No Place Like Home (3 page)

A picture of Dottie Hart formed in his mind. He couldn't believe she had gone that far out of her way to watch out for Cassie. He thought of the Good Samaritan in the Bible. As a kid hearing that story in Sunday school, he hadn't thought what an unusual thing the man had done. If he had fallen off his bike and skinned his knee, there had always been a herd of people who would stop to help him.

But that had been a kid's perspective.

As a cop he'd seen firsthand just how unusual it was for someone to stop and help a person on the side of the road. People didn't want to get involved. People were afraid. With good reason.

He understood all too well how dangerous it was out there. Witnessed it up close and too personal. There was a part of him that wanted to tell Dottie what she'd done had been reckless, most especially for a woman alone in an area she didn't know. But his admiration for
her overruled all his cautions. Again he wondered what her story was. He wondered…
Stop wondering, Brady.

Other than helping her figure out if Cassie Bates was a runaway, he didn't need to be wondering anything about Dottie.

Because the reality was, when each day ended, he would always walk into his house alone.

He'd chosen the life of a cop. He'd seen what happened to a cop's family when things went wrong in the line of duty. He'd thought watching his partner die in his arms was the hardest thing he'd ever done. But it had been watching Eddie's wife and two kids at the hospital that had changed his life.

He'd decided he would never put anyone he loved through that anguish.

Life was about choices. Good ones. Bad ones.

Hard ones.

Turning, he strode to the hollow house, yanked open the screen door and stepped inside. Alone.

S
am's Pharmaceuticals and Diner. Dottie read the sign splashed across the window. She smiled when she got close enough to read Eat at Your Own Peril, in small print. Sounded like Sam had a sense of humor.

When she awakened at her usual five in the morning she'd decided to check out the town and get a cup of coffee at the café. After working out and writing an e-mail to her brother, filling him in on what was happening, she'd made quick time coming over. She was excited to see the café Cassie had so vividly described to her with its jukebox that got stuck on forty-fives, playing the same song over and over again until it got good and ready to switch to something new.

Now, as she pushed open the door, she was instantly swept back in time. She felt like a child again, holding her granddad's hand as he bought her a soda pop at the general store just down the road from his house.

She loved those days.

Today the smells were of aged, oiled wood, bacon frying and the sweet scent of five-cent candy…. Inhaling deeply, she knew she could really love this place.

The first person she saw when she stepped into the room was Sheriff Brady. Whether she wanted to admit it or not, the guy was the perfect adornment for any setting. All night she'd tried to tell herself there was no way he could be as handsome as she'd remembered.

Wrong.

He was everything she'd thought and more.

She had no time for this. She had an agenda to accomplish a long way from this small town. She was out of here in just a few days. So maybe she could look at the good sheriff, but that was it. No flirting, not that she was any good at flirting… The man was off-limits.

And you'd better remember it!

“Mornin', Miss Hart.” His slow, easy drawl drew her to meet his eyes over his coffee cup as he took a sip of the steaming brew.

Dottie rubbed her suddenly clammy hands on the fronts of her workout pants and gave him a puny smile.

She'd had a terrible night after she'd finally turned in, which was strange since she'd had such an interesting day. No way had she been expecting the nightmares to start again. When she'd awakened drenched in sweat, her heart pounding in the darkness, not even the small night-light she kept near her bed helped. The only relief, as always, had been to flee outside to the sweet open
space where she could sit and talk to the Lord. Her caring Savior was always there for her.

Everything was fine now. “Good morning to you, Sheriff. Did you sleep well?”

He raised an eyebrow. “How about you?”

She shrugged, noticing the two eavesdropping older men sitting at the window hunched over a game of checkers that they were valiantly pretending to play. Instead, they were covertly listening.

She swallowed the cotton in her mouth. “New surroundings don't always lend themselves to a good night's rest. That and Cassie's snores. Whatever you do, don't tell her I said that. If there's one thing a young girl doesn't want getting out it's that she snores.”

Brady chuckled. “You're probably right about that.”

Their gazes met. Dottie swallowed, forgetting everything for the moment as what felt like static electricity hummed between them. This was ridiculous!

She'd hoped she'd only imagined the electricity.

She hadn't imagined anything.

He cleared his throat, set his cup down and motioned to the seat across from him. “Why don't you join me.”

