Rachel sighed as she parked her dad’s pickup in front of Vincent’s Hardware. The Friday night she’d experienced had been rougher than she’d anticipated. Not only had her regular deputies Tommy Smith and Billy Jones stayed on duty with her all night, they’d had to call in part-time deputies Mack Green, Janet Ng, and Red Lawton. The city council would howl at her about the “excessive overtime” this month, but the alternative, to let six different traffic accidents and nine bar fights go unattended by law enforcement would have been worse. The jail would be full until Judge McCreary could arraign each suspect, and they’d have to have at least one deputy in the station at all times to keep the peace until they were all processed.
At least she’d had time to change out of her uniform and into jeans, T-shirt, and sneakers. She’d have to get her sheriff clothes thoroughly laundered before she could wear them again. Handling drunks was not conducive to keeping clean.
The worst part was the fat lip she kept worrying with her tongue. It still hurt. Stupid Bobby Clanton. He had to pick last night to live up to his supposed ancestry. Rachel still didn’t believe he was related to the Clanton family of Tombstone and OK Corral gunfight infamy, but that didn’t stop him. When drunk, he was loud and aggressive. Drunk or sober, the boy had fists like hammers.
He was also slow and clumsy when drunk. She’d almost dodged back far enough from the roundhouse punch, but he’d caught her mouth with one knuckle and then paid for it when she’d jammed his wrist up between his shoulder blades and slammed him face-first into the wall. He’d stopped fighting at that point and allowed her to shove him into a cell.
Then she’d looked at the wall he’d hit. The drywall now had a Bobby-shaped broken dent in it. Dust had floated through the air. The dent would have to be repaired. Today. And she’d have to make sure it got done herself. He was very lucky he’d hit the wall between the studs.
She got out of her car and shook her head to clear it. A late model Dodge pickup was parked next to the passenger side of her parking spot. It looked familiar but she couldn’t quite place it.
The store’s front door had almost swung shut. Rachel might have seen the driver entering the store if she weren’t so wiped out.
She pushed through the door and saw Manny hugging a taller man. “My good friend Clark!” he called. “You have come for your electrical supplies, yes?”
Clark’s truck. Of course. She hadn’t gotten a good look at it when she’d passed out at the Kent place on Wednesday. She wouldn’t forget it again.
She watched Clark step back and shake his head. “Sorry, Manny, I jumped the gun. The electric company won’t let me turn on that kind of tap on their line without a formal inspection, and they don’t have an inspector available for at least three weeks. I can’t wait that long.”
Manny’s face fell. “Oh, my good friend Clark, I am so sorry. I know you truly wished to complete this project quickly. The only consolation I am able to offer is that you owe us nothing for the supplies we ordered in anticipation of your purchase. We would have purchased them for the store whether you wanted them or not. We carry them in our regular inventory.”
Clark sighed. “I’m still sorry for the trouble. I wanted to come and tell you in person that you’re not making commission on me today.”
Manny grinned. “Thank you, Clark. You are a good man, and I am glad you came to see me today. Do you have an alternative plan?”
“I can’t take up that much space in my parent’s house, so I’ll need to rent an office. You know of anything available?”
Rachel said, “I do.”
Both men snapped their heads around in surprise. It made Rachel chuckle to herself. She wasn’t used to surprising men unless she was arresting them. “Oh, right,” Clark said. “I remember now. You said something the other day about office space for rent downtown, didn’t you?”
She walked toward Clark. Both men were there, of course, but Clark was her destination. “I don’t have the particulars, but Denise Howard does. She’ll be at the sheriff’s office until eleven or so doing paperwork. If you wanna drop by and ask her about them, I’m sure she’d be glad for the distraction.”
He smiled and nodded. “Thanks, Rachel. Sorry, I mean, thanks, Sheriff.”
She smiled back. “You’re welcome. And when I’m in civvies, I’m just Rachel. Especially to my friends.”
With a plaintive note in his voice, Manny asked, “Does that description include me?”
She heaved a theatrical sigh. “Oh, okay, yeah, it does. But that means you have to call me ‘Sheriff’ when I’m in uniform.”
