“I’d planned to ask you to supper with my family,” Marian said when they reached her door.
The hesitation in her voice was endearing, and everything inside of Cole yearned to say yes. But instead, he gave her a wistful smile. “Thank you, but I need to report what happened to the sheriff. He might have some ideas on who’s behind it.”
“I thought you might.” She paused and then rose up on her toes to kiss him on the cheek. “Thank you, Cole.”
“Good night, Marian,” he said as she stepped inside, his stomach turning somersaults.
When the door shut behind her, he pressed a hand to the cheek she’d kissed, wishing he could preserve the feeling of her lips against his skin forever.
Guilt clawed its ugly way up from inside him, and he finally dropped his hand and began to walk back into town. He hadn’t kept her safe, and he oughtn’t linger all starry-eyed outside her door until he rectified that.
A hunch sat at the back of his mind. Cole stopped by the house where he’d found Marian before—Ian Hardison’s home. He knocked on the door and waited. A few minutes passed, and he knocked again.
Finally, the door just barely creaked open to reveal a slender, tow-headed boy of about eight years old. “Yes, sir?” he said in a polite, whispered voice.
“Zachary?” Cole asked.
The boy nodded.
“I’m Cole Robertson, the sheriff’s deputy. Is your pa at home? I’d like to talk to him.”
The little boy glanced behind him before turning back to Cole. “He’s asleep, sir. I . . . I don’t like to wake him up.”
His words made Cole’s heart ache. “That’s all right. Do you remember when he went to sleep?”
Zachary shrugged. “He was like that when I got home from school.”
He shouldn’t have been surprised. The man was already in his cups early in the afternoon when he came to Mrs. Shomburg’s. “Thank you, Zachary.” He paused a moment. “Keep doing well in school.”
The boy beamed. “I am, sir.”
Cole ran the conversation over through his mind as he made his way to the office. Stars were peppering the sky overhead by the time he arrived.
“And nothing was taken?” Sheriff Granger asked after Cole relayed what had happened.
“Didn’t appear to be.”
“Hmm.” Granger said nothing else as he leaned against the edge of his desk.
“The only person I can think of that might do such a thing without the intent to steal is Ian Hardison, yet I stopped by his home and his son said he’d been asleep for hours.” Cole proceeded to tell the sheriff about Hardison’s behavior at Mrs. Shomburg’s earlier in the day.
Granger nodded. “The man’s been causing more and more trouble lately, but it appears we’ve got another troublemaker on our hands with this situation at the schoolhouse. Let’s keep a close watch on the place.”
“Already planning to,” Cole said.
Granger smiled. “Ought to have known that, I suppose.” He crossed the room and reached for the coat he’d hung on a peg near the door. “I need to get home or I’ll get an earful from the missus. Let me know if anything comes up.”
“I will.” Cole watched Granger leave, his mind jumping immediately to dreams of going home to Marian.
He drew in a deep breath and sat heavily in the chair behind Granger’s desk. How he’d gone from perfectly happy being on his own to tangled up in thoughts of settling down with one woman, Cole didn’t know. But it was all he thought of when he wasn’t consumed with work or daydreaming about how it would’ve felt to finally kiss Marian.
He pulled off his hat and slapped it onto the desk before running his hands over his face. It didn’t matter how much he watched the schoolhouse—or Marian’s home. He couldn’t be at either place all of the time.
He couldn’t promise to keep her safe.
And shouldn’t a man be able to do such a thing for the woman he’d given his heart to? Safety aside, if he succeeded in convincing her to choose him over her dedication to teaching, how could he live up to the promise of a life good enough to replace all that she would have willingly lost?
What made him think he’d be any sort of worthwhile husband or father? He certainly hadn’t acted as if he’d had the potential in the past.
