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“The kid walked right into an enemy squad and froze in his tracks. It’s one thing to do that on a computer screen. Quite another to confront armed men in real life. They were aiming their weapons at him when Red led a squad in to recover him. Took about two minutes for them to eliminate the threat and get Commando Carl back to his own lines.” He shook his head. “In the excitement, the kid had, shall we say, needed access to a restroom and didn’t have one. So they hung a nickname on him that stuck.”
“Tell me!”
He chuckled. “Let’s just say that it suited him. He took it in his stride, sucked up his pride, learned to follow orders and became a real credit to the unit. He later became mayor of a small town somewhere up north, where he’s still known, to a favored few, as ‘Stinky.’”
She laughed out loud.
“Actually, he was in good company. I read in a book on World War II that one of our better known generals did the same thing when his convoy ran into a German attack. Poor guy. I’ll bet Stinky cringed every time he saw that other general’s book on a rack.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
She sipped her iced tea and smiled. “This is really good food,” she said. “I’ve never had a steak that was so tender, not even from beef my uncle raised.”
“This is Kobe beef,” he pointed out. “Red gets it from Japan. God knows how,” he added.
“I read about those. Don’t they actually massage the beef cattle?”
“Pamper them,” he agreed. “You should try that sweet potato,” he advised. “It’s really a unique combination of spices they use.”
She frowned, picking at it with her fork. “I’ve only ever had a couple of sweet potatoes, and they were mostly tasteless.”
“Just try it.”
She put the fork into it, lifted it dubiously to her lips and suddenly caught her breath when the taste hit her tongue like dynamite. “Wow!” she exclaimed. “What do they call this?”
“Red calls it ‘the ultimate jalapeño-brown-sugar-sweet-potato delight.’”
“It’s heavenly!”
He chuckled. “It is, isn’t it? The jalapeño gives it a kick like a mule, but it’s not so hot that even tenderfeet wouldn’t eat it.”
“I would never have thought of such a combination. And I thought I was a good cook.”
“You are a good cook, Jake,” he said. “The best I ever knew.”
She blushed. “Thanks, Theodore.”
He cocked his head. “I guess it would kill you to shorten that.”
“Shorten what?”
“My name. Most people call me Ted.”
She hesitated with the fork in midair. She searched his black eyes for a long time. “Ted,” she said softly.
His jaw tautened. He hadn’t expected it to have that effect on him. She had a soft, sweet, sexy voice when she let herself relax with him. She made his name sound different; special. New.
“I like the way you say it,” he said, when she gave him a worried look. “It’s—” he searched for a word that wouldn’t intimidate her “—it’s stimulating.”
“Stimulating.” She didn’t understand.
He put down his fork with a long sigh. “Something happened to you,” he said quietly. “You don’t know me well enough to talk to me about it. Or maybe you’re afraid that I might go after the man who did it.”
She was astounded. She couldn’t even manage words. She just stared at him, shocked.
“I’m in law enforcement,” he reminded her. “After a few years, you read body language in a different way than most people do. Abused children have a look, a way of dressing and acting, one that’s obvious to a cop.”
She went white. She bit her lower lip and her fingers toyed with her fork as she stared at it, fighting tears.
His big hand curled around hers, gently. “I wish you could tell me. I think it would help you.”
She looked up into quiet, patient eyes. “You wouldn’t … think badly of me?”
“For God’s sake,” he groaned. “Are you nuts?”
She blinked.
He grimaced. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to put it that way. Nothing I found out about you would change the way I feel. If that’s why you’re reluctant.”
“You’re sure?”
He glared at her.
She lowered her eyes and curled her small hand into his big one, a trusting gesture that touched him in a new and different way.
“When I was fifteen, Uncle John had this young man he got to do odd jobs around here. He was a drifter, very intelligent. He seemed like a nice, trustworthy person to have around the house. Then one day Uncle John felt bad and went to bed, left me with the hired man in the kitchen.”
