Sighing wearily, Lucita left the kitchen and walked out to the living room where Marti was lying on the floor, staring in a bored stupor at the television screen.
“What are you watching?”
“I don’t know.” He swiped a hand at the fringe of hair falling in his eyes. “Somethin’ about frogs and how they help to keep insects controlled.”
“Hmm. I didn’t know you were that interested in science programs.”
His shrug was halfhearted. “Well, there’s nothin’ else to watch. And I don’t have anything to do outside.”
Lucita eased down in a nearby armchair. “That’s not true. You could invite Gracia to go horseback riding. Or we could go for a swim in the pool.”
A grimace on his face, he continued to stare at the television screen. “Gracia is goin’ shopping with Aunt Juliet this afternoon. And I could never talk her out of goin’ ’cause she’s gonna get a new pair of boots.”
Smiling wanly, Lucita asked, “Is that why you’re so out of sorts? You want a new pair of boots, too?”
The frown on his round face deepened. “Shoot no! I don’t want that pointy-toed kind like she wants. They’re girlie. Besides, I got good boots.”
“Well then, I—”
Before Lucita could make another suggestion, Marti turned his head and looked at her. His expression was anxious, almost pleading and she had to fight the urge to pluck him off the floor and cradle him in her arms as though he was three years old instead of eleven.
“Mom, do you think Ripp will call soon?”
Lucita’s heart hurt so badly she wondered how it could keep beating. “I don’t know, son. I’m sure he’s been busy.”
Marti’s troubled gaze dropped to the floor. “Maybe he got mad at me about somethin’,” he mumbled. “Maybe I said somethin’ wrong.”
Rising from her seat, she squatted on her heels and rubbed a hand over her son’s thick hair. “Oh, Marti, of course Ripp didn’t get mad at you. He likes you a whole lot. I’m sure of that. And I—”
The ring of the telephone interrupted her words and for a moment she almost ignored it in order to finish what she considered a very important conversation with her son. But the ringing continued, intruding on the moment.
Sighing, she rose to her feet and walked over to an end table where a portable phone was sitting in its cradle.
Not bothering to look at the caller identification, she snatched it up and quickly answered, “Sanchez residence.”
“Lucita, it’s Ripp.”
The sound of his voice was both sweet and painful. She gripped the phone and tried to continue breathing in a normal way. But her heart had already jumped into overdrive and her knees began to quiver.
“Hello,” she replied. “How are you?”
“Great. Just great,” he said in an almost-cheery voice. “Is Marti there? I want to apologize to him for not calling sooner. I’ve been—tied up with work.”
And trying to avoid her, Lucita wondered. Perhaps he’d read her plea to take things slowly as a sign that she didn’t need to be close to him. How could she explain that her trust in men had been broken? She was terrified to even think of being a wife again, yet she very much wanted his love.
“Yes, he’s here. Would you like to speak with him?” she asked, keeping her voice as casual as possible.
“Yes. But I want to ask you something first.”
If possible, her grip on the phone tightened until her knuckles began to ache under the pressure. “All right. What is it?”
“I’d like to invite Marti over to my place for the afternoon. Is that okay with you?”
“Of course.”
There was a long, tense pause as she waited and hoped in the next moment he would invite her to join them. Instead he said, “Good. I thought it would be nice for the two of us to spend some time together. Just a male thing—you understand?”
Clearly. He was pointedly distancing himself from her. But why? He’d told her that he loved her. Had that all been a lie? Her throat was suddenly so tight that when she replied, it felt as though the words were ripping away part of her vocal cords. “Sure. I understand. And it will be good for Marti. I’ll put him on the phone.”
She walked over to Marti and with a smile she was far from feeling handed the phone down to him. “Here’s a person I think you’ll want to talk to.”
The minute her son heard Ripp’s voice, his face started shining like the sun bursting over the Sandbur on a spring morning. Nothing that she’d been able to do or say this past week had made him happy. Now one call from Ripp had him jumping to his feet and grinning like a mischievous elf.
