didn’t think yelling would help matters. So he counted some more. He counted past Madison. Across Harrison. Down Main Street.
When he parked in front of the sheriff’s office, he came around to her side of the SUV and relieved her of Duke. “I take it things didn’t work out with Doris.” He held the office door for her, and then he carried Duke up the stairs.
“We can sleep down here.” Julie still sounded half-asleep.
“No. You can’t sleep in the jail.” He didn’t trust her not to walk out at sunrise. Nate opened the door at the top of the stairs and carried Duke to the bed in his studio apartment. “The sheets were clean since yesterday. Don’t flush when the shower’s running or it’ll turn cold.”
She sat on the mattress next to Duke. Only her sit was more like a collapse. “Thank you.” She had something clutched in her fist. She set it on the bedside table. It was his mother’s worry stone.
Nate bit back a curse and pulled up a chair from the kitchen
table. He took Julie’s hands in his. They were like ice. “What were you thinking? Why didn’t you call?”
“It was horrible. One of her dogs bit me.” Julie’s mouth worked as if she was fighting tears. “I should have gone home, but I promised to run for sheriff. And my dad always said you had to honor a promise. And I couldn’t call you because I didn’t want you to think that I couldn’t take care of Duke.”
“That’s the exhaustion talking. I would’ve respected you if you had called me.”
She closed her eyes. “I can’t seem to do anything right since—”
“Don’t say since the shooting. Don’t define your life that way.” He shook her hands, thought better of it and framed her cold cheeks with his palms. “You aren’t to blame for that woman dying.”
She raised her tear-filled gaze to his. “How would you know?”
“The woman you shot was cornered, afraid and angry. She made a choice. She drew her weapon.”
“She didn’t deserve to die.” And there it was. The heart of her sleeplessness.
Nate grabbed her arms, stood and brought her to her feet. “She could have walked out of that house when the negotiators asked. She could have turned herself in. But she didn’t. She held her own children hostage. She was trapped and scared and wanted to hurt someone. Or worse. She was trapped and scared and wanted someone to end her pain.”
Julie’s eyes were huge, desperate to believe she wasn’t a cold-blooded killer.
“You protected your unit. You made sure they got home safe to their loved ones.”
Her hands crept up his chest. “She haunts me.”
Nate glanced at the worry stone. “She doesn’t deserve to.” He drew her closer and stroked a hand down her back, breathing her in the same way he’d done with Duke days ago. She smelled of daisies and damp. “You have to take care of yourself. If not for you, for Duke.”
Julie shuddered. “The nightmares. I can’t sleep in the same bed as Duke.”
Nate drew her closer still. He’d take away her pain and ease her suffering if he could.
“I...” She sighed and leaned into him. “Leona checked on me last night during a nightmare and I put her in a choke hold.”
Now it was Nate who was chilled. He hadn’t realized her symptoms from the shooting were that bad. “It’ll be all right. I’ll get his bedroll. Duke can sleep in the chair.”
“Don’t leave,” she whispered, so faintly he thought he might have imagined it until she stepped free of his embrace, took him by the hand and drew him down on the bed. “He’ll be safe with you here. Just...don’t talk either. Just...stay with me.”
Those words... Longed for, dreamed of... He couldn’t have left her if he wanted to.
Nate sat on the bed, his back to the wall. She sat next to him, staring at him with luminous eyes that had taken on more pain than she was ready to handle. She’d arrived in town with vengeance on her mind, but fear in her heart. She’d always fought for what was right. But she’d lost track of the boundary where right ended and wrong began.
Julie took his pillow, placed it in his lap and rested her head on it.
He ran his hand up and down her back with a slow, light touch. He wanted to bring her into his arms and kiss her fears away. But she didn’t want that. She didn’t want him. She wanted a guardian to watch over her nephew.
Her breathing steadied, deepened. How little it took for her to fall asleep. How little it took for his heart to pang with longing.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
JULIE AWOKE TO the smell of sausage and the gentle feeling of rejuvenation.
She hadn’t dreamed, at least, not about the shooting. She’d dreamed she was dozing on a tropical beach. Rested, relaxed, sun warmed.
“Juju,” Duke whispered. He crawled into bed next to her and snuggled close.
She expected Duke to tug on her arm or demand to be fed. She peeked at him through half-closed lids. He was smiling. “Is it morning?” Duke never smiled in the morning.
“Juju.” Duke made his silly face, the one that said he was blissfully happy. He held up a half-eaten sausage.
Julie opened her eyes more fully and took in the studio apartment. The card table and two folding chairs. The recliner facing a wall-mounted television. The small area built into the short hall that led to a tiny bathroom where his shirts were hanging. The kitchen area where Nate stood cooking breakfast. His dark hair was as rumpled as Duke’s every morning.