He grinned like a possum with a peach. “I shall remember, my good friend Rachel the sheriff.”
Clark headed for the door. “I’d better go see Mrs. Howard before she leaves. And thanks for the tip on the office space.”
“No problem, Clark. I’ll see you later.” As Clark left the building, she turned to Manny and said, “I need some drywall for the sheriff’s office. A drunk busted a hole in the wall last night and I gotta fix it.”
“Of course, Sheriff Rachel. We carry that in only one size, a six-foot-by-four-foot panel. Will you take it with you or shall I arrange for a delivery? And how many panels?”
“Two to start with. If I need more I’ll come back. I borrowed my daddy’s pickup for the day, so I can take it with me. I just need you to put it in the bed for me.”
“This I shall do immediately. Will you pay for it or shall I bill the city of Smallville?”
“City pays for the materials. I’m providing the labor. I’ll need some drywall tape, a wide putty knife, a drywall hand saw, a claw hammer, a small box o’ two-inch nails, and some joint compound to go with it. We got no tools in the office. Ought to, though.”
“Your order shall be ready in but a moment.”
“Thanks, Manny.”
“Oh, no, Sheriff Rachel, it is I who owes you thanks for preventing last night’s drunken men from damaging my place of business. Or worse, damaging me.”
*****
Lois knocked on Perry’s office door and leaned in. “Final version of the nursing home story is in your inbox. I think you’ll like this one.”
He nodded. “I’m sure I will. Can you stick around for a little while? I want to give it one more look before I send it to printing.”
“As long as you put it on the front page, I’ll hang.”
He grinned a little. “Hard-charging as always. You can go get something to munch on if you want. This’ll take me about half an hour.”
“Will do. You want something from the concession stand downstairs?”
“Naw. Alice has been after me to cut down on sweets, so she’s sending me to work with what she calls ‘healthy’ snacks.” He curled his lip and shook his head. “It’s like eating wet sheetrock.”
Lois chuckled. “Hang in there, Perry. She’s worth it.”
He gave her a sharp look but didn’t say anything. But she knew what he’d been thinking.
She hadn’t thought Clark was worth the effort to keep him.
Her smile long gone, she stomped to the elevator and hit the “down” button with her fist, then flinched and shook her bruised hand. She had to stop punching hard things or she’d break her hands and then where would she be? There was no one left in the newsroom who’d willingly take dictation from her.
Clark would have done so gladly just to be close to her. At least, he would have done so two weeks ago.
The rebel thought angered her yet again.
The elevator came and she stepped in, then gently touched the button for the first floor. The doors slid shut. Her reflection in the metal of the doors showed an angry woman with little to no compassion in her life.
Fine. She had no compassion. It was Clark’s fault. He’d betrayed her heart, her mind, her trust, her love. He’d lied to her for years. He’d kept his biggest secret from her as he’d wooed and won her heart, her mind, her trust, her love.
Then with a single sentence, with one confession, he’d dumped the essence of Lois Lane out on the floor and stomped on it with spiked boots. He’d broken her, destroyed her, betrayed her, and she couldn’t tell anyone about it without betraying him in return.
There were times when she was angry enough to reveal The Secret, to purchase air time on radio and TV, to buy half-page ads in every newspaper on the East Coast, to write her story and sell it to the highest bidder. But she couldn’t. If she were to do that, she’d have to admit that she was as much an untrustworthy, unethical, manipulative low-life as he was. And that was one thing she’d vowed she would never do.
As long as Clark Kent stayed out of Metropolis.
The doors opened and she forced herself to walk with something like her normal gait. Doug, the man behind the concession stand counter, looked up and saw her coming, then put four Double-Fudge Crunch Bars on the counter, along with a sixteen-ounce bottle of Pepsi.
Lois slowed as she came closer, frowned at Doug, then said, “What’s this?”
Doug shrugged. “Mid-morning on Saturday, you come down here, you always want a pick-me-up. Saves time if I set it up for you.”
She nodded slowly. “Okay. How about I take two of the bars and the bottle?”
