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“Do you want to pray about this, Tripp?”

It wasn’t what Laurel intended to ask, but it just popped out.

“Not really. I’m sure God has better things to do than to handle my petty problems. Especially when I’m capable of handling them all by myself.”

“Oh, right. Your idea of handling this is rushing off to St. Louis, locking Ashleigh in a tower like Rapunzel.”

“Put that way, it does sound a bit rough. But she’s my little girl.”

“And she needs reminding of that. Gently, from a loving father. Do you want company?”

“Maybe I do. I’m out of my depth here. Maybe you can stop me from saying anything I’ll regret.”

“I can try. But I won’t make any promises. I’ve already seen you in action, Sheriff Jordan, and I can’t imagine you’re easy to stop in any situation.”

He tipped his hat up with one finger. “Some day we’ll have to test that theory.”

LYNN BULOCK

lives in Thousand Oaks, California, with her husband and two sons, a dog and a cat. She has been telling stories since she could talk and writing them down since fourth grade. She is the author of nine contemporary romance novels.

The Prodigal’s Return
Lynn Bulock

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

—Philippians 4:6–7

To Joe, always,

and

To my “other mother,” Louise Bulock:

I don’t think I could have

done this one without you.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Epilogue

Letter to Reader

Chapter One

“Ring, already,” Laurel Harrison told her silent phone. It was only nine in the morning in her cheery yellow kitchen in California, but that didn’t matter.

What mattered was that it was already eleven in Missouri. This was the information age, wasn’t it? So where was her information? She wanted the news from home and she wanted it now. Or maybe even ten minutes ago. That fit with her L.A. lifestyle.

She took a sip of coffee and made a face no one saw. Her latte had gotten cold. She’d already stuck it in the microwave once, so that wasn’t an option. She stood in the middle of her beautiful kitchen and tapped one foot, thinking.

Going to the freezer in the built-in, side-by-side refrigerator, she found the bag of coffee ice cubes. She knew without even wondering that no one else in her family kept ice cubes made of decaf espresso in the freezer. It just wasn’t the kind of thing one did in Missouri. And right this moment it seemed a little odd to her, too.

Shrugging off her discomfort, she took the bag of ice cubes over to the mini-bar between the family room and kitchen. Other houses in the neighborhood had a full-fledged wine bar there, or a cocktail island. Laurel had a coffee bar to rival those of the professionals. She poured her cooling drink and a generous portion of the ice cubes into the blender, put on the lid, and turned the appliance on.

As she poured the frozen concoction out of the blender a moment later, she looked up at the framed poster over the mini-bar. It was from the theater release of what had been Sam’s last movie. Somehow it seemed fitting that she needed to dust the glass.

“This just isn’t home anymore, Sam,” she said softly. Not for her, anyway. When Sam was alive this had been home. This morning it didn’t feel like anything but a house. Her elegant surroundings looked almost foreign to her.

A wave of desire to go home, really home, to Friedens, Missouri, washed over her. Granted, it hadn’t been home in almost seventeen years. But without Sam, Southern California didn’t feel like where she belonged anymore.

If Jeremy walked in on her while she was in this mood, he’d groan. They’d already had this discussion a few times in the past year, and each time Laurel’s feelings got stronger. Without Sam here, California didn’t feel like the place to raise a teenager. But Jeremy’s main argument against the move was that they probably didn’t even have skateboards in Missouri.

Not that she could argue with him much. They hadn’t seen many skateboards when they’d gone back to Friedens for her dad’s wedding. Was that really only six weeks ago? Laurel marveled at how her life had changed again in that amount of time.

When she’d gone back to California after the wedding, she’d managed to convince herself that maybe she did belong here, after all. Maybe Jeremy’s argument that he should go to high school here, with his friends at Westlake, made sense, and she could postpone moving until he was in college.

Instead, God trailed his fingers through her well-ordered life and stirred things up. In the course of half a day, her new direction was clear and obvious. Did the Holy Spirit make person-to-person telephone calls? Until this week, Laurel would have said no. Now she was pretty confident the answer was yes.

Deciding to do something practical while she waited for the phone to ring, Laurel got a clean cotton towel from the kitchen and dusted the poster frame and glass. The small date down in the corner, from two years earlier, still didn’t look right. It was hard to believe Sam had been gone for 18 months, too sick to work on screenplays for half a year before that.

If she needed a reminder, there was his computer. It sat silent these days, except for Jeremy’s e-mail and video games. She and Jeremy were the lone occupants of this house that was far too big and grand for just the two of them.

