by Liz Ireland
“In other words, a real ticking package,” Merlie observed.
Cody nodded. “Just think of the harm she could have caused. I know for a fact those floors had just been waxed. A wrong step from one of the square dancers—say if they were craning around to gape at Ruby’s outfit—and one of them might have slipped. You might end up with square dancers in the hospital!”
“Or do-si-doing in the great beyond,” Merlie speculated.
Cody frowned. “Or what about Laird Weatherby? He plays the fiddle for the square dancers, and he has a heart condition. If I’d let Ruby sashay into that gym and strut her stuff, we might’ve had to cart poor old Laird out on a stretcher.”
Merlie hooted. “Death by striptease—that’s a new one!” She poked her cat glasses up the bridge of her nose. “Least old Laird would’ve died happy.”
Sam let out a long sigh. “Well, okay, Cody. I guess I can understand your reasoning, unconventional though it is. I was just afraid you might be using the jail as a holding pen for pretty gals.”
“Cody?” Merlie laughed. “You know as well as I do, Sam, that the only birds this boy thinks about are those fat chickens of his.”
How Cody wished that were true. The unfortunate fact was, however, he’d been dreaming about Ruby Treadwell’s pert breasts and shapely legs so much lately that he was beginning to doubt his sanity. No one else needed to know that, however.
“Sam, you couldn’t actually think I have designs on Ruby Treadwell. She’s caused me plenty of trouble just dealing with her here, not to mention that oldest brother of hers nearly strangled me to death!”
Sam nodded. “She’s pretty, though.”
She was pretty, but he would be the last man to admit that in public. “She’s got a mouth like a trucker and taste like a Vegas showgirl. Not to mention, she’s got a personality like a she hyena. Whose idea of a dream girl is that?”
“There are plenty of he hyenas hanging out at the Chugalug, last I saw,” Merlie observed.
Sam slammed his cowboy hat on his head. “Okay, Cody, whatever you think is best. As long as things are under control here, I better be moseying along. Shelby and the baby are planning a surprise dinner for me at home.”
Merlie tilted her head. “If it’s a surprise, how do you know about it?”
Sam grinned. “It’s our three-month anniversary. She always does something special.” His brows lifted as an idea occurred to him. “Say, if ya’ll want to come over later, we might have some new movies to show.”
That suggestion sent Merlie scurrying for the door. “Sorry. I don’t think anything could top ‘Lily Sucks Her Thumb’ in terms of dramatic action and exciting production values.”
Cody followed, and he and Merlie saw Sam off.
In the jail cell, Ruby was sitting cross-legged on the bed, her feather boa wrapped around her like a cape, a sour expression on her face. She was atypically silent.
“I wish I had someone waiting at home to give me dinner,” Merlie complained, gathering her things. “The only surprise that ever greets me is when Tubb-Tubb throws a hair ball.”
Cody always suspected that Merlie’s much-maligned yet fat and pampered cat was her favorite companion outside her old Budweiser card deck. “From the amount you complain about them, I would think Tubb-Tubb’s hair balls would have ceased to be a surprise by now, Merlie.”
She laughed. “That’s a fact.”
When Merlie was gone, Ruby still didn’t appear to be in a talkative mood, so Cody sat in Merlie’s chair and thumbed through People. In its pages, movie stars, as always, were enjoying life-styles beyond the understanding of plain folks. Cody let out a low whistle. “Did you hear about this actress who spent millions to buy a ranch out in central Texas?” He showed her the picture of the twenty-million-dollar actress in a pair of two-thousand-dollar boots lounging casually on the wraparound porch of her new ranch house. “What do you think about that?”
Ruby didn’t appear impressed. “I think if I had millions, I could think of better places. Why doesn’t she go buy Switzerland?”
“I don’t know…it looks like a nice spread.” He dreamed of something half that big. Besides which, he admired a person who could do whatever they wanted, which this movie star obviously could.
