Marie Ferrarella - The Sheriff's Christmas Surprise

Well, not while she was around, Olivia silently vowed. Not while there was a breath left in her body. If she had to, she would drag Tina back kicking and screaming and sit on her sister until she came to her senses.

But none of this did she want to share with a virtual stranger no matter how good-looking he was. Her sister’s insanely poor judgment was her business. It was not up for public scrutiny. “He is Don Norman,” she told the sheriff. The moment stretched out and she knew the man was waiting for more. “And ever since he came into my sister’s life, Norman has turned it upside down, and turned my sister into some pathetic, mindless groupie.”

“Groupie,” Rick repeated. The word had a definite connotation. He made the only logical connection. “This Norman’s a musician?”

Olivia laughed shortly again. Don thought of himself as a musician, but as far as she knew, he’d never gotten paid and was currently part of no band.

“Among other things, or so he says,” she replied crisply. “Mostly he’s just a waste of human skin.” She looked down at the baby in her arms.

Please don’t take after your father, she implored Bobby silently.

“Sounds like you don’t like him much,” Miss Joan speculated, wiping down the same spot on the counter that she’d been massaging for the past few minutes.

“No, that’s not true. I don’t like him at all,” Olivia corrected. “I tried, for Tina’s sake.” She patted the baby’s back, moving her hand in slow, small concentric circles. The repetitive movement tended to soothe him. “And for Bobby’s. But it’s really hard to like someone who repays you for putting him up for six months by stealing your jewelry.”

“He stole your jewelry?” Rick asked, his interest in the case piquing. “You’re sure that he was the one who took it and not—”

Olivia saw where the sheriff was going with this and cut him off.

“Tina didn’t have to steal anything from me. All she had to do was ask and I’d give her whatever she needed. I have been giving her everything she’s needed.” Olivia pressed her lips together. And how’s that working out for you? a voice in her head jeered. “Norman’s the thief,” Olivia insisted. “He stole the jewelry, he stole my sister. I don’t care about the jewelry, that’s replaceable,” she told the sheriff, struggling to hold on to her temper. It wasn’t easy. Just thinking of Don pushed all her buttons. “My sister is not. And I am really afraid that something terrible is going to happen to her if she stays with the man.”

She raised her eyes to the sheriff’s. It killed her to ask a stranger for help, but she knew when she was out of her element. Tina’s welfare took precedence over her pride.

“Can you help me find them, Sheriff?”

He’d always been a fairly decent judge of character. He had a feeling that the woman before him was used to taking charge of a situation. Was this actually nothing more than a glorified matter of power play? Did she resent the fact that her sister had run off with a boyfriend she disapproved of?

“If your sister left with this Norman guy of her own free will—” Rick began.

Olivia knew a refusal when she saw it coming. Quickly, she changed strategies. “All right, then go after him for stealing my jewelry. I’ll press charges. Whatever it takes to get him out of my sister’s life and mine, I’ll do it.”

“I’d be careful how I phrase that if I were you,” Rick warned her.

Olivia felt her back going up. She’d been through a lot these past few days and there was precious little left to her patience. “I’m a lawyer, I don’t get careless with words, Sheriff.”

“And there’s abandonment,” Lupe chimed in, speaking up for the first time. “You could get this guy for that.”

The word “abandonment” suddenly sank in. Olivia realized that with her mind racing a hundred miles an hour and going off in all different directions at once, she’d gotten so caught up in finding the baby, she hadn’t asked the sheriff a very basic question. There was a huge chunk of information she was missing.

“What are you doing with my nephew in the first place, Sheriff? Why do you even have him?”

“I found your nephew on my doorstep this morning when I was leaving for work,” he informed her matter-of-factly.

“On your doorstep?” Olivia echoed, stunned. “That’s impossible. Tina would have never let Bobby out of her sight.” She paled as a possible explanation came to her. “Unless something’s happened to her.” Her eyes widened as she caught hold of the sheriff’s arm, a sense of urgency telegraphing itself from her to him. “Sheriff, you’ve got to help me find—”

“Don’t go getting ahead of yourself,” Rick told her. He thought of one plausible explanation, although it was a stretch. “Maybe your sister figured that what was ahead was too dangerous for the little guy.”

He was being kind, making up an excuse to calm the blonde with the ice-blue eyes. In his heart, though, he believed that perhaps the woman’s sister had gotten bored with playing house and had decided to abandon her latest toy, leaving him in the first place that came up. Maybe they’d passed his place on their way out of town and impulsively decided to drop the baby off on his doorstep.

Technically, his mother had done that, Rick thought, leaving him and his younger sister, Ramona, with her mother-in-law. He could still remember what she’d looked like as she’d promised to be “back soon.”

“Soon” had turned into close to eighteen years. By the time she actually had returned, he didn’t need her, or her lies, in his life. She’d come back too late. He’d grown up with a substitute mother, his tough-as-nails grandmother, molding his life and Mona’s. Maria Elena had been a hard taskmaster, but her heart had been in the right place and she had made him the man he was today. And for that, he would always be grateful to the pint-size martinet.

“Or maybe Don felt that the baby was dragging them down and he told my sister to get rid of Bobby—or else,” Olivia said.

“But he is the baby’s father, isn’t he?” Lupe asked, horrified.

“The baby’s his,” Olivia allowed slowly. “But it takes more than getting a woman pregnant to make a man a father,” she said with feeling, raising her chin.

Rick saw the anger in her eyes and found the sparks oddly fascinating.

“That vermin has no more of an idea on how to be a father than a panther knows how to walk around in high heels,” Olivia declared angrily.

“Interesting imagery,” Rick commented. He glanced down at her feet and saw that she was wearing fashionable shoes whose heels could have doubled as stilts. They had to be around five inches. How did she manage to walk around in them?

“Feet hurt?” he guessed.

They did, but that was something else she wasn’t about to admit. Besides, she’d gotten used to the dull ache.

“No,” she denied. “Why do you ask?”

“Haven’t seen heels that high since the circus came through a couple of years ago.” He glanced at her shoes again, shaking his head. The women he knew were given to jeans and boots. But on the other hand, he had to admit the woman had a great set of legs. Best he’d seen in a very long time. “They just look like they might hurt.”

She lifted the shoulder the baby wasn’t leaning against in a partial shrug. Bobby’d fallen asleep and she wasn’t about to disturb him. Olivia lowered her voice. “That all depends on what you get used to,” she told him, the inflection in her voice distant.

The woman wasn’t kidding when she said she knew her way around words. “I suppose you have a point. By the way,” he said, and extended his hand toward her. “I’m Sheriff Enrique Santiago—Rick for short.”