The Sheriff's Son

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Surprised by the personal question, she slanted him a glance from beneath her lashes. “Since before Mother died seven months ago.”

He grimaced. “I was sorry to hear about her passing.”

He sounded sincere, and somehow that made it harder for Justine to remain callous toward him. She knew that Roy had lost his mother long before he was grown. His father had died in a hunting accident when Roy was only a teenager. He understood what it was like to lose a parent.

“I moved back to the Hondo valley to be with her and nurse her while I could.”

His eyes searched her face. “And you stayed because…?”

She met his gaze. Was he thinking the reason was him? No, surely not. It should be obvious. She’d been home a year and half, and she’d carefully kept her distance from him.

“Mother’s death made me realize how much I needed to be with my family, and how much Charlie needed them, too.”

He glanced at the ground and shifted uncomfortably. “Now, you’ve lost your father. That must have been quite a blow.”

“I think you know how much of a blow. You lost your father, too.”

He glanced up, and for a split second, Justine saw naked pain in his eyes, but it was gone just as swiftly and he was back to being the steely-eyed sheriff of Lincoln County.

“You remember that?” he asked lowly.

He seemed surprised, and Justine couldn’t understand why. True, their time together hadn’t been that long. Two months, at the most. But during those weeks, she’d grown so very close to him. She’d learned all about his growing-up years, his hopes and disappointments, his dreams for the future. How could he think she had forgotten anything about him?

“Of course I remember. He was hunting elk up in the mountains near Cimarron and fell from a cliff.”

“I guess you do remember.”

Too much, Justine thought. Far too much. She turned down the sidewalk heading back to the entrance of the building, then paused awkwardly, a few steps away from him.

“I should thank you again for your help with the twins. I’m sure it would have been impossible for us to keep them if you hadn’t intervened on our behalf. Chloe and Rose are beside themselves.”

Being the sheriff, Roy often received thanks from the people he was able to help. Yet a thank-you coming from Justine was something entirely different. He didn’t want to be touched by it, but he was. He didn’t want to be drawn to her beauty, but he was. More than that, he didn’t want to think of her as his lover. In the past or the present. But he was. And he didn’t know how to stop it.

“I’ll be out at the ranch again this evening,” he said without preamble.

Surprised, Justine looked at him. “For what?”

“Remember, I still need to talk to your sisters. I’d appreciate it if you’d tell them to be there. And I’d like to talk to you some more, too.”

Her heart began to thud rapidly. “About the twins?”

One corner of his mouth curled mockingly. “What else?”

What else indeed, she thought, as heat colored her face. “All right. We’ll be there.”

He touched his finger to the brim of his Stetson, then turned and walked away.

Justine watched him until he was out of sight, then forced herself to go back inside to work. But forcing him out of her mind was another matter.

Chapter Three (#ulink_12588b8b-0bbf-5c5e-82bd-255069115153)

That evening, when Justine got home from work, she scraped her hair back into a ponytail, donned a pair of old, faded jeans, a worn chambray work shirt and tennis shoes with paint splotches on the toes.

When Roy Pardee showed up, he was going to see that enticing him was the last thing on her mind, Justine assured herself as she walked down to the kitchen.

As she stepped into the room, Kitty looked up from her task at the cabinet. “What are you going to do, clean the attic?” the woman asked, her eyes running over Justine’s grubby clothes.

“No. Just getting comfortable,” Justine said offhandedly, then walked over to where the twins were seated, in two high chairs. Bibs were tied around their necks, and damp vanilla-wafer crumbs were scattered across the trays in front of them.

“Where did the high chairs come from?” Justine asked.

“Rose found one in the attic, and Vida brought the other one over this morning,” Kitty said. Vida was an old friend of hers, who lived a few miles down the road, toward Picacho. “Her grandbabies have all grown out of the high-chair stage, and she said she wouldn’t be needing it.”

“She knew about the twins being here?”

“I told her last night on the phone. But I think the whole Hondo Valley must know by now. The telephone has been ringing all day.”

Justine tweaked both babies’ cheeks with thumb and forefinger. “I guess it would be impossible to keep the news from traveling. Especially with Roy’s deputies asking questions all over town.”