Her jaw clenched. “At first, he was real helpful. Wanted to put out the trash for me and sweep the floor. I thought it was so nice of him. Then all of a sudden, he asked what was my bra size and if I wore nylon panties.”
Theodore’s eyes began to flash.
She swallowed. “I was so shocked I didn’t know what to do or say. I thought it was some sick joke. Until he tried to take my clothes off, mumbling all the time that I needed somebody to teach me about men and he was the perfect person, because he’d had so many virgins.”
“Good God!”
“Uncle John was asleep. There was nobody to help me. But the Peales lived right down the road, and I knew a back way through the woods to their house. I hit him in a bad place and ran out the door as fast as my legs could carry me. I was almost naked by then.” She closed her eyes, shivering with the memory of the terror she’d felt, running and hearing him curse behind her as he crashed through the undergrowth in pursuit,
“I didn’t think what danger I might be placing Sassy Peale and her mother and stepsister in, I just knew they’d help me and I was terrified. I banged on the door and Sassy came to it. When she saw how I looked, she ran for the shotgun they kept in the hall closet. By the time the hired man got on the porch, Sassy had the shotgun loaded and aimed at his stomach. She told him if he moved she’d blow him up.”
She sipped tea while she calmed a little from the remembered fear. Her hand was shaking, but just a little. Her free hand was still clasped gently in Theodore’s.
“He tried to blame it on me, to say I’d flirted and tried to seduce him, but Sassy knew better. She held him at bay until her mother called the police. They took him away.” She drew in a breath. “There was a trial. It was horrible, but at least it was in closed session, in the judge’s chambers. The hired man plea-bargained. You see, he had priors, many of them. He drew a long jail sentence, but it did at least spare me a public trial.” She sipped tea again. “His sister lived over in Wyoming. She came to see me, after the trial.” Her eyes closed. “She said I was a slut who had no business putting a sweet, nice guy like him behind bars for years.” She managed a smile. “Sassy was in the kitchen when the woman came to the door. She marched into the living room and gave that woman hell. She told her about her innocent brother’s priors and how many young girls had suffered because of his inability to control his own desires. She was eloquent. The woman shut up and went away. I never heard from her again.” She looked over at him. “Sassy’s been my friend ever since. Not a close one, I’m sorry to say. I was so embarrassed at having her know about it that it inhibited me with her and everyone else. Everyone would believe the man’s sister, and that I’d asked for it.”
His fingers curled closer into hers. “No young woman asks for such abuse,” he said softly. “But abusers use that argument to defend themselves. It’s a lie, like all their other lies.”
“Sometimes,” she said, to be fair, “women do lie, and men, innocent men, go to jail for things they didn’t do.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “But more often than not, such lies are found out, and the women themselves are punished for it.”
“I guess so.”
“I wasn’t here when that happened.”
“No. You were doing that workshop at the FBI Academy. And I begged the judge not to tell you or anybody else. She was very kind to me.”
He looked over her head, his eyes flashing cold and black as he thought what he might have done to the man if he’d been in town. He wasn’t interested in Jillian as a woman back then, because she was still almost a child, but he’d always been fond of her. He would have wiped the floor with the man.
His expression made her feel warm inside. “You’d have knocked him up and down main street,” she ventured.
He laughed, surprised, and met her eyes. “Worse than that, probably.” He frowned. “First the hired man, then the accountant.”
“The accountant was my fault,” she confessed. “I never told him how old I was, and I was infatuated with him. He was drinking when he tried to persuade me.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe I even did that.”
He stared at her. “You were a kid, Jake. Kids aren’t known for deep thought.”
She smiled. “Thanks for not being judgmental.”
He shrugged. “I’m such a nice man that I’m never judgmental.”
Her eyebrows arched.
He grinned. “And I really can do the tango. Suppose I teach you?”
She studied his lean, handsome face. “It’s a very, well, sensual sort of dance, they say.”
“Very.” He pursed his lips. “But I’m not an aggressive man. Not in any way that should frighten you.”
