Maverick Christmas

by Joanna Wayne

  She picked up the cushions that had been scattered about the room during the boys’ rambunctious game of indoor football and placed them on the couch. “Have you known Josh a long time?” she asked.

  “Ever since he moved to Montana. That’s been about seven years now.”

  Seven years ago. That would be before the boys were born but possibly after they were conceived—or maybe not.

  Cougar rubbed his whiskered chin. “Most guys grow wilder once they move to Montana. Josh has actually tamed a bit.”

  “Tamed? In what way?”

  “He was a loner with an attitude. Most folks like that get their attitude adjusted pretty quickly up here, but Josh could hold his own with anybody.”

  “Odd that a guy like that would end up as sheriff.”

  “It’s ’cause he ran deeper than what he wanted you to believe. Folks liked him in spite of himself, and he was a hard worker. Buck Miller says he was the first one on the job in the morning and the last one in the bunkhouse at night. Likable, not afraid to take on anything or anybody and not afraid of hard work. He was a natural to replace me. ’Course, he didn’t have two sons to raise back then. Didn’t even go by the name of Josh McCain.”

  “What name did he go by?”

  “Josh Morgan.”

  “Why did he use an alias?”

  “I don’t know. I figure he had his reasons. We don’t mess much with people’s private lives up here. You either cut it or you don’t.”

  Apparently Josh had cut it. But a man didn’t change his last name unless he had a purpose for doing so. Had his own past been suspect? Was that why he’d believed her story or at least decided to investigate further before turning her over to the Houston police?

  “Josh is a good guy, but don’t push him, Chrysie. A man like Josh don’t like to be pushed and he sure won’t take being lied to.” Cougar gave the warning, then picked up the remote and powered on the TV.

  Chrysie took that as a signal that he was through talking. She stepped into the narrow hallway to go and check on the girls. The two of them played well together despite the age difference—as long as Jenny didn’t get too bossy. Chrysie paused when she was near enough to hear their conversation clearly.

  “I hope Santa Claus knows we had a flood at our house,” Mandy said. “I don’t want my presents to get all wet.”

  “It wasn’t a flood,” Jenny corrected. “It was a leak. That’s different. And I hope I get a puppy.”

  Jenny had begged for a puppy ever since they’d left Houston. It broke Chrysie’s heart that she couldn’t get her one, but pets didn’t fit in a nomadic lifestyle or in the small apartments they’d lived in before now.

  The Miller cabin would have been the perfect spot for a dog. The animal would have acres to explore, and Jenny could have run with him, through the grass, along the creeks and up and down the mountain paths.

  Chrysie leaned against the wall, suddenly weak and more than a little heartsick. It wasn’t going to happen, not for Jenny and not for Mandy.

  “I’d rather have a daddy than a puppy,” Mandy said. “A daddy can give you shoulder rides, just like Sheriff Josh does. And he can pick up really big Christmas trees and stuff. And get your car started when Mommy can’t.”

  Chrysie swallowed hard. A puppy was out of the question. Josh McCain as Mandy’s daddy was about as likely as…as Santa actually arriving in a sleigh pulled by flying deer with glowing noses.

  “I don’t think Santa brings daddies,” Jenny said. “You better just ask for a puppy. We might get lucky.”

  Christmas was two weeks away. That would give Josh plenty of time to check out her story and make his decision. If he let Chrysie go without arresting her, she might just see that her girls got that puppy and make room for it in the crowded car when it was time to move on.

  If he didn’t believe her, then she might be spending Christmas in jail, and her daughters could be stuck in an orphanage with total strangers who had no idea how special they were.

  They wouldn’t know that Jenny liked her bath lukewarm and that she was afraid of loud thunder. They wouldn’t know Mandy had nightmares sometimes and that the only thing that calmed her was a story or that she loved chocolate sprinkles on top of her ice cream.

  The girls had gone back to their dolls now, and Jenny was telling hers she would take her for a walk in her stroller but that she better not cry and scare the cows. Chrysie tiptoed by the bedroom unnoticed, unwilling for the girls to see her tears.

