His Defender

by Stella Bagwell

  “I don’t know about you, Ross, but when Jess told me about Noah this morning, I was shocked,” Victoria was saying. “It’s probably been twenty years or more since he left the ranch.”

  Realizing talk around the table had turned to Noah Rider, Isabella mentally shook herself and perked her ears.

  “Yeah. I’ve been thinking the same thing, Sis. What would Noah be doing back here on the T Bar K? Especially now that Dad is gone.”

  Isabella looked thoughtfully from brother to sister. It was obvious that the two of them were equally perplexed about this new development.

  “Could be the man didn’t know Tucker had passed away,” Isabella suggested.

  “That’s true,” Jess spoke up. “Or he could have been coming to the ranch to see you kids.”

  Victoria glanced at her husband. “I thought that same thing, too, honey. But wouldn’t you think he would have called ahead of time to make sure we’d be here?”

  “We don’t know that Noah was coming here,” Ross argued. “Could be he just happened to be in the area when he met up with whoever it was that killed him.”

  Victoria snorted. “Ross, that is plain stupid. This ranch is the only connection Noah Rider had in this area. And someone killed him because of it. His body was found on the T Bar K. Remember?”

  Isabella cast a covert glance at Ross and wondered if he was thinking the same thing as she. Once news of Noah Rider got out, cattle and horse buyers might actually be afraid to come to the ranch to do business with Ross. The mystery of the man’s murder had to be solved, all right. But she wasn’t the one to do it. Maybe she had promised to try and find Jess’s shooter, but that was before she realized she was headed straight for heartache.

  Ross waved his empty fork at his sister. “Okay, so you’re probably right. But it doesn’t make sense, Sis. Why would anyone want to kill Noah? As far as I can remember, he was a quiet, easygoing guy. I can’t think of anyone who didn’t like him.”

  Victoria’s expression turned thoughtful as she studied her brother’s face. “You’re right about that. I remember Daddy being upset when Noah quit his job here and left the ranch. In fact, I overheard him telling Mother that he was losing the best foreman he’d ever had.”

  Caught up in the mystery, Isabella spoke up, “Did Noah have a family?”

  Brother and sister exchanged questioning looks.

  “No,” Ross answered. “He didn’t have any wife or kids around here.”

  Victoria backed that up with an emphatic nod. “I don’t remember any, either. I’m not even sure he had much family anywhere. He must have had some sort of family at one time, but how would we find them?”

  Jess paused in the act of shoveling a bite of food into his mouth. “So far the only thing we’ve been able to ascertain is that he lived in Hereford, Texas. Sheriff Perez is sending Redwing down there to search Noah’s place. If there’s any information there to be found, he’ll find it.”

  “Well, in the meantime,” Ross said, “the least we can do is give him a nice burial.” He cast an inquiring look at Jess. “Can we do that?”

  “If there’s no family around to take care of things, I don’t see why not. I’ll find out if the remains have been released.”

  As the group went on to finish the meal, Ross and Victoria discussed the type of memorial service to give Noah Rider. Eventually dessert and coffee were passed around. After it was consumed, the men left the table to walk down to the horse barn, where Linc was sitting up with a foaling mare.

  Once the men had disappeared from the kitchen, Victoria asked Isabella if she would mind helping her clear away the dirty dishes.

  “I know Marina normally cleans everything up before she begins breakfast each morning,” Victoria said, “but Jess and Katrina and I caused a much bigger mess. I don’t want to leave all this for her to have to deal with.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t mind at all,” Isabella said gladly. “So far Ross has insisted I stay out of the kitchen and I’ve been feeling guilty about causing Marina extra work around here. I’m glad to have the chance finally to do something for her.”

  Across the table, Katrina was still strapped in a portable high chair that Victoria had brought with them. As the youngster banged a fork on the tray in front of her, Isabella tried to hide an amused smile.

  “Want more cake, Tori!” the child demanded. “More cake!”

  Winking at Isabella, Victoria walked over to her daughter.

