Stella Bagwell - The Deputy's Lost and Found / Her Second Chance Cop - The Deputy's Lost and Found / Her Second Chance Cop

But he prayed to God before any of that happened, something would turn up. Or even better, Lass would start to remember. Until then, Brady had his work cut out for him. Not only to find Lass’s past, but to also keep his growing attraction for the woman in a proper perspective. And his hands to himself.

Yeah, right, he thought, as he turned down the bumpy dirt road to the Chino homestead. That was like telling himself to quit eating whenever he was hungry.

Johnny Chino was two years older than Brady and had lived with his grandparents, Charlie and Naomi, since he was a tiny infant. His mother had been an unwed teenager, a wild and irresponsible girl who’d been spoiled since her parents were older when she was born. She’d brought much shame on the Chino family. Shortly after Johnny had been born, she’d dumped the baby into her parents’ lap and left for parts unknown. A few years later, they’d gotten word that she’d been killed in an alcohol-related car crash.

Now Johnny’s grandparents were both in their nineties, but were still in good enough health to do for themselves. Even so, Johnny didn’t stray far from the home place and Brady often wondered if they were the reason the man had quit taking on tracking jobs. Rumor had it that he’d quit because of some tragedy that had occurred out in California. But Brady wasn’t one to listen to rumors. Nor was he one to question a friend just to satisfy a curiosity.

When Brady parked the truck in front of the house, two dogs, a red hound and a black collie, barked and ran toward the vehicle. Trusting that the dogs would remember him from his last visit a couple of months ago, he stepped to the ground.

By the time the dogs had surrounded him, a door slammed and he looked up to see Johnny stepping onto the long, wooden porch spanning the front of the small stucco house.

He was a tall, strongly built man, his long black hair pulled into a ponytail. His right cheekbone carried a faint scar, but it was his dark eyes that bore the true marks of his past. He stood where he was and waited for Brady to join him in the shade.

Lifting his hand in greeting, Brady approached the porch. Their tails wagging, the dogs trailed close on his heels.

“They remember you,” Johnny said, nodding toward the dogs.

“Why wouldn’t they?” Brady joked. “I’m pretty unforgettable.”

A quirk of a smile moved a corner of Johnny’s mouth as he motioned to a tattered lawn chair. “Come sit.”

Brady climbed the steps and took a seat. Johnny slouched against the wall of the house and pulled a piece of willow from his pocket and opened his pocket knife.

“How are your grandparents, Johnny?” he asked politely.

“Old. Very old.”

Well, his friend always did have a way of summing up a situation with very few words, Brady thought wryly.

“You probably know why I’m here,” Brady said. In spite of this part of the reservation being remote, he knew that news of any sort traveled quickly from one family to the next. No doubt Johnny had already heard a woman had been found in the mountains.

“Maybe.”

Brady did his best to contain a sigh of impatience. This was one man he couldn’t hurry and if he tried, he’d probably blow the whole reason for the visit.

“The girl doesn’t know who she is,” Brady explained. “And I can’t figure out what happened. At least, I haven’t yet.”

“I’m no lawman.”

“No. But you’d make a good one,” Brady said honestly.

Johnny’s knife blade sliced through the piece of willow and a curl of wood fell to the porch floor.

“I don’t track anymore.”

Brady couldn’t let things die there. Lass and her happiness meant too much to him. “I was hoping you’d break out of retirement for me. Just this one time.”

“The dogs don’t track anymore, either.”

Brady looked around to see both dogs had flopped down in a hole they had scratched near the end of the porch. Their energy level appeared to match Johnny’s.

“Since when have you needed dogs to help you?” Brady asked.

“I don’t track anymore,” he repeated.

Rubbing his hands over his knees, Brady tried to hide his frustration. “Johnny, I thought we were friends. Good friends.”

Johnny’s rough features tightened, but he said nothing.

One minute, then two, then three finally ticked by in pregnant silence. If it had been anyone else besides Johnny, Brady would have set in with a long speech about how they’d stood up for each other in high school, how they’d always had each other’s backs on the football field, and how after Brady’s grandfather had died, they’d camped together on Bonito Lake for a whole week. Because at that time, Johnny had understood how much Brady had needed to be with a friend.

But Brady didn’t remind the other man of their close ties. He knew that Johnny hadn’t forgotten anything.

“This girl,” Johnny said finally, “she means a lot to you?”

Brady let out a long breath. Means a lot? Leave it to his old buddy’s simple question to make Brady really think about what Lass was becoming to him, how important her happiness had come to mean to him. “Yeah. She … well, I like her better than any girl I can ever remember.”

His friend didn’t make an immediate reply to that and while Brady waited, he watched a pair of guinea hens strut across the dusty yard. He tried to imagine Johnny living in Albuquerque or Santa Fe, but that was like picturing a mountain lion in a cage.

“Show me where you found her,” Johnny finally said. “And I’ll try to get the dogs interested.”

More grateful than he ever expected to feel, Brady swallowed a sigh of relief, then rose to his feet and walked over to Johnny.

At that moment, he could have said a lot of things to his old friend. Like how much he valued their friendship. How much he appreciated his help and how much he thanked him for always being around whenever he needed him. But Johnny already knew all of that. And the quiet Apache would be insulted to hear such platitudes from Brady. To Johnny a true bond needed no words to keep it strong.

Instead, Brady touched a hand to his shoulder. “Fine. But before we go, I’d like to say hello to your grandparents.”

Johnny opened the front door of the little stucco and motioned for Brady to precede him into the house. As Brady stepped into the cool, dimly lit living room, all he could think about was that he was now one giant step closer to finding Lass’s identity.

But what was that going to bring to her? To him? Was all of this effort to find her past, eventually going to tear her from his arms?

Brady couldn’t let himself think about those questions. Because the minute he did he would quit being the Chief Deputy of Lincoln County and simply become a man.

At the same time, some twenty miles away, in a small boutique in downtown Ruidoso, Lass ambled slowly through the aisles of lingerie while close behind her, Dallas made helpful suggestions.

“I love this pink lace,” Dallas said, pausing to examine a set of bra and panties draped from a padded satin hanger. “This would look great on you, Lass.”

A faint blush colored Lass’s face. “Those are very expensive. Especially when … well, no one is going to see what I’m wearing underneath,” she reasoned.

“Lass! Since when did a woman start worrying about that? We wear this stuff because it makes us feel sexy and pretty. And who’s worrying about the cost, anyway? I’m not.”

Following up on her invitation from yesterday, Dallas had insisted on bringing Lass to town today to shop for personal items. So far she’d purchased a sack full of inexpensive makeup, hair-styling tools, two pair of shoes, a handbag and wallet. Though what she expected to put inside the wallet, she didn’t know. Without money, ID, credit cards, or a checkbook, she had little use for one. But Dallas had insisted, saying eventually that Brady was going to solve the whole thing and then Lass would need a place to put her driver’s license and other important information.