The Sheriff's Son (8 page)

Justine couldn't help but smile at the faint excitement in Chloe's voice. At least the ranch's financial problems hadn't taken away her hope for the future. “That's good to hear. Maybe she'll win us a million in the All-American Futurity.”

Chloe chuckled. “Yeah, wouldn't that be something? Daddy would be bursting with pride. If he were here,” she added, her face suddenly shadowed with loss.

“Daddy would want you to go on with training the horses, whether he was here to see it or not,” Justine said gently.

Her eyes on the floor, Chloe nodded, then brought her gaze back up to Justine. “I know you're right,” she said, and then her eyes slowly scanned Justine's tired features. “Aunt Kitty said you came home in a snit this evening.”

Justine's mouth fell open. She thought she'd been behaving in a perfectly normal manner since her trip into town. But apparently her family knew her better than she thought. “I wasn't in a snit. Where did she get that idea?”

Chloe shrugged. “She said you were nearly in tears.”

Justine grimaced. “Aunt Kitty exaggerates. There was nothing wrong with me, except exhaustion.”

The toe of Chloe's cowboy boot tapped the air. “She thinks there's something about the sheriff and you—”

Justine's head whipped up. “There's nothing between Roy and me! What makes her think that?”

Chloe smiled to herself. “Maybe it's the way you say his name…Roy. It comes out sounding more than friendly.”

“What imaginations you two have,” Justine muttered. “Roy is only an old acquaintance who happens to rub me the wrong way. That's all!”

Justine's protests were a bit too loud to satisfy Chloe, but the younger Murdock sister decided to let the whole matter slide for the moment “So what do you think about
this woman who was supposedly with the twins? Think it was their mother?”

Justine shrugged. “Who's to say?”

Chloe remained silent for so long, Justine finally glanced at her. “Chloe? Is something wrong?”

The younger woman sighed. “I don't want Sheriff Pardee to find the twins' parents.”

“Chloe! That's terrible. You should be thinking about the babies and their welfare.”

“I am,” she shot back. “I don't want them taken away from us and given back to parents who are—well, obviously unfit to be parents!”

“Chloe, we don't know any circumstances yet. Roy might discover that the twins have been kidnapped from a loving family.”

“No!” she said with a violent shake of her head. “I know in my heart that the babies were meant to be here with us.”

Justine didn't argue any further. She could see that Chloe had already set her heart on keeping the babies, and who was she to dash her hopes?

Lola Murdock's old Christmas cards proved to be fruitful. Justine wrote down a Nebraska address for Neil. She couldn't find an address for Earlene, but she did discover a short letter folded inside one card that said Earlene was living in Idaho, somewhere north of Boise.

Maybe the information would be enough for Roy to start on, she thought. But in her opinion, her two weird cousins had nothing to do with Adam and Anna.

Glancing at her watch, she decided it was too late to call Roy tonight. Tomorrow was Saturday. As much as she hated to talk with him again, she'd call his home in the morning. The quicker he could solve this mystery of the babies, the quicker he would be out of her life for good. And that was what she wanted, she told herself fiercely.
She didn't want to have to see him, touch him, hear his voice or remember how much she'd once loved him.

She'd been devastated when she lost Roy, and afraid to have his baby alone. But she'd lived through it all, and survived. Only now…now she was beginning to think she still loved him, and the idea terrified her.

J
ustine didn't have to call Roy the next morning. She was finishing the last of her coffee at the kitchen table with Kitty when the telephone rang.

She went to answer it, and was faintly surprised when she heard Roy's voice on the other end of the line.

“Do you have news about the twins?” she asked, before he could say anything.

“No. I'm not calling about the twins,” he said.

Her heart began to thud with heavy dread. She glanced at Kitty and saw the woman watching her curiously. “Then what is it?”

He suddenly chuckled, and the sound shivered over her. “Still playing it cool, are you?”

“My cheeks aren't red,” she countered, doing her best to keep her voice low. “Now what do you want?”

“Actually, I'm calling about Charlie,” he said.

His laughter had caught her off guard, but this really stunned her. “Charlie? My son?”

He frowned at the panic in her voice. “Why, yes. Why? Is something wrong with him?”

Placing her hand over the mouthpiece, she drew in a long breath, let it out, then drew in another. “No. There's nothing wrong with him. He's watching cartoons. But I don't understand why—”

“He talked to me the other day about his horse. Thundercloud, I believe he called him.”

Justine relaxed slightly. “Yes. He's crazy about the animal.”

“I gathered that. So I thought you might drive him over here to the ranch. I have something I think he'd enjoy seeing.”

Justine couldn't believe he was inviting her and Charlie to his home. She'd only been there once, and that had been years ago. “I don't know if that would be wise,” she started.

“Hellfire, Justine! I'm not inviting you over here to seduce you!”

Her spine went rigid. “I didn't think you were! But Charlie doesn't know you, and—”

“Yes, he does. He knows I'm the sheriff, and he thinks I'm the boss.”

Justine closed her eyes against her spinning thoughts. “And you like it when anyone thinks of you as the boss,” she said dryly.

He chuckled under his breath. “I'd like it if you did.”

