Sarah told herself it was a hello kind of kiss—a door opening, something beginning between them.

That was what she thought she tasted on his lips: realness and strength and the utter spring freshness of new beginning. When his lips left hers she opened her eyes reluctantly.

He took a step back from her and she read a different truth entirely in his eyes. They were suddenly both shadowed and shuttered.

It hadn’t been hello at all. It had been goodbye.

Then Sullivan straightened and smiled slightly—that cynical my-heart-is-made-of-stone smile.

“Sarah,” he said softly, “you’ve got your hands full trying to save this town. Don’t you even try to save me.”

Then he turned and walked through his open door. He was alone, even though the puppy was with him. He was the gunfighter leaving town. Not needing anyone or anything. Not a woman and not a dog.

Dear Reader,

I am a technophobe. My six-year-old grandson shows me how to use our DVD player. Smartphones make me cringe. I finally have a cellphone, but my message says, ‘Don’t leave a message.’ It’s not because I’m unfriendly! It’s because I leave the phone for days at a time, gathering dust in a corner.

I don’t text or Twitter. My website became glitchy months ago, meaning I can’t update it and I don’t get mail from you. The designer has gone AWOL and I don’t have a clue what to do next!

Imagine my surprise when I discovered I love Facebook. It’s such an immediate, simple and lovely way of having contact with you! Readers helped me name the hero and his two nephews in this story. So please come and join the fun. You can find me at Cara Colter, Author. I can’t wait to hear from you!

With warmest wishes,

Cara

About the Author

CARA COLTER lives on an acreage in British Columbia, with her partner Rob and eleven horses. She has three grown children and a grandson. She is a recent recipient of the Romantic Times Career Achievement Award in the ‘Love and Laughter’ category. Cara loves to hear from readers, and you can contact her or learn more about her through her website: www.cara-colter.com

The Cop, the Puppy and Me

Cara Colter

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Rob (again) who loves me through it all.

CHAPTER ONE

OLIVER SULLIVAN—who had been called only Sullivan for so long he hardly remembered his first name—decided he disliked Sarah McDougall just about as much as he’d ever disliked anyone.

And he’d disliked a lot of people.

Meeting dislikable people was a hazard of choosing law enforcement as a profession, not that Ms. McDougall fell into the criminal category.

“Though I have dealt with criminals who were more charming,” he muttered to himself. Of course, with criminals he had the advantage of having some authority over them.

All this naked dislike, and Sullivan had yet to even speak to her. His encounters had all been filtered through his voice mail. He’d never seen her, let alone met her, and he would have been only too happy to keep it that way.

But she’d gone to his boss.

Her voice on the phone had been enough to stir his dislike of her and her bulldog-like persistence had cemented it.

Not that her voice was grating. It was what she wanted from him that was the problem.

Call me back.

Please.

It’s so important.

We have to talk.

Mr. Sullivan, this is urgent.

When he’d managed to totally ignore her, she’d eventually gone to his boss. Sullivan mulled that over with aggravation. Which was worse? The fact that she had gone to his boss? Or the fact that his boss had ordered him to comply?

At least go talk to her, the chief had said. In case you haven’t figured it out, you’re not in Detroit anymore.

Oh, Sullivan had figured that out. In about his first five minutes on his new job.

Being a cop in small-town Wisconsin was about as different from being a homicide detective in Detroit as Attila the Hun was different from being Mother Theresa.

“What moment of insanity made me choose Kettle Bend, Wisconsin?” he growled.

Of course his moment of insanity had a name, and her name was Della, his older sister, who had discovered this little pocket of American charm and chosen to come here with her orthodontist husband, Jonathon, to raise her two boys. She’d been trying to convince Sullivan to join their happy family ever since his whole life had gone sideways.

Sullivan shook that off, focused on the town instead. He took in the streets around him with a jaundiced eye.

It looked like the kind of town Walt Disney or Norman Rockwell would have imagined, wide, quiet streets, shaded by enormous trees that he, hard-bitten product of some of Detroit’s worst neighborhoods, had no hope of identifying.

Still, there was no missing the newness of the leaves, unfurling in those tender and vibrant shades of spring, the sharp, tangy scent of their newness tickling his nose through his open car window.

Nestled comfortably in the leafy shade were tidy houses, wearing their age and their American flags with equal pride. The houses, for the most part, had a pleasant sameness about them. White with pale yellow trim, or pale yellow with white trim, the odd sage-green and or dove-gray thrown into the mix.

All had deep porches, white picket fences around postage-stamp yards, splashes of spring color in the flower beds lining walkways that welcomed.

But Sullivan refused to be charmed.

He disliked illusions, and he knew this particular illusion to be the most dangerous: that there were places left in the world that were entirely safe and uncomplicated, porch swings and fireflies, cold lemonade on hot summer afternoons.

That there was a place where doors and windows were unlocked, where children rode their bikes unescorted and unafraid to school, where families laughed over board games. That there were places of unsullied innocence, places that whispered the word home. He kept trying to warn Della all was probably not as it appeared.

No, behind the windows and doors of those perfect and pretty houses, Sullivan was willing to bet he would uncover all kinds of secrets that belied the picture he was seeing. Behind some of those closed doors were probably booze bottles hidden down toilet tanks. A kid with a crack problem. Unexplained bruises and black eyes.

It was this cynicism that was making him a poor fit for Kettle Bend.

Certainly a poor fit for Sarah McDougall’s plans for him.

Her message on his voice mail chimed through his head, making him shudder. We need a hero, Mr. Sullivan.

He wasn’t about to be anybody’s hero. This wasn’t how he wanted to be spending his day off. He was about to make one Sarah McDougall very, very sorry she’d gone after this bear in his den.

Checking addresses as he went, Sullivan finally pulled over, stepped out of his car and steeled himself against the sleepy appeal of the street he found himself on. On principle, he rolled up his car window and locked his door. The people of Kettle Bend might want to pretend nothing bad ever happened here, but he wasn’t going to trust his new car stereo to that notion.

Then he turned to look at the house that sat at 1716 Lilac Lane.

