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“...now that we’ve gotten through all the minutes from last time, thank you, Jane, we can get to new business.” Bradley beamed at his constituents. The man looked about ready to burst. I’d not seen him so torqued since the governor had visited two years ago on a reelection campaign stop. We’d made the poor man pet a cow. Nothing against Bertha, she’s a lovely Holstein and winner of a blue ribbon, but the governor had not worn cow-friendly shoes. “I know that I’ve spoken about trying to find ways to increase the city coffers. Several of my ideas have been true blockbusters!”
“Name one!” someone who sounded a good deal like Edgar shouted from the back. I smiled inside but remained stoic on the outside. Bradley, the consummate politician that he is, never missed a beat.
“This time Rockmount is about to become famous!” Bradley shouted into his mic, feedback flowing out of the speakers. “Sorry, sorry,” he quickly said as he moved his mic back from his face. “I’m just so darn excited!”
“I got calves to feed. Get to it!” a deeper male voice called from the right side of the room.
“Okay, simmer down, everyone.” Bradley patted the air in front of him. “We’ve just finalized a deal with Life Loves Studios to film a holiday romance movie right here in Rockmount! Yep, that’s right! Next week people will be arriving to begin filming! I’ve been told that six to eight weeks should be enough for them to do all the scenes they want here in Rockmount, so our local businesses will be thriving at a time when sales are needed most. We all know that most of our income rides with hunters coming into camps, but once they leave after the end of deer season, it’s a rough go. Not this year! This year our tills shall runneth over!”
We all blinked at the announcement. Wow, that was...wow. That was big news indeed. I nodded in appreciation of such a big score for the town. We’d have a ton of income flowing in, as well as hundreds of people. I stretched my legs out in front of me, crossing my right ankle over my left to try to alleviate the ache in my ass. Damn hard chairs. That influx of cash was great for Rockmount, but it might be a bit of a nightmare for Teddy and me. Maybe I should reach out to the state police to see if they could give us a hand while filming was taking place.
“And that’s not all,” Bradley announced. “The stars ofTinsel Kisses for Santaare two of the biggest soap opera stars on the planet, and they’ll be right here in town!”
“Who is it?” a woman a few rows from the front asked.
Bradley stood up. Huh, must be big names if he was going to his feet. I didn’t do daytime TV as a rule, so I’d not have a clue. I was at the courthouse most days, either in court or in our tiny little broom closet that they dared to call an office, or out policing the county. If I were home due to sickness, I might watch a game show, but if I was not working, I was either out fishing or hiking, anything outdoors as opposed to sitting inside. I spent enough time at a desk or staring out the windows of our lone courtroom on the second floor wishing I was outside. Besides, I did my best to avoid soap operas and those who starred in them.
I reached into a back pocket to pull out my phone and start making notes. A big rush of movie people was going to require some major planning ahead of time. Something that I was sure Bradley hadn’t bothered with. He’d shove that off to others as he normally did while basking in the limelight of his coup. First off, I’d have to make sure they had all the required permits and then I’d have to try to figure out where the hell these people were going to park because along Main Street was not going to happen as we—
“The stars ofWillow Dale.Sasha Faye and Tony Gugliotti!” Bradley crowed. More than half the crowd seated on the bleachers squealed. I gaped at our mayor, my phone sliding from my now numb fingers to the floor as several men in farming caps asked who the hell Tony Gugliotti was. If only I could ask that question. I knew far too well who the man was...
***
My house was a tinylittle fifties bungalow that used to be a hunting camp tucked back at the end of a winding dirt road.
There was something magical about my long driveway and it wasn’t just the fact that wildflowers lined it or that wildlife was frequently seen darting across it. That stretch of smooth gravel signified the end of the workday. Most of those workdays were pleasant enough, even if some did tend to run long. Today’s had been a real kick in the balls. Pity too because it had started off nicely enough with Teddy bringing in doughnuts with my favorite jelly-filled variety that the local bakery generally ran out of first. You would imagine a day that began with jelly-filled would end up on a good note. Nope, not this one. Perhaps jelly-filled had lost their magic? Whatever the cause, this day had not only taken a wrong turn, it had veered off the road and right over a cliff, flew downward to crash into jagged rocks, and then burst into flames in a garish Hollywood style.
I parked my black SUV with the big golden star on the door in my drive, turned off the engine, and simply sat there staring at my humble abode. It had been well over an hour since the bomb had dropped. Tony was coming here. To Rockmount. To act. In a fucking movie. About romance.
Fuck. Me.
He did. Many times. Remember?