  “More cake?” she asked with exaggerated dismay. “You’ve already had one big piece.”

  The little golden-haired tot wrinkled up her nose at her new mother. “It’s good, Tori.”

  Isabella chuckled. “If you ask me, that’s reason enough.”

  Victoria shared a quick grin with Isabella before she turned her attention back to Katrina. “All right. Since you ate all your chicken and vegetables, you can have a second piece of cake. But we’re going to have to watch all this eating you’re doing or you’ll soon be growing taller than your daddy.”

  The little girl giggled loudly and Isabella was instantly struck by the musical sound. Except for seeing her godmother’s grandchildren on occasion, she hadn’t been around babies or children all that much. She hadn’t realized how much life one small girl could bring to a room or how special it was to see the joy and sparkle on her mischievous little face.

  “Katrina is adorable,” Isabella told Victoria as the two women carried dirty dishes to the cabinet counter. “You must be crazy about her.”

  Victoria’s soft laugh bubbled with love. “She’s a handful. But I couldn’t love her more. We hope we can give her a brother or sister soon.” She cast Isabella a sidelong glance. “Do you want children? Or is that a stupid question since you’re not married yet?”

  Isabella shrugged as she tried to imagine herself caring for a child. A child with dark hair and laughing green eyes.

  “Oh, I…suppose I’d like to be a mother. Someday. But I’m not sure I’d be very good at it. I never had any younger siblings. And I don’t know very much about children.”

  Victoria waved away her words as she opened up the door to the dishwasher. “Believe me, you learn fast, Bella. I didn’t have the luxury of learning as my baby grew, like a normal mother does. When Jess and I were married a month ago, I was thrown into instant motherhood.”

  “Yes. But you’re a doctor,” Isabella rationalized. “It couldn’t have been all that hard for you to step into the role.”

  Victoria accepted the dirty plates Isabella handed her.

  “Caring medically for a child is only a small part of it, Bella. And that doesn’t come from being a doctor. It’s just…maternal instinct, I suppose. Something I’m sure you’ll have plenty of when the time comes for you to raise your own children.”

  Her heart wincing, Isabella glanced away from Victoria’s smiling face. “Well, there’s no need for me to worry about that now,” she said. “It will be a long time before I have a family. I…have a career to get going first. And anyway, I’d have to find the right man before I could ever think about being a mother.”

  Rising up from the dishwasher, Victoria plugged the nearby sink and began to fill it with hot, soapy water for cleaning the counters.

  “Speaking of men,” she said, “Jess told me you really stuck up for Ross this morning at the sheriff’s office.”

  Isabella blushed. “Jess and the other two law officials with him must have thought I was some radical idiot or something. I laid into them before they had a chance to tell us what the meeting was about. I’d just assumed they were planning to interrogate Ross again. I never dreamed they had information about the John Doe.”

  Victoria stopped what she was doing and turned to Isabella. As she leaned her hip against the cabinet counter, she said, “That part of it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you were determined not to let anything bad happen to my brother. And I think that’s wonderful.”

  Victoria’s praise brought another self-conscious blush to
Isabella’s cheeks. “As I told Ross, that’s what a lawyer’s job is—defending her client.”

  Victoria smiled slyly. “Yes, but you’ve gone the extra mile by staying here on the ranch and trying to figure out who really tried to kill Jess. That means a lot to Ross, Bella. And to me and Jess, too.”

  Unable to meet the other woman’s gaze, Isabella walked over to the table and picked up a few more dirty dishes.

  “You’re giving me too much credit, Victoria. And I—” She paused, a tea glass in her hand, as the rest of her words refused to come.

  “Bella? Is something wrong?”

  Victoria’s questions brought Isabella’s head around and with a heavy heart she looked at Ross’s sister. The Ketchums had welcomed her into their home. And tonight, with the bunch of them sitting around the dining table, Isabella had been filled with a sense of belonging, of being embraced in something big and warm and loving. But she wasn’t a part of their family and she had to remember that.

