No Ordinary Sheriff

Beyond the badge…

Shannon Wilson is on the fast track to the top. A DEA agent from the big city, she’s simply passing through Ordinary, Montana, to settle a score. And no small-town sheriff will derail her plans simply because he flashes a badge and a great smile…no matter how sexy he looks in that cowboy hat.

After all, Sheriff Cash Kavenagh is ready to settle into that white-picket-fence ideal. And Shannon isn’t about to swap her fast-paced lifestyle for such an ordinary existence. Only problem is—wrapped in those big masculine arms of his, Shannon can’t seem to shake the feeling that life with Cash may just be the most extraordinary thing that’s ever happened to her.

Cash stood in front of her and countered everything she knew about men

Shannon stopped, arrested by the sight of his massive bed. A faint glow of moonlight spilled through a window. Too many images of her and Cash mobbed her mind, images of them naked, covered only by moonlight and each other.

She wanted him. Now.

She felt his gaze on her. He leaned against the doorjamb, watching her, his arms crossed over his chest, his biceps stretching his white dress shirt.

“Need help with anything?” he asked, as though he knew what she’d been thinking as she stared at his bed.

“I want to go to bed with you.”

“No.”

No? He turned her down? “Why not?”

“We want two different things in life.”

“Like what?”

“I want a relationship. I want kids and a family now.”

He was turning things upside down, making a hash of her assumptions of what men were, and she didn’t know what to make of it.

Dear Reader,

No Ordinary Sheriff is the last in my Ordinary, Montana, series. I’ve enjoyed writing about this fictional town. As with most towns, it had its share of good and bad characters, and happy and sad experiences. As with all romances, stories closed with happy endings.

The town “grew” as I wrote about it. It started as one story about Hank and Amy on the Sheltering Arms Ranch. As I added characters to each story, they asked for their own novels and Ordinary became a series. This is the sixth and final installment.

Cash Kavenagh showed up a number of times as Ordinary’s sheriff. He begged for his own story, his own happily-ever-after. Finishing almost where I started, the heroine, Shannon, is Janey Wilson’s sister. Janey was little Cheryl’s mother. Cheryl starred in the first novel, No Ordinary Cowboy.

Here is Cash and Shannon’s story! Hope you enjoy it. I love to hear from readers, so please contact me through my website, www.marysullivanbooks.com.

Best,

Mary Sullivan

No Ordinary Sheriff

Mary Sullivan

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mary Sullivan likes to turn people’s assumptions on their heads. She believes that all things are possible for those who believe in themselves. Watch for role reversals in No Ordinary Sheriff. Can a man enjoy cooking and creating the comforts of home? You bet. Can a woman be an effective cop and love her job? You bet. Contact Mary through her website, www.marysullivanbooks.com.

To my fabulous siblings—

Pat, Margaret, Dianne, Paddy, Dorothy and John—

thank you for supporting my writing.

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER ONE

ON MONDAY MORNING, Shannon Wilson stood in front of her brother Tom’s apartment door with dread running cat’s claws across her nerves. She’d already given him a good ten minutes to answer.

Her sister’s voice came through her cell phone. “I’m concerned about him,” Janey said. “He looked terrible when he was here.”

Two weeks ago, Tom had come to see Shannon, and he had looked awful, emotionally spent.

Go to rehab, she’d said.

Sure, he’d replied with his sweet lopsided smile.

She’d known he wouldn’t.

Instead, last week Tom had visited Janey in Ordinary, Montana.

“Before he left,” Janey said, “he wouldn’t stop hugging me and telling me he loved me.”

Shannon needed her to stay calm. “I’m sure he’s fine.”

“Promise you’ll check up on him?”

“I’ll head over to his apartment as soon as I hang up.” Liar. You’re already here. “I’ll call if there’s a problem.”

Had those visits been Tom’s way of saying goodbye? Had he planned to hurt himself? Shannon knocked again, rapping so hard her knuckles hurt, covering the phone with her other hand so Janey wouldn’t hear.

Come on, Tom, answer.

“I’m so worried.” Janey was the older, wiser sister, but Shannon had an urge to reassure her.

