A Sweet Life-kindle

by Andre, Bella

  "You plumb wore the boy out. I think he went home to get some sleep."

  She looked puzzled. "He seemed fine a moment ago. Maybe he should think about quitting smoking if it makes him so tired."

  He couldn't have stopped his laugh any more than he could have moved those mountains outside her window. "You know, darlin', I think he'll do exactly that, just as soon as this stakeout is over."

  A grimace tightened her mouth. "This ridiculous stakeout should be over right now. You're just wasting everybody's time."

  "I don't know. You seem to be getting a lot of work out of my boys."

  She gave him a tart look. "If 'your boys' want to squander taxpayer's money hanging around here all the time, I'm going to see that at least somebody gets an honest day's work out of them."

  "I think you're just trying to scare them all away," he said, tossing his Stetson onto the table.

  "Is it working yet?"

  "Not with me."

  Andie watched as he edged away from the wall and advanced on her, his intent clearly visible in his eyes. She panicked.

  "Will, you don't want to kiss me. Honest. I smell like onions."

  "Mmm. I'm starving," he said, pursuing her like a hawk moving in on a helpless field mouse. "Besides..." He suddenly grinned. "I like it spicy."

  She gave in to the inevitable and settled into his arms with a soft sigh. If she couldn't resist him when he was gruff and taciturn, how could she possibly fight him when he was teasing and laughing?

  He was still cold from outside, and she rubbed her mouth against his to warm him.

  "Mmmm. You can do that for about another four hours."

  "Yeah, but then my spaghetti sauce will burn," she whispered.

  "So will I," he whispered back.

  He was already burning, she thought. She could feel the heat of him through the layers of cloth. Filled with a sudden, desperate need to be close to him—to savor every moment she had left with him—she tugged his heavy oiled coat off his shoulders and tossed it near his hat on the table, then tightened her arms around his neck and pulled him to her.

  He groaned and deepened his kiss, pushing her back against the counter, as he had that night in his kitchen. His hands caressed the skin above the waistband of her jeans, and with each touch, she seemed to melt against him. It still wasn't close enough, she thought.

  As always, she lost track of time while they kissed, while his thumbs danced over her skin, edging closer and closer to the undersides of her breasts beneath her shirt; while his mouth moved with tantalizing rhythm against hers; while those hot, glowing embers of desire he sparked so easily in her sizzled into a blistering, scorching need.

  The phone and the timer on the stove rang at the same time.

  Out of breath and flustered, Andie pulled away. She didn't know which to grab first, but Will moved to the stove in his long, easy stride and turned off the timer. Gone was the urgent, aroused lover of a few seconds before. Instead, he had that watchful, predatory look on his face, and she shivered as the phone rang again.

  The strident call of the phone echoed through her house, and reality came crashing back. She realized why he was standing there looking at the phone with an expression of anticipation on his face.

  Her caller. How could she possibly have forgotten?

  "Pick it up, Andie. Just try to act as natural as possible."

  Heart still pounding from his kiss but her mouth suddenly dry with nerves, she crossed to it. She held a hand to her stomach in a futile effort to settle the nausea zinging through her.

  "Come on, sweetheart. You can do this."

  The phone rang again. She studied him for a moment, then took a deep, fortifying breath and picked up the receiver.

  Chapter 11

  "Hello," Andie said quietly.

  Silence greeted her, and she felt her pulse kick up a notch. "Hello?" she repeated.

  "Milagrita? Is that you?"

  She practically sagged against the wall in relief as her mother's lilting voice traveled across the wires. "Si, Mama."

  "It did not sound like you at all," her mother said in Spanish. "Is something wrong?"

  "No, Mama. Nothing's wrong." She crossed her fingers behind her back at the lie. Everything was wrong. She loved a stubborn wretch of a sheriff who would be riding into the sunset just as soon as he caught the bad guys.

  She was living a stupid cliché.

