Lawman's Redemption

by Marilyn Pappano

  “I’m going to get changed, then start dinner. If you want something to drink, help yourself, and make yourself comfortable in the living room.”

  He went through the door that led down a short hallway to his bedroom, closed the door and changed into jeans and a T-shirt. In the walk-in closet, he dropped his uniform in the laundry basket on the closet floor, then hung his gun belt on a hook inside the door and laid his pistol on the shelf above his head…for all of five seconds. On second thought, he shoved a rodful of clothing aside to reveal a small wall-mounted gun rack. It held two rifles and a shotgun—all it was built for—but the drawer underneath was empty except for a few photographs. He slid his pistol inside, then hesitantly picked up the photos. He didn’t look at them, though. He knew their images well—his grandmother, Logan, Sandra, himself.

  And Les. Her mother had called her Alessandra, even then, when she was hardly bigger than a wish. He had always preferred sweetheart.

  He returned the pictures to the drawer and locked it, then left the bedroom and went down the hall that passed the bathroom and the room he used for storage, then into the living room.

  Les had plopped down in the middle of the sofa, her feet were planted on the coffee table, and she was flipping through the television channels.

  He stood at the end of the couch and waited for her to acknowledge him. When she didn’t, he moved between her and the television. That earned him a hateful look.

  “I, uh… Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean… I’m just sorry, okay?”

  She stared at him but didn’t speak.

  “There’s pop in the refrigerator and cookies and chips in the cabinet. Dinner will be ready in an hour or so.”

  On his way back to the kitchen, Brady opened his mouth wide, then wiggled his jaw side to side. He’d spent less than ninety minutes in Les’s presence, and already he’d ground a few layers off his teeth. By the time she went home to Texas, he was going to be in need of serious dental work.

  Hallie was still in the kitchen, drinking a diet pop and gazing out the window over the sink. When he stopped beside her to wash his hands, she shifted a few inches away.

  “You have a nice view,” she remarked.

  He didn’t look out the window. He saw the pasture out there every day, and had fallen into the habit most evenings of walking out after dark and feeding apples to the horses that grazed there. Instead he glanced down at her. “Yeah, I do.”

  She was dressed in pastels today—shorts in pale peach and a shirt in peach and mint-green stripes. With her hair in a ponytail that bounced every time she moved, she looked young and innocent, as if her life hadn’t gone to hell on her a couple of times already.

  He wondered how she managed that. He hadn’t felt either young or innocent since he was five years old.

  “I assume we’re having spaghetti.” She gestured toward the food on the counter. “Can I help?”

  “Would you rather chop onions or open cans?”

  “I’ll chop.” She washed her hands, then accepted the cutting board, knife and bag of onions. “Do you have a housekeeper?”

  “For a place this small?”

  “So you cook, clean, do your own laundry and shop for groceries. I’m amazed some smart woman hasn’t snatched you up.”

  “I haven’t been available for snatching,” he said dryly.

  “I’ve heard plenty of men say the same thing, and they had rings on their fingers and their signatures on the pre-nups before they even knew they were in danger.”

  “Did you and Max sign a pre-nup?”

  “You bet. His lawyer would have had him declared incompetent if he’d tried to marry without one.”

  “But you still got the house and the Mercedes.”

  “He offered the house to speed things along. As for the car, it was a birthday present. It was a little extravagant for Max, but I thought it was just proof of how much he loved me. Turned out he just felt guilty about the bimbo.”

  “And you were never tempted to drive it into his pool or fill it with concrete or anything?”

  “Tempted…but, contrary to popular opinion, too pragmatic.”

  “Popular opinion’s not too popular,” he commented. “Or accurate.”

  Her only response was a faint smile.

  He emptied a half dozen cans of diced tomatoes and tomato sauce into a Dutch oven, added sugar, then seasoned it with salt, garlic and oregano. Usually he added Italian sausage sautéed with onions and bell peppers, but this time they would have to settle for just the vegetables.

