The Love of a Lawman, The Callister Trilogy, Book 3 (31 page)

"Well, not what I wanted to, 'cause I couldn't see spending the rest of my life in jail. I punched the wimpy sonofabitch in the jaw and threw his naked ass outside."

Isabelle blinked. "You're kidding."

He saw mirth in her eyes. He couldn't share in the humor, but he guessed the scene did have its funny side. "Julie gathered up his clothes and took them to him."

"Where were your kids?"

"At her sister's. When I cooled off and came to my senses, I figured out the guy had been at my house all weekend and that wasn't the first time he'd been in my bed. Hell, for all I know, he used my toothpaste and my spare razor. The signs were there. I was just too preoccupied to see them."

"So you got a divorce."

"Not right away. We went to marriage counseling."

Isabelle's eyes questioned him.

"Nope, didn't work. What she
said
she wanted was for me to quit rodeoing. But what she really wanted was that dude she'd brought into my bed. The counselor figured that out in two visits. Deep down, I already knew it, too. Julie always believed she was a cut above the rodeo crowd."

Isabelle closed her eyes, frowned and pinched the bridge of her nose. "Damn," she said under her breath, then looked up at him. "Come on over to the house. I'll cook supper."

Confused, he cocked his head and gave her a narrow-lidded look. "I don't know. Are you mad?"

"No. But I will be if you don't stay and eat supper.... And if I don't get to meet your kids."

Women.
If he lived to be a hundred, he would never understand them. As they walked, he looped his arm around her shoulder and tucked her close to his side. "Don't be mad at me, okay? I'm the only member of my family to ever get a divorce. I'm still coming to terms with the whole mess. As for my kids, they'll be lucky to get to spend time with you."

* * *

Isabelle cooked her mother's chicken-fried steak recipe for supper, one she knew from memory. Along with canned green beans, frozen biscuits and cream gravy she made from scratch, the meal turned out edible. Or, at least it appeared so because John ate until he was stuffed and had no room for the brownies Ava had made. Ava wrapped some up for him to take home.

They cleared off the table and played Trivial Pursuit, where John's competitive nature manifested itself. Ava challenged him with a vengeance and he barely defeated her. Isabelle's daughter had a competitive streak almost as fierce as her mother's. Isabelle was lost in a game like Trivial Pursuit, so she mostly worked at providing refreshments and participated as an "also-ran."

After John left, she lay awake under the blue patchwork quilt staring out at the three-quarter moon that looked like she could reach up and pluck it from the star-dusted sky. The visual of a furious John throwing a naked man out of his house made her grin in the dark. John was over six feet tall, must weigh two-ten or two-twenty and was solid as a rock. He was so easygoing she couldn't imagine him in a temper fit, but she could imagine it would be a terrifying sight.

As a caring, sensitive man, he must have been crushed by his ex-wife cheating on him, especially if he loved her.

Cheating spouses. She could never have cheated on Billy and they weren't even married. She'd had chances, though. The bored, rich horse crowd was notorious for its swinging lifestyle. More than one millionaire had made her an offer many sane and practical women couldn't and didn't refuse.

It would have served Billy right if she had taken up with someone else, but that kind of disloyalty didn't live within her soul. Even after his being a player became common knowledge, she still couldn't turn her back on him. He was the father of her only child and they had been together since she was fourteen years old. His presence had been as much a part of her as one of her limbs. She had foolishly thought that at some point he would wake up and come to his senses. Stupid. And a waste of time.

Now that the shock of his leaving had passed and the fear for her and Ava's welfare consumed only half her waking moments instead of all of them, she knew at the ripe old age of thirty-five that she hadn't been in love with Billy. Oh, she had cared about him, but more than anything he had been a means to an end. She didn't like thinking of herself as having used him, but if she hadn't had him to take her away from Callister, she couldn't guess what might have been her fate. Even if she hadn't loved him in a bells-ringing, heavens-opening kind of way, she owed him gratitude for rescuing her.

What she felt for John Bradshaw was different. Just seeing him striding across the corral, his chaps flapping, his spurs clinking, filled her heart to its brim. His very touch turned her into one of those silly, giggling females who had always revolted her. And sex. He was hot and skilled and earthy in all the ways she liked. And gentle and loving and sensitive in all the ways any woman would like.

She had stepped out on a long limb. After swearing to stay as far away from men as possible, and cowboys especially, here she was, bowled over and knocked flat by the ultimate cowboy...

...Who was also the county sheriff.

And that fact might be the most vexing. The law and the Rondeaus had always had a borderline relationship.

Her thoughts veered to Paul. She hadn't seen him in two weeks, but his boat was missing from its parking place beside his travel trailer. She presumed he was fishing, which was a good thing. He had always found himself—or lost himself—in the vastness of the outdoors.

* * *

John spent a busy week. He settled two domestic disputes, investigated a horse-neglect case, accompanied the fire truck to fight a house fire. Plus, he had gone out to the vet's clinic and assisted the vet and Izzy in breeding two more of Luke's mares and Trixie. Come next spring, blue horses would be popping up all over the county. He and Isabelle had also managed to sneak in a lunchtime quickie in his apartment.

As usual, he ended his workday Sunday with the calendar, making up a work schedule. He had put a small red mark on the twenty-seventh, the day he calculated Izzy would get her next period. Not that he expected her not to.

Only ten days had passed since they had been so careless. Nine more days to wait and worry.

