Texas Lawman

by Ginger Chambers

  She touched her father’s cheek. He looked up, his gaze tortured. And without further argument, they moved into each other’s arms.

  “I didn’t mean for it to happen this way,” Gib said huskily. “I kept wantin’ to talk to you about it ever since you grew up, but every time I tried, the words just wouldn’t come.” He pulled back and cupped her face. “You may look like your momma, but you aren’t like her! Not one tiny little bit! Your momma had a hard edge, probably from bein’ raised hard scrabble. She didn’t think about anything but what was good for her. Clothes, jewelry—she wanted the best and couldn’t get enough of it. I wish I could tell you that havin’ you made a difference, but it didn’t. I think she loved you—she used to rock you and sing to you all the time right after you were born—but when it came down to it, she took off with that cowboy. I didn’t know about it until Mae told me the next morning.”

  “She was a silly woman to leave you,” Jodie said thickly.

  Gib gave a half smile as he let her go. “I don’t seem to have the right touch with women. Not even my own little girl.”

  “Why don’t you let me be the judge of that?”

  Jodie left her father in his converted studio. She’d asked for and been given the drawing of her mother. She took it to her room, smoothed the edges, then tacked it on the wall near her cheval mirror. One day soon she’d get it framed. Not because she admired what she knew of the woman who was her mother, but because it was her mother. A face to put with the name. A connection, of sorts, to her past, as Mae was so determined she make.

  JODIE LAY ACROSS her bed and tried to sleep, but she couldn’t get the day out of her mind. Christine’s advice, Mae’s portent, her father’s assertions. She wasn’t going to have any rest until she thought it all through. She went outside, then, restive, started to walk. Ending up, as if drawn, at the Parker cemetery.

  A rosy twilight lent the valley a rugged fairy-tale quality. Cattle clustered here and there, barbed-wire fences separated sections. The compound was like a green oasis, with its large trees and civilized comforts.

  Jodie’s gaze settled on the final resting place of the people who, through generations, had created the ranch with their blood, sweat and tears. They’d fought for it, died for it, then passed it on to their heirs for care. The Parkers. Her people.

  She bent down, gathered a handful of dirt and slowly let it trickle through her fingers. Good West Texas dirt—dry, but rich in nutrients, so that when water came in the seasonal rains, life sprang into being and the growing cycle began again.

  Jodie gathered another handful of dirt, then another and another, until she finally did what Mae had talked to her of doing. She rubbed it into her skin. At first experimentally, feeling slightly silly. Then with more intensity of purpose.

  She wanted to make the Parker connection!

  She wanted to feel what Mae and the others did!

  She was tired of trying to stand alone!

  And as she rubbed it on her neck and throat, then down across the rise of her breasts, she began to laugh. Because as her heart opened on a swell of feeling, the years of determined detachment broke away and a newborn peace with who she was settled into place.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  TATE LEARNED through the grapevine that Rio Walsh had packed up and left for Colorado. At first he experienced a jolt of primal pleasure. A rival, vanquished! Then he thought about how Rafe’s boot and Mae’s shotgun had no doubt been a part of the equation, and most of his pleasure disappeared. The question remained: how did Jodie feel?

  He thought about going out to talk to her, to see for himself. But the duty of office kept getting in the way—an attempted robbery at a convenience store outside town, a reported livestock theft, some teenagers who drank too much the night before and were causing no end of trouble this morning in jail, and the parents who objected to their children’s incarcerations.

  In between, Tate made his decision. He was going to do it! He would accept the position on Drew Winslow’s task force. It was work that interested him, would advance his career along the lines he’d originally intended and would—he laughed darkly—get him away from that infernal jail!

  Only two things had yet to be worked out: his replacement as sheriff and whether or not Jodie Parker was going to play a part in his life. The first needed to be seen to right away, but the second...well, he had at least six weeks before he had to report for duty with Drew Winslow. He could afford to take it slow. Not press her. Not press himself. They could let things evolve naturally. If they were going to evolve. If she hadn’t already recommitted herself to Rio Walsh.

