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His broad shoulders moved restlessly. “He said she wrote him a letter. He never told me what was in it, but he admitted that his own pride had killed any hope of them getting back together. He couldn’t bear having everybody know what she did to him.” He smiled sadly. “She was his first woman,” he added, with a glance at Christabel’s wide-eyed stare. “And his last. I don’t suppose some people today even think it’s possible for a man to be faithful to one woman his whole life, but it’s not so rare a thing in small towns, even in the modern world.”
“I guess you’ve thought about how it would have been, if he could have forgiven her.”
“Yes.” He turned the coffee cup in his big, lean hands. “It was a lonely life after she left. I could never talk to him the way I could to her, about things that bothered me. I guess I drew inside myself afterward.”
He’d never talked to her this way before, as if she were an adult, an equal. She studied his hard face and ached to have his mouth on hers again. She knew she’d never be able to forget how it felt.
He pushed back from the table and got to his feet. “I need to get back to Victoria.”
She got up, too, eyeing him curiously. “What did you come down here for?”
“Leo Hart phoned me about some Salers bulls that have died mysteriously. He said he’d heard that our young one was poisoned. I wanted to talk to you about it.”
“Yes, I tried to tell you when it happened that I thought Jack Clark was responsible, and you wouldn’t listen...” she began.
He held up a hand. “You know you didn’t have the boys check that pasture for bloat-causing weeds,” he pointed out. “I told Leo so. I warned you about that, Christabel. You can’t accuse people of crimes without solid proof.”
“I wasn’t! Judd,” she said, exasperated, “there were four other young bulls in that pasture with him. They didn’t die.”
“I know that. They were lucky.”
She grimaced. “They were Herefords,” she said impatiently. “The only bull we lost was a Salers, and he was one of the same group that Fred Brewster bought calves from. He thinks Mr. Brewster’s bull was poisoned, and I still think ours was, too.”
He picked up his Stetson and slanted it across his brow. “Prove it,” he said.
She threw up her hands. “I don’t save dead bulls!” she exclaimed. “You wouldn’t believe me and I couldn’t afford an autopsy! We buried him with the backhoe!”
“Dig him up.”
She gave him a speaking glare. “Even if I did, where am I going to get the money to have an autopsy done?”
“Good point.” He sighed. “I’m skint. I used the last of my savings to repair that used tractor we had to have for haying.”
“I know,” she said, feeling guilty. “Listen, as soon as I graduate next year, I’ll get a job in town at one of the businesses. Computer programming pays good wages.”
“Then who’ll do the books?” he asked. “I don’t mind writing checks to pay bills, but I’m not burying myself in ten columns of figures and justifying bank statements. That’s your department.”
“I’ll justify the statements and do the printouts at night or on the weekends.”
“Poor Grier,” he said sarcastically.
“I only just met the man,” she pointed out.
“Stay out of parked cars with him,” he said with rare malice.
“He drives a truck,” she reminded him pertly, throwing his own earlier statement back at him.
“You know what I mean.” He turned and started out the front door.
She followed him, seething inside. He didn’t want her, but he didn’t want any other man around her, either.
“I’ll do what I please, Judd,” she said haughtily.
He whirled at the front porch. “You put your name on a marriage license,” he reminded her curtly.
“So did you, but that’s not stopping you from doing what you want to!”
He lifted an eyebrow and went on down the steps to his truck. “The film people are coming back Saturday to set up their equipment,” he added. “The director’s bringing Tippy Moore with him, and the guy who’s playing the cowboy—Rance Wayne.”
She couldn’t have cared less about the movie people. She hated the way Judd’s eyes twinkled when he mentioned Tippy Moore. The woman was internationally famous for her beauty. Christabel was going to look like a cactus plant by comparison, and she didn’t like it.
“I can hardly wait,” she muttered. “Do they like pet snakes? I’m thinking of adopting a black one and keeping it in the living room...”
“You be nice,” he said firmly. “We need the money. There’s no way we can fix the barn or buy new electric fencing without that grubstake.”
“Okay,” she sighed. “I’ll be nice.”
“That’ll be a change,” he remarked deliberately.
“And that’s just sour grapes because I didn’t dress up and look sexy for you,” she said, striking a pose. “You can go home and dream about me in that red negligee, because that’s the only way you’ll ever see it,” she added.
He made a rough sound in his throat, something like laughter, and kept walking.
She stared after him with flashing dark eyes, wishing that Cash would drive up before he left so that she could flaunt her date in front of him.
Daydreams so rarely come true, she thought wistfully as Judd climbed in behind the wheel, started the SUV, and drove off with a perfunctory wave of his hand.
It was a full ten minutes later that Cash Grier drove up in his black pickup truck. It was a huge, new vehicle with a spotlessly clean bed.
“Well, I can see that you don’t haul cattle,” she remarked as she went out to meet him at the bottom of the steps.
“Maybe I just keep an immaculate truck,” he chuckled.
He looked really good. He was wearing a black turtleneck sweater with a casual jacket and dress slacks. His shoes were polished to a perfect shine. His dark hair was in a neat ponytail. He was easy on the eyes.
“You look nice, even out of uniform,” she pointed out.
