She’s not just another fan.

She’s here on baby business.

When small-town cop Ali Templeton shows up at Grant Cooper’s door claiming he’s the uncle of an abandoned baby, the air force veteran turned famous thriller writer is shocked. By the news...and by their instant, irritating attraction. Grant moved to Weaver for peace and quiet, not whirlwind romance. Now it’s time to step up and be a hero—for the child’s sake and his own.

Though her name is frequently on bestseller lists, ALLISON LEIGH’s high point as a writer is hearing from readers that they laughed, cried or lost sleep while reading her books. She credits her family with great patience for the time she’s parked at her computer, and for blessing her with the kind of love she wants her readers to share with the characters living in the pages of her books. Contact her at allisonleigh.com.

Also by Allison Leigh

Yuletide Baby Bargain

A Child Under His Tree

The BFF Bride

One Night in Weaver…

A Weaver Christmas Gift

A Weaver Beginning

Destined for the Maverick

Fortune’s Homecoming

Wild West Fortune

Fortune’s Secret Heir

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

Show Me a Hero

Allison Leigh

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-07799-6

SHOW ME A HERO

© 2018 Allison Lee Johnson

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

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For my family.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

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

Epilogue

Extract

About the Publisher

Chapter One

The house was nineteen-point-six miles outside of town.

“Incredible,” Ali Templeton muttered under her breath when she pulled up in front of the dated-looking two-story building that sat on a small knoll in what seemed like the middle of nowhere.

Only nineteen-point-six miles.

She exhaled and pushed open the door of her cruiser, sticking one sturdy boot out onto the frozen red earth. She was on personal time and probably shouldn’t be using the vehicle assigned to her by the department. It would be one more reason for her sergeant to give her grief, but her own little pickup truck was in the shop, and would be remaining there until she could scrabble together the money to pay for the new transmission it needed.

She zipped up her jacket against the whistling wind as she studied the house in front of her. Sgt. Gowler had been annoyed with her ever since she stopped dating his son, so she was used to it by now. What was one more reprimand?

Discovering that Grant Cooper was living just nineteen-point-six miles outside of her very own hometown was either the height of irony, or the proof that she wasn’t much of a cop, just like Sgt. Gowler seemed to think.

Not that she was here for professional reasons.

Not exactly.

Her bangs blew into her face, obscuring her view, and she shoved her sunglasses up onto the top of her head to keep her hair out of her eyes. She should never have impetuously cut the bangs. It was taking forever for them to grow long enough to stay contained in the bun she had to wear because Gowler was a stickler for regulations.

She’d been out to this abandoned ranch once before. Just over a year ago. Then, it had been at the behest of a single mom at her wit’s end over the wild crowd her fifteen-year-old son had fallen in with. Alongside one of the county’s deputy sheriffs, she’d rounded up Trevor and the rest of the kids, boarded up the broken windows that had allowed them access to the vacant house and hauled the kids back home to their parents.

There were still no animals in the fields. But now the sheets of plywood were gone. All the windows were intact. And though there was no sign of any vehicles, there was a thin stream of smoke coming from the chimney that she hoped meant the man she sought was actually inside.

When she went up the weathered porch steps, they creaked ominously, as if they hadn’t borne the weight of a human being in about half a century. Jabbing her gloved finger against the doorbell didn’t elicit any response, so she tugged off the glove, balled her fingers into a fist and pounded loudly on the door. A shelf of snow slid off the roof, landing with a plop next to her feet.

She wasn’t going to take it as a bad sign. The snow could just have easily landed on her head.

She swiped the pile sideways with her boot until it fell off the side of the small porch, and knocked again, a little more gently this time. Even if he didn’t answer the door, she wasn’t going to give up.

Not now that she’d finally found him.

She glanced at her watch. She couldn’t afford to be too long before she reported in, or Gowler really would have a legitimate reason to be all over her case. But she’d just discovered where Grant Cooper was and she wasn’t taking any chances. She knocked on the door again, then glanced over her shoulder, scanning the landscape around the house. It looked even more desolate than it had when she’d rousted the weed-smoking teenagers.

But then again, it was the middle of January. In the middle of Wyoming.

“Come on.” She lifted her hand to knock again, but the door was yanked open from the inside, startling her enough that she fell back a step.

Annoyed with herself, she stiffened her shoulders and looked up into the face of the man who stood there.

Six feet tall. A lean 170. Dark-haired. Dark-browed, dark-bearded. Her brain automatically categorized the details that she’d only seen in a photo in his DMV record.

When she got to the eyes, though?

She felt her brain short-circuit.

Not blue.

Not green.

Aqua.

Entirely heart-stopping, even though they were glaring at her.

“I can’t believe I finally found you,” she blurted.

His lips thinned. “It’s my only one.” He shoved something into her hands. “Now get off my property.” Before she could blink, he slammed the door shut. Right in her face.

She was too stunned to react.

At first.

But annoyance quickly hit and she pounded on the door again, using the spine of the hardback book he’d pushed into her hand. It served one good purpose at least—it made an effective door-knocker.

It didn’t matter to her if he turned out to be as strange as a three-dollar bill. She wasn’t going to just turn around and leave because he hadn’t greeted her with a big smile and howdy-do.

So she banged with the book and pulled out her badge with her other hand. “Mr. Cooper, open the door,” she said loudly. “I’m not going away until we’ve had a chance to speak.” She banged again. “Open up!”

The door was yanked open again. “If Chelsea sent you—”

Ali did the shoving this time and pushed her badge right in front of his face. “I’m Officer Templeton with the Braden Police Department, here on official business.” She was definitely stretching the truth about that, but oh, well. “I don’t know who Chelsea is, nor do I care, unless she has information about the whereabouts of Daisy Miranda.”

Only because she was watching him closely did she catch the glint of surprise in his otherwise glowering expression.

“Are you Grant Cooper?”

He still looked like he wasn’t going to answer and she wiggled her badge a little, even as she tried to make herself as physically imposing as five foot two could ever be.

“Yes,” he admitted through his teeth.

“Then Daisy is your sister.” The woman might be a rolling stone, never staying in one place for more than three or four months at a time, but she seemed to have tried to always maintain some sort of contact with her brother.

Which was the only reason Ali had found him right here at all. She’d literally followed a postcard to the man.

Nineteen-point-six miles. He’d been practically under her nose all this time.

His expression darkened even more. “My sister’s name is Karen Cooper. Not Daisy Miranda.”

But he’d recognized the name. Ali had seen it in his eyes. She wished they had a photo of Daisy. But she didn’t. Just a general description provided by the people who’d known her during her brief stay in Braden. “Medium height. Slender. Red hair, green eyes? Maybe she married?”

His expression revealed his disbelief. “No way.”

“Does she often use an alias? Are there other names she goes by?”

His lips were pressed together.

She let out a little breath of frustration. “If you think your silence will make me give up, you’re wrong, Mr. Cooper. Regardless of what she’s calling herself these days, I’m looking for her. And I intend to find her.”