  While she spoke with her mother, Andie watched Will out of the corner of her eye. He dipped a spoon into the batch of spaghetti sauce simmering on the stove and took a taste, closing his eyes in appreciation. He rinsed the spoon and drank some water, tilting his head back and exposing the skin below his chin, stubbled with the dark shadow of a day's growth. He opened her refrigerator and peeked inside in the eternal male quest for food.

  These past five days of near-constant closeness with him had filled her with both joy and pain—joy that she would have these memories to comfort her when he left, and pain that she would have only the memories.

  Although she'd tried to keep distance between them, tried to protect her heart, by the second day of the stakeout she realized it was an exercise in futility. The more time she spent with him, the more she grew to love him.

  She loved the way he talked to the dogs every night when he came home. She loved the way he left his things around the house-—his razor in the bathroom, his coat hanging on the peg beside the door. She loved the way he pulled her to him in his sleep, as if he couldn't bear to let her out of his arms.

  She loved him.

  Only half-listening to what Leticia said, she stayed on the line for several more minutes. Her mother must have sensed her distraction because she soon ended the conversation.

  After she'd said good-bye and hung up the phone, Andie took a deep breath and turned back to Will. "My mother wants to come for Christmas."

  "That will be nice."

  Christmas. He'd be long gone by then, she thought, once again wrapped up in the vengeance that had come to consume his life. And she would be left trying to reglue the shattered pieces of her life.

  She avoided his gaze and returned to the stove. "I need to get back to my sauce," she said, lifting the pressure cooker and removing it from the burner.

  "Andie," he started, just as the phone rang again. Her mother must have forgotten something, she thought. Still with a hot pad in her hand, she reached for it.

  "Hola, Mama," she said.

  An ominous silence met her words, and she knew. She knew it was him. After a quick, panic-filled glance at Will, Andie drew a deep, calming breath.

  "Yes? Hello?"

  A dry raspy laugh rattled in her ear. "You're going to be begging for your mama before I'm done with you."

  His eyes shuttered, Will picked up the cordless phone he'd made her bring down so whatever officer was on duty could listen in on the calls. Before pushing the Talk button, he stood behind her and whispered in her other ear, his breath barely a hushed outtake of air.

  "Stay on the line. As long as you can, stay on the line so we can get a good trace. I know it's hard for you, but they're just words. Remember that, they're just words."

  What a contrast, Andie thought, fighting an hysterical urge to laugh. The man she loved talking in one ear, the one she hated in the other.

  She coughed to cover the soft intrusion of Will on the line as the caller continued what seemed like an endless succession of curses and threats. She knew she had to maintain the link, both so that the tracing equipment could work and so the tap they had on the phone would be supporting evidence in court. But it was hard. So hard.

  She held out as long as she could, until her knuckles were clenched white, fighting every instinct in her that cried out to sever the connection. Just when she had reached the limit of her endurance, when she felt the panic clawing its way out, Will nodded to let her know enough time had elapsed for them to trace the call.

  He gently took the phone from her and set it in its cradle as if it were
made of fine porcelain. Then he pulled her into his arms and she collapsed against him.

  "Easy, easy." He spoke to her slowly, with measured calm. "You did great, sweetheart."

  "I'm such a baby, Will."

  "No! You're not. You're the bravest woman I know."

  She pressed her cheek to the cotton of his uniform, the hard, comforting muscles of his chest. She wanted to stay there forever, safe in the circle of his strong, capable arms. With a tenderness that brought a lump to her throat, he kissed her hair and tightened his arms for one more embrace, then reached behind her and dialed a number on the cordless phone. He'd explained the procedure to her before, and she knew he was calling the phone company to verify the location of the call.

  "This is Tanner," he said into the phone. "Right. I need the last caller." Holding the phone in the crook of his neck, he whipped a pen out of his shirt pocket and scribbled a number on the memo pad by her phone. "Son of a bitch. Thanks."

  He severed the connection and dialed another number as Andie pulled away. Tension knotted in her stomach as she watched his face, its expression hard and intense. "Yeah," he said when someone answered on the other end, "Jessop's our guy. Round up Joe and Wade and have them meet me at the Rocking J."

