Maverick Christmas

by Joanna Wayne

  “You know me too well.”

  “So have you met someone new? Is this serious?”

  “Let’s just say it’s…complicated.”

  “You already said that.”

  Josh peeked inside the back door. Things were reasonably under control—reasonably meaning there were no food fights or overturned furniture. And no tears.

  “It’s a long story and I don’t have much time,” Josh said, “so listen carefully.” He told the story as briefly as he could.

  “Let me see if I have this straight,” Logan said. “You have moved a woman wanted for suspicion of murder into your house.”

  “Believe me, she’s no murderous psychopath, if that’s what you’re thinking. And she’ll only be here long enough for me to see if her story checks out.”

  “And just how would you verify this since the only people who know if she’s telling the truth are her dead husband and the two men she claimed killed him?”

  “I have ways. Look, I know her story sounds fishy, but…”

  “You think? She finds out her husband is running around on her and that same night two men she’s never heard of just happen to come by and shoot him right before she walks in the house.”

  “It could happen.”

  “Sure it could. Now let me guess. The woman is coyote-ugly with tiny breasts and her face is covered in warts.”

  “Okay, so she’s good-looking, but that’s not what this is about. She’s scared, Logan, really scared, and not for herself. She’s scared for her daughters. I don’t know, maybe it’s because Tess put our sons into so much danger, but the fact that she’s such a dedicated mother gets to me. And I’m not going to let some D.A. in Houston decide how I do my job.”

  “You were always one to make your own rules, but just be careful. And if there’s anything I can do, let me know.”

  “I may take you up on that, little brother. Oops, got to go. My two loving sons require a referee.”

  CHRYSIE AWOKE TO squeals and the kind of clattering you’d expect if the back half of the cabin were being demolished. She sat up in bed to the protest of a stiff neck and a headache. Ignoring them, she threw her legs over the side of the bed and staggered to the kitchen.

  “Mommy, you’re up.” Mandy wrapped herself around Chrysie’s legs.

  Chrysie bent, gave her a reassuring hug, then studied the scene in front of her. Jenny was standing by the table, arms folded, while Danny and Davy were going at each other with feet and arms flying.

  Josh was storming through the back door, looking aggravated and incredibly virile. His dark hair was rumpled, and thick locks of it had fallen over his brow. And the sleeves of his pale yellow Western shirt were pushed up, revealing a scattering of dark hairs on his sun-bronzed arms.

  He grabbed an arm of each of his sons and yanked them apart. “Haven’t I told you about fighting in the house?”

  Jenny’s hands flew to her hips. “Danny started it.”

  Danny made a face at Jenny and stuck out his tongue. “Tattletale.”

  “Let the sheriff handle this, Jenny.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Josh released his grip on the boys and dusted his hands as if dismissing the problem. “Sorry if they woke you, Chrysie. I had to leave them alone for a minute to take a phone call.”

  Alarm kicked in. Had he changed his mind and been talking to someone in Houston about her? She studied his expression but saw nothing to indicate he’d turned on her.

  “Can I get you some breakfast?” he asked. “So far the choices are cereal or toast and jelly.”

  She glanced at the table. The blue checkered tablecloth was decorated with a large orange stain. One cereal bowl was overturned, as was a box of something that looked like chocolate puffs being passed off as breakfast food.

  “Guess it doesn’t look too appetizing,” Josh said, no doubt reading her expression. “We had a few problems.”

  She poured herself a cup of coffee, then sat down at the end of the table while Josh started clearing the mess. He might be a terrific rancher and sheriff, but his parenting skills were sadly lacking. If she stayed around long enough, she’d do something about that. The boys needed firm but loving guidance.

  Jenny climbed back into a kitchen chair. “I told Sheriff Josh that you didn’t let us eat that kind of cereal.”

  “It won’t hurt you to have it once, and it was nice of the sheriff to fix breakfast for you. I hope you remembered to thank him.”

  “Well, I couldn’t thank him yet ’cause I haven’t had breakfast. I’m waiting on toast and grape jelly.”

  Mandy walked to stand beside Chrysie. “Can we go home now?”

  Chrysie took another sip of the coffee. Her mind was clearer this morning, but she still hadn’t come up with any suitable way to explain that they would be living here in this tiny cabin with people they barely knew. She’d put the girls through so much in their young lives, dragging them from place to place, afraid to make close friends, afraid to let them out of her sight. She knew that overbearing parenting could be as harmful as neglect, but given the circumstances, she hadn’t had much choice.

  She lifted Mandy to her lap and kissed her chubby cheek. “We’re going to be staying with the McCains for a while,” she said.

  “Why?”

  Chrysie looked to Josh, wondering if he’d given his boys an answer to that question. He obviously read her raised eyebrows as a request for help. He dropped to his knees so he was eye level with Mandy. “Your house had a big leak in the roof and all that snow is melting and pouring in. If you were there, you’d have to walk around with your raincoat on.”

  “That would be funny.”

  “Right on, but your toys and books would get all wet, and that would be bad, so you’d better stay with us.”

