The Rancher & Heart of Stone (18 page)

“Luckily for the man,” Clark elaborated dryly. “If he’d shot Kilraven, he’d be awaiting trial in the hospital.”

“That would depend on where he shot him,” Winnie replied.

“Kilraven’s steel right through,” Keely teased. “No bullet could get through that hard shell.”

“She’s right.” Clark chuckled. “They’d have to hit him with a bomb to make a dent in him.”

None of them noticed that Boone was sitting rigidly, with his eyes staring blindly into space. There was a look in them that any combat veteran would have recognized immediately. But nobody in his family had ever been in the military, except for himself.

Keely did notice. She knew that Boone had been in the war, that he’d been a front line, Special Forces soldier. She knew that he was reliving some terrible memory. Keely knew about those, because she had her own. Without saying a word, her eyes communicated that knowledge to the taciturn man across from her. He frowned and averted his eyes.

He finished his coffee and got to his feet. “I’ve got to make a few phone calls,” he murmured.

“Keely made cinnamon buns,” Winnie said. “Don’t you want one?”

He hesitated uncharacteristically. “Bring me one in the office, with a second cup of coffee, will you?” he asked.

“Sure,” Winnie said.

“No.” His dark eyes slid to Keely. “You bring it,” he said.

Before she could answer him, he strode out of the room.

“Well!” Clark said, surprised.

“He’s in a mood to bite somebody,” Winnie said solemnly. “Boone’s a horror when there’s no audience to slow him down. If he disapproves of you dating Clark, he’ll make your life hell. I’ll take his dessert to him.”

“No,” Clark said. He looked at Keely. “You have to stop being afraid of him and stand up to him,” he told her. “This is a good time to start.”

Keely became pale. She hesitated and looked to Winnie to save her.

But Winnie hesitated, too. She frowned. “Maybe Clark’s right,” she said after a minute. “You’re afraid of Boone. He knows it, and uses it against you.”

Keely bit her lower lip. “I suppose you’re right. I’m a wimp.”

“You’re not,” her best friend replied, smiling. “Here’s your chance to prove it.”

“With your shield or on it,” Clark intoned dramatically.

Keely glowered at him. “I am not a Spartan.”

“An Amazon, then,” Clark compromised, and grinned. “Go get him!”

“We’ll be right here,” Winnie promised. “You can yell for help and we’ll come running.”

Keely had her doubts about that. Winnie and Clark loved Boone, but neither of them had ever been a match for his temper. If she yelled for help, they’d assume that Boone was bristling and ready for a fight, and they’d be under heavy pieces of furniture trying not to get noticed. Still, they had a point. She was almost twenty years old. It was time she learned to fight back.

She poured a cup of black coffee from the pot and took the cinnamon buns out of the oven. She put two of them on a saucer and added a napkin to her burdens. She glanced at her audience.

Clark flapped his hand at her.

Winnie mouthed, “Go on!”

She would have made a smart remark, but her heart was in her throat. It bothered her that Boone had asked her to bring dessert to him. Considering his reaction to her friendship with Clark, he had to be up to something.

* * *

S
HE
TAPPED
NERVOUSLY
on the door.

“Come in,” he called curtly.

She balanced the saucer holding the cinnamon buns on the cup of coffee and gingerly opened his office door, closing it with her back once she was inside.

It was a small, intimate room, with ceiling-to-floor bookcases on two walls, French windows opening onto a small patio and a fireplace with gas logs. The carpet was deep beige, the curtains echoing the earth tones. But the furniture was red leather, as if the very sedateness of the room commanded a touch of color. Boone looked right at home in a big red leather-upholstered chair behind his enormous solid oak desk. Over the mantel was a painting of Boone’s father. It was a prophecy of what Boone would look like in old age—with silver hair and a distinguished, commanding expression.

“You look like him,” Keely mused as she put the coffee and its accompanying dessert gently in a bare spot on the paper-littered desktop. Her hands were cold and shaking and the cup rattled in the saucer. She hoped he hadn’t noticed.

“Do I?” He glanced at the portrait. “He was a head shorter than I am.”

“You can’t see height in a painting,” she pointed out.

She didn’t want to argue. She started toward the door.

“Come back here,” he said curtly. It wasn’t a request.

