The Sheriff of Shelter Valley Read online

“I take it Bob, Sr. and Clara aren’t home?” he asked.

  He had the most intense dark green eyes.

  Still holding the door, Beth told him, “They went to Phoenix to have lunch and see a movie.” She frowned. “Is something wrong?” Bob, Sr. had lost both his parents during the past few months. Surely they’d had their share of bad news for a while.

  Greg shook his head, but Beth had a feeling that it was the “I’m not at liberty to say” kind of gesture rather than the “no” she’d been seeking.

  “I just need to ask them a couple of questions,” he added, “but it sounds like they’ll be gone most of the afternoon.” His gaze was warm, personal.

  “I got that impression.”

  Hands in his pockets, Greg didn’t leave. “I’ll catch them later tonight, then. If you don’t mind, please don’t mention that I’ve been by.”

  “Of course not.” Beth never—ever—put her nose in other people’s business. She didn’t know if this was a newly acquired trait or one she’d brought with her into this prison of oblivion. “I won’t be seeing or talking to them, anyway. I just leave their key under the mat when I’m through here.”

  “So what time would that be?”

  Beth glanced at her watch—not that it was going to tell her what jobs she had left or how long they would take. “Within the hour.” She was due to pick Ryan up from the Willises at five.

  Ryan couldn’t be enrolled in the day care in town. Not only was Beth living a lie, without even a social security number, but she couldn’t take a chance on signing any official papers that might allow someone to trace her.

  Especially when she had no idea who that someone might be.

  So she left the toddler with two elderly sisters, Ethel and Myra Willis, who adored him. And she only accepted cash from her clients.

  “How does an early dinner sound?”

  That inexplicable headiness hadn’t left her since she’d answered the door. “With you?” she asked, stalling, putting off the moment when she had to refuse.

  He nodded, the movement subtly incorporating his entire body. It was one of the things that kept Greg on her mind long after she’d run into him someplace or other—the way he put all of himself into everything he did. You had to be sincere to be able to do that consistently.

  “I have to feed Ryan,” she said, only because it was more palatable than an outright no. It still meant no.

  Pulling a hand from his pocket, he turned it palm upward. “The diner serves kids.”

  Beth’s eyes were automatically drawn to that hand and beyond, to the pocket it had left. And from there to the heavy-looking gun in a black leather holster at his hip.

  “Ry’s not good in restaurants.” Her mouth dry, Beth knew she had to stop. Too much was at stake.

  Yet she liked to think she was starting a new life. And if she was, she wanted this man in it.

  If he weren’t a cop. And if she weren’t afraid she was on the run from something pretty damn horrible. If she were certain she could trust him, no matter who she might turn out to be, no matter what she might have done.

  “He’s two,” Greg said. “He’ll learn.”

  “I have no doubt he will, but I’d rather get him over the food-throwing stage in private.”

  Greg stared down at his feet, shod, as usual, in freshly shined black wing tips. “In all the months I’ve known you, I’ve never done one thing to give you reason to doubt me, but you always brush me off,” he said eventually.

  “No, I…” Beth stopped. “Okay, yes, I am.”

  “Is it my breath?”

  “No!” She chuckled, relaxing for just a second. With the truth out in the open, the immediate danger was gone.

  “My hair? You don’t like black hair?” He was grinning at her, and somehow that little bit of humor was more devastating than his earlier intensity.

  “I like black just fine. Tom Cruise has black hair.”

  “Dark brown. Tom Cruise has dark brown hair. And he’s the reason you’ve come up with an excuse every single time I’ve asked you out?”

  “No.”

  “It’s the curls, then? You don’t like men with curls?”

  “I love your curls.” Oh God. She hadn’t meant to say that. Her throat started to close up again. She couldn’t do this.

  And she couldn’t not do this. Beth’s emotional well had been bone-dry for so long she sometimes feared it was beginning to crumble into nothingness. She had no one else sharing her life—her fears and worries and pains; worse, she didn’t really even have herself. She was living with a stranger in her own mind.