Nevertheless, at Ruby’s look of disgust, he thumbed quickly past the seductive images of rolling hills and rampant free will. “I don’t know why you’re in such a bad mood,” he said. “You’re finally getting your free night in jail.”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to sound ungrateful.”
“Would you like something to eat?” he offered. “I could pick up some sandwiches at the Feed Bag before it closes.”
“I’m not hungry.”
He didn’t have much of an appetite, though he was tempted to go to the Feed Bag to escape the tension his prisoner was exuding. Of course he could have gone into the next room, but somehow that didn’t seem very neighborly, considering that there were just the two of them.
Then again, Ruby’s scowling didn’t seem very neighborly, either. “What’s the matter with you? You’ve hardly said a civil word since we’ve been here.”
She sprang off the bed as though jet propelled. “I haven’t said a civil word? At least I haven’t been insulting you!”
He drew back. “What did I do? I was just thumbing through this magazine—”
“In the next room with the sheriff and Merlie, remember? I quote, ‘a personality like a she hyena!”’
As that and a few other choice phrases came back to him, the blood drained out of his face. He hadn’t reckoned on Ruby listening in on their conversation.
“Taste like a Vegas showgirl?” Her face was red with indignation as she tossed her boa to the ground. “I told you why I was doing all this! Do you think I enjoy making a spectacle of myself?”
“Well, you’ve always had a way of standing out, Ruby.”
“I can’t help that. It’s just something in my genes, I guess. I thought you were big enough to look past a person’s reputation, or at least were gentleman enough not to insult me in public.”
He felt as low as a worm. “I’m sorry, Ruby. I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. I just didn’t want my uncle to think that I was bringing you in here out of any kind of personal feeling.”
She leaned against the bars, grudging agreement in her expression. “Oh, well, I suppose you were right to do that, though I seriously doubt anyone with half a brain would think a man like you would have any kind of feelings for me in the first place.”
“Well, I do,” he said, then added with a sheepish smile, “I mean, friendly feelings, at any rate.”
She smiled ruefully. “Don’t mind me, Cody. I don’t know why I blew up at you like I did. Just moods, I guess.”
Cody turned his head away, not wanting to get into an argument.
Ruby tilted her head. “Do you like M&M’s?”
He swirled in Merlie’s chair, happily surprised by her change in tone, and topic. “Sure.”
She grinned and did a little skip backward to her handbag. “Good. See, I was hoping I’d end up in jail, so I hid a king-size pack in my jacket. There’s enough to share.”
“Well, I wouldn’t want to take your food….”
She laughed. “Don’t worry, I won’t starve for the lack of a few pieces of candy. Besides, you could use some fattening up.”
“Me?” he asked, surprised. He went to the bars to accept her offer of M&Ms, which she tore open with her red-nailed fingers. “Oh, good, the peanut kind.” He popped a blue one in his mouth. “Thanks.”
She ate a yellow one and smiled thoughtfully. “Anyway, I suppose you were right. I’m short and loud and used to raising hell—nobody’s idea of a dream girl. I sometimes wonder if I’d have turned out any better if I’d had a mother to do the pink ribbons and frilly dresses routine with.”
Her tone was starkly lacking in self-pity, which made him feel worse. He hated that she’d been listening in. Hated that he’d hurt
her feelings. “I didn’t really mean what I said back there. I told you, I was just trying to get Sam off our scent.”
“But in the heat of the moment, I believe you hit upon a morsel of truth, Cody. I’ve been rebelling so long, I doubt I could act normal even if I tried.”
“Of course you could. You were sort of normal once. Heck, you were even a cheerleader.”
“They just wanted me for my lung power.” She sighed. “Anyway, being normal in high school doesn’t count. Everybody tries to be like everybody else when they’re teenagers, and teenagers are all nuts, anyway, so I suppose even when I was like everybody else I was still crazy.”
Cody mulled over that twisted logic and glanced at her. She seemed so discouraged, his heart couldn’t help going out to her. Nor could his hands. Some madness made him reach through the bars to touch her shoulder. At the same moment she shifted position, and his hand collided with her chest.
