Читать книгу The Sheriff's Nine-Month Surprise - Brenda Harlen - Страница 12
ОглавлениеReid stared at the modest pile of boxes in the middle of his new kitchen. He suspected that most people, by thirty-four years of age, had acquired more stuff, but when he and Trish had separated, he’d moved into a fully furnished apartment and let her keep the house and almost everything in it.
While looking at the housing options in Haven, he’d found an in-law suite available to rent only a few blocks from the Sheriff’s Office—furnishings available—and decided that was again the easy option. Glancing around his new home, he acknowledged that he should have asked for photos.
Whether or not his decision to move to Haven, Nevada, would prove to be the right one had yet to be determined. But he’d needed a fresh start, he’d liked what he’d seen of the town on his first visit and he’d been assured by Jed Traynor, the former sheriff who had been forced into early retirement by some health concerns—and his wife—that Haven was populated by mostly good people.
And then, of course, there was the Katelyn factor.
He wasn’t foolish enough to let his career decisions be influenced by a weekend fling, no matter how spectacular and unforgettable the sex had been. But he’d been thinking about her a lot and he was looking forward to the opportunity to see her again.
Seeing her naked again would be even better.
She was a woman of intriguing contrasts. When she’d walked into the conference room, she’d been the picture of cool professionalism, but it hadn’t taken long for him to realize how much heat simmered beneath the surface. The passion she’d displayed in advocating her position in the conference room was just as evident in the bedroom.
She’d made the first move—not just when she’d invited him back to her room, but when she’d kissed him. There had been nothing tentative about that first kiss. No questions or doubts about what either of them wanted. Their mouths had come together eagerly, almost desperately.
They’d both been enthusiastic participants in their lovemaking. Tearing at their own clothes while simultaneously trying to undress each other, laughing when limbs got tangled in uncooperative fabric.
When she’d been stripped down to a tiny pair of black bikini panties and a low-cut bra, he’d stopped laughing.
Hell, his heart had almost stopped beating.
She was so incredibly hot.
So wonderfully agile.
So totally willing.
And even six weeks after only two nights together, he hadn’t forgotten any of the details of the time he’d spent in her bed. Not the way her eyes went dark when she was aroused or the soft, sexy sounds that emanated from deep in her throat. Not the rosy pink buds of her nipples or the tiny brown mole beside her belly button. Not the way her hair looked fanned out on the soft pillow behind her head, or the erotic brush of those long tresses as her lips leisurely explored his body. Not the way her thighs quivered when he stroked deep inside her or the way her inner muscles clenched around him when she finally succumbed to her climax.
Yeah, he was definitely looking forward to seeing her again.
With that thought in mind, he decided to abandon his unpacking for a while and wander the neighborhood—to get his bearings. At least that would be the justification if anyone asked. The truth was, he’d already located the most important places: Sheriff’s Office; courthouse; Diggers’, the neighborhood bar and grill; Jo’s, a local pizza place; The Trading Post, the general store; and, a few blocks down from the courthouse, The Law Office of Katelyn T. Gilmore.
Her practice was set up in a beautiful old building with a cornerstone that established the date of its erection as 1885. Maybe the old library, he speculated, since Jed had pointed out the new community center, which included a swimming pool, gymnasium, “the new library,” several multipurpose rooms and administrative offices.
“Are you in need of legal counsel?”
Reid turned to face a woman who appeared to be in her mid-to late-sixties, about five-four with shoulder-length dark hair liberally streaked with gray, wearing a plaid shirt with faded jeans and well-worn boots.
“No, ma’am,” he said. “Just admiring the building.”
“The old library,” she said, confirming his supposition. “It was built in 1885, as were most of the buildings on this stretch of Main Street, but the doors didn’t open until 1887. It’s rumored that sixteen-year-old Elena Sanchez hid out in the basement of this very building for three weeks in the fall of 1904 to avoid being forced to marry.”
“Did she succeed?”
The woman nodded. “With the help of the librarian, Edward Jurczyk, who sneaked in blankets and food for her. Two years later, they were married. Nine years after that, Edward was killed fighting in The Great War in Europe.”
“Haven has quite an interesting history,” he mused, his gaze returning to the wide front window where Katelyn T. Gilmore was painted in bold black letters outlined in gold and Attorney at Law was spelled out below in slightly smaller letters.
