“You had to know your business would raise eyebrows. It’s unusual.”

“Are llama treks a suspicious activity, Sheriff?” Samantha shot him a command-the-room smile.

Garrett found himself unaccountably taken aback by her direct gaze. “You…need to understand I’m talking to you as a father. I’d check out any situation I let my son into.”

“So you want to know what kind of employer I am?” Her tone was pseudo-light with a defensiveness that swam just below the surface. Her body language said he wasn’t intimidating her.

He got the feeling this woman could hold her own. Anywhere.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Having worked at various times as a teacher, a media specialist, a professional storyteller and a freelance artist, Amy Frazier now writes full time. She lives in Georgia with her husband, two philosophical cats and one very rascally terrier-mix dog.

Dear Reader,

Sometimes our identity is defined by external circumstances even as our heart tells us we are someone else altogether. Then what? What does it cost us to pick up and move on? My heroine, Samantha, must find the courage to begin a journey of change and self-discovery – oh, so much more easily said than done. Even as she thinks simplicity and solitude are the answer, she is wise enough along the way to accept the help of others at the same time that she reaches out to help. Subsequently, she finds the road less bumpy when travelled with valued companions.

And my hero, Garrett? He thinks he knows who he is and where his path should lead. But in reality, he’s taken a safe and smooth route so that his world isn’t rocked any more than it has been. Of course, Samantha – and love – are going to cause a much-needed detour!

Journeys. Sometimes it’s better to ditch the road map and wing it, always open to the possibilities!

Enjoy!

Amy Frazier

Single-Dad Sheriff

AMY FRAZIER

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

GARRETT MCQUIRE leaned on the fresh timber and wire fence—erected properly within the surveyors’ stakes, he noted—and looked out over the newly created pasture that had Tanner Harris in such a lather. As elected sheriff of Colum County, Garrett felt an obligation to listen to the concerns of all the citizens, but Tanner had been a sneak and a whiner all his life, someone who thought the world owed him, and he wore on Garrett’s last nerve.

“When I saw you stop at the head of her road,” Tanner said, “I thought you were gonna talk to her. Why didn’t ya?”

Garrett took his time answering. Officially he was responding to Tanner’s complaint against his neighbor’s new fence. As sheriff, he didn’t need to get into the fact his son was applying for a job at Whistling Meadows. To Tanner, that alone might look as if Garrett were taking sides. He wasn’t. He hadn’t even met the other side. Samantha Weston. Although he’d seen her bicycling around town. Unless she broke the law—or messed with his son in any way—she was no concern of his. Maybe that’s how he should approach the issue with Tanner.

“I didn’t talk to her,” he replied at last, “because she’s done nothing wrong. Nothing I can see.”

“Not technically, maybe.” Tanner glowered at the offending railing. “But she’s gone against time-honored tradition. Sashaying into town from who-knows-where. Buyin’ up my family land. Cuttin’ off access…”

Garrett tuned the guy out. He and the rest of Applegate’s residents had heard this rant for weeks. In the barbershop. In the diner. At town meetings, even. And although the beef wasn’t new, it had nothing to do with time-honored tradition—as much as boundary disputes came close to ritual in Colum County. Tanner’s gripes all boiled down to the fact that his aging uncle Red had had the audacity to sell his sixty acres to an outsider rather than will it to his nephew. Three-quarters of Tanner’s collateral had always been his presumed inheritance.

As to the comment that Ms. Weston had sashayed into town, she hadn’t. She’d arrived and set up her business so quietly that, if it weren’t for the new fence enclosing the pasture part of her property and the signs around the county, advertising llama day treks, you wouldn’t think much had changed.

“…and the old man’s makin’ a fool of himself.” Tanner had wound himself even tighter, if that were possible. “Living with her. A woman half his age.”

“I don’t think you can call it ‘living with her.’ You’re ignoring the fact he sold her the land with the stipulation he can live out his days in the bunkhouse. Separate from the big house. On land he loves. Farmers don’t usually get such a secure retirement. In cutting himself a creative deal, your uncle was thinking of his future.”

“Well, he sure wasn’t thinking of the future of his only kin. Me. With three boys to raise.”

“No,” Garrett replied, struck anew by Tanner’s unrelenting self-centered attitude. “I dare say he wasn’t.”

Tanner grunted and seemed to be thinking along a different tack. “Between the national park and this fence, I’m blocked in. So where are me and my boys gonna ride our ATVs?”

“Rig yourself a trailer and haul your ATVs to the authorized county trails like most of the other folks around here. Your free-range days are over. Times are changing.”

“Doesn’t mean I have to like it.” Tanner glowered at the top of the Whistling Meadows barn just visible above the far rise. “So, you’re not gonna talk to her?”

“As things stand, I have no reason to.” Garrett headed for his cruiser. “But I suggest you do. Neighbor to neighbor. Friendly-like.”

“When hell freezes over.” With a dismissive wave of his hand, Tanner headed across his littered yard toward his rundown house, which had been built too close to the boundary line as if in anticipation of the merging of the two properties.

Garrett got in his cruiser and glanced at his watch. Rory’s interview with the Weston woman should be over by now. He hoped his son got the job. As soon as he’d arrived for the summer, the twelve-year-old had found the ad in the paper and had made the call himself. The only thing he’d asked his father for was a ride this morning. And although Garrett was glad Rory was showing some initiative, he wished he knew more of what was going through his son’s mind these days. From the last visit to this, the preteen had closed down. Already reduced to seeing him on vacations, Garrett didn’t like feeling further shut out of his only child’s life. But if there was one thing he’d learned from experience with other people’s kids, it was that you didn’t find out much by pushing. Patience and observation were key— virtues easier executed in his job than in the role of parent.

PERCY TAGGING ALONG behind, Samantha walked Rory McQuire toward the five other llamas wading in the creek. The boy had said very little, but he’d made eye contact as he’d listened to her explain the duties of the part-time job. And he’d let Percy make the first moves. He seemed easier around the animal than he was with her.

“Have you had any experience with llamas?” she asked.

“No, but I’ve read about them and most other animals. I watch the Discovery Channel. Animal Planet. National Geographic. I want to be a vet.”

“How old are you?”

He patted his pocket. “I have my work permit.” A work permit meant he was young. Standing on the bank of the stream, he watched Percy join his packmates. “Besides, does it matter? I’m strong.”

“No, I guess it doesn’t matter. I was just curious.” She didn’t like people snooping, either, and turned the conversation in a different direction. “Thinking how long I might expect your services before you head off to vet school.”

He suddenly seemed uncomfortable, so she switched the subject away from him and onto her operation. “My herd’s small right now because I’m just starting out. Besides, day treks with six llamas and a dozen or so paying customers are all I can handle by myself.” And for the time being, at least, she needed to remain alone.

“Why aren’t you out on the trail today?” he asked.

“Monday’s our day off,” she replied. “Not that the boys need it. But if I don’t take a break, work around the house and the property piles up. That’s where you’d come in.”

“Did you ever think of breeding? Seems like it would bring in more money than trekking.”

She didn’t care about the money. In fact, a small, obscure operation was just what the doctor had ordered. She’d experienced the personal pitfalls of a big enterprise. But she wondered why a kid who looked like he was in middle school cared about business.

“What made you think of the moneymaking aspect?”

“My mom’s in banking,” he replied with a shrug. “I can’t avoid the subject.”

“To answer your question,” she said, strangely at ease talking to this kid as if he were much older, “I think I’ll stick to trekking. Adding females to a herd leads to a whole other set of challenges. They’re not particularly willing pack animals, and they can be moody.”

Rory seemed to be taking mental notes. “How come you advertised for stable help,” he asked at last, “when you said the llamas rarely go into the barn?”

“Force of habit. I grew up with horses. Even though the llamas stay for the most part in the pasture, the barn’s full of tack and trekking equipment, and you’d be helping keep that in order.”

Led by Percy, the five other animals had begun to drift over to the creek bank where the humans stood. Curiosity. Cats had nothing on llamas. Rory stood still. Not nervous, but waiting. Exuding a calm energy that, too, belied his years.

