Marilyn Pappano - The Sheriff's Surrender

But he’d despised her so much more—and so much longer—than he’d ever loved her, and he wouldn’t forget, or let her forget. He was offering to compromise on his behavior, not his beliefs. That damning look in his eyes, the one that shadowed every other emotion he was feeling, would probably never go away, no matter what.

“So what do we do?” she asked. “Agree that certain topics are off-limits?”

Reese shrugged.

“The Miller case?”

“Your noble profession.”

Ignoring the sneer underlying his words, she smiled. “Your narrow-minded, damn-the-law-and-the-lawyers pigheadedness.”

He opened his mouth to refute her statement, then almost smiled. It had been so long since he’d smiled at her that she stared and made silent, fervent wishes that he would let the smile form. He didn’t. “At least we agree that we don’t think much of each other professionally.”

“You’re wrong, Reese. I always thought you were the best thing that ever happened to the Keegan County Sheriff’s Department…until you became just like the others.”

“I was never just like them,” he denied a little too quickly and too vehemently.

“Careful there. A person might think you find being compared to your former fellow deputies an insult, and that might suggest that you have a problem with the way they did their jobs. That maybe they weren’t always so right. Maybe I wasn’t always so wrong.”

After studying her a moment he mildly said, “It seems to me that discussion encompasses all three topics we just agreed were off limits. So…how are your sisters?”

It was entirely too normal a question, one that left her feeling unbalanced, as if the gibe would come in a moment, when she wasn’t prepared. She shrugged and cautiously replied, “My sisters are fine. Kylie is living in Dallas. Hallie is in Los Angeles, and Bailey lives in Memphis.”

“Any of them married?”

“Hallie just divorced number three—no kids, fortunately. Kylie and Bailey are waiting for the right guy. They’re learning from her example.”

“And yours?”

“Hallie’s got the relationship ‘dos and don’ts’ all to herself. I’m the ‘don’t’ for everything else.” Don’t try to make a difference. Don’t make the mistake of thinking you can be important. Don’t care too deeply or too passionately about anything. Don’t mix relationship and career. Don’t work where you might make men with guns angry with you. And the biggie—Don’t piss off drug-dealing murderers.

“And your mother?”

“She’s also fine. She’s living in Illinois with husband number two. She golfs, cooks, plays doting grandmother to his grandkids and routinely complains that none of us has provided her with grandchildren of her own.” She heard the cynical note in her voice and was embarrassed by it. She’d long ago learned to not expect much from her mother. Doris Irene had done the best she could with the life she’d gotten. All she’d ever wanted to be was a wife, mother and grandmother, with a husband who would take care of all life’s problems so she wouldn’t have to bother her pretty little head with them. And that was what she’d gotten in the first ten years of her marriage.

Then the police had come in the middle of one winter night, kicking in doors, waving guns, shouting commands, and they’d taken Lee Madison away. To this day Neely remembered the cold, hard knot of terror in her stomach, her mother’s tears and her sisters’ screams. She’d stood there in her little flannel nightgown, the younger girls and Doris Irene huddled behind her sobbing, and her feet had felt like ice as she stared unflinchingly at the officers who dragged her father away.

“You never mentioned a father.”

Her startled gaze jerked to Reese. Seeing curiosity in his expression, she forced herself to relax, to breathe deeply and hopefully get some color back into her face. Under the protection of the table, she rubbed her hands together, her fingers as icy as her heart that long-ago night. “You never asked.”

“I figured he was a sore point. People who get along with their parents tend to bring them up from time to time. You never did.”

“I got along with him beautifully. I loved him dearly. I adored him.”

“Is he dead?”

The cold, hard knot was back, making it difficult to breathe. For years she couldn’t think about her father without bursting into tears, or dissolving into a nerveless, trembling heap. I’m not bitter, he’d told her the last time she’d seen him. She had been bitter for him. That was when she’d learned to truly, intensely, unforgivingly hate.

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