To Wear His Ring

by Diana Palmer

  Don’t be afraid, angel, not of me.

  Lost in the silent communication, he took a step toward her, intending to reach up, forgetting the handcuffs on his wrists. He felt the slice of the steel rings at the same time that he saw her jerk back. A second later, he heard the sheriff’s gun being whisked from its leather holster.

  “Hold it! Take one more step, and you’ll walk bowlegged the rest of your days.” The sheriff’s voice was low and deadly serious. “My gun’s aimed behind your knee.”

  Chase froze. He sucked in a breath, then spoke with forced control. “Really. Which one?”

  “That’s your guess, smart mouth. Nettie, come out of there.” Obviously surprised by the sheriff’s threat to shoot, Nettie complied, moving carefully.

  It may have been his anger over having a loaded pistol pointed his way, or the stress that had been mounting inside him for weeks…It could have been his frustration over frightening the fragile beauty or all three factors combined, but something inside Chase started to feel like a geyser held too long in check.

  He released a startlingly rude word and then bit it off with hard-won control. Turning slowly in the hope she wouldn’t shoot him before he could insult her some more, he said, “Let me spell it out for you—I’ve had all the country hospitality I’m going to take for one night. If there is anyone in this town who isn’t one can short of a six-pack, get him over here and tell him to call my lawyer.”

  “Get in that cell right now, mister! You’re making me lose my patience.”

  Chase responded to her order with a bark of laughter. “That’s priceless! I’m being held at gunpoint—probably illegally—and you’re losing your patience? Let me guess: That’s a toy gun and Barney Fife is your favorite action-adventure hero.”

  “Get…in…the…cell.” Raising the gun, Sara spat the words through gritted teeth, her expression suggesting she’d just as soon put a hole in him and toss his carcass in the alley as lock him safely behind bars.

  Standing to the side of the cell, Nettie shook her head. If they kept baiting each other, someone was sure to snap. Sara looked like steam might shoot out of her ears at any moment, and the stranger seemed poised to pounce.

  When Sara issued another order, to which the man growled, “Make me,” Nettie’s heart began to palpitate. The desire to flee was almost overpowering. This time, however, she shut her mind against the fear. She could not, would not, allow her anxiety to paralyze her, not when a member of her family was in danger.

  Raised voices buzzed in her ears as she used the adrenaline shooting through her veins to move with a purpose. Praying her rubbery legs would continue to hold her, she fled to the storeroom where Sara kept the guns.

  It didn’t take long to grab the rifle she knew Sara kept loaded. Raising it, Nettie checked and then released the safety lock the way her father and Uncle Harm had taught all three of the Owens girls years ago. Taking a deep, determined breath, she turned and raced back to the cell.

  When she arrived, the Gentleman Caller was in mid threat, leaning forward as if he no longer cared a bit about the gun pointed his way. He smiled evilly. “I sincerely hope you know of a good paper route, because when I’m through suing you for false arrest you can kiss your current job good-bye.”

  Nettie winced. Unbeknownst to him, he’d just hit Sara where it hurt the most. “Is that so?” Sara snarled back. “Let me tell you something. Not only will I have a job after your trial, I’ll send you a thank-you note. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone named a city—or maybe a bank—after me.”

  He scowled. “You’re delusional.”

  “No, just happy. In case you haven’t been reading the papers lately, there’s a fifty-thousand-dollar reward for your arrogant hide—”

  “What?”

  “—and I’m going to collect it!”

  “The only thing you’re going to collect is dust while your sanity hearing is pending, you nutcase. Now take these damn handcuffs off me!” His roar shook the rafters.

  “Stop it, both of you!” Punctuating the order, Nettie cocked the Winchester. A bullet slid loudly into the chamber.

  Chase and the sheriff each gave a jolt and then froze.

  Chase turned his head slowly. The other woman, Nettie, stood ten feet away, a wood-stocked rifle hoisted in her thin arms. Her face was flushed and her arms shook so badly it looked like she was dancing a jig with the rifle, but the expression in her eyes was fierce and determined.