The house differed from its neighbors very little. It was a shingle-sided, single-story bungalow, painted recently—white, naturally—the trim a deep, crisp shade of olive. Vines—he guessed ivy because that was the only name of a vine that he knew—showed signs of new growth, and would shade the wide porch completely in the heat of summer.

Sullivan passed through an outrageously squeaking gate and under an arbor that he knew would drip the color and fragrance of climbing roses in a few more weeks.

He shrugged off the relief it was not happening now, as if there was something about all this charm that was nattering away at his defenses—not like a battering ram, more like an irritating humming, like being pestered by mosquitoes. The scent of roses would have been just one more thing to add to it.

Peripherally, he made note that the concrete walkway was heaved in places, but lined with an odd variety of spring flowers—deep purple, with a starburst yellow interior.

He noticed only because that was what he did.

Sullivan noticed everything. Every detail. It made him a great cop. It hadn’t helped him be a better human being, as far as he could tell.

He went up the wide stairs to the front door, crossed the shaded porch to it. Before he rang the bell, he studied the outdoor furnishings.

Old wicker chairs, carefully painted the same olive-green as the house trim, held impossibly cheerful plump cushions, with red and yellow and orange flowers in the pattern. Just as the town painted a picture, so did this porch.

A place of rest. Of comfort. Of safety. Of peace.

“Ha,” Sullivan snorted cynically, but was aware of setting his shoulders more firmly against the buzzing of all the pesky details working at convincing him he could maybe try letting this woman down softly. He could try being a nice guy.

“Ha,” he said again. So far, subtleness had not worked on her. When you phoned a person sixty-two times and they didn’t return your calls that did not mean, Go to the boss.

It meant, Get lost. Go away. Find yourself another hero.

He turned deliberately away from the invitation of the porch, not prepared to admit for even one small moment, a fraction of a second, that he had imagined himself accepting the invitation.

Rest.

He shook his head, and turned to the door, found the bell—a key type that needed to be turned—and twisted it.

The exterior door was a screen door, white with elaborate carvings around the edges framing the oval of the screen in the middle. The green interior door was open, and he could hear the bell echo through the house.

No one answered, but he figured leaving a door hanging open was an invitation, plain and simple, for prying eyes.

So, unlike the invitation to rest, he took this one, peering in at the house.

The door opened directly into the living room, though a handmade rag rug designated a tiny entry area, and suggested the owner liked order—and wiped feet.

Afternoon sunlight spilled through the open door and through the picture window, slanting across wood floors that were golden with the patina of age.

Two small couches, a shade of sunshine-yellow that matched the interior of the flowers that marched up the front walk, faced each other over a scarred antique coffee table. Again, there was a sense of order: neatly stacked magazines and a vase of those flowers that had lined the walkway, dipping low on slender stems.

Sullivan had not formed a mental picture of his stalker.

Now he did. Single. No evidence—and there was always evidence—of a man in residence.

No children, because there was no sign of toys or mess, though his eyes caught on a wall of framed magazine covers, hung gallery-style, just inside that front door.

They were all covers from a magazine called Today’s Baby.

They did nothing to change his initial impression of her. No life.

Sullivan was willing to bet the resident of this house was as frumpy as her house was cute. She was no doubt a few pounds too heavy, with frizzy hair and bad makeup, busy making her house look pretty as a picture while she fell into middle-aged decline.

Now that there was nothing left to do on her house—obviously it was magazine photo shoot ready—she’d turned her attention to the town.

Mr. Sullivan, Kettle Bend needs you!

Yeah, right. Kettle Bend needed Oliver Sullivan the way Oliver Sullivan needed a toothache.

He could smell something faintly, drifting through that open door. The scent was sweet. And tart. Home cooking. The sudden, sharp feeling of yearning took him totally by surprise.

He felt it again, like a whisper along his spine.

Rest.

Again, he shook it off, along with annoying yearnings. He had rested. For a whole year. Tying flies and wearing hip waders. It wasn’t for him. Too much time for thinking.

Sullivan rang the bell again, impatiently this time.

A cat, a gray puffball with evil green eyes slid out of a hallway, plunked itself in the ray of sunshine and regarded him with slitted dislike, before dismissing him with a lift of its paw and a delicate lick. The cat fit his picture of her life exactly.

Still, that cat knew he didn’t like animals.

Which was what made the whole situation that had gotten him to this front door even more irritating. A hero? He didn’t even like dogs. And so he didn’t want to answer the question—not from her and not from the dozens of other reporters and TV stations that were hounding him—why he had risked his life for one.

Sullivan gave the handle of the screen door a firm tug, let the door squeak open a noisy inch or two before releasing it to snap shut again.

Come on. An unlocked door?

It made him feel grim. And determined.

This cozy little world was practically begging for a healthy dose of what he had in abundance.

Cynicism.

He backed off the steps and stood regarding the house.

“She’s in the back. Sarah’s left that rhubarb a bit too long.”

Sullivan started. See? It had gotten to him. His guard had been down just enough not to notice that his every move was being monitored by the next-door-neighbor. She was a wizened gnome, ensconced in a deep Adirondack chair.

From under a tuft of cotton-ball hair, her bright black marble eyes regarded him with amused curiosity rather than the deep suspicion a stranger should be regarded with.

“You’re the new policeman,” she said.

So, he wasn’t a stranger. There was no anonymity in a small town. Not even on your day off, in jeans and a T-shirt.

He nodded, still a little taken aback by how trust was automatically instilled in him just because he was the new cop on the block.

In Detroit, nine times out of ten, the exact opposite had been true, at least in the hard neighborhoods where he had plied his trade.

“Nice thing you did. With that dog.”

Was there one single person on the face of the earth who didn’t know? Sullivan was beginning to hate the expression gone viral more than any other.

She wouldn’t think it was so nice if she knew how often since then he just wished he’d let the damn thing go down the river, raging with spring runoff, instead of jumping in after it.

He thought of it wriggling against him as he lay on the shore of the river afterward, gasping for breath. The puppy, soaked, another layer of freezing on top of his own freezing, had curled up on his exposed skin, right on top of his heart, whimpering and licking him.

