“Great idea. Although your scones are delicious no matter when I eat them.”
She laughed. “Save a few for Tom, please. Why don’t you take your coffee and go on out? I’ll join you with the scones when they’re ready.”
After pouring a mugful, Brice walked out onto the large, shaded porch that overlooked an expanse of neatly trimmed lawn, with a play set for Bunny on one side and a flagstone terrace in the center, bordered by beds of rosemary, lantana, and Lady in Red salvia, now a riot of red, gold, and orange blooms.
Settling into a chair, Brice took a long swig of coffee and sighed with pleasure. Was there anything finer than sitting on a back porch sipping coffee, while a soft breeze wafted over the sharp scent of herbs and the early sun set the whole landscape glittering?
He was staring into the distance, enjoying the moment, when a flash of motion in the neighboring backyard caught his eye. Focused on the movement, he saw someone facing away from him, bent over at the waist, weeding what looked like a bed of cherry tomatoes.
A female someone, with long, shapely bare legs and tight short shorts that barely covered a cute little behind impossible to ignore, since the lady’s torso and head were bent to the ground and shadowed by it.
Smiling, Brice waited with anticipation for the woman to stand up. The view when she did was just as pleasing. That tempting butt narrowed to a slim waist and a halter top that displayed a lovely swath of lightly tanned back. Long, curly black hair tossed up casually in a high ponytail completed the appealing picture.
It took him a moment to realize Elaine had walked out and spoken to him.
“Who is that?” he asked, turning toward her.
She laughed. “My neighbor. Who, I agree, is well worth looking at. She’s fairly new to Whiskey River, so you might not have met her.”
“I assure you I have not. Why don’t you correct that dreadful mistake?”
Elaine wagged a warning finger at him. “Okay, I’ll introduce you, but hold back on the charm. You’re a player, but she’s not, so don’t be thinking of some overnight quickie affair.”
Brice put a hand over his heart. “You wound me! You know I don’t use ’em, abuse ’em and cast ’em aside.”
“True. But . . . it’s complicated. You see—”
“Better call her quick,” Brice interrupted. “Looks like she’s heading inside.”
Elaine gave him a measuring look.
Brice held up his hands. “I’ll be on my best behavior. Promise.”
“You’d better be,” Elaine muttered. Going to stand at the porch railing, she waved and called out, “Hey, neighbor! Can you come over for some coffee?”
The woman turned and waved back, putting up a hand to block the sun shining directly into her eyes. “Morning, Elaine. Sure, I have a minute.”
The view from a distance had been attractive and it was even better as she walked closer. From the ebony curls to the pert nose with a hint of freckles and the lush, kissable mouth, his gaze drifted down to admire the halter top’s display of full breasts with a hint of cleavage, more golden tanned skin on her bare arms and midriff, then rose back up to appreciate her beautiful dark eyes.
Those eyes. For an instant, he had the impression he’d met her before, but he couldn’t place where.
“I want to introduce a good friend,” Elaine said as the lady drew closer. “Mary, this is Tom’s best high school buddy, Brice McAllister. Brice, my best neighbor, Mary Williams.”
The woman stopped short. “We’ve already met,” she said, her smile disappearing. “You’ll have to excuse me. I don’t think I have time for that coffee after all.”
She turned on her heel and walked back to her cottage.
Elaine looked at him, her jaw dropped in surprise. “Good grief, Brice! What did you do to offend her?”
He had a hard time understanding her words, his startled brain scrambling to reconcile two shockingly different images. That hot babe in short shorts and halter top . . . was the same woman as the dowdy librarian? Shaking his head to try to make sense of it, he said, “Mary Williams. The reference librarian in town?”
Elaine nodded. “What did you do? Destroy a first edition?”
“I didn’t do anything!” he protested. “I met her a few days ago when I went to consult some old maps in the reference room. But . . . she didn’t look anything like that!”
