Her Man Behind the Badge

by Stella Bagwell

  “I’ve been learning something about you, too,” he murmured.

  “What’s that?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

  “That you’re far too nice to be out with a guy like me. But I’m glad you are.”

  She finally remembered to breathe and a rush of air swooshed past her lips. “I’m glad I am, too.”

  Chapter Seven

  When Connor parked the truck in front of Jazelle’s house much later that evening, it had been dark for more than two hours and Raine was sound asleep in the backseat.

  “No need for you to wake him,” Connor said as he helped Jazelle to the ground. “You go ahead and unlock the door. I’ll carry Raine inside for you.”

  Nodding, she fished the house key from her handbag and hurried on to the little porch.

  Connor opened the back door of the truck where Raine’s head had fallen against one side of the booster seat. After gently removing the confining straps, he scooped the child out of the seat then used his shoulder to shove the truck door shut.

  Once inside the house, Jazelle motioned for him to follow her. “Come this way and I’ll show you where to put him.”

  Connor followed her out of the living room and down a short passageway. To the right, she entered an open door and switched on a lamp at the head of a single bed.

  While she pulled the cover back and straightened the pillow, Connor stood to one side and tried not to think about the warm weight of the boy cradled in his arms, or the way it felt to have his little cheek pressed against his chest. What had his own father been thinking all those years ago when he’d carried Connor in his arms? Love? Protectiveness? Or had he been reminded of the mistake he’d made with the wrong woman?

  Drawing in a deep breath, Connor pushed the hurtful thought away and glanced around the small room. For a child of Raine’s age, he’d expected to see a few toys and pieces of clothing scattered around on the floor. Instead, it was surprisingly neat, almost to the point of being bare.

  “Okay. The bed is ready.”

  Jazelle’s voice broke into his musings and he moved forward to ease the child onto the narrow mattress.

  “What about his clothes?” he asked, careful not to allow his voice above a whisper.

  “I’ll deal with them later,” she told him.

  As if on cue, Raine suddenly roused from his slumber and gazed sleepily up at Connor. “I found a real arrowhead.”

  “That’s right, little buddy. Now go back to sleep.” Connor gently stroked the child’s forehead until his blue eyes drifted closed. When his breathing grew slow and even, he glanced up at Jazelle. “I think he’s gone back to sleep.”

  Nodding, Jazelle started to pull off his boots and it was then that Connor noticed Raine was clutching something in his right hand.

  Gently, he opened the little fingers to find the piece of flint hewed to the shape of an arrowhead. Raine had been ecstatic when he’d found the rock and had chattered about it until he’d fallen asleep on the way home. Such simple things today had made the boy so very happy, he thought.

  Connor straightened away from the bed and handed Jazelle the arrowhead. “Here,” he said. “Raine was still holding on to this. I think you might want to put it up for him.”

  Smiling wanly, she looked down at the rock resting in the middle of her palm. “I think he was just as thrilled over finding this as he was about catching a fish.”

  She placed the arrowhead on top of a chest of drawers, then drew the cover over Raine. “I know his clothes are dirty and he needs a bath, but I don’t think it will hurt him to sleep like this just one time.”

  He smiled at her. “Never did hurt me.”

  “That’s good to know.” She switched off the lamp and, after she turned on a nightlight, the two of them slipped out of the room and into the short hallway.

  As they migrated toward the living room, Connor told himself it was time he put an end to the evening. He was feeling far too comfortable and contented in her company. It wasn’t normal. He was no longer normal.

  “Well, I need to be leaving,” he said, literally forcing the words out of his mouth. “I’m sure you probably have to be at work early in the morning.”

  “I do. But it’s not yet bedtime. Would you like a cup of coffee or something before you go?”

  The invitation took him by complete surprise and he paused in the shadowy hallway to glance at her. “Are you sure you’re not making the offer just to be polite?”

