Quint tried not to stare at her mouth. Discovering that it could be sweet and stirring as well as sharp didn’t help his powers of concentration any. “If you’re going to speak to anyone, I suggest you start with Jenny and make that speak with, not to.”
“I have, and you heard the results.” Ginny knew he’d overheard them arguing. Talking to Jenny was like trying to talk to a wall and get a response.
“Like I said, with, not to.”
Her back went up, her eyes narrowed. Was this another criticism? “Meaning?”
“No one likes a lecture.” Quint saw the look in her eyes and tried not to laugh. Only a smile creased his mouth. “As you can readily testify firsthand.”
Damn, but he had a smile that sliced right through her. Ginny wanted to be angry at him, not moved by him. And least of all, she didn’t want to react to him physically. So far, she wasn’t faring very well.
Her smile was almost rueful as she told him, “You’re making it awfully difficult for me to make up my mind about you.”
His smile only went further in unsettling her. “Good, a little mystery is always a good thing between a man and a woman.”
She looked at him sharply. Was he implying that something was going to happen between them? That he thought she’d go to bed with him just because she wanted to free her sister? “When did we become a man and a woman?”
“Why, I think nature took care of that right from the beginning.”
Ginny didn’t know whether to be embarrassed at her assumption or annoyed that he had set her straight for the mistake. She couldn’t tell if he was laughing at her or not. She chose to ignore it and plowed to the heart of the reason they were here.
“So what happens to Jenny? Does she sit in jail until the judge comes back from wherever he is?” She couldn’t believe that Quint would do that to her. If nothing else, his mother wouldn’t let him.
“Well,” he drawled, deliberately playing the hayseed he knew she still believed him to be. “I have the authority to release her on her own good behavior if I wanted to—”
Thank God. “Great—” Ginny turned, ready to reach for the front door. They could be on their way within the hour.
He moved to block her way. “Except that she hasn’t proven that she has any good behavior, at least, not in large supply.”
Frustrated, Ginny thought she was going to scream. She glared at Quint. “Are you deliberately trying to drive me crazy?”
He fixed her with a long, steady look. “No, you’ll know when I deliberately try to do that.” The wink sent tidal waves rippling through her system. Ginny felt as if she had just been put on notice. Of what, she couldn’t put into words. But it definitely made her feel antsy.
“So what are you saying—exactly?” Antsy or not, she wasn’t about to let him tap-dance his way out of this until she had a straight answer.
“I might be able to sway Mr. Taylor if Jenny offers restitution.” That had been Quint’s plan all along, ever since he’d put Jenny into the cell to cool off. Having Ginny remain was just a bonus.
Restitution. So it was about money after all. The prick of disappointment seemed even sharper than she’d counted on. Ginny squared her shoulders.
“How much?”
She still thought in terms of money, Quint realized. He shook his head. That came from having a great deal—or none to start with. He’d already figured out that it was the latter with her.
“Not how much, what kind.”
“Excuse me?”
“Mr. Taylor’s assistant just went off to college.” The summer was only half over, but Taylor had told him Ruby’d made up her mind to go. “It’s early,” he allowed, seeing the dubious look on her face. “But Ruby wanted to settle in, so that leaves him really shorthanded. I figure Jenny could work off her debt to him by helping out in the store.” He considered a reasonable time frame. “Say, ten days’ worth?”
Ginny’s brows rose high, completely disappearing beneath her bangs. “For. a package of cupcakes?”
“Several packages,” he reminded her. But there was more at stake here than that and she knew it. “And it’s not the amount but the crime itself. Ever read Les Misérables? The main character was hounded to his grave because he stole a loaf of bread to feed his hungry daughter.”
She figured that if there were any feathers in the vicinity, they could have been used to knock her over. “You read Les Misérables?”
Quint got a kick out of the amazement in her eyes. He’d wager that she probably had no idea she was prejudiced. “Twice, why?”
