Forever After (15 page)

Shoving away from the window, Meredith moved through the house, searching almost frantically for something to distract her. When she noticed the evening paper, still neatly folded and unread, lying on the television, she grabbed it up, then nearly groaned when she saw the front page story.

Parents Protest
, the headline read. Below was a grainy colored photograph of Heath on the courthouse steps, a group of angry citizens clustered around him. She returned the newspaper to its place on the television, not wanting to
read more. The slant of the story was undoubtedly biased, just as all the others had been, using the terms “rabble-rouser” and “unorthodox” to describe him. He was those things, she supposed, for he was like no other lawman she’d ever encountered, from the unconventional way he dressed to the execution of his duties. But he was also much more, and now that she’d gotten to know him better, she thought this county was darned lucky to have him.

Telling herself she couldn’t afford to get any more involved than she already was, she strode through the house, turning off the lights. When she reached Sammy’s room, she stepped inside to stand at the child’s bedside. In the shifting shadows cast by the breeze-tossed limbs of an oak outside, Sammy looked like a little angel, curled on her side, hair trailing over the pillow in strands of moon-kissed gold. Meredith bent to touch her cheek, remembering how Heath had done the same, his knuckles tracing the delicate contour of Sammy’s jawline and chin.

He handled Sammy as if she were made of the most fragile crystal, always so incredibly gentle. And so very,
very
dangerous. She had come to Oregon to build her daughter a future, and this ramshackle old farmhouse in the middle of a weedy field had become Sammy’s castle in the clouds.

Unfortunately, it was a castle made of glass, and Heath Masters was the stone that might shatter it.

Heath didn’t bother to turn on the lights when he got home. After dumping some food in Goliath’s dish, he went to the bathroom to get some towels, then to the freezer for several bags of ice to fill the coolers and ten-gallon water container he kept in the back of his Bronco. On the way out of town, he would stop at Safeway and buy several cases of cola, at least a dozen bags of corn chips, a load of candy bars, a half dozen bottles of over-the-counter headache remedy, and enough marshmallows to feed an army. If there was one thing he’d learned in his years at the department, it was to be prepared for everything at these parties, from nursing
sick kids to feeding them, usually in that order.

Breaking up beer busts had managed to put a serious dent in Heath’s bank account, but so far, he hadn’t convinced the board of county commissioners to allocate a portion of the annual budget to snack food, ibuprofen, and pop.

As he backed his Bronco from the driveway, Heath stopped for a moment at the edge of the road to gaze at Meredith’s house. One at a time, her windows were going dark. He imagined her walking through the house, turning off the lights, then stepping into her bedroom. Right about now, she’d be struggling to unbutton her shirt with one hand.

He sighed, picturing how she must look, bathed in moonlight as she undressed. White cotton sliding down slender arms, denim puddling around delicately turned ankles. A slip of a woman, the biggest thing about her a pair of brown eyes. Why that image fascinated him so, he couldn’t say.

Jesus
. Whether he wanted to admit it or not, he was half in love with her already. It was nuts. She hadn’t given him any encouragement. But he was falling for her, anyway.

He clenched his hands on the steering wheel. Did a man start his midlife crisis at thirty-eight? Maybe that was his problem. Lately, the thought of home and hearth had an appeal that should have scared the hell out of him. Marriage, fatherhood. In the past, he’d never given those things more than a passing thought. Now they were popping into his mind frequently, making him feel as if his life lacked something vital.

He’d always gone for tall, well-rounded, sloe-eyed brunettes, and never any particular one. Big racks, slinky hips, legs that went forever. Never blondes or redheads, never anyone short. Given his size and build, he had always felt like an awkward giant with a female of slight stature.

Now, suddenly, only
one
woman appealed to him, which made absolutely no sense given the fact that she was so completely different from the females he’d always preferred. The only things about Meredith Kenyon that fitted the bill were that wealth of sable hair and those gorgeous brown eyes.

Man and dog
, dog and man. Over the next week, Meredith began to feel as if her previously quiet and manageable world had been invaded. After finishing the repairs on both porches, Heath moved inside to work and the dog came with him. Suddenly the drab old farmhouse had taken on a warmth it lacked before, always filled with either her little girl’s giggles, Heath’s rumbling laughter, or Goliath’s deep barking.

Laughter. It was a priceless gift, and Heath had filled their lives with it.