He shrugged again, then tapped the keys of a calculator on the counter. “Fine by me. Comes to, uh, two-fifty-five including sales tax.”
She huffed through her nose as she dug through her purse. “These things get more expensive every day.”
“Too true. And I got my overhead and profit margin to think of.”
She gave him three ones. He gave her back a quarter and two dimes. She stuffed the candy and change in her purse and carried the bottle back to the elevator.
“Perry better love that blasted story,” she muttered.
*****
As Rachel parked at the back door of the station, she sighed. She was tired, she wanted to see her daddy, and now she had to repair a wall. She thought about making Bobby Clanton do it, but then his lawyer would scream about forcing persons accused of misdemeanors into hard physical labor and it would ruin any case against him for assaulting a police officer.
The things she put up with as sheriff.
She stepped out the driver’s door and turned toward the tailgate, then heard someone open it. She looked up to see Clark manhandling the wallboard panels out of the truck bed as easily if they weighed almost nothing.
“Hey, Clark,” she called, “do I need to arrest you for theft of county property?”
He balanced the panels atop his head and grinned at her. “I was here, so I thought I’d give you a hand with the wall. Mrs. Howard told me about it. I wouldn’t want you to strain a muscle.”
“I’m a big girl, Clark,” she said dryly. “All I’d need is one deputy to help carry ‘em. I can do the rest.”
“Then it’s a good thing I’m here. It’ll save your deputy’s lower back from strain.”
She frowned past her amusement. “Fine. They go upstairs, just to the right of Denise’s desk. Hey, you talk to her yet?”
She opened the back door to the station and held it for him. “Yes. I have an appointment in two hours with Sam Kramer. He owns the building across the street – sorry, you already know that. Anyway, we’re going to discuss my renting some office space there.”
Across the street, thought Rachel. That would be nice.
Clark kept talking as he climbed the stairs. “He has two furnished spaces and one unfurnished space available. I plan to take the unfurnished one if it’s suitable. I’ve already bought a desk and chair and filing cabinet, plus a lamp. That’d be enough for my purposes.”
They finished the climb to the second floor where the sheriff’s offices resided, and Rachel realized that Clark hadn’t pretended to strain with his load.
She also realized that she’d forgotten the other supplies. “Nuts. I’ll be right back. I forgot the tools and stuff.”
Clark leaned the wallboard panels against the wall near the damage – again, without straining – and said, “I can get that for you.”
“Naw, it’s my responsibility. I’ll just—”
He gently touched her forearm and smiled. “It’s no trouble. I like to help. You just wait here and I’ll be right back.”
She sighed with fake exasperation. “Fine. It’s all in a box on the passenger seat.”
He nodded and turned to the stairs. She watched him skip down the steps to the door, again showing no effect from the exertion.
It reminded her of the night of the prom.
~~~~~
It was the next-to-last dance and he was still beside her, still smiling and chatting with real animation and letting her hold his hand. The corsage he’d given her was still bouncy on her wrist. He’d shown surprising grace and agility while they’d danced, and she’d surprised herself by being more adventurous on the floor than she normally was. All in all, it had been a most wonderful evening.
Until Matt Stearman tried to start a fight with Clark.
He and two of his motorcycle buddies, all three in ill-fitting suits, had been harassing the occasional couple both inside the venue and outside all night. By the end of the night, Rachel had seen two different girls at different times who’d come back in helping their respective dates to chairs against the wall. Stearman and his buddies had been warned several times not to misbehave, but the dance organizers didn’t have enough chaperones to police the entire area. No one had anticipated this kind of problem.
She and Clark had tried to help the second young couple, but the boy, whose name Rachel didn’t know, had refused any assistance. They’d tottered outside to his car alongside Clark and Rachel and driven away. The boy had been grunting in pain and the girl had been crying.
Clark turned to her. “I hate this,” he growled. “I hate that these clowns are ruining the prom for so many people.”
“Clark, please don’t go looking for trouble.”
“I won’t. But if I see them bothering anyone, I’m going to stop them.”
She grabbed his arm and tried to pull him back inside. “Please, Clark, don’t do that. You can’t make people act right if they don’t wanna do it.”
