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“Now don’t do that,” Christabel groaned, getting up. “Maude, it was very innocent, and he really was showing me his scar.”
Maude nodded enthusiastically and went back to her potatoes. She cast a quick, amused look at Judd, who had a forkful of apple pie suspended in midair and was glaring at her.
“Sure he was,” Maude agreed.
Judd’s eyes narrowed. “I’m armed,” he pointed out.
Maude put down her knife and potato and spread out her arms. “Me, too,” she said, wiggling her eyebrows.
Judd glowered at her, and at Christabel, who was grinning from ear to ear. “Now I know where she gets it from,” he told Maude.
“He’s just jealous because he can’t make jokes,” Christabel said wickedly.
Judd gave her a measuring glance and went back to his pie.
2
That night, after Judd had gone back to his apartment in Victoria where he was stationed, Christabel lay awake for hours worrying about Tippy Moore and Judd’s odd reaction to the news that she was going to be in the movie. He seemed fascinated by the woman, just from her photographs, and it was obvious enough to be painful. He might hold Christabel on his lap and reassure her about her scars, but it was impersonal. He’d never even touched her in an inappropriate way, despite her efforts.
Her mind went back to that Saturday long ago when her life had changed so drastically. She could smell the scents of blood and leather, feel the whip on her back...
* * *
Through waves of pain, she heard a deep, gravelly voice cursing steadily. It was the only sound audible, although five other cowboys were standing around her with grim faces and stiff postures where she lay. The corral was dusty, because it hadn’t rained, and there were traces of hay in her disheveled blond hair. She was lying on her stomach and her blouse was in ribbons. Blood seeped from the deep cuts in her back. There had been hard thuds and groans from somewhere nearby, followed by sounds of a door slamming. A minute later, she felt someone kneel beside her.
“Christabel, can you hear me?” Judd’s voice asked harshly at her ear.
Her dark eyes opened, just a slit. It was hard to focus, but she remembered that Judd Dunn was the only person who ever called her by her full name. Everybody else called her “Crissy.”
“Yes?” Was that her voice? It sounded weak and strained. The sun was so bright that she couldn’t get her eyes open.
“I’m going to have to pick you up, honey, and it’s going to hurt,” he said curtly. “Grit your teeth.”
She swallowed hard. Her back felt raw. Her blouse was sticking to the lacerated skin and she could feel the hot, wet blood cooling as it soaked the fabric. It had a funny smell, like metal.
Judd’s strong arms slid under her legs and around her rib cage as carefully as he could. He swung her up, trying to avoid gripping the torn flesh. Her small breasts were pressed hard against the warm muscle of his chest and she sobbed, trying to stifle the sound as pain lanced through her viciously.
“What about...Daddy?” she choked.
His black eyes flashed so violently in that lean, tanned face that two of the cowboys climbed the corral fence to avoid him. “He’s in the tack room,” he said shortly. “He’ll stay there until the sheriff’s deputies get here.”
“No,” she cried. “Judd, no! You can’t have him...arrested! Mama’s sick and she can’t run the ranch. I can’t, either...!”
“He’s already under arrest,” he bit off. “I’m a Texas Ranger,” he reminded her. “But I had your foreman radio the sheriff’s office from my car. They’re already on the way.”
“Who’ll run our part of the ranch?” she repeated, still mostly in shock from what had happened so unexpectedly. Her father had a history of violent behavior when he drank. In fact, Ellie, her mother, was now an invalid because Tom Gaines had knocked her off a ladder in a drunken rage and broken her pelvis. Emergency surgery hadn’t completely healed it, and she had weak lungs to boot.
“I’ll run the ranch, your part and my own,” he said shortly, and kept walking. “Be still, honey.”
Tears ran down her pale cheeks. Her eyes closed and she shivered. He looked down at her with his lips in a thin line. Her long blond hair had come loose from its ponytail and it was matted with her own drying blood. He cursed under his breath, only stopping when the ambulance came careening up in the driveway.