Ginny shook her head, feeling just the slightest bit embarrassed for what she’d been thinking about his mental abilities. The man was full of surprises.
“Nothing, you didn’t seem the type to read anything but…”
“Men’s magazines?” he suggested when her voice trailed off.
That was exactly what she’d been thinking, but she knew when to gracefully withdraw. “I think I’d better stop right here.”
He grinned. “Good idea.”
Somewhere in the distance, crickets were serenading one another, searching for their soul mate. The air was alive with their music. She’d forgotten what that sounded like, she realized. Then it had been nothing but annoying to her, now it was almost soothing.
She turned to face him, ready to deal.
“All right, suppose I let my sister be sold into servitude for ten days. Just what am I supposed to do in that time? I can’t go back and forth to Southern California.” He probably had this all figured out, too. Part sheriff, part philosopher, part con artist. A modern renaissance man, she thought, a hint of amusement curving her mouth.
Quint wondered what caused her smile, but addressed her question instead.
“Well, actually you could, but it would be time-consuming and a waste for everyone all around.” He included himself in that reckoning. “Your other option is to stick around for the ten days and give your sister the moral support and encouragement she needs.”
Ginny really wished he’d stop telling her what her sister needed, as if she were the outsider in this instead of him. “The town have a hotel?”
Quint thought of the old building where he’d worked after school to earn a little extra money of his own. It stood two stories and if its rooms were half-filled, they were doing well.
“We do, but it’s closed for repairs.”
Which in this case might have meant that they were changing the light bulb, Ginny thought. She didn’t recall seeing any large buildings in town when she’d come looking for Jenny.
“Figures.”
“My folks’ll be glad to put you up for more than the night.” If he knew his mother, she’d insist on it, which was a lucky thing because the other alternative was to remain in the cell at night.
“You’re awfully free with their hospitality. Shouldn’t you ask first?”
She obviously had no working knowledge of Western hospitality or close-knit families. “Don’t have to. My mother loves taking in people, and she’s already taken a shine to your sister.”
Taking in people. The term rankled. The year before she turned eighteen, she and Jenny were always being taken in. Always treated as something a little less than human. Her chin rose.
“We’re not poor strays.”
The lady had a lot of extra baggage she was carrying around with her. “Not that I used the term, but a person doesn’t have to be poor to be a stray. It’s a matter of how you feel inside that decides it.”
He was uncomfortably close to the truth, Ginny realized. “Do you always spout philosophies like that?”
The look on Quint’s face was genial. “Only if the situation warrants it.”
They heard the sound of the door opening behind them. Ginny turned to see Jake poking his head out. There was an apologetic expression on his face.
Nodding at Ginny, his eyes shifted toward his son. “Don’t mean to be interrupting anything, but your mother sent me out.”
&nbs
p; Quint straightened. “You’re not interrupting anything, Dad. I’m just talking Geneva into staying at the Shady Lady until Jenny’s slate is wiped clean.”
Ginny expected to see a look of protest on the older man’s face. None appeared.
Jake grinned. Again Ginny was struck by the similarity between father and son.
“That’s what she sent me out to ask, but as usual, you’re way ahead of me, Quint” He looked at Ginny. “So, did he twist your arm too hard?”
Obviously he was acquainted with the way his son browbeat people. Suppressing a smile that seemed to materialize naturally around the older Cutlers, Ginny shook her head. “Not too hard.”
“Glad to hear it.” Not that he’d had any doubts. Hank might be the golden-tongued one in the family, but Quint was none too shabby in that department. Jake had no doubts that his second son could talk a snake into keeping its skin on an extra season. “I’ll help Zoe make up one of the extra bedrooms.” He gestured toward them. “Go back to doing what you were doing.”
Acting far more pleased than the situation warranted in her estimation, Jake withdrew.
It wasn’t until after the door closed that she realized she hadn’t told him that she’d agreed to anything. “He really didn’t ask if I was staying.”
