Of Objects and Obsessions

Chapter 2

2

“Well, one advantage of being in this condition is I get out of doing some of the work around here,” Carli said.

Ethan propped himself on his elbow, his dark hair falling over his forehead, and gazed down at his wife. He wondered if there would come a morning when he didn’t wake up amazed at this gift.

Tucking a strand of dark blonde hair behind her ear, he said, “But you love doing the work. And I secretly think you enjoy supervising others as they complete the heavier physical tasks on your to-do list.”

“Shhh,” she smiled, placing her finger across his lips. “No one is supposed to know.”

He returned her smile, then said, “And by the way, your inventive threat to J.J. that he not tell me you went riding yesterday was a waste. I saw you coming back on the Valley Trail.”

Her expression changed from apology to surprise. Taking his hand, she placed it on her belly.

Ethan’s coffee-colored eyes lit up as he chuckled. “He’s quite active this morning.”

“‘She’,” Carli automatically corrected.

There was a hundred-dollar bill riding on the s*x of the child. Tim, her former photography and travel assistant who now lived in New York full time with his partner, Charlie, swore Carli’s body would only be satisfied with a boy, someone as tough as she was. Tim and Charlie had already purchased a wardrobe for the baby, complete with jeans and pajamas decorated with blue trucks.

Her husband, who immediately researched what to expect as a new father, decided the baby was a boy because she carried it high. Secretly, Carli didn’t care which s*x the baby was, as long as she/he was healthy. She loved her siblings and had talked with Ethan about having more than one. They hadn’t planned on getting pregnant so soon after being married, but there had been no major event in Carli’s life that, at the time or soon after, she hadn’t realized the significance of it. Her father’s murder, and Ethan subsequently entering her life, being the most recent. Even Rutgers breaking out of prison and coming after Samantha brought Cole back into her sister’s life, where, everyone knew, he should have been all along.

The kicking and rolling of the baby subsided, and Ethan leaned over to kiss his wife. Ignoring the masculine voices coming from downstairs, he did his best to distract Carli. Since receiving the transfer that made this small town of Centennial, Wyoming, his home, he had devised many ways to redirect the attention of his lovely, action-oriented wife from her daily activities, which included ignoring her comment that she would follow the doctor’s advice and quit horseback riding before the last trimester. Carli had ridden all her life and knew every inch of the Preserve. It was as if Lady, the mare Carli rode, knew of her owner’s condition. She would just swish her tail and lay her ears back if Carli tried to get her to trot. He had chuckled at that when J.J., recently promoted to manager, reported the incident. J.J. would smile each time he shared with Ethan the creative threat that Carli came up with if he told her husband that she had been riding or cleaning stalls or setting up feed in the cart. They all knew Carli was fit and healthy, but that didn’t mean they would let her do too much. It also gave all of them, Zach and Alyssa included, a chance to update the bets they had wagered as to the s*x of the baby and the delivery date. Unbeknownst to Ethan, the employees, along with Shaun and Sam and Cole, had side bets as to his reactions when Carli went into labor.

She sighed when Ethan deepened the kiss and was momentarily distracted. He had a way about him that kept her grounded, redirected her thoughts when angst and concern threatened, and made her feel more loved and cared for than the most precious gem. When the voices faded, she knew the guys had moved from the lobby to the kitchen. That meant she had maybe thirty minutes before J.J. and Shaun began to clean out and rearrange her father’s office to make room for the newest employee. When Ethan’s hand slid over her belly, and below, she rolled away from him and pushed herself up from the mattress.

Smiling over her shoulder, she said, “Nature calls.”

He laughed and flopped onto his back. While it was true that Carli’s bladder capacity wasn’t what it used to be, he also knew she used it to her advantage to stall an argument or gain control of a situation. Knowing once she was out of bed she wouldn’t return, he thought about the work he needed to complete that day. The bathroom door clicked shut, and a minute later, the shower started. The few moments he gave himself to mentally review his cases were interrupted by the beep from his cell phone.

Rolling over to sit on the edge of the bed, the display showed a text from his boss.

Need you in D.C. ASAP. Commission is reviewing the events of the Rutgers case.

“s**t,” he said and rubbed his eyes.

There wasn’t much of the case that had gone according to plan or procedure. Even the shooting of Rutgers, which Cole did himself, simplified putting Carl back behind bars, but complicated the paperwork. He had spent a week in Durango, after they rescued Sam, coordinating with the various agencies involved in the case. Now it seemed that headquarters wanted clarification. He knew it wasn’t unusual for a debriefing to last as long as four months.

