Mary Leo – A Baby For The Sheriff (страница 7)

“Since it’s not safe out there for either you or Lily, you both can stay here for the night...if you want. Of course, I’m not trying to step on your toes when it comes to your authority. All I’m saying is, it’s a long way to Valley Hospital and then back to your apartment. Instead, I can put Lily down in her soft bassinet on my bed for the night and make up the sofa for you. I have a spare bedroom, but it’s for storage.”

He thought about it for a moment, as if his brain had to wrap itself around the idea that her proposal might come with illegal strings he couldn’t see.

“While you think about that,” she said, “can I get you anything to drink? Water? Coffee? Milk?”

“Actually, I’d take a shot of that scotch if I was going to stay. It’s been one heck of a night on a lot of counts.” He stood. “But I can’t stay. I tell you what. I’ll leave Lily in your care for the night, but I should get going while I can still do that. I’ll come by to pick her up in the morning once the roads are clear and I know for certain who will take her.”

“You don’t know that yet?”

“No. With the weather being what it is, the person I spoke to wasn’t really sure how to handle it.”

No way was Coco willing to let that baby go under those ambiguous circumstances.

“Then I’d be more than happy to take care of her tonight, and again, you’re more than welcome to stay, as well.”

“Thanks for the offer of your sofa.” He gazed over at it, looking skeptical.

“Okay, so maybe you wouldn’t be comfortable on my sofa. But if you slept on your side and bent your knees, five feet would be a perfectly acceptable fit.”

“I appreciate the offer, but that SUV can get through just about anything. Now, let’s get Lily settled in her bed.”

Coco picked up Lily’s cloth bassinet by the handles and made her way to the bedroom, where she placed it on the bed. Then, ever so carefully, the sheriff put Lily down on her back and expertly swaddled her with the blankets. Lily didn’t even stir, but let out a long sigh.

Then he did something she’d seen her own dad do a million times to each of his children, always feeling the love her dad had for his family. The only difference now was what the sheriff said...

He leaned over and gently kissed baby Lily on the forehead, tenderly stroked the top of her head and whispered, “Sleep well, Lily. You’re safe now.”

Then he exited the room, leaving Coco to wonder: Who are you and what have you done with by-the-book Sheriff Wilson?

* * *

WHEN JET STEPPED back outside into the quiet night, leaving the warmth of Doctor Grant and baby Lily behind, the cold wind instantly sent a shiver down his spine. The thought of trying to drive through all this heavy snow only to get back to the drafty, lonely jail made him a combination of angry and sad.

Angry at himself for not taking the doctor up on her kind offer to sleep on her sofa, and sad that his life had come to sleeping inside a jail cell on a hard cot.

He shook his head as he made his way to his rig, which was somehow completely packed in snow. Still, he told himself if Russ could make it out of there, so could he.

One problem.

He would need a good-sized shovel to dig his way out. It looked as though a snowplow had purposely shoved snow all around his SUV, making it impossible for him to get out.

But who would do such an inconsiderate thing to the sheriff’s rig?

At this point it didn’t matter. What did matter was that he’d made a big deal about not spending the night with the doctor.

He corrected himself. Not with the doctor, but at the doctor’s apartment. Was that the reason he didn’t take her up on her offer of the sofa? Didn’t he trust himself? Maybe he didn’t trust her? If she and Russ had an “open relationship,” would she try to seduce him?

He told himself that was plain silly.

He’d merely done the stand-up thing and left. Nothing more to it.

But now he was in a pickle, and had no choice but to take her up on that sofa offer.

“Fine,” he said aloud as he trudged back to her front door, the snow and cold wind blasting his face and hands with its bitter sting. He hated nights like this, nights when Mother Nature reminded him of her power, and when memories of his childhood came crashing back. He wished he could talk to Lily’s mom and tell her of the life that Lily more than likely would have. He’d like to somehow help Lily’s mom with whatever reason brought her to abandoning her child. But most of all, he hated that Lily would now be a ward of the state and he would be the one to hand her over.