He turned hard eyes to her. “No more, Rachel. No more. They’re not hurting anyone else here tonight. I will not permit it.”
She knew that once Clark made up his mind, no one would change it. She tried anyway. “Come on, let’s catch the last dance. I wanna snuggle up real close to you and make Lana mad enough to spit tacks.”
He softened enough to smile. “I think you’ve already done that, but I get the point. Miss Harris, will you allow me the privilege of the last dance of the prom?”
She dimpled. Might even have blushed a little. “Why, of course, Mr. Kent. I would be pleased and proud to dance with you one more time tonight.”
He offered his arm and she took it. “Then let us—”
That was when Matt Stearman stepped out of the dark and called out, “Hey, boys, we got us a couple of live ones here!”
Rachel turned to see Matt approaching from beyond the lights in the parking lot with an evil grin decorating his face. She snapped her head around to pick out an escape route, but there were two more thuggish youths approaching from different angles. She could have drawn an equilateral triangle using their positions.
This was not accidental. They were hunting. And Rachel and Clark were their prey.
“Hold on, boys,” she called out. “My daddy’s the county sheriff, and I don’t think he’d take kindly to y’all messing with his little girl.”
One of the others laughed. “Oh, we ain’t here for you, blondie. Not yet, anyway. We come for your boytoy.”
“Hey, fellas,” she said, “this guy ain’t no pushover.”
“Ha!” the third one huffed. “He won’t be any tougher than the other two.”
Clark pulled Rachel toward his dad’s pickup and handed her the keys. “Rach, get in and lock the doors.”
“No! I can’t let you—”
“Rachel! Please!” He turned to her, almost begging, and whispered, “I have to keep you safe. I gave your father my word.”
She took a moment to look into his eyes. In that moment, she decided that he meant it. He’d keep her safe no matter what it cost him.
She nodded, took the keys, and retreated to the passenger side of the truck. As soon as she closed and locked her door, she spun around to kneel in the seat and watch through the back window. If they hurt Clark, she’d make sure they wouldn’t get away with it.
The three boys closed around Clark until they were almost close enough to touch him. Then they each took one step around the circle to the left and charged.
Clark ducked and rolled out of the way. The three boys collided and went down in a heap.
Rachel couldn’t believe how fast Clark could move. If she had blinked she’d have missed it completely.
Matt was the first to his feet. He lunged at Clark with a vicious roundhouse punch which Clark took on—
No. He moved his head out of the way with no time to spare and Matt missed. His momentum made him lean toward Clark, who grabbed Matt’s extended arm and flipped him over his hip to the asphalt.
Another boy jumped and wrapped his arm around Clark’s throat from behind and squeezed. Rachel saw Clark’s elbow jab back and hit the boy in the ribs.
The boy tried to scream, then crumpled and fell.
The third boy, apparently just as dumb as his buddies, tried to kick Clark in the side. Clark caught his foot with one hand, lifted it almost shoulder-high, then came down on the boy’s shin with his free elbow.
Rachel heard the bone snap from inside the truck.
Matt finally made it to his feet, but when he saw his friends down and groaning, he reached inside his jacket and pulled out a pistol and pointed it at her inside the truck and opened his mouth—
And suddenly – impossibly suddenly – Clark held the pistol in his hand. Matt was just as suddenly sprawled against the front grill of the principal’s Volvo with his arms over his chest.
As Matt slowly slid to the parking lot, Clark squeezed the pistol. Rachel decided she needed to get out and stop him before he accidentally fired it and—
The pistol bent in his hand.
Then he turned away and threw it out of her sight over the prom venue.
She spun and sat on the passenger side of the front bench seat facing forward. If he didn’t know she’d seen him do those impossible things, maybe he wouldn’t worry that she’d tell anyone. As far as she knew, no one on earth knew that he could bend metal with his hand or move faster than humanly possible.
Maybe his parents knew. But she’d never tell.
When he tapped on her window, she didn’t have to fake being startled. Her head brushed the truck’s ceiling when she jumped. “What!” she yelled.