“I know.” Me, too. Terrified. “You go to Disneyland. You worked your butt off for this trip, sis, and planned it for a year. It’s your family’s dream vacation. Go. I’ll take care of things here.”

“I don’t know—”

“If you don’t leave, I’ll come to Ordinary and drag you to California myself.”

Janey chuckled. “Okay, okay. I’ll bring you back a souvenir.”

Shannon tried to laugh, but it sounded phony. “Something really tacky?”

“You got it.” Janey’s answering laugh was genuine. Good. Shannon had managed to assuage her fears.

“Call me if you need me.”

Not likely. Her sister really had earned this trip.

Shannon ended the call. She glared at Tom’s apartment door. What about her own unease? Who would reassure her, when she was the one always taking care of others?

When she’d called Tom half an hour ago, he’d sounded out of it, but not drunk. Which drug was it these days? She knocked again, loudly enough to rouse everyone in the building.

He’d said he was home and didn’t plan to go out—why wouldn’t he answer?

Swearing, she hurried down to the first floor through a dirty stairwell that reeked of boiled cabbage. The smell nauseated her, reminded her of the poverty she’d clawed her way out of.

She knocked at the first apartment. The superintendent answered.

“There’s something wrong with my brother in 308. You have to get me into his apartment.”

“I can’t—”

“Yes. Now.” Her panic made an impression and he followed her upstairs with his set of master keys.

On the third floor, he unlocked Tom’s door.

The stench hit her first—garbage and stale cigarette smoke. He’d started smoking again. Despite everything the family had done, was doing for Tom, it wasn’t enough if he wouldn’t take care of himself.

Why couldn’t men handle the problems in their lives?

She stepped over a pizza box.

With the toe of her shoe, she nudged aside a grubby shirt. There was something on it—God, old vomit. Oh Tom.

Afraid of what she would find, she stepped into the living room. Laundry and dishes littered every surface. Dust coated the room.

When she walked across the stained carpet, something crunched under her foot. An unfinished pizza crust.

At first, she looked right past Tom.

He lay on the sofa so folded in on himself she’d mistaken him for a pile of laundry. She approached. His clothing was soaked with sweat, his once hale body ravaged, his stomach concave as though it were eating itself. He’d grown even thinner in just the past week. The deep clefts bracketing his mouth looked deeply ingrained, as though he’d carried them for a lot longer than his thirty years.

Shannon sank to her knees beside him and touched his arm. Too hot. He stank.

“Tom,” she whispered. “What have you done to yourself?”

He raised a hand as if to touch her cheek. Too weak to complete the action, it fell back to his stomach.

“Cathy,” he whispered and smiled.

Cathy? He thought she was his dead wife? What was he on?

His pulse raced beneath her fingers. How could a man’s heart beat so fast without hurting itself?

She turned to the super. “Call 9-1-1. It’s an overdose.”

Of what, though? He’d done so many different drugs, taken anything to deaden memories of the crash.

She wiped his forehead with her sleeve. “Tom, talk to me. What did you take?”

“Shannon?”

“Yes. What did you take? I need to know.”

“Meth.”

“How much, sweetie?”

He didn’t respond. “Tom, how much!”

Still no answer. She was going to kill the bastard who sold her brother the meth.

“Where’s Cathy?” he whispered.

Shannon grabbed the photo of Cathy and the two boys from the coffee table. His fingerprints coated the silver frame and glass. She wrapped his hand around it.

“Here, honey, they’re right here.” He thought they were still alive. That would last only until the drug cleared his system.

Tom, you’re breaking my heart.

“Where did you get it?” she asked.

“Huh?” He was falling asleep.

“The meth,” she yelled and shook his shoulder, her fear making her harsh. “Where did you get it?”

“Ordinary.”

“Ordinary? You’re kidding. Who in Ordinary would sell you meth?”

He whispered something and she leaned close. “Cooking. Main Street.” His voice was thin.

He looked past her. “Where’s Cathy?” Panic started to set in. His pupils dilated until they were huge, and Shannon took his hand. He nearly cut off her circulation.

