Chapter Two
“Catnip. That’s what you are.”
Sheriff Matthew Parker shouldn’t be surprised by much that his ten-year-old daughter might come up with, but her words as she slipped into her seat belt, and looked smugly over at him, made him stop in his tracks.
“Where did you get that from and what are you doing repeating such craziness? And what do you know about catnip?”
She rolled her eyes and took a quick sip from the straw in her chocolate milkshake.
“Come on, Dad. Everyone says that. I even heard my aunts both say it. And it means that all the single girls in this town think you are hot stuff. You need a wife, and they are lining up to apply. That’s catnip to them, Dad. ”
Matt shook his head. “It’s about time I have a conversation with my sisters.
The rest of the town I can’t do much about, but those two need to remember you are an impressionable child with big ears!
” He turned the key and the engine in his truck roared to life.
He squelched the urge to hit the loudspeaker button on his official vehicle and announce once and for all to the world that he, Matt Parker, was not in the market for a wife and when he was, it was his business and not theirs.
He often wondered if he could back that up with writing tickets to those who repeated such garbage.
“It’s okay. But they do have something. You aren’t getting any younger, Dad. And I could use another girl in the house. You know, to help me win arguments about clothes and stuff.”
Those words caused him to shoot a quick look in his daughter’s direction. Had he missed something? Neglected something? It wasn’t easy being the town’s sheriff and a single dad of a precocious and way too smart for her own good female child. Luckily, they came to a halt at a red light.
“Have I missed something? Have I not done something right? Is there something we need to talk about or ask one of your aunts about?”
Jillie shook her head. “Relax, Dad. You are great…ninety-eight percent of the time.”
“Only ninety-eight percent? What have I missed?”
“You don’t get a perfect score…no parent does. Now, maybe if you let me go to bed later once in a while during the week…that might push you up to a ninety-nine.”
“Guess I will just have to be imperfect because the answer is still no way. Nice try, Jilliebean.”
“And Dad, we need to discuss you using that name for me when we’re around others.”
“Others?”
“My friends and stuff.”
He cast a sidewards glance at his daughter. “Stuff would be boys?”
“Dad! I didn’t say that.”
“I did. And just remember, you are not dating until you’re thirty.”
The famous eyeroll appeared. “By thirty, you will be really old and won’t know what I’m doing anyway.”
“Well, you will always be Jilliebean to your family and we…”
“And we’re here, Dad. Stop and let me out.
” She pointed out the fact while grabbing up her bag and unsnapping her seat belt.
He managed to pull to the curb and the door opened to let her exit, her usual can’t-wait-another-moment to be off and running to the next item on her schedule.
In this case it was choir practice at the church.
“Bye, Dad, and yes I know Aunt Tori will pick me up.” That was thrown over her departing shoulder with a fast wave and then she was halfway up the steps of the side door of the building.
What had happened to his calm, little, angelic baby girl? His ten-year-old was going on twenty at times. And that meant the aforementioned infamous thirty wasn’t far behind. He grimaced at the thought. He needed coffee.
The bell above the door jangled as a countrified butler of sorts to alert the arrival of yet another guest into the welcoming atmosphere of Tillie’s Café.
The small country diner had been in this same building, same location on the corner of a street bordering the town’s square, across from the courthouse, in view of the sheriff’s office, for over five decades.
Matt never knew a time when opening that door that the bell didn’t jangle, that the aroma of fresh-baked bread didn’t rouse the stomach, nor that the smiling shout of welcome that the owner met each guest with whether they might see you a few times each day or not didn’t greet him. No one was a stranger in Tillie’s.
Before Matt could take his place on one of the red leather swivel seats lining the long Formica-covered bar, there was a steaming mug of hot coffee poured and sat in the spot for him. The woman smiled as he took his seat. “What’ll it be today? Biscuits and gravy or a freshly baked cinnamon roll?”
“I had breakfast at home this morning, Tillie.”
“Right. I’m sure you fixed a real nice one for Jilliebean and yourself. And again, I will ask—biscuits and gravy or cinnamon roll?” The smile on her face told him that she had this conversation so often with him over the years that they both knew it was just an old habit by now.
“Roll, please.” He knew when to call it quits and he responded with a sheepish hint of a grin.
A sip of the still-hot coffee made him set the mug back down.
At the same time a slap on his back brought his attention to the man who slid into the seat beside him.
Matt nodded at his brother-in-law, Cade Lockwood.
“What brings you into the big city here?”
“The auction over at the Scotts’ place. Your sister has her eye on Mary’s china cabinet. And I thought I might check out that new combine he was so proud of.”
“Thought you already had a couple of those?” Matt asked, already knowing what was going on with this sudden interest in the new equipment.
“And that’s about the same interest you have in that workbench and tools you already told Spence you wanted to be sure and get a bid on.” He dished it right back to the uniformed man beside him.
“Well, I just hope there’s a good turnout at the auction of townspeople who are like-minded.
With Dave’s sudden death, Mary needs all the extra funds she can get.
And hopefully, she’ll get a real good price on their land.
She’s moving to Dallas to be closer to her daughter, so she’ll need a good start over there. ”
“Here you go, Sheriff Parker,” the waitress said, placing the plate with the sweet confection in front of him and refilling his coffee mug from the pot in her other hand.
He recognized her as one of Tillie’s newest hires.
Probably just over eighteen with a penchant for tight blouses and heavy makeup.
Matt smiled his thanks and picked up his fork, ignoring the fact she continued to linger in front of him.
