The Sheriff's Christmas Surprise Part 18

She knew without being told specifics that some other law enforcement officer might have turned the baby over to child services. That was still better by far than what Don had had in mind for the boy, but getting Bobby back would have meant going through h.e.l.l.

"Just doing my job," Rick murmured, then realized how often he'd heard himself saying that these last couple of weeks or so.

He glanced over the roof of the vehicle. Olivia had just finished securing the baby in his infant seat and was turning toward the front of the car. Their eyes met and held. He felt his insides twisting again.

d.a.m.n it, stay woman. I can't ask you to give up everything for me. I don't have the right. But if you just said you wanted to stay, or at least that you didn't want to leave just yet, then I could tell you what I'm feeling. That I want you here with me.

But he remained silent.

Olivia saw the expression in his eyes, one she couldn't quite fathom. "Do you want to say something?" she asked, mentally crossing her fingers.

He wasn't conscious of the careless shrug that he gave, but she was.

"Just that I hope you have a safe trip." He held the door open for her and she got in, sitting behind the steering wheel. "You've got my number in case you run into trouble between here and Dallas."

She slid the seat belt tongue into the slot. "And what, you'll come riding to the rescue?"

He laughed shortly. There was no humor in the sound. "More like driving to the rescue and hey, it's the Texas way."

She nodded. This was pure torture. "We'll be fine." If I don't break down and cry. She looked at Tina, who was already strapped in. "Let's get you home, Tina."

Her sister breathed a sigh of relief. A look of tranquility seemed to come over her features. "Sounds good to me."

Olivia forced herself to smile as she started up the vehicle. "Yes, me, too."

Those were the last words he heard the woman who had his heart packed up in her suitcase say as he stepped back to let her leave.

He watched her drive away until the car was nothing more than a speck against the horizon, then remained there a little longer.

"HOW LONG WILL YOU go on being a jacka.s.s?"

The question came from Miss Joan as she poured a particularly inky cup of coffee for him. Rick had come in on his evening break, as he had been doing almost every evening ever since he'd become sheriff of this town. But, unlike all those other times, there was a heaviness to his step, a preoccupation about the expression on his face. Just as there had been for the past five days. Ever since that girl and her sister had left.

About to take a sip of the piping hot brew, he gazed up at the older woman. "What?"

Penciled-in dark brown eyebrows furrowed as she regarded Rick. She'd known him, man and boy, and prided herself on being able to read him better than he read himself. "You heard me. How much longer are you going to go on being a jacka.s.s?"

His took a sip, then another, before placing the cup back down on the counter. "Anything in particular you referring to?"

"Don't play games with me, boy," she warned sternly. "You know you want to go up there and see her. Be with her. Why don't you take that job offer that's been twisting in the wind and get on with your life?"

He'd only mentioned the possibility of going to Dallas for an interview. He hadn't said anything about the job actually being offered to him. "Anything you don't know, Miss Joan?"

"If that ever happens, you'll be the first to know," she promised, her expression the last word in drop-dead serious. Folding her hands together, she leaned over the counter and closer to him. "You know you're miserable without her. Anyone looking at you can see that. That friend of yours, Sam-something, he can get you on the force. You can go on being a law enforcement officer and still get the girl." She straightened up again, picking up her ever-present white cotton cloth and began polishing the counter. "If that's not the American dream, I don't know what is."

He didn't want to talk about it, not seriously. Not yet. He took another sip. "If I left, where would I get coffee like this?"

The cup was empty. She didn't refill it as was her habit. "I'll send you an urnful every Monday. Now quit talking and start packing."

He felt himself really vacillating. "I thought you liked having me around."

"I do. Only thing I like better is seeing you happy, not moping around all day with a hangdog expression on your face. Now, go." She punctuated her order by waving him on.

He circled the empty cup with his hands, staring down into it. "I'm thinking on it," was all he was willing to say at the moment.

"Think faster," she ordered as she went to tend to the customer who had just entered.

"IT'S HIS, ISN'T IT?" Tina asked abruptly.

The question had come out of the blue, in the middle of an inane conversation about the actual order of the articles cited in "The Twelve Days of Christmas."

Olivia stopped pretending that she had the slightest interest in decorating the tree she'd finally bought. Putting down her ornament, she turned to look at her sister. A nervousness undulated through her.

"Is what whose?"

Kindness and understanding flared in Tina's eyes. She was a far cry from the young woman who had stormed out of the apartment a short month ago. "The baby."