The three other kids who’d come seeking the job had been either too talkative or too boisterous in their movements or too touchy-feely. Llamas, like people, didn’t wish to feel assaulted and, as cuddly as they appeared, didn’t particularly like being snuggled or petted. They, more than she, had decided to pass on those first candidates.

She pointed to each llama in turn. “That’s Percy. You already met him. He’s what’s called a paint. Then there’s Mephisto, the bay. And Fred, the piebald. Mr. Jinx is an Appaloosa. The white one’s Ace. And finally Humvee, the black and tan.”

“Their coats are so different they’re easy to tell apart.”

“You’ll learn you can recognize them as easily by personality.”

Percy chose that moment to lean close and snuffle Rory on the neck. His muzzle, dripping with mountain creek water, must have been cold, but the kid stood his ground, merely chuckling. “What’s he doing?”

“He’s saying, ‘You’re hired.’”

“For real?”

“For real. Percy’s chairman of my interview committee. Can you start today?”

“I’ll have to ask my dad when he comes back.”

“Of course.” She hadn’t paid attention to how Rory had managed to get to her farm. He’d simply shown up in her barn at the agreed-upon time as she’d been cleaning tack.

“He shouldn’t mind if you could, maybe, give me a ride home when I’m done.”

She tried to hide the reflexive wince. “Sorry. I don’t drive.”

Rory shot her a disbelieving look, but she was spared an explanation by the staccato double toot of a car horn. Partway down the hill, a cruiser had pulled up in front of the barn. The driver’s door opened, and the sheriff got out.

“That’s my dad,” Rory said, heading downhill. “I’ll tell him you want me to start now. I can walk home. I’ve walked farther. Other days I can ride my bike.”

She didn’t really want to meet the sheriff—she didn’t need her second chance at life beginning with a connection to law enforcement—but, as an employer, she should say hello to this kid’s father. So she set her shoulders and marched down the hill.

The boy and the man approached each other as if they weren’t entirely at ease. After exchanging a few words, which Samantha couldn’t hear, Rory came back up to her, dejection written on his features.

He looked at the ground as he spoke. “I can start today, but…I didn’t tell you everything. Maybe you won’t want me for the job.”

“Try me.”

He looked back at his father, who remained by the cruiser. “I’m only here for the summer. In September I go back with my mom. To Charlotte. Unless….”

“Unless?”

“Let’s just say I can only promise you two months. The ad didn’t say it was a summer job.”

Percy felt comfortable with this kid. And so did she. Besides, two months to a person who was learning to live one day at a time seemed like forever. “Two months will be fine.”

“You mean it?”

“Sure. But years from now I might ask you for a vet discount. Who knows?”

His only answer was a heart-melting grin.

“Come on. Introduce me to your father.”

She told herself she had no reason to be nervous. Her business permits were in order. She hadn’t sat behind the wheel of a car since her license had been revoked. She regularly attended her court-ordered AA meetings. Although her name change hadn’t been sanctioned by the judge, she was Samantha Weston only in Colum County. For personal reasons. All her business transactions bore the corporation name she’d established three months ago. A holdover reflex from her former life. Perhaps this bit of hedging meant she hadn’t really disowned her past. She was glad Percy wasn’t around to give her that soul-searching llama look.

“Garrett McQuire. Rory’s dad.” The sheriff held out his hand. He was tall and fit. Muscles were evident beneath a well-pressed uniform. Not much else showed, though. His facial features were well concealed beneath a Stetson and behind aviator sunglasses. Stereotypical, sure. But arresting.

“Samantha Weston.” She tried not to be tentative in her handshake. “I run this place.”

“She says I can work the summer.” Rory still looked pleased, but a note of defensiveness had crept into his voice. Did the sheriff run his family the way he ran his department? “Maybe I could fill in other vacations, too, if Mom knows I’d be making money.”

“You’ll have to work that out with your mother, son. And Ms. Weston, of course.”

Samantha didn’t want to get into the middle of a custody mess. “Let’s see how the next few days work out,” she said. “You may change your mind. The work I need done isn’t particularly glamorous.”

“But the llamas are cool, Dad. You gotta meet ’em.”

“Another time, okay? Now I’m due at the courthouse. I’ll be late tonight, too. Geneva will have your supper ready for you. She can stay if you want to play cards or video games.”

“I don’t need a babysitter,” Rory mumbled.

“I know you don’t. But you might want company.” He turned to Samantha. All business. “Good to meet you. And welcome to Applegate.”

Rory seemed relieved when it was just the two of them again. “What should I do first?”

“Let’s go meet Mr. Harris. He used to own this land, and now lives in the bunkhouse. Although he doesn’t work anymore, he still supervises.”

Rory grinned. “Gotcha. Kinda like Geneva. She doesn’t babysit. She supervises.”

Red Harris, crafting fishing lures, was sitting in a rocking chair on the bunkhouse porch as they climbed the steep and rocky hill. “This here the new help?”

“You don’t miss much,” Samantha replied. “Mr. Harris, this is Rory McQuire.”

Rory stuck out his hand.

The old man took it and hung on. “Now’s a good time to get something straight.” He looked directly at Samantha. “I’m not Mr. Harris. I’m Red. And since you, missy, are young enough to be my granddaughter, and you, kid, could be my great-grandson, I sure would appreciate it if we all stuck to first names. Red, Sam and Rory okay with you two?”

Both Samantha and Rory, a little taken aback, nodded as Red shook Rory’s hand forcefully. “You any good makin’ lures?”

“Mr. Harris…Red.” Samantha felt the need for a preemptive strike. “I hired Rory to do cleanup around the property. Maybe minor repairs. To help with the tack and equipment—”

“Just kiddin’,” Red cut in with a wink to Rory. “If I had help with my lures, I’d get done twice as fast. Then what excuse would I have to sit on the porch and see how a city slicker runs a hardscrabble farm?” He chortled, and Samantha wondered at his assessment of her. She hadn’t mentioned to him where she’d come from. “Let me tell you, kid,” he continued, “weird doin’ ashe’s doin’a helluva lot better than my good-for-nothin’ nephew woulda, had he got his greedy mitts on the property.”

As Samantha resisted the point-of-pride urge to tell Red she’d grown up feeling far more comfortable in her father’s stables and pastures than at her mother’s posh parties, her BlackBerry vibrated. The caller ID told her it was her mom.

“I have to take this,” she said to Rory. “You can start by clearing the tree branches from the paddock.” The tumultuous winds of a thunderstorm last night had strewn her property with debris. “I’ll be with you in a minute.”

As she walked away, she heard Red say to Rory, “I might have to come up with a new name for her. She really isn’t a Sam. Not at all. More like a Duchess…”

“Mother,” she said quietly into the phone.

“Darling, how are you?” Her mother’s concern was, and always had been, genuine.

“I’m wonderful.” It was becoming the truth.

“Then, perhaps, your father and I could visit—”

“Please, we all agreed with Dr. Kumar. I need a total change. A year off.”

“From us as well?” Her mother’s voice held hurt.

“From everything.”

“You know, dear, we’re not the enemy.”

“I know that. But my old habits are. I need time to forge new ones. Healthy ones.”

“In secret?”

“Not secret. Seclusion.”

“But why?”

“Because I’m vulnerable right now. And you know Dad. A steamroller in a tux.” She smiled at the thought of the man she loved with an only child’s devotion. “If I saw him, I’d be persuaded right back into the rat race.”

“May I remind you Ashley International Hotels is a five-star rat race?”

“You know what I mean.”

“And…now that we’ve broached the subject… will you be attending the opening of the Singapore Ashley? You worked so hard to get it up and running.”

Samantha didn’t quite know how to answer. Although she and her father had worked side by side on the project, although she knew it was his way of introducing her to the world as his heir in the luxury hotel corporation he’d grown from a small chain of economy lodges, she wouldn’t be in Singapore for this event. Her heart wasn’t in it. For her father’s sake, she wished it were. But no matter that she had been immersed in the business from an early age and that her father implicitly believed in her—she wasn’t a hotelier. Because she’d almost self-destructed trying to be someone she wasn’t, she needed to find out who she might be.

“I did my job,” she replied cautiously, “so that others could take over. And they will. Beautifully. With you and Dad there it will be a gala opening.”

“Of course it will, but we’ll miss you, darling. We do miss you. We only want you to be happy.”