She nodded, purely a reflex action. Besides, she did need to talk to him. Pushing away the butterflies tearing up her stomach, she crossed to his booth, glad her limp had eased up this morning. She slid into the bench across from him and looked him straight in the eye.

No childish infatuation was going to ambush her and
muddle her good sense. She had a bigger agenda than this, this infatuation.

Oh, but he did have nice eyes.

In her peripheral vision the two checker players leaned out from their chairs a bit, getting their ears a little closer to the action. Shaking herself again, she smiled at them, even though they hadn't yet acknowledged her existence. Small towns always did have ears, and they had eyes, too, these two just hadn't caught on to the fact that she was on to them.

They were a good excuse not to look at Brady and she was thankful for the distraction.

“I saw you exercising earlier. When I pulled into town, I glanced down that way and you were getting after some crunches. It looked like a scene from the movie
G.I. Jane.
”

“It's part of my rehab.” Mental and physical, but she didn't say that.

“At that rate you ought to be strong by tomorrow.”

She wished. “That would be just fine with me. I never have been weak and I can't stand it. It makes me crazy.”

In more ways than one—

Suddenly the swinging door to the back of the store flew open and a small wrinkled man burst through carrying a plate of bacon and eggs.

“How-do,” he said as he plopped the plate down in front of the sheriff. “I heard what you said about being weak—you have a plate of this and you'll be as strong as an ox in two weeks' time. I promise.”

Dottie laughed—but the little man wasn't laughing. He wasn't joking.
Oops.
The last thing she wanted was to hurt his feelings.

“Sam takes his breakfast serious,” Sheriff Brady said, his eyes twinkling as he held back a chuckle of his own.

Sam crossed his wiry arms and locked eyes with her. “Eggs and bacon make a body strong. I don't care what these reports say nowadays. It's all that refined sugar that'll kill you. From the looks of ya, you ain't been eatin' much of anythang.”

So much for thinking she was starting to get her figure back.

“Sam, this is Dottie Hart. She's the one I was telling you about. Dottie, this is Sam. And those two over there are Applegate Thornton and Stanley Orr.”

She recognized all the names from Cassie. “Glad to meet all of you gentlemen.” The two checker players nodded and grunted something she couldn't quite make out. Sam held out his hand and she slipped hers into his and nearly fell out of the seat when he pumped it up and down so hard she felt as if it would come out of its socket. “My goodness, those eggs and bacon must work.”

He beamed and dropped her hand, just in the nick of time.

“I'll have you a plate in a jiffy. Mean whilst, how 'bout some coffee?”

“Oh, yes, please.”

Feeling a bit more relaxed, she watched him amble away.

“Is your arm okay?” Sheriff Brady asked, leaning
across the table so that only she could hear the question.

“Yes, thanks. But boy, he's rather vigorous.”

“Sam has a tendency to be violent when he shakes hands. I don't know why, but it's always the same.”

Dottie started to chuckle but bit it back as Sam reappeared with a cup of coffee. She thanked him and watched as he headed toward the kitchen with the promise that he'd be back in a few minutes.

She was about to say something more, when one of the checker players, Applegate, she thought it was, slapped his hand on the table and grunted loudly.

“Why'd you make that move?”

“'Cause I wanted to. It was the move to make, you old goat.”

“I didn't see that checker there a minute ago.”

“You sayin' I cheated?”

“I'm sayin' that that checker wasn't there a while ago.”

“App, I ain't never had to beat you by cheatin', so why should I have to do it now?”

Not certain if she should be alarmed, or if this went on all the time, Dottie glanced from the two men back over at Sheriff Brady. He seemed not even to notice what was going on. Instead, he was eating his eggs.

Taking her cue from him, she took a sip of her coffee and tried to ignore the men. It was a little hard when the one stood up and stormed out the door. She met Brady's eyes over the rim of her cup and he winked. “It happens all the time.”

Okay. So maybe she wouldn't have breakfast here again. Or maybe there was something she could do for the two men. She noticed that the one man, Stanley, continued to sit in his seat, contentedly eating sunflower seeds and spitting the husks into a bucket. Yuck! But at least it wasn't that tobacco stuff.

Sam brought her eggs and bacon and a refill of coffee for her and the sheriff. “Stanley, when you ever going to quit doing that to the man?”

“What was that?”

“You heard me. I saw you turn up your hearin' aid when Miss Dottie walked in.”