"You mean Bobby?" Olivia asked innocently, turning away. "You said that-"

Tina moved so that she was in front of her sister again. "You know, for a clever lawyer, you throw up a very poor smoke screen." She shook her head, but there was no judgment in her eyes. "No, not Bobby. I heard you throwing up this morning. And the morning before that. And the morning before that," she enumerated. Just a shade taller than her sister, she put her hand comfortingly on Olivia's shoulder. "I've been through this, Livy. Except that you, luckily, have a much nicer guy as the baby's father."

Where had this sudden urge to cry come from? She felt it scratching at her throat, trying to burst free. It took her a second to get it under control. "I don't have anything," Olivia corrected her sister. "In all likelihood, I'll never see the man again." And just saying that hurt. Hurt like h.e.l.l.

Tina had a simple solution. "You would if you went back down there."

Olivia stared at her, dumbfounded. "Just pop up? Tina, I can't go and-"

"No, not pop up," Tina contradicted. "I'm talking about going back there to live."

This time, Olivia laughed. The situation was far from funny, but Tina's simplistic take on it was. "Oh, even better. And just what would my excuse be?" she asked, then answered her own question. "You want me to walk up to Rick and say, 'Excuse me, Sheriff, but I believe I have something of yours? Some of your genes accidentally mingled with mine and it appears that I'm having your baby'?" She forced herself to pick up another ornament. "That, my dear, is a conversation stopper, not a conversation starter."

Tina took the ornament out of her hand and put it down. She bracketed Olivia's shoulders with her hands and looked into her eyes. "He deserves to know, Livy."

Olivia shook her head and shrugged out of Tina's hold. "Trust me, he'll be happier not knowing."

Tina picked up on the lead-in Olivia had given her. "Speaking of happy, you haven't been happy since we came back."

Olivia shrugged as she circled the tree, looking for the right place to hang the ornament she'd retrieved for a second time. "I've had a lot of work to catch up on. n.o.body took up the slack while I was gone."

Tina saw through the flimsy excuse. "It's not the work and you know it." She glanced over her shoulder toward the room where Bobby was sleeping. "Why don't we just pack up and go back?"

That stopped Olivia in her tracks. It never occurred to her that Tina would ever want to see that region of the state again.

"We? You mean you and Bobby, too? You actually want to move to Forever?"

Just a short while ago, the Tina she knew would have made some kind of snide remark about not being caught dead in a place where they rolled up the sidewalks after ten o'clock at night. This was quite a change-if she actually meant it.

But there was no indication that her sister was joking or pulling her leg. Tina looked-and sounded-sincere.

"It seems like a really nice, safe place to raise a kid. There're just bad memories for me here, Livy," she confessed. "I could start fresh there." Tina's eyes met hers. "Do it for Bobby and me if not for you."

"Like I don't see through that." Even so, she would have been willing to give it a try if not for one thing. "If Rick had given me the slightest indication that he wanted me to stay, maybe I could go back. But he didn't. He's probably forgotten all about me by now."

Tina stared at her incredulously. "In a week?"

"You'd be surprised how quickly men can develop amnesia-" The doorbell rang just then and she sighed. She was doing a lot of that lately. Sighing and throwing up and feeling as if her hormones were in the middle of a fierce tennis match. "That'll be the pizza I ordered. Could you do me a favor and get the door?"

"Sure." Tina left the room. A minute later, Olivia heard her sister opening the door. And then Tina called out, "It's not the pizza delivery guy, Liv."

The closer it got to Christmas, the more the local kids tried to hawk cards and wrapping paper and cookies even ants weren't interested in. She'd already bought more than her share. "Then tell whoever it is we don't want whatever they're selling."

"Don't you want to hear me out, first?"

The gla.s.s ornament slipped from her fingers, hitting the rug and rolling toward the base of the tree. Olivia turned from the eight-foot fir, her heart already pounding madly even as she told herself she was just imagining his voice.

But it wasn't her imagination.

Her mouth went dry.

He was standing in her living room, a black Stetson on his head, a tanned sheepskin jacket and worn jeans on his body and even more worn boots on his feet. All that was missing was the star.

"Rick."

He took off his hat and held it in his hands. If she didn't know better, she would have said he looked nervous. "Hi."

She blinked once. He was still there. "What are you doing here?"