Elaine laughed. “I know. I’ve tried to tactfully talk to her about the way she dresses for work, but she politely evades me. Aside from her terrible taste in clothes, she’s a wonderful person. Bunny absolutely adores her. I have to rein her in, or she’d be over there every minute Mary is home. She’s so warm and patient and loving with her. Reads her stories, shows her how to garden, cooks with her, plays games. Even got Bunny her own child-size garden tools and gloves. She’s a terrific cook too. Always whipping up some amazing Italian dish and bringing some of it over, saying she’s made too much and doesn’t want to eat it for a week. Tom leaps at the chance, I’ll tell you. It’s been great having her there. She’s offered to babysit whenever we need her. It’s so nice to know we have someone dependable so close by, so we can go out and really enjoy ourselves, knowing Bunny is having just as much fun as we are.”
Brice was still having trouble putting together the dowdy librarian and the hot babe. “She doesn’t seem very friendly.”
“Well . . . now that you mention it, she’s not very friendly to men. She must be really resistant if she didn’t respond to you, since you can usually charm the fleas off a dog. As far as I’ve seen, she never goes out with anyone, not even girlfriends. Aside from us and Miss Shirley, I don’t think she’s made any friends in Whiskey River. I’ve suggested she go down to happy hour at Booze’s or to Buddy’s Bar & Boogie, the new honky-tonk out on the highway. Someplace where she could meet other young single people her age, but she said she’s not much for the bar scene.”
Elaine fell silent, looking troubled.
“What?” Brice asked, instantly picking up on her unease.
“It’s just that I . . . worry about her sometimes. She never has any visitors. She never talks about family, or about anything, really, that happened to her before she came to Whiskey River. When I think back, it took even us a really long time to get to know her. Kept to herself. It was Bunny who broke the ice—you know she never met a stranger. A year ago in the spring, must have been six months or so after Mary moved in, a nice sunny Saturday morning, Bunny saw her in the yard, planting a garden, and just had to go over and find out what she was doing.”
Brice smiled. “Sounds like Bunny.”
“Mary was super nice to her, explained what she was planting, even let Bunny help a little. But she only gradually warmed up to us, brushing off our invitations to dinner or lunch or coffee for the longest time. She doesn’t seem wary of Tom, but the way she avoids people, especially men, makes me suspect she might have run from a bad situation.”
“Domestic abuse, you mean?”
Elaine nodded. “Yeah. I think she might have an abusive ex-boyfriend or ex-husband that makes her want to avoid getting into another romantic relationship. It’s not relationships in general, because since getting to know her, she’s been a good neighbor and she’s great with Bunny. It’s just . . . men.”
“Even charming men?”
Elaine gave him a look. “Don’t take it in your head that she’s a challenge and you need to charm or coax or persuade her into going out with you. I won’t have you harassing her.”
Irritated, Brice retorted, “Now I’m really insulted. You know I wasn’t brought up like that. Miss Dorothy would have whupped me from here to Sunday if I ever bothered or harassed a lady.”
“Good. I thought so, but Mary is awfully pretty, so I can see that trying to get her to like you might be tempting. If you do anything about her, you might keep an eye out. If she is on the run from an abusive ex, it would be good to have a Texas Ranger in her court if he managed to find her. Don’t push her too hard trying to
get to know her, but I would feel better if you kept tabs—discreetly—on any potential situation.”
Brice frowned. “Nothing I despise more than a man who mistreats women. If that is the case, I’d want to take his head off. You and Tom keep an eye out too. Let me know if you notice anyone hanging around or looking suspicious.”
“Oh, we do watch out—suspecting what we suspect. She’s such a sweetheart, it makes me sick to think that someone might have hurt her. I hope she can eventually get beyond whatever happened, because as great as she is with kids and with her being such a terrific cook, she’d make someone a wonderful wife.”
Brice held up hands in a warding-off gesture. “Not in the market.”
Elaine grinned. “I thought that might discourage you. Mary is definitely the homey-wife type, not hot-sex-babe material.”
