White Dove's Promise

by Stella Bagwell

  Kerry knew if she protested too loudly here it would only make Christa suspicious and the last thing she wanted was for anyone to think there was something going on between her and Jared.

  Sighing, she said, “All right. I admit I still think about men. I even wish I could find a perfect father for Peggy. But that doesn’t mean I let a handsome face and sexy body turn my head. Most anyone in this town would agree that Jared Colton is a confirmed bachelor. He’s not the sort of man a serious woman would look at twice. Unless she wanted her heart broken.”

  “Hmm. You could be right. But he looked right at home in that picture.”

  Kerry laughed. “That’s because he was home, Christa. Now get out of here and let me get back to work. I promised Clarence to have these papers finished before noon and at this rate it will be noon tomorrow.”

  Christa made a tsking noise of disapproval as she started toward the door. “All work and no play. When do you ever have any fun, Kerry?”

  Kerry was still thinking about that question long after Christa had disappeared from sight.

  When Kerry arrived home that evening after work, two neighbors were on the front porch with Enola. The sight of the women made Kerry groan with dread. She’d already spent most of the day discussing the newspaper article. Now that she was home, she didn’t want to have to go over it again. But both women appeared to be comfortably glued to their lawn chairs as they waited for her to climb out of the car.

  “Kerry! We’re so glad you got home before we left. We want to know what it’s like to be a town celebrity.”

  The remark came from Helen, a large, gray-haired woman who’d raised three sons close to Kerry’s age.

  “I’m not really a celebrity, Helen,” she said with a weary smile. “The only reason my picture is in the paper is because I’m Peggy’s mother.”

  Alice, a small woman with dark hair, quickly spoke up, “Oh, you’re being modest, honey. All three of you are celebrities now. Everyone in Black Arrow is talking about this.” She tapped a red fingernail against the paper in her lap.

  “That’s right,” Helen put in. “Just about everyone is saying what a lucky thing that Jared Colton was back in town when Peggy got trapped. That young man is a real hero. If it hadn’t been for him—well, I’d hate to think what would have happened to little Peggy.”

  “And it sure doesn’t hurt that he’s as cute as a bug in a rug,” Alice added with a wink. “I wouldn’t mind getting my picture taken with him. Not at all.”

  “Do you know if he’s back in town to stay?” Helen asked.

  Did these women really think she would know something that personal about Jared Colton? Kerry wondered. Just because he’d plucked her daughter from the jaws of the earth, didn’t mean there was any sort of intimacy between them.

  “I wouldn’t know,” Kerry said dully. “But I seriously doubt it. Jared follows his job.”

  Alice sighed as though she was thirty years younger and still in the market for a man. “Well, the way he has his arm around you in this picture, I’d say he’d rather be following you.”

  A few feet away in another lawn chair, Enola cleared her throat. “Kerry, you’d probably better go check on Peggy. It’s about time she woke from her nap.”

  Kerry knew exactly why her mother was interrupting. Just the thought of anyone linking her daughter to Jared in a romantic way was enough to send Enola into spasms. And normally Kerry would have resented her interference. But not this time. Thoughts of Jared had tormented her all day. She needed an escape.

  “Sure, Mom,” Kerry said, then quickly excused herself to the two women.

  Inside the house, she went straight to the bedroom she shared with her daughter. Peggy was still asleep, her face buried in the faded patchwork quilt covering the bed. Not wanting to disturb her, Kerry quietly changed from her office clothes into shorts and a T-shirt, then slipped out of the room.

  She was in the kitchen, making herself a glass of iced tea when the telephone rang. For a moment, she considered not answering. She’d heard all she wanted to hear about Jared Colton’s heroism. Yet she knew if she ignored the ringing, Enola would hear it and come to answer the phone herself.

  With a weary sigh, Kerry carried her glass over to the wall phone which was situated at one end of the cabinets.

  “Hello.”

  “Kerry, it’s Jared.”

