The Sheriff's Son (5 page)

“How long have you worked here?”

Surprised by the personal question, she slanted him a glance from beneath her lashes. “Since before Mother died seven months ago.”

He grimaced. “I was sorry to hear about her passing.”

He sounded sincere, and somehow that made it harder for Justine to remain callous toward him. She knew that Roy had lost his mother long before he was grown. His father had died in a hunting accident when Roy was only a teenager. He understood what it was like to lose a parent.

“I moved back to the Hondo valley to be with her and nurse her while I could.”

His eyes searched her face. “And you stayed because…?”

She met his gaze. Was he thinking the reason was him? No, surely not. It should be obvious. She'd been home a year and half, and she'd carefully kept her distance from him.

“Mother's death made me realize how much I needed to
be with my family, and how much Charlie needed them, too.”

He glanced at the ground and shifted uncomfortably. “Now, you've lost your father. That must have been quite a blow.”

“I think you know how much of a blow. You lost your father, too.”

He glanced up, and for a split second, Justine saw naked pain in his eyes, but it was gone just as swiftly and he was back to being the steely-eyed sheriff of Lincoln County.

“You remember that?” he asked lowly.

He seemed surprised, and Justine couldn't understand why. True, their time together hadn't been that long. Two months, at the most. But during those weeks, she'd grown so very close to him. She'd learned all about his growing-up years, his hopes and disappointments, his dreams for the future. How could he think she had forgotten anything about him?

“Of course I remember. He was hunting elk up in the mountains near Cimarron and fell from a cliff.”

“I guess you do remember.”

Too much, Justine thought. Far too much. She turned down the sidewalk heading back to the entrance of the building, then paused awkwardly, a few steps away from him.

“I should thank you again for your help with the twins. I'm sure it would have been impossible for us to keep them if you hadn't intervened on our behalf. Chloe and Rose are beside themselves.”

Being the sheriff, Roy often received thanks from the people he was able to help. Yet a thank-you coming from Justine was something entirely different. He didn't want to be touched by it, but he was. He didn't want to be drawn to her beauty, but he was. More than that, he didn't want to think of her as his lover. In the past or the present. But he was. And he didn't know how to stop it.

“I'll be out at the ranch again this evening,” he said without preamble.

Surprised, Justine looked at him. “For what?”

“Remember, I still need to talk to your sisters. I'd appreciate it if you'd tell them to be there. And I'd like to talk to you some more, too.”

Her heart began to thud rapidly. “About the twins?”

One corner of his mouth curled mockingly. “What else?”

What else indeed, she thought, as heat colored her face. “All right. We'll be there.”

He touched his finger to the brim of his Stetson, then turned and walked away.

Justine watched him until he was out of sight, then forced herself to go back inside to work. But forcing him out of her mind was another matter.

T
hat evening, when Justine got home from work, she scraped her hair back into a ponytail, donned a pair of old, faded jeans, a worn chambray work shirt and tennis shoes with paint splotches on the toes.

When Roy Pardee showed up, he was going to see that enticing him was the last thing on her mind, Justine assured herself as she walked down to the kitchen.

As she stepped into the room, Kitty looked up from her task at the cabinet. “What are you going to do, clean the attic?” the woman asked, her eyes running over Justine's grubby clothes.

“No. Just getting comfortable,” Justine said offhandedly, then walked over to where the twins were seated, in two high chairs. Bibs were tied around their necks, and damp vanilla-wafer crumbs were scattered across the trays in front of them.

“Where did the high chairs come from?” Justine asked.

“Rose found one in the attic, and Vida brought the other one over this morning,” Kitty said. Vida was an old friend of hers, who lived a few miles down the road, toward Picacho.
“Her grandbabies have all grown out of the high-chair stage, and she said she wouldn't be needing it.”

“She knew about the twins being here?”

“I told her last night on the phone. But I think the whole Hondo Valley must know by now. The telephone has been ringing all day.”

Justine tweaked both babies' cheeks with thumb and forefinger. “I guess it would be impossible to keep the news from traveling. Especially with Roy's deputies asking questions all over town.”

Kitty turned her attention back to the cookbook lying open on the cabinet counter. “How do you know this?”

“Roy told me,” Justine answered. “He came to the clinic this morning to have me sign a legal document about keeping the twins.”

“So that part of it is already settled?”

Justine walked over to the coffeemaker sitting on the small breakfast bar. “Yes. It's all legal now. We keep the twins until Roy finds the parents.”

Kitty looked up from the cookbook. “Sounds like Sheriff Pardee works fast. But, to be honest, I don't really know how he plans to find who the twins belong to. What does the man have to go on?”

Justine filled a pottery mug full of coffee and took a cautious sip. “Frankly, I don't know. But he seems confident. By the way, he's coming back out to the ranch this evening to speak with Rose and Chloe.” Justine refused to add herself to that list. “Did I tell you?”

