Rodeo Sheriff Read online

  HE’S CALLING IN BACKUP

  As the law in Rodeo, Montana, Sheriff Cole Payette can handle just about anything. Taking in his orphaned niece and nephew, though, puts him out of his depth. Grief-stricken himself, Cole turns to bar owner Honey Armstrong. Cole’s longtime crush on Honey has always made him tongue-tied, but now she’s the only one he can ask for help.

  Honey is shocked by Cole’s request. He rarely says two words to her and now he needs her to help care for the children? She’s willing to pitch in, but bonding with the kids starts to feel a lot like being a family. And that’s not something Honey has ever let herself dream about—no matter how tempting Cole is...

  “Don’t use guilt on me, Cole. I don’t appreciate it. I’ll spend as much spare time as I can with Madeline, but you have to find someone who can care for the children full-time. Okay?”

  Cole nodded, but she wasn’t at all certain she’d gotten through to him.

  “I mean it, Cole. I expect you to put in your best effort to find someone else.”

  “I will,” he promised, and she believed him.

  A tiny head peered around Cole’s legs: Madeline, her blue eyes a miniature version of her uncle’s, but large in her tiny face. Every bit as haunted as his, they softened Honey’s defenses, and that would not do.

  She couldn’t offer everything Cole needed, but she would give as much as she could.

  Dear Reader,

  Since writing the first book in my Rodeo, Montana series I have wanted to write Cole Payette and Honey Armstrong’s story!

  I liked both of these characters immensely and included them in the other books in the series. Cole is a capable, intelligent, well-respected sheriff, but he falls apart whenever Honey is around. Usually articulate, Cole is extremely shy with her and can’t string two words together when she is near. Honey owns the town’s bar and is outgoing and generous.

  When Cole becomes guardian of two sad children, and is grief-stricken himself at the loss of his sister, the first person he goes to is Honey. With the help of the children, Cole learns to step outside his fears and embrace life before it slips through his fingers. Watching Honey fall in love with the already-smitten Cole was a lot of fun. Together, the duo provides the children with a new and loving home.

  I hope you enjoy reading this story as much as I enjoyed writing it!

  Mary Sullivan

  RODEO SHERIFF

  Mary Sullivan

  Author Mary Sullivan has been collecting awards, accolades and great reviews since her first book, No Ordinary Cowboy, was published by Harlequin in 2009. She has written fifteen Harlequin Superromances and four Harlequin Western Romances. She has been told her writing touches the heart.

  She loves hearing from readers! To keep up-to-date about upcoming releases, don’t forget to sign up for her newsletter at marysullivanbooks.com.

  Books by Mary Sullivan

  Harlequin Western Romance

  Rodeo Father

  Rodeo Rancher

  Rodeo Baby

  Harlequin Superromance

  No Ordinary Sheriff

  In from the Cold

  Home to Laura

  Because of Audrey

  Always Emily

  No Ordinary Home

  Safe in Noah’s Arms

  Cody’s Come Home

  Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.

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  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Excerpt from A Family for the Rancher by Allison B. Collins

  Chapter One

  Honey Armstrong wouldn’t have thought Rodeo’s sheriff, being the predictable sort, could do much to surprise her.

  Except show up with children.

  Cole Payette, in civilian clothes instead of his uniform, stood just inside the open doorway of Honey’s empty bar with two kids.

  The cloudless June day cast Cole and the children into silhouette.

  Sunlight limned Cole’s muscular frame and lightened his thatch of dirty-blond hair.

  His broad shoulders dwarfed the silent, delicate girl about three or four years old sitting on his forearm. A boy of about six held Cole’s other hand, but not quietly. His slim body percolated in motion.

  Honey’s spirits lifted, and she laughed. “I was just thinking I need a distraction this afternoon.”

  For Honey, a child was a luminous slice of life, the perfect soft golden yolk of a sunny-side-up egg.

  Cole wasn’t a father, nor did he babysit that she knew of, even though the children of town liked him.

  So whose kids were they?

  “Who do you have with you today, Cole?”

  He sighed and Honey cocked her head, alerted by a strange intensity emanating from him.

  While Cole might have lived in town for more than a dozen years, his presence on his favorite bar stool at Honey’s Place every Friday and Saturday night accounted for most of Honey’s exposure to him. He poured drinks while she took her breaks or relieved her waiters. Cole didn’t visit any other time unless on official business.

  So why was he here with children on Sunday when he knew the bar was closed? Had something happened to someone in town?

  “Come in,” she urged again. “Close the door.” Eager to recognize the children, she gestured for them to step closer. “Who did you bring to visit?”

  “They’re mine,” Cole said, his voice a hollowed-out shell of its normal deep timbre.

  Honey frowned.

  Mine?