Dear heaven, he was a flirt, she thought with a groan. Six years hadn't taken that out of him. “To be truthful, I was just about to call you myself. I found an address for my cousin.”

“Good. Bring it when you come.”

“Roy—”

The line went dead, and she knew he'd hung up so that she wouldn't have a chance to say no.

Jamming the phone back on its hook, she swiped a frustrated hand through her tangled hair. What was she going to do now?

“Justine? Was that Sheriff Pardee?”

Justine glanced absently across the room at her aunt. “I'm afraid so.”

“What did he want? Does he have a new lead on the case?”

Justine wanted to scream. “No. Is Charlie still in his pyjamas?”

Kitty frowned. “I don't know. Why?”

“Because the sheriff wants to see him,” she said sharply.

Her face full of concern, Kitty rose from the table and walked over to where Justine still stood, by the telephone. “Okay, honey, I want to know what's going on. And I'm not simply being a nosy old aunt. I can see you're troubled. You look troubled every time you say the sheriff's name.”

With her hand on her forehead, Justine tilted her face toward the ceiling. “What is it with you and my sisters? You all seem to think I have this thing for Roy, when—”

“Don't give me that cock-and-bull runaround. This is your old wizened aunt who's been down the road and seen a mile or two. I realize that you and the sheriff have had to meet because of the twins. But that doesn't account for the way the two of you look at each other.”

“Aunt Kitty—”

“Now, don't interrupt when I've got my fires burning. I'm not blind or deaf. I can see that Roy is more to you than just an old acquaintance or high school classmate. You were lovers, weren't you?”

To Justine's surprise, it was a relief that her aunt had finally guessed the truth. Roy had been in her heart for so long, but there had been no one, not her parents, not her sisters, not anyone, that she could say his name to and cry. That she could tell how much she'd loved him and how much it had hurt her to let him go.

Before she realized it, tears were streaming down her cheeks and her aunt was holding her tightly in her arms.

“My dear honey girl,” she said, patting Justine's trembling
shoulder. “What a burden you've been carrying around inside you.”

“Oh, Aunt Kitty, I thought when Mother got sick that I could come back home and never have to see him again. And I didn't see him until the twins showed up and I had to call him. I thought then that facing him again wouldn't hurt. But it did. It still does.”

Kitty gently put Justine away from her and looked directly into her teary green eyes. “Roy is Charlie's father, isn't he?”

Justine's throat was so clogged she could merely nod.

“I thought as much. The other night, I noticed the boy favors him in ways. His walk and gestures. His blue eyes and sandy hair. Does Roy know?”

Justine shook her head. “No. And he never will.”

“Why?”

Groaning, Justine turned away from her aunt and desperately wiped at her eyes. “Because—There's lots of reasons.”

Kitty's lips pressed together in a thin line. “Roy doesn't love you? Is that the reason?”

“Roy never loved anyone but himself. But I'm not keeping Charlie from his father simply because he doesn't love me. I'm not that selfish.” She glanced over her shoulder at Kitty. “When Roy and I—When Charlie was conceived, Roy wasn't ready for a family, and I didn't want to trap him that way.”

“And what about now?” Kitty asked, her expression full of concern. “Six years have passed, Roy might feel differently after all this time.”

Justine shook her head. “No. He told me himself, just yesterday, that he wasn't cut out to be a father or a family man.”

Kitty snorted. “Most all men say that. They have to say it, because they don't want to admit they're afraid of becoming
husbands and daddies. Why, even your father was gun-shy before your mother roped him in.”

“Roy is different.”

Kitty dismissed Justine's idea with a wave of her hand. “Roy is a man. And he looks at you with enough heat to set a house on fire. Why don't you do something about it?”

“Because I don't want to do anything about it. Because Roy hurt me once, and I won't allow him to do it twice.” Desperate to escape the hemmed-in feeling coming over her, Justine skirted around her aunt and walked over to the open screen door leading out to the back courtyard. After a moment, she sighed, then said, “If Roy wants anything from me, and that's a big
if,
the anything would be sex, pure and simple.”

From behind her, Kitty laughed. “Oh, Justine, there's many a woman who would give anything to have Roy Pardee attracted to them in that way. He's strong, intelligent, good-looking, and too sexy for any woman to resist.”

The idea of Roy with just
any
woman was sickening to Justine. Though it shouldn't have been. If he was involved with another woman, she could breathe a sigh of relief. Yet she couldn't stand the idea of him marrying someone, making love to her, giving her a child. Justine supposed that because she'd loved him so much and borne his son, she'd somehow always thought of him as her man. Which was crazy. Roy wasn't her man, and never had been.

“I guess I'm just not like other women, Aunt Kitty. I want more than that, and Roy can't give it to me.”

Kitty let out a hopeless sigh. Then, walking up behind her, she placed a hand on Justine's arm. “I would like to know something, Justine.”

“What?”

“Why you kept Charlie's parentage a secret. Why did you not tell your parents, your sisters? Instead, you let us all believe you were engaged to a college student and he was the one who'd left you pregnant.”

