Brenda Harlen - The Sheriff's Nine-Month Surprise

“Optimistic,” he told her. “But I do need to ask you something.”

“What’s that?”

“Is there anyone waiting for you at home in Haven?”

“Aside from my father, grandparents, sister, two brothers, several aunts, uncles and cousins, you mean?”

“Aside from them,” he confirmed.

“No, there’s no one waiting for me.” She traced the base of her wineglass with a neatly shaped but unpainted fingernail. “What about you, Sheriff Davidson—are you married?”

He shook his head. “Divorced.”

“Girlfriend?”

“No,” he said again. “Any more questions?”

“Just one,” she said.

He held her gaze, waiting, hoping.

“Do you want to take these drinks back to my room?”

Chapter Two

Five weeks later

“I can’t believe you’re leaving.” Trish Stilton pouted as she rubbed a hand over the curve of her hugely pregnant belly. “Especially now, only a few weeks before the baby’s due to be born.”

Reid dumped the entire contents of his cutlery drawer into a box. Though he didn’t dare say it aloud, considering the imminent delivery of his ex-wife’s baby, he’d decided that his timing was almost perfect.

“Just last week, I told Jonah that we should ask you to be the godfather, but now that you’re moving to Nevada, that’s out of the question.”

Which further convinced Reid that he’d made the right choice in accepting the offer to take over the sheriff’s position in Haven. Though he and Trish had been divorced for more than four years and she’d been remarried for almost three, they’d remained close. Maybe too close.

When she’d walked down the aisle to exchange vows with her current husband, Reid had been the man to give her away. Yeah, it had seemed an odd request to him, but he didn’t see how he could refuse. When she’d found out that she was pregnant, she’d stopped at the Sheriff’s Office to share the news with Reid even before she’d told her husband. And when she’d cried—tears of joy, because she was going to be a mother, mingled with grief, because her child would never know his grandfather—he’d held her and comforted her.

If she’d asked him to be her baby’s godfather—as Jonah Stilton had warned him she intended to do—Reid wouldn’t have been able to refuse. How could he refuse any request from the daughter of the man who’d saved his life?

Reid had been an orphaned teenager running with a bad crowd when the local sheriff took him under his wing. He didn’t just turn Reid’s life around, he saved it, and Reid knew there was no way he could ever repay the man who had been his mentor, father figure and friend. So when Hank realized he wasn’t going to beat the cancer that had invaded his body and he’d confided to Reid that he was worried about his daughter, Reid had promised to take care of her. The news of their engagement had been a balm to the older man’s battered spirits, and he’d managed to hold on long enough to see Reid and Trish exchange their vows.

“I’m honored that you thought of me,” he said to his ex-wife now. “But I’m sure your baby’s father would prefer to have his brother fill that role.”

“Jonah understands how important you are to me,” she said, without denying his claim.

“You’re important to me, too, but I think this move is going to be the best thing for all of us.”

“But why do you have to go so far away?” she demanded.

“Nevada’s not all that far,” he said soothingly.

“But Haven?” she pressed. “I looked it up—it might as well be called Nowhere, Nevada, because that’s where it is.”

“Then I won’t expect you to visit,” he said mildly.

“Of course, I’ll visit,” she promised. “Because you don’t have any friends or family in that town.”

“Actually, I do have a...friend...in Haven.”

“A female friend?” she guessed.

He nodded.

“I knew there had to be another reason that you suddenly decided to leave Echo Ridge—something more than a temporary job.”

“She’s not the reason I’m leaving,” he said truthfully. “But I am looking forward to seeing her again.”

“What’s her name?”

Reid shook his head. “None of your business.”

Trish smiled. “Afraid I’ll track her down and ask about her intentions?”

“Yes,” he admitted.

Not that he was really worried. He had no doubt that Katelyn Gilmore could handle his ex-wife. But the attorney had no idea that he was moving to Haven, because they hadn’t exchanged any contact information before they went their separate ways after the conference. And with the perspective that came with time and distance, he couldn’t help but wonder if he’d made the weekend they’d spent together into more than it really was.

“Well, it would only be fair,” Trish said now. “You wouldn’t let me go out on a second date with Jonah until you’d done a complete background check on him.”

“Because your father asked me to take care of you,” he reminded her.

“He wanted us to take care of each other,” she said.

And for a while, they’d done just that. But Trish had wanted more than he’d been willing or able to give her—an irreconcilable difference that led to the end of their marriage. When that happened, he felt as if he’d let down Hank as much as Trish, but he knew his old friend would be pleased to see his daughter in a committed relationship with a man who could give her everything Reid couldn’t.

He was sincerely happy for her, because she was happy. For himself, he’d decided a long time ago that he wasn’t cut out to be a dad. A kid who’d been knocked around by his mother’s various boyfriends for the first six years of his life, then raised by his widowed grandmother for the next eight before being kicked into and around the system didn’t know anything about being a father. He’d lucked out when he’d met Hank. Trish’s father had given him an idea of the type of man a dad should be, but Reid suspected it was too little too late, that the scars from his earlier years were too numerous and deep to ever truly heal.

“Now you’ve got Jonah,” he reminded her.

“Yes, I do,” Trish said, smiling through the tears that filled her eyes again.

“Jeez, will you stop with the waterworks?” he demanded, passing her a box of tissues.

She plucked one out and dabbed at her eyes. “I can’t help it—it’s pregnancy hormones.”

“Well, let your husband deal with your blubbering—he’s the one who knocked you up.”

“Yes, he did,” she said proudly, rubbing a hand over the enormous swell of her belly. “And those hormones have also led to doing a lot more of what got me into this condition.”

He lifted his hands to cover his ears. “Way too much information, Trish.”

She laughed through her tears. Then she reached out a hand to touch his arm. “Can I give you one piece of advice?”

“Can I stop you?” he countered drily.

She ignored his question. “Before you get involved with this woman—before she gets involved with you—be honest about what you want and don’t want from a relationship.”

“I never meant to be dishonest with you,” he said quietly.

“I know,” she admitted. “The problem was, we rushed into marriage without ever talking about all the things we should have talked about.”

He nodded. “But now you have everything you wanted.”

“Soon,” she amended, rubbing a hand over her baby bump again. Then with her other hand, she grabbed his and drew it to the curve of her belly. “Do you feel that? He’s kicking.”

He did feel it, little nudges against his palm. He wondered if it hurt her, to have a tiny human being moving around inside of her, but that seemed like too personal a question to ask. Not that his ex-wife seemed to care about boundaries, which was why Reid was moving out of state in an effort to establish some. Instead he asked, “He?”