  Just thinking his name made Tate’s skin crawl. What she saw in him, now or in the past, was beyond his understanding. Rio was good-looking in a brash kind of way, but he’d already proved himself unreliable. And not nearly enough of a man to stand up for himself, even in the most recent crisis.

  Tate set his hat in place and left the office. He didn’t care if space aliens staged a Hollywood-type landing on Del Norte’s main street, he was going to talk to Jack. Then he was going to see Jodie.

  “YOU’VE DECIDED, haven’t you?” Jack said almost as soon as he set eyes on Tate, his famous intuition still operating.

  “Yep.”

  “And?”

  “You’re the first to know. I’m gonna do it. I’m accepting Drew Winslow’s offer. Which leaves me with a big problem.”

  “Another one?”

  “Who’s gonna take my place.” Tate leaned on the fence near the stock pen where Jack was working and listed his requirements. “It has to be someone who can hit the ground runnin’. It’d also be best if he knows the procedures, knows the personnel—that kinda thing.”

  Jack nodded sagely.

  “And be someone the men can respect.”

  Jack nodded again.

  “Someone like you..” Tate put emphasis on the last word.

  Jack kept working, cleaning dirt from a shovel. “I’m retired.”

  “You can unretire.”

  Jack shook his head. “Why would I wanna do somethin’ like that?”

  “Because you’re bored stiff livin’ all the way out here. Away from all the excitement. Away from all your friends in town.”

  “Did your momma tell you that?” he demanded, straightening.

  Tate smiled. “Her exact word was ‘antsy.’ Or, if you prefer, ‘restless.’ But she didn’t have to tell me. I saw for myself the last time I was out here. It just took me a while to put together.”

  “Son, I quit because I thought it was time for new blood.”

  “Are you tellin’ me you aren’t bored? Look at this place! There’s not a blade of grass growin’ where it shouldn’t, there’s not a wood surface that’s not been painted. You prob’ly run around after the cows with a shovel and a plastic bag!”

  Jack glanced at the shovel he was cleaning, then back at Tate. The light of amusement brightened his dark eyes. “One of us is sure shovelin’ something all right.”

  “Tell the truth, Jack,” Tate said seriously, “are you happy out here?”

  The old sheriff finished cleaning the shovel, then meticulously hung it from a nail on the side of an outbuilding. Finally he turned to Tate. “I dreamed about havin’ a place of my own for thirty, maybe forty years. Maureen did, too. We’d stay up till the wee hours plannin’ how we were gonna do things. She made me promise that first thing I’d build her a wishin’ well, like one she’d saw in a book when she was a little girl. An’ I did.” The wishing well was off to one side of the house, complete with hand crank and wooden bucket. A profusion of pink flowers overflowed the sides of the bucket. “I even planted the petunias she wanted,” he added, then sighed. “But it’s not the same. She’s not here.”

  Tate thought of Maureen. Her warm wonderful smile, the way she loved to work crossword puzzles, the way she shooed everyone out of the room when it was time for her favorite TV soap opera.

  “So what’s your answer?” Tate asked. “Will yo
u come back to bein’ the sheriff? Or do you want me to tell the county supervisors they’re gonna have to look for another man to fill out my term?”

  Jack cast a long look around. “I think what happened,” he said slowly, “is that I came out here too soon. Maybe in four or five years I’ll be ready. Right now?” He glanced at Tate. “You know anybody who might like to lease the place?”

  Tate grinned. “You sure you don’t want to think this through some more?”

  Jack shook his head emphatically. “You hit the nail almost straight on the head—this mornin’ I came a little too close to findin’ me a plastic bag!”

  Tate hooted and Jack slapped him on the shoulder, then the two men started back for the house.

  “When do you have to report for duty?” Jack asked.

  “Not for six weeks. But like I said, you’re the first to know. I haven’t even told Drew Winslow yet. He may have changed his mind and not want me anymore.”