The terror in his eyes begged her to do something, anything, to save him.

How? What?

“Tell me what you need, honey.” His eyelids drifted closed.

“Stay with me, Tom.” He opened his eyes at her words. If he fell asleep he might not wake up again. She refused to let him die, damn it.

She sprinted for the kitchen. In the freezer she found ice cubes furry with frost and an old freezer pack. She carried them back to the sofa.

Where should she put them? On his chest? His forehead? For God’s sake, why hadn’t she ever studied first aid? Her hands shook, but she managed to tuck the cubes into his T-shirt, because she didn’t have a clue what else to do.

Cathy smiled at her from the photo, watching every move with her lively brown eyes as though asking her sister-in-law to take care of her man while she was gone. Shannon swore she could detect Chanel No. 5, Cathy’s favorite, and smell the kid-sweat of Casey’s and Stevie’s hair. She almost turned, half-convinced they were about to barrel into the room with mischievous grins to throw themselves into their aunt’s arms.

But Shannon’s arms were empty. She slid Tom’s hand over the picture so she couldn’t see their faces.

He was burning up. Most of the ice had already melted

The photo skittered sideways. The rhythm of his breathing changed. His chest rose and fell too rapidly.

“Come on, come on,” she whispered to the ambulance, as though the mantra would get the paramedics there any sooner.

The Montana ambulance system was usually pretty quick. Shannon knew a bunch of paramedics in Billings. They were good at their jobs. So why was it taking so long?

“Tom, are you still with me?”

He didn’t respond, no longer seemed to recognize her.

“Hey!” she yelled to the super. “Where’s the ambulance?”

“I called.” He hovered at the apartment door but didn’t enter, as though an overdose were contagious. “They said just a couple of minutes.”

She heard the pounding on the stairs then, almost mistaking it for her own heartbeat, or maybe Tom’s where her fingers sat on his wrist.

When a pair of paramedics entered the room with a stretcher, she said, “He took meth. I don’t know how much. I don’t know when. Do something. Hurry.” Her voice broke. She still gripped Tom’s hand even though it had fallen slack.

“Okay, we got him.” The paramedic spoke quietly. He eased her away from Tom. “We’ll take care of him. We know what we’re doing.”

She nodded and stepped back, bunching a fist against her mouth.

Calm down. Tom needs you.

The paramedic quickly took her place, kneeling beside Tom. “His blood pressure’s through the roof,” he told his colleague who stood beside the stretcher and took notes.

Tom looked from one man to the other, confused. When the paramedic tried to take his temperature, he weakly flailed at the man.

“Tom,” Shannon said. “Take it easy. These people are here to help.”

His throat gurgled.

“What’s happening?” Her voice rose an octave.

“He’s choking on his saliva.” The paramedic turned Tom onto his side.

Shannon pressed a hand against her roiling stomach.

“Shannon, are you okay?”

At the sound of the deep voice behind her, Shannon turned slowly, giving herself time to put on her game face. Officer Dave Dunlop had entered the apartment.

They had history. She wanted to forget it. He wanted to make up for it.

“Dave,” she said, keeping her voice cool enough to discourage familiarity. She was tired of putting him off. He had to get the message one of these days. “It’s Tom. My brother.”

“Looks like he isn’t going to make it.”

Shannon gasped. Dave had a habit of being socially inept. Wrong response, wrong time. Not the best trait in a cop.

“For God’s sake, Dunlop,” one of the paramedics said. “Show some humanity.”

Dave grimaced. “Sorry, Shannon.”

Within seconds the paramedics had Tom on the gurney and wheeled out the door.

Dave stared at Tom as he passed. “Poor bugger. I wouldn’t have recognized him.”

Shannon tried to follow but Dave wrapped his fingers around her arm.

“Let me go. I need to get to the hospital.”

“Shannon, I can help you with this. I can take care of you.” Trust Dave to use a time like this to try to ease his own conscience.

In her experience, women handled things, not men. Men had their uses—brute strength, fun in bed, pillow talk—but she was better off on her own.

“Give it a rest. It’s too late to make things up to me.”

