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“I’ve got an even better idea,” he said in a thoughtful tone. “If you happen to be home when she stops by, why don’t you just make it a point to disappear? You’re not fit to breathe the same air she does. Is that clear enough?”
“You’re gonna be sorry you did this, breed,” Bull croaked through aching vocal cords.
“Yeah, well, we all do things we’re sorry for, and we all make mistakes, Bull,” Rio said, heading for the door. “But if I were you, I’d be real careful about making any more. I think your luck just ran out.”
He turned and headed for the door. “I’ll pick you up tomorrow afternoon,” he said to Rick. “Same time.”
Nodding, Rick followed Rio out the door, a combination of awe, admiration and fear in his eyes.
“You step a foot on this place again, and I’ll kill you,” Bull screamed after him. “I may kill you, anyway.” The sound of the whiskey bottle shattering against the door punctuated the threat.
Rio hardly heard. A final rush of adrenaline carried him to his truck. He felt better getting that off his chest. He just hoped he hadn’t made things worse for Rick and Ada.
“You better not come tomorrow,” Rick said as Rio climbed into the truck’s cab.
Rio paused, his hand on the door handle. “You don’t want to work for me anymore?”
“I do!” Rick said. He shook his head. “You don’t know him. He gets crazy out of his mind when he gets really drunk. Does all kinds of terrible things. Then when he sobers up, he doesn’t remember half of it.”
“What are you trying to say, Rick?”
“I’ll meet you in front of the mailbox on the highway. If you come here, he’ll be primed and ready for you, and there’s no use asking for trouble.”
Rio nodded. “Will you and your mom be all right, or did I just buy you another beating?”
“You rattled his cage pretty good,” Rick said. “He doesn’t know what you’ll really do.” He shrugged. “I imagine he’ll just drink and worry on it awhile. We’ll be fine.”
Rio nodded. “If you need me, you know where I am.”
Chapter Two (#ulink_b192f50f-41bb-56cd-ae64-863d8bf12276)
During the ride home, Rio’s thoughts were filled with his confrontation with Bull Farmer. He prayed he hadn’t made things worse for Rick, but if ever a kid needed some guidance and someone to stand up for him, Rick Farmer was that kid.
Rio rubbed a hand over his whisker-stubbled cheek and expelled a harsh sigh. Now he understood why Maggie was so down some evenings. He was always telling her to leave her work at the office, but after today, he could see how much easier that was said than done. The amazing thing was that she was able to stay as objective as she did.
Rio’s heart lifted when he saw her car in the driveway, but he had a few more chores to do before he could call it a night. He stopped by the trailer to visit with Jeremy’s wife and baby daughter and check with Jeremy to see how the broncs had settled in, but Tess said he’d driven in to town to pick up some hamburgers for supper.
Having his recently discovered younger brother and his family on the ranch was a pleasure Rio was glad he hadn’t missed. As he did often of late, he wondered if the man who’d fathered them both was lonely, and if he was sorry for the world of distortion he’d built, now that it had collapsed on him.
He knew Jeremy missed his dad—and probably the easy lifestyle he’d grown up with. But he was a stubborn kid, and he was still mad and hurt to the bone by John Hardin Westlake’s scheme to separate him from Tess and their unborn baby. Tess’s father and Westlake had constructed a web of lies that put the two young people’s love to the test. Only a miracle had brought them all together. A miracle and a woman named Maggie, who’d been willing to put her job on the line.
As Rio played with six-and-a-half-month-old Emily, he tried to imagine what his life had been like before he’d found her on his front doorstep. Lonely. Empty But Emily’s appearance had brought Maggie back into his life, and eventually Jeremy and Tess had come, too. And suddenly Rio had found himself with a real family. It was nice, he thought. Real nice.
After giving Emily the attention she considered her due each evening, Rio checked Babydoll again and gave his gelding a rubdown and a handful of sugar cubes. Something about the mundane tasks was calming. It didn’t occur to him that the small everyday chores were a validation—maybe even a celebration—of his own life and happiness.
