by Liz Ireland
She looked back, giving him the same fluttery-fingered wave she’d sent to the guys at the Chugalug. “Bye, Cody. It was good talkin’ to you! Maybe we can do it again sometime!”
2
CODY ASSUMED she was joking.
Unfortunately, the next Friday he discovered differently.
“You gotta get her outta there!” Hank Tyler yelled at Cody over the roar of rock music coming from a battery-operated boom box.
Alanis Morissette bellowed incongruously in the peaceful setting of the little pond nestled in the hollow between two hills. Cody glanced fleetingly toward the middle of the water, where Ruby was doing a backstroke. Naked. He caught one tantalizing glimpse of pale flesh before darting his gaze away.
Heaven help him! He needed to start asking for Fridays off.
For the life of him, though, Cody couldn’t understand what old Hank was raising such a ruckus about. So there was a naked woman in his pond—worse things could happen! Heck, if it were him, and there was a beautiful woman doing a nude backstroke in a tank on his property, he’d probably take a subtle peek and move on.
Exactly! A stern voice in his head reprimanded him for the subversive thought. That’s why he wasn’t cut out for law enforcement. He didn’t enjoy getting people into trouble. Unfortunately, pacifists didn’t make the best policemen.
He reached down and switched off the radio.
“Hey!” Ruby called, incensed. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Cody turned to Hank, ready to beg, grovel and plead with the man not to make him haul Ruby away. “You know, I don’t really see the harm being done here….”
Hank swung a thunderstruck gaze on him. The man was so thin he might have been constructed of toothpicks, and with his droopy mustache and old cowboy hat he looked like pictures of old gold prospectors Cody had seen. But every inch of the guy’s wiry frame was taut with tension, and his face reddened as he had to speak over the colorful invective being hurled their way from the pond. Ruby wanted her music turned on.
“No harm?” Hank repeated, incredulous. “No harm? Tomorrow’s Saturday, and that gal’s disturbing my fish!”
Fish weren’t the only ones being disturbed by Ruby’s display. Cody’s equilibrium was way off kilter. He turned, then to his dismay found himself staring straight at Ruby’s bared breasts. He pivoted quickly to Hank.
“Listen, Hank, kids skinny-dip all the time around here in the summer. If I—”
Hank quivered with indignation. “It’s a simple case of trespassing. That’s still against the law, ain’t it?”
“Well, technically, yes, but—”
“Then technically I’m lodging a complaint!”
Cody let out a sigh. “Okay, Hank.” Reluctantly he turned and, trying to keep his gaze trained toward a tree on the other side of the pond, addressed Ruby. “I’m going to have to take you in.”
“It’s about time!” she hollered. “What were you two talkin’ about over there? The weather? Fine thing to be gabbing when there’s a lawbreaker in your midst!”
“That’s what I was tellin’ him!” Hank interjected.
Cody sighed. Now the two were in cahoots! “Ruby, will you get out of there and put on some clothes so we can get a move on?”
“All right, all right! Hold onto your shorts!”
He listened to her sloshing toward dry land and tried not to visualize bare flesh sprayed with water. Good heavens. What was it about Ruby Treadwell that got under his skin so?
He concentrated on something only slightly more productive than thinking about Ruby—namely, thinking about getting himself a girlfriend. All week, as thoughts of Ruby in that red WonderBra had been flitting unwanted through his mind, he’d been mulling over the necessity of finding himself a female companion. Fast. Before he did something really crazy, like deciding that Ruby might be a fun date.
So in his spare time, he’d been thinking about Leila Birch, the cash register girl at the Stop-N-Shop at Heartbreak Ridge. She was pretty and modest, and the last time he’d gone by for groceries she’d smiled at him as he’d written his check. He wasn’t sure if that was an indication she’d be willing to go out with him or not. It was hard to tell.