Maude, the heavyset, buxom housekeeper, was wringing her hands on the porch. She ran forward, her hair disheveled. “My poor baby,” she sobbed. “Judd, is she going to be all right?”
“She will be. I can’t say the same for Tom. If she won’t press charges, by God, I will!”
A small thin woman with gray-streaked fair hair came hobbling onto the front porch in a tattered old chenille robe, tears running down her cheeks as she saw her daughter.
“She’ll be all right. Go back to bed, Ellie,” Judd called, and for her his voice was gentle. “I’ll take care of her.”
“Where’s Tom?” she asked shakily.
His voice changed. “Locked up in the tack room.”
Her eyes closed and she leaned against the post. “Thank God...!”
“Maude, get her the hell back to bed before she passes out on the floor!” Judd yelled and kept walking straight toward the EMTs who were just getting out of the ambulance. Behind them, a sheriff’s patrol car arrived with lights flashing and a deputy got out of it to approach Judd.
“What happened?” Deputy Sheriff Hayes Carson asked, his eyes on Christabel’s back.
“Tom happened,” he replied tersely, waiting for the EMTs to get the gurney ready for Christabel. “He was beating her filly with a quirt. She tried to pull him off.”
Hayes winced. He’d been a deputy for five years and he’d seen plenty of battery cases. But this... Christabel was barely sixteen, thin and fragile, and most people around Jacobsville, Texas, loved her. She was forever baking cakes for bazaars and taking flowers to elderly shut-ins, and helping to deliver warm meals to invalids after school. She had a heart as big as Texas and to think of Tom Gaines’s big arm bringing a quirt down on her back with all his might was enough to make even a veteran law enforcement officer nauseous.
“Where is he?” Hayes asked coldly.
Judd pointed in the direction of the tack room, his eyes never leaving Christabel’s tear-drenched face. The tears were all the more poignant for the lack of even a sob. “Key’s by the door.” He met Hayes’s eyes. “You keep that son of a bitch locked up, no matter what it takes. I swear before God, if you let him loose, I’ll kill him!” he said in a tone that sent chills down even Hayes’s back.
“I’ll see that bail’s set as high as possible,” he assured the other man grimly. “I’ll go get him. Is he drunk?”
“He was,” Judd said shortly. “Now he’s crying. He’s sorry, of course. He’s always sorry...!”
He eased Christabel down onto the gurney. “I’m going with her,” he told the EMTs.
They weren’t inclined to argue. Judd Dunn was intimidating enough when he wasn’t in a temper.
He glanced back at Hayes. “How about calling the Ranger office in San Antonio and tell them I’ll probably be late in the morning, and to get someone to fill in for me.”
“Will do,” Hayes said. “I hope she’ll be all right.”
“She will,” he said somberly. He climbed into the ambulance and sat down across from Christabel, catching her soft little hand tightly in his own. “Can you give her something for pain?” he asked as the tears continued to pour from her eyes.
“I’ll ask for orders.” The EMT got the hospital on the radio and explained the patient’s condition. He was questioned briefly by Dr. Jebediah Coltrain, the physician on call.
“Give me that,” Judd said shortly, holding out his hand for the mike. The EMT didn’t argue with him. “Copper?” he asked abruptly. “Judd Dunn. Christabel’s back looks like raw meat. She’s in agony. Have them give her something. I’ll take full responsibility for her.”
“When haven’t you?” Copper murmured dryly. “Give me back to Dan.”
“Sure.” He handed the mike to the EMT, who listened, nodded, and proceeded to fill a hypodermic from a small vial.
Judd pulled off his hat and wiped off the thick sweat from his straight black hair that was dripping onto his broad forehead. He tossed the hat aside and stared at Christabel with glittery eyes.
“Judd,” she whispered hoarsely as the needle went in. “Look after Mama.”
“Of course,” he returned. His fingers tightened around hers. His face was like stone, but the deep-set black eyes in it were still blazing with fury.
