by B. J Daniels
He backed up against the bedroom wall, his hands out in front of him as if to shield him from her words. “You let me think she was Odell’s.”
“You’re the one who saw Odell in her.”
He nodded, his eyes dark and moist. “What was I to think? I didn’t remember that we’d made love.”
“Didn’t you? Didn’t you remember any of it?” She saw the answer in his face.
He slammed a fist against the wall with a curse. “Why, dammit? Why didn’t you tell me when you realized you were pregnant?”
She didn’t want to get into all the reasons. Not now. “Because I believed it wouldn’t have been the best thing for me or my child.”
“Our child, damn you. Ivy is our child! I had a right to know. I had a right to decide what was the best for our child.”
Her heart pounded. “What would you have done if I’d told you?”
“I would have—” He looked around as if the answer were in this room. He closed his eyes.
“I knew you wouldn’t have believed Ivy was yours.” Why did he believe it now?
He lifted his head slowly, sadness softening his handsome face. “But once I knew she was mine, I would have married you.”
“You would have forced me to marry you whether it was what I wanted or not,” she said angrily. The last thing she’d wanted was a loveless marriage. “I did what I thought was best for Ivy and me.”
The phone rang, making her jump. She reached for it before it could ring a second time. “Yes?” She listened for a few moments. “Yes, thank you for calling.” She hung up and looked at Clay, tears in her eyes. “That was the sheriff. They have a suspect in custody. A man who was seen drinking with Raymond at the Toston bar. They found the murder weapon in the man’s car.” Odell didn’t kill Raymond. Because he was dead. “It’s over.”
“If you think that, Josie, you’re dead wrong.”
HE HEARD IVY COMING AWAKE in the room across the hall. Ivy. His daughter.
Josie wiped her eyes and looked up at him. Neither spoke for a few moments. Ivy let out another cry.
Josie slid off the bed and headed across the hall.
He stood for a few moments, too shaken to move. He could still smell her on his skin. The same way their lovemaking had been branded in his mind. His anger seemed to overwhelm him.
He trailed after Josie, stopping in the doorway to watch her with Ivy. His daughter. Some of his anger dissipated at the sight of her. He tried to tell himself that Josie had done what she thought was right for her baby. Their baby.
But he couldn’t. She should have told him. He had a right to know. Ivy was his, too.
He knew he needed time to think. But for the life of him, he had no idea where they went from here. It scared him. Now that he knew Ivy was his, it changed everything. Surely Josie realized that.
He watched her change the toddler, then put her down on the floor. Ivy scrambled over to him, holding out a worn teddy bear in her hand.
He looked into her large, lash-fringed brown eyes and felt a jolt, heart-deep. “Ivy,” he whispered as he reached down to pick her up. He could smell her sweet baby scent as he wrapped his arms around her. Tears burned his eyes.
Over Ivy’s small shoulder, he met Josie’s gaze. But he refused to let her tears touch the wall of ice he’d built around his heart toward her.
He closed his eyes and hugged his daughter to him, awed and humbled and scared.
“She’ll be hungry after her nap,” Josie said.
He nodded, realizing how little he knew about his daughter. His gut constricted with regret at all he’d lost. Would he ever be able to forgive Josie? Forgive himself?
He followed her downstairs, carrying his daughter, Ivy’s face against his, her arms around his neck.
The pull had always been there. He’d felt something for this child the moment he’d laid eyes on her. Had he known but just refused to admit the truth?
JOSIE COULDN’T BEAR to look at him. She busied herself making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for Ivy.
When she turned, she saw he still held his daughter, his face filled with anguish. She watched him press a kiss to Ivy’s cheek, then put her down. The expression on his face as he looked at his daughter broke her heart.
He didn’t look at her as he turned and strode from the room, the screen door slamming behind him.
She closed her eyes, willing back the tears, but her heart filled with images of Clay and Ivy. Their laughter mingling. Their dark eyes accusing her.
What had she done?