  The deep voice momentarily stunned her. He was the last person she’d expected to be hearing from today. Especially after she’d made an issue of not wanting to see him again.

  “Jared—why are you calling?”

  “I wanted to see what you thought about our article.”

  She didn’t bother to stifle her groan. “Not you, too.”

  Jared chuckled. “I take it you’ve been getting a lot of response over it.”

  “I could hardly work with all the people stopping by my office and calling on the telephone. There’s two neighbors out on the porch right now who are probably still singing your praises to Mom.”

  He chuckled again. “Oh, I don’t expect that’s going over too well.”

  “No. But they’re old friends. After a while she’ll tell them to shut up. Especially Alice. She thinks you’re as cute as a bug in a rug.”

  “I’m not really worried about what Alice thinks. I’d like to know what Kerry thinks.”

  One hand gripped the receiver while the other tightened its hold on the icy glass of tea. “I think I should have never agreed to that interview last night. Now people are starting to think that we—well, I’m not sure all of them are reading the article. I think most of them are just looking at the three of us hugged up together like mama bear, daddy bear and baby bear.”

  Jared’s loud laughter sounded in her ear. “Kerry, I really don’t know how you can be so funny when every bone in your body is the serious kind.”

  She swallowed down a few sips of tea in an effort to loosen the ball of nerves in her throat. “Look, Jared, I told you last night—”

  “Please don’t go into that again. I remember everything you told me. And I have no intentions of letting that stop me from trying to see you again. So what about having dinner with me? Tonight?”

  Jared Colton was asking her out on a bona fide date. Kerry couldn’t deny that she was thrilled he found her attractive. After all, there wasn’t a woman on earth who didn’t want to be desired by a man. Yet the part of her that Damon had crushed was very afraid.

  She breathed in a deep bracing breath. “Don’t you ever work?”

  Once again his soft laughter met her ear. The sound was so seductive, it was all she could do to keep from shivering.

  “I’m working now, Kerry. If you walked out to the open field behind your house and looked toward the site, you could see me standing beside my pickup truck.”

  “Well, then keep working and forget about having dinner with me,” she said as sternly as she could.

  “I have to eat and so do you.”

  “I already had Peggy out late last night. I’m not about to take her out two nights in a row.”

  “I wasn’t planning on taking Peggy with us.”

  Even though she wasn’t looking at him, she could easily envision his gray eyes glinting sexily back at her.

  “You’re crazy if you think I’d go without Peggy.”

  “That’s easy to fix. We’ll take Peggy with us.”

  She rolled her eyes. “No. We have nothing in common, Jared. And you’ve already said yourself that you’ll be leaving once your job is finished.”

  His sigh was full of frustration. “Kerry, this isn’t a marriage proposal. I’m just asking you to have a meal with me. As two friends. Nothing more.”

  “Why would you want to do that?” she asked suspiciously.

  There was a long pause, then he said, “I’m not sure what that question means.”

  Expecting her mother to walk into the room at any moment, Kerry moved as far as the coiled cord would allow in order to peer through the straight s
hot of rooms to the front of the house. Through the open screen door, she could see Alice’s crossed legs. Apparently the two neighbors were keeping Enola occupied.

  In a hushed voice, she said, “Jared, I’m not stupid. You don’t need to bother yourself with me just to have female company.”

  He clicked his tongue with disapproval. “Kerry, you don’t believe all those old rumors you’ve heard about me, do you?”

  “Yes.”

  He laughed. “Then you have to give me a chance to plead my case. And Kerry, just so you understand, I want your company. Not just female company.”

  How could she resist him when the hungry, lonely part of her heart was begging her to reach out to him.

  “Like I said, I won’t take Peggy out again tonight.”

  “Then tomorrow night?”

  Her heart began to hammer at what she was about to do. “All right. Tomorrow night.”

  “Good. I’ll pick you up at six-thirty,” he said with undisguised pleasure. “And Kerry, it doesn’t matter what you wear, just so you’re wearing a smile.”