  As owner of the only bar in town, Honey knew all that went on in Rodeo. Cole had no children and no significant other. Unless maybe he lived a double life he kept secret... Ha. In Rodeo? Where everyone knew everything about everyone? Laughable.

  “Shut the door,” she said, quietly this time. She knew trouble when it walked into her bar.

  He did so, blocking out the sunshine. He stepped closer to the lamps, a ravaged man who looked as though he’d been on a bender last night. If so, it hadn’t been here. He’d been missing from town all week, his bar stool empty last night and Friday night.

  Deep brackets framed his well-defined mouth, harsher than usual.

  Honey was certain he wasn’t yet thirty-five, but permanent frown lines had already started to develop on his forehead, and today every faint line that marred his attractive face was deeper than usual.

  He watched her with a dim, weary gaze, as did the boy and girl, all three seeming past their power to endure.

  The boy shifted from foot to foot.

  “Do you need to go to the bathroom?” Honey asked the child.

  “Nope,” he said loudly.

  Cole stared down at him. “He moves a lot.”

  Okay. But— They’re mine?

  “What do you mean, they’re yours?” Honey asked.

  “They were my sister’s kids.”

  Honey gasped. Were.

  Grief rolled from Cole in dark waves.

  After staring at Honey with wide eyes for unrelieve
d moments, the girl closed her eyes, rested her head on Cole’s shoulder and stuck her tiny thumb into her mouth.

  Honey’s heart went out to her.

  Help, Cole mouthed. One word. So much said.

  She started to rush forward, but he stiffened, resisting her sympathy.

  Okay. As always with Cole, she got mixed messages. He would help her out at the bar on the weekends, but outside of that, hands off.

  You got it, Cole. Message received.

  And yet here he was in her empty bar with a pair of children.

  Okay. Today he needed her, but no physical displays of sympathy. Maybe he was too close to the edge. Given her experience with her mother’s and Daniel’s deaths, she understood.

  “What can I do?” she asked briskly.

  “The kids will need someone to take care of them. I have to get organized. I—Maybe I have to get them... I don’t know. What? A nanny?”

  Ordinarily, Cole would know that kind of thing, but shock had a firm hold on him. “A nanny, yes,” she confirmed. “What do you need from me?”

  “Can you take care of the children while I interview people?”

  “Today? Now? That’s so soon. You just brought them to town.”

  He didn’t respond, but his hard jaw flexed.

  Honey went on, “Can you take time off work to get them settled in? If you give them over to a nanny too soon, won’t that be hard on them?”

  He shrugged helplessly, this normally rock-solid guy. “I’m taking this week off, but I need to get as much as possible settled right away.”

  Maybe a gradual transition was a good idea, kind of acclimating the children to the new nanny before Cole left them with her full-time.

  “Okay.”

  “I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m in over my head.” A massive admission from a man most often in control. “I can’t do this alone.”

  “I’ll help, of course, but I don’t understand. Why come to the bar? Why come to me?”

  “You’re good with kids,” he said. “You love them and they love you.”

  Yes, true. She was crazy about kids. No secret there. Everyone in the surrounding Montana countryside knew that. Children gathered around wherever Honey went, drawn like bees to...well, honey.

  “Can I do the interviews here?” he asked.

  “Cole, this is a bar. I know I’m closed today and tomorrow, but still. It’s hardly an appropriate spot.”

  Cole released the boy’s hand. A couple of backpacks fell from his shoulder to the floor. Given half a chance, maybe he would follow suit.

  “There’s room here for me to ask questions without anyone hearing.”

  Anyone. The children.

  “You know my place,” he said. “It’s dim and dismal.”

  “Actually, I don’t.” She’d never been in the apartment above the sheriff’s office. “But I’ll take your word for it.”

  She glanced around her bar. “While it’s spacious, I would hardly say this is a suitable spot for entertaining children.”

  He stared around, but Honey had the sense he wasn’t seeing much. Oh, my lord, he looks so lost.

  Right. Let’s get on with it.

  “Upstairs.” Brisk in her movements, she locked the front door of the bar. “We’ll use my apartment.”

  He nodded. “Makes sense. Yeah. Thanks.”

  Cole Payette, as predictable as a finely wound clock, as handsome and rugged as the Rocky Mountains—and as quiet as a monk when in her presence—had reached the end of his rope.

  No problem. Honey had enough coping skills for both of them.

  “Follow me,” she said.

  She led them to the interior stairs at the back of the building.

  A sudden tug on a huge hank of her hair had her pulling up short.

  “Ow!”

  “I’m sorry!” Cole sounded distressed.

  Someone hung onto her hair with a strong grip. Honey turned around as far as she could. It was the girl in Cole’s arms. He was trying to loosen her grip, but the child wouldn’t let go.

  Cole stared at the child in his arms. “Madeline, let go.”

  The child’s deep, hollow gaze broke Honey’s heart.

  “What’s going on?” she asked Cole.

