A Sweet Life-kindle

by Andre, Bella

  "Marty! Can I help you with something?"

  The acrid smell of perspiration suddenly reached her, and as he looked at her, Andie took an instinctive step backward. His eyes burned in a too-pale face. "Is something wrong, Marty? Are you sick? Do you need me to call Doc Matthews?"

  He speared her with his gaze, and she found she couldn't look away from the wild intensity blazing in his blue eyes. "You don't get it, do you?"

  Andie felt behind her for the edge of the table, suddenly uneasy yet not knowing why. "Get what?"

  "You shouldn't a had your stupid sheriff boyfriend arrest my dad. He didn't do nothin'."

  Oh, dear. She'd been so relieved about Tom being in custody she hadn't given a thought to his son and what he must be going through, how hurt and embarrassed he would be.

  "Look, Marty—"

  "You shut up," he hissed. "Just shut up, schoolteacher."

  Andie froze, her stomach roiling. Schoolteacher. The name her obscene caller always used for her. How could he possibly know that, unless—

  She jerked her mind away from the idea. How could young Marty possibly be her caller? Yet as she stared at him, as she heard the echo of that low, disguised voice ringing through her mind, as she remembered the unsettling way Marty sometimes looked at her, the unthinkable didn't seem so far-fetched.

  He must have seen the panic in her eyes, seen her realize the truth, because he reached inside his slicker and pulled out a sleek, sharp bowie knife, the kind used for skinning game.

  She felt herself begin to hyperventilate and summoned every ounce of strength in her. She breathed slowly for precious seconds, her mind in a frenzy. Emily! She had to protect Emily, above everything else.

  "Why don't you go on home, Marty?" she asked, striving desperately for calm. "I know you're upset about your father and you're not thinking clearly."

  His harsh laugh sliced through the room. "My old man's going to give me up the first chance he has, to save his own damn hide. When your stupid sheriff finally figures it out, he's going to come lookin' for me."

  Frantically, she looked around for some kind of weapon, but came up with nothing but soft cushions, toys, and art supplies, all chosen for their safety features. A preschool just wasn't the best place to come up with something handy to hurt somebody with, she realized. A hysterical giggle welled up in her throat, but she quickly swallowed it. Surely, if she concentrated hard enough, she could come up with some way to get both her and Emily out of there safely.

  The whoosh of her office door opening interrupted her thoughts and her gaze flew to the hallway, where Emily walked out carrying the roll of paper. Marty was watching Andie, not the hallway, and she held her breath, praying he wouldn't turn around and see the girl.

  Emily halted when she saw Marty, and she studied them for a few seconds, her gaze bouncing between the knife in Marty's hand and the wild panic on Andie's face. Then, very quietly, Will's daughter set down the roll of paper and eased back toward the rear door of the center.

  As soon as she'd quietly opened the back door and slipped outside, Andie felt as if a weight the size of Wyoming had been lifted from her chest She could figure out a way to get herself out of this, but it would be so much easier without having to worry about the girl's safety.

  "Why don't you put that thing away?" she said to Marty. "You know you don't want to hurt anybody."

  "It's all your fault, you know."

  "My—my fault?"

  "Yeah. I was just playing around on the phone. I never woulda hurt you." He reached out to touch her hair, and she fought to keep herself from flinching.

  She held herself perfectly still, even when he yanked her hair, an ugly look on his face. "And then I saw you kissin' the sheriff and letting him touch you. You shouldn't a done that."

  "I'm sorry," she whispered.

  "You can tell me how sorry you are while we go for a little ride."

  His fingers gouged into her arm as he yanked her toward the door. Andie's mind spun as she tried to think of some way to escape. He outweighed her by seventy-five pounds, most of that solid, farm-boy bulk. She could try outrunning him, but she hated to think what would happen if he caught her. Maybe it would be better to play along, to let him think she was cooperating until his guard was down.

  She said the first thing that came to her. "Look Marty. Let me ... let me get my purse. Wherever we're going, we'll need money, won't we?"

