The Sheriff’s Christmas Surprise Read online

  He glanced at Miss Joan. “I figured you’d be more comfortable staying here.” And he would be more comfortable going about his job without having her less than five feet away.

  “Comfort isn’t my main priority,” she informed him, her voice growing more serious. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to go with you, see what you do.”

  Having a beautiful woman around was way down on his list of things he minded. But, in this case, he knew it wasn’t just to keep him company. “Don’t trust me to send out that APB?” He was sharp, she thought. He seemed a little too laid-back for her taste and she just wanted to make sure that he did everything he could to locate Tina. But she knew that admitting as much would be a tactical mistake, male egos being what they were, so she forced another smile to her lips, one that was a little sensual around the edges, and said, “No, I just like leaving myself open to new experiences.”

  The amused smile that came to his lips told her that she could have phrased that considerably better.

  She was tired, Olivia thought, and there was no denying that emotionally she’d been through the ringer these past forty-eight hours. That was the reason she wasn’t at the top of her game.

  “Nice to know,” he responded.

  She could have sworn a twinkle had entered those incredible green eyes.

  Or what could have passed for one, she amended silently. Seeing as how she’d never encountered a “twinkle” before that wasn’t captured within an old-fashioned string of Christmas lights. Like the ones her father used to string up around the house during the holidays, she remembered fondly.

  The next moment, Olivia felt a pang in the center of her chest. That she missed her parents went without saying, but she missed them the most around this time of year. Thanksgiving this year had been spent with her searching for Tina, an emptiness eating away at her as she stopped at one diner after another, encountering dead ends and pitying looks.

  She didn’t even want to think about what Christmas might be like if she didn’t find Tina.

  Decorations had started going up all over Dallas right after the pumpkins had been put away. That only prolonged her nostalgia and the sadness that inevitably overtook her. There was a very real chance that this year, she would wind up spending Christmas alone. Alone because she’d lost touch with all her friends in her drive to succeed, to give Tina a sense of stability and try to meet her every need. Alone because Tina wouldn’t be there.

  Damn it, since when did you turn into this maudlin, self-pitying creature? Your life is what you make it, so make it good, Livy, make it good.

  Besides, she wouldn’t be alone. If nothing else, Bobby would be there and Bobby needed her.

  She hugged the baby to her a little tighter.

  “Hey, aren’t you forgetting something?” Miss Joan called out after them.

  Olivia turned around, reaching into her purse with her free hand. Obviously the woman had changed her mind about being generous. Just as well.

  “I offered to pay you,” Olivia reminded the woman, crossing back to the counter.

  Miss Joan merely shook her head, a patient, tolerant expression on her face.

  “I was talking about the baby’s infant seat,” she said, pointedly holding it up. Olivia had left it on the counter after taking her nephew into her arms.

  Rick was at her side in two steps, picking up the seat.

  He nodded at Miss Joan. “Thanks.” With that, he was back at the front door in time to open it for Olivia and the baby. The latter began to rouse from his all-too-short nap.

  “I think he might be hungry,” Miss Joan speculated, raising her voice so that they would hear her as they walked out of the diner.

  Stopping again, Rick looked at Olivia. He hadn’t thought of that. For the most part, babies were beyond his realm of expertise. “She has a point. I could swing by the grocery store,” he volunteered. “Pick up some milk and a baby bottle—”

  “Or we could go to the backseat of my car,” Olivia interjected, stopping him before he could go any further. “I packed a few bottles and some formula for Bobby before I left. Tina only took one bottle with her.” A smile that was equal parts affectionate and long-suffering resignation came over her lips. “Tina doesn’t exactly plan things out.”

  But Olivia wasn’t like her sister, Rick observed. She came prepared. He found that to be an attractive quality in a woman.

  “She’s not alone,” he told her. “I see that a lot as sheriff.”

  Olivia unlocked her car. “You can put the seat in the back,” she told him.

  Seeing as how the diner was barely five feet away, he found the fact that she’d locked her vehicle before leaving it amusing. People didn’t lock their doors in Forever, much less their cars. In part that was because people trusted one another around here. In part it was because there wasn’t all that much worth taking. It all worked out in the end.

  And all that did was remind him that his job was superfluous. A halfway intelligent monkey could handle it. He needed something more challenging.

  No sooner had he deposited the seat into the back than Rick found himself on the receiving end of Olivia’s nephew, who was now fully awake and not in the best of moods.

  “Hold him for a second,” she said after the fact.

  He cradled the infant in the crook of his arm. “You asking me or telling me?”

  “Whichever works,” she answered glibly, then inclined her head in a semiapology as her tone replayed itself in her head. He undoubtedly thought she was being too bossy. God knew Tina had accused her of that often enough. “I’m sorry. I have a habit of issuing orders. Comes from taking charge so much, I guess. I didn’t mean to offend you.”

  Secure in his manhood and comfortable in his own skin, it would take a great deal more than a petite blonde in expensive high heels and a designer suit to rattle his confidence. Her apology, however, did surprise him. He would have put money on her never actually apologizing for anything she did. Maybe you couldn’t always tell a book by its cover. “No offense taken,” he answered. “I was just being curious.”