Two years ago, she’d believed Clay would make a terrible father and an even worse husband. She’d believed he’d regretted their lovemaking and wanted nothing to do with her. Yes, he’d been wrong about her, had purposely thought the worst of her to protect himself from his feelings.
But what she’d done to him was so much worse. She’d kept him from his daughter. She’d underestimated the man she loved.
“I’m sorry, Clay,” she whispered after him.
Ivy chattered up a storm as Josie put her into the high chair and fed her. “Everything’s going to be all right now.” She repeated the words, praying somehow they would come true.
Someone knocked at the front door. Clay. He’d come back. She pulled a peanut-butter-and-jelly-faced Ivy from her high chair and hurried to the door.
But it was Mildred peering through the screen door.
“Are you all right?” Mildred asked.
Josie smiled, but the tears gave her away.
“What did he do now?” Mildred said, going to the kitchen, straight to the coffeepot.
“It isn’t what you think,” Josie said, following behind her. Ivy wriggled to be put down, but not before Josie cleaned up her face and hands. Ivy hurried to her cupboard to pull out all of the toys.
“You told him, didn’t you?” Mildred said, her hands on her hips as the coffee began to fill the pot. “You told him he is Ivy’s father.”
Her mouth gaped open.
“Oh, Josie, Ruth and I both knew the moment we laid eyes on him.”
She stumbled over to a chair and plunked down. It had been a long day. Too much had happened. She rubbed her temples, wondering what Mildred would say if she knew that she’d just made love with him again this afternoon. “I had to tell him.”
“Of course you did,” Mildred agreed. “I’m sure you had your reasons for not telling him before. What happens now?”
She shook her head. “Oh, Mildred, it’s all so complicated.”
“Love usually is.”
Her gaze froze on the woman. “Love? What makes you think—”
“Oh, please. I’m not that old that I don’t know love when I see it.”
Josie leaned her elbows on the table and dropped her chin into her hands. “Clay and I have always been like oil and water. He’s never understood me any better than I did him. Now too much has happened. We’ll never be able to get past it. We’re all wrong for each other. We always have been and nothing can change that.”
“It already has,” Mildred said, smiling. “Ivy. Ivy is the best of the two of you. She’s proof that with love even two people like you and Clay can find some common ground.”
Common ground. Josie thought of their lovemaking. Oh, they’d already found their common ground, all right. A sexual chemistry. But unfortunately that was shaky ground and nothing to build any sort of relationship on.
“Would you like me to stay?” Mildred asked.
Josie shook her head. “We’ll be fine. The sheriff has a suspect in custody for Raymond Degas’s murder.” And Odell was dead. “We’ll be just fine.” She actually believed it. She got up to give Mildred a hug. “You go on home. I know you have things to do. But thanks for all your help. I really appreciate it.”
“Charley asked me into town for dinner,” Mildred said, grinning. “You think I should go?”
“Absolutely,” Josie told her.
Mildred got a hug and a kiss from Ivy, then left. Josie watched h
er drive away, wondering where Clay had gone. He hadn’t left for good. That much she knew.
The sun had dropped behind the mountains, leaving the day cool and a little dark. She made a light dinner for herself and Ivy, but opted to eat inside tonight because of the approaching storm. Thunder rumbled off in the distance.
She played with Ivy until the night turned black and the breeze coming through the window smelled of rain. She sensed static in the air she wasn’t sure had anything to do with the storm. She couldn’t quit thinking of Clay, the ache for him painful. Was he all right?
She bathed Ivy, dressed her in her favorite teddy bear pajamas and put her to bed just before the storm hit. Lightning lit the night outside her bedroom window. She tried to read, but finally gave up and turned out the light. The storm moved closer. Huge splintered bursts of lightning lit the sky, immediately followed by the cannon boom of thunder.
She pulled the blankets up to her chin, hoping the storm didn’t wake Ivy and scare her. She wished Clay was here with them.
Finally, rain began to fall and the lightning and thunder moved on.
