The Sheriff's Son

Cover Page

Excerpt

Dear Reader

Title Page

Dedication

Books by Stella Bagwell

About the Author

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Copyright

Please address questions and book requests to: Silhouette Reader Service

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Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont L2A 5X3

To Thelma and Gerald with love and appreciation

J
ustine Murdock flexed her aching shoulders and shook her long red hair in the wind blowing through the open pickup. It was June in New Mexico. The sun was warm, and the orchards and pastures had just been washed with an overnight rain.

As the pickup rattled over a planked bridge crossing the Hondo River, Justine breathed in the fresh evening air. It was wonderful to be out of the medical clinic. She'd had an especially tiring day, and all she could think about was getting home to the ranch, taking a long, hot bath, then setting down to supper with her family.

The Bar M Ranch spread over several hundred acres at the foothills of the Capitan mountains. The house itself was built in a square, with a small courtyard in the center. The pink stucco walls, red tiled roof and ground-level porch, with arched supports, made the home a typical hacienda-style ranch house.

A graveled driveway circled the house, but since her sisters parked their vehicles in the back, Justine always used the front entrance.

Leaving her mud-splattered pickup in the shade of a piñon pine, Justine walked the short distance to the porch, rubbing the back of her neck as she went. For some unexplainable reason, half the mothers of Lincoln County had decided to bring their babies in for their immunizations today. Each time Justine jabbed a fat little thigh or hip, horrified shrieks had echoed through the whole clinic.

Rubbing her furrowed brow, Justine glanced around her. It still seemed like she was hearing babies crying!

She saw it then. The straw laundry basket on the flat concrete porch, the tottery little head wavering just above the rim.

Running the last few steps to the porch, Justine knelt beside the basket. A loud gasp rushed past her lips. There wasn't just one baby sitting on the fuzzy blue blanket, there were two! A girl in pink, with bright red hair, and a boy in blue, with slightly darker auburn hair. Their features were almost identical, right down to the green of their eyes.

Dear God, twins! Where had they come from?

Quickly she scanned the area back over her shoulder. There were no strange vehicles parked nearby, no one to be seen. Did her sisters or aunt not know the babies were out here?

She looked back down at the twins, her face still mirroring the shock of finding them. “Where did you two come from?”

Distracted by Justine's voice, the babies suddenly stopped their fussing and stared, wide-eyed, at her. After a moment, the boy stuck out his lower lip and the girl began waving her arms in the air.

“Yeah, I know,” Justine said. “You can't talk yet. You're not old enough.”

Quickly she picked up the basket of babies and carried it into the house. “Aunt Kitty! Rose! Chloe! Is anyone home?”

No one answered as Justine carried the heavy load into
the kitchen and placed it carefully on the long Formica table.

With one hand still on the basket, Justine glanced at the refrigerator door, where notes were usually left, beneath an array of colorful magnets. A tiny square of paper dangled beneath a banana.

Charlie and I have gone to the grocery store in Ruidoso. Be back before dark. Love, Aunt Kitty

Justine groaned. It was nearly two hours before dark. That meant it would probably be at least an hour before her son and aunt returned home. As for her sisters, she doubted either of them would show up any sooner. Since their father's death six weeks ago, which had left them in dire financial straits, both Rose and Chloe had taken to doing the work of the wranglers they'd been forced to let go.

“Well,” Justine said to the twins. “Looks like it's just you and me, kids. What are we gonna do?”

Now that the two had an audience, the twins didn't seem too perturbed at being confined to a laundry basket. Thankful for small favors, Justine thrust her hands through her thick red hair and tried to calm her racing mind.

Of course, she'd heard of babies being left on doorsteps in books or movies. But that was fiction. That didn't happen in Hondo, New Mexico. And certainly not to Justine Murdock.

What should she do now? What did a person do when she found deserted babies on her porch? she wondered wildly. And they were obviously deserted. No one was knocking at the door or calling on the telephone to claim them.

A thought suddenly struck her, and she quickly made a search around and under the babies for a note, or any sort of clue. The only things she found were two bottles and
two pacifiers, wrapped in several disposable diapers. The bottles were filled, and the formula was still cool, as though the bottles had only been taken out of the refrigerator a short time ago.

