Babies and Badges Read online

  “Jealous?”

  Yes!

  No! Of course not!

  Seeing how Cassie didn’t even want a man in her life, let alone need one, she wished the buxom nurse all the luck in the world in resnagging the handsome sheriff. After all, Tiffany hadn’t said anything about group members not being able to launch new Noah campaigns.

  “I’m not a bit jealous,” she finally said, tucking her long hair firmly behind her ears. “Merely making conversation. Your friend Tiffany stopped by yesterday, and told me all about the support group they formed to get over you—you big stud.”

  When she winked, Noah looked sharply away.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “Even though I barely know you, I can see the man she told me about and you have nothing in common. Those women obviously have too much time on their hands. Anyway, back to my lodging issue—know anyplace that might have a room?” She flashed him a hopeful grin.

  “Um, sure.” Though he was mighty pleased to no longer be hearing about that ridiculous support group, Noah cringed inwardly when another of his hot-cold dizzy spells accompanied her latest innocent question. Damn those gorgeous eyes of hers. And she could knock off the grinning, too. Unfortunately, yes, he did know of a place to stay. Trouble was, inviting her to use it violated every rule he’d spent years perfecting.

  “Well? The name?”

  “You probably wouldn’t want to stay there. It’s, um, pretty messy.”

  “So? I’ll clean it.”

  “No, I mean really messy. Downright unsanitary. You might, ah, catch something.”

  Fixing him with a laser beam stare, she narrowed her gaze. “Why do I get the feeling wherever this place is, you don’t want me there?”

  “That’s crazy.” He gulped.

  How had Cassie known exactly what he was thinking? Did she also know how rotten he felt about those thoughts? After all, he’d promised to protect her until she was released from the hospital. And since she was being released, then technically, he was released from all obligation, right? So why did he still feel like a schmuck for not wanting her in his home?

  Probably because you do want her? All of her lush little curves and big, green Saturday-morning-sex eyes and that damned adorable grin that keeps turning you all hot and dizzy.

  Solely to prove that none of that was even remotely true—well, granted some of it was, but certainly not the part about him wanting her—Noah blurted, “Look, I’ve got a guest room. You want it, or not?”

  “Yes, please. If it’s not too much trouble.” She grinned, and in the heart of his bachelor’s gut, he died ten thousand hot and dizzy deaths.

  “Nope. No trouble at all.” What was wrong with him? He’d gone without sleep before, but never had it affected him like this.

  Could he have contracted some swift-acting deadly disease? Yeah. That was it. Had to be. No other way would he be this upset over a little bitty snippet of a woman with a pretty smile and even prettier face wreathed in the most prettiest red hair.

  Argh! Most prettiest? Whatever sickness he had, looked like it was growing more serious by the second!

  “Oh, Noah, thank you!” She leaned entirely too close, grazing her full breasts against his chest while wrapping her arms around his neck in a hug. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, she finished him off with an all-too-innocent kiss to his cheek. His cheek! After the anguish her eyes and that grin of hers had put him through, at the very least he deserved a taste of those ripe lips—not to mention a taste of that naughty darting tongue! Her flaming, kiss-shaped brand still burning his left cheek, she said, “You’re the best friend a girl could ever have.”

  Friend?

  Damn. But then wait—where he and Cassie were concerned, friendship was a good thing. It proved he had a virus rather than the hots for her.

  “Um, thanks,” he said, “Coming from you, Cass, I’ll take that as a compliment. Do you mind if I call you Cass?”

  She beamed and shook her head. He grew warm.

  Dizzy.

  I have to get out of here. Now!

  Because he wasn’t feeling sick, but attracted. And proud and fiercely protective. And he’d had lots of friends in his life, but none of them he’d wanted to draw back into his arms and kiss square on her soft, full lips!

  “Noah? You all right? You’re looking pale again.”

  “Sure,” he said, swallowing hard. “I’m fine. Great. Never been better.”

  “Good. So? Ready to head over to your place?”

  “You know, I just remembered a couple errands I have to run. Let me do those, and I’ll be back.”

