Free Love a Little Sideways by Shannon Stacey

enough to keep his mouth shut.
    “You’re looking pretty serious today,” Liz said, breaking into his thoughts as she set his bowl of chicken soup in front of him. Drew never missed Gavin’s chicken soup days if he could help it. While it wasn’t quite as good as Rose’s, it ran a pretty damn close second and nothing beat a good bowl of chicken soup.
    “Lot on my mind.” Before she could open her mouth to push for more, he kept going. “You know, if you need to go into the city to stock up on more than what the Mustang can hold, just say the word. We can take the SUV. I just fill it on my personal card before I leave town and nobody complains.”
    It was almost a date. He wasn’t a big fan of shopping, but at least he’d get to spend some time with her away from her family and the rest of the town.
    “Thanks, but I stole Josh’s truck and made a run the other day after work. There are enough vehicles there so he didn’t miss it and, if he really needed a pickup, the gas mileage in the old plow truck doesn’t hurt as badly if he was just running around town.”
    Deflated, he tried to shrug off the missed opportunity. “Settling in okay?”
    “Yeah. I haven’t done a lot of shopping for the house yet. Mostly I needed to stock up on staples and fill the fridge and pantry. As much as I love Fran, that kind of shopping gets expensive at the market and it’s worth the trip to the city.”
    “I know you’ve got plenty of family, but you can still call me if you need anything.”
    She smiled, handing him a few extra packages of crackers for his soup. “Thanks. I appreciate it. Hey, did you see on the news they caught the guy that was breaking into the camps on the lake?”
    They talked about the news while he ate his soup and he would have lingered, but dispatch called him out for a possible bear in a backyard report.
    An hour later, he’d coaxed a massive black dog he hadn’t seen around town into his SUV, and radioed ahead to Barbara to let her know he was bringing her another stray and to give her a description. She’d start reaching out to see if he’d been reported missing anywhere local, then take the poor guy home with her. They didn’t have much in the way of animal control outside of the police department, and Barbara always fostered the rare displaced or lost pet. They almost always traced them back to a vacationing family.
    Because nothing popped immediately and the dog had obviously been wandering a while, Barbara left early. She’d make the half-hour drive to the vet, then take him home and get him fed and bathed. That left Drew as police chief-slash-office staff.
    As soon as he sat down at his desk, he remembered something he’d wanted to tell Liz. She’d probably left work and, after a little bit of hesitation, he decided to call her. He’d given her his cell number earlier in the week in case she needed anything, so it had been natural for her to give him hers at the same time.
    She answered on the second ring. “Hello?”
    “Hey, it’s Drew. Are you busy?”
    “Nope. I just left the diner. Still in the parking lot, actually. What’s up?”
    “I meant to tell you when I stopped in for lunch, but I forgot. There’s an all-wheel-drive wagon for sale in the paper for short money.”
    “I saw that. I was thinking about calling them when I get home.”
    “Don’t bother. The guy selling it picked it up dirt-cheap at auction because its previous owner accidentally put it in a pond where it sat for two days before he finally confessed it hadn’t been stolen after all. I’ve had some issues with this guy selling questionable vehicles before and he might have managed to clean it up enough to sell it, but it’s going to have problems.”
    “Wow. I should have known the description and the price didn’t add up.”
    “Sorry to burst your bubble.”
    She laughed, the sound almost musical over the phone line. “I’d rather know now than after I gave him my money.”
    “If a deal