Will of Steel

by Diana Palmer

  Both women turned. Davy Harris was watching them, a nasty look on his face.

  “Yes, I’m getting married,” Jillian told him.

  “There was a time when I thought you’d marry me,” he said. “I had it all planned, right down to what sort of dress you’d wear and where we’d live. I’d lined up a full-time job with a local rancher. Everything was set.” His lips twisted. “Then you had to go and get outraged when I tried to show you how I felt.”

  “I’ll show you how I feel,” Sassy said pertly. “Where’s my shotgun?”

  “Terroristic threats and acts, Mrs. Callister,” he shot back. “Suppose I call the news media and tell them that you’re threatening me?”

  Jillian was horrified.

  Sassy just smiled. “Well, wouldn’t it be a shame if that same news media suddenly got access to the trial transcripts?” she asked pleasantly.

  His face hardened. “You think you’re so smart. Women are idiots. My father always said so. My mother was utterly worthless. She couldn’t even cook without burning something!”

  Jillian stared at him. “That doesn’t make a woman worthless.”

  “She was always nervous,” he went on, as if she hadn’t spoken. “She called the police once, but my father made sure she never did it again. They put him in prison. I never understood why. She had him locked up. He was right to make her pay for it.”

  Sassy and Jillian exchanged disturbed looks.

  Harris gave Jillian a chilling smile. “He died in prison. But I won’t. I’m never going back.” He shrugged. “You enjoy thinking about that wedding, Jilly. Because all you’re going to get to do is think about it. Have a nice day, now.”

  He walked out.

  The shopping trip was ruined for Jillian. Sassy insisted that they get the gown and the things that went with it, but Jillian was certain that Davy had meant what he said. He was going to try to kill her. Maybe he’d even kill himself, afterward. In his own mind, he was justified. There was no way to reason with such a person, a man who thought that his own mother deserved to die because she’d had his father arrested for apparently greatly abusing her.

  “You know, there are scary people in the world,” Jillian told Sassy in a subdued tone. “I’ll bet if Uncle John had ever really talked to Davy, he’d never have let him in the front door in the first place. He’s mentally disturbed, and it isn’t apparent until he starts talking about himself.”

  “I noticed that,” Sassy replied. She drew in a long breath. “I’m glad we have Rourke.”

  Jillian frowned. “Where is he?”

  “Watching us. If Harris had made a threatening move, he’d already be in jail, probably after a trip to the emergency room. I’ve never seen Rourke mad, but John says it’s something you don’t want to experience.”

  “I got that impression.” She laughed. “He cooked steaks for Ted and me.”

  “I heard about that,” the other woman said in an amused tone. “Ted was jealous, was he?”

  “Very. But after he realized that Rourke was just being friendly and protective, his attitude changed. Apparently he knows a police chief in Texas that Ted met at a workshop back east.”

  “Rourke does get around.” She glanced at Jillian. “He acts like a perpetual clown, but if you see him when he thinks he’s alone, it’s all an act. He’s a very somber, sad person. I think he’s had some rough knocks.”

  “He doesn’t talk about them much. Just about his ranch.”

  “He doesn’t talk about K.C. Kantor, either,” Sassy replied. “But there’s some sound gossip about the fact that Rourke’s mother was once very close to the man.”

  “From what everybody says about that Kantor man, he isn’t the sort to have kids.”

  “That’s what I thought. But a man can get into a situation where he doesn’t think with his mind,” Sassy chuckled. “And when people get careless, they have kids.”

  “I’d be proud of Rourke, if I was his father.”

  “You’re the wrong age and gender,” Sassy said, tongue in cheek.

  “Oh, you know what I mean. He’s a good person.”

  “He is,” Sassy said as she pulled up in front of the ranch house. “I’m glad John hired him. At least we don’t have to worry about being assassinated on the way to town!”

  “Amen,” Jillian sighed.

