Not Their First Rodeo

by Christy Jeffries

  Her head tilted slightly, but she didn’t turn to look at him. Probably a good call considering her lips weren’t all that far from his as she replied somewhat breathlessly, “It’s none of my business, either way.”

  “Well, I’m making it your business. You said you like to have all the facts, and those are the facts.” He couldn’t stop the suggestive tone creeping into his voice as he added a parting shot. “Use that information however you see fit, counselor.”

  Chapter Five

  “There’s just not a lot of room at Gan Gan’s house right now,” Marcus told his sons Tuesday morning when they asked why they had to remain with him at the cabin for the whole week. In reality, even with Tessa and Aunt Freckles temporarily staying there, there was plenty of room. The truth was Marcus didn’t want to keep running into Violet.

  Besides, the cabin wasn’t really a cabin at all. It was a house of nearly three thousand square feet in a secluded area less than a mile from the main driveway on the Twin Kings Ranch. And technically, it was their home. Marcus and Brie had built it right before their wedding, and everything inside—from the custom-designed drawer pulls on the kitchen cabinets to the floral upholstered rocker in the den—had been picked out by his wife.

  Twice now, he’d been embarking on what he’d thought was a new journey with a woman he loved, eager to share his life with someone. And twice those relationships had ended in disaster. Different journeys and different disasters, obviously. Yet both times he’d had to move forward on his own, which was always easier if he didn’t look back at what he’d lost.

  He’d thought about redecorating a few times, to make it seem like less of a shrine to his late wife; however, he’d never gotten around to making any changes. Partly because Marcus had needed so much help with the pair of toddlers—and managing his grief—after Brie had passed away.

  As a single dad, he’d become increasingly dependent on his family for backup. His sister Dahlia, who lived in town and had a five-year-old daughter, usually picked up the twins after school and brought them to his office. Uncle Rider loved entertaining the boys with riding lessons and old rodeo stories, and Finn was always happy to keep an eye on her nephews whenever Marcus had to work late.

  Although, his youngest sister’s inappropriate sense of humor was proving to be more of a bad influence now that the kids were repeating the outlandish things she said. And then there was Marcus’s mother, who was a little too supportive when she was in town for occasional visits. Now that his father was gone, it was time to accept the fact that Sherilee King had returned to Wyoming full-time. She doted on her grandkids even as she drove her own children crazy with her unsolicited opinions and high-handed interference in every aspect of their lives.

  “But everyone at Gan Gan’s will miss us,” Jack pointed out.

  “I’m sure they’ll get used to it.” Marcus looked at the twins’ pouting faces in his rearview mirror. “We have a perfectly good house that nobody is using, and you guys are getting old enough to ride your bicycles to the main house to visit whenever you feel like it.”

  “I don’t like my plain ol’ bike anymore.” Jack crossed his arms under the shoulder strap of his seat belt. “It doesn’t go as fast as a 50cc-engine motocross dirt bike would.”

  “Motorcycles are dangerous,” Jordan reminded his brother for the hundredth time.

  “Only if you crash them.”

  “Jack, you crash everything.” His twin wasn’t wrong. Jack was not only impulsive, he was also the most accident-prone child in the history of Teton Ridge Elementary School. And he was still in the first grade. The school nurse had Marcus on speed dial. They’d taken so many trips to the nearby hospital for sprains, stitches and casts, the staff informally referred to the pediatric exam room as the Jack King Suite.

  Sure, Jordan first took an interest in medical conditions after learning about the cause of his mother’s untimely death. But then Jack’s frequent visits to urgent-care offices and emergency rooms really took that fascination to a whole new level.

  “Aunt Finn said she’d teach us how to drive a Polaris,” Jack said, referring to the smaller all-terrain vehicles the ranch hands sometimes used for hauling supplies. “Could we get one for me and Jordan to drive to the main house? I’ll wear a helmet.”

  “I’m not riding with you on an ATV.” Jordan shook his head. “Even if Dad says yes, I won’t go. Not even with a helmet.”