  This was no time for weakness. Yet when she reached the room at the end of the hall and the un-made bed she’d slept in last night, she fell to the crumpled sheets and sobbed herself to sleep.

  JOSH HAD GOTTEN ONLY one official call that day: a stranger in a red pickup truck had driven away from the local service station without paying for his gas. Fortunately the forgetful driver had returned to pay his bill even before Josh had hung up from the complaint call.

  Josh stretched, closed his eyes for a second, then pushed back from the computer. He’d just completed the frustrating task of scrutinizing a long list of violent thefts in Houston, Texas, over the last three years. None of them had occurred in the same area as the Harwell murder.

  The boys were suspiciously quiet, so he walked to the door and peeked into the outer office where they had been playing. Davy had fallen asleep in the old worn chair under the window. Danny was watching an animated movie on Josh’s laptop.

  “Can we go now?” Danny said without looking up from the screen. “I’m tired of this old office.”

  “Yeah, just give me a minute to shut down the computer and make a few notes.”

  His phone rang before he finished. It was Clayton Green, one of his buddies from his college days, who was currently an FBI agent in San Antonio. “What did you get?” Josh asked, forgoing the routine hello.

  “A couple of things. One, a lawyer named Marv Evinu had been given the power of attorney in case either Jonathan Harwell or his wife Cassandra weren’t around to handle their estate. He’s handled their finances and kept up their house payments and property taxes on their home.”

  “So the house is still in Mrs. Harwell’s name?”

  “Exactly. I haven’t been able to get my hands on the crime-scene report yet, but I did get one of the guys in the crime lab down there to fax me the firearms and ballistics report.”

  “What did you find?”

  “That it’s very unlikely that Cassandra Harwell is as innocent as she claims.”

  CHRYSIE STARED at the top of the stairs, livid and so terrified that her lungs burned with each gasp for air. “Put her down. Put my baby down.”

  The monster laughed and held Mandy farther over the banister, shaking her tiny body so that her little legs seemed to be dancing.

  Heart pounding, Chrysie started to race up the staircase. But the wooden steps started revolving, the flights going in random directions so that every step took her farther and farther away from Mandy and the brute who held her. Chrysie’s hands were numb, frozen to a block of ice that was clasped in her right hand. Only it wasn’t ice. It was a pistol, a shiny silver pistol.

  She held it up and aimed it, but the steps started revolving again, this time spinning wildly. She fell and the gun went off. There was a huge thud and blood, so much blood, all over the stairs—and the bed. All over Jonathan.

  Chrysie jerked awake. Her T-shirt was wet from the cold sweat that pooled between her breasts. She’d had some version of the nightmare hundreds of time before. It was never exactly the same except for the ending. Jonathan was always lying in a pool of blood, and she could never reach Mandy.

  She knew enough about dreams to understand that the nightmares were a manifestation of the frustration and fear she lived with every day. Nothing she did could save Jonathan. And she could never guarantee that the monster wouldn’t get his hands on Mandy again.

  Chrysie went to the bathroom, splashed her face with cold water and ran her fingers through her short hair. During the fi
rst few months after the murder, any glance into a mirror had produced a shock, the bizarre feeling that a stranger had crawled inside her and taken over her body.

  The changes in appearance were even more dramatic now that she’d gained a few pounds and her skin was bronzed from the sun. But the biggest differences were on the inside. Then, much of her identity had been tied to her career as a psychologist and her position as Jonathan’s wife. Now she was only Chrysie Atwater, mother.

  She glanced at her watch. She’d slept almost two hours. Apprehension sent her scurrying down the hall in search of the girls. She was not used to having them out of her sight that long unless they were at preschool or asleep. She found them in the living room playing with some toy dinosaurs that evidently belonged to the boys. Cougar was watching a college football game on the television.

  Mandy jumped up and ran to her. “We were quiet so you could sleep and get well fast.”