“Thank you. I’m working on it.”

“Justin wants to know if he can call you.”

“No.” Justin Steele was her ex-almost-fiancé. She’d come to think of him as the fox in the henhouse. “When he proposed, I was very clear we had no future together.”

“Oh, darling, that was the stress talking.”

No. Of all the things she’d done to please others, turning down Justin had been the first genuine action she’d taken for herself. She wouldn’t debate her mother on the issue.

After a long silence, her mother tried a different approach. “Can you give me a tiny hint as to where you are?”

“Mother!” As much as she missed her parents, Samantha needed this time. Alone. She didn’t need her mother’s well- intentioned meddling. And she certainly didn’t need the intrusion of the paparazzi that had followed her arrest and court date. “I’m counting on you to honor Dr. Kumar’s advice, and to make sure Dad doesn’t send Max out on the trail.” Max was the personal detective her father kept on retainer.

“You flatter me. I have very little real control over your father. As you say, a steamroller in a tux.”

“I’m not trying to hide from you, Mother. Every day I feel stronger and stronger. But before I come home, I want to make certain I’m strong enough to avoid a repeat of—”

“An unfortunate incident. There’s no need to bring it up.”

“But part of my recovery is accepting responsibility.”

“Darling, you had a drink or two during a social occasion. We all do. No matter what the judge thought, you are not a drunk.”

“An alcoholic. A recovering alcoholic. And, over time, it was more than a couple drinks. In fact, so many drinks at that particular luncheon I don’t even remember the school zone—”

“No!” The single syllable pierced the distance between mother and daughter. “You paid your debt. Can we, please, not relive it all?” her mother pleaded.

“Agreed. I’d like to focus on the present. And right now the sky is blue, the sun is shining and I’m breathing the most wonderful fresh air.”

“Sea air? The Hamptons, perhaps? That lovely spa on the far end—?”

“Mother, you’re incorrigible.”

“Well, Dr. Kumar may have prescribed a year’s rest, but you’re not going to keep the location secret for the whole time, are you?”

“No. I just need to settle in.” It had been three months since her rather secret—to keep the newshounds away—release from rehab. At first she hadn’t wanted her parents to know her new location because she was afraid of being drawn back into her old life. Now, she was head over heels in love with the simplicity and beauty of Applegate, tucked away in the North Carolina Blue Ridge Mountains. Now, she was afraid if her parents showed up in town, they’d love it, too. So much so that her father would buy it and turn it all into a five-star resort.

LATER THAT NIGHT, Garrett returned home, glad that today on the job had been routine. It wasn’t always so. When he’d become sheriff five years ago, he’d inherited a mess. Colum County was changing rapidly. Developers were buying up mountain tracts and turning once nearly communal land into gated vacation communities and upscale commuter subdivisions, shutting long-term residents out and making their taxes stratospherically high. That was a minor intrusion compared to the influx of big-city problems. Drugs especially. Recreational drugs had replaced moonshine. The county remained a bucolic paradise on the surface, but underneath simmered some very real issues.

Sheriff Easley, his predecessor, had run things as his daddy and granddaddy had done before him—by a slow and convoluted good-ol’-boy system that didn’t want to recognize change. The small department had been low-tech, ill-equipped and badly trained. Not to mention susceptible to the lure of small-town graft. A real embarrassment. Elected on a reform platform, Garrett had been vigilant in turning things around and confronting the county’s problems head-on. Which meant he appreciated a routine day. A relatively quiet day. Like today.

He found Geneva in the kitchen, scrubbing a scorched pan. The smell of burnt popcorn filled the air. “How’s it going?” he asked his housekeeper.

“It’s going, all right,” Geneva muttered as she lifted the pan and made as if to throw it out the window over the sink. “That boy uses my best pot to make popcorn. Puts in the oil then walks away to check on a video game. Smelling something not right, I come back here to find flames shooting out. My best,” she repeated dourly. “Nearly ruined.”

“I’ll speak to him.”

As Garrett turned toward Rory’s room, Geneva caught his arm. “Don’t.” Her voice immediately changed from irritated to concerned. “He’s been wrestling with something heavy. Been on that skinny little phone of his most of the evening with his mama. Won’t tell me what’s got him so riled.” She returned to her scrubbing. “So don’t mention this stupid old pot.”

“I won’t.” He headed for a chat with his son.

In the three years since he and his ex-wife, Noelle, had divorced, Rory had spent every vacation with Garrett. It was part of the custody settlement. Garrett always looked forward to the return to day-to-day parenting, and Rory seemed to enjoy his time in the mountains, but the initial transition was always hard. This time especially so. At twelve, almost thirteen, Rory, with one foot in childhood and the other in adulthood, had stopped communicating with his father. It made Garrett worry his son might be getting ready to tell him he was too big for life in a small town and wanted to live full-time in Charlotte.

He knocked on Rory’s bedroom door.

“Yeah.”

Taking that monosyllable for permission to enter, Garrett pushed the door open. Rory was at his computer, intent on a game Garrett had seen his deputies playing. He didn’t think it was appropriate for a twelve-year-old, but he needed to pick his battles. Right now he wanted to find out what was bugging his son.

“How did work go?” he asked. Up at Whistling Meadows Rory had seemed almost happy.

“Okay.” His boy continued to play.

Garrett sat on the edge of the bed, facing Rory. “I’d like to talk.”

Reluctantly Rory shut off the game, but he didn’t face his father. Didn’t speak.

“Geneva says you seemed upset.”

Rory scowled as if fighting back tears, as if struggling to put the boy behind him.

“Son, I can help—”

“No you can’t!” Rory twisted away. “Mom’s made up her mind.”

“About what?” Foreboding stabbed him. Despite their cool but cordial relationship so far, Noelle didn’t reveal much about Rory’s and her life in Charlotte, only her rise in the banking world. That was something she never tired of telling him, her proof, perhaps, that she’d been right and he’d been wrong about the limitations of Applegate. Now, what was going on? Was she thinking of remarrying? Or—the awful possibility hit him—was she tired of fitting Rory’s trips to Applegate into her increasingly hectic schedule? Was she planning to seek sole custody? With her continued climb up the corporate ladder, she had the contacts and the financial wherewithal.

“What has your mother decided?” he repeated.

Rory whirled on the computer stool to face Garrett. Tears glistened in his eyes. He looked five, not twelve. “Mom wants to send me to boarding school after eighth grade.”

Damn. This was out of left field. “Why?” His kid was bright and conscientious. Perhaps, at times, too conscientious. Too buttoned down. If Noelle had a fault, it was that she tried to make Rory a little pinstriped banker. “You’re doing great right where you are.”

“Mom says Harpswell Prep can help me get into an Ivy League college. But I wanna be a vet, and there are good vet schools that don’t look at whether you went to some snooty high school or not.”

Garrett felt the anger rise. Not at the notion of a prep school, but at the idea that Noelle had failed to consult him on a big decision in his son’s life. And what a decision. She had to know it pushed his buttons. He hadn’t spent his youth in foster care just so his son, with two loving parents, could get farmed out to boarding school.

“I’ll talk to your mom,” he said, rising.

“You can’t talk to her now. She’s on a plane to London. Besides, we need a plan, and I’ve been working on one.”

Surprised, Garrett turned to his son. “What plan?”

“I want to live with you. Full-time. I don’t want to go back to Charlotte. Mom’s always traveling, anyway. We could switch the schedule. I could see her on vacations.”

“Have you mentioned this to your mother?”

Rory shook his head.

Garrett could see the fireworks now. Noelle would think this was his idea. Would think he was using Rory to question her parenting skills, to circumvent the judge’s orders. While she’d use all her considerable money and influence to make Garrett pay, Rory would be the one to suffer in the end.

Garrett couldn’t let that happen.

CHAPTER TWO

“YOU LOOK LIKE the wrath of God.” That’s what Geneva had told Garrett as she’d bustled through the kitchen door earlier that morning. Then, while getting eggs and bacon out of the refrigerator, she’d muttered, “I wouldn’t worry so much if I thought there was a chance you’d been out on the town. Goin’ a little wild. Havin’ a little fun…”

She knew him better than that.

