Her Texas Lawman

by Stella Bagwell

  As soon as the words passed her lips, she could feel his whole body tense and withdraw from her, as though it had suddenly dawned on him that she was a woman he didn’t really know.

  “Lovers.” He repeated the word as though he was rolling the taste of it around in his mouth and wasn’t finding it particularly palatable. “That’s hardly the same as man and wife.”

  Easing back from him, she saw his blue eyes were full of hurt. The sight tightened her throat, making it difficult to breathe. “No. Not exactly,” she huskily agreed. “But we would be together. And it would give us—me—time to think about the future.”

  Time. Of course she needed time. The practical side of Ripp understood that he was rushing her. But he’d hoped that she was as in love with him as he was with her, that she was straining at the bit to be his wife as much as he was raring to be her husband. Obviously she wasn’t feeling anywhere near the devotion he felt toward her. The realization left him feeling as though he’d just been abandoned in a dry desert without any hope for a drink of water.

  Time was something Pamela had asked for, but a stack of calendar days hadn’t fixed their relationship, he remembered. And once his mother, Frankie, had walked out of his and Mac’s young lives, time had done nothing to bring her back or make her decide that she actually loved or wanted her children. If Lucita didn’t want to marry him now, time would hardly change her mind.

  “Yeah,” he said, his voice shadowed with disappointment. “I understand. Marriage is serious. You don’t want to leap in without thinking.” The way he just had, he thought glumly.

  She continued to study his face and Ripp hoped she couldn’t see how much she’d just crushed him. If he was going to survive, he needed a little pride to keep him afloat.

  “You say you understand,” she said quietly, “But I get the feeling that you’re—upset with me.”

  Moving away from her, he swung his legs over the side of the bed and reached for his jeans. As he stood and tugged them up over his naked hips, he said, “No. I’m not upset.” He did his best to chuckle, to prove to her and himself that he was as happy as a toad in a summer downpour. “Why would I be? A beautiful woman is sitting naked in my bed. I’d be crazy to be upset.”

  “Then why are you putting your clothes on?” she questioned.

  Glancing over his shoulder, he saw that a puzzled frown marked her forehead.

  Why was he pulling on his jeans? Ripp wondered. Any sane, red-blooded man wouldn’t leave a sexy, willing woman alone in his bed. But once she’d brushed his marriage proposal to some murky place in the far-off future, making love to her had taken on a different light. It didn’t mean the same thing and the realization jarred him like the hard shake of his father’s disciplining hand. The special commitment and devotion he’d felt when he’d taken her into his arms had all been one-sided.

  Maybe, like her, he needed time, too. To figure out how long his heart could live on nothing but hope.

  “I—I’ve decided you were right,” he told her, each word rasping against his throat like a piece of barbed wire. “It wouldn’t look very good for either of us if I took you back to the Sandbur at daylight. We’d better start back pretty soon.”

  Pulling his eyes away from her, he stared into the dark shadows of the bedroom and as he pulled up the zipper on his jeans, he could hear the rustle of her movements on the bed.

  After a moment Ripp realized that she was gathering up her clothes from where he’d tossed them only minutes earlier. How fleeting that ecstasy had been, he thought. Earlier, he’d been soaring like a bird, but it hadn’t taken him long to fall flat.

  “If that’s what you want,” she said, her voice muffled as she tugged her top over her head.

  God, no. It wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted to take her into his arms, make love to her over and over. He wanted to hold on to her. Like any man wanted to hold on to the thing he loved the most.

  Was this the way his father had felt when he’d watched his beloved wife slowly slipping from his fingers?

  Reaching for his shirt, he cleared his throat. “I, uh, just remembered I have something to do early in the morning. We’ll get together again. Soon.”

  Suddenly she was standing in front of him and Ripp felt his heart melting all over again as she placed her palm against the middle of his chest.

  “Ripp, whatever you’re thinking, just know that you and tonight are special to me.”

  Special. Was that the same as love? He looked down at the floor and let out a long, heavy breath. “Well, it’s like you said, we need time to see what happens.”