  “Her mother had long blond hair. I guess... I don’t know... Maybe she sees a bit of her mother in you?”

  Tentatively, Honey held out her hands. The child practically jumped into her arms, where she clung like a monkey.

  She drew hanks of Honey’s waist-length, curly hair around her shoulders as though donning a protective cape.

  Honey’s heart broke a little more. She raised her eyebrows at Cole, but he shook his head, also confused by the girl’s behavior.

  If this was what she needed, this was what Honey would give. She carried the child up to her apartment, leading Cole and the boy down the hallway to her living room.

  Honey liked big comfy furniture—big comfy everything—and her space reflected that, with plenty of generous pieces for seating and lots of colorful afghans thrown around. The apartment as large as the bar below, Honey had all kinds of living space.

  While Cole conducted his interviews in privacy by the windows, Honey could play with the children at the opposite end of the room.

  Cole led the boy to the sofa, where he sat obediently and hugged one of her puffy pillows. When Honey tried to put down the girl, she clung hard, her tiny fingernails digging into Honey’s shoulders.

  Honey straightened. The girl wrapped Honey’s hair more tightly about herself. Okay, this could be a problem.

  She indicated the girl and boy. “Is this why you’ve been missing from town the past week?”

  Cole nodded.

  “No one knew where you went.”

  “Didn’t tell them.” His voice rasped as drily as day-old bread without a trace of butter.

  The children made not a peep. The girl still had her thumb in her mouth, even though she was too old for it.

  The boy played an imaginary game walking his fingers along the seams of the pillow on his lap.

  This was silly. She couldn’t keep calling them the boy and the girl.

  “What are their names?”

  “I’m Evan Engel,” the boy piped up.

  “Evan, I’m Honey.”

  “Like the stuff you put on toast?”

  She smiled. “Exactly like that.”

  The girl didn’t make a sound.

  “That’s Madeline,” Cole said. Oh, yes, he’d used the girl’s name when she’d grabbed Honey’s hair.

  Honey placed a hand on Cole’s arm. Tension ran along his muscles.

  His body reacted when she touched him with not quite a jerk, but more like—Well, she didn’t know.

  She dropped her hand and motioned him toward the far end of the room, to her small home office set up with desk, chair, her computer and a printer.

  She ran Honey’s Place from her office downstairs, but she’d designed this corner up here strictly for pleasure. Well...to be honest...to play her computer games.

  Voice pitched low, she asked, “What happened to their parents?”

  Stark vulnerability clouded his handsome face. His gaze flickered to Madeline.

  “My sister—Her husband—” His voice broke. He hissed in a breath. “In their will, they left guardianship of the children to me.”

  Before she could ask for more, he rushed on, “Can we leave it at that for now?” A pain-laden plea if she’d ever heard one.

  She’d always wanted a sister.

  “Was she your only sibling?” she asked.

  He tightened his lips and nodded.

  God. To have only one sister and to lose her so early in life, and then to have an instant family. How was he to deal with this?

  And
Evan and Madeline, poor children.

  No! She would not use that awful, inadequate, destructive word poor.

  From personal experience, starting with her father’s death when she was only six, she knew too well the damage a word like that could do to a child...and how dangerous pity was. She would not treat Madeline or Evan with that most useless of emotions, pity.

  They should never think of themselves as poor.

  How could she help them?

  Perhaps by making the day as normal as possible.

  “Before you use the phone to set up your interviews, I need to call Rachel to come over.”

  “Go ahead and use your phone,” Cole said. “I’ll use my cell. Why Rachel?”

  “We need to make the children comfortable. Rachel will bring Tori. If anyone can put them at ease it’s that little girl.”

  The tension in Cole’s shoulders eased a fraction. “Yeah. Good idea.” He stretched his neck to one side and then to the other. Bones popped. “Who should I call in town?”

  “To hire as a nanny?”

  He nodded.

  Honey tapped her lips with her forefinger. “Of the women who would suit, there are Ellen Clarkson, Tanya Mayhall and Maria Tripoli.”

  “All older women. Why?”

  “They’ve been stay-at-home moms, and their chicks have flown the nest. They’re helping to organize the teenagers for the food and beverage stands at the revival fair. They love children and are good with them.”

  Cole nodded and collapsed into her office chair. “Sounds good.”

  He pulled his cell phone out of his shirt pocket and stared at it as if it were alien to him.

  Honey touched his hand, surprising him. He glanced up with wide blue eyes. Something odd touched their depths. Maybe hope? Or...what? Honey couldn’t identify what she saw, but again tension arced under her fingers.

  She dropped her hand. “Do you need me to make the calls?”

  A split second of temptation lit the darkness in his eyes, replaced at once by determination.

  “My job. Just please take care of them this afternoon. Make them happy.”

  “Cole, no one can do that right now.”

  “You can, Honey. If anyone can, it’s you.”