CHRISTMAS FOR THE DEPUTY

by Helm, Nicole

  “Shouldn’t you be wearing your sling?”

  “I hate that thing. And everyone looks at it and wonders what happened and I’m tired of telling the story. If I keep my sleeve over the cast I can minimize most of the curiosity.”

  “How did you end up alone and needing a ride back to the farm?” he asked, going for casual and failing. Miserably.

  Pen only smiled that knowing smile at him and then answered honestly. “Sadie was sneaky. She said she was going to watch the girls while I did some Christmas shopping. Then she took them home instead. She said she wanted to give me a break. Which is the last thing I thought I needed, but it was nice.”

  “Well, I’m glad.”

  “But not glad about having to take me home.”

  “I’m going there anyway,” he replied doing his best to keep his shoulders relaxed and his expression mild.

  She shook her head and chuckled. “You know, it’s funny. Becoming an adult away from home then coming back. You and Colt aren’t what I thought you were.”

  “Don’t you mean who?”

  “No. You’re both extraordinarily good men with good hearts. That’ll always be true and I’ve always known it. Who you are won’t change. But what you are? I thought Colt was Mr. Have-A-Good-Time without a care in the world. And I thought you were just naturally quiet and stoic.”

  “I am naturally quiet and stoic.”

  She laughed and Ethan tried not to notice a few heads turning to watch them with speculative eyes. That kind of rumor was the last thing he needed.

  “You’re a storm, Ethan.”

  He stared down at her, stopping in his tracks, which led a few people walking behind him to grumble.

  Again, Pen just laughed then led them up to the booth that was selling hot chocolate and a variety of German Christmas treats. Pen got him a hot chocolate and a cookie and when she handed them to him, he could only stare for a second before he gathered his wits.

  Pen gave him a speculative look as he finally took the outstretched offerings. He cleared his throat and moved out of the line. “Your mom did this with me once.”

  “We always came.”

  “No, just me. Before she moved me in. I’d stolen some beer from the saloon’s booth and she was on duty and caught me.”

  “No matter how hard I try I can’t picture you as a little bad boy. Colt’s easy to believe. You? I just can’t.”

  “I didn’t particularly want to be bad. I wanted to escape. And instead of arresting me or even lecturing me, she had me return the beer. Then she brought me to a booth and bought me a hot chocolate and a cookie.”

  Pen smiled up at him as they walked down the line of booths. “That’s a nice memory.”

  “All of mine with her are.”

  Pen laughed sadly. “Well, you’re lucky. Too often I remember butting heads with her. Arguing and yelling and being a little brat.”

  “That doesn’t sound like Addie at all,” Ethan replied with a grin.

  “I wasn’t that bad.”

  “Oh, but you were.”

  She gave him a teasing slap across the arm holding the cookie. He ate half then offered her the other knowing her affinity for sweets. She took it without hesitation.

  “It’s the age, I think, having watched all you girls go through it,” Ethan offered. “And now Addie. You lash out against the ones you love because you have all that teenage angst, and the people you love won’t toss you out.”

  “Addie’s only twelve.”

  “She’s had a tough twelve.”

  “Yeah, she has.”

  They walked back to the now lit Christmas tree. He didn’t have too much longer before his shift was over and he found himself wishing for more time like this. Being able to walk and talk with each other without complication. Because here his uniform and badge stood in the way. It was that barrier he needed between them.

  Once they went back to the farm it would be all confused again. Difficult. For him. She seemed so…serene all of a sudden he had to wonder if she’d found some magic answer to everything.

  “I guess Sadie knew what she was doing. You seem happier.”

  “I’m getting there.” She smiled at the tree and took a deep breath. “I had to let go of some things. Like thinking I could ever make life easy. I kept thinking the right sequence of moves would make things uncomplicated. Permanently nice. But that’s silly. I don’t think there’s been an easy thing in my life since I gave birth to Addie. Motherhood isn’t easy, even when it’s amazing.”