  He looked confused for an instant, but she didn't give him time to form an answer.

  "I've got some," she said. "In my purse. And credit cards. I have those too. You can use them all."

  He seemed to be considering it, then he nodded. "Okay. Good idea. We'll need gas. Just your purse, though, got it? That way everybody will think you just went out of town."

  "It's—it's in my office."

  She glanced at the clock. The other teachers would be arriving any moment now. She had to come up with something quick. What did she have in her office she could use as a weapon? Scissors? Nail file? What? Think, Andie! Suddenly it came to her. On her desk was a fossil paperweight the size and weight of a brick that Carly had given her for her birthday earlier that summer. If she could figure out a way to slip it into her purse, she could swing the whole thing at him, and if she aimed well and luck was on her side, she might be able to knock the knife out of his hand.

  Her stomach twisted at the idea, but what other choice did she have? She would do anything to protect the children and the other teachers.

  He watched her from the doorway as she grabbed her purse from underneath her desk. Blood rushing through her ears, she pretended to stumble as she rounded the desk and she reached for it, as if to steady herself. In the confusion, she grabbed the fossil and slipped it into her purse.

  "Move it, schoolteacher. We're going to walk out real slow now. If anybody's watchin', they'll think we're just goin' for a little stroll. Got it?"

  She tightened her grip on the purse. "Sure, Marty. Whatever you say."

  Reflected light glinted off the sharp blade of the knife as he gestured for her to leave first. Her knees shaking and her nerves screaming, Andie kept one eye on him and one on the knife, waiting for an opportunity to act. She pushed the door open and walked outside. Sunlight had replaced the clouds from the night before, but the air was still cool and smelled like pine. The door clicked shut behind him.

  If she was going to do this, she would have to do it soon, Andie thought as she walked down the path. Like now. She took a deep breath, turned, and swung the purse with all her might. Propelled by the weight of the rock, it connected to flesh with a solid thunk. Marty grunted in pain and staggered back against the door. She'd missed his hand, but in his shock, he relaxed his grip on the knife and it flew from his hand, landing a few yards away.

  She lunged for it, but before she could close her fist around it, pain exploded in the back of her head, the breath whooshed out of her, and she collapsed on the sidewalk.

  ***

  His gun drawn, Will rounded the corner of the preschool at a dead run, just in time to see Andie grab for a knife on the ground and Jessop's bastard of a son drive the heel of his cowboy boot into her head.

  He watched her crumple, her hand still outstretched. No! his mind screamed. He thought he said it out loud, but only the sound of Jessop muttering wild curses reached him.

  Will started to move toward Andie, just as he realized she was breathing and conscious. The kick must have only dazed her. Relief flooded through him, and he offered up a quick prayer of thanks to a God he'd long since given up on, the one he'd been praying to ever since Emily ran into the jail a few minutes before, crying hysterically about how some bad man had Andie.

  He hadn't taken time to do more than push Emily into Shirley's ample, comforting arms and shout orders for backup, then he had raced down the street, fury and a terrible, consuming fear churning in his gut.

  Now, before he could react, before his lawman's instincts could kick in, he realized Jessop had grabb
ed the knife and scooped Andie to her feet. Damn. Why hadn't he moved faster, taken Jessop out while she was still down?

  "Why'd you do that, schoolteacher?" Jessop said. "Why'd you hurt me?"

  She shook her head groggily, as if to shake him off, but he only tightened his grip.

  "Fight all you want, but you're not getting away from me. You hear me?"

  "Drop it, Jessop!" Will yelled. "Let her go."

  Marty turned to Will, panic flickering through his eyes. His hand flexed on the knife and he brought it to Andie's throat.

  "Back off, Sheriff. Just let us walk outta here."

  "You're not going anywhere. You know you don't want to hurt her. Just drop the knife and let her go."

  Jessop gave a hysterical laugh that sent eerie tremors down Will's spine. "You don't think I can do it, do you? One good swipe, right here"—he pressed the wickedly sharp blade to her carotid artery—"and she'd bleed to death before you could reach her. You want that, Sheriff?"