  Chapter Eleven

  The Cattle Call Café was a country-style restaurant located in downtown Goliad, a short distance away from the courthouse. The interior was a long rectangular room with a high ceiling fitted with a number of bladed fans to stir the smoke of cooking grease and cigarettes that mingled with the twangy country tunes coming from a radio.

  A long bar lined with swiveling stools crossed one end of the room, while the remaining area was fitted with round wooden tables and chairs. The walls were plastered with historical photos and paintings depicting the local area, some of them going as far back as Colonel Fannin’s battle at Coleto Creek during the Texas war for Independence.

  The café had long been a gathering place for townsfolk, local ranchers and lawmen. Down through the years, Ripp had enjoyed many meals here with his father and brother. He’d sat with Sheriff Travers and his fellow deputies as they’d gobbled down hurried lunches or sometimes were even forced to race away before their plates were ever placed upon the table.

  On most days when his work allowed him to stay in town, Ripp ate lunch at the Cattle Call and sometimes had dinner there in the evenings when he wanted to treat himself to a good steak. But this evening he’d not entered the restaurant to treat himself. This evening he wanted to avoid going home to an empty house. He didn’t want to remember how it had felt to eat at the kitchen table with Lucita sitting across from him. He didn’t want to imagine her smiling face or how just having her in the house had made it feel special.

  Damn it, for the past week since he’d made love to the woman of his dreams, it had been a struggle to get his mind to focus on anything other than her. A hundred times he’d wanted to pick up the phone and punch in her number. He wanted to hear her say she was as eager to see him again as he was to see her. He wanted to hear her confess that she loved him and couldn’t live another day without him. But the only time that ever happened was in his dreams.

  “Thank God. I was about to decide I’d lost my tracking skills. I’ve been calling your cell phone for the past two hours and looking all over the place for you. I finally thought to look in here.”

  At the sound of his brother’s voice, Ripp glanced up to see a smiling Mac pulling out the chair next to him.

  Ripp grunted out a greeting. “Probably because you got hungry.”

  “Have you already ordered?” Mac asked as a young waitress approached their table.

  “Yeah. Catfish and hush puppies.”

  “I’ll have the same, sugar.” He gave the waitress a wink, then added, “and about a gallon of sweet tea to go with it.”

  The petite brunette smiled at Mac as she scribbled words on her order pad, then swished away from the table. Ripp rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. If he possessed half of his brother’s sex appeal Lucita would probably be sitting here beside him with a wedding band on her finger.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  Mac frowned. “What the hell kind of question is that? Every time I show up, you ask me what I’m doing. I’m going to have supper with my brother. That’s what I’m doing.”

  “Sorry if I sounded short. It’s just not your normal routine to show up around here on a Saturday night. Didn’t you have something better to do?”

  “Than see my brother? No.”

  The waitress returned with Mac’s glass of iced sweet tea. Ripp watched the two of them exchange coy glances b
efore she finally turned and headed over to another table.

  “Maybe you should ask her out,” Ripp suggested, his tone sardonic. “She’s certainly giving you all the right signals.”

  Mac grinned. “Aw, that’s just a little minor flirtation, brother. She’s got a boyfriend.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “She told me. The first time I asked her out.”

  Mac laughed as though he found the situation more than funny. But when Ripp didn’t join him, his expression sobered.

  “What’s the matter, brother? You ought to know when I’m joking.”

  He felt awful about his strained situation with Lucita, but he hardly knew what to do about fixing his state of mind. “I guess I just don’t find anything about women amusing just now.”

  “Oh. Well, they sure as hell aren’t to be taken seriously. If you ever let that happen, then you’re in trouble. Brenna taught me that much.”

  Mac’s comment reminded Ripp that he wasn’t the only McCleod who’d been hurt by a woman. It had taken Mac years to get over his divorce. And then there was their father, Owen, and their mother, Frankie. She’d simply left their father with two young sons. Another man had turned her head and she’d never looked back. As far as Ripp knew, his mother had not once acknowledged the family she’d left behind in any way ever since. It was almost as if the woman had died. And as far as Ripp was concerned, she was dead.

