by Tina Leonard
“Well,” Helen said with a sigh, “go change, honey. Let him cool his heels a minute. I’ll tell him you’ll be right out, and maybe that will settle him.” She picked up a delicate teacup, poured some fresh tea in it and bravely headed outside to offer it to the sheriff.
Liberty went into a back room and slipped out of the beautiful gown with Valentine’s help. Valentine hung the dress for her, covering it in plastic. Even beneath the cover, the dress shimmered with hope and dreams of happiness. Liberty had sewn every single one of those sequins and crystal beads herself, and had cut the satiny fabric with trembling fingers while Pansy and Helen helped her keep it from snagging or getting dirty. That dress had been a labor of love on all their parts.
“The ladies say he really is a teddy bear,” Valentine said.
“He is,” Liberty agreed, “when he’s not being a horse’s ass. You don’t get one without the other with Duke.”
Valentine giggled. “I heard his brother, Zach, is the same way.”
“Zach may be worse. Although Pepper takes the cake,” Liberty said. “Little sister knows exactly how to tame those brothers of hers.”
“Where is Pepper, anyway?” Valentine asked, carefully smoothing the plastic covering the dream dress.
“I don’t know. Off somewhere, being a wild woman.” She smiled as she pulled on jeans and a loose white sweater. “I think the fact that Pepper and I were best friends growing up gives me insight into the family. Zach and I were close, almost as much as Pepper and I were. But not Duke. I think I fell in love with him when I was five years old. I was watching him catch tadpoles, and I remember thinking he could do anything.” He had been her hero.
A part of her still thought he was.
She shook her head as she stepped back into her high-heeled wedding shoes. There wasn’t going to be a wedding but she might as well wear them, even if they might be the color of sin in Duke’s eyes. The heels would make her a little taller when talking to him—and a little sexier, despite her pregnancy.
“Your shoes and sweater match,” Valentine said. “You look so pretty, Liberty. No one would ever guess you’re seven months pregnant. I hope you don’t mind me saying so.”
Liberty smiled. “Thanks.”
“I’m going to head back to Union Junction. I’ll give your dress to Helen and Pansy.” She hugged Liberty. “In the meantime, good luck with Duke.”
Pansy poked her head around the door. “Duke says he’s gotten a call and he’s got to leave, so you’d best hurry, dear.”
Liberty hugged Valentine again and followed Pansy out, waving to her friends who watched her depart with some concern. Outside the saloon, Duke stood on the sidewalk, sexy as all get out and clearly disgruntled.
“I have to go,” he said. “I have a call. But we should talk.”
Noting he’d used the ladies’ more courteous phrasing, she gave him points for trying and nodded. “All right.”
“You can ride with me if you like.” He eyed her wedding shoes. “Although we’ll be going into the country on a family crisis call.”
“Who is it?” She followed Duke with quick steps as he strode away.
“The Carmines. Mrs. Carmine says her husband left last night and she wants someone to talk to. She thinks he may have gotten lost.”
“Again,” Liberty murmured. Bug Carmine frequently departed to his fields with a bottle of whiskey and a shotgun. The shotgun was in case he saw a deer or duck he wanted, though in his ten years of disappearing, he’d never brought home food nor trophy. People suspected he couldn’t see more than five feet in front of him. His disappearance upset Mrs. Carmine after a few days. She would call someone to fetch him from the five hundred acres he could hide himself in, and he’d come home sheepishly, bottle empty but shotgun still loaded.
They got in Duke’s truck. He glanced over at her, and Liberty’s nerves tightened.
“So,” he said, “who’s the lucky guy?”
Chapter Two
“There is no lucky guy,” Liberty said. “You should know that better than anyone.”
He scowled. Why had he asked? No matter the answer, it was bound to hurt. But she wouldn’t have been wearing the wedding gown if she wasn’t intending to marry another man.
It was killing him.
“No second chances from me,” he said. “I’m not asking twice.”
