Deputy Daddy. Patricia Johns
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A Family for the Officer
Officer Bryce Camden never expected his two-week stint in Comfort Creek, Colorado, would mean diaper duty. But that’s exactly what happens when he stays at the local bed-and-breakfast where Lily Ellison is fostering an abandoned baby girl. Bryce is drawn to the lovely B and B owner, but being a dad is not part of his plans. His troubled past has shown him that he’s not the nurturing type. But he soon finds himself wishing he didn’t have to leave. Because Lily and the baby have taken root in his heart and made him think that maybe he could be a family man after all...
“Did you miss me or something?” he whispered.
The baby blinked up at him, then her eyes drifted shut once more. Bryce couldn’t help but feel a little smug about her preference for him. He’d kind of missed her, too, if he had to admit to it.
Lily stood at the stove scooping cookies off the pan with a spatula and depositing them onto a plate. She was beautiful—even more so when she was focused on a job she enjoyed, like this one. He could see her happiness in the way she held herself, the way her shoulders were squared and the way her eyes shone.
Stop enjoying this, he told himself gruffly. This isn’t yours.
The baby in his arms, the beautiful woman across the kitchen, the family arguing at the table—none of this was his. It was tempting in a way he’d never felt before, but it was firmly out of reach. And he’d best remember it. This was a closed door.
PATRICIA JOHNS writes from Alberta, Canada. She has her Hon. BA in English literature and currently writes for Harlequin’s Love Inspired, Western Romance and Heartwarming lines. You can find her at patriciajohnsromance.com.
Deputy Daddy
Patricia Johns
A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows... God sets the lonely in families.
—Psalms 68:5–6
To my husband, who inspires all this romance.
And to our little boy, who really wanted Mom
to dedicate a book to him, too.
You are my everything!
Contents
“You’ll need to burp her after that bottle,” Police Chief Chance Morgan said, glancing over his shoulder on his way past Bryce Camden’s temporary desk.
Bryce looked down at the tiny baby in the crook of his arm. She barely seemed to weigh anything, her rump resting in the palm of his hand and her tiny hands opening and closing in the rhythm of her drinking. The small Colorado town of Comfort Creek was the remote location of his disciplinary action for having punched a fellow officer in the kisser. He’d arrived that morning with an angry simmer in the pit of his stomach that barely covered the sour taste of humiliation, and the police chief dropped a newborn in his lap.
He’d never burped a baby in his life.
“Is that an order, sir?” Bryce asked.
“Yes.” The chief shot him an amused look. “Consider this part of your sensitivity training.”
The baby had been abandoned at the station in the wee hours of the morning, an out-of-date car seat left on the doorstep. Whoever had left her had pounded on the door and slipped away. When Bryce clocked in for the start of this two-week debacle, they’d immediately put him on baby duty.
So far, sensitivity training looked a whole lot like babysitting, and he’d never been very comfortable around kids, something he had in common with his dad. Some things were hereditary, like the combination of black hair and blue eyes. He was confident that his discomfort with kids came from the same genetic source. His father had been a lousy parent, and he had it on good authority—from his overworked and chronically frustrated mother—that he was just like his old man. And if anyone wanted confirmation on that, they could ask the officer with the split lip.
Christian