by Jeanne Allan
J.J. stared at the other woman in speechless fascination.
Margo went on. “I can’t wait on Ev the way Susan thinks I should because he’ll think I feel sorry for him and sometimes I want to cry when his leg hurts so bad, but I joke about it instead, and Susan hates that. Luke probably told you that about five years ago Susan’s husband and two little boys were killed by a drunk driver.”
“Oh, no,” J.J. breathed, shamefully recalling her earlier, ugly taunt that Susan would never be able to make Luke as happy in bed as J.J. had. Of all the horrid things to say to a woman tragically widowed. It probably wasn’t even true.
Margo nodded. “She has a real thing about women who don’t appreciate their husbands and children, not that I blame her, but that’s no reason to assume every woman falls into that category. She’s positive you won’t put up with Luke’s juvenile delinquents, which makes her as bad as Ev, who was surprised at how levelheaded you were about delivering Birdie Parker’s baby. I don’t know where their brains are. Luke wouldn’t marry a lightweight feather head just because she’s beautiful.”
Ignoring Margo’s dubious conclusion, J.J. zeroed in on the two words that had caught her immediate attention. “Juvenile delinquents?”
“Luke hasn’t told you about Sal and Tony?” Margo shrugged off the subject as unimportant. “He will. Now—” she crossed her long legs and took a sip of wine “—it’s your turn to talk.”
Trying to decide how to reply, J.J. stared at the mirrored backsplash over the countertops. Wide-set eyes of clear, pale aqua that slanted the barest bit upward gazed back. She liked Margo Bailey too much to lie. Finally she said in a voice deliberately devoid of emotion, “I’m a lawyer from Denver. Luke arid I made the mistake of getting married a little over a year ago, and now we’re getting divorced.”
Absolute silence filled the kitchen. “Well,” Margo eventually said in an artificially bright voice, “I asked you to tell me the worst, didn’t I?” She hopped down from her stool. “If you’ll take this tray of veggies in and set it on the dining-room table, I’ll take care of the rest. We’re eating buffet style. Please tell Ev he needs to come check his lasagna. I don’t have a clue if it’s done.”
J.J. took the tray. At the kitchen doorway, she turned. “I’m sorry, Margo. I would have liked being your friend.”
Margo gave her an astonished look. “Goodness, JJ., just because you and Luke are breaking up, doesn’t mean we can’t be friends. Although I will have to say—” she frowned darkly “—I thought Luke had better sense than that.”
“Than what?”
That’s all she needed, J.J. thought. Now Luke would be justifiably annoyed she’d told Margo about the divorce.
“Luke Remington, it’s rude to eavesdrop,” Margo scolded. “And you must know eavesdroppers never hear anything good about themselves. You asked, so I’m going to tell you. Ev told me you let Ad Parker get the drop on you with a knife.”
“Ev was on his way. I didn’t see any point in working up a sweat. Besides, Calamity Jane here galloped to the rescue with her elk antlers.”
Margo, not having heard that part of the story, immediately demanded all the details. Her laughter brought the rest of the dinner guests trailing into the kitchen, wanting to know what was so funny. Luke launched into yet another retelling of the episode. The more he told it, the more of an idiot J.J. thought he made her out to be. Clutching the tray of vegetables, she fled the kitchen.
The other guests, ranging from ranchers to storekeepers to schoolteachers, appeared to accept J.J. without reservation. She would have enjoyed the evening had she not been there under false pretenses. No matter how often she told herself legally she was Luke’s wife, she knew these people believed her Luke’s wife in every sense of the word. Their opinions of her tardy arrival in North Park after marrying Luke a year ago remained their secrets. JJ. was uncomfortably aware they’d view her much differently if they knew J.J. not only planned to divorce Luke, but had already picked out his successor. Whatever Margo Bailey thought of J.J.’s bald announcement of the pending divorce, she kept her thoughts and her knowledge to herself.
Susan Curtis represented the other blot on the evening for J.J. Other than greeting J.J. civilly, Susan made no effort to renew their acquaintance. Having learned of the triple tragedy in Susan’s past, J.J. couldn’t blame Susan for disliking her. Once, after his wife Caroline had died, Burton had exploded with anger when a young law clerk in the firm had slighted his wife. Susan obviously shared Burton’s low opinion of spouses who failed to value their marriage partners.
