The Sheriff Catches a Bride (11 page)

So when Anna told her she’d be able to help, she counted it as a miracle and thanked God. Two weeks later, Anna passed her money, instructions and the props she needed to pull off her escape. Now she was on a train heading for Montana to find Aria’s daughter and thank her personally.

And to ask her a few questions.

For if anyone knew how to help Fila raise money to save even more women from forced marriages, it would be Aria’s daughter.

He was blowing it,
Cab knew as he followed Rose’s taillights through town. She’d stuck exactly to the speed limit all the way in from Carl’s house and now she stopped at every stop sign, looked both ways and never went above thirty miles an hour. He knew Rose well enough to doubt she was usually this much of a stickler for the rules. He’d better stop and apologize for his overzealousness about her safety when they got to her house.

Or maybe he shouldn’t.

Maybe he should do exactly what he’d said he’d do and keep on driving. If he stopped, she’d think he wanted an invitation inside. Of course, he would like that sort of invitation, but not tonight; not while she was engaged to Jason.

The sleepy town dozed around them. In the living rooms where the drapes were open, the residents gathered around their televisions, but most homes were shut up tight, their curtains drawn against the wintery night.

He’d keep driving, he decided, but if he didn’t hear back from her by tomorrow afternoon about their shooting date, he’d give her a call.

Rose pulled into her driveway,
climbed out of the truck and slammed the door shut. Cab had kept a respectable distance behind her as they drove into town, but she was still angry that he was there at all. If he thought he could stop at her house and she’d invite him in, he had another thought coming. She couldn’t help glancing over her shoulder, however, as Cab’s headlights swept the street as she walked up to the front door.

He didn’t stop at all. He didn’t even beep his horn as he passed. Just like he said back at Carl’s house, he kept on going now that he’d seen her home safe.

Rose felt a dip of disappointment, but brushed all thought of the sheriff aside as she faced the carriage house and dug in her purse for her key. Letting herself in, she shut and locked the door behind her, taking a moment to lean against it and close her eyes. What a day of ups and downs. What a night. She hadn’t exactly gone a date with Cab, but it sure felt like she had.

And she hadn’t even broken up yet with Jason.

Opening her eyes again, she refused to think about that anymore. Time enough to talk to Jason when she’d found a job and apartment. She hung up her coat, took off her boots and made her way inside. Instantly she knew something was wrong. Emory had been here in her absence; the place had all the signs. A twist of dread tightened her gut. She hated when he came around when she was gone. It gave her the creepiest sensation to know he’d been in her private space. She passed through the carriage house, taking note of what he’d done.

The kitchen counter, already scrubbed to a shine, had been washed again. She knew that because she had lined up her appliances—the toaster, blender and microwave—in the center of the counter and now they were at the far end.

In the living room, the few magazines she’d stacked carefully on the coffee table were now fanned artistically as if inviting her to sit down and read. Indents in the carpet told her the easy chair had been moved half an inch.

Then she caught sight of her bedroom door.

Her open bedroom door.

She’d closed it this morning, like she always did, because as much as she was willing to accommodate the intrusive, OCD elements of her fiancé’s father’s personality, she could not bear the thought of him pawing through her clothing, jewelry and makeup.

If it was open, Emory had been in there, something she’d expressly forbidden him to do. Of course, she’d forbidden him to muck around with the rest of her house, too, and he regularly broke that rule. She crossed to the bedroom, anxiety tightening her stomach. If he was still in there, she would scream.

More than scream.

She pushed it open slowly and scanned the room.

No one was there.

Rose let go of the breath she was holding, entered the room fully and scanned it for changes. Emory had been in here all right; her brushes and combs were lined up on the dresser and—had he cleaned them? The thought of the man pulling hair from them and scrubbing them under the bathroom tap made her skin crawl. She crossed to the dresser in two steps, gathered them up and threw them in the trash.

