The Lawman's Second Chance. Ruth Herne Logan
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with them.
So was he.
* * *
“Who’s the total stud-muffin?” Caroline Fitzgerald asked once Lisa cleared the main computer to recognize the tags on pink merchandise from matching vendors. On any of the vendors’ products sold before the end of June, her dollar-per-item pledge toward breast cancer research would be matched with one of their own. Those donations could unlock an easier way to battle the disease. Something that didn’t include radical surgery, poisonous drugs and radiation burns, treatments she’d endured firsthand.
This one’s up to You, God. Put it on the heads, hands and hearts of those researchers to find a key. Amen.
“Hmm?”
“The guy.” Her sister-in-law pointed across the sprawling sales area of their family business. “Tall, broad-shouldered, military hair and a soldier profile. With the cute kid.”
“They’re new in town.” Lisa followed Caroline’s hand motion with a quick gaze. “Alex and Emma Steele. Clearly you couldn’t see his gray eyes from here, or you’d have mentioned them because they’re heart-stoppers. Kind of calm and storm, mixed together. When he smiles, they brighten. Like when the sun peeks out on a cloudy day.”
Caroline grinned at Lisa’s elongated observation. “Really?” She drawled the word as if reading a lot into one simple statement about eye color, then paused, surprised. “Wait. That’s Lieutenant Alexander Steele?”
Lisa’s answering frown said she had no idea what Caroline was talking about.
“The State Troopers lost a bunch of people from their investigations department. They transferred in several new guys from other sectors. If you listened to Adam more...”
Caroline’s husband, Adam, was Lisa’s younger brother, a great guy and a New York State Trooper, but between work, buying a new house and helping her father on the farm, Adam had been unavailable for much of the past three months. Work was the last thing he talked about when they were together. Lisa laughed. “And if there were more hours in a day...”
“I can’t argue that,” Caroline agreed. “Anyway, Alex Steele is the new lieutenant in charge of investigations. He’s a widower,” she added, but anything else she might have wanted to say was lost in saving her small child from possible annihilation. “Rosie-O Fitzgerald, do not even think of heading toward that parking lot.”
“I’ve got her.” Lisa snatched up the mop-headed tot and held tight. “I’m going back out on the lot to field questions, so I’ll keep her with me.”
“Thank you. I thought she’d be sleeping by now.”
“She loves the limelight. Just like her daddy.”
“Even though she looks like her Aunt Lisa.”
Lisa couldn’t deny it. Same dark eyes and dark curls. And she wasn’t the only one who wondered if a similar fate awaited Rosie, if the genetic cocktail that had erupted as breast cancer in Lisa at age twenty-nine might linger already in Rosie’s tiny, perfect body.
Cancer sucked.
Lisa tucked her niece onto her hip and headed back outside.
Crowds of people teemed around the displays. Her father was caught up in a composting demonstration beside the back shed, his go-green attitude prevalent throughout the garden lot.
Lisa headed toward the fountain exhibits. Landscape gardening was her forte, a blessing in more ways than one. Between losing her breasts, her lymph nodes, her hair and a husband who decided damaged goods weren’t his cup of tea, she’d poured herself into fun landscape design.
Flowers gave her joy.
Gardens gave her repose.
Fountains offered hope of life-giving water, the image of Christ in the river, being baptized by a mere man, his cousin. Some of her favorite choir songs embraced water. Sacrifice. Rising to the challenges life set before you. She used to excel at the “faith-in-all-things” mentality. Lately?
Not so much.
Right now a neighborly challenge aimed her way. Chin down, eyes sharp, Eddie Jo Shupert wore determination like a mantle of clothing. The aged woman seemed certain that crises could be averted and illness made well by drinking her power shakes, three times a day.
Lisa reasoned that if the chalky-tasting shakes were God’s answer to everything that ailed mankind, someone besides her neighbor might have figured it out by now. But since they were on a straight path for one another, Lisa had little choice but to paste a smile on her face and hope for a reprieve.
“Lisa! I’ve been hoping to talk to you! Have I got a great new line to show you, the kind of thing...” Eddie Jo lowered her voice as if sharing a compelling secret, for no ears but Lisa’s. “That prevents things from coming back. Ever.”
If only such a product existed. It didn’t, but not for lack of scientific trying, and Lisa had no time to elevate this overture into a full-fledged conversation. Not on such a huge sales weekend with a wriggly child in her arms.
“Eddie Jo, you know I can’t risk taking anything that might compromise the good effects of the medicines I’m taking. And I wish I could talk more now...” God would forgive her half truth, hopefully “...but we’re swamped as you can see and I—”
“Lisa?”
A small voice called from across a clever display of pink-and-fuchsia perennials. She turned in time to see Alex Steele place a cautionary hand on Emma’s shoulder, but Lisa didn’t want him to shush the girl. Right now, whatever question Emma had was preferable to Eddie Jo’s spiel. “Gotta go.” Lisa gave Eddie Jo a quick smile and a wave. “Customers waiting.”
She didn’t turn to see if Eddie Jo looked exasperated. Eddie Jo was known to sputter, so it wouldn’t be a news flash in any case. And Lisa held herself back from hugging Emma because that reaction would be over-the-top, but she realized Alex possessed perception beyond the norm when he quietly observed, “You owe me.” His gaze flicked toward Eddie Jo before coming back to rest on Lisa. “I met Ms. Shupert in church last Sunday and was treated to an informative discussion on how using her products would not only improve my children’s grades and hair texture, but establish good colon health for me.”
“Good colon health being of great importance at church.” Lisa met his naughty and knowing smile with one of her own.
“Right up there with teeth whitening and forgiveness,” he agreed, his voice easy. The way he handled their banter, with quiet humor and intelligence, made Lisa realize Alex Steele was a breed apart.
She liked the tenor of his voice. The solid but gentle feel, very Roosevelt, the whole iron-fist-in-a-velvet-glove thing. He sounded strong but looked approachable, and that made for a wonderful combination. “You guys needed me?”
“It’s about these.” Emma pointed to the perennial area. “If this kind of flower comes back every year, why don’t people just grow them? Why waste money on those?” She pointed to the greenhouses and tables loaded with bright-toned annuals.
“That’s a great question,” Lisa told her. She readjusted Rosie, plucked a coral-to-pink Echinacea blossom and handed it to Emma. “This is a coneflower bloom. And it’s gorgeous, it self-multiplies, and comes back every year, but it doesn’t start to flower until mid-July.”
“Then what do I do in June?” asked the girl reasonably.
“That’s where the annuals come in,” Lisa explained. She indicated the perennials with a quick thrust of her chin. “I’ve forced these indoors so people can get a visual of what their gardens will look like later in the summer, but you have to pick carefully to have a colorful garden from April through October. So most folks use annuals to add color because our gardening season is short.”
“I didn’t know how much flowers cost,” Emma admitted. Her voice went softer. “Dad, if this