Usually mornings found her sitting at the breakfast bar making lists over a cup of coffee. Her silly coffee was her one indulgence. She wanted a really good cup of coffee to start the day, and Sam had always made sure she had one. Now it was up to her, along with everything else. And with each passing moment she grew more convinced as the adult in charge that “home” didn’t need to be Southern California.

When the phone rang she dropped her towel in surprise, even though she’d been waiting for it, listening for it, for over an hour. Her fingers hesitated over the handset of the cordless phone. Answering it would end her suspense, and she wasn’t sure she wanted that.

She should have flown to St. Louis to be in Friedens for her father’s surgery. But nobody won an argument with Hank Collins, even when he was arguing from a hospital bed, so in the end she sat in California and waited for the call. Everyone had assured her that her dad would be even more upset if she came all the way home again so soon after her trip to his wedding.

So here she was, in a standoff with her own telephone. It rang again. No sense in assuming that it was Claire. It could be anybody. She picked it up. “Hello.”

“It’s me.” The sound of her sister’s voice made Laurel search for her chair with her free hand behind her. She suddenly felt too weak to stand and listen to the news. Not that there was anything in Claire’s tone that said the news was going to be bad. It was just that hearing her voice made Laurel realize just how long she’d been waiting, almost holding her breath.

“Tell me it all went fine.” Her slightly panicky voice bounced off the pale yellow kitchen walls, the pristine tile and sparkling glass.

“It really did. I can’t imagine how many people were praying us through this one,” Claire said. She sounded almost as shaky as Laurel felt.

The conversation passed by in a blur, and before Laurel knew it she was holding a quiet phone in her hand again. She realized she hadn’t told Claire she’d finally made the decision to move back to Friedens. That was probably for the best. Claire would just say she was overreacting to Dad’s surgery.

Maybe she was, partly. Laurel was pretty sure this decision to move was brought on by much more than her dad’s health.

It took her a moment to realize that she needed to hang up the phone. Doing so, she breathed the first of several silent prayers of thanks that her dad was okay.

Her lanky teenager stumbled into the kitchen a moment later. “Was that Aunt Claire or Aunt Carrie?”

He pushed a shock of brown hair out of his face. Laurel could see concern in those brown eyes that looked so much like his father’s.

“It was Aunt Claire. And everything is fine. Grandpa made it through the surgery and is in recovery already.”

A smile lit up his face. Laurel treasured it. Jeremy smiling that broadly wasn’t something she saw every day. There were a lot of challenges to raising a fourteen-year-old boy alone, and one of the biggest was putting up with his adolescent moods.

Before she could give him any more details, or even a hug, the phone rang again. Jeremy picked it up, talking to the person on the other end just long enough that Laurel began to think it was one of his friends. Just when she’d turned to get herself a cool drink of water, Jeremy handed her the phone.

“It’s Grandpa Sam.”

Laurel realized that she should have called her father-in-law once she got off the phone with Claire. No one there in Friedens would have thought to tell the older gentleman how Hank’s surgery had gone, though he’d be interested.

“Hello, Mr. Sam.” Nobody aside from Jeremy called the elder Sam Harrison anything but “Mr. Sam.” “I guess you’re calling about Dad?”

Sam’s voice on the phone was gruff. “Not exactly. I hope he’s doing real well. The shorter time I have to deal with that idiot deputy he put in charge, the better.”

“Oh?” His tone told her there was a story here, and Laurel knew he didn’t need much urging to keep telling it, whatever it was. Mr. Sam was never at a loss for words.

“The fool sure isn’t the same caliber of law officer as your father. Do you know what he had the nerve to tell me this morning?” He didn’t even pause for breath to let her guess. “He said that if he caught me breaking even the slightest traffic law in Lurlene, even failure to signal a turn, he was going to take my keys. Ban me from driving within the city limits of Friedens. Can you imagine that?”

“I hardly think that’s legal.” Even when the individual in question was eighty-two and his car was an aqua vintage Cadillac that was a city block long, that didn’t strike Laurel as right. “Maybe you can lay low for a little while and he’ll forget about you.”

There was a harrumph from Mr. Sam’s end of the phone. “Maybe. You haven’t met Tripp yet, have you? He’s a pretty persistent guy. And up until today I would have said he had good sense, too.”

“Having good sense” was the older gentleman’s highest compliment. It was also one that was instantly withdrawn when someone crossed him. “Do you think a call from me would help?” Laurel asked.

“Not likely. I mean, what could you do? You’re two thousand miles away.”

“I could be a lot closer.” The words came out in a rush. “I’m really regretting not being there for my dad and my sisters. How would you feel about a houseguest for a while?”

There was a pause. “One houseguest?”

“No, you know it would be two.”

