Falling for the Lawman

by Ruth Logan Herne

  He tweaked her nose, a tiny touch, sweet and almost cute, which made her want to deck him for making this attraction more difficult to ignore. “I pay. But if you’re worried about leveling the playing field, you could wear that sundress I saw hanging on the line yesterday. The one with—”

  “I know which one.” She raised her gaze to his and stood, facing him, quiet and still. His next words surprised her.

  “I’m not Reilich.”

  He knew.

  Shame coursed through her, then anger.

  What did Zach know of her? Of her family? Her father’s death, her mother’s departure, her engagement to Hunter? Rainey’s imprisonment? The twins’ birth and abandonment?

  Here he was, a seemingly nice, normal guy who appeared to be a good cop. A man with a great father, whose work ethic matched her own. A guy from a salt-of-the-earth family with morals and ethics. The great biceps were simply icing on the cake.

  She took a step back, hands up, palms out. “Clearly, you are unaware of my first rule of business—no family talk. That includes incarcerated former fiancés. Ever. Got it?”

  He stood still, watching her. A tiny muscle in his left cheek twitched, the only sign of movement, but she read the silent message. He’d leave it, for now.

  And wait for her to bring it up again. Which she wouldn’t, so that was fine. Just fine.

  She turned and strode away, choking back emotions she thought she’d dealt with, but facing Zach—recognizing the goodness in him—made her realize she could never erase enough of her family’s past to consider a future with an honest cop like him. And she was surprised how much that hurt.

  Chapter Six

  The deck decay had spread to the opening of Zach’s family room, and the realization made him long to punch someone. Or something.

  The rotted boards meant water damage might extend into the family room wall. “Not good.” Marty’s observation spiked Zach’s frustration level. It wasn’t his father’s fault that the two-week project would probably take twice as long, especially because he’d be returning to work in a few days. Gainful employment swallowed large chunks of time.

  “Gotta tear it out. I’ll help.”

  Zach hesitated. His father excelled at working with animals, farmland and big equipment. But he’d always avoided home repair whenever possible. Regardless, Zach couldn’t refuse the offer. “There’s not much room back here.” As it was he was splayed on his belly, trying to wrench out pieces of decayed wood, inch by splintered inch.

  “I’ll start from this end,” Marty decided. He peeled off his outer shirt and hunched down. “I grabbed an extra pry bar from McKinney’s. Figured there must be a problem if this was taking you so long.”

  Zach hunted for censure in his father’s tone, but found none. Had he been too sensitive to Marty’s ways growing up? Too quick to take offense?

  They worked steady, moving along the twenty-foot strip at a tortoise pace, but by midafternoon, they’d removed the bad piece. “Hand me that flashlight, would you, Dad?”

  “This little thing?” Marty frowned as he handed it over. “What good can that... Oh.” He stopped criticizing when the high-intensity LED light came on. “That’s crazy bright. When did they come up with those things? While I was whacked out?”

  “You were sick, Dad,” Zach shot back, but he saw the grim look on his father’s face and knew his father’s term was factual. In layman’s terms, Marty had been incorrigible, but he was better now. Which meant he was forced to face a host of changes. Thanks to Zach. “And yes, they’re common now. And it looks like the next board up and the plywood are good from here. No rot.”

  “You need to buy the lumber to replace that piece we just chiseled out, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then let’s roll.” Marty stood, swiped his hands to his pants and headed for the SUV. “Maybe we can grab a burger while we’re out. The puppies are fed and I’m hungry. I expect you are, too.”

  Zach couldn’t deny it. “Starved. I put off lunch because I didn’t want to stop until we got to clean wood.”

  “Annoyingly thorough.” Marty grunted as he settled into the passenger seat. “Your mother liked to say you got that from me.”

  Remembering his mother’s easygoing ways, Zach couldn’t refute her assessment. “Most likely.”

  He slid a quick glance his father’s way, and thought he saw a flash of pride in the older man’s face, but the look turned to a grimace when Marty inhaled deeply. “We don’t smell too pretty.”