  “Little chance of that. Not when he handpicked you. I’d tell you what all he had to say about you, but I wouldn’t want to swell your head.”

  Tate suffered Jack’s teasing with fond regard.

  “So,” Jack said as they neared the patrol car, “that means you haven’t told your momma yet, either, right?”

  “Nope.”

  “How’s she gonna take it?”

  Tate cocked his head. “Did you know she was goin’ around with Mark Lovell?”

  Jack’s grin widened. “Sure. Didn’t you?”

  Tate shook his head as he settled into the driver’s seat. “No. But then, there seems to be lots of things I’m just learning about.”

  “That always happens when you’re fallin’ in love. Your head’s in a cloud and all you smell is roses.”

  “Now I know you’re goin’ nuts.” Tate started the car.

  Jack bent down to see him better. “When you gonna ask her to marry you? Better get busy!”

  “Bye, Jack,” Tate said dryly, and escaped.

  TATE REHEARSED in his mind what he was going to say. I know this might not be any of my business, Jodie, but...where does it stand between you and Rio Walsh? Is there something going on? Or is it over? And if it’s over, are you willing to see what it is that’s been happening between us? Simple, direct, yet still slow-paced enough not to cause alarm.

  Only, he didn’t get to use it. He received one of the few calls guaranteed to take him back immediately to Del Norte—one of his deputies had been injured while trying to referee a domestic dispute.

  Tate arrived at the hospital to find both Jimmy and Evie Evers being treated in the emergency room, as well as Deputy Bob Stewart. The injuries ranged from scrapes and bumps on various parts of the three anatomies to the deep gash in the deputy’s upper arm.

  Jimmy Evers immediately started to whine excuses. He knew he was in trouble, since he was out on bail from the previous altercation with Evie and would have the bail revoked if he proved to be the instigator. Evie, of course, blamed the deputy for everything.

  Tate went to stand beside Bob Stewart while the doctor sewed up the wound. “What happened?” he asked briskly.

  “They were havin’ an argument, a neighbor called it in, I arrived—thought I had everything under control—then when I started to take Mr. Evers to the car, Mrs. Evers grabbed a kitchen knife and came at me. I let go of him, tried to take the knife away from her, he grabbed me, she started to scream at him, and the next thing I know, I’m cut.”

  “Which one did it?” Tate asked, his eyes narrowing on what he could see of the pair in the next cubicle, where another deputy stood guard.

  Bob looked embarrassed. “I don’t know. She had it last time I looked, but things kinda got confused.”

  Tate nodded. He told the deputy to stop at the station to make his report, then go home if he needed to.

  “I’m fine,” Bob said. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”

  Tate stopped off to speak to the Everses. “Looks like you’ve gone and done it this time. This is serious business, assaulting a police officer. You can both end up doin’ time.”

  “I didn’t do anythin’!” Jimmy wailed, and ever the gentlemen, blamed his wife. “She did it! She had the knife! I never—”

  “You took it away from me! I was cuttin’ onions, that’s why I had it in my hand. I—”

  Tate hushed them both. “I don’t want to hear any more right now. Deputy? Bring ’em on over when they get done here.”

  “Yes, sir,” the deputy said.

  Tate turned a deaf ear to their continuing pleas as he walked away. By now, if his plans had been left undisturbed, he’d have been talking to Jodie.

  Stymied anticipation formed a knot in the pit of his stomach.

  It could be hours before he’d get another opportunity, or with his luck, even days!

  THERE WAS SOMETHING different about Jodie that everyone, herself included, noticed. And it wasn’t merely a release from the stress of the week before. The change that started when she stood up for her right to deal with Rio after his exoneration had only continued.

  Several times she caught Mae watching her, trying to gauge what had happened but remaining puzzled. Finally Mae could stand it no longer. “All right! What is it?” she demanded. “What’ve you done? What are you smilin’ about?”

  “Is it a sin to smile?” Jodie asked.

  Mae frowned. “It’s not the smile. It’s what’s behind it I’m worried about!”