  Fiddling with the handle on his coffee cup, he said, “Yeah, I guess she did.”

  Mac took a long drink of iced tea, then glanced at Ripp over the rim of his glass. “I went by the Dry Gulch. The Cotton Pickers are playing tonight. I thought you might be there enjoying yourself. You deserve it after the long hours you put in on that Sanchez case.”

  Long hours with Lucita, he thought. Long hours of watching the agony she’d gone through and desperately wanting to make everything right for her. He’d fallen in love with her along the way and for some idiotic reason he’d believed she’d reciprocated that love.

  “I wasn’t in the mood for music,” Ripp glumly replied.

  “Humph,” Mac grunted with amusement. “What about drinking and dancing?”

  Releasing a long sigh, Ripp propped his elbows on the table and leaned toward his brother. “I’m not in the mood for that, either. But you don’t need my company to go have a little fun.”

  The glower on Mac’s face said he was getting peeved with Ripp’s negative attitude.

  “I wasn’t asking you to go with me. I’m a big boy. I can go out on the town at night without you watching over me. I might get into a little trouble, but what the hell. A man that always plays it safe might as well be dead.” He turned a narrow eye on Ripp. “By the way, you look like you’re headed toward the cemetery yourself. What’s the matter? Been off your feed?”

  “Nothing is the matter with me.” Ripp’s tone was clipped. Except that he was mixed-up and crazy. He should have phoned Lucita today and asked her for a date this evening. He figured by now she’d been expecting him to either call or show up at the ranch. But for some reason his heart had stubbornly refused to let him make contact with her, which didn’t make sense. He ached like hell to be with her, yet at the same time he couldn’t help but wonder if he was wasting his time, hanging on to a dream that might never come true. Just like the dream that his mother would one day reappear and throw her arms around him. He’d been waiting for twenty-nine years and it still hadn’t happened.

  Thankfully, before Mac could make any sort of reply, the waitress arrived with their meal. She placed a platter of fish in front of Ripp, then another in front of Mac.

  “I had the cook rush yours, honey,” she said in a syrupy voice to Mac. “Y’all want anything else?”

  Mac reached out and coiled a hand around her tiny wrist. “Yeah. You goin’ to the Dry Gulch after work tonight?”

  She looked at his hold on her, then grinned as she lifted her gaze back to his. “I wouldn’t miss it.”

  “What about that boyfriend of yours?” Mac asked. “He’s not gonna come around and ruin things, is he?”

  Ripp wanted to pick up a piece of fish and throw it right at his brother’s goofy smile.

  “Don’t worry about him,” the waitress said in a hushed voice. “I’ve already sent him packing.”

  Someone across the room began to bang a spoon against their empty coffee cup. The waitress hurried off and Ripp threw another hopeless look at his brother.

  “That’s just what she’s going to do to you, too, Mac. Toss you away like an old dishrag when she’s done with you.”

  Mac laughed. “Sure she will. But I’ll enjoy myself on the way to the trash heap.”

  “I don’t understand you,” Ripp said with a shake of his head. “Brenna should have taught you better than to play games with women.”

  Mac’s face went sober as he picked up his fork and stabbed it into a piece of crisp catfish. “The key word is play, Ripp. If a man never takes a woman seriously, he’ll be just fine.”

  Ripp looked down at the plate of food in front of him. He needed to eat. His stomach was gnawing, but his appetite was as dead as his spirits.

  “What’s wrong now?” Mac asked after several moments passed. “You’re not eating.”

  Ripp purposely lifted a bite of food to his mouth and began to chew. “I’ve broken your cardinal rule,” he said sullenly. “And I don’t know what to do about it.”

  Mac’s brow furrowed with confusion as he turned his attention to the plate of food. “What are you talking about?”

  “Getting serious about a woman,” Ripp said bluntly. “I did—I have—and it hasn’t worked. At least, it hasn’t worked the way I wanted it to.”

  “Hell, it’s been years since Pam walked out on you. Can’t you get over that dumb female? She was a loser, Ripp. She didn’t know when she had a good thing. You’re better off without her.”