  Stopping alongside him, she shot him an impatient look. “I’m not that prim and polite, Connor. If I wanted you to leave I’d tell you goodbye and shut the door behind you.”

  “Ouch. That’s plain enough,” he said then grinned. “Okay, I’d love some coffee before I drive up to Wilhoit.”

  She said, “Come on with me to the kitchen. We’ll sit at the table—if that’s okay with you?”

  As long as she was in his sight, everything was okay with him, Connor thought, immediately wondering if he’d left part of his mind back at the lake. He felt like a moonstruck idiot wandering around with a goofy grin on his face.

  “Sure. I can even make the coffee, if you like.”

  He followed her over to another open doorway, where a light over the cookstove shed a dim glow across the kitchen cabinets.

  As they entered the room, she said in a teasing voice, “I thought you had trouble boiling water. How would you know how to make coffee?”

  He chuckled. “Joe forced me to learn. We have a coffeemaker in our office and he thought it was only fair that we shared the chore.”

  “You two have an office of your own?”

  “Well, it’s nothing special. In fact, it’s a small space. But we managed to fit two desks in it and a few file cabinets.”

  She switched a light on over the sink and then pulled down a large can of coffee from a shelf near the stove.

  She said, “I thought file cabinets were obsolete nowadays.”

  He crossed the room to stand next to her. “Not all archived cases and information has been stored on computer,” he told her. “At least, not yet anyway. Honestly, I prefer digging out a folder with written statements. Especially the information that’s been jotted down by hand. There’s something about it that makes everything more real and personal.”

  As she heaped coffee grounds into a filter, she said, “I wasn’t going to bring this up, but now that you mentioned Joe and your office, I can’t resist. I’m wondering about the investigation into Joel’s death. Reeva believes Joe has asked for your help—that’s why you came to dinner the other night.”

  “He’s kept me in the loop of things all along. But he’s asked me to help him make an all-out push to find Joel’s killer, and I’m only too glad to devote my off hours to the cause. None of the Hollisters will truly rest until the case is solved and closed once and for all.”

  “You’re right about that. From the things Maureen says at times...well, I think the not knowing still keeps her in a bit of a limbo. Otherwise, I think she would’ve already become engaged to Gil.”

  Her comment surprised him and he wondered if Jazelle was simply viewing the situation through romantic eyes. “You honestly think so? Joe hasn’t mentioned anything about Gil and his mother. Except that she’s come to rely on him.”

  “Maybe Joe doesn’t want to see the writing on the wall. But any way you look at it, Maureen is in love with Gil. And vice versa.”

  “You say that like you know it’s a fact.”

  “Most everyone on Three Rivers knows it,” she said and then cast him a rueful glance. “For her sake, I wish you and Joe could uncover the truth. That would make lots of people happy.”

  “Me included,” he admitted. “I can tell you one thing, if someone had murdered my father, I’d damned well want to find him and make sure he never saw the outside of a penitentiary.”

/>   She poured water into the coffee machine and pushed the on button before she turned to face him. “I’m sorry, Connor. I shouldn’t have brought up such a gloomy subject. It’s not a good way to end our day, which I think turned out to be very nice, don’t you?”

  Nice? That was putting it mildly, Connor thought. He felt as if he’d just gone through some life-changing event. One that scared the hell out of him.

  His heart suddenly beating fast, he took a step toward her. “I’ve enjoyed it very much. Too much... I think.”

  She tilted her head back to look up at him. “There can never be too much joy, Connor.”

  Oh, yes, there could be, he thought. Especially when the abundance of happiness was over something he could never have for himself.

  “I, uh, can only think of one other thing that could make it better,” he murmured.

  Her eyes widened and Connor was thankful that she couldn’t read his mind. Otherwise, she’d probably be running from the kitchen.

  “I can’t imagine what that might be,” she said, her gaze never wavering from his.

  Connor took one more step forward and then, before she had time to guess his intentions, he bent his head and captured her lips beneath his.