The smell of coffee and breakfast had Ethan contemplating the closed bathroom door before he padded silently to it to join Carli in the shower. It was thirty minutes later that he was getting dressed. Out of years of habit, his gun and badge were slipped into their proper place, and he grabbed the yellow legal pad and pencil from the nightstand before leaving the room. He hoped Shaun was up for more time at the Preserve. Carli being pregnant was an issue he wasn’t overly concerned about, but the fact that Ted Worthington was missing made him feel uneasy.

At the bottom of the stairs, he smiled a greeting at Alyssa as she booked a reservation and continued through the lobby to the kitchen. Always having people around meant he found living at the Preserve, at times, disconcerting. He had grown up in a quiet family as an only child. At other times, like now, with Carli expecting and him being called back East, it also came as a relief that there was always someone at the lodge.

Shaun leaned back against the counter, a cup of coffee cradled in both hands. It was a vacation day, so he was dressed like everyone else instead of wearing his sheriff’s uniform. Because of the nature of the work and the atmosphere of the resort setting, standard lodge wear consisted of jeans, a T-shirt layered with a long-sleeved flannel shirt this time of year, and boots.

Ethan gauged his brother-in-law’s mood and decided by the clear eyes that there had been little drinking the night before, or more likely, the sheriff was getting better at hiding it. Concerned, he mentioned a few days ago to Carli his suspicions that Shaun was struggling with alcohol. She blamed it on Bear’s murder, and then the events with Sam. But Ethan knew people. Observations and cataloging a person’s behavior were part of his job. Shaun had a problem. Whether it started with his father’s murder, or that was just what exacerbated an existing condition, he didn’t know. It wasn’t uncommon for officers at all levels to relieve the stress of the job with visits to a local bar. There were even several, he knew, that had taken the self-medication further. Some pulled themselves back from the edge. Others jumped off. He wasn’t sure how far along Shaun had gotten himself, but he would do what he could to keep the sheriff from the precipice. Nodding a greeting to the quiet and brooding law officer, he poured himself a cup of coffee and listened to Zach and J.J.

“Before you know it, this place will turn into a nursery,” J.J. said with mock disgust.

Zach, his short blonde hair hidden under his straw hat that shaded his gray eyes, stood at the stove and stirred the scrambled eggs in the pan, turned and held up his spatula. “Not until Alyssa finishes college. And maybe not even until she works a couple of years at the school.”

J.J., his green eyes twinkling, the black Stetson covering his red-blonde hair, tossed the dishtowel at Zach. “That’s because it will take you that long to figure out how to do things.” He laughed and sidestepped the spatula that was flung in his direction.

Plucking another one from the canister next to the stove, Zach glanced at Shaun, then said to J.J., “You’ve been dating Sissy long enough, and been secretly admiring her from afar since you moved here. When are you going to make her an honest woman?”

Ethan paused, the cup halfway to his lips. His eyes darted from Zach to Shaun. There was no change in the sheriff’s expression.

“I don’t know,” J.J. answered, the joking atmosphere having evaporated from the kitchen. He glanced at Shaun, then went back to packing box lunches for the day hikers who were coming from Cheyenne.

Sipping his coffee, Ethan wondered which one, J.J. or Shaun, would be the first to breech the wall that was Sissy, Shaun’s history with her, and the now-strained friendship between them.

“Sissy and I are just friends. She deserves to have someone in her life who can give her more than I’m able to. I likely always knew that.” Shaun shrugged his shoulder in the typical Tanner gesture. “Probably why I never proposed. She would have said yes and would have been miserable.”

Zach looked up from the eggs as his gaze traveled from Shaun to J.J. It seemed as if for months there had been tension at the Preserve, even before Bear died and the incident on the courthouse steps that resulted in Ray’s death. No one knew for sure who ordered the hit on Ray. A person who had a lot to hide had been Shaun’s guess. The Tanner family had been plagued by bad luck ever since the shooting. It was around that time that Sissy told Shaun she would be a friend, but nothing more. Shaun had shared that with J.J. the night of Bear’s wake at the Rockin’ R. Neither of them knew Zach was close enough, just down the bar, to overhear the confession. There had been tension between Shaun and J.J. Zach didn’t know how it started but had hoped to break the sheriff from his dark mood by sparking an argument, or his defensiveness, or even his consent towards J.J.’s relationship with Sissy. The last time Zach had seen Shaun smile, which was a rare occurrence in itself, was when Sam called from Durango. That was days ago.

“I’m going to take a look at the office, see how much there is to box and move. Let me know when breakfast is ready,” Shaun looked at J.J. “That was part of the deal.” He exited the kitchen, leaving the three men to stare after him.