He slowly lifted his hands and spoke just loudly enough for her to hear. “Rachel, it’s me. It’s Clark. The fight’s over. You’re safe.”
She put her hand to her chest and took three deep breaths, then pushed the door open and all but threw herself in his arms. “Oh, Clark! I was so scared! Where are they? Where did they go? Did they run away?”
Later she was sure his sigh was one of relief that she hadn’t seen what he’d done. “No,” he said, “they didn’t run. They made me fight them. And – uh – it didn’t turn out very well for them.”
She slowly walked to the truck’s tailgate and looked around. The three boys were still in the places where they’d landed after Clark was finished with them. All three were conscious, but groaning in pain and none showed any signs of leaving under their own power.
“Oh, my. These boys gonna need some doctorin’. I’ll go find Principal Keller or somebody and tell him they’re here. You stay with ‘em, okay? I’ll be right back.”
She’d turned and sprinted as fast as she could in a semi-formal gown back to the prom venue. A number of people were heading for the doors as she banged through them. “Principal Keller! Mr. Keller! We got a situation outside! We need police and a ambulance!”
The middle-aged man materialized out of the mob and stood before her. “Young lady, please! Why are you shouting so?”
She controlled her breathing again and said, “They’s three boys out in the parking lot who got hurt somehow. They cain’t get up and they need a doctor real quick!”
He frowned at her and opened his mouth to speak, but before he uttered a syllable, Mrs. Naughton, her geometry teacher, touched Mr. Keller’s arm and said, “This is Rachel Harris, the sheriff’s daughter. She’s not given to wild stories or exaggeration. You stay here and I’ll go look.”
Mr. Keller drew himself up, then nodded. “That’s a good idea. Everyone stay inside! If there are injured people out there, they don’t need an audience!” He turned and grabbed Mr. Holder, the boy’s gym teacher. “Go find that deejay and have him play some more music. Something loud and energetic. And then help me get these kids back inside.”
Mrs. Naughton crooked her finger at Rachel and said, “Show me where they are.”
Rachel started off with Mrs. Naughton trailing in her wake. Rachel stopped a few feet short of the first boy, the one whose shin Clark had snapped, and pointed. “Here’s one, the second’s just there next to Clark, and the third one’s over there by Mr. Keller’s car.”
Mrs. Naughton looked at the three, then at Clark, then turned and jogged back to the building. Clark sighed and shook his head. Rachel walked over to him, stood beside him, and took his hand in hers.
Neither of them spoke for several long moments, then Rachel said, “Wow. You sure know how to show a girl a good time.”
Clark gaped at her for a few seconds, then slowly dissolved into soft laughter. Rachel joined him. Then the boy with the broken leg moaned and said, “They gettin’ – a doctor?”
“Yeah,” Rachel said. “I hope it’s the one who treated the other two boys you idiots beat up.”
They boy put his head down and went silent save for his labored breathing. Rachel put her head on Clark’s shoulder and said, “You kept me safe. Just like you said you would.”
Clark nodded once, then did something he’d not done before that moment.
He turned slightly, put his lips on hers, and kissed her briefly.~~~~~
That kiss, despite being so soft and brief, was still the best one she’d ever had. Just thinking about it made her all warm inside her chest.
She was still standing at the top of the stairs when Clark carried the box of supplies in. He smiled once again and said, “I have some time. Can I help?”
That was what he did best, what he lived for. He wanted to help people, to protect them from harm.
“Sure,” she heard herself say. “Many hands make light work.”
“Sounds good,” he replied. “Let’s get started.”
Clark borrowed a pencil from Denise’s desk, tapped on the wall with his index finger until he found the vertical wooden stud behind the drywall on either side of the dent, then drew a rectangle on the broken wall that framed the damage between studs. Rachel used a box knife from the station’s junk box to score the existing drywall over the stud, then Clark took over and made the horizontal cut from stud to stud with the drywall saw Rachel had bought. From there, he used the box knife to cut the drywall down to the stud on the left.
When he moved to the right side of the work area, Rachel shook her head and held out her hand. “I said you could help. I never said you could have all the fun.”