The Sunday night party broke up early. Luke and J.J. exited the warm luxury of the Baldwin home into a night filled with swirling snowflakes. Borrowing into her down coat, J.J. shivered as she hastened toward the pickup in Luke’s wake. “Come on, heater,” she said, stamping snow from her feet.
Luke turned the ignition key. “Give the engine a minute to warm up. You survived the party, you can survive a little cold.”
“A little cold! In Antarctica the weather gets a little cold. This is freezing. Polar bears couldn’t survive here.” She didn’t want to talk about the party. She hated deceiving people who in other circumstances might have become friends. “It must be fun, knowing a mystery writer.”
Luke flipped a blanket from behind the seats over her legs. “Margo drives us nuts. Always looking for a unique way to kill someone. In her last book she used a hay baler. You’ve probably inspired her to gore a victim to death with elk antlers.”
J.J. chose to ignore Luke’s teasing remark. “She must make good money writing.”
“If you mean the house, the money’s from Ev’s family. He’s a trust fund baby. His parents were high society, always gallivanting around from one beautiful people spot to another. They died in a private plane crash when Ev was ten, leaving him bags of money.”
“Margo said he was a policeman in Denver and got shot.”
Luke nodded. “Some guy out of his mind on drugs, took his ex-wife and kids hostage. The cops thought they’d convinced him to let the wife and kids go. He said send two cops in for them.”
“Oh, no.” J.J. anticipated the rest.
“Killed the other cop. They couldn’t go in after Ev for fear of endangering the hostages. Didn’t matter. The guy killed them all before turning the gun on himself. Ev still thinks he should have been able to save them some way. He quit the force. Might have quit life, but Margo wouldn’t let him. It may be noble to release a woman from an engagement because you’re crippled. It’s not too noble to ditch her when she’s pregnant.”
“I thought Ev knew Margo wasn’t pregnant.”
“He knew it. Everett Jr. came along nine months and two days after the wedding. Ev said he didn’t want people calling his wife a liar.”
“Using pregnancy to force a man into marriage seems manipulative and potentially damaging to the marriage.”
“Margo likes to play at being eccentric, but she has a wise head on her shoulders. She knew she and Ev belonged together.”
“They seem so different.”
“As night and day,” Luke agreed, “but they complement each other, bring out the best in each other. Like yin and yang, peanut butter and jelly.”
Not a subject J.J. wished to pursue. “How in the world did a rich kid grow up to be a policeman?”
“After his folks died, Ev’s relatives didn’t want to bother with him. He embarked on a life of petty crime, demonstrating he didn’t give a damn about them, either. At age eighteen his guardian gave him a choice between the army or prison. Ev chose the army, did his stint, got out, went to college and joined the Denver police force. He figured his youthful life of crime prepared him for understanding other criminals.”
“Why are they living in North Park?”
“Ev stayed at the ranch while recuperating. The sheriff’s job here opened up about the time he and Margo got married. Ev didn’t want to go back to Denver, and although he could have lived off his investment income
, he didn’t feel that was the best way to bring up a kid.”
“Did you meet your juvenile delinquents through Ev?”
“Who told you about Tony and Sal? Margo, I suppose. Discount at least half what she says. She never can resist improving on the truth if it’s boring. If the fellows were hardened criminals and murderers, Margo wouldn’t be inviting them to join her family’s activities every summer.”
“She didn’t tell me any such thing. In fact, she didn’t tell me anything. She said you’d tell me.”
The wind flung icy crystals against the windshield faster than the wipers could handle the onslaught. “I suppose I should, in case you hear false rumors in town.” Luke squinted into the darkness. “Sal’s brother involved him in the robberies of three convenience stores and a gas station. A pimp got Tony’s older sister addicted to heroine, and she died of an overdose. Tony put the pimp in the hospital. Sal was fifteen, and Tony sixteen. Ev knew they were good kids who just needed a chance, so he worked out something with the courts, and I took them here, four, five years ago. Summers and holidays.” Luke laughed. “I worked their behinds off.”
