Single-Dad Sheriff

CHAPTER TWO

“YOU LOOK LIKE the wrath of God.” That’s what Geneva had told Garrett as she’d bustled through the kitchen door earlier that morning. Then, while getting eggs and bacon out of the refrigerator, she’d muttered, “I wouldn’t worry so much if I thought there was a chance you’d been out on the town. Goin’ a little wild. Havin’ a little fun…”

She knew him better than that.

Last night, after leaving a message on Noelle’s voice mail to contact him as soon as she arrived in London, he’d lain awake for hours, worrying the untold consequences of both her and Rory’s separate plans. Not having heard from her by morning, he’d called her assistant in Charlotte, who had her itinerary. Overseas, Noelle was already in a closed meeting. Garrett needed to understand the time difference was five hours. Was it an emergency? If not, try Noelle again around nine, North Carolina time. She should have a small break before heading into another meeting, the assistant had said, promising to leave a message as well—

“Dad, look at that!” Rory said with disgust. Garrett had thrown the old banana-seat bike in the cruiser’s trunk and was giving his son a ride to Whistling Meadows. “Someone’s tossed garbage into the pasture. I’m gonna have to take care of that first thing. Before Percy and the boys eat something they shouldn’t.”

It made Garrett proud that his son was already taking ownership of this new job.

As they pulled up the farm road, Garrett could see six llamas haltered and tethered to the paddock fence. One carried a double-sided pack, and Samantha was adjusting another on a second animal. Four more packs lay on the ground. The llamas looked cool, calm and collected, but the woman looked frazzled.

Rory barely waited for the car to come to a stop before he hopped out. “Need help?”

“Yes, please!” Samantha moved from one side of the black-and-tan animal to the other, apparently trying to balance the contents of the bags. “Twelve Rockbrook campers and their counselor are booked for this morning. I just got a call they’d penciled in the time one hour earlier than I had. They’re on their way. I’m not ready.”

Garrett, noting she looked like a woman who preferred being in charge and prepared, stepped forward to pick one of the packs off the ground. “The cinch work looks simple. Anything in particular I should know?”

“The process is pretty straightforward,” she replied, swiping wisps of pale blond hair away from her face. “If you keep the loads evenly distributed, you shouldn’t have a problem.”

“Problem?”

“Llamas express their displeasure by spitting, but that’s really a llama-llama thing.”

“Come on, Rory,” he replied, only slightly reassured. “I’ll put the bags in place. You tie them.” He headed cautiously toward a piebald llama.

“Dad, meet Fred.”

Fred emitted a sound like high tension wires that Garrett could only hope came from the front end of the beast.

“He’s humming!” Rory looked thrilled to be among these strange-looking creatures. In that, he didn’t take after his father. As a kid Garrett had never been allowed a pet.

“So, how do you keep them clean?” his son asked Samantha. “I can’t picture giving one of these guys a bath.”

“They’d get bathed only if I were going to show them,” she replied. “Which I’m not. Everybody here stays happy with a lot of rolling in the dust on their part and some very careful brushing on mine. And spring shearing.”

For the first time, the woman’s speech pattern, her cultured inflection, fully registered with Garrett. He took note of her spotless designer jeans, her expensive boots and her carefully ironed shirt—some soft material in a grayish-green—nothing from the local discount store. Stuff Noelle would have picked out. The Weston woman seemed to know what she was doing with the llamas, but she sure didn’t look or sound as if she belonged on a North Carolina farm.

“Can I do it as part of my job?” Rory asked her. “Brush ’em, I mean.”

“I’ll teach you if you really want. It’s tricky. Llamas are very sensitive to touch. Their coats can be full of static. And more than that, you have to earn their trust….”

Garrett listened with surprise to his son and this stranger talking easily. Rory had spoken more words in the past five minutes than he had in the entire week he’d been in Applegate. As a father, he wanted to be a part of the conversation, too.

He fell back on what every resident asked a newcomer. “So, Samantha, where are you from originally?”

She looked as if he’d asked her for her Social Security and bank account numbers plus the key to her house. At that moment the instincts of both father and sheriff kicked in. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to run a check on his son’s employer.