  “Ryan has curls,” she finished lamely.

  Greg’s expression grew serious. “Is it the cop thing? I know a lot of women don’t want to be involved with cops. Understandably so.”

  His guess was dead right, but not in the way he meant. “I’m not one of them,” she said, compelled to be honest with him. About this, at least. “I’d consider myself lucky to be involved with a man who’d dedicated his life to helping others. A man who put the safety of others before his own. One who still had enough faith in society to believe it’s worth saving.”

  “Even though you’d know, every morning when you kissed him goodbye as he left for work, that you might never see him again?”

  “Every woman—and man—faces that danger,” she said. “I’ll bet that far more people die in car accidents than on the job working as a cop.”

  “Far more,” he agreed.

  “And, anyway,” she said, feeling a sudden urge to close the door, “who said anything about kissing every morning?”

  “I was hoping I’d been able to slide that one by you,” he said.

  “Nope.”

  “So—” his gaze became challenging “—if it’s not the cop thing and it’s not my breath, it must be you that you’re afraid of.”

  “I am not afraid.”

  He sobered. “If you need more time, Beth, I certainly understand. We could grab a sandwich as friends, maybe see a movie or something.”

  More time? She frowned.

  “It’s been—what?—less than a year since you were widowed?” he asked, his face softening.

  Widowed. Oh yeah, that. It was the story she’d invented when she’d come to town. She was a recent widow attempting to start a new life. You’d think she could at least manage to keep track of the life she’d made up to replace the one she couldn’t remember.

  “Look,” she said, really needing to get back to work. Ry was going to be looking for her soon. Routine was of vital importance to her little boy. “If you were serious about the friend thing, I could use some help.”

  She was testing him. And felt bad about that. But not bad enough to stop herself, apparently.

  “Sure.”

  “I just bought a used apartment-size washer and dryer.” Taking a two-year-old’s two and three changes a day to the Laundromat had been about to kill her—financially and physically. “I need someone with a truck to go with me to pick it up and then help me get it into the duplex.”

  He’d know where she lived, then. But who was she kidding? He was the county sheriff—a powerful man. And Shelter Valley was a small town. He’d probably known where she lived for months.

  “I have a truck.”

  “I know.”

  She’d passed him in town a couple of times, feeling small and insignificant in the old, primer-spattered Ford Granada she’d bought for five-hundred dollars next to his beautiful brand-new blue Ford F-150 Supercab.

  “If I offer to help are you going to brush me off again?”

  “No.”

  “You aren’t just setting me up here?” He was smiling.

  “No!” Beth said indignantly, but she was smiling, too.

  “I’m tempted to force you to ask, just to win back a little bit of the pride you’ve been quietly stripping away for months. But because I’m afraid to chance it, I’ll ask you, instead. May I please help you bring your new appliances home?”


  Beth laughed out loud…and was shocked by the sound. She couldn’t remember having heard it before. Couldn’t remember anything before waking up in that motel room in Snowflake, Arizona, with bruises and a child who called her Mama crying on the bed beside her.

  “If you’re sure you wouldn’t mind, I could sure use the help,” she said, all laughter gone. She had no business even thinking about flirting with the county sheriff, but she and Ryan needed those appliances. And she couldn’t get them to the duplex alone.

  “What time?”

  “Tonight? After dinner?”

  “Sure we couldn’t do it before dinner and just happen to eat while we’re at it?”

  “I’m sure.”

  Beth hated the conflicting emotions she felt when he gave in with no further cajoling and agreed to pick her up at six-thirty that evening for the ten-minute drive out to the Andersons’. They were remodeling the one-room apartment over their garage and no longer needed the appliances, which, while five years old, had hardly been used.

  Conflicting emotions—one of the few experiences Beth knew intimately. Intermittent relief. Disappointment. Resignation. Fear.