Sullivan knew he didn’t really wish that he hadn’t gone in after it. He just wished that he wished it. And that a person with the cell phone had not recorded his leap into the swollen Kettle River and then posted it on the internet where it seemed the whole world had seen it.

“How is the dog?” she asked.

“Still at the vet,” he answered, “but he’s going to be fine.”

“Has anyone claimed him yet”?”

“No.”

“Well, I’m sure there will be a long lineup of people who want to adopt him if his owner doesn’t show up.”

“Oh, yeah,” he agreed.

Because of the video, the Kettle Bend Police Department was fielding a dozen calls a day about that dog.

Sullivan followed the narrow concrete path where it curved around the side of the house and then led him down a passageway between houses. Then the path opened into a long, narrow backyard.

There was no word for it.

Except perhaps enchanting.

For a moment he stood, breathing it all in: waxy leaves; mature trees; curving flower beds whose dark mounding loam met the crisp edge of freshly cut grass.

There was a sense of having entered a grotto, deeply private.

Sacred.

Sullivan snorted at himself, but a little uneasily this time.

He saw her then.

Crouched beside a fence lined with rows of vigorously growing, elephant-eared plants.

She was totally engrossed in what she was doing, yanking at the thin red stalks of the huge-leafed plants.

It must be the rhubarb her neighbor had mentioned.

She already had a stack of it beside her. Her face was hidden in the shade of a broad-brimmed hat, the light catching her mouth, where her tongue was caught between her teeth in concentration.

She was wearing a shapeless flowered tank top and white shorts, smudged with dirt, but the long line of strong legs, already beginning to tan, took his breath away.

As he watched, she tugged vigorously on one of the plants. When the stalk parted with the ground, she nearly catapulted over backward. When she righted herself, she went very still, as if she knew, suddenly, she was not alone.

Without getting up, she pivoted slowly on the heels of her feet and looked at him, her head tilted quizzically, possibly aggrieved that he had caught her in a wrestling match with the plant.

Sarah McDougall, if this was her, was certainly not middle-aged. Or frizzy-haired. She was wearing no makeup at all. The feeling of his breath being taken away was complete.

Corkscrew auburn curls escaped from under the brim of her hat and framed an elfin face. A light scattering of freckles danced across a daintily snubbed nose. Her cheekbones and her chin mirrored that image of delicacy.

But it was her eyes that threatened to undo him. He was good at this: at reading eyes. It was harder than people thought. A liar could look you straight in the face without blinking. A murderer could have eyes that looked as soft as suede, as gentle as a fawn’s.

But eleven years working one of the toughest homicide squads in the world had honed Sullivan’s skills to a point that his sister called him, not without a hint of admiration, scary in his ability to detect what was real about a person.

This woman’s eyes were huge and hazel, and stunningly, slayingly gorgeous.

She was, obviously, the all-American girl. Wholesome. Sweet. Probably ridiculously naive.

Case in point: she left her door unlocked and wanted to make him a hero!

But instead of that fueling his annoyance at her, instead of remembering his fury that she had called his boss, Sullivan felt a surge of foolish protectiveness.

“You should lock your front door when you work back here,” he told her gruffly. Part of him wanted to leave it at that, to turn his back and walk away from her. Because obviously what a girl like that needed to be protected from most was a guy like him.

Who had seen so much darkness it felt as if it had taken up residence inside of him. Darkness that could snuff out the radiance that surrounded her like a halo.

Still, if he left without giving her an opportunity to see that in him, she might pester him, or his boss, endlessly.

So he forced himself to cross the yard until he stood above her, until his shadow passed over the wideness of those eyes.

He rarely shook hands. Keep the barriers up. Establish authority. Don’t invite familiarity. Keep your distance.

So it startled him when he wanted to extend a hand to her.

“Sarah McDougall?” he asked, and at her wide-eyed nod, “I’m Sullivan.”

The aggrieved look faded from her face. She actually looked thrilled! He was glad he had shoved his hand in his pocket instead of holding it out to her.

“Mr. Sullivan,” she said, and scrambled to her feet. “I’m so glad you came. May I call you Oliver?”

“No, you may not. No one calls me Oliver. And it’s not Mister,” he said, his voice deliberately cold. “It’s Officer.”

A touch of wariness tinged her gaze. Hadn’t she been able to tell from her unanswered pleas that he was a man who deserved her wariness?

“No one calls you Oliver?”

What was she asking that question for? Hadn’t he made it eminently clear there was going to be nothing personal between them, not even an invitation to use first names?

“No.” His voice had a bit of a snap to it.

Which she clearly did not recognize, or she would have had the sense to back away from the subject.

“Not even your mother?” She raised a skeptical eyebrow. Her looking skeptical was faintly comical, like a budgie bird trying to look aggressive.

“Dead,” he snapped. He could see sympathy crowding her eyes, and there was no way he was allowing all that softness to spill out and touch him. His mother had died when he was seventeen years old.

And his father.

Seventeen years ago was a place he did not revisit.

There was no sense her misconstruing his reasons for being here, and there was only one way to approach a person like this.

Brutal bluntness.

“Don’t call me anymore,” he said, holding her gaze, his voice deliberately low and flat. “I’m not helping you. Not if you call six million times. I’m not any kind of hero. I don’t want to be your friend. I don’t want to save your town. And don’t call my boss again, either. Because you don’t want me to be your enemy.”

Sullivan saw, astonished at his failure, that his legendary people-reading skills were slightly off-kilter. Because he had thought she would be easily intimidated, that he could make her back down, just like that.

Instead he saw that cute little mouth reset itself in a line that was unmistakably stubborn and that could mean only one thing for him.

Trouble.

Sarah stared up at her unexpected visitor, caught off balance, not just by her tug-of-war with her rhubarb, but also by the fact she’d had a witness to it!

Add to that his unexpected sharpness of tone, his appearance in her yard, his appearance, period, and her feeling of being unbalanced grew.

She’d been totally engrossed in wresting the rhubarb from the ground. Which was what she needed from her house, her yard, her garden and her work.

There was always something that needed to be done, the hard work unending. But her total focus on what she’d been doing had left her vulnerable. Though Sarah suspected that even if you had been expecting this man, had laid out tea things and put on a presentable dress, the feeling you would have when you experienced the rawness of his presence would be one of vulnerability.