  “I don’t know how you do it.”

  “You’re great with them. It can’t be that much of a mystery.”

  “Sure, but they aren’t my responsibility. I don’t have to be the center of their world. I can stay on the periphery where it’s…”

  “Easy?” She studied him, but it felt like a trick question.

  But it was exactly the truth. If you kept a certain distance between yourself and everyone else things were easier. He’d had a lot of hard in his life. He deserved easy.

  So did she, for that matter, but kids complicated that.

  More importantly though, easy kept everyone safe. You put up enough walls the bad parts of him couldn’t climb them and hurt the people he loved.

  “As much as I wish for easy, it isn’t… The best things in life aren’t. They can be simple, but they’re never easy. Because caring about someone that way isn’t ever easy, but what’s as fulfilling as my daughter looking up to me?”

  She stood there in the glow of the tree lights, bags hooked on one arm, her cast hidden under the sleeve of her other arm. She reminded him more of the girl he’d known. She’d always been…well, Pen. Organized and on top of everything and with a certain weight on her shoulders she herself placed there. But there’d been a raggedness to that since Henry died.

  She was letting that go, little by little.

  And what are you doing?

  A good question. One he didn’t particularly want to answer when she turned and smiled at him.

  He could not give in to this thing between them. He had good reasons. The kind of reasons that would keep her and her girls safe. They shouldn’t dim in the face of that smile, they should intensify.

  “I have to radio out.”

  Pen nodded. Because she understood his job in a way a lot of people didn’t. Even Fritz got a little grumpy about certain parts of it, and Ethan didn’t know if it stemmed from being reminded of Susannah, or having so much time pass since Susannah was a police officer that he’d simply forgotten what the job required of a person.

  But Pen had lived with a police officer for most of her life. She knew.

  Which didn’t matter. Not to him. He radioed out, then turned back to her. She was watching him with that careful consideration he knew better than to ask about.

  “I’m parked over at the PD,” he said pointing in that direction. She fell into step behind him, a heavy quiet enveloping them. She seemed fine with it, but it was making him…edgy.

  “I usually change at my apartment, but the girls really don’t seem to mind.”

  “They didn’t see Henry much in his uniform. He didn’t have a take-home car. And the Texas Ranger dress code is different than a uniform. Simplistic, but I think it helps. I also think they’re young enough they don’t quite equate the career to the…end.”

  “It doesn’t bother you?”

  She shook her head. “I think the fact that Mom died of cancer, and Henry died in the line of duty… I don’t know. Death happens, no matter what you wear or who you are. It doesn’t mean I don’t worry. It just means the uniform doesn’t symbolize what happened to Henry for me. I’ve loved too many cops for that to happen.”

  Loved. That word was really starting to get annoying. Pen said it to the girls all the time. So did Fritz. Sadie and Colt were forever saying goodbye for the ten seconds they’d be apart with kisses and I love yous.

  Love was too complicated to talk about, even if you felt it. Because of course he lov
ed his brothers, and Fritz. He loved those girls because they were…they were…lovable. He loved the Martin girls—women—because even though they didn’t feel like sisters the way his biological one had, they were still family.

  But he didn’t need to say it. Examine it.

  Ethan had said I love you to one person in his entire life, and he didn’t plan on that changing anytime soon. Susannah had died and it had seemed a good enough time to let that saying die with her.

  Why his brain was taking that particular detour was so far beyond him he didn’t even know how to rationalize it to himself.

  They got into his car and drove home. They chatted about shopping she still needed to do and when Mack and Bracken were going to come home, and they settled into easy periods of silence as well.

  When he pulled up in front of the Martin house, lit up to the nines in red, green and white, he felt for sure there was something he should say, but no words came.

  They both got out of the car. Pen grabbed her bags and began to head inside. Before she reached the porch she turned around, looking up at the bright half-moon shining above them. She stood there for a moment, bathed in moonlight, and all he could do was stare.

