For the rest of the day he thought about the ad and how long it had been since he had ridden a horse. At four p.m., he turned the office over to Rooster and Dana and headed out to Izzy's house.
When he knocked at the front door, her little girl's face popped up behind the glass pane in the upper half of the door. She opened up, the puppies barking and bouncing around her. "Where's your mom?" he asked her.
She held the door wide. "You have to come in. I can't hold the door open 'cause Mama doesn't want bugs to get in the house."
"Oh, okay." John stepped into the living room and felt and heard the creak of the wood floor. He looked around. The room, with its aged pine paneling, looked old but cozy. The furniture looked fairly new—a long leather sofa, a cowhide chair. A huge, draping fern filled one corner and houseplants sat on the windowsills. All of it was spotlessly clean and welcoming.
Ava looked up at him with huge coffee-colored eyes. Plastic clips that looked like little blue bows showed on either side of a part in her red hair. "Can you fix our fire? I know how, but I'm not allowed to if Mama isn't in the house."
John turned his attention to a dying fire flickering in a brick-front fireplace. "Sure." He walked to the fireplace, stepping on layers of cowhides and Navajo rugs covering the floor between the hearth and the sofa. On the thick oak mantel he saw photographs of horses and trophies of various sizes and configurations.
"Those are Mama's prizes," Ava said. "She's won a lot."
"She sure has," John said, impressed. He returned his attention to the fire, found pine rounds in a bin beside the fireplace, then squatted and placed them on the grate.
Ava spoke behind him. "Did you come to check on Harry and Gwendolyn?"
He glanced at her over his shoulder. "Gwendolyn?"
The kid pushed her glasses higher up her nose with the tips of her fingers and gave him a serious look. "I changed Jenny's name to Gwendolyn. I read this story where someone called his jackass Jenny. Gwendolyn sounds better."
As he reached for the hearth broom and swept stray ash and debris into the fireplace John wondered what book a little girl her age could be reading that had the word "jackass" in it. He stood up and wiped his hands with his handkerchief. "Right. Gwendolyn's a better name. You do a lot of reading?"
She pointed to the lower shelves of a wide bookcase that stretched from floor to ceiling on one side of the fireplace. "These are mine."
The upper shelves were filled with dozens of what John assumed were CDs until he reached for one and examined it. Audiobooks.
"Those are Mama's," the kid said. "She listens all the time. She only looks at horse stuff and vet books, but I read a lot. Sometimes I read to Mama."
"Is that right?" John pushed an audiobook on American history back into its slot.
"Some people wanted Mama to write a book because of all the stuff she knows about horses. I told her I'd help her, but she won't." The little girl sighed, the weight of the world on her narrow shoulders.
Exactly what did Izzy know that would call for writing a book? John wondered.
The kid picked up a hardback lying on the sofa. "This is Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. It's about a boy who can do magic. I've already read it once, but I'm reading it again because we haven't gone to Boise yet to buy the next book."
"I see." John took the book and fanned the pages, thinking of the struggle he and his ex-wife had trying to persuade their older son to focus on reading. "Looks like a good story."
The puppies barked and scampered around his and Ava's feet. She looked at them, then back up at him. "You don't have to worry about Harry and Gwendolyn. I'm very responsible. I sleep with them on the porch."
"You think that's a good idea? Long as they can't get outside, they should be all right out there by themselves."
"But I don't want them to get lonely. And I don't want them to get scared when the coyotes howl. Mama lets me use her big sleeping bag."
"Ah. Guess that makes a difference, huh?" He tilted his head toward the playing puppies. "You think you oughtta have them in here? I'll bet they're not housebroken yet."
The words had no sooner left his mouth than one of them squatted and tinkled at the corner of the tile hearth.
"Harry!" Ava scooped him up and shook her finger at his dark nose. "Bad dog. Now you have to stay on the porch."
"Where's your mom?" John asked again before the girl could escape to the porch with the puppies.
"Over at the big barn. She's painting."
