Big Sky Lawman

by Marilyn Pappano

  Just like people snickered and called her aunt “Crazy Cobbs.” He broke off, but it was too late.

  “Crazy Crystal, just like her crazy old aunt. Those loony Cobbses. Maybe they are harmless, but, just in case, shouldn’t they be locked up for their own good?” She gave him a thin, coldly lonely smile. “Go back out to the clearing and look, Deputy, and if you find something, write your report. But don’t bother coming here again. I’ll be too busy packing to say goodbye.”

  Pulling her arm free, she went inside, closed the door and secured the lock.

  Rankled by her use of his title, and more shaken than he wanted to admit by her threat to leave Whitehorn, he considered shouting through the door or going to the shop to get Winona’s key and letting himself in. But in the end, he did neither. He returned to his truck and drove back to the clearing.

  Nothing had changed. There was nothing to indicate that Christina had ever been there, nothing at all to suggest that she might have died there. He knelt where Crystal had knelt, reached out his hand just as she had, but he felt nothing. No otherworldly connection, no fear, no foreboding.

  Maybe he was too pragmatic, too much an unbeliever. Maybe the spirit, the energy, the memory, whatever the hell it was, was accessible only to someone who believed.

  Crystal believed, but he couldn’t ask her to come here again. It was too cruel. But what about Winona? She was a believer, too, and embraced the whole idea far more willingly than Crystal did. If there was some psychic energy here, surely she could detect it.

  Deciding he would ask the old lady to come out with him the next morning, he straightened and began a serious survey of the site. He was looking for anything to suggest that he and Crystal weren’t the first people to set foot in the clearing in ages—a gum wrapper, a footprint, a broken twig. He searched the clearing, then the ten feet beyond, then another ten feet, and found nothing.

  That should make Crystal happy, he thought as he returned to the clearing. No clues meant no report, and no report meant her secret was safe. He should be happy, too, because as long as he kept her secret, she had no reason to leave Whitehorn.

  Besides, it wasn’t even logical that Christina would come here. She hadn’t been the outdoors type. Her idea of a good time had been shopping, spending Daddy’s money and partying. A nighttime hike wasn’t in keeping with what he knew of her, especially if the rumors that she’d been pregnant were true.

  But Crystal had seemed so certain that Christina had come here, so convinced that something terrible had happened to her here.

  After a moment Sloan realized that his gaze was fixed on yellow lights on the far side of the lake. Dusk had settled, and tiny pin-dots of light scattered across the darkness indicated that friends and neighbors were home safe for the night. It would be in his best interests to head home, too, before it got so dark that he tripped on the trail and broke his fool neck.

  He made it back to his truck without incident, but instead of turning toward town and his apartment, he went the opposite direction. It was only a few miles to the reservation, only three miles farther to the house where he grew up. He tapped the horn once, an old signal to let his father know he was there, then headed for the pasture north of the house.

  There were more than a dozen horses in the field, everything from quarter horses to paints to Arabians, plus Amy’s Appaloosa. Leaning on the board fence, he whistled and half of them wandered over, expecting feed, a treat or at the least a good scratching. His paint separated from the others and walked right up to him, stretching his neck across the fence for Sloan’s attention.

  “I’d ask how things are going, but the fact that you’re out here with your horse on a Saturday night tells me all I need to know.”

  Sloan glanced at the man who came to stand beside him. His father was two inches taller, ten pounds leaner, and his skin a few shades darker, but other than that, the resemblance between them was strong. So was the bond between them.

  “How are things going out here?” Sloan asked.

  Arlen smiled. “I can’t complain, and I shouldn’t brag. What about you?”

  Sloan could tell him about work or catch him up on everything happening in town, but he chose a different topic. “I met a woman. She’s white. Doesn’t care much for me. Doesn’t want to see me again. But I think I’m going to marry her.”

