Montana Sheriff

by Marie Ferrarella

  She sniffed, trying to regain control over herself. “He probably doesn’t see it that way,” she said. She felt so drained, it was as if someone had opened her up and let everything just flow out. She felt beyond exhausted.

  “Then he’s wrong,” the doctor told her. “It’s the ones who drive us crazy that keep us going,” he assured Ronnie.

  Another, different nurse stuck her head in. “I’m afraid time’s up,” she told the two visitors at the bedside politely. Hospital procedures allowed only a maximum of two visitors per bedside, and in the ICU area, those visitors were only allowed to stay for ten minutes every hour.

  Ronnie nodded. “I’m not greedy. I’ve had my miracle for today,” she told the nurse. “So I’ll be going home now.”

  She felt like embracing both the doctor and the nurse, but she refrained. She didn’t want them thinking her brother was related to a crazy woman.

  Oblivious to the fact that Cole seemed to be leaving the ICU with her, she paused at the very last possible moment beside Wayne. His eyes were still closed. That no longer worried her.

  Ronnie bent over and whispered in his ear. “I knew you were in there somewhere,” she told him triumphantly. With that, she straightened, flashed a smile at the doctor and said, “Please call me if there’s any other change. Anything at all,” she underscored, silently praying that there was only good news from now on.

  Dr. Nichols patiently nodded, acting as if this was a new instruction rather than something that was already a standing order.

  “You okay to drive home?” Cole asked the moment they stepped into the hallway.

  Ronnie slanted a look at his face. She’d felt stronger in her time but she wasn’t about to admit that just yet. “Why?”

  “You look a little flushed, that’s all,” he answered. And with what had just happened, who could blame her for being a little off her game?

  She was feeling rather wobbly and unsteady, Ronnie thought. But precision driving wasn’t required for making the trip back to Redemption. She’d seen maybe three other vehicles before she’d entered Helena proper. Driving here was a completely different experience from driving in Seattle. Between traffic and practically daily encounters with at least sporadic rain, driving in Seattle was challenging at best.

  “I’m okay,” she said after a beat, then added with a smile, “Better than okay.”

  Even though he could have stood there, easily getting lost in her smile, Cole still had his doubts about her fitness to drive.

  “Tell you what, why don’t we stop for coffee first?” he suggested.

  “Coffee?” she repeated.

  What had made him suggest something like that? And wasn’t he supposed to be on duty? That meant he was supposed to be back in Redemption, not here. The last time he’d technically been a guide for one of the ex-citizens of Redemption, so he’d had an excuse to be away from the small town.

  But he didn’t have that excuse anymore.

  Did he?

  As if reading her mind, Cole said, “Doesn’t have to be coffee. It can be a bite to eat. Or just sitting, not saying anything. Just being immobile long enough to get our bearings,” he told her.

  He was saying “our” but he meant hers, Ronnie thought. She knew what she had to look like to him. Just on this side of deranged.

  There was a time when she would have found his concern, his being practically in touching range every time she turned around, downright confining and insulting. It showed what he thought of her ability to take care of herself.

  But after being on her own for so long, forced to make all the decisions for herself and Christopher and having really no one around to lean on, Ronnie found it comforting that he worried about her.

  Even if he was probably only going through the motions.

  She had no doubt that in no time at all, he would transform back into the town sheriff and would be making noises like the town sheriff.

  Still, she saw the merit of his suggestion. “I guess sitting down and having a cup of coffee while I pull myself together isn’t all that bad an idea,” Ronnie allowed slowly.

  He had to admit he wasn’t expecting her to give in so easily, not without a fight. That meant that he’d been right in guessing at her present state.

  But then, Cole thought, he’d lived in isolation a long while now. He was well aware that good news could grab a chunk out of a person just as easily as bad news could. It was no secret that emotions could provide the bearer a wild roller-coaster ride, filled with ups and downs, even at the best of times.