“You and about a dozen others. If you’re here because my sister owes somebody money, you’re out of luck. You won’t get it from me.”

“This isn’t about money.”

“I don’t care what it’s about.” He tried closing the door again, only to glare at her even harder when he couldn’t because she’d quickly planted her heavy boot in the doorway.

“So you don’t care about her abandoned baby?” Ordinarily, she would have cringed a little at her own bluntness, but these weren’t ordinary circumstances.

This time she didn’t have to look closely to see the shock that crossed his handsome face. He closed his aqua eyes for a second. Then he frowned and moved away from the doorway. But he didn’t try shutting the door.

It was invitation enough for her and she stepped inside.

The interior of the house was only slightly less derelict than it had been when she’d confronted the teenagers. Then, the kids had been sprawled around on sleeping bags and tattered beach chairs. Now, only one piece of furniture remained in the main room—a couch that was presumably new, considering the thick plastic wrapped around it. It was pushed to one side of the square room and sat beneath a foggy-glassed wall mirror. A couple of packing boxes were stacked next to it, along with what appeared to be new, unfinished kitchen cabinets. On the other side of the room were gallon cans of paint along with paint rollers stacked atop a tarp. Clearly he was preparing to paint over the graffiti-covered walls.

The problems she and her sister were having with the Victorian they’d been restoring were owed strictly to the age and decline of the house. He had to deal with an old house plus neglect and outright vandalism.

He disappeared through a door near the paint cans and she followed, setting the thick book on top of one of the boxes as she passed the stack.

He was standing in the middle of the kitchen, seeming to stare at nothing at all.

He made no sign that he even recognized her presence. Chewing the inside of her cheek, she stepped around him to reach the sink against the cabinetless wall. When she’d been here before, the kitchen had had vile yellow cabinets and she wondered if he’d pulled them out in preparation for the new ones, or if it had been vandals.

The white enamel sink was still chipped, but it was no longer filled with cigarette ashes and discarded beer cans. In fact, it looked scrupulously clean. There was a dish drainer sitting on the bottom of the sink and she pulled one of the glasses from it. It was still damp from being recently washed, and she filled it with water.

He hadn’t moved a muscle.

“Mr. Cooper, why don’t you sit down?” She gestured to the round table wedged in the space between an avocado-green refrigerator and a tin-doored pantry cupboard.

He still didn’t move.

His chambray shirtsleeves were rolled up his sinewy forearms and she cautiously touched his elbow through the cloth.

He jerked as if she’d prodded him with an electric rod and glared down at her.

She pushed the water glass toward him until he had no choice but to take it. “Maybe this will help,” she said calmly despite the distraction of his intensely colored eyes. “Would you mind if I sat?”

His eyebrows lowered as she pulled out one of the padded metal chairs without waiting for his answer. She sat on the edge of the yellow vinyl cushion, hoping he would follow suit.

She needed his cooperation. It would be easier to get that if she could get beyond his annoyance and his shock. In her experience, sitting together at someone’s kitchen table was a step in the right direction.

After a brief hesitation, he pulled out a second chair. The metal legs scraped against the black-and-white checkered linoleum floor. He sat, and finally drank down half the water.

Then he set the glass in the middle of the table and sighed. He rested his forearms on the Formica and pressed his fingers together until the tips turned white around his short, neatly clipped fingernails. “I didn’t know she’d had a baby,” he said after a moment. His voice was low. Gruff. “Or that she was in Braden. We—” He broke off and cleared his throat, curling his fingers into fists. “We haven’t spoken in a while.”

Ali very nearly reached out to cover his hands with her own. Instead, she clasped them together in her lap just to be sure she kept them under control. She wanted to ask what his and his sister’s connection was to Braden that they’d both ended up here during entirely different time frames. Braden was simply too small for it to be coincidental. But she held back that particular question for now. “How long is a while?”

His jaw shifted. “A while.” He focused those unsettling eyes on her face. “How do you know this baby you’re talking about is Karen’s?”

She couldn’t fudge the facts about that. “I don’t know for certain that she is,” she admitted. “Only that a child has been abandoned, and the evidence seems to point to her being Karen’s.”

“What evidence?”

An old-fashioned electric clock hung on the wall opposite them, above the stove. It was shaped like a black cat, with a long tail that swung right and left in time with the ticking hands of the clock face on the cat’s belly. “There was an unsigned note left along with the infant. We believe your sister wrote it. Her wording was distinct.”

His eyebrows rose slightly.

“‘Jaxie, please take care of Layla for me.’” Ali recited the brief missive from memory.

Grant sat back in his chair. His expression turned annoyed again. “How does that tell you anything? Except the kid’s name is Layla. You don’t even know for sure that the author of the note is Layla’s mother. You’re just assuming.”

“In the absence of any other information, it’s the only assumption we have to make. Maybe Daisy isn’t—”

“Karen.”

“Karen. Maybe she isn’t the baby’s mother, but she clearly had some involvement with the child or she wouldn’t have written the note.”

“If she wrote the note. Do you even have proof of that? And who the hell is Jaxie?”

She glanced at the clock again. Gowler would take lateness even worse than he would her personal use of a department vehicle. God only knew what he would assign her to next. Janitorial, maybe. It was about the one thing he hadn’t done. Yet. “Maybe I should start at the beginning.”

He gave her a long look that seemed to say “you think?” “Maybe you should.”

She suddenly felt too warm and unzipped her jacket. “An infant was left on the doorstep of a home owned by two brothers in Braden last month. The only identifying item left with the baby was the note. Unsigned, as I said. On common, white paper. No clear fingerprints. But the reference to Jaxie presumably meant Jaxon Swift, who is one of the occupants of the home. Mr. Swift owns a business in Braden and he had an employee for a short while named—” she inclined her head slightly “—Daisy Miranda, who was the only one who ever used that nickname for him. But she left Mr. Swift’s employment more than a year ago and he hasn’t heard from her since.”

“So? The kid is his. Why else leave her for him? What’s the problem?” His eyes looked cynical. “Jaxie doesn’t want to take responsibility?”

“That was our assumption, too, at first. That he was the father, I mean. But DNA tests have already disproved his paternity. He’s not Layla’s father. The business Mr. Swift owns is a bar. Magic Jax. Karen was a cocktail waitress. Their uniforms are, um—”

“Skimpy?”

She hesitated. She’d been known to work as a cocktail waitress at Magic Jax a time or two for extra money. She was taking a few shifts right now to help get her car out of auto-shop jail. “Let’s just say the outfits are closely fitted. Given the timing, it’s unlikely that your sister was even pregnant when she quit working there. There are no records locally about Layla’s birth, but we estimate she’s now about three months old.”

“So where is the baby?”

Ali kept herself from shifting. “The judge in charge of her case has placed her temporarily with a local family while we investigate.”

His lips twisted. “He’s put her in foster care, you mean.”

The term was accurate, but implied a formality and distance that wasn’t the case at all, since it was Ali’s own sister Maddie and her new husband, Lincoln Swift, who were providing the care. “Yes. A very good foster family. Can you give me any information about Karen’s friends? If she was involved with a particular man?”