They hadn't discussed the "what if" once. She didn't seem the least bit anxious. He tried to let her casual attitude seep into him, but the possibility of her being pregnant did more than give him pause. It forced him to give serious consideration to what he wanted for the rest of his life.

His feeling for Julie had been all tangled up with devotion to the two kids they brought into the world. While he loved the kids, the emotion with Julie had no solid seat in his soul. The feeling he had for Isabelle was as pure as it had been when he was fifteen, a part of him, like the marrow in his bones. Isabelle had been the one from the first day he started paying attention to the differences between boys and girls. Without knowing it, she had been the first to teach him that plumbing so different from his brought a passel of pain as well as pleasure.

He tried to visualize a child he and Izzy would produce. Would he or she be athletic and competitive like him and Izzy? Or brainy like Ava? All that intelligence in Ava's head had to come from Izzy. None of the Bledsoes had ever been especially smart. Would his and Izzy's kid have a mop of wild red hair and coffee-colored eyes or would they be tow-headed like his boys?

He wouldn't call himself a romantic, but some things were meant to be. And if it was meant for him and Isabelle to be together, then it could also be meant for them to have kids. He couldn't quarrel with the possibility.

Chapter 20

The warble of the phone brought John awake from a sound sleep. His clock radio showed eleven thirty and caller ID showed the Rusty Spur Saloon. John groaned and answered. The bartender on the other end of the line reported a loud disturbance and a fight brewing.

Still half asleep, John got to his feet and pulled on the clothes he had removed earlier, strapped on his pistol and grabbed a jacket. As a last-minute thought, he plucked a pair of handcuffs he had rarely used off the coatrack by the back door. If the bartender thought things were bad enough to call him at nearly midnight, somebody could be going to jail.

He headed out, thinking about his own drinking days. Since yow-yowing and fighting hadn't been his style, he hadn't realized how much trouble drunks could be.

He reached the bar in a matter of minutes, but too late to prevent the fight. Elbowing through the throng of onlookers and agitators, he saw the two combatants on the wooden floor, grunting, flailing fists and tearing at each other's clothing. To John's dismay, he recognized one of them as Izzy's little brother. The opponent was a stranger.

On a surge of adrenaline, John waded into the fray, gripped a fistful of the back of Paul's shirt and hauled him to his feet. The tree-faller blindly threw a fist. John ducked, but the wild blow glanced off his jaw.

Fuck!
John flung him against the bar. "Paul! Cool it!"

John swerved his attention to the other man, whose nose was gushing blood, making a bib pattern on the front of his light-colored shirt. The guy teetered on his feet, his arms hanging as if disconnected from his shoulders.

"You need a doctor?" John asked him.

The stranger staggered to the edge of the bar and the bartender thrust a towel across the bartop. The injured man used it to cover his nose and dragged himself to the far end of the bar. Anybody could see he had lost the will to fight and he was outmatched. Paul wasn't a big guy, but his body was compact and muscular. Years of wielding a heavy chain saw and wrestling behemoth trees had made him strong as a Titan and John had always suspected the guy had rattlesnake blood in his veins.

A cut on Paul's cheek was bleeding slightly. He swiped it with the back of his hand, smearing a crimson stain across his face. "Just 'cause you're fuckin' my sister," he cried, "don't mean you can push me around."

Jee-zus Christ!
Paul was shit-faced drunk. John restrained himself from punching his mouth. He gripped his shirt in his fist, shoved him down onto a barstool and pressed him back against the bar's edge. "Goddammit, I said cool it!" John turned to the other man. "What's your na—?"

"John! Look out!"

The shout came from behind the bar. John whirled just in time to get a glimpse of a blade in Paul's hand. He jerked backward, but not far enough or quick enough. The knife swiped across his midsection, caught his shirt and scraped his stomach.

Anger turned to rage, mixing with the dose of adrenaline already buzzing in his system. He grabbed Paul's wrist and forced the smaller man to the floor with sheer brute strength, breaking his grip on the knife handle. He reached behind himself for the handcuffs, locked Paul's hands behind his back and hauled him to his feet.

Now slumped on a barstool, Paul's opponent sat holding the towel to his nose.

"What's your name?" John barked.

The man mumbled through the towel, "Larry... Atkins."

"You're not from around here."

Atkins shook his head. "Come to see my sister."

"Who's your sister?"

"JoAnn Howard."

John knew the woman's husband. He turned to the bartender. "Call Bob Howard. Tell him I said come get his brother-in-law and take him over to the hospital to see the doc." He turned back to Atkins. "You don't move 'til Bob gets here."

A line of pain stung John's stomach on his left side. He looked down and saw a ragged tear in his shirt.
Fuck!
He stooped and picked up the knife, a heavy hunting type. Paul had sat down on a barstool again. John yanked the little fucker to his feet by the shirt. "C'mon, loudmouth. You're spending the night in a cell."

After John locked Paul into one of the two cells in the courthouse basement, he stamped to his office, his whole body abuzz. His stomach burned like a bitch. His jaw ached. Bloodstains showed at the ragged tear on his shirt a few inches above and to the left of his belt buckle, but he felt energized and loaded for bear, euphoric even.

Amazing substance, adrenaline. He had felt the rush many times, poised on the back of a charged-up horse behind a barrier in a narrow chute, waiting for a calf to cut loose. As much as anything, the high that lingered long after his seven-to-ten-second run under the bright lights had driven him to soak the letdown in a fifth of Crown Royal.