  She tried not to listen to the logistics of the arrest. She didn't want to know the details. She wanted to lock the door of the Limber Pine, to shut out the rest of the world and go back to the past five days where he'd been hers alone. When she'd been free to pretend, even for a little while, that this could go on forever.

  Instead, she crossed to the stove and busied herself removing the jars from the pressure cooker.

  After a couple more minutes of conversation, Will hung up the phone. "It's nearly over, Andie. A few more hours and Jessop will be behind bars."

  She should be feeling some relief, shouldn't she? Instead, she had a terrible urge to cry. She shook it away and lifted another jar. "Now will you all leave me alone and let me get back to my life?"

  "Even me?"

  Especially you, she almost said. The lie clogged in her throat and nearly tumbled out. If she was smart, that's exactly what she should say. Go away, Will. Go back to your desert and your real job and your grief. She couldn't say it. Not with him watching her so closely, his eyes dark and piercing.

  In the end, she didn't have to say anything.

  "Never mind," he said, turning away and shrugging into his jacket "Grab your coat. I'm taking you to the Bar W until we have Jessop in custody."

  She laughed in disbelief and gazed at the bubbling spaghetti sauce, the mess of her kitchen, the jars cooling on the counter. "I'm in the middle of something, in case it slipped your attention. I can't just leave."

  "You'll have to. I'm sorry, Andie, but I can't leave you alone here. Not until he's in custody."

  "Will—"

  "I mean it, Andie. Anything could happen and I don't want to be so concerned for you that I can't concentrate during this arrest on the safety of my men."

  A new, more intense panic whipped through her. Why had she never realized he could be in danger? That Tom might not take kindly to being arrested and might react violently?

  She nodded and untied her apron.

  ***

  A noise from the doorway distracted Andie from the magazine she was pretending to read. She looked up from her spot at the Bar W kitchen table to find Emily, wearing the oversized T-shirt she was using for pajamas, peeking her head around the doorjamb.

  "What are you still doing up, Emily?"

  The girl walked into the room and twisted her fingers together. "I couldn't sleep. Any word from my dad yet?"

  "No, sweetheart. Not yet."

  Emily shrugged and tried not to look concerned. "He'll call when he has a chance."

  "You're probably right. Much more of this and I think I'm going to go look for him, though." Andie rose on the pretense of rinsing her coffee cup in the sink and glanced out the gingham-draped window, as she'd done at least a hundred times that night. Just as those ninety-nine other times, no headlights lit up the Bar W driveway. The drizzle had turned into a hard, cold Wyoming rain, the kind of night made for curling up in her favorite chair near the woodstove with a book and a mug of hot chocolate.

  But there she was in a strange kitchen, drinking lukewarm coffee while perched on an uncomfortable wooden chair, and trying to convince herself the magazine article on beef production was the most gripping thing she'd ever read.

  Andie would have laughed if she hadn't been so nervous over Will's safety.

  Beth and Jace had tried to keep her company, but she'd forced them to go to sleep after she caught them each yawning for the fourth time. Dustin had colic, and she knew it was exhausting for both of them.

  "I'll wake you when I hear something," she'd promised them, and for the last hour she'd kept a solitary vigil. It was nice to have company, she thought. Even the company of an eleven-year-old girl who didn't much like her.

  She pivoted from the window and saw Emily settle into one of the chairs around the table and leaf through her magazine nonchalantly, though shadows of worry clouded those eyes that were so much like Will's.

  "You'd better go on back to bed," Andie said. "You have school tomorrow."

  "No, I don't. Parent-teacher conferences."

  "Hmmm. In that case, I could use somebody to talk to," she admitted. "This waiting is terrible."

  "You get used to it," Emily said philosophically. "Sometimes in Phoenix he would have to be gone for a couple of days at a time. That was the worst. Mrs. Jenks—she's our housekeeper—would stay over and we had pizza and watched videos and it was pretty fun and everything. But I still missed my dad."

  Andie fought a fierce longing to pull the girl into her arms, to put some laughter into those eyes that were too young to be filled with such sad wisdom. But she knew her sympathy would go over with Emily like a mouse at a cheese factory.