Her nursing instincts kicking in, Justine picked up the boy, gave him a quick inspection, then did the same with the girl.

They were both plump, the boy a little more so than the girl. Their skin was clear and pink, their eyes were bright. Both babies appeared to be perfectly normal and healthy.

Satisfied with her examinations, Justine set the twins facing each other in the basket, then stepped back and studied them thoughtfully. From what she could remember from her own son, and from the babies she saw in the medical clinic, she would guess the twins to be somewhere around five months old. Neither one had any teeth, yet they could both sit up without any props.

Try as she might, Justine couldn't remember any of their friends or neighbors in the area having twins in the past six months. Nor could she remember twins of this age visiting the clinic at any time. Did that mean they weren't from around here? If so, why would anyone bring them to the Bar M?

Maybe her aunt or sisters would have some idea, but Justine doubted it. She figured the three women were going to be just as flabbergasted to find the twins here as she'd been.

You know you're going to have to call the sheriff, a voice said inside her head. Whoever had left the babies had committed a crime. Technically, the law needed to be advised and an investigation started. But calling the sheriff was the last thing on earth that Justine wanted to do.

Her legs suddenly wobbly, Justine pulled out a chair from the table and sat down. The babies stared at her, gooed and banged their little fists against the sides of the basket.

Justine smiled at their sweet round faces, while inside
her stomach churned sickly. More than five years had passed since she saw or talked to Roy Pardee, the sheriff of Lincoln County. And during the year and a half that she'd been back home in Hondo, she'd carefully avoided any contact with the man. He was a part of her past that she wanted to keep in the past.

But now she had two strange babies on her hands, and he needed to know about them before the trail from where they came from turned cold. Dear God, could she face him again? Could she look at him and pretend that nothing had ever happened between them?

The questions made her hands tremble, but when she looked at the two helpless children, her jaw set with determination. She wasn't an innocent twenty-year-old anymore. She was a mother, a nurse, a strong, grown woman. Someone had dumped two precious humans, and they deserved her help. Roy Pardee be damned!

Before she could lose her courage, Justine went over to the wall phone, located at the end of a row of cabinets, and punched the number listed for the Lincoln County sheriff.

A female dispatcher answered on the first ring, and Justine quickly gave the woman her name and address and went on to explain the problem.

“If you'll hold a moment, Ms. Murdock, I'll see how quickly someone can get out there,” she told Justine, then went off the line. Seconds later, she returned. “Sheriff Pardee will be right there, Ms. Murdock.”

In spite of all her earlier bravado, Justine felt as if the wind had been knocked from her. “Oh, it isn't necessary to send him. Any deputy will do.”

The dispatcher must have considered Justine's suggestion strange. She paused for long seconds, then said, “In a case like this, Sheriff Pardee would rather see things first-hand.”

“Oh, yes, of course,” Justine said, glad the woman
couldn't see her red face. “Then I'll be here waiting for him.”

The woman thanked her, then hung up. Justine placed the receiver back on its cradle, then groaned loudly. “I'll be waiting for him,” she repeated with a snort, then turned and looked at the twins. “What am I saying? I won't be waiting for him. I'll simply be here—ready to talk to…whoever shows up. But I won't wait on Roy Pardee. Not even for you,” she added to the babies.

As soon as the words were out, the girl began to cry. Justine quickly went over and lifted the baby into her arms.

“It's all right, honey girl,” she said in a soothing voice. “Not all men are like Roy Pardee. Besides, when you grow up, you'll be a lot smarter than I was. You've got an intelligent little face. I can already tell you'll know to steer clear of men who walk with a swagger and wear a badge in place of a heart.”

The trip from Carrizozo, where the sheriff's department was located, to the Bar M was a bit over forty miles. She figured she had thirty minutes or more before Roy arrived. She used part of the time to make a quilt pallet on the living room floor for the babies.