During the day while Heath was at work, Goliath managed to keep Meredith and Sammy chuckling. Every time Meredith turned around, it seemed she discovered some new quirk in the Rottweiler’s nature. His eating habits, for instance. The very first morning when she filled the gigantic dog dish Heath had brought over, Goliath promptly thumped it with his foot, dumping the kibble all over the floor. Afterward, he lay down in the mess to eat, oblivious to Sammy’s and Meredith’s laughter.

Later that afternoon, Meredith heard an awful racket in the kitchen. She found Goliath pushing the metal dish across the kitchen with his nose, occasionally whacking it with his paw to send it somersaulting. It was the dog’s way of asking for lunch.

Before long, it became both Meredith and Sammy’s habit
to leave the bathroom door open and the commode seat up. Goliath preferred toilet water to that in his bowl. After drinking, he invariably emerged from the bathroom with his jowls streaming water, whereupon he made a beeline for a human to blot his jowls on dry clothing.

Meredith kept her word. When Goliath got on her bed to take a Rottweiler snooze, she fluffed his pillow.

Ever watchful for dog hair, she grew accustomed to straining her coffee through her teeth. Finding stray black hairs in her food, or on her toothbrush, or even in the refrigerator no longer turned her stomach. Extra protein, Heath called it. Meredith comforted herself with the thought that at least it was black and showed up rather well. On everything. She didn’t care. That big old, sloppy Rottweiler was the most wonderful dog in the world.

When the contractor finished Goliath’s kennel, Meredith worried that Heath might stop bringing the dog by each morning. He didn’t. Goliath, it seemed, had become a daytime member of the Kenyon family and would remain so until they moved.

Meredith dreaded the very thought of leaving. If something happened and she had to relocate, she wasn’t sure how Sammy would handle it. The child adored Goliath and fairly worshiped Heath, a state of affairs that Heath encouraged on a nightly basis. No matter how tedious his work, he always had time to play. Sammy got piggyback rides around the house. Other times, Heath would suddenly jump up, grab the child under the arms and swing her in high arcs around the kitchen, Goliath circling and barking. On the sidelines, Meredith watched the three and found herself thinking that
this
was what a family should be like. By an accident of birth, Sammy had been robbed.

The child was blossoming under Heath’s attention. With each day that passed, Meredith saw transformations taking place in her daughter, a process of healing that the counseling sessions and her love hadn’t brought about.

It wasn’t only that Sammy laughed frequently, which in and of itself seemed miraculous. She was also becoming
more mischievous and actually dared to disobey Meredith sometimes, doing things she never would have done a month earlier. Unlike most mothers, Meredith silently rejoiced when she caught her daughter committing an infraction, no matter how slight. Not so very long ago, Sammy had been more a shadow than a child, never breaking rules and constantly fretting that she might have committed some imagined wrong.

The evening after Meredith got the stitches removed from her hand, she had cause to wonder if Sammy wasn’t becoming a little too mischievous. Meredith was out in her garden patch, trying to get the soil ready for seeding before she completely missed planting time. Her hand, which the doctor had warned her to pamper, was aching from the unaccustomed use. Taking a break, she gazed at the turned earth, imagining how it would look in another month or so with all her vegetables flourishing in evenly spaced rows.

She sighed with satisfaction. It was a perfect evening to work outside, the air sweet with the scents of spring, warm enough for shirt sleeves, yet cool enough that she hadn’t broken a sweat. On the gentle breeze, she could smell the pot of red beans she’d left to simmer on the stove. She’d had an unusually busy schedule today, doing phone solicitations, and beans didn’t need much tending. Pretty soon, though, she needed to go in and stir them.

First she wanted to take a turn around the yard. Heath had finished replacing the boards in the kitchen floor late that afternoon and had gone home, saying he’d be back tomorrow to start working on the utility porch. She wanted to see if he’d discarded any board remnants she might be able to use to repair the shed.

As Meredith approached the discard pile, she heard Sammy calling her. She cupped a hand to shield her eyes against the evening sun. “I’m out here, sweetie!”

Sammy came running around the house. As she drew up near Meredith, she cried, “Momby, I can’th bweeve!”

Meredith bent to study her daughter’s face, which looked oddly asymmetrical. Sammy’s nose was swollen, she de
cided, slightly more so on one side than the other. “You can’t breathe?” Meredith asked worriedly. She knelt to give the child a closer look.