  Once the sauce was simmering, they returned to the living room. Hallie sat on the sofa, and Brady chose the easy chair at one end. “So…what did you guys do this afternoon?”

  Hallie looked at Les, who was pretending to be engrossed in a rerun of “The Andy Griffith Show.” When the kid ignored her, Hallie gave a gentle tug to one of her purple spikes, then said, “I rented a house.”

  A feeling oddly akin to panic tightened in his gut. “You’re only staying a few more weeks. Why would you go to all that trouble?”

  She gave him a chiding look. “It wasn’t any trouble. For half the money I was paying at Motel Le Dump for one room, I’ve got five rooms and a huge bath. And it’s just far enough outside town to be peaceful and quiet. As far as I can figure, my nearest neighbor is a grumpy undersheriff who likes to keep to himself, so he shouldn’t be any trouble, either.”

  He frowned, considering the houses he could claim as neighbors. There weren’t many, and all of them were occupied except… “You rented the Tucker place?”

  She poked her elbow in Les’s ribs. “It’s that sharp mind and those brilliant powers of deduction that made him become a cop.”

  “Brilliant like Barney Fife,” Les replied with a snort.

  Brady chose to ignore the insult. “When are you moving in?”

  “The furniture we picked out this afternoon will be delivered tomorrow, and I plan on sleeping in my very own bed tomorrow night.”

  So tomorrow night—and every other night she stayed in Buffalo Plains—she would be sleeping only a five-minute hike away. How easy was it going to be for him to sleep then?

  Not at all.

  Abruptly Les muted the television. “Did you bring my stuff?”

  He was still thinking about Hallie in her bed and him in his own, so close but apart. Blinking, he focused on Les. “Your…Yeah, it’s in the truck.”

  “Can I have it?” she asked with exaggerated patience, as if that had been her question all along.

  If the duffel were in his pickup, he would toss her the keys and let her get it. But it was in his sheriff’s vehicle, along with handcuffs, Flex-cuffs, his radio, his shotgun and plenty of other stuff he’d prefer she not get into. “I’ll get it.”

  It took him maybe two minutes to get the bag and return. She was waiting impatiently at the end of the sofa, and as soon as he set it down, she hefted it over her shoulder, then looked around. “Where can I put it?”

  Feeling helpless, he looked around, too. “I told you, I have only one bedroom. You’ll have to sleep in here.”

  “Oh, that’s just great.” She flung out her arm to point at the closed door across the hall. “What’s in there?”

  “Just stuff.” It had once been a guest room, but when he found the time, he intended to knock out the wall and enlarge the living room. What did he need with an extra bedroom? Logan was the only relative he could face without the very real threat of violence, and the chances that he would come knocking on Brady’s door after seventeen years were nil. His only friends were Reese and Neely, who had their own place. He never brought women home with him, and the odds of him ever having a family of his own were slim.

  Slimmer this morning than they were tonight.

  “I’m fourteen years old,” Les complained. “I can’t camp out on the sofa like…like a boy. I need my privacy!”

  “Maybe…” He glanced at Hallie, who looked as uncomfortable as he felt, then back at Les. “Maybe
tomorrow you can pick out a bed, and I-I’ll clear a space for it.”

  “You’re damn right you will!” Dropping the duffel to the floor with a thud, she stomped down the hall to the bathroom and slammed the door hard enough to send vibrations through the air.

  In the silence that followed, Hallie softly said, “Teenagers. Aren’t they lovely?”

  Chapter 5

  Exhaling loudly, Brady sat down at the opposite end of the sofa. “I’m not surprised Sandra raised a self-centered brat. She intended for her little girl to be a mirror image of herself, and since she’s a spoiled brat…”

  Hallie considered all the things she could say, and settled on the most innocuous. “You married a purple-haired, pierced and tattooed girl?”

  “No,” he said sullenly, then unexpectedly he grinned. Sort of. “I bet it drives Sandra crazy to look at her.”

  “And anything that drives Sandra crazy can’t be all bad, right?”