She colored a little. “Really?”
“Really.”
She drew in a long breath. “I guess every woman should dance the tango at least once.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
He wiped his mouth on the linen napkin, took a last sip of the excellent but cooling coffee and got to his feet.
“You have to watch your back on the dance floor, though,” he told her as he led her toward it.
“Why is that?”
“When the other women see what a great dancer I am, they’ll probably mob you and take me away from you,” he teased.
She laughed. “Okay.” She leaned toward him. “Are you packing?”
“Are you kidding?” he asked, indicating the automatic nestled at his waist on his belt. “I’m a cop. I’m always packing. And you keep your little hands off my gun,” he added sternly. “I don’t let women play with it, even if they ask nicely.”
“Theodore, I’m scared of guns,” she reminded him. “And you know it. That’s why you come over and sit on the front porch and shoot bottles on stumps, just to irritate me.”
“I’ll try to reform,” he promised.
“Lies.”
He put his hand over his heart. “I only lie when I’m salving someone’s feelings,” he pointed out. “There are times when telling the truth is cruel.”
“Oh, yeah? Name one.”
He nodded covertly toward a woman against the wall. “Well, if I told that nice lady that her dress looks like she had it painted on at a carnival, she’d probably feel bad.”
She bit her lip trying not to laugh. “She probably thinks it looks sexy.”
“Oh, no. Sexy is a dress that covers almost everything, but leaves one little tantalizing place bare,” he said. “That’s why Japanese kimonos have that dip on the back of the neck, that just reveals the nape, when the rest of the woman is covered from head to toe. The Japanese think the nape of the neck is sexy.”
“My goodness!” She stared up at him, impressed. “You’ve been so many places. I’ve only ever been out of Montana once, when I drove to Wyoming with Uncle John to a cattle convention. I’ve never been out of the country at all. You learn a lot about other people when you travel, don’t you? ”
He nodded. He smiled. “Other countries have different customs. But people are mostly the same everywhere. I’ve enjoyed the travel most of all, even when I had to do it on business.”
“Like the time you flew to London with that detective from Scotland Yard. Imagine a British case that involved a small town like Hollister!” she exclaimed.
“The perpetrator was a murderer who came over here fishing to provide himself with an alibi while his wife committed the crime and blamed it on her absent husband. In the end, they both drew life sentences.”
“Who did they kill?” she asked.
“Her cousin who was set to inherit the family estate and about ten million pounds,” he said, shaking his head. “The things sensible people will do for money never ceases to amaze me. I mean, it isn’t like you can take it with you when you die. And how many houses can you live in? How many cars can you drive?” He frowned. “I think of money the way the Crow and Cheyenne people do. The way most Native Americans do. The man in the tribe who is the most honored is always the poorest, because he gives away everything he has to people who need it more. They’re not capitalists. They don’t understand societies that equate prestige with money.”
“And they share absolutely everything,” she agreed. “They don’t understand private property.”
He laughed. “Neither do I. The woods and the rivers and the mountains are ageless. You can’t own them.”
“See? That’s the Cheyenne in you talking.”
He touched her blond hair. “Probably it is. We going to dance, or talk?”
“You’re leading, aren’t you?”
He tugged her onto the dance floor. “Apparently.” He drew her gently to him and then hesitated. After what she’d told him, he didn’t want to do anything that would make her uncomfortable. He said so.
“I don’t … well, I don’t feel uncomfortable, like that, with you,” she faltered, looking up into his black eyes. She managed a shaky little smile. “I like being close to you.” She flushed, afraid she’d been too bold. Or that he’d think she was being forward. Her expression was troubled.
He just smiled. “You can say anything to me,” he said gently. “I won’t think you’re being shallow or vampish. Okay?”
She relaxed. “Okay. Is this going to be hard to learn?”
“Very.”
She drew in a long breath. “Then I guess we should get started.”
His eyes smiled down at her. “I guess we should.”