  Peace. That was, and had to be, her only goal. Peace for her. And health, safety and happiness for Ryan.

  Nothing else mattered.

  CHAPTER TWO

  HE’D SEEN HER DOWNTOWN, coming out of Weber’s Department Store, at the grocery store, the gas station, and in the park just beyond Samuel Montford’s statue. Seen her at Little Spirits once or twice when he’d stopped in to visit Bonnie or spring Katie. According to his sister, Beth Allen never left her son at the day care, but she volunteered once a week so he could have some playtime with the other kids.

  He’d seen her at the drugstore once, and at Shelter Valley’s annual Fourth of July celebration.

  But he’d never seen her at home.

  The duplex was not far from Zack and Randi Foster’s place. But it didn’t resemble that couple’s home with its garden and white-picket fence. Her place was very small. One bedroom—the door was shut—a full bath squished into a half-bath space, a living room with a kitchen on the other end. And a closet that would fit either coats or the stackable laundry unit Beth had purchased. But not both.

  The closet had washer-dryer hook-ups, and a clothes bar and single door, both of which had to be removed to fit the washer and dryer. The door he could rehang. The clothes bar’s removal would be permanent for as long as the closet remained a laundry room.

  The entire house was meticulous.

  “Where’d you say you lived before coming to Shelter Valley?” Greg asked as, pliers in hand, he attached a dryer vent to the opening on the back of the appliance.

  “I didn’t say.”

  “That?” Beth’s two-year-old son was standing beside Greg’s toolbox.

  “It’s a hammer,” Beth said.

  “That?”

  “A level.”

  “That?”

  “A screwdriver.”

  Glancing between the top rack of the toolbox and the little boy, Greg frowned. “How do you know which tool he’s referring to?”

  Ryan hadn’t pointed at anything. His index finger had been in his mouth ever since Greg had collected Beth and her son more than an hour before.

  She shrugged, hoisting Ryan onto her hip. “I could see where he was looking,” she said.

  “You don’t have to hold him.” Greg returned to the metal ring he was tightening on the outside of the vent. “He’s welcome to help.”

  She held the boy, anyway, as defensive about her son as she was about herself.

  Greg still liked her.

  “Here, Ryan,” he said, standing to give the little boy his wrench. “Can you hang on to this and give it to me when I ask for it?”

  After a very long, silent stare, the toddler finally nodded and took the tool. He needed both hands to handle the weight of it, meaning that finger finally came out of his mouth—but he didn’t seem to mind the sacrifice.

  “You changed.”

  Beth’s words threw him. “Changed?” he asked. “How?”

  “Out of your uniform.”

  “I’m off duty.”

  “I’ve never seen you out of uniform.”

  He hadn’t thought about that, but supposed she was right. He’d been on duty the Fourth of July. And just coming off duty each time he’d stopped in at Little Spirits. She hadn’t been there the afternoon he’d spent building the sandbox on the patio of the day care.

  “You look different.”

  Giving the dryer vent a tug, satisfied that it was securely in place, Greg moved down to the washer. “Good different?” he asked. The jeans were his favorite, washed so many times they were faded and malleable, just the way he liked them.

  “Less…official.”

  He screwed the washer tubing to the cold-water spigot. “So, you going to tell me where you’re from?”

  “You going to tell me why you’re so nosy?”

  “I’m a cop. It’s my job to be nosy.”

  “I thought you were off duty.”

  “Touché.” Leaning around the edge of the washer, he grinned at her.

  Beth wasn’t grinning back. Her expression showed both anger and hurt. And defensiveness—again. She hugged Ryan closer, almost knocking the wrench out of the little guy’s hands, but the boy didn’t complain. He just held on tighter.

  Ryan Allen was one of the quietest toddlers Greg had ever met.

  “You think I’m some kind of threat to the people of Shelter Valley?” she asked.

  “Of course not!” Greg would’ve laughed out loud if he wasn’t so surprised by the tension that had suddenly entered the room. “I’m interested, okay?” he said, eager to clarify himself before the evening dived into dismal failure. “As a guy, not as a cop.”