  “Yes you were, and I appreciate that.” Chrysie reached down, picked her up and gave her a big hug before setting her back to the floor.

  “This is a Tyrannosaurus rex,” Jenny said, holding the plastic replica up so that Chrysie could get a better look. “He’s carnivorous. That means he eats meat, like other dinosaurs. That’s what Mr. Cougar said. But tyrannosaurs didn’t eat people. He lived so long ago there weren’t any people.”

  “Sounds as if you’ve learned a lot about dinosaurs while I slept.”

  “I tried to keep ’em busy,” Cougar said. “Josh called a few minutes ago. He’s on his way home, should be here in ten minutes or so, said he was bringing pizza.”

  Jenny and Mandy clapped their hands in unison. Chrysie went to the kitchen for a glass of water and to rummage drawers for a pad and pencil to start her list of things she knew about Jonathan. She had no idea where to start unless she began with the lie that had permeated their whole marriage.

  She had never loved Jonathan Harwell.

  Chapter Seven

  It was midafternoon before Josh managed a few minutes alone with Chrysie, and even then they weren’t really alone. The kids were running and playing ahead of them while they walked in the snow. Chrysie had said she needed some fresh air. He understood that feeling all too well. He’d felt cooped up all his life, never feeling he could breathe free until he’d arrived in Montana.

  That first morning on Buck Miller’s ranch, when he’d smelled the scent of hay, felt the sun hot on his back even while the air was brisk, seen green as far as he could see, he’d known he was home.

  And now he had it all. His own ranch. The opportunity to work in law enforcement—even though it wasn’t the type of investigative work he’d envisioned when he’d caught his first Dirty Harry movie on late-night TV. He even had two adorable sons. He adjusted his Stetson, pulling the brim down to shade his eyes from the sun. Yep, he had it all.

  So why was he putting it on the line for a woman he barely knew? That had been the question his FBI buddy had posed on the phone once he’d realized what Josh was up to. Josh could call this protective custody until his own cows came home, but the Houston police would see it as aiding and abetting, especially with the evidence they had against Chrysie.

  She slipped, and he put out a hand to steady her. Still she fell against him for a moment before regaining her balance. His chest tightened and an unwanted arousal stirred between his legs.

  What was there about her that got to him like this? He’d been with lots of women, some prettier than Chrysie. Some sexier. Some with better bodies. Not that she was lacking in any of those departments.

  He’d like to blame it on the fact that she was in serious jeopardy, but even that didn’t tell it all. There was just some kind of weird chemistry between them. He’d felt it the first night at the civic center. And right now he felt it way down in his gut—and a couple of very sensitive places in between.

  This was getting him nowhere. “Did you make the list about Jonathan?” he asked, trying to get his mind and libido back on track.

  “I wrote down a few things.” She pulled a piece of paper from the back pocket of her jeans, unfolded it and handed it to him.

  “You say here he was determined to become a wealthy and powerful man. Was that always the case?”

  “Pretty much. His father was an alcoholic and never kept a job for more than a few months at a time. Jonathan had quit school in the tenth grade to help support his family.”

  “Yet he ended up with a law degree,” Josh said, thinking out loud as much as making conversation.

  “He earned his graduate equivalency degree at night school, then worked afternoons and nights to put himself through university.”

  “Did you notice anything different about his moods or work habits in the days and weeks just prior to his murder?”

  “I didn’t see much of him.”

  “Because of the affair with his secretary?”

  “No. We’d drifted apart months before that. Looking back, I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised by the affair, except that…” Her voice trailed off.

  “I’m in this neck-deep, Chrysie. Don’t hold back on me.”

  “We’d been having marital problems since before I got pregnant with Mandy. I’d mentioned a separation, but Jonathan was dead set against it. He kept saying we could make the marriage work. He’d even agreed to marriage counseling. We had already made an appointment for the week after he was murdered.”

  “Then I can see why the affair caught you off guard. How did he react when you questioned him about the affair?”

  “He denied it, said I was imagining things, that it was just my postpartum depression talking.”