The irony was too real. By the time he’d graduated from high school he’d lived with twelve different families. Most of them were good people, but a few of them were borderline abusive or simply neglectful. Those were the kinds of households that he hoped Lily would never run across, but he knew the odds were stacked against her. Once she went into the system, there was no telling who would be her temporary parents.

Life sure could stink at times, he thought as he made his way back up the three steps to Doctor Grant’s front porch, but before he was able to ring the bell for her apartment, she swung open the door and handed him that shot of scotch.

“Thanks,” he said after he drank it down. “I really needed that.”

“I figured as much,” she said, her voice low and sultry, feet bare, pretty little toes painted a bright pink.

No doubt about it, he was in for it now.

Chapter Three

“I know these animals legally aren’t supposed to be here, but there was nowhere else I could take them, especially after it started snowing,” Coco told the sheriff as he helped her clean out their cages and pens.

Coco had slipped out of her lacy black dress, and instead donned jeans, rubber boots and an oversize red plaid shirt. She wore rubber gloves and had offered a pair of gloves to the sheriff, which he surprisingly took. She’d set up one of her many portable baby monitors, which she used for her animals, inside her bedroom, so she had baby Lily in her sights at all times.

As for the sheriff’s part, he’d left his gun holstered and locked in a dresser drawer in the spare bedroom, his badge and cream-colored cowboy hat sat on a side table next to her sofa.

Medium-sized cages lined one wall of the room, where sibling calico kittens played with a brown-and-white bulldog puppy, who eagerly rolled around with each of them, while a large tortoise watched the activities from the shelter of its hard shell. Fortunately, aside from the need of an occasional heat lamp and a meal of greens and maybe a strawberry or two, a tortoise was low maintenance. Unlike the rest of her critters, which required not only basic needs but some loving and human interaction. Otherwise they’d never be comfortable around people.

The area smelled of a combination of manure, fresh hay and animal fur, a scent that had lost its impact on Coco some time ago. Since her renovation, this part of the clinic was now separated from her apartment on the second floor of the original main building. This new clinic took up most of the empty lot that had been behind her house. She’d bought this property precisely because she knew she’d be able to expand her business. The closest house on her street was at least fifty yards away.

“I understand,” the sheriff said as he scooped up goat dung and hay from the large pen at the end of the large room.

Those two words caught her by complete surprise as she stared at him and dumped the waste material into a big plastic trash can.

“Thanks,” she told him, but she wanted to give him a big hug.

“Don’t tell me you take care of all these guys by yourself?”

The piglet and all the other critters required time and care. She could never do it alone.

“Not exactly. One of my neighbors, Drew Gillian, helps out whenever she can. Normally she’ll take in the cats and a couple dogs if we have them, but this time, she already has two pups and a kitten. I couldn’t burden her with any more, so I’m keeping them here for a few days, at least until the weather clears up.”

“You did what you had to do, Doctor Grant,” he said, sounding official. This new attitude of his had to stop if they were going to make it through the night without her thinking that perhaps the sheriff was redeemable.

“Why don’t you call me Coco,” she told him, wanting to be on more friendly terms. After all, the man was helping her clean out the cages for animals that he knew being here were completely illegal.

He gazed over at her, a smile lighting up his normally stern-looking face. “And you can call me Jet, at least for tonight.”

“And after tonight?” She stopped cleaning and looked over at him, grinning while the two goats kept rubbing up against him, wanting the bottles of milk she’d been warming in the large bottle warmer she kept in the other room.

“Protocol dictates the more formal name, and I wouldn’t want you to think that just because we spent the night together...er, I mean, just because we slept... Yes, Jet will be fine.”

She chuckled under her breath at the sheriff’s—at Jet’s—obvious awkwardness with the situation. It was almost as though he’d never spent the night with a woman before, at least not on a platonic basis. The thought caused her to snicker even more.