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“Why?”
“Personal reasons.”
“Must have been a whopper to throw away what could have been a nice pension.” He slowly reached out and fingered the shiny metal. “This won’t bring you anything near that.”
It was unbearable to think of how close his fingers were to her breast. Could he see her nipple hardening? “Sometimes money can’t be allowed to matter.”
Hugh let his hand fall to his side. “I heard that your old man hurt his leg. Is he all right?”
“He will be in six weeks or so.”
“What happened to Sandoval?”
“The town got fed up with his bullying ways. My father had to let him go.”
“And no one else wanted the job?”
“I’m the most experienced.”
That had him lifting one straight eyebrow. “How much do you have?”
“Too much.”
As expected, that had him searching her face again, this time focusing on her eyes. For a small eternity he just looked, and she knew he was reading and gauging, but she wasn’t quite the open book she used to be. She did, however, let him see her regret...and that she refused to be intimidated by him. Neither emotion seemed to impress him.
“Qualified or not, you shouldn’t have come back,” he said at last.
Taking hope in the quieter note she’d picked up in his voice, she allowed herself to continue with what she’d come to say. “You shouldn’t have, either. People are nervous, Hugh.”
“Afraid the half-breed may go on a bloodthirsty rampage?”
She hated hearing him talk that way. Except for snobs like the Marsdens, no one around here had ever said anything derogatory regarding his heritage. Even now, she’d been given no hint that people’s concern was ethnically motivated.
“Let’s just say you have friends here who are concerned that you might have some form of revenge on your mind.”
“Now what right does a guilty man have to think of revenge?”
She wasn’t going to fall into that trap. But he wasn’t going to like what she had to say next any better. “My father—The chief says he wants assurance from you that you plan to leave before anything happens that we’ll all regret.”
“Tell him not to hold his breath.”
“No one wants any trouble, Hugh.”
“Right. That’s why you came to see me wearing a gun.”
“It comes with the badge, you know that.”
“Go away, Taylor. Get off my mother’s property and get out of this sorry excuse for a town. It’s not the place you remember. Maybe we were kidding ourselves to ever think it was better.”
“I wish I could leave, but it’s too late. I already gave my word that I’d stay.”
He twisted his compressed lips into a smirk. “You gave me your word once. We found out fairly quickly what that was worth.”
Had she thought him hardened? He was ruthless.
So be it. Let him understand that I’ve changed, too.
“Congratulations,” she snapped. “Now you’ve proven that you can sound like a bastard. But the message stands. There’s to be no trouble. Understood?”
“Oh, I understand, all right.” Without warning, he took hold of her belt and jerked hard, slamming her pelvis against his. “You try understanding this. If you ever come near me again wearing that gun, you’d better plan on using it!”
Two
“Hugh!”
At the sound of the reproving female voice, Hugh released Taylor and slowly backed a step, then another, away from her. Only at that point did he feel it safe to face his mother. Only then did he begin to trust his emotions again.
As expected, his mother strode quickly across the warehouse’s concrete floor, and with each step her worn cowboy boots sounded a staccato beat in the already throbbing silence. She had changed a good deal since they’d locked him away, and the greatest difference was that, like him, she rarely smiled these days—not that there was anything to smile about at the moment. Boots, jeans and a man’s plaid western shirt remained her uniform, and as usual she wore an apron with huge pockets. At the store it was always denim, at home she switched to cotton. None of that had changed since she’d started the business. As for the no-nonsense German bun, it was still a standard, too. More gray than sable now, but it hadn’t thinned much that he could see.
When she drew closer, he spotted the pinched quality of her features, noted that her eyes were shadowed with concern and disapproval, the once-warm hazel irises shooting off metallic sparks. That hardened her handsome face even more, a face already marred by sun and stress-etched fine lines. Since Taylor was responsible for some of Jane Thurman Blackstone’s biggest disappointments and heartache, it was only natural that there should be no sign of her gracious businesslike demeanor.
“It’s all right, Mother. I’m not going to do anything foolish that will get me sent back to prison.”
Even so, she stopped a few feet from them and crossed her strong, tanned arms. “Exactly what do you think you’re doing?” she demanded of Taylor. “You’re not welcome here.”
“I’m aware of that, Mrs. Blackstone,” Taylor murmured with a nod that might have done double duty as a greeting. “But I have a job to do. Perhaps you heard about Chief Benning falling while doing some repairs on the roof of our house?”
His mother’s expression indicated that Taylor’s question matched her fashion sense. “This is Redoubt. Everyone hears everything.”
“Then you know he hasn’t yet replaced Lew Sandoval. As a result, I’ve agreed to take the job. I—” Taylor gestured to her clothes “—apologize for the attire. But I only just arrived.” She added more gently, “How’ve you been?”
“How do you think I’ve been? My son isn’t home twenty-four hours and already you’re here. You’re worse than a bad penny and rotten apple combined!”
“That will be enough, Mother.” Hugh may not have done such a good job of it so far, but he wanted to handle Taylor himself.
