Kelton's Rules (Harlequin Super Romance)

by Nicholson, Peggy

  “I didn’t have a photo of him that I thought would blow up worth a darn,” she explained as she pulled a cloud of pale hair back behind her small shapely ears. “Do you think this’ll do?”

  “Oh, this’ll get their attention, all right. As will the money. That’s a mighty handsome reward for these parts, ma’am.” More than Abby could afford, he suspected.

  He’d won a smile with his cowboy drawl, but it faded away. “I’ve got to get him back. He’s Skyler’s and Sky…he’s lost enough.”

  Jack did a ten-second review of his day’s engagements and concluded regretfully that he couldn’t play hooky, couldn’t spend the day finding Abby’s cat for her. He needed to be in court in an hour. “He’ll turn up,” he assured her, wondering if the Durango pound—heck, he’d drive to Denver if need be—might have a white tomcat of the precise weight and size and eye colors as the one she’d lost. Or would Abby know the difference?

  “Meantime, I’ll make your copies on one condition.” He pointed a finger at her nose—and a very nice nose it was, he realized for the first time. Generally her mouth grabbed most of his attention, with her eyes claiming the rest. “You take it easy today, and don’t go gimping around town.”

  “But I—”

  “I mean it, Abby. You want that ankle to heal, which means stay off it. Let Sky and Kat do your legwork. I’ve ungrounded Kat for the duration and told her she has to report in to you every two hours. Is that all right by you?”

  “Of course, but—”

  “No buts.” He waved the envelope to remind her. “That’s my condition. Tomorrow’s Saturday and we’ll flood the town with your posters, if the kids haven’t found him by then. Today, the one useful thing you can do is call Josie Hansen at Hansen’s General Store and tell her you’ve lost a cat. Then sit back and don’t worry. Everybody in Trueheart will know inside half an hour. Somebody’s bound to spot him. Now…” He glanced at his watch and winced. “Gotta run.”

  He had the weirdest damn impulse to lean over and plant a farewell kiss on the corner of her mouth, there where it tucked in and tipped up, even when she was sad. Instead he sketched her a jaunty salute. “Catch ya later, kid.”

  Or maybe he’d caught her already. Like one of those summer colds. One sneeze and your temperature starts to rise.

  THEY’D CANVASSED all the houses on their own street, which was named Haley’s Comet Street, according to Kat, although there was no sign anywhere to prove her claim and Sky wasn’t sure he believed her. But nobody had seen a trace of DC. “Not a tail, not a whisker,” insisted that nice old Mrs. Connelly while she fed them chocolate-chip cookies hot from her oven.

  After that they’d knocked on all the doors along the next street down the hill toward town, tiptoeing through the backyards when nobody was home to ask permission. They’d waited patiently for half an hour by a chicken coop in the Butlers’ yard. Kat had been convinced that sooner or later DC would come to hunt the plump, dirt-pecking hens, although Sky tried to tell her that DC thought food came packed in cans, not feathered and clucking. He wouldn’t have a clue how to feed himself. Had to be starving by now.

  Discouraged, they’d wandered down to the junior high school, their “kitty, kitty!” echoing up and down its ramps and corridors. They’d pressed their faces and cupped hands to a window while Kat showed him which classroom would be hers next year—the terrible Mrs. Callahan’s, who was said to yell and sometimes even throw things.

  “But if she throws anything at me, I’ll throw it right back,” Kat growled, nose to the glass.

  “Glad I won’t be there to see that,” Sky said fervently.

  Kat turned to study him. “Where will you be?”

  “Uh…back home in New Jersey.”

  She cocked her head at him, the same way her dad did it. “You’re on vacation?”

  He shrugged and looked away. “Yup. That’s right.”

  “Then why’d you bring your washing machine?”

  He set off across the schoolyard, not bothering to see if she followed. “Mom likes lots of clean clothes.”

  “And your model planes?”

  He broke into a run.

  When Kat caught up to him a block later, she tugged at his T-shirt sleeve, dragging him toward the nearest corner. “We’ve got to go to Hansen’s now.”

  “Why?” He was sick of this whole stupid town. They’d never find DC. Never. He was as lost as Skyler himself.

  “’Cause when I’m sad, ice cream always helps.”