"Feeling d.a.m.n awkward," he admitted freely. "But it seemed like a good idea at the time."

Her brain felt as if it had gone into a deep freeze. "What did?"

Rick took a deep breath. "Coming here to tell you that I'm going to take a job with the Dallas police force."

Tina came to life. "I think I hear Bobby waking up," she announced. "I'll just go and look in on him." She paused to grin at the father of her sister's baby. "So great seeing you again, Rick," she told him, then gave him a quick kiss on the cheek before all but flying out of the room.

Rick ran the brim of his hat through his fingers. "She looks good," he commented.

"She is." They'd gone to see the doctor that Dr. Baker had recommended and he'd had nothing but encouraging words to say about Tina's obvious progress. "Getting stronger every day. But she can't act worth a d.a.m.n." Olivia turned her attention back to him. Her heart pounded harder. He couldn't be saying what she thought she heard him saying. "So, you're really moving here?"

He nodded. "Seems like the thing to do. The commute would be a bear otherwise."

He had to be kidding. Didn't he? Oh, please let him be kidding. "Oh. That's too bad."

He thought she'd be happy that he was coming to Dallas. Had he misread the signs? "Why?" he asked cautiously.

She watched Rick's face carefully as she said, "Because Tina and I were just talking about moving to Forever."

Suddenly he was feeling a whole lot better. "You were? Why?"

She gave him Tina's reason, not her own. "Seems like a good place to raise a child. While we were there, there was definitely a feeling that everyone was looking out for Bobby. That wouldn't happen in Dallas. People don't take an interest in one another the way they do in Forever."

"It's a great place," he agreed enthusiastically. But he needed to be absolutely sure before he let his happiness loose. "You're really serious?"

Was it her imagination, or were the lights on the tree suddenly glowing brighter? "I'm really serious."

His sigh of relief was huge. "Then I don't have to take that job on the Dallas PD and move here."

She needed more. She needed to have him spell things out. "Why would you have to?"

He looked at her as if she should know the answer to that. "To be near you."

She heard him, but she was reluctant to allow herself to believe what he was saying. Because she wanted it too much. "You'd give up everything to be near me?"

"Don't you get it, Livy? You are everything," he told her in a quiet, firm voice. Stepping forward, he opened his jacket and enfolded her in his arms. Next to his heart. "Are you prepared to make an honest man of me?"

She felt warm and safe and sheltered. Olivia lifted her head to look up at him. "Isn't it usually the other way around?"

"Times have changed," he informed her. "This is called equality." The smile on his lips faded as he watched her in earnest. "I know this is short notice, but it feels as if I've been waiting for you for a long, long time. I love you, Olivia." And then he set her world on its ear by asking, "Will you marry me?"

She felt like laughing and crying, all at the same time. She wanted to shout yes, but not before everything was out on the table.

Olivia pressed her lips together, then said, "You have to know something first."

He braced himself. Whatever it was, it didn't matter. He'd handle it. As long as she was his in the end. "There's someone else?"

"In a way." She took a breath, but it didn't help. Taking a thousand breaths wouldn't make saying this any easier. "I'm pregnant." She saw him grow very still. Oh G.o.d, she'd lost him before she ever had him. "I don't know how, we did all the right things, but there you have it. I'm pregnant and the baby is yours."

"How long have you known?" he asked her quietly.

She was right, she'd lost him. Who wanted to have an instant family when he got married? "A week."

"Why didn't you call me?" His voice grew in volume. She still couldn't tell if he was angry about the baby-or excited. But she knew which side she was rooting for.

At first, she'd been tempted to call, but her more practical side had prevailed. "Because I know the kind of man you are and I didn't want you to feel you had to marry me."

His features softened, and she knew everything was going to be all right. "Now there you're wrong. I do have to marry you-because the thought of someone else holding either you or our baby would kill me. Now you have to say yes," he told her. "You'd be saving my life."

Olivia found herself back to the laughing/crying reaction again. She felt wonderful. "You are a crazy person, you know that?"

"You're stalling."

"Yes," she declared. "Yes, I love you. Yes, I'll marry you." She threaded her arms around his neck. Everything inside of her felt like singing. "Every day of the week, if you want."

"Just one day will be fine," he a.s.sured her. "Oh, wait." Pausing, he dug into the pocket of his sheepskin jacket. "Miss Joan gave me this mistletoe twig for luck, in case I needed help to get you to kiss me." He held it up over her head.