Lawman

by Palmer, Diana

  “I was going to ask you out to eat,” he said on a breathless laugh.

  She smiled and kissed his muscular shoulder. Her own heart was doing uncomfortable things. She hoped he didn’t notice. “It gets better and better,” she whispered.

  He held her closer. “I couldn’t work today for thinking how it was last night,” he confessed after a minute. “I didn’t think it could be as good as I remembered it. But it was.” He lifted away from her, to look down with possessive dark eyes at her swollen breasts, their pink crowns soft and relaxed now. He touched them gently, aware of faint scars around the nipples. His hand moved down to her flat stomach and he frowned. The scars were oddly uniform. He’d seen accident victims, so he knew what glass did to human flesh. But it didn’t look like this.

  “I know they’re ugly,” she began, misunderstanding his scrutiny.

  His eyes lifted back to hers, shocked. “That wasn’t what I was thinking at all,” he said. “Were you in the hospital a long time?”

  She nodded. “Two weeks,” she said.

  He brought her hand to his chest where the rib cage began, and pressed it into the thick hair that covered the warm muscles. “Feel.”

  There was a ridge there.

  “Feel it?” he asked, smiling. “I took a hit with a machete when we stormed a hostage situation several years ago. Not in this country,” he added with a husky laugh when he saw her expression. “I spent several days in hospital myself. So we both have scars.”

  She smiled back, much less self-conscious. She reached up to touch his face, explore it, caress it. This was like a day out of time, when she could love and be loved, when she could feel as a normal woman did. She felt the return of hope. He was helpless against the attraction she held for him. That had to mean something.

  He felt that look all the way inside. He shouldn’t encourage her to care about him. It would lead to disaster. But he loved the way she looked at him, the shy tenderness in her fingers when she touched him. He loved her fierce response when passion locked them together. For a woman with a traumatic past, she’d moved easily into intimacy. He liked to think it was because of his own skill in bed. He knew how to give her pleasure, and he could see the remnants of it in her smile.

  “Suppose we go out to eat tomorrow?” he suggested.

  “Lunch?”

  He nodded. “I have to stop by a couple of stores afterward. The inspector gave us a great score, so the SAC said I could have the day off.”

  She smiled. “I’d enjoy that.”

  “So would I.” He bent and kissed her and then rolled over and got to his feet to dress. She watched him, her eyes soft with appreciation of the hard muscles of his body as he slid back into his clothes. Belatedly she got up and dressed, too.

  “Would you like me to cook something?” she asked.

  He shook his head, smiling. “I have phone calls to make and reports to go over,” he said. “But I’ll phone you in the morning.”

  “Okay.” She wasn’t going to fuss or demand that he stay with her. She felt loved. It was enough. She saw him to the door and then fixed herself a bowl of soup, humming as if she’d won the lottery.

  HE HELD HER HAND as they went into Barbara’s Café to get lunch. Other patrons who knew Grace smiled benevolently at her, noting the man she was going around with. He was the police chief’s brother, so he must be a good sort, they were saying. Garon noticed the smiles and felt uneasy, but they were seated and the spectators found other things to talk about.

  Grace was so happy that she radiated it. Even Garon couldn’t help but notice what a picture she made when she smiled at him.

  She was proud of her enlarged wardrobe that Barbara had helped her buy at the college thrift shop. She was wearing a soft blue wool dress today that came from the shop. It was beautifully cut, fit nicely and emphasized the tiny blue flecks in her gray eyes. She’d gone to pains with her hair as well, putting it up in a becoming style. Garon had noticed, complimenting her on her taste.

  They held hands again on the way to the office supply store. Grace, beaming, smiled at passersby who knew her. Garon was still uncomfortable with their scrutiny, and getting cold feet. Colder by the minute, especially when they walked into the office supply store and the manager teased Grace about her companion. It was only small town banter, but Garon obviously didn’t like it, and when they left the store, he didn’t hold hands with her again. The teasing was getting on his nerves. He loved Grace in bed, but he wasn’t going to marry her because of it.

