His old man had paid attention, all right. But instead of showing him the affection he'd needed, Turner Calhoun had washed his hands of his hellion son.
His thoughts darkened and then grew dangerous. For years after Pat had taken him in, he'd prayed that someday he and his father would meet up again. He had lain awake for a lot of nights, planning in great detail how he would beat that holier-than-thou smirk off his old man's face.
Sick of his thoughts, he raised his arm and sailed the rock toward the other side of the river, but it fell short.
"I've seen you do a lot better than that."
Even though there was a smile in Darcy's voice, he knew before he turned to face her that there would be the soft shimmer of worry in her eyes.
"Must be out of practice."
Judd plucked a blade of grass from a clump near his knee and stuck it in his mouth. He had a strong mouth, sometimes bordering on cruel when the dark side of him came out. Now, however, the corners were relaxed as though it wouldn't take all that much to coax a smile from him.
"I was thinking of my old man."
"Did you ever see him?"
"No. I don't even know if he's alive or dead," he said, matter-of-factly.
"Do you care?"
"Not particularly."
"Are you and Judd done with your naps?" Betsy called from the bank, and Darcy waved.
"Not yet, sweets. Soon, though."
"Better hurry, or me 'n Angel will catch all the fish."
"Leave a couple for us, okay?"
"Okay."
"You too, Angel," Darcy called as Angel turned to look at her expectantly.
"Okay, Mommy."
Darcy watched her girls in silence for a few moments, aware that Judd was watching them, as well, his expression broodingly sad.
"I don't remember him very well," she said, taking a chance. "But I seem to remember him always having a frown on his face."
"Yeah, well there wasn't a lot to smile about in his world." He glanced back at the rough surface of the river. "I guess I didn't help much, especially when the cops hauled me into the early morning service by the seat of my pants for letting all the air out of the tires in the parking lot."
Darcy grinned. "Did you really?"
"It seemed like a good idea at the time." Judd smiled down at her, aware of the peachy tones of her sleek thighs and the slide of those thighs under his.
"How old were you then?"
"Twelve."
"What did your father do to you?" she asked, still grinning.
"Pulled down my pants and whipped me in front of the whole congregation."
"He didn't!"
He snorted a laugh. "He did a damn good job of it, I'll give him that."
"No wonder you ended up a rebel."
"I would have ended up worse than that if it hadn't been for Pat, and he never laid a hand on me." He turned slowly, his expression bleak, his eyes filled with raw cynicism. "Sometimes I think we all would have been better off if I'd just let them haul me off to reform school."
Darcy sat up and crossed her legs, yoga fashion. Below her the river followed the same course that it had followed for generations.
"Someday you'll have to forgive yourself," she said so softly her voice barely carried over the river's rush and tumble.
"Tell me how, and I'll give it a shot."
She covered her hand with his and felt the heat of his body coming through the scarred skin. "How many times have you been hurt in the line of duty?"
He shrugged. "About average."
"How many times were you in the hospital?"
He hesitated, his jaw working. "Six."
Her fingers lightly stroked the puckered skin beneath them. "Uncle Mike once told me that the worse pain that a living being can endure is caused by fire."
Slowly, making sure she had his full attention, she removed her hand from his, then leaned forward to kiss the worst of the scars. Judd flinched, his mouth flattening dangerously.
Undaunted, Darcy plunged ahead. "I don't know what else you can offer as a sacrifice, unless it's your life."
Anger turned his jaw to stone and whitened his mouth. "Back off, Darcy."
"Not this time, Judd. I'm pretty sure I love you, and even if I don't, I know I care about you, and I hate to see you go on paying and paying for one mistake."
"That's not what you thought twenty years ago."
She drew in a sharp breath, then let it out slowly. "Are you telling me that it's my fault you can't forgive yourself?"
He frowned at her. He hadn't considered that, and he didn't want to. "I didn't say that—"
He was interrupted by a bloodcurdling wail from the vicinity of the river. "Mommy! Judd! Betsy's got a hook stuck in her hand."