It was now or never. She took a steadying breath and turned. “Winnie’s waiting for me.”

“Winnie?” he asked with a cynical smile. “Or Clark?”

She swallowed. Her hands began to shake again. She clasped them at her waist to still them. “Both of them,” she compromised.

He leaned back in the chair, ignoring the buns and the coffee. “You and Clark have been like siblings for years. Why the sudden passion?”

“Passion?” she parroted.

“He’s dating you. Didn’t you notice?” he asked sarcastically.

“We went horseback riding,” she pointed out. “There are a lot of things you can’t do on a horse!”

His eyebrows made arches. “Really? What sort of things?”

He was baiting her. She glared at him. “You said you wanted cinnamon buns and coffee. There it is.”

She started toward the door again.

Incredible, how fast he could move, she thought dazedly when he was already at the door before she reached it. She had to stop suddenly to keep from running right into his tall, powerful body.

He turned so that her back was against the door. His dark eyes narrowed as he looked down at her. She felt like a small, delicious and decidedly alarmed bunny.

He knew it. He smiled slowly and his eyes began to glitter. “You’re afraid of me,” he said in a slow, deep tone.

Her hands spread behind her against the door and she tried to melt into it. He was very close. She could feel the heat from his tall, powerful body, smell the clean, spicy scent of him as he leaned closer.

Now he had an advantage, and he knew it. She’d done a stupid thing, trying to run.

“You aren’t afraid of Clark or Bentley, though, are you?” he persisted.

“They’re nice people.”

He made a short, rough sound deep in his throat. “And I’m not?”

She dragged in a ragged breath. Her eyes would only go as high as his top shirt button, which was unfastened. Thick, black curling hair peeked out from under it. She wondered if there was more across his broad, muscular chest under the fabric. He never took his shirt off, or even opened it past that top button. She was curious. Her thoughts surprised her. She hadn’t thought that way about a man in a long time.

He recognized her fear for what it was. One lean hand came up to her cheek and brushed back strands of soft blond hair, the gesture sensuous enough to make her shiver. She couldn’t hide her reaction to him. She didn’t have the experience.

Pressing his advantage, he bent and brushed his nose lazily against hers in an odd, intimate little caress that made her breath stop in her throat.

“You smell of lilacs,” he whispered. “It’s a scent I never connect with any other woman.”

“It’s only shampoo,” she blurted out. She was shy and nervous. She didn’t understand what he was doing. Was this a pass? She couldn’t remember a man ever treating her like this.

“Is it?” He shifted, just a little, but enough to bring his long legs in contact with hers, in an intimacy she’d never shared with a man.

Instinctively her small hands went to his chest and pushed once, jerkily.

He pulled back from her with a rough word. His eyes were blazing when he looked down at her. “Did you think I was making a pass at you?” he challenged tightly. “You’d be lucky! I don’t waste my time on children.”

She was shivering. His whole posture was threatening, and he looked murderous.

“Hell!” he burst out, furious at his own weakness and her cold reaction to it. She was just a little icicle.

Her lower lip trembled. He was scary like that. She still connected anger with physical violence, thanks to a friend of her father’s. She cringed involuntarily when he lifted his hand.

Her blatant fear put a quick cap on his temper. He stopped for a moment, puzzled. What he was learning about her, without a word being spoken, fascinated him. She really
was
afraid of him. Not only of his ardor, but his temper, as well. She thought he was raising his hand to strike her. Which posed a worrying question. Had some man hit her in the past?

“I was going to open the door, Keely,” he said in a totally different tone, the one he used with children. “I don’t hit women. That’s a coward’s way.”

She forced her eyes up to his. She couldn’t tell him. She kept so many secrets. There were nightmares in her past.

He frowned. His fingers went to her cheek and drew down it with an odd tenderness. They moved to her soft mouth and traced it, and then lifted to smooth back her hair.

“What happened to you?” he asked in the softest tone he’d ever used with her.

She met his eyes evenly. “What happened to
you?
” she countered in a voice that was barely louder than a whisper to divert him.

“Me?”

She nodded. “When Clark was talking about bombs, you got all quiet and your eyes were terrible.”

The expression on his face went from tender to indifferent, in seconds. He was shutting her out. “You’d better go back to the others,” he said. He opened the door for her and stood aside, waiting for her to leave.