  The sudden contact produced a tiny moan somewhere deep in her throat, but that was her only response, until he wrapped his arms around her shoulders and pulled her close against him.

  At that point, he expected her to jerk away and give him a scathing speech about behaving like a cad. He even imagined her palm cracking against his cheek. But none of those things happened. Instead, he was shocked senseless by the hungry movement of her soft mouth beneath his lips, the feel of her slender arms wrapping around his waist.

  He was still breathing, so he couldn’t be in heaven, he realized, but he had to be darned close to paradise. The taste of her lips and the scent of her skin and hair mingled together to create a euphoric reaction in his brain. And then there was the way the soft curves of her body molded against his, the way the heat of her skin spread through his hands and shot up his arms.

  Connor was so lost in her kiss, he was clueless about the time ticking by or the pungent scent of coffee filling the kitchen. The only thought in his brain was to deepen the kiss, to hold her so close that the two of them became inseparable.

  Somewhere in the back of his muddled mind, he recognized the circle of her arms tightening around his waist, the groan in her throat growing deeper and louder. This was exactly what he wanted from her, he thought. It was all he wanted from her.

  You’re lying, Connor. You want more than sex from this woman. Why can’t you admit, at least to yourself, that she means more to you than a romp in bed?

  The voice rattling around in his head was enough to snap him into reality and he quickly broke the contact of their lips and stepped back from her.

  “I—I’m sorry, Jazelle. I need to go. You’ll have to drink the coffee without me.”

  As Connor turned away, he glimpsed a look of astonishment on her face, but he didn’t dare stop to explain his abrupt departure. If he did, he might just pull her back into his arms and then there’d be no turning back for him. He’d be totally and irrevocably lost in something that would most likely wind up hurting both of them.

  “Connor? Are you leaving?” she asked incredulously.

  Unable to face her, he said in a raw, husky voice, “I have to, Jazelle. I have to go. Now!”

  Not waiting to hear her response, he hurried out of the kitchen and didn’t stop until he was out of the house and sitting in his truck.

  The fact that his hands shook as he fastened the seat belt and started the motor caused him to mutter a few curse words under his breath. But he didn’t allow himself a moment’s pause to collect himself. Instead, he rapidly reversed the truck onto the road and then, without so much as a glance at Jazelle’s house, gunned the vehicle in a northerly direction toward Wilhoit and home.

  * * *

  The next day, Jazelle was in the mudroom piling linens into the washing machine when Reeva yelled to her from somewhere in the kitchen.

  “Jazelle, there’s someone ringing the doorbell. Can you get it?”

  She dropped what she was doing and hurried through the kitchen. “I’m on my way,” she told the cook. “Probably a visitor to see Roslyn or Katherine.”

  “Just in time for lunch, too,” Reeva said wryly. “It never fails.”

  Jazelle walked through the house then peeped through the door to see a deliveryman standing on the porch. A vase filled with a bouquet of beautiful, fresh-cut flowers was wedged securely in one arm. Apparently, Maureen or one of her daughters-in-law was getting flowers from the florist in town, she thought.

  Promptly opening the door, she signed for the delivery. After thanking the driver, she reentered the house, carrying the bouquet.

  Inside the living room, she paused long enough to glance at the card. If the flowers were going to Katherine or Roslyn, there wasn’t any point in taking them out to the kitchen first. She’d carry them upstairs. If they were going to Maureen, she’d put them on the desk in her office.

  But the flowers weren’t for Maureen or Katherine or Roslyn. The name written across the front of the small lavender envelope read “Jazelle Hutton.” What in the world? This wasn’t her birthday. Not that she ever received flowers on her birthday, or any day for that matter.

  Completely puzzled, she set the vase on the nearest table and quickly opened the card.

  “Thank you for yesterday, Connor.”

  Connor had sent her flowers! After the way he’d hightailed it out of her house last night, she’d never expected to hear from him again. What did this mean? Was he trying to apologize for his abrupt departure? Or was it a custom of his to send flowers to the women he dated and dropped?