Glancing over her shoulder, Kitty frowned at her niece. “You knew the sheriff was coming out to the ranch and you dressed in that getup?”

“What do you mean? Roy isn't coming out here to see what I'm wearing,” she said with faint irritation.

“Why, Justine,” Kitty scolded lightly, “I didn't imply anything of the sort. It's just that you're usually so conscious
of your appearance. And Sheriff Pardee is a very good-looking man. Single, too.”

Justine wasn't surprised at the direction Kitty's mind had taken. Her aunt was always trying to find husbands for all three of her nieces. “I heard he was divorced.”

“Hmm…I think that's true. Someone—maybe it was Vida—said he used to be married to the past sheriff's daughter. But the marriage only lasted two or three months. Strange, isn't it, two people go to all the trouble of getting married and then can't stay together for more than twelve weeks.”

Justine tried not to appear shocked as she gazed at her aunt. Two months after she left Roy and went back to college in Las Cruces, Roy had tried to call her several times. Each time, she'd refused to talk to him. Had he and Marla already divorced by then? She didn't know why it should matter to her now, but it did.

“I wonder what ever happened to Marla?” Justine asked more to herself than Kitty.

Kitty leaned her hip against the cabinet and tapped a finger against her thumb. “You knew his wife?”

Justine nodded, but didn't say more. Since she returned home a year and a half ago, she'd deliberately refrained from asking her father or any of her old acquaintances anything about Roy. For one thing, she didn't want to arouse any sort of suspicion about Roy Pardee and herself. And for another, she'd always told herself she didn't care what had happened in his life once she went back to college.

Kitty spoke up, totally unaware of Justine's spinning thoughts. “Well, apparently the woman wasn't what the sheriff expected in a wife, because they split the blanket before it ever got warm.”

And Justine could only wonder why. Was that what he'd been wanting to tell her when he called her at NMU all those years ago? That he and Marla were finished? And what about the baby Marla had been expecting? He'd said
he'd never been a father. Had the woman suffered a miscarriage?

Oh, none of it mattered now, she wearily told herself. What had happened in the past couldn't change the way things were now.

“That's his business, Kitty. Not ours.”

Before the older woman could reply, Justine carried her coffee out through the screen door and across the small courtyard. In one corner, Charlie was playing in the sandpile her father had built for his grandson before he died.

Smiling at the precious sight, Justine sat down beside her son and picked up a small road grader. “May I play, too?”

“Sure, Mommy.” He pointed to a long trench he'd dug in the sand. “See, this is the Hondo River, and this is our house over here.”

“And we need to have a bridge to cross to the other side,” Justine observed. “Maybe we can find a few twigs to use for logs.”

Twenty minutes later, Justine was admiring the miniature ranch she'd helped Charlie construct when the screen door leading out from the kitchen softly banged closed. Glancing up, she saw Roy sauntering slowly toward them.

Before Justine could say a word, Charlie jumped to his feet and went to meet him.

“You're the sheriff,” he said, smiling up at the tall man with the black Stetson and the steel-blue eyes. “Did you come here to arrest us?”

Roy had never felt comfortable with young children. He'd never been around them much, and he didn't know what they were capable of talking about or how their minds worked. Yet something about this sturdy little boy of Justine's was different. For some reason, he felt attuned to him.

“Do you know what
arrest
means?” he asked the child.

Charlie nodded vigorously. “Yep. Aunt Kitty told me
that's what sheriffs do. They arrest people who do bad things and take them to jail.”

His expression serious, Roy said, “Your aunt Kitty is right. Have you done something bad?”

Charlie wagged his head back and forth. “No. If I do something bad, Mommy won't let me ride the horses with Aunt Chloe.”

Sounded like Justine knew the right button to push to keep her son in line, Roy thought. “Then I'm not going to arrest you and take you to jail. You like to ride horses?”

Charlie's blue eyes lit up. “Yeah! I have a painted pony named Thundercloud.”

“Can he run like the wind?”

Charlie grinned. “When Aunt Chloe rides him he goes really, really fast. But Mommy won't let me run him yet. She says I need to be six, and then I can take him on the galloping track.”

“Sounds like you have something to look forward to,” Roy told the boy.

“Charlie is like his Aunt Chloe. He has a great love affair with horses,” Justine said as she walked up to the two of them.

Roy looked at her. “And what about you?”

Justine didn't want to get involved in small talk with this man. He'd caused her so much pain that she still, after all these years, wasn't able to forgive him. But since Charlie was present, Justine didn't want to appear short or impolite.

“I love horses. I just don't sleep, eat and breathe them, as my sister does,” she said, her eyes meeting his, then glancing away.

“Kitty tells me Rose and Chloe went into town earlier.”