  By the end of the day, he’d made a decision he hated having to make. He wasn’t going to see Grace alone again. She was seeing him as a prospective husband, but he didn’t want her for keeps. He’d dug his own grave, continuing to see her when he knew how she felt about him. He had nothing to offer her. He couldn’t marry her. But when he saw the beaming look on her face as he left her at her front door, he couldn’t manage the words to tell her he was breaking it off, either. He made an offhand remark about being especially busy in the next two weeks, but that he’d call her. It was the first lie he’d told her.

  10

  GRACE WENT TO HER regular jobs for the next two weeks. She didn’t phone Garon, and he didn’t call her. She was still glowing with the memory of the physical delight he’d shown her. She ached for him in the darkness. His ardor had taught her that there was more to sex than pain and fear. She’d loved what he did to her. He was accomplished and thorough. Every time she thought about the passion they’d shared, she almost moaned aloud with the need to experience it again. But days went by and then weeks went by. She heard through the grapevine that the team he led was sent out of state to an emergency, and he was gone a long time. She rarely saw his car at his house when she drove to work. And still he didn’t call.

  Miss Turner had obviously come back home long ago, but she hadn’t phoned Grace, either. Grace didn’t know that Garon had told her not to, that he and Grace had had a parting of the ways and she wasn’t to communicate with her until things calmed down. It would have killed her.

  But worse than Garon’s absence was the kindly meant teasing around town. People had been delighted to see Grace finally with a fellow of her own, holding hands in public and radiating happiness. Some of the older people remembered what had happened to her. Nobody talked about it, of course, but it was a good reason for them to wish her well in Garon’s company.

  Except that she wasn’t in his company, and she hadn’t seen him. So every time someone asked why he wasn’t taking her to community events, she had to make an excuse that he was working hard on a case. Maybe he was. But she didn’t know.

  GARON REALLY was working on a case. The same case, the child murders. He was bad-tempered and impatient since he’d stopped seeing Grace, because he knew it was going to hurt her when she realized that he was ending their brief relationship. The odd thing was, she didn’t seem to know it. He’d heard from his brother, Cash, that she’d said he was working hard and that’s why they weren’t being seen together in town.

  She hadn’t gotten the message, he realized. He was going to have to do something drastic to make her understand. Something painful.

  If only she’d taken the hint and gone about her own business. He grimaced inwardly as he realized that he’d given her every indication that he wanted her in his life. She was an innocent, and he’d seduced her. He’d looked forward to their meetings. Even now, the memory of Grace in his arms was powerful enough to disturb him.

  But even more powerful than his hunger for her was his memory of what it was like to lose a loved one. It had been ten years and still the anguish of that time in his life was vivid. He couldn’t bear to go through it again. Better to live in the past than risk his heart a second time. Grace was a sweet woman. He liked her. But she wasn’t the sort of woman who normally appealed to him. He liked aggressive, confident, powerful women; women like Jaqui. A quiet, clinging woman who couldn’t relate to him intellectually wasn’t going to fit into his world.

&
nbsp; He’d let Grace sidetrack him, but now he had to put a stop to her fantasies. He had to make her understand that he didn’t want her in his life. He hated having to hurt her, but she should have realized he wasn’t interested in marriage. He was thirty-six and single. Surely she knew that men who were still unmarried at that age were confirmed bachelors?

  “Is something wrong?” one of his colleagues asked curiously.

  He forced a smile. “No. I was just thinking about this case.”

  “Have any luck over in Palo Verde?” he asked.

  That brought back the memory of Grace with him, and it stung. “Not much,” he replied. “But their police chief’s been doing some interviews in the case. Maybe he’ll turn up that witness.”

  “Maybe so.”

  Garon went back to work, mentally promising himself that he was going to have it out with Grace this weekend and show her, once and for all, that he wasn’t interested in her.

  GRACE WAS CONFUSED by Garon’s avoidance of her. He’d seemed as involved as she was, especially when they became intimate. She knew that he’d enjoyed her. But then he’d taken off and hadn’t even bothered to call. No man was that busy. No, he wasn’t overwhelmed with work. He was trying to get rid of Grace without confrontations.