  “Why don’t I go with you? I’m not due back for a feeding until this afternoon, and after being laid up in here I could sure use a change in scenery.”

  Sure. That was all he needed, to be cooped up in the car with her and that Oriental perfume he’d long since established to be trouble. “You know,” he finally said. “I would love to take you, but, um, official sheriff’s code of Pritchett County states that I can’t have any noncriminal civilian passengers in my county-owned vehicle.”

  “Oh.”

  “You just hang tight. I’ll be back to get you in my SUV around two.”

  “Okay. Sure. That’d be great.”

  Without so much as a wave, he was gone, leaving Cassie wondering if she’d said something to upset him. But then not five minutes later he was back—wearing an even fiercer frown than the one he’d left with.

  “Need these?” she asked, jangling his keys. She held them out, but just when he reached for them, she snatched them back. “Not so fast, mister. You were in an awfully big hurry to get out of here.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “So…You’re not still upset over that support group, are you?”

  A muscle ticked in his jaw.

  “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  “Actually, I was about to say no. But since we’re on the subject, let’s get one thing straight.” He’d taken his voice dangerously low. “Those women might say they were the ones who got hurt, but they’d be lying. I did darned good by every one of them. I’d thought we had something special, but then they had to—”

  Bring up the word commitment? “What, Noah? What did they do?”

  He raked his fingers through his hair, sighed, then grabbed his keys while she was staring into his eyes instead of at his hands. “I’ll be back around two.”

  FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, Noah claimed a counter stool at Brenda’s Bigger Burger.

  Brenda herself, order pad in her plump hand and wearing one of the dozens of psychedelic muumuus she’d picked up on last summer’s trip with her sister to Maui, ambled out from the kitchen. “What can I get for you, Sheriff?”

  “Got any new lives stashed back there?”

  “Aw, surely things can’t be that bad. After all, talk is you’re a new daddy. Babies always bring a good-some dose of joy.”

  “Unless they’re snake babies.” Ernie, Brenda’s cook and husband, peeked through the kitchen’s passthru. “Homer Claussen found a whole nest of copperheads out in his south pasture.”

  “You don’t say…” Noah nodded. Experience had long since taught him it was far better to go along with whatever Ernie said. Any contradictions, and the four-foot, ten-inch former pro wrestler tended toward belligerence.

  “Yep. Hundreds of ’em wrapped all around his best calf. Nearly squooze him half to death. Homer called the vet, but she said there wasn’t a thing she could do.”

  “You’re so making that up,” Brenda said.

  “Am not! Call over to Homer’s and see. His wife’ll tell you every word is true.”

  See? Noah closed his eyes, wishing Brenda would’ve just gone along with Ernie’s latest outrageous tale. Now, he’d have to listen to this bickering all the way through his lunch. And Lord, how he hated bickering. Brenda and Ernie were just one more shining example of why m-marriage doesn’t work. He had no trouble seeing it. So why did all the other men and women of the world still seem confused?

  “Can I get you your usual Coke, double cheeseburger and Tater Tots?” Brenda asked during fight intermission—meaning Ernie must’ve taken a time-out to grab a fresh bag of something from the freezer.

  “Why don’t you change that Coke to a chocolate malt?”

  Brenda frowned. “Tiffany stopped by here awhile ago and said those women of yours already gave your babies’ momma an official group number. She’s Ms. Eighteen. Things that serious already, huh?”

  Noah washed his face with his hands.

  This whole town was a few donuts short of a dozen!

  Wonder if the Fayetteville police force was doing any hiring?

  In a back booth, a trio of teenaged girls burst into giggles.

  He hadn’t thought the idea of moving to Fayetteville all that funny.

  Just as he didn’t cotton to their skipping classes. He was just rising off of his stool to go over and say something when he realized they were out on their lunch break, and sat back down.

  “Yo, Sheriff!”

  Noah didn’t even have to glance toward the burger joint’s opening door to know his youngest deputy, Jimmy Groves, was heading his way.