  This had to stop. Time alone with Pen. There was no reason for it. All it did was make him ache for something he couldn’t allow himself. So, it had to stop.

  But when she stepped forward to him, he didn’t back away. He didn’t tell her to stop. He stood there as she stood on her tiptoes and wrapped an arm around him and gave a friendly squeeze.

  “Thanks for the drive home. I know you didn’t want to, but I really needed tonight in a way I didn’t realize.” She reached out and he tensed, but he was a police officer trained to defuse dangerous situations.

  Or, in the case of anything to do with Pen, he stood perfectly still and hoped it would go away.

  She let her hand slide down his arm as she went back to flat-footed, but she stood exactly there. Too close. Too…

  “Aren’t you going to run away?” she asked in a quiet voice, humor making the ends of her mouth curve.

  He should. He should run in the opposite direction. His limbs weren’t listening. They tightened around her of their own accord—it had to be that they were in charge here because he absolutely knew he shouldn’t.

  He never took what he couldn’t or shouldn’t have. Not anymore. He’d made promises to himself. Over and over again.

  But all those words jumbled in his head. Things that had always been warnings and rebuttals started to sound like encouragement. When she did nothing but stand there, too close and far too beautiful, it seemed the only thing to do.

  Break every promise he’d ever made to himself about her. Every other possibility disappeared so that there was only this and her.

  His mouth touching hers, his arm wrapping around her waist and pulling her close. Every part of him that he kept locked down and away springing to life.

  He’d initiated it—he knew he had. But why or how or what on earth had possessed him was beyond him. And didn’t seem to matter with his lips on hers.

  It wasn’t what he’d imagined or dreamed it would be on those rare times his subconscious got the better of him. Because he’d never felt anything like this, not even in a dream. There was no way to explain it. Something inside of him that grew—something outside of him that brightened every dark thought he’d ever had.

  Whatever he’d thought a kiss could be wasn’t this. She tasted like sugar and was warm against a cold Texas winter night. And she kissed him back, like they’d been made to do only this. Forever.

  She lifted her arm, as if to pull him closer, but the bag she had hanging off of it banged into them and she startled away. She blinked up at him as if waking up from a dream.

  Could they pretend it had been?

  “We shouldn’t have…” He couldn’t finish the sentence. Shouldn’t have? He couldn’t survive this and yet shouldn’t have felt all wrong.

  But her expression made something like fear bolt through him. Because she looked pale. Shaken. Not in a good way.

  “I think you’re right,” she finally said. “We shouldn’t have.”

  Which made no sense. At all. She was the one pursuing this. She was the one…

  “Wait.” He nearly held on to her as she moved away. Even though he wanted her away. But since when did she want away? “What?”

  “I have to go,” she said, already turning around and striding purposefully for the door.

  “What?”

  But she didn’t answer. She disappeared inside. And he…

  What?

  Chapter Ten

  “There you are,” Sadie greeted cheerfully. She was the only one in the kitchen, thank God. “The girls and Dad—”

  “I’m just going to go hide this stuff,” Pen managed to choke out as she hurried up the stairs. She got to her room and shut the door and then simply sank onto the floor and sobbed.

  The well of emotion was so broad and deep she didn’t have a word for it. Part grief, part surprise, and a big, huge part of it fear.

  She’d thought she knew what she was doing when it came to Ethan, but that kiss… It was bigger than anything she’d imagined or even expected. Too big. Too much.

  She’d loved her husband with everything she was, and she never thought she could feel that again. She’d been happy to believe moving on would mean feeling something for someone, even love, but nothing so big and all-encompassing. Because how could you feel it twice in one lifetime with two different people?

  But that kiss had been something closer to magic than she’d realized existed. It had made her forget everything. It had filled her up with so many emotions, she’d had to run away.

  The knock that eventually came wasn’t exactly unexpected. “Pen?” Sadie said quietly.

