is there. I’m there. Cy is there. We can protect you.”
Amy scoffed. “Cy wouldn’t hurt a hot biscuit.” The malamute was gentle as a kitten.
“And—” he held up a finger as if to stop her argument “—my place sits off the road, up an incline that requires a four-wheel drive and a lot of patience to climb. It’s backed by a mountain. No one can get to you there. Come on, Amy. Be reasonable.”
Amy softened. Reed really was trying to do the right thing. He was misguided but well intentioned. “I’m not afraid to stay here.” Not much anyway. “God has always taken care of me, and He won’t let me down now.”
Reed gave one grunt that let her know what he thought about that. His brown eyes glazed over and Amy suspected that he was thinking of Ben. Well, so was she. God had carried her through the nightmare of loss and the last year of struggling to make ends meet and to keep the town afloat. Without faith in God to sustain her, she would have given up.
Reed’s gaze came back to hers. Jaw tight, he said, “Ben would expect me to take care of you.”
Amy’s hackles jumped up like barking dogs. Reed’s twisted sense of loyalty to her dead husband was the final straw.
“I said no, Chief Truscott, and I meant it.”
Reed was still stewing as he guided his Explorer back to the police station.
“She’s going to get herself hurt, and then what?” If anything happened to Amy or her boys, he wasn’t sure what he would do. A man could only live with so much guilt.
For one minute there, he’d been tempted to snatch her up, toss her over his shoulder like some barbarian, and drag her kicking and screaming to his place. Amy brought out the worst in him.
He shifted in the seat. Amy brought out something else in him, too.
“She’s Ben’s wife. End of story.”
Only, Ben was gone.
The malamute in the passenger seat listened in silence, head cocked, his one good eye sympathetic. Reed reached across to ruffle the thick, dark fur. Cy was a lot easier to talk to than most humans, and a lot more dependable. A few years back, he’d given an eye to protect his owner, a fact that had earned him the right to sleep on the foot of Reed’s bed. Reed Truscott put a lot of stock in loyalty. It was what had gotten him into this dilemma with Amy in the first place. “Aw, Ben.”
As much as he missed his good friend Ben James, he couldn’t imagine how hard the man’s death was on Amy. But Amy was a whirlwind, staying so busy with saving the world—or at least with saving Treasure Creek—that she didn’t realize how much she needed a man’s help. She’d give him an ulcer if he wasn’t careful.
With a sigh, he ran a weary hand down his face. He hadn’t slept well since this mess over the treasure had started. Actually, he hadn’t slept well since Ben’s death. Nightmares brought him back to that moment on the rapids when Ben threw himself into the icy water to rescue a capsized tourist and never returned. Some friend Reed Truscott proved to be.
With a groan, he tried to focus on something else. Thinking of his part in Ben’s death drove him crazy. He’d been helpless then and he felt helpless now. But he still believed he should have done something.
He’d never told Amy about Ben’s final moments but he replayed them often in his thoughts. Reed could almost feel the icy, snow-laden wind of that horrible January day, the slippery, snowpacked rocks beneath his feet, and the taste of fear in his mouth as he ran toward the river, sliding, falling, only to scramble to his feet and fall some more. He knew the capsized kayak was too far out and the rapids too wild and frigid, but he tried anyway. Long after Ben disappeared beneath the foam, Reed had searched by raft and on foot, and with every step, every stroke of the oar, he’d chanted his promise to care for Ben’s family.
Though a search party eventually arrived, he’d been the one to find Ben’s broken body hours later, far downstream—a sight that was burned into his memory with painful clarity. While he’d held his friend in his arms, knowing he and no one else must take the news to Amy, he sobbed his grim promise one last time.
He’d told her that night, and in the process, he proposed marriage. He thought it was the right thing to do. The thing Ben wanted. Amy hadn’t agreed.
To make matters more insane, shortly thereafter Amy had been interviewed by Now Woman magazine. She talked about the handsome tour guides who worked for her, in an effort to promote the business, and now every love-starved female in the Lower 48 had converged upon the tiny Alaskan settlement noted for having more males than female residents.
“Maybe not every love-starved female,” he conceded to his canine companion. “But too many.”
Several had made a play for him, which just proved their desperation.
Still, a few of his buddies were now engaged or married because of that influx of females. They seemed happy about it, too. Not that he gave a frozen frog about love or marriage. He was too busy trying to keep the peace amongst all the ones who did.
Turning down Treasure Creek Lane, the town’s main thoroughfare, he eased the Explorer over the snow-dusted street and into a parking spot outside the brightly painted facade of Alaska’s Treasures tour company. Amy’s business matched the other rustic-looking buildings—bright paint, clapboard and turn-of-the-century style.
Treasure Creek remained much as it had been in the Gold Rush Days. So much so that a man could close his eyes and imagine the rinky-tink of piano and the clip-clop of horse hooves that had filled the town a hundred years ago.
He climbed out of the SUV and sucked in the chilly smell of snow coming down out off the mountains. Treasure Creek enjoyed mild winters, comparatively speaking, and today’s temperatures around freezing felt almost balmy. Black night would be upon them soon, and even now the streetlights sent a weak glow over the piles of shoveled snow. Dark or light, tired or rested, duty called the sheriff of Treasure Creek.
Amy employed a tight-knit group. The guides and office staff would want to know about the break-in.
“Come on, boy,” he said to the waiting dog.
Cy leaped happily to the ground and shook out his fur, eager for exercise. His warm breath puffed gray around his muzzle as he hopped onto the curb. Reed moved more slowly, as tired today as he’d been as a teenager when he’d labored long hours on the freezing deck of a crab boat.
As far as his father, Wes Truscott, was concerned, his son was a dead weight who should be able to earn his keep. Reed had then, and he would now. Treasure Creek depended on him to keep its citizens safe. And that included Ben’s widow.
Inside the small office of Alaska’s Treasures tour company, he was greeted by the toasty, warm smell of fresh coffee and the friendly smile of Rachel Adams, Amy’s receptionist. His belly growled, a reminder that his last meal had been somewhere around six this morning at Lizbet’s Diner. Granny Crisp would have a hot meal in the microwave if he ever made it home.
“Amy’s place was broken into,” he said without fanfare.
Rachel’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, no! Is she okay?”
“Fine.” His answer was curt. “For now.”