  A red flag shot up, waving like crazy in Josh’s head. “You never mentioned being depressed.”

  “Because I wasn’t. I loved being a mother.”

  “What about your career? Were you happy with that?”

  “Very, though I had cut back on my hours during my pregnancy with Mandy and hadn’t resumed a full schedule yet. She was only two months old.”

  A marriage going sour. A husband accused of having an affair. A wife who might or might not have been suffering from postpartum depression. And the cops in Houston no doubt knew all of this.

  The air was shattered by a loud squeal. Josh and Chrysie took off running. They found Jenny on the ground, her face and hair frosted with snow.

  “I was making snow angels, and Danny and Davy hit me in the face with snowballs.” Her words were more like sputters between sobs.

  Josh looked around. There was no sign of the boys. He called and then whistled loudly. They walked up slowly, mittened hands stuck in their pockets and looking like innocent angels who’d been called back to earth for unjustified punishment.

  “We were just playing attack,” Danny said. “Davy hits me with snowballs all the time. They don’t hurt.”

  “I wasn’t playing attack,” Jenny said. “And they smashed them in my face.”

  “Okay, boys. You’ll have to be punished.”

  The boys stared at him as if he’d just ordered them to be shot at daybreak or at least tortured and made to shovel snow. He felt like a cad, but then, Jenny had been on the ground and kind of defenseless when they’d ganged up on her.

  “She’s just a big crybaby,” Danny said. “And this is our house anyway. Who wants her here?”

  Chrysie reached out and took both boys by their arms. “Look at me.”

  They hesitated but finally turned their faces toward her.

  “Throwing snowballs is one thing,” she said in a voice that sounded as authoritative as God might have used issuing the Ten Commandments. “Smashing them in someone’s face when they’re not playing attack is unacceptable behavior. I think a ten-minute time-out in your room with no TV or toys while you think about what you’ve done is appropriate punishment.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Danny said.

  “And you owe Jenny a genuine apology.”

  Danny looked back to his boots and kicked at the snow. “I’m so
rry, Jenny.”

  “Me, too,” Davy said. “I won’t smash you again unless you’re playing attack.”

  Josh stood there in awe of Chrysie’s performance and dumbfounded by his sons’ obedient responses. She was good, damn good. No wonder people had paid her big bucks to work with their troubled children.

  They took a shortcut back to the house, but not short enough that the boys retained their subdued moods. They were running ahead, pummeling each other with snowballs until they ended up on the ground in a mass of tangled arms and legs, laughing while they scuffled and rolled about in the snow.

  Jenny walked between her mother and Josh, ending any chance of his asking Chrysie about the information he’d gotten from his FBI friend. Mandy dawdled and lagged behind, until she ran up and grabbed Josh’s hand.

  “I’m tired,” she said. “Can I ride on your shoulders?”

  Josh picked her up and swung her into place, amazed again at how light she was. The boys had been only a little older than she was now when he’d seen them for the very first time.

  They’d been half-afraid of him at first. But then, they’d already lived through hell. The police had gotten the details surrounding their mother’s death all wrong.

  But were they wrong about Chrysie or was he letting sentiments from his own past and his almost overpowering attraction for her affect his judgment?

  “Oooh, look!” Mandy called, kicking so enthusiastically he had to grab her feet to keep her from bouncing off his shoulders.

  Josh looked, but all he saw was a tall spruce that stretched a couple of feet over his head.

  “It’s a Christmas tree,” Mandy said. “Can we get it, please?”

  “It’s much too tall,” Chrysie said.

  “I don’t know about that,” Josh said. “It looks like a pretty perfect Christmas tree to me.”

  “Yes,” Mandy agreed. “Perfect.”

  “I don’t know where you’d put it,” Chrysie said. “There’s no place for everyone to sleep as it is.”

  True, but then, he figured they all needed a little Christmas about now. And if a little was good, then a lot should be better. “We can put it in the middle of the den and the boys and I can put our sleeping bags beneath it. It will be like camping outdoors, except we’ll be warm.”