When he stepped through the door of the house he shared with Maggie an hour and a half later, the aroma of baking apples and other mouthwatering scents wafted through the air to tickle his nostrils. He smiled. She had cooked up a storm—with apple pie for dessert. He wondered what he’d done to deserve it. He wondered what he’d done to deserve his sweet, sweet Maggie. The sheer rightness of his life banished the last lingering thoughts of Bull Farmer from his mind.
He hung his Stetson on the antique hall tree and took off his boots in the entryway. Maggie got a little testy if he tracked up her floors. Considering the time she spent keeping the place clean, he couldn’t say he blamed her.
“Maggie!” he called, padding toward the living room in his stocking feet.
“In here!”
Rio made his way through the house toward the sound of her voice. He stopped just inside the dining room. The room was dark, except for the flames of literally dozens of candles—tall, squat, thin, fat—a re-creation that was poignantly reminiscent of their wedding night.
Maggie stood by the window, her head tilted slightly to one side as she arranged flowers in a crystal vase. She wore a dress he’d never seen before. He knew he’d never seen it, because it wasn’t the sort of dress a man would easily forget, a shimmering, satiny, peach-colored number that gathered at the neck and revealed most of her shoulders. The hair that tumbled over her bare, fair shoulders shone as brightly as the copper kettle her Aunt Hattie had given them at their kitchen shower. She looked up at him, a single long-stemmed rose in her hand.
“Hi.” She raised the rose to her lips, her green eyes twinkling over the petals as if she had a secret too delicious to keep.
She dropped the flower on the table and reached out a hand toward him. Dazed, Rio, his movements slow and careful drew her into his arms, feeling, as he always did in her presence, big and clumsy and unworthy of a woman like her.
Their kiss was long and slow. When she drew away, his heart was galloping in his chest.
“My sweet, sweet Maggie,” he said in a husky voice as he rubbed his thumb over her bottom lip in a gentle caress. “What’s all this for?”
Maggie captured his hand. “I know how hard you and Cal and Ken have been working at getting those rodeos lined up lately, and how uptight you’ve been about getting your business started. I got to thinking that it would be nice if I helped you unwind.”
He laughed softly and shook his head.
“How am I supposed to relax when you look so beautiful?” he said thickly. “You are, you know.”
“So are you,” she countered on a sigh.
“Yeah, right.” He hugged her tighter and gave a deep, satisfied sigh. “I don’t know what I did to deserve this kind of treatment, but if you’ll tell me, I’ll make sure to do it more often.”
She lifted her head from his chest to look at him, then cradled his whisker-rough cheek with her palm.
“I guess I just got to thinking about how lucky I am to have you,” she said in a trembling voice.
He dipped his head to kiss her. Their mouths had just touched when the phone rang, shattering the feelings building between them.
“Don’t answer it,” he said as the phone rang again.
“It might be Cal calling from Calgary,” Maggie said, reminding him of the trip Cal McKinney had made to see about providing the stock for the annual Stampede. The phone shrilled the third time.
“You don’t want to miss it, do you?” she asked as the fourth ring pealed out.
Reluctantly Rio hauled himself away from her and stalked into the kitchen. He grabbed the phone on the fifth ring and barked a short “Hello” into the receiver. Nothing but buzzing sounded in his ear.
Great. Whoever it was had hung up. He was just starting back to the dining room when the doorbell rang. What was this? he wondered. Some sort of conspiracy? Muttering to himself, he went to see who was at the door.
