Coming Home

by Shirlee Busbee

“It was. I still have nightmares about it. Especially finding those two little babies. …” A shudder rolled through him and he looked across at her, a terrifyingly savage expression in those black eyes. “You know,” he said with an equally terrifying quiet, “I always thought that it was a good thing that Delmer died instantly. In my mind, I've killed him with my bare hands a dozen times … and I like to think that if he'd still been alive when I reached the wreck that my training and dutywould have held me back from breaking his miserable neck right then and there.”

  Instinctively Roxanne reached over and laid her hand on his. Their eyes met and she said softly, confidently, “You would have done the right thing.” She smiled crookedly. “Your kind always does.” Her face grew grim. “Now if it had been me. …”

  He smiled. “I know—you have all that outlaw blood in you, all the way back to old black-hearted York Ballinger himself.”

  She cocked a slim brow. “Don't forget you have some, too. Isn't your mother part Ballinger and part Granger?”

  “In this valley, I'm not allowed to forget it.”

  “Probably not.” Her gaze fell on her hand still lying on his. She started to withdraw it, but he turned his hand and caught hers in strong fingers. Since it would be a useless struggle, she let her hand stay—or so she told herself.

  Trying to ignore the pleasurable tingle it gave her to feel his warm hand around hers, she asked, “So tell me about you and Ilka.”

  He sighed. “That night, the night of the tragedy, I was the one who got her out of the truck just before it exploded. And I was the one who had to tell her that Bram and Ruby were dead.” He looked away. “The ambulance had arrived, and they were trying to calm her down, trying to stop the bleeding, but she kept fighting them, kept screaming that she had to get her children. The only way we could stop her was to tell her the truth, that her babies were dead.” He shook his head. “That was back in the days before mandatory safety seats for kids. …” He swallowed. “They both went right through the windshield and looking for those little bodies was one of the worst, if not the worst thing, I've ever had to do in my life. I'll never forget it. Never.”

  His words touched a cord inside of her and she absorbed the fact almost absently that there was a lot more to tall, arrogant, tough, good-looking Jeb Delaney than most people realized. He really was a cupcake. She scowled. Well, when he wasn't being an overbearing jerk.

  Jeb took a drink of his coffee. “Anyway, the events of that night formed a bond between the pair of us—probably to do with the drama and tragedy of the moment. I was in to see her several times when she was in the hospital recovering and after she got out I don't know, the visits just continued. Your mom told me that Ma always seemed to cheer up after I'd been to see her. More importantly, I was one of the few people she would talk to about what had happened.” He looked embarrassed. “And somewhere along the way, we became friends. Good friends. I guess I consider her one of my best friends.”

  Friends. Hmm, that didn't sound too bad. Even best friends. In fact, friends was a whole lot better than lovers, Roxanne thought, wondering why it should matter to her what the relationship was between Jeb and Rica. After all, she couldn't stand Jeb Delaney … right?

  She cleared her throat. “Urn, so you two have been friends, best friends, since then?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. And as best friends, we talk about a whole range of things.” He scratched his cheek with one hand. “And lately, she's been talking an awful lot about all these trips the two of you have been taking. …”

  Roxanne stiffened. “Oh, really? And what has she told you about them?”

  Jeb grinned. “Well, first of all, she says that she's enjoyed them tremendously, including the date with the handsome cover boy that you set up. Claims that it's been fun getting to know her famous big sister. She likes you, you know, admires you—apparently always has.” His eyes gleamed. “Although, I can't imagine why.”

  Roxanne sniffed and Jeb laughed, adding, “She thinks that you have a lot more depth than most people realize. Of course lately, she's mentioned that she really hopes that you'll find someone else to save soon, so she can relax and get back to her normal life.” Humiliation at the idea of Jeb and Ilka having cozy little chats about her washed through Roxanne. Hurt and angry, she caught him by surprise, jerking her hand out of his. “Is that so?” she asked in frosty tones.

  “Afraid so, Princess,” he said gently.

  “Did she ask you to tell me this?” Roxanne demanded, her eyes fierce.