  Shifting the baby to his other arm, Rick peered over Olivia’s shoulder into her vehicle. He was about to ask if she wasn’t worried that the formula might have spoiled in the car, but he had his answer before he got to ask the question. She’d brought along a large cooler filled with ice and baby formula. He noticed that she’d also brought along several packages of disposable diapers. They were piled up on one side.

  Rick laughed to himself. Olivia Blayne struck him as the kind of person others gravitated to during a natural disaster. She obviously knew how to think on her feet and was prepared for anything.

  Except a runaway sister.

  But then, if he was being honest with himself, he still wasn’t a hundred percent convinced that her sister hadn’t opted to run off rather than have every moment of her life planned out by a well-intentioned but highly dictatorial older sister.

  Or at least that was what he would have surmised Tina’s feelings to be on the matter.

  If it wasn’t for the fact that the baby had been left on his doorstep, Rick had to admit that he would have been inclined to just let the whole matter go, even if the woman making the charge was, hands down, the most gut-tightening attractive woman he’d laid eyes on in a very long time.

  Beauty-contest-winner pretty or not, though, that still didn’t make Olivia Blayne right, he thought.

  Bottle in hand, Olivia straightened up, hit the lock on the rear door and closed it.

  “Do you have a microwave or a stove where I could warm this up?” she asked, indicating the chilled bottle in her hand.

  “We have a microwave,” he assured her. There was one in the small room where he and the others took their lunch and occasionally, when he had someone sleeping it off in their only cell, their dinner. “We got it just after we learned how to make fire by rubbing two sticks together,” he couldn’t resist adding.

  Olivia opened her mouth to respond, then s
hut it again. She would have to be more careful how she phrased things around this small-town sheriff, she chided herself. There was obviously a vein of sensitivity beneath the rock-solid pectorals.

  Taking her nephew back from his arms, she flushed slightly. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to sound as if I thought you were backward in Forever.”

  “But you do, don’t you?” he asked knowingly. There was no indication that he took offense at that, or even that he found it irritating. “Think it,” he added when she looked at him quizzically.

  “No,” Olivia denied with feeling, then, as he continued to look at her knowingly, she relented. “Well, maybe just a little. This is a small town,” she said by way of what she hoped he’d accept as an explanation.

  “Little or not, progress finds us all,” he assured her, then confided in a conspiratorial whisper, “We’ve even got one of them there newfangled com-pew-ters. Now if we could only figure out how to make it work.”

  “All right, all right,” she surrendered, “point taken. I’m sorry. I’m really not trying to be condescending. Having to track down my sister and Bobby has thrown me off track. I’m usually a lot better than this.”

  “Looking forward to seeing that,” he told her with a wide smile that somehow found its way into her belly a moment before it unfurled.

  The next moment, she quickly blocked the feeling that flowed out through her. Olivia deliberately shifted her eyes away from him and wound up looking at the single-story building that housed Forever’s police department.

  The only thing that mattered, she told herself as she followed the sheriff inside, was finding Tina and taking her home.

  She didn’t have time to think about anything else.

  At least, not now.

  Chapter Four

  Humming a bastardized version of “Here Comes Santa Claus,” Alma emerged from the back storage closet carrying a huge, somewhat worn cardboard box that looked to be almost half as big as she was. Written across the side in big, block letters, were the words Christmas decorations. With a dramatic sigh, the female deputy set the box down on the small table against the wall that functioned as the catchall for everything that didn’t have an assigned place within the office. During the holidays, it housed the pint-size Christmas tree as well as any baked goods that generous citizens—or Alma—wanted to send the sheriff’s department’s way.

  Only when she set her burden down did Alma see the sheriff and the person and a half who were with him in the office.

  Olivia felt a definite chill as the woman regarded her.

  “I see you found the baby’s mother.” The expression on the deputy’s face was far from friendly. It wasn’t hard to see what she thought of a woman who left her baby on someone’s doorstep.

  “No, this is his aunt, Olivia Blayne,” Rick told Alma. Alma’s expression softened a degree. “She’s been looking for the baby. And for her sister.”

  “Her sister, the mother?” Alma asked, still eyeing Olivia.

  “Got it on the second try,” Rick congratulated the woman drily. He glanced at the teeming box the deputy had set down. Once Alma got caught up decorating, there was no stopping her. “Look, I need you to stop decorating the office for a minute and put out an APB for me.”

  “Haven’t started decorating yet,” Alma informed him. Resigned that the decorating would have to wait, she held her hand out. “Give me the information.” Rick gave her both the paper he’d written on and the photograph of the missing duo. Alma glanced at the photograph first, then looked at the description of the car. Raising her eyes to her boss, she shook her head. “You should’ve been a doctor, Sheriff. Medical people appreciate handwriting that looks like a chicken did a war dance after stumbling over a bottle of ink.”

  Joe glanced up from the book he was studying. He’d been taking classes online, intent on eventually getting a degree in criminology. His face remained expressionless as he told her, “You can’t say that,” in his low, rumbling voice.

  They’d been together so long, they were like siblings, she, Joe and Larry, with a sibling’s penchant for squabbling.

