Falling for the Lawman

by Ruth Logan Herne

  Zach shook his head. “You might be late to the game but you’ve got tradition and farm management on your side. I can’t believe the Department of Agriculture and Markets will think this is a good idea. If one town bullies a farm, it sets precedent for other towns to do the same. Ag and Markets won’t let that happen.”

  “You think we’re in trouble.”

  He shook his head, looped an arm around her shoulders and headed toward the house. “I think we’ve got trouble, but we can win. We’ll fight. We’ll win. But it will probably get ugly.”

  “What will get ugly?” Marty noted Zach’s arm around Piper’s shoulders, smiled, then frowned. “What’s wrong? Are you crying? Did you make her cry? What’s the matter with you?”

  “I did nothing of the sort. She cried all by herself. With a little help from the stupid town.”

  “He didn’t make me cry, Marty.” Piper half laughed, trying to deflect the opposing glares of father and son. “No, it’s this.” She held the envelope aloft. “The town is trying to seize parts of the farm by using eminent domain.”

  Marty said something under his breath that made Zach’s eyebrows shoot up. He paced toward the barn, then back their way. “What are they saying?”

  “That with Vince and Linda’s land going on the market, once it’s sold they want to have an easement of my land for a sewer district to be established from the lakeshore to the western boundary of Vince and Linda’s land.”

  “Subdivisions. Housing. All overlooking that pretty piece of lake we see right there.” Marty turned and pointed down the hill where the McKinneys’ beautiful corner of Kirkwood Lake waterfront sat still and pristine, dotted with deciduous trees and a few evergreens around the wooden gazebo. Pastoral and sweet, the land sat at water’s edge, a refuge and respite from the busyness of life.

  “And they intend to seize the lakefront to use for public and private boating launches and docks.”

  “They what?” Marty turned quickly. He stared at the lake, then at Piper and Zach. “They want to seize the lakefront, too?”

  “It’s the only remaining open ground on the northwest shore.” Piper stared at the property in question, then shifted her attention back to Zach and Marty. “My great-great-grandparents settled this land. They carved this farm out of the forest. They worked night and day, and then they bought other parcels here and there. McKinney Farm grew and did well until...” She heaved a breath, bit her lip, then shrugged. “Until my mother left us all, and took two-hundred and fifty-thousand dollars as alimony from my father.”

  “Ouch.” Marty’s expression showed shock and disbelief at that figure.

  “Piper.” Zach had no trouble reading the reality of her mother’s abandonment in Piper’s face. He tugged her closer and held her, not caring that his father watched, just knowing he wanted to help. Some way. Somehow.

  Piper shrugged out of his grip, face grim. “I’ve got a letter to write.”

  “And I have a barn to paint soon as it’s dry,” Marty announced. “That power sprayer is a wonderful piece of equipment, son. It would have taken me days to scrape that barn wall properly.” Marty headed toward Zach’s house. “I’m grabbing coffee, then running an errand. By the time I get back I should be ready to paint.”

  Zach raised his cell phone. “And I’m calling Ethan for his advice. And getting back to the deck.”

  Marty met Zach’s gaze. “If you’d rather I help you on the deck, I can do that. The barn’s been there a while. It’ll still need painting in a week. I know you’re behind.”

  He was, but right now he needed to take a breath, call his brother, examine Piper’s options, then build a deck. The deck wasn’t going anywhere, although he hated seeing a job half-done.

  “I’m good, Dad, but thanks. No reason I can’t keep building once I’m back at work.”

  He punched in his brother’s number on his cell phone, then paced while he waited for Ethan to pick up. While he walked back and forth, he scanned the farm surrounding him, seeing it with greater clarity now.

  The family farm had fallen on tough times when a marriage fell apart. No wonder Piper clung hard and long to a family legacy that had almost caved before. She wasn’t just staking a claim on a farm, but on the family that had developed it. Worked it, generation after generation.

  He watched her dash up the back steps of the plain white farmhouse and knew she was determined to thwart the town’s efforts. No matter what the town offered financially, losing the lakefront access diminished the farm’s value exponentially and changed the northwest shore forever. And if it had that kind of financial effect now, how much more would that pretty piece of shoreline be worth in ten years? Twenty?

  One way or another he’d help Piper keep hold of what was hers. He couldn’t go back and undo the sale of his father’s farm, and he’d bear that on his shoulders until the day he passed from the earth.

  But Piper’s dream was here. And no group of political cronies would be allowed to wrench it from her.

  Chapter Ten

  “You don’t look ready.” Zach’s dubious voice held a strong note of misgiving.

  Ready?

  Piper turned from the computer, saw how clean and dressed up Zach was, and wanted to kick herself. They were supposed to go on a date tonight, but after this morning’s political bombshell, she’d assumed—wrongly, it seemed—that they’d be sitting home, pouting.

  “Fifteen minutes.” He stepped through the door and tapped his watch. “We’ve got reservations and luckily I assumed you were running late when I saw you stomping in from the milking parlor twenty minutes ago.”