  “I’m not talking about Pam.”

  This brought Mac’s head up and he stared in wonder at Ripp. “You mean—the Sandbur heiress? Lucita? You’ve fallen for her? Damn, Ripp! What were you thinking? She’s not in our caliber.”

  “You’re wrong there. Lucita isn’t a snob. That isn’t the problem.”

  Confusion wrinkled Mac’s forehead. “Then what is the problem? You asked her out and she refused?”

  A bitter laugh gurgled up from Ripp’s throat. “Mac, if only that were the case. I can deal with being turned down for a date. This was—things got way beyond asking Lucita for a date. I asked her to marry me.”

  Mac was so flabbergasted that he fell back against his chair and let out a long breath. “Well, you’ve surprised the hell out of me, brother. I realize you’ve been getting close to her son, but I didn’t know you’d been getting that close to her!”

  “Yeah, well, I guess I surprised myself. I don’t know what made me blurt out the marriage word to her. It was stupid. And way too soon to say it to her. But I…love her, Mac.”

  For once his brother appeared seriously concerned. “I take it she turned you down.”

  “Flatly. But she wanted us to continue on with our—relationship.” Ripp wasn’t about to use the word lover with Mac, even though his brother’s mind had probably already leaped to that conclusion. “I agreed and tried to be understanding with her. But I’m miserable, Mac.”

  “Why?” Mac asked with obvious dismay. “Hell, be glad she isn’t cutting you off completely. After a while you can change her mind about marriage.”

  Now that he’d released some of his pent-up feelings, Ripp realized he was hungry and he began to fork the fish up to his mouth. Between bites, he said, “I’ve been telling myself that exact thing, Mac. But I just feel so damned hurt. I wanted her to—” He paused, looking down at his food as he shook his head. “When I talked to her about marriage I guess I wanted her to…cling to me, to tell me she couldn’t bear to be away from me for any amount of time. Because that’s the way I feel about her. It didn’t happen and now I feel like a
fool.”

  Mac thoughtfully regarded Ripp’s glum features. “Ripp, you can’t hurry love. Or a woman. From what you’ve said, one man has already put her through hell. Give her time to realize you’re not going to break her heart.”

  Break her heart! He’d told the woman that he loved her! She ought to know he’d never do anything to hurt her.

  “In other words, be happy with any sort of crumbs of affection that she’s willing to give me,” Ripp said with frustration.

  “You want to hear what I really think about all this?” Mac asked after a moment.

  Ripp looked wearily across the table at his brother. “You might as well tell me. You will eventually, anyway.”

  “I think you’re suffering from a bad case of pride.”

  Ripp sputtered and nearly spewed coffee across the table. “Pride?” he finally managed to choke out. “How could you say that? I don’t have any pride. Pam whacked it to pieces and now Lucita has stomped those bits into the dirt. I don’t know why I was stupid enough to think I’d found a woman who might actually want to make a life with me.”

  “Lucita isn’t Pam,” Mac pointed out.

  “It’s not just Pam. Our mother—”

  “Is gone,” Mac interrupted sharply. “She has nothing to do with now—with you. Unless you let her.”

  The next morning was Sunday. Lucita attended church with her family, then made a light lunch for herself and Marti.

  Her son had been very quiet throughout the meal. Once it was over he’d gone to the living room to watch television instead of going outside to enjoy the warm afternoon as he normally would on the weekends. Lucita was very concerned about his withdrawn behavior. Right after the kidnapping had been resolved, he’d appeared to be returning to his regular self. But now he seemed to be sliding backward and she was afraid to admit that the change in him was a result of Ripp’s absence.

  Since that night they’d made love, Lucita had neither seen nor heard from him. Not that she’d expected him to contact her the next day, but she should have heard from him before now. She could only believe that he’d changed his mind about the two of them being together. He’d been very withdrawn after she’d explained that she couldn’t marry him anytime soon. Maybe he’d decided she wasn’t worth waiting for, she thought sadly. Still, she’d never imagined he would hold any of that against Marti. He’d promised her son that he would see him soon, but soon was quickly coming and going.