  “No. I’m fine. I was just thinking—” What was wrong with her? she wondered desperately. She couldn’t even tell Victoria that she was leaving the ranch. The whole idea simply hurt too much. “I was thinking about who might have been out there shooting at you and Jess that evening.”

  Dark conviction suddenly gripped Victoria’s features. “None of us will rest until we find him,” she assured Isabella. “And that also goes for the person who killed Noah Rider.”

  The next morning after breakfast, Isabella still couldn’t bring herself to walk down to the barns, find Ross and tell him that she needed to leave the ranch. Instead, she decided to try to put the whole problem out of her mind for a few hours and drive up to the Jicarilla to see her mother.

  The moment she pulled to a stop in front of Alona’s house, she chided herself for not calling before making the trip. Her mother’s pickup truck was gone from its usual parking spot. And since Alona sometimes filled in at the health clinic for nurse’s-aides who needed a day off, she might not return home until late this evening.

  Deciding it wouldn’t do much good to hang around waiting, Isabella scratched down a short note on a small piece of paper and attached it to the screen door with a bobby pin. Before she climbed back into her car, she took a few moments to pet Duke and assure the dog she would stay longer the next time she visited.

  As she drove away, she realized that she was disappointed. She’d wanted to see her mother. Not that she would have necessarily aired her troubled feelings to Alona. She’d simply needed to see the person who was always there for her, who would continue to be there for her no matter what.

  A mile down the road, she decided the next best thing to seeing her mother would be to drive across to the other side of the reservation to visit her godmother Naomi.

  The fifteen-minute drive over a bumpy dirt road wasn’t done in vain. Naomi was home and met Isabella on the doorstep of her adobe house. The old woman was dressed traditionally in a long, colorful skirt topped with a long-sleeved green velvet blouse. Her silver braids hung from both sides of her head all the way to her waist. The happy smile on her face exposed a gap where the bridge for a missing eyetooth should have been.

  Isabella smiled back at her.

  “I’m so glad to see you, my daughter,” Naomi said as she gave Isabella a tight hug. “Come in out of the heat and tell me what this visit is about.”

  Isabella followed the woman into the small, crudely built house. The thick adobe walls had been built centuries ago and shielded the sparse interior from the June heat. As Isabella took a seat on a faded couch, she noticed the room was pleasantly cool.

  “This visit isn’t about anything special,” Isabella told her godmother. “I drove up here to see Mother and she was gone. So I thought I’d stop by here before I headed back to the ranch.”

  Naomi settled her short, rounded form into a nearby chair and studied Isabella with black eyes. “I notice you say ‘the ranch’ like it was your home.”

  The comment brought Isabella up short. Had she said it that way? Surely not. Even though she’d been enjoying her stay on the T Bar K, she hadn’t been thinking of it as her home, she mentally argued. Her home was here on the Jicarilla, not on a white man’s ranch. Especially a white man who never planned to marry any woman.

  “You’re only hearing what you want to hear,” Isabella told her.

  Naomi smiled with gentle patience.

  Isabella sighed. “Do you know where Mother is?”

  “Working at the clinic. I talked to her yesterday and she told me she would be gone today.”

  “I should have called first,” Isabella said with a grimace. Normally she had more forethought. But in actuality, she hadn’t thought of calling. Her mind had been consumed with Ross and how to tell him that her stay on the ranch had to end. She’d been hoping a visit with her mother would put everything in the right perspective and she’d go back to the T Bar K assured that she was doing the right thing.

  “And you were anxious to see her,” Naomi stated.

  Even though Isabella was long accustomed to Naomi’s uncanny perception, it was always a little disconcerting to have the woman reading her thoughts. Marina and the old Apache would make quite a pair if the two women ever got together, Isabella thought wryly.

  “Well, it’s been a few days since we talked and I thought I’d surprise her with a little visit.”

  Naomi nodded. “How is the work coming on your office building?”