  “Fifteen minutes? No way can I—”

  “Fourteen. Clock’s ticking, Piper.”

  He wasn’t taking no for an answer, and that made her feel good inside. Treasured.

  She hurried upstairs, took the fastest shower ever, slipped into the second dress she owned since Zach had already seen the first one, and added an ankle bracelet to her left foot, earrings to her ears and a touch of mascara. She slid her feet into sling-back high heels, wondered if sandals might be better, decided against it because her toes looked horrible, and was back downstairs in the allotted time.

  Zach whistled. “Impressive.”

  “The timing or the girl?”

  “Both. But mostly the girl.”

  His eyes added certainty to the words, and that made a flush rise up from somewhere deep within her. When Zach offered a compliment, the weight of sincerity made it special.

  She’d never experienced that before and decided she loved it. Honesty, appreciation and a sense of humor, rolled into one great cop, heart and soul.

  A keeper.

  Was he?

  He offered her his arm in a most courtly fashion.

  She accepted it and proceeded down the back steps with him.

  “Trooper Zach and Piper, sitting in a tree! K-I-S-S-I-N-G,” a neighbor girl spelled out from a table near the ice cream window. “First comes love. Then comes marriage. Then comes a baby in a baby carriage!”

  “Junie!”

  Zach opened the door to his SUV for Piper and waved to the mother. “Nothing I haven’t been thinking myself, ma’am.”

  “Do tell.” The young mother saw Piper’s look and laughed out loud. “Trooper, I do believe you’ve struck Piper speechless and that’s a rarity around here.”

  “Almost as good as sighting an evening grosbeak before the leaves have fallen.”

  “You’re a bird-watcher?” Piper leaned out the open window of the SUV.

  Zach tipped his head to Junie’s mother, grinned and climbed into the driver’s seat. “I prefer the term ‘birder,’ but yes. I am. Check the glove box.”

&
nbsp; Piper hit the latch. The glove box held several books about birds, with detailed pictures and descriptions. “Whoa. You are a birder. For real.”

  He steered the SUV down the drive and onto the road, then tapped the console box between them. “Equipment.”

  She sent him a funny look, then opened the box. Two pairs of binoculars sat inside, clearly well-used. “When do you do this?”

  “When I need time to think. To pray. To figure things out.”

  “Do you hate my barn cats?” she wondered out loud. “Because their primary job is to catch rodents. Rats, mice, moles and the occasional dead snake don’t bother me at all, but they do catch birds now and again. Is that a deal-breaker?”

  He laughed and shook his head. “Not if they keep the field mice and baby rats away from my house, too. And did you know you have a nest of kittens in the far barn?”

  “No.” She turned his way, eager. “Moonbeam had her babies?”

  “If Moonbeam is the orange cat with dark orange stripes—”

  “No, that’s Pumpkin. Moonbeam is lighter and has a white belly.”

  “Then Pumpkin has babies. Four of them. Three dark, one light.”

  “I love baby animals. And no matter how often I see a calf being born, I still love the experience. When all goes well, of course. Your father said he’s the same way.”

  “He is,” Zach admitted. Funny, he hadn’t thought about it in those terms, that his father treasured the miracle of birth. He’d only looked at the financial side of things, that his father worked night and day to build a bigger, better business, when the reality was maybe the older man simply loved what he was doing.

  And if that was the case, why didn’t Zach see it sooner?

  Because he was just as stubborn and doggedly determined as his father.

  “Do you have favorite birds?”

  Zach mulled her question, then nodded. “Tiny ones.”

  “Really?” His admission seemed to delight her. “You like little birds?”

  “They’re amazing.” He turned toward Clearwater and waved to an older couple out for an evening stroll along Lake Road. “They defy the odds consistently. Their size. Their strength. Their versatility. You thought I’d like raptors, didn’t you?”

  Piper couldn’t deny it. “They’re big. Strong. They soar and dive and float and show off all their prowess. Yeah, I’d have taken you for a big bird kind of guy.”

  Zach shook his head. “I’m a finch man. And nuthatches. And buntings, orioles. I’m installing feeders to draw more to your back field. That way I can see them from my patio, but it keeps the squirrels from deciding my house would make a great winter quarters.”

  “There’s some kind of cute little bird that lives in that big stand of spruce trees at the back property line,” Piper told him. “They’re brownish-gold and they sing like crazy.”

  “Cute little bird.” Zach nodded thoughtfully. “Now there’s a scientific description for you.”

  She laughed and batted his arm. “Check them out yourself, bird-man.”

  “Better yet, you and I can take a walk out there and see what we find together.” Zach posed the question at a stoplight and turned, watching for her reaction. “Look at the birds,” he quoted softly from Christ’s Sermon on the Mount. “They do not sow or reap...”

  “And yet our Heavenly Father feeds them.” She faced him more fully, nodding. “I’d like that, Zach.” She half whispered the answer, reading the question in his eyes, the tilt of his head. “I’d like to go walking with you.”