“Nice going,” J.J. murmured.

“What? I tried to get some reaction from him,” Zach said.

“Well, bringing up his old relationship with Sissy and reminding him that I’m the one dating her didn’t help.”

“He can’t go on like this.”

“He’s a grown man—” J.J. started.

“Who has a drinking problem,” Ethan filled in.

J.J. and Zach stared at him.

“s**t,” J.J. said.

“No wonder,” Zach commented at the same time, understanding the perpetual gloomy mood of Centennial’s Sheriff.

“Carli and I have talked about it. So far, she’s making excuses,” Ethan said.

“She knows him best,” J.J. said in her defense.

Ethan shook his head. “Not this time.”

J.J. finished the lunch boxes and set them in the fridge. Zach began multi-tasking with toasting bread, stirring the eggs, and cutting up fruit.

It was 7:15 AM, according to Ethan’s watch. They all knew Ms. Casey was scheduled to arrive by early afternoon. There weren’t many clients at the Preserve this week, so she could get her bearings without being inundated with new duties and not having anyone around to help her. And that gave weight to the idea that started to form as he shared a shower with Carli that morning. Because he lived here, and was considered part of the staff when he wasn’t away on a case, Ethan did his part by taking a stack of plates and a pile of silverware into the dining room.

Shaun, taking the office keys from behind the front desk, where Alyssa was still on the phone, opened the door to the place his father had occupied when he wasn’t somewhere out on the Preserve with clients. He was sure he imagined it, but for an instant, he saw Bear Tanner behind his desk, heard his laughter, and smelled the pipe smoke that clung to Bear’s beard, though he only smoked occasionally in the evenings. Blinking, the image floated away with the bits of dust opening the door had disturbed. Carli had taken over the office. Being the only one who understood Bear’s filing system, she had kept things mostly how they were.

The new computer Carli ordered remained in boxes on the floor. Bear’s was an older PC that she had complained about as often as she parked herself in front of it. There had been several glitches, which led to a hard drive failure, and each time bits of information could not be retrieved from the hardware. Since she decided the business needed an overhaul, especially with the change in focus from hunting big game to a photo safari, Carli added technology to the list of new equipment. There were funds in the accounts Bear had set up, and though Shaun knew Carli had a threshold she didn’t want to drop below, he wondered how it was working since the amount of clients had decreased significantly. Apparently, there was a greater demand for hunting animals than there was for picture taking. His recently domesticated sister was convinced that with the right marketing and public relations person in charge of promoting the new direction of Tanner’s Outdoor Adventures, within six months, the reservations log would be filled. Newly hired Fiona Casey was the one on whom Carli hinged the future of the Preserve.

Leaving the door open while he waited for J.J., Shaun took a box from the stack in the corner and began to transfer files and papers from the desk. Carli hadn’t completely organized the information in the office so others could understand the system, and judging by the variety of topics that filled the box, Fiona had a lot of work to do.

J.J. paused in the doorway. He had stayed at the Lodge last night instead of at Sissy’s, in the hope that working with Shaun today would be easier. Sissy had told him that even though she and Shaun had a history, the sheriff repeatedly denied her what she wanted, and that kept their relationship from moving forward. J.J.’s feelings for the woman who had spent the past ten years in an on-again-off-again relationship with Shaun were getting serious. Thoughts of her would flash in his mind at the oddest times, as if they waited for him to lower his guard so they could slip in and establish an ‘I-think-I’m-in-love-with Sissy’ camp. And each time that happened, he found himself avoiding Shaun’s company, or Shaun had other commitments and didn’t have time to spend at the Preserve. With Zach being the one who spent the most time with clients or working on remodeling cabin nine, and Ethan involved with FBI cases, that left him and Shaun, when the sheriff wasn’t doing his own paid work, to carry out the manual labor. It had been over six months since he first asked Sissy out on a date, and the time had arrived for him and Shaun to settle this awkwardness between them.

Turning his head to look over his shoulder, Shaun suggested, “It would go a lot faster if you started filling boxes instead of standing in the doorway.”

“Right,” J.J. agreed as he stepped into the room. “It’s just that—”

“You don’t like being around me,” Shaun finished for him.

Papers were laid inside a box, and J.J. clarified, “Actually, I miss your company. We don’t go fishing or hang out at the lodge like we used to. Since I started dating Sissy…” he trailed off, as he wasn’t sure how Shaun would react, even though they had discussed it before he had asked her out the first time, “things have been… different between us. Are you angry or jealous that Sissy and I are seeing each other?”