“No. I didn’t even know she’d been here in Wyoming.”

Ali waited a moment for him to explain further, but he didn’t. And even though she tried to give him her best demanding stare, his gaze didn’t shy away.

She was afraid that she was the one who came away feeling unsteady. She wasn’t used to feeling unnerved by a man. Even an unreasonably handsome one.

Determined to get back on track, she reached into the inner pocket of her jacket and pulled out one of her business cards. They were generic cards for the police department, but she kept a small supply on which she’d added her badge number, email and phone number. “If there’s anything that comes to you, anything at all, please consider calling me.”

He didn’t take the card. “So you can arrest her for abandoning her child?”

She thought about the sweet baby that she herself had rocked and played with and fallen for just like everyone else who’d come into Layla’s orbit. It didn’t really matter what had drawn this man and his nomadic sister to the same place at entirely different times.

What mattered was Layla.

She placed the card on the center of the table as she stood. “So I can find a child’s mother,” she amended quietly.

He didn’t respond. Didn’t reach for the card.

She squelched a sigh. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Cooper.” She turned to leave the kitchen.

“I haven’t talked to Karen in nearly three years,” he said abruptly.

She stopped and looked at him. She couldn’t imagine not speaking with any one of her siblings for three days, much less three years. “That’s a long time.”

“You don’t know Karen.” He stood from the table and escorted her from the barren kitchen back through the nonlivable living room. “She’s flighty. Irresponsible. Manipulative. But she wouldn’t have done this.” He opened the front door and a rush of bitterly cold wind swept inside. “She wouldn’t have dumped off her baby.”

“Not even if she was desperate?”

His lips tightened. “If she was that desperate, she would have let me know.”

“Well...” Ali zipped up her jacket. Fortunately, her departmental SUV had good heating. She stuck out her hand, hoping to show him that she wasn’t his adversary. “If you think of anything at all that might help us find her, please consider calling me.”

He looked vaguely resigned. He briefly clasped her hand, then shoved his fingers in the front pockets of his jeans. “I won’t think of anything.”

She fought the urge to tuck away her own hand, because her palm was most definitely singing. “But if you do—”

“But if I do, I’ll contact you.”

It was the best she could do at the moment. Bringing up the subject of testing his DNA to help identify whether or not Karen, aka Daisy Miranda, was actually Layla’s mother wouldn’t get her anywhere. Not just yet. She didn’t have to possess the kind of brilliant mind that had been bestowed on her siblings to recognize that particular fact. “Thank you.” She barely took two steps out the front door when it closed solidly behind her.

She didn’t look back, but let out a long, silent exhale that clouded visibly around her head as she went down the steps and headed to the SUV. At least she’d learned Daisy’s real name.

Daisy Miranda might have seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth.

But maybe Karen Cooper hadn’t.

She pulled open the truck door and climbed inside, quickly turning on the ignition and the heat.

Only when she drove away did she finally rub her palm against the side of her pants until the tingling went away.

* * *

Grant Cooper watched the SUV until it was out of sight.

Then he turned on his heel and strode through the disaster zone that was the living room, heading back to the kitchen.

The sight of the book sitting on top of his packing crates stopped him.

He picked up the thick novel. Stared for a moment at the slick black cover featuring an embossed outline of a soldier. The author’s name, T. C. Grant, was spelled out in gold and was as prominent as the title—CCT Final Rules.

He turned and threw the book—hard—across the room.

It bounced against the plaster wall, knocked a can of white paint onto its side and fell with a thud to the floor.

He still felt like punching something.

If not for Karen, he never would have written the damn book he’d just thrown. But what was a little signature forgery, which had locked him into writing a fourth CCT Rules book, compared to abandoning her own child?

He raked his fingers through his hair.

“She wouldn’t do that,” he muttered.

But his eyes caught in the old mirror hanging on the wall. And there was uncertainty in his reflection.

Karen would have had to have been desperate to do it. If he hadn’t barred her from his life three years ago, she’d have come to him.

Just like she’d always come to him, expecting him to clean up the latest mess that she’d landed herself in.

Until that last, unforgiveable act, when she’d signed his name on the publishing contract he’d decided against accepting, he’d always been there for her.

She’d been crashing on his couch at the time, pitching the advantages of the contract as heavily as his publisher had been. It was his fault for leaving the unsigned contract right out on his desk where she’d had easy access to it. His fault for not even realizing the contract had disappeared, until he’d received it back, fully executed and with a handwritten note of “glad to see you came to your senses” attached. That’s what he got for having an ex-wife for his publisher. He’d known immediately what Karen had done, then. Signed his name on the dotted line. Same as she’d used to sign their parents’ names on school report cards.

It was easier to write the book than admit what she’d done. Courtesy of his ex-wife, Karen had walked away with a shopping spree for her part in “convincing” him to take the deal he’d admittedly been waffling over. She’d never known that writing the book had taken everything he had left out of him. Because he’d drawn the line with her by then. No more cleaning up. No more paying off. He didn’t want to hear from her. Didn’t want her phone calls. Her text messages. Her emails. Not even the postcards she always mailed from the places she ended up on her never-ending quest to find her “perfect” life.

Didn’t matter how many times Grant told her there was no such thing. His troubled sister was always on the hunt for it.

She’d even come to Wyoming, where she didn’t have any connections at all except for the one that he had.

And now there was a baby. Supposedly hers.

He looked in the mirror.

It wasn’t his reflection he saw, though. It was his sister’s face when he’d told her to stay out of his life for good.

He looked away from the mirror. Sighed deeply.

“Hell, Karen. What have you done?”

Chapter Two

Grant didn’t recognize her at first.

Which wasn’t all that surprising, he supposed.

Instead of the shapeless navy blue police uniform covering her from neck to ankles, she wore a short red dress edged in black, which crossed tightly over her breasts to tie in a bow at her hip, and high-heeled black shoes. Her shapely legs peeked out below the snug hem that reached only a few inches past her butt.

He studied Officer Templeton over the rim of his beer as she made her way between tables, taking orders and picking up empties on her way toward the bar, where he was sitting in front of the taps. She didn’t even glance his way when she got to the end of the bar, delivered her orders to the bartender and picked up a fresh set of drinks.

“Thanks, Marty,” she said as she headed back out to the tables with her heavy tray balanced on one hand.

Grant’s gaze followed the sway of her hips longer than was probably polite before he managed to pull it away.

The bartender was back at the taps, filling more beer mugs. He smiled wryly as he caught Grant’s eyes. “Don’t waste your time on that one,” he advised. “The trips are hard to catch.”

“Trips?”

“There are two more, look just like her. Identical triplets. Except one of them got married a couple weeks ago.”

“I guess at least she got caught.”

Marty grinned. “Yeah, by the richest guy in town. Lincoln Swift. His brother, Jax, owns this place.”

Grant’s interest was piqued a little more. Officer Templeton hadn’t provided that particular piece of information. That her brother-in-law’s brother owned the bar where Karen had worked. Or that she herself worked there, too. Because the police department didn’t pay enough, or because of some other secret she harbored?