  “Fine, then.” Jack stuck out his tongue at his brother before plopping his elbow on his windowsill, stubbornly cupping his chin in his hand. “I’ll just take my slow, boring bike to the main house to see Violet then.”

  “Why do you want to visit Violet so badly?” Marcus asked as he pulled his SUV into the drop-off line at the elementary school.

  “Because she doesn’t ever get to be around kids,” Jack said, as though that explained everything.

  Marcus reached for the stainless-steel travel mug in his center cupholder. He was going to need a lot more coffee this morning to decipher the logic of an almost-seven-year-old. “So you think you two are doing her a favor by rewarding her with your presence?”

  “Gan Gan says we’re a delight,” Jordan replied, not picking up on the sarcasm. “And Aunt Freckles says being around us keeps her on her toes. Don’t you think Violet wants to be on her toes?”

  Suddenly, Marcus flashed back to a memory of the summer before his senior year in high school. He and Violet and two thousand other so-called junior global ambassadors had been invited to attend the International Summit at Sea. The event sounded prestigious but really was just a bunch of teenagers attending lectures and seminars all day on a cruise ship anchored in international waters with no cell-phone service. He and Violet had been so bored with the evening’s organized activities that they’d snuck off in search of an adventure and stumbled upon the ship’s beauty salon, which had been closed since there weren’t any paying customers on that particular trip. There’d been a bet—for the life of him, he couldn’t remember what it was—and he’d lost and had had to paint Violet’s toenails for her.

  Social Scene Red.

  That had been the color she’d selected from the wall of nail polishes. Unfortunately, the end result looked more like Crime Scene Red after he’d made a sloppy mess with his too-big fingers and the way-too-tiny brush. But Violet had only laughed and proudly worn her flip-flops the rest of the weekend, showing off those smudged red toenails like they were works of art.

  Now, all these years later, it finally occurred to Marcus that Violet hadn’t been proud of his paint job. She’d been proud of winning whatever bet they’d had. Had she always been this competitive and he’d never noticed it? He was still wracking his brain for the terms of that wager when a horn blasted behind them.

  All the cars in front of him had pulled forward, and the crossing guard was waving for him to follow along. Most of the time he parked and walked the boys to their classroom. But yesterday, Jordan had commented on how all the big kids got dropped off at the curb. Now Jack was begging for a motorcycle, of all things. What would they ask for tomorrow? Probably a six pack of beer. Or, in Jordan’s case, a 401(k) plan.

  Why did it feel like his babies were in such a hurry to grow up? And why did the realization suddenly make him feel so lonely?

  Sighing, Marcus put the SUV in Park and turned to give them each an awkward half hug through the narrow opening separating the front seat from the back seat. “Good luck on your spelling tests. And eat the celery sticks I packed in your lunch.”

  “Did you put peanut butter and raisins on them like Aunt Freckles does?” Jack, the picky eater, asked. Thankfully, they weren’t trying to grow up too fast.

  “Yes,” Marcus said, trying not to think of how old the raisins he’d found in the cabin’s cupboard were. He really needed to go to the market instead of picking up last-minute supplies from the pantry in the main house like he’d done last
night. “Don’t forget. Aunt Dahlia is picking you guys up again today.”

  He gave the boys a final wave before driving to the county building that housed both the courthouse and the annexed sheriff’s station. Deputy Broman had just returned from his overnight patrol shift, still sporting the black eye from MJ’s attempts to resist arrest. The man was also still carrying a decade-old grudge from the safety academy when Marcus had beat him out as the top-scoring recruit, earning the Chief’s Commendation Award at their graduation. Things hadn’t improved in their professional relationship when Marcus had later won the election for county sheriff in a landslide and become Broman’s boss.

  Despite his deputy’s attitude toward Marcus, though, the man was a dedicated cop and followed procedure by the book. He also knew how to write an ironclad arrest report that Violet, or any other attorney, would be hard-pressed to dispute in the courtroom.

