Making It Right (Most Likely To #3)

Tim saluted her and encouraged the rest of the distance team to take their first laps.

Second lap around, she noticed Tina and Maureen avoiding the puddles still accumulated on the track. Instead of calling the girls on it, Jo decided they needed a little off-roading. She joined their third lap and directed them off the field.

The girls moaned, but they got over it once their legs were splattered with mud and avoiding puddles wasn’t possible.

As they closed in on the four-mile circuit, her freshman was winded and Gustavo was clenching his side.

“Don’t feel like you have to keep pace with the seniors, Louis,” she told the youngest runner.

Louis acknowledged her with a nod but didn’t try to talk.

Jo sped up a few yards to run beside Gustavo.

“Looks like you lost a little steam during the rain.”

He looked at her, frowned. “You said practice was canceled.”

“I did. You’re right.”

They ran side by side a little longer.

“Hey, Drew?” Jo called ahead. Drew was pacing beside Tina. They’d dated on and off since the previous summer. She couldn’t tell if they were on again or not.

“Yes, Coach?”

“When I cancel practice, do you still run?”

The girls started to laugh, and Drew turned around to run backward as he answered. “If I don’t wanna puke the next time I come out, yeah.”

“In the rain?” Gustavo spat out.

“In the anything, dude. Couple miles minimum unless God himself is dumping buckets on River Bend.”

“Oh, man.”

Gustavo wasn’t happy. Then again, he wasn’t there by choice. He’d tried to give himself a five-finger discount from the main market in town. The store owner caught him with a pocket full of gum and candy, of all things, and called Jo. It was petty and it was stupid . . . and if Jo had anything to say about it, it would be the last time Gustavo attempted to steal anything from anyone.

He’d been pulled into the cross-country team in the fall and the distance team in the spring. She’d acquit the kid during the summer if she didn’t catch or hear of any problems. But this was River Bend. And Jo knew it like sailors could smell an oncoming storm. She knew where to find the teenagers on a Friday night being teens . . . knew how they scored their liquor and where they stashed their weed. Keeping her recruits from year to year wasn’t that hard. Some, like Drew, took his extra laps and added time with a shit-eating grin. He played the fence hard, but overall he was a good kid with a smart sense of everything that went on around him, probably a byproduct of being Deputy Emery’s son. The kid reminded her a lot of herself at his age.

If she ever received inside information from one of the kids on the team, even if they weren’t on the distance team, she kept it confidential and made sure she was the one to catch kids in the act of no good.

They all knew, each and every one of them, that they could call her if any situation got sketchy.

And sometimes they did.

So far, every forced recruit finished high school. Which was her goal. Well, that and keeping them from doing something permanently stupid. Three of her kids were given full ride scholarships for their performance on the field. Considering the average income of a River Bend family, she considered those efforts home runs. That wasn’t to say she wasn’t just as happy with the kids that went to the community college in Waterville and then on to whatever school or trade they decided on to earn their way in life. The best part was, none of her recruits ended up in her jail.

They ran from the wooded trail they’d followed and back onto the track at the high school. They had a couple of cooldown laps where they slowed their pace, and then they’d all go in and grab a shower or rush home to do it before class.

“So, Sheriff?” Drew asked loud enough for all the kids to hear.

“Yeah?”

“Did you learn how to be badass with the Feds?”

She scowled. “Language.”

Drew rolled his eyes.

She didn’t bother scolding him more. He had parents for that. “I learned a few things.”

“FBI training sounds cool,” Louis said as he huffed through his final lap.

“Did you shoot a lot of guns?” Tina asked.

“We did.”

“I looked it up online,” Tim said. “Did you get to drive like a crazy person?”

“We call it defensive driving, Tim. Not crazy person.” She laughed.

They rounded the last lap, and the noise from the parking lot told her that the other students were arriving.

“I think it’s awesome that our town sheriff trained with the FBI.” Tina puffed out her chest like it was her accomplishment.

“It was a lot of hard work, but it was worth it.”

“Did they make you run?” Gustavo asked with a laugh.

“No. I made myself run three miles every day.” Well, except two, but she wasn’t going to admit that.

Gustavo’s look of mortification had her laughing.

Tim and Drew raced their last hundred meters, even though they were supposed to be cooling down. Drew caught the first foot over the finish line. With hands on their knees, air moving in and out of their lungs quickly, they sparred each other with words of next time and who was the faster runner.

“Oh, who is that?” The tone of Maureen’s voice said she liked what she saw.

“Oh . . .” Tina said on a sigh.

Jo followed their gaze. Her breath caught in her throat and she started to cough.

Gill leaned against the fence. He wore a black leather jacket and jeans. The sunglasses, which weren’t yet needed, rested on his nose, blocking the direction of his eyes.

But Jo felt them.

“Hello, JoAnne.” Gill’s voice was low and sexy. Saying hello sounded like intimacy.

Jo waited a beat, and then she heard it. The low-lying whistle of one of the guys, she guessed Drew, who was ballsy like that. All the girls did the giggle thing.

She took a step toward him.

“He looks a little scary, Sheriff. Might wanna be careful,” Drew teased.

She lifted her hand, her back to the kids. With two fingers in the air she said, “Two extra laps, Drew. Let’s not make it three.”

The kid laughed as he took off to wrap up his punishment.

“What are you doing here?” she whispered once she was close enough so only he could hear.

“I told you I’d come before you missed me.”

Jo smiled, tried not to think of the kids who were watching from behind.

“I thought you’d call first.”

Gill took off his sunglasses, and yes, he was staring at her. “I was in the neighborhood.”

From two hours away?

Jo wanted to blush, probably was under the heat on her cheeks. “You’re funny. I’m just finishing up here.”

Gill looked her up and down. “I’ll wait.”

“Stop looking at me like that.”

“Like what?” he matched her whisper.

“Like you want to devour me.”

He leaned close, his lips close to her ear. “But I do.”

“You’re impossible.”

His grin screamed sin before he covered his eyes with the glasses and leaned against the fence.

Jo faced her team, who had all stopped to gawk.