Of course, the downside was that if he did ask her for a date, Leila might say no, and there he’d be with an audience of Stop-N-Shop patrons witness to his rejection. By the next day it would be all over town. He’d be ribbed about Leila at work by his uncle, and Merlie would make his life a misery with her jokes and innuendo. At the Feed Bag diner they’d call him Casanova and Loverboy to the point that it would be difficult for him to eat his food in peace. He’d have to start packing a sack lunch for work, and all he could make with any confidence was egg salad sandwiches, and those got old real fast. He’d lose weight, dwindling down to something about as bony as Hank, and then no woman would ever want to go out with him anyway.
Then maybe he really would be stuck with someone like Ruby.
His face burned with dread at the catastrophic results just one little invitation for a date could bring raining down on him, so much that he doubted he’d ever work up the nerve to ask Leila for anything more romantic than cash over the amount of purchase.
“Okay, Tucker, let’s hit the trail.”
Cody turned, surprised to find Ruby tugging on his arm, almost as if she were the one hauling him away, and equally disappointed and relieved to see that she was fully clothed in jeans and a T-shirt and her trademark red boots.
Hank trailed after them, tossing out warnings. “You tell her not to come back, hear?”
“Tell her yourself,” Ruby replied tartly. When they were out of earshot, she turned to Cody and said, “Old coot.”
Cody grinned. “He was just trying to protect the modesty of his fish.”
She laughed. Her short black locks glistened with wet, and as she scooped up her boom box and glanced at him, her dark eyes glittered with humor. “Hope I didn’t shock you too much.”
“Something tells me that this antic of yours was meant to shock,” he said as he escorted her to the police car.
“Of course. What would be the point otherwise?” She went to the front this time without any arguments about getting in the back seat. In fact, she settled into the passenger seat as cozily as if she considered it her spot. “Anyway, I’m grateful to you. If you hadn’t come, I’m not sure what would have happened. My skin was starting to get awfully pruny.”
“I’ll tell you what might have happened. Hank might have gone for his shotgun.”
She chuckled. “No, he wouldn’t have. Shooting me, he would have risked nicking a bass with a bullet.”
“Couldn’t you have picked a more secluded place to do your skinny-dipping?” Anyone who’d grown up in Heartbreak Ridge knew all the good swimming holes. “It’s no secret what an old crank Hank Tyler is about people going onto his property to hunt or swim or…”
His voice faded as he noted the complacent smile on her face. “Of course,” she agreed.
Suddenly, he got it. “You wanted him to see you there?”
She crossed her arms and looked out the window. “Just do your job, Deputy Dawg. And could you please lock me up this time so we don’t have a repeat of last week’s fiasco?”
He frowned. He’d never met a girl so eager to be tossed in jail! “Sure, if it’ll make you happy. I’m sure as heck not going to call one of those brothers of yours!”
RUBY SAT BACK on the musty-smelling bare mattress and sipped her paper cup of hot coffee with satisfaction. She’d made it—finally! Most people worked as hard to earn Hawaiian vacations as she had to land in this little cell. And she’d managed to land in jail without breaking a law that would result in harm to anyone. That had taken a little ingenuity.
“Any milk over there?” she asked.
From the area that comprised the sheriff’s office, Merlie Shivers, the sheriff’s secretary, glanced at her through cat glasses that looked like eyewear holdovers from the Eisenhower years. But then
, except for the computer sitting atop her desk, the office itself, with its ancient green file cabinets and furniture that only a Joe Friday throwback would think of as ergonomic, looked like something from another era. Definitely more Mayberry than Miami Vice. And Merlie, with her uniform of overalls and her reputation for plain speaking in a particularly loud drawl, had been a fixture in the sheriff’s office since before Ruby could remember.
“We law-abiding people get milk,” Merlie told Ruby. “Criminals get nondairy creamer.”
“Mmm, I like creamer even better,” Ruby said enthusiastically. “Could I have some of that, please?”
Merlie pursed her lips and squinted at her distrustfully. “I’ll get you the milk.”
Ruby grinned.
Cody looked at her curiously. He was sitting in the chair next to Merlie’s desk, the very chair Ruby had sat in when they logged her in. “Are you sure you don’t want to make a phone call?”