Before Darcy could get her feet unfolded, Judd was already scrambling down the slope, his crutches forgotten. Both twins were crying when she reached them, seconds after Judd.
Already, he had Betsy's hand in his and was gently working the small hook from the tender skin. "There. All gone," he said when the steel came free. His face was white and his voice wasn't quite steady.
"It still h-hurts," Betsy wailed, her blue eyes streaming and her mouth trembling.
"I know, sugar," Judd said as he carefully swabbed the blood from the tiny wound with a handkerchief he'd taken from his pocket. "And it will hurt for a while longer, and then it'll stop hurting and you'll have an interesting scar."
Betsy frowned at that and the sobbing stopped. "Like you?" she asked, her eyes still swimming in tears but clearing rapidly.
"Yep, like me. And Mommy, too."
"Mommy?" Now he had the attention of both girls.
"Sure. Show 'em your knee, Mommy. Where you tangled with the barbed wire trying to jump the pasture fence."
Shaking inside, but managing a smile for the now curious twins, Darcy sat down and turned one knee so that they could see the triangular white line just above her kneecap.
"Ooh," Angel said, clearly impressed.
"Mine is worse," Betsy maintained stoutly. "See, it's still bleeding."
Judd enveloped Betsy's grubby hand in his, shortcutting the discussion. "What we need here is a Band-Aid and a couple of those chocolate bars your mom hid under the napkins in the picnic basket. I hear chocolate works great at making the hurt go away."
Betsy blinked, and then Angel blinked. "Chocolate?" they chorused.
"Really and truly?" Betsy asked.
Judd wound the hanky around Betsy's small hand and tied a neat bow. "Give it a try and see. Okay?"
"Okay!" they chorused again, and turned in unison toward the cooler still halfway up the hill. Betsy had taken three steps and Angel two, when Angel all of a sudden shouted for her twin to stop, then turned around and took two steps back.
"Is that okay, Mommy? What Judd said?"
"Yes, sweets, it's okay," Darcy said, smiling. That settled satisfactorily, the girls proceeded to race each other to the cooler.
"Looks like you've not only taken over my bed, Calhoun, but my kids, as well," she whispered, still grinning.
His jaw slowly reddened, then bunched. "Sorry about that. I guess I'm so used to giving orders, I just … forgot that I'm in your world at the moment, not mine."
Darcy managed a quick peck on his still-hot cheek. "Don't worry, Judd. At the moment, in my little world, things couldn't be better."
Judd paid for his impulsive dash down the bank. By dinnertime, his knees were giving him so much pain he could scarcely force down half a plate of the prime rib, dumplings and biscuits that Bridget had made especially for him. And when the twins and Rosie, who'd returned late in the afternoon, asked him to read their bedtime story to them, he'd had to beg off and go to bed himself.
It had been three hours since the girls, all four of them, had come in to say good-night, the three little ones chattering a mile a minute while Prudy simply smiled benignly, her hands pressed protectively against the babies. And it had been an hour since Bridget had stuck
her head in to cluck over his pale face and lack of appetite before she herself had bedded down for the night.
From her, he'd learned that Darcy had driven to Grantley to do some shopping. "Said she forgot something important the other day."
Since then, because the pain made sleep impossible, he had decided to finish going through Mike's things. He had just reached the last item in the box, a soiled manila folder containing a number of yellowed newspaper clippings, when the numbers on Darcy's clock radio clicked over to ten.
Another impatient glance at the well-lighted turnaround area told him that Darcy still hadn't returned. Worry bunched his forehead and shortened his temper as he flipped open the folder.
A half hour later he'd come to the conclusion that Mike was a publicity junkie. Even the most trivial mention of a family member had been duly clipped and saved. Mike himself had been mentioned in half a dozen articles, some quoting him as chief, others praising some action he'd taken on behalf of the department.