Not waiting to hear Marti’s side of the conversation, Lucita slipped out of the room and wiped at the tears burning her eyes.
Later that evening, just before dark, Lucita finished her lesson plans for the coming school week and started wandering restlessly through the house, trying to keep her mind busy and direct it away from Ripp and Marti. Each passing minute in the empty house was only making it worse.
Finally, she decided to walk over to the big house to see if Juliet and Gracia were back from their shopping excursion. As she was going through the kitchen on her way out, she heard a truck pull to a stop in front of the house. If it was Ripp bringing Marti home, would he come in and speak to her?
Pausing in her tracks, she held her breath, waiting for the sound of footsteps while asking herself what she could possibly say to the man. That she still wanted them to be lovers?
Rolling her eyes with helpless despair, she thrust a hand through her tousled hair. Clearly that idea hadn’t pleased him. So where did that leave her? With empty, aching arms and a troubled mind, she told herself.
After a moment, she heard the door at the front of the house open and close and then her son’s footsteps running through the living room. No other sounds followed. It was painfully obvious to Lucita, even before she heard the engine of his truck fire back to life, that Ripp wasn’t coming in to see her. He didn’t want to see her.
“Mom? Mom! Where are you?”
Drawing in a bracing breath, she turned away from the door and headed toward the sound of her son.
Feigning a cheery expression, she called to him, “In the kitchen.”
In a matter of seconds Marti raced into the room, then skidded to a stop on the tiled floor. His face was a glow of smiles, a complete contradiction to the child she’d seen earlier this morning.
“Gee, Mom, why is it so dark in here?”
Surprised that she hadn’t noticed the shadows filling up the house, she looked around her. “Oh, I was about to go over to the big house to see if Juliet and Gracia have come home. I—uh—didn’t want to leave any unnecessary lights burning.”
Seeming to accept her reasoning, he said, “Well, Gracia and Aunt Juliet ain’t back yet. So come here and sit down. I wanta tell you everything that me and Ripp did at his place. You wanta hear about it, don’t you?”
He was so excited the words were tumbling from him like an auctioneer with a bidding war on his hands.
“Yes, I want to hear. Just quit saying ain’t, though, or I’m going to make you write it until you’ll wish you’d never heard the word before.”
Laughing at her threat, he tugged her over to the table. Feeling as though she’d just switched roles and was now the child, she sat in one of the chairs and after folding her hands in her lap, gave Marti her full attention.
“Okay,” she said, “First of all, did you have a good time?”
Of course the question was unneeded. It was quite evident that Marti was on top of the world. But she was going through all the motions for her son’s sake. Spending time with Ripp was important to him and she had to accept that, even if the man had left an ache in her heart.
“It was super, Mom. Just super. Ripp has a really neat place! And he has this dog named Chester. He’s black and he’s so smart you just wouldn’t believe it. I think he understands human talk.”
Lucita had nev
er mentioned to Marti that she’d visited Ripp’s home the weekend before. If things had ended on a happy note between the two of them, she would have loved telling Marti about Chester, Ripp’s carpentry work, his garden and all the other things she’d seen. But after their tepid parting that night, she’d decided it was best to keep her visit bottled inside with the rest of her memories.
“Did you like Chester?”
“Boy, did I! We wrestled and played fetch and all that kind of stuff. He ain—isn’t like the curs here on the ranch. He likes to have fun.”
Lucita smiled. “The curs are working dogs. They’re too tired from running cattle to want to race around and play.”
Marti’s freckled nose wrinkled up as he considered his mother’s comment. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. Chester’s just a pet and the curs are cowhands.”
Glad her son could respect the difference, she reached over and ruffled the top of his hair. “Are you hungry? There’s leftover spaghetti in the fridge.”
Marti rubbed his tummy. “I already had supper with Ripp. He fixed smoked sausage on the grill and we ate it on bread with mustard. And we ate ice cream right out of the container. He says that’s the way a real man eats ice cream. Did you know that, Mom?”