She picked up the second pup and marched away in quick little steps. The word that came to John's mind was one he didn't usually associate with a ten-year-old kid—efficient.
Chapter 7
John walked toward the massive old barn. Hearing rhythmic hammering, he looked for the sound and saw someone on the steep roof nailing down shingles.
The barn's double doors stood open. Inside, he found Izzy at the top of a twelve-foot aluminum ladder leaned against the tack room wall. Wearing brown padded coveralls, she had a wide paintbrush in her hand. He glanced around. Most of the tack room exterior showed a fresh coat of white paint. But the temperature was in the low fifties, too cold for outside painting.
He thumbed back his hat and went to the foot of the ladder, braced both hands on the side rails and looked up. "You think that'll ever get dry?"
She twisted and looked down. White paint dripped off her brush to the ground, just missing him. "It's barn paint. Not much more than chalky water. What do you want?"
"I saw your ad."
She juggled the paintbrush and a gallon paint bucket into one hand and began to descend the ladder, placing both feet on each rung as she stepped down. When she finally reached the ground, she gave him a shy smile and all he could think of was how soft her full lips looked.
"I'm afraid of high places," she said. "And ladders."
"Then maybe you shouldn't be up there."
She had splotches of white everywhere, even in her hair.
"I just want everything to look better, like there's a live person here. I'll put good paint on later. You didn't really come about the job." It was a statement rather than a question.
"Why not? I figure I know as much about horses as anybody. Around here, anyway."
She gave him a narrow-lidded look. "I don't know—"
"Horses like me. You saw. The other day when you introduced me to them."
A stocky, muscular man wearing dirty clothes and a well-seasoned leather tool belt appeared in the doorway. On a second look, John recognized him as Izzy's kid brother. John hadn't seen him around town lately. Perhaps Izzy had been keeping him too busy to frequent the bars. Paul walked over and John touched his hat to him, "Paul."
"What're you doing way out here, John?" The man's tone had a wariness to it.
"Nothing official. Talking horses."
Paul grunted and declared he had finished shingling the roof. Izzy thanked him and hugged him, transferring smears of white paint from herself and her brush to him, and asked him to stay for supper.
John's mind spun back to high school, when Izzy had been her little brother's keeper. And his unfaltering defender.
"No, thanks," Paul said. "If I get hungry, I'll eat at the cafe in town."
Isabelle released him. "Thanks again for helping me. Stay out of trouble, okay?" She stepped aside and he started toward a silver dually. "I love you, Paul," she called.
He turned back, giving her a big grin. "I love you, too, sis. And don't be worrying about me. You'll get gray before your time." He lifted his hand in a wave and continued on his way.
Izzy looked after him with a worried expression. John, in his role as sheriff, had already become aware that Paul Rondeau was indeed enough to give a loving sister a gray hair or two.
After her brother drove away, Izzy turned back and walked over to a hay bale where the lid to the paint can and a mallet lay. "Paul's a great carpenter." She pushed the lid onto the can and pounded it shut with the mallet. "He's helping me out,
fixing up the barn and patching the holes in the roof."
"Good for him." John looked up, estimated the barn ceiling to be at least thirty feet high. He gave her a wink. "Being afraid of high places, you'd have a heck of a time up there fixing it yourself."
She laughed and the whole world seemed brighter.
"That's true," she said and carried the brush outside.
John tagged along. The late afternoon's golden sun caught in her hair, turning it the color of fire. "If you need help with the horses, why don't you call on your brother for that, too?"
Copper-colored brows arched. "I said he's a great carpenter. He's terrible with horses."
A faucet stood outside the barn door. She bent over and worked at washing the paintbrush under a stream of water. "You're the sheriff. When would you find the time to fool with my animals?"
"Being sheriff doesn't use up every hour of my day. Lots of days I don't have that much to do."
"From what I've heard, you don't take the job seriously. If you tried, you'd probably be busy all the time."
Well, wasn't she bossy and what the hell had she heard? He shrugged. "Hard to say. What're you paying?"
