by Liz Ireland
“I resent that!” she said indignantly. “And anyway, you don’t know for sure. You wouldn’t want me driving around.”
“Your car’s at the Chugalug,” he pointed out.
“I could get back to it.”
“How? The closest cab is in San Antonio.”
“A woman can get around if she has a mind to.” She wiggled suggestively.
He steeled himself against reacting to that little shimmy of hers. “Merlie Shivers, the secretary at the sheriff’s office, usually leaves a sweater at work. You can put that on when we get there—and leave it on.”
She flashed him a wry smile. “My bra really bothers you, doesn’t it?”
Lordy, he was glad it was dark in that car. His face could probably give a radish a run for its money. “No.” That, at least, was the truth. The bra, aside from its color, was nothing to write home about. A woman could buy one at any mall in America. It was the way Ruby’s breasts filled out the wispy garment that had him on edge.
“Liar,” she said. “You’re as jumpy as a frog.”
“It doesn’t matter. Once we get to the jail, I’m calling your brothers.”
The sedan’s interior suddenly filled with such an explosive scream that Cody practically jackknifed onto the shoulder of the winding road. He slammed on the brakes and threw the car into park. The old vehicle shuddered to a stop and died, as did Ruby’s scream.
Cody turned to her, grabbing her shoulders. “For heaven’s sakes, what’s the matter now?” he asked, shaking her.
She gazed at him in a daze. “You’ve got to wait.”
“Wait for what?”
“To call my brothers.”
He squinted at her, his heart still beating like a hammer in his chest, then dropped his arms and leaned back. “Ruby, for cryin’ out loud! I thought you were having a heart attack!”
She sniffed derisively. “People don’t scream when they’re having heart attacks.”
He looked at her unbelievingly. “People don’t scream like that just because they don’t want someone to call their brother, either.”
“But I do want you to call my brothers.”
“Huh?” His head was spinning.
“I just want you to wait awhile.”
“Why?”
She didn’t answer. “Listen, all I’m asking for is a little time in your jail cell. I’d think as an officer of the law you’d appreciate having a guest every once in a while.”
His jaw popped open. “Are you nuts?” As if that were in doubt!
She shrugged. “Look, couldn’t you just leave me there for a little while—say, till three a.m. or so?”
Sam was never going to believe this! Usually when they brought someone in to the little jail cell at the front of the sheriff’s office, the poor inmate cajoled them for hours, using any excuse for why he should be released until Cody was squirming with guilt and burning with the desire to be a rancher.
Yet here was Ruby begging to get locked up.
“I can’t just put a person in jail when they haven’t committed a real unlawful offense and they have family who can come pick them up. There are rules about these things, you know.”
“Cody Tucker, Boy Scout,” she said disgustedly.
Her derisive tone made him bristle. Maybe because he had been a scout. A darn good one, too.
“Sorry, Ruby, but that’s the way things are.”
“Couldn’t you wait at least two hours?”
“No!”
One eyebrow arched, as if she were making her final offer. “An hour and a half.”
He rolled his eyes in exasperation. “Listen, you’re not making any sense. The longer you wait, the madder they’ll be!”
She clucked her tongue. “What do you think I’m doing this for?”
“Beats me!”
Nothing she said made sense to him. Not that he cared to understand her. He feared once a normal person got inside the confused maze of Ruby Treadwell’s brain, her twisted reasoning would start sounding logical and render the person just as bug crazy as she was.
He let out a sigh and turned the key in the ignition. Nothing happened. Frowning, he tried again. The engine clicked.
Ruby hooted. “This is just great! Whoever heard of a cop car breaking down?”
Cody frowned. “The battery couldn’t have died in five minutes!”
“It’s not your battery—it’s your starter.”
He frantically tried turning over the engine again and prayed for a miracle.
His prayer went unanswered.
“Been having trouble lately?”
“No more than usual.” The old sheriff’s sedan had always required TLC.
“It’s your starter,” Ruby repeated.
