Hometown Sheriff Read online

  “It is the same kind?” she asked.

  “It’s the same car.”

  “No.” Her breath whooshed out. She got in and touched the vintage dash, the chrome door handles. “It’s absolutely beautiful, Nick.”

  “Thanks. It’s my favorite,” he replied easily. “Can’t see getting rid of her.” He slid behind the steering wheel and started the engine, driving the car away from the curb.

  “No, of course not,” she replied. “Your persistence obviously paid off. You must have envisioned it like this all along, while I only saw an old car.”

  He turned and met her eyes, and she flushed beneath his look. She hadn’t meant to gush, but the car was truly a classic beauty. It had to be worth a pretty penny.

  He returned his attention to the streets and in minutes they arrived at the park in the center of town. A concrete fountain splashed water as it had for a century, and even the streetlights that lined all four sides were the originals, converted from gas years ago.

  Two enormous striped canvas tents had been erected, and tables and chairs had been carried from the courthouse across the street.

  Ryanne immediately felt herself the center of attention. Someone new stood out like a third eye in this community, and she was certain that speculation about her visit had already been flying. Because of her father’s warnings, she’d always felt the judgmental eye of this community on her anyway, only now it was worse.

  Nick got an ice-cream freezer from his trunk and carried it to a shaded picnic table, where the ingredients and the other freezers were set out.

  “There’s my friend, Wade,” Jamie said, pointing to the approaching family.

  “What a surprise,” Natalie Perry said with a smile. “I heard you were in town.” She held a dark-haired little girl on her hip.

  “Yes.” Ryanne greeted them and admired the chubby-cheeked toddler.

  “This is Wendy,” Natalie told her. “That’s Wade.”

  “They’re darling children,” Ryanne said sincerely.

  Forrest took a business card from his wallet and handed it to her. “Come see me if you need a deal on a car.”

  Ryanne glanced down, noting the name Heartland Auto Deals and the address on the highway. “Okay. Thanks.”

  Natalie laughed. “He never gets to do that, because he already knows everyone, so just ignore him.”

  A young woman with strawberry-blond curls caught up in a clip on her head moved into their circle. “Ryanne! You look wonderful! Look at you!”

  Recognizing her former high school friend, Ryanne couldn’t get over the changes. Birdy Nichols was no longer a skinny girl with freckles and glasses, but a petite, curvy knockout.

  Natalie and Forrest moved away, and Jamie followed with his little friend.

  “I hardly recognized you,” Ryanne told Birdy. “You look so—different!”

  “Better, I hope. You, too. What size are those shorts? A five? And the highlights in your hair—great touch. I could really hate you. I work out three times a week and still look like a sausage in a pair of shorts.”

  Ryanne laughed. Birdy had been the only female friend Ryanne had been close to in her younger years. She’d forgotten how good it felt to have someone talk to her so frankly.

  Birdy stepped forward and hugged her in a warm, spontaneous embrace that gave Ryanne a lump in her throat.

  “You do not look like a sausage. You look great.” She wracked her brain to remember anything about Birdy’s life. She’d received a wedding invitation years ago, but the date had conflicted with something. Her mother had mentioned Birdy a few times.

  They pulled apart and Ryanne glanced around, feeling bad about not keeping in touch. “Is your husband here?”

  “I hope not. He’s not my husband anymore, and he’s been gone for three years. If I had to see him, I’d move away myself.”

  As Birdy was speaking, Nick came over to stand beside them.

  Ryanne glanced at him, then at her old friend. “Oh.” She felt terrible for bringing it up. “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, me too, but whatever. Hey, Nick.”

  “Birdy.”

  “How about you?” the young woman said, directing her attention back to Ryanne. “Your marriage still intact?”

  Heat washed up Ryanne’s cheeks. She met Nick’s interested gaze and looked away quickly, her stomach clenching. How on earth was she going to reply to that?

  CHAPTER FOUR

  RYANNE CONSIDERED ALL the lies she could tell. No one would ever know. She’d never brought Mason to Elmwood with her; even her mother had met him only a few times. No one would be the wiser if she let them think she was happily married and successful at her career.