She’d made her bed and it didn’t seem disturbed, although perhaps the comforter was a tiny bit straighter. The closet door was closed. Good. But when she crossed the room and opened it, Emory had definitely been in it, too. Her clothes were now categorized by type of item and by color scheme within the type. Pants, skirts, shirts… He’d touched and rearranged them all.

She swung around and pawed through her desk. He’d straightened the top drawer where she stored pencils, pens, erasers and all the odds and ends one accumulated. Everything now sat neat as a pin.

One look in the bathroom made her want to throw up. He’d scrubbed and neatened everything there, too. All the porcelain gleamed, the tile floor shone and the mirrored cabinet door over the sink didn’t even harbor a single piece of lint. She opened it and clapped a hand to her mouth. Everything from her hand cream to her toothbrush to her birth control pills stood in careful lines equidistant from each other.

Emory was sick. He was totally sick.

Rose’s skin tingled and her stomach hurt. She felt like she’d separated from her body, or that her mind was losing itself in her utter shock. Emory had never done this before. Her bedroom with its en suite bathroom was the one place she’d felt almost safe. Almost able to be herself.

Almost.

Now any illusion of privacy she’d ever had was gone.

She was shaking as she approached the second bedroom, the one she used to use as a painting studio before she gave up painting at the house. Emory couldn’t possibly have done anything in here—he’d already invaded this room multiple times, putting her paints away, cleaning her brushes, scrubbing her palettes down to the bone, destroying carefully mixed colors she’d been saving for her next session. She’d given up and already packed most of her supplies in preparation for the move to her tree house when she built it. What could Emory do?

She pushed open the door to the studio and cried out in shock. Nothing was where she’d left it, not even the carefully packed boxes. In fact, they were all undone. The wide table she’d disassembled was put together and back into place. The boxes were gone and all her supplies sat out in pristine rows. The paints grouped by color, the brushes by size.

At first Rose didn’t understand where the piles of paper placed neatly around the floor of the room had come from, but when she did she had to bite back a scream. He’d gone through her sketchbooks—all of them, and there were dozens—ripped out the pages and arranged the drawings by category. He’d divided her landscapes into those that contained buildings and those that didn’t, those that contained animals, but no buildings and those that contained both. Her sketches of people were separated into men, women, children, and combinations of the three. Her animal sketches categorized by mammal, reptile, bird, or fish.

Even her canvasses had come under Emory’s organizing powers. He’d hung every single one on the walls, until there wasn’t an inch of space left. A chill touched her spine when she realized her canvasses couldn’t possibly all fit on the walls of this small room.

Where were the others?

She spun in a circle, but the room offered up no other clues. She raced back out to the living room and looked high and low through the rest of the carriage house. They were nowhere to be seen.

She’d have to confront him. Right now. Before the crazy old man did something unthinkable. Throwing her coat back around her shoulders, she slammed the front door behind her, clattered down the stairs and raced across the yard to the main house.

Only then did she notice the remains of a bonfire in the stone outdoor fireplace that stood halfway between the two buildings.

Rose stumbled to a stop, nearly tripping over her own feet. The glow of the embers revealed that the paving stones around the fireplace were swept clear of fallen leaves in typical Emory fashion. The patio furniture that normally sat here had already been put away for the season. Emory was nowhere to be seen, but a pail of water stood at the ready in case of emergencies. A large pile of glowing ash was all that remained of the fire.

“Tea?” Emory said behind her and Rose nearly jumped out of her skin. “I saw you pull in and figured you might want something warm to drink.”

“Where are my canvasses?” Rose said. A light went on in the window of the house next door and she could see a middle-aged woman moving around her dining room table, covering it with a clean cloth. A teenage girl appeared and began to help. Why couldn’t her life be like that? Simple. Straightforward. How come she attracted every kind of crazy there was?

“Your canvasses,” Emory repeated slowly.

Something in Rose snapped. “My canvasses!” she shouted. “Where the hell are my canvasses, Emory?”

The woman next door straightened and turned to look in their direction, but Rose doubted she could see them out here in the darkness. Even the sound of her shouts must be muffled.

Emory shook his head. “Rosie. You keep too many things. Your mother calls you a pack rat, did you know that? Spot on, as usual.”