The only thing Lucita knew was that there were hot tears pouring down the sides of her heart, scalding it with pain. All she’d ever wanted was a family of her own, to know that she and her child were loved and wanted. Ultimately, Derek hadn’t cared about anyone but himself. His desertion and betrayal had torn deep wounds into both Lucita and Marti.
Yet now, as she watched the animated joy on her son’s face as he talked about Ripp, she realized that her son was brave enough to move on, to accept love where it was offered. She wasn’t that brave. And it was killing her.
“No. I didn’t know men had a special way of eating ice cream,” she said, pushing the words through her aching throat. “So what else did you and Ripp do, besides eat?”
“We went fishin’ in the pond! With cane poles—like people used to do way back in the olden days. The poles had corks and hooks and we had to dig worms in the garden to use for bait. Ripp says that sun perch love grub worms, so we found as many of them as we could.”
Smiling as best she could, Lucita asked, “Did you catch any?”
“Shoot yeah! I caught eight! Ripp cleaned them and put them in the freezer. He says we’ll cook ’em and eat ’em the next time I come to visit.”
So Ripp was planning to have a next time with Marti. She thanked God that he wasn’t going to let his differences with her stand in the way of his relationship with her son. Even if he didn’t understand her feelings, he seemed to recognize that Marti needed him. And she loved him for that.
Yes, she still loved him. The realization was something she was going to have to get used to, she told herself. Because she couldn’t see her heart changing or forgetting.
“Ripp has a brother and he’s a deputy, too. His name is Mac and Ripp says Mac has a boat—a big one. And that one of these days we’ll take it to the ocean and fish in the saltwater!” Marti tilted his head thoughtfully from side to side. “Wouldn’t that be somethin’? To have a brother who did the same thing as you? I think that would be neat. Really neat. Don’t you, Mom?”
Did Marti wish for a brother? Of course, he did. In the past, he’d often asked for a sibling. And for a long time, Lucita had promised to give him one. Yet the right time to get pregnant again had never seemed to come. And then her marriage had come to an abrupt end. Her plans, her hopes and dreams had all come crashing down. But that didn’t mean her life had ended. Did it?
“Well, I have two brothers,” she replied. “But I can’t see Matt or Cordero teaching geometry.”
That idea tickled Marti enormously and he giggled outright. “Uncle Matt would probably wear his chaps and spurs in the classroom and Uncle Cordero would have the students dancing and singing instead of working on math.”
“I think you have a clear picture of your uncles,” Lucita said with wry amusement.
His face suddenly sobering, Marti rose from the chair to stand at the edge of the table, closer to his mother. “Mom, this is—I’m gonna say somethin’ that’s probably stupid. But I’m gonna say it anyway.”
Caught by the sudden change in him, Lucita stared at the mixture of emotions parading across his boyish features. Happiness. Sadness. Confusion. Hope. It was as if she was seeing everything in her heart mirrored on her son’s face.
“You know that Faye Warner woman—she was creepy and she stunk like cigarettes and beer and I wasn’t sure if she’d hurt me or not. She said she wouldn’t hurt me, but she was a bad person and I figured she was lying. But I—now after everything is over with, I’m almost glad that she took me.”
Stunned now, Lucita’s eyes flew wide-open. “Marti!” she gasped. “Why? That doesn’t make sense? Were you angry with me or someone else here on the ranch and you wanted to get away? I don’t understand.”
One corner of his mouth dipped downward. “See, I told you it was gonna sound crazy. But if she hadn’t took me then Ripp wouldn’t have come looking for me. And I wouldn’t have him for a buddy now.”
Overwhelmed by her son’s admission, she reached over and rubbed a hand gently over Marti’s forearm. “You met Ripp before Faye Warner grabbed you at the rodeo. You didn’t act like you even liked him then.”
