Wildflower Ridge

by Sherryl Woods

  “Yeah, later.”

  After all their years of troublemaking, Justin got a kick out of watching Harlan Patrick squirm at the sight of his uniform. No one in the family, least of all his own father, quite understood what had motivated him to become a sheriff’s deputy. Jordan Adams had saved a spot in his oil company for Justin and he was mad as hell that his son had turned it down. Justin figured his brother-in-law would settle into the position just fine and sooner or later everyone would get over his defection.

  Ironically, it was the family’s very own values that had taken root in Justin’s heart and made him long to keep the whole community of Los Piños as safe and secure as his family was on their various ranches. In the cutthroat oil business, his father had a straight-arrow reputation for honesty and never cutting corners. Grandpa Harlan’s instinctive decency and tough-love brand of justice were as ingrained in Justin as breathing. Even as a kid, when he and Harlan Patrick had played cops and robbers, he’d always, always wanted to be the good guy. To him, becoming a cop was less a surprise than a destiny.

  He stood on the sidewalk in the middle of town after his cousin had gone and surveyed his domain. Not a bit of trouble in sight. Not even a gum wrapper on the sidewalk, he observed, smiling at the memory of that kid’s expression as he’d snatched up the offending piece of paper and thrown it into the litter basket on the corner. His actions had been accompanied by a stern lecture meant to put the fear of God into the boy.

  Yep, Justin thought, all was right in his world. Maybe he could actually get fifteen minutes to himself to grab a burger at Dolan’s before it closed for the night. He radioed Becky at the station.

  “I’ll be at Dolan’s, if you need me. Want me to bring you anything back?”

  “A hamburger, double fries and a milk shake,” the very pregnant receptionist said with heartfelt longing.

  Coached on her dietary restraints by her worried husband, Justin asked, “How about a tuna on rye and a diet soda?”

  Becky sighed. “It’ll do.”

  “Ten-four.”

  As he walked down the block, he spotted the dusty, expensive car with the out-of-state tags. Los Piños didn’t get a lot of tourists. He glanced around for some sign of strangers, but everyone out in the heat of the day was familiar. He shrugged and walked on after making a mental note of the tag number.

  Inside the drugstore, he glanced at the counter, expecting to see Harlan Patrick’s sister, Sharon Lynn. His cousin had taken over a job once held by her mother and now was thinking of buying out Doc Dolan so he could finally retire. If she actually went through with it, she would hire a new pharmacist and continue running the rest of the store as she had been for the past couple of years, anyway.

  “Hey, Sharon Lynn, you in here?” he called out, even as he dragged a notebook from his pocket and wrote down the Oklahoma tag number.

  “Back here, Justin,” she replied from the back of the drugstore. “I’ll be with you in a sec.”

  He’d barely settled on a stool at the counter, when he heard what sounded like a whispered argument. His cop’s instincts, already alerted by the out-of-state car, kicked in. Drawing his gun, he moved silently down the aisle in the direction of the voices.

  At the end of the row of shelves, he spotted Sharon Lynn and another woman, her blond hair scooped up into a careless ponytail, damp tendrils curling and clinging to her neck. The desperate expression on the stranger’s face spelled trouble.

  She was talking so fast he couldn’t make heads or tails of what she was saying, but he didn’t waste time trying to figure it out. While she was distracted, he moved in beside her and laid a restraining hand on her shoulder. Though she was dressed in expensive, tasteful clothes, she was so thin he could feel her bones. At his touch, she jolted as if she’d been shot, her panicked eyes clashing with his. It all added up to the kind of vulnerability that could make a man lose sight of the job he was being paid to do.

  Keeping her firmly in his grip, he glanced at Sharon Lynn. “Everything okay?”

  The stranger’s eyes pleaded with his cousin. Sharon Lynn touched her hand gently.

  “It’s okay. Justin’s my cousin. He’s not going to hurt you.”

  “That all depends,” Justin said, contradicting her. “What happened?”