  Her words tugged his heart wider.

  He’d been given a new glimpse into Piper McKinney today. A whole new perspective on her workaholic nature. If you needed to keep a family legacy alive, with few people to help, you did what needed to be done. That was Piper.

  She didn’t want to work night and day. She just wanted to keep a piece of her historic family intact, a unit that broke irrevocably when her mother left years ago. It wasn’t so much the farm as it was the family farm. And that he understood fully.

  Zach had two loving parents for decades, and he’d still whined about his father’s choice of profession.

  Piper had only one parent for over half of her life, and lost him several years ago, but did she complain?

  No.

  She hunkered down and did what needed to be done, despite the odds against her. And looked mighty good doing it.

  “What are you thinking?” She reached a hand to his arm as they pulled into the parking lot of a long-established steak house. “You got quiet.”

  “You know what I was thinking?” He turned her way, cupped her cheek and leaned in to kiss her lips. “I was contemplating what an amazing woman you are.”

  She pulled back instantly, surprised and uncomfortable with the compliment, which only made Zach more determined to accustom her to hearing sweet things. Loving things.

  He ignored her reaction and smiled at her, holding her gaze with his eyes and her cheek in one hand. “You work hard and rarely complain.”

  Her eye roll said she might protest more than he thought, and just hadn’t done it around him.

  He smiled wider. “You’re not afraid to tackle big jobs and little jobs. You’ve taught those precious girls to be sweet, nice and respectful most of the time.”

  “With Lucia’s help. And mostly following her lead.”

  “You’re dogged, focused, smart—”

  She winced a little when he said smart, the same reaction he’d gotten earlier when he asked about writing the letter. Did she think she wasn’t smart because spelling gave her trouble?

  She was running a quarter-million-dollar farm and doubted herself because she couldn’t spell? Ridiculous.

  But the look in her eye said it might be more true than not, so he’d tackle that insecurity later. Right now, a kiss was in order. Soft. Gentle. And when he managed to leave her speechless for the second time in less than thirty minutes, Zach Harrison climbed out of the SUV, pleased with himself.

  * * *

  “Flowers.” Piper stared at the floral basket in the center of their dinner table and sighed, enchanted. “Zach, they’re gorgeous.”

  “For you.” He tipped his gaze to the basket and nudged her forward. “There’s a card.”

  His smile said he liked surprising her, and Piper discovered she enjoyed the feeling, as well. Gentle words, sweet praise, long looks from those gorgeous blue eyes...

  Her heart stuttered, then calmed as she read the card. “Thank you for our first date. I’m already hoping for many more to come.”

  She turned and looked up at him, but she did it slowly. Thoughtfully. He might think he knew a lot about her, but it was easy in the glow of attraction to brush aside deeper issues. And the McKinney family came with plenty of those. “I come with baggage, Zach.”

  He tweaked her nose and held out her chair. “Don’t we all?”

  “Mine are living, breathing people. A family full of people who depend on me. Depend on the farm’s success. And the dairy store.”

  “Why should that make a difference?” Zach wondered. He accepted menus from the waiter, gave their drink order, then switched his attention back to Piper.

  “Because most girls come with just themselves.” She leaned closer, determined to be frank. “Berto and Lucia have nothing except their investment of time in that farm. The girls will need care until they’re grown. And you’re not real big on farming, so I don’t see how an attra
ction...”

  He caught her left hand, lifted it for a kiss and smiled at her. Just her. A full, magnum-force smile that said more than words ever could.

  “Well, I can’t possibly warn you off when you look at me like that.” She sighed, dramatic, then smiled. “But you know what I mean.”

  He held her hand lightly, waited while the waiter came back with their drinks, placed an appetizer order and then met her gaze. “Wanna talk baggage?”

  Put that way, she suddenly wasn’t all that sure, but she nodded. “Yes.”

  “I sold my father’s farm out from under him.”

  Maybe because that was the last thing she expected to hear, it hurt the most. She’d read the longing in Marty’s eye, sadness bowing his shoulders. The ease with which he handled the cows, equipment and routine. Marty Harrison was obviously a man well-schooled with farm technology and animal husbandry. “Why would you do that?”

  Zach made a face, but the expression did nothing to mask the pain in his eyes. “He got sick. Very sick. It wasn’t long after my mother died in a car accident. He started losing function, physical and mental.”

  “Oh, Zach.” Piper cringed and squeezed his hand. “That had to be so hard because none of you were close by. Right?”

  “Right. He started forgetting things. Getting lost. One day he’d be fine, the next day he’d forget my name. And it kept going on like that, until we didn’t dare leave him alone at the farm. He’d fall as if he was tripping over things but there was nothing in his way. And then the medical center told us he had early-onset Alzheimer’s. That’s why it hit so fast and hard, because the early-onset variety takes hold quickly.”

  “But he’s fine.” Piper didn’t know a lot about Alzheimer’s, but she knew there was no cure. So how could Marty be doing so well now?