  The answer seemed to satisfy Mandy, at least for now. Chrysie mouthed her thanks over Mandy’s head.

  So here she was in league with the sheriff. It was a strange bonding, one fraught with frightening possibilities. He could at any moment decide she was guilty or that the risk of harboring her was too great. One call to the Houston Police Department and she could be on her way to jail. For all she knew, he’d made the call already and was only waiting for the authorities to pick her up.

  Yet sitting here at his kitchen table, dressed in her polka-dot jammies, her hair disheveled from sleep, she felt more awkward than uneasy—awkward and much too keenly aware of the sexy, charismatic sheriff hovering over her.

  “I make a mean scrambled egg,” Josh said.

  “Good, I was afraid I’d have to settle for sugarcoated chocolate lumps.”

  “No, the gourmet stuff is just for the kids.”

  Mandy climbed down from her lap and went running to the den, where the boys were howling in laughter over whatever was happening on Saturday-morning cartoons. Jenny wolfed down her toast so she could join them, as well.

  Which left Chrysie alone with Josh. When the eggs were ready, he set them on the table along with four slices of toasted and buttered bread and joined her for breakfast.

  “Guess we should talk strategy,” he said.

  “Strategy as in how six people are going to live in a house with one bathroom and two bedrooms?”

  “No, I’ve got that worked out.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure. We sleep in shifts. You and the girls get the first half of the night. The boys and I will take the second half. And we’ll only bathe every other day.”

  She choked, and the bite of egg she was chewing went down the wrong path. Josh jumped up and slapped her on the back a few times, knocking the egg and her tonsils loose.

  “I was joking,” he said. “You can have my bed and the girls can take the bunk beds. I’ll get some sleeping bags for the boys and we’ll camp out on the den floor. It’ll be fun.”

  “You don’t have to do this.”

  “Do you have a better suggestion?”

  “You can forget you ever saw me and the girls, and I can
just disappear from your life?”

  “I like my option better.”

  She took another bite of egg. She chewed slowly, reassessing the situation, amazed that she could be eating at all when her whole life had taken a serious turn for the worse over the past twenty-four hours.

  “We need to set priorities,” Josh said. “I think the first order of business should be discovering the identity of the men who killed your husband.”

  “I don’t know how you’d do that. I’d never seen them before that night.”

  “They likely have a police record. Do you think you can identify them from a mug shot?”

  “I’m sure I could. I’ve seen those faces in a hundred nightmares. But if you call the Houston police and ask for that information, they’ll suspect something.”

  “Right, which is why I won’t call them. But I have friends in high places. Actually, I have friends in low places, too, both of which could be helpful.”

  Apprehension started churning again, and Chrysie pushed her plate away, her appetite totally vanished. Even the thought of seeing the two men’s mug shots made her nauseous.

  I’ll see what I can dig up,” Josh said, “but it would help if we knew the motive for the murders.”

  “I’m certain it was just a robbery gone bad. Jonathan probably woke up while they were burglarizing the house, and the crooks killed him.”

  “If that’s the case, why did they hang around and wait for you to return?”

  “I don’t know they waited. I just happened in on them right after they’d killed him.”

  “Did your husband keep a gun in the house?”

  “Yes, but he’d never used it.”

  “Had anyone made threats on his life?”

  “No. Everyone liked Jonathan.”

  “A popular lawyer. That’s sort of an oxymoron, isn’t it?”

  “Well, I’m sure he had enemies in the business sense but never anything personal.”

  Josh’s cell phone rang. He excused himself and walked outside to take the call, out of her hearing range. That made her nervous, too. If this was about her, then she should be able to hear the conversation. And if it wasn’t about her, there was still no need for secrecy. She took the dishes to the sink and rinsed them. Josh returned before she was finished.

  “You are not to do dishes or housework today. Doctor’s orders.”

  “I feel fine.” That was a blatant lie, but she was pretty sure it was the situation and not the bump to her head yesterday that was causing the nagging pain at the base of her skull.

  “Nonetheless, you’re supposed to get bed rest.”

  “Okay, right after I shower.”

  “I have to be out for a while this afternoon.”

  “You’re leaving?”

  “For a couple of hours. I have to take care of some business, but I’ll take the boys with me so you can have some quiet. If you want, I can take the girls, too.”

  “No. They’ll be fine. They play quietly.” Her mind jumped into gear. A couple of hours would be plenty of time for her to get out of town, but she’d need a car. Perhaps she could call Evelyn and borrow one of the pickup trucks Buck used on the ranch.

  Josh took another call. Chrysie headed for the shower, her mind running with ideas for escape. It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate Josh’s help, but he thought he could keep her safe while he conducted his investigation. But he was a small-town sheriff. What did he know of men who were evil through and through?

  “MAC BUCKLEY PUT the jar to his lips and shook out a mouthful of peanuts. A few rolled down his bare stomach, across his briefs and onto the worn leather sofa. This was his favorite night for watching TV. There was one crime show after another, all ones where the good guys won in the end.

  Americans were so gullible. They actually believed that cops and forensics experts were the only ones who had access to all that information. Hell, he knew as much as any of them.

