The Sheriff's Son (6 page)

“Why did you leave? Why did you go without saying one word? Not even
goodbye?”

Her green eyes grew wide, her lips parted. “My Lord, Roy, what would you have had me do?”

His face contorted with confusion and anger. “Come to me. Talk to me. I don't think that would have been asking too much.”

Bitterness hardened her eyes and twisted the soft lines of her face. “You had no right to ask me anything. You got Marla pregnant while professing to love me!”

He looked sincerely surprised. “She told you that?”

The rage Justine had felt at him back then begged to be let loose now. It was all she could do to keep from screaming, beating his chest with her fists.

“Of course she told me,” she said cuttingly. “You didn't seem to be able to.”

Justine had never seen a look such as the one that suddenly spread over Roy's face. Hate, anger, regret and pain all mixed to contort his features into a feral snarl.

“Why would I want to tell you a lie?”

Her senses were so scattered by his nearness, she hardly knew what he was saying. But she did latch on to one word, and she repeated it in a blank question. “Lie? What are you trying to say?”

“I'm not trying to say anything. I
am
saying it.”

He dropped his hold on her chin, then wiped a hand over his face. “What the hell…” he muttered. “It doesn't mean anything now.”

Justine should have let it go at that. But she couldn't.
His words and his touch had inflamed her. She had to know what happened with him and Marla.

“If you didn't want to lie to me, why didn't you tell me about Marla—that she was pregnant with your child?”

Her question came out in a heated rush. Roy stared at her face, seeing the outrage there, and realized that she'd gone through all these years believing the worst of him.

“Because I didn't know anything about it.”

Somewhere in the back of Justine's mind, she knew the best thing for her to do would be to leave the stables and never look back. But the years she spent away from her home and family had been the blackest of her life. She'd been young and alone and heartbroken, and this man had done it to her. She needed to know why.

“Sure,” she said, her voice heavy with sarcasm. “The next thing you'll be telling me is that you never had sex with the woman.”

“No. I did have sex with Marla,” he admitted, with a rueful twist to his lips. “But it was before you and I became involved.”

“How convenient. Did this happen hours before you asked me out on a date? Or can you narrow it down to minutes?”

“You're infuriating.” He gritted out the words between clenched teeth. “You know I'd been trying to break up with Marla. I hadn't touched her in that way for weeks!”

“And you're disgusting to think I'd actually believe you! I'm not that same twenty-year-old you charmed and seduced.”

He grabbed her by the shoulders, his fingers digging into the soft flesh of her arms. “Then believe this! Marla was never pregnant She lied to you and she lied to me!”

His words knocked the wind from her, and she went limp against the wooden stall door. “She said—” Justine broke off as shock and regret swirled through her. “Marla told me she was carrying your child, and if I didn't believe her,
I could ask her doctor. She said I was standing in the way of you two getting married. She loved you and wanted to give her child your name. She said if I was any kind of woman at all, I'd leave you and the Hondo Valley for good.”

“Marla never loved anyone but herself,” Roy said tightly.

She lifted accusing eyes to his. “You married her!”

“Only because she was carrying my child. At least I believed she was. And even though I didn't love her, I wanted my child to have a name. I didn't want it to be born a bastard.”

How ironic, Justine thought sickly. He'd wanted to do the honorable thing. Yet his son had been born a bastard anyway. How could she tell him that? She couldn't! He could never know that Charlie was his child!

“Can you understand the situation I was in, Justine?” he asked, jolting her straying thoughts back to the present. “Marla's father was the sheriff and my boss. He respected me. The whole town did. I couldn't ignore my responsibilities. But you wouldn't let me tell you any of this. You left without a word.”

Justine felt sick and defeated. Stepping away from his grasp, she turned her back to him. “What could you have really said, Roy? You chose her rather than me. End of story.”

“But it wasn't the end of the story,” he said. “A few weeks after we were married, it became obvious to me that Marla wasn't pregnant. I was furious. I wanted to kill her. I knew she'd made up the whole thing to get you out of the picture.”

“Well, it worked,” she said bitterly.

Roy sighed. “After we divorced, I called you to tell you what had happened. I tried several times, but you wouldn't talk to me.”

Pain spread from the middle of her chest up to her throat.
“I didn't want to talk to you. I knew you'd married Marla. And as far as I was concerned, it was all over between us.”

Moving behind her, he placed his hands on top of her shoulders. To her disgust, his touch burned through her shirt.

“What would you have done if you'd know the truth about Marla?” he asked quietly, all the anger draining from his voice.

What
would
she have done? Justine asked herself. Would she have told him she was pregnant? He'd already married one woman out of obligation. Would it have eased her heart to be the second? She didn't think so.