  “Stop it, I said,” she repeated, though no one had moved a pinky since she’d cocked the gun. “You ought to be ashamed, acting like this,” she admonished in a voice that telegraphed her strain. “Why can’t you behave like a normal sheriff and bank robber?”

  “Bank rob—” Chase’s stunned protest was abbreviated by the rifle being raised a notch. Figuring he’d tempted fate enough for the time being, he nodded in what he hoped was a conciliatory manner. “Okay. You’re absolutely right. We should all calm down.” He smiled. “I’m sure we can work out whatever misunderstanding has brought us all here.”

  “Oh, gag me,” Sara muttered.

  “I’d love to,” Chase growled back.

  “That’s enough! I want quiet!” Nettie shouted the command with more force than anyone including her, thought she possessed.

  “Okay!” Chase and Sara answered in unison and each backed up a step.

  “I have a problem with tension,” Nettie shared with them.

  “Okay,” they answered again.

  “So no more arguing.”

  They nodded, and she released a long, slow breath. “All right. Now you—” Indicating Chase, she directed him with the gun barrel. “Please step into the cell as my sister asked.”

  Sister? Chase glanced between the two women. This whole situation was starting to seem more and more surreal, like a Robert Altman movie. Or Nightmare on Elm Street. Maybe if he fell asleep on the cot, he’d awaken to find this was all a bizarre dream, induced by stress and a very greasy chicken-fried steak.

  He studied Nettie, her eyes wide and glowing blue, like a sea on fire. Wielding a rifle and fighting to be brave only made her seem more vulnerable. Illogically, he had the impulse to comply with her request—for now, at least.

  “All right.” Slowly, he moved, demonstrating how cooperative he intended to be. “I’ll step into the cell.” He flicked a quick, sour glance at the sheriff. “But only because you said please.”

  He was halfway across the cell’s threshold when he felt a boot pressed firmly to the seat of his jeans. Caught off guard and unbalanced by his bound hands, he stumbled headlong onto the cot as the boot shoved him forward. Angry as a bull, he let loose a string of oaths as he fell onto the narrow cot and his shoulder smacked into the brick wall.

  “Sara! What’s the matter with you? I told you to behave.”

  “I don’t have to behave. I’m the sheriff.” She pointed to Chase. “And I don’t like his attitude.”

  Chase had never before hit a woman. Fortunately, he thought he could make a pretty good case that this sheriff was no woman.

  Lowering the rifle, Nettie took a few steps toward a wood chair. “I can’t take anymore. I have to sit down,” she muttered. As she collapsed onto the hard seat, her exhausted muscles shook and the rifle slipped from her grasp. The butt of the gun thunked onto the hardwood floor.

  KA-BLAM!

  The blast that echoed through the jail jolted them all. Nettie heard a shriek, which turned out to be her own, a loud curse—Sara’s—and a series of sharp pings as the discharged bullet ricocheted first off the iron cell bars, then the light fixture above the cot, imbedding itself finally in the brick wall behind Chase.

  There was a moment of stunned silence from the dazed trio, punctuated only by a tinny creak as the light fixture swayed.

  Heart pounding, Nettie looked at Sara, who for once seemed incapable of immediate speech. With his hands still bound behind his back, the Gentleman Caller lowered his head, shaking it. It took Nettie only a moment
to realize the man was laughing. The low chuckle was rich with irony and seemed to blend perfectly with the creak-creak of the light fixture.

  Nettie looked up. She tilted her head, realizing that the short chain suspending the fixture from the ceiling had been sliced through. The severed link struggled to hang on, but with each rusty creak the connection grew more and more tenuous, and then—

  “Oh! Look—” Nettie started a warning she had no time to finish before the hanging light cracked loose, plummeting. It might have landed harmlessly on the cot—if the Gentleman Caller’s head hadn’t gotten in the way. “—out,” she finished.

  With his arms behind his back, he had no way to protect himself, even if there had been time. Unfortunately his thin canvas cap offered no protection against the thunk of steel against skull.

  A moment’s surprise crossed his whiskered face. He blinked and wagged his head as if to clear it.

  Nettie and Sara watched open-mouthed as he teetered, looked curiously at the light, then back at them.