Kitty turned her attention back to the cookbook lying open on the cabinet counter. “How do you know this?”

“Roy told me,” Justine answered. “He came to the clinic this morning to have me sign a legal document about keeping the twins.”

“So that part of it is already settled?”

Justine walked over to the coffeemaker sitting on the small breakfast bar. “Yes. It’s all legal now. We keep the twins until Roy finds the parents.”

Kitty looked up from the cookbook. “Sounds like Sheriff Pardee works fast. But, to be honest, I don’t really know how he plans to find who the twins belong to. What does the man have to go on?”

Justine filled a pottery mug full of coffee and took a cautious sip. “Frankly, I don’t know. But he seems confident. By the way, he’s coming back out to the ranch this evening to speak with Rose and Chloe.” Justine refused to add herself to that list. “Did I tell you?”

Glancing over her shoulder, Kitty frowned at her niece. “You knew the sheriff was coming out to the ranch and you dressed in that getup?”

“What do you mean? Roy isn’t coming out here to see what I’m wearing,” she said with faint irritation.

“Why, Justine,” Kitty scolded lightly, “I didn’t imply anything of the sort. It’s just that you’re usually so conscious of your appearance. And Sheriff Pardee is a very good-looking man. Single, too.”

Justine wasn’t surprised at the direction Kitty’s mind had taken. Her aunt was always trying to find husbands for all three of her nieces. “I heard he was divorced.”

“Hmm…I think that’s true. Someone—maybe it was Vida—said he used to be married to the past sheriff’s daughter. But the marriage only lasted two or three months. Strange, isn’t it, two people go to all the trouble of getting married and then can’t stay together for more than twelve weeks.”

Justine tried not to appear shocked as she gazed at her aunt. Two months after she left Roy and went back to college in Las Cruces, Roy had tried to call her several times. Each time, she’d refused to talk to him. Had he and Marla already divorced by then? She didn’t know why it should matter to her now, but it did.

“I wonder what ever happened to Marla?” Justine asked more to herself than Kitty.

Kitty leaned her hip against the cabinet and tapped a finger against her thumb. “You knew his wife?”

Justine nodded, but didn’t say more. Since she returned home a year and a half ago, she’d deliberately refrained from asking her father or any of her old acquaintances anything about Roy. For one thing, she didn’t want to arouse any sort of suspicion about Roy Pardee and herself. And for another, she’d always told herself she didn’t care what had happened in his life once she went back to college.

Kitty spoke up, totally unaware of Justine’s spinning thoughts. “Well, apparently the woman wasn’t what the sheriff expected in a wife, because they split the blanket before it ever got warm.”

And Justine could only wonder why. Was that what he’d been wanting to tell her when he called her at NMU all those years ago? That he and Marla were finished? And what about the baby Marla had been expecting? He’d said he’d never been a father. Had the woman suffered a miscarriage?

Oh, none of it mattered now, she wearily told herself. What had happened in the past couldn’t change the way things were now.

“That’s his business, Kitty. Not ours.”

Before the older woman could reply, Justine carried her coffee out through the screen door and across the small courtyard. In one corner, Charlie was playing in the sandpile her father had built for his grandson before he died.

Smiling at the precious sight, Justine sat down beside her son and picked up a small road grader. “May I play, too?”

“Sure, Mommy.” He pointed to a long trench he’d dug in the sand. “See, this is the Hondo River, and this is our house over here.”

“And we need to have a bridge to cross to the other side,” Justine observed. “Maybe we can find a few twigs to use for logs.”

Twenty minutes later, Justine was admiring the miniature ranch she’d helped Charlie construct when the screen door leading out from the kitchen softly banged closed. Glancing up, she saw Roy sauntering slowly toward them.

Before Justine could say a word, Charlie jumped to his feet and went to meet him.

“You’re the sheriff,” he said, smiling up at the tall man with the black Stetson and the steel-blue eyes. “Did you come here to arrest us?”

Roy had never felt comfortable with young children. He’d never been around them much, and he didn’t know what they were capable of talking about or how their minds worked. Yet something about this sturdy little boy of Justine’s was different. For some reason, he felt attuned to him.