  Despite the chill of the October morning, a drop of sweat trickled down the back of Will's neck. He felt his nerves tighten, felt his shoulder cramp from holding his gun so steady.

  Before his injury, he could easily have taken out a measly kid with a bowie knife, from twice the distance and in the middle of a damn dust storm if he'd had to.

  He'd regained much of his strength, but he didn't know if he had the shooting precision back yet.

  "Look, Jessop. Don't make it worse for yourself. Drop it."

  "I got nothing left to lose. I let her go and you're just going to arrest me anyway. You can't shoot me without shooting her too."

  Jessop applied a subtle pressure to the blade. "Now leave us be, Sheriff, and I won't hurt her."

  Will felt all the breath being squeezed from his lungs as a tiny dot of blood appeared in the pale skin of her neck. Andie's gaze met his, and he nearly staggered at the trust there.

  Suddenly, the fear melted away, leaving only the rage pulsing through him, steady and strong.

  She trusted him. Whether or not he was worthy of that faith didn't matter one bit. Andie was counting on him to keep her safe, and the assurance gleaming in her green eyes told him she had every reason to believe he would.

  Sarah's face suddenly replaced Andie's. She'd trusted him, too, and he hadn't been able to protect her. If anything happened to Andie because he couldn't move fast enough, couldn't aim true, he might as well take his service revolver and point it at his own head.

  He couldn't let her be hurt. He wouldn't. Not this time. He focused all his concentration on the Glock's grip, letting it become an extension of himself. He shut out the world, the deputies he knew were right behind him, the crowd that had gathered in the storefronts.

  "Last chance, Jessop," he said, suddenly calm. "Drop it unless you want a bullet hole messing up that fancy coat of yours."

  "You want to risk your girlfriend's pretty neck? Go right ahead and shoot me, then."

  Will shrugged, squeezed the trigger, and watched Jessop go down, clutching his arm and leaving Andie standing alone as the knife fell harmlessly to the ground.

  Chapter 13

  "How's the head, hon?"

  "Feeling pretty stupid right about now," Andie told Carly, the latest in a long string of people calling to inquire about her health. She should have known word would travel faster than a runaway train in Whiskey Creek. A real live shootout on Main Street was about the most exciting thing to happen in town since Lizzie Kramer took too much cold medicine last fall and thought for a few hours she was Lady Godiva.

  "You should be feeling incredibly lucky," Carly retorted. "If Emily hadn't been at the school to run for help, who knows what might have happened to you."

  Andie cradled the cordless phone on her shoulder and reached up to clip a withered climbing rose off the lattice of her porch. The rain of the day before had swept out of the valley, leaving the air crisp and clean; and the trees, in all their vivid splendor, shone in the late-afternoon sun. Without any kind of cloud cover, it would be a cold one tonight, she thought irrelevantly.

  "I would have come up with something sooner or later," she told Carly.

  "Always the optimist, aren't you? Would you like me to come out to stay there tonight? Ryder left this afternoon for San Francisco, and I think Jake can handle things on his own here at the ranch tonight. We could stay up all night and eat popcorn and talk about boys."

  Andie summoned a laugh. "Another time, Carly. Okay?"

  "Sure, sweetie. The offer stands."

  "Thanks."

  Carly hung up a few minutes later after receiving Andie's assurance that she wouldn't do anything too strenuous for the rest of the evening. It seemed a moot point after she'd just spent the day with thirty overexcited preschoolers. She'd forced herself to stay at Growing Minds, though her head had pounded as if a whole roomful of carpenters were working on it and her stomach had been twisted with nerves.

  It had been pride at first, and then, when reaction set in, she'd decided she was better off working, keeping active.

  Now she just wanted to disconnect her phone—the blasted thing that had started the whole trouble—and collapse.

  She reached a hand to the back of her head and felt where Marty had kicked her. It had bled a little, and she had a bump the size of Kansas back there, but Doc Matthews had said there was no real damage.