  “Briggs has been looking for ya.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Noah said above the racket Brenda was making with the malt machine. “What’s he want?” Briggs was another deputy—the complete opposite of tall, lean and young Jimmy. Briggs didn’t have any hair, was a single parent to three great girls and one boy, and spent his every waking moment when he wasn’t on patrol or ferrying said kids watching tapes of Martha Stewart. Briggs had loved his wife to a dangerous degree. When she’d died of complications of diabetes, folks round town said Briggs would die right along with her. Still one more reason Noah wanted no part of marriage.

  Far from being a blessing, loving a woman to that degree sounded more like a curse. Thank goodness Briggs and his munchkin crew seemed to be doing okay, two years later.

  “He thought it might be nice to wash your girlfriend’s car. You know, that hot yellow Thunderbird?”

  Noah rolled his eyes while Brenda set his malt on the gold-speckled counter in front of him.

  He took a long, slow drink, savoring the icy goodness that eased fiery indigestion no doubt brought on by all this talk about him and Cass having already formed some kind of bond. Couldn’t everyone see they were nothing more than friends?

  “First off,” he said, “Cassie’s hardly my girl—just the mother of my babies, which technically aren’t even mine, but—oh hell, you know what I mean. And second, stay away from her car.”

  “But it’s awfully dusty.”

  “Jimmy…”

  “Come on, Sheriff, pleeeease. Briggs got to drive it all the way into town from out on the highway, and all I got to do was sit behind the wheel once she was already parked.” Jimmy was one of those kids who had posters of cars up on his bedroom walls instead of bikini-clad women. “If you’ll let me just drive it real slow to the car wash, I promise I’ll never ask for anything else.”

  “No.”

  Dragging his lip like a kid who’d got nothing for Christmas, Jimmy slinked out of Brenda’s and back to the sheriff’s office located five doors down across the street.

  Why was it that the more Noah thought about Cassie and the hornet’s nest of women supposedly scorned, the more he wished she’d had those babies of hers in someone else’s town?

  “THIS IS NICE,” Cassie said after Noah had given her the grand tour of his cozy four-bedroom ranch home. She’d decided not to mention the fact that after having told her back at the hospital that he wasn’t allowed to have civilian passengers in his county-issued Blazer, he’d turned around and picked her up in it!

  “Thanks. I can’t really take any of the credit, though. Mom did all of the homey stuff. Dad and I just did our part to help keep everything clean.”

  “So what happened?” Cassie asked with a smile twinkling in her eyes. While the house wasn’t trashed, in spite of pretty blue floral curtains, mossy green walls and an antique china cabinet brimming with dusty, rose-patterned china, the place definitely had the look and feel of a bachelor pad.

  Dirty dishes filled the sink, and mail, newspapers and grocery store sales circulars cluttered the white tile kitchen counters. A dirty frying pan had been left on the stove. Bread crumbs dusted the counter beside it, along with a butter knife and one of those plastic wraps off of a slice of American cheese.

  On the living room floor resided hiking boots, an array of video games scattered in front of the jumbo TV and plenty of dirty towels, T-shirts and socks. The overstuffed brown leather sofa was missing a cushion—never mind. There it was, beside the PlayStation II. An earth-toned plaid recliner held a basket of clothes. Judging by the fabric softener sheets crowning the pile, Cassie figured they were clean.

  “Guess I’ve been busy,” her temporary housemate said with a disinterested shrug. “Ever since mom died a few years back, and I moved back in here when Dad took off to live in his fishing cabin, I guess it really doesn’t feel much like home anymore. I do the bare minimum of upkeep, but that’s about it.”

  On their way down a dark hall, he flipped on a weak overhead light, then kicked aside another stray blue sock.

  “I’m sorry,” Cassie said.

  “No need to be. I never really had a Beaver Cleaver life to begin with. I mean, to outsiders, my folks made sure everything looked okay, but from the time I was ten, I knew things weren’t. Here’s your room,” he said, stopping at the last door on the right.

  He opened it, and upon her first glance, Cassie gasped.

  “Noah, this—well, it’s beyond words.”

