by Diana Palmer
“Wait until Jenny is old enough to use the can opener,” he said. “Then he’ll start on her!”
Jessica looked at him with her heart in her eyes. She wanted the baby so much.
“What if the judge won’t let us have her?” she asked with faint sadness.
He took up the bacon and turned off the burner, placing the platter on the table.
“The judge will let us have her,” he corrected. He tilted up her chin. “You have to start realizing that good times follow bad. You’ve paid your dues, haven’t you noticed? You’ve had one tragedy after another. But life has a way of balancing the books, honey. You’re about due for a refund. And it’s just beginning. Wait and see.”
“How in the world did a cynic like you learn to look for a silver lining in storm clouds?” she asked with mock surprise.
He drew her close. “I started being pestered by this overly optimistic little social worker who got me by the heart and refused to let me go. She taught me to look for miracles. Now I can’t seem to stop.”
“I hope you find them all the time now,” she said. “And I hope we get Jennifer, too. That one little miracle would do me for the rest of my life. With Jennifer and you, I’d have the very world.”
“We’ll see how it goes. But you have to have faith,” he reminded her.
“I have plenty of that,” she agreed, looking at him with quiet, hungry eyes. “I’ve lived on it since the first time I looked at you. It must have worked. Here you are.”
“Here I stay, too,” he replied, bending his head to kiss her.
Fourteen
The petition was drawn up by their attorney. It was filed in the county clerk’s office. A hearing was scheduled and placed on the docket. Then there was nothing else to do except wait.
Jessica went to work as usual, but she was a different person now that she was married. Her delight in her new husband spilled over into every aspect of her work. She felt whole, for the first time.
They both went out to the No Bull Ranch to see Maris Wyler and Keith Colson. The young man was settled in very nicely now, and was working hard. The homebound teacher who had been working with him since the summer recess was proud of the way he’d pulled up his grades. He was learning the trade of being a cowboy, too, and he’d gone crazy on the subject of wildlife conservation. He wanted to be a forest ranger, and Maris encouraged him. He was already talking about college.
“I couldn’t be more delighted,” Jessica told McCallum when they were driving back to town. “He’s so different, isn’t he? He isn’t surly or uncooperative or scowling all the time. I hardly knew him.”
“Unhappy people don’t make good impressions. If you only knew how many children go to prison for lack of love and attention and even discipline…. Some people have no business raising kids.”
“I think you and I would be good at it,” she said.
He caught the note of sadness in her voice. “Cut that out,” he told her. “You’re the last person on earth I’d ever suspect of being a closet pessimist.”
“I’m trying not to be discouraged. It’s just that I want to adopt Jennifer so much,” she said. “I’m afraid to want anything that badly.”
“You wanted me that badly,” he reminded her. “and look what happened.”
She looked at him with her heart in her eyes and grinned. “Well, yes. You were unexpected.”
“So were you. I’d resigned myself to living alone.”
“I suppose we were both blessed.”
“Yes. And the blessings are still coming. Wait and see.”
She leaned back against the seat with a sigh, complacent but still unconvinced.
They went to court that fall. Kate Randall was the presiding judge. Jessica knew and liked her but couldn’t control her nerves. Witness after witness gave positive character readings about both Jessica and McCallum. The juvenile authorities mentioned their fine record with helping young offenders, most recently Keith Colson. And through it all Jessica sat gripping McCallum’s hand under the table and chewing the skin off her lower lip with fear and apprehension.
The judge was watching her surreptitiously. When the witnesses had all been called and the recommendations—good ones—given by the juvenile authorities, she spoke directly to Jessica.
“You’re very nervous, Mrs. McCallum,” Kate said with teasing kindness and a judicial formality. “Do I look like an ogre to you?”
She gasped. “Oh, no, your honor!” she cried, reddening.
“Well, judging by the painful look on your face, you must think I am one. Your joy in that child, and your own background, would make it difficult for even a hanging judge to deny you. And I’m hardly that.” She smiled at Jessica. “The petition to adopt the abandoned baby Jennifer is hereby approved without reservation. Case dismissed.” She banged the gavel and stood up.
Jessica burst into tears, and it took McCallum a long time to calm and comfort her.
“She said yes,” he kept repeating, laughing with considerable joy of his own. “Stop crying! She may change her mind!”
“No, she won’t,” the judge assured them, standing patiently by their table.
Jessica wiped her eyes, got up and hugged the judge, too.
“There, there,” she comforted. “I’ve seen a lot of kids go through this court, but I’ve seen few who ended up with better parents. In the end it doesn’t matter that your child is adopted. You’ll raise her and be Jennifer’s parents. That’s the real test of love, I think. It’s the bringing up that matters.”
She agreed wholeheartedly. “You can’t imagine how I felt, how afraid I was,” she blurted out.
Kate patted her shoulder. “Yes, I can. I’ve had a steady stream of people come through my office this past week, all pleading on your behalf. You might be shocked at who some of them were. Your own boss,” she said to McCallum, shaking her head. “Who’d have thought it.”
“Hensley?” McCallum asked in surprise.