“Nope, not going to take that stroll down memory lane,” I growled at myself. I’d worn that fucking path down to the Earth’s core over the years, and what had I gotten out of it? Blisters and an everlasting heartache. Staring at my front door as if I could mentally command it to open, I barely noticed the tuxedo cat waiting on the porch. Ellery stretched, meowed, and then sprinted to the car. I opened the driver’s side door for him. Up he leaped into my lap, making muddy cat tracks on my trousers. “Hey, buddy,” I whispered, running my hand down his back. His purrs were deafening. “Let’s go have a beer.”
He gave my chin a bonk with his head and then he jumped down to the cold ground. October had a firm chilly grip on things, frosting the grass as well as the pumpkins for the past few nights. The leaves were now mostly fallen. If you drew in a deep breath in the morning, you could taste the bitter touch of winter. It was coming. We’d been known to have snow by mid-November, a real boon to deer hunters.
And holiday movie sets. Real snow. How romantic!
“Nope, once again, we are not thinking about romance.” I stalked to my front door, opened it, and followed Ellery inside. He darted to the kitchen as I untied my black tactical boots and left them on the boot tray. Working where I did one needed good boots. I locked the front door and removed my duty rig from around my waist and then flipped on the light.
“Alexa, play theAfter the Gold Rushalbum,” I called, and she rewarded me with Neil Young’s amazing voice. The fire in the woodstove needed some wood, so I did that before padding around my rustic home, my head a million miles away given the fact that when I went to reach for the dry cat food, I still had my gun belt in my hand. “For fuck’s sake.”
Ellery was too hungry to put off, so I placed my rig on the counter, fed him, and threw a frozen meal in the microwave. Then I carried my belt into my bedroom, placed it on the dresser, and stood there staring at myself in the round mirror over the bureau. I looked pretty much the same as I always did but nothing like I had when Tony and I were together.
I’d been younger, leaner, still burly but not quite as husky, and with far less laugh lines and gray hairs. And Tony had been...well, Tony had been incredible. A fun-loving extrovert theater major who tended to offset my less-than-bubbly personality. Tony was beautiful. Tall, rangy, with dark hair and eyes so brown they appeared to be onyx. Olive skin from his Italian parents and a laugh that lifted a soul. Tony had wanted me just as much as I’d wanted him for some weird reason. To this day, I could not reason why. He was so stunning, so vital, so personable. He could have had any man on the Drexel campus, but he chose me. The big, lumbering wanna-be cop who wrestled to pay for his tuition. The poor kid from the rough side of Philly who somehow managed to get a sports scholarship to get him out of the grimy city streets. Tony was from Society Hill, a whole different world compared to the badlands where I’d grown up. Rich boy, poor boy. One dreams of acting, while the other dreams of walking a beat. We shouldn’t have worked, but we did. Until we didn’t.
I got my degree, and he got his. He left me for California. Not another man or because we didn’t jibe. He left me for the glamour of Tinsel Town, something that I could not compete with even if I had wanted to. Once he had left, I found my dreams had shifted slightly. I no longer wanted to work the streets that had claimed my older brother and, in a way, had also killed my parents for when David had been gunned down, they’d died as well. Day by day, until they were gone within a year of my younger brother. Tony had been the only reason I would have stayed in Philly, but when he climbed onto that jet bound for LA, my heart and soul withered, just like my folks had.
I left the city behind, applied for jobs in small towns throughout the commonwealth, and finally settled here. And I was happy here.
“Youarehappy here, Stillman,” I told myself. The man gazing back didn’t look particularly joyous. To be honest, he looked like he had swallowed a porcupine. Ellery arrived with a soft little squeak as he landed on my dresser. He paraded back and forth, his tail tickling the underside of my chin. “We’re as happy as clams, aren’t we, Ellery?”
He purred a bit more loudly, then jumped to the bed, eager to curl up on the duvet to warm his little pink beans. I had a moment where I too thought crawling into bed with the covers drawn over our heads would be the cat’s meow. But then that stubborn side of Stillman pushed aside the woe-is-me with a hearty shove.
“We are not going to do this again,” Stubborn Stillman announced. Ellery glanced up from cleaning himself, rear leg in the air, to stare at me as I pointed a finger at myself in the mirror. “We arenotdoing this again. The past is just that, the past. He’s a big TV star now. You’re a small-town sheriff. We’re going to do our job, be professional as hell, and not give two fiddly fucks about the man. Remember, he leftyou, not the other way around. You have nothing to be ashamed of and no reason to be fidgety. It’s only six to eight weeks, then he’ll be gone, headed for sunny California just like before, without a thought for you or what we had.”
I nodded at my reflection with authority. There. I told me.