She went through it hesitantly, as though there was something unfinished between them.

“Thanks for the coffee and dessert,” he said tautly, and closed the door before she could say another word.

CHAPTER FIVE

B
OONE
CAME
OUT
of the office an hour later and left without saying a word. Keely and Winnie and Clark watched a new movie on pay-per-view and then shared a pizza before Clark drove Keely home. Boone still hadn’t come back.

Keely didn’t often get premonitions, but she had one now. It was getting dark and when they drove up at the Welsh house, two things registered at once. There were no lights on in the house and a Jacobs County Deputy Sheriff’s car was sitting in the driveway.

“Oh, dear,” Keely murmured fearfully, grabbing at the door handle.

Clark, concerned, got out of his car and walked with her to the deputy, who got out of his car when Keely approached.

“Sorry, ma’am,” he told her with a quiet demeanor, “but we couldn’t contact you by phone and there’s, well, there’s sort of an emergency.”

“Something’s happened to my mother?” Keely asked nervously.

“Not exactly.” The deputy, a kind man, grimaced. “She’s over at Shea’s Roadhouse,” he added, naming a sometimes notorious bar on the Victoria road. “She’s very drunk, she’s breaking bottles and she refuses to leave. We’d like you to come with us and see if you can get her to go home before we’re forced to arrest her.” He, like most of Jacobs County, knew that Ella’s fortunes had dwindled, even if Keely didn’t. Keely likely wouldn’t have enough money to bail Ella out of jail.

“I’ll come right now,” Keely agreed.

“I’ll drive you and help you get her home,” Clark said at once without being asked.

She smiled at the deputy. “Thanks.”

He shrugged. “I used to have to drag my old man out of bars,” he said. “It’s why I went into law enforcement when I grew up. I’ll follow you out there, in case there’s any more trouble.”

“Thanks.”

“It goes with the job, but you’re welcome.”

* * *

W
HEN
THEY
GOT
to Shea’s, Ella was screaming bloody murder and holding an empty whiskey bottle over her head while the bartender crouched in a corner.

“For goodness’ sake!” Keely exclaimed, walking up to her mother with Clark and the deputy close behind. “What are you doing?”

Ella recognized her daughter and slowly put the bottle on the bar. She shivered. “Keely.” In a rare show of emotion, she caught her daughter around the neck, hugged her and held on for dear life. “What will we do?” she sobbed. “Oh, Keely, what will we do?”

“About what?” Keely asked, shocked at the older woman’s behavior. She was never affectionate.

“All my fault,” Ella mumbled. “All my fault. If I’d told what I knew...”

Before she could elaborate on that cryptic remark, she began to collapse.

“Help!” Keely called.

The deputy and Clark got on both sides of the older woman and held her up.

“Do you want to press charges?” the deputy asked the bartender.

The man looked torn. But Keely’s face decided him. “Not if she’ll agree to pay for the damages.”

“Of course we will,” Keely replied, unaware of her mother’s financial status.

“Where in the world is Tiny?” the deputy asked the bartender, because their bouncer usually prevented trouble like this.

“He’s having knee replacement surgery,” he confided. “One of our more volatile customers kicked him in the leg and put him out of commission. We usually have a relief bouncer, but we can’t find one. Nobody except Tiny wants the job.”

“If you get in trouble, all you have to do is call us,” the deputy told him.

“I know that. Thanks.” The bartender hesitated, frowning, as if he wanted to say more, but he glanced worriedly at Keely.

The deputy was a veteran of law enforcement. He knew the man wanted to tell him something. “I’ll help them get Mrs. Welsh to the car, then I’ll come back and get a list of the damages,” he promised, and saw the bartender relax a little.

“Okay,” he said.

* * *

K
EELY
FOLLOWED
THE
deputy and Clark, with her mother, out to Clark’s car.

“Do you have a blanket or something, in case she gets sick?” Keely asked worriedly. It would be terrible if her mother threw up in that luxurious backseat.

Clark popped the trunk lid and pulled out a big comforter, throwing it over the backseat. “I keep it in case I have to carry Bailey somewhere,” he confessed. “He doesn’t like to ride in the car.”