Mr. Sam cleared his throat. “As long as it would be the two of you, I think I could stand it for a while. Maybe that would keep me from tangling with Tripp again. Your father won’t be back at work for a while, will he?”

“Afraid not. Although if I know Dad, he won’t stay down a moment longer than necessary.”

“Good. Maybe if you two come out and keep me company, I can find a way to keep my car keys.” They made small talk for a few moments, and then Mr. Sam hung up, conscious that he was spending money on long distance in the middle of the day.

Each call seemed to strengthen Laurel’s resolve that going home was the right thing to do. Talking to Mr. Sam wasn’t as disturbing as getting bad news about her father, but it was close. She worried about Sam’s father, living alone in a large house, driving his huge car and getting into who-knows-how-much trouble around town. He’d been cantankerous as a younger man and hadn’t aged gracefully.

How long would Jeremy have his grandfathers around? Laurel knew she was doing him a disservice by living as far away from them as she did. Mr. Sam didn’t hold with new things like e-mail. Even when Sam had gotten his father a computer before he’d gotten terribly sick, Mr. Sam hadn’t take to the new means of communication. And though money wasn’t a problem for him in any way, he still didn’t pick up the phone and call long distance very often.

Not that her father was much better. He’d taken to the computer a little, out of necessity. Even a police department the size of Friedens’s did a lot of work on the computer these days. So naturally his new familiarity with it all spilled over into Hank’s personal life. Marrying Gloria had helped him overcome his long distance phobia a little, too. Laurel knew she’d heard from him more in the past two months than she had in previous years.

With this sudden health problem, that communication felt like a blessing. She felt secure knowing that if things went terribly wrong, she wouldn’t agonize over what she hadn’t said. She’d healed whatever wounds she had with her father many years before, and now told him she loved him at every opportunity. That was one of the many legacies Sam had left her. She wasn’t shy anymore about telling anyone close to her that she loved them. Time was too short for that.

Now that she didn’t have to sit around and wait on a phone call, Laurel got busy around the house. Today she was especially glad she’d never given in to Sam’s argument that they needed household help. Even when Sam had been well and working from home, there wasn’t much to clean up after three people. Most days about an hour took care of all the housework she needed to do. Another hour spent doing laundry, and maybe as much time running errands left her with a lot of time on her hands.

She liked being home where Jeremy could find her when he needed her. That was becoming less frequent every day, of course. Independent teenage boys wouldn’t admit they needed a mother for anything less than broken bones, dramatic blood flow or money. Fortunately the traumatic two out of the three weren’t a daily occurrence, even with Jeremy’s wild skateboarding.

An hour later Laurel was out of chores. She didn’t plan to leave the house to run errands today, just in case Claire or Carrie called back. She was still full of nervous energy, and searching for a way to tell Jeremy that his summer was going to be far different from what he’d planned.

Maybe she’d go into the storage room and sort things out to decide what suitcases they’d need for an extended visit to Friedens. She wanted to look at all of them, including some that hadn’t gotten a workout since Sam’s days on location, when he’d watched directors shoot his screenplays.

She headed for the desk in the hall where the cordless phone sat. Or, at least, where it should have been. Jeremy was forever borrowing the handset and losing it in his bedroom. She pushed the button that activated the pager in the handset and cocked her head to listen. Was there a muffled beeping coming from some pile of dirty laundry in Jeremy’s room? It was hard to tell.

Before she could activate the pager again, the phone rang. “Rats.” Nothing aggravated her more than a ringing phone that she couldn’t answer. “Jeremy, you have my phone,” she called. It was still ringing.

She went to Jeremy’s room, looking around for the telephone handset as she went. “Jeremy Samuel, answer that phone. It might be one of your aunts again.”

By the time she got into his room, Jeremy had rescued the telephone from whatever corner it had landed in, and was talking to someone. “Yeah, hold on. Wait a minute, my mom wants to talk to me.”

He looked up at her. “It’s for me. Todd.”

He went back to his conversation and what she heard next pushed Laurel over the fence she’d been sitting on.

“Yeah. I’m back. I know, but we’re in the Dark Ages here. No caller ID, no extension in my room. No chance of my own phone line in this lifetime.”

He sounded so aggravated. Laurel looked down at Jeremy’s rangy form splayed across the floor, and saw a child who was being raised in an environment that was so foreign to her own memories of growing up that it felt like another planet.

If she had ever dared speak that way to her father, or even in her father’s presence, she couldn’t imagine the consequences. Jeremy knew there were no consequences, but Laurel wasn’t so sure that was a wonderful thing. Was this really the life she wanted for her son, while they faced his teen years? Was it the life she wanted for herself? The answer to the question was easy, and made her turn on her heels and leave the room to do some serious thinking.

