Ruth Herne - The Lawman's Second Chance

She waved to the girls and walked back to the fountain area, avoiding Caroline and her father. They’d read her like a book. She needed a few minutes to recover, because somewhere inside her she’d known this would happen. Men didn’t want damaged goods. Alex was no exception. And while it shouldn’t matter, it did. And that came as a wake-up call.

She didn’t bargain on meeting Adam near the mulch station.

He and Rosie came around from the back barn. The toddler raced for Lisa, arms out, eyes wide, her broad smile easing the sting of Alex’s rejection. This was the reason she worked to raise awareness. So Rosie’s generation wouldn’t have to go through the rigorous treatments she’d undergone.

“What’s wrong?” Adam’s face said she hadn’t done a good job of hiding her emotions. Given five more minutes, he wouldn’t have been able to tell, but right now she was an open wound, raw and bleeding.

“Nothing.”

“It’s not nothing when it makes you look like you want to cry,” Adam scolded in a none-too-gentle brotherly voice. “Who hurt your feelings? And where are they? I’ll punch them for you.”

“You can’t. You’ll get fired and then who will buy Rosie pretty dresses and fancy shoes?”

“You. You spoil her all the time.”

“Love doesn’t spoil children,” Lisa told him. She sighed, rubbed her cheek against the toddler’s soft, dark curls and shrugged. “I forget how cancer scares people. And then I see the reality in their eyes when they find out, and—”

“Alex Steele?” Adam interrupted her with a nod toward the road leading to town.

She nodded.

He rubbed his jaw, made a face and said, “Listen, sis—”

“It’s okay, Adam. I get it. It’s not like I haven’t dealt with those expressions before. I’m a big girl. I can handle this.”

“You don’t get it.” Adam looked torn, then lifted his shoulders. “I don’t talk about private stuff at work. None of us do. When we’re on the job, we stay on the job. Full focus. Troopers that lose their focus can get killed.”

She knew that. They’d buried a young trooper two years before, a victim of a hit-and-run driver on the Interstate while he wrote out a speeding ticket. Focus was clutch in police work.

“But I know this much—Alex’s wife died of breast cancer.”

Lisa’s heart gripped tight.

Her pulse bumped down, then up.

Realization made her feel foolish. She hadn’t seen revulsion in Alex’s eyes, on his face. She’d seen naked fear, a replica of the emotion she knew so well. Too well.

“She fought just like you did,” Adam continued. “I know this because one of the other guys that transferred in worked Monroe County with him. But we don’t talk about it. We just figured he could use some prayer. And moral support. It’s hard coming in as a boss in a new setting. Not all the guys are happy when outsiders are brought in. But we needed a new lieutenant in B.C.I., and Alex wanted a fresh start for his family. Something without reminders.”

He’d lost his wife, the mother of three sweet children.

He’d changed jobs.

Bought a new home.

While she was celebrating her possible full remission, he’d been dealing with the opposite image in the mirror, the aftermath of a killer’s success. His wife’s death. Why her? Why not Lisa? Why anyone?

“Oh, Adam...”

“Don’t tell him I said anything,” Adam instructed her. “I don’t want Alex to think I talk about him behind his back. Especially to my pesky, know-it-all big sister.”

“I won’t.” She set Rosie down, took the little one’s hand and moved forward. “But I’m glad you told me. Now I can be more sensitive to it if he lets me work with Emma on this 4-H project.”

“Lets you work on it?” Adam halted her progress with a hand to her arm. “You think he won’t?”

“If he doesn’t want reminders, walking into a place like this...” She waved a hand, pointing out the obvious. “Pink banners, pink flowers, pink hanging baskets and breast cancer information at every turn has to be like walking the plank. A slow and painful process.”

“Hey.” Adam turned her around and his no-nonsense cop face said she’d better listen up. “You do great work here. And it’s not like you guys are on different teams. You’ve just taken on the fight visibly, using the business to help raise people’s consciousness. There’s nothing wrong with that, sis.”

She knew that. And she wouldn’t change a thing, but now she realized why Alex looked war-torn on Saturday. And why the house of kids seemed chaotic on Sunday. And why he’d recoiled today.

She understood they were on the same team, in a way. But she’d survived.

His wife hadn’t.

And that made being on the same team unbelievably painful for him.

* * *

Alex glared at the clock, thumped his pillow twice because once wasn’t enough, then hauled himself out of bed the next morning. He thought he’d put sleepless nights behind him in Rochester.

Obviously not.

Lisa.

Cancer.

Pink.

The words dogged his morning routine. When Becky wanted milk, he gave her juice. When Josh whined about his game system, Alex didn’t even make the kid say please. And when Emma asked an innocent question about the start-up date for the garden plans, he’d snapped at her.

Right then he knew. He couldn’t do cancer again. He couldn’t do the watching and waiting. Not up close and personal. Never again.

He’d pray for Lisa’s continued good health from a distance. Which meant finding someone else to do Emma’s project, but even a small town must have more than one able-bodied gardener, right?

With that plan firmly in mind, he parked his car outside the Fillmore station house and strode in, determined. Jack Samson, a long-standing investigator, gave him a high-sign as he wrapped up a phone call. Alex approached him, a coffee cup in his left hand, his laptop bag in his right, and a self-made promise to push all thoughts of Lisa Fitzgerald aside, no matter how hard that might be. “What’s up, Jack?”

“Overnight grand theft of pricey gardening equipment.”

“Gardening equipment?”

“Well.” Jack raised his notepad and shrugged as he headed for the door. “Garden, farm, whatever. In this case it’s both because Gardens & Greens is a farm that’s a garden store, right?”

Gardens & Greens.

Robbed.

Lisa.

Alex’s heart did a double take. So did his brain. The thought that someone with ill intent got close to her. Close to her family...

Lisa.

He’d promised himself he’d stay away.

That pledge dissolved into dust at his feet as he hurried after Jack.

Jack turned at the car, puzzled. “You’re riding along?”

“Yes.”

The clipped word said Jack should leave it alone.

Jack did just that.

He nodded, climbed in and started the engine, but a tiny smile quirked the right side of his jaw, the only side Alex could see. “Okay, then.”

He’d accompany Jack, make sure everything was all right. That Lisa was all right. That no one was hurt. And then he’d leave.

One look at her face as they strode into the garden center office a few minutes later said leaving wasn’t an option. Knowing her past and seeing the pain of the present stamped across her pretty face, he longed to hug her.

He couldn’t.

His entire being yearned to comfort her, to pledge her safety, and yes, maybe even kiss that worry-furrow between her eyes, smooth it away.

Right now she looked like she could use a hero, but the cool look she passed over him as she locked gazes with Jack said he’d missed his shot by a country mile the day before.

Alex understood her reaction. He’d brushed her off when he found out she’d been sick, a coward’s choice. But the tables had shifted this morning, because someone had tried to hurt Lisa and her family.