  "Hey," she said instead, "Beth usually keeps some cookies stashed around here somewhere. Want to pig out with me while we wait for your dad to call?"

  "She'll be mad if we eat 'em all."

  "This is a crisis situation. She'll understand. You pour the milk and I'll see what I can scrounge up."

  "Try the cupboard above the fridge." Emily flashed a wicked grin. "That's where I found 'em last time."

  Andie clamped down on her lingering worry about Will, for the girl's sake if nothing else. She stood on tiptoe to reach into the high cupboard and emerged triumphant with an unopened bag of sandwich cookies.

  "Bingo!"

  Emily slid a glass of milk to her, and Andie ripped open the bag and placed some cookies on a plate. For a few minutes, they munched in companionable silence, broken only by the shifting and settling of the old house and the rain outside the window.

  "So I have to ask you the question we all ask anybody under the age of eighteen. It's required," Andie finally said. "How's school going?"

  "Okay." Emily twisted apart a cookie and scrapped the insides out before answering. "They're a ways behind what I was learning last year in Arizona so all the kids think I'm pretty smart. That's cool."

  "You're in the sixth grade, right?"

  Emily nodded. "Back home I'd be in middle school, but they keep sixth graders in the elementary school here. I feel like a baby with all those little kids."

  "Is your class doing anything fun for the Halloween festival this year?"

  "A spook alley. I get to dress up like a mummy and jump out from behind a coffin and scare people. It's way cool."

  Andie gave a mock shudder. "I'm getting chills just thinking about it."

  Emily grinned. "It won't be scary now. You'll know it's just me!"

  Before she could answer, Dustin gave a soft cry from down the hall, and they both fell silent until his crying had stopped.

  "He's a cute kid, isn't he?" Andie said.

  "He's okay I guess. When he's not bawling."

  She laughed. "It's hard when they have colic. But he'll grow
out of it."

  "The other day I was holding him and he was crying and I started tickling his tummy and he grinned. Just like that. Then he fell right to sleep. Aunt Beth says I have 'the magic touch.' Whatever the heck that means."

  "It means you're good with kids. Not everybody is, you know, and it's a pretty special skill to have. You know," she continued, compelled to make the offer again, as she had the first day she met Emily, "I could use somebody with the magic touch at the school. Anytime you want to come and help, I'd be happy to have you."

  Emily glanced down at the cookies, then quickly back up. "How about tomorrow? I don't have school and I don't have anything else to do except sit around here." She paused and looked away. "If you don't want me there, that's okay too."

  Andie fought a powerful urge to reach across the space between them and hug the girl until her skittishness melted away. "Tomorrow would be great. I'll pick you up about eight. Think you can get up that early after this wild late-night girl party we're having?"

  "Sure. I can if you can." Emily grinned and took another bite of a cookie.

  Despite her nervousness over Will, a slow, comfortable satisfaction bubbled through Andie. She hadn't realized how much his daughter's antagonism bothered her until it was gone.

  The phone hanging on the wall near the refrigerator suddenly rang, and they jumped.

  Andie chuckled as they both scraped their chairs back to answer it. "Go ahead, Em. You take it." The girl dashed to the phone in a flurry of twirling T-shirt and skinny legs.

  "Hi, Dad," she said after she'd answered it, her smile filled with exulted relief. No matter how rocky Will thought their relationship was, Andie mused, it was obvious Emily loved her father deeply.

  "Yeah," Emily went on, "we were a little worried, I guess. Andie said if you didn't call soon she was going to come and look for you." She paused, then giggled. "I don't think she'd let me, but I could try."

  She held her hand over the mouthpiece. "He said to grab you and lock you in the bathroom if you try to leave."

  Andie smiled. For an instant while she listened to Emily's end of the conversation, she engaged in a wonderful, dangerous daydream. A daydream of happily ever after. A shimmering vision of the three of them forming a warm and loving family, filled with laughter and caring. It was so intense, so powerfully real, she could see it as vividly as she could see Beth's red-and-blue checked kitchen wallpaper.