Starting Over (Nugget Romance 4) Read Online Free PDF Page A

right, I’ll see you tonight, then.” He grabbed his gym bag and jogged across the square.
    At lunchtime there was always a game of pickup behind the police station where Rhys had installed two in-ground basketball hoops. Anyone who wanted to play could.
    Nate changed in the police station’s locker room, a spare bathroom with a shower, and headed to the court. Eight people, including Rhys, his officer Wyatt, and dispatcher Connie, leaned up against the stucco wall, waiting. Usually, Jake, another member of Nugget’s finest, also played. Nate figured he must be holding down the fort today.
    Clay McCreedy, a local cattle rancher who’d grown up with Rhys, arrived a few minutes later and they broke into teams.
    “Hey,” Clay said to Nate. “You’ve been around a lot lately. I thought you had the redhead picking up the slack for Maddy.”
    “She’s not quite up to speed. And I’m trying to help out with Lilly.”
    “She’s a pretty little thing and getting big.” Clay had two boys of his own. “Things slow in San Francisco?”
    Nate sighed. “Things are never slow in San Francisco, but I have a good staff there.” Unlike here, where he had Daisy Buchanan running the show.
    “Good,” Clay said. “Then you’ll be coming to the wedding.”
    Clay and Emily Mathews, a local cookbook author, were getting married in June. The rest of the women in Nugget were in mourning, as Clay was the local heartthrob. His first wife, who from what Nate had heard was a serious hobag, had died in a car accident while having an affair with the developer of Sierra Heights. Sometimes life in Nugget imitated a soap opera.
    “I’ll be there,” Nate said.
    “Bring the redhead too.”
    “Uh, are we ready to get this party started?” Connie said, dribbling the ball. “Or do you ladies want to continue your conversation about babies and weddings?”
    Nate laughed. The dispatcher liked to play hard-ass and was legendary for busting balls in the police department. But Nate got a kick out of her.
    Sometimes he’d go into the police station and bum a cup of coffee off her. The inn made great coffee, but Connie’s was better. She was a certified coffee snob, ordering beans from a specialty roaster in Oakland.
    For about an hour they played basketball, running up and down the court until they were sweaty and out of breath. As much as he missed the city, he liked it here. There were a number of guys his age and they had a nice camaraderie, especially between him and his brother-in-law. Rhys Shepard was about the most stand-up guy Nate knew. If not for Maddy, Nate probably never would’ve gotten close with Rhys. The two men trucked with different people. Nate had more in common with Maddy’s first husband, also a hotelier. But when Dave cheated on Maddy, Nate had cut all ties with his sister’s ex. As a matter of fact, he’d like to hurt the guy.
    But now his sister had a good man, a baby, and two teenagers, who Nate loved like his own family. The teenagers were Rhys’s much younger half siblings, who’d been left in his care when Rhys’s father died. Lina had recently gone off to college, but Samuel (there were too many Sams in this town) was still in middle school. They lived in a big white Victorian near McCreedy Ranch.
    Attending one of their big rambunctious dinners reminded Nate of growing up in Madison, Wisconsin, where his parents and other sister, Claire, and her family lived. Nate was the only one in the family who wasn’t hitched, with kids. Although he had Lilly, it wasn’t the same. The deal he’d made with Sophie and Mariah was that he would always play a minor role in Lilly’s life, but they were her parents. The terms had seemed easy at the time, when all he’d wanted to do was help his two best friends make a baby. Now, not so much. Especially when he held her in his arms and gazed into those saucer-sized brown eyes that so much mirrored his own.
    Nate showered and changed into his work clothes. When he got