She started to smile. And then the memories from the night before came rushing back.
The devil dog. The cold SUV. Nate, so angry. Nate, so commanding. Nate, so tender.
He’d held her and she’d slept better than any pain pill could induce. She’d felt safe and protected. She’d felt understood and absolved.
Because of Nate.
Her belly clenched, distressed by the knowledge that she’d failed Duke, that Nate was the reason they were warm and rested and, in Duke’s case, fed.
Oh, she’d make a fine sheriff, all right. Cue sarcasm.
“Coffee’s ready when you are.” Nate’s back was to her. He wore blue jeans that hugged his lean frame and a brown long-sleeved T-shirt. His feet were bare.
Julie couldn’t remember ever having seen his bare feet. Or maybe she couldn’t remember seeing him relaxed enough to go barefoot. She half expected him to turn around and smile at her.
He turned around, not smiling, and dished up eggs and sausage on plates. “If you want your morning sugar fix, you’ll have to go elsewhere. Real men eat protein for breakfast.”
“So you’ve said.” Julie sat up slowly.
Duke popped up and scrambled to the table.
Her shoulder felt better today. There was less ache and more tightness around her stitches. She sought refuge in the bathroom. She shut herself in and stared at her reflection in the mirror, upgrading her appearance from zombie to vampire. She was still pale, but the bags under her eyes were gone. Her hair was wild, but could be tamed.
She cleaned up and returned to the main apartment, hesitating when she saw something pink in a long plastic bag hanging from a rod in the alcove that led to the bathroom. “Is this Mae’s wedding dress?” Further inspection revealed it was a pale rose satin gown with a sweetheart neckline and a mermaid silhouette. It was sweet and flirty and sophisticated all at the same time.
“Yep. That’s my wedding dress.” Nate stepped into view. The pink in his cheeks matched the soft hue of the dress. “I probably should have donated it or something, but Mae was... She was a character. Her shop used to be next door, where the wine cellar is now. Mae was convinced that dress would be perfect for the woman I marry.”
“She chose pink for you?” A woman would have to be confident in herself to wear such a dress.
“I think she would’ve chosen anything out of the ordinary.” He plucked at the plastic, separating the bag from the shirts and pants hanging around it. “She enjoyed prodding people out of their shells.”
While Julie mulled the so-called shell Nate was in, she went to the counter and poured herself a cup of coffee. It wasn’t until she poured a packet of sweetener in it that she realized the mug said, Some Heroes Wear Capes. I Wear Kevlar. She brought the mug to the table. “Nice sentiment.”
“It was true, once upon a time.” Nate sat in the recliner, a travel coffee mug in hand. “My sister and I didn’t talk for several years. When we reconnected, she gave me that mug.”
The television was on low and tuned to a cartoon. No wonder Duke was silent. He was watching something that had captured his attention.
“Wedding dresses. Cartoons. You’ve gotten soft, Landry.” And yet, the furniture in his apartment projected no permanence.
“Small-town life has a way of changing a person.” The half smile again.
The view outs
ide the window was the back of Martin’s Bakery.
“About last night...” Julie wanted to say she wouldn’t impose on Nate—not by sleeping in his bed, not by sleeping in his arms. But her gaze drifted to his broad chest and she remembered how secure she’d felt last night with him watching over her. She hadn’t worried about nightmares or Duke.
“I’ll sleep downstairs tonight,” Nate said, reading at least some of her thoughts. He nodded toward her duffel, backpack and the bag of diapers. “After you eat, you should get April’s notebook and ask me another question.”
She didn’t want to. Every time she asked a question, Julie was the one who got upset. He’d knocked her for a loop by telling her April had called off the wedding. And then he’d pissed her off with his so-called sacrifice. Granted, she’d been relieved when he’d left the force. Would she have done the same for him? She didn’t think so.
“Let’s skip the test today.” She rubbed at a crease between her eyebrows. “It makes me feel—” dare she admit it? “—petty and shallow.”
“You’re neither of those things.” He didn’t hesitate to argue. “You just see the world in black and white. Sometimes I wish I could say the same.”
Duke finished eating and crawled back in bed, without taking his eyes off the television.
“The test, Julie.”
With a sigh, Julie brought out the notebook, flipping to the third section. “For the record, I don’t want to ask you this.”
He rubbed the travel mug between his palms as if it was Aladdin’s magic lamp. “For the record, I’m sure I don’t want to answer.”
Their gazes held. There was friendship in his, friendship Julie didn’t feel she deserved. This was definitely a gray area.
She returned her attention to the notebook. “A good dad isn’t afraid of change or of differences between father and son. As adults, the ability to appreciate each other’s differences and strengths draws us to friends and lovers. Give an example of how you and your father were the same and how you were different. Then give an example of differences you appreciate in one of your friends.”
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