His gaze dropped guiltily to the floor as he shrugged both shoulders. “That was before I knew that Dad was dead—and that he’d done all those bad things.” He lifted his head to meet his mother’s troubled gaze. “Now I can see that Ripp—well, he could never be a bad person like Dad was. He won’t ever leave me. ’Cause he ain’t like that. I just know it.”
He won’t ever leave me.
Her son was willing to trust again. Love again. Why couldn’t she?
She was aching, wondering, trying to picture the future when Marti slapped a hand over his mouth in sudden dawning.
“Uh-oh, sorry, Mom. I forgot and said ain’t.”
Laughing through her tears, she reached to hug him to her. “This time I forgive you, son.”
Chapter Twelve
The next evening, in a room at the back of the sheriff’s department, Ripp sat on the edge of a metal chair while Officer Tava Hollis wound a bandage around his upper arm.
Only an hour earlier Ripp and the sheriff had responded to a domestic incidence on the south side of town. While the two of them listened to the woman’s version of the confrontation, Ripp had glanced around just in time to see the male offender armed with a butcher knife, running straight for the sheriff’s back.
Ripp hadn’t hesitated or even taken one split second to react. He’d lunged between the sheriff and the offender and wrestled the knife from his hand. But not before Ripp’s arm had taken a deep stab from the kitchen utensil.
“This needs stitches, Ripp,” the young woman exclaimed with a frown. “Before you head home, you’d better go by the emergency room and let a doctor deal with this.”
Ripp grunted. “It’s just a scratch and it hasn’t been that long ago since I got a tetanus shot. I’ll live.”
Tava clicked her tongue with disapproval. “A knife blade slicing into your bicep is not a minor scratch, Ripp. What happened anyway? Sheriff Travers didn’t say, except that you saved his life.”
Ripp released a mocking snort as she finished taping down one end of the thick gauze. “I was just doing my job. There wasn’t anything heroic about it. In fact, I should have noticed that the guy had slipped back inside. Any bastard that would beat his wife can’t be trusted.”
Grinning, the blond officer jerked her head toward the lockup area situated at the very back of the building. “He’s raising hell in his cell right now. Swearing he hasn’t done anything to warrant being jailed.”
Ripp let out a weary breath. Normally he felt good after he’d put a jerk like Ron Whitman behind bars. Society was safer. Women were safer. But this evening he only felt a weary
defeatism that was totally out of character for him.
Hell, who was he kidding. Ever since Lucita had turned down his marriage proposal, he’d felt utterly defeated. He’d felt lost and hurt. The same way he’d felt when his mother had walked out of the house with a pair of suitcases in her hands.
“Let him tell his story in court,” Ripp replied. “I can’t wait to testify and put the creep away for a long time.”
“There.” Tava patted the last piece of adhesive tape in place then stepped back to admire her handiwork. “That will fix you up until you can see a doctor.”
Rising from the chair, he strode to the door to exit the room. “Thanks, Tava. I’ll do that tomorrow—sometime.”
As he walked down the hallway to the sheriff’s office, Ripp could hear Tava yelling warnings at him about the cut getting infected. She meant well, but at the moment, Ripp could care less about the aching wound in his arm. The pain in his heart was much worse.
After a light rap against the sheriff’s door, Ripp stuck his head inside the small, messy office. His boss was on the telephone, but once he noticed Ripp, he made a motioning gesture with his hand for him to enter the room.
Ripp stepped inside and took a seat in one of the folding metal chairs in front of the desk while he waited for the other man to finish his conversation.
Once Travers hung up the phone, he looked pointedly at Ripp. “On your way home?”
Ripp nodded. “Yeah. Unless you need me for something else. I’m pretty beat.”
The sheriff’s gaze zeroed in on Ripp’s arm. “Better have a doc look at that. You lost a lot of blood. And even if I thanked you before, I’m saying it again. You had my back, buddy. Literally. I won’t ever forget that.”
Her Texas Lawman Page 16