  But Birdy’s flippant candor had had an effect on her. Ryanne could tell the truth, like her old friend. She had divorced him, after all. “Not exactly,” she replied.

  “Not exactly? How not exactly?” Birdy asked. She knelt briefly to adjust the strap on one of her hot-pink sandals.

  Nick was gazing off toward the group of small boys playing kick ball, as if he wasn’t paying attention, but she knew he was listening.

  “We’re divorced.” Heat fused Ryanne’s cheeks with the painful admission.

  “Happens to the best of us, eh, Nick?” Birdy asked with a shrug, and stood back up.

  “Yeah.” Nick turned to study Ryanne with an intensity she wanted to run from, but instead she looked him in the eyes and raised her chin a notch.

  “At least neither of us had any kids,” Birdy continued. “Not that I don’t think your kid is great, Nick, because he is, but I couldn’t have coped with the whole single parent thing.”

  “You do what you have to do,” he replied.

  “You don’t have any kids, do you, Ryanne?” she asked.

  Ryanne shook her head and glanced away. “No.”

  A commotion rose from the direction of the bandstand.

  “Oh, boy, I’m going to have to show them again how to connect the loudspeakers to the portable stereo. Catch ya in a few.”

  Nick watched Birdy sprinting toward the gazebo, then turned guarded blue eyes on Ryanne. “Birdy never changes.”

  She didn’t know what to say. Nick had been in this town all along, participating in local activities and staying current with the populace. She was just discovering what had happened since she’d left. Neither of them added anything to the discussion on their single statuses, and Nick didn’t ask any questions, for which she was grateful.

  Ryanne glanced around, suddenly feeling more out of place than ever.

  “Want to help make ice cream?” he asked finally.

  “I’ve never done it.”

  “You can be my assistant and turn the crank.”

  “Okay.” Appearing busy and staying with Nick would keep her from falling prey to curious neighbors.

  The machines were electric, so there was nothing to the process, except adding ingredients and timing the freezers. Nick had been kidding about the cranking. Once each batch of ice cream was stirred up, they scraped the cold confection into buckets set in coolers of ice.

  The high school band warmed up, then played several selections from the lacy shade of the gazebo. Children ran and dogs barked, and Ryanne was transported back to her childhood. She could picture herself with Nick, Justin tagging along, as the three unconcernedly played and ate ice cream.

  Since her father had forbidden his wife to mingle with Elmwood citizens not involved in the college, Mel and Florence Sinclair had packed Ryanne along to local functions. Ryanne’s father believed it was beneath his position as a professor to attend such activities. Occasionally, if he’d been away or busy at the college, Evelyn Whitaker had come along, too.

  Influenced by his teaching and authority, Ryanne had begun to draw away like her father when she’d reached her teens.

  With the task of ice cream making finished, Nick scooped up two enormous cones and handed her one. “Let’s go listen to the band. They’re pretty good this year.”
/>   “I’ll never eat all this.”

  “I’ll finish what you can’t.” Instead of leading her toward one of the tables, he found a shade tree and sat on the ground at its base. Ryanne settled in beside him.

  They ate their rich, smooth ice cream in silence for a few minutes. Nick waved at Jamie, who was playing lawn darts with Wade and another small boy.

  “What would you be doing tonight if you were at home?” Nick asked finally.

  She glanced over at him.

  “Just wondering what the yuppie life in California is all about,” he commented with a shrug.

  “Well.” She lowered the hand with her cone to her knee. “Sunday night, I guess I’d be going over my planner, scheduling the week—” She stopped. “That makes me sound like my dad. He couldn’t survive a day without his Franklin.”

  “As in Delano Roosevelt, or as in the turtle guy on Nickelodeon?”

  “What?”

  “Who. Who’s Franklin?”

  “A Franklin’s a planner. An object, not a who. People used to use them before Google calendars and phone apps.” She couldn’t help laughing. “You interrupted me.”