Twisting her head around, she looked up at him. The moment her eyes connected with his blue ones, she felt her heart breaking all over again.

“You weren't ready to settle down to family life then,” she said. “You told me that more than once. And I had my education to get. It's probably for the best that I didn't know.”

“Best for whom—you?” he asked. “It must have been. You didn't waste any time finding another man.”

She could hear accusation in his voice, yet she couldn't even defend herself, she realized. She couldn't tell him that he'd been the only man in her life without giving away her secret. She'd had to tell her family, everyone back in Hondo, that she'd gotten engaged to a college student, but he'd dropped her after she became pregnant. It had been the only thing she could think of to save face for herself, her baby, and perhaps even Roy.

“I had to get on with my life, Roy.”

“And pretty damn quick, too, wasn't it? You'd hardly been gone a month when I heard you'd gotten engaged. Why didn't you marry Charlie's father?” he asked sharply.

Justine felt as though his hands were on her heart, rather than her shoulders, twisting and crushing what little was left of it.

“It turned out he didn't want me nearly as much as he thought he did. When he found out Charlie was on the way, he left me high and dry.” Which was true enough, she thought sickly. Roy had left her for Marla. The other woman had been more important to him. “I guess I wasn't as lucky as Marla.”

He didn't say anything, and Justine could only wonder if he was satisfied now. Had dredging up the past relieved him from some sort of guilt? The question very nearly made her snort out loud. What are you thinking, Justine? she asked herself. Roy Pardee never felt guilty about anything.

“Justine,” he began softly, “I didn't want things—”

Justine couldn't stand any more. She didn't want to hear how it should have been, or could have been, if Marla hadn't chosen to tear them apart with her lies.

“I don't want to hear it,” she said. Then, twisting away from his grasp, she hurried down the alleyway of the huge horse barn.

Roy caught up to her in three strides and took hold of her upper arm. His angry face bore down on hers. “Is that the only way you know how to deal with things? Walk away from them?”

Her teeth grinding together, Justine glared at him. “I don't have any ‘things' to deal with. As far as I'm concerned, the past is just that. The past. I didn't ask you to come down here and—”

Her words, her touch, inflamed him, made him forget everything but the need to have her in his arms again.

With a small jerk of his hand, she tumbled against his chest. “You didn't ask for this, either,” he muttered, then brought his lips roughly down on hers.

Outraged, Justine stiffened and pushed her fist against his chest. He didn't relent, his mouth continued its hot, hungry foray. And then, suddenly, stopping him wasn't nearly as important as simply hanging on.

Without her even knowing it, her hands spread open against his shoulders, and her lips parted. He tasted of promised heat and mindless ecstasy. It would be so easy to let herself want him again, need him again.

The road her thoughts had taken shocked her back to the reality of what she was doing. With a great mustering of strength, she twisted out of his embrace and backed away from him.

Her breast heaving, she glared at him. “You shouldn't have done that.”

His top lip curled with mockery. “You and I have done a lot of things we shouldn't have. But kissing wasn't one of them.”

“Get out!” she screamed. “I never want to see you again!”

Her anger caused a dry grin to spread across his face. “And what will you do if you see me again? Run away to Las Cruces? Find another man to cool that womanly fire of yours?”

She desperately wanted to slap him, but the fear that he might arrest her for assaulting a law officer stopped her. She didn't know Roy Pardee anymore. He was liable to do anything, she told herself.

“Believe me, when I go looking for another man, he won't have a badge on his chest and a gun on his hip!”

Roy looked pointedly down at himself. “I guess it's a good thing I keep these on—until I go to bed, that is.”

If her eyes had been daggers, she would already have stabbed him to death. “You helped my sisters get temporary custody of the twins, but that doesn't mean I have to listen to this!”

His expression went flat. “Well, you won't have to listen to any more tonight, because I'm leaving.”

“Good!”

He stepped past her and started toward the large open door at the east end of the barn. Before he reached it, he
paused and glanced over his shoulder at her. She was watching him, her jaw clenched and her hands fisted at her sides.

“See you later,” he told her.

“No, I won't. I don't plan on ever seeing you again.”

A taunting smile lifted the corners of his lips. “We both know better than that.”

A half hour passed before Justine was collected enough to return to the house. In front of her family, she pretended that everything was normal, that nothing out of the ordinary had happened between her and Roy down at the stables.

But later that night, when she went to bed, she could no longer keep up the pretense. She sobbed into her pillow over all the things she'd lost and all the things that could never be.

The next morning, Justine was assisting Dr. Bellamy in dressing a burn on an older woman's leg when Carlita, the receptionist, entered the examining room and informed her that she was wanted on the telephone.