“Was Ev right about them?” JJ. asked doubtfully.
“Who they were isn’t as important as who they are today. Tony’s as smart as they come. He made the Dean’s list at the University of Colorado last semester. Sal’s in prelaw there. He’ll make a good lawyer.”
J.J. didn’t bother to ask who was paying the young men’s tuitions. “Bad boys gone good. You and Ev and your delinquents. Is that why you took them on? No,” she answered her own question. “Because of your uncle Zane. You told me you got into trouble in high school and your folks sent you to stay with him.”
Luke shrugged. “I never got around to thanking him.”
J.J. studied Luke’s rugged profile. The darkness concealed the cleft in his chin. She didn’t practice criminal law, but she’d been around courthouses enough to know a person didn’t turn around a young man’s life just by hiring him to baby-sit cows. It took dedication, discipline and a helping hand. More important, someone had to care.
Luke cared. A person would have to be dead to miss the caring, affection and satisfaction in Luke’s voice. He sounded like a proud father.
One day Luke would remarry and have children who’d climb all over the huge Belgian draft horses and tumble off hay bales as they fed the cattle with their father. They’d have snowball fights with their father. Learn to ride ponies at their father’s side. J.J. could picture the children, hazel-eyed sons and daughters.
She turned her head and looked out her window. The horizontally blowing snow curtained off the outside of the truck from the outside world. An enormous lump obstructed her throat, and she couldn’t prevent herself from touching the beauty mark by her mouth. She wouldn’t have to worry about passing the hated full bottom lip or detestable beauty mark on to a daughter or granddaughter. Oddly the knowledge gave her zero comfort.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE heater pumped warmth into the pickup cab as icy pellets pinged monotonously off the outside of the truck like miniature BBs. The windshield wipers snicked back and forth. J.J. peered into the maelstrom of snowflakes, hypnotized by their wild dance in the headlight beams.
“Hey, slow down, you crazy fool!” Luke yelled, before swearing viciously.
Startled from her drowsy state, J.J. snapped to attention as a large, dark shape materialized from behind, its headlights sweeping up to run beside them. Luke swore again as the other vehicle bumped Luke’s side of the pickup. The pickup lurched and swerved as Luke fought to keep it on the road. The other vehicle, a truck larger than Luke’s, nudged them again. Cursing fluently Luke battled grimly, as the other truck toyed with them, speeding up or slowing down to match Luke’s speed, then randomly bumping them.
They approached a curve in the road, and the tension flowing from Luke jacked up a notch. The whine of the engine beside them intensified, and the dark shape roared up and squarely rammed the front of Luke’s pickup. The pickup left the roadbed, bumping and jolting its way across the ground, stopping abruptly with a loud screeching noise.
“You okay?” Luke switched off the engine.
“Yes, I think so. You?”
“Stay here. That crazy son of—” Luke disappeared into the storm, slamming the truck door behind him.
J.J. slumped against the back of the seat. Luke had left on the headlights, which illuminated thin willow branches bowing in the wind. The side windows framed a wall of blowing snow. The faint sound of a car horn penetrated the storm.
Luke climbed back into the truck bringing a blast of arctic air with him. He brushed snow off his head and shoulders and gave J.J. a piercing look. “Sure you’re okay?”
“Yes. What was that all about?”
“That damned fool Parker, playing games. Probably drunker ’n a skunk. He had the gall to honk and wave as he drove back to town.”
“Maybe he’ll tell someone what happened.”
Luke snorted angrily. “Don’t bet on it.” Turning the key in the ignition, he alternately begged and swore at the pickup as he spent the next few minutes futilely attempting to rock the vehicle from its icy resting place. With one final curse, he shut off the engine.
The silence was deafening. “What do we do now? Walk?”
“What the hell do you think we do?” He switched off the headlights, encasing them in a world of swirling snow. The wind howled around the truck, beating it with willow whips and shaking it in fury. “We wait.”
“Wait for what?” Luke’s solution left a lot to be desired. “There must be something you—we can do.”
