Finding The Road Home. Tina Radcliffe

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СКАЧАТЬ he was doing a lousy job remaining impassive. Still, there was no denying that five kids were more than a handful. He knew firsthand as he had been the designated adult in a family of five children himself.

      “Yes. All of them. Their parents...” She kicked at a stone on the ground with a dusty sneaker, and then met his gaze. “We lost my sister and her husband six months ago.”

      The pain he glimpsed in her eyes sucker punched Mitch and he swallowed hard, averting his gaze. It was too bad they had so much in common.

      “I’m really sorry,” he finally said, knowing the words were insufficient.

      “Thank you,” she murmured.

      The silence stretched for a moment, broken by the giggles of children that spilled out from inside the house. The joyous sounds seemed to snap them both from their reverie.

      “You’re going to raise them by yourself?” Once again the words were out there before he could rein them back in.

      “Don’t look so horrified, Chief Rainbolt. I’m a law-enforcement officer with crowd management experience. I’m confident I can control a handful of children.” She offered a little smile. “However, my grandmother is staying with us...for the summer, maybe longer.” Her smile widened, and she shrugged. “Everything will work out. It always does.”

      Spoken with the bright optimism of youth. As he recalled from her job application, she was nine years younger than him. Which made him an old realist. Looking at Daisy Anderson, he felt even older than usual.

      “Why Rebel?” he asked.

      “Why not?” she returned with another shrug of her slim shoulders.

      Why not, indeed? Mitch couldn’t resist a look around the yard. Plenty of space for kids to be kids. Yeah, Rebel was a fine town to raise children. Her passel seemed well behaved. Maybe she had worked out all the details.

      Perhaps everything would be just fine.

      A moment later he couldn’t help but nix that thought. Mitch knew only too well how raising a family could mess up the most carefully intended plans, which explained why he was still in Rebel. Yeah, it explained a lot of things.

      “The children won’t interfere with the job, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

      Mitch turned back to Daisy and offered a slight nod. Did the woman really understand the big picture? In the days when he played both mother and father to his siblings, it seemed each dawn brought a new crisis, and sometimes no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t avoid disaster.

      He tucked away his thoughts, instead focusing on the here and now. All that really mattered was that thanks to the county funding, he had a new officer. A new officer his department needed badly.

      “You can still start on Monday morning?” he asked.

      “Yes, sir.”

      “Great. I’d like your transition to be as seamless as possible. The county has recently approved additional funding for the Rebel Police Department. I don’t want to give them any reason to change their minds. My plan is for those folks up at the county offices to fondly refer to Rebel as a well-oiled machine.”

      “And is it?”

      “Is it what?” he returned.

      “Is the Rebel Police Department a well-oiled machine?”

      Mitch could only stare, surprised at the gutsy question. No use skirting the truth. “Not at the moment.”

      “The population here is about seventeen hundred?” she asked.

      “About is a relative word in these parts. The transient summer tourist population headed to Rebel Lake and Keystone Lake down the road is around ten thousand. It’s a long time from May to September. Memorial Day was a week ago, and the fun has already begun.”

      “What sort of fun? I’m not familiar with tourist towns.”

      “Everything from noise to other ordinance violations on the lake. And where there are summer folks, there are summer teenagers. Not that I have anything against teens. There’s talk that I used to be one.”

      Daisy’s lips twitched at the comment.

      “Teenagers seem to find new and unusual ways to bend, twist and otherwise manipulate the law without quite breaking it.”

      “Yes, they do.” She looked up at him, her gaze thoughtful and once again, assessing. “When was your last day off?”

      “I’m on call 24-7.”

      “That can’t be good for your disposition.”

      Mitch jerked back slightly at the words. He found himself unreasonably annoyed at the astute observation.

      Crossing his arms, he pushed back his shoulders before answering. A good offense was always the best route.

      “Point of the matter is, Ms. Anderson, Rebel is growing. We’ve had a developer take an interest in our town and, this autumn, a big-box store is going in between here and Hominy. I need funding and I need the manpower... I mean, personnel. We’ve been short on both for too long.”

      “Then I guess I showed up right on time.”

      Mitch stared her up and down. For a little thing, she certainly could hold her own. And yeah, she was right. She had shown up at the right time.

      That should be a good thing, but it sure didn’t explain why his brain was waving a red flag between his eyes, fast and furious, while his gut answered that it was much too late for warnings.

      Daisy opened the door and stepped into the kitchen. Her grandmother sat at the farmhouse table next to ten-month-old PJ who laughed with abandon as she slapped the tray top of her high chair with chubby little hands, causing her plastic plate to jump.

      “I never get tired of her laughter,” Daisy said. She smoothed the wispy red curls and pressed a kiss to the baby’s cheek.

      “Were you out there talking to your boss all that time?” Alice asked.

      “No. I went for a walk around the property. It turns out we have blackberry bushes behind that shed,” Daisy said. “A pecan tree, as well.”

      “Pecan pie and blackberry cobbler,” her grandmother said. “I am so loving this place.”

      “And it looks like there’s what used to be a small orchard of apple and peach trees farther down. Though the entire area is so overgrown that it will take forever to clean things up.”

      “We can handle weeds and grass, can’t we?”

      Daisy sighed. “Yes. Perhaps I should hire someone. My to-do list is out of control.”

      “Probably a good idea. No telling what else might be hiding in that long grass. Snakes and mice and such.”

      “Ew.” СКАЧАТЬ