  He felt his face go hot as he glared at her. “Who’s sad?”

  Her drawn-on eyebrows pulled together and for a second it looked as if she’d snap back, but she only said mildly, “Well, you’ve lost your cat. You must be sad. Though Dad says he’s only temporarily misplaced.”

  They turned downhill at the corner and Sky glanced upward. Finally a street sign. “This is Arcturus Street?”

  “No, that one back there is Arcturus. The children around here are always turning the street signs around. Baby stuff.”

  “Arcturus is a star.”

  “Uh-huh. All the streets that run east and west are called after stars and planets and sky stuff. The north-south ones are named for birds. Like this is Chickadee.”

  “My dad taught me all the stars you use to navigate by if your instruments ever go down.” His misery deepened.

  “When I’m a captain I’ll steer my ship by the stars.”

  “Girls can’t be captains,” he said nastily, though he knew it wasn’t so. His dad even knew a lady pilot.

  “Oh, yeah? Zoe Montana said, last year at the Christmas party at Ribbon River, that she saw lots and lots of women captains—well, two—in the Caribbean.”

  So what? Big deal. But he gritted his teeth on the words till they got to Hansen’s, where the old lady behind the counter, Mrs. Hansen, somehow already knew they’d lost a white tomcat. That made him feel better, but when he tried to order Rocky Road ice cream, his heart sank to his sneakers.

  Mrs. Hansen looked at him over her horn-rimmed glasses, as if he’d burped out loud. “Vanilla, chocolate or the special is all we ever have, young man. Today’s special is lemon-banana.”

  “Gimme the chocolate,” he muttered. He couldn’t wait to get out of this town!

  Mrs. Hansen rose up on her tiptoes and leaned over the counter. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Could I please have the chocolate?” he mumbled as Kat stuck a hard little elbow in his ribs. He gasped as she jabbed him again and added, “Ma’am?”

  That earned him a baleful look and a loaded cone, then it was Kat’s turn to sweat. “I hear you tried to burn your father’s house down,” said Mrs. Hansen as she scooped lemon-banana.

  “Did not.” Kat stuck out her chin. “I was welding.”

  “Humph. Not what the sheriff told Mo.”

  Kat simply shrugged, took a cautious lick of her bright-yellow ice cream, then asked, “May we please use the phone?”

  “That’ll be ten cents.” Mrs. Hansen brought an old black dial phone from under the counter, smacked it down, then bustled off to help a man in a cowboy hat, whose boots rang loud as horse hooves on the plank floor.

  They called Sky’s mom and received permission to stay out for another two hours, then they escaped out the screen door—where Sky stopped short. “We forgot to pay!” The old witch would kill them!

  Kat managed to shake her head with her tongue attached to her cone. “No, we didn’t. I have an ice-cream account. She makes Dad pay whenever he stops in for milk.”

  “Oh.” Trueheart was a very strange place.

  ABBY SAT ON THE TOP STEP of the back stoop, her eyes fixed on the crimson bus as the number Jack had given her rang half a dozen times. She had her finger on the disconnect button when a feminine voice cried, “Don’t you dare be a telemarketer!”

  “Um, hi. No. I’m not. This is Abby Lake calling,” she said, raising her voice since a baby was lustily howling at the other end of the line.

  “Oh—
sorry! Yes, you’re Jack’s friend. The one with the red bus,” said the voice, adding in an undertone, “Hush, sweetie.”

  “I’m afraid I woke you.”

  “Oh, not really. We were just dozing on the couch and I’d forgotten to take the phone off the hook. I’m Kaley, by the way, Kaley McGraw, and the hallelujah chorus you hear is Shannon and Shea.”

  Twins, Abby remembered Whitey saying. Born in calving season, whenever that was. “I’m sorry to have bothered you. I remember I would’ve killed for an hour of sleep when my son was young.”

  “At least they’re both up at the same time for once,” Kaley agreed on a note of weary amusement. “Usually they work in shifts. One snoozes while the other yells.”

  They traded first year stories for a couple of minutes, then Abby asked for Whitey, only to learn he was out dosing cattle with pinkeye ointment. “I was hoping he might be able to work on my bus sometime this weekend,” she said apologetically. “That is, if you don’t have plans for him?”

