Montana Sheriff. Marie Ferrarella

at her son, the woman shook her head. “Don’t know what that girl ever saw in you, Cole.” Her exasperation with her son could only last a few moments, if that much. He was as close to perfect as a man could be. Just like his father before him, she thought with a pang. “Must have been your charm and your silver tongue.”

      “Must’ve been,” Cole deadpanned, finally taking a bite out of the muffin he’d selected. As always, the muffin all but melted on his tongue. His mother had a knack for making baked goods that turned out to be practically lighter than air. But Cole wasn’t given to gushing effusively. Instead, he gave her an approving nod. “Not bad.”

      “You always did lay on the flattery,” Midge told him with a laugh. “I swear, Cole, you’re getting to be more and more like your father every day.”

      And that only reminded her how much she still missed her late husband.

      Squaring her small shoulders, Midge left the basket where she’d placed it and took a couple of steps toward the front door.

      “Leaving?” Cole asked, finishing the muffin. Rolling the paper that was left between his thumb and the first two fingers of his hand, he tossed the small ball into the wastebasket.

      “Well, if you don’t feel like talking, I figured I’d better be getting back to the ranch.” And then a thought occurred to her. “Come over for dinner tonight,” she told her son. “I’ll make your favorite,” Midge added to seal the deal.

      Cole sighed. He knew what she was up to. She was trying to draw him out of what she referred to as his “shell.” She’d all but undertaken a crusade to accomplish that the summer Ronnie took off.

      “I’m okay, Ma,” he insisted.

      The very innocent look was back. “Didn’t say you weren’t,” Midge replied.

      She looked at the deputy as she walked past his desk. Tim McGuire hardly looked old enough to shave despite the fact that he was edging his way toward his twenty-second birthday.

      “Tell your mother and father I said hello,” she told him.

      “Sure will,” the deputy cheerfully assured her. As he spoke, a golden crumb broke away from the muffin he was in the midst of consuming and fell onto his shirt. Looking down sheepishly, Tim laughed and brushed the crumb—and several others—off. “You sure do bake the best things, Mrs. James. I wish you’d teach my mother how you make these.”

      Unlike her son, Midge absorbed praise, fully enjoying each compliment.

      “I’m sure she does fine without my input, Tim.” Her bright blue eyes danced as she paused at the door, one hand on the doorknob. “But I can teach you anytime you’d like.”

      “Me?” the deputy asked incredulously.

      He glanced up at the sheriff’s mother, stunned. Tim was the stereotypical male who had yet to master the art of boiling water—not that he felt he had to. He still lived at home and thought that was what mothers were for—among other things.

      “Nothing wrong with a man knowing his way around a stove, Tim,” Midge told him.

      Cole rolled his eyes. “That’s all I need,” he grumbled. “A deputy in an apron, his face smeared with blueberries as he’s burning the muffins he’s trying to make.” With a shake of his head, Cole slanted a sidelong glance toward his mother. And then he raised another muffin as if to toast her with it. “Thanks for bringing these.”

      “Don’t mention it. And don’t forget about dinner tonight,” she pressed, opening the door. “Six-thirty. Don’t be late.”

      “Or what, you’ll start without me?” Cole teased.

      “Don’t get fresh,” his mother warned. But she was smiling at him as she said it. “Goodbye, Tim,” she called out.

      “Goodbye, Mrs. James,” Tim responded with enthusiasm.

      “Your mom really is a nice lady,” the deputy said with feeling, his eyes on his task. He was preparing to eliminate his third muffin.

      Cole marveled at the way Tim could put food away and still look like a walking stick. Had to be all that enthusiasm he kept displaying, Cole thought.

      “Yeah, I know,” he replied.

      He took a bite out of his muffin, thinking. It occurred to him that this wasn’t the first time his mother had mentioned stopping by Amos McCloud’s place. Seemed to him that she was doing that quite a lot.

      He made a mental note to ask her about that the next time he got a chance. He didn’t recall his mother and Amos being all that close before.

      But then, loss had a way of bringing people together, and his mother wasn’t the type who liked being alone. He could recall her taking part in whatever needed doing around the ranch, never worrying about getting her hands dirty or complaining about having to work too hard.

      In that respect she was a lot like Ronnie, he mused, breaking off another piece of the muffin.

      Except that, growing up, Ronnie had been even more so. Part of the reason, he knew, was because she’d grown up without a mother. Margaret McCloud had died shortly after giving birth to Ronnie. Never a strong woman, according to his mother, one morning Margaret just didn’t get out of bed. When Amos came in to see why she wasn’t up yet, or at least tending to the baby, who was screaming her lungs out—Ronnie was loud even then—Amos found that his wife was dead.

      The doctor who had to be called in from the neighboring town said she’d suffered from a ruptured aneurysm. Just like that, she was gone.

      Life could change in an instant.

      Cole got up. “I’ll be back in a while,” he told Tim as he walked out.

      “What’s ‘a while’?” Tim called out after him.

      “Longer than a minute,” Cole called back. And then he was gone.

       Chapter Four

      Ordinarily, patrolling Redemption and the area just outside its perimeter helped Cole clear his mind whenever he found it too cluttered.

      Ordinarily.

      But not this time.

      This time the tension he felt from the moment he merely thought he saw Ronnie had increased and refused to dissipate. This would take a lot of patience. He would just have to wait it out, work through it and give himself some time.

      What bothered him the most was that he couldn’t simply shake the effects of seeing Ronnie off or block them out. The feeling hung in there, wrapping its tendrils around him like a vine determined to grow a hundred times its size.

      Ronnie had always been his Achilles’ heel.

      Everybody had a cross to bear and this was his.

      As he drove slowly up one street and down another, patrolling the town, everything seemed to be in order—rather an interesting aspect seeing as how his whole world had been turned upside down. But nothing was going on in Redemption today that required his attention.

      No visible disputes to mediate the way there sometimes were when tempers flared up between friends and neighbors. Not even Mrs. Miller’s damn cat to coax out of a tree.

      As he passed the woman’s Prized Antique Furniture Shop, Cole could see Lucien, Mrs. Miller’s smoke-gray Persian cat, curled up on a rocking chair just to the left of the large bay window. Lucien was sound asleep.

      He’d lost count how many times that cat had to be rescued out of a tree. And the one time he needed the feline to act accordingly, it was sleeping.

      Figured.

      Cole sighed impatiently. There was nothing to divert his mind from—

      The string of muttered curses scissored through his thoughts. Had he not had his