The Love of a Lawman, The Callister Trilogy, Book 3

by Jeffrey, Anna

  Knowing that Billy Bledsoe—all the girls called him "hunk" or "stud" or something like that—wanted her body without criticism or condition had been a boost to her short supply of self-esteem. Naturally they all said the only reason Billy hung out with her was because she put out.

  Now that she was older, she knew the real reason Billy hung out with her. He was weak; she was strong. He had needed her strength. It was that simple. The human community wasn't so different from animal communities. There was always a dominant member, usually the strongest and smartest animal, the alpha male or female. It was part of the mating process.

  If you get pregnant... The possibility of motherhood had been absent from her life for so long, she couldn't drum herself into hysterics over it now. Nor could she feel that a baby with a man like John would be a disaster—except, of course, for how it would affect Ava and the fact that they now lived in a town where every citizen inserted himself into every other citizen's life, invited or not.

  She disliked causing John worry. He was the best man she had ever known. Not only was he handsome and a wonderful, considerate lover, he had a rare, quiet strength she revered. Her feeling for him had grown to something deeper than she had expected.

  Or wanted.

  Until now, that is.

  Chapter 19

  Failing to use protection on Thursday had been a mistake, but John left Izzy's house sensing that wasn't the only error he had made. Her attitude when he picked her and Ava up on Saturday morning confirmed his concern. She was almost as standoffish as she had been the first day he saw her when he went out to check into the dog shooting.

  Not that she was mean or hateful—just bristly.

  The horseback ride turned out great. What could go wrong on a sunny day in the mountains? They rode along the shoulders of Sterling Mountain through a landscape of new spring growth and endless blue sky. He insisted Isabelle ride his rope horse, Rowdy, and teased her about "riding a good horse for a change."

  She didn't so much as grin.

  The horse his mom assigned to Ava—a bay gelding named Pancho—was a dream horse for a kid. As they rode, she went into a long explanation of the differences between Western saddles and the smaller English equipment. Where a ten-year-old got all the information that floated around Ava Rondeau's head, John couldn't imagine.

  After the ride, John volunteered to haul Pancho to Isabelle's for Ava to ride at will, but Isabelle declined the offer, telling him that keeping a man's horse in her corral was a little like giving the guy a permanent place at the table. Ouch.

  John's mother spread joy all over them. He hadn't brought a woman to visit since before he married Julie. Mom met them at the barn on their return and invited Isabelle and Ava into the house for a Coke or coffee while John unsaddled.

  His mother's welcome didn't come as a surprise, nor did his dad's noticeable absence. John was unsaddling when his dad came into the barn.

  "Good ride?"

  "Great. Grass up in the foothills looks good."

  Dad nodded and hung his elbow on a stall door. Something was stuck in his craw, for sure. It didn't take a genius to know it was Isabelle. "You might as well say it and get it over with," John told him.

  "Well... I'm just wondering what you're doing with that Rondeau woman."

  His dad knew the relationship with Isabelle was more than casual or he wouldn't have brought up the subject. He pulled Isabelle's saddle off Rowdy's back. "That's between her and me."

  "Art's already had a falling-out with her."

  Still irritated when he thought about the incident that had taken him to Isabelle's house the first time, John turned, resting a hand on Rowdy's back. "I don't know what Art told you, Dad, but he shot her dog. It was a pretty little border collie. If there had been something I could've done about that, I would have. It tore the little girl up."

  His dad looked away. He had border collies himself and it would have been out of character for him to wish ill on a kid. "Well... Art gets carried away sometimes.... But he's not wrong about that Rondeau bunch. Paul Rondeau—"

  "I'm not seeing Paul."

  "An apple doesn't fall far from the tree, son. Just don't forget that."

  John puffed his cheeks, blowing out a breath. "We done?"

  "That's all I'm gonna say. I promised your mother." His dad walked out of the barn.

  Unfazed, John watched him walk away. In truth, his dad had thought no better of Julie, had considered her a gold digger from the first. Perhaps he hadn't been wrong about Julie, but he was way off base with his negative opinion of Isabelle. The only things Julie and Isabelle had in common were they were both female and they both had brown eyes.

