Amy Frazier - Falling For The Deputy

“You were snooping around this afternoon, deliberately creating drama, which you knew would get back to me eventually, because you were ticked I wasn’t giving you my full attention. Maybe you thought you could find something you could use as—I hesitate to use the word blackmail—leverage?”

Chloe stuck her finger in the center of his chest. And pushed. “I’m not that kind of person. I was simply doing my job as best I could—alone—once it became evident you weren’t taking my assignment seriously. An assignment, I might remind you, your boss requested.”

When it looked as if she might poke him again, he took a step backward. “Lady, don’t try to throw your weight around. I’m bigger than you by a good hundred pounds.”

Chloe’s cheeks flamed red, making the freckles across her nose stand out. She pulled herself erect. “I’m not going away, Deputy Whittaker. I’m staying right here in town….”

Dear Reader,

This was a difficult story to write. Quite frankly, my personal life has been in turmoil for the past year. I’d get up every day and face the computer screen, wondering if I could help my hero and heroine with their lives when I was having such a difficult time with my own.

Deputy Sheriff Mack Whittaker is guilt ridden over an event in his past. His reaction is to shut down emotionally and throw himself into his job. Reporter Chloe Atherton harbors her own traumatic touchstone, but she feels confident that by pursuing the truth in the form of facts, she has her life under control. At one point in writing I found myself yelling at the computer screen, “Wake up! Control is merely an illusion!” Harsh. Even if you’re yelling at fictional characters.

So…if I wasn’t going to give these two the comfort of control, what was left to them? (And to me. Because, if you haven’t yet guessed, I was kinda countin’ on Mack and Chloe leading me out of my own personal wilderness.) The answer was as it always is: We survive—and thrive—by first opening our hearts.

As I helped my hero and heroine grasp that particular lifeline, I pulled myself to safety, as well.

Now I wish you love,

Amy Frazier

TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON

AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG

STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID

PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

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Having worked at various times as a teacher, a media specialist, a professional storyteller and a freelance artist, Amy Frazier now writes full-time. She lives in Georgia with her husband, two philosophical cats and one very rascally terrier-mix dog.

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

EPILOGUE

THE TOP OF HIS HEAD was about to blow.

His mother had just called him—for the third time this morning—to ask if the reporter from the Western Carolina Sun had arrived in Applegate yet.

No.

Thank God.

Undeterred by his increasingly testy responses, Lily had insisted Mack bring the man or woman to supper at the farmhouse one night this week. For a nice down-home mix of business and pleasure, she’d said. That wasn’t going to happen. People, his mother chief among them, thought because Mack had joined AA and was back on the force, he was ready to rejoin the human race.

He wasn’t.

He still struggled to stay sober. Doing his job helped. Period.

To that end, Mack pulled his sheriff’s department cruiser to the side of the road behind a battered Yugo. He cast a glance over the wreck of a car. Primer paint in several hues covered all but one fender. The driver’s-side taillight was broken. Bumper stickers, some faded beyond legibility, littered the car’s sorry backside. Two caught his attention. The facts will set you free and Pray for peace; work for justice. Call him cynical, but it wasn’t that easy.

At first he’d thought the car was abandoned. It wasn’t unusual in the mountains, valleys and hollows of Colum County, North Carolina, to find stolen cars stripped and ditched by the side of an out-of-the-way road. But this Yugo—Mack doubted it would have appealed to a thief even in its heyday—had a current registration sticker on the plate. From his cruiser, he began a computer check.

As the door of the Yugo opened and the driver got out, Mack stopped mid-routine. Despite the glare of the midday sun, he instinctively ran a visual of the slender woman, who shaded her eyes with one hand. In the other she clutched a crumpled road map. She wore a button-up sweater that looked as if it had shrunk during washing, a faded ankle-length dress that had “church rummage sale” written all over it and black lace-up boots, the kind his great-granny used to wear. When she finally took her hand from her eyes, Mack saw she was young. And pretty.

He stepped out of the cruiser and approached her. “Can I help you?”

She smiled, and her fresh face framed by tousled strawberry-blond hair, made him think she’d never been disappointed in her entire life. “Is this the road to Applegate?”

“One of them.” He gave her car’s interior a cursory inspection. Books, notebooks and loose papers filled the back seat. She was probably a student at the college over in Brevard, although she looked too young to be even a freshman.

“One of them? Is that local humor?” Cocking her head to the side, she gazed directly at him. Mack blinked and discovered the proverbial shoe on the other foot. Usually he was the one who made other people uncomfortable because of his size and uniform.

But his presence didn’t faze this young woman in the least. She stood almost toe-to-toe with him, so close he could see a dusting of freckles across her nose, and waited patiently, with an air of innocence he found disconcerting.

He scowled. “Humor? No. I’m told I don’t have an ounce left in me.” To prove the point, he added, “Do you know your car has a broken taillight?”

“You should see the other guy.” She grinned wickedly, revealing perfect teeth. “Humor,” she explained.

“It’s not a laughing matter. I could write you up—”

“Oh, please, don’t,” she said as she might say no, thank you to a second helping of cake. “When I get to Applegate, I’ll get it fixed.”

Kids. Not a care in the world. Making it on looks and youth alone. Mack felt a jolt of envy. After what he’d seen and done half a world away, carefree would never be a mood ascribed to him again.

He ran his fingers over the broken plastic of the Yugo’s taillight. “See that you get this fixed. Take it to Mel’s on Main Street.” He turned to go. “And afterward, come to the sheriff’s office with the receipt. To show me you kept your word.”