“Katie opened her office here almost two-and-a-half years ago,” the woman continued. “If you’re ever in need of an attorney, you couldn’t do better. She sometimes has office hours on weekends, but she’s out of town right now.”
“You seem to know a lot about Ms. Gilmore’s schedule,” he noted.
And sharing more information than you should with a stranger, he wanted to caution. Of course, he kept that admonition to himself, as he was eager to hear anything about Katelyn that she was willing to tell him.
“Of course, I do,” she replied. “Katie’s my granddaughter.”
“I’m beginning to believe that everyone in town knows—or is—a Gilmore.” He offered his hand. “I’m Reid Davidson, the—”
“The new sheriff,” she finished for him, as she gripped his hand in a surprisingly firm shake. “I know who you are. And I’m Evelyn Gilmore, not some dotty old woman who would spill personal information about my family to a stranger on the street.”
Then her gaze narrowed speculatively. “So you apparently know that Haven was founded by the Gilmore family,” she acknowledged, “but what do you know about the Blakes?”
He forced his expression to remain blank. “Who?”
She laughed. “It might turn out that you’re exactly what this town needs, Sheriff Reid Davidson. You plan on staying beyond the completion of your current term?”
“Maybe you should table that question until after I’ve actually started my job,” he suggested.
“Maybe I will,” she decided. “Until then, if you’ve got time for a cup of coffee, I can introduce you to Donna Bradley. She’s been working the counter at The Daily Grind for longer than it’s been The Daily Grind.
“Cal’s Coffee Shop, it used to be called,” she continued. “But Cal died nearly a dozen years ago now and when his granddaughter took it over, she gave it a face-lift and a new name. She was smart enough to keep Donna, though, and if there’s any news in town, she’s usually the first to know it.”
“I’ve always got time for a cup of coffee,” Reid said, looking forward to her commentary on the community and its residents—and hopeful that she’d share more information about Katelyn.
* * *
Though Kate had been feeling tired for a couple of weeks, having the doctor explain that fatigue was normal in the first trimester, because her body was expending lots of energy helping to grow a baby, seemed to exacerbate the situation. By the end of the following week, she was really dragging.
Thankfully, she didn’t have court Friday morning, but she did have an appointment at the community center in the afternoon to talk to a group of seniors about wills and estate planning. After the session was finished, she decided to call it a day.
Her cell phone rang just as she pulled into the parking lot behind the old library, which housed not only her law office but her apartment above it. Shifting her vehicle into Park, she glanced longingly at the second-floor windows. If she ignored the ringing, she could have her shoes off and her feet up in less than three minutes.
She answered the call, anyway.
“Hey, Kate—it’s Liam,” her brother said, as if she wouldn’t recognize his voice or the number on the display.
“What’s up?” It was unusual for him to contact her in the middle of the day, so she knew his call had a specific purpose.
“Do you remember my friend, Chase, from school?”
“Of course,” she said.
“Well, I just got off the phone with his brother, Gage, who called me because Chase told him that my sister is an attorney.”
“Are you getting to a point anytime soon?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Gage’s son, Aiden, has been arrested.”
Now that was a surprise.
Aiden wasn’t just a good kid, he was unfailingly honest. The type of kid who wouldn’t swipe a pack of chewing gum from The Trading Post. In fact, Kate remembered a time when he’d paid a dollar for ten gummy worms but Samantha Allen, who was working behind the counter, miscounted. When Aiden realized he’d been given eleven candies, he tried to give one back.
“What did he allegedly do?”
“I don’t know,” Liam admitted. “I didn’t think to ask, but Gage is panicking because he’s still half an hour out of town and he wanted to know if there was anything you could do to help.”
“Okay,” Kate decided. “Tell him to bring Aiden in to see me tomorrow morning. I have a couple of later appointments but I should be able to squeeze them in around eleven.”
“This can’t wait until tomorrow. Aiden’s being held for a bail hearing—that’s why Gage is so frantic.”
“He’s a juvenile with no prior record,” Kate said, thinking aloud.
“Can you find out what’s going on?” Liam asked.
“I’m on my way to the Sheriff’s Office right now,” she promised.