  No matter the reason, she was stunned by the gesture and she read through the short message three more times before she slipped the card back into the envelope and carried the bouquet out to the kitchen.

  “Who was at the door?” Reeva asked, not bothering to look around from her task of peeling boiled eggs.

  “A delivery from the florist in town.”

  “God help us, Maureen must be expecting houseguests,” Reeva said with a good-natured groan. “She normally doesn’t order flowers from the florist unless something special is going on.”

  “Uh, these aren’t for the house, Reeva.” Jazelle carried them over to where the woman was working. “They’re for me.”

  Reeva’s head whipped around just as Jazelle placed the blue hobnail vase on the cabinet counter.

  “Those are for you? Your daddy must be feeling as guilty as hell to make that kind of splurge. Oh, and aren’t they pretty! Pink peonies, yellow daisies and blue cornflowers,” she said as she touched a finger to the fragrant peony petals.

  Feeling a blush on her face, Jazelle said, “They aren’t from my dad, Reeva. They’re from a—man.”

  She couldn’t have stunned the cook any more if she’d yelled a warning that the ceiling was crashing down. Reeva’s mouth fell open as she dropped the egg into the bowl of cold water and stepped back from the sink.

  “A man?” She rested a hand on each hip as she slipped a cynical glance over Jazelle. “What are you talking about? Don’t tell me that bastard who fathered Raine has come crawling back?”

  Jazelle inwardly winced at the mention of Spence. As far as Reeva and the Hollisters were concerned, Spence was the dregs of society. Truth was, Jazelle considered him even lower than the manure the ranch hands wheelbarrowed out of the horse barn.

  “Don’t worry, Reeva. That is never going to happen. The flowers are from Connor Murphy—you know, the deputy who works with Joe. The one who came to dinner the other night.”

  Reeva’s thin dark brows shot upward. “The deputy. Yes, I remember him. I saw him from a distance the other night, but did
n’t have a chance to speak with him. What’s he doing sending you flowers? You must’ve served him a special drink or double helpings of dessert.”

  There wasn’t any reason Jazelle should be feeling like a kid who’d stuck her finger into the sugar bowl. She was a grown, single woman. She had every right to go out with a man if she chose to. But that was just it; she’d never dated any other man until yesterday. Until Connor had looked at her with those deep blue eyes.

  Folding her hands together, she said, “I, uh, didn’t mention this, Reeva. Because I...well, I honestly didn’t think it would amount to anything. And it hasn’t. It won’t. But Connor took me and Raine on a picnic yesterday. All the way to Lake Pleasant.”

  The suspicious look on Reeva’s face deepened. “Raine went, too?”

  “That’s right. When I explained to Connor that I don’t get to spend enough time with my son, he suggested that Raine come, too. And, actually, Reeva, Connor was great with Raine. The two of them hit it off like bread and butter.”

  “Hmm. And what about you and this deputy?” Reeva asked. “From the looks of these flowers, you two must have hit it off, too.”

  Jazelle sighed as the thrill of receiving the flowers was now giving way to reality. “Oh, I like him, Reeva. He’s very enjoyable to be around. But he’s not a guy a woman can take seriously. I learned my lesson with Spence. I’m not about to make the same mistake.”

  Reeva’s doubtful expression changed to one of relief. “I guess I don’t need to worry about you, then. It’s just that you surprised me. You’ve gone all these years without a man in your life. Are you going to go out with him again?”

  Jazelle picked up the flowers and carried them over to an area of the cabinet where they wouldn’t be in the way.

  “I don’t think so.”

  Reeva sniffed and went back to peeling the eggs. “Why not? Scared you might get to liking him too much?”

  “Maybe. Wouldn’t you be?”

  “After my Dale died, I never met a man I liked that much. So I never had the chance to get scared of trying again.”