  He ought to know.

  Cole felt as if he’d been perpetually attending a damn amusement park every single day since Ronnie had come back to Redemption.

  “Good,” he pronounced in his low-key voice, showing no feeling one way or another about her acceptance. “I saw a little coffee shop on the next block. We could stop there.”

  He was leaving it up to her, Ronnie realized. But it wasn’t as if she was all that familiar with this area anymore. A lot more buildings had gone up here since she’d left the state.

  Almost as many as there had in Redemption. The little town seemed to have doubled in size as far as the stores went. That still didn’t make it on its way to becoming a city. At least, not yet.

  “Lead the way,” she told him.

  He tried not to look surprised that she would relinquish the lead so very easily.

  The woman was full of surprises, but then that really shouldn’t come as such a surprise to him. Like a gaily wrapped, mysterious Christmas present, Ronnie had always been full of surprises.

  Right from the very first moment he’d laid eyes on her.

  Chapter Ten

  Though he wasn’t holding her hand, Cole became aware that Ronnie’s hand was shaking before they’d gone very far down the block.

  A closer scrutiny of the woman made him realize that she was about to come apart. Given that she had just been on the receiving end of some very good news, he was concerned about the frailty of her mental state.

  “Ronnie?”

  “What?”

  Incredibly anxious and shaky, Ronnie tried very hard to concentrate on—literally—just putting one foot in front of the other on the sidewalk. Right now, it felt as if her entire body had turned on her and she had no idea why.

  “You’re shaking,” Cole said.

  “No, I’m not,” she denied as vehemently as she could.

  What was the matter with her? The worst was over. Everything from here on in would be all right, maybe not as fast as she’d like, but eventually. Right?

  Coming to a dead stop, Cole tugged on her hand to get her to stop walking, as well.

  “Yes,” he said firmly, “you are.” She really was shak ing, and it wasn’t restricted to just her hand now, but all of her.

  His eyes searched her face for a clue as to what she was feeling. He was vaguely aware that emotions could be very complex and tricky. While he didn’t have a handle on what Ronnie might be going through right now, he was pretty sure he could make an intelligent guess.

  “When I was a kid, I’d sometimes find my mother crying. The first time I did, I asked her what I could do to help and she said, ‘Nothing.’ Sometimes she just needed to have a good cry and said that she always felt better afterward.” He drew his own conclusions from that. “Maybe you just need to work whatever’s going on with you out of your system with a good cry.”

  “Right,” Ronnie said sarcastically. But then she looked into his eyes. “You’re actually serious,” she realized.

  He’d figured out that she had to be under an enormous amount of tension. Ronnie was working on overload and even though the last piece of information she’d been given had been positive, she wasn’t emotionally equipped to handle it. Crying was the only thing he could think of to help her.

  “Yes.”

  Ronnie pressed her lips together, afraid she would do exactly that. But there was no way she would break down like that in public. She gestured around.
The streets were filled with people. “Even if I wanted to, I can’t just stand here crying in the middle of the city like some pathetic idiot.”

  Cole looked around for a second, not at the people, but searching for an opportunity. Spotting it, he took her hand and pulled her into the recessed doorway of an abandoned store that, from the fly-specked signs in the bay window, appeared to have once been a bakery.

  He had her back up against the door. “What are you doing?” she demanded.

  Cole placed himself between the rest of the world and her. “Now you’re not standing in the middle of the city,” he answered quietly.

  Maybe it was his tone that got to her, or maybe it was the fact that he was going out of his way for her, being so kind.

  Being protective.

  Or maybe the weight of everything she’d been trying to deal with had finally gotten to her. Or maybe it was that the immense relief that Wayne’s coma had receded had overwhelmed her.

  Most likely, it was a combination of all of the above, with a dose of an anxiety attack thrown in on top of it. Whatever the reason behind it, as if on cue, Ronnie suddenly couldn’t maintain another pseudobrave moment. She broke down and cried.