While the twins rolled and stretched on their new bed, Justine peered out the windows, toward the corrals and barns, in hopes of catching a glimpse of Chloe or Rose. If there had ever been a time she needed the support of her sisters, it was now. But there was no sight of them anywhere, and she could hardly leave the babies alone to go in search of them.

As for her son and aunt, Justine hoped the two of them didn't show up until after the sheriff had come and gone. She didn't want Charlie to see Roy. And she didn't want Roy to see her son. Maybe that was selfish and ridiculous on her part. Roy would probably never make any sort of connection. Still, she wasn't ready to take that chance. She wasn't sure she'd ever be.

Grimacing, Justine sat down on the couch in front of the twins' makeshift bed. More than likely, she thought, Roy had forgotten all about the brief affair they had nearly six years ago. Yet she hadn't forgotten. She couldn't. Charlie was a constant reminder of the time she'd spent with Roy.

As she watched the twins examine each other's ears and eyes, a soft smile curved Justine's lips. Having Charlie far outweighed the heartache and humiliation Roy had dealt her all those years ago. Her son gave her life meaning and purpose. She loved him fiercely, and would do anything to protect him. And knowing that only made her wonder how any mother had been able to leave these two babies behind.

It had been at least two years since Roy was on the Bar M Ranch. He'd stopped by on a trip to Picacho to see Tom. There'd been a rash of cattle thefts at the time, and he'd wanted to see if the ranch had suffered any losses.

Roy had always liked the older Murdock man, and had been sorry to hear of his sudden death a few weeks ago. Yet he'd not gone to the funeral. He'd known that
she
would be there and he'd decided that if or when he ever saw her again, he didn't want it to be over her father's grave.

That day, he'd chosen not to see Justine. But today he had no choice, and he didn't know how he would feel to finally look at her beautiful face once again. And she would still be beautiful. She could only be twenty-five or twenty-six now.

He didn't know exactly when Justine had returned home to Hondo. Quite by accident, he'd overheard someone in a Ruidoso café talking about Tom having his middle daughter back out on the ranch again. That had been several months ago, yet he could still remember how the snippet of news had stunned him. He'd come close to casually questioning the person about Justine's coming home. But he'd stopped himself short of doing such a thing. When the county sheriff
asked questions about anyone, it always started the gossip mill grinding.

Six years ago, he'd been a young deputy in the middle of a messy breakup with the sheriff's daughter when Justine came into his life. The result had been a secret affair. To this day, he didn't think anyone knew about the torrid liaison he'd had with the fiery-haired Murdock girl. Except him. And it annoyed the hell out of him, because he couldn't forget.

The knock on the door startled Justine, making her hands jerk as she fastened the adhesive tab on the waist of the diaper.

“He's not going anywhere.” Justine spoke in a hurried hush to the boy twin. “And I want to make sure your pants aren't going to fall off.”

Her heart beating in her throat, Justine took another moment to check the fresh diaper she'd placed on the baby. Then, rising to her feet, she went to answer Roy's second knock.

The thin strips of glass running the length of the oak door gave her a glimpse of a tall man dressed in blue jeans, boots and a khaki shirt. His head was turned toward the corrals and barns, but the moment Justine opened the door, it jerked around to face her.

For long seconds, Justine could only stare at him and wonder why, after all these years, he should still look so good, so sexy, to her. The years she'd been away had changed him very little, except to add a few sunlines to his face and muscular weight to his body.

“Hello, Roy.”

Beneath the brim of his black Stetson, his blue eyes flicked impassively over her face. “Hello, Justine.”

She didn't realize just how much seeing him had affected her until she stepped back to allow him entry into the
house. Her legs were trembling on weak knees, and for a moment she clung to the doorknob for support.

“Please come in. The babies are right here.”

He stepped past her. Justine shut the door and turned to him.

“Were you the only one here when you found the babies?” he asked.

No “How are you, it's good to see you, how have things been?” Justine thought. He was going to be strictly business. That was good, she supposed. She didn't want anything personal to pass between them. Still, his indifference hurt. She'd once given him so very much of herself. But she supposed Roy Pardee was like so many men in this world. They took a woman's heart, then forgot all about it.