“Elaine, please!” he protested, laughing. “You’ll make me blush.”
She gave a snort of disbelief. “Right. I’ll believe that.”
“Honey, where are you?” A voice called from inside the house.
“On the back porch, Tom,” Elaine called back. “Pour yourself some coffee and come on out.”
Her husband, Tom, big, broad-shouldered, and tall like Brice, had been a fellow offensive lineman in high school who’d gone on to play college ball at the University of Texas before turning his business degree into a lucrative job in mortgage banking back home. He came out onto the porch carrying his coffee, then leaned over to give his wife a kiss. “Blueberry scones, whoa-daddy!” he said, spying the plate in the center of the table. “You know the road to a man’s heart.”
“There are still some left, amazingly, despite Brice getting here before you. He was too mesmerized, watching Mary garden in her short shorts, to remember to eat.”
“If I weren’t married to the most beautiful woman in Texas, I might understand what you mean,” Tom said with a grin.
Elaine batted her husband on the nose. “Look all you like, as long as you bring me home from the dance.”
“Darlin’, you know there’s only you. Brice, sure was good to get your text and know you were in the area. But what brings you to downtown Whiskey River?”
“I’m waiting to testify at a court case in Johnson City, which probably will happen on Monday, then I’ll head back to Austin. Thought I’d take advantage of the break and stay downtown.”
“At the B&B? You and your brothers have a falling out?”
“Tom, neither of them has been married six months yet.”
“Oh, yeah, there’s that. Well, you could have stayed with us.”
“I didn’t want to impose.”
Tom gave him a look. “I sure hope you know us well enough to know it’s never an imposition to have a friend we count as close as family come stay with us. Though you might have been wise not to. Bunny would be sure to dog your every step.”
“Unless Mary invited her to come over and cook or garden,” Elaine said. “You have a rival for your affection now, Brice.”
“She does love Mary,” Tom said. “Can’t blame her. What’s not to love when you have someone who’ll do whatever you want to do, cooks you whatever you like, and is ready to read stories and play games all night? Mary focuses on what Bunny wants more than her own grandma does—and she looks a lot better.”
“Bunny spends a lot of time there, then?” Brice asked.
“She’d practically live there if we didn’t intervene,” Tom said, confirming what Elaine had told him earlier. “Good thing she’s such a nice lady.”
Was she a nice lady? Brice’s lawman instincts went on high alert anytime he was presented with two images of someone that were as different as “Homely Librarian” and “Hot Gardener.”
But Tom and Elaine were no fools, and they were very protective of their daughter. If they both thought Mary Williams was a safe person for Bunny to know, she probably was. Probably.
“The fruit is cut and it will take just a minute to fix the omelets,” Elaine said. “Shall we go in and eat in the kitchen? It’s already getting pretty warm out here.”
Tom stood up. “Yes, let’s. Maybe after, we could turn on the game. Houston’s playing a doubleheader.”
“Sounds great,” Brice said.
But he remained troubled. A woman with no friends, no visitors, who never went out or mentioned family. What if she were running from something other than an abusive situation?
Bad guys were not always guys; sometimes they were girls. When he met her at the library, he hadn’t gotten a warning vibe that hinted she might be involved in some sort of criminal activity, but something had definitely been off. She’d been very curt and visibly nervous.
He didn’t want to alarm Elaine or Tom, when his innate caution might be completely unwarranted. But since the woman was spending a lot of time alone with Bunny, his Bunny, he wanted to be sure there was nothing in her past that might make her a danger to the little girl.
Tucking his observations in the back of his mind, Brice followed them in for brunch. He’d do some quiet investigating on his own, just to make sure Bunny was safe.
Chapter Three
The middle of the following week, Brice drove from Johnson City back to Tom and Elaine’s in Whiskey River. His testimony at the trial was concluded, and since he hadn’t gotten to spend much time with Bunny on his previous visit, he’d promised her to come and overnight with the Edgertons before heading home.
