Page 44 of Naughty by Nature

Cheyenne leaned forward, a little grin on her lips. “I think we shocked some people.”

“Possibly. I think there were a few knowing looks too.”

Sophia returned with their iced teas and waved the regular waitress away. “I’ll take this one, Shayna.”

The younger woman headed back to her customers with a wave.

“So, do you know what you’d like?” She paused to look between them. “Other than each other?”

Sheridan laughed. “I’ll take the California burger with the works.”

She swung to Cheyenne. “And you?”

“I’ll take the buffalo chicken wrap with the sweet potato fries.”

Nodding, Sophia turned for the kitchen.

“I love Sophia,” Cheyenne leaned forward to whisper, “but she loves a good piece of gossip.”

Sheridan leaned forward as well. “Yes, so do Anne and Coco, over against the wall. They’re in Marlene’s NBC. Wonder if we’re boring them? They’re used to racier stuff.”

Cheyenne covered her mouth with her hand and giggled, her eyes dancing with sapphire light in the sunshine. For a moment, Sheridan completely lost track of where he was.

They talked of inconsequential things over their food, and, as expected the line between emotional and professional blurred, weighing heavily to the emotional.

“Can you tell me about your wife?” Cheyenne asked. “I didn’t know her well, only in passing.”

Taking a big drink of his tea, Sheridan sat back against the cushion. A smile creased his lips as he thought about Eleanor. “She was my college sweetheart. Met during the first semester of school in Austin. Had a class together and I dropped my book on her foot. Wasn’t a great beginning but we fell in love. We were inseparable the rest of the time we were in school. Once we got out of school we got married. Nora got a paralegal job at a local attorney’s office, and I worked Austin PD for a while. After getting our careers in line, we decided to have a baby. Olivia was easy for a first. Prettier than the average baby, I thought, and happy. But when we tried for another a few years later we went through a series of miscarriages. Then a few rounds of IVF, but nothing worked.”

“I’m so sorry,” Cheyenne gasped. She reached across to touch his hand. “You don’t have to tell me anymore.”

Shrugging, he squeezed her fingers. “It’s not as hard to talk about as it used to be and looking back, it was kind of a good thing, in a jacked-up way. We found the signs of the cancer a few years later, and if she had been pregnant when she found it, I think we both would have gone off the deep end.”

Cheyenne nodded, still holding his hand, just being there.

“She had Inflammatory Breast Cancer, which is extremely rare. It had already spread to her lymph nodes. We tried to treat it, but it just overwhelmed her. She was gone within six months.”

Tears flooded her eyes and she used her napkin to blot them away. “I’m so sorry, Sheridan. That’s terrible.”

“Yes,” he sighed. “Olivia was eight. She took it hard.”

“That poor baby, of course she did. No child should lose a parent at that age.”

“She had a lot of counseling, and I did too. I focused on the job. Olivia focused on volleyball and being difficult.”

Cheyenne chewed her lip. “You were voted in the year before Wade attacked me.”

“Yes.”

She took a drink of her tea and he could tell he’d given her a lot to think about.

Sheridan looked at his phone as it buzzed. Patterson had sent him a message.

White Chevy, blacked out windows just pulled in.

With a nod, Sheridan locked gazes with Cheyenne and reached out to grip both her hands. “I want you to look at me, honey.”

She did, a smile flirting on her lips.

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