They got Ella down on the seat and closed the door. After a couple of words with the deputy, they went back to the Welsh place and bundled Ella into the house and onto her bed. Keely was careful to use her right arm in the process. The left one was too weak and fragile for lifting.

“It’s like deadweight,” Clark commented when they’d placed her.

“She usually is,” Keely replied, breathless. She frowned at the prone sight of her mother, who was still wearing slacks and a blouse and sweater and shoes. She’d take those off later, when Clark left. “I just wonder what set her off? She doesn’t ever go to bars except with Carly, and she doesn’t usually get this drunk even then.”

“No telling,” Clark said. “Well, I’ll get home,” he added, smiling. “Thanks for everything, Keely.”

She smiled. “Thank you.”

“I’ll call you.”

She waved as he drove away. It was already dark. She went back inside, still puzzled about Ella’s condition.

* * *

B
UT
THERE
WERE
more puzzles to come. She’d tugged off her mother’s shoes and thrown a coverlet over her. Undressing an unconscious person was heavy work and Keely’s shoulder was already aching.

She was watching the news on their small color TV while doing a load of clothes when there was a knock at the door.

Most Saturday nights, there was an emergency at work and she was called in to assist. But the phone hadn’t rung. There weren’t even any messages, except for an odd call with nothing but static and then a click. She wondered if Bentley had driven over to collect her for an emergency.

When she opened the door, it was another surprise. Sheriff Hayes Carson was standing on her front porch. He wasn’t smiling.

“Hi, Keely,” he said. “Mind if I come in?”

“Of course not.” She held the door wide so that he could enter. He was a head taller than Keely, with brown-streaked blond hair that had a stubborn wave right over his left eyebrow. He had dark eyes that seemed to see right through people. In his mid-thirties, he was still a confirmed bachelor, and considered quite a catch. But Keely knew he hadn’t come calling in the middle of the night because he found her irresistible.

She went to turn the television down, and motioned him into a chair. She perched on the edge of the sofa.

“If it’s about the bar tonight,” she began worriedly.

“No,” he said gently. “Not quite. Keely, have you heard from your father lately?”

She was stunned. It wasn’t the question she’d anticipated. “No,” she stammered. “I haven’t heard a word from him since he dropped me off here when I was about thirteen,” she added. “Why?”

He seemed to be considering his options. He leaned forward. “You knew he’d fallen into some bad company before you left?”

“Yes,” she said, and shuddered. “One of his new friends slapped me around and left bruises,” she recalled. She’d never told that to anyone else. “I think it was the main reason he brought me back to my mother.”

Hayes’s sensuous mouth made a thin line. “Pity he wasn’t living in Jacobs County at the time,” he muttered.

Keely knew what he meant. She’d heard that Hayes was hell on woman-beaters. “It is, isn’t it?” she agreed. “Is my father in some sort of trouble?”

“We think he needs money. He may get in touch with you or your mother. This is important, Keely. If he does, you need to call me right away.” He was solemn as he spoke. “You could both be in terrible danger.”

“From my own father?” she asked, agape.

He was hesitant. “He’s not the father you remember. Not anymore.”

He never had been the father she’d wanted, she recalled, even if she’d tried to give him the love a father was due from his daughter. She could remember times when she was sick and her father left her alone, going out at odd hours and staying gone, sometimes for two days at a time, while Keely and the hired help kept the game park going. At the last, his drinking and his violent friends worried Keely more than she’d ever admitted.

“Is he mixed up in something illegal, Sheriff Carson?” she asked worriedly.

His face was a closed book, revealing nothing. “He’s got friends who are,” he said, sharing with a little of the truth. “They’re pushing him for money that he doesn’t have, and they want it very badly. We think he may have tried to contact your mother.”

“Why would you think that?” she asked slowly.

He sighed. “The bartender at Shea’s said she was yelling that her husband was going to kill her if she didn’t buy him off, and she was broke.”

Her heart skipped. “Broke? She said she was broke?” she exclaimed. “But she owns property, she gets rent—”

He hated being the one who had to tell her this. He ground his teeth. “She’s sold all the property, Keely, probably to pay her bar bills,” he said heavily. “One of the Realtors who was at the bar at the time mentioned it to me. There’s nothing left. She’s probably drained her savings, as well.”