  John Callister was an easygoing, friendly man. He didn’t seem at all like a millionaire, or at least, Jillian’s vision of one. He treated her as he would a little sister, and was happy to have her around.

  Jillian also liked Sassy’s mother, who was in poor health, and her adopted sister, Selene, who was a whiz at math and science in grammar school. John took care of them, just as he took care of Sassy.

  But the easygoing personality went into eclipse when he heard that Davy Harris had followed them into the dress shop in Billings.

  “The man is dangerous,” he said as they ate an early supper with Rourke.

  “He is,” Rourke agreed. “He shouldn’t be walking around loose in the first place. What the hell is wrong with the criminal justice system in this country?”

  John gave him a droll look. “It’s better than the old vigilante system of the distant past,” he pointed out. “And it usually works.”

  “Not with Harris,” Rourke replied, his jaw set as he munched on a chef’s salad. “He can put on a good act for a while, but he can’t keep it up. He starts talking, and you see the lunacy underneath the appearance of sanity.”

  “Disturbed people often don’t know they’re disturbed,” Sassy said.

  “That’s usually the case, I’m sad to say,” Rourke added. “People like Harris always think they’re being persecuted.”

  “I knew a guy once who was sure the government sent invisible spies to watch him,” John mused. “He could see them, but nobody else could. He worked for us one summer on the ranch back home. Gil and I put up with him because he was the best horse wrangler we’d ever had. But that was a mistake.”

  “How so?” Rourke asked.

  “Well, he had this dog. It was vicious and he refused to get rid of it. One day it came right up on the porch and threatened Gil’s little girls. Gil punched him and fired him. Then he started cutting fences and killing cattle. At the last, he tried to kill us. He ended up in prison, too.”

  “Good heavens!” Jillian said. “No wonder you hired a bodyguard for Sassy.”

  “Exactly,” John replied tersely. He didn’t mention that Sassy had been the victim of a predator herself, in the feed store where she was working when they met. That man was serving time now.

  His eyes lingered on Sassy with warm affection. “No body’s hurting my best girl. Or her best friend,” he declared with a grin at Jillian.

  “Not while I’m on the job,” Rourke added, chuckling. “You could marry me, you know,” he told Jillian. “I really do have most of my own teeth left, and I can cook. Your fiancé can’t boil water, I hear.”

  “That’s true,” Jillian said, smiling. “But I’ve known him most of my life, and we think the same way about most things. We’ll have a good marriage.” She was sure of that. Ted would be gentle, and patient, and he’d rid her of the distaste Davy had left in her about physical relationships. She’d never been more certain of anything.

  “Well, it’s a great shame,” Rourke said with a theatrical sigh. “I’ll have to go back home to my ugly cattle and live in squalor because nobody wants to take care of me.”

  “You’ll find some lovely girl who will be happy living on a small farm in Africa,” Jillian assured him.

  John almost choked on his coffee.

  Rourke gave him a cold glare.

  “What is wrong with you?” Sassy asked her husband.

  He wiped his mouth, still stifling laughter. “Private joke,” he said, sharing a look with Rourke, who sighed and shrugged.

  “But it had better be somebody who can dress bullet wounds,” John added with a twinkle in his eyes as he glanced at the other man.
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  “I only get shot occasionally,” Rourke assured him. “And I usually duck in time.”

  “That’s true,” John agreed, forking another piece of steak into his mouth. “He only has one head wound, and it doesn’t seem to have affected his thinking processes.” He didn’t mention the lost eye, because Rourke was sensitive about it.

  “That was a scalp wound,” Rourke replied, touching a faint scar above his temple. He glared at the other man from a pale brown eye. “And not from a bullet. It was from a knife.”

  “Poor thing,” Jillian murmured.

  John choked on his steak.

  “Will you stop?” Rourke muttered.

  “Sorry.” John coughed. He sipped coffee.

  Jillian wished she knew what they were talking about. But it was really none of her business, and she had other worries.

  The wedding gown was exquisite. She couldn’t stop looking at it. She hung it on the door in the guest bedroom and sighed over it at every opportunity.