  Jeb looked uncomfortable. It suddenly dawned on him that he might have opened his mouth when he should have kept it shut. He winced. Not only did it appear that he'd put his foot wrong with Roxanne, but he had a powerful hunch that Ilka was going to be livid when she learned what he'd done. I should have kept going. Never should have stopped, he thought uneasily. Certainly never should have mentioned a private conversation with Ilka. Oh, man, I'm in for it now. Both of them are going to be after my scalp. He winced again. What had he been thinking of? He knew better. He wasn't a blabbermouth. He could keep a secret. Hell, he kept them all the time. It was just that he'd seen Roxanne's Jeep parked out there and had wanted an excuse to see her. And that, he realized, was the scariest admission he'd ever made.

  “Did she?” Roxanne demanded again.

  “Uh, no,” he muttered.

  Roxanne smiled thinly. “I see. So it was your very own omniscient decision—without finding out if Ilka even wanted you to open your big fat mouth—to share this little bit of information with me?”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  Roxanne rose regally to feet. Her face full of contempt, she snapped, “Well, thank you. I appreciate it. I'm sure Ilka will, too. I can hardly wait to tell her how kind you have been to speak up for her.”

  There was an icy draft as Roxanne swept past him and he winced for the third time when the door slammed shut behind her with a ferocious bang. He buried his head in his hands. Not one, but two women were going to be after his hide. Two Ballinger women. And he didn't blame either one of them. He was dead meat. Very dead meat.

  Hank walked over to the table. “I take it,” he said dryly to Jeb's down bent head, “that you're going to pay the lady's bill?”

  Jeb lifted his head and looked at him. “Yeah. I guess so.”

  Hank took the seat Roxanne had vacated. Crossing his legs, he asked, “Lovers' quarrel?”

  “Are you crazy? Me and Roxanne? Hell, I'd rather mate with a grizzly bear with cubs than tackle that firecracker.”

  Hank chuckled. “She was pretty mad, wasn't she? For a minute there I thought she was going to dump her soup on your head. What'd you say to her anyway?”

  “Now, Hank, you know that a gentleman never tells,” Jeb quipped, thinking he'd opened his mouth once too many times already.

  “Yeah,” Hank said, rising. “But who ever said that you were a gentleman?”

  Jeb laughed and, getting to his feet, grabbed his mug and walked over to the table that held Mingo and the others. Greetings were exchanged as Jeb took a seat with his back to the wood stove. The heat felt good and the fresh coffee Hank poured tasted just fine.

  He took some ribbing from the guys about Roxanne's sudden exit, as well as the fact that he had joined her at the table in the first place. Eventually, since at least two of the men in the group had worked on her house, conversation drifted to her house.

  Don Bean ran heavy equipment among other things and had done all of the site preparation. He was a brawny, barrel-chested man only a couple inches shorter than Jeb. Like the others at the table, except for Hank, they'd all grown up together in the valley: Don had been two years ahead of Jeb in school. Wearing worn, grease-stained blue jeans and a striped long sleeved chambray shirt, having a big round friendly face, his hamlike hands bearing some recent nicks and scrapes, he looked like what he was—a hardworking, honest good ole boy.

  “I can't believe that Roxanne is actually going to live up there,” Don exclaimed. “I mean, it's
gonna be a great house, nice, you know, but not a mansion. Not the kind of place you'd think someone as famous as she is would live in. No wine cellar. No swimming pool. No servants' quarters. And the house isn't even that big—it's good size, probably thirty-five hundred square feet, maybe a little bigger, but it's not one of those ten thousand square feet plus places you hear about celebrities buying and building. And there's no gold-plated faucets or inlaid Italian marble or things like that. Nice stuff, but nothing outrageous.” He grinned. “Sort of disappointed me—I was hoping for a bunch of half-naked models hanging around and seeing things I've only read about in magazines.” He shook his head. “Can you believe it? She's gonna have a barn built nextspring—wants a couple of horses and chickens. Now I ask you, can you picture Roxanne feeding chickens, picking eggs, and scooping up horse shit?”