“He didn’t have to.” His father was good at reading people. Quint had gotten the knack from him. “You would have said no flat out if you weren’t.”
Ginny baited him. “And if I did now?” He surprised her by shrugging.
“Choice is yours, of course, but personally, I don’t think a job—or a career—” he tacked on before she could correct him “—is worth it, not if it means losing touch with people we love. Or worse, losing those people.”
Ginny frowned. She hated being backed into a corner. Even more, she hated the fact that this small-town sheriff with his wicked, wicked mouth was absolutely right. If the situation hadn’t involved her so directly, if she’d been removed, it would have been exactly what she would have said. Being stuck in the middle put a different spin on it, but at bottom, he was right.
Damn him.
Resigned, she conceded. “We’ll stay.”
He slipped his arm around her shoulders, not like a man with a woman but like one friend with another. Ginny wasn’t certain if she preferred that or not. The man was definitely scrambling her brain.
“Knew you’d come through.”
It wasn’t so much a matter of coming through as not really having much choice. Quint was right about Jenny. Somewhere along the line she and her sister had lost that closeness they’d had, that interdependence that came of feeling it was them against the world. If they were to remain close—if Jenny was to leave the self-destructive path she was on— Ginny knew she had to cut through the hostility in her sister’s soul.
And it looked as if Quint Cutler’s way of doing it just might be the key she was looking for.
Not that she’d ever tell him.
Wearing the nightgown that Zoe had loaned her, Ginny leaned over the double bed and fluffed up her pillow. “The Cutlers are nice people.”
Jenny had elected to sleep in her camisole and underwear. She sat on the edge of the bed, not quite a prisoner, not quite free. She shrugged indifferently. “They’re okay.”
Ginny reached for Jenny’s pillow and fluffed it as well. “You seemed to think Mrs. Cutler was more than ‘okay.’”
Jenny turned, ready for a fight. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Ginny tossed her pillow back into place. Why was there always that hostile look in Jenny’s eyes? Why couldn’t they just talk? “Only that you seemed to take to her. And she certainly took to you.”
Jenny swung her long legs under the covers. “Jealous?”
Ginny bristled at the suggestion. “No, of course not.” Quint’s words about communicating played themselves through her head. She swallowed her pride. “Yes.”
The admission surprised Jenny and she stared at her sister.
“What?”
It wasn’t easy opening her feelings to an audience that had been far from receptive for more months than she cared to remember, but there was a great deal at stake. Ginny pushed forward.
“Yes, maybe I am a little jealous. Jealous that you can relate to a total stranger so easily when you can’t even talk to me.”
Jenny reacted the way she had for the past couple of years. She took Ginny’s confession as a criticism against her. “Maybe it’s because the total stranger doesn’t judge me.”
Ginny could feel the conversation slipping away again, out of her control. “I never judge you.”
Jenny’s brown eyes grew into small, accusing slits. “Yeah, right.”
Ginny opened her mouth, ready to vehemently deny the charge, then stopped herself. The sound of raised voices arguing was no way to repay the Cutlers for their generosity. Besides, what good would it do? The harder she tried, the less Jenny listened. Ginny did what she seldom did in life. She temporarily gave up.
With a sigh, she lay down on her side. “You’d better get some sleep, you’ve got to get up early tomorrow to work in Taylor’s store.”
Jenny groaned, grumbling under her breath as she tossed herself down on the pillow, her back to Ginny. She didn’t want to think about what she had to face tomorrow.
They were sharing a bed, just the way they used to years ago when they were younger, except that now at least it was a double bed instead of a single one.
They’d seemed to come almost full circle, Ginny realized. Who would have ever thought that success brought so much dissatisfaction with it?
Ginny sighed again. Back then, she thought all they needed to solve their problems was each other and a wheelbarrow full of money. Talk about being naive…
“Sheriff going to drive me in tomorrow?”
Ginny turned her head toward Jenny. “Us,” she corrected, wanting there to be no mistake that she was here for her. “Drive ‘us’ in, and yes, he is.”