“I'm busy right now, Carlita. If it's one of my sisters—”

She cut in anxiously. “But it's the sheriff, Justine.”

Justine could feel patient, doctor and receptionist staring curiously at her. “Perhaps you'd better go answer it, Justine,” Dr. Bellamy told her. “I can finish up here.”

She gave the older man an appreciative nod. “Thank you. I'll only be a moment or two.”

Outside the examining room, Justine hurried down the hallway to the front desk. Carlita had put the receiver back on its hook. She lifted it and punched the glowing line number.

“Hello,” she said cooly.

“It's Roy,” he replied. “Sorry to bother you at work again, but I didn't want this to wait.”

His tone was all business, nothing like the taunting, sexy
way he'd talked to her last night, in the stables. She was relieved.

“You have a lead on the twins?”

“Maybe. There's a man who runs an ice-cream parlor here in Ruidoso who thinks he might have seen them. He says he'd have to see the babies to be sure. Can you bring them into town after work this evening?”

She thought for a moment. “Dr. Bellamy is leaving early this afternoon. I can have the babies in town by four-thirty at the latest. Where do I take them?”

“Meet me at the Ruidoso Police Department. We'll leave from there.”

“I don't want to do that,” she came back quickly.

For a moment, the line was silent. “What do you mean, you don't want to do it?”

She let out a heavy breath as she glanced down the hallway to the examining rooms. Carlita would be coming back any minute. She didn't want the woman to overhear anything personal she might be saying to Roy.

“I told you last night—I don't want to see you again. Have one of your deputies go with me.”

“Are you that afraid of being alone with me?”

“I'm not afraid. I just prefer not to be in your company.”

“Well, forget your preferences and be there.”

She opened her mouth to tell him no, but he hung up before she could get the word out. Furious, she slammed down the phone just as Carlita arrived at the desk.

“My goodness, you don't look too happy,” she said, her dark gaze studying Justine's red cheeks and tight lips.

“Happy? Nothing about Sheriff Pardee makes me happy,” she said to the shocked receptionist, then turned and walked quickly back to the examining rooms.

“J
ustine, do you really think it's necessary to take the twins into town?” Rose asked later that afternoon, as she helped Justine dress the babies in clean clothes. “It's not likely this man really knows that much. Besides, it would be easier for him to come out here to the ranch than transporting the babies into town.”

“I know,” Justine agreed. “But apparently that suggestion wasn't put to him. Roy said for me to be there with the babies. And as much as I hate to, I'm going to be there.”

In her usual quiet and thoughtful manner, Rose regarded Justine's grim face and flustered movements.

“You don't like Sheriff Pardee much, do you?”

Justine didn't look up from her task as she buttoned a shirt on the boy twin. “Not really.”

“Why?”

Justine momentarily closed her eyes, and then her blood began to boil. Before she knew it, words were spilling out of her mouth. “He's just not my type of man. He's arrogant and cocky and he thinks women are playthings. He has no
respect for women or families in general. He's callous and hateful and he thinks all he has to do is look at a woman to make her lust after him.”

Rose gasped softly. “Justine! My word, where did you come up with such things about a man you barely know? Sheriff Pardee has been kind to us. And when he looked at me, I didn't get the impression he was trying to be suggestive or provocative.”

Since Rose rarely had anything good to say about a man, Justine was more than surprised by her sister's outspoken opinion on Roy.

“I just happen to know his kind, Rose. I ought to—I encountered plenty of them in college.”

“He doesn't seem like a phony to me,” Rose went on.

It was puzzling even to Justine. A few days ago, she'd felt certain any feelings she had toward Roy had died when Charlie was born. But now that he'd kissed her, she knew he'd stirred up a long-buried need inside her.

“That's because you don't know men like I do. But believe me, it doesn't take very long to see through them,” Justine said flatly.

Rose frowned as she watched her sister stuff several clean diapers into a duffel bag. “Well, I admit I haven't had as much experience with men as you, but this attitude that you have toward the sheriff seems rather unfair. You make him sound like the cad who ended your engagement and left you pregnant with Charlie.”

Justine hoped her face wasn't white as she glanced evasively at her sister. “Believe me, Rose, all men are from the same mold. You ought to know that as well as I.”

Rose walked over to the bedroom window and glanced out at the corrals in the distance. Her face was suddenly pinched with pain and disgust. “And you know I'll never forget what Peter did to me, Justine. I'm frigid now because of him.”

“Oh, dear heaven, you're not frigid, Rose!” Justine softly scolded her. “You just think you are.”