Ruby tossed her still-damp locks. “No, thank you. I’ll call my brothers later.”
At the mention of her siblings, he sank a little further in his chair and pretended to be engrossed in a book entitled Beekeeping Basics. Or maybe he really was engrossed.
It was hard to figure Cody Tucker, which was funny, because as the younger sister of four brothers, with twenty-one years of observation to her credit, she thought she had carefully pegged and categorized most types of men. But Cody was a breed unto himself. He had a tough job, yet he had a reputation for being mild-mannered and quiet. He never shirked his duty, but he didn’t seem particularly comfortable taking charge of unpleasant situations, either. Half the time he looked at Ruby with something like a shine of attraction; other times he appeared to look at her as if she were his worst nightmare come to life.
And wouldn’t you know it, there was something about his ambivalence that appealed to her. She’d never given shy, quiet Cody Tucker much thought before last weekend, and yet in the time since then, she’d wondered why not. His blond, all-American good looks easily made him one of the handsomest men in Heartbreak Ridge, and those blue eyes of his featured more than once in her dreams lately. He wasn’t her type at all—a little too boy-next-door for her taste—and yet there was something about him….
She shook her head, not liking the direction her thoughts were heading. No, no, no. Once she busted out of Heartbreak Ridge, she envisioned herself with the tall, dark, mysterious type.
But to get out of Heartbreak Ridge, she needed assistance. And Cody Tucker could help.
“Aren’t you afraid you might get stung?” she asked him, trying to draw his attention away from Beekeeping Basics.
He looked at her, frowning, as if he’d forgotten she was there. But somehow she doubted he had. “Pardon?”
“By bees. You keep bees, right? Aren’t you afraid of getting stung?”
He considered the question. “Well, no. If you handle them correctly, it’s perfectly safe. Mostly it’s a matter of gear. See, you need—” His words were cut off, and he looked at her sharply. “You don’t care about bees.”
She laughed. “Well, not in any detail, no.” Then she tilted her head, remembering something. “Hey, weren’t you going to make a stab at raising chickens? My brother said he’d sold you one of our best roosters a while back.”
Cody ducked his head. In fact, he looked as if he would have been pleased to duck the whole subject, only Merlie came in with the milk for the coffee and laughed uproariously.
“Oh, Farmer Tucker here was all set to go into the chicken business, all right,” she said, handing the half-pint carton to Ruby through the bars. “Had a whole flock going. Then one day after he’d built them a chicken coop palace and named his new feathered friends from A to Z and gotten to know their little poultry personalities, he decided he couldn’t possibly bring himself to send them off to be beheaded. So now he has eggs every morning and eggs at dinner and delivers eggs to a wide variety of nonpaying customers.”
“I sold some to Doyle at the Stop-N-Shop,” Cody said defensively.
Merlie laughed. “Oh, right. Two dozen out of the five hundred dozen those chickens have produced so far. Face it, Cody, you’re running a charitable institution for chickens!”
Cody’s cheeks were flaming, but he only grumbled, “Well, there are a lot of people benefiting, too.”
Merlie pulled her sweater over her overalls and grabbed her purse. “Except you. You used to order fried chicken several times a week at the Feed Bag, but lately I noticed you’ve been hitting the hamburgers pretty hard.”
His eyes widened in protest. “I happen to like hamburgers!”
Merlie shrugged. “Well, to each his own. Only I wouldn’t consider going into cattle ranching any time soon. You’ll starve to death.” She headed for the door. “See you kids later. I’m off for poker night.”
After the door slammed behind her, there was an awkward minute of silence before Cody spoke. “I had chicken and dumplings at the PTA potluck just last week,” he assured her.
Ruby nodded sympathetically, though in her mind she imagined him extracting the dumplings from the chicken bits.
She also thought that if he had a soft spot for poultry, maybe he would be able to work up one for her, too. She leaned against the bars. “Cody, have you given any more thought to what I said to you last week?”
“About your being a…” The word wouldn’t come out of his mouth.