Keely felt sick. She sank down into the sofa and felt wounded all over again. No wonder Ella didn’t want her to leave. Her mother couldn’t afford to hire someone to replace her for domestic work.

“I’m sorry,” Hayes said genuinely.

“No, it’s all right,” she replied, forcing a smile. “I did wonder. She let things slip from time to time.” Her green eyes were troubled. Her own small salary barely allowed her to own an ancient used car and buy gas to get to work, much less pay for utilities and upkeep. What Hayes had told her was terrifying. “What do you want me to do?” she asked, surmising why he’d come.

“I want you to tell me if you hear anything from or about your father,” he said gently. “There’s a lot at stake here. I wish I could tell you what I know, but I can’t.”

Keely recalled that her father’s friend had a police record. He’d bragged when he slapped her that he’d killed a woman for less than Keely had done, talking back to him.

She frowned. “Just before I came to Jacobsville,” she recalled, “Dad’s friend, Jock, said he’d killed a woman.”

“Jock?” He drew out a PDA and pulled up a screen. “Jock Hardin?”

Her heart flipped. “Yes. He was the one who hit me.”

He frowned. “Why did he hit you?”

She drew in a long breath. “I burned the rolls.”

Hayes cursed roundly and then apologized. He leaned forward and stared right into her eyes. “Did he do anything more than hit you?” he asked.

“He wanted to.” She couldn’t say more. Jock had gotten her shirt halfway off and then pushed her away, revolted. Her pride wouldn’t let her admit that to Hayes.

“He was prevented?”

She nodded. Her green eyes looked into his. “Do you know where he is? I mean, he isn’t going to come here and make trouble for Mama and me, is he?”

“I don’t know, Keely. He’s on the run from a new charge, one he shares with your father. Don’t ask. I can’t tell you,” he added when she started to speak. “Suffice it to say that we can put him away for life if we can catch him.”

“And my father?” she prodded gently.

He bit his full lower lip. “He’ll probably get the same sentence. I’m sorry. He’s done some bad things since he left you here. Some very bad things. People have died.”

Her heart sank right into her shoes. She remembered her father laughing, buying her a puppy and taking her around with him in the game park, teasing her about her affection for the big mountain lion, Hilton. He hadn’t been a bad man in those days, and he’d been affectionate with her, and always kind. The man she remembered at the last had been very different, with violent mood swings. Jock had taken over his life. And Keely’s. She’d realized, belatedly, that her father had probably saved her life by bringing her back to Jacobsville.

“He wasn’t a bad man when we had the game park,” she told Hayes. “He had a nice girlfriend who took me to church and he never teased me about it. She was also our bookkeeper. In those days, he was religious, in his own way. He loved the animals. They loved him, too. He could walk right in with the tiger and the mountain lion and pet them.” She laughed, remembering. “They purred...” Her face fell. “What if Jock comes here?” she asked, and she was really afraid. The man had terrified her for weeks. Her father had been so far out of reality that he hadn’t even intervened.

Hayes’s face hardened. “I’ll lock him up so tight he’ll never get out,” he promised.

She relaxed a little. “He was vicious to me.”

“You were lucky he didn’t kill you.”

She nodded.

“We’ll all keep a watch on you,” he promised, rising to his feet. “I’ve worked it out with my deputies, and the Jacobsville police will increase patrols by your office at night when you work late. Call dispatch when you start home and let them know you’re on the road. We’ll watch your back.”

“I will. Thanks, Sheriff Hayes,” she added when they were at the front door.

“I’m sorry about the way things worked out for your father,” he told her abruptly. “I know how it is. My only brother was an addict. He died of an overdose.”

She did know. Everybody did. “I’m sorry, for you, too.”

“Keep your doors locked.”

“I will.”

“Good night.”

“Good night.”

She watched him drive away. Then she locked the door and sat down, heavily, giving way to tears.

* * *

H
ER
MOTHER
SOBERED
up the next day and became very quiet. Keely cooked and cleaned, equally silent. Neither of them mentioned the financial situation. Her mother was very watchful and she locked doors. But when Keely asked why, she would not reply.

Carly came over the next Friday night to take Ella out bar crawling, but Ella was sober and didn’t want to go.

They were in the next room, talking softly, but Keely was listening and could hear them above the soft noise of the dishwasher.