“In case you haven’t looked outside, O’Brien, it’s snowing.”
“We have snow in Denver. I recognize it when I see it.”
“Do you also recognize we’re two miles from home?”
“Two miles,” she said with relief. “I can walk two miles.”
“Sure you can. In a city park on a nice spring day. You’d be whining about the cold and the snow before we covered half a mile. That’s two miles as the crow flies. Another two miles longer by the road.”
“Then we’ll have to be crows.”
“In this storm, if we left the road, we’d be lost before we walked twenty yards.”
“I am not going to spend the night in the truck.”
“How’s that?” Luke shifted his large frame beneath her.
“Really, really uncomfortable. I don’t know why they put stupid gearshifts there.” J.J. tried to fit herself to the narrow bench seat and Luke’s semireclining body. At least she couldn’t complain of being cold. Living in blizzard country, Luke traveled prepared. Which is why they were currently packed inside a sleeping bag as if they were two sardines. Inside the zippered bag, Luke had unfolded a reflective emergency blanket over her, and the heavy wool blanket she’d had on her lap now covered the sleeping bag, Luke and J.J. She wore a stocking hat Luke had dug out from under the seat. He’d put their shoes on the floor, and their coats lay across their feet. Beneath her, Luke was a raging furnace. Her pulse began to accelerate.
“Damn it, O’Brien, will you quit wiggling?”
“I can’t get comfortable. You’re too bumpy.”
“I wouldn’t be so bumpy if you’d quit wiggling.” He laughed softly at her sudden rigidity. “On the other hand, I might be able to find someplace to put one of those bumps.”
“Just my luck to be snowbound with a silver-tongued devil,” J.J. said sarcastically. “I couldn’t help myself, Ma,” she trilled in a false voice, “his purty words swept me off my feet.”
“They stopped your wiggling.”
“I still don’t see why we can’t do something to get us out of this mess instead of spending the night in the truck.”
“Sometimes the best plan of attack is patiently waiting to see what’s going to happen before you make your move.”
“You must be president of the procrastinators’ club.”
“Didn’t your mothe
r ever tell you patience is a virtue?”
“She told me to fight for what I wanted,” JJ. said.
“The two aren’t mutually exclusive.”
Since she couldn’t figure out how to refute that, J.J. said nothing. For the next few minutes the only sounds were the storm battering against the truck and the truck rattling in defiance. And the beat of Luke’s heart beneath her ear. The back of J.J.’s leg itched and her foot threatened to cramp. She didn’t dare move. Luke’s breath warmed her face, and his legs twined through hers. His hard thighs supported her. Their arms encircled each other in a loverlike embrace. If she turned her head and unbuttoned his shirt, she could paint his chest with kisses.
She wondered if it was possible to make love in a sleeping bag. What a dumb thought. The brutal cold necessitated their present position. Any tension emanating from Luke’s body was strictly a product of her imagination. If he and one of his cowhands had been stranded under similar circumstances, the two men would wisely huddle together to defeat the cold. J.J. had lived in Colorado long enough to know all about the hazards of hypothermia. She couldn’t remember if the niggling craving deep inside her was one of the symptoms. Think of something else, she told herself. Sublimate. “I’m hungry.”
“You just ate,” Luke said.
“When it’s this cold, a body needs fuel for warmth. Don’t you have candy bars or something we can gnaw on?”
“If we’re still here tomorrow night, you can have one.”
“Tomorrow night! I’m not staying here past morning if I have to chop down those willows and make myself snowshoes.”
His chest shook with silent laughter. “J. J. O’Brien, intrepid mountain woman.” He shifted, rearranging her. across his sprawling body.
J.J. jammed her fingers into the sleeping bag behind Luke’s back. His every move tantalized and tormented body parts sensitized by their enforced intimacy. He stretched beneath her, brushing his chest against her swelling breasts in a move as potent as a lover’s caress. “You know what you said about me wiggling?” she asked tightly. “Your wiggling doesn’t exactly put me to sleep. If you don’t stop moving around, we’ll be finding out just how easy it is for two people to have sex in a sleeping bag designed for one.”
