Page 2 of The Woman Left Behind

A small cracker box painted a pale yellow with white trim, sporting a green roof and a shocking-red door, there were profuse plantings of bronze, butterscotch and yellow button mums in appealing but mismatched terracotta pots dotted up the front steps and all over porch. An attractive fall wreath of leaves, berries and pinecones was on the door. A white picket fence rounded the property, and he could see the numerous rose bushes that likely ornamented that fence in the summer had been cut back in preparation for winter.

There were two Adirondack chairs on the porch. They were painted white and had yellow, brown and green plaid lumbar pillows upstanding against the back of the seats, a wooden table with a lantern resting on top between them.

No kitschy Sweater Weather! Or Happy Fall Y’all or Fall in Love! signs marred the neat, well-kept property.

As he opened the gate on the fence and stepped foot on her front walk, that feeling in Harry’s gut intensified.

Something was up.

Something was about to happen.

Something big.

He walked up the steps to that bright-red door.

He knocked.

He stood in his uniform and looked through the box of six square-paned windows at the top of the door, when he sensed movement inside.

And then there she was.

She opened the door.

The instant she did, the moment his eyes caught hers, Harry’s chest caved in, and his stomach curled up.

Yeah.

Something was about to happen.

Something big.

And he wasn’t ready for it.

ONE

Fresh-Cut Flowers

Lillian

I stared up and into the chocolate brown eyes of Sheriff Harry Moran, my heart in my throat, even though, when he’d made the announcement at the town council meeting that they were auditing Leland Dern’s files, I knew this day would come.

I had answers to his questions.

I doubted he had any answers to mine.

But what was rendering me speechless, to the point I could feel gooseflesh raising on my arms, was that, from afar, he was an intensely handsome man.

Up close, he was taller than I expected, his shoulders were broader, his jaw was sharper, his cheekbones higher, his dark brown hair more lustrous, and after whatever was going to happen with him being on my doorstep happened, I might construct a shrine so I could worship his thick, long, curling eyelashes.

“Lillian Rainier?” he asked.

I had to clear my throat because…because…

He was just that beautiful.

But now I had his voice, which was deep and imposing. An authoritative cop voice. A man’s-man voice.

Further, it was saying my name, deep, imposing and authoritative. And the sound of it wrapped around something that was only mine made me have a highly inappropriate response.

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