  Kaley laughed over her babies’ wails. “Don’t let Whitey hear you say that! After forty years at the Circle C, he’s family. He and Chang boss us all. But I’ll tell him you could use some help tomorrow, shall I? Oh—and Abby, welcome to Trueheart!”

  “Well, it’s only for a week or—” But Kaley had already dashed back to her own double serving of trouble.

  Abby heaved a sigh and put the phone away.

  “TOLD YOU Hutchins would never grant a restraining order,” said Alec Fielding. “Simply because the creep sits in his car in front of her house every night till 2:00 a.m.? Now, how could a woman object to that? She ought to be flattered, bless her hysterical little soul.”

  “Maybe if I’d told the judge he cleans his gun while he sits out there?” Jack growled, suppressing an urge to kick the trash can they were passing on their way back from the courthouse.

  “Hutchins’d say the defendant’s devotion to tidiness demonstrates that he’s an upstanding, commendable citizen—give him full custody. As for me, I want a pastrami on whole wheat next time, with extra pickles.”

  “So noted.” Jack had known it was a stretch, asking Hutchins for a restraining order. Still he’d had to try. And honor demanded that anything he took to court, he had to back with a bet.

  Meanwhile, since the legal system had failed her, Susie Murphy and her two children would probably move in with her parents. Her father was a retired marine drill sergeant from Texas, who’d been threatening to get out his gun and settle the problem of Susie’s ex-husband if the judge wouldn’t. Which would make more problems for everyone. “I hate it when the law is an ass.”

  “Don’t we all,” agreed Alec. “But it’s Friday thank God, and how’s your hot neighbor? Asked her for a date yet?”

  “Dream on. Abby needs a date like a trout needs a go-cart. She’s too busy finding herself. She’s going to write children’s books when she grows up.” Jack’s mood shaded from cobalt blue to black as he heard himself speak. She’d told him her dream last night—a preposterous, impractical dream to be sure—but still, she’d spoken from the heart and here he was blurting it out on a street corner.

  Alec nodded. “Sounds like a clear and flourishing case of the Divorce Crazies, all right. But is it divorce itself that causes the syndrome? Or sexual deprivation? Maybe you’d be doing her a kindness, if you—”

  And maybe sometimes you run off at the mouth. Jack clamped his teeth on the words as he stopped short. “I forgot. Left an order for some prints at the copy shop. See you Monday?”

  “I’ve got an alternative?” Alec flashed a too shrewd grin over his shoulder and kept on walking.

  FROM HANSEN’S, they’d searched along Main Street, checking the trash cans behind a half-dozen small shops and stores. They’d seen a black cat who ran away and a gray who wanted his stomach tickled, but not a sign of the one cat that mattered.

  “He’s walking back to New Jersey,” Sky muttered, fighting back his tears. “Cats always go home.” Or try to. But how many rivers and highways lay between here and home? DC couldn’t swim the Mississippi. And what about all the dangers along the way, the whizzing cars, the mean dogs and hungry coyotes?

  “Maybe not. Maybe he’s in the park.” Kat led him down Quail Street to where the shallow valley in which the town was built bottomed out. Splitting Trueheart in two, a narrow creek meandered along, bordered by a strip of park on each bank.

  There they peered under each of the three footbridges that spanned the creek. Looked into and under the bandshell where Kat told him the school orchestra performed every other Saturday in the summer. Asked the little kids playing on the swing set and the seesaw if they’d seen a white cat, but to no avail.

  Hot and disheartened, they ended up lying on two big smooth stepping stones, just above a tiny, burbling waterfall, while Kat showed him how to catch fish without a pole.

  “Don’t move, don’t breathe,” she chanted, her head almost touching his own as she leaned from her rock, peering down into the creek. She’d insisted that Sky hold the dented soup pot she’d taken from a hiding place under the bridge while she sprinkled bits of her ice-cream cone that she’d saved for fish bait. “Let him eat that crumb for free, then go tell his friends how good it tasted.”

  A three-inch perch hovered just beyond the submerged rim of the pot, eyeing the floating crumbs within. Sky’s hands ached with the cold. The water was clear as ice. It must come down from the mountains to flow through this lousy little park. “He’s not going to come in and eat it. And even if he did, who needs a fish?”