“Sweetie, your nose is puffy.” Meredith’s first thought was of a spider bite. Her heart leaped. “You haven’t been playing under the porch or out in the shed, have you?”

“No.”

“Did you bump yourself?”

Her eyes filling with tears, Sammy shook her head. “Ith’s the beenthz,” she cried.

“The what?”

“The beenthz,” the child repeated. “I sthuck ’em ind my node, and dey won’th come outh.” When Meredith gazed blankly at her, Sammy leaned closer. “Yooo know. The beenthz? For thupper?”

Realization dawned. Meredith gave a horrified gasp. “You stuck beans up your nose? Oh, Sammy, no!” She’d caught the child trying to insert a bean in her ear that morning and cautioned her against it. “Why’d you do that?”

Sammy blinked, crocodile tears coursing down her cheeks. “I don’th know.” She rubbed at her upper lip. “It hurths, Momby, and I can’th bweeve!”

Sensing that panic wouldn’t be long in coming, Meredith gave Sammy a comforting hug. “Well, now, let’s not get in a dither. We’ll get those old beans out of there, straightaway. You’ll be fine.”

Twenty minutes later, Meredith was beginning to feel a little panicky herself. Try as she might, she couldn’t pluck the beans out with her tweezers. The things had put down roots. Even worse, Sammy was crying, which seemed to make the beans swell.

Admitting defeat, Meredith gathered her daughter up from her perch on the kitchen table. “I think we’d better go see the doctor,” she announced.

Sammy’s wailing grew higher pitched. “I’m th-cared, Momby.”

“Oh, sweetie,” Meredith crooned as she grabbed her purse and headed for the car with the child cradled in her
arms. “Don’t be scared. The doctor will get them out. He has special tools.”

What kind of tools, Meredith wasn’t sure. Aside from tweezers, what could be used to make forays up a little girl’s nostrils?

She bundled Sammy into the cream-colored Ford and fastened her seat belt. “Sit tight, okay, sweetkins? Be Mommy’s big girl, and try not to cry.”

“Thwy?”

Meredith kissed her daughter’s damp forehead. “Just don’t, okay?”

Running around to the driver’s side, Meredith threw open the door, slipped under the wheel, and turned the key in the ignition. Nothing happened. Just an ominous click.
The battery
. She hit the steering wheel in frustration. “Confound it!”

“Whath?”

“The car won’t start.”

Sammy pinched the bridge of her swollen nose. “Buth I goth beenthz up my node, Momby! I goths to go to the hothpiddle!”

From a long distance away, a phone was ringing. Heath surfaced from his evening snooze, scratched his armpit, and snorted awake.
Damn
. Another call. Maintaining law and order could be a real son of a bitch sometimes.

“I’m coming, I’m coming!” he yelled, releasing the footrest of his recliner.

As he raced to the kitchen, he nearly tripped over Goliath, who was napping in the doorway. Scrambling to get his balance, he grabbed the telephone receiver.

“Hello!” he barked, wondering as he spoke who would be at the other end of the line this time. If it was that frigging reporter again, he was going to hunt the bastard down and rip his throat out. More likely, it was one of his deputies. “Masters, here.”

“Heath?”

He blinked. “Merry?” She didn’t sound like herself, her
voice thin and quavery. “Honey, what’s wrong?”

“It’s Sammy. I need to take her into emergency, and my car won’t start.”

“I’ll be right there.”

“Wait! It’s nothing bad so don’t break a leg getting here.”

Nothing bad, but she was taking the kid to the hospital? In the background, he could hear Sammy crying. “Did she hurt herself?”

“No, she stuck beans up her nose.”

Heath blinked again. “Say what?”

“She stuck beans up her nose. I let her help me sort them this morning before I put them in the pot to soak. She must have done it then. Now they’re all swollen up in there, and I can’t get them out, not even with tweezers. She’s having trouble breathing.”

“Beans up her nose? What possessed her to do that?” Heath no sooner asked than he remembered how he used to snort a cooked spaghetti noodle down his nostril, cough up the end, and drive his sister Laney crazy by pulling it back and forth through his sinus cavity. “Never mind. Listen, honey, calm down, okay? She’ll be fine.”

“It’s just that she’s panicky because she can’t breathe through her nose.”