“Poor Jeremy,” she murmured in the hallway. “You’ll never know how this one day changed your whole life.”

California was not the place for her to raise this young man. And today was the day to take steps to ensure she didn’t have to raise him here any longer.

It was hot in his office. Tripp Jordan wasn’t used to experiencing summers like this yet. Back in the detective room of the station house in St. Louis, the windows were always closed. There was temperature-controlled air all the time, summer or winter. Of course, it was often too hot in the winter and too cool in the summer, but it didn’t bring you into contact with nature, for sure.

Here there were all kinds of distractions. Not the least of which was the knowledge that he was now officially in charge here and wasn’t ready for it. He’d been in charge all week, but it hadn’t sunk in until this morning, when he’d faced the fact that Hank was in surgery and wouldn’t be back for weeks.

He still felt out of place in Hank’s office. His chair didn’t sit right and the desk was too low at one corner. Plus there was the temperature problem in here—it was hot. And the coffee wasn’t strong enough. Or maybe it was just that Verna made good coffee. He was still used to the sludge at St. Louis police stations. Real coffee, made lovingly by hand by his fifty-something secretary with her tight perm and plastic-rimmed glasses, was a new experience. The woman reminded him of his aunts, who looked sweet and old-fashioned but had every situation well in hand. And he’d always felt uncomfortable around them, too.

No matter how many faults he found with Friedens or his office in the tiny police station, he still wasn’t sorry he’d taken the job. So maybe he hadn’t been prepared for the changes of the past week, but being Hank’s deputy had been great so far.

When the town had been looking for a deputy, Tripp had jumped at Hank’s offer to take the job. The city council had liked him, the interviews had gone smoothly—and Tripp had gotten out of St. Louis, where it had felt as if the walls were closing in on him.

Once he had been hired on in Friedens, he rented a great apartment over a vacant downtown store, where the odds and ends of furniture he’d collected over the years looked dwarfed. He’d gotten settled in, and had even gotten used to seeing himself back in uniform after eight years in suits and ties.

He didn’t miss the tie, but he still missed the hat: the sharp fedora that was the trademark of the “hat squad” of St. Louis homicide. Deputies around here didn’t wear any kind of hat. Even the sheriff’s hat that he’d been issued when he took over for Hank was a poor substitute for that fedora.

He was running his hand around the brim, trying to break it in some, when Verna ushered in his first visitor of the day. His initial guess when he saw the woman was that she was the town’s version of the welcoming committee, bringing him brownies.

Although she looked old and delicate enough to be Verna’s mother, she dispelled his notion that she was a grandmotherly type in a hurry. The sweet-looking older lady in front of him proceeded to scald his ears with a scathing diatribe on the unsafe driving habits of some of her fellow senior citizens. She claimed to be a representative of the Women’s Club—and the PTO, although Tripp thought that she could have given birth to the school board members he’d seen. This lady hadn’t had anybody in the school system in decades.

Still, she was persistent. Tripp felt himself breaking out in a sweat just listening to her. Trying to get a word in edgewise was almost impossible. Might as well wait until Mrs. Whoever-she-was wound down on her own.

He nodded and made appropriate sympathetic noises for about ten minutes. Then he’d had enough and tried to break in. After three attempts he was successful. “So let me summarize this. You believe that I ought to be writing some tickets downtown?”

The old harridan’s nostrils flared. “Not just tickets. Citations. That Sam Harrison ought to go to jail. He’s parked in my flower bed twice this month. That old heap of his is a menace, even standing still.”

“Well, Mrs….” Tripp looked down at the desk, hoping he’d jotted down something when Verna ushered the lady into his office. “Mrs. Becker—”

“That’s Baker,” she corrected in a frosty tone.

“Mrs. Baker.” He had to learn to decipher his own handwriting better. “Sorry about that. I’ll go track down Sam Harrison and have a talk with him. If he’s as dangerous as you say, I’ll take appropriate action.”

Mrs. Baker sniffed. “You won’t have to go far. That awful car is parked two doors down from here right now. In front of a fire hydrant.”

Tripp stood up and put on his hat. “Then I’ll get right on it. Can I escort you out, ma’am?”

“I’m not that feeble, and you’re not a Boy Scout. Although you look like one in that hat.”

Tripp didn’t say anything else. He couldn’t, for fear of further offending an old lady on his first official day as sheriff.

It was going to be a long couple of weeks before Hank got back. How long did uncomplicated bypass surgery take to heal? He hoped it was uncomplicated. He didn’t know how many days of this he could take.