  “Say what?” Alma asked.

  “‘War dance,’” Joe told her.

  Alma pressed her lips together, annoyed. “Why not? You say things like that all the time.”

  Joe went back to reading. “I’m a full-blood Apache, I can make any reference to Indians I want to. One of the few pleasures that your government forgot to take away from us,” he deadpanned.

  Alma’s eyes shifted toward the sheriff.

  Rick raised his hand before she could speak, waving away anything that might have risen to her lips. Friendly squabble or not, he was not about to get pulled into this.

  “Just get that APB out for me,” he told Alma. “Now.”

  She sat down at her desk and looked at the paper again. Her brow furrowed as she turned the paper upside down, pretending to try to make sense of what was on the page. But she really couldn’t decipher what Rick had written down.

  “What kind of a car are we talking about?” she finally asked.

  “It’s a red Mustang, 2004,” Olivia filled in, moving over toward the woman’s desk.

  “Red Mustang, huh? Shouldn’t be too hard to spot,” she commented. She moved the keyboard closer and began to type. “How long have they been gone?” she asked conversationally.

  “They took off several days ago. This is the closest I’ve gotten to finding them.” Despite the fact that she was swaying slightly in an attempt to soothe her nephew, Bobby was becoming more audible about his displeasure. Olivia turned toward the sheriff and held up the bottle she had in her other hand. “You said there was a microwave around here?”

  About to point her in the direction of the back room, Rick decided he might as well take her there himself. Alma, who was far better at the computer than he, was taking care of putting out the APB. So right now, nothing was on tap except some annoying paperwork that required his attention. The paperwork wasn’t going anywhere.

  “This way,” Rick said, walking in front of the woman and her fussing nephew.

  The room that did double duty as a kitchen/break area and storage facility was only slightly larger than a walk-in closet. The window on the opposite wall gave it the illusion of being larger than it was.

  Rick pointed out the microwave. It sat in the middle of a table that looked only a fraction more sturdy than a folding card table. The microwave itself had seen better days. It had come to them, a second-hand donation from Miss Joan, who had upgraded the one in her diner.

  Olivia shifted the baby to her other side, trying to prop him up on her hip. The boy was still too small for that and she didn’t want to have to juggle him while testing the milk. Putting the bottle inside the microwave, she selected a time, then pressed Start. When the oven dinged, she turned to the sheriff and held the baby out to him.

  “Hold him, please,” she requested,

  Now what? Rick eyed her uncertainly. Why was she giving him the boy? “You want me to feed him?”

  She opened the microwave and took the bottle out again. “No, I need to test the milk to make sure that it’s not too hot for Bobby.”

  Olivia shook out a few drops on her wrist. Then, because she didn’t want to just let the milk slide down her skin onto the floor, she quickly licked the drops up.

  Why he found that simple act so sensual and arousing was something Rick told himself he’d have to explore at a later time. Right now, he figured it was best not to go there.

  “What’s the verdict?” he asked.

  She smiled, setting the bottle down on the table for a moment and holding out her arms. “It’s warm, but not too hot.”

  “Like the fairy tale,” Rick commented, handing the baby back to her.

  “Fairy tale?” Olivia asked, curious. Sitting down, she tucked Bobby against her and started feeding him. The moment she placed the nipple near his lips, he started sucking greedily.

  “Goldilocks and the Three Bears,”
Rick told her, resting a hip against the table as he watched the baby eat. “You know,” he elaborated, “too hot, too cold, just right.”

  “Oh, right.” Her mind hadn’t gone in that direction for a reason, which she explained. “I didn’t take you for the type to know fairy tales.”

  Rick laughed shortly. “I didn’t just appear one day, wearing a badge and a gun belt. I was a kid once, just like you were.”

  The smile that came to her lips was sad, distant, as if she was trying to access something and wasn’t quite successful. She looked down at her nephew, taking comfort in just watching him. “I don’t remember ever being a kid. It feels like I was always an adult.”

  He read between the lines, remembering what Olivia had said to him earlier. “How long have you been at it?”

  Her eyes met his. “‘It’?”

  He nodded. “Taking care of your sister.”

  She didn’t even have to stop to think. She could have told him the figure in months if he’d wanted it that way. “Ten and a half years.”

  No wonder she didn’t remember having a childhood. She practically hadn’t. She had to have been in her teens when she’d taken on the responsibility. “That’s a long stretch.”

  She smiled at his choice of words. “You make it sound like a prison sentence.”

  He paused for a moment, his eyes on hers. The woman didn’t sound bitter about it, which he found impressive. “Is it?”

  “No,” Olivia said with feeling. “I love my sister.” She didn’t want him thinking she was being a martyr about this. Nothing could be further from the truth. “Do I wish that Tina was a little more responsible? Yes, of course I do, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love her.”

  “Didn’t say you didn’t.” Finished with his bottle, the baby’s mouth had traces of formula all over it. Rick took out his handkerchief and gently wiped away the milky substance. “But life’s a complicated thing. You can love someone and still find that there are times you don’t like them very much.”

  To be honest, he expected more denials. He was surprised to see that he’d evoked a smile from the woman instead.