He glanced over his shoulder again. It was easy to follow Officer Templeton’s progress around the dimly lit room. For one, the dress was like a bright red beacon. Then there was her hair. She didn’t have it twisted back in a god-awful tight bun tonight; instead, it reached beyond her shoulders, a streaky mass of brown and blond waves that bounced as she walked.

Seymour would have taken one look at Officer Templeton and said she was sex on a stick.

If Seymour wasn’t six feet under.

Grant looked back into his beer. He didn’t want to think about Seymour Reid any more than he wanted to speculate about his sister and her baby. But Seymour had been on his mind ever since he’d gotten the invitation in the mail that afternoon.

It was for a ceremony a month from now, when Claudia, Seymour’s widow, would accept the Distinguished Service Cross for her deceased husband. She’d included a handwritten note for Grant, imploring him to attend. Grant had been Seymour’s best friend. He was godfather to their two children. Wouldn’t he please, please come to North Carolina, where the ceremony was being held?

He dug his fingertips into his pounding temples. Unlike Grant, who’d been a combat controller with the US Air Force, Seymour had been army all the way. A Green Beret. He’d been a few years older than Grant, a hothead with the need to be a hero running in his veins. Grant had been attached to Sey’s unit for more than half the time he’d served. When he’d gotten out of the air force nearly six years ago because he’d thought it would save his marriage, Seymour had warned him it wouldn’t. At the time, Grant had warned Seymour that his marriage wouldn’t survive him staying in.

But it turned out Seymour had been right.

As usual.

Grant and Chelsea had been divorced within a year.

At Seymour’s funeral last year, Claudia’s wedding ring had been firmly in place on her finger.

“Getcha another, bud?”

He realized Marty had spoken and looked at his now-empty mug. He hadn’t even realized he’d finished the beer.

Which was a pretty good reason not to have another. “No thanks.” He tossed enough cash on the bar to cover the drink and a tip, then pushed out of his seat and grabbed his coat from the empty bar stool next to him.

From the corner of his eye, he saw Officer Templeton bending over slightly as she cleared a table. How anyone as short as her could have legs that went on forever was beyond him. His ex-wife was nearly as tall as he was and her legs hadn’t seemed that long.

He was almost to the door when the pretty police officer straightened and her gaze collided with his.

She looked surprised for about half a second, then dumped her round tray into the hands of one of her customers and started toward him, not stopping until she was two feet away. She propped her hands on her slender hips and gave him a steady look. “There are at least ten bars in this town. Yet you pick Magic Jax.”

“So?”

She shrugged. “Don’t expect me to believe it’s coincidental. You wanted to see the place where Daisy worked.”

“Karen. And interesting that you didn’t mention you work here, too.”

“It’s temporary.” Her dark eyes continued to boldly meet his. “Are you going to ask when you can meet your niece?”

He grimaced. “You don’t know that she’s my niece. You only think she is.”

“Little lady, are we gonna get our cocktails anytime soon, or—”

She looked at the old guy wearing a ten-gallon hat who’d just interrupted them. “Squire Clay, I’ve warned you before. If you call me ‘little lady’ again, I’m not gonna let you off for speeding the next time I stop you.”

The auburn-haired woman with Ten Gallon hid a snicker.

“You want your drinks right this second, go on over and get ’em from Marty,” she told him.

Ten Gallon looked a little abashed. “Sorry, Ali,” he muttered.

Seeming satisfied, Officer Templeton looked back at Grant. “It’s a pretty good hunch,” she continued as if there’d been no interruption at all. “If you’re willing to provide a DNA sample, we could know for sure.”

His DNA wouldn’t prove squat, though he had no intention of telling her that. Particularly now that they’d become the focus of everyone inside the bar. The town had a whopping population of 5,000. Maybe. It was small, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a chance he’d be recognized. And the last thing he wanted was a rabid CCT Rules fan showing up on his doorstep.

He’d had too much of that already. It was one of the reasons he’d taken refuge at the ranch that his biological grandparents had once owned. He’d picked it up for a song when it was auctioned off years ago, but he hadn’t seriously entertained doing much of anything with it—especially living there himself.

At the time, he’d just taken perverse pleasure in being able to buy up the place where he’d never been welcomed while they’d been alive.

Now, it was in such bad disrepair that to stay there even temporarily, he’d been forced to make it habitable.

He wondered if Karen had stayed there, unbeknownst to him. If she was responsible for any of the graffiti or the holes in the walls.

He pushed away the thought and focused on the officer. “Ali. What’s it short for?”

She hesitated, obviously caught off guard. “Alicia, but nobody ever calls me that.” He’d been edging closer to the door, but she’d edged right along with him. “So, about that—”

Her first name hadn’t been on the business card she’d left for him. “Ali fits you better than Alicia.”

She gave him a look from beneath her just-from-bed sexy bangs. “Stop changing the subject, Mr. Cooper.”

“Start talking about something else, then. Better yet—” he gestured toward the bar and Marty “—start doing the job for Jaxie that you conveniently didn’t mention before.”

“I told you. It’s temporary.”

“I don’t care if it is or isn’t. But it makes me wonder what other details you’ve left out.”

She looked annoyed. “Mr. Cooper—”

“G’night, Officer Ali.” He pushed open the door and headed out into the night.

* * *

Ali stifled a curse as she watched Grant Cooper flip up the collar of his coat before he strode across the street.

Then the door to Magic Jax swung closed, cutting off the sight of him as well as the flow of cold air.

That didn’t stop her from feeling shivery, though.

“Ali, all your orders are backing up.”

She smiled at the other cocktail waitress working that night. It wasn’t Charlene’s fault that Ali was more interested in chasing after Grant Cooper for information about his sister than she was delivering drinks. “Sorry about that, Charlene.” She couldn’t push Grant out of her mind, but she could at least do what she was being paid to do. She hurried over to the bar and began loading up a tray. “Marty, you work most nights, right?”

The bartender didn’t stop polishing glasses with his towel. “Most.”

“Has he been in here before? Grant Cooper?”

“That’s the guy you were just talking to?” Marty shrugged. “He’s been in a couple times.”

“Recently?”

“Yeah, I guess. The last few weeks, anyway.”

“He ask any questions?”

Marty smiled wryly. “Yeah, what’ve we got on tap.”

“About something other than beer?”

He shook his head. “Nope. Why? What’s the story?”

“No story. I was just curious.”

“You’re never just curious, little... Ali,” Squire interjected, stopping next to the bar and handing her a twenty. Not too long ago, she’d learned that the prosperous rancher from Weaver was sort of her relative. “Gloria and I are headin’ out now.”

Ali held up the twenty-dollar bill between two fingers. “What’s this?”

“Bribery. For next time you pull me over for speeding.”

“I’ve got a better idea, Squire.” She plucked the hat off his gray head and tucked the twenty into the hatband. “Just stop speeding.”

He guffawed and clapped her on the back with one of his big, rough hands. “You’re a good girl, Ali, even if you got that uppity shrew for a granny. Ya oughta be finding a husband like that sis of yours has now.”