He chuckled handed her the knife handle-first. She duplicated the cuts he’d already made on the other side of Bobby’s outline and opened a hole in the wall. They bumped elbows several times while pulling the broken pieces of wallboard away.
It was a touch of domestic intimacy that Rachel wished could last all day.
In less time that Rachel would have preferred, they had a rectangle of open wall. Clark turned one panel with its long edge on the floor and the short end against one side of the hole. He took the pencil and drew a straight vertical line on the other end that matched the other side of the hole.
He held the box knife out to Rachel. “I’ll hold this steady if you’ll cut it to fit.”
“Done.”
She took the knife and scored the panel with it, then grabbed the wallboard saw and cut it all the way through. The trimmed piece of wallboard fit almost seamlessly into the bottom of the hole.
She turned to Clark and grinned. “Good job. You wanna nail it up there?”
He lifted his hands as if in surrender. “It’s your jail. I’m just helping.”
“Yeah, right.” She knelt and grabbed the hammer, then tapped a nail into each corner to hold it against the studs. “Ready for the next part?”
He nodded. “Whenever you are.”
Working together, they measured and cut the remaining board to fit the smaller upper portion of the hole, then Rachel held it in place to let Clark nail it down. They stepped back together and smiled at each other.
“Good job, Sheriff,” he said. “Just needs a tape and float job and it’ll be ready to paint.”
“Can’t paint it for a few hours. Gotta wait for the compound to dry. And don’t you have an appointment to look at an office?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t want to leave you in the lurch.”
“I’ll tape and mud it, then I’ll go home. If Bobby Clanton gives me any trouble I’ll make him paint it. You did a lot of the hard work anyway, so get going.”
“Okay. As long as you have it under control.”
“I do. If you do rent one o’ them offices, I’ll see you later.”
“Sounds like a plan to me. See you soon, Rachel.”
“Hey, wait! When do I get to read your first column in the paper?”
He stopped and faced her. “I sent the first one in last night. My boss said he’d get it in tomorrow’s Daily Planet.”
“Why don’t you talk to Mr. Emerson about putting it in the Smallville Post? I bet he’d love to print it. You know, local boy makes good, gets published nationally, that kind of thing. Folks around here would eat that up. Buy more copies of the Post, too.”
“That’s not a bad idea. I’ll check with my boss to see if he wants to allow it. See you around.”
He clip-clopped down the stairs and was gone.
Rachel smiled at nothing for a moment, then turned to pick up the putty knife and open the can of wall compound and nearly ran over Denise Howard. The older woman stood in Rachel’s way with her arms crossed and a concerned look on her face.
“Whoa. Sorry, Denise. Didn’t realize you was there.”
Denise’s voice was low and serious. “You watch yourself, young lady. Don’t let your emotions get ahead of your brain with that man.”
Surprised, Rachel paused, then said at the same low level, “You think he’s out to break my heart or something?”
“No, of course not. I think Clark Kent is a fine young man. But I was at Martha’s house helping her put that food together for you and your mom when he called. He’s in love with a woman in Metropolis, and she up and broke his heart. Take my advice and don’t try to put his heart back together for him.”
Rachel put on her “sheriff” face. “I appreciate your concern, but you’re puttin’ the cart in front of the horse here. He just got to town and all he’s done so far is what he’d do for anyone. I’m not all that special to him.”
“Not yet, no. But you’d like to be.” Denise held up one hand before Rachel could speak. “I know, I’m butting in. I won’t do it again. Just remember what I told you and take your time.”
Rachel nodded and decided not to discuss the issue any further. “I gotta get this tape and mud on the wall before I disintegrate into little tiny broken-hearted pieces.”
Denise’s left eyebrow tilted up on the outside. “Sarcasm duly noted, Sheriff. Just remember what I said.”
“I won’t. Hey, I really gotta finish this before I go home and see my daddy.”
Denise nodded and returned to her desk. Rachel attacked the wall with more energy that she thought she’d had.
Clark was the gentlest and kindest soul she’d ever met, but he wouldn’t break her heart. Not again. She wouldn’t allow it.
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