  The large, pale yellow room wasn’t just pretty—it was exquisite. An ornately carved dark walnut canopy bed dominated the west wall, flanked on both sides by matching side tables and eight-paned windows draped with the same yellow rose-patterned fabric as the bedspread and canopy.

  Sunlight streamed in, bathing an intimate seating area on the south wall in a golden glow.

  Tucked into a bay window was an upholstered window seat brimming with needlepoint pillows of flowers and quotes she couldn’t wait to read. On the walls hung an interesting blend of antique plate collections and hats and black-and-white photos of long-gone ancestors.

  Dotted here and there were colorful tapestry rugs, and blending nicely with the abundance of yellow were regal ferns on stands and delicate English ivies trailing over the rims of teacup planters and matching saucers.

  Through an open door, Cassie glimpsed a white-tiled bathroom. Behind a closed door was, she assumed, a closet.

  “I’m glad you like it,” Noah said, yanking a dead leaf from the nearest fern. “This room meant a lot to my mother. From what little I’ve pieced together, she’d always wanted a daughter, but after three miscarriages—the last a close call with nearly dying—her doctor said no more. She had to have a hysterectomy, and Dad said she never recovered.”

  “Wow.” Cassie swallowed hard. “I don’t know what to say. That’s awful.”

  Noah shrugged. “Water under the bridge. Anyway, I always viewed this room as her shrine to the little girl she wanted instead of me.”

  “Oh, Noah, you don’t think that just because she wanted a girl means she loved you any less, do you?”

  “I’ll get your luggage, and the kids’ toys and stuff, then show you the deck and my new gas grill.”

  “Noah, don’t you want to—” Talk?

  Too late, he’d already left the room.

  Turning in a slow circle, Cassie once again drank in the space. Different from the rest of the house, this room held a faint lemony smell. Not a speck of dust rested on anything. Not on the dresser with its collection of silver-framed pictures of Noah as a boy. Not on any of the hardback classics lining a built-in bookshelf. Not even on the glass paperweights lounging on the seating area’s coffee table, basking in the sun.

  The room was a shrine.

  But to who or what?

  Noah’s mother and the daughter she’d wanted? To Noah’s lonely childhood—assuming he’d had one? To his ex-wife, or one of the women in the support group? Or to something more? Something Cassie sensed hiding deep inside him. Something all seventeen members of that goofy group also might have sensed, but hadn’t identified.

  Cassie, on the other hand, wondered if she might have accidentally stumbled across the answer.

  Whether he knew it or not, could Noah, the breaker of hearts suffer from a broken one?

  Having herself fallen victim to the very same malaise, Cassie figured she ought to be able to recognize the signs in others. Something she also recognized was the fact that no amount of talking or praying—or for that matter, dusting—would ever cure the disease. Maybe time would, but for her at least, not enough had passed yet for her to be able to tell.

  Goose bumps dotted her arms.

  Crossing them, she ran her hands up and down her shoulders, suppressing a shiver. For all the room’s warmth, why was she suddenly so cold?

  Chapter Four

  “Thanks,” Cassie said to Noah in the cereal aisle of Riverdale Grocery.

  “For what?” he asked, snatching the box of fiber flakes from the top shelf and tossing it in their cart. He’d offered to push, but though she hadn’t said anything to him, the day’s activities were starting to take a toll. She was exhausted from her latest trip to the hospital to feed the babies and holding the cart gave her much-needed support. “Because if I were really and truly a good guy, I’d save you from eating this overpriced cat food in a pretty box.”

  She made a face.

  “Seriously,” she said, rounding the end cap piled high with Pop-Tarts to turn down the baby aisle. “Thank you. I’m not used to this damsel in distress role I seem to have fallen into. It seems like every time I turn around, caught yet again in another jam—this time unable to reach my favorite cereal—you gallop up on your trusty sheriff-steed to save me…I mean, us. Guess I need to start getting used to that, huh? The fact that I now have a family.”

  “Aw, shucks, ma’am,” he said, pretending to whip off a cowboy hat while he deeply bowed. “’Twasn’t nuthin”’