He felt her astonishment. “I’m not asking you to ask me, if you’re referring to marriage.” Her posture stiffened. “Duke, my leaving had more to do with me than you. I got scared. I wasn’t ready. Even I didn’t know I was a predestined runaway bride. It just happened, silly as that seems.”
“If it was any woman other than you who’d done that, I’d think they were a little loose in the skull,” he said. “But being loosey-goosey is sort of your way. I think it’s what attracts me to you.”
Of course, there were a lot of other things that attracted him to her. Right now he could smell her perfume. It smelled wonderful, reminding him of the scent of her skin. The memory worked him over. “I think you weren’t convinced.”
“Of what?”
“You weren’t convinced that you couldn’t live without me. Since we never really dated but made love twice—in one afternoon—you probably were unconvinced that I was husband material.”
“I don’t think that was it. But let’s not examine it too much. If we try to overanalyze it, we might figure something out, and I don’t want to. It’s in the past.”
He didn’t like that. “Completely?”
“Not exactly,” she said.
“Aha! You did like sleeping with me!”
“I never said I didn’t,” she said tartly. “That was the one really good thing about you.”
“What the hell does that mean?” He couldn’t decide if he was gratified or insulted. “Liberty, when I asked you to marry me, you said yes. I assumed there was something about me you liked beyond the bedroom.”
“The field,” Liberty murmured, “and then a closet.”
“It was awesome. I never knew a woman could be so flexible.”
“Duke!” She sighed. “Good sex doesn’t a marriage make.”
“It makes something,” he said, “and in my book, it makes something good.”
“Yes, well—” Her voice drifted away. “I want something more solid than sexual desire. That fades away over time.”
He turned into the Carmines’ drive. “Like what? A written promise that I’ll always want you enough to make love to you in a closet?”
“Yes.” Liberty nodded. “And that you’ll never try to rule me, or boss me, or overwhelm me with your personality. You’re very chauvinistic in some ways, Duke.”
He laughed. “Not me. That would be my brother, Zach.”
She shook her head. “Zach was always the gentleman. The girls love him. You were always the autocratic one.”
“That’s why I’m sheriff,” he said happily. “It’s an autocracy.” He stopped the engine. “You’ve been hanging around those little blue-haired friends of yours too much. Any day now I expect them to bring out their suffragette banners.”
“That’s not very nice, Duke Forrester. Shame on you.”
He smiled, appreciating the sensation of being the bad boy with a bad girl. “I couldn’t boss you even if I wanted to, Liberty Wentworth. You’re far too unquantifiable for that.” Leaning over, he brushed her lips with his. “Of course, I’ll always be bullheaded enough to take what’s mine.”
“That’s it,” Liberty said, getting out of the truck, “you flunked the test.”
“Poor testing parameters, if you ask me.” He took her arm, helping her to the porch. “You and I were made for each other. We’re like an odd shape, not meant to fit another puzzle on the planet.”
“Sounds dreadful.” Liberty knocked on the door. “Mrs. Carmine! Are you home? It’s Liberty Wentworth!”
“I believe that’s my job,” Duke said to her. “And Sheriff Duke Forrester!”
“Som
etimes it’s easier for women to talk to women. Especially about things like husbands that run off for days.”
He crooked an eyebrow at her. “One day, our last name is going to be the same, and then we can stand on Mrs. Carmine’s front porch and just holler ‘It’s the Forresters!’”
“Sounds like a movie title. Maybe it is. It was probably a bad one, too,” she said as Mrs. Carmine opened the door.
“No way. Everything about the two of us together is good,” Duke said as Liberty hugged Mrs. Carmine.
“How are you doing?” Liberty asked the elderly lady.
“I’m fine.” She smiled bravely. “I’m just lonely. Would you mind fetching my husband home?” she asked Duke.
It would be a chore searching all the acreage, but one he’d done many times. “A pleasure,” he said, interpreting Liberty’s glare to mean be gracious. “We’ll go right now. Don’t you worry about a thing, Mrs. Carmine. We’ll tell Bug it’s time to get home.”