  Ted came by to visit frequently and they took long walks in the woods, to talk and to indulge in a favorite of dating couples, the hot physical interludes that grew in intensity by the day.

  He held her hand and walked with her down a long path through the snow, his fingers warm and strong in hers.

  “I can’t stand it if I go a whole day without seeing you,” he said out of the bue.

  She stopped walking and looked up at him with pure wonder. “Really?”

  He pulled her into his arms. “Really.” He bent and kissed her slowly, feeling her respond, feeling her warm lips open and move tenderly. She reached her arms up around his neck as if it was the most natural thing in the world. He smiled against her lips. It was a delightful surprise, her easy response to him.

  “Maybe I can get used to Sammy following me around, and you can get used to me shooting targets off the front porch,” he teased.

  She grinned. “Maybe you can teach me to shoot, too.”

  He looked shocked. “I can?”

  “We should share some interests,” she said wisely. “You always go to that shooting range and practice. I could go with you sometimes.”

  He was surprised and couldn’t hide it.

  She toyed with a shirt button. “I don’t like being away from you, either, Ted,” she confessed and flushed a little. “It’s so sweet…”

  He pulled her close. One lean hand swept down her back, riveting her to his powerful body. “Sweeter than honey,” he managed before he kissed her.

  His hand pushed her hips against the sudden hardness of his own, eliciting a tiny sound from her throat. But it wasn’t protest. If anything, she moved closer.

  He groaned out loud and ground her hips into his.

  “I can’t wait until Saturday,” he said in a husky tone, easing his hands under Jillian’s blouse, under the bra to caress her soft breasts. “I’m dying!”

  “So am I,” she whispered shakily. “Oh, Ted!” she gasped when he pulled the garments out of his way and covered her breast with his mouth. It was so sweet. Too sweet for words!

  He didn’t realize what he was doing until they were lying on the cold ground, in the snow, while he kissed her until she was breathless.

  She was shaking when he lifted his head, but not from cold or fear. Her eyes held the same frustrated desire that his held.

  “I want to, so much!” she whispered.

  “So do I,” he replied.

  For one long instant, they clung together on the hard ground, with snow making damp splotches all down Jillian’s back and legs, while they both fought for control.

  Ted clenched his hands beside her head and closed his eyes as he rested his forehead against hers. He was rigid, helplessly aroused and unable to hide it.

  She smoothed back his black hair and pressed soft, undemanding little kisses all over his taut face, finally against the closed eyelids and short thick black lashes.

  “It’s all right,” she whispered. “It’s all right.”

  He was amazed at the effect those words, and the caresses, had on him. They eased the torment. They calmed him, in the sweetest way he’d ever imagined. He smiled against her soft throat.

  “Learning how to tame the beast, aren’t you?” he whispered in a teasing tone.

  She looked up at him with soft, loving eyes. “How to calm him down, anyway,” she said with a little laugh. “I think marriage is going to be an adventure.”

  “So do I.”

  He stood and tugged her up, too, helping to rearrange her disheveled clothing. He grinned at her. “We both love maps and the tango. We’ll go dancing every week.”

  Her eyes brightened. “I’d like that.”

  He enveloped her against him and stood holding her, quietly, in the silence of the snow-covered woods. “Heaven,” he whispered, “must be very like this.”

  She smiled, hugging him. “I could die of happiness.”

  His heart jumped. “So could I, sweetheart.”

  The endearment made her own heart jump. She’d never been so happy in her life.

  “Saturday can’t come soon enough for me,” he murmured.

  “Or for me. Ted, Sassy bought me the most beautiful wedding gown. I know you aren’t supposed to see it before the ceremony, but I just have to show it to you.”

  He drew back, smiling. “I’d like that.”

  They walked hand in hand back to the ranch house, easy and content with each other in a way they’d never been before. They looked as if they’d always been together, and always would be.