  Her head would be fine. Her heart? That was another story entirely. All because of one stubborn sheriff with aching eyes and a deadly aim.

  After calmly shooting Marty Jessop in the shoulder—something folks in Whiskey Creek would be talking about for a long, long time—he'd checked to make sure she was safe, then handcuffed a hysterical Marty.

  Doc Matthews had determined that the bullet merely grazed Marty—just enough to compel him to drop the knife. Marty was now in the Whiskey Creek jail, awaiting his preliminary hearing on assault and attempted kidnapping charges.

  And Will? He'd been as remote and taciturn as he was when he first came to Whiskey Creek.

  Andie sighed and settled onto the porch swing, pulling her sweater tight around her against the early evening chill. She shouldn't just sit there, she thought, not with all she had to do. The garden needed a layer of mulch for winter. The leaves needed to be raked. One more tree of apples needed to be harvested. But she could barely summon the energy to make the porch swing move.

  No. She had responsibilities, she reminded herself. As much as she would have liked to spend one day—just one day –doing absolutely nothing, the ranch had to come first.

  She was spreading grain for the chickens and watching them peck at the ground when his Jeep pulled into the driveway. Brushing her hands off, she straightened and watched him walk toward her.

  Sunlight glinted off his hair, and his shoulders looked impossibly broad as he neared, and she wanted to run to him and bury herself against him. She didn't, though. The remoteness in his eyes stopped her.

  "How's your head?" he asked.

  She grimaced. "If one more person asks me that question today, I'm going to start wearing a sign. I'm fine, thank you."

  "Doc Matthews said you'll have a bump, but nothing serious."

  "When did you talk to him?"

  "You think I would have let you keep working all day if I hadn't checked with him first?"

  She fell silent as the image flashed through her mind of him calmly taking aim and squeezing the trigger. How had he been so cool about it when, nearly eight hours later, she still didn't feel as if her heart had slowed?

  "I didn't have a chance to say thank you, Will. For riding to my rescue the way you did. Just like Marshal Dillon." She tried to smile, but couldn't seem to work the right muscles. Not with him standing there so distant. "You're a pretty good shot, Sheriff."

  He looked out at the mountain, then back at her. "I'm not the sheriff anymore," he said quietly.

  She'd known. Somehow she'd known.

  "Hank's back on the job. I quit an hour ago."

&
nbsp; "So when do you leave?"

  "Andie—"

  "When do you leave, Will?" she interrupted him. "You might as well get it over with and tell me."

  "Now. Tonight."

  Her hands started to shake, so she shoved them into the pockets of her sweater, encountering a few hard kernels of grain that must have fallen there. She pinched them between her thumb and forefinger as she tried to regain control.

  "I see," she said, with what she hoped was calm acceptance in her voice.

  "I had a phone call from Phoenix this afternoon. My captain called to tell me I'm not on probation anymore and to tell me, strictly off the record, that he had a good solid tip where Zamora might be hiding. I need to follow it up, Andie. I have no choice."

  "That's the only reason you're leaving, then? This call from your captain?"

  "I would have left anyway," he admitted. He leaned against the split-rail fence. "With Hank back on the job and Marty in custody, there's nothing left for me to do in Whiskey Creek."

  Except stay right here and love me, she thought. She bit her lip to keep it from trembling, to keep the words from spilling out. "Do you... do you need any help packing?"

  "No. I'll send for the rest of my things in a few weeks, if that's all right. Beth says she'll take care of everything."

  "What about Emily?"

  "We talked it over and decided she would stay with Beth until the school semester is over at Christmas time. It's better this way."

  "Better for whom?" Anger began to seep through the cracks in her heart, and she clenched her fists in the pockets of her sweater.

  "For everybody. For Emily. For me. For you. I have to go, Andie. Can't you see that?"

  "No," she snapped, hating herself for her bitter tone but unable to temper it. How could he walk away from what they had together? "I don't see it at all."