She nodded. “Thank you. It’s good to see you, Liberty,” she said, her voice quavering. “If I’d known how men like to disappear, I probably wouldn’t have married Bug, as much as I hate to say it.”
Great. That’s all I need—a little help from the “Wish I Hadn’t” club. “Now, Mrs. Carmine,” Duke said patiently, “you know you love Bug.”
“Bug is a pain in my ass,” she declared. “Like a child, always running off.” She looked at Liberty. “You’re lucky Duke is such a stalwart sort.”
Duke enjoyed the blush pinkening Liberty’s face. It was good for Liberty to know that other women considered him a catch!
“Of course, stalwart can be boring,” Mrs. Carmine said with a frown. “If I was your age again, I’d run off with an Italian lover or a Russian circus performer first. Then I might settle down. Might.”
Liberty blinked. “Let me fix you a cup of hot tea, Mrs. Carmine.”
“No.” A sigh so deep it made her pinafore rise escaped her. “You just go find my Bug before I get the urge to squash him.”
Liberty hugged the older woman, then walked out the front door Duke held open for her.
“Now don’t go getting any ideas,” Duke said. “It’s well-known that the Carmines married very young.”
“Her words are food for thought, though,” Liberty said.
“Try a diet,” Duke said. “Some foods aren’t healthy for you.”
Liberty got in the truck. “Then again, sometimes the food you like most is the least healthy for you.”
He turned to look at her before grabbing her shoulders and kissing her hard. “How’s that for an appetizer?” he asked after he’d thoroughly ravaged her mouth.
She raised her chin and gave him a haughty look. “So good I prefer to skip the main course.”
He rammed his hat down on his head, not sure what to say to that. What was wrong with her? Women didn’t push him away as hard as Liberty was doing. Driving down the hill into the back pasture, he considered his options where Liberty was concerned.
He didn’t appear to have many.
“Duke, when do you run for reelection?”
The change of subject startled him. “I don’t really run. No one else wants the job. I’ve always been a shoo-in.”
“When does that happen?”
“I suppose the elections are this month. I hadn’t really thought about it.” He began to scan the landscape for Bug. “You look on that side, I’ll look over here.”
He thought about her question and idly wondered what had brought her back to town. “Are you running?”
She looked at him. “From you?”
“For sheriff,” he stated flatly, his jaw tightening. Did she have to bring that up again?
“Oh, no. I heard your brother Zach was. Then I heard your sister Pepper was, but that’s silly. Pepper’s not here.”
His jaw untightened and went slack. “Where did you hear that?”
“At the saloon.”
“They haven’t told me.”
“Actually, what I think I heard is that the ladies have decided to petition them onto the ballot.”
“The ladies?” Duke demanded. “By that you mean the little group that’s constantly scheming.” He was slightly hurt, he had to admit. The “ladies” always conspired against him, but it was usually in a somewhat delightful spirit that he indulged. They were, after all, much older than he and deserved his respect.
But petitioning his siblings onto a ballot to run against him didn’t sound like something he cared to indulge. He kept looking for Bug, trying to ignore the hammering in his heart.
“All the ladies,” she clarified. “At least the ones who were in attendance at today’s Ladies Only Day.”
“I knew that was a bad idea. If the men had been there, the gang would have been soundly overruled.” He scratched his chin, aware that he was beginning to sound truculent. He softened his tone. “You still haven’t told me what you were doing wearing the dress you were supposed to wear to our wedding. I have fond memories of you trying it on and letting me button those tiny little buttons.”
He had taken his sweet time doing so, enjoying touching her and looking down at her bare shoulders. She was the smoothest, softest thing he’d ever seen.
“The ladies were trying to convince me that it was a good idea to marry you,” Liberty said. “I had a weak moment.”
“Ouch.”
“No! I didn’t mean that. I meant that I allowed them to coerce me into trying it on.” She put a hand on his arm. “Duke, it wasn’t you as much as it was me, really and truly.”
“You spend too much time around women, listening to them gripe about their men,” he said gruffly, “and it scared you.”
“No, frankly just the thought of marrying you spooked me.” She sighed. “You can’t blame them. I had my own doubts.”
