The Sheriff's Christmas Surprise Part 4

"Hold him, please," she requested, Now what? Rick eyed her uncertainly. Why was she giving him the boy? "You want me to feed him?"

She opened the microwave and took the bottle out again. "No, I need to test the milk to make sure that it's not too hot for Bobby."

Olivia shook out a few drops on her wrist. Then, because she didn't want to just let the milk slide down her skin onto the floor, she quickly licked the drops up.

Why he found that simple act so sensual and arousing was something Rick told himself he'd have to explore at a later time. Right now, he figured it was best not to go there.

"What's the verdict?" he asked.

She smiled, setting the bottle down on the table for a moment and holding out her arms. "It's warm, but not too hot."

"Like the fairy tale," Rick commented, handing the baby back to her.

"Fairy tale?" Olivia asked, curious. Sitting down, she tucked Bobby against her and started feeding him. The moment she placed the nipple near his lips, he started sucking greedily.

"Goldilocks and the Three Bears," Rick told her, resting a hip against the table as he watched the baby eat. "You know," he elaborated, "too hot, too cold, just right."

"Oh, right." Her mind hadn't gone in that direction for a reason, which she explained. "I didn't take you for the type to know fairy tales."

Rick laughed shortly. "I didn't just appear one day, wearing a badge and a gun belt. I was a kid once, just like you were."

The smile that came to her lips was sad, distant, as if she was trying to access something and wasn't quite successful. She looked down at her nephew, taking comfort in just watching him. "I don't remember ever being a kid. It feels like I was always an adult."

He read between the lines, remembering what Olivia had said to him earlier. "How long have you been at it?"

Her eyes met his. "'It'?"

He nodded. "Taking care of your sister."

She didn't even have to stop to think. She could have told him the figure in months if he'd wanted it that way. "Ten and a half years."

No wonder she didn't remember having a childhood. She practically hadn't. She had to have been in her teens when she'd taken on the responsibility. "That's a long stretch."

She smiled at his choice of words. "You make it sound like a prison sentence."

He paused for a moment, his eyes on hers. The woman didn't sound bitter about it, which he found impressive. "Is it?"

"No," Olivia said with feeling. "I love my sister." She didn't want him thinking she was being a martyr about this. Nothing could be further from the truth. "Do I wish that Tina was a little more responsible? Yes, of course I do, but that doesn't mean I don't love her."

"Didn't say you didn't." Finished with his bottle, the baby's mouth had traces of formula all over it. Rick took out his handkerchief and gently wiped away the milky substance. "But life's a complicated thing. You can love someone and still find that there are times you don't like them very much."

To be honest, he expected more denials. He was surprised to see that he'd evoked a smile from the woman instead.

Her eyes crinkled a little as she said, "You have siblings." It wasn't a question.

Rick began to tuck the handkerchief back into his pocket and was surprised when Olivia put out her hand for it. He surrendered it to her and watched as she spread it over her left shoulder.

"One," he told her. "A younger sister."

"We have that in common then." Placing Bobby against her shoulder, Olivia gently began to pat the baby's back, waiting for the obligatory burp. "Except that your sister is probably one of those superresponsible types."

He had no idea how she had guessed that. "She is." Then he explained, "Abuela wouldn't have allowed her to be anything else."

"Abuela," Olivia repeated slowly, searching for a match in her memory banks. And then she brightened just as Bobby burped. She kept him there a little longer, in case more was going to come up. She didn't want to risk her suit getting more stained than it already was. Her dry cleaner would probably tear out what little hair he had left when he saw what she wanted him to clean this time.

"That's 'grandmother' in Spanish," she said, pleased that she remembered.

He had no idea why it would matter to him one way or another that she spoke Spanish. After all, it wasn't exactly that unusual. For more than half the population of the state, Spanish was either a first or second language. But it did.

"That it is."

Olivia gleaned a few things from his tone, putting her own interpretation to it. "Your grandmother raised you, didn't she?"

He was ordinarily the one asking the questions, not answering them, but he indulged her. For now. "She did."

If his grandmother had raised him, that meant that his parents hadn't been around to do it. Did she have more in common with him than she thought?

"Did your parents pa.s.s away, too?" she asked quietly, as if the occurrence demanded reverence.

For a moment Rick thought of ignoring the question, or acting as if he hadn't heard her. But she'd probably only ask again. Besides, he wasn't ashamed of his background and everyone around town knew his history anyway. That was both the good thing and the bad thing about living in a town the size of a small, above-ground pool. Everyone knew everyone else's business.

That being the case, there didn't seem to be much point to being secretive. Even if this woman was just pa.s.sing through.

"I haven't the slightest idea," he answered.

Olivia was quiet for a moment, digesting his answer and taking it apart. She was right, she thought. The sheriff had looked particularly incensed when he thought her sister had willfully abandoned Bobby. Undoubtedly that was because he'd been abandoned himself.

Though her expression didn't change, she found herself feeling for him. Her parents had had no choice in the matter. What kind of a mother willingly walks out on her child?

Olivia lowered her eyes, cradling Bobby in her arms. "Oh."

For reasons he didn't quite fathom, he wasn't annoyed, he was amused. "That was a really pregnant 'oh.'"

Olivia shrugged, pretending to be engrossed in cleaning away the telltale signs of Bobby's last burp from his little round face. "Sorry. I didn't mean to pry."

The h.e.l.l she didn't. "You said you were a lawyer, right?"

This time, she did raise her eyes and look at him. "Yes."

"Isn't that inherent in your nature, then? To pry?" He rephrased it to seem less hostile. "To find things out?"

"I'm not being a lawyer right now," she told him, letting down her guard. His sharing something private with her had stirred her compa.s.sion. "I'm just a worried aunt and sister." She paused for a moment. "And I'm sorry about your parents."

