Annie Jones - Bundle of Joy

“It’s a girl.” Round-faced Sheriff Denby appeared with the freshly diapered infant and handed her to Shelby.

“Surprise, surprise.” Jax cocked his head and crossed his arms. “No chance you knew that already?”

Shelby sighed and shook her head at the implication in his question.

“And her name is Amanda,” the sheriff went on. “At least that’s what it says in fancy stitching on the corner of this blanket she was wrapped up in.”

“Hand-stitched, huh?” Jax looked at the corner of the blanket, then at Shelby’s decorated backpack. “Any flowers on it?”

“You have got to be kidding.” Shelby couldn’t help but laugh as she spoke to baby Amanda to get her point across to everyone. “This guy thinks I’m your mother, sweet pea.”

“Shelby Grace? A mama?” Sheriff Denby snorted out a laugh that someone else might have taken as an insult. “No way could she have had a baby and kept it a secret around here. Maybe somebody could have, but not her. We all know her story.”

“I don’t,” Jax said in a soft tone that bordered on dangerous—but also carried interest.

“This ain’t about you.” Sheriff Denby moved to the counter, picked up the coffee carafe and flipped over a cup on the counter. But he didn’t pour. “This is about Shelby Grace.”

“Right. We agree on that, at least.” Jax adjusted his hat, and the movement came off as a kind of sly tip of congrats to the sheriff for being on his side.

“What do you mean? About me how?” Shelby cradled the baby higher in her arms, but that did nothing to temper the sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.

“Everybody in town knows your story, Shelby Grace. We all know about your daddy, about that Mitch. Some of us even know that you broke your lease and packed up all your belongings today.”

“Huh?” Tyler glanced up and blinked. “You moving, Miz Shelby?”

“I don’t know your story, Miss Lockhart, but I do know that that’s an interesting development.”

People were not supposed to find out this way, not by hearing it couched in supposition and gossip, and certainly not before her father. “It doesn’t matter, Tyler. None of this has anything to do with me and—”

“Hold that thought right there, young lady.” Sheriff Denby flipped a waiting coffee mug over on the counter and helped himself to a steaming hot cup. “There is a more than passing fair chance that whoever left that baby on the doorstep, when you were here closing up all by your lonesome, left her here for you to find.”

“Makes sense to me.” Jax turned toward the door, then looked at Tyler. “You said someone tried to steal gas from the station tonight. Did they happen to be driving a silver SUV?”

“Uh, no. Actually, when I looked up and saw a faded red Mustang slide up to the pump, I thought it was Mitch come to see Miz Shelby. So I stopped paying attention until they took off fast. That’s when I thought maybe they’d filled up and run off without paying, but turns out their credit card had been denied and they didn’t get a drop.”

“Mitch?” Jax leaned one elbow on the counter, gave Shelby a hard look, then glanced at the baby. “Any particular reason this Mitch might have come by tonight and not hung around to talk to you face-to-face? He a friend of yours?”

“An ex...friend,” Shelby said, oddly defensive in this man’s presence. Still, she searched the baby’s face for any similarity to Mitch, who she had forgiven more than once for cheating on her.

The man stared her down with an expression that made her feel he knew all about Mitch and his cheating ways, though that would be impossible. Wouldn’t it?

“This Mitch wouldn’t be the kind of ex-friend who might think you’d be a good person to raise his child, would he?” Jax asked, sounding far too matter-of-fact for that kind of question.

“The last thing Mitch Warner would have wanted was to be a daddy,” Sheriff Denby snorted.

Shelby tucked the baby in closer, as if that might conceal how strongly her heart was beating at the very idea that Mitch might have done something like this. “Of course, we are conveniently overlooking the possibility that the baby was left by someone who doesn’t even know me. Someone we don’t know, for that matter.”

“Like me?” The man with the cool eyes and the quick smile cocked his head at her.

“I’m just saying that we all know one another around here. You just showed up.” At the worst time. Or maybe the best, if he had no connection to tiny Amanda. “Tonight, of all nights.”

“You want to know who I am, Miss Shelby Grace Lockhart? I’m a man who served four years with the Greater Dallas police force.” He reached into his back pocket and withdrew his wallet, glanced down at it, grimaced slightly and put it back. “At least I used to. Now I’m, for all intents and purposes, homeless and unemployed for the next couple of weeks.”

He gave her a wistful smile that hinted he expected her to find that notion so preposterous, she would have to laugh. She didn’t know whether to smile or shake her head at that.

He nodded at her nonresponse. “You got me. I’m pretty much the most likely suspect in your child abandonment scenario.”

“Yup.” Andy Denby set the coffee cup down on the counter without a drop ever going in his mouth. “Not trying to be punitive. Got to consider what’s right and best for little Amanda. My wife is the town’s only physician, so it makes sense we get the child to my house to be checked over.”

“So that means...” Jax narrowed his eyes and held out his hands like a man waiting to carry out an order.

“That makes it official. This is a case. I’ll call in what details we have tonight, see if there are missing children reports that might be connected. Whatever else needs to be done can wait till morning.” The sheriff turned to grab a to-go cup and poured his untouched coffee into it as he half spoke, half yawned. “C’mon, Shelby Grace. The old doc will be tickled pink to have you and that little one stay with us for the night.”

“Stay? In Sunnyside?” Her mind raced. She had planned to be long gone by morning, to have begun a whole new life. “Can’t you just take the baby and...”

“And what?” Sheriff Denby took the emptied ceramic cup around behind the counter and disappeared long enough to bend down and drop it in the dirty dishpan. He motioned to her, then to her backpack. “Allow you to leave town before we get statements and figure out what’s best for little Amanda?”

Shelby held her breath. How had the sheriff known she was fleeing town tonight? Had she been that obvious? She turned to Jackson Stroud, as if she actually hoped that somehow he would spring to her rescue. That was his style, right? If he was telling the truth, that he had come over to save a basket he thought held kittens, then why wouldn’t he save her?

The man in the Stetson stepped forward. “So that’s it? I can get back on my way, then?”

Cowboys. Shelby let out a huff. You couldn’t trust them, at least not to do anything but think of their own hides.

“Absolutely...not.” The sheriff put the lid on his to-go cup with a soft click. “It’s late. I can’t call around to find somebody to put you up, so I’m asking nice. Will you just bunk at the Truck Stop Inn for the night so we can sort this out with clear heads tomorrow morning?”

“I can let you in.” Tyler started toward the back of the building, motioning. “It ain’t fancy, but there’s a couple rooms with cots and a shower that we rent out to truckers by the night.”

“Tell Miss Delta to bill the department for it.” Sheriff Denby clapped his hands together, then motioned for Shelby to hurry up and get her things together. “As of now, this is an official investigation. I’ll thank you not to leave town, Stroud, until after we speak again.”