Where could she be?
“Justice, hey, Justice!”
“Hello, Mickey.”
“I called your name three times. What’s wrong with you?”
“Got a lot on my mind.” Mickey George, owner of Rural Seed and Feed was a Bruce Willis look-a-like, but not nearly so badass. “How was your Christmas?” Justice asked politely, even though he was having trouble thinking about anything except Charlee.
“My Christmas was good, King. How was the wedding?”
Mickey had poured Justice a cup of coffee, but Justice waved it off. “No, thanks, I have a cup in the car. I don’t have the time to sit and drink. But speaking of the wedding, I’m sure you heard we had a Chinese fire drill at the altar.” Justice managed to smile. “I can joke about it, no one was too upset—not even the groom.”
“Yea, we heard. We also heard Charlee was back in town.” To Justice’s annoyance, the man announced the news as if he were telling Justice his fly was unzipped.
Not wanting to play the man’s game, Justice signed the order and paid his bill. Tipping his hat, he started moving toward the entrance that was flanked on either side by tractor tires and sacks of cattle feed. “News travels fast in our little town. Have a good day, Mickey.” Bracing himself, he opened the door and headed out into the weather. He’d rather face the cold wind any day rather than the redneck’s sarcastic remarks about Charlee. But he’d barely got behind the wheel when it hit him. Ms. Horne was the one who first knew his friend was returning to Bronco.
Charlee was staying at the Bronco Inn.
* * *
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Startled, Charlee threw her hands up and two things happened—the bag of cheese doodles she’d been eating was now raining down like orange confetti and the towel she’d been holding around her naked body was lying at her feet.
“Charlee! I know you’re in there. Open this damn door!”
“Hold on!” Oh, my sweet Lord, it’s Justice. At the rate he was banging, he’d break the door down next. Scrambling, she jerked the too small terry cloth rectangle from the floor and held it in front of her breasts.
“I have to warn you, Parker, Ms. Horne was glad to give me the key.”
His tone might be teasing, but she knew he wasn’t kidding.
“All right, all right!” As the latch released and the door swung open, she was fastening a thin white robe around her waist. He filled the entire doorway, his big blue eyes roving from her top to her bottom. “I’m sorry I ran.”
“Which time, today or eight years ago?” Justice shut the door behind him and pointed to the floor. “Did I interrupt your lunch?”
Raising her chin, she crossed her arms over her breasts. She knew her nipples were hard, she could feel them rubbing against the cotton. “Today, I’m sorry I ran today, it was cowardly.”
Justice placed one hand on his hip, then held out the plastic key to her. It pissed him off that she hesitated, holding out her hand, drawing back, finally stepping forward and taking it from his hand. Did she think he was going to hurt her? “Why would you ever run from me? We’re blood brothers, remember?” Justice held up his hand, palm toward her, a small scar still visible in the center of his palm. “Show me yours.”
Slowly Charlee mirrored his gesture, revealing an identical scar on her right hand.
“We have to do this. It’s required.” Charlee sat cross legged in front of him, the sharp knife between her fingers. “I’ll go first.”
“It’s gonna hurt, Charlee.” He reached for the knife. “We don’t need to do that to make it official, we’re bound for life.”
“I don’t care about the pain. I’m tough.”
Yes, she was. Tougher than even he realized. Lying her hand down flat, she made a small cut, hissing as the blade brought blood.
“You came prepared.” He was amused, she carefully wiped the blade with disinfectant before handing it to him.
“Yep, your turn.”
Justice couldn’t let himself be bested by a girl half his size. “No problem.” After he’d done the deed, he placed his hand against hers, mixing the flow of their blood.
“Now, it’s official. We’re one.” Charlee gave him a beaming, happy smile.
“I’m not your brother,” she said with a small feminine snarl.