Those Judd had learned to scan quickly, but the others—a description of the fire that had killed Pat, his obituary, the announcement of Darcy's engagement and her wedding picture—those he dealt with slowly, deliberately, forcing himself to absorb every word.
His stomach was knotted and his eyes burned by the time he was done, but in a way the process was cathartic, too. He hadn't forgotten Darcy's words by the river about forgiving himself. But he still wasn't convinced that it was possible.
The small red numbers read 10:36 when he came to the last clipping. It was more brittle than the rest, with frayed edges, and turned out to be two articles clipped together. The prose was different, too, more flamboyant.
Judd was halfway through the three-column piece before he realized the reporter was talking about the closing of Main Street
for a week while workers from the water department tried to find the source of a "definite gasoline taste" in the town's drinking water.
Frowning, Judd scanned quickly to the end, searching for the inevitable mention of a member of the Kerrigan family, but strangely there was none.
Sure he'd missed it, he went back to the beginning and reread the story word by word. But his first conclusion had been correct. No Kerrigan had been mentioned.
Careful to keep the aged paper intact, he turned back the first article and began on the second. According to this account, the job had taken two weeks, not one. A crew of ten dug from dawn to dusk to trace the pipes buried under Grantley's two major thoroughfares to the source of the contamination—a recently buried tank under the community's newest and finest filling station.
Built of galvanized steel, the tank had been welded together in sections, and according to "outraged city officials," the welds had been damaged when the tank had been sunk into the black Oregon clay, resulting in a slow seepage. The article went on to cite experts in the brand-new field of "petroleum science" as well as various prominent local residents about the steps that would be taken. The article concluded with the reassurances of the station's owner that the problem would be corrected with "all haste." Judd frowned as he reread the name of that owner. John Francis Koch. Grant's grandfather.
Judd let out a long stream of air, still puzzled. Again, in the second article as in the first, there had been no mention of the Kerrigan name.
So why did Mike include it in his unofficial family archives? he asked himself as he unfolded the article and tucked it carefully under the rest of the clippings.
He'd been reading without the glasses he'd left behind in his office and his eyes felt as if someone had poured sand in them. But the discomfort in his gut was worse. A sharp, steady clawing of suspicion that Mike Kerrigan, for reasons of his own, had deliberately included those articles in his personal papers in order to hide them kept nagging at him.
Judd rested the back of his head against the pillows and stared flint-eyed at the ceiling. If that was so, the odds said that those articles just might have been the reason that someone had broken into Darcy's house and his office.
Judd glanced at the nightstand and then swore when he remembered that Darcy had taken the phone with her to the twins' room yesterday evening and hadn't brought it back.
He was eyeing his crutches and wondering if he could make it to the phone in her office without passing out when he heard the low rumble of the Chevy's big V-8 engine.
By the time he heard her step outside the door to his room, he had the folder safely back in the bottom of the box and the box tucked under the bed.
"I saw the light," she said as she slipped into the room and closed the door. Her cheeks were flushed and her hair was tousled. In her hand she was carrying a small white paper bag bearing the name of Groler's Drugstore.
"I don't suppose that's a hamburger in there," he asked, lifting one eyebrow very, very slowly.
"Open it and see," she said as she tossed it toward him. "In the meantime, I'm going to take a bubble bath."
* * *
Chapter 12
« ^ »
Darcy slipped out of her robe and let it fall to the floor. This time she was wearing something thigh-length and white.
Watching from the bed, Judd suddenly felt as nervous as a bridegroom. "Very nice," he said as she came toward him. "But I kinda miss those skimpy little pajamas with the fancy lace that used to swish around your fanny when you walked across the room."
Darcy felt her face bloom warm all the way to her hairline. "A gentleman wouldn't have looked," she chided, slipping under the sheet and into his arms.
It was a small, old-shoe comfortable intimacy, common between a man and a woman who'd been together a long time but not to Judd. Even as he settled her more comfortably against him, he wasn't sure it ever would be. At the moment, however, he didn't care. She was in his bed, and whatever her reasons, he intended to make the best of it.