  Silent sobs wracked her body, causing her to shake even more. And during the entire episode, Cole just held her. Held her close to him, wordlessly letting her know with his presence that he was there for her if she should find that she needed him.

  Rather than talk, he let her cry everything out of her system. The fear, the weariness, the relief. Everything. The only thing he did say was to assure her that, “It’s okay. It’s all going to be okay.”

  The rest of the time, he was busy struggling to keep his own feelings at bay and under control. He was trying to keep a tight rein on his own reaction to having her this close to him, to having her body turn into his, reminding him—as if he needed reminding—how much he still wanted her.

  But this wasn’t about him. This was about letting her know that she wasn’t alone in this. That he was here for her and would continue to be for as long as she needed him. And a little bit longer than that.

  She cried for what seemed a very long time, becoming progressively exhausted, progressively drained. And through it all, she was aware of the man holding her, giving her shelter, shielding her from prying eyes and the aroused curiosity of passing strangers.

  More than that, she was acutely aware of Cole. Of everything about him. His scent, the gentleness of his hands, the texture of his shirt. Aware of the warmth of his body that radiated through his clothing and hers until it seemed to touch her very skin.

  Aware of him.

  As the last sob faded away, Ronnie slowly raised her head and looked up at Cole. Her body was no longer shaking because of an impending breakdown. But it was vibrating ever so slightly from an inner need that had materialized in the wake of her purging herself of all the rest of it, rising out of the ashes of anxiety like a resurrected phoenix, spreading its wings and taking to the sky.

  Before she knew what was happening, Ronnie had raised her lips up to Cole’s. Whether or not she was responsible for initiating that first kiss, she honestly couldn’t remember. All she knew was that she had wanted it. Had tasted it before it became a reality.

  Rather than keep her arms pinned down to her sides, she picked them up and threaded them around Cole’s neck, still kissing him.

  Damn it, this wasn’t supposed to be happening, Cole thought. He hadn’t pulled her aside to kiss her. He’d done it so that she could have a private moment, away from possible prying eyes, and either cry out all the emotions weighing her down, or just pull herself together.

  There was no denying that she’d been through a hell of a lot this last week and a half. There was only so much a body should have to take. At a loss how to help, he’d fallen back on something incredibly elementary and simple and hoped he was right.

  But there was nothing simple about this.

  Nothing simple about the extent of the desire hammering through him, nothing simple about the things that this kiss was generating.

  Damn, but he had missed her, Cole thought, gathering her even closer to him. If he could, he would have absorbed her, taken her very essence into his, mingling their spirits and whatever else he could manage so that she would be a part of him even more than she already was.

  She would think he’d taken her aside for this, he warned himself. She might think he’d had an ulterior motive and he didn’t want her thinking that way, didn’t want her believing that because it wasn’t true.

  So why are you still kissing her? Why aren’t you trying to put a stop to this and put some space between you? an annoying voice in his head demanded.

  The annoying voice was right.

  He had to stop kissing her. It was the right thing to do, just not the easy thing to do.

  Reluctantly, Cole removed her arms from around his neck and drew back his head. A sense of almost bereavement came over him when his mouth left hers.

  There was a dazed, quizzical look in Ronnie’s eyes, as if she didn’t understand why he’d stopped.

  Cole fought with the very real, very strong urge to lose this battle he waged with himself and kiss her all over again. But Ronnie might think that he was just preying on her vulnerable state.

  “Ronnie, I didn’t…”

  How the hell did he begin to phrase this? How did he begin to tell her that he didn’t mean for this to happen, even though it made him happier than he’d been in six long years?

  As it turned out, he didn’t have to phrase it at all.

  The dazed expression in Ronnie’s eyes faded, to be replaced by one of understanding.

  She nodded her head. “I know.” There were unspoken volumes behind the two words.

