“Right. Well, I’m an only child, so I’m not really up on the dynamic.”

“That must have been lonely,” Kate said.

For some reason, her words hit a sore spot. “Uh...” Sadie cleared her throat. “I had a lot of friends.” Friends she hadn’t spoken to in a decade. Were they here? Were they gone? She had no idea.

She didn’t hold on. It wasn’t healthy. And she was a bastion of positive mental health and good feelings. And stuff.

“Well, that’s nice. I have...minimal friends, actually,” Kate said. “But you know, the ones I have are good. People who love horses as much as I do.”

“Hey, that’s important. And it’s better than lots of crappy friends anyway.” Her friends hadn’t really been crappy. Sure, they’d been terrible influences on each other, but they’d all had sucky lives. Smoking in the woods, drinking beer and making out were the best they could do since their homes were in such a sorry state.

“Yeah, I’m sure that’s true,” Kate said, putting a few leafy greens onto the cart. “Do you want some basil or mint or anything?”

“Oh, yeah!” she said. “Any. All. Can I put those in the windowsill in the kitchen?”

“Yep. I’ll grab herbs on our way back inside and you can wait for me at the counter.”

“Thank you,” she said. “For your help and the discount and...not hating me.”

“Eli doesn’t hate you,” Kate said, shoving the cart in through the door, her petite frame obviously a lot more muscled than it appeared at first glance. “He doesn’t hate anyone. He’s really very decent down to his core.”

Sadie went to the front of the counter and set her coffee on the rough-hewn wooden top, digging in her back pocket for her credit card. “He seems like he is.”

“He took care of me for most of my life. Our mom left when I was little. You probably knew that. Everyone knows that.” She reached around and tugged on her braid, the gesture so childlike and sad it made Sadie ache a little bit. “Anyway...” She flipped her hair over her shoulder and went about grabbing the scanner and checking the plants. “Our dad... Things were hard for him after that and someone had to take care of the ranch—that was Connor. And someone had to take care of me and the house. And...Eli did that.”

Sadie cleared her throat, strange, aching emotion pressing in and making it feel tight. “Well, then it’s a good thing I plan on extending an olive branch. Apology azalea. Whatever. I mean, since he’s such a good guy.”

The total flashed up on the screen, and Kate tapped away on the ten key, bringing the amount down by almost half, and Sadie sighed in relief. “Really. Really, thank you.”

“Really, no problem. Maybe...maybe we could hang out sometime?”

“Yeah, maybe. I think...I probably won’t get to plant these until tomorrow. But if you’re around, maybe we could work on it together?”

Kate brightened. “Sure! And actually, if you don’t need them now, if you want I could put them in the bed of my truck and bring them home tonight. Then you wouldn’t get dirt in your car.”

Kate’s offer gave Sadie serious feelings in the region of her heart. She wasn’t sure she deserved the other woman’s friendliness. But she wanted it. She wanted a friend, darn it. “Thanks. I’ll take the apology azalea, though, since I need to talk to Eli and I’m not doing it without reinforcement.”

Kate grabbed the largish potted plant from the cart and handed it to Sadie. “Here you go.”

Sadie wrapped her arms around it, holding both her coffee and the bag of knickknacks she’d purchased earlier. “Great. Well. See you later.” She turned and headed toward the door, pausing when she realized she had no available hands.

“Sorry!” She heard Kate scurry around the counter, rushing to hold the door for her.

“No problem,” Sadie said. “I’ll see you.”

She walked out into the warm afternoon, wind kicking up from the ocean, blowing her hair across her face and into her mouth as she walked back up the sidewalk toward where she’d parked her car. She did a little cursory scan for Eli’s patrol car but didn’t see it.

And she tried not to think too much about the sinking, vague sense of disappointment she felt over that.

CHAPTER SIX

BY THE TIME Eli clocked out, he was ready to sink onto the couch and zone out. Maybe watch whatever sport was on. He wasn’t picky. Hell, he’d take tennis at this point. Just something that didn’t require thought.

But when he pulled his car into the dirt drive that led up to his house, it didn’t take long for him to see that was not going to be in his future. There was a shiny black sedan in his space. Which meant there was a person here. Which meant he had to be on still. Which had him cursing internally in a variety of interesting combinations.

He groaned and pulled his car to the side, so that whoever owned the sedan could easily get out again once their business with him was done.

He put the car in Park and killed the engine, unbuckling and getting out, letting out a long-suffering breath as he did.

He took a few steps toward the house and saw the back of a dark-haired woman, long hair, shiny and curly, swinging down to a slim waist. She was facing...well, off into the vague distance as far as he could see.

He frowned and moved closer, then he noticed that there was another woman kneeling down in the dirt, her face partly blocked by a curtain of blond, straggly hair. He could see one pale, dirt-splattered arm. And for some reason, the sight of the bedraggled woman on her hands and knees gave him a jolt that the back of the glossy brunette hadn’t.

Then the brunette turned, and revealed both her identity and that of the blonde. And suddenly everything, including his reaction, made very irritating sense.

Because Lydia Carpenter belonged to the glossy dark hair, and the gritty mess in his dirt was, of course, Sadie Miller. Of. Course.

He and his dick needed to have a very serious conversation about appropriate reactions to women who were very annoying.

“What’s going on here?” he asked, realizing, in some dim part of his brain, that this was not a socially acceptable way to greet people.

“Eli!” Lydia said, smiling broadly, taking a few steps toward him, her tan legs on display in a very short summer dress she had not been wearing earlier. She was also wearing red lipstick, which he didn’t remember from earlier, either.

Sadie looked decidedly less happy to see him from her position on the ground. She looked up, squinting against the sun, offering an approximation of a smile that looked a little bit like she was baring her teeth at him.

“Hi. Did we have a...meeting I forgot about?” he asked, looking from Lydia to Sadie.

Lydia’s smile suddenly went a little snarly. “Uh. No. Great minds, I guess. Though I feel like I should have brought a plant.”

“What?” He took that moment to look a little more specifically at what Sadie was doing.

There was a mound of fresh dirt around an azalea plant, bright pink buds mocking him with their cheeriness on the ends of the branches.

“Surprise!” Sadie said weakly.

“Uh...” And he had nothing to say after that, so he just let it hang there.

“Eli,” Lydia said, and he wondered, yet again, how they’d gotten all first-name basis all of a sudden, “I wanted to let you know that I ran the barbecue idea past everyone on the board and the response was massive. We’re so thankful to have someone running for Logan County Sheriff who has such a vested interest in the well-being of Copper Ridge’s economy.”

Oh, dammit. This was like his worst nightmare come true. He was being railroaded. By two petite, smiling, evil women.

“Well...I... Of course I care,” he said, and Lydia’s expression changed to something else entirely. Something that he couldn’t quite identify, but that terrified him down to his soul.

“I knew you did,” she said, walking toward him and putting her hand over his. “And it’s so greatly appreciated. By me. And...of course, the whole town. And county.”

“Of course,” he said, drawing back slowly. He looked down at Sadie, who seemed frozen, her eyes wide with a combination of amusement and horror.

“Well, I have to go,” Lydia said, “but we should discuss this further. Over coffee.” She reached into her purse and dug a card out, pressing it into his hand.