Last night, after leaving a message on Noelle’s voice mail to contact him as soon as she arrived in London, he’d lain awake for hours, worrying the untold consequences of both her and Rory’s separate plans. Not having heard from her by morning, he’d called her assistant in Charlotte, who had her itinerary. Overseas, Noelle was already in a closed meeting. Garrett needed to understand the time difference was five hours. Was it an emergency? If not, try Noelle again around nine, North Carolina time. She should have a small break before heading into another meeting, the assistant had said, promising to leave a message as well—

“Dad, look at that!” Rory said with disgust. Garrett had thrown the old banana-seat bike in the cruiser’s trunk and was giving his son a ride to Whistling Meadows. “Someone’s tossed garbage into the pasture. I’m gonna have to take care of that first thing. Before Percy and the boys eat something they shouldn’t.”

It made Garrett proud that his son was already taking ownership of this new job.

As they pulled up the farm road, Garrett could see six llamas haltered and tethered to the paddock fence. One carried a double-sided pack, and Samantha was adjusting another on a second animal. Four more packs lay on the ground. The llamas looked cool, calm and collected, but the woman looked frazzled.

Rory barely waited for the car to come to a stop before he hopped out. “Need help?”

“Yes, please!” Samantha moved from one side of the black-and-tan animal to the other, apparently trying to balance the contents of the bags. “Twelve Rockbrook campers and their counselor are booked for this morning. I just got a call they’d penciled in the time one hour earlier than I had. They’re on their way. I’m not ready.”

Garrett, noting she looked like a woman who preferred being in charge and prepared, stepped forward to pick one of the packs off the ground. “The cinch work looks simple. Anything in particular I should know?”

“The process is pretty straightforward,” she replied, swiping wisps of pale blond hair away from her face. “If you keep the loads evenly distributed, you shouldn’t have a problem.”

“Problem?”

“Llamas express their displeasure by spitting, but that’s really a llama-llama thing.”

“Come on, Rory,” he replied, only slightly reassured. “I’ll put the bags in place. You tie them.” He headed cautiously toward a piebald llama.

“Dad, meet Fred.”

Fred emitted a sound like high tension wires that Garrett could only hope came from the front end of the beast.

“He’s humming!” Rory looked thrilled to be among these strange-looking creatures. In that, he didn’t take after his father. As a kid Garrett had never been allowed a pet.

“So, how do you keep them clean?” his son asked Samantha. “I can’t picture giving one of these guys a bath.”

“They’d get bathed only if I were going to show them,” she replied. “Which I’m not. Everybody here stays happy with a lot of rolling in the dust on their part and some very careful brushing on mine. And spring shearing.”

For the first time, the woman’s speech pattern, her cultured inflection, fully registered with Garrett. He took note of her spotless designer jeans, her expensive boots and her carefully ironed shirt—some soft material in a grayish-green—nothing from the local discount store. Stuff Noelle would have picked out. The Weston woman seemed to know what she was doing with the llamas, but she sure didn’t look or sound as if she belonged on a North Carolina farm.

“Can I do it as part of my job?” Rory asked her. “Brush ’em, I mean.”

“I’ll teach you if you really want. It’s tricky. Llamas are very sensitive to touch. Their coats can be full of static. And more than that, you have to earn their trust….”

Garrett listened with surprise to his son and this stranger talking easily. Rory had spoken more words in the past five minutes than he had in the entire week he’d been in Applegate. As a father, he wanted to be a part of the conversation, too.

He fell back on what every resident asked a newcomer. “So, Samantha, where are you from originally?”

She looked as if he’d asked her for her Social Security and bank account numbers plus the key to her house. At that moment the instincts of both father and sheriff kicked in. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to run a check on his son’s employer.

Samantha tried to keep her features neutral. “I’ve lived too many places to count,” she replied with her pat answer. It wasn’t a lie. Although the Virginia estate outside D.C. had always been the family home, as an adult she’d traveled the world for the hotel business.

“Army brat?”

Rechecking a cinch, she pretended not to have heard the question.

“How do you come to run a llama trekking business in western North Carolina?” he persisted.

She wasn’t about to tell him about the rehab center just outside Asheville, recommended by an old family friend, and its program, wherein residents took turns caring for a Noah’s ark assortment of animals. She’d fallen in love with Pogo the llama. Actually, she’d fallen in love with the calm and purposeful woman she’d become in the llama’s presence.

She inspected a strap Rory had tightened. “Good work,” she said, then turned to the sheriff. “Who wouldn’t want to do this if they had the opportunity?”

As he lifted the last piece of baggage from the ground, the glance he gave her said he knew she was being deliberately evasive. But he didn’t pursue the issue.

She took the pack from his hands and headed for Percy as the sound of the Rockbrook Camp van floated up the road. Good. She didn’t need any more questions from Sheriff McQuire. Nor any more looks. If her father was a steamroller in a tux, and her ex-almost-fiancé a fox in the henhouse, she suspected this man was a walking, talking lie detector. She preferred staying off his register.

“It seems like you have things under control,” he said, his manner brusque. “Son, see you at supper.”

“Okay.” Rory eyed the giggling girls piling out of the van with as much trepidation as Samantha felt for his father’s questions. “I’m gonna clean up that garbage in the pasture near the road.” And before the lead camper could reach him, he bolted.

Samantha didn’t see the sheriff leave. She made herself busy settling the girls and giving them the basic instructions that would lead to a happy trail experience. As she talked, as she demonstrated what to do, over the girls’ questions and the llamas’ gentle humming, she began to feel at ease. Despite the possibility that her parents or the paparazzi could invade her sanctuary at any moment or that Rory’s father could reveal her as a fraud, she refused to be driven from her new life. These campers didn’t care that she was an heiress. This land didn’t care that she was a recovering alcoholic. Her llamas didn’t care about her background as a deb. They cared about her present behavior. A kind word. A gentle touch. Those were things that Samantha could offer from the heart. It was an authentic start. She would not let others spoil it.

THOUGHTS OF NOELLE AND RORY and the perplexing new owner of Whistling Meadows weighing on his mind, Garrett eased his cruiser up the rutted trail on the Whittaker property—one of many old logging roads that crisscrossed the area. Lily Whittaker had called him to say her son Mack had taken his shotgun and a full bottle of Jack Daniel’s and had left the house without a word. She was worried. It wasn’t hunting season.

Garrett was worried, too.

Mack Whittaker had been his best deputy. And his best friend. Hired because of his army training, Mack had successfully juggled work for the Sheriff’s Department with a continued Armed Forces commitment in the reserves. He had seen active duty in the reserves in a call-up to Iraq. Garrett had promised him his position when he got back. Trouble was, Stateside again, Mack didn’t seem to want the job anymore. Or Garrett’s friendship. Or any part of his previous life. He’d broken up with his longtime girlfriend. His mama said he was a bear to live with. His daddy said his eyes looked like those of a dead man. After one nasty brawl in town, he shunned old friends and acquaintances entirely. People reported seeing him in odd places, on foot tramping the side of the roads, sometimes crossing fields, sometimes lying way up on Lookout Rock, motionless, a bottle in his hand. He rarely drove. He never spoke.

Garrett approached their boyhood hideout with caution. He knew what worried Lily most, but if Mack had taken a full bottle of whiskey, he wasn’t planning on doing away with himself before he did away with the contents of that bottle. Drunk, however, Mack might turn the shotgun on an intruder.

Garrett didn’t feel like an intruder here. The big old cave had been Mack’s and his fortress as boys. Garrett’s refuge. His foster parents had been conscientious enough, sometimes even kind, but Garrett had never felt he fit in anywhere until the first day of school in third grade when Mack had come to his defense on the playground. Even at eight, Mack had had an inordinate sense of fair play. After that the two had been like brothers.

The man staggering on the ledge in front of the cave, however, didn’t look like Garrett’s brother or his friend. Unshaven, hair wild, dirty clothes in disarray, Mack looked like a vagrant ready for a sober-up stay in jail.

“Get out of here!” he shouted as Garrett stepped out of the cruiser. “Don’t want your sermons. Or your pity.”

