Queen (6 page)

"My name is Queen Houston. I'm from Cradle Creek, Tennessee. Sheriff Miller checked my background. If you doubt me, all you have to do is ask him."

The jut of her chin and the defiant glare emanating from those green eyes told him more than he needed to know. She obviously had more guts than gumption.

And then he caught her inference. Sheriff Miller?

Donny recognized the look on his father's face and knew that he was as much to blame for her presence as she. After all, he'd more than aided and abetted in her false claim of kinship.

"Dad… let me," Donny said. "We didn't know what to think when you didn't come home that first night. I thought maybe you'd been in a wreck, or had car trouble, or maybe…"

It was just as Cody had feared. They'd coped, but what had happened had left scars. He sighed. He was an old hand at scars.

"Anyway," Donny continued, refusing to voice his own worst fears, "when we hadn't heard anything by noon the next day, I decided to go to the police."

"Oh, God," Cody groaned. The authorities were exactly who he didn't want mixed up in their lives. Not anymore.

"Dad… I'm sorry. But what else could I have done?"

"What's the big deal about not telling the sheriff?" Queen asked sharply. "It would have been the first thing to come to my mind, too."

"The police came and took us away once before," Will said, surprising them all by his sudden interruption.

"Why am I not surprised?" Queen muttered.

"No! You don't understand," Donny said. "It wasn't because Dad wasn't a good father. He was… he is. But at the time he was still in the military, and…" He swallowed once as if the words were too painful to repeat. But, manfully, he continued, "And our mother had been dead for about a year. Our grandparents thought he couldn't take care of us and still be away so much. They filed charges."

"I had a good nanny. We were doing fine," Cody said. "Until…" He paused, unwilling to tell a stranger about the hell he'd been through.

"Daddy fought in the war in the desert. He's a hero," J.J. said. And then his voice grew soft, and the tone changed to one of fear. "The bad guys shot at my daddy and made him crash his plane."

"Oh."

A shuttered expression slid across Cody Bonner's face at the mention of Operation Desert Storm.

Queen refused for the time being to allow him any leeway. He still had to explain to her satisfaction where the hell he'd been for three days and two nights. Surprisingly, he started to do just that.

"None of this would have happened if I hadn't stopped in Denver to buy you guys some shorts. When I came out, the Blazer was gone… stolen."

"You've been shopping for three days?" Queen couldn't prevent the disdain that colored her question.

She'd heard better excuses from Johnny Houston after a week-long drunk.

Cody sighed. This woman was like a damned bulldog with the only bone in a yard full of dogs. She wasn't giving up, and she wouldn't give an inch. The frustration and fury of the past three days overwhelmed him as he broke one of his cardinal rules… cursing in front of his kids.

"No, lady. I didn't leave to go shopping. I went to the base to a goddamned shrink. None of this would have happened if I hadn't listened to a friend's advice. Now if you don't mind, I'll continue."

Queen flushed, and she tried to think of why she should be sitting here listening to a total stranger's weak excuses. He was back. That was all that mattered to her. Now she was free to be on her way, although she had to give him credit. Johnny had never used doctors of any kind as a reason for being gone or broke.

She shifted on her seat, uncomfortable beneath his angry stare. If she had an ounce of brains left, she'd already be on the road to Snow Gap. Then she remembered the isolation of the Bonner house and the distance to town. For now, she'd hear him out. When he was through making excuses, he could take her to town. She couldn't wait to be on her way to…

Damn the man. For a moment he'd made her so angry she'd forgotten her plan… Arizona. That was where she was going. And she would, too, just as soon as she could buy a bus ticket.

"Please," she said. "Do continue. I can't wait to hear the rest."

He glared. She stared.

Donny broke the ice. "Wow!" he said. "Stolen! How did you—"

"Let me finish," Cody said, redirecting his anger into mirth as he grinned at his oldest son's enthusiasm for gory details. "Part of it was my fault. I left the keys in the ignition. As soon as I noticed it wasn't where I'd parked it, I went back into the store to call the police. They told me to come to headquarters and file a report. I started walking, and then the strangest thing happened. I hadn't gone more than six blocks when there it was."