  Another fact Zach couldn’t deny. “No one will care at the lumberyard.”

  “But we’ll get our food to go,” Marty decided. “I can’t think anyone would appreciate being downwind of us about now. Still, it’s a good job done. Now we’re ready to move on.”

  “Yes.” As he turned the truck toward Clearwater, Zach took another look Marty’s way. His father looked satisfied for the first time since he’d brought him home. Pleased with himself. And Zach.

  And that felt better than Zach ever thought it could.

  * * *

  “Don’t you go back to work soon?” Marty faced Zach on Saturday, waiting as his midmorning coffee brewed. “It’s been over a week.”

  “Tuesday,” Zach answered, leaning against the counter.

  Marty stayed quiet, then looked the kitchen over with his gaze. “This waking up business...”

  Zach’s heart paused midbeat, unsure where his father’s conversation might be headed.

  “I don’t know what to make of things.”

  Zach waited, patient, letting his father continue.

  “A different place. A different life. Nothing I can look at and remember.”

  Guilt clutched Zach’s gut. “I know, Dad.”

  Marty shook his head. “You don’t. You can’t know. No one can. But that’s just the thing, I don’t get it, either. How someone can make a big mistake like that and then shrug it off later as if, ‘Oh well...mistakes happen.’”

  Guilt mushroomed. “We thought—”

  His father’s frown turned into a scowl. “I’m not blaming you. Or your brother and sister. I’m talking about the doctors who made life-and-death decisions, decisions that changed my life. The whole family’s. There’s a part of me that wants to go back to that medical center and see what they have to say for themselves. How do they intend to fix this? But if I sue them for their ineptitude, what does that get me? A lot of aggravation while I pad some lawyer’s bank account. But someone should pay, shouldn’t they?” He leveraged his gaze to Zach, man-to-man. “Shouldn’t someone, somewhere, take responsibility for messing up people’s lives like this?”

  “Now that you’re feeling better, we can examine your options. Your insurance paid for the majority of the care you received while you were sick, so the proceeds from the sale of the farm are still in the bank.”

  “What am I gonna do? Start over? At my age? With no family, no kids to help, no one to step in and take over when I’m done? It’s different when you start something like that when you’re young. Young men have dreams.” Marty shrugged that off. “What would be the point now?”

  Zach drained his cup and set it in the sink. “There’s always a point to doing what you love, isn’t there?”

  “Like police work?”

  And there it was, a tiny stab because Zach was the third of three kids to walk away from the family farm. The last hope, the final link in a broken chain. “You gotta grow where God plants you. For me, it’s the force. Protecting. Watching. Serving.”

  Marty stared out the back window. Piper’s near paddock stood just beyond their property line, but Marty wasn’t seeing the here and now. Zach knew that. He was remembering sprawling fields of green-cut hay. Thick alfalfa, rich and full. Hundreds of cows dotting the far pasture, young heifers wa
iting to be freshened, pastured to the left of the new barn. A pretty colonial farmhouse with a wraparound porch. Grandpa’s house down the road, not far from the interstate. Huge tractors, mind-boggling equipment, an enterprise grown from three generations of frugality and hard work.

  Gone.

  Sold.

  By Zach.

  Remorse bit deep, but Marty wasn’t looking for apologies. He wanted answers.

  And payback.

  But no amount of money could regain the history they’d lost nearly two years before. Regret speared deeper.

  He could have taken a leave and run the farm for a little while. The hired help had been in place. He could have sacrificed a portion of his life to see. Just to see.

  But it was too late now. He’d had the chance to make the sacrifice and chose otherwise.

  Did Ethan jump in to take over? Or Julia? They were as schooled on the farm as you were.

  But they had families. Careers.

  So did you. You’ve worked hard to become an officer in the troop. You’re up for promotion. And no one expected your father to get better.

  Marty’s prognosis had been life-alteringly grim: early-onset Alzheimer’s, advancing at a rapid rate.