Smiling wryly, Justice realized while trying to remind her of how they were connected, he’d hit on her greatest insecurity. “No, thank God, you’re not.” All during her childhood, she’d been teased because she was small and thin with a boyish figure. Well, no more. The tender rosebud that was his Charlee had blossomed into a beautiful rose. “You’ve grown into a beautiful woman.”
She’d had her mouth open to challenge him about barging in on her. After his unexpected declaration, she quickly closed it and frowned. “Don’t try and pull my leg, King.”
Justice grinned. “But it’s such a pretty leg.” He gave her long, sleek legs a pointed stare as she tugged on the end of the too short robe.
“Stop it,” she warned him. When he smiled big enough his dimples appeared, Charlee softened. “I missed you.”
Instead of pacifying him, she saw his face harden. “Don’t give me that, you were here one day and gone the next. Not one word of explanation. Not one post card, not one damn phone call.”
Charlee was shocked. She hadn’t realized. It never crossed her mind as a possibility. She’d hurt him. Justice missed her as much as she’d missed him. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?” He shook his head. “That don’t cut it. I want answers. For starters, where the hell have you been?”
Her heart contracted. His pain wounded her as surely as the knife she’d used to seal their pledge. “Oh, Justice.” Without warning, she launched herself at him, arms outstretched. He caught Charlee to him, hugging her tight. Like she was coming home, her body melded to his.
Eight years just slipped away. “Don’t leave me again,” he whispered. She felt so good. There was no way he could let her go again, not without showing her how he felt. Setting her down gently on the floor, Justice took her face in his hand. “Now I’m going to do something I’ve dreamed about almost every day since you left. I advise you to hold on to me, sweetheart, I’m about to rock your world.”
When she looked up at him, her eyes big with hope, Justice knew he was wrong. The world stood still. He could feel her heart beating beneath his palm, their breathing synchronized. Gratefully, he studied her face. She had the cutest heart-shaped mouth and her nose was dusted with a smattering of barely-there freckles. “You’re adorable.” Leaning close, he began to kiss her, teasing the corner of her mouth with his tongue.
Charlee’s head was spinning. Being in his arms was heaven on earth. When their lips touched, she couldn’t help but respond and when she did, it was like they were both zapped by an electrical shock. Justice groaned and sealed Charlee’s lips with his own. She almost swooned with pleasure. This was what she was born for. Charlee didn’t just receive, she gave as good as she got, playing an erotic game of tug of war with their lips and tongue. Giving her desire full rein, she wove her fingers through his hair and pushed against him while he devoured her mouth with ultimate skill, nibbling with his teeth, pushing and pulling with his tongue, moving his mouth over her in a sensual womb-clenching dance. All coherent thought was gone, this was a be-all and end-all kiss. “Justice,” she whispered when she pulled away for breath.
“Come back.” He reached for her again.
What were they doing? She still hadn’t told him…anything. “No, we can’t do this.”
“The hell we can’t.” She could see confusion in his eyes. Placing a hand on his chest, she stopped him, moving backward on unsteady feet. “I don’t want to kiss you.” Lies didn’t come easy, they pricked tiny wounds in her conscience.
Justice snorted. “Your body’s telling me a different story.”
“I’ll deal with my body,” she retorted with a toss of her head.
“I’m jealous.�
�
Charlee whirled on him, hands on her hips. “What I can’t deal with is you not knowing what you want. You told me that you didn’t think of me this way, that we were only friends. You didn’t want this, you said so.” Stepping closer, she started to touch him, then pulled back like he was too hot to handle. With a hard shake of her head, she reconsidered. Risking the pain, Charlee placed the tip of one finger over his heart. “You said I wasn’t your type. You said I was a tomboy.” She was right in his face, her finger poking him in his chest. “You don’t get to change your mind!” And you don’t get to call me by another woman’s name, she silently screamed. To give Justice credit, he didn’t flinch. But he was the size of a mountain, six-three to her five-three, outweighing her by at least a hundred pounds.
