Montana Sheriff

“You have a son.”

Releasing Christopher, Ronnie slowly rose to her feet. “Yes, I have a son.”

Cole frowned. “Where’s his father?”

“His father and I aren’t together anymore,” she told him stoically.

“Ran out on another one, did you?”

“I didn’t run out on you,” she cried.

“No? Then what would you have called it? Walking really fast?” he suggested sarcastically.

Putting her hands on Christopher’s shoulders protectively, she told Cole, “Making the right decision for me.”

Cole took a breath, trying very hard not to let his imagination go. Trying not to think of her in someone else’s arms. Making love with someone else.

Breaking loose, Christopher ran up to him just as he was about to get into his truck.

The little boy asked, “Are you a sheriff?”

“Yes, I’m a sheriff.”

Tension telegraphed itself throughout Ronnie’s body. Watching Cole interact with Christopher this way was causing all sorts of bittersweet feelings to go rampaging through her.

He doesn’t realize he’s talking to his son… .

Dear Reader,

It’s no secret that I love cowboys. A cowboy taught me how to speak English when I came to this country at the age of four. Okay, he wasn’t a real cowboy, but John Wayne played cowboys with such flare. And, technically, he wasn’t teaching me. He was acting and I was glued to the TV set.

I confess that I am not the rough-and-tumble type and I probably wouldn’t have fared well in the Old West, but writing modern-day romances set in rural places allows me to indulge in all those wonderful childhood fantasies. I was a very progressive child. I never went through that “boys are icky” stage. Romances had a definite place in all the stories I would spin. Even back then, I knew that life without romance was only half a life at best. Both the hero and heroine of this book, Cole and Veronica, come to discover this despite their determination to do without that all-important ingredient. A lot they know.

As always, I thank you for reading my book and from the bottom of my heart, I wish you someone to love who loves you back.

Fondly,

Marie Ferrarella

This USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award-winning author has written more than two hundred books for Silhouette and Harlequin Books, some under the name of MARIE NICOLE. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website at www.marieferrarella.com.

Montana Sheriff

Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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To

Kathleen Scheibling,

who apparently likes

cowboys as much as I do.

Thank you.

Chapter One

Cole James blinked. As he did, he expected the image to fade away.

This wouldn’t be the first time that his eyes—aided and abetted by his heart—had played tricks on him.

In the beginning, when Veronica McCloud had initially left Redemption—and him—a little more than six years ago, he kept seeing her all the time. He’d see her walking down Main Street, or standing in line at the movie theater they used to go to regularly, or passing by the sheriff’s office which had, these last four years, all but become his second home.

He couldn’t begin to count the number of times he’d thought he saw her peering in the window, a funny little half smile on her lips, the one that always used to make his heart stop. But when he’d bolt from his chair to chase after her, or run across the street in pursuit, ready to call out her name, he’d discover that it was someone else who just happened to look like Ronnie.

The worst times were when there turned out to be no one there at all, just his memory, torturing him.

Eventually, his “sightings” of Ronnie became less frequent. Whole days and then even whole weeks would go by without him even thinking that he saw Veronica McCloud, the woman who had, for all intents and purposes, tap-danced on his heart and then deliberately disappeared from his life six summers ago.

Sheriff Cole James frowned as he watched the woman across the street walking toward the wooden building in the middle of the block: Ed Haney’s Livestock Feed Emporium.

She wasn’t disappearing.

Instead, she looked as if she had every intention of walking into the store. Just like Ronnie used to when her dad sent her into town.

The funny thing about this particular mirage was that all the other times, when he thought he saw Ronnie, she looked pretty much the way she had that last night by the lake.

The night that would forever be imprinted on his soul.

Her golden-blond hair would be flowing loose about her shoulders, that soft, cream-colored cotton peasant blouse dipping down low, making him all but swallow his tongue.

Each and every time he thought he saw Ronnie, she would be that green-eyed hellion, part eternal female, part feisty tomboy. The woman who could instantly make him weak in the knees with just one look.

But this time, the mirage—Ronnie—looked different.

This time, she looked a lot like the picture she’d once showed him of her late mother, Margaret, when she’d been a young woman. The photograph was taken just after she’d married Ronnie’s dad, Amos.

Old image or new, why wasn’t she vanishing the way she always did? he wondered impatiently.

Damn it all to hell, Cole silently swore. Lifting his Stetson, he dragged a hand through his dark chestnut, almost black, hair. Exasperation zigzagged through him.

