Falling for the Sheriff. Tanya Michaels
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in the area. Indefinitely.” She forced a smile and tried to sound reassuring. “But I plan to stay out of public until I learn how to properly carry sodas, and Luke may be grounded for the rest of the summer. So you don’t have to worry about us menacing the populace, I promise.”
The size of Cupid’s Bow might make it difficult to avoid someone, but she was willing to try. Between the terrible impression her son had made and Kate’s aversion to being around cops since Damon’s death, she rather desperately hoped never to see Sheriff Trent again.
After Luke and his unwitting accomplice apologized to the gruff but fair Mr. Jacobs, Kate and her son resumed their journey. He had the good sense not to resume his complaining.
It wasn’t until they were jostling along the private dirt road that led up to Gram’s house that Luke spoke again. “Are you going to tell her about the gas station? And the sheriff?”
She sighed. “Well, it wasn’t going to be my opening. I thought we’d say hi first and thank her profusely for taking us under her roof before we hit her with news of your exciting new criminal activities.”
“I apologized,” Luke grumbled. “I even paid the guy, although no one ended up with the candy bar.”
“‘The guy’ is Mr. Jacobs, and you’re going to treat him with respect when you see him next weekend.” It turned out that the inked man with the gravelly voice visited the pediatric ward of the hospital once a month and gave a magic show. Luke’s penance was that he would sacrifice a Saturday morning to work as the man’s assistant. “And paying for what you took after the fact doesn’t justify what you did. You know better than to steal! Your own father was a policeman, who—”
“My father is gone,” he said flatly.
She parked the car, and turned to look at her son. “I miss him, too. And I get angry—at him, at the man who shot him, at the unfairness of life. But lashing out and doing dumb things won’t bring your dad back. It only drives a wedge between you and me. I’m still here for you, kiddo. Try to remember that?”
Without responding, he climbed out of the car.
She blinked against the sting of tears, preferring to meet her grandmother with a smile. Joan Denby had lost her husband even more recently than Kate. The two women were supposed to bolster each other, not drag each other further down.
Either Gram had been watching for them, or Patch, the eight-year-old German shepherd, had barked notice of their arrival. Kate had barely removed her seatbelt before Gram hurried out onto the wraparound porch to greet them. In a pair of purple capris and a polo shirt striped with hot pink, Joan Denby was a splash of vivid color against the white wood railing. She looked much the same as she had all those summers when Kate visited as a girl, except that the cloud of once-dark hair framing Gram’s face was silver and her lively hazel eyes now peered at the world through a pair of bifocals. Still, few would guess that she was the great-grandmother of a teenager.
“Luke! Katie!” The exuberant welcome in her voice carried on the breeze, and the knot in Kate’s stomach unraveled.
Home. Whatever happened during the next few weeks of transition, Kate was suddenly 100 percent certain this was where she was supposed to be. Her vision blurred again, but this time with happy tears. She jumped out of the car, not even bothering to shut the door before rushing to hug her grandmother.
“I’ve missed you,” she whispered fiercely. Even though she now stood taller than the woman who’d been equal parts mom and grandmother to her, Gram’s embrace still made Kate feel safer, just as it had when she’d woken from nightmares as a girl or been rattled by a Texas thunderstorm.
“Missed you, too, Katie. So much.” Gram patted her on the back, then pulled away to reach for Luke. “And you! I can’t believe how tall you’re getting. Strong enough to help with farm chores, I reckon. But don’t worry,” she added with a smile, “I promise to make sure you’re well-compensated with your favorite desserts.”
“Anything but candy bars,” he mumbled.
Kate suppressed a groan at the reminder of their inauspicious entry to town. “We should start bringing in bags,” she told her son. “The car’s not going to unpack itself.”
Gram followed them. “I expected to see you hauling a trailer of stuff.”
“We brought most of our personal items, but the furniture’s in storage back in Houston.” She didn’t add that she hadn’t wanted to move it all twice in case this relocation didn’t work out.
Gram insisted on helping, and Kate gave her the lightest things she could find in the backseat. Kate faltered at the box of Luke’s art supplies. It had been sheer optimism on her part to bring them; he’d told her she could leave them in storage—or throw them away.
There’d been a time when he’d never been without a sketch pad of some kind. A few months before Damon was killed, Luke had started working on a comic book series about a superhero on another planet. The interstellar crime-fighter didn’t have a family and he’d possessed larger than life mystical powers, but the physical resemblance between Luke’s fictional champion and his dad had been unmistakable.
His earlier statement echoed in her mind. My father is gone. But he hadn’t only lost Damon. In the last two years, he seemed to have also lost his inspiration and his direction. Although there was no need to get the heavy box inside before dinner, she vowed to put the supplies in his room later. Maybe, with time and patience, he’d find his direction again.
Shifting a large satchel against her hip, she pulled a rolling suitcase from the trunk. “Am I in my usual room, Gram?” Even during her trips to the farm as an adult, Kate had stayed in the bedroom where she had so many happy childhood memories.
Her grandmother nodded. “Of course. And for Luke, I cleared out the room where Jim used to work on his model planes. It’s not huge, but it’s the least girly space in the house.”
“I’m sure it will be fine,” Kate said gently, hating the thought of Gram boxing up all of her late husband’s beloved planes alone. She wished her father was more reliable, that he lived close enough to regularly visit his widowed mother. Not that geography was any guarantee he’d pull his head out of his textbooks long enough to remember his family. The cliché “absent-minded professor” aptly described James Sullivan Jr. The last time he’d had dinner with Kate and Luke, he’d seemed sincerely shocked that his grandson wasn’t still nine years old.
Patch met them at the front door with baritone yowls and a tail wagging wildly enough to generate a windstorm. It took a few minutes to get past the excited shepherd and into the living room. Kate took in the familiar surroundings, recalling her grandfather’s good-natured complaints about the pink curtains and throw pillows on the sofa. Gram had told him that, if it made him feel better, the color was technically “country rose.” He’d also pretended to be annoyed by her collection of carousel-horse figurines, but he’d built her the gorgeous display cabinet that housed them.
The room had barely changed in the last decade. Even the warm, inviting scent was the same. Gram’s house always smelled like a combination of the lemony cleaner she used on the hardwood floors and pecan pie.
Luke raised his head, sniffing appreciatively, but it wasn’t floor cleaner and nostalgia that captured his interest. “Food!”
Gram laughed. “I have beef stew in the slow-cooker and made a batch of corn bread muffins.”
He immediately dropped the large duffel bags, as if preparing to bolt for the kitchen.
“We’re not just leaving our stuff all over Gram’s house,” Kate chided, familiar with his habits. Their home in Houston had often been an obstacle course of discarded tennis shoes, an unzipped backpack with class binders spilling out of it and dirty glasses that should have been carried to the sink. “Once you’ve got