Samantha tried to keep her features neutral. “I’ve lived too many places to count,” she replied with her pat answer. It wasn’t a lie. Although the Virginia estate outside D.C. had always been the family home, as an adult she’d traveled the world for the hotel business.

“Army brat?”

Rechecking a cinch, she pretended not to have heard the question.

“How do you come to run a llama trekking business in western North Carolina?” he persisted.

She wasn’t about to tell him about the rehab center just outside Asheville, recommended by an old family friend, and its program, wherein residents took turns caring for a Noah’s ark assortment of animals. She’d fallen in love with Pogo the llama. Actually, she’d fallen in love with the calm and purposeful woman she’d become in the llama’s presence.

She inspected a strap Rory had tightened. “Good work,” she said, then turned to the sheriff. “Who wouldn’t want to do this if they had the opportunity?”

As he lifted the last piece of baggage from the ground, the glance he gave her said he knew she was being deliberately evasive. But he didn’t pursue the issue.

She took the pack from his hands and headed for Percy as the sound of the Rockbrook Camp van floated up the road. Good. She didn’t need any more questions from Sheriff McQuire. Nor any more looks. If her father was a steamroller in a tux, and her ex-almost-fiancé a fox in the henhouse, she suspected this man was a walking, talking lie detector. She preferred staying off his register.

“It seems like you have things under control,” he said, his manner brusque. “Son, see you at supper.”

“Okay.” Rory eyed the giggling girls piling out of the van with as much trepidation as Samantha felt for his father’s questions. “I’m gonna clean up that garbage in the pasture near the road.” And before the lead camper could reach him, he bolted.

Samantha didn’t see the sheriff leave. She made herself busy settling the girls and giving them the basic instructions that would lead to a happy trail experience. As she talked, as she demonstrated what to do, over the girls’ questions and the llamas’ gentle humming, she began to feel at ease. Despite the possibility that her parents or the paparazzi could invade her sanctuary at any moment or that Rory’s father could reveal her as a fraud, she refused to be driven from her new life. These campers didn’t care that she was an heiress. This land didn’t care that she was a recovering alcoholic. Her llamas didn’t care about her background as a deb. They cared about her present behavior. A kind word. A gentle touch. Those were things that Samantha could offer from the heart. It was an authentic start. She would not let others spoil it.

THOUGHTS OF NOELLE AND RORY and the perplexing new owner of Whistling Meadows weighing on his mind, Garrett eased his cruiser up the rutted trail on the Whittaker property—one of many old logging roads that crisscrossed the area. Lily Whittaker had called him to say her son Mack had taken his shotgun and a full bottle of Jack Daniel’s and had left the house without a word. She was worried. It wasn’t hunting season.

Garrett was worried, too.

Mack Whittaker had been his best deputy. And his best friend. Hired because of his army training, Mack had successfully juggled work for the Sheriff’s Department with a continued Armed Forces commitment in the reserves. He had seen active duty in the reserves in a call-up to Iraq. Garrett had promised him his position when he got back. Trouble was, Stateside again, Mack didn’t seem to want the job anymore. Or Garrett’s friendship. Or any part of his previous life. He’d broken up with his longtime girlfriend. His mama said he was a bear to live with. His daddy said his eyes looked like those of a dead man. After one nasty brawl in town, he shunned old friends and acquaintances entirely. People reported seeing him in odd places, on foot tramping the side of the roads, sometimes crossing fields, sometimes lying way up on Lookout Rock, motionless, a bottle in his hand. He rarely drove. He never spoke.

Garrett approached their boyhood hideout with caution. He knew what worried Lily most, but if Mack had taken a full bottle of whiskey, he wasn’t planning on doing away with himself before he did away with the contents of that bottle. Drunk, however, Mack might turn the shotgun on an intruder.

Garrett didn’t feel like an intruder here. The big old cave had been Mack’s and his fortress as boys. Garrett’s refuge. His foster parents had been conscientious enough, sometimes even kind, but Garrett had never felt he fit in anywhere until the first day of school in third grade when Mack had come to his defense on the playground. Even at eight, Mack had had an inordinate sense of fair play. After that the two had been like brothers.

The man staggering on the ledge in front of the cave, however, didn’t look like Garrett’s brother or his friend. Unshaven, hair wild, dirty clothes in disarray, Mack looked like a vagrant ready for a sober-up stay in jail.