The grainy video she had seen—along with millions of other people—had not really prepared her for the reality of him. Though she had already figured out from her unanswered calls that he was not exactly going to be the kind of guy the heroic rescue of a drowning puppy had her wanting him to be.

From thirty seconds of film, from him ripping off his shirt and jumping into the icy water just past where the Kettle River ran under the bridge in downtown Kettle Bend, to lying on the bank after, the pup snuggled into the pebbled flesh of his naked chest, she had jumped to conclusions.

He was courageous. That much was in his eyes. A man afraid of nothing.

But she had thought—a man willing to risk his life for a dog, after all—that he would be gentle and warm.

If his message on his voice mail had been a touch abrupt, she had managed to dismiss that as part of his professional demeanor. But then the fact that he had not returned her increasingly desperate calls?

And now he had been downright rude to her.

Plus, there was nothing warm in those dark eyes. They were cool, assessing. There was a wall so high in them it would be easier to scale Everest.

Sarah felt a quiver of doubt. The reality of Oliver Sullivan versus the fantasy she had been nursing since she had first seen the clip of him did not bode well for her plan, unless he could be tamed, and from looking at him that seemed highly unlikely!

Sullivan was dressed casually, dark denims, a forest-green T-shirt that molded the fullness of his chest, the hard mounds of firm biceps. A hundred other guys in Kettle Bend were wearing the same thing today, but she bet none of them radiated the raw potency that practically shivered in the spring sunshine around him.

He looked like a warrior wearing the disguise of a more civilized man.

He was one of those men who radiated a subtle confidence in his own strength, in his ability to handle whatever came up. It was as if he was ready and waiting for all hell to break loose.

Which was so utterly at odds with the atmosphere in her garden that it might have made her smile, except there was something about the stripping intensity of his expression that made her gulp instead.

Despite astonishing good looks, he had the expression of a man unutterably world-weary, a man who expected the absolute worst from people, and was rarely disappointed.

Still, he was unnervingly good-looking. If she could talk him into doing some TV interviews, the camera would love his dark, chocolate hair, short and neat, slashing brows over eyes so dark brown they could have been mistaken for black. He had a strong nose, good cheekbones, wide sensual lips and a devilish little cleft in his chin.

She could not allow herself the luxury of being intimidated by him.

She just couldn’t.

Kettle Bend needed him.

Not that she wanted to be thinking of him in the same sentence as the word need.

Because he was the kind of man who made a woman aware of things—needs—she was sure she had laid to rest.

He was the kind of man whose masculinity was so potent it could make a woman ache for things she had once had, and had no longer. Fevered kisses. Strong arms. Laughter in the night.

He was the kind of man who could almost make a woman entirely forget the terrible price, the pain that you could invite by looking for those things.

Sarah McDougall didn’t need anyone looking out for her, thank you very much! It was one of the things she prided herself on.

Fierce independence.

Not needing anyone. Not anymore. Not ever again.

Inheriting this house, and her grandmother’s business, Jelly Jeans and Jammies, had allowed her that.

She could not back down from him! So, with more confidence than she felt, in defiance of his hostility, she whipped the gardening glove off her hand, wiped it on her shorts just in case, and extended it to him.

Then she held her breath waiting to see if he would take it.

CHAPTER TWO

OFFICER Oliver Sullivan looked at Sarah’s extended hand, clearly annoyed at her effort to make some kind of contact with him.

She knew he debated just walking away now that he had delivered his unfriendly message.

But he didn’t. With palpable reluctance, he accepted her hand, and his shake was brief and hard. She kept her face impassive at the jolt that surged, instantaneously, from her fingertips to her elbow. It would be easy to think of rough whiskers scraping a soft cheek, the smell of skin out of the shower.

Easy, too, to feel the tiniest little thrill that her life had had this unexpected moment thrust into it.

Sarah reminded herself, sternly, that her life was full and rich and complete.

She had inherited her grandmother’s house in this postcard-pretty town. With it had come a business that provided her a livelihood and that had pulled her back from the brink of despair when her engagement had ended.

Kettle Bend had given her something she had not thought she would ever have again, and that she now could appreciate as that rarest of commodities: contentment.

Okay, in her more honest moments, Sarah knew it was not complete contentment. Sometimes, she felt a little stir of restlessness, a longing for her old life. Not her romance with Michael Talbot. No, sir, she was so over her fiancé’s betrayal of her trust, so over him.

No, it was elements of her old life as a writer on the popular New York–based Today’s Baby magazine that created that nebulous longing, that called to her. She had regularly met and interviewed new celebrity moms and dads, been invited to glamorous events, been a sought-after guest at store openings and other events. She had loved being creative.

A man like the one who stood in front of her posed a danger. He could turn a small longing for something—excitement, fulfillment—into a complete catastrophe.

Sarah reminded herself, sternly and firmly, that she had already found a solution for her nebulous longings; she was going to chase away her restlessness with a new challenge, a huge one that would occupy her completely. Her new commitment was going to be to the little community that was fading around her.

Her newfound efforts at contentment relied on getting this town back to the way she remembered it being during her childhood summers spent here: vital, the streets overflowing with seasonal visitors, a feeling of endless summer, a hopeful vibrancy in the air.

So, handshake completed, Sarah crossed her arms over her chest, a thin defense against some dark promise—or maybe threat—that swirled like electricity in the air around him.

She wanted him to think she was not rattled.

“I have a great plan for Kettle Bend,” she told him. She had interviewed some of the most sought-after people in the world. She would not be intimidated by him. “And you can help make it happen.”

He regarded her long and hard, and then the tiniest of smiles tickled the corner of that sinfully sensuous mouth.

She thought she had him. Then …

“No,” he said. Simple. Firm. Unshakable, the smile gone from the corner of that mouth as if it had never been.

“But you haven’t even heard what I have to say!” Sarah sputtered indignantly.

He actually seemed to consider that for a moment, though his deeply weary sigh was not exactly encouraging.

“Okay,” he said after a moment, those dark eyes shielded, unreadable. “Spit it out.”