Ignoring his quiet command, she lifted an already stubborn chin and scoffed at Taylor. “What qualifies you to wear a gun?”
Taylor lifted her chin, as well. “Nine years with the Detroit P.D.”
“It seems,” Hugh added before his mother could respond, “that she wants me to leave by sundown. Apparently my presence is making the citizenry nervous.”
That had her fisting her hands and setting them on the hips that had carried two healthy children full-term. “How dare you! All of you! The law can’t or won’t do what it’s supposed to do, so you bully my son? Well, it’s not going to happen. He’s paid enough, and then some. And for what? A crime he wasn’t guilty of! Have you no shame?”
“More than you can imagine,” Taylor replied, almost too softly to hear. “But I also have my orders. Believe me, I’m very sorry—”
“We don’t want your regrets!” Despite standing a good two inches shorter, his mother shook a fist at her. “You had your chance, but you betrayed Hugh, betrayed all of us. Go away and leave us alone!”
For a moment Taylor looked as if she would ignore the command, try to reason with his mother. But suddenly something inside her deflated and those unforgettable blue eyes shifted to him. “I’ve said what I was asked to say. The rest is up to you. Be careful, Hugh.”
As far as threats went, hers had been all but wrapped in cotton. If she’d been like that in Detroit, small wonder she hadn’t lasted. But as he watched her walk away, Hugh had difficulty holding on to his sarcasm. Strange...the last time she’d walked away from him, the emotions that had churned and stabbed at his insides were clear and acute—disbelief, pain and an anger that had left him impotent and all but frozen for a long, long time. He wished his current feelings could be as easily defined.
Prison had indeed changed him, hardened and embittered him. If necessary, he could stand before this entire town and tell them all to go to hell. At least that’s what he’d believed before Taylor had driven up here. But now...
Hell, it wouldn’t take a magnifying glass to spot the chink in your armor, pal.
If only time hadn’t been so kind to her. He’d always thought her a natural woman, someone not unlike his mother who had a no-nonsense approach to her gender, but Taylor was more feminine nonetheless. That’s why it had been such a shock to learn she was a cop. Shapeless T-shirt and ancient jeans aside, she remained one of the sexiest women he’d ever known, her fine-boned, slim body always moving with an easy grace he knew she didn’t recognize let alone appreciate. Lady Blue, Wind Woman, he’d dubbed her when as kids they’d ridden over the hills and prairies. He had only to close his eyes to remember her incredible hair back then, how it would fly behind her like a golden eagle’s wing. How could she have cut it off? He didn’t want to acknowledge that the shorter style accented the angles and contours of her face, and added a youthfulness and vulnerability that was echoed by her sensitive mouth.
Damn. He had to forget that mouth.
“Can they do it?”
He welcomed his mother’s intrusion into his thoughts. “Anybody can do anything if they’re determined enough.”
“Then what are we going to do?”
“Ignore them for as long as we can. Take one day at a time.” It was a lesson he’d learned white caged. Consequently, he doubted few people out here could match his patience. In prison there had been little else to do but wait...and try to survive. “Don’t dwell,” he said as much for his own benefit as for his mother’s. “You knew my coming back wouldn’t be easy.”
“Knew, yes. But a mother can still hope.” She glanced at the departing Blazer. “It wasn’t fair of Emmett to send her. That cunning coyote never did play fair.”
She hadn’t always spoken with such resentment toward the Bennings. Once she’d treated Taylor, who’d been motherless for most of her childhood, as tenderly as she had Noel. Then Piers Marsden raped his little sister. Everything changed after that.
Fourteen years. Noel was thirty-one now, and although still single, she was finding some peace living in Arizona where she worked for a private foundation that helped women in trouble. Several times over the years she had tried to convince their mother to join her out there. So far she hadn’t succeeded.
“Would it be so bad to move?” he asked, curious to see if his mother had reconsidered.
“Your father was born here. He’s buried here. This is my home.”
His father had been Laughing Max Blackstone, half Jicarillo Apache and half Navajo, a strong, kind man who had been the center of Hugh’s life. A state road department supervisor, he had been killed at a job site when an eighteen-wheeler lost its brakes and had gone out of control. Hugh had been twelve, Noel seven. Their mother had just opened the feed store only weeks before, and suddenly what had begun as a comfortable life became a challenging one as they all worked together to make ends meet. There had been some insurance money, but their mother had tried to keep those funds for his and Noel’s education. He’d made her use his share for other things because he hadn’t been in a hurry to go off to college, not when she’d become so dependent on his help. There had also been Taylor...
Words couldn’t explain the way it had been between the two of them. Kindred spirits seemed a flowery, empty expression, and yet from their childhood they’d shared a strong connection, an understanding. By the time he was graduating from high school, friendship and adoration had grown into an unbelievable passion, and the mere thought of being away from her—even if only until weekends— had been unacceptable. He’d been willing to wait until she started college and his mother’s business was solid to where extra help could be hired. But then Piers Marsden entered their lives and sent everything and everyone into a tailspin.