“The very same. And even old Jeremiah Kincaid,” she added with a chuckle. “I thought my eyes would fly right out of my head on that one.” Kate checked her watch. “I’ve got another case coming up. You’d better go and see about your baby, Jessica.” She dropped the formal address since the court had adjourned. “I expect you new parents will have plenty of things to do now.”
“Oh, yes!” she exclaimed. “We’ll need to buy formula and diapers and toys and a playpen—”
“We already have the crib,” McCallum said smugly, laughing at Jessica’s startled reaction. “Well, I was confident, even if you weren’t. I ordered it from the furniture store.”
“I love you!” She hugged him.
He held her close, shaking hands with the judge.
From the courthouse they went around town, making a number of purchases, and Jessica was in a frenzy of joy as they gathered up all the things they’d need to start life with a new baby.
But the most exciting thing was collecting Baby Jennifer from a delighted Mabel Darren, the woman who’d been keeping her, and taking her home.
Even Meriwether was a perfect gentleman, sniffing the infant, but keeping a respectful distance. Jessica and McCallum sat on the sofa with their precious treasure, and didn’t turn on the television at all that night. Instead they watched the baby. She cooed and stared at them with her big blue eyes and never cried once.
Later, as Jessica and McCallum lay together in bed—with the baby’s bed right next to theirs instead of in another room—they both lay watching Jennifer sleep in the soft glow of the night-light.
“I never realized just how it would feel to be a parent,” McCallum said quietly. “She’s ours. She’s all ours.”
She inched closer to him. “Sterling, what if her mother ever comes back?”
His arms contracted around her. “If her mother had wanted and been able to keep her, we wouldn’t have her,” he said. “You have to put that thought out of your mind. Sometimes there are things we never find out about in life—and
then there are mysteries that are waiting to be solved just around the corner. For instance, we’re still working on the mystery murder at the wedding. We may solve it, we may not. The same is true of Jennifer’s situation. But we’ve legally adopted her. She belongs to us, and we to her. That’s all there is to it.”
Jessica let out her breath in a long sigh. After a minute she nodded. “Okay. Then that’s how it will be.”
He turned her to face him and kissed her tenderly. “Happy?” he whispered.
“So happy that I could die of it,” she whispered back. She pushed her way into his arms and was held tight and close. As her eyes closed, she thought ahead to first steps and birthday parties and school. She’d thought she’d never know those things, but life had been kind. She remembered what McCallum had said to her—that bad times were like dues paid for all the good times that followed. And perhaps they were. God knew, her good times had only just begun!
The Widow and the Rodeo Man
Jackie Merritt
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Epilogue
One
Maris Wyler disliked unexpected visitors. The black pickup truck that had pulled into her front yard was definitely unexpected and the man who got out was a stranger. She shielded her gaze from the strong afternoon sun to get a better look at him. He was tall and broad shouldered, a black Stetson shadowing his face as he headed toward the house. Maris had just come off the range, having tended her small herd of cattle on horseback for most of the day. She felt sweaty, gritty and in no mood for a caller. Nevertheless, she stepped off her front porch and walked out to greet him.
Something about the man seemed vaguely familiar, she thought as she drew closer. Though even face-to-face she couldn’t quite place him.
“Can I help you?”
Her caller flashed a charming smile. “Hello, Maris. How are you?”
His familiar greeting put her a little off-balance. She tried, but her own smile faltered some. “Apparently we’ve met.”
“Apparently you don’t remember.” His amused expression suggested that he’d rarely heard a woman say she’d forgotten meeting him. “Name’s Luke Rivers. We met in Casper, Wyoming. A bunch of us from the rodeo had joined up in a little bar—”
Maris’s hand jerked up. “I remember now.” Her deceased husband’s behavior that night wasn’t a memory to elevate a widow’s spirit. Ray had followed a flashy-trashy girl around like a panting puppy dog, embarrassing and angering Maris. Luke Rivers had broken the whole thing up by persuading Ray it was late and time to leave. Maris never did know if Luke had gallantly come to her rescue to save her from further humiliation, or simply because it really was late and the woman Ray had been hitting on was Luke’s date. Certainly they hadn’t discussed it, and, in fact, had never seen each other again until this very moment.
“What are you doing in Montana? Is there a rodeo in the area?” Maris wasn’t speaking with any great amount of friendliness. Ray’s obsession with rodeo had been one of the poisons that had destroyed their marriage, long before his fatal accident. Luke Rivers—if she remembered correctly—was a rodeo man through and through, a substantial enough reason to keep a very wide chasm between them.
Luke leaned his hips against the front fender of his truck. Maris Wyler was nice to look at, even with that guarded expression on her face. She had long, sun-streaked, honey-brown hair, restrained at the back of her neck by something he couldn’t see. Her skin was as tanned and smooth as honey, and he would bet anything she wasn’t wearing any makeup. Her leanness and long legs were accentuated by her worn jeans and red T-shirt. She didn’t look soft or at all helpless; rather, she impressed him as a tough, no-nonsense woman. That was okay; she was still nice to look at.
“I came to see Ray. Is he around?”
Maris stiffened. This was the second time an out-of-state pal of Ray’s had dropped in, the second time she was going to have to explain why he wasn’t “around.”