Spit it out? As an invitation to communication, it was somewhat lacking. On the other hand, at least he wasn’t walking away. Yet. But his body language indicated the thread that held him here, in her yard, was thin.

“The rescue of the dog was incredible. So courageous.”

He failed to look flattered, seemed to be leaning a little more toward the exit, so she rushed on. “I’ve seen it on the internet.”

His expression darkened even more—if that was possible—so she didn’t add that she had watched it more than a dozen times, feeling foolishly compelled to watch it again and again for reasons she didn’t quite understand.

But she did understand that she was not the only one. The video had captured hearts around the world. As she saw it, the fact he was standing in her yard meant that she had an opportunity to capitalize on that magic ingredient that was drawing people by the thousands to that video.

“I know you haven’t been in Kettle Bend very long,” Sarah continued. “Didn’t you know how cold that water was going to be?”

“If I had known how cold that water was going to be, I would have never jumped in.”

That was the kind of answer that wouldn’t work at all in the event she could talk him into being a participant in her plan to use his newfound notoriety to publicize the town.

Though that possibility seemed more unlikely by the second.

At least he was talking, and not walking.

“You must love dogs,” she said, trying, with growing desperation, to find a chink in all that armor.

He didn’t answer her, though his chest filled as he drew in a long breath. He ran an impatient hand through the thick, crisp silk of his dark hair.

“What do you want from me?”

Her eyes followed the movement of his hand through his hair, and for a moment the sensation of what she really wanted from him nearly swamped her.

Sarah shook it off, an unwanted weakness.

“Your fifteen minutes of fame could be very beneficial to this town,” she said, trying, valiantly, and not entirely successfully, not to wonder how his hair would feel beneath her fingertips.

“Whether I like it or not,” he commented dryly.

“What’s not to like? A few interviews with carefully chosen sources. It would take just the smallest amount of your time,” she pressed persuasively.

His look of impatience deepened, and now annoyance layered on top of it. Really, such a sour expression should have made him much less good-looking!

But it didn’t.

Still, she tried to focus on the fact that he was still standing here, giving her a chance. Once she explained it all to him, he couldn’t help but get on board!

“Do you know what Summer Fest is?” she asked him.

“No. But it sounds perfectly nauseating.”

She felt her confidence falter and covered it by glaring at him. Sarah decided cynical was just his default reaction. Who could possibly have anything against summer? Or a festival?

Sarah plunged ahead. “It’s a festival for the first four days of July. It starts with a parade and ends with the Fourth of July fireworks. It used to kick off the summer season here in Kettle Bend. It used to set the tone for the whole summer.”

She waited for him to ask what had happened, but he only looked bored, raising an eyebrow at her.

“It was canceled, five years ago. The cancellation has been just one more thing that has contributed to Kettle Bend fading away, losing its vibrancy, like a favorite old couch that needs recovering. It’s not the same place I used to visit as a child.”

“Visit?” It rattled her that he seemed not to be showing the slightest interest in a single word she said, but he picked up on that immediately. “So you’re not a local, either?”

Either. A bond between them. Play it.

“No, I grew up in New York. But my mother was from here, originally. I used to spend summers. And where are you from? What brings you to Kettle Bend?”

“Momentary insanity,” he muttered.

He certainly wasn’t giving anything away, but he wasn’t walking away, either, so Sarah prattled on, trying to engage him. “This is my grandmother’s house. She left it to me when she died. Along with her jam business. Jelly Jeans and Jammies. You might have heard of it. It’s very popular around town.”

Sarah was not sure she had engaged him. His expression was impossible to read. She had felt encouraged that he showed a slight interest in her. Now, she was suspicious. Sullivan was one of those men who found out things about people, all the while revealing nothing of himself.

“Look, Miss McDougall—”

She noticed he did not use her first name, and knew, despite that brief show of interest, he was keeping his distance from her in every way he could.

“—not that any of this has anything to do with me, but nothing feels or looks the same to an adult as it does to a child.”

How had he managed, in a single line, to make her feel hopelessly naive, as if she was chasing something that didn’t exist?

What if he was right?

Damn him. That’s what these brimming-with-confidence-and-cynicism men did. Made everyone doubt themselves. Their hopes and dreams.

Well, she wasn’t giving her hopes and dreams into the care of another man. Michael Talbot had already taught her that lesson, thank you very much.

When she’d first heard the rumor about Mike, her fiancé and editor in chief of Today’s Baby, and a flirty little freelancer named Trina, Sarah had refused to believe it. But then she had seen them together in a café, something too cozy about the way they were leaning into each other to confirm what she wanted to believe, that Mike and Trina’s relationship was strictly business.

Her dreams of a nice little house, filled with babies of her own, had been dashed in a flash.

No accusation, just, I saw you and Trina today.

The look of shame that had crossed Mike’s face had said it all, without him saying a single word.

Now, Sarah had a replacement dream, so much safer. A town to revitalize.

“Yes, it does have something to do with you!”

“I don’t see how.”

“Because I’ve been put in charge of Summer Fest. I’ve been given one chance to bring it back, to prove how good it is for this town,” she explained.

“Good luck with that.”

“I’ve got no budget for promotion. But I bet your phone has been ringing off the hook since the clip of the rescue was shown on the national evening news.” She read the answer in his face. “The A.M. Show, Good Night, America, The Way We See It, Morning Chat with Barb—they’re all calling you, aren’t they?”

His arms had now folded across the immenseness of his chest, and he was rocking back on his heels, watching her with narrowed eyes.

“They’re begging you for a follow-up,” she guessed. She wasn’t the only one who had been able to see that this man and that dog would make good television.

“You’ll be happy to know I’m not answering their calls, either,” he said dryly.

“I am not happy to know that! If you could just say yes to a few interviews and mention the town and Summer Fest. If you could just say how wonderful Kettle Bend is and invite everybody to come for July 1. You could tell them that you’re going to be the grand marshal of the parade!”

It had all come out in a blurt.

“The grand marshal of the parade,” he repeated, stunned.

She probably should have left that part until later. But then she realized, shocked, he had not repeated his out-and-out no.