“You’re throwing words at me that I said when I was a kid.” She was recounting what he’d spouted off the day Toby painted the graffiti on the water tower. His friends had run with it, making a song out of whole thing. They’d given him a hard time and he’d overreacted, taking it out on her. “You know it didn’t change how I felt about you.”
“No,” she murmured, “I know that. But it wasn’t your feelings in question. It was mine.” Holding her hands up, she stopped his retort. “Let me ask you a question. Do you remember being in the diner the day after you returned from Abby’s surgery?”
Justice frowned, and he locked her eyes with Charlee. “Vaguely. One of my headaches was coming on, and I’d ended up in a saloon the night before…” His voice trailed off. “I was full of medicine.” Then, he walked around in a circle. “I met Zelda and Toby there to sign a release form for some photographs she wanted to use. Why?”
“I was there.” Her voice was small. This was important.
She could see he was thinking, and she saw no deception in his expression. “You were there.” He looked to one side. “Maybe. What happened?” He narrowed his eyes. “You got angry.”
“Yea, I got angry. You don’t remember? I called you a jerk.”
Justice smiled. “Did I deserve it? What did I do?”
She debated on what to say next. Then settled on the truth, or what of it she was willing to reveal. “You hurt me.”
“How?” Pain crossed his face.
She hung her head. “I was jealous. You were with your friends. You ignored me.” She said these words out loud, the rest she whispered in her heart. You slept with me, called me by another woman’s name and got me pregnant.
“I’m sorry.” He looked disturbed. “I remember so little, I got drunk the night before, and I have no memory of that.”
Bingo.
He didn’t remember. She didn’t know whether to be relieved or upset or both. At least he didn’t just consider it so unimportant that he’d ignored it.
“You spoke to me, but you didn’t stop to talk. I sorta told you off,” she said sheepishly.
Justice laughed. “Good for you.” Then he winked at her.
“You don’t remember any of it?” She stepped closer, gazing deep into his eyes.
“No. Why?” A flash of curiosity shone in his eyes. “Did I do something else?” Time to back up. They were headed in a direction she wasn’t ready to go in.
Regret washed over Charlee. “It doesn’t matter now. That was a long time ago.”
Justice placed his hands on her shoulders, looking into the beautiful face of a person he used to know as well as he knew himself. “It matters. You matter to me. Very much. I know we weren’t as close when all of this happened as we used to be, but I intend to change that.”
A familiar hope began to rise in her heart, a hope that had never borne fruit, a hope which brought only disappointment and dissatisfaction. Despite the impromptu kiss, Justice undoubtedly wasn’t talking about love. Charlee couldn’t let herself hope anymore, it was just too painful. Putting forth her hand, she defined the parameters. “I want that. I want us to be close, to be friends again.” Her voice shook a bit, but she drew upon all of the grit in her arsenal and laid it out.
Justice looked down at her hand. Friendship alone wasn’t what he wanted. But maybe it was a good place to start. “Deal.” There were a lot of things he wanted to do and say but at this moment, they’d taken it one step at a time. This was too important not to do right. “Come on. Let’s sit down.” He took her by the arm and pulled her to the bed. “I want you to tell me why you left and where you’ve been.” Picking up her left hand, he touched her ring finger. “You’re not married, yet I saw you leave with a man that day.”
Did she hear a touch of jealousy in his voice? She couldn’t help but give a short snort of laughter. “No, I never married.” Reversing the question, she flipped their hands over so she could see his own ring finger. “Men don’t always wear wedding rings. Why didn’t you and Zelda ever tie the knot?” Justice had the audacity to look affronted.
“No. I’ve managed to avoid the ‘bonds’ of holy matrimony.” Justice emphasized the word ‘bonds.’ “Zelda wanted more than what I could give her. She wasn’t willing to live in a small town.”
Charlee tried to read between the lines. Did that mean he had proposed to her? Did that mean he still wanted her? She was afraid to ask. “I’m sorry.”