“Maybe we’re just out of gas.”
“Dream on. The needle’s not even halfway to E.” Ruby grinned at him. “What’s the matter, Deputy? Getting stuck in the middle of the night in the moonlight with a girl make you uncomfortable?”
More than he cared to admit—especially when the woman was half-dressed and didn’t seem mentally sound. Thank heavens for cellular technology! “I’ll call Uncle Sam.”
She laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“Uncle Sam. Sounds like you’re calling in the Marines.”
He felt as if he were calling the sanity hot line. Gripping the cell phone for dear life, he prayed Sam would answer. Soon.
“Hello?”
Cody sagged with relief. It was Shelby, Sam’s wife of three months. “Shelby, it’s me. Sam there?”
Shelby hesitated. “Are you all right, Cody?”
No. I’m stuck in a dead car with a half-dressed lunatic. Shelby, a woman who had been in a few jams in her day, would probably appreciate the situation. However a glance at Ruby, who was gazing at him with keen interest, made him sense now wasn’t the time to go into it. He tried to inject some optimism into his voice. “Just dandy! May I speak to Sam?”
“Sure, Cody.” She called Sam, then whispered encouragingly into the phone. “I know you’re lying, Cody, but whatever’s wrong, you just hang in there. I’ll have you over for supper tomorrow, and you can see the latest baby movies.”
Baby movies. “That’ll be great,” Cody said in a voice woefully lacking in enthusiasm. Ever since Sam had picked up a video camera on sale at Wal-Mart, he’d turned into a regular Cecil B. DeMille. His movies were about as long as those old Hollywood epics, too. Only instead of Ben-Hur, unwitting visitors were treated to three-hour sagas of such fascinating subjects as baby Lily’s teething.
Sam finally made it to the phone, and though Cody was interrupting his newlywed uncle during what was probably a cozy evening at home with his new family, he laughed at Cody’s predicament—and he didn’t even know about Ruby’s lack of clothing.
“I’ll be right there, Cody,” he promised.
Cody breathed a sigh of relief. Rescue! “The sheriff’s on his way,” he assured Ruby. Although she hadn’t seemed overly concerned about being stuck in the middle of nowhere with him.
And why should she? He was sane. He had all his clothes on.
“Goody. All we have to do now is figure out what to do for the next half hour or so.” She twisted around and peered into the back seat. “You don’t have any hooch in this car, do you?”
“No.”
She laughed.
Cody tried to let it pass, but curiosity got the better of him. “What’s so funny?”
“You. I forgot how straitlaced you are. You always were, even back in high school. You were three years ahead of me, and you were always scurrying around doing student council things, or else Future Farmers of America.”
She made these activities sound shameful. “Okay, so I wasn’t a live wire. At least I wasn’t always getting kicked out of school.”
She rolled her eyes. “I was only kicked out once, and even that time was just a silly mistake. Besides, that home ec teacher always had it in for me, anyway.”
; “Mrs. Conway? What did she do?”
“She told us to fix a family recipe and bring it to school for the Christmas party. It was supposed to be our semester final.”
“So?”
Ruby sank down on the seat and grumbled, “So, I made my great-aunt Martha’s fruitcake. I worked on it for weeks.”
“What’s the matter with that?”
“Well, most of those weeks it was soaking in brandy. Great-aunt Martha’s fruitcake was eighty proof.”
Cody laughed.
“It wasn’t funny.” She looked at him and giggled. “I was probably the only person in the world to fail home ec.”
“I never heard the part about the fruitcake, just that you got in trouble.”
“That’s all anybody ever hears about!” she lamented. “Never mind that most of the time it’s not my fault.”
At that assertion, Cody grunted skeptically.
She darted a gaze at him. “Well, what would you know about it, Mr. Model Citizen? You never got into scrapes!”
“Am I supposed to apologize for that?”
She shrugged. “You were always so shy, too. Lena Castle said she had to flirt with you for six months her junior year before you asked her out.”