“Get out of here!” he shouted as Garrett stepped out of the cruiser. “Don’t want your sermons. Or your pity.”

“When did I ever preach to you?” Garrett stood not ten feet away. He could see the half-empty bottle of booze and the shotgun lying on the pebble-strewn ground. He wasn’t leaving without either his friend or the gun. “But you’ve been back a month now. Don’t you think it’s time you let someone know what’s gnawing at your gut?”

Mack sank against the mossy embankment near the cave entrance. “Even if I told you, you couldn’t begin to understand.”

“Try me.” Garrett suspected part of Mack’s despair was that he’d returned from war while one of his unit—one of their high school classmates, Nate Dona-hue—had not.

“Sheriff—” the word was spoken with uncustomary contempt “—you live in a mighty small world. In little ol’ Applegate you think you have a handle on right and wrong, black and white, up and down. But I’m here to tell you you’re one misinformed sombitch.”

“Sounds like you’re the one offering up the sermon.”

Mack said nothing.

“Rory’s home,” Garrett said, trying to break through to his friend. From the minute of Rory’s birth, Mack had embraced the role of uncle. “He’s been asking after you.”

“What’d you tell him?”

“I don’t know what to tell him. Do you want to see him?”

“No.”

“Okay. I get your point. You look like hell. Why don’t you come back to the barracks with me? Have a shower and shave. It’s McMillan’s turn to cook. Chili. Everybody would be glad to see you.” He kept talking even though it was obvious Mack was tuning him out. If Mack wanted to wall himself off after what he’d been through, who was Garrett to judge? But he was determined not to give up on his buddy. “Come on.”

Mack shook his head.

“Suit yourself. I’ll leave you the bottle, but your daddy needs the shotgun to take care of a woodchuck that’s been raiding your mama’s garden.”

Mack narrowed bleary eyes. “His case of hunting rifles isn’t enough?”

“Apparently not.” Garrett picked up the weapon.

Mack didn’t resist. Instead, he closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the embankment. When he spoke, his words were low and menacing. “There are a thousand and one ways to destroy life, and none of ’em needs a shotgun.”

The satisfaction Garrett had felt at retrieving the gun drained right out of him. “Sure you couldn’t use some chili?”

“What I could use, friend, you can’t supply.”

“I’ll be back, anyway.”

“Don’t bother.”

“You know me better than that.”

“I know nothing anymore.”

This statement—from a guy who had always been confident in who he was and his place in the world—made Garrett’s blood run cold. He wouldn’t argue now, but he’d keep returning until Mack showed signs of the man he’d once been.

With a heavy heart Garrett got in the car. Thank God he still knew who he was. Sheriff. And father. And regarding the latter, he needed to take care of matters he could still control. He needed to get in touch with Noelle. Maybe she hadn’t made a decision about Rory’s schooling. Kids could hear a suggestion and blow it all out of proportion. When he did reach her, his ex would want to know what their son was doing with his summer so far. Noelle might be highly focused on her career, but she was also a fiercely devoted, often overprotective mother. He wanted to be able to reassure her Rory’s job was safe and his employer reliable. She, too, would want a background check on Samantha Weston.

While driving back to headquarters, he phoned Noelle. Surprisingly, she picked up immediately. “Garrett, hello. I was expecting your call. Is Rory okay?”

“He’s fine. For the most part.” He tried to choose his words carefully. “He seems to think boarding school is a done deal, however, and he’s not happy about that. I can’t say I’m too pleased about it, either. You could have consulted me.”

“I threw out the idea of Harpswell, among others, to get Rory thinking about the broader possibilities in his future.”

“Broader than?” Garrett didn’t trust the implications of the broader concept. Not long after they’d married, Noelle had begun to chafe under what she considered their constricting life in Applegate. “He’s going to be an eighth-grader. How much broader than decent grades, friends and an interest in the world around him—animals, for instance—does his life have to get?”

He could hear her sigh from clear across the Atlantic.

“Less restricting than North Carolina,” she said at last.

“Are you moving?”

“I didn’t want to discuss it with you or Rory until I had something solid to add to the list of possibilities. But, yes, a move might be in the future. I’m here interviewing for a position—a promotion—in our London headquarters.”