  She got it, Cole thought, surprised. Ronnie somehow understood how much he wanted her, but that he was trying his best to hold himself back. For her sake. God knew it wasn’t for his own.

  “You’d better be getting back,” he told her quietly, stepping out of the doorway.

  Ronnie raised her head and her eyes met his. A beat later, a sliver of amusement entered those same crystal green eyes.

  “Are you trying to welsh out of that cup of coffee you said you were buying me?” she asked him.

  “What?” For a second, Cole had forgotten all about the coffee, and everything else for that matter. The universe—his universe—began and ended in Ronnie’s green eyes. “No,” he answered with feeling as the suggestion he’d made in the hospital came back to him. “The coffee shop’s right down there.” He nodded to the left in the shop’s general direction.

  She moved out of the shelter of the temporary haven he’d formed for her, her step just a little surer now than it had been a few minutes earlier. She was ready to reclaim her position in the world.

  “Well then, let’s go.”

  He grinned. Okay, the old Ronnie was back. And all was well with the universe.

  Inclining his head, he said, “Yes, ma’am.”

  RONNIE DIDN’T REMEMBER MUCH OF the drive back to the ranch. Only that Cole remained right behind her the entire trip to make sure she didn’t suddenly veer off into a ditch—or worse.

  Her guardian angel, she thought, amused. But then, that was what he’d always been, right? Hadn’t he always watched out for her, been there to deflect any possible blows, verbal or otherwise, aimed at her? She’d acted as if that annoyed her, independent tomboy that she tried to be, but secretly, it had pleased her.

  The coffee shop had been fairly empty when they arrived and they had sat outside with their containers, talking for a little bit. The conversation had centered around Wayne, the ranch and his mother. No mention was made—by silent agreement—of the explosion that had rocked both ends of their worlds in that bakery doorway.

  After they left the coffee shop, she’d wanted to go back to the hospital to see Wayne one last time before heading home. So they stopped by his cubicle and found Wayne sleeping.

  For a moment,
her heart sank and she was afraid that Wayne had slipped back into that awful coma. Cole went searching for the doctor, who came back and assured her that wasn’t the case. Wayne was no longer comatose. Instead, he was simply sleeping again, resting his exhausted system. The good news was that while she and Cole had been having coffee, Wayne had completely woken up. The coma had gone just as mysteriously as it had descended on him.

  Part of her wished that she had remained on the hospital premises the entire time so that she could have seen this for herself rather than hear about it secondhand.

  But she was forced to admit, albeit silently, that another part of her was glad that she hadn’t been here. More specifically, she was glad that she had been exactly where she had been. In the doorway, in Cole’s arms. Lost in his kiss.

  And just where is that supposed to lead you? her conscience demanded.

  She didn’t want to explore that avenue. Didn’t even want to think about it. Because thinking about it would most likely only ruin the joy she was feeling right at this moment.

  Wayne was conscious, that was the important thing and all that mattered right now. Ronnie focused on that.

  BY THE TIME SHE REACHED THE ranch, pulled up the hand-brake and jumped out of her car, Ronnie had to restrain herself to keep from bursting through the front door. She deliberately hadn’t called home from the hospital because she wanted to deliver the news in person. Wanted to be there to see her father’s face when she told him that Wayne was awake.

  The minute she was inside the house, Ronnie called out for her father. There was no one in the foyer.

  “Dad? Dad, are you around?” She raised her voice and called again. “Dad? I’m back and I have news!”

  Her father, moving far more stiffly than he was obviously happy about, shuffled into the room as quickly as he could, leaning on his cane. His face was the picture of dread.

  “I’m right here,” he grumbled. “Stop bellowing.” And then he came to a stop in the middle of the room, as if he couldn’t listen and walk at the same time. Steeling himself for the worst, Amos McCloud asked his daughter, “What’s the matter?” Before she could answer him, he swallowed and nervously added, “Is Wayne—?”