“I’m not a child, J.J. I know what goes on when people are dating and spend a lot of time together. I have no hold on Sissy, though she and I will always be friends. She’s a wonderful woman who deserves to be happy, and I’m fine with the two of you,” he swallowed, not entirely convinced he was ‘fine’ with anything anymore, “being together,” he finished. J.J.’s dubious expression told him he didn’t believe the words either. “Would you feel better if I took a swing at you?”

While it looked as if the Preserve manager was seriously considering it, J.J. paused in his stacking and, thinking of Ethan’s comment in the kitchen, asked, “Are you alright? If you and I aren’t keeping Sissy as a means to not talk and be friends like we used to, would you tell me if something was wrong?”

Busying himself with closing a box, Shaun said, “I’m fine. A lot has happened these past months. Just trying to adjust.”

J.J. nodded at Shaun’s back, convinced the sheriff was shoveling a lot of bullshit.

“I don’t think a little bloodletting between friends would improve things,” Shaun said. “But if it makes you feel better, I can promise to make you hurt as much as her broken heart if you mistreat her.”

J.J. clenched his jaw at the thought he would intentionally hurt the woman that meant more to him than any of the females he had spent time with. “Agreed,” he said, then returned to the box and stack of papers. “I wasn’t at Sissy’s last night,” he volunteered.

“Not really my business where you were, unless you were breaking the law.”

“Zach thinks I’m there a lot.”

“Zach is your closest friend and fellow employee. He would know your routines, when you change them.”

J.J. sighed. “He tried to set you off this morning.”

“Sorry to disappoint.”

It didn’t take long to remove the loose files and miscellaneous office items. Flat surfaces were revealed at an equal rate with the growing stack of boxes in the hallway. To make better use of the tiny space, they moved the desk against the wall, repositioned the two-drawer file cabinet and the long bookshelf to what they thought was a more efficient use of the space with the furniture up against two walls. With the computer cartons on top of the desk ready to be unpacked, Shaun stood in the room while J.J. occupied the doorway.

“Who knew a ten-by-twelve office could be so… spacious, just by rearranging the furniture,” J.J. commented.

“Things often improve with a little shifting,” Shaun agreed, his meaning including more than just the office. He extended his hand toward his friend. “We okay?”

J.J.’s gaze moved from Shaun’s face to his outstretched hand, and back to the hazel eyes. There was no malice, just the easy openness the sheriff usually possessed, and the shadows that never seemed very far away. J.J. grasped Shaun’s hand, and a quick smile flashed on his face.

Carli paused in the hallway, partially hidden behind the stack of boxes. From where she stood, she could hear the last words that were exchanged and see J.J.’s body as it leaned into the room. She took another step and smiled when she saw the two men shaking hands and the friendly expression on her brother’s face. So maybe he was alright after all.

“Wow. You guys work fast,” she said, coming to stand next to J.J. and glance around the room. “I knew this office was bigger than what it seemed.”

“Mounds of paper have a way of taking up space,” Shaun agreed.

“So, you’re going to move these boxes, right?” She gestured to the twenty or so cartons in the hall.

“The storage area in the studio?” J.J. confirmed.

Carli nodded. “We’ll let Fiona decide what needs to be filed and what can be tossed.” She glanced at her watch. “She should arrive in about four hours. Zach your breakfast in the oven to keep it warm. Said he didn’t want to interrupt your workflow,” she informed them with a smile.

She tapped her earpiece to answer the phone and made her way back down the hall to the lobby and the guest counter where the reservations program was open on the computer screen.

Shaun watched her go with a slight shake of his head. Would he ever get used to Carli, pregnant? Beside him, J.J. hefted a box and headed for the front door of the lodge. For that matter, would he get used to Sissy being involved with someone else? Grabbing his own box, he followed the ranch hand, who had been a friend and, because of his own lack of integrity, the relationship had faltered. They now had a tentative truce. Everything he said to J.J. was the truth. About Sissy deserving better, about him being alright without her… wasn’t he?

The cool air of early November swirled around him as he navigated the steps of the veranda and the short distance to the storage room Carli had built onto the back of the studio. With each step, he tried to remember when the last time was he was ‘alright’ with things. Certainly before his father’s death. Did it go back to Sam’s abduction ten years ago? Did the feeling of not good enough stem from Darla’s desertion when he was only six? He stumbled as he neared the open door to the storage room. Had he lived his whole life with this feeling of lack? Stepping into the shade provided by the overhang, he felt as if a similar shadow engulfed his soul.