  Jeb wasn't surprised by Don's words. If he hadn't already seen the plans, he would have assumed Roxanne would build a manison that would have looked more at home in Beverly Hills than Oak Valley. And a barn with horses, well, yeah, he could see that—provided she had a stableman to handle all the messy work and she could just stroll out now and then and find her horse all groomed and saddled and waiting for her. Chickens gave him pause and he did have a little trouble seeing her clucking as she threw out feed and then picking eggs from the nest. But from what Don had said, it appeared he was wrong about that, too. He frowned. So what else was he wrong about? It made him uncomfortable to think that he'd been so busy coming up with reasons to dislike her that maybe he hadn't seen the real person.

  Mingo grinned, sending a sly look at his brother. “I can picture her doing lots of things, but I don't think chickens and horse shit fit.”

  There were a few grins and a laugh or two, but there was nothing salacious or unkind about it. The valley took great pride in Roxanne's accomplishments and there wasn't a man gathered around the table who would have stood for her to be insulted—teased some, but not insulted. And that was whether they approved of her lifestyle or not. Roxanne was valley born and bred and that said it all … which didn't mean they wouldn't speculate or gossip some—they were, after all, men.

  “Me neither,” said Don. “I'm to do the site work for the barn, too, and she's talked to me about putting in a couple of ponds for her come spring and some roads so she can get around the place.” He shook his head. “I'd have thought that someone like her would have chosen somewhere rich and fancy, like San Francisco, or Marin County, or even Sonoma County. Not Oak Valley.” His blue eyes danced. “Plays hell with my image of her to think of her living here just like a regular person.”

  “I'll say,” said Monty Hicks, an expression of awe on his boyish face. Monty was a newcomer to the valley. About six or seven years ago, he'd come to visit a friend he'd met at Junior College in Santa Rosa, fell in love with a local girl, and never left. Married these past five years to Gloria Adams, and the father of two lively boys, he was considered a welcome addition to the valley. He'd worked awhile at McGuire's but four years ago he'd taken a job at Western Auto—better hours than a grocery store and better pay. He trained as an EMT and was also a volunteer fireman. At twenty-eight years old he was the youngest of the men seated at the table and with his blond crew cut and slim build, he looked even younger.

  “The first time she came into the store, I thought I was hallucinating,” Monty continued, his voice as awed as his face. “I blinked and nearly had a heart attack when I realized it was really her standing right infront of me. She was really nice, too----acted just like a normal everyday person.” He looked rueful. “When I went home that night all excited and told Glory, she just stared at me and said so what, her older sister, Sandy, had gone to school with Roxanne. It was no big deal.” He shook his head. “To me it was a big deal and I just couldn't get over how real, how normal she was.”

  Annoyed, Jeb said, “Come on, Monty, she is a normal person. Just because she's a famous model doesn't mean she isn't just like the rest of us.”

  “Goddamn prettier,” chimed in “Profane” Deegan, so named for obvious reasons. Next to Hank and Hugh Nutter—who wouldn't see seventy again—he was the oldest of the group, being somewhere in his fifties. He was noted for three things: he was a hard worker, willing to tackle any job; he could hardly complete a sentence without some sort of profanity in it; and his T-shirts. The T-shirt he wore today was black and stated in big, bright orange letters, “Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy.” Profane glared around the table as if daring anyone to disagree with his statement. When there was a general nodding of heads, he added, “And she's a hell of lot nicer than some of the women in this damn valley. Shit, I've worked for some of them and I'd bake in hell before I'd ever do that again. But Roxy …” His weathered face softened, which was quite a sight considering that he sported a salt-andpepper beard that seemed to have been electrified and sprouted wildly in all directions. “I'll tell you one thing—she's a goddamn nice person. When I was helping Don at her place, and we had that hot spell—I' look up, certain I'm one damned degree from turning to toast and there'd be Roxy. She'd be walking out in that heat, smiling that sweet smile of hers, and bringing me a big, icy glass of tea, or a Pepsi or a bottle of water. Nice lady. A real nice lady.” He looked ferocious. “And if I ever find out which of those little sons of bitches were that broke into her place and trashed it, I'll put their asses in their mouths. See if I don't.”