He eyed her quizzically. "What about my parents?"

Maybe she shouldn't have ventured onto this ground, but for a moment, there had been a connection, a kindred feeling. And, since she had opened this door, she might as well walk through the doorway with dignity.

"About them not being there for you," she told him. "I know what that feels like."

He didn't doubt that she thought she knew what that felt like. But their situations were ultimately very different. "How old were you when your parents-"

"Nineteen," Olivia answered quickly.

"Then you don't know," he said matter-of-factly. "I was eleven." The world looked a lot different to an eleven-year-old than it did to someone who was mostly grown. "My sister was six. My father had been long gone by then. One day my mother dropped us off with her mother-in-law, saying she'd be back soon," he recounted, trying his best to separate himself from his words. "Turns out that she and my grandmother had a difference of opinion when it came to the meaning of the word 'soon.' To my grandmother it meant a couple of days at the most." Rick shrugged. "Probably less."

"And to your mother?" She had a feeling she knew the answer.

He set his mouth grimly. His eyes were steely as he said, "Fourteen years."

That was still less time than she'd thought, Olivia said to herself.

"Hey, Sheriff," Alma called from the next room.

Rick straightened, moving away from the table. He was glad for the interruption. He wasn't sure what had come over him, but he'd shared far too much with this woman who'd been a complete stranger to him an hour ago. Shared a h.e.l.l of a lot more than he normally did with people he actually knew.

He had no idea what had compelled him to run off at the mouth like that, except that there was something about her eyes, something that transcended rules and decorum and seemed to pull the words out of him.

Though it sounded absurd, it was as if the woman was looking right into his soul.

Asking him to look into hers.

He was applying for this job in Dallas just in time. A few more months in Forever and he'd be ready for the loony bin. Maybe sooner. There was absolutely no earthly reason for him to be waxing philosophical like this.

People who sat around spinning theories about why someone did or didn't do something ordinarily annoyed the h.e.l.l out of him-and here he was, voluntarily joining the ranks.

Definitely time for a change of scenery, a change of venue.

Rick got his mind back on business and away from wondering what other threads he and the woman with the hypnotic blue eyes had in common.

"Coming," he called back to Alma.

Before he could cross to her, Alma told him, "I think I found a match."

Olivia's heart leaped into her throat. She had no idea why a feeling of dread suddenly washed over her. This was what she wanted, to find her sister. Why then was she afraid to hear what the sheriff's female deputy had to say?

Feeling as if she was getting up on borrowed legs, Olivia rose to her feet and followed the sheriff into the main room, every step she took resounding in her head and body.

"That was fast," Rick commented to Alma. He glanced at the monitor beside her computer.

"People remember a red Mustang," Alma said. "Especially one that crashed into a utility pole."

"Crashed?" Olivia cried, struggling to rein in the deep fear that seized her heart.

For a second, she couldn't breathe. That was the anxiety kicking in, she told herself, trying to work her way out of the terror that threatened to overwhelm her.

She wasn't going to pa.s.s out, she told herself firmly. She wasn't.

All she needed to do was just hang on for a second and the room would stop spinning and settle back into place. Silently, she talked to herself the way she did to a nervous witness when she was taking a deposition. Calmly. Soothingly.

"Yeah," Alma said in response to the single-word question. The deputy s.h.i.+fted her chair so that both Rick and the woman with him could clearly see what was on her monitor. She pointed to the bottom of the monitor, where the short notification started. "It says here that there was an accident." She began to read. "A 2004 red Mustang, heading northwest, was clocked going about ninety-five miles an hour when it suddenly swerved and careened into a utility pole."

Holding Bobby tightly against her, Olivia stared at the screen. She tried to read, but none of the words sank in.

"Does it say if they-if they-"

Olivia couldn't bring herself to say the words that were tantamount to ushering in death. Instead, she went at the information from another angle.

"Does it say if they're all right?"

Standing behind her, Rick had quickly scanned the report himself. It wasn't very long.

Turning toward her, he said, "Looks like you're not going to be having any more trouble with your sister's boyfriend."

She knew what that meant, but she needed to hear him say it. "Don's dead?"

The sheriff nodded. "Says here he died instantly at the scene."

Oh G.o.d, oh G.o.d, oh G.o.d. She couldn't stand the man, but she hadn't wanted to see him dead-just gone. Her mouth felt utterly dry as she pushed the next words out. "And my sister? Tina? Was she-"

He spared her the agony of finis.h.i.+ng the question. "She was badly injured. They took her to Pine Ridge."

She didn't understand. "But it says here that the accident happened in Beaumont."

"It did," he told her. "But Pine Ridge is the site of the closest hospital."

That meant that her sister was alive. They didn't transport dead people to the hospital; they took them to the morgue.

She looked at the sheriff, her heart pounding. "But she's alive, isn't she?" she asked in a whisper. If she raised her voice she knew it would crack.

He nodded, and his voice was gentle as he answered, "According to the feedback."

It was a noncommittal answer, but she'd take it. She desperately needed to hang on to something while she pulled all the threads together-again.

"Okay," Olivia said, trying to center herself, to gather the thoughts that were scattered in all different directions. "Okay," she repeated. "We'll go to Pine Ridge. Bobby and I will," she clarified.

"You'll need directions," he told her.

No, she thought, she'd need strength, but there was no handy dispenser lying around to give her some of that. She had to dig it up and tap into it.

In response to his observation, she shook her head. "No, I don't need directions, I've got a GPS. I'll be all right." And, please G.o.d, let Tina be the same. "Thanks for all your help," she said as she quickly hurried out of the office.

Chapter Five.