  “I needed some children’s Tylenol,” the woman said in a voice barely above a whisper. “My son’s sick.”

  Sharon Lynn sighed. “I caught her trying to slip them into her purse,” she admitted with obvious reluctance.

  Justin tried not to react to the tears that were welling up in the woman’s eyes, turning them into huge pools of green light, like sunshine reflected in a pond surrounded by tall pines. She was little more than twenty, it seemed to him, and fragile as a bird. He had a feeling if she was shoplifting Tylenol, then she hadn’t had much to spend on food lately, either. Just because her clothes were pricey didn’t mean she wasn’t truly down on her luck. At the thought of the sick child, his rock-solid value system shifted ever so slightly. He felt justice clashing with compassion. Because he had a sudden, uncharacteristic instinct to bend some rules, his next words came out more harshly than he’d intended.

  “Where’s the boy?” he demanded gruffly.

  “In the car.”

  He fought to hold his temper in check. “You left the baby in the car by himself? As hot as it is out there today?” And why, he wondered, hadn’t he spotted the kid if he’d been securely strapped into a car seat as he should have been? He hadn’t even checked inside the car. Obviously he was slipping.

  “He’s okay. I left the windows open a little. He’s sound asleep. Besides, I knew I’d only be gone a minute.” She stared at him defiantly. “You don’t have to tell me all the terrible things that could happen. Believe me, I know. I weighed every one of them and decided he’d be safer there than with me. I didn’t want him to cry and draw attention to me.” Her shoulders sagged. “It didn’t matter. I really am no good at this.”

  “Get him,” Justin said tightly. “Now.”

  The instant he released her, the woman scooted past him and out the door.

  “She’ll run,” Sharon Lynn said, staring at him in astonishment.

  “No, she won’t,” Justin said.

  “How can you be so sure?”

  He held up the package. “Not without medicine.” He handed his cousin a ten-dollar bill. “Pay for them out of this, okay?”

  Sharon Lynn gaped. “Are you all right?”

  “Just take the damned money.”

  She grinned. “Yes, sir.”

  “And then fix a couple of milk shakes. I’ll grab some juice for the baby.”

  “Uh-oh,” Sharon Lynn said. “What did it, Justin? Those big green eyes or the tears?”

  “Go to hell.”

  “You ought to be nicer to me,” she taunted. “I can tell this story far and wide by morning. Grandpa Harlan will know every touching detail by the time you get there tonight for the poker game. Your life won’t be worth living by the time they finish teasing you about letting a nasty, evil shoplifter off the hook just because she was beautiful.”

  “You know, Sharon Lynn, there are things about you that old Kyle Mason doesn’t know about,” he said grimly, referring to her fiancé. “That man’s been dangling on the hook for the past fifty million years, it seems like, waiting for you to marry him. Could be I know just the way to cut him loose before the latest wedding date next month.”

  “You wouldn’t dare,” she breathed.

  He could see her calculating the risks and twisted the knife a little more. “Wouldn’t dare tell him that you were the party girl of your senior class at ole Los Piños High? Wouldn’t dare mention that you landed in jail on your senior trip?” he taunted. “Try me.”

  “Kyle knows all that,” she said airily. “He loves me, anyway. Besides, you know perfectly well what kin
d of party girl I was, all talk.”

  “So you say.”

  Her gaze shifted toward the front window. “If you ask me you’d do a whole lot better to be worrying about why your suspect appears to be about to pull out of the space in front and hightail it out of town.” She shot him a smug look. “Just the way I predicted she would.”

  Justin looked up in time to see a car shoot backward into traffic amid a squeal of tires. As he’d expected, it was the fancy car with the out-of-state tags.

  “Well, hell,” he muttered, and took off running, the carton of juice he’d just grabbed still clutched in his hand.

  “If you catch her, tell her I’m not pressing charges,” Sharon Lynn shouted after him, laughing.