Maggie watched as Rio left the room, a look of admiration in her eyes, a satisfied smile on her lips. For the past few hours she’d raced around the house like a mad woman, cooking, cleaning, arranging the flowers and candles just so and then finally, working on herself, creaming, spritzing and curling, until she looked as good as the rest of the place. Judging from the expression on Rio’s face, it had all been worth it—more than worth it. There was no doubt that he liked the dress. The music on the CD player had changed to an instrumental Christmas medley. She sighed in contentment as she hummed along with the soft strains of a violin. Her husband was quite a man, she reflected. How had she gotten so lucky as to find him?
Her thoughts were scattered by the sudden unexpected roar of a gunshot from the front of the house. The noise drowned out the lilting melody of the Christmas song and shattered Maggie’s mood in a single thundering beat of her heart. Instant and inexplicable fear exploded inside her. Her brain kicked into overdrive, computing the information at hand and coming up with a horrifying answer.
Rio!
With her heart pounding in sudden terror, Maggie ran headlong through the house, screaming his name.
She careened to a stop just inside the living room. In the light that spilled through the open doorway from the front porch, she saw Rio lying sprawled on his back Rick Farmer stood framed in the open doorway, a look of fearful disbelief on his face, a revolver clutched in his whiteknuckled fist as he stared at Rio helplessly. Maggie’s hand crept to her mouth to hold back the anguished cry that emanated from the depths of her soul.
“I’m sorry.”
The sound of Rick’s voice broke the spell of immobility that held Maggie rooted to the floor. With a high, keening wail, she launched herself across the room and dropped to her knees beside Rio’s still, bleeding body, trying her best to rouse him, wanting, needing to hear him say he was all right. But there was no sign of life, except a horrible sucking noise that came from his chest with every shallow breath he took.
Swaying from a growing light-headedness, Maggie was marginally aware of Jeremy arriving, his shotgun in tow, demanding that Rick put down his weapon, which he did while chanting a litany that he was sorry.
“Call an ambulance, Maggie,” Jeremy commanded.
Maggie’s dazed gaze moved from Rick’s white face to Jeremy’s. “What?”
“Call an ambulance, dammit!” Jeremy yelled.
Shocked by the unaccustomed violence in his manner, Maggie scrambled to her feet and dialed 911, telling the operator in a strangely detached tone what had happened. Assured that the ambulance and the police were on their way, she went back and knelt beside Rio, wiping at the fine spray of blood on his face with the hem of her satin dress and watching in helpless surprise when more reappeared.
“He’s bleeding to death,” Jeremy said in a tearthickened voice. “For God’s sake, Maggie, do something besides sit there and watch him die.”
Once again, the harsh criticism in his voice jolted her from the dreamlike passivity enshrouding her. Rio dying? She looked up at Jeremy with the idea of giving him a piece of her mind and encountered the anguish on his face. It was like the slap of a wet washrag. Jeremy thought Rio was dying.
She looked down at Rio, really seeing him for the first time. He was pale and still. Too still, except for the noise rattling in his chest. Too still, she thought on a fresh rush of panic, but alive.
Bits and pieces from the first aid class she’d taken in college came rushing back. Nothing was obstructing his breathing. But he was bleeding from the wound that misted his chest with a fine spray of blood with every breath he expelled.
The term for the type of wound emerged from somewhere in the back of her mind, probably all the thrillers she read. It was a sucking chest wound.
Petroleum jelly and gauze. That tidbit, too, came from nowhere…somewhere. It was worth a try, better than watching blood being pumped from him with every beat of his heart. Running to the bathroom, Maggie located some gauze bandages and a jar of petroleum jelly.
She got back to the living room in time to see the sheriff’s car screech to a sliding stop in the driveway, his siren blaring, the red and blue lights on top of the county vehicle slashing the darkness with metronomic frenzy.
Fully aware of the danger of the situation, Maggie was too busy trying to stanch the flow of blood to concern herself with what Wayne Jackson was doing. She knew that Jeremy relinquished his guard to a deputy while Wayne handcuffed Rick. As the sheriff herded his prisoner toward the squad car, Maggie heard him reciting the Miranda code over the harsh sounds of Jeremy’s crying and the scream of the approaching ambulance.
