Snowfall On Haven Point. RaeAnne Thayne

kind of work?”

      She held up the brown portfolio. “I’m a commercial graphic artist—computer graphics, mostly, but photography, sometimes oil on canvas. I needed a watercolor, which isn’t exactly my specialty, and Louise was kind enough to work up a few possibilities for me. They’re wonderful.”

      “Oh. I guess I didn’t realize she was artistic.”

      “She considers it more of a hobby, but she’s really talented. And not just in making shortbread.”

      He smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. He looked distracted—whether from pain or something else, she couldn’t tell.

      “Is there anything I can get you right now?”

      “I can’t think of anything.”

      “I’ll refill your water bottle while you make a list of what you’d like me to pick up at the grocery store.”

      “You don’t need to do my shopping.”

      Good grief, trying to help the man was about as easy as climbing Mount Solace in a blizzard.

      “You might as well tell me. If you don’t, I’ll just look through your kitchen cabinets and see what staples seem to be missing. Who knows what I might come back with?”

      He gave a sigh that sounded more resigned than annoyed. “Fine. I’ll text you a list of a few things. Does that work?”

      “Perfectly. See? You’re getting the hang of this whole accepting-help thing.”

      “I don’t believe you’re giving me much choice, are you?”

      “Not really,” she admitted. “I have just enough time to reheat a little more stew or I can probably throw together a sandwich if you would prefer.”

      He didn’t sigh this time, but she could tell he wanted to. “Stew would be fine,” he finally said. “Thank you.”

      “Give me a second.”

      After dishing some into a bowl and popping it into the microwave, she spent a moment straightening up his mostly clean kitchen while it reheated. She added a couple of the rolls she had brought the evening before and cut up an apple she found in the vegetable drawer of the refrigerator.

      “Here you are. Soups and stews are always better the second day, if you ask me.”

      “Agreed.”

      “I wasn’t snooping—okay, I was snooping a little—and I noticed you didn’t have milk or bread and the only other banana looked pretty ripe. I can pick those up for you and whatever else is on your list. And if you think something sounds good for dinner, let me know.”

      “Stew is fine by me, if there’s enough for one more go-round.”

      She raised an eyebrow. “My stew is remarkable, I will admit, but you can’t have it for every meal.”

      “You’re not running a short-order restaurant here. I’m fine with whatever. I’ve got frozen dinners in the freezer that will do.”

      “Are you this stubborn with everyone or am I receiving special treatment?”

      If she didn’t know better, she might have thought the stoic sheriff almost smiled, for a minute there. “My deputies would probably say the former,” he answered.

      “That makes me feel a little better. I need to run, but make sure you text me your list. I probably won’t have a chance to go shopping until after Chloe gets home from school, but we’ll bring groceries and dinner around five thirty, if that works. Meanwhile, you’ve also got leftover pie and Louise Jacobs’s shortbread.”

      “What else could a guy possibly need?”

       CHAPTER FOUR

      THE SCENT OF flowers again lingered in the room after Andrea Montgomery blew out of his house as quickly as she’d come.

      He couldn’t seem to escape it. He shifted in the recliner, wishing he could find a spot that was comfortable for more than five seconds.

      It wasn’t only the general discomfort from his smashed-to-smithereens leg or his various other aches and pains that left him edgy and unsettled. Her mention of the Jacobs family next door was even more disconcerting.

      He knew Herm and Louise from way back. Louise had been good friends with his mother—in a roundabout way, that friendship had been the catalyst for everything that came after.

      When he first moved into Wyn’s house here on Riverbend Road in late summer, he had made it a point of going over to say hello to them. It had been the neighborly thing to do, hadn’t it?

      Since then, he had spoken with them a few times in passing, but he worked long hours and their schedules didn’t seem to coincide, plus he didn’t really have an obvious excuse for stopping by.

      They had bumped into each other a few times at the only grocery store in town—which was one of the main reasons he didn’t do his shopping in Shelter Springs, five miles away, even though the two grocery stores and the box store there were larger and had a far more extensive selection.

      He had decided those rare encounters at the little store in Haven Point were worth the disadvantage of having a choice between only two brands of dishwashing detergent.

      He needed to figure out a way to do more than say hello in passing. That was the entire reason he was living here in his sister’s house instead of his perfectly adequate—and certainly more conveniently located—apartment in Shelter Springs, after all.

      In some vague corner of his mind, he had thought maybe he would wait until after the holidays before he burst in and shook their world completely. He glared down at the stupid cast. He could still go talk to Herm and Louise after the holidays, but some idiot in a stolen SUV had added a complication he never would have anticipated.

      How could he show up now, in this completely useless state, when he couldn’t even go to the grocery store on his own?

      Though he wasn’t really hungry, he forced himself to take another few bites of Andrea Montgomery’s delicious stew. His body needed fuel to heal, and the faster he healed, the faster he could return to work.

      He was on his third bite of stew when his phone buzzed with an incoming text. He set down his spoon and checked the message from Jackie Scott, the assistant he had inherited from the previous sheriff, asking him a question about holiday overtime. He answered her question, which led to two more follow-up texts in quick succession.

      Three texts in a row was his personal limit. More than that warranted an actual conversation instead of an endless string of thumbed communications via text or email.

      He quickly found her number on his phone and Jackie answered on the first ring.

      “You’re not supposed to be working, Sheriff. You should be resting.”

      He didn’t bother reminding her she had been the one to text him about overtime.

      “I’ve rested plenty. Just because my leg is broken doesn’t mean my brain is. How are things there?”

      “Ken Kramer is walking around like he won the lottery since the commission named him acting sheriff. He tried to move into your office, but I wouldn’t let him. I told him you left the door locked and I didn’t have the key, and if he wanted it, he would have to go there and take it from you.”

      “I believe I won’t hold my breath,” he said.

      Both of them knew Ken would never do that. On the surface Ken Kramer pretended to be loyal and supportive after Marshall defeated him in the last election, while behind the scenes he whispered and spread rumors. He was the kind of man who was really good at sneaky, underhanded sabotage but didn’t have the stones for outright confrontation.