“When did I ever preach to you?” Garrett stood not ten feet away. He could see the half-empty bottle of booze and the shotgun lying on the pebble-strewn ground. He wasn’t leaving without either his friend or the gun. “But you’ve been back a month now. Don’t you think it’s time you let someone know what’s gnawing at your gut?”

Mack sank against the mossy embankment near the cave entrance. “Even if I told you, you couldn’t begin to understand.”

“Try me.” Garrett suspected part of Mack’s despair was that he’d returned from war while one of his unit—one of their high school classmates, Nate Dona-hue—had not.

“Sheriff—” the word was spoken with uncustomary contempt “—you live in a mighty small world. In little ol’ Applegate you think you have a handle on right and wrong, black and white, up and down. But I’m here to tell you you’re one misinformed sombitch.”

“Sounds like you’re the one offering up the sermon.”

Mack said nothing.

“Rory’s home,” Garrett said, trying to break through to his friend. From the minute of Rory’s birth, Mack had embraced the role of uncle. “He’s been asking after you.”

“What’d you tell him?”

“I don’t know what to tell him. Do you want to see him?”

“No.”

“Okay. I get your point. You look like hell. Why don’t you come back to the barracks with me? Have a shower and shave. It’s McMillan’s turn to cook. Chili. Everybody would be glad to see you.” He kept talking even though it was obvious Mack was tuning him out. If Mack wanted to wall himself off after what he’d been through, who was Garrett to judge? But he was determined not to give up on his buddy. “Come on.”

Mack shook his head.

“Suit yourself. I’ll leave you the bottle, but your daddy needs the shotgun to take care of a woodchuck that’s been raiding your mama’s garden.”

Mack narrowed bleary eyes. “His case of hunting rifles isn’t enough?”

“Apparently not.” Garrett picked up the weapon.

Mack didn’t resist. Instead, he closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the embankment. When he spoke, his words were low and menacing. “There are a thousand and one ways to destroy life, and none of ’em needs a shotgun.”

The satisfaction Garrett had felt at retrieving the gun drained right out of him. “Sure you couldn’t use some chili?”

“What I could use, friend, you can’t supply.”

“I’ll be back, anyway.”

“Don’t bother.”

“You know me better than that.”

“I know nothing anymore.”

This statement—from a guy who had always been confident in who he was and his place in the world—made Garrett’s blood run cold. He wouldn’t argue now, but he’d keep returning until Mack showed signs of the man he’d once been.

With a heavy heart Garrett got in the car. Thank God he still knew who he was. Sheriff. And father. And regarding the latter, he needed to take care of matters he could still control. He needed to get in touch with Noelle. Maybe she hadn’t made a decision about Rory’s schooling. Kids could hear a suggestion and blow it all out of proportion. When he did reach her, his ex would want to know what their son was doing with his summer so far. Noelle might be highly focused on her career, but she was also a fiercely devoted, often overprotective mother. He wanted to be able to reassure her Rory’s job was safe and his employer reliable. She, too, would want a background check on Samantha Weston.

While driving back to headquarters, he phoned Noelle. Surprisingly, she picked up immediately. “Garrett, hello. I was expecting your call. Is Rory okay?”

“He’s fine. For the most part.” He tried to choose his words carefully. “He seems to think boarding school is a done deal, however, and he’s not happy about that. I can’t say I’m too pleased about it, either. You could have consulted me.”

“I threw out the idea of Harpswell, among others, to get Rory thinking about the broader possibilities in his future.”

“Broader than?” Garrett didn’t trust the implications of the broader concept. Not long after they’d married, Noelle had begun to chafe under what she considered their constricting life in Applegate. “He’s going to be an eighth-grader. How much broader than decent grades, friends and an interest in the world around him—animals, for instance—does his life have to get?”

He could hear her sigh from clear across the Atlantic.

“Less restricting than North Carolina,” she said at last.

“Are you moving?”

“I didn’t want to discuss it with you or Rory until I had something solid to add to the list of possibilities. But, yes, a move might be in the future. I’m here interviewing for a position—a promotion—in our London headquarters.”

He had to pull his cruiser to the side of the road. Had to tamp down his rising anger. “And you want to put our kid in a boarding school so you can take a job overseas? What’s wrong with the possibility of letting him live with me?”

“That would be one of the choices. As is boarding school. But I was really hoping you’d support me in trying to convince Rory it would be a wonderful experience to live in London. It would be an education in itself.”

“You want to take him with you?”

“Of course. But I want him to want to come.”

“Even farther away from me.”

“You would have summers together. That wouldn’t change.”

But how much would Rory change in a year’s time? Garrett didn’t want to be a stranger to his son.

“Besides, there’s e-mail and the telephone,” Noelle insisted. “Letters even. And you could always fly to England.” She made it sound so simple. Made him sound so provincial for not immediately embracing such simplicity.

“The three of us need to discuss this.”

“Absolutely. But don’t jump the gun. I haven’t been offered the job. Yet.”

With her talent and drive, he had no doubt she would be.

“I have to run.” Her voice was charged with the thrill of a challenge. “Wish me luck.”

“Luck,” he replied without enthusiasm, wondering, sourly, if wanting to have a good, solid father-son relationship here in Applegate meant limiting Rory.

He and Noelle hadn’t even talked about how happy he was to be working at Whistling Meadows.

THE ROCKBROOK VAN departed as Red’s pickup, the bed loaded with bulging garbage bags, arrived in the barnyard. Rory got out, but Red leaned through the driver’s window. “I’m hauling this to the landfill,” he said, then added with a nod to Rory, “The kid can work.”

“So I see,” Samantha replied, surprised Rory had pulled Red out of retirement.

“Someone dumped all this in the pasture by the road.” The boy wrinkled up his face. “Who would do that?”

Red smiled. “I tried to tell him some kids around here think summer activities mean dumping garbage, smashing mailboxes and toilet papering the trees along Main Street. Seems they do things differently in Charlotte.”

“You might have a dog problem, too,” Rory said. “We walked the fence line and saw signs of digging.”

Red’s smile disappeared. “Most likely those would be Tanner’s dogs.”

Samantha didn’t like the sound of that. If dogs got in the pasture, they could wreak havoc with the llamas. “Isn’t there a leash law?”

“You’d need to ask the sheriff,” Red replied. “If there is, no one pays attention to it. I’ll stop by Tanner’s on my way to the dump and talk to him about keeping his hounds on his own property.”

“No,” Samantha said quickly. From experience in the hotel business, she’d come to realize the importance of being an upfront neighbor to those already in the area. “I’ll talk to him.”

“I don’t know if that would be a good idea.” Red seemed just as adamant. “Tanner isn’t what you’d call open to suggestion.”

“We’ll do fine.” At the Singapore Ashley, she’d dealt with everyone from architects to contractors to lawyers to local officials and merchants. Tanner Harris couldn’t be more difficult than any of them. “I’ll bicycle over right now.”

“I’ll go with you,” Rory offered. “I don’t know Red’s nephew, but I know dogs.”

Red eyed the two of them. “As long as you both remember the cur you have to watch out for is Tanner.”

Samantha checked that the inner pasture gate was latched—the llamas, released from their packs and tethers, were already letting off steam, chest butting and rolling in the dust—then wheeled her bike out of the barn.

Rory joined her. “How was today’s trek?”

“It was the beginner course. Just a few hours of hiking up to Lookout Rock and back with some trail mix and sports drinks thrown in for good measure. But the girls had fun.”

“They were noisy.”

“They were okay on the trail. I think the giggling beforehand was mostly for your benefit.”

She hadn’t meant to make him blush, but he did anyway, then sped up ahead of her.

Following him to her neighbor’s property, she turned in at the corner of the fence where her pasture gave way to a woebegone yard. There, three hulking teenagers worked at building a trailer of sorts from lumber and spare parts. An all-terrain vehicle and two dirt bikes were parked nearby. Four large dogs lay chained to a tree. Rory stopped at the edge of the road and warily eyed the scene.

“Hello!” Samantha called out. “Is your father home?”

“No,” came a mumbled response before the dogs clambered to their feet and began a raucous baying. The three young men worked on without looking up.

Not knowing how long the dogs’ chains were, Samantha stayed put. Rory inched closer to her in what seemed more of a protective gesture than fear.

“Hush!” one of the boys shouted, making a menacing gesture with a wrench. As a group, the dogs slunk back to the tree.

