Wanted by the Marshal by Susan Lute

Author:Susan Lute
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9781951786441
Publisher: Tule Publishing Group, LLC
Published: 2022-05-06T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

There was no room left in the parking reserved for Taylor’s restored Craftsman, so Beckett parked on the street across from Dakota’s Mustang. He hadn’t meant for her to get here before he arrived, but he hadn’t counted on Betty asking for help to get flour and sugar from a high shelf in the pantry so she could make oatmeal cookies. Claude was still working in the barn, where they’d been all morning. How could he tell the sweet woman, who was the same age as his grandma, he had an engagement with a feisty marshal? A feisty marshal he’d promised to teach how to make bread.

He should have been on that a couple of days ago. A vision of the two of them in the kitchen, flour dusting their clothes, made him shake his head and smile. But then the warmth invading his chest faded. She still didn’t trust him. That had been very clear when she’d gone off to town by herself. Dakota was one tough cookie, but something had to be very wrong for her to all of a sudden call him to reach out for help.

“Come on, kids. Gotta go help Dakota,” he said to the dogs.

He’d just gotten the dogs out of the Bronco when movement in the Mustang’s interior caught his attention. He crossed to the red beast, as Dakota liked to call the classic car, just in time to see her shove an envelope in her bag.

It wasn’t the first time he’d seen her troubled, but it was the first time he had to fight with everything in him not to take her in his arms and whisper everything would be okay.

He opened her door. “What’s wrong?”

She sucked in a ragged breath. Struggling to sling her purse over one shoulder, she shook her head. “Nothing.”

Un-huh. Maybe here was his chance to earn that trust she held so tightly inside. He wasn’t going to waste the opportunity.

Carefully, so he didn’t put her into retreat—not that you could scare a fellow Marine—Beckett placed his hands on her shoulders and leaned close so she could see his sincerity. He cracked a crooked smile. “Doesn’t look like nothing from here.”

“I shouldn’t have called you.” She closed her eyes for the briefest of seconds and, seemingly without realizing what she was doing, leaned her forehead against his chest.

Beckett swallowed hard. “We’re friends. Of course you should have called.”

Friends. Right. He was starting to question if friendship was what he wanted from Dakota.

“Thanks for coming,” she muttered and knelt to sling an arm around Tucker’s neck before burying her nose in his fur. With her other hand, she scratched Lucy’s ear.

“No problem at all.” Beckett didn’t know what was going on, but he was going to find out. Whoever had gotten her this torn up was going to get a piece of his mind.

She gave the dogs a final pat, and without looking at him, ducked back into the Mustang. For a second he thought she might be

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