  “Morning, Broman,” Marcus said as he used his electronic key card to open the secured back door only accessible to employees. “Uneventful shift, I hope?”

  “As much as can be expected. It’ll be nice when all those media vans camped outside the Twin Kings get whatever story they came for and leave.” Broman had been complaining about the influx of news reporters snooping around town since before the funeral. Each time he commented on it, Marcus heard the underlying implication that it was somehow the King family’s fault that the department’s limited staff and even more limited budget had to be stretched thin to cover the additional patrol duties. Luckily, most of the local shops and restaurants appreciated the extra business, though. “Oh, and we got a noise complaint about Jay Grover again. Apparently he fired his fourth divorce attorney and went on another Taylor Swift binge. The neighbors are getting pretty tired of him getting drunk and blasting bad breakup songs at three in the morning. He was already passed out by the time I got there, and his Bluetooth speaker battery had died, so I left it for you guys on the day shift to handle.”

  “Okay. I have a few calls to make this morning, and then I’ll drive over to Grover’s house and have another chat with him. Speaking of lawyers, though, MJ’s defense attorney is meeting the prosecutor here this afternoon to look at the body-cam footage from the night of his arrest. Can you make sure the toxicology reports are printed out before you leave?”

  “No problem.” Broman shifted his gear bag higher onto his shoulder as he passed through the door and inside the building. “Hey, is it true that your baby brother’s lawyer is also your ex-girlfriend?”

  Marcus clenched the door handle tighter before forcing his fingers to relax. It was bad enough that his law-enforcement duties were suddenly completely at odds with his brotherly duties, and that no matter what he did in this situation, someone would be pissed at him. Yet now he had the unfortunate bonus of dealing with Violet, on top of an already-precarious balancing act. All he could manage was a tense nod of acknowledgment before he retreated to his office.

  The bulk of Marcus’s morning was spent dealing with a sullen and hungover Jay Grover; pulling over the mayor’s wife to give her another ticket for blowing through the new stop sign at Frontier Drive and Stampede Boulevard; responding to a call at Burnworth’s Bakery where Mrs. Crenshaw was refusing to leave until Mr. Burnworth, the notoriously temperamental baker, honored an expired coupon for 50 percent off a blueberry muffin; and explaining to Mr. Watterson at the Weathered W Ranch that his overweight pygmy goat (and not a rogue gang—as he had called them—of vegan teenagers) was responsible for tearing up his vegetable garden.

  At one o’clock, Marcus grabbed a chicken sandwich to go at Biscuit Betty’s, then buried himself in his office to finish reviewing operation reports from the prior weekend. Next, he went through his employees’ time sheets and approved the overtime pay for the extra shifts they’d had to pull for all the Secret Service task-force meetings and security briefings related to the funeral. Due to Tessa’s little media scandal with Agent Wyatt and all the lingering news agencies sticking around, his deputies had earned some hefty overtime checks this week.

  By the time Rod D’Agostino, the front-desk volunteer, announced Violet’s arrival, Marcus was already regretting his decision to hold this particular meeting at the station.

  “The DA called to say he can’t make it, but that other attorney is here.” Rod had been a homicide detective in Chicago before retiring and moving to Teton Ridge with his wife, who wanted to get away from the big city. Unfortunately, the small-town life didn’t hold much interest for an old-school cop like Rod, and Mrs. D’Agostino was so sick of listening to true-crime podcasts at home, she’d begged Marcus to let her husband volunteer at the station a few days a week.

  “The junior cadets from the high-school program are holding their monthly training in the community room,” Rod reminded him. “Do you want me to put her in the interrogation room? I can come in there with you as your backup in case she gets a little slippery with all that fancy lawyer talk.”

  “It’s called the interview room,” he corrected Rod, who was clearly missing his days as a detective on the police force. “And since we aren’t charging her with any crimes, it’s probably safe enough for me to meet with her in my office.”

  “Suit yourself.” Rod shrugged. “I’ll be out here listening to the feds on the encrypted scanner if you need me.”