He wasn’t going to go and check it out. He wasn’t. The people in town looked up to him. They depended on him for guidance. It went without saying that the sheriff of Redemption, a pocket-size town fifty miles north of Helena in the proud state of Montana, wasn’t supposed to be given to having hallucinations. Leastwise, not without smoking something—which he hadn’t done except for that one time when he was fifteen. He did take the occasional shot of whiskey, but only when the weather turned bitter cold, and never more than one. And even then, it was to warm himself up more than for any other reason.

He didn’t need anything to warm him up now, even though it was September and this year the temperature was already dropping down at night into regions that tried a hearty man’s soul. Just thinking of Ronnie, even after all this time, more than sufficiently warmed him up, thank you very much.

Cole bit off the rough edge of a curse. The next minute, he was making a U-turn at the end of the block. Telling himself he now officially qualified as the town idiot, he turned his truck around and slowly drove along the length of the street until his vehicle was parallel to the Livestock Feed Emporium.

The mirage had definitely gone inside.

Cole stopped the truck and squinted, looking in through the store’s huge bay window. From where he sat, his hallucination was talking to the store’s owner, Ed Haney. And Ed answered the hallucination.

Cole pushed back his black Stetson with his thumb and blinked again. Nothing changed. Either he was having one hell of a daydream or—

The word hung in midair, refusing to gather any more words around it. Refusing to allow him to even finish his thought.

Or.

He couldn’t finish his thought.

Because it wasn’t true. He knew that, knew it as sure as he knew his own name.

Veronica McCloud had left that summer six years ago. Left Redemption and left him. Left after they had enjoyed possibly the best night of their lives—certainly the best night of his life. And not once, not once had she come back to visit, or just to talk or even to throw rocks at him. She hadn’t come back at all.

She never wrote, never called, never sent carrier pigeons with messages attached to their tiny little ankles. Never tried to get in contact with him in any way at all. Half a dozen times he’d set out to see her father or her older brother, Wayne, to ask them for her address or her phone number, just about any way at all to get in contact with her. But each time he set out, he never quite completed his journey.

His pride just wouldn’t let him.

After all, he hadn’t left her, she had left him. And if she hadn’t wanted to stay gone, to remain missing from his life, well, hell, she knew where to find him. He had the same phone number, the same address, the same everything he’d always had. None of that had ever changed, not since they were kids together, growing up in each other’s shadows.

Back then, Ronnie had been a rough and tumble tomboy, more agile and skilled at being a boy than any of the boys in town. Partially, he’d always suspected, to curry her father’s attention and favor. And she’d always been a type A competitor.

In any event, they’d been each other’s best friends almost from the moment of birth. And they shared everything. They bolstered each other, supported each other and just enjoyed being kids in an area of the country that was still relatively uncomplicated by the demands of progress.

Everyone in Redemption knew everyone else by their first name. The people of the town were always ready to lend support through the hard times and especially ready to rejoice during the good times.

Sure the twenty-first century had brought some changes to the town, but not all that much. Certainly not enough to make him want to be anywhere else but right where he was.

But not Ronnie. For Ronnie it was different. Once she hit her teens, Ronnie started talking about someday wanting to go someplace where “the possibilities were endless and the buildings stretch up against the sky. Someplace where I don’t have to be stuck on the ranch all the time if I don’t want to be.”

At the time, he’d thought it was just talk. Or at least, he’d hoped so.

But then she started to talk about it more and more. Her big dream was to go to college, to get that all-important piece of paper that called her a graduate and allowed her to “make something of myself.”

As if she wasn’t good enough.

That was around when they began having arguments, real arguments, not just squabbles and differences of opinion about things like who had the faster horse—he did—or who was the better rider—she was.

Moreover, Ronnie wanted him to come with her. She wanted him to go to college, too, and “become someone”—as if he couldn’t be anything without holding that four-year degree in his hand.

But all he wanted to be was a rancher, like his father, and she, well, she didn’t want to live on a ranch her whole life. Didn’t want to be a rancher’s wife and certainly didn’t want to live and die in Redemption without “leaving her mark” on the world, whatever that meant.

He’d thought after that huge blowup they’d had that last night at the lake—and especially after the way that they’d made up—that the argument had finally been settled once and for all.

To his great satisfaction.

Apparently, he’d been wrong because when he woke up that morning at the lake, she wasn’t there beside him the way she had been when they’d fallen asleep.

She wasn’t anywhere.

Suddenly uneasy, afraid something had happened to her, he still pulled together his courage and went to her house just in case she’d decided to go home. When he asked to see her, Amos McCloud had looked at him for a long, awful moment, then said he’d just missed her. She and Wayne had just left. Her older brother was driving her to the next town. From there she was taking the train to Great Falls. There was an airport in Great Falls. And planes that would take her away from here.

Away from him.

Remembering all that created the same pang in his heart that had gripped him that terrible morning.