Rose slowly turned back to her sister. “Frigid or not, I realize all men aren't bastards. And I have a feeling that Sheriff Pardee is different from most men out there. I think deep down you know he's different, too.”

Justine sighed as she gazed at the two babies lying side by side on the double bed. They were looking up at her with trusting eyes, the same way Charlie did. Her heart surged with love. “Right now, I'm not concerned with Roy. I just want to make sure the twins are taken care of.”

A few minutes later, Rose helped her carry the babies and the duffel bag out to her pickup, where the two women had strapped down a double car seat for children.

After securing the babies, Justine climbed behind the steering wheel. “I'll be back as soon as I can. I don't know how long this is going to take. Just make sure Charlie doesn't eat any candy before supper.”

Rose nodded and smiled. “He'll be fine. As long as he's with Chloe and the horses, he won't even miss you.”

“That really makes me feel needed,” Justine said with a grin, then started the engine and pulled the gearshift into drive. “See you later.”

Rose stepped back and waved her sister and the twins down the road.

Thirty-five minutes later, Justine pulled into the parking lot in front of Ruidoso's police department. Roy's four-wheel-drive vehicle was parked to one side of the building. She parked beside it and killed the motor.

She didn't know what she was supposed to do now. She wasn't about to leave the twins in the pickup alone while she went inside to find Roy. Nor was she capable of safely carrying both twins into the building with her.

The dilemma was suddenly solved, as Roy and a man who appeared to be one of his deputies walked through the
front entrance. The two men paused on the steps and exchanged a few more words before Roy walked over to her vehicle.

“Are you ready to go?” He glanced at the babies, then settled his gaze on Justine's face.

She wanted to stay angry with him, she wanted to look at him and feel nothing, yet she could do neither.

“The babies are strapped in their car seat. Do you want to move it to your vehicle or take mine?” she asked.

He opened the door and motioned for her to scoot over and let him behind the wheel. “It's only a few blocks to the ice-cream parlor,” he told her. “This will be faster.”

Justine wedged herself as close as she could to the babies, but there just wasn't enough room on the bench seat for her to put space between herself and Roy. His thigh was pressed into hers, and his upper arm pinned her shoulder to the back of the seat. Touching him like this was agony, and she figured he knew it.

“I don't like being manipulated,” she said as he steered the pickup onto a main thoroughfare.

He glanced at her. “You think I've done all this just to see you again? What conceit!”

Heat poured into her cheeks. Maybe it had been stupid of her to think he actually
wanted
to see her again. But his behavior last night had warned her to expect anything from him. “Are you saying you didn't want to see me?” she asked, her tone faintly challenging.

“I said I didn't manipulate you.”

Justine didn't know what that was supposed to mean, and she wasn't sure she wanted to know. “You could have asked Chloe or Rose to bring the babies into town,” she quickly pointed out.

Roy's gaze remained on the traffic. “I don't know Chloe or Rose like I know you.”

“Thank God,” Justine muttered. “No need for all three Murdock sisters to be corrupted.”

“You think that's what I did to you?”

“What you did to me isn't fit for babies' ears,” she said.

A frown twisted his profile. “I suppose Charlie's dad treated you better?”

Charlie's dad.
Dear God, how she wished she could forget
he
was Charlie's father.

“How he treated me is none of your business,” she said flatly, then purposely turned her attention to the twins. The girl had lost her pacifier. She offered it to the baby again, then wiped drool from the boy's chin.

From behind the wheel, Roy was very aware of Justine's soft body pressed against his, the sweet, flowery scent of her, and the way her red hair fell in wild, loose curls down the middle of her back.

Last night, he'd purposely kissed her, to prove to himself that she was totally and irrevocably out of his system. But the kiss hadn't proved anything. Other than the fact that he was still a fool where she was concerned. He still wanted her with a vengeance, and he didn't know what in hell to do about it.

“You sure are testy where Charlie's father is concerned,” he said after a moment.

Justine resolutely turned away from the twins and looked him squarely in the face. “Maybe I'm testy where all men are concerned.”

His brows lifted at the heat in her voice. “That's not true. You like men.”

She gritted her teeth. “You don't know that.”

He chuckled under his breath. “I know it better than anybody.”

“You only know what you remember,” she said tightly. “When I was with you, I was reckless and in-infatuated.”

He kept his eyes on the traffic ahead, but Justine could see a muscle working in his jaw. If she'd made him angry, she didn't care. She was just relieved she'd caught herself before she blurted out that she'd been in love with him.
She didn't want Roy to ever know how much she'd cared for him. It was safer to let him think she'd carelessly moved on to some other man.