  Only a clone of Katie Bradshaw, John suspected, would please his dad. It dawned on John that Isabelle came close.

  By the time he retrieved Isabelle and Ava from his mom's kitchen and started the drive home, Isabelle had grown even more distant. They reached her house and he began to help her take her gear to the tack room. "I don't need your help. I can do it," she told him.

  His mom had given Ava some books and a couple of videos. To John's relief, she took them and skedaddled to the house, giving him an opportunity to corner Isabelle in the tack room. "What's wrong, Isabelle?"

  She whirled to face him, fury burning in her eyes. "I'll tell you what's wrong. Why don't you want me to meet your kids? You think I'm not good enough?"

  Shocked, John blinked and tucked back his chin. "Where'd you get that idea?"

  "You didn't even tell me you'll be spending your time with them all summer."

  He shook his head. "I wasn't ready to discuss it."

  "You intended to hide me under a rock for three months?"

  "No. I want you to meet them. When it's right."

  "I wonder if you've been honest with me, John."

  "I haven't lied to you. About anything."

  "By omission, John. By omission. I saw how your dad behaved toward us. I should've known better than to go to his house. I know he's always been friends with Art Karadimos." Her eyes teared up, but she sniffed and dashed them with her sleeve.

  Lord, he hated to see her cry. Bewildered, he moved closer to her. "What do you think I haven't told you?"

  "What you're planning with your kids, how you feel about your divorce. Any of it."

  "I haven't discussed my divorce with anybody, Isabelle. I'm still sorting through it."

  She began to pace the tack room. "What's to sort through? If it's over, then it's over. That's what I'm talking about."

  Was she jealous? Did she think he harbored hidden feelings for his ex-wife? He put his hands on her shoulders and stopped her pacing. "Isabelle, isn't it enough that I don't have anything to do with Julie except for the kids?"

  "It isn't her. It's me. I don't want to be walked out on ever again. Getting past it took too damn long. It was too damn hard." She stepped away from his hands. "I'd rather be alone for the rest of my life than go through that again."

  "Don't you think the same applies to me? Hell, I didn't even know my wife had a boyfriend until I walked into my own house and found the sonofabitch in my bed."

  She stopped pacing and stared at him, wide-eyed. He hadn't intended to blurt out that information, but now that he had, he felt compelled to continue. "I came home a day early from the show in Pendleton and—" He stopped, his explanation overcome by the memory of walking up the hall and seeing the bedroom door that wasn't usually closed tightly shut, then opening it and seeing a man he didn't know scrabbling for his pants. He had tried for a time to drown the memory in alcohol. To this day, when it came back to him, self-doubt assailed him.

  "You loved her, then."

  "I don't know. I just believe when a woman gives birth to your kids, it has to mean something.... Then again, maybe not. It sure didn't mean as much to her as it did to me."

  She crossed her arms and looked at the tack room floor. "I'm sorry. I don't know what came over me. I shouldn't have—" She straightened and started for the doo
r, but stopped and looked at him over her shoulder. "Just to satisfy my curiosity, what did you, um... do?"

  "Well, not what I wanted to, 'cause I couldn't see spending the rest of my life in jail. I punched the wimpy sonofabitch in the jaw and threw his naked ass outside."

  Isabelle blinked. "You're kidding."

  He saw mirth in her eyes. He couldn't share in the humor, but he guessed the scene did have its funny side. "Julie gathered up his clothes and took them to him."

  "Where were your kids?"

  "At her sister's. When I cooled off and came to my senses, I figured out the guy had been at my house all weekend and that wasn't the first time he'd been in my bed. Hell, for all I know, he used my toothpaste and my spare razor. The signs were there. I was just too preoccupied to see them."

  "So you got a divorce."

  "Not right away. We went to marriage counseling."

  Isabelle's eyes questioned him.

  "Nope, didn't work. What she said she wanted was for me to quit rodeoing. But what she really wanted was that dude she'd brought into my bed. The counselor figured that out in two visits. Deep down, I already knew it, too. Julie always believed she was a cut above the rodeo crowd."