She parked her vehicle then walked the few blocks to the Sheriff’s Office. Judy Talon, the administrative assistant, was seated behind the front desk.
“Hey, Katie—are you here about Aiden Hampton?”
She nodded. “But I don’t have any of the details,” she admitted. “Can you fill me in?”
Judy glanced at the sheriff’s closed door but still dropped her voice when she said, “He was arrested with Trent Marshall.”
Under normal circumstances, they both knew that Aiden Hampton didn’t keep company with kids like Trent Marshall—and he definitely didn’t get in trouble with the law. Unfortunately, nothing had been normal for Aiden since his grandmother had died a few weeks earlier.
“What did they do?”
“Found a car with the keys in the ignition and decided to take it for a spin.”
“Joyriding,” she realized.
“Some would say,” Judy agreed. “The new sheriff is saying grand larceny of a motor vehicle.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
The other woman shook her head. “I wish I was.”
“Grand larceny is a felony.”
“Which is why he’s being held over for a bail hearing,” Judy explained.
“Obviously, Jed didn’t tell his replacement how things work around here.” Kate glanced at her watch. “What time is the hearing?”
“Ten a.m. Monday morning.”
“Oh, no.” She shook her head. “I’m not letting Aiden spend the weekend in lockup.”
“I hope he doesn’t have to,” the other woman agreed, though her tone was skeptical.
Kate looked toward the office. When Jed had run the department, the door was almost always open. Now it was closed, and she hoped that status wasn’t a reflection of the sheriff’s mind. “Can you let the new sheriff know that I need a few minutes of his time?”
Judy picked up the phone to connect with the sheriff, but first whispered, “Good luck.”
She didn’t let the woman’s words unnerve her. After giving a perfunctory knock on the door, she turned the knob.
Be confident. Be convincing. Don’t back down.
She repeated the refrain inside her head as she stepped into the office.
Be confident. Be convincing. Don’t—
The rest of the words slipped from her mind as familiar hazel eyes lifted to meet her gaze.
And she found herself face-to-face with her baby’s daddy.
* * *
Reid had been looking forward to the day when he would see Katelyn Gilmore again. He didn’t anticipate that it would happen as soon as his third day behind the desk in the Sheriff’s Office.
He’d been writing a report when she walked in, and he automatically glanced up—and was immediately sucker punched by her presence.
If the sudden widening of her eyes and the sharp intake of her breath were any indication, Katelyn was just as surprised to see him. Maybe even more so, because while he’d known their paths would cross and had eagerly anticipated that eventuality, it appeared that she’d been unaware of the identity of Haven’s new sheriff.
“Reid?”
“Hello, Katelyn.” He thought he’d remembered how beautiful she was, but seeing her again proved his memories inadequate.
She was wearing another one of those lawyer suits, this one a deep purple color with a pale pink shell under the jacket, which made him wonder what color lace she might be wearing beneath that. Her hair was pinned up as it had been the day of their first meeting, but he knew now how it felt when he slid his fingers through it as he kissed her. And maybe that wasn’t a memory he should linger on while he was wearing his official sheriff’s uniform, because the mental image was causing his body to stir in a very unprofessional way.
She opened her delectably shaped and incredibly talented mouth, then closed it again without saying another word.
“You’re Aiden Hampton’s attorney?” he prompted.
She nodded. “And you’re the new sheriff.”
“I am,” he confirmed.
“But...I thought you lived in Texas. I even—” Now she shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”
“What doesn’t matter?”
She ignored his question to ask her own. “Why are you here?”
“I applied for the job before I met you,” he said, wanting to dispel any concern she might have about his motivation. “In fact, I interviewed with the hiring committee the day before the conference in Boulder City.”
Her cheeks flushed as she cast a quick glance at his open office door.
He nodded to the phone on his desk, indicating the light that revealed his assistant was occupied with a call.
“When I told you that I was from Haven, why didn’t you mention that you’d applied for a job here?”
“Because you didn’t want to know,” he reminded her.
Her brows drew together as she recalled that earlier conversation and finally admitted, “I guess I did.”
“And when I got the call offering me the job, well, I figured our paths would cross soon enough.”
“They’re going to cross frequently if you insist on locking up juveniles who should be released on their own recognizances.”