  The sort-of-a-grin faded. “Why is she so angry?”

  Hallie glanced toward the hallway, then stood up. “Let’s go see the horses.”

  On the way through the kitchen, he stirred the spaghetti sauce, then picked up a handful of apples and tossed one to her. She took a bite as she went out the back door and down three steps into the yard.

  “Hey, that’s for the horses.”

  “I know. I’m just making sure it’s nice and sweet for them.”

  His yard was broad and long and, she would bet, pretty much self-sufficient. He didn’t strike her as the kind to spend his time watering, fertilizing and feeding. Keeping it mowed appeared to be the extent of his green thumb. It was empty of garden-y touches like flower beds, but there was a nice variety of trees—oaks, maples, dogwoods, redbuds and mimosas, as well as a row of crape myrtles on one side and another of forsythia opposite. No doubt it was a pretty place in the spring, as well as the fall. Not that she would be around to see it.

  That thought shouldn’t dim her pleasure at being there that very moment, but it did. Should that worry her?

  They strolled back to the fence, where he gave a low whistle that brought five of the six horses grazing at a trot. Hallie leaned her arms on the top rail of the fence and watched while Brady fed apples to the first two horses.

  “You want to feed one?”

  “No, thank you.” She would much rather photograph him doing it, but her cameras were back at the motel. One of these days she would get back in the habit of taking them with her wherever she went.

  “You’re not afraid of horses, are you?”

  “Nope. I just don’t like horse slobber on my hand.” She waited until he’d run out of apples, then handed hers over. When it was gone, too, she shifted her gaze to him. “Les is angry with you, and from her perspective, she’s got very good reasons. You disappeared from her life when she was a baby. You never called her, never sent her birthday or Christmas cards, never invited her for a visit. You abandoned her, and you bet she’s angry about it.”

  “But I didn’t know—”

  “We’re talking her perspective, remember? She doesn’t know what her mother told you. All she knows is she’s grown up without a father, and now she’s finally met him and he’s not at all happy to see her. She came here most likely with some fantasy of telling you who she was and being welcomed with open arms into your home and your life. Instead, you’re treating her like some alien being who’s more a nuisance than anything else.”

  He turned so the fence was at his back and leaned there. Accepting that there were no more apples, all the horses but one wandered away. That one, black and beautiful, nudged Brady’s shoulder, then stuck his face right up next to Brady’s. Absently he reached up to pat the horse.

  Lucky animal.

  “I don’t even know how to talk to her,” he said at last.

  “Maybe you could start by telling her you’re glad she’s here, that you welcome this opportunity to get to know her.”

  “You mean, lie to her.”

  Hallie wasn’t sure which of them her heart ached for more—Les, who would deny it until she was blue in the face, but who desperately needed someone to love her, or Brady, who would also deny it, but who also needed badly to love and be loved.

  “Would it be such a lie?” she asked softly. “Does she have to prove she’s your daughter before you can care about her?”

  He didn’t answer, but stared off toward the house, his expression troubled and grim.

  Hallie touched his arm. “Have all the doubts and questions you want. But for the few days or weeks she’s here, can’t you pretend to be who she thinks you are? After all, she might really be your daughter, and if you lose her now, you may never get her back.”

  “And what if she’s not my daughter?”

  She shrugged. “If that proves to be the case, what will it have cost you? A little hope?”

  “And what will it cost her if I pretend to be her father and I’m not?”

  “At least she’ll find out you had a reason for abandoning her. That’s got to be better than believing she wasn’t good enough for her own father to love her.” After another moment’s silence, she asked, “How old was Les when Sandra told you you weren’t her father?”

  “Three months.”

  “Remember how you felt about her before that? She was your family. She depended on you to take care of her, and you were there for her. As far as she knows, that hasn’t changed. She’s still your family, and she still needs you.”

  “It’s damned hard to reconcile that kid in the house with the baby I used to get up with in the middle of the night for feedings,” he said dryly.