"What? There what was?" Will asked.

"The Blazer. Just sitting there. Windows down, the key dangling in the ignition. For a minute I thought I must have lost my mind and forgotten where I'd parked. But then I looked inside and knew that someone had definitely taken it for a joy ride because all the tapes were missing."

"Oh, man! Even my Guns and Roses?" Donny asked with a groan.

Cody nodded and shrugged. "Sorry," he said.

Queen couldn't prevent a grin. Kids really put things into strange perspective sometimes. To heck with the stolen Blazer. The calamity was the missing tapes.

"Anyway, I figured I was lucky it was in one piece and not stripped and burned. I tossed the sack with your shorts into the backseat, crawled into the truck, and simply headed out of town. I didn't think about going to tell the authorities I'd found it, because I hadn't actually filled out the papers to report it missing. I didn't think it would be worthwhile to report six missing tapes, and I still had that last stop to make at the grocery store before coming home."

"We ran out of milk," J.J. said accusingly. "But Aunt Queenie bought us more. She bought lots of good stuff. She's a real good cook."

Cody's gaze centered on the woman's flushed face.

She was a strange one. Coming to the rescue out of the blue, spending her own money on total strangers, taking a strip off of him for what she imagined was neglect toward his children—and reluctant to hear someone commend her.

"Thank you," Cody said quietly.

Queen nodded and looked away.

"But why did it take you so long to get home?" Donny continued.

Cody grimaced. "Here's where it gets good," he said. "I drove about five miles out of Gold Nugget and then was pulled over by a policeman and arrested."

"Why?" Queen asked, intrigued in spite of herself.

"Because the people who stole my Blazer didn't just take it for a ride. They had used it to rob a bank and then dumped it, leaving me to walk straight into a trap as a suspect in the robbery. It didn't matter how fast I talked, or how much I explained, the wheels of justice grind slowly… very, very slowly."

"Didn't you tell them you were our dad?" J.J. asked.

Cody hugged his youngest son, trying to remember a time in his life when simply telling the truth had set things right… when things had been that simple. "I sure did," he said. "But it didn't seem to matter. The more I talked, the more convinced they were that I was involved. Finally I got smart and shut up."

"You had a phone call coming," Queen said. "Why didn't you use it to call the boys?"

Cody raised his eyebrows. He had to give her credit: she was for the boys all the way. Obviously she still suspected his credibility.

"I did," he said. "There was no answer… and unfortunately, the answering machine can't accept collect calls."

Donny ducked his head. "Sorry, Dad."

Cody ruffled his oldest son's hair. "You don't need to apologize for my mess. It damn sure wasn't your fault."

"Why did they let you go?" Queen asked.

"Two reasons. One of my constant complaints was that my children were alone and would be hysterical. Whoever put out a missing persons report on me confirmed that part of my story."

"We did. All of us. Even Aunt Queenie," Will said.

"Well… we had to do something," she said, refusing to listen to any more accolades. The warmth in Cody Bonner's eyes was making her nervous. "And what was the other reason?"

"Early this morning, they caught the robbers in the act of repeating the same crime… in the same manner… with another stolen car. They let me go with an apology."

Cody leaned forward and wrapped his boys in his arms, ignoring the stare of the woman across the room. "But it doesn't matter. I'm home… and you're safe. You're all safe."

Queen watched him hold his children and knew that the affection between them was genuine. She sighed. It was just as well. She didn't have time to be worrying about men who had no business being fathers. She had a life to pursue.

And then the phone rang.

Cody dumped the boys from his lap and went to answer it. No sooner did he identify himself than Queen realized he was talking to Sheriff Miller. But the shock and then fury on his face was unmistakable and unexpected. Why should he be angry at a follow-up phone call? She noticed a muscle twitch at the corner of his mouth and his cheekbones streak with flashes of red as he started his good-bye.

