The Enforcer by Marliss Melton

Author:Marliss Melton
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: James-York Press
Published: 2013-07-28T14:00:00+00:00

***

“Why, Dylan!” Father Nesbit’s face lit up with pleasure as he opened his kitchen door. She stood on the stoop of the rectory in a cold drizzle. “Come in, please. What brings you to my humble abode in such inclement weather?”

Dylan slipped into his warm kitchen with relief. The familiar smells of chamomile tea and burnt toast assailed her nostrils. “I’m picking up Sergeant Burke at the station at seventeen thirty,” she said, shaking out of her army-issue trench coat. “I thought I’d drop by and visit you first.”

“I’m so glad you did,” he insisted, taking her coat and draping it over a chair. “Let me make you some tea.”

“No, that’s okay. I don’t have much time. I’d rather just talk.”

His brow creased with concern. “Well, of course, my dear. Take a seat, then.”

They sat across from each other at his scarred dinette table, where he laid a blue-veined hand over her chilled fingers. “Something’s bothering you. What is it, my child?”

Dylan averted her gaze. Her throat tightened and her stomach churned. Discussing her inner life had never been easy; it was harder still when there was a man involved.

“Something’s changed,” she said, speaking quickly to keep her emotions from overtaking her words. “Sergeant Burke joined my militia, and things have been different ever since.”

The priest sent her a searching look. “Different good or different bad?” he asked.

“Good.” She drew a bracing breath. “Wonderful, in fact,” she added, flicking him a look to gauge whether he grasped what she was saying.

His expression of dismay hit her like the rain that started pelting the window over the sink.

Dylan tugged her hand free and fisted it in her lap. “I know Tobias seems aloof and skeptical in church,” she added, making excuses for him, “but outside of church, I assure you, he is warm and helpful and very capable. He puts a humorous spin on everything.” She smiled as she thought about his T-shirts. “When he’s around, I find that I’m not living in the past anymore.”

“That’s wonderful,” Nesbit said, but his tone lacked full conviction.

Dylan tried again. Her parents were dead. This man was her last connection to them and to the wisdom they might have imparted if they’d lived longer. “I’ve begun to question whether I should lead the militia any longer,” she confessed.

Bushy gray eyebrows rose toward Nesbit’s sparse hairline. “Go on,” he encouraged.

Dylan sighed. She realized it was his blessing that she craved. “I nominated myself for a leadership position because I needed a reason to live, and the militia gave me that. Plus, supposedly, all that gunfire and the public protests raise my anxiety threshold.”

He nodded his understanding. “Those were all good reasons.”

“But now I picture myself doing other things—like tending the orchard, perhaps, and harvesting apples the way my parents did.”

To her relief, his blue eyes crinkled with delight. “I think that’s a grand idea.” He beamed at her.

“You do?”

“I do. Your parents would be so pleased.”

Her eyes stung with relief. “Thank you.”

“As for this young man you speak so highly of…”

She held her breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

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