  Pen tried to wipe at her face, but it was pointless. Sadie wouldn’t understand this. Heck, Pen wasn’t even sure she understood it.

  But Sadie would listen, and maybe Pen didn’t need her to understand. Maybe she just needed to unburden herself.

  Pen opened the door from her position on the floor. When Sadie stepped in she immediately sank to her knees in front of Pen.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m okay. Nothing is wrong.” Not wrong exactly anyway. Just confusing.

  At Sadie’s disapproving look, Pen managed a smile. “Really. I don’t know how to explain… I…” Too many words and emotions jangled inside of her, so she went with the simplest explanation even though it wouldn’t make sense. “Ethan kissed me.”

  Sadie closed the door and moved from her knees in front of Sadie to a seat next to Pen on the floor. “I thought that’s what you wanted,” Sadie said gently.

  “I did. I do.” It wasn’t that she wanted to take it back. Well, part of her did. The scared part. But it was more than that.

  “So? Was he a jerk? I’ll knock his teeth out.” Sadie waved her fist, then seemed to consider the size of it. “Or have Colt do it. He might if Ethan was a jerk to you.”

  “No.” Pen laughed. “No. It was a great kiss. It was… I hadn’t thought it through. I hadn’t… I haven’t kissed anyone since Henry died. I didn’t think that would matter, but…”

  “Oh.”

  Pen wanted to laugh because that oh wasn’t an I understand. It was an I don’t know what to say to that. But Sadie was sitting here. Sadie who tended to avoid emotional confrontation was sitting next to her letting her cry and be confusing. Offering comfort.

  Sadie had changed this past year. Matured maybe, or just allowed herself to open up more fully. In part because she’d fallen in love with Colt, and love was big enough to change a person. Make them better or worse.

  “I’m not sad or mad or hurt,” Pen replied, trying to work through it enough to find words for what she felt. Not all that different than therapy. “I’m overwhelmed. I never expected to feel that way again, even with Ethan. I thought I’d moved on from losing Henry. I mean, I still think I did. It’s
not that I’m still… I’ll always love Henry. But he isn’t here. So, I said my goodbyes and thought I was ready to move on. It’s been three years.”

  “You lost him so young. I’m sure that’s harder.”

  “Maybe. It’s more I thought I’d said all my goodbyes to Henry. We buried him, moved out of that house. What was left? But kissing another man was one thing I didn’t expect to be a goodbye to him. I’d only ever kissed Henry before.”

  “That’s not true. You kissed Ben Hutchins to make Henry jealous that one time.”

  It got a good laugh out of Pen, as she’d forgotten that. “I was sixteen.”

  “Yeah, but it counts.”

  “Okay, fine. Still. I didn’t expect it to be so…” She struggled to find the words. Any words. She’d had this idea of what moving on would feel like. Cathartic. Good. Exciting.

  But this wasn’t any of those things. Well, it was a little exciting, but fear had been bigger. The unexpected potency, breadth and effect of Ethan’s kiss was so much bigger than she’d fully allowed herself to believe was possible.

  “Ethan’s always been safe. That kiss wasn’t safe. That kiss was…” Too big. Too right. A kiss that would change everything when she’d only wanted a little change. Only wanted to feel like a woman instead of a harried mother just trying to get through the day.

  She cared about Ethan, she was attracted to Ethan, but that kiss was bigger than those words. It was soul-altering.

  “Well, that I understand.” Sadie smiled a little dreamily and Pen had no doubt she was remembering her first kiss with Colt. Sadie and Colt had had their share of complications, but Sadie didn’t have kids or a dead husband.

  “I just thought it’d be nice. To move on. I thought I wanted to feel that again. I do want to feel that again. But…but it’s a hell of a lot more complicated a feeling than I thought it’d be.”

  “Nice.” Sadie chuckled a little. “Pen. I know you’ve done it once before, but there is nothing nice about falling in love.”

  “There was with Henry!”

  “Oh, please. You two broke up like every other week in high school. It was constant drama.”