  “Just getting it straight.”

  “Got it now?”

  “Us corn-fed boys take a while to catch on.”

  “Are you mocking me?”

  “So you’d be planning your week. What else?”

  “Well, I would probably send a few emails, make a list of calls for my assistant for the next day, maybe do a little online research.”

  “What’s your assistant’s name?”

  He had been her assistant, anyway. “Brad.”

  “And Brad’s a person, right?”

  “Of course Brad’s a person. What else?”

  “I don’t know.” He gave his cone a lick and cast her a grin. “A companion of Franklin’s maybe.”

  “Shut up, Nick.”

  His laugh warmed the cold places in her heart, places she’d deliberately neglected. He made her feel like a kid again, like she was eight years old, out of school for the summer and having the time of her life. She wouldn’t have been surprised right then if he’d smashed her cone in her face and run from her with a teasing whoop.

  She couldn’t help herself; she laughed, too. And then something inside her, some remaining little devil from her childhood, made her reach over as he brought his cone to his lips, and give it a healthy push toward his face.

  Startled, he sat with ice cream on his chin for a full minute.

  Laughter and fear rose in Ryanne’s chest. She knew him and yet she didn’t. She hadn’t done anything that impulsive in twenty years. Her heart tripped.

  He turned his dark head and drilled her with a blue-eyed look of surprise and...appreciation. “Touché, you little twerp.”

  Ryanne smiled, the first smile she’d given him since her return.

  Nick grinned, a decidedly handsome grin, even with white ice cream on his suntanned chin. With his left hand, he swiped it off and wiped it on the grass. “Remember, chicky, paybacks are hell.”

  Chicky? Her smile widened. “Consider me forewarned.”

  Lights came on around the gazebo and along the park on all four sides. Torches were lit and, as the day waned into evening, she handed him her cone and he finished it.

  Jamie came running over to where they sat. “I won two games in a row!”

  “Good job,” Nick replied, raising his right hand.

  Jamie smacked his palm against his father’s with a resounding high five.

  “Did you have some ice cream?” Nick asked.

  Jamie held up two fingers.

  “Two?”

  “Like father, like son,” Ryanne said.

  Jamie leaned into Nick’s bare knees, and Nick turned him around and pulled him back into his lap, running a hand over his hair and clamping long fingers on his shoulder in a loving gesture. “I saw Benny Perkins’s little sister over there,” he said softly in Jamie’s ear. “I think she wants you to come over and play tag with her.”

  Jamie leaned his ear away from his dad’s lips and said, “Da-ad! I don’t like Delores. She looks at me funny.”

  “That’s ’cause she likes you. Girls get all googley-eyed like that when they like you.”

  Jamie jumped up and down a few times in his dad’s lap, making sure he bumped him good each time his seat landed on Nick’s belly. “Stop saying that.”

  Laughing, Nick caught him and held him still. “Okay. I’m just trying to help you out here.”

  Jamie turned an imploring blue gaze on Ryanne. “Tell him to stop teasing me about Delores.”

  Ryanne looked at Nick and said sternly, “Stop teasing him about Delores.”

  Nick raised both hands in surrender, and Jamie got up and ran off to play.

  Ryanne couldn’t get over the sight of Nick with a child. He obviously adored the boy, and the interaction between the two showed a natural loving relationship. Watching him with Jamie reminded her that even though there was still a familiar connection between herself and Nick, he was not the same boy she’d grown up with. A good many years and experiences stretched between them. A whole lifetime.

  The band packed away their instruments and she watched as Birdy instructed two men on starting a hastily rigged sound system. Seconds later, recorded music floated on the night air. John Lennon’s voice echoed across the lawn and bounced back from the businesses along Main Street, singing a song Ryanne hadn’t heard in years—a song about starting over.

  A few young couples, mostly high school age, had climbed the wooden stairs and were dancing in the shelter of the gazebo. Ryanne remembered doing that when she was a teen. She’d been on the volleyball team, the track team, in the debate club and she’d had plenty of dates. Nick, two years younger, had preferred to hang out in his garage at home. She wondered if he’d changed after she’d left for college.