  “If I catch her, I’m throwing her in jail,” he vowed. “You give me a reason, even an itsy-bitsy reason, and you’ll be in the cell right next to her.”

  Chapter Two

  Patsy wasn’t sure why she’d run. Obviously she hadn’t wanted to be hauled off to jail, something that the sheriff’s deputy had seemed perfectly capable of doing. But it was more than that. Fleeing had been instinctive, which told her quite a lot about the damage even a few days on the run had done to her normally assertive personality.

  Seeing the judgment in the deputy’s eyes, the disdain, ordinarily would have infuriated her enough to make her stand her ground. She was capable of holding her own in an argument, or at least she had been until living with Will had taught her that silence was often the only way to escape from escalating tensions.

  One look at the deputy had told her that arguments would be wasted on him, too. There was an unyielding air about him, the kind of steadfast determination that would be great if he were on your side, not so terrific if he weren’t.

  She had been startled when he’d released her and sent her after Billy. Grateful for the unexpected opportunity to escape, she had seized it, not pausing to consider just how incensed the deputy might be by her actions.

  Maybe the woman in the store could calm him down and keep him from chasing after her, she thought hopefully. Patsy had seen the compassion in the woman’s eyes, had known that she was only a hairsbreadth from getting both the medicine and her freedom when the man had turned up. Though she hated taking advantage of anyone’s kindness, she had been relieved that Billy would have the medicine he needed. That was all that really mattered.

  Now, not only did she not have anything to bring her son’s fever down, but she was a criminal, with an attempted shoplifting charge pending if that deputy decided to pursue matters.

  For all she knew there were kidnapping charges on file back in Oklahoma, too. Will was perfectly capable of doing something so despicable just to make a point to her, to prove that he was the one with all the power. What would turn up if the deputy happened to catch her tag number and run it through his computer? There was no telling.

  She couldn’t take any chances that he might find something damaging. She would just have to drive faster and more cleverly than she ever had before. Suiting her actions to her thoughts, she skidded onto the highway and headed north, back toward Dallas, after all. She would exit a few miles ahead, then take back roads to elude any pursuit.

  Though her plight was increasingly desperate, she reminded herself that she still had a bank card with her. Though there was a risk that Will would use any transactions with it to track her, she would use it to get cash if there were no options left to her. She could get enough money to last a few more days, until she could find another town, maybe get a job and find a safe place for herself and Billy. It might even be smarter to abandon the car and fly to another state. If she used cash for the tickets, it would make the job of tracking her more difficult. It was a huge country and Will’s reach surely couldn’t extend to every corner of it.

  When the car sputtered then chugged to a stop barely ten miles outside of Los Piños, she realized that in her rush to get away from the deputy, she’d made a terrible miscalculation. The blasted car was out of gas. It hardly mattered that she had the credit card or a few dollars left in her purse. She hadn’t passed a gas station heading out of town. It was impossible to know how far ahead the next one might be.

  That was the only reason, she assured herself, that Justin whoever-he-was-lawman caught up with her. He found her on the side of the road, cursing a blue streak about the gas-guzzling car Will had insisted she have, and rocking the fussy toddler in her arms. His reflective sunglasses prevented her from getting a good look at his eyes, but his I-told-you-so smile said it all. He’d never doubted for a moment that he’d catch up with her and haul her into custody.

  “Get in,” he ordered, gesturing toward the patrol car.

  “You’re arresting me?” she asked, as if it were the most ridiculous notion she’d ever heard. Will had been a master of haughty indignation and she had learned by example.

  Their gazes clashed, hers defiant, his unreadable.

  “No,” he said finally with a heavy sigh. “I’m taking you back into town. Unless you’d prefer to stand around here and wait for someone else to come along and offer you a lift. I’ll tell you right now, though, that it’s a very long way to the next town and hardly anybody uses this particular stretch of road.”

  Patsy had guessed as much. Not a single car had passed by while she’d been standing beside the car, cursing her lousy luck.