“A virgin.”
“I can’t say I’ve been pondering it long and hard.”
“Really? You guessed it quick enough.”
He sighed in irritation. “Look, I don’t know what your problem is. A lot of people are virgins.”
“You’re not. Even you—Mr. Shy—you’ve managed to have a fling, while I’m stuck in a rut!” She shrugged. “Besides, that’s not what I was asking you about.”
His face reddened. “Oh.”
“I mean, not exactly,” she clarified. “See, it’s my brothers….”
Cody shuddered, and she sensed this was a topic he cared for even less than her virginity. “I don’t see what they have to do with anything.”
“You don’t?” Ruby’s brothers had been a trial to her for so long she assumed everyone else could see the problem, too. “I’ve got four older brothers who think we’re living in the nineteenth century! They think I should be happy as a lark living at home till I get married.”
“So?”
“So?” she asked, aghast. “That’s why I’m in the state I’m in!”
Cody’s expression was one of sheer confusion. “You mean why you’re in jail?”
“No, I mean why I’m a virgin.” Then, thinking twice, she added, “Although being in jail is part and parcel of the same problem, of course.”
Cody didn’t look as though the situation was becoming any clearer. In fact, he sent furtive longing glances to his bee book, as though he’d like nothing better than to escape this conversation completely.
She wasn’t going to let that happen. “Didn’t you notice Bill’s reaction when he thought you might have kissed me?”
Reflexively, Cody lifted his hand to his starched collar. “He seemed a little upset.”
“Upset? You were moments away from meeting your Maker, if you’ll recall. And let’s face it—you’re a guy any normal family would be pleased as punch to see their little sister take an interest in. You’re the model young man, Mr. Upstanding, an overgrown Boy Scout, a—”
“I get your drift,” he said in a voice that was practically a groan. “So I take it your brother wasn’t pleased.”
“That’s just my point. He wouldn’t be pleased no matter who I brought home.” She laughed mirthlessly. “It’s terrible. I live in a town with a reputation for romances gone wrong, but what I wouldn’t do just to have one romance, good or bad! I used to love this town, love living on the family ranch, but now I can’t stand it. I’m suffocating, I tell you. I want to go out and have adventures, not die in Heartbreak Ridge an old maid!”
> “You’re twenty-one,” Cody counseled. “Just tell your brothers that you’re an adult and you want to go on a date.”
She rolled her eyes. As if it were that simple! “Those brothers of mine are cagey. If I try to go out with a guy, one of them magically pops up at the restaurant or the movie theater.”
Cody laughed. “Why?”
“Because they’re nuts! After my mom died when I was four, they were always overprotective, but with Dad gone, too, they’ve been on guardian overdrive. I love them, of course, but I’ve also been going out of my mind! So now I’ve decided that if I get in a lot of trouble around Heartbreak Ridge, they’ll want to get rid of me.”
Cody crossed his arms over his broad chest. “Isn’t that a little extreme? Why don’t you simply move out and get your own apartment?”
She tapped her foot. “Been there, done that. About a year ago I found a little rental just outside town. You know, Mr. Loftus’s duplex?”
Cody nodded.
“Well, Lucian and Farley helped me move my stuff, then never moved out. First they said they wanted to stay until they upgraded the locks to dead bolts. Then the plumbing needed working on, then they started working on wiring….”
Cody smirked. “I get the picture.”
“It was just like living at home, only more cramped. So I moved back home, where at least I have my own bathroom.”
“Couldn’t you pack up and sneak out of town? If they didn’t know where you were, they couldn’t follow you.”
Ruby grunted. “Are you kidding? Within the hour they’d have a missing persons alert out on me. You’d be seeing my photo on America’s Most Wanted!”
“But your brothers are bound to loosen up someday. They can’t go on like that forever.”
Ruby grunted again. “That’s what I used to think—that I could wear them down. But now it looks like I’ll be a middle-aged crazy lady before they finally decide I’m old enough to let loose on my own, and by then it won’t matter because I’ll be ready for the nuthatch.”