She shook her head. “Nobody left who’s worth marrying, Squire, since you’ve been hitched to Gloria all these years.”

Standing near the doorway, Gloria sniffed loudly. “You’re welcome to the old coot, Ali,” she called. “You just say the word.”

“Eh, she needs a young buck like that fella she was just talkin’ to.” Squire winked at her as he headed toward his wife and the exit. “Someone who can keep up with her.”

Ali chuckled as was expected of her, and picked up the heavy tray.

But the truth was, she was thirty years old. She’d been dating since she was sixteen, and in all that time, she’d never met a man she’d been inclined to marry. And even though there’d been all sorts of inclinations circling inside her since she’d met Grant Cooper, none of them were in the “proper” realm of marriage.

As for her thoughts of Grant inhabiting an improper realm? Now that was a whole different kettle of fish.

But it was a lot more important to get Grant Cooper on board when it came to finding his sister than it was to think about properly improper-ing him.

She finished delivering the drinks and returned to load up her tray again.

“You going to work again tomorrow night?” Marty had pulled out the schedule and set it next to the drink station.

She sighed. The thought of spending another five hours wearing high heels held no appeal whatsoever, particularly after spending eight hours on her feet doing traffic duty, which was Gowler’s latest punishment for her. But she still needed to get her truck out of the shop. “Yeah. And probably the night after that, if I can.”

Marty scribbled on the schedule with his pencil. “You got it, little lady.”

She made a face and tossed a lemon curl at him. “Very funny.”

“I thought so.” He grinned. “So what is behind your curiosity with that guy, Grant? Been a while since you dumped Keith Gowler. You finally looking for some fresh flesh?”

“Don’t be gross, Marty.” She preferred not to think that she’d dumped Keith since they’d only dated a few weeks, but it was true she’d been the one to put the brakes on dating him. “Grant might be a link to Layla.”

Looking surprised, Marty stopped what he was doing. Most everyone in town, and particularly those who worked at the bar, knew a baby had been abandoned on the Swift brothers’ doorstep last month. “He’s the baby’s father?”

“Uncle. He’s Daisy Miranda’s brother.”

He propped his elbows on the bar. “No kidding. First time he came in, he told me he was staying at the old Carmody place outside of town.”

“I know that now, so don’t rub it in, okay?” Ali had been to New Mexico, Colorado, Idaho and California—all on her own time and Linc’s pennies—following the circuitous trail that Daisy Miranda had left in her wake after quitting her job at Magic Jax. What Ali had learned along the way was that there had been only two consistent things about Daisy. One—her inconsistency. And two—her habit of sending postcards to a man named Grant Cooper that were routinely marked “return to sender.” But one of those postcards had gone against that trend. It had been returned to the post office right here in Braden with a label on it containing a forwarding address for a desolate ranch located nineteen-point-six miles outside of town.

“Did you ever meet the Carmodys?” Marty pulled a tray of clean glasses from the dishwasher and started emptying it. “Roger and Helen?”

Ali shook her head. “I don’t recall, but I suppose our paths would have probably crossed somewhere along the way. Can’t really live in Braden all your life and not have run into everyone else.” She nabbed one of the glasses, filled it with water and gulped it down. She hadn’t had time to eat between her shift at the police department and when she’d gone on duty at Magic Jax, and her stomach was growling in the worst way. “I assume you did.” Since he knew their names and all.

“They went to the same church as my grandma. Helen died way before he did.” He made a face. “I think they were as uptight as my grandma, too.”

“Well, I don’t know anything about that. But I do know the bank took back Roger Carmody’s property about ten years ago and he was forced to move away. I did not know, until just this week, however, that it had been bought at auction by none other than Grant Cooper, who turns out to be the brother of Daisy Miranda. He never lived there, though. Until now. He’s got his work cut out for him. Leaving it vacant all those years was just an invitation for vandals.” She set her glass in the rack of dirty dishes. “He’s here and claiming he doesn’t know anything about his sister’s whereabouts or her baby.”

“You don’t believe him?”

Did she? Ali picked up her loaded tray again. “I think it’s a lot of coincidences.”

“In other words, you don’t believe him.”

There was something about Grant Cooper that made her instinctively want to believe him.

Or maybe it was just those darned aqua eyes.

“It’s too soon to tell, Marty. It’s just too soon to tell.”

* * *

Eighteen hours later, Ali was working her way along Central Avenue, trying to pretend her feet hadn’t turned into blocks of ice despite her boots as she monitored the frost-rimmed parking meters lining the four blocks of the downtown area. Since it had been snowing steadily since that morning, she didn’t feel particularly inclined to punish the folks who didn’t want to keep running out to feed coins into the meters every ninety minutes. But she also knew if she didn’t write at least a few parking tickets, Gowler would accuse her of being soft. And being “soft” wasn’t going to earn her an opportunity to move up the ranks—assuming he ever forgave her for dumping his son.

So she kept tramping up and down the snowy street looking for the worst of the offenders. She pulled out her pad and halfheartedly wrote out a couple citations, tucking them beneath windshield wipers before shoving her cold hands back into her gloves.

When she reached the edge of the business district, she crossed the quiet street and started making her way back down the other side. For every two meters with time on the clock, there were two more that had expired. She tucked her nose farther into the knit scarf wound around her neck and kept walking.

“Templeton!”

She stiffened at the sound of her name and looked toward the source. Sgt. Gowler was standing on the sidewalk in front of the library. She stomped her feet in place on the sidewalk. “Yes, sir?”

“Know for a fact that meter you just passed is expired.”

“By only a few minutes.”

“Expired is expired.”

She swallowed her retort and pulled her citation book out of her pocket again. “Yes, sir.”

It was obvious that he intended to stand there and wait to make sure she did her duty. She turned back to the last vehicle and peeled off her thick glove again so she could write out the parking ticket. “Parking shmarking,” she muttered under her breath.

If she had more than a few bucks in change to spare, she’d have carried it around in her pockets just to feed the dang meters herself. She tore the ticket off her pad and brushed the mound of snow off the windshield, then lifted the wiper enough to stick the ticket underneath it.

From the corner of her eye, she saw her boss go back inside the library.

Grumbling under her breath, she moved to the next expired meter next to a badly rusted truck. Her fingers were numb as she quickly marked the form and wrote in the license plate number. She yanked off the form and hurriedly shoved it under the wiper blade.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

She jerked up her head, looking toward the library again. But instead of Sgt. Gowler, this time it was Grant Cooper who’d come out onto the sidewalk.

He wore a dark jacket, unzipped, as if he was impervious to the weather that was currently making her long for life in the tropics. He had no scarf. Wore no gloves. Within seconds, his dark hair was dusted with snow. “I had ninety minutes on that thing,” he said, pointing a long finger at the meter. “I haven’t been in the library that long.”

