“Right now?” He lifted one shoulder, then let it down. “I’m gonna look around.”
“Oh.” That should not have disappointed her as much as it did. “So you don’t have any hunches?”
Before he could answer, Amanda sneezed.
“Oh! God bless you, sweetheart,” Shelby whispered.
Jax turned, and his expression warmed as he, too, mouthed “God bless you” to their tiny charge. No sooner had the words left his lips than his shoulders stiffened and his voice went hard. “No. No hunches. Other than that whoever left that little cutie did it in a hurry.”
“In a hurry like someone committing a crime?” She settled the baby on her hip and made a quick swipe to wipe the tiny pink-tipped nose. Once she had thought of it, the theory came quickly to her lips. “Like somebody kidnapping a baby and then panicking and deciding to ditch it somewhere?”
He frowned.
“Or in a hurry like someone ripping off a Band- Aid?” she asked, feeling a bit like she should have led with that. “You know it’s going to hurt, so you do it as quickly as possible. Get it over with.”
“Yeah. Yeah, like that Band-Aid thing,” he muttered as he scanned the tall grass, his eyes narrowed to slits. “I don’t think it’s a kidnapping case. I’m sure Denby checked to see if there are any alerts for a missing infant and acted on that right away.”
“Sheriff Andy did go back to the office last night.” She watched Jax a moment, not sure what to do. Just twenty-four hours ago, she had resolved to take charge of her life and had thought she might actually pull it off. She might really leave Sunnyside. Now? Now she needed to ask Jax a question she realized she probably should have asked herself yesterday, when she had packed up her few personal belongings and had told her landlord to keep the cleaning deposit. “What are you looking for, exactly?”
“I don’t know, exactly.” He reached up in a gesture Shelby recognized as a man adjusting his cowboy hat to shade his eyes. But there was no hat, so at the last second the man rubbed his palm lightly through his dark hair. “When people get in a big hurry, they don’t think straight. They come up with a half-baked plan and carry it through before they get cold feet.”
Shelby shifted her feet nervously back and forth.
“That’s when they make mistakes.”
“Then again, something this monumental surely had a lot of thought behind it.” Shelby pulled her shoulders up. His comment was not aimed at her or her emotionally charged decision to turn her back on everything she knew. Still, it put her on the defensive. “It wasn’t necessarily an impulse.”
“No.” He shook his head. “A woman abandoning a baby in the night, even with the most trustworthy person in the whole town, isn’t something she’s going to plot out.”
The most trustworthy person in the whole town. On one hand, hearing him describe her that way sent a shimmer of pride and happiness through her. On the other hand, it seemed a pretty improbable expectation to live up to. Shelby looked at baby Amanda, then at Jax, and in doing so, she knew. She wanted to live up to it. She wanted to be worthy of the trust placed in her. “You’re so sure it was a woman? Her mother?”
“Maybe someone else was with her, but there is the footprint of a woman’s shoe in the mud.” He knelt down and touched the ground, then stood again with something small and pink in his hand. “And I believe with all my being she was the mom. A kidnapper wouldn’t have brought this.”
“She had to be so desperate,” Shelby whispered, her heart aching at the sight of the floppy home-sewn bunny in his hand.
“Had to be,” he said in a way that sounded like he had some kind of personal stake in that conclusion. He stood and walked over to where Shelby stood holding Amanda. “To do this, she clearly didn’t think she had anyone in her life she could turn to...except you.”
He held out his hand with the humble handmade toy in it for Shelby to take.
Shelby hesitated, then reached out, her hand almost trembling.
Her fingers brushed his.
For less than a second, he held on to the toy. Shelby couldn’t explain how, but much like when they had prayed together over Amanda last night, she felt a connection to this cowboy who had walked into her life when she had needed it the least—and Amanda had needed it most.
Without warning, Jax loosened his grip. The rabbit slid through his large, rough hands, the long ears dragging through his blunt, calloused fingers.
It felt like a passing of the responsibility to Shelby. Jax had found the baby. He had stayed long enough to help Sheriff Denby. He had found what clues he could. The rest was up to her.
Shelby turned the crudely sewn animal over in her hand and shook her head. “You’re right. There’s no one else to take this on here. No one except good ol’ softhearted Shelby Grace Lockhart.”
* * *
They had waited another twenty minutes for Denby to show up at the café before Shelby’s father remembered to tell them the sheriff had called right after the pair had gone out to the back parking lot. The town’s deputy on duty had had to go out to oversee a dispute between two neighbors, and Denby needed to stay close to the office. He wanted them to bring Amanda there to give their statements.
“A desperate mother who thought of Shelby as her only resource?” Sheriff Denby came around to the front of the large wooden desk in his cluttered office to peer into the face of the baby in Shelby’s arms before he leaned back to make a seat of the edge of the desk. “I pretty much came to that conclusion last night.”
With Shelby settled into the only chair in the room, aside from the one behind the desk, Jax leaned one shoulder against the wall. He crossed his arms. “Then why didn’t you share your theory last night, instead of asking me—”
“Because I was hoping you’d come at this with a fresh set of eyes, Mr. Stroud. Or should I call you Officer?”
“Just Jax is enough.” Jax held up his hand. “I’m a civilian now.”
“No such thing. Once a lawman, always a lawman.” The older man groaned a bit as he rose from his perch on the corner of the desk. He winced and straightened slowly. “Of all people, I know how hard it is to walk away from the calling.”
“The calling?” Jax swept his gaze over the walls of the office, which were covered with plaques, framed photos and citations that recounted a history of service. Just standing here humbled and touched him. His few short years on the force paled in comparison to this kind of work, and his new job? Well, it didn’t compare at all.
He tried to tell himself he’d still be helping others in Miami. But he couldn’t stay convinced of that when he turned his head and found himself looking at Shelby cradling Amanda. How could patrolling the playground of those who could afford anything in the world compare to standing up for and protecting those who had nowhere else to turn?
“I don’t know.” Jax shook his head. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s hard for some people to leave the life of a lawman behind. A calling, like you say. But me?”
“You?” Shelby made a big show of rolling her eyes and laughing at Jax’s weak protest.
Amanda fussed at the sudden, albeit soft, outburst.
Shelby didn’t miss a beat. She curled the baby close and rose deftly from her chair. Her feet did a scuff, scuff, shuffle over the old floor, lulling the baby into woozy contentment, and with hushed words she still managed to knock Jax off his guard and send him reeling with her insight. “You mean the would-be kitten rescuer just