“I’m not so terrible,” he complained.
She turned away. “You’ll be wonderful for the right woman.”
“You are the right woman!” he roared. “Or at least you would be if you’d act right.”
“Duke,” she said, “we’d end up like the Carmines.”
“Only you’d be the one running off. Even Mrs. Carmine said I’m stalwart.” He was proud of that. “By the way, you still look good enough to eat in that dress. It always reminds me of a big, fluffy piece of Ms. Pansy’s divinity when I see you in it.”
“Ugh. I’m not sure that’s what it was supposed to evoke.”
“I like dessert, so the dress was perfect, in my opinion.”
“There he is,” Liberty said, pointing.
Duke slowed the truck as he saw the old man sitting propped against a tree, watching ducks fly overhead. His rifle was on the ground next to him but the elderly man didn’t have a hand on it. He appeared to be watching the wedge of ducks as they flew, perfectly content to enjoy the silence and the heat of the day. “He doesn’t look ready to go home.”
“You tell him,” Liberty said. “I’m not in a position to tell someone they should return home.”
“You got that right,” Duke said, “and I might remind you, based on the popular opinion of my stalwartness, you should tell your lady friends that their idea to write Zach and Pepper into the ballot hurt my feelings.”
Liberty laughed. Then she saw the seriousness of his face as he parked the truck. “Did it really?”
“Yes, damn it.” He switched off the engine, keeping an eye on Mr. Carmine. “How would you feel if you knew all your townfolk that you’d sworn to serve and protect were always conspiring against you?”
“It’s not actually against you,” Liberty said, but Duke waved her comforting words aside.
“Sure it is. They’ve got some bee in their bonnets over something. Like I haven’t given in to them enough. They wanted to change the name of the town to reflect the Dutch ancestry of the settlers, so I agreed. They wanted to change the name of a perfectly good establishment to make it more of a tourist attraction, and I agreed to that, with great reserva
tion. Now they’re trying to run me out by writing in my siblings’ names—one of whom hasn’t been here in a year—with their little wizened hands. Judases!” He frowned. “Or would that be Jezebels?”
“Oh, gosh.” Liberty got out of the truck. “Duke, come on. We’ve got a job to do.”
He got out, his heart heavy. What was the matter with all the females in his world? Clearly none of them cared that he was so easy to get along with.
It wasn’t fair.
“Hello, Mr. Carmine,” he said.
“Howdy, Sheriff,” Bug said, not surprised to see him at all. “Nice day, isn’t it?” He nodded to Liberty. “Glad to see you back in town, girl.”
Liberty sat next to him. She picked up his bottle, which looked empty and probably had been for some time. From her jeans pocket, she pulled out a package of spearmint gum, and they each had a piece. Duke raised an eyebrow, watching this silent communication.
“Mrs. Carmine is wondering about you,” Duke said.
Bug looked back at the sky as if searching for the ducks he’d been watching before. But they were long gone and only small white clouds trailed across the blue in cumulus strings. Bug’s gaze came to rest on Duke. “How’s your jail, Sheriff?”
“It’s a jail,” Duke said. “And occupied,” he continued quickly, in case Bug was looking for a place to stay. “Mr. Parsons is still in residence.”
Bug nodded. “Marriage is a jail, and I’m still in residence, too.”
Liberty shot a worried glance at Duke. He remained silent. Maybe his powers of communication weren’t quite what he’d thought they’d been.
Liberty stood, putting her hand out to Mr. Carmine. After a moment, Bug took her hand and lifted himself to his feet, giving all appearances of using Liberty’s strength as emotional support. Duke watched as the two of them headed to the truck. Bug silently settled himself into the back seat of the double cab. Liberty nodded at him, telling him they were ready to go, so he got behind the wheel and drove back to the ranch house.
Mrs. Carmine came out onto the porch, her face lit with a gentle smile. Bug got out of the truck, and walked toward the house, where he was enveloped in a big hug he seemed happy to return. The two of them went inside the house arm in arm and closed the front door.