  “When,” he asked, working hard to make his lips and tongue form letters, “do I get my free phone call?”

  With that, their Gentleman Caller fell soundly, face-first onto the cot.

  “Do you see any blood?”

  “A little.” Gingerly, Nettie parted the man’s dark hair to examine his scalp. “His hair is so thick.”

  “To cover his thick skull, I suppose.”

  “Sara, stop it! You’re making everything worse. Haven’t we got enough trouble?”

  “What trouble?” Sara waved a hand at the figure lying on the cot. “He hit his head and got a boo-boo.” But she didn’t look altogether confident right now, and Nettie was glad to see it.

  “He’s out cold, and we’re responsible,” she countered firmly. “If we haven’t already killed him, we’d better hope he wakes up with amnesia.”

  Reaching into her sweater pocket, Nettie withdrew a clean tissue and pressed it gently but firmly against the wound, wincing in sympathy. Though she could never figure out why, the fears that had governed her life the past few years would sometimes abate at the oddest times—when she was in the midst of an actual crisis, for instance. Efficiently, she placed two fingers beneath the man’s unshaven jaw to check for a pulse. His skin was warm, alive. He didn’t feel unconscious at all.

  “Is he still kickin’?”

  It took Nettie a moment to register Sara’s question. She pulled her hand away quickly. “Yes—” Her mouth felt dry and her tongue thick. She swallowed and tried again. “Yes, his…his pulse is steady. Strong.” Like the rest of him.

  “Good. So he’ll come to and—What do you mean ‘we’re responsible’?” Sara jumped back to Nettie’s previous comment. “This was an accident.”

  Nettie spared her sister a look that said puh-lease. “Is it standard practice to boot your prisoners into the cell?” She shook her head. “And I had no business handling that rifle.”

  Sara frowned. “Yeah. I almost had a heart attack. I haven’t seen you pick up a gun in years. What got into you?”

  “I was afraid the two of you were going to kill each other. And I do know how to handle a gun,” she reminded her sister for the record. Of herself, Lilah and Sara, she’d always been the best shot, but popping soda cans at fifty paces was different from pointing a rifle at another human being. Still, she refused to take all the responsibility for the trouble they were currently in. And she did sense trouble. Studying the man’s features, peaceful and handsome in repose, she said, “Sara, are you sure he’s the Gentleman Caller?”

  “What? Of course!” Sara put both hands on her gun belt. “Although, I don’t have to be positive, you know. I had a reasonable suspicion. And he wasn’t carrying ID.”

  “Did he say why?”

  Sara snorted. “Yeah. He said he thinks he lost his wallet at a taco place somewhere in Nebraska. I should have arrested him just for being a lousy liar. Plus he’s got that wad of cash in his pocket.”

  “But if he really did lose his wallet—”

  “Oh, come on! He resisted arrest. Why are you defending him?”

  “I’m not defending him. I’m concerned. He said he was going to sue you for false arrest.”

  “He was bluffing.”

  “You shouldn’t have bickered and sniped at him.”

  “Me?” Sara gestured angrily. “He—”

  “There’s something familiar about him. Without his cap, I mean. He reminds me of someone. Who does he look like?”

  Sara crossed her arms. “He looks like the composite sketch of the Gentleman Caller.”

  “Do you have the composite sketch? I haven’t seen it since it was in the paper. Where is it?”

  Sara hesitated a bit too long. “I was looking for it when you came in tonight.”

  Nettie thought it prudent, for the time being at least, not to comment on her sister’s organizational skills. She folded the tissue. “He stopped bleeding.” She checked her watch, biting her bottom lip. “He’s been out for four minutes now. Maybe we ought to call Doc Brody.”

  Mere mention of the elderly physician evoked an expression of sheer horror from Sara. “What for?” She gestured to the man lying unconscious on the cot. “You said his pulse is strong.” Leaning forward, she gave him a shake. “Come on, buddy. Get up.” She jiggled him again. “Come on.”

  Nettie wagged her head. Doc Brody had mended every broken limb Sara had ever had, and there had been plenty of them. He thought she was an unladylike hooligan. He was also one of only two men who could make Sara feel like she was ten years old again, and she generally went to any length to avoid him.