He’d taken advantage of some free time during trial recesses to nip back to his office in Austin and do some background checking. His conscience tweaked him a little to be investigating a citizen not under suspicion of any crime, but he assured himself that protecting the wellbeing of a child justified a little snooping. Since Texas law required new residents moving in from out of state to get a Texas driver’s license within a year, and he’d seen the librarian’s car parked in the driveway by her cottage, it had been easy enough to pull up her driver’s license, although he had to wade through fifty or so other “Mary Williams” before he found the correct one. Then he’d used that picture—which, fortunately, showed her with hair down rather than pulled back into a severe bun—to run a facial recognition check through state and federal data banks.
He’d been reassured when the system returned only “low probability” matches and needed only a cursory further inspection to confirm that none of the images resembled Mary Williams.
So his initial instincts were correct; if she was running from something, it wasn’t because she’d been incarcerated or was wanted for any crime.
Next, he ran a quick license check in several other states to see if he could find where she’d lived before coming to Whiskey River. And came up with no matches—at least, not for the Mary Williams who worked at the library and lived next door to Bunny. “Williams” being a pretty common surname, there were literally hundreds of “Mary Williams” with driver’s licenses. If she’d married and divorced, she might have gotten a new license with her maiden name, but if “Williams” were her maiden name, with most young people getting driver’s licenses at sixteen, he would have expected to find a record of a license for a younger Mary Williams.
He found nada that matched her picture.
But there are a lot of states. It would take forever to check through them all.
By the end of his investigations, he’d begun to suspect that “Mary Williams” was not in fact her original name. If she did want to evade discovery, changing her name to something for which anyone searching would encounter hundreds or thousands of matches would be good tactic.
If she had legally changed her name, he’d need to know the county in which the name change had been registered to be able to trace her former name in court records. And if she had been in a domestic abuse situation, the name change could have been made confidential, with no public notice given and the records sealed, so that anyone searching under her former name would not be able to discover what her new name was.
He ended up guiltily relieved t
hat his snooping hadn’t turned up anything that showed she might pose a danger to Bunny. But he also tended to share Elaine’s fear that “Mary Williams” might be hiding from someone.
It would be hard to keep an eye on her and ensure her safety unless he could somehow make her less wary of him. For that, he thought with a smile as he turned onto the Edgertons’ street, he was counting on Bunny.
*
His scheme worked just as beautifully as he’d hoped. After sending Elaine and Tom off for a matinee movie to be followed by a romantic dinner, he took Bunny out on the back porch for lemonade and to play a favorite game of go fish. And as he’d hoped, a little after the library’s closing time, he heard a car pull into the driveway next door.
Half an hour later, Mary Williams came out her back door and headed to her garden. Not in short shorts and a halter top this time, sadly, but the sleeveless cotton dress in a floral pattern looked cool and summery and was a thousand times more attractive than the dress she’d worn the day he’d first met her at the library.
Bunny spotted her immediately. “Hey, Miss Mary!” she cried, running down the steps and over to the fence. “Can I help you pick vegetables?”
The beautiful smile she gave the child sent a jolt of surprise—and intense attraction—through Brice. It transformed her face, already pretty without the dark glasses, making her luminous eyes sparkle, turning those tempting lips into a bow, and giving her an air of engaging warmth that had been totally missing in the woman on the previous two occasions he’d seen her.
Hoo-wee! As the recipient of a smile like that, no wonder Bunny had been drawn to her.
“Sure, Bunny, if it’s okay with your mommy. I don’t want to make you late for dinner.”
“Mommy’s not cooking dinner. She and Daddy are on a date!” The girl smiled mischievously. “That means they’ll come home all kissy and huggy and send me to bed early.”
Mary laughed. “It’s good for your mommy and daddy to be kissy and huggy. But if they are out, who’s watching you?”
The Ranger Page 3