“Where are they?”

“I’m only trying to help you, you know,” he said. “Sometimes if you show someone how to keep their things neat, it’s easier for them to learn how to do it right.”

She blinked, trying to hold back her anger. How to do it right? She’d show him how to do it right. But Emory was her parents’ closest friend and they’d asked her many times not to antagonize him or make fun of his condition. He was just lonely, that was all.

“You didn’t need all those extra pictures, anyhow. I only burned the ones that weren’t any good. Drink some tea.” He offered the cup again.

Rose struck it from his hand, overcome by fury. It shattered against the hard paving stones, spilling a wash of dark liquid over them. Emory cringed back, then straightened in anger. “Clean up that mess!” He pointed to the broken cup. “Every last piece.”

“You burned my paintings?” Rose yelled. “Burned them?” She had suspected as much, but the truth was unbearable. The beautiful sunrise landscape she’d labored over for weeks—gone. The experimental piece she’d been working on—gone. And countless others she hadn’t even remembered yet. The product of years of labor. He’d simply tossed them on the flames?

Next door, the mother and daughter peered through the window. The daughter held something to her ear. A phone?

“You heard me. Clean up that mess,” Emory said again. “I’ve had those cups for thirteen years. Every single one of them in perfect condition.”

“Yeah? Well, they’re not perfect now,” Rose hollered. She stepped closer and stomped on the broken remains. “They’re not even close to perfect, are they? That one’s gone for good, which means you have an uneven number now. What are you going to do about that, Emory? Huh? What are you going to do?”

She heard sirens in the distance, but she didn’t care what happened next. How could Emory have burned her paintings—so many of them? Didn’t he know how wrong that was? Was he really that sick?

Or did he just feel like everyone else that he had the right to tell her what to do, the right to organize her life and destroy her things? Did he feel his needs were more important than hers? Everyone else sure did.

“Rose? Is everything all right here?”

She spun around to find Cab crossing the lawn toward her. “I heard on the police radio there was a problem here. What’s happening?”

The sirens continued to get closer. Rose stared at him, a new suspicion forming. “Were you watching me?”

Cab faltered at the shrill tone of her voice, but only for a split second. “No,” he said gruffly. “I wasn’t watching you. I went to the Burger Shack drive-through for a cup of coffee. I was barely a mile away.”

She peered at him in the darkness, unsure if he was telling the truth. “He burned my paintings,” she said finally, her voice beginning to wobble. “Emory burned them. Dozens of them.”

“Emory?” Rose could almost feel the cloak of his office falling over Cab’s shoulders. Gone was the friendly cowboy. In his place was a stern, take-charge officer.

Emory visibly shrunk back. “I was tidying up for her. She’s a nice girl, but sloppy. Always sloppy. Look what she did to my cup.” He pointed to the paving stones where small, white chips of porcelain glittered in the firelight.

“You think maybe she did that because she was angry you destroyed her things?”

The sirens trailed off as two police cruisers pulled into Emory’s driveway. A few moments later, a number of officers swarmed into the backyard.

“Cab? What are you doing here?”

“Heard the call on the radio,” Cab said to the officer. “I know the people involved. Thought I might be able to help.”

As the uniformed men and women took over the scene, the gravity of her loss overwhelmed Rose. Years of work. Years of creativity. A few of her best works of art were gone for good.

Why bother anymore?
a little voice inside her asked.
Why fight it? Why not just give in? Give away your paints. Burn the rest of the canvasses.

No matter what she did, everyone else came first. Their ideas, their plans, their feelings, their desires. If she didn’t give in when they asked her to, they just waited until she turned her back and enforced their will over her. She would never have control over her life. Never.

“Hey, you all right?” Cab crouched beside her. She hadn’t realized she’d sunk to her knees, but now the cold from the paving stones leached through the fabric of her jeans.

She shook her head. “No. God, Cab, you have no idea…” She couldn’t put into words the enormity of what Emory had done. What he kept on doing. What everybody kept doing.