A Baby For The Sheriff. Mary Leo

silly.

      He’d merely done the stand-up thing and left. Nothing more to it.

      But now he was in a pickle, and had no choice but to take her up on that sofa offer.

      “Fine,” he said aloud as he trudged back to her front door, the snow and cold wind blasting his face and hands with its bitter sting. He hated nights like this, nights when Mother Nature reminded him of her power, and when memories of his childhood came crashing back. He wished he could talk to Lily’s mom and tell her of the life that Lily more than likely would have. He’d like to somehow help Lily’s mom with whatever reason brought her to abandoning her child. But most of all, he hated that Lily would now be a ward of the state and he would be the one to hand her over.

      The irony was too real. By the time he’d graduated from high school he’d lived with twelve different families. Most of them were good people, but a few of them were borderline abusive or simply neglectful. Those were the kinds of households that he hoped Lily would never run across, but he knew the odds were stacked against her. Once she went into the system, there was no telling who would be her temporary parents.

      Life sure could stink at times, he thought as he made his way back up the three steps to Doctor Grant’s front porch, but before he was able to ring the bell for her apartment, she swung open the door and handed him that shot of scotch.

      “Thanks,” he said after he drank it down. “I really needed that.”

      “I figured as much,” she said, her voice low and sultry, feet bare, pretty little toes painted a bright pink.

      No doubt about it, he was in for it now.