"Thanks for calling, Sheriff. Yes, I'm anxious to meet you, too. Thanks for
all you did on my boys' behalf and—"

He stopped in midspeech as the sheriff assured him that it wasn't so much what he'd done as it was a good thing his stepsister had turned up like that… out of the blue. Otherwise the boys would have been turned over to social services.

Cody looked across the room into Queen Houston's eyes and finally admitted to himself that her presence in Snow Gap that day had saved his world. He nodded once at something the sheriff said, then smiled at her… slowly… and only once.

But it was enough. Queen felt the air leave her body as if she'd just been kicked. All sense of the world shifted sideways, and she gripped the arm of her chair to adjust to the move.

His smile had done something strange to her heart. She didn't want what she was feeling and hated Cody Bonner for singling her out.

Finally he hung up the phone and cursed as if that moment between them had never existed.

"What?" Donny asked, surprised by the fact that twice in the space of a few minutes his father had broken a hard and fast rule by cursing in front of them.

"It seems that while they didn't really believe me about my children being alone, they still made a report to social services, who did some checking into our background and decided that it was their duty to inform our next of kin… on record," he added, simply for Queen's behalf, "that I was incarcerated. The long and the short of it is that your grandparents were notified. That means they'll probably show up soon."

Will blanched and began to stutter. "No, no. I… I… don't wan… want to go wit… with them again."

Queen was in shock. What was going on here? Why were the grandparents so feared?

"Will, don't," Cody said quietly, shocked by the recurrence of stuttering that had all but disappeared over the last few weeks. He took the child up in his arms, as if to shield him from what he'd said, but it was hopeless. All he could do was hold him, so he did, hugging him tight against the world and its unknowns.

Will forgot that .he'd just turned ten years old. He forgot that he'd been the tallest boy in his class for more than two years running. All he could think of was the fear of losing his father… again. He buried his face against Cody's neck, wrapped his legs around his waist, and hung on for dear life.

Cody was overwhelmed by his son's emotional collapse. His arms tightened around Will's thin shoulders until he feared the child could not breathe, yet still Will would not turn him loose. The horror of the past months and the helpless fury of the past three days caught up with Cody Bonner.

His voice reverberated with anger and conviction when he spoke. "I will allow them to come… and maybe someday you will learn to enjoy their visits. But I swear to God they will never… absolutely never… take you away from me again."

The boys seemed to accept his fervent announcement with sighs of relief. Daddy could fix anything. But Queen shuddered. She'd seen the look in his eyes and the soldier inside the man. It had been full of hate… and almost ready to kill. No matter what they'd done in the past, she almost pitied the unsuspecting grandparents. They couldn't know what they'd unleashed.

Cody stood outside on the deck surrounding his house and stared up into the vast and star-studded night A slow breeze came through the trees and slowly cooled his anger. It was good to be home.

In spite of his vow that Claire's parents could no longer hurt him or his family, he was afraid. He knew them. They'd grab on to this latest fiasco without thought to what it would do to his sons. They seemed hell-bent on replacing their dead daughter with his boys. He sighed and buried his face in his hands. He'd do anything to keep from having to put the boys through another round of the judicial system.

"The dishes are done."

Cody turned and stared at the woman standing in the shadows just beyond his reach. "Thank you," he said. "For everything. What you did was above and beyond the call, lady. You'll never know how much it meant to me."

"I didn't do it for you," she said. "I did it for them."

Cody heard the censure in her voice. Somewhere in her past she'd lost complete and total trust in men. He wondered who had hurt her… and why… and then wondered why he cared.

"Just the same." He shrugged and turned away, unwilling for her to see his fears. It was the acknowledgment of weakness in him that had started all this mess in the first place. If he'd been a man about the damned nightmares he kept having, none of this would have happened.

"Will you give me a ride into town tomorrow? I need to catch a bus."

He nodded.

"Why did you go see a psychiatrist? Why did your wife's parents try to take your children?"

Cody inhaled sharply and spun back around. He was about to shout, to order her off the place and back to wherever the hell she'd come from, and then he saw genuine concern on her face and bit his lip instead.