She grinned. "I only need someone a couple of hours a day, maybe three days a week. Six bucks an hour. That doesn't add up to much."
Mental sigh. That amount of money wouldn't make a pimple-sized dent in his child support payments. "You're right. Six hours a week at six dollars doesn't add up to much."
"I was figuring on a schoolkid."
"You're gonna let a schoolkid loose with horses like yours?"
"Just to feed and do some grunt work. Anything else, I do myself. Unless, of course, I find one with some experience... or talent." She stood up, wiped her wet hands on her coveralls, then started back into the barn. "I appreciate your asking about it, though. So far, you're the only one who has. I imagine kids think the drive out here's too far."
John sensed an air of desperation in Izzy. He weighed the pay against the trip, arguing with himself. Though he missed riding and working with horses, and putting horses like hers through their paces would be a special treat, it made no sense to commit to a thirty-mile round trip three days a week and get paid no more than thirty-six dollars. "I know a few teenagers. I'll ask around."
The corners of her mouth tipped up into another heart-stopping smile. "That would be great."
Warmed with a smile like that, John couldn't make himself say good-bye. "So how're you getting along with the puppies?"
"They're cute."
"Still mad at me for bringing them?"
"I guess not. Ava loves them and they must have been what she needed. She still misses Jack, but—anyway, it was nice of you to think of her."
"Yeah, well, you know. Kids and dogs."
She slid the coveralls off her shoulders. "Just don't forget"—she laughed again—"I'll soon be sending you a bill for carpet cleaning."
She stepped out of the coveralls, carried them to the tack room and hung them on a nail in the wall, then started toward the house. Since she didn't invite him to join her, he debated whether he should follow or just get in the Blazer and go on back to town.
While the question volleyed inside him, he fell in step beside her. "If you're going to the house, I'll just say hi to the dogs," he told her.
They walked along in silence and for the first time John noticed the landscape. Though he had grown up in Callister and had hunted the mountains sandwiching the long valley all his life, he had never been to Frenchie Rondeau's place. The house backed up to snowcapped Callister Mountain. In the late-afternoon sun, the mountaintop shone like gold. The pasture's fledgling green gently rolled uphill to the dark tree line behind the white house and barns. The place was picturesque and had an appeal about it even with the buildings looking old and run-down.
He had never known the size of the Rondeau spread, but the back boundary had to adjoin national forest. "How much land you got here?"
"Not enough. About three hundred acres. Which means once I get calves in, I'll have to buy feed most of the year."
"Calves?"
"For the horses to work with. Cutting horses, remember?"
* * *
A flutter beat in Isabelle's stomach as John walked beside her toward the house. Sneaking peeks at him, she saw lashes a woman would kill for and a good profile. She hadn't seen him without a hat, but he wore his brown hair longer than most cowboys. From out of nowhere, this crazy urge cropped up to find a mirror and catch a glimpse of her own unruly hair, which must be flying all over the place.
She found him just as easy to look at today as when he had come out in the rain about Jack. Today, however, it dawned on her that something other than his appearance had seized her attention in the first place. He seemed to own his space, giving off an easy confidence like it came to him naturally. It was something subtle that would have been as foreign to Billy as speaking Russian, something she had rarely seen in men. And it was something she admired, because she engaged in a daily struggle to find her own self-confidence.
Beyond that, the utter maleness that radiated from him grabbed her right where she had no business letting herself be grabbed. John Bradshaw could have his pick of women, even more so than Billy—of that she was certain. Her former partner may have been handsome, but he didn't have John's strong presence.
When they reached the house and she opened the door onto the porch, they were greeted by puppies scampering around their ankles. "Uh-oh," she said. "Ava's banished them to the porch. They must have done something on the carpet. I don't suppose you brought that second doghouse with you?"
"I haven't been down to Boise yet. But I haven't forgotten it. I promise."
She suspected he had done exactly that—forgotten it ten minutes after he dumped off the puppies.