He seemed to realize it, too. “No,” he said flatly.

She rushed on as if he hadn’t spoken. “I don’t have a hope of reaching millions of people with no publicity budget. But, Oli—Mr.—Officer Sullivan—you do. You could single-handedly bring Summer Fest back to Kettle Bend!”

“No,” he said again, no hesitation this time.

“There is more to being a cop in a small town than arresting poor old Henrietta Delafield for stealing lipsticks from the Kettle Mug and Drug.”

“Mug and Drug,” he repeated dryly, “that sounds like my old beat in Detroit.”

Despite the stoniness of his expression, Sarah allowed herself to feel the smallest stirring of hope. He had a sense of humor! And, he had finally revealed something about himself. He was starting to care for his new town, despite that hard-bitten exterior.

She beamed at him.

He backed away from her.

“Let me think about it,” he said with such patent insincerity she could have wept.

Sarah saw it for what it was, an escape mechanism. He was slipping away from her. She had been so sure, all this time, when she’d hounded him with message after message, that when he actually heard her brilliant idea, when he knew how good it would be for the town, he would want to do it.

“There’s no time to think,” she said. “You’re the hot topic now.” She hesitated. “Officer Sullivan, I’m begging you.”

“I don’t like being impulsive.” His tone made it evident he scorned being the hot topic and was unmoved by begging.

“But you jumped in the river after that dog. Does it get more impulsive than that?”

“A momentary lapse,” he said brusquely. “I said I’ll think about it.”

“That means no,” she said, desolately.

“Okay, then, no.”

There was something about the set of his shoulders, the line around his mouth, the look in his eyes that he had made up his mind absolutely. He wasn’t ever going to think about it, and he wasn’t ever going to change his mind. She could talk until she was blue in the face, leave four thousand more messages on his voice mail, go to his boss again.

But his mind was made up. Like the wall in his eyes, it would be easier to climb Everest than to change it.

“Excuse me,” she said tautly. She bent and picked up her rhubarb, as if it could provide some kind of shield against him, and then shoved by him. She headed for the back door of her house before she did the unthinkable.

You did not cry in front of a man as hard-hearted as that one.

Something in his face, as she glanced back, made her feel as if her disappointment was transparent to him. She was all done being vulnerable. Had she begged? She hoped she hadn’t begged!

“You should try the Jelly Jeans and Jammies Crabbies Jelly,” she shot over her shoulder at him. “It’s made out of crab apples. My grandmother swore it was a cure for crankiness.”

She opened her back screen door and let it slam behind her. The back door led into a small vestibule and then her kitchen.

She was greeted by the sharp tang of the batch of rhubarb jam she had made yesterday. Every counter and every surface in the entire kitchen was covered with the rhubarb she needed to make more jam today.

Because this was the time of year her grandmother always made her Spring Fling jam, which she had claimed brought a feeling of friskiness, cured the sourness of old heartaches and brought new hope.

But given the conversation she had just had, and looking at the sticky messes that remained from yesterday, and the mountains of rhubarb that needed to be dealt with today, hope was not exactly what Sarah felt.

And she certainly did not want to think of all the connotations friskiness could have after meeting a man like that one!

Seeing no counter space left, she dumped her rhubarb on the floor and surveyed her kitchen.

All this rhubarb had to be washed. Some of it had already gotten tough and would have to be peeled. It had to be chopped and then cooked, along with all the other top secret ingredients, in a pot so huge Sarah wondered if her grandmother could have possibly acquired it from cannibals. Then, she had to prepare the jars and the labels. Then finally deliver the finished product to all her grandmother’s faithful customers.

She felt exhausted just thinking about it. An unguarded thought crept in.

Was this the life she really wanted?

Her grandmother had run this little business until she was eighty-seven years old. She had never seemed overwhelmed by it. Or tired.

Sarah realized she was just having an off moment in her new life.

That was the problem with a man like Oliver Sullivan putting in a surprise appearance in your backyard.

It made you question the kind of life you really wanted.

It made you wonder if there were some kinds of lonely no amount of activity—or devotion to a cause—could ever fill.

Annoyed with herself, Sarah stepped over the rhubarb to the cabinet where she kept her telephone book.

Okay. He wasn’t going to help her. It was probably a good thing. She had to look at the bright side. Her life would have tangled a bit too much with his had he agreed to use his newfound fame to the good of the town.

She could do it herself.

“WGIV Radio, how can I direct your call?”

“Tally Hukas, please.”

After she hung up from talking to Tally, Sarah wondered why she felt the tiniest little tickle of guilt. It was not her job to protect Officer Oliver Sullivan from his own nastiness.

“And so, folks,” Sarah’s voice came over the radio, in that cheerful tone, “if you can spare some time to help our resurrected Summer Fest be the best ever, give me a call. Remember, Kettle Bend needs you!”

Sullivan snapped off the radio.

He had been so right in his assessment of Sarah McDougall: she was trouble.

This time, she hadn’t gone to his boss. Oh, no, she’d gone to the whole town as a special guest on the Tally Hukas radio show, locally produced here in Kettle Bend. She’d lost no time doing it, either. He’d been at her house only yesterday.

Despite that wholesome, wouldn’t-hurt-a-flea look of hers, Sarah had lost no time in throwing him under the bus. Announcing to the whole town how she’d had this bright idea to promote the summer festival—namely him—and he’d said no.

Ah, well, the thing she didn’t get was that he didn’t care if he was the town villain. He would actually be more comfortable in that role than the one she wanted him to play!

The thing he didn’t get was how he had thought about her long after he’d left her house yesterday. Unless he was mistaken, there had been tears, three seconds from being shed, sparkling in her eyes when she had pushed by him.

But this was something she should know when she was trying to find a town hero: an unlikely choice was a man unmoved by tears. In his line of work, he’d seen way too many of them: following a knock on the door in the middle of the night; following a confession, outpourings of remorse; following that moment when he presented what he had, and the noose closed. He had them. No escape.

If you didn’t harden your heart to it all, you would drown in other people’s tragedy.

He’d had to hurt Sarah. No choice. It was the only way to get someone like her to back off. Still, hearing her voice over the radio, he’d tried to stir himself to annoyance.