Stanley frowned. His entire face dipping in a cascade of wrinkles, he punctuated the frown by spitting out another husk. “App needs his blood pressure raised once a year. Keeps him kickin'.”

“Yeah, well, when he comes in here one day and kicks your—well, I ain't goin' there 'cause we have a lady in our presence, but you know what I'm talkin' about. I ain't gonna feel sorry for you at-
tal.
”

Dottie watched Sam retreat behind the swinging doors. She was beginning to worry about the two gentlemen; she certainly couldn't eat. And then suddenly the door opened and Applegate strode back in, sat back down and grabbed a handful of seeds like nothing had happened.

“You old fool,” he said. “I was halfway to my truck when I remembered what day it was.”

“I get you every year.” Stanley chuckled and rubbed his hands together.

Applegate frowned. Dottie couldn't help but think the man looked like a prune. Poor man. “You just wait till next April Fools' day. I'm gonna git you next year.”

“Ain't happened yet.”

April Fools'!
Dottie couldn't believe she'd forgotten today was the first day of April. Sheriff Brady was smiling when she looked back at him.

“Whew, I thought they were really breaking up a longtime friendship,” she said. This time she was the one leaning over the table.

“It happens every year. Keeps them alive, anyway. You better eat those eggs before they get cold and Sam gets upset with you.”

Dottie grimaced, said a quick silent prayer then lifted her fork and dug in. Mule Hollow was truly starting out as an interesting place to spend a few days.

And she'd been here less than twelve hours.

“So, you were on your way to California before you picked Cassie up?”

“That's right. My brother is a pastor in Los Angeles and he's involved with a foundation for women at risk—battered women, unwed mothers. I spent two weeks at the place and now I'm moving out there to be kind of a housemother to them.” Just thinking about it always made a happy face in her heart, not that it was a mother's role she would be playing, but more that of a survivor and mentor. Someone who'd been down a similar road. “I'm going to keep the place up and teach the ladies some business skills. The plan is for me to reopen my
candy business there and employ the women on a rotating basis. I can't wait.”

Sheriff Brady placed his elbows on the table, linked his hands and rested his chin on his thumbs. “That's a great plan. You have a great heart.”

Dottie shook her head. “When you've looked death in the face like I have and God brings you through…let me tell you, it'd be weird not to want to give back. I'm just making good on a promise I made to Him.”

“Like I said, you have a good heart. Thousands of people make that same promise when faced with trying times. But as soon as they're back on their feet, they forget about it.”

Thinking back to those dark hours before she was rescued, Dottie shuddered. “I'll never forget about what God delivered me from. Never. I look at life in an entirely new light. And I'm trying my hardest to live life in a new light.” And she was. No looking back. Only up. Even the nightmare's return couldn't change that.

When she left the diner, Brady walked with her. As they approached the RV she was surprised to see cowboys everywhere working on different projects. It looked like a scene from
Lonesome Dove.

And Cassie was right in the big middle of it. The kid was flitting from one group to the next, introducing herself and offering her hand in introduction. It looked suspiciously like speed dating.

“I wonder if any of those guys know what she's up to?”

“Oh, most of these guys are ready to settle down.
Maybe not the younger ones, but for the most part all of them are thrilled with this campaign to get women out here to them. The odds of finding a wife out in this town looked pretty dismal after a while. Many of the guys actually had to move on to other places because they refused to live alone. Or shall we say they refused to live bunked up with a bunch of other rowdy bachelors for the rest of their lives.”

Dottie couldn't blame them. But still, watching the serious look in Cassie's eyes, she couldn't help feeling the girl was looking at this as if she was picking out a pair of shoes or something. And that just wasn't right.

Dottie had never been in love, but she wanted the man God intended for her to marry. That would be the most important thing she could look for but undeniably there would have to be chemistry between them. One didn't just stand the men up in a line and say that's him. There had to be more to it than that and she hoped Cassie would realize this and take her time looking for Mr. Right.

Sheriff Brady came to a halt in front of her RV. He placed his hands on his hips, emphasizing his broad shoulders and lean, muscular build. Dottie found herself studying his profile.

Why wasn't this guy married?

He was good-looking, nice, seemed great on the outside…and, well…

Oh, come on, Dottie! Get honest here.

All right already, she grumbled to herself. The man
had chemistry coming out his ears. His name was probably listed under the word in the dictionary.

He seemed to have it all, and yet he was still single. What did that mean?