He had to pull his cruiser to the side of the road. Had to tamp down his rising anger. “And you want to put our kid in a boarding school so you can take a job overseas? What’s wrong with the possibility of letting him live with me?”

“That would be one of the choices. As is boarding school. But I was really hoping you’d support me in trying to convince Rory it would be a wonderful experience to live in London. It would be an education in itself.”

“You want to take him with you?”

“Of course. But I want him to want to come.”

“Even farther away from me.”

“You would have summers together. That wouldn’t change.”

But how much would Rory change in a year’s time? Garrett didn’t want to be a stranger to his son.

“Besides, there’s e-mail and the telephone,” Noelle insisted. “Letters even. And you could always fly to England.” She made it sound so simple. Made him sound so provincial for not immediately embracing such simplicity.

“The three of us need to discuss this.”

“Absolutely. But don’t jump the gun. I haven’t been offered the job. Yet.”

With her talent and drive, he had no doubt she would be.

“I have to run.” Her voice was charged with the thrill of a challenge. “Wish me luck.”

“Luck,” he replied without enthusiasm, wondering, sourly, if wanting to have a good, solid father-son relationship here in Applegate meant limiting Rory.

He and Noelle hadn’t even talked about how happy he was to be working at Whistling Meadows.

THE ROCKBROOK VAN departed as Red’s pickup, the bed loaded with bulging garbage bags, arrived in the barnyard. Rory got out, but Red leaned through the driver’s window. “I’m hauling this to the landfill,” he said, then added with a nod to Rory, “The kid can work.”

“So I see,” Samantha replied, surprised Rory had pulled Red out of retirement.

“Someone dumped all this in the pasture by the road.” The boy wrinkled up his face. “Who would do that?”

Red smiled. “I tried to tell him some kids around here think summer activities mean dumping garbage, smashing mailboxes and toilet papering the trees along Main Street. Seems they do things differently in Charlotte.”

“You might have a dog problem, too,” Rory said. “We walked the fence line and saw signs of digging.”

Red’s smile disappeared. “Most likely those would be Tanner’s dogs.”

Samantha didn’t like the sound of that. If dogs got in the pasture, they could wreak havoc with the llamas. “Isn’t there a leash law?”

“You’d need to ask the sheriff,” Red replied. “If there is, no one pays attention to it. I’ll stop by Tanner’s on my way to the dump and talk to him about keeping his hounds on his own property.”

“No,” Samantha said quickly. From experience in the hotel business, she’d come to realize the importance of being an upfront neighbor to those already in the area. “I’ll talk to him.”

“I don’t know if that would be a good idea.” Red seemed just as adamant. “Tanner isn’t what you’d call open to suggestion.”

“We’ll do fine.” At the Singapore Ashley, she’d dealt with everyone from architects to contractors to lawyers to local officials and merchants. Tanner Harris couldn’t be more difficult than any of them. “I’ll bicycle over right now.”

“I’ll go with you,” Rory offered. “I don’t know Red’s nephew, but I know dogs.”

Red eyed the two of them. “As long as you both remember the cur you have to watch out for is Tanner.”

Samantha checked that the inner pasture gate was latched—the llamas, released from their packs and tethers, were already letting off steam, chest butting and rolling in the dust—then wheeled her bike out of the barn.

Rory joined her. “How was today’s trek?”

“It was the beginner course. Just a few hours of hiking up to Lookout Rock and back with some trail mix and sports drinks thrown in for good measure. But the girls had fun.”

“They were noisy.”

“They were okay on the trail. I think the giggling beforehand was mostly for your benefit.”

She hadn’t meant to make him blush, but he did anyway, then sped up ahead of her.

Following him to her neighbor’s property, she turned in at the corner of the fence where her pasture gave way to a woebegone yard. There, three hulking teenagers worked at building a trailer of sorts from lumber and spare parts. An all-terrain vehicle and two dirt bikes were parked nearby. Four large dogs lay chained to a tree. Rory stopped at the edge of the road and warily eyed the scene.

“Hello!” Samantha called out. “Is your father home?”

“No,” came a mumbled response before the dogs clambered to their feet and began a raucous baying. The three young men worked on without looking up.