  “Interested.” Her hold on the boy loosened, but not much.

  “Yeah, you know, interested.” He went back to the job at hand, thinking it was probably his safest move. “Men do that,” he grunted. He could tell the water spigots hadn’t been used in a while. If ever. He was having one helluva time persuading the faucet to turn. “They get interested in women who attract them.”

  “I attract you?”

  An entirely different note had entered her voice. Though the sound of battle hadn’t left, he was no longer sure he was the target.

  “I haven’t made that perfectly obvious by now?”

  The room had gone too still. Greg glanced around the washer once more, half thinking he might find he was alone, and his gaze locked with Beth’s.

  “I need to be more obvious?” he asked. He’d never worked so hard for a woman in his life. Not that he’d had that many. His life had taken unexpected turns, been filled with unexpected responsibilities, but when he’d wanted a woman, he hadn’t had to work at it.

  “No,” she said, looking down. From his silent vantage point, Ryan stared up at her, as though following the conversation with interest. “I, um…guess—” her eyes returned to his “—you have to be looking to see the obvious, don’t you?”

  “You’re trying to tell me you aren’t looking. Period.” He couldn’t deny his disappointment.

  “No. Yes.” She set her son down. “I’m saying maybe I didn’t notice your, um, interest because I wasn’t looking.”

  The woman challenged him at every turn—something he particularly liked about her—and yet she’d never, until that moment, been difficult to follow. Just difficult to get any information from.

  Of course, she’d been hurt, was wary. Probably loath to risk letting anyone get close again. Greg could understand that. It had taken him a long time to open up after Shelby left.

  “And now that I’ve pointed it out to you?”

  “I know.”

  “And?”

  “I don’t know.” As Ryan toddled toward Greg to see what he was doing, Beth leaned over the washer. “How’s it going back there?”

  Greg twisted the faucet again and it gave
immediately. Probably because exasperation had added strength to his grip. “Good,” he told her. “Another five minutes and you can throw in your first load.”

  “Can I have the wrench, Ryan?” he asked, surprised when he turned his head to see the little guy so close to him, staring him right in the eye. Without blinking, the boy handed over the wrench.

  “He’s a man of few words,” Greg said to Beth.

  “We’re working on that.”

  With his only living relative in the day care business, Greg knew a lot about kids. “He’ll talk when he’s ready.”

  “I hope so.”

  Greg made one more adjustment. “Here you go, little bud,” he said, handing the wrench back to Beth’s son. “You want to drop that in the toolbox for me?”

  Ryan put the tool down on top of the hammer.

  “I’ll bet he has more to say when it’s just the two of you,” he said as he slid the appliances in place against the wall.

  “Not really.”

  She sounded worried. Greg figured it had to be hard for her, a single mother—all alone in the world, as far as he could tell. She had no one to share the worries and heartaches with, to calm the fears, to share the mammoth responsibility of child-rearing.

  More than ever, he wanted to change that.

  If she’d let him.

  “Did you get to the Mathers’?” she asked as he packed up his toolbox.

  Greg nodded. It had been just as difficult as he’d expected.

  “Bad news?”

  “A sheriff rarely gets to deliver good news.”

  “Clara told me they lost a daughter.”

  Resting a foot on his toolbox, Greg leaned his forearm on his leg. “It’s been almost twenty years,” he told her, nowhere near ready to leave. Ryan was sitting on the floor a few feet away, a toy on his lap, pulled from a neat stack of colorful objects in the bottom drawer of the end table. The boy was obviously occupied, but Greg lowered his voice, anyway. “She and some friends were in a boat on Canyon Lake. They hit a rock. She was thrown and ended up underneath the boat.”

  Beth’s eyes clouded. “They have pictures of a boy in their bedroom. I’m assuming they have a son, too?”

  Greg nodded.

  “Is he still around?”