to Tanner to make him this way. No one was born with the kind of disposition he had. Something had to have happened to make him back away from people.
“How could you not know?” The question slipped out before she could stop herself. Lani bit her lower lip, waiting to be chewed out.
“She married a guy who was just like my stepfather, and moved away. We lost touch,” he retorted, angry at Ellen for being so stupid. Angry at himself for not stopping her. And angry at this petite blonde, blue-eyed perpetual thorn who’d just rubbed salt into all these old wounds. Never mind that it was unwitting on her part. She’d still managed to do it. “Any other questions?” he growled.
“No,” Lani replied, feeling for him despite the fact that he was acting pretty much like a wounded bear. “I think I can pretty much fill in the blanks.”
“Oh?” What blanks? he wanted to demand, but he restrained himself.
She could hear a dangerous note in his voice, but Lani decided it best to pretend she hadn’t. Instead, she gave him the theory she’d just worked up.
“Yes. You told your sister not to marry the guy, she did anyway, and you told her that you were washing your hands of her. Hurt, she retreated, and you put her out of your mind. For the most part,” Lani qualified. “But you went on caring about her, anyway.”
Garrett rose to his feet, towering over the woman by a good ten inches. She was as fair in coloring as he was dark. He thought it rather ironic, reflecting the difference in their dispositions.
Right now, she was annoying the hell out of him—the way she did most days. But today he’d had just about enough.
“So, how long did you travel with the carnival as a fortune teller?” he asked coldly. “Or did you have a little storefront shop of your own back in San Francisco?”
“San Diego,” Lani corrected with no animosity. “And no storefront, no carnival. I do have a degree in criminology,” she replied, deliberately putting on the smile that she knew drove him crazy. “I minored in profiling.” Had he actually looked at the résumé she’d submitted, he would have known that, she thought. She turned her attention to a more pertinent question. “So, when are you going?”
“Going?” he repeated. He felt cornered and highly resented it. He wasn’t accustomed to people burrowing into his business. Folks in Booth knew better. But that was partially because they knew about his stepfather and the kind of abuse the man had inflicted on his family. They cut Garnett some slack and appreciated the work he did.
“Yes, to pick up your niece. Or is someone bringing her to you?”
He frowned. The woman who had called him with the news hadn’t offered to bring Ellie or to accompany Ellen’s remains. That meant that both were his responsibility. “I’m going,” he told the annoying deputy, then added, almost to himself, “I’ve got to see about making arrangements to bury my sister.”
“Where?” Lani asked.
He looked at her. What kind of question was that? Did she want a blow-by-blow description? “What do you mean, where? In the ground.”
“I mean are you going to bury her in New Mexico, or here in Booth?”
He hadn’t thought of that. He was still dealing with finding out that Ellen was dead. “There, I guess.”
Lani suppressed the impulse to tell him that wasn’t a good idea. Instead, she tried to tactfully steer him in what she felt was the better direction.
“Why don’t you bring her back here? This was her home, right?” Lani had done her homework on her silent boss and found out that he had grown up in the vicinity. That meant his sister had, as well. “That way your niece could feel as if her mother’s close by.”
What kind of nonsense was this woman babbling about? “What do you mean, ‘close by’? Her mother’s dead.”
This man had a soul; Lani knew it was in there someplace. Finding it was going to be a huge challenge, but she was suddenly determined to do it. “It’s a state of mind thing. Trust me, having her mother’s grave close by will help her. It did me.” Because Tanner gave her what she took to be a quizzical look, she went on to explain, “My mother died when I was really young. Whenever I was trying to work something out, or feeling particularly upset, it helped having a grave site to go visit. I’d sit there sometimes for an hour, talking to her.”
She loved her father dearly and he had tried to be there for her at all times, but sometimes, it just helped talking things out with her mother. Even if there were no audible answers.
She searched Garrett’s face, trying to see if he understood what she was telling him.
He looked somewhat uncomfortable. “That’s more than I wanted to know.”
“So you say,” Lani replied brightly. She wasn’t buying it for a minute. As she turned to go back to her desk, she heard a world-weary sigh escape from his lips.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained, she thought, turning back. “You want me to come with you?” The quizzical expression on his face deepened. “To pick up your niece.”
If he was being totally honest, what he would have wanted was to have her go instead of him, but he couldn’t very well say that. This little girl—Ellie, was it?—was his responsibility, not his gabby deputy’s. Besides, someone had to remain in Booth. That, he assumed, had been part of the town council’s thinking behind hiring a deputy. So that if he was called away, there would still be someone here to watch over the town.
Not that it needed that much watching.
“No,” he muttered. “The council wants someone to be in Booth at all times.”
Humor played along her lips. She’d been in town for six months and in that time, the only “crime” that had come to her attention was that Mrs. Willows had her mailbox knocked over, and that was only because her sister had accidentally backed her car into it and hadn’t owned up to the deed until three days later.
“Lots of people are in Booth at all times,” she pointed out glibly. “I don’t think they’d have anything against the town being ‘sheriffless’ for a couple of days.”
He frowned. “I’m not interested in your opinions,” he snapped. “Just mind the shop.”
She couldn’t continue arguing with him about everything, not without risking having him fire her. So she retreated.
“Will do,” she promised with a smart salute. “Oh, and Sheriff?”
He was already at the front door, one hand on the doorknob. Bracing himself, he glanced at her over his shoulder. “Yeah?”
“Go easy on her,” Lani advised. “She just lost her mom.”
“She’s not the only one who lost someone,” Garrett replied.
“Yes, but right now I’m betting it feels like that to her.” Lani thought of a way to eliminate the initial awkwardness. “On your trip back, while you’re driving, you might want to tell her a couple of stories about your sister when she was a little girl.”
Now
