by Diana Palmer
Carson stared at her without meaning to. She wasn’t pretty. She had nothing going for her. She had ironclad ideals and a smart mouth and a body that wasn’t going to send any man running toward her. Still, she had grit. She could do a job like that. It would be hard even on a toughened police officer, which she wasn’t.
She looked up, finally, intimidated by the silence. He captured her eyes, held them, probed them. The look was intense, biting, sensual. She felt her heart racing. Her hands on the keyboard were cold as ice. She wanted to look away but she couldn’t. It was like holding a live electric wire...
“Carson?” the chief called from his open office door.
Carson dragged his gaze away from Carlie. “Coming.”
He didn’t look at her again. Not even as he left the office scant minutes later. She didn’t know whether to be glad or not. The look had kindled a hunger in her that she’d never known until he walked into her life. She knew the danger. But it was like a moth’s attraction to the flames.
She forced her mind back on the job at hand and stuffed Carson, bad attitude and blonde and all, into a locked door in the back of her mind.
4
THINGS WERE HEATING UP. Reverend Blair went to San Antonio with Rourke. They seemed close, which fascinated Carlie.
Her dad didn’t really have friends. He was a good minister, visiting the sick, officiating at weddings, leading the congregation on Sundays. But he stuck close to home. With Rourke, he was like another person, someone Carlie didn’t know. Even the way they talked, in some sort of odd shorthand, stood out.
* * *
THE WEATHER WAS COLD. Carlie grimaced as she hung up the tattered coat, which was the only protection she had against the cold. In fact, she was worried about going to the dance with Robin because of the lack of a nice coat. The shoes she was going to wear with the green velvet dress were old and a little scuffed, but nobody would notice, she was sure. People in Jacobs County were kind.
She wondered if Carson might show up there. It was a hope and a worry because she knew it was going to hurt if she had to see him with that elegant, beautiful woman she’d heard about. The way he’d looked at her when he was talking to the woman on the phone was painful, too; his smug expression taunted her with his success with women. If she could keep that in mind, maybe she could avoid some heartbreak.
But her stubborn mind kept going back to that look she’d shared with Carson in her boss’s office. It had seemed to her as if he was as powerless to stop it as she was. He hadn’t seemed arrogant about the way she reacted to him, that once. But if she couldn’t get a grip on her feelings, she knew tragedy would ensue. He was, as her father had said, not tamed or able to be tamed. It really would be like trying to live with a wolf.
On her lunch hour, she drove to the cemetery. She’d bought a small plastic bouquet of flowers to put on her mother’s neat grave. A marble vase was built into the headstone, just above the BLAIR name. Underneath it, on one side, was the headstone they’d put for her mother. It just said Mary Carter Blair, with her birth date and the day of her death.
She squatted down and smoothed the gravel near the headstone. She took out the faded plastic poinsettia she’d decorated the grave with at Christmas and put the new, bright red flowers, in their small base, inside the marble vase and arranged them just so.
She patted her mother’s tombstone. “It isn’t Valentine’s Day yet, Mama, but I thought I’d bring these along while I had time,” she said, looking around to make sure nobody was nearby to hear her talking to the grave. “Dad’s gone to San Antonio with this wild South African man. He’s pretty neat.” She patted the tombstone again. “I miss you so much, Mama,” she said softly. “I wish I could show you my pretty dress and talk to you. Life is just so hard sometimes,” she whispered, fighting tears.
Her mother had suffered for a long time before she finally let go. Carlie had nursed her at home, until that last hospital stay, taken care of her, just as her mother had taken care of her when she was a baby.
“I know you blamed yourself for what happened. It was never your fault. You couldn’t help it that your mother was a...well, what she was.” She drew in a breath. “Daddy says they’re both gone now. I shouldn’t be glad, but I am.”
She brushed away a leaf that had fallen onto the tombstone. “Things aren’t any better with me,” she continued quietly. “There’s a man I...well, I could care a lot about him. But he isn’t like us. He’s too different. Besides, he likes beautiful women.” She laughed hollowly. “Beautiful women with perfect bodies.” Her hand went involuntarily to her coat over her shoulder. “I’m never going to be pretty, and I’m a long way from perfect. One day, though, I might find somebody who’d like me just the way I am. You did. You weren’t beautiful or perfect, and you were an angel, and Daddy married you. So there’s still hope, right?”
She moved the flowers a little bit so they were more visible, then sat down. “Robin’s taking me to the Valentine’s Day dance. You remember Robin, I know. He’s such a sweet man. I bought this beautiful green velvet dress to wear. And Robin’s rented us a limo for the night. Can you imagine, me, riding around in a limousine?” She laughed out loud at the irony. “I don’t even have a decent coat to wear over my pretty dress. But I’ll be going in style.”
She caressed her hand over the smooth marble. “It’s hard, not having anybody to talk to,” she said after a minute. “I only ever had one real girlfriend, and she moved away years ago. She’s married and has kids, and she’s happy. I hear from her at Christmas.” She sighed. “I know you’re around, Mama, even if I can’t see you.