  “He will so. You just have to be patient. And everybody ought to know how to fish. When I’m a navy SEAL and I go on missions, I’ll need to know how to live off the land. Eat grubs and worse things to survive.”

  “What’s worse than a grub?”

  Kat giggled. “Two grubs?”

  “Chicken feet and pig ears.”

  “Horse pats! You pick out the oats they ate and then you—”

  “Ee-euw—oh, hey!” The perch darted over the rim, seized the bit of cone and was gone with the flick of a tail. “Did you see that?”

  “Yup.” Kat sprinkled another bit of cone into the pot. The perch cruised back out of the green weeds that waved in the current, then a second, smaller fish joined him. They floated, fins barely fanning, gazing solemnly at the treats within the trap. “Let ’em eat this one for free, too.”

  If his hands didn’t fall off first. To distract himself from their growing numbness, Sky sent his mind back to last night, when he’d been almost happy, thinking DC was still up his tree, the four of them eating together almost like a— He closed his eyes and shook his head. Not like a family, not in the least! Like a…a party, a nice birthday party.

  “Oops, you spooked them. You can’t move like that.”

  Who cares? Stupid fish. “That picture on your dad’s desk.” In her living room. Sky had noticed it when they’d run to get the lantern last night. “Who’s that guy in the uniform?” Navy whites, like his dad used to wear.

  “Him? Oh, that’s Todd.” Her tone was coolly indifferent but with a funny edge.

  “Who’s Todd?”

  “My half brother, I guess. Though it doesn’t feel like he is. We didn’t grow up together. My mom kept him.”

  “He’s a sailor?”

  “Uh-huh. Just joined, after he got out of high school. He’s going to be stationed on an aircraft carrier, but I don’t care what everybody thinks. That’s nothing special. It isn’t dangerous, not really, not like being a SEAL.”

  Who cared about SEALs? “Where’s your mom?”

  “San Francisco. She and Dad’re divorced. Ha, here they are again!” She nodded at the fish, two of them—no three, now—contemplating the bait.

  So Kat had to be hurting as much as he was. “That stinks. Divorce, I mean. It’s stupid.”

  Kat shrugged. “People do it all the time, my dad says. I can’t remember it. Remember my mom, I mean. I was only a year old when they
broke up.”

  “And she didn’t take you?” He could have kicked himself the minute he said that.

  “No-o.” Poised in the clear mountain air, Kat sat as still as the perch, refusing to meet his raised eyes. “Anyway, it’s good, the way things worked out. My dad needs me. He’d be awful lonesome without me for company, and he’d never remember to wash his socks if I didn’t remind him. And if he didn’t have to set me an example, he’d never eat his vegetables. He’d live on frozen pizza and Whopper burgers. If he didn’t need me, I’d have run off and stowed away on a tall ship by now. Be a second mate, probably.”

  Sky opened his mouth to tell her she was crazy, then shut it again. The largest perch shot into the pot—and he tipped up the rim. “Gotcha!” The fish darted in frantic circles.

  Kat shared his triumphant grin. “But now…you’ve gotta eat him.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  JACK NEVER SCHEDULED an afternoon appointment on Friday if he could help it.

  Today being one of those days when he could, he rolled into Trueheart around four. Plenty of daylight left if cat-hunting was still on the agenda. Not that he couldn’t think of half a dozen better ways to start the weekend. Fielding’s comment about a hot date skittered across his mind as he pulled into his driveway.

  Forget it, Kelton. Never hit on a brand-new divorcée who drives a—what color did Abby call it?—crimson bus. That way madness lies.

  The same madness that inspired Rocky Mountain rams to butt heads and bull elks to bugle at the moon. Mourning doves to sit on the branches, shoulder to soft gray shoulder. Stealing a glance at the house next door, Jack felt a dangerous quickening in his blood.

  Okay, he could think about it; it was springtime in the Rockies, after all. But he’d never act. He’d learned his lesson very well, thank you, at sweet Maura’s hands. Might as well court a buzz saw as a woman who was still making up her mind about Life, Men and Love. You ended up losing parts of yourself you’d rather keep.