A few seconds later, a napkin went beside his plate.
He was about to reach for it when his glance caught the fact that something had been written on it.
It was numbers and then he heard the low grunt of laughter from the man beside him.
Matt drew his hand back and instead picked up his mug.
He finished the last couple of sips and then reached for the check.
“You’re forgetting something, aren’t you?” The innocent look on his brother-in-law’s face was not lost on him as being totally fake. The man nodded toward the scrap of napkin with the numbers.
“I’m not forgetting that I don’t date teenagers.” He reached for it and wadded it up and very nicely placed it in the trash bin by the cash register. This was noted by the waitress, and she gave him a look that told him exactly what she thought of him…and it wasn’t complimentary.
Tillie accepted his check and payment with a shake of her head. “Sorry, Matt, but you’re just—”
“Don’t say it if it’s catnip,” he stated with a shake of his head. “My daughter already told me the latest gossip she has heard about her bachelor father and that was the operative word.”
Tillie laughed and so did the man who stood ready to pay his check next. “It must be tough to be you, Sheriff Parker. So very in demand with the ladies.”
The look he left them both with told them what he thought of the comment and their laughter.
He paused briefly to check the street and traffic and then bounded across to the other side, throwing up a hand in response to one being sent his way out the window of a resident from his passing truck.
Matt just needed to make it to his office, shut his door and find some peace and quiet.
“Here he is now, Mayor.” His deputy spoke up as he stepped through the door and found his sister, the mayor of their town, standing in conversation with his chief deputy.
“Just one of the two people I want to speak to,” he responded, leaving the obligatory good morning off the sentence. “Come into the office.” He did not stop to see if she followed. Once behind his desk, the door clicked shut, and he looked up to see her poised in front of him, hands on hips.
“Please note that in spite of your current bad mood and the fact that your invite into your office just now sounded very close to an order…which I know you would never think of doing as the bottom line is in fact that I can remind you that one of the two of us in this room is the other’s boss…
but be that as it may, I will simply ask what the heck has gotten your shorts in a twist so early? ”
“You and my other sister—otherwise known as Jilliebean’s…Jillie’s,” he corrected, “aunts—should know better about repeating gossip in front of an impressionable child.”
“Okay,” she said, pushing up the sleeves of her sweater, “what is the infraction we’re being accused of?”
“She informs me today in the car, that I am considered catnip…catnip, she said…which she said she heard via her aunts…and that certainly includes you. You both need to cease and desist educating my daughter on the latest gossip of this town.
It was very clear that Tori was trying very hard to maintain as much of her composure as possible. At least she knew that laughter in that moment would not help matters. “I can see where this might have gotten your morning off to a bad start.”
“Bad start? No, that was accomplished when I was having a simple cup of coffee at Tillie’s and her latest waitress—someone just barely out of childhood, a teenage man-eater—gave me her phone number along with my cinnamon roll.”
She could contain it no longer and laughter escaped. “I am sorry,” she tried to choke out between bouts of laughter at his expense, “but you bring this on yourself.”
“And just how do you figure that one?”
“Face it, Matthew,” she said, reining in her mirth, “you are a free man, in good health, with reasonably good looks, a nice house, good job, adoring sisters, and a beautiful little girl…and the population is a few hundred short of your variety of male at the moment considering the number of single females…and I’m just counting the ones of childbearing age. ”
“This has got to stop. Do you know how often I’m called to go to a house where a poor animal is stuck in a tree?
Or there are strange noises in the basement?
It’s gotten to where I send someone else to the call and then I get complaints from the person who called for me to come to the scene.
I should hire a wife and put myself out of misery.
” He sank down in his leather chair and closed his eyes.
There was silence. So much so that Matt ventured the opening of one eye to see if his sister was still in the room. She was. But there was an expression on her face that he knew and that made him come back to the present on full alert.
“No, Tori, I know what happens when you get that look and you start thinking and things happen, which usually don’t go well for those involved.”
She smiled. And that did nothing to reassure him. Just the opposite. “Matthew, you’ve just hit on a solution. Hire a wife. The single females will lose interest and move on to some other unsuspecting male.”
Matt slowly shook his head. “Hire a wife. Is that in the yellow pages or do you just google it or—?”
“Oh, okay, smarty,” she stopped him. “You wouldn’t have to really hire someone and marry them. You could hire someone to say, be a girlfriend until the others cool down and find another guinea pig…so to speak.”
“Again, I’m not sure where you hire one of those except someplace called an escort service…and I am fairly certain that would become the scandal of the century around Destiny’s River.”
She shrugged her shoulders and then moved to the door, hand resting on the doorknob when she turned to look at him. “It was just a suggestion. But you need to think of a way to take yourself off the market…or at least make people think that you are. I’ll send you my bill for my advice. Bye!”
“Find a make-believe girlfriend…or just bite the bullet and sacrifice myself on the altar of catnip.” He mumbled the words out loud to himself.
And he knew that would not be an option.
He had lost his wife even before their first anniversary when she bled out due to a physician’s oversight in her postpartum care.
He had raised Jillie from that moment. It had been just the two of them in their little family.
He had hoped he had done his best…with the help of his siblings along the way.
But it was tough. What if he chose the wrong person?
What if Jillie ended up hurt? He felt the weight of that decision only grew stronger as the years passed.
Why did he allow his eldest sister to get inside his brain so easily? He would just have to hope for one of those Christmas miracles since the season would soon be upon them. If all else failed, maybe Santa would help a guy out.