She pulled out of his grasp and he let go easily enough. He wasn’t cruel. Just clueless.

“If you really want to help,” she said, “call the cops in Ordinary. Someone there is cooking meth. That’s where Tom got it.”

“They’ve got cops. They’ll deal with it.”

“I need you to notify them. They’ll take a call from you more seriously than if I just show up to ask.”

“Okay. I’ll call today.”

She glanced around. What should she bring to the hospital? Tom owned nothing of value. His days were populated by despair, cravings and addictions.

Nothing else in his life meant anything to him anymore.

A glint of silver on the filthy carpet caught her attention. Tom had dropped the photo of his family. This mattered. Only this. When he awoke in the hospital, he would want it.

She picked it up and left the apartment. Dave followed her down the stairs, his presence like a weight on her back.

“What are you doing in the old neighborhood?” he asked. “You said nothing could drag you back here.”

She didn’t answer. Of course she would come back for her brother.

Shannon ran to her car. She didn’t expect Dave to have much luck with the cops in Ordinary. She relied more on herself than on the local cops. They’d never found Janey’s rapist, had they? She’d had to do that herself once she was old enough.

She sped to the hospital. By the time she got there, Tom had slipped into a coma.

There was nothing they could do for him but keep him on life support and wait for a change, the doctors said. What did that mean? Were they waiting for his death?

She stood by his bedside. The terrifying image of him with tubes running everywhere was burned onto her retinas.

Slipping the photo under his limp hand, she gave instructions for it to stay near him, either on his body or on the bedside table.

She brushed too-long hair from his sweaty forehead and willed her tears away. Better to be angry. Furious.

“I’ll get whoever did this to you,” she whispered with an intensity she hadn’t felt since Janey’s rape. “I’ll crush them.”

“Shannon?”

She turned around. Dad. Who had called him? Dave? Good. He’d done something right.

“Tom’s bad.” Her voice cracked and she moved into her father’s arms. As usual, though, she ended up comforting him more than receiving comfort. Dad had fallen apart after Mom’s death, too, but that time it had been Janey who’d held the family together. These days, with Janey living in Ordinary raising her own family, the job had fallen to Shannon.

She called the twins to tell them what had happened and then held her father while he cried. She’d deal with her own grief later.

* * *

“FRANK?” SHERIFF CASH KAVENAGH stood behind his desk in the Sheriff’s office in Ordinary, Montana, and stared at the man who was technically his father. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Francis Kavenagh might have shared his DNA with Cash, but he hadn’t given much else of himself to his son.

Autumn sunlight streaming through the office’s open door limned Frank’s once-broad shoulders. He was shorter than Cash remembered.

Behind him, cars drove by on Main Street. A junker Cash didn’t recognize sat at the curb. Frank’s?

One of Main Street’s shop owners walked along the sidewalk, but didn’t glance at the stranger. Thank God. A brisk November wind blew in. Another ordinary day in Ordinary. Or not. Cash’s father was here.

Cash’s eyes weren’t deceiving him, though. Nor was his nose. It was Frank, all right. He still wore the same old lady-killer cologne—Kanøn—applied with a heavy hand. It had been popular thirty or more years ago.

“Why are you here?” Cash asked again, the belligerence in his tone unintentional. He came by his attitude toward Frank honestly. Life had taught him to distrust the man.

“I wanted to see you.” Frank’s voice had weakened, didn’t have the authority it used to.

Pushing sixty, he looked closer to seventy. He’d been vain about his thick head of hair, but most of it was gone, the remaining yellow-gray like an old bedsheet. Sort of matched the tone of his skin.

“I told you to never come to Ordinary,” Cash said.

“I know.”

“Get in here and close the door before someone sees you.”

Frank did.

Broken veins dotted his cheeks and the creases of his nostrils.

“You look like hell. I guess the hard living finally caught up.”

Frank winced. “Yeah.” He stepped toward the desk. “Can I sit?”

Cash nodded. He didn’t want the man here, should boot him out, but— He seemed unwell. Cash didn’t care, but couldn’t turn him away.

