The Love of a Lawman, The Callister Trilogy, Book 3 (8 page)

Izzy stared wide-eyed at the box. She began to shake her head. "No, no—"

"Can we have them, Mama? Please?"

Before John had time to wonder if he had made a huge mistake, a puppy, its tail swinging like a pendulum, climbed out of the box and waddled toward Ava on stubby legs. She picked it up and its tiny pink tongue frantically lapped her face. Giggles bubbled out and John felt his heart lift. The pup that had been left behind in the box began to whine. Ava picked it up, too. Now she had a double armload of squirming, licking puppyflesh and she was laughing nonstop.

No combination was as full of pure happiness as a kid and a puppy. John couldn't keep from grinning.

Izzy gave him a baleful glare and threw her shovel across the muck-filled wheelbarrow. "Don't look so pleased with yourself. They aren't staying."

"Aw, c'mon. Look at your daughter. It's a perfect match."

Peeling off her gloves, Izzy walked over and looked down at the animals in the kid's arms. "What are they?"

John frowned. "Dogs?"

"This isn't funny. I meant what sex." She planted her fists on her hips.

John looked at her, sex leaping into his mind. She had on tight jeans and a green turtleneck sweater that hugged her trim shape. Her breasts weren't huge, but were just right for her build. The outline of peaked nipples showed on the front of her sweater. Chilly temperature. Lord, the sensitivities of a woman's body would fascinate him 'til he died.

She looked solid and strong as any athlete, yet fine-boned and feminine. Memories from high school darted through his head, the hours he had fantasized about touching her. Somehow she seemed even sexier now than back then. With her rosy cheeks, full lips and a storm of hair the color of new pennies, she looked healthy and alive and she was arousing urges he had no business having. "How about one of each?"

She took a puppy from her daughter and examined its underside. "This one's male." She ran her thumb and fingers over a paw. "They're mutts. And they're going to be
big
mutts. Look at the size of these feet."

"A cross between a lab and something, I'd say. Cute, huh? I took one look at them and thought of Ava Bledsoe."

"My name isn't Bledsoe," Ava said. "It's Rondeau."

Confusion muddled John's mind. What was up with these two and names? Had Izzy and Billy not married? Was Ava not Billy's kid? "Oh, sorry."

"I'll take care of them, Mama. They won't be any trouble." A puppy licked Ava's chin and knocked her glasses askew. She quickly righted them. "I'll teach them not to potty on the carpet. Like I did Jack, remember?"

Izzy glared up at him, her jaw tight. "I can't believe you've done this. What kind of a horrible mother would I be if I insisted you take them out of here?"

"I'm going to name the girl dog Jenny," Ava said, "after the girl that got saved by Harry Potter."

Except for having heard the name everywhere, John knew nothing about Harry Potter. "Sounds good. I bet she'll like that."

Izzy heaved a great sigh.

"C'mon," John said to her again. "Don't be grouchy. You're out here all by yourself miles from town. Your neighbor isn't exactly neighborly. You can use a couple of watchdogs. They don't have to be a special kind. And these two probably don't have an instinct to herd sheep."

"I'm going to name the boy dog Harry," Ava said.

"Damn," Izzy mumbled, almost but not quite under her breath. "Bring them up to the house."

She stuffed her gloves in her hip pocket and left the barn. Behind her back, John gave Ava a thumbs-up and the girl scrunched her shoulders and giggled. She was a likable kid. They put the puppies back into the box, he picked it up and they caught up with Izzy.

As they walked along the fence, the stud lifted his head from grazing and shuffled toward them. John stopped and waited for him, noticing that he was smaller and lighter than John's rope horse and most ranch horses. Even so, the stallion had the sleek look of an athlete and damn near perfect conformation. A magnificent animal.

And his color was almost blue. A blue roan. John had seen only one other in all his years around horses and livestock.

The stallion craned his neck over the fence and snuffled at the cardboard box. When one of the pups barked, the horse jerked his head up and danced backward, farting and stamping and swishing his tail. Izzy put her hand out to him. "Stop that, you devil, and come here."

The horse approached the fence again. She slipped an arm around his neck and made kissing sounds at him. The horse nuzzled her hair and John had the feeling she had a special bond with him. "You're ornery," she told him softly, as she rubbed the side of his head.

"He's quite a lover," John said on a laugh, smoothing a hand down the stud's neck, enjoying the proximity of a sexy woman and a good horse. "He got a name?"

"Pepto's Blue Dan. I call him Dancer, but Satan would better suit his personality."

John didn't know performance horses by breeding, but he had been around a few highbred horses in rodeos and had heard variations of the Peppy name. "Good breeding, huh?"

"Yep. Goes all the way back to Little Peppy. You know that horse?"

Before John could say he had heard the name everywhere, Ava chimed in. "He was a cutting horse from the King Ranch in Texas. He won a million dollars."

Izzy grinned and pushed strands of hair from Ava's face. "At least a million."

John could see the strength in the stallion's body, the arrogance in his bearing, the intelligence in his eyes. "Cutting horse, huh? You had him in shows?"

"Some futurities in Texas."

"He's got cow," Ava said.

Isabelle chuckled and looked at Ava with obvious affection. "My little expert." She looked back up at John. "He's good with cows, all right, but he's high-spirited. Sometimes he takes some handling. He doesn't mean to be troublesome. His biggest problem is being a five-year-old stud."

