BEVERLY BARTON - Time of Death

“Sorry. I … uh … Why don’t I follow you home and then escort you over to Maleah’s after you pack a bag.”

Had she heard him correctly? Was Sheriff Birkett, the man who thought she was only one step above pond scum, actually worried about her?

“Why?” she asked.

“Why what?”

“Why the pretense of being concerned about my welfare?”

“I’m the sheriff. You’re a citizen of my county whose life has been threatened. I’m just doing my civic duty.”

“Bull. You could have sent a deputy to check on me.”

“You’ve been monitored all day today,” he told her. “Between my men and Chief Ballard’s police force, somebody’s been by here every hour since you arrived at Treasures this morning.”

“So to what do I owe the honor of your visit this evening? Why put yourself out for little old me?”

“Damn it, Lorie, that smart mouth of yours—” Grimacing, he clenched his teeth together and snorted. “I came by here to apologize.”

“What?”

Their gazes met and locked. For a split second, she thought she saw something achingly familiar in the way he looked at her. But the expression vanished so quickly that she realized she had probably imagined it.

“I let my personal feelings get in the way of doing my job,” he admitted. “I had no right to assume you were lying about being threatened and to dismiss your concerns as if they were nothing. I’m sorry.”

To say she was stunned was a gross understatement. She never thought she would live to see the day that Mike would ever again apologize to her for anything.

“I’m sorry, too,” she told him. “I’m sorry that I gave you reasons to believe I’d do anything to get back into your good graces. I should have accepted the fact, years ago, that you didn’t want to have anything to do with me … and with good reason.”

He shuffled uncomfortably. “Yeah, sure. Apology accepted. So, what about you?”

She forced a fragile smile. “Apology accepted.”

“Good. Why don’t I help you close up shop and then I’ll follow you home.”

“There’s nothing to do except turn out the lights, get my purse, and lock the back door on my way out.”

“I’ll walk you to your car,” he said. “You’re parked in back, right?”

“Right.”

She glanced at him briefly. He smiled. Her nerves tingled with awareness. This was the first time since her return to Dunmore that Mike had smiled at her.

Don’t make too much of it. He’s just doing his best to be civil, to do his job, to prove to you and Maleah—and probably to Jack and Cathy—that he won’t allow his personal feelings to interfere with doing his duty.

Mike loaded Lorie’s suitcase into her Edge SUV and closed the hatch. “All set?”

“Yes, but it’s really not necessary for you to escort me to Maleah’s. I’m sure you’d rather be home having dinner with your children.”

“Hannah and M.J. are visiting Molly’s parents over in Muscle Shoals this weekend. Carl and Gail picked them up right after school today. They stay with them on average one weekend a month and they go over for a couple of weeks every summer.”

“I know your wife’s parents appreciate your being so generous with the kids.”

“It’s what Molly would have wanted.”

Lorie smiled and nodded before moving away from him and grasping the driver’s side door handle. “I’m ready to go.”

“I’ll be right behind you.”

As soon as she pulled out of her driveway, he started the truck’s engine and fell in behind her. He really wasn’t sure why he was doing this.

Paying penance, maybe.

His feelings for Lorie hadn’t changed. He still hated her, still wished she would leave Dunmore and never come back, still wanted to drag her off to the nearest bed and fuck her like crazy.

But he owed her the common courtesy of showing her that the sheriff’s department intended to do everything possible to keep her safe. He might despise Lorie, but he couldn’t bear the thought of someone killing her. She might deserve some of the bad things that had happened to her, but she didn’t deserve to die.

You’re an idiot, Birkett. A damn idiot.

Lorie didn’t deserve any of the bad things that had happened to her. Just because she’d left him high and dry, had broken his heart and nearly destroyed him didn’t mean she should be punished forever for wanting a life he couldn’t be a part of. She had begged him to go to LA with her.

“Oh, Mike, it’ll be so much fun,” she had said. “We can both get jobs. You can go to school at night until you get your degree and I can sign with an agent and get small parts in TV at first. And later on, when you’re a big-time LA detective and I’m a movie star, we’ll be the envy of every other couple in Hollywood. Just think how romantic that is—the detective and the actress.”

Those had been her dreams, not his. She had wanted a glamorous life surrounded by the rich and famous. All he’d ever wanted was to finish college, work for local law enforcement, get married, and raise a family. He was a simple man with simple wants and needs. Lorie had been—and probably still was—a complicated woman with the kind of wants and needs he could never fulfill.

It had been his choice to stay in Dunmore and not follow her to LA. At first, she had called him every day, then every week and then every month. He would never forget the last time she’d called and the things they had said to each other.

“Honey, forget all that fame and fortune bullshit and come home where you belong.”

“Oh, Mike, why can’t you understand? I just got a speaking part on a Law and Order episode. I want you to be happy for me. I want you to fly out here and—”

“I can’t.”

“You mean you won’t.”

“Yeah, okay. I won’t. I don’t belong out there and neither do you.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. I’m not going to live and die in Dunmore, Alabama, and waste the talent the Good Lord gave me. I’ve got a good singing voice and I’m taking acting lessons and my teacher says I’m a natural. And I’m told I have the kind of looks that will help me go far in the business.”

“You do what you have to do,” he’d said. “And I’ll do what I have to do.”

“What you have to do doesn’t include me anymore, does it? You’ve stopped loving me … if you ever really did.”

“How can you say that? I love you so damn much it hurts,” he had told her. “And I miss you something awful. It’s you who doesn’t love me. If you did, you’d come home and we’d get married the way we planned. In a few years, we could save up enough for a house and our first baby.”

“I don’t want a baby! Not now. Not for years and years.”

In the end, Mike had been forced to accept the fact that Lorie would never come back to him, that he had lost her forever.

It had taken him years to get over her, to move on with his life, and he could thank Molly for that. She had been his salvation. All the dreams he’d once had that included Lorie, all the plans the two of them had made together, he had fulfilled with another woman, with Molly. Thinking about his children, he knew that was the way things were meant to be.

He wasn’t the kind of man who wasted his time looking back and wondering what if? or wished for things that he couldn’t have.

Yeah, sure, he could have Lorie, could have had her when she first came back to Dunmore, could have had her before and after Molly died. He could probably still have her. But the Lorie he had known and loved no longer existed. His Lorie was as dead to him as Molly was. The Lorie who had come to him a sixteen-year-old virgin, the girl who had been his and only his. The teenager who had planned her future around him and the family they would one day have.