Justice laughed. “Don’t be, some things just aren’t meant to be. I went to see your father the day I heard you were coming back to town. He didn’t make much sense.” Earlier you said you’d had a run-in with him the day you saw me in the diner and that influenced your decision to leave. Did he hurt you again?”
Their hands were still clasped, and he was caressing her palm with his thumb. She hesitated, knowing she had to be selective in what she revealed. “We fought over something,” she waved her other hand in the air, “I don’t remember what.” He widened his eyes in a silent question. “He did hit me, and I just decided I wasn’t going to take it anymore.”
Okay, he could understand that. “Why didn’t you come to me?”
Nope, nope, not going there. “You had your hands full with Abby’s accident.” Which was true. “I was desperate, so I turned his office upside down until I found some information on my adoption.”
Of course, he’d always known she was adopted. “You tracked down your parents.”
She nodded. “My parents were listed, as was the lawyer’s number. I called the law firm and hit the jackpot.”
“You found them.”
“Yes.” She smiled sadly. “The man you saw that day was Hampton Forbes. His law firm had bought out the original lawyer’s practice and was trying to right some wrongs.” Charlee touched her chest. “I was one of those wrongs.” Because something had happened.
“What do you mean, Charlee?” There was nothing wrong about her—nothing.
“There was a racket, for want of a better word.” She pulled away from him and stood up. “Because of a rule where they could get more governmental support for American Indian foster kids and adoptions, this group of people stole children from their parents. They made up stories and falsely accused them of abuse and drunkenness.” She dashed tears from her cheeks. “That’s what they did to my folks, lied about them and took me away and gave me to the Parkers.”
“Oh, Charlee,” he said, pulling her into his lap. She didn’t have to say the rest. He knew her history as well as she did—Parker’s wife drowning when she was five, Curtiss blaming her, his drinking, and his abuse. “You know, I would have spared you all that if I could.”
She wrapped her arms around him and laid her head on his shoulder. “You made my life bearable. You made me happy. And I guess it all turned out for the best. After the run-in I had with my father, what happened with you in the diner spurred me to do something about my situation. If I hadn’t been so angry, I never would have been brave enough to go through his office and find the papers. I would have missed the three months with my mother.”
“Three months?”
“She had cancer,” Charlee said sadly. “We didn’t have much time.”
“God, I’m so
sorry.” He wrapped his arms around her. “You have to know that whatever I didn’t do or didn’t say, I was out of it.”
She laid her head on his shoulder. “I understand.” She did. The headaches and the pain medication threw him for a loop. “You shouldn’t have been driving that day.”
“Yes, mama hen.” For a few moments, they sat there just holding one another before he spoke. “I’m so glad you’re back and I want to know everything. Just consider your time booked. I want to see you tonight.” Justice kissed her on the cheek. Having her sweet body pressed up to his was playing havoc with his libido, and now wasn’t the right time for him to do anything about it. “But right now, I have a meeting to get to. You’ll never believe what’s going on.” He laughed. “I have a hole in the ground on El Camino big enough to bury a T-Rex.” Looking at his watch, he helped her stand. “I’m about to be late for a meeting with someone named Cortez that the state has sent over to tell me what I did wrong and what it’s going to cost to keep me out of trouble.”
Tightening the belt on her robe, Charlee stood straighter. “Actually, you’re not late, Justice.”
At his enquiring look, she explained.
“I’m Cha’risa Cortez. That’s my real name. Your meeting is with me.”
CHAPTER SIX
Justice’s expression was one of astonishment. “You’re Cortez?” he asked with disbelief.
“Cha’risa was the name my parents gave me. Charlee was close, I guess. I still use it, but I’ve dropped the Parker.”
Justice shook his head, ruffling his hair with his hand. “Wait.” He looked pissed. “So, you didn’t come back to see me. You didn’t come home. You’re just the one they sent to see how many laws I’ve broken and how high of a price I’m going to have to pay to get it fixed.”
Loving Justice (El Camino Real Book 2) Page 8