He leaned back in his chair. Though he was disappointed that she’d so quickly refocused on her client, he could appreciate that she had a job to do. Any personal business could wait until after-hours. “Grand larceny of a motor vehicle is a felony.”
“Grand larceny of a motor vehicle is a ridiculously trumped-up charge.”
“Tell that to Rebecca Blake—it was her brand-new S-Class Mercedes, worth close to two hundred thousand dollars.”
That revelation gave her pause, but just for a second. “Was the vehicle damaged?”
“Thankfully, no,” he acknowledged.
She nodded, and he could almost see her switching mental gears from confrontation to persuasion. “He’s a good kid, Reid—a straight-A student grieving for his grandmother.”
He wouldn’t—couldn’t—let sympathy for the kid interfere with his responsibilities. “There are lots of kids who lose family members and don’t act out by stealing a car.”
“Elsie Hampton helped raise Aiden from birth, after his mother walked out of the hospital without her baby, leaving him in the custody of his seventeen-year-old father. But of course, you didn’t know that, did you?”
“How could I?” he countered.
“You could have asked someone,” she told him. “Everyone in Haven knows his family and his history. In fact, his dad works with Jed’s son at Blake Mining.”
He gave a short nod. “Point taken.”
“So I can take my client home now?”
“No,” he said.
“Why not?” she demanded.
“Because I’ve already gone on the record stating that he’s to be held over for a bail hearing.”
She sighed. “Then you’re going to have to call Judge Calvert and ADA Dustin Perry and tell them you want to have a bail hearing.”
“While I appreciate your passionate advocacy, Katelyn, you don’t make the rules around here—I do.”
“I get that you’re new,” she said. “Not just new to this office but new in town, and you might think I’m trying to manipulate you for the sake of my client, but I’m not.”
“Well, okay, then,” he said, making no effort to disguise his sarcasm. “I’m sure the judge and the prosecutor will both be thrilled to be called out to a bail hearing at four thirty on a Friday afternoon.”
“I’m sure they won’t be,” she countered. “But they’d be even less happy to find out, on Monday morning, that you made Aiden Hampton spend the weekend in a cell.”
“If I agree to do this, it will look like your client got preferential treatment,” he warned.
“No, it will look like the new sheriff finally took his head out of his butt for a few minutes.”
Though her blatant disrespect irked him, Reid couldn’t help but admire her passion and conviction.
“Your client was processed by the book,” he told her.
“Maybe,” she allowed. “If he’d actually committed grand larceny of a motor vehicle, but the reality is that he went for a joyride—and joyriding is a misdemeanor offense.”
“A gross misdemeanor,” he clarified.
“Are you going to make those calls or should I, Sheriff?”
“Are you really trying to put my badge between us now, Katelyn?”
“Seems like you were the one who did that,” she said. “And it’s Kate. Everyone here calls me Kate.”
“Or Katie,” he noted.
She frowned. “Only my family calls me Katie.”
“I like Katelyn better, anyway.”
She huffed out a breath. “The judge and ADA?” she prompted.
He picked up the phone.
* * *
Thirty minutes later, all parties were assembled at the courthouse. Less than half that time had passed again before Aiden Hampton was released into the care of his grateful and relieved father.
The assistant district attorney didn’t stick around any longer than was necessary to sign the papers. The judge didn’t even wait that long. After enumerating the usual conditions for release, he gave the new sheriff a brief but pointed speech about the value of the court’s time and suggested that he familiarize himself with the way things were done in Haven, because apparently it was different than what he was used to.
Kate didn’t let herself feel sorry for Reid. But she did appreciate that he’d called the hearing, albeit reluctantly, and she said so as they walked side by side out of the courthouse. “Thank you.”
“The next time I put your client in a cell, he’s going to stay there a lot longer,” Reid warned.
“There won’t be a next time,” she said. “Aiden really is a good kid who chose the wrong way to work through some stuff.”
“By hanging out with a friend already on probation?”
“I don’t know what he was doing with Trent Marshall,” she admitted. “They don’t usually run in the same circles.”
“I’m guessing you represent the Marshall kid, too?”
She nodded. “And I’m curious as to how the kid already on probation walked away with a summons to court and the kid who’s never been cited for jaywalking ends up locked in a cell.”
“If you really want to know, I’ll tell you—over dinner.”