  Jodie left the side table, where she’d been filling a vase with some of Harriet’s beautiful summer flowers, to sit beside her great-aunt on one of the twin sofas. Mae’s house had cleared out as the morning wore on. Harriet and her younger children had gone to take Gwen and Wesley to the fair being held at the county park outside Del Norte, and Shannon had gone home to work some more on Jack Denton’s family history.

  “There’s absolutely nothing to worry about,” Jodie said sweetly.

  Mae snorted. “Now I really am worried.”

  “There’s not! It’s...” Now that the time had come, Jodie found it hard to put into words without sounding trite. “I took your advice. I thought about what you said, about what everyone said, and...I think you’re right.”

  Mae narrowed her eyes. “About what?”

  “About being a Parker. About me being a Parker.” She paused. “Aunt Mae, I think I’m beginning to see that I am who I am, and there’s nothing I can do about it. There’s nothing you can do about it, either. I’m my mother’s daughter as much as my father’s.” She tilted her head. “Why didn’t you tell me I look like her?”

  Mae sputtered, “Who told you that? How do you know?”

  “If we’re going to get through this, we have to do it by laying all the cards on the table. No holding back. I look like her. I saw a drawing Daddy did. It’s hanging in my room now. He gave it to me when I asked for it.”

  Mae sat forward. “A drawing?”

  Jodie smiled wryly. “It escaped the ritual burning.”

  Mae blinked and repeated, “Ritual?”

  “Yes, when you burned every photograph of her. I heard about that years ago.”

  For once Mae seemed unnerved.

  Jodie asked, “I know you hated her, but did you hate her that much?”

  Mae quickly conquered her disquiet, and her eyes flashed. “Yes, I hated her! For what she did to Gib—he’s always been something of a disappointment when compared to the other Parker men, but he’s good to the bone. Wouldn’t hurt a fly. He didn’t deserve what she did to him. And for what she did to you. You were such a tiny little thing. You needed her!”

  “You disliked her on sight, Dad said.”

  “I knew what she was.”

  “Her name was Ruby.”

  “I know that!” Mae snapped.

  “How much money did you give her?”

  Mae pushed to her feet, wobbling a bit before she gained control of the cane.

  Jodie suffered her own moment of disquiet, but knew they had to get th
rough this. For both their sakes. “And when did you offer it to her? Right away or just before she left?”

  “Why should that matter?” Mae demanded, turning around.

  “I’m just curious if you influenced the breakup of the marriage.”

  “Me? No! It didn’t stand a chance from the beginning. Didn’t your daddy tell you that, too? She only married him for the money. All I did was supply it”

  “If you hated her, did you hate me?”

  Mae, genuinely confused, asked, “Why would I do that?”

  “Because I’m Ruby’s daughter.”

  When the fog of confusion parted, Mae looked at Jodie as if she’d uttered something sacrilegious. “I didn’t hate you! I never hated you! How can you...?” She groped her way to the nearest chair and Jodie rushed to kneel at her side.

  “I thought you did, don’t you see? The way you sounded when you told me about her! I was too young to understand. I thought I’d done something wrong, too! That you’d found yourself saddled with me and were making the best of a bad situation.”

  “Oh, Jodie.” Mae’s aged hand reached for her head and, trembling, smoothed the copper red hair. “No! If only I’d listened to Rafe. He didn’t think I should tell you the way I did or when I did. He thought I was bein’ too harsh, and now...” She took a breath. “I’m about to tell you something your daddy doesn’t know about. Not even to this day. She threatened to take you with her, and I couldn’t let her do that. All she wanted was more money, so I gave it to her. I couldn’t let her take a Parker away from the Parker Ranch! She didn’t know the first thing about raising a child. And that boyfriend of hers—he made the Hammonds look good! That’s the kind of people she came from. The kind of men she ran around with. I had her investigated.”

  Jodie sat back on her heels. “You gave her more money—for me?”

  “Not for you. To keep her from takin’ you away.”