She searched his eyes. “I’ll have scars.”
“They won’t matter,” he said through his teeth.
Her eyes closed wearily. It would be all right. Judd would take care of everything...
* * *
And he had. Five years later, he was still taking care of everything. Christabel had never felt guilty about that before, but suddenly she did. He had the responsibility for everything here, including herself. Her father had died of a heart attack soon after his arrest. Christabel’s mother had died the year Christabel graduated from high school, leaving just Maude in the house with her. Judd came to stay during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, and the three of them had good times together. But Judd had never wanted a physical relationship with his young wife, and went to extreme lengths to make sure they didn’t have one.
This year he’d transferred to the Victoria Texas Ranger post, when an elderly ranger working it had retired. It hadn’t been long after his friend, fellow Texas Ranger Marc Brannon and Josette Langley had married, and Cash Grier had come down here from San Antonio to become Jacobsville’s assistant police chief. Marc had worked out of the Victoria office, too, briefly, but he’d left the Rangers to become a full-time rancher when Josette had become pregnant. Judd visited them and their son Christopher often.
So he’d let her sit in his lap tonight. But it hadn’t meant anything, and it never would. His pulse hadn’t even raced, she recalled miserably. But when the director had mentioned Tippy Moore, he’d smiled, and there had been a purely masculine look in his eyes.
She knew Judd was no virgin, even if she was. He had a worldly air about him, and women seemed to sense it, as her friend Debbie had at school. Later she’d remarked that he was probably great in bed and had broken women’s hearts everywhere.
Christabel had brooded after that, because she recalled some odd remarks from her mother long ago about Judd and the company he kept in San Antonio. Apparently he was no stranger to permissive women, but he never brought any of them to the ranch. Her mother had smiled knowingly about that. He wouldn’t want to parade any of his lovers in front of Christabel, she’d remarked. Not when they were secretly married.
It had devastated her to think that Judd didn’t honor his wedding vows, even if it was a paper marriage. Realistically, he couldn’t have gone without a woman for several years, she knew that. But she hated picturing him in bed with some gorgeous companion. She’d cried for two days, hiding her tears in the henhouse while she gathered eggs, or while riding fence line with the boys.
Her tomboyish nature had disturbed her invalid mother, who said that Christabel should be learning how to dress and set proper place settings instead of throwing calves for branding and grooming the horses in the rickety stable. Christabel paid her no attention, and went right on with her chores. She felt that she had to hold up her part of the responsibility for the ranch somehow, and helping with the daily chores before and after school and on weekends was her way of doing it. Judd noticed, at first with amazement, and then with affectionate indulgence.
He did care about her, in his way. But it wasn’t the way Christabel wanted him to care. She had a terrible premonition about the change the movie company’s arrival the following month was going to make in her dreary life. Judd had already stated his intention of getting an annulment in November. What if he fell head-over-heels for the internationally famous model that most adult men drooled over? She couldn’t help thinking that the model might find him equally attractive. Judd was a dish.
She started to roll over and put the pillow over her head. Plenty of time for those worries after she got through the computer class exam at school on Monday. The exam! How could she have forgotten! She reached for her alarm clock and set it for an hour earlier than usual. A little last-minute cramming never hurt anybody.
* * *
She got through the exam and her other classes and went home to do chores. She’d just finished grooming her mare—the same one she’d managed to save from her father’s brutality when it was just a filly—when she heard a car drive up.
Maude had gone to the store, so she went to see who it was. She was surprised to find a black-and-brown Jacobsville police car sitting there. A tall, well-built man in uniform with his thick black hair in a ponytail turned at her approach and came down the steps with a hand on the butt of his .45 automatic in the holster on his well-laden duty belt, sharing space with a leather ammunition clip holder, along with leather baton, aerosol, flashlight and knife holders.