“Ray’s dead.” The first old pal had gotten tears in his eyes, Maris recalled. Luke Rivers looked as though someone had just punched him in the belly.
“He can’t be!” Luke heard his own ludicrous denial and shook his head to clear it. “I’m sorry. What happened?”
Maris recited without emotion. “He got drunk and ran his truck into a cement pier at an underpass out on Highway 191.”
“Damn.” Frowning, Luke moved away from the pickup and paced a small circle. He pulled off his hat and ran his hand through his hair. “Damn,” he repeated. “Now what am I gonna do?”
“What are you going to do?” Maris didn’t care what Luke Rivers did about anything, but his remark was so quixotic that she repeated it with some sarcasm. “I can’t see why Ray’s death should have any effect on your life.”
Maris watched him scowling and pacing. He was a tall, rangy, good-looking man, with thick black hair and vivid blue eyes. A lady’s man, she’d bet, if the women who made themselves so blatantly available to rodeo men could be called ladies. They were in every town, hanging on the corral fences while the men took care of their horses, cracking jokes, laughing too loudly, trying to catch the men’s notice.
Ray had noticed too many times to count, each occasion driving the spike in Maris’s heart a little deeper. Luke Rivers would notice. She could tell just from his good looks that he was cut from the same cloth as Ray. Two peas from the same damned pod. Overly macho, strutting peacocks who thought the sun rose and set in their hind pocket just because they risked their stupid necks in the rodeo arena.
Luke stopped pacing and faced Maris with his hands on his hips. “Ray owes me three thousand bucks.”
Maris’s left eyebrow shot up. “Oh?” She almost laughed. Luke couldn’t have known Ray all that well, or he would also have known that collecting that debt would be next to impossible. The only time Ray had ever repaid a loan was when the lender had harangued it out of him. Maris gave her head a brief, negative shake. “All I can tell you is that you’re out the three thousand, Mr. Rivers.”
“I have an IOU.” Luke dug for his wallet and fished out a ragged piece of paper, which he handed to Maris.
She read it—IOU three thousand dollars. Ray Wyler—then handed it back.
“It’s none of my affair,” she said calmly.
Luke’s face darkened. “I need that money.”
Maris smirked. “I hope you’re not thinking of collecting it from me. I’ll tell you right now that I don’t have three thousand dollars, but even if I did I wouldn’t use it to pay off one of Ray’s gambling debts.”
“It wasn’t a gambling debt. Ray came to me about two years ago and all but begged for that money. He said something about using ranch money…” Luke stopped. What Ray had told him had been in confidence. Luke, I took money out of the ranch account, and I’ve got to put it back before Maris gets the next bank statement. She’ll brain me for sure if she finds out I gambled again. It had been all but impossible for Luke to refuse. He had just earned a big purse in a bronc-riding contest, and only the day before Ray had saved him from being gored by an ornery old bull. He’d never been particularly fond of Ray Wyler, but the man had risked his own life to save Luke from certain injury.
“He used ranch money?” Maris asked suspiciously. “Two years ago, you said?” There were so many incidents of Ray depleting the ranch bank account for some inane reason, to pay a gambling debt or to buy another piece of junk, to name two. There were acres of old cars, trucks and odd pi
eces of junk out behind the barn, and Ray had said the same thing every time he brought home another unnecessary and foolish purchase: “I’m gonna fix it up and sell it for a big profit.”
He had never fixed anything. Ray Wyler had been a dreamer and a schemer, a gambler, a womanizer and, something that only Maris knew, an insurance-company swindler. But she wasn’t thinking of her deceased husband’s amoral character right now, she was thinking of that three thousand dollars. In the back of her mind was a bank statement with a mysterious withdrawal and deposit, each for three thousand dollars. Ray had sworn he knew nothing about it and had finally convinced Maris that the bank had made a mistake and merely corrected it. Since it hadn’t affected the account’s balance, Maris had let it go.
“Let me see that IOU again,” she said to Luke. He handed it over and she studied the date and thought about that peculiar bank statement. It was easy to put together: Ray had withdrawn the three thousand, wasted it on something, probably gambling, and borrowed the money from Luke to maintain the correct balance in their account to keep her from finding out that he’d lost so much money.
She wilted inside. Was she responsible for Ray’s reprehensible schemes? For his conniving and manipulating Luke Rivers into giving him a loan? Obviously the IOU was genuine, and Luke had every right to expect repayment.
But she had to look after herself, and while she could probably scrape together the three thousand, she wasn’t going to hand it over to Luke Rivers.
She passed the IOU back to him. “Sorry, I just don’t have that kind of money.”
There was a rising panic in Luke. A year ago he’d had a bad accident in the arena, resulting in a broken leg and collarbone. But worse than his own injuries was the death of Pancho, his horse. Pancho had broken his neck in that freak fall and had to be put to sleep, and everyone who had ever seen Pancho work knew he was one of the best cutting horses in the business. For Luke, losing Pancho had been like losing a piece of himself. His broken bones had healed, but would he ever find another Pancho? Especially when he didn’t have the money even to start looking?