He was reluctant to admit it was actually something else her husky tone caused in him.

A faint longing. The same faint longing he had felt on her porch and when the scent from her kitchen had tickled his nose.

What was that?

Rest.

Sheesh, he was a cop in a teeny tiny town. How much more restful could it get?

Besides, in his experience, relationships weren’t restful. That was the last thing they were! Full of ups and downs, and ins and outs, and highs and lows.

Sullivan had been married once, briefly. It had not survived the grueling demands of his rookie year on the homicide squad. The final straw had been someone inconveniently getting themselves killed when he was supposed to be at his wife’s sister’s wedding.

He’d come home to an apartment emptied of all her belongings and most of his.

What had he felt at that moment?

Relief.

A sense that now, finally, he could truly give one hundred percent to the career that was more than a job. An obsession. Finding the bad guy possessed him. It wasn’t a time clock and a paycheck. It was a life’s mission.

He started, suddenly realizing it was that little troublemaker who had triggered these thoughts about relationships!

He was happy when his phone rang, so he didn’t have to contemplate what—if—that meant something worrisome.

Besides, his discipline was legendary—as was his comfortably solitary lifestyle—and he was not thinking of Sarah McDougall in terms of the “R” word. He refused.

He glanced at the caller ID window.

His boss. That hadn’t taken long. Sullivan debated not answering, but saw no purpose in putting off the inevitable.

He held the phone away from his ear so the volume of his chief’s displeasure didn’t deafen him.

“Yes, sir, I got it. I’m cleaning all the cars.”

He held the phone away from his ear again. “Yeah. I got it. I’m on Henrietta Delafield duty. Every single time. Yes, sir.”

He listened again. “I’m sure you will call me back if you think of anything else. I’m looking forward to it. No, sir. I’m not being sarcastic. Drunk tank duty, too. Got it.”

Sullivan extricated himself from the call before the chief thought of any more ways to make his life miserable.

He got out of his car. Through the open screen door of Della’s house—a house so like Sarah’s it should have spooked him—he could hear his nephews, Jet, four, and Ralf, eighteen and half months, running wild. He climbed the steps, and tugged the door.

Unlocked.

He went inside and stepped over an overturned basket of laundry and a plastic tricycle. His sister had once been a total neat freak, her need for order triggered by the death of their parents, just as it had triggered his need for control.

He supposed that meant the mess was a good thing, and he was happy for her, moving on, having a normal life, despite it all.

Sullivan found his sister in her kitchen. The two boys pushed by him, first Jet at a dead run, chortling, tormenting Ralf by holding Ralf’s teddy bear high out of his brother’s reach. Ralf toddled after him, determined, not understanding the futility of his determination was fueling his brother’s glee.

Della started when she turned from a cookie sheet, still steaming from the oven, and saw Sullivan standing in her kitchen door well. “You scared me.”

“You told me to come at five. For dinner.”

“I lost track of time.”

“You’re lucky it was me. You should lock the door,” he told her.

She gave him a look that in no way appreciated his brotherly concern for her. In fact, her look left him in no doubt that she had tuned into the Tally Hukas show for the afternoon.

“All Sarah McDougall is trying to do is help the town,” Della said accusingly.

Jet raced by, cackling, toy high. Sullivan snagged it from him, and gave it to Ralf. Blessedly, the decibel level was instantly reduced to something that would not cause permanent damage to the human ear.

Sullivan’s eyes caught on a neatly bagged package of chocolate chip cookies on the counter. His sister usually sent him home with a goodie bag after she provided him with a home-cooked meal.

“Are those for me?” he asked hopefully, hoping she would take the hint that he didn’t want to talk about Sarah McDougall.

His sister had never been one to take hints.

“Not now, they aren’t,” she said sharply.

“Come on, Della. The chief is already punishing me,” he groaned.

“How?” she said, skeptical, apparently, that the chief could come up with a suitable enough punishment for Sullivan refusing to do his part to revitalize the town.

“Let’s just say it looks like there’s a lot of puke in my future.”

“Humph.” She was a woman who dealt with puke on a nearly daily basis. She was not impressed. She took the bagged cookies and put them out of sight. “I’m going to donate these to the bake sale in support of Summer Fest.”

“Come on, Della.”

“No, you come on. Kettle Bend is your new home. Sarah’s right. It needs something. People to care. Everyone’s so selfish. Me. Me. Me. Indifferent to their larger world. What happened to Kennedy? Think not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country?”

“We’re talking about a summer festival, not the future of our nation,” he reminded her, but he felt the smallest niggle of something astonishing. Was it guilt?

“We’re talking about an attitude! Change starts small!”

His sister was given to these rants now that she had children and she felt responsible for making good citizens of the world.

Casting a glance at Jet, who was using sweet talk to rewin his brother’s trust and therefore get close to Bubba the bear, Sullivan saw it as a monumental task she had undertaken. With a crow of delight, Jet took the bear. She obviously had some way to go.

If she was going to work on Sullivan, too, her mission was definitely doomed.

“Why on earth wouldn’t you do a few interviews if it would help the town out?” Della pressed him.

“I’m not convinced four days of summer merriment will help the town out,” he said patiently. “I haven’t been here long, but it seems to me what Kettle Bend needs is jobs.”

“At least Summer Fest is an effort,” Della said stubbornly. “It would bring in people and money.”

“Temporarily.”

“It’s better than nothing. And one person acting on an idea might lead other people to action.”

Sullivan considered his sister’s words and the earnest look on her face. Had he been too quick to say no? Strangely, the chief going after him had not even begun to change his mind. But his sister looking at him with disapproval was something else.

It was also the wrong time to remember the tears sparkling behind Sarah McDougall’s astonishing eyes.

But that’s what he thought of.

“I don’t like dealing with the press,” he said finally. “They always manage to twist what you say. After the Algard case, if I never do another interview again it will be too soon.”

Something shifted in his sister’s face as he referred to the case that had finished him as a detective. Maybe even as a human being.

At any other time he might have taken advantage of her sympathy to get hold of those cookies. But it was suddenly there between them, the darkness that he had seen that separated him from this world of cookies and children’s laughter that she inhabited.