“Hey, Sheriff, you gonna sit in your truck idlin’ like that all morning?”

The sharply voiced question came from directly behind him. Wally Perkins was sticking his head out of his dark green pickup truck and he looked none too happy about the fact that the sheriff’s truck had stopped moving and was blocking his way.

Wally knew that he could always pull his vehicle around him, Cole thought, but it didn’t seem exactly right, seeing as how he represented the law and all.

“Sorry, Wally. Got lost in my own thoughts,” Cole murmured the apology.

With that, he pulled his truck headfirst into the first parking spot he could. It was in front of the next building, just one door down from the Emporium.

Cole cut off his engine and sat in the truck a moment longer.

If he had any sense at all, he silently told himself, he’d start the vehicle up again, go back to his office and work on this month’s monthly report. A report that was tedious given that there was actually very little to report. Crime in this small town of three thousand strong involved nuisance disturbances and not much else.

Of course, there was that horrible accident two weeks ago involving Amos McCloud and his son, Wayne, and a trucker who had been driving cross-country, but that wasn’t a crime, either, not in the sense that all those prime-time TV programs liked to highlight. His investigation had shown that inclement weather and bad brakes had been to blame for the truck suddenly jackknifing. Amos had seen the accident happening but it had been too late. He couldn’t stop his own truck in time.

Lucky for Wayne and Amos, Cole had been driving by or there might not have been anything left of the two men except for bits of cinders. Racing from his own truck, a sense of urgency sending huge amounts of adrenaline through his body, he’d managed to get first Amos and then Wayne out. The latter had been brutal. The cab of the truck had folded like a metal accordion, trapping Wayne in its metal embrace. He’d worked like the devil to get Wayne free and had succeeded just seconds before the whole damn truck exploded.

Fortunately, no one had died at the scene. But the jury was still out about the final count. The trucker and Amos had been pretty banged up, but Wayne had been unconscious when he was taken to the hospital in Helena.

He still was.

Was that why she was here? Cole wondered suddenly, straightening in his seat. Had Ronnie come back because of the accident? He might have tried to contact her about the accident himself if he’d known how to find her, but she’d done a good job of disappearing from his life.

“Damn it, she’s not here any more than she was all those other times you thought you saw her,” he declared angrily, upbraiding himself.

If he got out of the truck and went into the Emporium to investigate, he would feel like a damn idiot once he proved to himself that she wasn’t really there.

More than likely, it’d turn out to be some other woman. Or maybe nobody at all.

But if he didn’t go in, if he went back to his one-story, 1800-square-foot office, and tried to get some work done, this was going to eat at him all day. He knew that. Especially since he hadn’t imagined seeing her in a while now. Almost a whole month had gone by without a so-called “Ronnie sighting.”

It had begun to give him real hope. He was beginning to think he was finally, finally over her. For real this time. Not the way he’d thought before, the time he’d gotten engaged to Cyndy Foster at the diner.

Getting engaged to Cyndy had just been a desperate act on his part to force himself to move on. Except that he really couldn’t. Not then. And when he caught himself almost calling Cyndy Ronnie one night, he knew it wouldn’t be fair to Cyndy to go through with the wedding.

So he’d called it off and tried to explain to Cyndy that he thought she deserved better than spending her life with a man who was only half there. He’d hoped she’d take it well, the way he’d meant it. But she didn’t. His ears had stung for a week from the riot act she’d read him at the top of her lungs. Not that he hadn’t deserved it.

From that point on, he dedicated himself to the job of being town sheriff and saw to it that he was a dutiful son, as well. Cole figured he’d either eventually work Ronnie out of his system, or become a confirmed bachelor.

These last few months, he’d begun to think that he was finally coming around, accepting what his life had become.

A lot he knew, Cole thought sarcastically. If he was on the road to being “cured,” what the hell was he doing having another damn hallucination?

Only one way to battle this, he decided, and that was to walk in, see who Ed was really talking to and be done with all this racing pulse nonsense.

With that, Cole pulled his key out of the truck’s ignition.

Tucking the key into the breast pocket of his shirt, he shifted in his seat and opened the driver’s side door. He got out and walked the short distance to the Livestock Feed Emporium. Cole deliberately avoided glancing in through the window, giving himself a moment to prepare for the inevitable disappointment.

He opened the door to the store. The same tiny silver bell, somewhat tarnished now, that had hung there for fifty years, announcing the arrival or departure of a customer, sounded now, heralding his crossing the store’s threshold.

