And now, now they were just strangers, feeling awkward in each other’s presence.
Strangers with a past.
If she wanted to get through this with her sanity intact, she would have to treat Cole James the way she treated a client. Politely, competently, but always with preset boundaries.
Never once had she mixed business with her private life. Mainly because her private life was all about Christopher.
“Of course not,” she finally replied. “I wouldn’t want to say no to the sheriff.”
This time the smile that rose to her lips came of its own accord. The idea of Cole being the sheriff of the town they had grown up in just didn’t seem real to her. It was more like something they would pretend in one of their elaborate games.
Cole opened the door for her and held it. The bell just above the door rang softly, ushering them out.
She barely heard it, listening instead to the sound of her heart pounding.
Breathe, Ronnie, breathe. You knew he was going to be around.
The thing was, she’d expected him to be on his ranch. Which cut the chances of running into him down rather drastically.
“What happened to you being a rancher?” she asked him.
“Town needed a sheriff,” Cole said. “And my mother got a really good man to help her run the ranch,” he added. After a moment, he shrugged. “I still help out once in a while, during branding season, if Will’s short-handed.”
Ronnie tried to put a face with the first name. “Will?”
“Will Jeffers,” he clarified. “The man my mother hired to help run the ranch after …” Cole’s voice trailed off for a moment, his discomfort with the topic more than mildly evident.
Ronnie pressed her lips together. She hadn’t meant to inadvertently dredge up a painful subject for him. Cole’s father had died suddenly last year, coming down with and succumbing so quickly to ALS no one even knew what was happening until it was almost all over. Her father had told her about that last night, after she’d put Christopher to bed.
“I was sorry to hear about your dad,” Ronnie said haltingly.
She had to stifle the urge to put her hand on his shoulder, to communicate with Cole the way she used to, with a simple look, a touch. They’d had their own unique way of “speaking” without words once. Back when the world was new and their paths hadn’t diverged so very sharply and far apart.
“Yeah, well, these things happen,” Cole replied, his voice distant as he made an attempt to shrug off her sympathy.
He didn’t want sympathy from Ronnie. He didn’t want anything at all from her.
And then he made the mistake of looking directly at her again.
Cole could almost feel her getting under his skin, shaking his world down to its foundations. Just the way she always used to. Searching for some way to distract himself, he asked, “When did you get in?”
What went unsaid was that he was surprised that he hadn’t heard about her arrival. Redemption was a small town and most information became general knowledge within the space of a few hours. Usually less.
“Late last night. My father didn’t even let me know about the accident until just two days ago.” When she’d received the call from her father, she’d known, the moment she heard his voice, that something was terribly, terribly wrong. She vaguely remembered sinking onto the sofa, both hands wrapped around the receiver to keep it from dropping to the floor as she listened to her father tell her about the accident.
He told her about Wayne being in a coma. The moment she’d hung up, she’d galvanized into action. Calling the company where she worked, she cited a family emergency and put in for a leave of absence. Then, packing up everything she thought she would need, she’d strapped Christopher into his car seat and then drove straight from Seattle to Redemption, covering close to six hundred miles in just a little over nine hours.
She’d been too wired to be exhausted until after she’d put Christopher to bed and talked at length to her father who was surprised that she’d driven all the way to Montana to see them.
Ronnie shook her head as remnants of disbelief still clung to her. “A whole two weeks and he didn’t think to call me.” She and her father were closer than this. Or at least she’d thought they were. Now it felt as if she didn’t know anything.
“You know your dad,” Cole told her. “He’s a stubborn son of a gun. Doesn’t want help from anyone.” He looked at her pointedly. “Not even you.”
For a split second, some of the hurt, the anger and especially the fear she’d been harboring since she’d received the phone call—harboring and trying to deal with—surfaced and flashed in her eyes.
“I’m not anyone,” Ronnie retorted. “I’m his daughter,” she emphasized, then struggled to get her temper, her feelings under control. “I’m his family,” she said in a softer, but no less emphatic voice. “He’s supposed to call me when something like this happens. I’m not supposed to learn that he and Wayne were nearly killed because I just happened to call to ask him what he wanted for his birthday.”
He could see why she was upset, but he was having trouble dealing with his own issues, his own hurt feelings, so it was difficult for him to be sympathetic about what she’d gone through.
“Yeah, well, maybe Amos lost that page in the father’s handbook for a while.” And then he told her something he wasn’t sure she was aware of. “Your father’s been busy beating himself up because he was the one behind the wheel, driving the truck, and he feels responsible for what happened to Wayne.”
Cole saw her clench her hand into a fist at her side. He could all but see the tension dancing through her. “Wayne’s going to be all right,” she declared stubbornly. “I called Wayne’s attending surgeon as soon as I got off the phone with my father. Dr. Nichols said all my brother’s reflexes seem to be in working order and that sometimes a coma is just the body’s way of trying to focus on doing nothing but healing itself.”
Cole saw no reason to contradict her or point out that a lot of people never woke up from a coma. She was dealing with enough as it was. Besides, what she thought or felt was no longer any concern of his outside the realm of her being a citizen of Redemption—or a former citizen of Redemption, he amended.
“Have you been to see your brother yet?” he asked as they walked past his truck.
“No. Not yet. But I’m going this afternoon,” she added quickly. She’d wanted to go the second she’d arrived in Montana, but there was more than just herself to take into account. She had Christopher to take care of. No one had ever told her, all those years ago when she had so desperately longed to become an adult, that being a mother required so much patience. “I wanted to get a couple of things squared away for my dad first,” she added.
Ronnie took a deep breath, debating whether or not to continue. The easy thing would be to terminate the conversation here. But in all good conscience she couldn’t ignore the particulars that had been involved in the aftermath of the accident.
She approached the topic cautiously. “Dad said that you were the first one on the scene after the accident.”
His expression gave nothing away, neither telling her to drop the subject nor to pursue it. “I was,” he acknowledged.
He said it without any fanfare. How very typical of Cole just to leave the statement there, she couldn’t help thinking. Another man would have thumped his chest. At the very least, he would have basked in the heroism of what he’d done, risking his very life in order to save someone else.
But