“Oh, I know, honey,” the old man hoarsely soothed Lily. “You’ve had a scary day, but you’re safe now.” Stace’s stomach tightened when he switched his attention to her, and his old weathered face took on that stern look all over again. His tone mirrored it as he opened the screen door. “Get on inside where it’s warm. You’re going to catch your death out here. Don’t clean up, though. Wait until after Sheriff Thompson gets done with you.”
Wanting to take it as a good sign that they knew the sheriff, she wiped her dirty hand on equally dirty jeans and limped inside. It was surreal standing alone in a home that wasn’t hers. Patting Lily’s back to help calm her, she looked around. The place was neat, rustic, very tidy, and with an open concept floor plan as far as the living room and combination dining room and kitchen were concerned. Stairs to her far left led up to a second-floor landing, blocked by a single door and guarded by a jackalope head, mounted above it. A short hall directly ahead of her led to three more closed doors. Light from the kitchen shown through a side entry archway. It wasn’t a huge place, but it was comfortable and cozy and just about the right size for two bachelors.
Who knew where they were going to put a live-in companion.
She jumped when the screen door bumped her back.
“Oh, I’m so sorry.” She jumped aside, letting the old man hobble back in, his rifle in his hand. He started to set it on the floor leaning against the wall behind the door, but quickly caught himself. Flashing a look at Lily, and then her, he hoarsely whispered, “I’ll just put this back up on the wall in my room.” He winked at her, half smiling as he shuffled off. His door was the one directly ahead of her.
“Here she is,” the lumberjack said, and Stace jumped all over again, moving even further out of the way as the big man came into the house, followed by the sheriff.
“H-he got away?” She had no idea what scared her more: not seeing the driver in handcuffs directly behind them, or lying in the mud and the cold, from when he’d knocked her down. He’d been so angry. So inexplicably angry and violent towards her, and she still couldn’t quite wrap her head around the why of it.
“Got away?” The bearded man looked at her, a flash of something moving through his dark eyes so quickly that she couldn’t recognize it. But she knew his tone—those heavy, grim, slightly disapproving notes that sent ripples racing through her until they found the perfect place to hide: her already quivering tummy. “He did not ‘get away.’”
“He’s cuffed in the back of my car with a good-sized knot on his head from when he charged your friend here,” Sheriff Thompson added. “I figured I’d come in and get your statement first, but I can already tell by the looks of you, he’s headed straight for my jailhouse and a Zoom call with the county courthouse come Monday.” Sighing, the officer knuckled his fists into his lean hips and looked her over. He shook his head once. “Never could stand a man who’d put angry hands on his woman.”
“I’m not his woman,” she said quickly. “I’m moving into my aunt’s house next door—”
Thompson’s gray eyes brightened. “Maggie told me her niece was coming to visit. You’re Stace-Loo Malone?”
The lumberjack looked at her.
“Stace,” she corrected, her face growing hot. Only her aunt still called her by her baby nickname. She took the sheriff’s hand when he held it out, giving her a greeting shake.
“Welcome to Myrtle Creek, Stace.” He looked at her hand, turning it first to examine her broken dirty nails and then rolling it over and gently disengaging his hand so he could better see the bloody scraps on her knuckles and then on the soft palm of her hand. He shook his head again. “He wasn’t a very nice man, was he?”
That went without saying.
“I hurt my leg too.”
The lumberjack looked at her, but she kept her eyes glued to the officer who was already digging through his jacket in search of his camera.
“Let’s get some pictures, shall we?”
Chapter 2
Stace sat at what was obviously their breakfast table. There was a plate of eggs and toast in front of her. Lily was balanced on her knee, reaching for bits of egg and buttered toast which she had broken into manageable pieces. The sheriff was at the foot of the table, filling in the last of his report, and the big bearded man was to her right. Every now and then, his burly arm brushed hers as she held onto Lily.
This still felt surreal, and it was hard to drag her thoughts together apart from the one immutable fact she couldn’t ignore. If this really was where the interviews for the home companion job were being held, then she was sure she’d just lost any hope of consideration. Nobody wanted an employee with as much drama as she’d just brought to their door, and she didn’t even know what had sparked it. At her first opportunity, she wanted to call the moving company and find out what happened. She had paid, but maybe the paperwork hadn’t been marked down right. He’d called her a cheat, said she’d stolen his money, but she’d done no such thing.
She itched to go outside and rescue her proof from where the driver had torn it up and thrown it in the mud, but when she’d tried, the big man had stopped her.
“You don’t need to go out there just yet,” he’d said, and then he’d gone in her stead. He’d returned while she was trying to explain what had happened, the papers so drenched in mud as to be unreadable. He’d vanished with them into the kitchen, but having seen them dripping muddy water from his hand, she already knew there was no “fixing” them.
“So,” the sheriff said, sipping at his coffee before taking the bite of toast the toddler was offering to him. He smiled at her, cooing, “Oh, thank you, honey. Nom nom nom.” He bent to eat it straight from her fingers, chuckling when she giggled, and then turned his attention back to his paperwork. “Let’s go over this one more time. He picked you up yesterday?”
“Yes, sir,” she confirmed. “He arrived at 8 a.m. yesterday morning. Then he and the two other movers—”
“The two in the white pickup that passed me before I got here?”
“Yes, sir.” She nodded. “They came maybe twenty minutes later, and then they loaded up everything of mine from my—” She stopped, the words just as hard to say the second time around as they had been the first. “—my husband’s house and I left with them.”
“And he wasn’t happy,” the sheriff said flatly.
Lily squirmed on her lap, trying to offer the big man a bite of toast too.
“No, uh,” she adjusted her hold on the baby, her face flushing as she tried to push her daughter’s arm down. “Sweetie, eat your breakfast. Mister, um… Mister…” she flushed even hotter. She’d written her interviewer’s name and address on the back of the moving itinerary so she wouldn’t lose it. It was in the kitchenwherever the big man had put it, probably in the garbage. She couldn’t for the life of her remember his name.