Cole’s deep blue eyes swept over the rustic store with its polished, heavily scuffed old wooden floors. Ed took pride in the fact that the store looked exactly the way it had back in his grandfather’s day when Josiah Haney opened the Emporium’s doors for the first time. The only actual concession that had been made to modern times was when the original cash register had finally given up the ghost. Ed had been forced to replace it with a computerized register since manual ones were nowhere to be found anymore.

The air had turned blue for more than a week until Ed had finally learned—thanks to the efforts of his incredibly patient grandson—how to operate the “dang infernal machine.”

The store was empty. Even Ed didn’t seem to be around. The man was probably in the back, getting something—

Okay, Cole thought, relieved and disappointed at the same time, the way he always was when a mirage faded. She wasn’t here.

It had been just his imagination, just the way it always was. Just the way—

And then he heard it. Just as he turned back toward the door to leave, he heard it.

Heard her.

He froze, unable to move, unable to breathe, as the sound of her voice pierced his consciousness. Skewered his soul.

Taunted him.

Almost afraid to look, Cole forced himself to turn around again. When he did, he was just in time to see the owner turning a corner and walking down an aisle. He was returning to his counter at the front of the store.

He was also talking to someone. A visible someone. He was talking to a woman.

And that woman was Ronnie.

Ed Haney’s round face appeared almost cherubic as he continued conferring. He seemed to be beaming as he bobbed his head with its ten wisps of hair up and down.

Ronnie McCloud returned the shop owner’s smile. “I’ll tell Dad you were asking after him.”

Ed was doing more than just asking after the rancher’s health and he wanted her to be clear about that. “Tell Amos that if there’s anything I can do to help, anything at all, he shouldn’t let that damn pride of his get in the way. All he has to do is say the word. I want to help. We all do,” Ed emphasized, then said in a conspiratorial voice, “There was really no need for you to have to come back here, although I have to say it surely is a pleasure seeing you again, Veronica. You’ve become one beautiful young woman, and if I was twenty years younger—well, no need to elaborate.” He chuckled. “You get my meaning.”

Veronica McCloud laughed. “Yes, I do.” He was teasing her. But he meant the other thing, the part about offering his help. Edwin Haney, a man she had grown up knowing, was a man of integrity—even if he did remind her a little of Humpty Dumpty. He meant what he said. About himself and about the others. The one thing she could never fault this town for was indifference.

The citizens of Redemption were anything but indifferent. So much so that at times they seemed to be into everybody else’s business. A private person didn’t stand a chance in Redemption. The people wore you down, had you spilling your innermost secrets before you could ever think to stop yourself.

She knew they meant it in the very best possible way, but when she’d been younger, she felt that it was an invasion, a violation of her rights. She’d wanted to be her own person, someone who made up her mind without the benefit of committee input or an ongoing, running commentary.

She wanted more than Redemption had to offer.

Even so, she had to admit, especially at a trying time like this, it was nice to know that there were people her father could count on. God knew he was going to need them once she left and went back home again, she thought. Her new home, she emphasized, since this had been home once.

“Hi, Sheriff, what can I do for you?” Ed’s voice broke into her thoughts as he addressed someone just behind her.

Ronnie smiled. The sheriff. That would be Paul Royce. He had to be, what? Seventy now? Older?

Remembering the gregarious man’s jovial countenance, Ronnie turned around, a greeting at the ready on her smiling lips.

The greeting froze.

She wasn’t looking up at Sheriff Paul Royce and his shining coal-black eyes. She found herself looking directly into the new sheriff’s blue ones. And suddenly wishing, with all her heart, that she was somewhere else. Anywhere else.

But she wasn’t.

She was right here, looking into deep blue eyes she used to find hypnotic, her mind a complete, utter useless blank.

“Hello, Ronnie.”

Chapter Two

As she was driving to Redemption, Ronnie had told herself that she would have more time before she had to face him. Instead, Cole had appeared out of the blue, and she was so not ready for their paths to cross.

Who was she kidding? There wasn’t enough time in the world for her to prepare for this first meeting after so much time had passed.

And, damn it, Cole wasn’t helping any. Not looking the way he did. This harsh land had a terrible habit of taking its toll on people, on its men as well as its women. So why wasn’t he worn-out looking?

Why wasn’t Cole at least growing the beginnings of a gut like so many other men who were barely thirty years old?

Heaven knew that her father looked like he was coming up on eighty instead of being in his early sixties. And the last time she’d seen her older brother, Wayne, the land had already begun to leave its stamp on him, tanning his skin—especially his face—the way that tanners cured leather.

Not that there weren’t any changes with Cole. But those changes only seemed to be for the better. Cole had lost that pretty boy look he’d once had—although his eyelashes appeared to be as long as ever. But now there was the look of a man about him, rather than a boy. A lean, muscular man whose facial features had somehow gone from sweet to chiseled.