She walked through the porch to the mudroom, pushed up her sweater sleeves and turned on the faucet in the laundry sink, glad to be distracted by washing her hands. He leaned a shoulder on the doorjamb and thumbed back his hat, watching her, which made her too self-conscious to look into his face. "I can't blame you for not wanting to work for what I'm paying, but you must have known it wouldn't be much." She laughed. "That can't really be why you came out."
His shoulder lifted. "I miss being around horses. If you could pay a little more, I could relieve you of the riding."
The offer tempted her. Bradshaws were old-time ranchers in Callister County. John had been around livestock since the day of his birth, but tempting offer or not, she hadn't seen him ride. Her horses were too valuable for an unskilled handler. No way would she hire him without knowing his ability. Nor could she commit to more wages. "Hah. I do the grunt work and you do the riding. Is that the idea?"
He shrugged again. "I'm willing to help you with what needs doing."
She rinsed off soap and shook the excess water into the sink, tore off sheets of paper toweling and dried. "I'd want to see you with the horses and watch you ride."
"No problem. When?"
She pulled a jar of bag balm from the cupboard and scooped out a dollop with the crook of her finger. "The sooner the better. When can you get away?"
As she began rubbing the silky cream onto her hands, he pushed away from the doorjamb, walked over and picked up the jar, the subtle scent of him—something woodsy smelling—overtaking the pleasant fragrance of the bag balm. Her pulse rate surged. Her mind swerved from negotiating his pay to the fact that she hadn't put on perfume since before she left Texas.
The corner of his mouth quirked. Amusement? Well, so what if using udder cream on her hands amused him? It was rich in lanolin. After seeing too many women who worked outdoors with animals let their skin turn tough as leather, she was determined to avoid that happening to her.
He set the jar back on the counter and stuffed his hands into his jeans pockets. His khaki quilted vest shifted back. A badge hung on the pocket of a tan button-down. She saw the butt of a pistol strapped to his belt, but instead of being uneasy about the
unusual circumstance of a man standing in her mudroom wearing a gun, the subject on which her mind settled was how would he look without a shirt?
"If the horses are for sale," he said, "why go to the expense and trouble of keeping them in peak training?"
She concentrated on creaming her forearms. "Would you pay a hundred thousand for a horse that isn't in top shape?"
A few seconds passed. "A hundred thousand? Dollars?"
She suppressed a grin of satisfaction at the astonishment in his voice, having sensed his skepticism all along. She glanced up at him. "No, sheriff. Marbles.... Besides having great breeding, they have winning records."
He looked away, as if he might be embarrassed. "Okay," he said. "Thursday. I could do it Thursday morning."
* * *
John now realized Izzy's animals were special. Due to selective breeding and unrelenting training from young ages, they had gone beyond the ordinary cow horse. They had become investments, athletes demonstrating their intelligence and capabilities in cutting contests across the Southwest. Everybody from car dealers to movie stars owned one or more that vied for the generous prizes awarded in cutting-horse performance shows. Her horses could well be worth the number she threw out.
That explained their superior condition and the fancy truck and trailer. What still puzzled him, though, was the contradiction between what she said and what she was doing. If she wanted to sell the horses, bringing them to Callister made no sense. If she intended to show them in competitions, hauling them from Texas to Idaho had been a wrong move. The purses in shows here couldn't come close to those in Texas and Oklahoma.
Well, his questions would have answers eventually. He had never met a woman who could keep secrets for long.
On Thursday morning John headed for Izzy's house, tamping down the guilt he felt for leaving the office to Rooster. To salve his conscience, he told himself he had worked 24/7 for months and was entitled to a day off.
An excitement buzzed within him. He hadn't been close to a horse in a year. The only rope horse he had left, a big gray gelding named Rowdy, was being used as a cow horse out at his folks' ranch. Since he didn't visit the Lazy B much, he didn't see or ride him.
The Love of a Lawman, The Callister Trilogy, Book 3 Page 7