It was after three in the morning that Josie woke with a start, sitting upright in bed. At first she thought she’d heard something that had woken her. The rain had stopped. No sound came from inside or outside the cabin.
She turned on the lamp beside the bed, slid into her slippers and hurried to Ivy’s room, suddenly afraid.
Ivy lay curled under her blanket sound asleep, her arms wrapped around her teddy bear.
Josie stood for a few minutes watching her, reassuring herself that her baby was fine. It must have just been a bad dream.
That’s when she remembered what had dragged her from sleep. Raymond’s last words. “Odell did it.”
She’d thought he was trying to tell her who’d shot him. But he couldn’t have meant that. Odell was dead. Then what had Raymond been trying so hard to tell her? Why would a dying man use his last breath if not to name his killer?
It felt like a light going off inside her head. A burst of knowledge, bright and blinding. Not “Odell did it.” But “Odell hid it.” The jewel collection.
That is what Raymond must have been looking for, just as Clay suspected. But if Odell hid it, wouldn’t it be in Texas, unless—
She sensed movement from the open doorway. Whirling in that direction, she saw a large man in a western hat silhouetted in the doorway.
“Clay?”
But the moment she said his name, she knew it wasn’t Clay.
A scream caught in her throat. No one would hear her but Ivy if she screamed. She spun around, frantically grabbing for a weapon in the dim light in the shadowy room. Her fingers closed over the base of a lamp as she heard him behind her.
He was on her before she could swing the lamp. His strong fingers clamped over her wrist and twisted hard. The lamp thumped to the floor.
Something hard smacked the side of her head. Stars splattered across her vision.
“Ivy!” It was her last thought before the darkness took her.
Chapter Twelve
Clay drove around for hours. Thinking. Remembering. Hurting. An unmerciful weight had settled on his chest, making merely breathing unbearable.
By the time he got back to Josie’s cabin, he felt more excitement about being Ivy’s father than anger toward Josie for keeping his daughter from him.
He understood why she’d done what she had. Understood the part he’d played. The confusion. The misunderstanding. And he blamed himself more than Josie.
But it didn’t make it any easier.
He parked a little way from the cabin. No lights shone inside, not that he’d expected to see any. It was late. Josie and Ivy would be asleep.
He slid down in the front seat, pulled his Stetson down over his eyes and tried to sleep, craving some release from his thoughts. Worse, his feelings. Feelings of love so strong that he thought his heart would burst.
Ivy was his daughter.
And Josie? He didn’t want to think about that right now. Couldn’t.
Sleep came in fitful spurts, filled with haunting images, the interludes in between packed with waking panic.
His dreams were always the same. Josie riding up to his campfire on Diablo.
Only this time something was horribly wrong.
Just before daylight, he jerked awake, heart pounding, drenched in sweat, his mind suddenly clear. He knew how Josie had done it! He knew how she’d gotten the security plans to steal the jewels.
He flung open the pickup door and raced down the hill to the cabin, not caring about the hour, not caring about anything but confronting Josie. If he thought she’d dropped a bombshell on him yesterday, wait until today. And just when he thought it couldn’t get any worse.
He pounded on the front door, waiting in the cool shadow of the porch. The moon sneaked toward the dark western horizon as if hoping to avoid the sun that now rimmed the mountain crest to the east. The early-morning darkness felt damp and cool and quiet.
He pounded again, needing desperately to break that eerie silence, to make sense of what had happened two years ago.
Still no answer. She was probably expecting him and had no intention of answering the door. Or she’d taken off. But her truck was still parked in the yard.
He tried the door, surprised to find it unlocked. He frowned as he turned the knob and the door fell open and he stepped in.
He felt something under his boot soles. His heart took off at a gallop as he flipped on the living room light. On the floor were wood shavings from where the front door had been jimmied open.
His pulse pounded in his ears at a deafening tempo, his heart a thunder in his chest as he took the stairs two at a time.
A muted night-light gleamed from the empty bathroom. He swung to his left and into Josie’s bedroom.