It was Cash Grier, the assistant chief. Crissy had seen him just once, but she’d heard a lot about him. He was like Judd, she supposed, all business and stone-faced.
On a wicked impulse, she put both hands high over her head. “I confess. I did it!” she called. “I robbed Jacobsville Savings and Loan, and the money’s in the barn. Go ahead, get a rope!”
He stopped and his eyebrows rose. His chiseled, very disciplined mouth in between the full mustache and the small goatee turned up at both sides and his dark eyes twinkled in a swarthy, scarred face.
“Suit yourself. Lead me to a tree,” he replied.
She grinned. It changed her face, made it radiant. She rubbed her dirty right hand on her equally dirty jeans and extended it. “Hi! I’m Christabel Gaines. Everybody calls me Crissy except Judd.”
He shook the hand. “What does Judd call you?” he asked.
“Christabel,” she said on a sigh. “No imagination, and he hasn’t got a sense of humor. If you don’t want to arrest me, why are you here? We’re not even in your jurisdiction. The city limits sign is four miles thataway.” She pointed.
He chuckled. “Actually, I’m looking for Judd. He left a message for me. I understand there’s a movie company coming out here to film and they need on-site security from some of my off-duty officers. I’d volunteer,” he added, “but they’d worry me to death trying to get me to play the lead in their movie. I’m good-looking, in case you haven’t noticed,” he added with a wicked grin.
It took her a minute to get it, then she burst out laughing.
“Are you going to be in it?” he persisted with a grin.
She nodded. “I’m going to play a lilac bush next to the porch steps. I understand the makeup will take all day.”
He chuckled. She was a real charmer, and pretty to boot. He liked her personality. It had been a long time since a woman had appealed to him so much at a first meeting.
“I’m Cash Grier, the assistant police chief,” he introduced himself. “I guess you figured that out already. What gave me away—the patrol car?”
“It does stand out,” she remarked. “Very nice.”
“We like to think we have the sexiest patrol cars in Texas,” he agreed. “I look good in a police car,” he added.
Her dark eyes gazed up into his. “Let’s see.”
“Oh, no,” he replied. “It’s too much for some women. We’ll have to work up to letting you see me in the car.” He lifted both eyebrows and his eyes twinkled. “I look pretty good over a cup of coffee, too.”
It was a hint, and she took it. “Okay. Let’s see.”
Before they got into the house, the ranch truck pulled up with Maude in it. She got out and pulled a sack of groceries out from beside her. Her green eyes went from the patrol car to the tall uniformed man. She turned to Christabel and glared. “Well, what have you done now?”
“This is Cash Grier, our new assistant police chief. He says he looks good over a cup of coffee,” she told Maude. “I’m going to let him prove it.”
She gave Grier a speaking look. “I’ve heard about you. They say you play with rattlesnakes and send wolves running.”
“Oh, I do,” Grier assured her genially. “I like a spoon to stick up in my coffee,” he added.
“Then you’ll be right at home, here. That’s how Crissy makes it.”
“Here,” he said, taking the burden out of her arms with a flair. “Women’s lib be damned, no dainty little woman should have to carry heavy packages up steps.”
Maude caught her breath and put a hand to her heart. “Chivalry lives!” she exclaimed.
He leaned down. “Chivalry is my middle name,” he informed her. “And I will do almost anything for a slice of pie. I have no pride.”
Maude chuckled, along with Crissy. “We have a nice pie left over from yesterday, if Judd didn’t eat it all. He’s a fanatic on the subject of apple pie.”
“There’s some left, because I made two,” Crissy told Maude. “Come along, Mr. Assistant Police Chief, and I’ll feed you.”
Grier stood aside to let Maude go first. “Beauty before titles,” he said with a grin. “And please don’t tell my superior that I’m susceptible to bribes.”
“Chet Blake is, too,” Maude informed him. “I hear he’s your cousin.”
He sighed as he followed the women into the house. “Nepotism rears its ugly head,” he agreed. “But he was desperate, and so was I.”