Roy told himself to forget the woman beside him. She was trouble. That was all she'd ever been in his life. Yet all he could think about was the way she'd tasted last night, the way she'd made love to him all those years ago. She'd given herself to him in a way that no woman had since. She'd branded him deep inside, and now that she was back in the Hondo Valley, he felt like a marked man.

The ice-cream parlor was at the west end of town, where the street began to climb up into the mountains. Along with ice cream, the shop also served sandwiches and short orders. At this time of the evening, the place was beginning to fill up with after-work diners.

After unfastening the babies from the car seat, Roy took the boy and Justine carried the girl. They found a small table in one corner of the room and waited for a waitress. When she finally arrived, Roy glanced at Justine.

“Do you want something to eat?”

She'd thought this was supposed to be strictly a police visit, but he was making it seem like a family outing with the kids, Justine thought with a measure of surprise. And from the curious glances the four of them were receiving from the other diners, she suspected they were equally surprised to see their county sheriff with a woman and a couple of babies.

“No, thank you. I'll eat later, with my sisters.”

“What about the babies?”

The twins had taken a bottle an hour or more before Justine headed into town with them. At their age, they would probably be getting hungry before she got the two of them home.

“I suppose we could feed them some vanilla ice cream,” she said.

“We?”

She slanted him a dry look. “You can handle a spoon, can't you?”

With a sigh, he glanced up at the hovering waitress. “Vanilla ice cream for the kids, and two coffees. Also, tell Fred that Sheriff Pardee is here. He'll know what I want.”

The waitress flashed him a ready smile. “Yes, sir. Can I get anything else for you?”

“No, thanks. That will do it.”

The young woman hurried away to do the sheriff's bidding. Justine's lips curved with faint amusement. “I wonder what she would have done if you'd asked for the moon?”

He flashed her an annoyed glance. “You're being nasty.”

Justine shrugged innocently. “Not really. She was bedazzled by you.”

“She was simply doing her job.”

Justine's eyes clashed with his, then drifted down to the hard line of his mouth. She didn't have to recall what it had been like last night to have those lips pressed against hers. The image was already burning through her mind.

“She would have liked to do more.”

Would you? The question was in his eyes. But whether he was going to speak it aloud to her, Justine would never know, because the baby boy on his knee grabbed for the saltshaker.

Roy's hand flashed out, took hold of the eager little fist and guided it away from the table.

“No, son,” he told the wide-eyed boy. “That stuff isn't good for big people, much less a little tot like you.”

The baby seemed to think having Roy talk to him was quite amusing, and he burst out with a happy little shriek.

Roy rubbed his ear in the aftermath. “What a mouth on this kid!”

Justine couldn't help but smile. “He likes you.”

Roy glanced from Justine to the baby's dimpled face. “You think he does?”

“Why does that shock you? To hear you tell it, everybody likes you. Ninety percent of the vote. I guess you can include Adam in that ninety percent now.”

He glanced sharply at Justine. “Adam? You've named him?”

With a weary shake of her head, Justine said, “I didn't name the twins. My sisters did. Anna for the girl. Adam for the boy.”

Justine scooted the wiggling Anna up farther in her lap, while Roy studied her with narrowed eyes.

“I told you, Justine, this is a temporary thing. You can't name these children!”

Justine sighed. “Yes. I know you're right, Roy. But I can hardly control what my sisters do. Besides, we can't simply keep calling them ‘baby boy' or ‘baby girl.' The two of them ought to at least have temporary names. Until you can come up with their real ones.”

Before he could make a reply, the waitress arrived with the coffee and ice cream.

Justine placed her coffee safely out of Anna's reach, then tucked a napkin into the collar of the baby's dress.

Watching her, Roy asked, “Do I need to put one of those on him, too?”

Justine could have reached across the small table and put a makeshift bib on Adam herself, but she wasn't going to. It was obvious that he didn't want to be a father or have to do the things that being a father sometimes required. But that was too bad, she thought smugly. Taking care of Adam for a few minutes would be good for the man.

“Adam would probably appreciate not having ice cream all over his shirt.”

Grunting with annoyance, he reached for a napkin. “This is—” He paused as he awkwardly tucked the paper around the baby's throat. “You can't just expect me to pick up a baby and know what to do with him.”

The sight of Roy's big hand against Adam's little cheek
stirred a bittersweet ache in Justine. This man was Charlie's father, yet he'd never touched his son. He'd never held him or fed him or kissed his cheek.

Maybe if he'd known about Charlie…Her regretful thoughts skidded to a jarring halt. If Roy had known about Charlie, he would have become a father to him out of obligation. Justine wanted more than that for her son. He deserved more, and so did she.