  Only now he was fully functioning and there was nothing left to do. No farm. No house. No equipment, no cows.

  “I’m heading next door to help Berto,” Marty announced as he set his mug in the sink. “We’re talking about how to make things run more efficiently. He’s a good man. Piper is lucky to have him. You staying here?” Marty’s glance took in Zach’s clean jeans and shirt as if finding them wanting, because why would anyone be clean in the middle of the day?

  “I’m taking Piper and the twins to the carnival.”

  “Ah.”

  His father almost smiled, and that made Zach feel better. “She wouldn’t have said yes if you weren’t here to help out. So, thank you.”

  “Those girls will love going on rides,” Marty told him. “You were the only one who would go on the crazy, spinning rides. Ethan got sick easy and Julia would grab me like a spider monkey if I tried to take her on anything faster than the merry-go-round. But you?” His expression didn’t reveal how he felt, but his voice pitched deeper. “You were always ready for something bigger. Bolder. Faster.”

  “We’ll see which way the twins go,” Zach told him as he moved to the door. “They’ve never been to the carnival before.”

  “Never?” Marty turned his attention back to the window, then paused, thinking. He followed Zach out the door, checked to make sure it locked behind him and fell into step alongside his son. “That’s the problem with running a farm with no spouse. If I was busy, your mom could take you places. If she was busy, I could do the running around.”

  Zach couldn’t remember more than a few times when his father did the running. He remembered Marty on a tractor, in the fields, in the barn, working, working, working.

  Mom had been the chauffer, the taxi driver, the one with a list of who needed to be where and when. But if it made his father feel better to put a different spin on things, so be it. They parted ways at the corner of the near barn.

  “Have fun.” Marty looked beyond Zach. His expression changed. A soft look touched his father’s face. “I’d say it’s a lucky man that gets to escort three such lovely ladies to the carnival grounds.”

  Zach turned.

  Dorrie and Sonya raced his way, their squeals contagious. Piper followed more slowly, and Zach decided then and there that he was clearly cut out to wear a detective’s badge, because he’d deduced she’d look great in a dress at their first meeting.

  Today proved it.

  He sucked back a whistle of appreciation. A floral print dress with thin shoulder straps flowed over her figure. Copper-toned freckles dotted her shoulders, a shade that matched the cinnamon tone of her hair. Pale, translucent skin made her seem more vulnerable, but the look in her eye said she’d throw blue jeans on in a heartbeat if he wasn’t careful.

  He smiled, met her gaze and paused for long, slow seconds as the girls clamored for his attention. “Thank you.”

  “For...?” She raised a brow in question, but didn’t try to shush the girls as she usually would. Her attention was solely on him, and that flattered his male ego.

  “Wearing it.”

  A tiny smile started at her mouth and made its way to her cheeks, her eyes, a glimmer that seemed shy and flirtatious at once. “You asked.”

  “Yes.”

  She shrugged one pretty shoulder as if that was all it should ever take.... He would ask. She would comply, if possible.

  He saw it then, plain as day, the spirit within the woman. Piper was a true-to-heart person, the kind who never played games, who strove to do good and be strong. A Martha mindset with a Mary heart in a crazy business that drained time like water down a creek.

  He noted her shoulders with a look of concern. “Aren’t you going to burn?”

  “Sunscreen,” she told him. “We slathered it on them, too, but their skin just absorbs the sun. Mine?” She made a face of resignation. “No farmer’s tan for me. Not with this skin.”

  He wanted to hold her hand, but he held back and grabbed Dorrie’s hand in one, then Sonya’s in the other. “Ready?”

  “Yes!” They answered in tandem. Piper took Sonya’s other hand and they moved down the driveway toward the road, not touching, but linked by the joy of a small child between them.

  Piper flashed him a smile over Sonya’s head, and that look made him wonder what her children would look like.

  Copper-haired? Pale-skinned? A curly-haired girl or a buzzed-head boy?