At his touch, she jumped back, stiff as a board. Her eyes were wide, and she looked more than a little offended as she swept him up and down with an imperious glance. “What’s the big idea?”
He retracted his hand. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…I just wanted to touch your shoulder….”
“I said I wanted to be locked up, not felt up.”
Cody’s face burned. “It was a mistake.” That was the truth!
She took a step backward. “Anyway, you’re a fine one to talk about being normal. What’s normal about being the Dudley Do-Right of Heartbreak Ridge?”
Cody shifted awkwardly, not knowing how to respond. Women and their moods! That was one reason he was so awkward around the opposite sex—they all seemed to be operating on a different frequency. “I’ll run over to the Feed Bag to get some sandwiches. You can’t eat M&M’s for dinner.”
He snatched his hat, knowing he shouldn’t feel as angry as he did. Nor should he feel grudging attraction to a woman who considered him a Dudley Do-Right throwback.
He needed to get a life!
He slammed out the door, wishing to heck he’d never got mixed up with Ruby Treadwell and her problems.
OH, WHY COULDN’T SHE keep her big trap shut?
Ruby hunched miserably on her cot, gnawing a turkey sandwich that might have been sandpaper for all she had noticed. All she could focus on was that Cody wasn’t talking to her anymore, and hadn’t since he’d come back from the Feed Bag and handed her a sandwich through the bars.
After the way she’d sniped at him, who could blame him? Here he’d done her this big favor, and she’d called him Dudley Do-Right. What was wrong with her?
She flashed back to the moment he’d reached through the bars to touch her. He’d missed her shoulder, but she’d known that he meant to comfort her. That was what was wrong. She wasn’t used to such sweet caresses, such concern—especially from men. The trouble was, the man she’d been calling a Boy Scout she really felt was sinfully cute, and he was also the first guy in Heartbreak Ridge who hadn’t given her either the wolf treatment or the cold shoulder.
His behavior now might look like the cold shoulder, but that was her fault. He was sitting at Merlie’s computer, eating his sandwich and reading something on the screen. Hadn’t so much as cleared his throat in fifteen minutes. He’d probably forgotten she was there.
She sighed, tearing off a bite of sandwich and staring at his profile. He really was good-looking. His blond hair was thick and shiny, the kind of hair a woman’s fingers just itched to run through. And he had a strong jaw, sort of like Dudley Do-Right’s, now that she thought about it, with a little dimple in his chin and everything. Only it didn’t look cartoonish, but sexy, like Cary Grant’s dimple. Add to those features eyes that were dreamy blue and a body that was trim without seeming bony, and all together Cody Tucker was very definitely a handsome specimen of a man.
Now that she’d noticed him, she heard other women mentioning him around town. Leila Birch, who worked at the Stop-N-Shop, had been talking about him the last time Ruby had been in buying groceries, and the tone in her voice and the simpering way she’d said his name had made Ruby want to gag.
Not that she was jealous or anything. It was obvious Leila had developed some kind of crush on Cody when she knew absolutely nothing about the man, except maybe what brand of washing detergent he preferred or whether he was partial to frozen dinners.
Come to think of it, that was more than Ruby knew.
She got up and moved to the bars, peering at the screen Cody was so absorbed in. As she did, Cody mirrored her movements, craning his head so her view of the monitor was obscured.
“What are you reading?” she asked, munching casually to disguise her intense interest.
“Nothing.” He remained turned away from her.
If he thought stonewalling was a useful strategy, he had another think coming.
Quietly, she crept out of the cell and tiptoed behind him so she could read the screen. What she saw nearly shocked the socks off her. Cody was reading personal ads on the Internet! She let out a chuckle.
Cody nearly jumped out of his skin. He swiveled toward her, blue eyes wide. “What is this? A jail-break?”
“I was lonely.” She grinned. “So, apparently, are you.”
His face had blushed to the color of a hot tamale. “I was just reading. Don’t you ever browse through these silly ads?”