  “Hey, look,” Sara said. “He moved!”

  “Of course he moved, Sara, you’re shaking him.” Taking her sister’s arm, Nettie directed her out of the cell. “You go get the first-aid kit. It has smelling salts. We’ll try that, but if it doesn’t work, we’ve got to get some help.”

  “All right,” Sara said, but she hung back, reluctant to leave Nettie alone. “But if he comes to or even starts to, holler for me and get yourself out of that cell.”

  “Okay. Now go.” Nettie shooed Sara away. “And I only hope you’re right about him being the Gentleman Caller,” she muttered, turning back toward their guest and studying his face.

  Without the cap hiding his features, he seemed more coolly handsome and less dangerous than he had before. A tiny frown nestled between his brows, but otherwise all trace of anger was gone. The lips that had curved sometimes seductively, sometimes sardonically were now soft and neutral.

  Ernie had described him as “normally-looking.” Nettie thought his face deserved a more creative description than that. His features were refined, projecting intelligence even though his eyes were closed. Eyes open, his sheer physical presence had been unnerving.

  She shivered, or maybe it was more of a tingle. He had stared at her, this man. Stared the way she hadn’t been stared at in a long, long time.

  “Who are you?” she whispered. And what was he doing in Kalamoose? Because something told her this situation was not as straightforward as Sara believed it to be.

  When he’d fallen face-first onto the cot, she and Sara had turned him right side up and straightened him out. Now, if Nettie wanted to, she could reach into the front pocket of his jeans to look for the identification he had either lost, as he claimed, or refused to produce.

  Quickly, she glanced toward the storeroom. She could hear Sara rummaging around and swearing, looking for the first-aid kit she probably hadn’t seen in months.

  Beginning with one hand in front of her mouth, Nettie reached out tentatively with the other, patting the right front pocket of his jeans. She detected the outline of a set of keys. Nothing else. She could have stopped there. She should have stopped there. But something told her to press on, some hunch that he might be carrying I.D.

  Gaining a bit more courage, she stretched across the man’s body to reach his left side. The tip of her tongue came out to rest at the corne
r of her mouth as she investigated the pocket below his waistband. She felt something here…something sort of square, but not solid enough to be the wallet. Probably the wad of cash. His jacket had pockets, too. She moved there next.

  Nothing on the right. Reaching over to the left side, she hunted around the area of his ribcage, trying to determine whether his jacket had an interior pocket.

  As she patted him gently, feeling for a telltale corner or edge, he gave an unexpected jerk. Nettie’s hand froze. Looking left, she glanced at his face.

  His eyes were open and trained her way. “I’m ticklish,” he announced, sounding as bleary as he looked. “Are you?”

  Nettie’s mouth dropped open. Bent over the cot, she was mere inches above him. “How…how long have you been awake?”

  “I’m not sure I’m awake now.” He frowned, scanning what he could see of her, beginning at her hairline and ending in the vicinity of her bosom, where her sweater opened to reveal a scoop-necked T-shirt. Gaze lingering, he drawled, “Did I miss any good stuff?”

  Nettie whipped her hand from his chest, then felt like kicking herself for betraying her nervousness. Forcing herself to move more slowly, she straightened. “No,” she answered as calmly as she could. “Most of the good stuff happened before you passed out.”

  The Gentleman Caller grunted. With effort, he raised himself to a sitting position, then seemed to remember something and grimaced. “Where’s Belle Star?”

  His tone conveyed such ominous foreboding, Nettie had to smile. “She’s getting the first-aid kit.”

  “Awww.” He groaned and lowered his voice. “You wouldn’t let her touch a wounded man, would you?”

  This time Nettie checked her answering grin to defend her flesh and blood. “Sara’s only trying to do her job. She said you resisted arrest. And,” she added, watching him closely, “you fit the description of the Gentleman Caller.”

  “I look like the Gentleman Caller,” he repeated in a murmur, obviously bemused. He seemed to roll the information around in his brain a while, then raised his brows in perfect horror. “You mean that red-headed hellion arrests people she wants to date?” He was wide awake now. “Forget about it—”