Montana Hero (14 page)

‡

F
lynn stared at
his desk calendar, wondering how he could possibly fit even a bathroom break into his jam-packed Monday. And the rest of the week didn’t look much better.

Not for the first time he contemplated whether or not being on the fire line led less risk than being the head of an aggregate, semi-autonomous group attached to the Crawford County’s law enforcement agency. The PR alone could bite him in the butt if he wasn’t careful.

He picked up the request Janet Haynes had left on his desk. To the casual eye, it was nothing more than a solicitation from the Marietta Fair Board asking him to be a judge on the Miss Marietta Fair Queen panel.

Hell no,
he thought. What better way to alienate people than to overlook some petty bureaucrat’s baby girl?

“Knock. Knock.”

A smile started low in his core and moved upward. “Good morning, Katherine. Come in.”

He’d thought about her on and off all weekend. On Sunday, his realtor took him to a three-bedroom, two-bath home that made him a little weak in the knees when he stood in the family room and looked at a view of the mountain range he couldn’t wait to trek. The place had acreage he didn’t need, but the current owners were retired and rented the land out.

His gut told him this was the place, but his head said, “Are you out of your mind? What does a single guy need with twenty-four acres and three bedrooms?”

But looking around, he’d imagined Kat and Brady there—and maybe a couple of to-be-named kids. A quantum leap with no basis in reality, he kept reminding himself. To no avail. His dreams had all been about her lately. Good dreams, for a change. The kind that left him rested but horny.

He stood and walked to the file cabinet where he buried the fair judge request in some nameless file from some distant year. “What can I do for you?”

She looked at the floor, obviously embarrassed about something. “I hate to ask after missing three days last week.”

He picked up the file she’d left on his desk for him to read when he first came in. “There’s missing work and there’s working from home. Obviously, you put in your time. I’m really impressed, and I’d be surprised if both of these grant applications aren’t funded. Really good job.”

Her blush was so pretty he would have kissed her if they were any place but his office—on view for everyone to see. “So, ask away.”

“Brady’s performance is Wednesday afternoon. I’d like to leave at two-thirty, if that’s not a problem.”

“Done. No worries.”

She smiled. “Thanks.” As she turned to leave, she added, “And thanks for suggesting we talk to Tucker. He gave Brady some great pointers on stage presence and how to engage with the audience.”

“Say what? When did you…?”

“Yesterday afternoon. We bumped into him at the Palace. I decided I was too wiped out to drive to Bozeman, so I took Brady to see that new Pixar movie. It was fun. Tucker spotted us and asked if he could sit with us. He said you were house hunting and his ankle hurt too much to join you.”

The tension Flynn vaguely recognized as jealousy started to dissipate. “Yeah, I looked at two places.”

“Any luck?”

Their gazes met and held. “One is a strong possibility.”

She swallowed. “That’s wonderful. I can’t wait to hear all about it, but I have a call in with the…” He missed the last of her excuse as she turned and hurried away.

Had the room shrunk or was the chemistry between them reaching critical mass?

*

Kat went straight
to her desk and swiped the mouse to open the bookkeeping program she’d been working in. The Sheriff’s Office had emailed that morning asking for a more detailed accounting of 2011. Well before her time, but she’d done her best to reconstruct what they wanted. Whoever had been doing the books at the time didn’t know squat about journal entries and making the various line items add up.

Katherine. He calls me Katherine.

Just as her grandmother always had. “Katherine, my darling, I’m going to teach you how to make snowflakes today.”

“But, Grandma, it’s July.”

“All the better don’t you think? These are made of paper so they won’t melt.”

A child could appreciate whimsy the way adults couldn’t. Mom had been so short with Grandma. Constantly annoyed by her forgetfulness and mistakes. Kat understood now it was fear that prompted her mother’s lack of patience and compassion. Fear that she was losing the woman she loved. Fear that some day she’d be in the same situation.

“There was a call for you last Friday,” Janet said, pausing to look at the computer screen over Kat’s shoulder. “Were they able to reach you? I gave them your cell phone number.”

Kat minimized the page she was working on and turned to face Janet. “Yes, thank you. They got me.”

Her property manager, Georgette, had called to say Kat’s renters had given notice. They’d been asking about the possibility of buying her house for the past six months, but Kat kept stalling. She couldn’t make up her mind. Was Marietta the right place for her and Brady or not? Did she dare sever that final tie with San Antonio?

She’d promised her property manager she’d think about it and decide this week.

Janet lingered. Since the woman wasn’t known for her diplomacy, Kat wondered what had her tongue-tied. Finally, Janet nodded toward Kat’s screen. “You’re working on old files, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Because you’re impartial. No horse in the race, so to speak. That’s why the Sheriff asked for you, specifically, isn’t it?”