  Isabelle closed her eyes, frowned and pinched the bridge of her nose. "Damn," she said under her breath, then looked up at him. "Come on over to the house. I'll cook supper."

  Confused, he cocked his head and gave her a narrow-lidded look. "I don't know. Are you mad?"

  "No. But I will be if you don't stay and eat supper.... And if I don't get to meet your kids."

  Women. If he lived to be a hundred, he would never understand them. As they walked, he looped his arm around her shoulder and tucked her close to his side. "Don't be mad at me, okay? I'm the only member of my family to ever get a divorce. I'm still coming to terms with the whole mess. As for my kids, they'll be lucky to get to spend time with you."

  * * *

  Isabelle cooked her mother's chicken-fried steak recipe for supper, one she knew from memory. Along with canned green beans, frozen biscuits and cream gravy she made from scratch, the meal turned out edible. Or, at least it appeared so because John ate until he was stuffed and had no room for the brownies Ava had made. Ava wrapped some up for him to take home.

  They cleared off the table and played Trivial Pursuit, where John's competitive nature manifested itself. Ava challenged him with a vengeance and he barely defeated her. Isabelle's daughter had a competitive streak almost as fierce as her mother's. Isabelle was lost in a game like Trivial Pursuit, so she mostly worked at providing refreshments and participated as an "also-ran."

  After John left, she lay awake under the blue patchwork quilt staring out at the three-quarter moon that looked like she could reach up and pluck it from the star-dusted sky. The visual of a furious John throwing a naked man out of his house made her grin in the dark. John was over six feet tall, must weigh two-ten or two-twenty and was solid as a rock. He was so easygoing she couldn't imagine him in a temper fit, but she could imagine it would be a terrifying sight.

  As a caring, sensitive man, he must have been crushed by his ex-wife cheating on him, especially if he loved her.

  Cheating spouses. She could never have cheated on Billy and they weren't even married. She'd had chances, though. The bored, rich horse crowd was notorious for its swinging lifestyle. More than one millionaire had made her an offer many sane and practical women couldn't and didn't refuse.

  It would have served Billy right if she had taken up with someone else, but that kind of disloyalty didn't live within her soul. Even after his being a player became common knowledge, she still couldn't turn her back on him. He was the father of her only child and they had been together since she was fourteen years old. His presence had been as much a part of her as one of her limbs. She had foolishly thought that at some point he would wake up and come to his senses. Stupid. And a waste of time.

  Now that the shock of his leaving had passed and the fear for her and Ava's welfare consumed only half her waking moments instead of all of them, she knew at the ripe old age of thirty-five that she hadn't been in love with Billy. Oh, she had cared about him, but more than anything he had been a means to an end. She didn't like thinking of herself as having used him, but if she hadn't had him to take her away from Callister, she couldn't guess what might have been her fate. Even if she hadn't loved him in a bells-ringing, heavens-opening kind of way, she owed him gratitude for rescuing her.

  What she felt for John Bradshaw was different. Just seeing him striding across the corral, his chaps flapping, his spurs clinking, filled her heart to its brim. His very touch turned her into one of those silly, giggling females who had always revolted her. And sex. He was hot and skilled and earthy in all the ways she liked. And gentle and loving and sensitive in all the ways any woman would like.

  She had stepped out on a long limb. After swearing to stay as far away from men as possible, and cowboys especially, here she was, bowled over and knocked flat by the ultimate cowboy...

  ...Who was also the county sheriff.

  And that fact might be the most vexing. The law and the Rondeaus had always had a borderline relationship.

  Her thoughts veered to Paul. She hadn't seen him in two weeks, but his boat was missing from its parking place beside his travel trailer. She presumed he was fishing, which was a good thing. He had always found himself—or lost himself—in the vastness of the outdoors.