Lena Castle! He hadn’t thought about her in years. She’d moved to Amarillo and was going to medical school. Sometimes it seemed as if all his classmates had gone on to bigger and better things, while he was stuck in a groove, doing the job he’d been ordained to do from the moment he was born, never mind that he and his profession were a hopeless mismatch.
“Now that brother of yours,” Ruby exclaimed, “he was something!”
Cody shook his head. His older brother, Cal, had always been the one with the reputation with the ladies, plus he was good at both academics and sports. A triple threat.
“Such a shame about his divorce.”
It had been a double shame for Cody, who had taken Cal’s position with their uncle at the sheriff’s office after Cal’s divorce had sent his brother into hibernation on the mountain. There seemed to be no sign of his wanting to come down and reclaim his job, either.
Personally, Cody thought his big brother was overreacting a tad, but Cal never did things by halves. That was probably why he’d married a completely inappropriate city woman to begin with. That, and because he lived in Heartbreak Ridge, a town that hadn’t earned its name from wise romantic choices or happy endings. Its founding pioneer, one of Cody and Cal’s ancestors, had been a brokenhearted soul who named the settlement after his unfortunate condition. And through the years, as the town’s couples had undergone more than the usual trials and tribulations, the moniker proved a fateful one. People tended to view weddings as that last gasp of happiness before doom set in.
“Have you ever had your heart broken?” Ruby asked him.
The question startled him. He hadn’t expected the conversation to turn so personal. “No, I guess not too much.”
“But you’ve had a girlfriend, haven’t you?”
He nodded. “A few.” He shrugged and admitted, “Well, one real serious one.”
Her eyes narrowed curiously. “You mean you’ve slept with just one woman.”
This was a lot more detail than he intended to go into! “Ruby, a gentleman doesn’t talk about things like that.”
“Don’t be so touchy. One’s better than nothing.” She scooted down in her seat with a sigh and looked at him. “’Sides, I’ll bet you’ve broken hearts and not even realized it. In fact, in this town it’s a cinch you have.”
Cody frowned. “Have you ever had your heart broken?”
She laughed. “Me? Take a guess!”
He was straining to recall some snatch of gossip he might have heard about Ruby’s romantic escapades, some remark from the crowd who hung out at the Feed Bag diner, maybe, but no victim came to mind. Most of the talk about Ruby centered around crazy shenanigans she’d pulled, like toilet papering the town square.
God knows Ruby Treadwell’s love life was none of his business, but he couldn’t help being curious. When he turned to ask her who she’d gone out with recently, however, she was looking at him with a strange gleam in her eye.
“Listen, Cody…”
She straightened in the seat and scooted a little closer. For a moment Cody had been so absorbed in their conversation that he’d forgotten how weird she was and the fact that she was sitting next to him in a blanket and a WonderBra.
The gleam, the scooting and the fact that this was the first time she’d called him by his first name made him wary. He edged against his door. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, only I have a proposition for you.”
Uh-oh!
Catching the anxious look in his eyes, she said quickly, “It’s no big deal. It wouldn’t be any trouble to you at all.”
“What?”
She licked her smudged lips. “Well, I was just wondering if you might do me a little favor…like letting me spend some time in your jail next Friday.”
He gaped at her in astonishment. “You mean just for no reason?”
She nodded and smiled. “That’s right.”
“No way!”
Frustration was written all over her face. “Why not?”
“Because we just don’t do things like that.”
“Why not?”
“Because we just don’t. The jail isn’t a motel—it’s taxpayer property.”
“Well, I’m a taxpayer, and I need that cell for a few nights.”
What she needed was a psychiatrist. “Why?”
“Because, look at me, I’m a desperate woman. I’m twenty-one and a virgin and I probably always will be if I’m stuck in this dinky town forever!”
His first thought was, What does that have to do with spending Friday night in jail?
His second thought was, Ruby Treadwell is a virgin?
“Oh, look! Here comes a car. Maybe it’s your uncle!” She turned to him, her shiny brown eyes pleading. “Listen, just give me an answer. Will you or won’t you help me out?”