“I’ll be there in two minutes, all right?”

Heath hung up and went to the medicine cabinet in his bathroom to get the mineral oil and a bottle of iodine, which came with an eye dropper. Ten seconds later, he and Goliath were loping up the road. When they hit the end of Meredith’s driveway, Heath could hear Sammy screeching, a good sign she was still getting plenty of oxygen.

Meredith met him at the front door. “Just let me grab my purse.”

Moving aside to let Goliath enter with him, Heath stepped into her living room and closed the door. “Forget your purse, honey. I can get the beans out, no problem.”

“You can?” She paused midway to the kitchen, looking
back at him over her shoulder. “I’ve tried and tried. They’re stuck in there, tighter than a miser’s fist.”

Heath held up the mineral oil. “I’m a certified first responder, remember? I deal with stuff like this all the time.”

In actuality, Heath had never plucked beans from a kid’s nose, but the department dispatcher, Jenny Rose, had a four-year-old boy with a penchant for inserting foreign objects in his orifices.

He followed Meredith to the kitchen. Sammy sat on the kitchen table, face squinched, tears streaming, her tremulous lower lip protruding. Heath went directly to her, hunkered down, and made a big show of looking up her nose with his penlight.

“Hmm,” he said.

“I can’th bweeve. My momby sethz I goths to go to the hothpiddle.”

Heath directed the light up her nose again. “Nah, you’re going to be fine, sweet cakes. Those beans haven’t even started to sprout yet.”

Sammy crossed her eyes to look down the swollen bridge of her nose. “
Spwout?
” She looked horrified at the thought.

Heath winked at her. “No beanstalks yet. Lucky for you, huh? We’ll just pluck those nasty old beans out of there, and you’ll be fine.”

“Dey won’th come outh.”

Heath gave the bottle of mineral oil a shake. “Sure they will.” He handed Meredith the iodine. “Wash out the eye dropper for me, would you please?”

Meredith rushed to the sink. She returned seconds later, drying the dropper with a dish towel. Extending it, she said, “You’re sure you know what you’re doing?”

He grinned. “A smidgen of oil up each nostril makes it easier to pull stuff out.”

“I should have thought of that.”

Sammy grew rigid when Heath laid her back on the table. To complicate matters, Goliath decided to join her. Heath wrestled the dog down and asked Meredith to hold his col
lar. “She’s all right,” he assured the Rottweiler. “I’m not hurting her. Right, Sammy?”

Sammy didn’t look too certain. He handed her his penlight, directing the beam at the ceiling. “Bet you can’t write your name on the ceiling without forgetting a letter,” he challenged. “You watch her, Mommy. If she makes a mistake, she has to start all over.”

Sammy took the penlight in both hands and gazed intently at the ceiling, a frown pleating her forehead as she began reciting the letters of her name with a nasalized slur. “Tuhee…ahay…emmb—”

“S,” Heath corrected as he bent to peer up her nose. “Back to square one for you, sweetcakes. Your name doesn’t start with a ‘T.’”

“Nuh—uh, ith—” Sammy broke off, pursed her mouth, and flashed her mother a startled look. Then she started over. “Eth…ahay…emb…emb…hawhy.”

“Good!” He chucked her under the chin. “Now see if you can spell Samantha.”

With Sammy’s attention thus diverted, Heath went to work. After putting a drop of oil up each of her nostrils, he went fishing with Meredith’s tweezers. Shortly thereafter, he plucked one of the beans from Sammy’s nose. The child blinked in surprise.

“You did ith,” she said, sniffing air through the one cleared passage.

“Don’t sniffle,” Heath cautioned. “You’ll suck the other bean farther in. Swallow it, and you’ll be sprouting beans from your belly button sometime next week.”

Sammy giggled. He chuckled with her, then went back to work. As he drew the second bean from her nose, he turned with it held aloft in the tweezers to show it to Meredith. “Am I good, or what?”

Meredith looked so relieved, Heath thought she might kiss him. He was disappointed that she didn’t. “Oh, Heath, thank you!”

“No problem.” He helped Sammy sit up, motioned to Meredith that she could turn Goliath loose, and then
watched with a smile as the Rottweiler reared up to plant his paws on the table. “Now, young lady,” Heath said chidingly. “It’s time for me to give you my official bean-up-the-nose prevention lecture.”