Kat assumed so. “He didn’t say. He asked for this year. Because whoever did the books at the time used an older software program, I have to input some categories and numbers manually.”

“What year?”

“I’d rather not say, Janet.”

Janet took a step closer. “You have more loyalty to a Sheriff you barely see than the people you work with every day?” Janet had fifty pounds on Kat, and standing, gave off a menacing vibe even though she was perfectly harmless…Kat hoped.

“This is my job, Janet. I answer to Flynn, and he answers to the Sheriff.”

“Is there a problem?”

Both women turned to find Flynn standing a foot away, arms crossed.

Janet’s cheeks flushed an unattractive shade of red. “No. I was just asking her a question.”

“Did she give you an answer?”

Kat would have been quaking in her boots if he’d aimed that take-no-prisoners tone on her.

“Y…yes. I guess so.”

“Then, please, go back to your desk and finish your work. If you have any questions about the ongoing audits that this office will be conducting in the next few months, bring them to me. I chose Kat to do this job because she’s the most qualified of you all, and because, other than me, she’s been here the shortest amount of time.”

He looked around to be sure he had everyone’s attention. “Maybe it’s time to point out the elephant in the room and clear the air. I’ve been on the job two weeks and in that time I’ve seen
nothing
—” He paused to make his point. “Nothing that makes me believe the previous administration was anything but corrupt, self-serving and incompetent.”

The others exchanged looks.

“I’ve given you all the benefit of the doubt because I know what it’s like to work under a greedy, manipulative boss. I was young at the time and I’d just had the rug pulled out from under my cushy life. I needed the money that job provided simply to put gas in my car to get to work. But I left the job the first chance I got because right is right and wrong is going to catch up with you eventually.”

Nobody said a word. Kat felt her cheeks burn, too. She never had to lie or forge anything or break the law while she worked for Ken—mostly because other people did that sort of thing for him, but she’d put up with his groping, his innuendo and flagrant sexism the whole time she’d been here, simply because she needed the job.

But look what she’d given up. Her self-esteem for one thing.

Chewing on her bottom lip, she went back to work, making damn sure she filled in every blank and uncovered every single mistake or blatant lie.

‡

D
-day.

Or, rather, P-day—as in his class’s historical monologue play—had finally arrived.

Brady knew his lines. Unlike half his class, he didn’t need a script to remember his monologue. The only part that made his stomach feel like he’d just eaten a box of live insects was his exchange with Chloe Zabrinski. Whenever she looked at him—or, George Washington, as he was supposed to be—she’d break into a giggle. A girl giggle. The kind he’d heard behind the backs of the hands of the girls in his class ever since he moved here.

He’d always assumed those snickers were trained at him. Now, he wasn’t so sure. Maybe she giggled because she was nervous. Like him.

“You two stand over there,” their teacher told them. “They’re opening the doors in a few minutes.”

“Is your mom coming?” Chloe asked.

He nodded. His throat felt too tight to risk a word. It might come out as squeaky as a cat toy.

“My dad and stepmom are here—and my new baby sister, Arya. Mom’s in Atlanta with my stepdad.”

“Is your dad’s name Paul?”

“Uh-huh.”

His grandmother told him all about the Zabrinski family one day when they were supposed to be playing Go Fish. “The grandmother was a witch, some say. She put a hex on a dishonest banker and he died a few days later. Nobody ever crossed Hilda Zabrinski.”

Brady liked the witchy part of the story. He wondered if she had a black cat, too. Then Grandma rattled off a bunch of names that didn’t mean anything to him. Sons and daughters-in-laws, grandchildren. But he remembered Paul’s name because he was the youngest, born a year or two before Brady’s mother. “I got to hold him once when his daddy brought him to the store,” Grandma said.

Brady wasn’t very old at the time—seven or eight, maybe, but he remembered thinking that didn’t sound right. If Mr. Zabrinski told GG he loved her, why didn’t he leave his wife and kids and marry her? Wasn’t GG good enough for him? Wasn’t Mom good enough to be a Zabrinski?

The idea made Brady mad.

He intended to ask the man the first chance he got.

He looked at Chloe so long she squirmed and touched her wig. “What? Is my wig crooked?”

“No. It’s okay. Your eyes are the same color as my mom’s.”

She made a face. “Jenna said you were weird, but I told her you were just super smart. Maybe she’s right.”

She thinks I’m super smart?
Did that change things? No. Not really. “What about your grandparents? Are they coming today?”

If Chloe thought his question strange, she didn’t show it. “Maybe. They just got home from down south. They go to Arizona every winter. Grandma said they’re going to try to come.”

She kept reading her lines and closing her eyes afterward as if to memorize each word.

Too late for that, Brady thought. But he kept this opinion to himself.

He hoped her grandparents would come. He was curious to see what they looked like. After all, they might be his grandparents, too. Or, rather, her grandfather might be his grandfather.