A pang of regret lanced through her chest. “Because I— I was ashamed of myself for getting involved with a man who was a—a philanderer. I didn't want them to think badly of me. But more than that, I didn't want anyone, especially Roy, putting two and two together and wondering if Charlie was his son. And, oddly enough, I didn't want to ruin his reputation.”

Kitty stared thoughtfully at her niece's bent head. “Why in the world would you be worried about his reputation? You should have wanted to smear him in the dirt.”

Justine let out a deep sigh. “Roy was a deputy then, everyone liked and respected him. And when I realized things weren't going to work for us, I was devastated, I hated him, or I thought I did, and told myself I could never forgive him. But I didn't want to humiliate him by dragging his name through the mud. I guess I still don't. Crazy, huh?”

“Love is crazy, Justine. And I think you need to face the fact that you still love Roy Pardee.”

An hour and a half later, Justine turned her pickup down a dusty side road and through an arched-pipe entrance with a sign announcing that she was on the Pardee Ranch.

On the bench seat beside her, Charlie stared curiously out the windshield. “Is this the way to Sheriff Roy's house?”

“Yes. It will only be a few minutes until we get there now.”

He looked at his mother. “Why are we going there, Mommy? Does he think we've done something bad?”

Justine smiled at him. “No, darling. I've got to give Roy a paper, and he—wanted you to. come along, too.”

Charlie's face brightened. “Do you think Sheriff Roy likes me?”

Justine had never been an overly emotional woman, yet
she suddenly felt tears clogging her throat. “I'm sure he does. You're a pretty easy boy to like.”

Charlie giggled, but then his little face sobered. “Well, I couldn't tell if Sheriff Roy liked me, ‘cause he don't smile very much. Why doesn't he smile, Mommy? Is he a sad man?”

Justine darted a glance at her son as she went over the question in her mind. Was Roy a sad man, or had he simply grown hard?

“I don't know, Charlie. A sheriff is a very busy guy. He has to protect a lot of people. It might be that he forgets to smile.”

Charlie tilted his head one way and then the other as he contemplated his mother's words. “Then we'd better remind him.”

If only it could be that simple, Justine thought.

The distance from the Bar M to the Pardee Ranch was not that far, but in those few miles the landscape began to change. The mountains began to slope off into desert hills covered with sage, scrubby creosote, piñon pine and choya cactus. The area was a startling change from the heavily forested mountains in Ruidoso, but it was equally beautiful to Justine.

Roy's home was a split-log structure built near the edge of the Hondo River. A row of poplars and several cottonwood trees shaded the house and the yard. There was hardly any grass to speak of, and the closest thing to a flower was a blooming prickly pear growing at the edge of the barbedwire fence.

Justine parked the pickup near the front of the house. By the time she and Charlie had climbed to the ground, a collie was there to greet them with a friendly bark.

“Don't worry. He doesn't bite.”

She looked up to see Roy rounding the corner of the house. This morning he was dressed in jeans and boots and
a plain blue work shirt. The absence of his badge and gun made him seem more approachable, somehow, and more like the man she'd first fallen in love with.

To her disgust, she felt a faint smile tugging at her lips. “Hello,” she said.

He came to stand a few steps away from them, his eyes running slowly over Justine, then on to Charlie, who was on his knees, hugging the collie around the neck.

“Hello,” he replied. “I'm glad you decided to come.”

“You really didn't give me much choice, did you?”

A little grin crooked his lips, and suddenly, deep in her heart, Justine could admit to herself just how happy it made her to see him.

“Oh, I think you could have come up with some excuse if you'd wanted to.”

“I'm not a woman who would ever stand in the way of the law,” she said lightly, then pulled a small slip of paper from the back pocket of her blue jeans and handed it to him.

Roy read it, then nodded. “You couldn't find anything on the female? Her name was Earlene, wasn't it?”

“I couldn't find an address for her, but I did find a short letter from her mother saying she was living in a small town north of Boise, Idaho. That was three years ago.”

“Old information is better than none at all,” he said. Then, turning away from Justine, he squatted down on his heels in front of Charlie and the dog.

“What do you think about Levi?”

Charlie gave him a broad grin. “He's got sandburs in his hair, but he's pretty. Does he help you round up the cows?”

Roy was impressed. He hadn't expected the boy to know about working dogs or rounding up cows. “He sure does. He can do more work than two cowboys put together.”

Forgetting the dog for a moment, Charlie inspected Roy with the bold innocence of a child. “You're not wearing
your gun or badge,” he said. “Who's gonna be the sheriff today?”

“I'm still the sheriff. But I'm taking today off. Unless something really bad happens, my deputies will take care of things.”

Smiling happily, Charlie continued to pat the dog's head. “That's good. Because Mommy says you work too hard.”

Roy cut his eyes up to Justine. “So your mother thinks I work too hard, does she?”

Justine could feel heat splotching her cheeks. Charlie had embarrassed her before, by repeating things he shouldn't. All children did that to their parents. But she'd rather it happen with anyone other than Roy.

“Yep,” Charlie answered. “She say that's why you don't smile. I thought you were just sad. But Mommy says you get so busy being the sheriff you forget to smile.”