Tara Quinn - The Sheriff of Shelter Valley

Beth just stared. Her eyes were trying to tell him something…if only he could decipher what it was.

“I won’t stay long.”

Still without a word, she stood back, holding the door wide. Greg quickly stepped inside and followed her into the small living room. It was as neat as it had been the last time he was there. Neat and bare.

“Where’s Ryan?” he asked. He’d expected the boy to be playing quietly on the floor, had expected to see some toys out, stacked along the wall, something.

As far as he could tell, Ryan Allen hadn’t discovered the terrible twos yet.

“He’s asleep already. Normally bedtime isn’t until seven-thirty, but I had a cancellation today and we spent the afternoon at the day care. He was beat.”

“Did he and Katie acknowledge each other?” Greg asked, taking a seat on the edge of an old but relatively clean tweed couch, elbows on his knees.

“Nope.”

“Your son doesn’t like my niece?”

“More likely, your niece isn’t interested in giving my son the time of day.” She had a challenging glint in her eyes.

God, he loved it when she was feisty. And wondered why he saw that side of her so infrequently.

“No way,” he said, shaking his head as he grinned up at her. “Katie’ll make friends with anyone.”

“You make it sound like she shows no discrimination at all.”

He shrugged. “She’s a day care kid,” he said. “She really will play with anyone. So the problem has to be Ryan. The boy’s stuck on himself.” He was being outrageous and didn’t care. He’d made her smile.

“Or maybe Katie thinks since she’s so much older, it would be beneath her to play with a two-year-old.”

“Were you that way in high school? Too good to go out with the younger guys?”

“Probably not.”

“Why just probably?”

She looked away, her shoulders hunched as she rested her arms along the sides of her chair, an old but sturdy rocker. “Oh, you know,” she said, “you never see yourself in quite the same way other people do.”

True enough. “Tell me what you think you were like in high school.”

It took her a long time to answer. “Not one of the stupidest kids in class, but not one of the smartest, either.”

“I’ll bet you never failed a single test.”

“Not that I can remember.”

“And you had dates every weekend.”

“Well, I don’t recall a single weekend without one.” She grinned, but was still evading his eyes.

“Did you have a steady boyfriend?”

“Nobody who stayed with me.”

She was finally talking to him. Sort of. He wondered what she’d been like before the loss of her husband, before his death had locked her so deeply inside herself.

But Greg wasn’t going to let her reticence deter him. He understood the grieving process—from personal experience—but he also knew you didn’t stop living.

“What do you enjoy doing?” For someone who interviewed people regularly, he was doing a pretty lame job of gaining his subject’s trust.

But then, Beth wasn’t a subject. She was a woman who had insinuated herself into his thoughts so thoroughly that she was interfering with his calm, predictable life.

“I’m good at business. Numbers. That kind of thing.”

Not quite what he was looking for. And yet, perhaps the first piece of personal information she’d given him.

“So did you go to college?”

He’d just assumed she had no higher education—based solely on the fact that she was cleaning houses for a living. Yet Greg knew better than most how often things turned out to be exactly the opposite of the way they appeared. He knew what a mistake it was to assume anything. To judge anything by appearances.

“I sure didn’t learn about business law in high school.”

“You majored in business?”

“As long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to own my own business.” She was so passionate in what she was saying that Greg almost missed how adeptly she’d sidestepped his question.

“I don’t know how we got that far off topic,” she added, before he could attempt to wade any further through the vagueness surrounding her, “but maybe Katie just doesn’t like kids who are a little more serious in their endeavors and that’s why she won’t play with my son.”

No matter how beautiful the teasing grin she shot him, it didn’t cover the fact that she had, once again, completely turned the conversation away from herself.

From his probing.

“I still think Ryan’s the problem,” he said, quite purposefully egging her on.

“My son is not a problem.” The teasing glint remained in her eyes, but she’d crossed her arms over her chest. Usually a defensive gesture.

At least, when you were a suspect being questioned.

“Okay, problem is the wrong choice of word. But if the kid’s anything like his mom…”

“Ryan plays with other kids,” she said. She’d lost the glint.

Sobering, Greg said, “Bonnie told me the reason you volunteer at the day care in exchange for playtime is that you’re trying to draw the little guy out more.”

“I want him to have a homelike environment during the day when I work, but I did think being around other kids his age might encourage him to talk.”

Greg nodded. He knew how much Bonnie and Keith—and he, too, for that matter—ached over every little glitch in Katie’s life. A measurement that wasn’t right in the middle of the chart. Teeth coming too soon, steps taken too late. Fevers, ear infections, runny noses. An aversion to vegetables. Shouldering all those worries alone had to be hard.

And that on top of losing the man you’d meant to spend the rest of your life with…

“If there’s ever anything I can do—teach him to play catch, empathize with you when he’s sick—you know I’m here, right?” he asked, certain that he was crossing a line he shouldn’t cross.

“Thanks.” Beth smiled again. A sad, very real smile, instead of the quick assurance he’d been expecting.

It wasn’t agreeing to a date. But in Greg’s book, it was far better than that.

And even though she’d given him more information about herself than he’d ever had before, he still didn’t have a clear picture of who Beth Allen really was.

“SO WHAT DID YOU DO TODAY?” Beth asked Greg when silence fell between them and she was afraid he might take that as a sign to leave.

She felt buoyed up and wasn’t ready to be alone.

He sat back, his uniform creased from a day in the August heat. That uniform made her uncomfortable. It reminded her of everything she couldn’t have. Freedom from fear. Freedom to speak openly. Sex.

“I can’t be sure, but I might have wasted the majority of it.” The words, accompanied by a tired sigh, completely surprised her.

Greg always seemed so on top of things. In control. Able to handle anything.

She couldn’t believe how quickly she wanted to help when she found out that wasn’t the case.

“Anything you can talk about?”

“I’m attempting to find a connection between some recent carjackings and the one involving my father ten years ago.”

Knowing how close Greg and Bonnie were, how much family meant to them, that couldn’t be an easy job. “You think there is one?”

He clasped and unclasped his hands. “I’m sure of it. Problem is, the deputy in charge—the best man in the whole damn department, as far as I’m concerned—doesn’t agree with me.”

“What does he say?”

“That I’m making it personal.”

“Are you?”

“I don’t think so.”

Beth didn’t know much about herself, but thought she had a pretty good sense of this man. The type of person he was. “You’re a smart man, Greg. And an honest one. I don’t think you’d kid yourself about something as serious as this.”