  His father was silent for a time, taking all that in. They’d discussed the women in each other’s lives quite often, but this was the first time marriage had come into the conversation since his dad had announced ten years ago that he was marrying Amy. Clearly, it had thrown him for a loop.

  After a while Arlen cleared his throat, then said, “Well, hell, son, why settle for something so easy? Why don’t you find yourself a real challenge?” Then, “Tell me about her.”

  “Her name is Crystal Cobbs. She’s from Georgia. She’s Winona Cobbs’s great-niece, and she’s…delicate as hell.” Distracted by the image of her, he forgot about scratching until the horse butted him. He absentmindedly started again. “Remember that mare you got from Uncle Delbert years ago?”

  “Thoroughbred so skittish even her own shadow spooked her?”

  “That’s Crystal. She got her heart broken by some idiot fiancé and she’s determined not to ever risk it again.”

  His father chuckled. “Spoken like a man who’s never had his heart broke before. Take it from one who has, son, it’s not an easy thing to risk again.”

  Sloan glanced at him. After the experience with Sloan’s mother, it had taken his father almost twenty years to get serious about another woman. Back then, if he’d given it any thought, he would have guessed that Arlen had no need of a regular woman in his life, or that he’d enjoyed dating multiple women too much to settle for just one, or even that he hadn’t been able to find a woman who wanted him and the reservation and his illegitimate, half white kid.

  He had never thought residual feelings for his mother could have played a role in Arlen’s choice to remain single. He had to admit, he wasn’t totally comfortable with the idea.

  “What did this idiot fiancé do to break her heart, besides not marrying her?”

  “I’m not sure. I know it involved betraying her trust.”

  “That can be worse than breaking a heart.”

  And harder to forgive, especially for Crystal, who, he suspected, was already woefully low on forgiveness.

  “Does she have any notion that you’re planning to marry her?”

  Sloan leaned back against the fence, his elbows hooked over the top rail. “I doubt it. She still hasn’t gotten past the fact that I’m a cop—she doesn’t trust cops—or that I know something about her that she wanted to keep secret.”

  “You’d better tread carefully, son,” Arlen warned, “or you may convince her that you’re no better than the idiot fiancé.”

  Sloan didn’t tell him that he’d already used her secret to blackmail her into cooperating with him. It wasn’t something he was proud of. “I got her to consider coming out here to ride some weekend. Is that all right with you?”

  “Of course. You can stay for dinner. Let the family meet her.”

  “Family,” Sloan knew, included his grandparents, whose house was just a quarter mile down the road, and any aunts, uncles or cousins who happened to come calling. They were all good-humored, good-natured, passionate people, and he tried without success to imagine Crystal in their midst. She was no doubt much more accustomed to quiet, formal dinners than loud, rowdy parties—and every meeting of the Ravencrest clan was a party.

  “She’s an only child who spent a lot of time at country club dinners. Could we restrict dinner invitations the first time to the grandparents?”

  “Next you’ll be asking that you get the chance to propose to her before Amy and your grandmother start planning the wedding,” his father teased, then relented. “All right. I suppose this one time we can do that.”

  Silence settled between them, the companionable kind that a man could be com
fortable with. Sloan had never known an easier man to be quiet with than his father. For as long as he could remember, they’d shared these times, where neither had to talk if he didn’t want to, but where nothing was off limits for discussion if he did want to. For the first time in longer than he could remember, he chose to broach the one subject that was closest to off limits. “Did she break your heart?”

  Arlen glanced his way, but in the dim light it was impossible to read anything in his expression. “Your mother? She surely did.”

  Your mother. It was a foreign phrase to Sloan. In twenty-nine years he’d never really thought of himself as having a mother. There was merely the woman who’d given birth to him. Who hadn’t wanted him. Who’d given him away without regret.

  He knew more about her, of course. Her name was Elizabeth, Betsy for short. She’d had blue eyes and blond hair, and she’d grown up in northern Wyoming. She’d majored in business in college, had wanted a career and hadn’t wanted him.