He was doing some looking of his own, with eyes at least as experienced as Judd’s. She thought about the way Judd had kissed her and she flushed.
“You look a little uptight,” he remarked. “Second thoughts about tonight?”
“Not a single one,” she said firmly.
“Not worried about what Judd will say?” he persisted as he helped her into the truck.
“Judd said he didn’t care,” she replied. “He was here earlier.”
Which explained her flustered look and the deep swell of her lower lip, Cash thought privately and with some amusement. Apparently Judd was more jealous of his paper wife than Christabel realized, and had made sure that she had a yardstick to measure men by. He had a feeling he’d never measure up to the hero-worship she felt for her husband. But she made him feel good inside, young inside, and he wasn’t going to fall at the first fence because of a little competition.
She fastened her seat belt while he got in and fastened his own, his eyes smiling as he approved the action.
“I have to tell most people to put their belts on,” he pointed out.
“Not me,” she said. “Judd taught me early that I would not ride with him if I didn’t wear it.”
“You’ve known him for a long time.”
“Most of my life,” she agreed. She sighed. “He’s taken care of me for five years. It isn’t that he’s possessive,” she said defensively. “He just wants to make sure that I’m safe.”
He gave her a rakish grin. “You’re as safe as you want to be,” he said.
She chuckled. “Now that’s encouragement, if I ever heard it!”
4
Shea’s Roadhouse and Bar was about a mile out of Jacobsville on the road that went to Victoria. It was big and rowdy on the weekends, and despite the fact that beer and wine were served at the bar, it wasn’t the den of iniquity that Judd called it. There were two bouncers usually. One had broken an arm in a fall, so that just left Tiny to keep things orderly. It wasn’t hard. Tiny was the opposite of his name, a huge, hulking man with a sweet nature and a caring personality. But he could be insistent when people got out of hand, and nobody lasted long in an altercation with him.
She said as much to Cash when they were seated at one of the small wooden tables waiting to be served.
“Altercation,” he repeated with a slow smile. “You sound like a cop.”
“Blame Judd,” she said on a sigh. “It really does rub off when you hang out with law enforcement types.”
He chuckled, toying with his napkin. “Are you sure he didn’t mind that you came out with me?”
She pursed her lips. “I think he did, a little. He’s very conventional.”
His eyebrows arched. “Are we talking about the same Judd Dunn?” he asked pleasantly. “The one who handcuffed a prostitute to the former mayor of Jacobsville when he caught them together in a brothel, and had someone tip off the newspaper?”
She cleared her throat. “He was a policeman here at the time...”
“...and chased a speeder all the way to Houston to give him a ticket?”
She moved one hand uneasily.
“...and then padlocked the local pool parlor until the owner promised to stop serving beer to minors?”
She sighed. “Yes. I suppose he used to be more unconventional than he is now. He feels that he shouldn’t embarrass the Texas Rangers. The exact figure changes from time to time, but this year, there are only 103 of them in the world.”
He gave her an amused glance. “I know. I used to be one.”
Her dark eyes widened. “You did?”
He nodded. “In fact, I worked with Judd for a while. I taught him those martial arts moves he uses so eloquently these days.”
“You know martial arts?” She was hanging on every word.
He chuckled. “There’s a movie cowboy up the road near Fort Worth who also runs a martial arts studio. He taught me.”
She named the actor.
He nodded.
“Wow!” she exclaimed, obviously impressed.
“Now don’t look like that,” he muttered. “You’ll embarrass me.”
She cocked her head, recalling something she’d heard about him earlier. “You’re one to talk about Judd being unconventional,” she added with a wicked grin. “We heard that you used the movie camera in your police car to film a couple in the back seat of a parked car up in San Antonio...?”
He chuckled. “Not the police camera—my own. And it was two local police officers I knew that I captured on tape. I made them promise to behave with more decorum before I gave them the only copy of the tape.”
“You make a bad enemy,” she pointed out.
He nodded, and he didn’t smile.
Around them, the band was just tuning up. It consisted of two men playing guitars, one with a fiddle and one with a keyboard. They broke into “San Antonio Rose,” and couples began to move onto the big dance floor.
“They’re pretty good,” she said.
“They’re missing their bass player,” he noted.
“I wonder why?”
“Oh, he’s in jail,” he said, smiling as the waitress approached.
“Why?” she asked.
“Some other guy was dating his girl. He chased them to her house in his car and made a scene. She called us.” He shrugged. “Fortunes of war. Some women are harder to keep than others, I guess.”
“Poor guy.”
“He’ll be out Monday, wiser and more prudent.”
“Hi! What can I get you?” the waitress, an older woman, asked.
“Pizza and beer,” Grier told her.
“Pizza and coffee,” Crissy said when it was her turn.
“No beer?” she asked.
“I’m not twenty-one yet,” Crissy replied easily. “And my...guardian,” she chose her words carefully, “is a Texas Ranger.”
“You’re Crissy,” the girl said immediately, chuckling. “I had a crush on Judd when we were younger, but he was going with that Taft girl from Victoria. They broke up over his job, didn’t they?”
Crissy nodded. “Some women can’t live with the danger.”
“Doesn’t seem to bother you,” the waitress said, tongue-in-cheek, as she glanced pointedly at Grier before she went away to fill the order.