“I’m Samantha Weston. Your new neighbor. May I have a word with you?”

The tallest teenager slowly straightened. “It’s a free country.”

Pulling one of her business cards from her back pocket, she left her bike at the edge of the road. “Would you, please, have your father call me? My number’s on the card.”

The boy took the card and, without looking at it, stuffed it in his jeans. “I don’t think any of us are interested in goin’ on a hike with llamas.” The last word was said with great contempt.

“I’m not trying to drum up business. I wanted to talk about the importance of keeping dogs out of the pasture.”

“You got a fence.”

“We’ve found signs of digging.”

“Lots of animals round here.” He jerked his head toward the dogs. “Ours are tied up.”

“I appreciate it,” she said evenly. “I want to be a good neighbor, too. Please, have your father phone me.”

As she turned, he mumbled, “If you wanna be a good neighbor, why’d you cut off our access?”

“Access?”

“You had to see the trails we made.”

She’d seen them. Ugly gashes worn over time with no regard for the land or its vegetation. “As I understand it,” she said, keeping her voice even, “the county has provided new and extensive ATV trails.”

“We had our own at Uncle Red’s,” a second boy added, standing in truculent solidarity with the first. “Until you came along.”

“Now that you have better ones, you don’t need my property anymore. But if you’re interested, you can come over and meet the llamas. See what trail life without motors can be like.”

The three gave a united snort of derision, then turned their backs and resumed work on the trailer.

Samantha returned to Rory and the bikes. “I’ll ride with you into town. I want to talk to the feed store owner. See if he’d be willing to top-dress the cattle feed I buy with some other ingredients good for llama health.”

“You’re not worried?”

“About their health? No, they’re doing fine on pasture for the summer.”

“Not the llamas.” Rory waited until they’d turned a bend in the road. “Those guys back there.”

“I think they’re harmless. Ticked off, yes. But harmless. I hear the new ATV trails are really good. They’ll get used to not having a backyard playground.”

Rory looked unconvinced. “You’re lucky you have me and Red.”

Samantha was touched by his gallantry.

“Then there’s always my dad if we run into real trouble.”

Oh, no, she didn’t need the sheriff in her new, clean-as-a-whistle life. “There won’t be trouble,” she reassured him.

The Harrises were the least of her concerns. Yes, she needed to discuss a new grain mixture with the feed store owner, but, more important, she needed to ask about the curt message he’d left on her voice mail—that a man had been asking about her in town. A member of the paparazzi or her father’s detective, Max?

Neither possibility was good news.

CHAPTER THREE

TUCKED IN A VALLEY off the beaten track, partway between Brevard and Asheville, Applegate was little like its bigger neighbors, the first a college town, the second a tourist destination. And although gentrification was slowly making inroads, one couldn’t spot the changes from the rustic interior of Abel Nash’s feed store. Samantha stood amid the stacked burlap sacks of grain and scarred wooden bins of seeds, waiting to speak to the owner and trying desperately not to sneeze on the fine dust that hung in the air. She couldn’t help but wonder why the sheriff stood sentry outside the store, looking for all the world as if he was waiting for someone in particular.

“Samantha, what can I do for you?” At last Abel turned his attention to her.

From her pocket she pulled a slip of paper on which she’d written the specifics of the new feed she wanted. “Could you give me this blend with my next delivery?”

He glanced at the list. “No problem. Anything else?”

“About your message…”

“That guy nosing around, yeah.” Abel scowled.

“Did he give a name?”

“No. He was slippery that way. Gut feeling, I didn’t trust him.”

“How so?”

“Said he was trying to find his long-lost niece. Showed me a picture of some society woman. Ashley something-or-other. Come to think of it, she had a passing resemblance to you—kind of like a gussied up cousin—but his niece? I sure as heck wouldn’t put the two of them on the same family shrub, let alone tree. He looked like a forties gangster.”

Samantha suppressed a smile. Not a newshound, at least. But Max. While it was true her father’s detective looked rough around the edges, the man had a heart of gold. Nevertheless, she didn’t want “Uncle Max” meddling in her new life. Not at this tender stage.

“What did you tell him?” she asked, fearing Abel Nash owed her, a newcomer, scant loyalty.

“I asked him if I looked like I ran in her circle. Then I told him if he didn’t need any seed or feed, I had paying customers to wait on.” He paused as if weighing his words. “You’ll find this has always been a live-and-let-live town. We’re not overfond of snoops.”

That was putting it mildly. In doing research on the area, as far back as the revolutionary war, Samantha had found that this region, with its peaks and valleys and inaccessible hollows, had been a haven for staunch individualists and rebels and people with something to hide. “I appreciate your respect for privacy,” she replied.

Abel had given nothing away, but surely Max had talked to others in town. Had they been as circumspect? She glanced at the sheriff on the sidewalk. Fortunately, Max, in keeping a low profile, always worked without benefit of law enforcement. He had other means. Unfortunately, he often proved more tenacious and more thorough than his uniformed counterparts. She’d almost rather take her chances with Garrett McQuire.

Almost.

Abel cleared his throat. “You’re a woman alone. If you don’t already have a gun, you might think of getting one.”

The idea appalled her, and her face must have registered that reaction.

“Most people do around here,” he said. “If for no other reason than to protect their livestock. Against snakes and coyotes. Intruders.”

“I never thought…”

“Consider it,” the storekeeper urged, not unkindly.

The responsibility of individual gun ownership. The necessity. A daunting concept. In the hotel business, security was handled by…well, security. A staff discreet and out of sight. And always at the ready. Until this moment she hadn’t really considered how others had taken care of her every need. And she’d considered herself an independent woman. Unsettled, she turned to go, only to discover she’d have to make her way past the sheriff still standing outside the door. An even more formidable prospect than purchasing a gun.

Why did he make her nervous even when she had nothing to hide? Nothing of substance. Not really.

She squared her shoulders and prepared to breeze by him with a cursory greeting. But stepping from the dim interior of the feed store into the bright June sunlight, she was temporarily blinded, and stopped to get her bearings.

“Can I have a word with you?” His deep voice, held firmly in check, nonetheless threatened her equilibrium. “I’d like to talk about Rory.”

“He…he finished work for today. We rode our bikes into town together. Said he was going off with friends to swim.”

“I know. He dropped by the office. Have you eaten lunch?”

She didn’t want lunch with this man, but her stomach—last fed hours ago at a crack-of-dawn breakfast—took that moment to cast its own vote with a loud growl.

“I’ll take that as a no.” Before she could protest, he cupped her elbow and guided her across the street. She was stunned to discover he was leading her not to Rachel’s Diner, but next door to the sheriff’s office.

“I hope you like chili,” he said as he propelled her through the front door. “McMillan made enough for an army.”

That reminded Samantha of the children’s taunt, “Who’s gonna make me? You and whose army?” and wondered how much she’d have to reveal of herself during this “lunch.”

Garrett was determined to get some answers from Samantha Weston—if that’s who she really was—and he was going to do it on his own turf. He needed to balance her right to privacy with his need to know whom his son interacted with. The lunch invitation was meant to make the procedure—one that required finesse, something he wasn’t sure he possessed—less threatening. He might be sheriff, but he’d been raised Southern. You didn’t scare off a newcomer just because you didn’t know what her daddy, granddaddy and great-granddaddy did for a living. Didn’t know yet.

“Up this way.” He motioned to a staircase that led to the barracks above the ground-floor offices.

Cool caution seemed to form a shield around her as she climbed the stairs ahead of him. Clearly, she was on guard, and he wondered why. She paused, uncertain, at the top of the stairs.

Without introductions, he propelled her toward the kitchenette, past several deputies eating at the long central trestle table. They eyed Samantha with interest. It was unusual for him to bring an outsider up here. Business dealings he always conducted below and by the book. Any personal life he kept separate from his work. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, after all.

Silently, he put together two trays of dishes, silverware, napkins, then indicated the chili, salad, bread, sweet tea. Holding herself regally, she responded with a nod that, yes, she’d try some of each. He hadn’t felt so uncomfortable since his first middle school dance. The silence of the deputies behind them was deafening.

