Gayle Kaye - Sheriff Takes A Bride

Dear Reader,

I was excited to learn Sheriff Takes a Bride is part of Silhouette’s new promotion, FAMILY MATTERS. Families today can be far from the typical family of the “Leave It to Beaver” days, but the key ingredient remains: love. In all my stories love abounds, love accomplishes, love encourages and love protects.

I believe in the power of family relationships. I can draw from my own experience as a single mom raising two daughters and finally meeting my very own Prince Charming, of the hardships endured and the love that was gained. I’ve written about these single moms, giving them their own unique stories.

We all have a cherished family member, one in whom we can put our trust, one who nurtures and encourages us. For Hallie Cates in Sheriff Takes a Bride that person is her independent and often cantankerous grandmother. Hallie has her job cut out for her trying to corral the moonshining Granny Pearl—and it doesn’t help that the local sheriff, Cam Osborne, has arrested the woman for her illicit trade. Or that he believes Hallie is involved.

Family means everything to Hallie and, in its own way, to Cam. But can love prevail between the two of them? It takes Granny Pearl to see that they have “family” potential.

Chapter One

“Hallie, I need you. You gotta come.”

Hallie Cates had never heard such a tremor in Granny Pearl’s voice before. Her grandmother was headstrongly in charge of her own life. Always. Something was definitely wrong.

Hallie abandoned the cookies she’d just taken from the oven and shifted the phone on her shoulder. “Granny Pearl, what is it? Are you all right?”

“No—I’m far from all right. In fact, I might never be all right again.”

There. Hallie heard the old familiar spunk she always associated with Granny Pearl. She drew an easier breath, if only for the moment. The seventy-nine-year-old woman lived all alone, tucked away in tiny, backwards—to Hallie’s way of thinking. Greens Hollow, Arkansas, but it was home to Granny Pearl. And the old girl vehemently refused to budge from there.

“I wouldn’t call you if it wasn’t important, Hallie.” The woman snuffled. Or maybe it was the scratchiness of the phone system in the Ozark hill country.

“You know you can call me anytime, Granny Pearl. Now, calm down and tell me what it is.”

Granny could take care of herself, even reveled in the fact, claimed she’d be carried out of her cabin feet first and no other way. And Hallie wasn’t sure she could change her mind on that score. Still, she worried about her relative.

“This... horrible cuss of a varmint has arrested me. Locked me up and won’t let me go home. I need to feed George and Myrtle.”

Granny’s voice quavered again at the last Hallie heard it, knew her grandmother would be upset to be away from her two pesky goats, but she suspected the animals would somehow survive. It was Granny Pearl she was concerned about

“Arrested? Granny, there must be some mistake.” Who would arrest a harmless little old lady, and for what? Jaywalking across the town’s lone hilly street that saw maybe four cars and six dogs in the way of traffic in any twenty-four hour period?

“He’s locked me up and throwed away the key. I’m sure he means to feed me bread and water for supper—if I even get supper.”

Granny’s voice sounded strong. And mad. Hallie took that as a good sign. When Granny Pearl got her dander up, the earth shook around her. In fact, maybe Hallie should have a little charitable pity for the poor sheriff.

“Let me talk to Sheriff Potts, Granny Pearl.” Hallie would settle this.

“It’s not Sheriff Potts. We buried him six months ago. This...varmint’s a new breed. And not from these parts.”

Hallie was sorry to hear about Virgil Potts. She remembered him from summers she’d spent with Granny in Greens Hollow. “Then let me talk to this new var—man,” she said, correcting herself. “I’m sure I can straighten everything out.”

Granny laid the phone down. Hallie heard a quick, muffled conversation, complete with a little ripe cussing from Granny Pearl, then a deep male voice came on the line.

There was nothing scratchy about the phone line now. It fairly rumbled with the low, earthy voice. Hallie felt it tingle across her nerve endings like sandpaper over new skin. She drew a deep breath and squared her shoulders. “Sheriff,” she said coolly, “just what is it my grandmother’s supposed to have done?”

Sheriff Cam Osborne heard the tension in Hallie Cates’s voice ripple across the wire. He couldn’t help but wonder if the woman was the she-lion her granny was. And what the granddaughter from Fort Worth would say if she knew Granny Pearl had sunk her teeth into his right arm in a moment of nonvigilance on his part. That was a mistake he wasn’t about to make again—even if he had to lock the old gal up in solitary until her temper cooled a bit. If it ever did.

It would probably be one cold day in hell.

“She’s been charged with a couple of things, the most serious being selling moonshine to half the county.” He’d keep the resisting arrest and assaulting an officer of the law with a seventy-nine-year-old set of choppers for later. At least until he knew what kind of woman Pearl Cates’s pretty granddaughter was. He hated to admit he was interested. He’d seen her picture standing in a frame on the mantel over Granny’s fireplace. Thick red hair, worn loose to her shoulders, high blushing cheekbones and a sweet little mouth that just begged to be kissed.

But that he knew he had no business thinking about Who even knew if Hallie Cates would come to her grandmother’s rescue? Hadn’t Pearl said her granddaughter didn’t come back to Arkansas very often?

He took some vague satisfaction at her small gasp. “Moonshine? Why... why Granny Pearl would never... She wouldn’t... I mean, Sheriff, there must be some mistake.”

And she clearly implied he’d made it Cam sniffed the cork of the hundred-proof “evidence” he’d confiscated from his prisoner, nearly becoming looped from the stuffs fumes. Oh, the old woman was guilty all right Not to mention, downright unrepentant about her little...business. “Trust me, Ms. Cates, there’s been no mistake.”

Another small gasp, this one sounding more like an irate sigh. “How could you even think one sweet, docile, little old lady would break the law? Why, Granny is—”

“Neither sweet, nor docile,” he interrupted the tirade she was only just warming to. From her spot beside him, Granny Pearl was giving him the devil eye. The woman was just lucky he hadn’t handcuffed her to that chair she was sitting on. No, she was hardly sweet. And as for docile...?

He rubbed the bite mark on his arm.

“Okay, okay, so Granny may be a little...feisty.” Hallie Cates admitted from her end of the line. “But she’s as honest and law-abiding as the day is long. And I can vouch for that.”

Cam dragged a hand through his dark hair. They were getting nowhere here. “I’m sure you’ll get an opportunity to voice your opinion in court,” he told her, “but for now—”

Cam had to hold the phone away from his ear. “Just what kind of a low-down poleskunk are you to throw a little old lady in the clink and feed her nothing but bread and water for supper?” The woman’s blast was nearly deafening.

“Give him hell, Hallie!” Granny yelped, joining in the fracas from this end. She’d gotten to her feet and was threatening Cam with balled fists.

It wouldn’t take much for him to lock both women in a cell for a year or two. What had ever made him think a job as small-town sheriff might be preferable to the vicissitudes of the Chicago police force? He had to be crazy.