  “Goodbye, Jared. I’ll see you tomorrow evening.”

  Early the next morning, Jared was using a laser instrument to shoot the correct angle of the new pipeline his crew was laying when he heard one of the workmen yell that the high sheriff had arrived.

  Handing the laser tool to his foreman, he said, “Take over, Mitch, and make sure you keep Harv digging at the right level. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  Jared climbed out of the ditch and walked over to where Bram had parked his pickup truck in an out-of-the-way spot at the edge of the work site.

  “What’s up?” he called to his brother.

  The lazy smile on Bram’s face as he climbed out of the vehicle quickly assured Jared that the sheriff’s early visit had nothing to do with an emergency.

  “I’ve been sent on a mission,” Bram said.

  Jared casually propped his boot on the pickup bumper. “Well, from the way you’re grinning it must not be a dangerous one.”

  Bram chuckled. “I don’t know yet. Depends on whether you want to be stubborn about this.”

  Jared’s brows lifted in surprise. “Me? What do I have to do with anything?”

  Bram slanted him a mocking look. “Oh come on, Jared. You’re Black Arrow’s newest hero. And the mayor has sent me out here to fetch you to his office. He wants to present you with a key to the city. And I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if he and the city council vote to change the name of Main Street to Jared Colton Boulevard,” he added dryly.

  Willow had already warned Jared that the mayor had been trying to contact him. But he still found it hard to believe that a city politician wanted anything to do with him. For the past ten years Jared had spent most of his time away from Black Arrow and before then he’d never been a civic-minded citizen. He’d mostly been a hell-raiser and womanizer. The idea that the mayor, or anyone else for that matter, saw him in a heroic light was almost laughable.

  Shaking his head with disbelief, Jared said, “Don’t tell me the press is going to be there.”

  Bram grunted with amusement. “It’s election year. The mayor is hardly going to pass up a chance to get his photo in the paper. Especially when it’s connected to a happy story. And I’ve already had a call from someone in Oklahoma City saying AP has picked up your story and published it in the Daily. So I don’t look for this thing to die down soon.”

  Jared frowned and heaved out a heavy breath. “Not when the public officials around here want to keep feeding it.”

  “Humor me, brother,” Bram told him. “Since the mayor wants me to join in on the ceremony, too, I can hardly go back and tell him you don’t want a key to the city. I do have to get along with the man.”

  With another shake of his head, Jared said, “Don’t get me wrong, Bram, I appreciate the mayor’s gesture. But if this hero stuff keeps up, it’s going to start getting embarrassing.” And for some reason it was important that he didn’t come across to Kerry as a showoff. He’d worked hard to rescue Peggy because he’d desperately wanted to save the little girl’s life. Not to make himself out a hero.

  “Since when did you get so humble, little brother?” Bram asked wryly. “You’ve always loved the spotlight. Especially when it caused the females to flock around you.”

  Pulling his boot from the bumper, Jared hooked his thumbs over his belt and looked out over the busy work site. The morning sun was already warming a bright blue sky and beyond the heavy equipment and the scars they had made in the earth, deep green grass and fully leafed trees announced the rebirth of spring. It was going to be a glorious day and Jared had never felt more glad to be alive and to be back in Black Arrow.

  “You make me sound like some rooster calling for a bunch of hens to gather around him.”

  Bram chuckled. “Well, you are, aren’t you?”

  Jared turned his gaze back to his brother. “Why no,” he said with faint surprise. “Those days are long gone, Bram.”

  Bram stared at Jared as though he was a thief caught in the act, yet still trying to plead his innocence. “What in hell has come over you? You’ve been a terror to women since you were eight years old. You’d have to be dead to give up on them now.”

  Shrugging, Jared folded his arms across his chest and glanced evasively back to the spot where his foreman was directing a backhoe operator. No matter where he looked he saw Kerry’s luminous brown eyes and soft gentle lips. It had been that way with him ever since he’d pulled Peggy out of the crumbling pipe and placed her in Kerry’s arms. He didn’t understand why or how such a quiet, unassuming woman had captured his thoughts so completely. But she had. And he wasn’t at all sure how he was going to cure himself.