“I…” His mouth felt so bone dry he could hardly speak. Wild ‘n’ crazy Ruby Treadwell, a virgin? “I can’t.”
She frowned and crossed her arms in a huff. “Fine! See if I do you any favors!”
Who was asking her to?
Cody squinted anxiously as the approaching headlights beamed into the rearview mirror. Sam couldn’t have gotten here this quickly. “It must be somebody else.”
Ruby twisted to see the truck pulling up behind them. “Oh, no!”
Cody lifted a brow. “What’s the matter?”
“It’s my brother Bill!” She scooted low in her seat, hunching as if to hide.
Sure enough, Bill Treadwell got out of the truck and strode toward them, his massive body a study in tension. Cody stepped out of the car to meet him.
Bill, in his mid-thirties, was Ruby’s oldest brother and the head of the whole Treadwell clan. He had the sober look of a man carrying the responsibility for a large family and a huge ranch on his broad, beefy shoulders.
He took in the car, then glared at Cody. “What happened? Cap called me from the Chugalug and said you’d hauled Ruby away. I thought you’d be at the sheriff’s office.”
“We, um, had a little trouble.” Cody didn’t know why he was suddenly so nervous. Something about Bill’s manner; he seemed a little suspicious.
“What are you doing parked with Ruby on the side of the road?” Bill asked, as if Cody had stopped the car on purpose.
“The car broke down,” Cody said. “We were stuck here—”
“You could have called me.”
“I called my uncle. He’s on his way.”
Bill peeked toward the passenger side of the car. “Ruby, come on out.”
Reluctantly, Ruby climbed out of the car, and when she was standing in front of them, Cody suddenly wished she’d stayed put. Brother Bill took in her smeared lipstick and her lack of top. “Ruby, what happened to your shirt?”
> Suddenly, incredibly, mouthy Ruby was all meekness. “I don’t know, Bill. Cody and I looked for it, but we couldn’t find it….”
His jaw twitched in anger as he looked at Cody. “What the hell are you up to?”
Faced with an irate brother, Cody found himself flapping his hands and professing his innocence. “Nothing! I swear it! I was just taking her to the jail to call you.”
“What was she doing in the front seat with you, not in back?”
Ruby looked at Cody and grinned. She was enjoying her brother’s anger a little too much. “Cody’s a front-seat lover.”
When Bill swung his gaze on him, Cody assured him, “She means that I love front seats.”
Ruby giggled. “He told me the back seat’s only for desperate cases.”
The suggestiveness in her voice struck fear in Cody’s heart. If she kept this up, Bill would really think that he…that she…
Judging from the ire in Bill’s eye, that’s exactly what he did think.
“Now wait a minute!” Cody sputtered. “I had nothing to do with any of this. Your sister was undressed when I found her!”
“And you just took advantage of that fact,” Bill said.
Cody turned to Ruby in supplication. “Tell him it’s ridiculous.”
The grin she sent him reminded him of what she’d said: Don’t expect me to do you any favors!
“What happened to your lipstick, Ruby?” Bill demanded.
“It got smeared.”
“How?”
“The usual way, I guess,” she said, smiling sassily.
Suddenly, Cody found himself airborne, his feet dangling inches off the ground, his lapels in the meaty fists of Bill Treadwell. “I’d think a man could trust his sister in the hands of the law!”
Cody gurgled an incoherent response. He meant to say that this was all a big misunderstanding, but he feared Ruby’s gorilla of a brother was strangling him.
Bill’s thunderous expression didn’t brook argument, anyway. “Next time you want to take Ruby out, you come to the house and knock on the door like a civilized person, understand?”
Knowing that he was only seconds away from going to Glory, Cody nodded frantically.
He landed flat on his feet, and the air whooshed into his lungs in a deep gasp. He shook his head, trying to clear it, and by the time the air was circulating above his collar again, he found himself alone. Bill was poking Ruby toward the pickup.