"Oh yeah, who told you that?" he asked, his voice lazy.
"I read it somewhere."
He aimed a kiss at the spice-scented jumble of curls drooping over her forehead before drawling, "You know what, Red? You've been reading the wrong books all your life."
She ran the flat of her hand over the bulge of muscle in his upper arm, pausing for a moment to trace a blunt, unpolished fingernail over the small blue anchor tattooed there. He shivered, bringing a secret smile to her lips.
"Are you by any chance suggesting that my education has been, er, incomplete?" She shifted position, then turned until her bottom was nestled perfectly against his thighs.
"I'm suggesting that you're heading for a mess of trouble if you don't stop rubbing your fanny against me that way."
"Oh? What way is that?" Her expression was as innocent as a baby's but the impish sparkle in her eyes told him that she knew exactly what kind of an effect she was having on him.
"Careful, Red. You're dealing with a man who's gone to bed horny a lot of nights recently."
"You don't say?"
Now her hands were busy ruffling, then smoothing the golden hair on his chest. Teeth mentally gritted, he felt his heart rate speed and his muscles strain.
"Darcy," he warned, his hand imprisoning her wrist and his tone one notch above a groan. "If this is some more of your cruel and unusual punishment, I gotta tell you, it's working."
"Good." Her smile was angelic. It was the half-drowsy, half-sultry look creeping into her blue eyes that worried him. He freed one hand and laid it along the softest part of her cheek.
"You're driving me nuts, you know that?"
Darcy covered his hand with hers. "For a man with the roughest hands I've ever felt, you can be impossibly sweet, Judd Calhoun."
Heat climbed his neck. "Sweet I'm not," he all but growled. "Just like I'm not a gentleman and never intend to be."
"Then that means I don't have to be a lady, right?" As though to prove her point, she tucked her face into the hollow of his shoulder and bit gently but firmly into the rigid muscle.
"No parlor manners," she murmured as she used her tongue to
trace the still line of his jaw. "No shy maidenly gasps." Her tongue swirled around his Adam's apple, then ran along the thick muscle leading to his sternum.
His breathing became more and more ragged. His hands slipped to her waist, but her gown, sleek and soft as it was, prevented him from touching her skin the way she was busily touching his bare chest, his shoulders, his arms.
In the limited number of sexual encounters he'd allowed himself over the years, he had been the aggressor, the partner in charge. It was simpler that way. More honest, less complicated. And when it was over, he was still free—and still alone.
"Darcy—"
"Sh," she murmured as his arm muscles bunched beneath her palm. He was tight as a drumhead, all corded muscle and roped tension. Using her fingertips, she pushed and kneaded, determined to relax him so completely that he would sleep through the night in spite of the pain he'd been trying to hide from all of them since they'd come back from the river.
"You have a strong body," she murmured, kissing the shoulder that wasn't bruised over and over until a helpless tremor rippled the powerful muscle under the hot taut skin. "But you need to take better care of it."
"Any … suggestions?" He had trouble concentrating on her words when his body was busy responding to her roving hands and teasing mouth.
"Mmm, one or two." Shifting to the other shoulder, she gently kissed the jagged line of the purple-and-yellow bruise slanting down his chest until she reached the tiny nipple.
"First, you need to relax more." Her tongue swirled over the nipple, turning it white and hard. Beneath his skin, his pectoral muscle turned slab hard.
"That's not relaxing," she murmured, kissing him over and over again until his head arched back into the pillow and a strangled groan escaped his taut mouth.
"That's better."
She moved then, surprising him into looking at her. His eyes were ablaze, his pupils sizzling with hot need. Slowly, masking her nervousness with a smile, she slipped to his stomach and touched her lips to the downy hair bisecting his corded belly.
He stiffened, then groaned and cupped the back of her head with one big hand. "Come up here, you," he ordered hoarsely.
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