  “Do you ever hear anything about her?”

  His father shook his head, then asked, “Do you?”

  Sloan echoed his father’s no. He certainly had the resources to locate her, if he chose, but what would he say to her? There was nothing he wanted to know, except maybe if she’d ever regretted it. If she’d ever had suitable kids—white kids—did she ever look at them and wonder about him? Did she ever think that, in putting him out of her life, she might have lost someone who was worth knowing?

  “If…” Arlen cleared his throat. “If you ever wanted to look her up and maybe go see her, Amy and I wouldn’t mind.”

  “Why would I want to do that?”

  “It would be natural if you did. She is your mother, after all, and every kid needs a mother.”

  “That sounds like Amy talking,” Sloan said with a grin. His stepmother was a peacemaker—with four rowdy sons, she needed to be. She looked for the good in everyone, preached compromise and encouraged forgiveness. Sloan believed in treating the people in your life with respect and not worrying about the ones who weren’t there. “Tell her not to worry. I had a grandmother, eight to ten aunts, and a dozen older female cousins all mothering me. I didn’t grow up deprived in that department.”

  “All the same, if you ever want to meet your real mother, it’s all right with us.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” And he would, even though he couldn’t imagine the situation in which he would want to meet the woman. “I’d better head back to town.”

  “Let us know when we get to meet your girl. We’ll make sure your brothers are on their best behavior.”

  “Forget the boys. Make sure Grandma and Granddad are on their best behavior. No comments about her being white, history repeating itself, or sticking to my own kind.”

  His father laughed as they walked to the truck. “Maybe we’d better restrict this to only the immediate family. You might better get a ring on her finger before you introduce her to the rest.”

  After giving him a hug, Sloan climbed in and backed out. A ring on her finger. That was damned optimistic, considering that the last time he’d seen Crystal, she’d called him Deputy and told him not to come around again.

  But he was nothing if not optimistic.

  And with Crystal, he needed all the optimism he could muster.

  After one long, lousy night in bed, Crystal woke up Sunday morning feeling as cranky as a teething baby. Her all-night tossing and turning had been interrupted only infrequently by restless naps and bad dreams. She would have been better off staying awake all night, she decided, and waiting for sheer exhaustion to put her to sleep. Then maybe she wouldn’t look so puffy and feel so fatigued. Then her head wouldn’t be hurting, and her heart—

  Well, her heart always hurt. It had ever since she’d realized that James was going to betray her, her parents were going to abandon her, her friends were going to ignore her and her employer was going to fire her. It had especially hurt ever since Sloan Ravencrest had walked into the back room at the shop. But it had stopped hurting completely in odd moments since then. She’d gotten too caught up in him a few times to remember to suffer… When she’d first seen him in the kitchen yesterday, looking impossibly handsome and sexy. Or when he’d drawn his fingertip up the length of her arm, making her want to rub against him and purr like a kitten. Or when she’d asked him to forget all that garbage about her parents, and he’d said sure, no problem.

  Or when he’d held her while she cried.

  When was the last time a man had held her while she cried? Never, that she could recall. James had hated tears. On the rare occasion that she’d shed them around him, he’d reacted with scathing remarks about overemotional women. Her father hated tears, too, and, on those even rarer occasions, had called to her mother to do something with her daughter.

  But Sloan had held her, soothed her, told her it was good to cry.

  And she had called him “deputy” in that scornful tone and told him not to bother coming back.

  Scowling, she left the bedroom for the bathroom, then the kitchen. A glance in the bathroom mirror had warned her that she looked every bit as bad as she felt—downright scary, in fact, with her short hair standing on end and shadows under her eyes—but there was no one to see her but Winona, who had some pretty scary mornings, too.

  She was rounding the corner into the kitchen when she became aware of voices at the small table—Winona’s and the deep rumble of a man’s. When she saw Sloan sitting in her usual place, cradling a cup of coffee in his hands, she came to a sudden stop. Feminine vanity demanded that she flee back down the hall, but her bad mood was equally insistent that she hold her ground. Before either could win, Winona inadvertently directed all attention her way.

