Holiday in a Stetson: The Sheriff Who Found Christmas / A Rancho Diablo Christmas. Marie Ferrarella

      She’d made change, giving him back the difference despite his growled protest that the extra money was his way of paying her for her time.

      “No need to reimburse me for that. I like hanging around with your niece. By the way, it’s nice to hear you actually claiming her,” she’d said, flashing that smile he found so irritating, and at the same time unsettling.

      For the sake of having Chisholm continue being there for his niece, Garrett swallowed his retort.

      Discretion was always the better part of valor, he tried to convince himself. But he hadn’t believed it when he’d first heard the saying, and he didn’t believe it now.

      Each time he silently congratulated himself on getting better at holding his tongue, something else would crop up, knocking him back to square one. Such as when Chisholm had informed him that not only was he now the “proud owner of a top-of-the-line computer,” but she had seen to it that he was hooked up to the internet, too.

      He did not receive the news well.

      He’d grudgingly given in and gone along with using a computer at work, because the need for efficiency had outweighed his desire to keep things the way they had always been. But he had been adamant about avoiding computers, and everything they entailed, when it came to his personal space.

      Which wasn’t his anymore, he reminded himself with a sharp pang.

      Still, he wasn’t going to give up without at least some kind of a fight. “And if I said I didn’t want it?” he’d challenged.

      She’d flashed that dazzling smile of hers, which was increasingly getting under his skin, and declared, “Too late.”

      He’d narrowed his eyes into slits, pinning her to the wall. Then realized he had definitely lost his edge, because Lani wasn’t even pretending to be affected anymore.

      “What do you mean, ‘too late’?” he asked.

      “Well, that computer you bought?” she began, referring to the purchase she’d obviously had made in his name sometime in the last twenty-four hours. “I had Wally, the computer tech, hook it up to the internet for you at lunchtime.”

      Earlier today, around noon, Garrett remembered, she’d darted out, mumbling something about having Ellie-related errands to run. He had just assumed they had something to do with buying more clothes or schoolbooks. And, to be honest, he had reveled in the fact that for one glorious hour the office was quiet and his again, so he hadn’t really questioned her very closely about the nature of this “Ellie-related” undertakings.

      Garrett suppressed a weary sigh. He should have known better.

      “In my house?” he asked his deputy now. Actually, it was more of an accusation.

      Lani pretended to regard the rhetorical question seriously. “Well, having the hookup and the computer up on the roof would be a little inconvenient, what with it being slippery and all, so yes, in your house.”

      There really seemed to be no boundaries to this woman’s pushiness. And it was his fault, he knew, because he’d given her free rein.