  * * *

  John spent a busy week. He settled two domestic disputes, investigated a horse-neglect case, accompanied the fire truck to fight a house fire. Plus, he had gone out to the vet's clinic and assisted the vet and Izzy in breeding two more of Luke's mares and Trixie. Come next spring, blue horses would be popping up all over the county. He and Isabelle had also managed to sneak in a lunchtime quickie in his apartment.

  As usual, he ended his workday Sunday with the calendar, making up a work schedule. He had put a small red mark on the twenty-seventh, the day he calculated Izzy would get her next period. Not that he expected her not to.

  Only ten days had passed since they had been so careless. Nine more days to wait and worry.

  They hadn't discussed the "what if" once. She didn't seem the least bit anxious. He tried to let her casual attitude seep into him, but the possibility of her being pregnant did more than give him pause. It forced him to give serious consideration to what he wanted for the rest of his life.

  His feeling for Julie had been all tangled up with devotion to the two kids they brought into the world. While he loved the kids, the emotion with Julie had no solid seat in his soul. The feeling he had for Isabelle was as pure as it had been when he was fifteen, a part of him, like the marrow in his bones. Isabelle had been the one from the first day he started paying attention to the differences between boys and girls. Without knowing it, she had been the first to teach him that plumbing so different from his brought a passel of pain as well as pleasure.

  He tried to visualize a child he and Izzy would produce. Would he or she be athletic and competitive like him and Izzy? Or brainy like Ava? All that intelligence in Ava's head had to come from Izzy. None of the Bledsoes had ever been especially smart. Would his and Izzy's kid have a mop of wild red hair and coffee-colored eyes or would they be tow-headed like his boys?

  He wouldn't call himself a romantic, but some things were meant to be. And if it was meant for him and Isabelle to be together, then it could also be meant for them to have kids. He couldn't quarrel with the possibility.

  Chapter 20

  The warble of the phone brought John awake from a sound sleep. His clock radio showed eleven thirty and caller ID showed the Rusty Spur Saloon. John groaned and answered. The bartender on the other end of the line reported a loud disturbance and a fight brewing.

  Still half asleep, John got to his feet and pulled on the clothes he had removed earlier, strapped on his pistol and grabbed a jacket. As a last-minute thought, he plucked a pair of handcuffs he had rarely used off t
he coatrack by the back door. If the bartender thought things were bad enough to call him at nearly midnight, somebody could be going to jail.

  He headed out, thinking about his own drinking days. Since yow-yowing and fighting hadn't been his style, he hadn't realized how much trouble drunks could be.

  He reached the bar in a matter of minutes, but too late to prevent the fight. Elbowing through the throng of onlookers and agitators, he saw the two combatants on the wooden floor, grunting, flailing fists and tearing at each other's clothing. To John's dismay, he recognized one of them as Izzy's little brother. The opponent was a stranger.

  On a surge of adrenaline, John waded into the fray, gripped a fistful of the back of Paul's shirt and hauled him to his feet. The tree-faller blindly threw a fist. John ducked, but the wild blow glanced off his jaw.

  Fuck! John flung him against the bar. "Paul! Cool it!"

  John swerved his attention to the other man, whose nose was gushing blood, making a bib pattern on the front of his light-colored shirt. The guy teetered on his feet, his arms hanging as if disconnected from his shoulders.

  "You need a doctor?" John asked him.

  The stranger staggered to the edge of the bar and the bartender thrust a towel across the bartop. The injured man used it to cover his nose and dragged himself to the far end of the bar. Anybody could see he had lost the will to fight and he was outmatched. Paul wasn't a big guy, but his body was compact and muscular. Years of wielding a heavy chain saw and wrestling behemoth trees had made him strong as a Titan and John had always suspected the guy had rattlesnake blood in his veins.

  A cut on Paul's cheek was bleeding slightly. He swiped it with the back of his hand, smearing a crimson stain across his face. "Just 'cause you're fuckin' my sister," he cried, "don't mean you can push me around."

  Jee-zus Christ! Paul was shit-faced drunk. John restrained himself from punching his mouth. He gripped his shirt in his fist, shoved him down onto a barstool and pressed him back against the bar's edge. "Goddammit, I said cool it!" John turned to the other man. "What's your na—?"