Handing her a tray, he headed for the stairs once more. She seemed mildly surprised they wouldn’t be eating at the communal table—as if he’d ever let that happen.

“We can eat and talk in my office,” he said in a low voice, but not low enough. He saw the corner of Deputy Sooner’s mouth quirk in the beginning of a grin.

Safely downstairs in his office, he lowered his tray to the top of a stack of papers covering his blotter, then cleared a place opposite for hers. Pulling Rory’s backpack from the only other chair in the room, he indicated she should sit. She did, gingerly, looking down at an empty trap Ziggy Newsome had returned after relocating a raccoon that had taken up residence in the Newsome attic.

With his foot Garrett pushed the trap into the corner. “Sorry about the housekeeping.”

“You said you wanted to talk about your son.” She was unflappable, this one.

“I don’t know how much he’s told you about his situation,” he said, trying for equally cool.

“He said he spends summers and vacations with you and the rest of the year with his mother in Charlotte. Beyond that we only talk about animals and running my business. In those areas he seems very mature for his age.”

“Do you know much about kids?”

“No.”

“All the more reason we should talk.”

Slowly spreading a napkin on her lap, she raised one eyebrow and gave him an if-you-say-so look, but didn’t answer otherwise. He was a crossword fanatic. In the paper that morning one of the answers had been hauteur. At this moment the clue could have been “Samantha Weston.”

“I guess because Rory splits his time between my ex and me,” he said, “we’re twice as vigilant. As parents.”

“That—” she took a delicate nibble of her salad “—and the fact you’re sheriff and would naturally want to know who’s moving into your territory and what they’re planning on doing. Say, me.”

“You’ve read me accurately there. And just about ninety-nine percent of the rest of the town. You had to know your business would stir up curiosity. It’s unusual.”

“And here Abel just got through telling me this is a live-and-let-live town.” She shot him a command-the-room smile. “Are llama treks a suspicious activity, sheriff? I filed a prospectus when I applied for my permit. It’s public information.”

“I read it.”

“Oh?” She paused, her fork halfway to her mouth. “Did you read Rachel’s when she bought the diner? Or Abel’s when he inherited the feed store?”

He found himself unaccountably taken back by her direct gaze and her cross-examination. “You… need to understand I’m talking to you as a father. I’d check out any situation I let my son into. Be it a sleepover with friends or a part-time job at Mickey D’s—”

“So you want to know what kind of employer I am? Have you talked to Red Harris? I think he’s observed me long and hard enough to provide a pretty good character reference. Or maybe Abel. He could tell you I pay my bills on time.” Her tone was pseudo-light with a defensiveness that swam just below the surface. Her body language said he wasn’t intimidating her. “Have you interviewed them?”

“No.” Who the hell was conducting this interview? He bristled at her ability to turn the tables. “But now you bring up the matter of background checks, why’s there no record for Samantha Weston? Not even a driver’s license.”

“So you did snoop on me.” She seemed almost relieved. “FYI, there’s no license under my name because I don’t drive. Your lunch is getting cold.”

He looked at the untouched meal in front of him. So much for finesse and the excuse of getting to know his son’s employer.

“I think Rory and I are going to get along fine.” She seemed to have no trouble eating and talking. With an unhurried elegance that would fit right in at a formal luncheon at the Grove Park Inn, she’d finished half her meal. “If you’d like, you could come with him to work one day. To observe.”

“You really don’t know much about twelve-year-olds, do you? He’d be mortified.”

“Ah, yes. So much easier to investigate me.”

“Come on now. Let’s not get off on the wrong foot.”

“But you did run a background check on me. Beyond the license.”

He got the feeling this woman could hold her own. Anywhere. “Yes.”

“And would you tell me what you found out?” she asked politely, as if they were discussing the weather for an upcoming polo match.

Screw finesse. “That everything from your phone bills to ownership of Whistling Meadows traces back to a corporation. Ashley Dreams, Inc.”

“Yes,” she replied without offering further explanation. “Is there anything wrong with that?”

“Not that I could see.”

“Well, I guess I can’t blame a man for doing his job.” Her tone said otherwise.

“Just out of curiosity, what’s your connection to Ashley Dreams?”

“Is this a sheriff question or a father question?” He noticed her brown eyes were flecked with gold. And they got darker the more serious she became.

“Neither. Just a question.”

“You want to know if I’m the CEO or the hired help. Is that what you’re getting at?”

One thing was certain, this woman was no one’s hired help.

“Let’s put it this way,” she continued. “On paper Whistling Meadows is owned by Ashley Dreams, Incorporated, but no one really owns that slice of pasture land and mountain. You should know that, sheriff. Your son says you grew up here. Its geologic history alone reaches so far back no human can really claim it. The llamas sense that if the people can’t. The animals just live on the surface. Day to day. Content to be here amid the splendor. I suspect they chuckle at the idea that someone—corporation or individual—thinks he or she owns them or the land. But they humor us. Me, I’m just part of the scenery. Trying to live on Whistling Meadows without leaving too intrusive a footprint.”

“A philosopher,” he said, noting rather cynically she hadn’t come close to answering his question.

“Now that’s the nicest thing I’ve been called in a long time.” She rose. “On that positive note, I need to get back to the farm. Thanks for lunch.”

She smiled, then left his office, leaving him with a cold meal, the hint of some sophisticated fragrance she’d been wearing and the firm conviction that, philosopher or not, Samantha Weston—if that’s who she really was—was one self-contained woman.

Outside, Samantha shook herself as if chilled. She was so mad she could bite someone. And wouldn’t her mother be shocked at even the thought of such behavior. Well, this wasn’t the Orchid Court at the Singapore Ashley. It wasn’t even the breakfast room back home in Virginia. This was Main Street, Applegate, North Carolina, and the sheriff seemed to think he could be rude—rude and nosy—and get away with it.

So much for Abel’s assessment that the town didn’t abide snoops. Outside snoops, perhaps. The homegrown ones seemed to come with a badge.

Trying to let off steam, she pedaled her bike furiously back to the farm.

So what was she to do about the sheriff? What she always did with rude people. Ignore them. But what about Rory? With him working for her, she upped her chances of running into his father. She could fire the boy. And his “vigilant” guardian would probably seek legal redress. Wouldn’t he think he’d discovered the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow when he realized how much she was worth?

No, she’d have to fly under the radar. With both the sheriff and Max on her trail…damn, she’d forgotten about Max. One thing was certain, he wouldn’t have forgotten about her. That she hadn’t seen him in town meant only one thing—he’d found out what he wanted and was headed back to her father to report. Then her daddy would take his time. He hadn’t built his hotel empire by being rash. The grand opening of the Singapore Ashley would occupy him for a week or two. Maybe. If she was lucky. He wouldn’t mention anything to her mother, not until the very moment he’d say, “Throw a few things in a bag for a little getaway.” Then the two would sweep south. And Samantha’s new life would be turned topsy-turvy by the whirlwind that always accompanied her parents. She could just picture Mother in the farmhouse. She’d do an extreme makeover in no time. And Father? She couldn’t quite imagine him and Red and martinis on the bunkhouse porch.

Despite her request for time, her parents would arrive. Like a tsunami. There was absolutely nothing Samantha could do to stop them. She only hoped the press wouldn’t follow.

Wouldn’t that give the sheriff something to investigate?

As she turned her bicycle into the lane running up to Whistling Meadows, she realized she’d worked up quite a sweat under the June sun. How unladylike. Well, Mother would have to get used to her daughter’s adaptation to the rigors of country living. And Samantha would simply have to not think about tomorrow. Stay in the moment, she chided herself. Right now, neither the press nor your parents are here. Right now, there is no reason for you to see the sheriff. Right now…there appeared to be a body on her front porch.

Yes, a man. Sprawled. Unmoving.

She looked toward the bunkhouse. Red’s truck was gone. Instinctively, she moved to page hotel security, then gave herself a reality check. Her next move was to call 9-1-1 and pray the sheriff didn’t think she’d added murder to her sketchy résumé.

CHAPTER FOUR

“IS HE DEAD?”

“Dead drunk.” Garrett surveyed Mack, collapsed and motionless, on Samantha’s porch. How had he managed to walk here from the Whittaker property with all that whiskey in him?