Justine nodded. “To get a few things for the babies. Clothes, diapers, bottles and such. I'm sure they'll be back any time now. Chloe doesn't want the horses to go five minutes past their regular feeding time. She says it upsets their digestion, not to mention their nerves.”

“I don't behave too well when I'm hungry, either.”

Justine didn't think a full stomach could help Roy's attitude. In fact, she was beginning to wonder what it would take to make the man smile more often.

At that moment, Kitty appeared in the open doorway behind them. “Sheriff Pardee,” she called through the screen door. “The girls are back from town now, if you'd like to come in and speak with them.”

“I'll be right there.” He turned and headed toward the house. To Justine's surprise, Charlie followed behind him. She opened her mouth to call him back, then closed it just as quickly. Not allowing her son to go into the house would look odd. Besides, being around Roy for a few minutes wasn't going to harm him. Charlie was fascinated with the sheriff, not the man, she assured herself.

With the two of them gone, Justine decided to walk down to the stables and feed the horses. Roy might keep Chloe and Rose tied up for several minutes, and she knew both her sisters would enjoy a little extra time with the babies.

The stables were built on a sloping hill at the foot of the mountain. Several yards to the northwest, where the land flattened out to become valley floor, a plowed circle of track covered a half-mile distance.

Justine had seen her father stand many a time at the edge of the track, watching proudly as Chloe galloped his racehorses. He would be there no more, Justine thought sadly. And she was beginning to wonder how much longer they would be able to hold on to the racing stock. It was very expensive to keep a stable of horses, and since their father's death, they'd been faced with one debt after another. But there was always the possibility that one of the animals would win them a chunk of money. At least Chloe liked to think so.

Justine was filling the last hay bag with alfalfa when Roy entered the long barn. Determined to ignore her pounding
heart, she leaned against the door of the stall and waited while he approached her.

“What are you doing down here?” she asked, annoyed that her voice had come out husky, rather than in the cool tone she'd been hoping for.

He didn't smile at her, but when his eyes met hers, they didn't seem nearly as hard as they had yesterday. Or was she only imagining that they had softened?

“I wanted to talk to you, remember?”

She'd been hoping he would forget. “I knew my sisters were busy, so I decided to do the feeding for them.” Her eyes slipped over his face. “Did they have any helpful information?”

Roy shook his head. “No. All of you say there's no one out there that you know who would leave babies on the Bar M's doorstep.”

Justine made a helpless gesture with her hand. “There isn't anyone we know. Look, Roy, all our friends and acquaintances live around here. They're the same people you know.”

“What about Charlie's father?”

Justine's heartbeat went from fast to runaway. “Wh-what about Charlie's father?”

Frowning, Roy looped his thumbs over his belt. “Obviously he isn't from around here. Perhaps he had something to do with this?”

Justine was suddenly thinking of the old adage that one lie always calls for another. But in this case, she couldn't come out with the truth. Not now! Roy hadn't wanted a family back when Charlie was conceived, and judging by his single status now, he still didn't want one.

“There's no chance of that,” she said curtly.

“How do you know?”

Justine frowned. “I just know. He—he doesn't have a wife or children. And he has nothing to do with my life now. He…doesn't want anything to do with it.”

“You seem very certain of that.”

Justine suddenly wondered if he was asking these questions because of the twins, or was merely using them as an excuse to pry into her life away from Hondo.

“I am certain.”

She moved her eyes from his and fixed her gaze on the far end of the stables. She didn't want to keep looking at him. She was afraid that if she did, he'd be able to see the secrets she was hiding.

“Well, it's my job to ask these things. I'm not really trying to find out about your old lovers.”

Her old lovers. Justine would have laughed if the whole thing wasn't so heartbreaking. Roy was the first and only lover she'd ever had. What would he think if he knew that? she wondered wildly.

“No, I don't expect you are,” she said wryly.

Roy hadn't come down here to the stables to hash out the past with her. But as his eyes wandered over her face, the tender line of her jaw, the curve of her cheeks, the lush fullness of her lips, he couldn't help but want to know many things. Most of all, why he'd lost her.

“I would like to know one thing.”

The quietness of his voice tugged her eyes back to his face. She couldn't read his stoic expression, but it hardly made any difference. Just seeing the chiseled lines of his face, the gray-blue of his eyes, made her remember how it had been to touch him, love him.

Before she could stop it, her mind went back to the day she and Roy had met. She'd been driving home during a semester break from college when, just north of Alamogordo, one of her tires suddenly blew. She'd been struggling to loosen the lug nuts when a patrol car pulled up behind her. The young deputy inside had been Roy, and by the time he'd changed the tire, she'd already agreed to meet him later in Ruidoso. The attraction between them had been
instantaneous and overwhelming, and from that very day, Roy Pardee had changed her life.

“One thing?” she asked quietly, forcing her mind back to the present.

Roy closed the three steps between them, and Justine's breathing stopped as he placed his thumb beneath her chin and tilted her face up to his.