  “I didn’t say I was giving up on women entirely,” he said to Bram. “I just meant—well, I’m thirty-four years old. I’m bored with all that playing around I used to do.”

  Bram studied his brother through squinted eyes. “All right,” he said finally, “who is she?”

  Jared’s look of surprise was followed by a laugh that was full of denial. “There is no she. Yet,” he added, then quickly deciding it was high time to change the subject, he slapped an affectionate hand on Bram’s shoulder. “Now tell me about this thing with the mayor. When do I have to be there?”

  Bram glanced at his watch. “About thirty minutes. So hop in and give me the honor of driving Black Arrow’s hero into town.”

  Seeing there wasn’t anyway he could disappoint his brother, Jared said, “All right, you don’t have to drag out your handcuffs. I’ll go. Just let me go tell the foreman what’s going on.”

  Enola stared moodily at the television set as Kerry watched out the front door for Jared’s arrival.

  “You know I am not happy about this, Kerry.”

  Careful to keep her sigh silent, she said, “Yes, Mom. I can see that I’ve disappointed you by choosing to have dinner with Jared.”

  Tight-lipped, Enola turned her gaze on her daughter. “It’s not the dinner—it’s the idea that you want to spend time with this man.”

  “Yes, I do want to spend time with Jared,” she conceded. “He’s been very nice to me. And Peggy adores him.”

  Enola turned her gaze back to the television, but Kerry knew her mother couldn’t have told anyone what was flickering across the screen. The woman was silently seething.

  “That’s because he knows exactly how to charm women. Mark my words, you and Peggy will both be hurt if this carries on much further.”

  The way you were hurt, Kerry wanted to say. But she didn’t. Pointing out her mother’s miserable marriage wouldn’t help matters now.

  “Mom, it’s been nearly four years since I’ve had a man in my life. That’s a long time and I’m still a young woman. I don’t want to bury myself forever.”

  Enola shot her an accusing look. “How many times have I tried to get you to go out? I could probably think of ten young men in the past year that you could have dated. But no. You al
ways found excuses not to go.”

  Kerry tried her best not to bristle. Maybe she had made a mistake with Damon, but she was her own person. Good or bad, she had to make her own choices. “I wasn’t attracted to any of those men, Mom. There wasn’t one of them I would have felt comfortable going on a date with.”

  Her remarks brought Enola to her feet. “So you’re telling me that you find Jared Colton attractive? That you feel comfortable with him?” she asked in an astounded voice. “Kerry, the man is up to no good. He’s only going to use you and hurt Peggy in the process.”

  Amazed at how desperate she was to see Jared arrive, Kerry kept her eyes focused on the driveway. “All men aren’t users, Mom. And did you ever stop to think that Jared might want to spend time with me because he actually likes me? Or have you decided that the only reason a man would pay attention to me is to get me in bed?”

  Enola gasped with outrage. “That’s a filthy remark.”

  Kerry made a pleading gesture with her hand. “Look, Mom. Damon crushed my self-worth. For a long time I didn’t think much of myself. And I didn’t think anyone else did either, especially men. But I’ve tried to put all that past me. It lifts my spirits to think that Jared might see something special in me. Something more than just a one-night stand. Surely you can understand that.”

  Enola shook her head. “Jared Colton sees all women as objects and the sooner you realize that, the better.”

  With that her mother stormed out of the room and Kerry let out a weary sigh. All afternoon, she’d been asking herself if she was crazy to agree to this dinner date with Jared. Even this evening, while she’d been dressing, she’d still been doubting the wisdom of her decision to go. But that had all changed the moment Enola had ripped into her.

  Being in Jared’s company might be worse than playing with fire. But she was tired of living behind the shelter of her mother’s apron.