  “We all grow up. I used to be a prissy little girl who played with dolls and cried if someone looked cross-eyed at me. And look at me now.”

  He did, his gaze starting at the top of her head and working its way down to her Pearly Pink Pale toes, and in the process warming her almost beyond bearing. “Yeah, and now you’re a prissy woman who plays with men and can probably still turn on the waterworks at the drop of a pin.”

  “I’m not prissy,” she said primly, “and at this point in my life, I don’t even like men, but yes, I can cry on cue with the best of ’em.”

  “You like me.”

  Hallie studied him. Even though his mouth wasn’t smiling, there was mischief in his blue eyes. Brady Marshall was teasing. This must be a day for the record books.

  She screwed up her face as if his comment required serious thought. “Well…you are awfully cute, and you’re a very nice man when you aren’t so busy being distant, and you are definitely well worth playing with. Not that I make a habit of doing that.”

  “So why did you do it with me?”

  With a blush warming her cheeks, she pushed away from the fence and started back toward the house. “Refer back to the ‘you’re awfully cute’ part,” she said when he caught up with her.

  “That’s all it was? If you hadn’t liked the way I look, you would have chosen someone else?”

  “Why did you do it with me? You could have accepted the beer I offered and told me to get lost.”

  “Men don’t tell women like you to get lost.”

  “Every man I married did.”

  “You married fools.” He said the words with a dismissive shrug, as if it was so obvious a fact it hardly needed stating. The very matter-of-fact-ness of it salved some little bit of the ache deep inside her and smoothed over some little bit of the wound to her pride.

  She climbed the first step to the stoop, then turned to face him. The extra height put her eye-to-eye with him. “So that was it?” she asked, mimicking his own questions. “If you hadn’t liked the way I look, you would have gone home with someone else?”

  “I liked the way you looked, and the way you talked…” He took a step up, forcing her to move up one more, too. “And the way you felt, and the way you smelled…” He took one more step, and so did she. “And I liked the way you smiled, and the way it was obvious you didn’t make a habit of d
oing that sort of thing, and I especially liked the way you—”

  She was on the stoop, her back to the wall and the railing against her hip, and he was mere inches away, leaning closer, his mustache tickling her ear, when a disgusted snort broke the mood.

  “Jeez, act like adults, would you?” Les said, her voice dripping disdain. “That sauce on the stove smells like it’s burning, and someone named Willl-burrr is on the phone.” She did a creditable imitation of Mr. Ed on the name, then managed to sound pretty horsy as she stomped away.

  More than a little regretful, Hallie smiled at Brady, still close enough to send her heart rate into double time. “I’ll check the sauce. You talk to Wilbur.” Ducking underneath his arm, she opened the screen door and went into the kitchen. A moment later he followed, taking the call on the phone mounted near the hall door.

  She stirred the sauce, lowered the heat, then put a pot of water on to boil, and listened only partly to his conversation. Wilbur, she was able to pick up, was the night jailer and was apparently having trouble with one of his prisoners.

  It was the sort of homey scene she remembered from her childhood—her mother fixing dinner, her father talking. It was the kind of scene she’d envisioned herself a part of when she grew up and married, but she couldn’t recall a single time it had ever happened. The Madison family joke was that she’d made a career of marrying well if not wisely. Even in her first marriage, when she was only twenty, her husband had come with a large house, a housekeeper and a cook.

  She’d envisioned a lot of things about marriage when she was a kid. That she would have as many babies as they could afford. That she and the children would be the most important things in her husband’s life. That they would be together forever. That he would love her dearly, faithfully, endlessly.

  What a joke.

  Maybe someday her heart would harden enough that she could laugh at it.

  When he got off the phone, Brady buttered thick slices of French bread, sprinkled them with garlic and put them in the oven, then set the table in the dining room. Was he as sorry as she that Les had interrupted them outside? Would he have kissed her if she hadn’t? Would he try again? If he were any other man, she would say of course. After all, he’d spent two nights with her.