“That settles things, then,” he said, turning back to the feed sacks. “You’re too stubborn to leave, and I have nowhere to go. Guess we’ll hang around and see what happens.”
“What about Taylor?”
“What about her?”
“Don’t try acting indifferent with me. I lived those years right beside the two of you. I had eyes, and there’s nothing wrong with them yet. Will you be able to cope, to deal with seeing her every day?”
Just the idea of that made him feel as if he’d swallowed a plateful of broken glass, but he managed a one-shouldered shrug. “We’ll find out that, as well.”
“But—”
“Mother,” he said with quiet warning. “Enough for now.”
His mother sighed, and once again glanced outside. “I wonder why she never married. Did you notice? She’s not wearing a ring.”
He’d noticed. And his heart continued its assault on his ribs thanks to that brief but intimate contact with her. Thanks to a lack of female companionship over the years, he knew he would have reacted to almost any woman; that it was Taylor who had reawakened his sexual appetite had to be the cruelest of jokes. So was finding himself pleased that she remained single.
“We aren’t going to get past this if we keep talking about it,” he muttered. He flung a fifty-pound sack onto the new pile with a little too much energy. As it landed, the multilayered brown paper split as though it was the finest wrapping.
Brown oblong pellets poured across the concrete floor. Hugh swore.
His mother eyed the mess and nodded. “I’d better go make some iced tea. You’re going to need some cooling down. Are you getting hungry yet?”
“No!” he snapped, glaring at what constituted several dollars of wasted feed. But he quickly checked his temper. “No, thanks. The tea will be fine for now.”
“I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Hugh didn’t reply and didn’t watch her head back toward the office. But once he heard the door shut, he walked out onto the dock—not in search of more air than was available in the stifling warehouse, although he did rub his forearm across his sweaty brow—to look farther down the road.
The Blazer was gone. For the time being. However, it would be back, and he and Taylor would cross paths again. For both of their sakes, he hoped it wasn’t soon.
“So what did he say?”
The screen door barely had time to shut behind her, yet Taylor’s father was already sitting up on the couch and lowering the volume on the TV. She looked from him to her son sprawled on the armchair beside him. Kyle’s open curiosity made her wish he’d waited until she’d sent the boy from the room.
“Use your imagination. It certainly wasn’t, ‘Gee, I’m glad to see you again. What? You want me to leave town? Sure, no problem.’”
Her father grimaced and scratched carefully at the two-inch scar beneath his chin where days ago stitches had been. Fingernails against several days’ growth of beard stubble sounded like sand being crushed under the sole of a boot. “Guess I deserved that, but can I help it if the suspense is killing me? Will he or won’t he cooperate?”
“My gut hunch is that I doubt it. At the same time, he doesn’t want trouble. I came away with the feeling that if people leave him alone he’ll reciprocate in kind.”
Her father didn’t look pleased. “That’s not going to satisfy Murdock or his allies.”
“Then you’re going to have to talk to Mr. Marsden,” Taylor replied, slipping off the borrowed hat. “Because I happen to believe that if the parole board saw fit to release Hugh, he has a right to try to start his life over wherever he pleases.”
She set the hat on the coffee table and retreated to the kitchen, as much to get a badly needed drink of something cool as to regroup. Being surrounded by familiar, nostalgic things helped.
The two-story house was an old friend, the kitchen still blue and white and in desperate need of repainting. No doubt the whole house did at this point, she mused, having already noticed the peeling paint on the outer walls. If her father didn’t do something soon, the place was going to look like a giant dalmatian dog.
After filling a glass with ice and water and taking several deep swallows, she refilled her glass from the tap and returned to the living room. Along the way she caught sight of her hair. Flattened and damp from wearing her father’s hat, it left her looking about as attractive as a wet rat. No wonder it had been so easy for Hugh to act so coldly toward her. She wished she could say she’d been indifferent.
“Mom?” Kyle leaned forward when she returned to the living room. “Is this Blackstone guy dangerous or not?”
Taylor eyed her father, wondering what he’d been saying while she’d been taking care of his dirty work. While it was inevitable that Kyle would hear of Hugh, not to mention meet him, she wished she could spare him any of that.
“I’m not sure it matters what I think,” she told him. “What does is that there are people in town who are afraid he might be.”
“So tell them to take a hike. You’re the law and what you say goes, right?”
She couldn’t help but smile. When she was in favor with her son, he was prone to think her too capable. “Police uphold the law, dear heart, we don’t make it.” She gestured upstairs. “Would you do me a favor and start unpacking? I need a few minutes to speak with your grandfather about business matters.”
As expected, his expression turned wounded. “Can’t I stay? I won’t tell anyone. You’ve let me listen before when you discussed cases on the phone.”
“And will again. Sometimes. But I’m afraid this isn’t one of them.”
When she was serious, she always spoke quietly, choosing her words with care to let him know she saw him, not as her equal but definitely as someone she respected. The gesture worked as it usually did. Although he didn’t like being shut out, he pushed himself up from his chair.