But the thing that she would always remember was Rick’s quivering young voice saying brokenly, “I didn’t do it, Sheriff. I swear, I didn’t do it.”
Maggie closed her eyes. It was the same thing he’d said about the dog.
Eva Blake looked up from the delicate square she was crocheting, one of many that would comprise the bedspread she was making for Maggie and Rio. She laid down her handwork and gazed tenderly at her husband. At sixty-five, he was still a fine-looking man, tall and trim and fit from his twice-weekly tennis games, the craggy lines in his face only adding to his good looks.
As it always did when she looked at Howard, her heart swelled with a wave of love so strong it hurt. How many times during the past forty-three years had she looked across a room and fallen in love with him all over again? His head, mostly gray now, was buried between pages of newsprint, as it was most evenings. He preferred to digest the news along with his breakfast, but it was seldom that he made it through his morning meal without someone calling about this crisis and the next, needing his advice, his help, his steadfastness.
In all the years they’d been together, Eva had never known him to put his own wishes ahead of those of his flock. His selflessness was just one of the reasons she loved him. Howard would be the first to tell her not to put him on any pedestal, that he wasn’t perfect by a long shot, but he was so close to perfection—at least in her mind—that it wasn’t worth splitting hairs over.
She knew she was getting sentimental, but what if she was? She couldn’t help being sentimental any more than she could help that her hair was more gray now than auburn or that she cried when she heard the “StarSpangled Banner” or that she liked country line dancing—which she often practiced in the living room when Howard was at the church building. She shot Howard a sideways glance and bit her bottom lip to hold back a giggle. What would Howard say if he knew?
A Christmas commercial filled the television screen and Eva sighed. The McKinneys’ big party was coming up soon.
“What should I wear to the McKinneys’ Christmas party?” she asked, lifting her gaze to Howard again.
“Whatever you want,” he said without looking up.
Eva smiled. He was on automatic pilot. “I was thinking of getting something new.”
“That’s fine.”
“I saw a cute little number in Frederick’s of Hollywood the other day,” she said with feigned nonchalance.
Did she imagine it, or was there the slightest pause before he answered? “That’s nice.”
Eva moved her crocheting from her lap to the coffee table and hugged a throw pillow to her ample breasts. “Howard,” she said in a serious tone.
“Mmm?”
“I’m having an affair.” It was a credit to her acting ability that she delivered the line straight-faced.
His eyes never left the paper. “Uh-huh.”
Her eyes widened and her mouth fell open. “Is that all you have to say?”
Howard turned another page of his paper. “Lucky guy,” he said, deadpan.
“Oh, you!” Eva fumed.
His blue eyes alight with merriment, Howard looked up in time to catch the pillow that came flying through the air at him.
“I had you going there for a while, didn’t I?” he said with a chuckle.
She pretended to pout. “I’m not talking to you.”
“Come on, Evie, talk.” He wiggled his eyebrows. “Tell me about the Frederick’s outfit.”
“You’re incorrigible!” she said, but she was doing her best to hide a smile.
“But you love me.”
She leveled an accusing look and pointed a finger at him. “And prideful.”
Howard winked at her. “But not boring.”
She tried to hold back a smile and failed. She shook her auburn curls, which were preserved from the ravages of time by Suzi over at the Curl Up and Dye beauty salon, who touched up Eva’s roots the third Tuesday of every month. “No one could ever accuse you of that.”
“Not even back in high school?”
Eva cocked her head to the side and pretended to consider the question. “Well…”
Howard pushed himself up from the chair and held out his hand to her. “Come on. Let’s go make some popcorn.”
“Honestly, Howard,” Eva said, as he drew her to her feet. “You’re so helpless. Just put the bag in the microwave, press the popcorn button and three minutes later it’s ready.”
Howard slid his arm around her shoulders. “I know, but I’ll miss you.”