“I won’t ever forget you,” she whispered softly. “And I’ll always love you. I’ll be back to see you on Mother’s Day, with some pretty pink roses, like the ones you used to grow.”
She patted the tombstone again, fighting tears. “Well...bye, Mama.”
She got to her feet, feeling old and sad. She picked up the faded flowers and carried them back to her truck. As she was putting them on the passenger’s side floor, she noticed a note on the seat.
Keep the damned cell phone with you! It does no good sitting in the truck!
It was signed with a big capital C.
She glared at it, looking around. She didn’t see anybody. But he’d been here, watching her. He’d seen her talking to her mother. Great. Something else for him to hold against her. She started to crumple up the note, but it was the first one he’d ever written her. She liked the way he wrote, very legible, elegant longhand. With a sigh, she folded it and stuck it in the glove compartment.
“Mental illness must be contagious,” she muttered to herself. “Maybe I got it from Rourke.”
She got in under the wheel and started the engine. It didn’t occur to her until much later that it seemed to matter to Carson if something happened to her. Of course, it could have just been pride in his work that she wouldn’t get killed on his shift. Still, it felt nice. Unless he’d seen her talking to Mary and thought she needed to be committed.
* * *
HER FATHER CAME in with Rourke that night just as she was taking the cornbread out of the oven. She’d made a big pot of homemade chili to go with it.
“What a delightful smell,” Rourke said in the kitchen doorway.
She grinned. “Pull up a chair. All you need is some butter for the cornbread. I have real butter. Homemade chili to go with it. There’s always plenty.”
“By all means,” Reverend Blair chuckled. “Carlie always makes extra, in case I bring someone home with me.”
“Do you do that often?” Rourke asked.
“Every other day,” the reverend confessed. “She never complains.”
“He only brings hungry people who like the way I cook,” she amended, and laughed. Her face, although she didn’t realize it, was very pretty when she smiled.
Rou
rke studied her with real appreciation. If his heart hadn’t been torn, he might have found her fascinating.
He looked around the stove and the cabinets.
“Did I forget something?” she asked.
“I’m looking to see if you cooked a grit.”
She and her father both laughed.
“It isn’t a grit, it’s grits. They’re made with corn,” she pointed out.
He shook his head. “Foreign fare.”
“Yes, well, I expect you know how to cook a springbok, but I’d have no idea,” she said as she put the pot of chili on the table.
“And she knows about springboks!” Rourke groaned. He sat down and put his napkin in his lap. “She also knows the history of the Boer Wars,” he said.
Her father shook his head. “She’s a student of military history. A big fan of Hannibal,” he confided.
“So am I. He was from Carthage. Africa,” Rourke added.
There was silence while they ate. Rourke seemed fascinated with the simple meal.
“I’ve had cornbread before, but it’s usually so dry that I can’t eat it. My mother used to make it like this,” he added quietly. “She was from the States. Maryland, I believe.”
“How in the world did she end up in Africa?” Carlie exclaimed. She blushed. “I mean, if you don’t mind my asking.”
He put down his spoon. “I was very rude about my father. I’m sorry,” he said, his brown eyes steady on her face. “You see, my birth certificate lists my mother’s husband in that capacity. But a covert DNA profile tells a very different story.” His face was hard. “I don’t speak of it in company because it’s painful, even now.”
She was really blushing now. She didn’t know what to say.
“But I wouldn’t have hurt you deliberately just for asking an innocent question,” Rourke continued gently. “You don’t even know me.”
She bit her lower lip. “Thanks,” she said shyly.
“Now, if you’d been a man...” her father mused, emphasizing the last word.
Carlie looked at him inquisitively.
He exchanged a look with Rourke. “There was a bar in Nassau,” her father said. “And a member of the group we were with made a sarcastic remark. Not to add that he did know Rourke, and he certainly knew better, but he’d had one too many Bahama mamas.” He pursed his lips and studied Rourke’s hard face. “I believe he made a very poetic dive into the swimming pool outside the bar.”
“Deliberately?” Carlie asked.
“Well, if it had been deliberate, I don’t think he’d have done it through the glass patio door,” her father added.
Carlie sucked in a breath. She looked behind her.
“What are you looking for?” her father asked.
“Glass patio doors...”
Rourke chuckled. “It was a while back,” he remarked. “I’m less hotheaded now.”
“Lies,” her father said. “Terrible lies.”
“Watch it,” Rourke cautioned, pointing his chili spoon at the reverend, “or I’ll tell her about the Russian diplomat.”
“Please do!” Carlie pleaded.
Her father glowered at Rourke. “It was a long time ago, in another life. Ministers don’t hit people,” he said firmly.
“Well, you weren’t a minister then,” Rourke teased, “and your embassy had to call in a lot of favors to keep you out of jail.”
“What in the world did you people do in those days?” Carlie asked, shocked.
“Bad things,” Reverend Blair said softly. “And it’s time to change the subject.”
“The things we don’t know about our parents,” Carlie mused, staring at her father.
“Some things are better not known,” was the reply. “And isn’t your chili getting cold, pumpkin?”
“Why do you call her ‘pumpkin’?” Rourke wanted to know.
“Now that’s a really long story...”