  “Oh, my.” Her aunt smiled anxiously. “Have a bit of a bad night, did you, dear?”

  Sloan’s gaze shifted to her, so potent she could physically feel it, so compelling she couldn’t move to save her life. His look started at the top of her head, then moved slowly down over her face and the startled expression frozen there, down her throat to the thin, snug tank top she still wore for sleep despite the November chill, over her breasts and stomach to the matching boxers that left way too much thigh exposed. It went all the way down to her feet, then just as slowly started back up again. She wanted to fold her arms across her breasts but couldn’t, wanted to casually stroll farther into the room, but couldn’t do that, either. All she could do was stand there, feeling exposed and hot and incredibly aroused—and knowing that he was, too. He was thinking about undressing her, seducing her, about removing her top and stroking her breasts, about the contrast between his dark hands and her pale skin, an image that made her bite back a groan.

  Slowly he smiled, a smile different from all his other smiles she’d seen. There was nothing charming about this one, or friendly or boyish or regretful. It was the satisfied smile of a man who knew he’d aroused her with no more than a look—and how could he not know? Her breathing had gone shallow and ragged, and her breasts had drawn up tight, her nipples forming hard crests obvious under the thin shirt.

  “Good morning.” His voice was low, husky. It sounded erotic as hell to Crystal, but her aunt didn’t seem to notice a thing.

  “Perhaps you’d like to grab your robe and join us for breakfast,” Winona suggested pointedly from her position in front of the stove.

  Murmuring an excuse, she spun and returned to her room. There she caught sight of herself once more in the mirror and didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She looked a fright—bad enough to make James groan and turn away.

  But Sloan hadn’t turned away. He’d been turned on, too. She’d seen the look on his face.

  She considered getting dressed, brushing her teeth, combing her hair and walking into the kitchen once more. She wasn’t sure she had the nerve. Maybe with makeup and her most modest outfit. And after a cold shower. With a stiff drink for courage.

  She also considered crawling back into bed, pulling the covers over her head an
d pretending sleep when Winona eventually came looking for her. She was trying to decide between the two when a knock sounded at the door.

  “Crystal?”

  It was Sloan. She went to the door, well aware there was no lock on it, and leaned against it. “What?”

  “Breakfast is ready.”

  Breakfast, eaten across the table from Sloan when he’d just…when she’d just…

  “I’m not hungry,” she murmured against the door. She didn’t hear him leave, though. Instead he tapped on the door again, a little knock created with one fingertip, possibly the same fingertip he’d trailed along her arm yesterday morning and made her—

  “Open the door, Crystal.”

  She swore she could feel his heat through the hollow-core door, reaching in, warming her already-too-warm body. “I can’t,” she replied in little more than a whisper. “I’m not dressed.”

  There was a thunk on the other side of the door, followed by a chagrined chuckle. “Oh, hell, just go ahead and shoot me. Put me out of my misery.”

  She eased the door open a few inches. The thunk, she realized, had been his forehead hitting the door, while the chagrin came from a most impressive complication. “You don’t look miserable.” Oh, no. He looked sinful, sensual, sexual, sensuous—all those wonderfully bad S words used to great effect in the romances she read.

  Gripping the door in one hand, he pushed it open a few inches farther, until she blocked it. “Let me look at you a few seconds more…” Then, in an instant, he changed, became serious, intense. “Are you still mad at me?”

  Heat flushed her face, from embarrassment this time instead of arousal. “I wasn’t mad. I mean, I was, but not at you. Jobs come first. They’re important. Sometimes I forget that.” James’s career, both in the D.A.’s office and the political office he aspired to, was of utmost importance. It dictated everything he did—the way he dressed, the clubs he belonged to, the people he was friends with, the woman he would marry.