  “Count me in,” growled Don. “You should have seen the place. We'd done some initial work that first Monday and came back the next day to find someone had gone in and had a party tearing some of the walls out and even ripping down the few cupboards in the kitchen.”

  Jeb frowned. “Are you talking about something that happened recently? You're not referring to the vandalism that was done this summer, are you?”

  Danny Haskell, the local deputy, spoke up. “No. This happened back in September.”

  Jeb glared at Danny. “Why didn't you tell me?”

  Danny looked taken aback. “Hey, she didn't report it, OK? I only heard about it from these guys.” More curiosity in his voice than complaint, he asked, “And since when do I report to you? Last I heard you were the detective around here, and that robbery and vandalism was my bag.”

  Jeb shrugged and sent Danny a rueful glance.“Sony. Stepped out of line. Hard to remember sometimes that I'm not in uniform.”

  Danny was a good kid. Well, not a kid anymore, Jeb admitted, since he'd attended Danny's thirty-fifth birthday back in September. But he had trouble remembering that fact sometimes—he was just enough older to remember when Danny had been a rambunctious, gangly teenager with a goofy smile and he'd been the local deputy. He shook his head. Some days he just felt old.

  Looking at Don and Profane, Jeb asked, “Any trouble since then?” “Nope,” Don said. “Theo was fit to be tied though—after that he had one of the younger guys on the crew sleep out there in a camper. Theo was pissed about the break-in, but since the inside was going to be torn out anyway, he got over it—but he was worried about all the equipment stored out there and the damage the kids might do to the new construction. Never had any more trouble after that.”

  “Milo Scott do a good job on the concrete?” Jeb asked.

  Don grinned. Everyone knew how Jeb felt about Milo. “Hate to say it, my man, but yeah, he did.” Tongue in cheek, he added, “Hung around a lot, too—after the job. Theo finally had to tell him that if he didn't have work to do to kindly get out of his way.”

  Hugh Nutter spoke up. “When are you guys going to arrest that guy anyway?” Hugh was bald, stood about five feet five, and was almost as wide as he was tall. He belonged to another old valley family and had spent his days in the logging business. Hadn't made a fortune, but retired comfortably enough. These days he hung out at The Blue Goose or sometimes during the summer across the street at The Burger Place—when he wasn't busy helping with community affairs. Now that Hugh was retired and his passel of six kids was grown, he and his wife, Agnes, were big on comm
unity affairs. His eyes boring into Jeb, he muttered, “Seems like you'd make more of an effort to get scum like that off the streets.”

  Danny looked at Jeb, a grin on his handsome face, his black eyes, inherited from his Indian great-grandmother, dancing. “Yeah, when are we going to arrest him?”

  Jeb made a face. “Not my department. Milo Scott's got juice and there's someone higher up who's just as happy to let him play his games. Besides, we've never been able to really pin anything on him. He always manages to weasel out of it.”

  Heads nodded and the conversation slipped onto other topics.

  It was several minutes later that the sound of vehicle doors slamming outside signaled the arrival of someone else seeking a late lunch. Hank glanced at the clock on the wall and jumped up. “Wouldn't you know it, you guys distracted me and now it's past closing time.” He said over his shoulder to Megan, “Sorry, Meggie, but we'll have to stay open a little longer than usual.”

  Megan sent him an exasperated look and he grimaced. “I know. I know. I'll lock the door behind them.”

  Crossing the room, he met the two new arrivals as they poured into the room shaking the rain from their jackets and hats.

  “Damn, it's wet out there,” said Morgan Courtland.

  “You can say that again,” replied his fraternal twin, Jason.

  Recognizing the pair of them, a gleam of anticipation entered Hank's eyes. The Courtland boys were always good for a laugh. He pointed to the clock and said, “Ah, now, me boys, you're too late. It's after 2:00 P.M. We're closed.”

  Morgan grinned, his blue eyes glittering in his dark face. He pointed to the lighted sign in the window. “That says you're still open.”

  “Come on, Hank, don't give us a bad time,” Jason added, smiling. He glanced over at the group of men around the table. “And half the valley is here anyway.” He saw Megan behind the counter, the big black grill and stove behind her. “Hey, Megan, say something to your brother—he's trying to throw us out.”