“The meters don’t lie.” She blew on her fingers, warming them a little before stuffing them back inside her glove. She wanted to tell him that if it was up to her, the meters wouldn’t even exist on that street. They hadn’t been updated in the past generation and the town had an old repair guy on standby just to keep them in operation. But she also didn’t want her sergeant coming out again and seeing her flagrantly disregarding his instructions, either.

“Looks like you had a productive visit.” She gestured at the stack of books he was carrying. The book he’d pushed into her hands when she’d shown up at his door wasn’t far from her mind, though she’d paid no attention whatsoever to it at the time. “You must be a big reader.”

He showed her one cover. “Plumbing for Dummies. Not exactly pleasure reading.”

“Ah.” She couldn’t help a surprised laugh, as she shifted from one frozen stump to the other. “I actually need a copy of that one myself. My sisters and I own an old Victorian that we’re restoring.”

“Because you don’t have enough to do, slinging drinks and doling out parking tickets?” He moved past her and tugged the ticket free. “How much is this gonna cost me?”

She started to point at the street sign nearby that warned of the fine for parking violations, only to realize that the surface of it was obscured by icy snow. “Fifty bucks. If you don’t pay it by the date indicated on the ticket, the fine doubles. And it gets worse from there.” Considering the state of his ranch house and the state of the vehicle, she hoped he got the message. Even if it was outrageously high, paying the parking fine on time was the simplest way to avoid owing even more money.

“Nice payback, Officer.” The truck door screeched when he yanked it open and he tossed the ticket and his stack of books inside on the bench seat that was covered with a worn woven blanket. Maybe to keep his admittedly fine tushy warm or, if he was like Ali with her truck, to hide the rips and stains in the upholstery.

“Payback! For what?”

“Not cooperating as much as you wanted.” He climbed into the truck and yanked the door closed with another protesting screech of metal.

She rapped her gloved knuckles on the window.

He looked as annoyed as she felt, but he rolled down the window a few inches. His aqua eyes skated over her face. “Now what?”

“If I wanted payback,” she said evenly, “I would also write you up for the broken taillight and the expired tags on this heap of rust. Instead, I’ll just offer a friendly warning to get them taken care of as soon as possible.”

“Or?”

“Or the next patrolman who gets stuck on traffic duty might not be so easygoing about it and you’ll end up owing even more money that it doesn’t look much like you can afford.” She stepped back from the truck and smiled tightly. “Drive safe, now. I don’t know what sort of conditions you were used to before coming to Wyoming, but the roads are treacherous in this kind of weather.”

His lips thinned. He rolled up his window and cranked the engine. It started after a few tries, belching a cloud of black smoke from the tailpipe.

Ali winced and tucked her nose back into the protection of her knit scarf and watched him drive away.

Chapter Three

“You should have let Cooper skate on the expired parking meter.”

Ali set the mineral water and lime and the order of onion rings on the table in front of her sister Greer. If Magic Jax wasn’t so busy, she’d have set herself down, too, in the seat opposite her. “I had to choose between citing Grant Cooper or getting skewered by my sergeant again. If Gowler has an actual reason to write me up, it’ll be the first nail in my coffin with the department. And he only needs three nails.”

“He’s not going to fire the only female officer he’s got,” Greer countered. “Particularly if she’s not guilty of anything more serious than letting a new resident off a minor infraction with a warning. Everyone else with the department does it from time to time. Why not you?”

“Everyone else doesn’t make the mistake of dating his precious son, Madame Prosecutor. I am not taking any chances.”

Greer gave her a look. “I’m a defense lawyer.”

“Don’t remind me.” Greer was the oldest of the three triplets and worked with the public defender’s office. Maddie was the middle triplet. The ultimate do-gooder, she was a social worker with family services. Because of her role there, the family court judge had agreed to let her be the temporary caregiver for Layla.

Ali gestured at the stack of files sitting on the table next to her sister’s elbow. The public defender’s office workload was so huge that they also had a rotating crew of private attorneys who took cases pro bono. “Always trying to get the people I arrest off with just a slap on the wrist.”

“You do your job and I’ll do mine. That’s how it works. Gowler aside, you could have at least bargained a little with Cooper over the ticket. You catch more flies with honey, you know.”

Ali didn’t dare slip her toes out of her high-heeled shoes so she could wiggle some blood back into them. If she did, she feared she would never get her feet back into the shoes. And she really didn’t want to hear Greer’s advice at the moment. “You want anything else to go with those onion rings?”

“I shouldn’t even be eating these.” Greer plucked a ring from the basket. Magic Jax didn’t provide a full menu, but they did offer the usual types of bar food. “But I’m starving. Came straight here from the office.”

“If you change your mind, let me know.” She grabbed her tray and headed back to the bar, picking up empty glasses along the way. It was even busier than it had been the night before. Part of that was because it was Friday night. A larger part, she figured, was because Jax himself was actually mixing drinks behind the bar. For as long as she’d been picking up shifts at Magic Jax, she could only recall a handful of times when he’d actually played bartender.

Every time he did, though, word seemed to spread and the ladies came in droves.

It wasn’t surprising. Jaxon Swift was rich. He didn’t take any part in the running of the family oil business like Linc did, but he was still part of Swift Oil. He was also as handsome as a blond devil and loved women just as much as they loved him. In short, nothing much had changed since he and Ali had been in high school together.

And now, thanks to Maddie marrying his brother, Linc, they were theoretically one big happy family.

She went behind the bar to rinse the empties and stack them in the dishwasher tray. “Busy night. I didn’t expect it to be, considering the snow today,” Ali said to her boss.

Jax took the lid off the blender and filled three hurricane glasses with the virulent pink daiquiris that the giggling college girls at table four had ordered. “Busy is the way I like it.” He set the glasses on a tray, leaving Ali to top them with the requisite whipped cream and sliced strawberry. He glanced at his next order and reached for a bottle of wine with one hand and a bottle of gin with the other. “Keeps us all in business.”

They both glanced toward the door as it opened and a flurry of snowflakes danced inside. A few more women hurried in and started shimmying out of their cold-weather gear. One wore a spaghetti-strapped blue sequin dress under her parka. The other had on a strapless red corset with rhinestone-studded jeans.

Both fluffed their hair as they focused on Jax behind the bar.

Ali had a hard time not rolling her eyes as she finished fanning one of the strawberry slices over a mound of cream. “I think I’m the only one here who’s never wanted to date you,” she told him.

He chuckled. “What about Greer?”

“Greer never dated anything except her textbooks. Besides, it would have been gross. You went out with Maddie.”

He deftly poured two glasses of wine, set them on a tray for Charlene and tossed the empty bottle into the bin beneath the bar top. “Yeah, but she married my big brother.” He shrugged and grinned. “No accounting for taste, sometimes.” He quickly prepared a gin-and-grapefruit, shaking out the last few drops of grapefruit juice from the plastic pitcher before tossing it into the stainless-steel sink, and added the glass to Charlene’s order. “No more grapefruit.” Then he picked up a knife and finished prepping the last daiquiri while she fussed with her second one. “You’re lagging, Ali.”