“I tried to talk to your mother.” Frank fell into the chair with a sigh that started in the soles of his shoes. “She wouldn’t see me.”

“She’s happy now.” Cash sat down on the business side of the desk. “She got herself a good husband the second time around. Leave her alone.”

“I figured that out.” In a gesture so familiar it hurt to watch, Frank ran his hand over his head as if fixing his non-existent hair. “I need to tie up certain things. Make them right.”

“‘Tie up things?’ What is this, some kind of deathbed confession scenario?” Despite the joke, unease circled in Cash’s gut.

A cynical smile spread across Dad’s face, colored with sadness. “Yes.”

Cash froze. “Seriously?”

“Yeah. Cirrhosis of the liver. End-stage. I wanted to see you before I…go. To apologize for the way I treated you and your mom.”

“It’s been twenty years.”

“I know.”

“You couldn’t have apologized before now?”

“I should have.”

“I thought you didn’t care.”

Frank stared at him. “For a long time I thought I didn’t, about either you or your mother.”

“Yeah, I got that.”

Frank met Cash’s bitter smile with a grim one of his own.

“I know I don’t deserve a thing from you—”

“You got that right.”

“—but I want you to know that you and your mom were the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“It sure didn’t feel that way.”

Frank glanced away and nodded. “It took losing you two for me to realize it.”

“So, what do you want from me? Money?” Man, that bitterness was giving everything Cash said a real hard edge.

“No, son. Nothing. I came for you, not for me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was a rotten role model. You never got married and had kids.”

“That has nothing to do with you.” So what if Frank’s concerns echoed his own? He’d tried to find someone to settle down with—honest to God he had—but that was nobody’s business but Cash’s. Particularly not Frank’s.

Frank had never appreciated Cash and his mom, yet Frank thought he had to right to criticize Cash for not having married yet?

You’ve been worried about that yourself a lot lately.

So what? That’s my right. Not Frank’s.

Besides, Cash was only thirty-six. Who knew what could happen in the next few years?

Frank raised a placating hand. “Okay. I’m sorry. For everything.”

Frank’s dry-eyed apology moved Cash more than tears would have. What he wouldn’t have given for this sincere, humbled man to have been his father twenty years ago. Cash resisted the apology.

“You’re a dollar short and a day late. I don’t need anything from you.”

“I can see that, Cash. You’ve done well for yourself. I asked around.”

“Who did you talk to?” Someone here in town? Cash felt a moment’s panic.

“Don’t worry. I did it long distance. You have a good reputation in the area.” Frank stood. “You’re a better man than I was. I’m proud of you.”

“Am I supposed to go all gooey and soft now? After you neglected me and mom during the marriage and since the divorce?”

“I know. It’s not much, is it? But it’s true.”

He didn’t know what to say. The man looked bad enough to elicit sympathy, but all of those years of anger backed up in Cash’s throat. Choked him. Strangled every decent word he might have said.

Frank gripped the door handle and Cash’s heart rate kicked up despite his anger, the child in him preparing to watch his father walk out of his life again.

“I just hope you find a good woman to love,” Frank said. “And don’t waste the opportunity like I did with your mother.”

“Don’t you worry about me,” Cash countered. “There are plenty of women in town who’d be happy to take up that position.”

Cash wasn’t boasting. He knew it from experience.

“Good.” Frank opened the door to leave.

Cash held his tongue. They’d said enough.

“I know you won’t believe me, Cash, but I love you.”

With that Frank was gone.

In the weighty silence left behind, Cash breathed heavily, trying not to succumb to regret and maudlin sympathy. Frank had forged his own way.

Cash’s hands formed into fists and he leaned on them on the desk, hard, so he wouldn’t run after Frank.

Even so, when the doorknob turned, his heart lifted.

But it wasn’t Frank.

His deputy, Wade Hanlon, stepped in, ready to relieve Cash as he did every night.

Hating himself for it, Cash rushed past Wade out the door, looking both ways up and down Main Street. Just past the edge of town a car veered off the road and rumbled onto the unpaved shoulder. A ball of dust enveloped it before it righted itself into the lane. The rusted old junker.