Page 24 of Gloria

Now she just had to go next door and see if Franklin would be willing to come by and see if he could fix her poor, broken machine.

Gloria figured she had pretty good odds. If there was one thing she figured out about her mysterious neighbor, it was that he wouldn’t be able to resist helping her. And she wasn’t above using that to her advantage.

That man was going to say ‘you’re welcome’ if it killed Gloria.

In the quiet of her cabin, just as she was hiding the bolt in her junk drawer, she heard the crunch of tires over the rocky, gravel path that led toward her new home. Grabbing a dish towel, wiping the grease from her fingers, she dashed from the kitchen to the front room, her curiosity piqued.

It wasn’t Franklin. She knew that much. His truck was already in the drive.

But who?

When she saw the familiar HSD cruiser pull up in front of her house, she couldn’t bite back her sigh of disappointment.

How much did she want to bet that that was Deputy Walsh?

She ran into the deputy the other day when she went to visit Isabella’s Beauty Boutique, the premier—and, well, only—salon in Hamlet. Addy recommended Bella highly and since Gloria preferred to keep her blonde curls shorter than her shoulders, she wanted to stop by and make an appointment. Now that she was a resident of Hamlet, Gloria liked the idea of giving the townspeople her business. As leery as they were of outsiders finding their way into town, the small businesses wouldn’t survive without local patronage.

It was only for a few seconds. Deputy Walsh was on patrol, and Gloria didn’t like the way the overeager young man seemed to back her up against the brick wall as he reminded her about his offer to take her over to the coffeehouse. She gave him some lip service about next time, then hustled toward her car.

And now he’d tracked her down to her cabin.

Great.

Pasting a smile she didn’t quite mean onto her face, she pulled open her door and stepped out on her porch.

“Deputy Walsh?” she called as he climbed out of the cruiser. “What are you doing here?”

“Hello, there, Gloria,” he said, waving at her. “I was in the area and I thought I’d stop by.”

“The mountains?” Gloria raised her eyebrows. “We’re a little off the beaten path here, deputy.”

“It’s my job. I have to patrol the whole village, from the gulley to the mountains. I’m always around somewhere.”

Sure.

Okay.

“Actually, I’m glad I ran into you up here,” the deputy said. “I brought you something.”

Deputy Walsh removed something from his belt. It looked like a bulky, weird walkie-talkie, a twin to the one he was still wearing.

Gloria had seen nearly every villager in Hamlet walking around with one, going back to the first day she arrived and Sadie met her at the coffeehouse while wearing one on her hip.

At first, she thought they belonged to law enforcement or something, but they couldn’t since everyone had one and, according to Hamlet gossip, the Hamlet Sheriff Department had like maybe four people who worked there.

Then Deputy Walsh had explained how they were the community’s way to communicate. Even Franklin’s Garage had a radio.

After that conversation, though, she’d kind of forgotten all about it. It was almost embarrassing to admit it, but she’d been so focused on Franklin these last few days, she had put her two encounters with Deputy Walsh out of her mind.

From the earnest look on his boyishly handsome face, it was clear that the deputy hadn’t forgotten about her at all.

“A communicator for you. Here,” Deputy Walsh said, offering it out to her. “We had a spare down at the station house. Willie… Willie Parker? She’s another one of the deputies. She asked the sheriff and Sheriff De Angelis said you could have it. So, here you go.”

“Thank you, Deputy. That was so sweet of you.”

Deputy Walsh shrugged. “It isn’t too often we get outsiders in town. I like to be friendly.”

He was friendly, Gloria conceded. Ever since he helped her find the way to Franklin’s garage, the deputy had been extremely friendly.

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