She rolled her eyes as she picked up the tray and headed around the bar again. After delivering the drinks, she went over to the newcomers, who were still hovering near the entrance. She didn’t recognize them. “Help you find a place to sit?”

One of them bit her deeply red lip. “We wanted the bar.”

Ali looked over her shoulder. There were a half-dozen bar stools and all were occupied.

By women.

“You’re welcome to wait, but I think it might be a while.” She gestured at a two-top in the far corner. It, and one other just like it, were the only vacant tables in the place. “If you change your mind, just grab one of those over by the pool table.” She barely paused as she spoke, since standing still for too long just reminded her how sore her feet were.

She made the rounds of her tables again and headed back to Jax with a fresh set of orders. Then she went into the small kitchen and dumped another bag of already breaded onion rings into one fryer basket and added similarly prepared chicken fingers to a second.

She left them bubbling merrily away in their vats of hot oil and nipped into the employee bathroom long enough to pee and wash her hands. Then it was back to the fryer, then to the drink station to fill some water glasses, and then out to see if Corset and Spaghetti had decided to forgo the coveted stools at the bar for a table.

They had, and she went to deliver water to them and collect their orders. “First time in?”

Corset nodded and fluffed her hair again. “We drove over from Weaver.”

Ali lifted her eyebrows. The thirty-mile drive between Braden and Weaver was tedious even without snowy conditions. “Hope you’re planning to spend the night in town. Probably going to be hard getting back there tonight. What can I get you?”

“Do you have a menu?”

Most people didn’t bother asking. “Sure.” She grabbed one from another table and returned with it. “It’s a full bar, so we can make most any drink you want.” She smiled. “Unless it takes fresh grapefruit juice. We ran out a few minutes ago.” It was obvious to her that they weren’t ready to make a decision since they were too busy ogling Jax. “I’ll come back in a few minutes and check on you.”

She headed back through the tables, only to stop short at the sight of her sergeant coming in. But then she straightened her shoulders. There was no rule against her working a second job, and plenty of the other guys did it to help supplement their public-servant wages. She headed toward him. “Good evening, sir. I’m afraid we’ve only got one table left—”

Gowler lifted his hand, cutting her off. His usual scowl was in place and he looked no more pleased to be there than she was pleased to see him. “Heard you were moonlighting here these days.”

No matter what logic told her, she felt the alarm like a swift, oily wave inside her stomach. “Temporarily.”

“Whatever,” he said, dismissing her reply. She didn’t even have time to draw a breath of relief before he plowed on. “Got a disabled vehicle out on the expressway. Need you to get on some real clothes and report for duty. Get things moving before we’ve got something worse on our hands.”

The “expressway” was Gowler’s favored term for the highway between Braden and Weaver. Mostly because it was in no way an express. The road was narrow. Winding. Just two lanes for most of the distance between the sister towns. And unfortunately, it was the site of increasingly frequent accidents. The more Weaver continued to grow—mostly because of people going there to work for Cee-Vid, an electronics and gaming manufacturer—the more people there were traveling back and forth between the sistering towns.

She stifled the “why me?” that hovered in her mind and nodded. She knew if Gowler had had a choice, he’d never have asked her to pull overtime. He hated when the excess pay screwed with his sacred budget. “I just need to let Jax know. He’ll have to call in another cocktail waitress.”

Gowler waved, looking impatient. But not even his mammoth-sized ego was large enough to think he could order her to do otherwise. Particularly where the Swift family was concerned. Swift Oil was integral to the town’s existence. “Do what you’ve got to do. Then get your rear out to mile post seventeen.” He turned on his boot heel and stomped back out the door.

Jax was a lot more understanding than Charlene when Ali broke the news that she had to leave. But then Jax wasn’t the one who had to cover all the tables until he found someone else to come in at the last minute on a Friday night.

As she rang up her last set of orders, her gaze fell on Greer. The onion-ring basket was half-empty and she had files spread out all over her table. Greer didn’t seem to be aware of anything going on around her as she bent her head over her work. Her dark hair was twisted up in one of her fancy chignons and the only movement she made was with her pen as she scrawled notes on a legal pad.

“Get Greer to fill in for an hour,” Ali suggested to Jax.

She left him giving her sister a speculative look and went to the employee bathroom again to change back into the uniform she’d just changed out of only a few hours earlier. She was dog-tired and didn’t really look forward to spending any time out on the dark, snowy highway. But there was one bright spot: she got to peel the high-heeled pumps that she had a hate-hate relationship with off her feet.

She rolled up the cocktail uniform and stuffed it in her carryall, pulled on her overcoat and headed out to the front again.

Greer spotted her and gave her the stink eye around Jax as he stood next to her table, clearly trying to talk her into emergency-waitressing for him. Ali smiled broadly as she headed out the exit. Greer would never be able to flat-out refuse their brother-in-law’s brother. And in Ali’s opinion, her legal-eagle sister could stand an hour or two slinging drinks like common folk.

The traffic was backed up so badly on the highway that it took Ali nearly an hour to work her way through it. She had to weave slowly between cars on both sides of the road with her beacon flashing before she got to the sight of the disabled truck. One of the county deputy sheriffs from Weaver was already on site, but it was obvious that he’d arrived only a few minutes before Ali had.

She grabbed a bright orange vest from her emergency kit and pulled it over her coat as she jogged across the headlight-illuminated road to where he’d set out flares. “Hey, Dave,” she greeted when she got close enough to recognize Dave Ruiz. He was a longtime deputy with plenty of experience when it came to their expressway. Far more experience than she had, at any rate. “Miserable night for this particular pleasure, but nice to see you all the same.”

Dave, wearing a similar vest, handed her a bundle of flares. “You, too, Ali.” He gestured at the semitrailer that was on its side, blocking both lanes of traffic. “Driver’s cleared the debris from the hay bales he lost, but we’re still waiting on the tow to get it back on its wheels.”

If it hadn’t been for the headlights and the glow of the flares, it would have been impossible to see much of anything. As it was, the lights reflecting off the falling snow made their task even harder. “At least this wasn’t two miles up the road.”

“Amen to that. We’d have had someone go off the curve for sure. All we have to deal with now are a bunch of pissed-off, impatient drivers.” The deputy pointed at the toppled trailer. “If we could get some snow cleared away from that side of the trailer, we could redirect traffic one-by-one past the block.”

She squinted at the vehicles crowded around them. “Going to have to get each side to give an inch or two.”

He grunted. “Yep.” He jerked his head. He was wearing a dark beanie, same as she was, and snow clung to it. “Already got a Good Samaritan working on our side to get ’em pulled back some. Busy night with the snowstorm, or we’d have more boots on the ground here.”

“Help is help. I’ll work on my side,” she said. “Considering the angle of the trailer, might be easier if we started letting my side go through first.”

“That was my thinking, too.”

Happy that they were on the same page, she lit a flare and started working her way back along the highway, dropping the flares as she went to outline the improvised route.

When she was finished, she walked back along the line of bumper-to-bumper vehicles, telling each driver what the plan was and assuring them they were trying to get the road passable as quickly as they could. Her feet were cold again inside her boots, but at least they didn’t ache the way they had in the high heels.

