Free Barbecue and Bad News by Nancy Naigle

slid to the side in an exaggerated manner, still clutching her bag with the two coffees and toast. “Maybe you should drink your coffee.”
    He tugged the hat from his head and took a sip from the mug.
    Goodness gracious, he was just handing her the column on a silver platter. H ow do you even respond to a sheriff who is spending his time rescuing waterfowl?
    “Well, all in a good day’s work. Don’t work too hard, Sheriff.”
    She turned to leave, and as she opened the door to exit, she heard him call after her.
    “Scott. You can call me Scott.”
    Or not , she thought.
    Who did that sheriff think he was, getting all indignant with her first thing in the morning? Man, and she thought she was cranky without coffee. She’d definitely get to the grocery store and pick up a few things this afternoon, including coffee, because starting each morning with a run-in with the sheriff could be a real mood spoiler.
    Too bad too, because he seemed more handsome every time she saw him. “Looks can be deceiving,” she mumbled. He had her so fired up that she headed straight back to the apartment to crank out that article while her mind was still buzzing with ideas. The market could wait.
    What’s that quote? Don’t fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel. Something like that. Yeah, Sheriff Scott Calvin might want to get a little plaque of that one for his desk.
    She ran up the stairs and didn’t even bother locking the apartment door behind her. She pressed the Power button on her laptop, then spread out her breakfast next to it. She sat in the chair in front of the desk, but she was too darn short to sit and type for long. She got up and grabbed a pillow from the couch and tried again. Perfect.
    Closing her eyes, she rolled her shoulders and then set her hands to the keyboard, counted to three, and began to type. It was her process. It felt good to be typing her own story. Not a response to some whack-job reader who wanted advice. She chomped on the toast and slugged back coffee between lines. Fueling the fire.
    She typed and typed without even so much as a pause. A smile pulled at her lips as she transferred her recollection of the ticket yesterday and the run-in this morning onto the page. It had been a long time since she’d been able to sit down and write a real story—not an over-the-top answer to some amazingly out-there question, but an article from scratch. She was back in the zone . . . and it felt good.
    She opened her eyes and leaned back in the chair. From here she could see most of the merchants up and down Main Street. No parking meters here. Strictly first come, first served. The sheriff had probably stopped in at the diner after marking tires as a way of enforcing those forty-five-minute maximum parking time signs along the curbs. Seems like that would be just his style.
    She probably should have mentioned that she was going to be covering the police blotter for the County Gazette when she saw Scott at the diner, but under the circumstances there just hadn’t seemed to be a good way to mention it. Especially after she’d stuck her foot in her mouth about that darn duck. Boy, was he touchy.
    Hopefully, he wouldn’t have to know, and she’d be gone before they even crossed each other’s paths again.
    She pulled her feet into the chair and stared out the window. Main Street was quiet this morning. Maybe it was always quiet. It was so different from the view from her downtown condo in DC. It was never quiet there. Even when there was no traffic, there seemed to be a hum of energy in the air. Maybe it was nerves being pulled and the sizzle of the stress that came with the lifestyle in the city. She tapped her pen on the side of the desk, eager for a little noise in the space. As if on cue, music came through the wall of the other apartment. Good old classic rock.
    She hadn’t even thought to ask Connor about her neighbor. She’d seen the sign on the door that he was a private investigator. Her mind