  “Sooner or later...” she began, thinking anything would be better than going someplace with this hard, no-nonsense man.

  “Are you willing to take that chance? If your son’s sick, this heat won’t help.”

  Her resolve wavered. “But the car...”

  “Isn’t going anywhere,” he said. “I’ll have someone bring out some gas and drive it back into town.”

  “I could wait,” she suggested hopefully.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Then you are arresting me.”

  “Dammit, no. Like I said, I am just trying to get you and the baby out of this blazing heat.”

  “Oh.”

  He opened the door to the front seat, which reassured her slightly. If he were arresting her, surely she’d be locked securely in the back. He tossed the bottle of Tylenol over to her, then indicated the carton of juice on the seat. “I brought those along for your boy.”

  So he did have a heart, after all. Patsy swallowed hard against the tears that threatened. It was enough lure to get her inside. “Thank you.”

  He closed the door, then went around to the driver’s side. When he was behind the wheel, he said, “There’s a milk shake in the holder there. You look as if you could use it.”

  Patsy shook her head, unwilling to be too indebted to this man who so clearly—and justifiably—disapproved of her. “No, thanks.”

  He rolled his eyes at her deliberate contrariness. “Suit yourself.”

  The drive into town was made in uncomfortable silence. She waited for another explosion of temper or a stern lecture, but instead he glanced over at Billy, who was belted into the seat with her, no doubt a bending of the rules he was so fond of enforcing. He hadn’t argued with her, though, or insisted she get his car seat and put him in the back.

  “Is he okay? Are you sure you don’t want to get him to a doctor?” he asked. “There’s a hospital in Garden City. I could run you over to the emergency room there.”

  “No,” she said in a rush. When he shot a sharp-eyed look at her, she explained, “He’ll be fine, once his fever goes down. He’s just tired and fussy. I think he’s getting a bit of a cold.”

  “Okay, if you’re sure.”

  “I am.”

  The same uneasy silence fell again. Billy squirmed in her lap. “Mama?”

  “Yes, baby.”

  Billy stared back at her with fever-bright eyes, then looked over at the man behind the wheel. “Who’s that?”

  “He’s a policeman. He�
��s helping us.”

  “Nice ’liceman,” Billy murmured approvingly and fell back asleep.

  Patsy glanced up just in time to catch a fleeting smile at the corners of Justin’s mouth.

  “At least the boy knows when someone’s on his side,” he commented.

  She regarded him doubtfully. “Are you on my side, Deputy...?”

  “Adams,” he supplied. “Justin Adams. And as long as you don’t break any laws, yes.” He gave her a sharp look. “So far you haven’t, at least not technically.”

  “Just because I got caught.”

  “Be grateful that my cousin has a forgiving nature. She won’t press charges.”

  “Is that the only reason you’re letting me off so easy?”

  “Yes,” he said curtly.

  Patsy studied him intently, then shook her head. Her opinion of the man had undergone several drastic shifts since he’d turned up with the juice and medicine. “I don’t think so. I think that under that by-the-book exterior beats the heart of a genuinely nice guy.”

  She was almost convinced he was a man she could trust. Even after he’d caught her stealing, even after she’d fled, he had thought first of her sick child. She could see, though, that the compliment made him uncomfortable. Maybe the leniency didn’t fit his own image of himself.

  “What’s wrong, Deputy? Afraid if word gets out, it’ll ruin your reputation?” she asked, daring to tease him, hoping to catch another glimpse of that potentially devastating smile again.

  “Something like that,” he conceded, unsmiling.

  Patsy felt an odd little shock of disappointment, then cursed herself. Was she so desperate for a friend that she was willing to trust this stranger who had the power to give her whereabouts away to her husband? He was clearly a man with a strong sense of right and wrong, a commitment to duty. He would be the worst possible choice for a friend. When it came to a choice between obligation and friendship, there would be no contest. He would choose obligation every time.

  She withdrew into silence once again.

  “Where are you two heading?” he asked eventually.