  Had he danced in the gazebo? With Holly, perhaps? Curious about his marriage to the girl she remembered as Justin’s girlfriend, Ryanne couldn’t help wishing she knew the details.

  “So, you married Holly?” she said finally.

  He glanced at her, then away. “Yep.”

  “Didn’t work out, I guess.”

  She fully expected an evasive “nope,” but he took a breath and spoke. “Don’t know why I ever thought it would. Foolish thinking on my part.”

  “Everyone thinks their marriage is going to work out, don’t they?” she asked.

  “Maybe two people who love each other do. At least they’ve got something going for them to start out with.”

  His reply caught her by surprise. “You didn’t love her?”

  He watched the dancers beneath the glowing yellow lights. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. And she sure didn’t love me.”

  I’m sorry, Ryanne almost said, but she didn’t think he’d want her pity. “Did you think you loved her when you married her?”

  He had pulled a blade of grass and held it between his teeth as he said, “I thought it was the right thing to do.”

  “For who?”

  He looked at her oddly. “For everyone.”

  The right thing to do could mean anything. Ryanne held her silence and glanced toward the gazebo.

  Now an eighties group she couldn’t place sang about there always being something there to remind them. The nostalgic words floated over the park.

  “Did you love your husband?” Nick asked.

  She’d faced that internal question a hundred times recently, so she had a ready reply. “I thought I did. We had the same goals and aspirations—or so I imagined.”

  “Yes, you always had aspirations,” he commented somewhat drily.

  She glanced at him.

  He turned his head.

  As their eyes met in the semidarkness, a little flicker of anger sprang to life in her. Had that been a criticism? He’d never understood her drive to succeed, and she’d never understand his contentment with things the way they were.

  “At
least you still have your career,” he said matter-of-factly.

  The anger died a quick death, replaced by hurt and embarrassment. “Oh, yes. At least I still have that.”

  The conversation ended as Forrest and Natalie, accompanied by Birdy and the thirty-something twins, Ashton and Elyssa Spaulding, who Ryanne learned ran the Sunshine Greenhouse, came for Nick and Ryanne and ushered them to the tables. Cold bottles of soda were passed around as Bruce Springsteen’s caressing voice suggested dancing in the dark.

  Everyone seemed warm and welcoming, greeting Ryanne and asking about her mother and her husband. Birdy blabbed that Ryanne had been divorced, and cringing, Ryanne imagined her life the fodder for gossip for the next month or more.

  Pulling Ryanne aside for a moment, Birdy asked, “Do you think we could maybe get together alone one of these days? Lunch, maybe? Dinner somewhere? We don’t have anywhere fancy to eat, not like the places you probably go to in California, but we could just talk. Catch up some. If you want to, that is. We don’t have to.” She shrugged. “No big deal.”

  Her hesitancy surprised Ryanne, and her apologetic tone made her uncomfortable. “Yes,” she told Birdy immediately. “I’d like that. Really I would.”

  “You would?”

  “Yes.” She gave her a smile.

  “Well, great then, we’ll do it.” Birdy gave a little wave and moved back toward the others.

  Mel approached Nick. “Audrey Milligan wants a ride home, son. And Jamie’s getting tired.”

  Nick pulled the keys to the Chevy from his pocket. “Take her on home, Dad. And Jamie, too, if he wants to go. I’ll be along in a few minutes. The freezer’s already in the trunk. I’ll get it out later.”

  Mel took the keys and wished Ryanne good-night. “Glad you came, sweetie.”

  “Me, too. It was fun.”

  Only about fifteen minutes passed before Nick asked if she was ready to go. She told those who remained good-night, and together she and Nick headed across the park toward their homes, with Madonna’s voice singing suggestive lyrics behind them.

  “I haven’t heard those songs for ages,” Ryanne said.

  “Hang around Birdy enough and you will. She’s stuck in the eighties.”