John laughed as the two mares ambled up to the corral fence by the big barn on the other side of the driveway and whinnied, no doubt feeling slighted. He turned, walked across the driveway to the fence and gave them a quick once-over. Izzy and her daughter followed. "These are good-looking nags, too."

She cocked her head and looked up at him, squinting from the sunlight. "Get out your checkbook, sheriff. They're for sale."

"They trained for cutting, too?"

"You betcha. That's what Billy and I did in Texas."

John's tongue itched to ask about the state of her and Billy Bledsoe's relationship and how she got her hands on horses like these three, but he restrained himself. "You show them, too?"

"We—I used to. They're too old for futurities, but they're still qualified for some shows."

"Who keeps them in shape?"

"Me. It's what I do. I'm well known for it."

John had spent most of his life in a world of horses. Women were all over it, calling themselves trainers, but he knew of few really successful ones. He looked her in the eye. "You don't say."

"Right now I mostly just want to sell them."

Like hell she wanted to sell them. He could hear that much in the way her voice softened a note when she said it. Still, if that was her story, why had she brought them here? Even with as little knowledge as John had about the cutting-horse community in Idaho, he knew it had to be small compared to the scene in the Southwest. The nearest buyer for a horse like one of these would have to be in Boise, or more likely Texas or California. Anywhere but here.

She spun and marched toward the house. John couldn't keep from thinking her butt still had that twitch he had admired in high school.

When they reached the backyard, he set the box of puppies on the ground. "I brought a doghouse with me and some doggie stuff."

Izzy
gave him a flat look. "Doggie stuff?"

He looked right back at her. "Puppies gotta have something to chew on, right?"

He returned to the front porch, picked up the doghouse and the sack of toys and Puppy Chow, then lugged them to the backyard. "Their shots are all arranged. No charge. All you have to do is take them by the vet's office."

Izzy stood on the stoop, arms crossed under her breasts while he and Ava located and leveled the doghouse a few feet from the back door, resetting and readjusting it until the installation suited the kid. At the end of it, mud covered his boots and his hands and knees.

"When they're grown," Izzy said, "I doubt if even one of them will fit into that thing, much less two. Does that mean you're going to show up out here with a second doghouse?"

"I could." John walked over to where she stood a couple of steps up on the stoop, pulled his handkerchief from his rear pocket and began to wipe his hands.

"Good thing. I don't have a penny budgeted for doghouses."

Meanwhile, the puppies had climbed out of the box and waddled around the muddy yard, their tails whipping back and forth. "They can sleep on the porch," Ava said, picking them up, one under each arm. She carried the muddy-footed puppies into the house.

Izzy held the door open. "Be sure to clean them up before you turn them loose," she said to Ava. She looked down at him and said, "See what you've done?" But he didn't detect true anger in her tone. "If you want to wash off the mud, you can come in and use the laundry sink."

John stuffed his handkerchief back into his pocket, scraped his boot soles and followed her to a screened-in porch that ran the length of the house in back. A wood-burning cookstove hunkered at the far end. Shelves lined one wall, filled with empty canning jars. He suspected Izzy's mom, like many Callister rural folks, had done canning out here on the porch, using this stove.

Izzy preceded him into a mudroom and pointed out a deep laundry sink. As John folded back his cuffs and began washing his hands, the aroma of something spicy and meaty wafted from somewhere and his mouth watered. Having not eaten since a combination breakfast-lunch hamburger at Betty's Road Kill Cafe at eleven o'clock, he was hungry. "Sure smells good in here."

"It's beef stew," Ava said, hanging on to both puppies. "Mama cooks it in the Crock-Pot. It takes all day. It's really good. She made some bread, too."

"Homemade stew? Homemade bread?" John grinned and looked into Izzy's mysterious dark eyes. "Oh, man, it's been a long time since I had home cooking. You wouldn't want company for supper, would you?"

She dragged a towel off a rack on the unpainted plywood wall and handed it to him, but didn't extend an invitation to eat. She spoke to Ava. "Sweetie, you can't bring those pups inside the house. They have to stay on the porch."

Damn. He had been dismissed. No home-cooked stew. No chance to learn more about his old schoolmate who, without even trying, had churned up his juices. His hands dry, he rolled down his cuffs and buttoned them. "Well, since we got the pups taken care of, guess I'll get back to town." He lifted his hat and smoothed his hand over hair weeks past needing a trim.

"Hopefully," she said, leading him to the back door, "these dogs won't be grown before that second doghouse shows up. I don't want dogs the size of horses living on my back porch."

Chapter 6

After what Billy had done, Isabelle had vowed to give up men forever. When she made the pledge she had suspected it was a hollow one and meeting John Bradshaw had just confirmed it.

Ladling stew into two bowls, she tried to steer her thoughts away from the image of him standing there at the fence stroking Dancer's neck, one tan boot propped on a rail and Wranglers pulled tight across his bottom. Good Lord, she had even caught herself several times sneaking a look downward from his trophy belt buckle.

Lust. Base animal attraction. It was the only explanation she had for the feeling that had slithered through her. As an animal breeder, she knew more than most about the mysterious and powerful drive in all animals to perpetuate the species. It was called mating. In human beings, it was called sex.
Damn.

Starting her new life in her hometown, she should have made a hospitable gesture and invited the sheriff to supper, but the odd attack of yearning had flustered her, especially when she thought she saw the same thing in his eyes. Being caught in an unexpected man-woman encounter where sex was an underlying impetus had made her so nervous she could scarcely have a coherent conversation with him, much less share a meal.