  “Thank you so much for bringing us, Trooper Zach.” Dorrie peered up at him. She squeezed his big hand with her tinier one. “Grandma says we should be extra good, and I feel like being extra good today, so it should be easy, right?”

  “Absolutely.” He grinned down at her as she marched along, lilac ribbons bouncing with each step, her childlike innocence a blessing. He’d felt burdened a few minutes ago, pondering his father’s change of circumstances. He knew they should celebrate Marty’s recovery, and they would.

  Right after they figured out how to give him back the life they’d stolen from him.

  Sonya tugged his other arm. “I think they have cotton candy at this thing. Don’t they?”

  “We’ll see.” He matched her hopeful smile with one of his own and pledged to put angst and worry behind him for the day. Right now, he wanted to show three girls the best summer afternoon he could muster. That would be enough for the moment.

  * * *

  “I thought this would be more difficult.” Zach leaned close to Piper and spoke the words with quiet deliberation. “Coming to a busy carnival, keeping track of two kids who disappear on a regular basis. I rehearsed ways to find them in the crowd. I even brushed up on how to issue an Amber Alert if one of them went missing.”

  “I think that’s awesome,” Piper replied. She smoothed a hand across the full skirt of the sundress and pretended not to notice as his gaze followed the movement. “Our reality is quite different, though, and I can’t say I mind.”

  “Seven merry-go-round rides later, I must agree.” He laughed, reached over and squeezed her hand.

  Then didn’t let go.

  Her pulse spiked.

  She should move her hand from under his. Nudge him away. Or give him an elbow to the midsection. That would back him off.

  But the truth was, she longed to move closer. Curl alongside that broad chest and muscled arm. See if he was lost in the moment. She certainly was.

  “Can we go again?” Dorrie raced their way, eyes wide, excitement speeding her step.

  “May we.”

  She huffed with impatience. “May we?”

  Zach releas
ed Piper’s hand and took Dorrie’s instead. “Let’s try those little airplanes. Okay?” He turned her toward the miniature biplanes across the center of the high school football field.

  “You mean...fly?” Dorrie’s eyes rounded.

  “That’s exactly what I mean,” Zach told her. “Sonya. Let’s try the other rides, okay?”

  Sitting astride the horse she’d claimed seven rides earlier, she thrust out her lower lip. “I like this one.”

  “Oh, we get that.” Piper exchanged a grin with Zach and moved toward the merry-go-round. “But we need to give other kids a chance on that horsey, right?”

  “It’s mine.”

  Piper decided against a battle in public. “Does he have a name?”

  “It’s a girl.”

  “Oh.” Piper accepted that pronouncement easily. “Well. Does she have a name?”

  “I can give her a name?” Sonya’s countenance brightened. “For real?”

  “Sure.” Piper reached over and plucked her from the dark roan carousel pony while the girl’s mind toyed with name possibilities. “How about Rosey?”

  “That’s a silly name for a horse.”

  The kid was right, so Piper tried harder. “Christabelle.”

  “Too long.” Sonya paused, thinking, one finger tapping her chin. This, Piper knew, could go on for a very long time.

  “What kind of horse is she?”

  “Oh.” Sonya caught on instantly. “Like in the book we have, right?”

  “Exactly.”

  Sonya peered over her shoulder, then grasped Piper’s hand as they made their way across the grass. “A Thoroughbred.”

  “A racehorse. Well. In that case,” Piper made her face go prim and proper. “She should have a name that goes with a pedigree.”

  “Like our red cows.”

  “Exactly.” Piper beamed, glad the little girl had been paying attention. “How about Lady Flora?”

  “Oh. I like that name, Aunt Piper.” Sonya trained her eyes on the hard plastic pony across the way. “Lady Flora the Thoroughbred.”

  “It’s perfect.” Zach joined the conversation as he double-checked Dorrie’s seat belt in her white plane. “Would you like to ride with your sister, or pilot your own plane?”