“And we can forget to tell it unless we want burned meat for a week,” Carlie interjected.
The reverend just smiled.
* * *
HER FATHER WENT to answer a phone call while Carlie was clearing the dishes in the kitchen. Rourke sat at the kitchen table with a second cup of black coffee.
“You really don’t know a lot about your dad, do you?” he asked her.
“Apparently not,” she laughed, glancing at him with mischievous green eyes. “Do you take bribes? I can make almost any sort of pie or cake—”
“I don’t like sweets,” he interrupted. “And it’s worth my life to tell you,” he added with a laugh. “So don’t ask.”
She made a face and went back to the dishes in the sink.
“Don’t you have a dishwasher?” he asked, surprised.
She shook her head. “Money is always tight. We get a little extra and there’s a pregnant woman who can’t afford a car seat, or an elderly man who needs dentures, or a child who needs glasses...” She smiled. “That’s life.”
He frowned. “You just give it away?”
She turned toward him, curious. “Well, can you take it with you when you go?” she asked.
He paused, sipping coffee.
“The Plains tribes had this philosophy,” she began, “that the richest man in the village was the one who had the least because he gave it all away. It denoted a good character, which was far more important than wealth.”
“I would ask why the interest in aboriginal culture,” he began.
She turned, her hands around a soapy plate. “Oh, my best friend was briefly engaged to a Lakota man,” she said. “We were juniors in high school. Her parents thought she was too young, and they made them wait a year.”
“From your tone, I gather things didn’t go well?”
She shook her head. She turned back to the sink to rinse the dish, aware of a pang in the region of her heart because the story hit close to home. “His parents talked him into breaking the engagement,” she said. “He told her that his religion, his culture, everything was so different from hers that it would be almost impossible to make a life together. She’d have had to live on the reservation with him, and his parents already hated her. Then there was the problem of the children, because they would have been trapped between two cultures, belonging to neither.”
“That’s very sad,” Rouke commented.
She turned to look at him, then lowered her eyes to the sink again. “I didn’t realize how much difference there was, until I started reading about it.” She smiled sadly. “Crazy Horse, Tashunka Witko in his own tongue—although that’s translated different ways in English—was one of my favorite subjects. He was Oglala Lakota. He said that one could not sell the ground upon which the People—what the Lakota called themselves—walked.” She glanced at him. “Things never mattered to them. Materialism isn’t really compatible with attitudes like that.”
“You’re one of the least materialistic people I know, Carlie,” her father said as he came back into the room. “And I’d still say it even if I wasn’t related to you.”
“Thanks, Dad,” she said with a smile.
“I need to talk to you,” he told Rourke. “Bring your coffee into the office. Carlie, that new science fiction movie you wanted to see is playing on the movie channel.”
“It’s not new, it’s four months old,” she laughed. “But you’re right, I guess, it’s new to me. I’ll watch it later. I promised Robin I’d help run one of his little toons through a dungeon.” She made a face. “I hate dungeons.”
“Dungeons?” Rourke asked.
“She plays an online video game,” her father explained, naming it.
“Oh, I see. You’re Horde, too, huh?” Rourke teased.
She glared at him. “I’m Alliance. Proudly Alliance.”
“Sorry,” Rourke chuckled. “Everyone I know is in Horde.”
She turned away. “It seems like it sometimes, doesn’t it?” She sighed. She turned at the staircase and held up her hand as if it contained a sword. “For the Alliance!” she yelled, and took off running upstairs.
Her father and Rourke just laughed.
* * *
IT WAS FRIDAY. And not just any Friday. It was the Friday before the Saturday night when the Valentine’s Day dance was being held at the Jacobsville Civic Center.
Carlie was all nerves. She was hoping that it would be warmer, so she could manage to go to the dance without wearing a coat, because she didn’t have anything nice to go with her pretty dress. She had to search out a file for the chief, which she’d put in the wrong drawer, and then she hung up on a state senator by pushing the wrong button on her desk phone.
The chief just laughed after he’d returned the call. “Is it Robin that’s got you in such a tizzy?” he teased.
She flushed. “Well, actually, it’s the...”
Before she could finish the sentence and tell him it was her wardrobe that was the worry, the door opened and Carson came in. But he wasn’t alone.
There was a beautiful blonde woman with him. She was wearing a black suit with a red silk blouse, a black coat with silver fur on the collar, and her purse was the same shade of deep red as the high-heeled shoes she was wearing. Her platinum-blond hair was pulled back into an elegant chignon. She had a flawless complexion, pale blue eyes, and skin like a peach. Carlie felt like a cactus plant by comparison.
But she managed a smile for the woman just the same.
The blonde looked at her with veiled amusement and abruptly looked toward the chief.
“Chief Grier, this is Lanette Harris,” Carson said.
“So charmed to meet you,” the blonde gushed in an accent that sounded even more Southern than Carlie’s Texas accent. She held out a perfectly manicured hand. “I’ve heard so much about you!”
Cash shook her hand, but he didn’t respond to her flirting tone. He just nodded. His eyes went to Carson, who was giving Carlie a vicious, smug little smile.