  As he straightened his desk, Marcus made a mental note to call the Secret Agent in charge at the ranch and advise him that Rod had figured out how to hack their frequency.

  When Violet walked in, Marcus almost dropped the stack of time sheets he’d just signed. Someone must have sent her some clothes, because the outfit she had on definitely wasn’t from Sherilee King’s closet.

  The silky-smooth fabric of the black pants hugged every curve, from the low-riding waistband all the way down to the cropped ankle length, showing off spiky five-inch heels. The matching jacket was fitted and hinted at being professional if it wasn’t for the daring V-neck of the blouse under the four buttons holding the outer garment closed.

  Technically, one might be able to call the articles of clothing a business suit. But the way Violet wore it gave Marcus very unbusinesslike thoughts.

  “What’s wrong?” Violet immediately asked. “Your nostrils are all round and huffy, like you can’t get enough air.”

  Marcus sniffed and shook his head. “Uh, nothing. I was just thinking that your outfit doesn’t look like anything I’ve seen in a courtroom. At least not here in Ridgecrest County.”

  “Considering the fact that our judge was wearing sneakers and basketball pants under his robe at the last hearing, I’ll consider myself overdressed. Besides, only one box of my clothes arrived and the dressiest material in Finn’s closet is flannel. I had to borrow this shirt from your aunt Freckles.”

  That certainly explained the plunging V-neck. Marcus shook his head to clear it.

  Violet placed her briefcase on the floor and gestured to the chair across from his desk, reminding him of his manners.

  He extended his hand. “Sorry. Please have a seat.”

  She sat down and crossed her legs, drawing his attention to the high heels that would become highly impractical as soon as the next snow fell. Her shoes made him think of her toes, which made him think of what nail-polish color she had on underneath, and before he could stop himself he blurted out, “What was the bet that I lost?”

  She lifted both eyebrows. “You’re going to have to narrow that down for me. You used to lose bets to me all the time.”

  He frowned. “First of all, that’s highly unlikely, since I rarely take bets that I might lose. Second, I’m talking about the one at that Summit at Sea cruise. Right before our senior year in high school. Remember that empty beauty salon?”

  Violet’s cheeks turned an adorable shade of pink, and she quickly busied herself with searching for something in her briefcase. “Are we here to talk about some old bet or about your brother�
�s case?”

  “Well, we were going to talk about the case. But now that it’s obvious you’re trying to avoid the subject, I would much rather discuss that bet.”

  “Fine.” She finally dragged her eyes to his. “We’d snuck off from that global pyramid team-building workshop, and you were making fun of me for bringing my Shirley Temple with me.”

  “That’s right! They closed all the bars on the ship and were only serving preapproved mocktails. I remember my roommate was the Secretary of State’s son. He smuggled a bottle of tequila in his suitcase and was charging kids to spike their drinks. So did I dare you to chug it or something?”

  “No. You bet me that I couldn’t tie a knot into the stem of a cherry. With my tongue.”

  Now he felt the heat rise to his own cheeks. And other parts of his body, as well. He remembered her skillful mouth and her agile tongue oh so well, and his body was responding as if he was eighteen all over again.

  As if to drive him further to distraction, she opened her soft lips ever so slightly and let out a breathy sigh. Her next words snapped him right back to the present, though.

  “So am I here to talk about a past bet you lost to me, or am I here to talk about a current case your absent prosecutor is going to lose to me?”

  * * *

  Violet would’ve had to be blind not to see how uncomfortable Marcus was as he shifted his weight in his office chair. His eyes kept dropping to her mouth, and despite their growing animosity toward each other, the attraction was clearly still there. Her stomach did a little dance at the realization that she was having such a physical effect on the man who had let it be known to everyone at the ranch that he didn’t enjoy having Violet in town.

  The only time she ever used her looks or her femininity to gain the upper hand—either in her personal life or in her career, which took up most of her personal life—was when she wanted to lure some good ol’ boy attorney into underestimating her. Then she could strike when they weren’t paying attention and win an argument or even an entire case.