  Sassy, busy in the kitchen with the cook, grinned at them. “Staying for lunch, Ted? We’re having chili and Mexican corn bread.”

  “I’d love to, if you have enough to share.”

  “Plenty.”

  “Then, thanks, I will. Jillian wants me to see the wedding gown.”

  “Bad luck,” Sassy teased.

  “We make our own luck, don’t we, honey?” he asked Jillian in a husky, loving tone.

  She blushed at the second endearment in very few minutes and squeezed his hand. “Yes, we do.”

  She opened her bedroom door and gasped, turning pale. There, on the floor, were the remains of her wedding gown, her beautiful dress. It had been slashed to pieces.

  “Stop right there,” Ted said curtly, his arm preventing Jillian from entering the room. “This is now a crime scene. I’ll get the sheriff’s department’s investigator out here right now, and the state crime-lab techs. I know who did this. I only want enough proof to have him arrested!”

  Jillian wrapped her arms around her chest and shivered. Davy had come right into the house and nobody knew. Not even Rourke. It was chilling. Sassy, arriving late, took in the scene with a quick glance and hugged Jillian.

  “It will be all right,” she promised. But her own eyes were troubled. It was scary that he’d come into the house without being seen.

  Rourke, when he realized what had happened, was livid. “That polecat!” he snarled. “Right under my bloody nose, and me like a raw recruit with no clue he was on the place! That won’t happen again! I’m calling in markers. I’ll have this place like a fortress before Saturday!”

  Nobody argued with him. The situation had become a tragedy in the making. They’d all underestimated Davy Harris’s wilderness skills, which were apparently quite formidable.

  “He was a hunter,” Jillian recalled. “He showed me how to track deer when he first started working with Uncle John, before he got to be a problem. He could walk so nobody heard a step. I’d forgotten that.”

  “I can ghost-walk myself,” Rourke assured her.

  “He used to set bear traps,” Jillian blurted out, and reddened when everybody looked at her. “He said it was to catch a wolf that had been preying on the calves, but Uncle John said there was a dog caught in it…” She felt sick. “I’d forgotten that.”

  The men looked at each other. A bear trap could be used for many things, including catching unsuspecting people.

  Jillia
n stared at Ted with horror. “Ted, he wouldn’t use that on Sammy, would he?” she asked fearfully. Davy knew how much she loved her calf.

  “No,” he assured her with a comforting arm around her shoulders as he lied. “He wouldn’t.”

  Rourke left the room for a few minutes. He came back, grim-faced. “We’re going to have a lot of company very soon. All we need is proof that he was here, and he won’t be a problem again.”

  Which would have been wonderful. Except that there wasn’t a footprint in the dirt, a fingerprint, or any trace evidence whatsoever that Davy Harris had been near the Callister home. The technicians with all their tools couldn’t find one speck of proof.

  “So much for Locard’s Exchange Principle,” Ted said grimly, and then had to explain what it meant to Jillian. “A French criminalist named Edmond Locard noted that when a crime is committed, the perpetrator both carries away and leaves behind trace evidence.”

  “But Davy didn’t,” she said sadly.

  “He’s either very good or very lucky,” Ted muttered. He slid a protective arm around Jillian. “And it won’t save him. He’s the only person in town who had a motive for doing this. It’s just a matter of proving it.”

  She laughed hollowly. “Maybe you could check his new Bowie knife to see if it’s got pieces of white lace sticking to it,” she said, trying to make the best of a bad situation.

  But he didn’t laugh. He was thoughtful. “That might not be such a bad idea,” he murmured. “All I’d need is probable cause, if I can convince a judge to issue a search warrant on the basis of it.” He pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes, nodding to himself. “And that’s just what I’m going to do. Stick close to the house today, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  He kissed her and left.

  But Ted came back a few hours later and stuck to her like glue. She noticed that he was suddenly visible near her, everywhere she went around the house and the barn. It was just after he’d received a phone call, to which nobody was privy.

  “What’s going on?” Jillian asked him bluntly.