  Isabella was glad the old house was dim and her godmother couldn’t see the blush on her face. “I don’t know. I haven’t driven into town yet. I’ll do that when I leave here.”

  The old woman peered at her. “Maybe you’re not so excited about starting your law practice.”

  Frowning, Isabella made a helpless gesture with her hand. “Of course I’m excited about it. I’ve just been very busy with this case for the Ketchum family.”

  Naomi rested her hands on the arm of the chair and Isabella noticed she was still wearing the silver wedding band her late husband had given her more than half a century ago. It didn’t matter that he’d been gone from this earth for years now. In Naomi’s heart she was still married.

  “And how is that going?” Naomi asked.

  Isabella paused. Naomi had always been her confidante, sometimes even more so than her mother. But today she found herself reluctant to talk about Ross or the ranch and his family. Maybe that was because she was afraid Naomi would read what was in her heart. And she didn’t want to worry her godmother with fears that she was going to make some of the same mistakes as Alona had made with Winston Jones.

  “It’s—going well. The law has pretty much decided that Ross is innocent of the shooting. So there’s no longer any danger of him being arrested.”

  The old woman’s brows peaked with interest. “Then why are you still there?”

  Isabella had been asking herself that same question over and over for the past twenty-four hours. And the only answer she could come up with was that she was a fool. A sucker for a man with dark hair and laughing green eyes.

  “Well, Ross has asked me to stay on—to try to help the family find out who nearly killed his brother-in-law. And I promised him that I would.”

  Naomi studied her for long moments. “You’re having doubts. Doubts that are making you sad.”

  The sight of her godmother’s wise face caused something to suddenly break inside Isabella and all the feelings she’d been bottling up the past few days came out in one miserable groan.

  “Oh, Naomi. I think—” Shaking her head, she rose from the couch and went over to her godmother, lowering herself to the floor at Naomi’s feet and resting her cheek on the older woman’s knee. “I’ve done something foolish. I’ve fallen in love with a rich white man. A man who doesn’t want a wife.”

  Naomi’s bony hand smoothed short, tender strokes over Isabella’s black hair. “You’ve not done anything foolish, my daughter. You’ve looked upon the one you want for your mate. When that happ
ens, you can’t change it.”

  Troubled even more by Naomi’s observation, Isabella lifted her head and stared miserably at her godmother. “But I have to change it, Naomi! Ross doesn’t want to marry. Ever. And I could never lie with him—” she paused as her voice quivered, then with a hard swallow, she finished “—unless he was my husband.”

  Naomi closed her eyes and continued to stroke Isabella’s hair. “Your mother’s pain has become yours and that is bad. You need to drive the pain away and trust your heart. This man will not be like Winston Jones.”

  Naomi might possess a sixth sense about a lot of things, but she couldn’t know about Ross. She’d never met the man.

  “He only wants me, Naomi. He doesn’t love me.”

  The older woman smiled. “Sometimes a man cannot separate the two. Maybe if you told him how you felt it would help him understand himself.”

  Isabella shot to her feet. “No! Never! That would only make a bigger mess of things! I—I’d better go.”

  She hurried toward the door, but her godmother was spry on her feet and she caught Isabella by both hands and held them in a tight grip.

  “What are you going to do, my daughter?”

  Isabella shook her head. “I—I don’t know,” she answered miserably. “I promised Ross to finish the job, but—”

  Isabella’s words halted as Naomi’s dark eyes suddenly took on a blank, haunted look.

  “Naomi? Is something wrong?”

  The woman shook her head and refocused her attention on Isabella’s face. “As I held your hands I saw a knife,” she said with dismay. “Cutting.”

  Apprehension shivered through Isabella. “Cutting what?”

  Naomi shook her head once again. “I’m not sure.”

  “Who was doing the cutting?”

  “I don’t know that, either,” Naomi said with regret.

  Isabella did her best to smile and put her godmother’s ominous vision into a better light.

  “I’m sure you were envisioning someone cutting your birthday cake. You’ll be turning seventy-six in a few days.”