watched as six feet four inches of muscled alpha male expertly tucked tiny baby Lily onto his receiving blanket–covered shoulder and rubbed her back as she squirmed and fretted over the loss of her food. Within moments a couple of hearty burps erupted, and Sheriff Wilson once again cradled Lily in his arms to feed her the rest of her bottle.
“Seems like you’ve done this a few times before,” Coco told him, amazed at his gentleness and ease with Lily. She was certain she’d be all nerves and frets if she had to feed her. Feeding a kitten or a baby goat or an abandoned foal was one thing, but a fragile baby was something entirely different.
“A few,” he told her, but she could tell he didn’t want to talk about it.
That never stopped her before. “Younger brothers and sisters?”
“None.”
“Nieces and nephews?”
“No siblings of any age.”
Coco perched herself on the edge of the sofa, intrigued now. “Then how...”
“One of the families I lived with consisted of a baby and a toddler, along with several other children. The older kids, like me, knew how to take care of themselves, but neither the baby nor the toddler got very much attention, which caused them to cry a lot. It was merely a matter of necessity. In order for me to get any of my homework done, I learned how to keep them content.”
“Where were their parents?”
“Like me, and like Lily here, their parents, for whatever reason, had abandoned them.”
Coco’s heart instantly shattered. She’d had no idea. “So you grew up in foster care?”
“Yep. From the time I was six years old, but that’s not anything to concern yourself with. What we need to think about now—” his voice spiraled down into a whisper “—is Lily.”
“The snow hasn’t let up at since you got here,” she whispered, thankful that Lily had finally fallen asleep. “I know you want to get her to Child Welfare or maybe to Valley Hospital, but the roads look treacherous.”
“What are you proposing?” He asked the question, but didn’t take his eyes off Lily.
She knew the sheriff was a stickler for the law, but she was hopeful that maybe he could bend the rules if she framed her idea exactly right. Besides Lily, her menagerie of animals downstairs was definitely not legal within city limits. Maybe if she offered to keep Lily for the night, he wouldn’t go snooping around her clinic, and even if he did, he’d let her slide without a fine...at least for now.
“Since it’s not safe out there for either you or Lily, you both can stay here for the night...if you want. Of course, I’m not trying to step on your toes when it comes to your authority. All I’m saying is, it’s a long way to Valley Hospital and then back to your apartment. Instead, I can put Lily down in her soft bassinet on my bed for the night and make up the sofa for you. I have a spare bedroom, but it’s for storage.”
He thought about it for a moment, as if his brain had to wrap itself around the idea that her proposal might come with illegal strings he couldn’t see.
“While you think about that,” she said, “can I get you anything to drink? Water? Coffee? Milk?”
“Actually, I’d take a shot of that scotch if I was going to stay. It’s been one heck of a night on a lot of counts.” He stood. “But I can’t stay. I tell you what. I’ll leave Lily in your care for the night, but I should get going while I can still do that. I’ll come by to pick her up in the morning once the roads are clear and I know for certain who will take her.”
“You don’t know that yet?”
“No. With the weather being what it is, the person I spoke to wasn’t really sure how to handle it.”
No way was Coco willing to let that baby go under those ambiguous circumstances.
“Then I’d be more than happy to take care of her tonight, and again, you’re more than welcome to stay, as well.”
“Thanks for the offer of your sofa.” He gazed over at it, looking skeptical.
“Okay, so maybe you wouldn’t be comfortable on my sofa. But if you slept on your side and bent your knees, five feet would be a perfectly acceptable fit.”
“I appreciate the offer, but that SUV can get through just about anything. Now, let’s get Lily settled in her bed.”
Coco picked up Lily’s cloth bassinet by the handles and made her way to the bedroom, where she placed it on the bed. Then, ever so carefully, the sheriff put Lily down on her back and expertly swaddled her with the blankets. Lily didn’t even stir, but let out a long sigh.
Then he did something she’d seen her own dad do a million times to each of his children, always feeling the love her dad had for his family. The only difference now was what the sheriff said...
He leaned over and gently kissed baby Lily on the forehead, tenderly stroked the top of her head and whispered, “Sleep well, Lily. You’re safe now.”
Then he exited the room, leaving Coco to wonder: Who are you and what have you done with by-the-book Sheriff Wilson?
* * *
WHEN JET STEPPED back outside into the quiet night, leaving the warmth of Doctor Grant and baby Lily behind, the cold wind instantly sent a shiver down his spine. The thought of trying to drive through all this heavy snow only to get back to the drafty, lonely jail made him a combination of angry and sad.
Angry at himself for not taking the doctor up on her kind offer to sleep on her sofa, and sad that his life had come to sleeping inside a jail cell on a hard cot.
He shook his head as he made his way to his rig, which was somehow completely packed in snow. Still, he told himself if Russ could make it out of there, so could he.
One problem.
He would need a good-sized shovel to dig his way out. It looked as though a snowplow had purposely shoved snow all around his SUV, making it impossible for him to get out.
But who would do such an inconsiderate thing to the sheriff’s rig?
At this point it didn’t matter. What did matter was that he’d made a big deal about not spending the night with the doctor.
He corrected himself. Not with the doctor, but at the doctor’s apartment. Was that the reason he didn’t take her up on her offer of the sofa? Didn’t he trust himself? Maybe he didn’t trust her? If she and Russ had an “open relationship,” would she try to seduce him?
He told himself that was plain silly.
He’d merely done the stand-up thing and left. Nothing more to it.
But now he was in a pickle, and had no choice but to take her up on that sofa offer.
“Fine,” he said aloud as he trudged back to her front door, the snow and cold wind blasting his face and hands with its bitter sting. He hated nights like this, nights when Mother Nature reminded him of her power,