“Oh, sure,” Ruby answered, smiling knowingly, “all the time, but I’m the self-professed frustrated twenty-one-year-old virgin, remember?”
“I was just curious,” Cody mumbled.
She wondered. “Even if you were, I can guarantee you that going through personal ads is probably a better way to find yourself a serial killer than a date.”
“My uncle found his wife on the Internet, and Shelby’s nice.”
“Maybe it works sometimes,” Ruby conceded. “But now that your uncle lucked out and got himself a wife that way, what are the chances you would, too? You can’t buck the law of averages, especially since you live in Heartbreak Ridge.”
Hard-luck romance was a fact of life in their hometown, but to prove that the human race was full of hopeless romantics, people kept trying anyway.
But Ruby was going to be smart. She was going to get out of town, then have her amorous adventures. Perhaps the town’s romance curse wouldn’t follow her.
“You can’t be too careful,” she admonished.
He grinned. “Thanks, but I don’t need a lesson in caution from a woman who skinny-dips in a pond full of snapping turtles.”
She tilted her head, inspecting his face again. She wondered if he knew Leila had a crush on him. She wondered if she should tell him. She decided against it.
“Anyway, a guy like you shouldn’t have to go fishing on the World Wide Web.”
He straightened. “What do you mean, ‘a guy like me’?”
No doubt he was thinking about her Dudley Do-Right crack. Maybe here was her chance to make amends. “Just that you’re…well, good-looking, frankly. Not in that he-man linebacker way. Not in the dramatic way your brother has about him. But you do have a certain charm, a kind of Chris O’Donnell thing that some women really go for.”
He lifted a brow skeptically. “Some…but not you?”
She laughed, a little too loudly, perhaps. “I could never get involved with anybody around here. Aside from the fact that my dumb brothers would kill any man who came within hand-holding distance, I intend to get away from here and have adventures.”
“What kind of adventures?” Cody smiled. “What exactly do you plan to do when you finally escape, as you say?”
Now this was a subject she loved. She clasped her hands together, savoring her vision of the future. “Well, first off, no more little towns for me—no sirree, Bob! From now on it’s big places, like New Orleans, Boston, San Francisco, Paris! With a real urban apartment—you know, spare modern furniture and one of those cool doorman buttons like you see on Rhoda reruns.”
He grinned. “Cosmopolitan. Gotcha.”
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She thought for a moment. “Well…unless it’s an interesting little town, not a throwback place like this. Maybe a picturesque village on the Riviera would be okay, or even an artist colony in Mexico.”
He lifted a brow. “You want to be an artist?”
She shook her head. “No, but I think it would be fun to be around them, don’t you?”
He wrinkled his nose. She took that as a negative. “What do you intend to do? You’ve worked on a ranch all your life.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” She frowned. This had been one thing she’d worried about—leaving the ranch. She’d be like a fish out of water, wouldn’t she?
But that would be part of the fun, too! “Oh, I don’t care. I’ll get a McJob. I really just want to meet interesting people.”
“Interesting men?”
She grinned. “Right! That’s going to be the best part of the adventure. I’m going to have lovers by the bucketful. And to start with, I’ll take Antonio Banderas.”
“I think he’s taken already.”
“Okay, then I’ll take an Antonio Banderas knock-off. But it wouldn’t just be a physical thing, mind you.”
Cody laughed. “No—heavens, you don’t sound caught up in that part at all.”
She punched him playfully on the shoulder. “I’m serious. I want love and the physical relationship all in one—the whole nine yards.”
“Ruby Treadwell, romantic dreamer. I’d never have guessed it,” Cody said with a whimsical sigh. “I guess that’s the funny thing about people. We’re all wandering around with cockeyed dreams inside our heads that nobody else would even guess at.”
She grinned excitedly. “No kidding—you, too?”
“Well…I’ve never thought about bucketsful of lovers or anything like that.” His eyes shone with humor. “But I have thought about maybe trying something different….”