“Do you know who he is?” Samantha looked at Garrett with an extraordinary degree of equanimity. He could think of several women in town whom he’d known since childhood, yet those very women would be all bent out of shape in this situation. Had been in similar situations.

“I know him,” he replied, unwilling to give out too much information. “Mack Whittaker.” He began to calculate what it would take to get his friend’s six-four, two-hundred-pound-plus frame into the cruiser. Although the men were equally matched size-wise, Garrett was at a disadvantage when Mack was unconscious and Garrett was doing all the work.

“Is someone missing him?” Without so much as wrinkling her nose, Samantha knelt beside Mack’s none-too-clean form. Garrett found himself staring at the curls of blond hair floating around her face, found himself noting that her porcelain complexion wasn’t the norm around here. He worried a little at the hint of sunburn across her nose and cheeks, before catching himself. She looked up at him. Her eyes were actually the softest shade of hazel, not brown as he’d first thought, but her gaze was penetrating. “A wife maybe?”

“N-no. No wife. Parents.” He pulled himself back into professional mode. “But I don’t want Miss Lily to see her son like this. She’s worried enough about him as is. I’ll call for backup. Let him sleep it off in a jail cell. Clean him up when he wakes.”

“Is he dangerous?”

“No.” He didn’t want to add, only to himself. It would be an admission on Garrett’s part of how low his old buddy had sunk, of how grim the road to recovery seemed and how little Garrett had been able to help. He wasn’t ready to throw in the towel yet, even if Mack was.

“Then let him stay here,” she said, standing. As if she was in charge. In fact, the way she spoke, the way she carried herself, said she was accustomed to giving orders. And used to having those orders followed.

“You don’t even know him.”

“But I know something about—”

Red Harris drove up then, interrupting their conversation. Too bad. Garrett couldn’t imagine how Samantha could possibly relate to this sorry-looking piece of humanity taking up floor space on her porch. As different from her as night and day.

Red jumped out of his truck. “Ziggy Newsome told me he saw Mack heading this way. None too steady on his feet, he said.” With concern on his craggy features, he studied Samantha. “Did he scare you, Duchess?”

“I’m okay now. But at first I thought he was dead.”

“He couldn’t look much worse if he was.” Red turned to Garrett. “You want help gettin’ him in the car?”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

“Wait!” Samantha put out a hand to stop them. “I still think he should stay here. Until he sobers up.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Garrett replied, squatting to get a grip under Mack’s armpits, “but you’re crazy. A jail cell’s the place for him until he comes round.”

“On second thought, maybe she isn’t crazy,” Red countered, hefting Mack from under his knees. “He’d be right pissed with you if he woke up in front of coworkers. Humiliated. Let’s carry him to the bunkhouse. I’ll keep an eye on him.”

Garrett was still skeptical. “You don’t have to do this, Red.”

“I know I don’t. But everyone—me included—has a story about Mack helping ’em at one time or another. He’s good people. Laid a little low, is all.”

Samantha seemed to hang on every word.

Garrett could fully understand Red’s feelings, but he couldn’t get a handle on hers.

“Duchess,” Red said, “get the bunkhouse door for us. The sheriff and I’ll haul Mack along as best we can.”

Even with the two of them, they had to sidle cautiously, Mack’s dead weight hanging between them. Inside the old bunkhouse Samantha stood beside a bed in the corner of what used to be the foreman’s room.

“Not there!” Red exclaimed. “That’s my bed and I just put on fresh sheets. I may be a Good Samaritan, but I’m no saint. Let’s get him on a bunk in the workers’ dorm, next room over.”

Garrett was glad to finally lay Mack down. That whole “He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother” saying was a crock.

“You’ll let me know when he’s conscious?” Samantha asked Red. “I want to talk to him.”

“Sure.”

She then turned to Garrett. “I’ll see you to your cruiser.”

“No need.” He wondered what Samantha could possibly have to say to Mack.

Despite the brush-off, she followed anyway. “This man works for the sheriff’s department?”

“He’s on leave.” It wasn’t any of her business. Besides, he didn’t like being questioned. Especially about things beyond his control. “Plus, he’s a buddy from way back. So…what’s your interest?”

She leveled her cool gaze at him. There was strength and resolve beneath that sophisticated exterior. You could tell by being three minutes in her company. What he didn’t know—yet—was what made her tick. Why she’d picked Applegate in the first place. Why, after being a quiet newcomer to this point, she’d chosen to get involved with Mack, of all people.

“Do you want us to call you?” she asked, “When—Mack, did you say?—is in better shape?”

“I’ll circle back in a while. If you wait until he gets his feet under him, he may be gone before you know it.”

“Perhaps.” She looked as if she knew something about his old friend that he didn’t.

“I’ll check in later anyway.”

“No need,” she insisted in an echo of his own words earlier. “Red and I are good.”

Dissatisfied, he got in the car. This morning he’d set two goals at the top of his mental to-do list: help Mack and run a background check on Rory’s employer. And what had he accomplished at the end of the day? Damn little.

Samantha watched the sheriff leave. Having deliberately sought solitude to put her life back together, why had she stuck out her neck just then?

Trying to avoid her own question, she made her way to the barn to ready the equipment for tomorrow’s lunch-and-wine trek with a group of retirees from Atlanta. She wanted everything to be a go when she got back from her early-morning AA meeting.

Not five minutes into her work, Percy poked his head over the pasture-side half door. Ever since she’d brought him into the paddock two weeks ago to treat a split and infected toenail, he’d decided he liked her company more than his fellow pack animals’ and had shown an uncanny propensity to act more human than llama. And more nosy than most. Today it was apparent he was going to stick around to see what was what.

What, exactly, was what?

Why had she come out of hiding to help Mack Whittaker? The sheriff’s buddy, no less. As Percy eyed her, she told herself she wasn’t hiding. She told herself Samantha Weston wasn’t an alias. Samantha had been her paternal grandmother’s first name, and Weston her maternal grandmother’s maiden name. She hoped combining and using the two now was less lie and more homage to a pair of women who had led purposeful lives. She wanted to do the same.

And if you led a purposeful life, you didn’t just let a fellow human being self-destruct as Mack seemed intent on doing. She recognized his pain. Maybe it was time she dug deep inside herself, to see how strong she really was, to see what she had to offer.

A daunting proposition.

“Mind your own business,” she said to Percy, who continued to stare at her. Llamas could seem unsettlingly perceptive. “Go hang out with the boys.”

He didn’t, and she finished her business in the barn under his soulful gaze.

True to his word, Garrett returned later that evening, but he checked in at the bunkhouse without as much as a hello to her. She told herself it was just as well. Of course, she was telling herself a lot of things lately, some of them helpful, but many of them obvious rationalizations.

EARLY WEDNESDAY MORNING Garrett drove Rory to work at Whistling Meadows only to be met by Red.

“We need to see to the fence—” the older man said to Rory, hefting the bicycle out of the trunk “—before the Duchess gets back. Someone damaged a length of it by ramming it with a tractor or an ATV, maybe. I have my suspicions as to who mighta done it, but I’ll take care of those in my own good time. I’ve got the fence supplies in my truck. Let’s get a move on.”

“I’ll go see Mack,” Garrett said.

“He’s not here,” Red replied, wheeling Rory’s bike to the side of the porch. “The Duchess took him to her AA meeting.”

“Her AA meeting?”

“She goes like clockwork every morning after early chores.”

That little bomb had barely gone off when Garrett thought of something else. “But she doesn’t drive, and Mack—”

“Her sponsor picks her up.” Red got in his truck and Rory followed. “Don’t worry about Mack. He’s in good hands. The Duchess may look like a china doll, but she’s one tough cookie.”

Standing in a cloud of dust as Red drove away, Garrett didn’t know what perplexed him more. That elegant and in-control Samantha attended AA, or that she’d succeeded in getting Mack to accept help. Where he’d failed. Suddenly, he felt his world slip sideways. Not only had his best friend put himself in the hands of a stranger, but his son was working his first real job—had taken off just now without a backward glance—even as his ex-wife plotted a new life overseas. None of this involved Garrett, and it stung.

It wasn’t that he needed to feel in charge. He just wanted some say in the matter. And on those three issues he had none.

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