Quint was staying at the ranch tonight instead of driving to town and then back again in the morning. He was putting himself out an awful lot for people he hardly knew. She couldn’t shake the feeling of waiting for the other shoe to drop. People just didn’t care about other people like this, not without a reason. Not even in postage-stamp-sized towns.
“You know, he’s kind of nice, even if he did throw me into jail,” Jenny murmured, her voice thick with exhaustion. Sleepiness made her words sound slurred.
“Kind of,” Ginny echoed.
Because it was late and she needed to get to sleep, Ginny resolved not to think about Quint Cutler any more that night.
She failed.
6
Ginny looked down at Jenny on the bed. Asleep, Jenny looked the way she always thought of her sister in her heart.
Sweet, innocent.
Ginny savored the impression, knowing it would disappear the moment Jenny opened her eyes and her mouth. But it was getting late, at least by Serendipity’s standards. Behind her, dawn was just beginning to unfurl, sending long probing fingers of muted sunlight tapping along the windowpane. Time to get rolling. Taking a deep breath, she cut short her indulgence.
Bracing herself for the heated reception ahead of her, Ginny leaned over the bed and gently shook her sister’s arm. Jenny finally responded with a barely audible, completely garbled noise that sounded very much like a growl.
“Jenny, wake up.” Ginny gave her shoulder one last shake. “You’ve got to go to work for Mr. Taylor this morning.”
Digging her face out of the confines of her pillow, Jenny rolled over on her back. She raised her head just enough to glance out the window. With a huge sigh, she let her head drop back on the pillow.
“You have got to be kidding me.”
Jenny stared at Ginny with eyes that were hardly larger than slits. Somehow, she still managed to telegraph hostility with them.
“No, it’s time to get up.” Ginny had already hurried into her clothes after taking w
hat amounted to a three-minute shower. Never having had the luxury of dawdling when she was growing up since there’d always been so much to do, Ginny wouldn’t have known how to take her time pampering herself even if she’d wanted to.
Turning around, she saw that Jenny had made no effort to move so much as a muscle.
“C’mon,” she urged. “I don’t like this any more than you do but if we’re going to get you out of here, we have to play by their rules.”
The small, dismissive snort spoke volumes. “Why can’t we just run away—at a decent hour?”
Saying that, Jenny rolled over and pulled the covers up over her head.
Ginny really didn’t want to get into an argument first thing in the morning. Biting back a few choice words about Jenny’s laziness, Ginny pulled the covers off, depositing them at the foot of the bed.
Yelping in protest, Jenny made a grab for the covers, but Ginny snatched them away before she could reach them.
“Because we have to play by the rules,” Ginny told her tersely, “not break them, that’s why.” What was wrong with Jenny? Why was she so determined to be perverse? “Haven’t you learned that running away doesn’t solve anything?”
Rather than comment, Jenny tried to cover her head with the pillow. Ginny dragged that away from her, too.
Jenny glared up at her, frustrated and finally wide awake. “I guess not. I couldn’t seem to run away from you.”
The remark drew blood, just as Ginny knew Jenny had intended. Ginny refused to show her that she’d made a direct hit. Annoyance colored her words. “Just get your butt out of bed and downstairs before someone comes up here and gets it out of bed for you.”
The threat didn’t produce the desired results. A smile that was half smirk curved Jenny’s young mouth. “Wouldn’t mind if it was Quint. Or maybe that deputy of his, what’s-his-name.”
Ginny folded her arms before her, waiting for Jenny to get up. “Carly.”
“Yeah.” The smirk softened a little. “Carly.”
The smile bothered Ginny far more than the remark did. Her sister was growing up a lot faster than she was happy about. Was that her fault, too? Was it all her fault? Had she somehow failed Jenny while she’d been trying so hard to make everything right for her, to give her the things that she herself had never had? The guilt and confusion were tearing her apart.
The Law and Ginny Marlow Page 7