The light was on, the covers thrown back on the bed, the pillow balled near the edge, a hollow space still in the sheets where she’d been. But the bed was empty.
He swung around and raced across the hall into Ivy’s room, flinging open the door, his gaze leaping to the crib. The first morning light bled in through the window. Even from the doorway he could see that the crib was empty.
A groan. His gaze swung to the dark corner of the room and the figure crumpled there.
He reached her in two strides, dropping beside her, his fingers going to her throat for a pulse, a prayer echoing in his head. “Please, God, please.”
He felt a pulse. Strong. Strong like Josie.
She stirred, her eyelids flickering. Her lips moved but no sound came out.
Tears burned his eyes. He took a ragged breath. “Don’t try to talk. I’m here. Everything is going to be all right,” he whispered as he brushed the fine blond hair back from her face and felt the lump and the dried blood.
Her eyes jerked open. She blinked up at him, all that blue filled with confusion and pain. “Ivy.” The word was only a whisper.
He felt his heart take off again. “Isn’t she with Mildred?”
“No!” Josie tried to get up.
He held her down, a lump the size of Texas lodging in his throat as he looked over at the empty crib. “She was here?”
Josie nodded, tears coursing down her cheeks. “He took her.”
“Who, Josie? Who took her?”
She began to cry, huge gut-wrenching sobs. “I didn’t get a good look at him.”
“It’s all right.”
“No, Clay,” she said, trying to get up again. “I have to find Ivy.”
He fought to breathe. “We’ll find her, Josie. Just lie still for a moment, please.”
The phone rang.
He stared down at her for an instant. “Stay here.”
He charged into the bedroom, half-falling, half-sliding, and jerked up the phone. “Yes. Hello.”
“It’s Charley, Charley Brainard. Sorry to call at this hour, but I can’t seem to find Mildred. It’s just odd. All the lights are on, her car’s here and her knit
ting is in the middle of the floor. I thought maybe something had happened over there, some reason she might have left in a hurry without her car?”
Clay felt the floor drop from under him. “No, we haven’t seen her. But I’ll let you know if I do.”
He’d barely hung up the phone when it rang again.
A deadly silence filled the line, one he could barely hear over the frantic beat of his heart.
“Jackson.” The voice was electronic, unrecognizable. “I have your daughter.”
Clay could hear Ivy crying in the background and someone trying to soothe her. “If you hurt a hair on her head—”
“You are in no position to threaten me,” the voice snapped. “Listen carefully. I have Ivy and her baby-sitter.”
Mildred?
“If you ever want to see Ivy again you will tell no one. No police. Don’t underestimate me.” Ivy’s crying grew louder, and he realized that the voice on the other end of the line had moved closer to the toddler.
“Ivy. Let me talk to her.” To his surprise the caller put the phone next to Ivy’s mouth and ear. “Ivy?” The crying slowed. “Ivy. Ivy, honey.” She stopped crying but still whimpered. He could see her in his mind’s eye, her face red and tear-stained, her cupid’s bow lips thrust out, eyes wide. His eyes. “Listen, sweetheart.” His voice broke. “It’s going to be all right. Can you hear me. It’s…”
“Clay.” He heard a sound behind him and turned to see Josie stumble into the room.
“Your mommy is here.”
He handed the phone to Josie but stayed beside her so he could hear.
“Ivy? Ivy, darling.”
He closed his eyes at the sound of Ivy’s sweet voice. Then the electronic voice came back on.
“Jackson?”
He could hear Mildred in the background. She sounded scared but was trying to comfort Ivy.
“I’m here,” he snapped, as angry as he was afraid. “Who are you? What the hell do you want?” How do you know Ivy is my child?
“I want the jewels,” the eerie, unreal voice said. “Josie has them.”
Clay looked over at her. She had the jewels. Just as he’d suspected. And now someone had kidnapped their daughter for those damned rocks. He gritted his teeth, his gaze boring into her.