  The phone rang. The calling number came up on his TV screen. There was no name, but the number had a Houston area code. Could be business.

  “Hello.”

  “Hello, Mac.”

  Definitely business. “What’s up?”

  “Cassandra Harwell. I think she may have been spotted in Montana, possibly in or near a town called Aohkii.”

  “Well, it’s about time.”

  “I want you and Sean to make a trip up there and check things out. The sheriff who called to get information on Cassandra is Josh McCain.”

  “I’ll be on the first plane out of town. Any special instructions?”

  “Kill her and leave no witnesses. And don’t do anything that would connect the killing to Texas or the Harwell murder case.”

  “You got it.”

  He broke the connection and went back to the TV show and the peanuts, but the excitement was already building. He’d wanted to kill the tight-ass doctor in the first place, but the rules had been different then.

  He liked the new rules better. Dead people never talked.

  Chapter Six

  The plans for escape that Chrysie had made in the shower fell apart the second she walked back into the kitchen and ran into a man with a bowling ball for a gut that pushed his belt down to near no-man’s-land.

  He smiled when she walked into the room. His teeth were tobacco-brown, but he had nice eyes that crinkled at the edges and sparkled as if he were watching fireworks. And now he was one more person who knew who she was or at least that she was in the sheriff’s unofficial custody.

  Josh made the introductions, then pulled her aside while Cougar walked out the back door to spit a stream of brown gunk over the porch rail and into the snow.

  “Are you sure you’re feeling all right?” Josh asked.

  “Are you going to ask that every five minutes?”

  “I’m not used to playing nurse.”

  “Obviously. Nurses wait until you drop off to sleep so they can wake you before asking that.”

  “I’ll try to remember that. In the meantime, Cougar is a good guy, dependable and great with kids. He can watch the girls while you rest.”

  “I’m sure he has better things to do on a Saturday afternoon. And isn’t it unethical for you to use a deputy to watch an unofficial prisoner?”

  “Might be if I were paying him with county money. I told him I had a hot woman that needed looking after, and he volunteered his services.”

  “Why don’t you just take out an ad in the community newspaper and tell everyone who I am and why I’m here?”

  “Take it easy. I didn’t tell him the whole story.”

  “So is he a deputy or not?”

  “He’s only part-time now, just helps when I need him, but he was the sheriff here for years up until he stepped on some criminal’s inalienable rights a few years back. He was cleared at the hearing, but by then he’d told them what they could do with the sheriff position. He’d been threatening to retire for years anyway.”

  “Which rights did he step on?”

  “He broke a couple of the guy’s ribs.”

  “That’s supposed to make me feel better about this?”

  “The guy had it coming. He was a no-good drug dealer who was using his own sons to deliver the goods to other teenagers. Besides, the other guy took the first swing.”

  “Now you sound like Davy and Danny. Exactly what did you tell Cougar about me?”

  “That you need my protective services.”

  “That’s it?”

  “And that he was not to let you leave the house for any reason unless he was with you.”

  “That should be just enough information to whet his appetite and send him to the same missing-persons Web site you visited.”

  “Why would he? You’ll have him so charmed by the time I get back he’ll be ready to break a few hips for you.”

  “Sure, I’m a real femme fatale.”

  “You’re not half-bad—for a fugitive.”

  He smiled and she felt flushed. It was unthinkable t
hat she could respond to him in this situation, but there wasn’t a lot she could do about it except try to keep her distance—while they shared a tiny cabin and she slept in his bed.

  Cougar stepped back inside, closing the storm door behind him with a rattling bang. He nodded in her direction but walked though the kitchen and into the den, where the boys were tossing a foam football around and, judging from the noise, performing spectacular athletic jumps from falling furniture. Her girls were back in the boys’ bedroom playing with their dolls.

  Josh’s gaze lifted and locked with hers. “I hope to be back in a couple of hours, three at the most. I pro grammed my cell number into your phone while you were showering. Call me if you need anything.”

  “I need a car.”

  He ignored her. “The first order of business is rest, but if you need something to occupy your mind, I’d like you to start making a list of everything you know about your late husband’s hobbies and business dealings. List everything that pops into your mind, even the things that don’t seem important. Put a star by anything that changed over the last few weeks and months before his murder.”

  “I’ve had three years to think about this, Josh. I haven’t come up with a single reason why someone other than burglars caught red-handed would kill Jonathan. The answers aren’t going to just all of a sudden pop out of my memory bank because I make a list.”

  “Just give it a try. We’ll talk later.”

  The football came flying into the kitchen. Josh put up a hand, caught it and tossed it back into the den without hesitating on a single syllable. She hoped his reflexes were as good when it came to intercepting killers. He might need the skill before this was over.

  She prayed it didn’t come to that, but the fear was welling inside her again. She doubted even Josh was a match for those monsters. She was almost positive Cougar wasn’t.

  CHRYSIE AND COUGAR made small talk, mostly about the weather and the rising price of gasoline. She knew it was best to keep him at a distance so that he didn’t feel free to ask any personal questions, but her curiosity about Josh had grown proportionately with her traitorous attraction.