They had faced the darkness, together, once before. Their parents had been murdered in a case of mistaken identity.

Della had been the one who had held what remained of their family—her and him—together.

She was the one who had kept him on the right track when it would have been so easy to let everything fall apart.

Only then, when she had made sure he finished school, had she chosen to flee her former life, the big city, the ugliness of human lives lost to violence.

And what had he done? Immersed himself in it.

“How could they twist what you had to say about saving a dog?” she asked, but her voice was softer.

“I don’t present well,” he said. “I come across as cold. Heartless.”

“No, you don’t.” But she said it with a trace of doubtfulness.

“It’s going to come out that I don’t even like dogs.”

“So you’ll come across as a guy who cares only about himself. Self-centered,” she concluded.

“Colossally,” he agreed.

“One hundred percent pure guy.”

They both laughed, her reluctantly, but still coming around. Not enough to take the cookies out of the cupboard, though. He made a little bet with himself that he’d have those cookies by the time he left here.

Wouldn’t that surprise the troublemaker? That he could be charming if he chose to be?

There it was. He was thinking about her again. And he didn’t like it one little bit. Not one.

“You should think about it,” his sister persisted.

It occurred to him that if he dealt with the press, his life would be uncomfortable for a few minutes.

If he didn’t appease his sister—and his boss—his life could be miserable for a lot longer than that.

“I think,” Della said, having given him ten seconds or so to think about it, “that you should say yes.”

“For the good of the town,” he said a little sourly.

“For your own good, too.”

There was something about his sister that always required him to be a better man. And then there was a truth that she, and she alone, knew.

He would do anything for her.

Yet she never took advantage of that. She rarely asked him for anything.

Sullivan sighed heavily. He had a feeling he was being pushed in a direction that he did not want to go in.

At all.

CHAPTER THREE

THE phone couldn’t have rung at a worse moment. Sarah was trying to shovel her latest batch of rhubarb jam into jars. How had her grandmother done this without getting jam everywhere? It was dripping down the outside of the jars, ruining the labels. She had managed to get sticky globs everywhere, including her hair!

Frisky? Sarah felt utterly exhausted.

Her phone had been ringing more than normal because of the free time on the Tally Hukas radio show yesterday, but still, she had the thought she had had every single time her phone had rung since she moved here to Kettle Bend.

She hoped it was Mike. She hoped he was phoning to beg her forgiveness. She hoped he was phoning to beg her to come back!

“I can’t wait to tell him no,” Sarah said, wiping goo off her hand before picking up the receiver.

Her ex-fiancé begging her forgiveness would go a long way in erasing the sourness of a heartache!

“Miss McDougall?”

It was definitely not her philandering ex-fiancé calling—Sarah would recognize that voice anywhere! She froze, licked a tiny trace of rhubarb jam off her wrist. Her heart was pounding unreasonably.

The jam seemed a little too tart.

Just like him.

“Oliver?” she said. She used his first name deliberately, hoping to aggravate him. No doubt, he was not calling voluntarily. Forced into it by the notoriety he had come into yesterday as a result of that radio show.

She enjoyed the sensation of having the upper hand.

But she also liked the way his name sounded on her lips. She had liked his name ever since she’d seen that video on the internet, and heard his name for the first time.

And this just in, fantastic footage out of Kettle Bend, Wisconsin, of Officer Oliver Sullivan …

His silence satisfied her. Then the silence was shattered by the shriek of a baby. For a stunned moment, she allowed that Oliver Sullivan might be married. There had been no ring on his finger. But lots of men did not wear rings. Especially if their line of work might make wearing them a hazard.

Sarah considered the downward swoop of her stomach with amazement. Why would she feel bereft if Oliver Sullivan was married?

“I’m having an emergency,” he said, after a moment. “I’ve tried everything. I can’t stop the baby from crying.”

“Wh-wh-what baby?”

He had her off balance, again. He was supposed to be caving to pressure, begging her to let him do some interviews!

“My nephew, Ralf. My sister takes pity on my bachelor state—”

Bachelor state. How silly that it felt as if the light was going back on in her world!

Her world, she reminded herself sternly, was jam and Summer Fest.

“—and has me over for dinner when I’m off. But she’s had a family emergency last night. Her husband was in a car accident on his way home from work. She had to leave suddenly. I don’t want to call her at the hospital and tell her the baby won’t stop crying. She’s got enough on her plate already.”

Sarah felt a faint thrill of vindication. She had just known this kind of man was lurking behind that remote facade he presented. The kind of man who would rescue a dog. Who would shield his sister from more anxiety.

“How is your brother-in-law?”

“Jonathon is fine. The injury is not life-threatening. It’s just a complicated fracture that needs surgery. It’s serious enough that she’s not leaving him.”

He would be like that, too, Sarah thought with a shiver. Fiercely devoted. If he ever allowed anything or anyone to get by his guard. Which seemed unlikely. Except this phone call would have seemed unlikely, too—yet here it was.

“And here I am,” he said. His voice was unreasonably sexy. “Jet, get down from there! With a four-year-old nephew who is climbing the curtains and hanging off the rod. And with a baby who won’t stop crying. Not knowing who to call.”

Sarah was surprised to hear, beyond the sexiness, the faintest note of something else in his voice. Panic? Surely not?

“And why call me?” she asked, softly. Imagining he might say, I saw something in your face I could not forget. You are the kind of woman a man dreams of having children with. Did you know you have a tender beauty in your eyes?

“Your front door was open when I came by to see you the other day. I saw the framed magazines on your wall. I figured you must be some kind of expert on babies. Though, Ralf’s not today’s baby, exactly. He’s eighteen months old.”

“Oh.” Again, not what she’d expected.

“Ah, also, I figured I had a bargaining chip with you.”

“A bargaining chip?”

“You want me to do a few interviews. You have the credentials of a baby expert. Maybe we could work a trade.”

It wasn’t begging exactly, but it was a stunning capitulation.

Still, it was so far from her fantasy of what he might say that she burst out laughing. “I have to warn you, my knowledge of babies is pretty much theoretical.” Sadly

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