There was no room to use the plow on the front of her unit or Ruiz’s, so she pulled the snow shovel she always carried from the back, headed over to the end of the long semitrailer and started attacking the berm that had built up from weeks of snowplows clearing the highway. It was a good four feet high, packed hard with ice and snow and dirt, and she was already breathless when someone carrying a pickax joined her.

“Fancy meeting this way.”

She went still, peering at the tall figure. “Mr. Cooper?” He had on a proper coat and gloves at least, though his head was still uncovered.

“Might as well make it Grant, Officer Ali.” With a smooth motion, he swung the sharp tip of the pickax into the iced-over mound. “I’ll break. You shovel.”

It was too much effort to argue, particularly when the idea was a good one, and between the two of them, they managed to break down a car length’s worth of snow and ice, shoving the clumps off into the ditch on the other side. The ditch wasn’t terribly deep, but it could break an axle if a driver wasn’t careful. They both moved farther along the berm and continued.

“You always carry a pickax around with you?”

“Doesn’t everyone?”

“Your truck parked somewhere in this logjam?”

“’Bout a mile back on the other side.”

“So you are capable of a straight answer.” She stopped for a minute to catch her breath and rub the growing ache in the small of her back. She was in good shape, but this was a workout like none she’d had in a while. “Have business in Weaver?”

He, on the other hand, just kept swinging away with the pickax. The guy was like a machine. “My sister isn’t in Weaver.”

Too proud to let him make her look weak, she jabbed the tip of the shovel into the mess again and resumed pitching it off to the side. “That’s not really what I asked.”

After siccing Jax on Greer back at the bar, she was going to have to work hard to get her sister to let her use her sweet, claw-foot bathtub back at the house tonight. When she and her sisters had bought the place, they’d agreed to pay separately for the renovations to their own bedrooms and en suite bathrooms, but combine their funds to restore the rest.

A fine idea in theory.

Except that Ali’s bathroom was still a work in progress. It had a plywood subfloor perpetually in wait for tile, a sink that worked most of the time and a shower that didn’t. Since Maddie had moved in with Linc, Ali had taken to regularly using her shower. But a shower wasn’t going to help her aches and pains anywhere near enough after tonight.

Greer, on the other hand, had immediately redone her bedroom and bath. In the entire house, it was the one haven from all that was broken or about to break down. And her claw-foot tub was seriously a thing of beauty.

“It’s what you meant,” Grant countered.

She didn’t bother correcting him, since it was true. “You bought the Carmody place quite a few years ago.”

The sharp tip of his pickax sliced cleanly through the snow and ice. “Your point?”

She possessed excellent peripheral vision. Which was handy, because she could watch him without seeming to watch him. “You left it vacant for a long time.”

“No law against that.” He moved farther along the berm, chipping away faster than she could shovel.

She clenched her teeth and sped up, even though her muscles protested. From behind the truck trailer, she heard engines revving up. Impatient drivers were starting to get a scent of freedom. Just to be safe, she left the shovel standing in the berm and walked back to the first car. The middle-aged driver—smoking his way through a pack of cigarettes if the butts sitting on the road were any indication—rolled down his window when she approached.

Smoke wafted out around her and she coughed once. A lot of her fellow officers smoked, but she’d never understood the appeal.

She repeated what she’d told him once already. “I’ll come back and let you know when it’s safe to proceed. It’s still gonna be a little while yet, I’m afraid.”

He swore. “Little lady, I’ve got places to be.”

She smiled, though she wanted to grind her teeth. “We all do, sir. Might want to consider preserving your gas a little if you can stand the chill—”

He swore again and rolled up the window, cutting her off. He did not turn off his engine.

She straightened, headed back to her shovel and pulled it from the snow. “Just another night in paradise,” she muttered.

Already two yards farther than he had been, Grant paused. “Say something?”

He’d done such a good job of breaking up the berm that all she had to do was push the tip of the shovel against the road to plow the chunks off into the ditch. “You’re pretty good at this. Had a lot of practice?”

He didn’t answer.

“Naturally,” she said under her breath.

They chipped and plowed for another few minutes when she saw Dave Ruiz signaling with his mag light.

They’d cleared about thirty feet of iced-over berm.

“That’s good enough to start,” she told Grant, and his rhythmic swinging immediately ceased. He hooked the deadly tip of his pickax over his shoulder and headed off.

“Thank you,” she called after him.

He didn’t pause. Didn’t look back. Merely lifted his left hand in acknowledgment.

The less he said about anything, the more curious she got.

The feminine side of her wished she wasn’t so darn predictable. The cop side of her just accepted the fact that she was always curious where all people were concerned. Not just enigmatic, aqua-eyed men.

She propped her shovel against an upturned wheel on the trailer as she walked back around it, stomped her feet hard against the road to make sure she still had some feeling in them and returned to the first car in the lineup. “I’m going to walk ahead of you until you’re past the trailer,” she told the driver. It wouldn’t speed up the process any, but she wasn’t taking any chances on an impatient man going off into the ditch and suing the department as a result.

And one by one, that’s how she slowly cleared enough of the road on her side to allow traffic on Dave’s side a chance of squeaking around the trailer.

Eventually, she was able to get back into her own SUV, crank up the heater and call in the progress as the traffic slowly crawled along the flare-lined path. About two hours after they’d started, three heavy-duty tow trucks arrived and they had to block off the road again from both sides to allow them space to get the semi back up on its wheels.

The only saving grace was that the snow stopped falling halfway through the mammoth task. But when it did, the temperature dropped another ten degrees and the wind—always pronounced, particularly along this highway cut into the hills—picked up.

But finally, the deed was done. The semi was hitched to the back of another tractor and was headed down the road to Braden. The highway returned to its usual quiet midwinter-night state. Dave and Ali congratulated each other on getting the job done without any collisions or injuries, and they all headed home.

When Ali finally made it there, she noticed Greer’s car parked in her half of the detached garage behind the house. In the kitchen, the slow cooker was sitting on the plywood counter. Stone-cold. Full of uncooked ingredients. Ali had forgotten to turn it on when she’d left the house this morning.

She clamped the lid back on top and left it. It wouldn’t be any worse come morning and she could deal with it then.

She dragged herself up the narrow staircase and decided she was too tired to worry about waking up her sister to beg to use her fancy-ass bathroom. Instead, she turned on Maddie’s shower and stripped once the bathroom was full of steam.

Then she finally stepped beneath the blessedly hot spray. She expected her mind to go blank as she stood there, unmoving, her eyes closed while the water rained down on her head. But she was wrong.

She kept thinking about Grant Cooper. Working beside her. Without being asked. Without complaint. Then just walking away.

She shivered, and realized the water was running cold. She shut it off, stepped out and wrapped a towel around her body. Then she wrapped another towel around her head, returned to her own bedroom, climbing in bed just like that, and pulled her quilt up to her ears.

She wasn’t even able to enjoy the grateful thought that she didn’t have to work the next day before she was out cold.

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