  She should have realized that a man like him wouldn’t be interested seriously in some small town spinster who didn’t even have a college degree. If he’d wanted Grace for keeps, he certainly wouldn’t have gone to that party at Jaqui’s aunt’s house. He was attracted to the woman. She was like him—sophisticated and career-minded. And she certainly wouldn’t be interested in settling down with him. She probably wouldn’t even want children….

  Children! She placed her hands on her flat stomach and felt sick all over. She’d told him she couldn’t have a child. Was that why he’d stopped seeing her? Before she told him that, he’d been very interested in her.

  She bit her lower lip and tears stung her eyes. That explained it. He was feeling his years, maybe, and he was thinking about a family. But Grace was out of the running because she couldn’t give him a child. That was why he was avoiding her. He didn’t want to hurt her, but she was barren. Yes, she had to admit, that was surely the reason he’d stopped calling her.

  She sat down in her easy chair and let the tears roll down her cheeks. Life had cheated her. From her nightmarish childhood to the final indignity of being left only half a woman, life had failed her entirely. She might as well get used to being alone, because it was all she would ever be able to expect. No man wanted a wife who couldn’t bear children. She should have realized it!

  Finally she got up, wiped her eyes and went to make herself a pot of coffee. Her sewing project was nearing completion. She had to concentrate on that, and stop trying to build castles in the air. She would get over Garon. She could get over anything. She’d proved her ability to survive tragedy. She just had to get in a better frame of mind and stop crying over spilled milk.

  THERE WAS AN ARTICLE in the San Antonio paper about the little girl who was killed recently. Grace read it with a sinking feeling in her stomach. The child was only ten. She had long blond hair and light eyes. When she’d been a child, Grace’s hair had been long. And her own eyes were light. She felt cold all over. Someone had mentioned that the child who died in Palo Verde was also blond.

  The killer had struck three times in Texas, as far as law enforcement people could reckon: in Palo Verde, in Del Rio and now in the outskirts of San Antonio. He chose his victims carefully. He left no clues at the crime scene. He was methodical and intelligent. The article in the paper mentioned that he’d just sent a note to the local paper claiming twelve kills, in three states, and daring the police to find him. He knew that FBI behavioral specialists had been involved, to do a profile of the unknown killer. It would do them no good, he said in a typed letter. He was smarter than they were. There would, he promised, be more victims. Many more.

  Grace put down the paper and came to a decision that was painful to make. She wasn’t sure that Garon realized the killer targeted a certain type of child. Or that there was something about the killer that was completely unknown. He needed to know. And there was a case she remembered, that nobody knew about except a handful of people in Jacobsville. What she could tell him might help him find the killer. She’d been hiding in the shadows for too long already. She couldn’t let another small life be lost.

  She tried the phone, but his answering machine picked it up. So she drove over to Garon’s house. It was only seven in the evening, and his car was in the driveway, so he must be home.

  She went up the steps slowly, and rang the door bell.

  There was a pause, then the sound of big, booted feet. There was a muffled curse before the door opened.

  It was Garon, but not the man who’d become so passionate with her. This was a cold, indifferent stranger who glared down at her with eyes that seemed to hate her.

  “I’m sorry to barge in,” she began, “but I need to talk to you.”

  “You don’t take hints, do you, Grace?” he asked coldly. “I tried to do it the easy way, but you’re persistent. So let’s get it straight. I don’t want to see you again. I don’t want to hear from you. Don’t call, and don’t come here again.”

  Her eyes widened. She felt the words hit her like a blow. “Ex…excuse me?” she stammered, shocked.

  “You’re looking for something permanent. I’m not. I don’t want a long-term relationship of any kind, especially not with someone like you.”

  “What do you mean, someone like me?” she asked, astonished.

  “You’re a small town spinster, Grace, with few talents and minimum education,” he said firmly, hating the words even as he forced them out. “We don’t have anything in common except physical attraction, and it doesn’t last. You need some steady cowboy who wants a domesticated little woman to keep house for him.”

  Her face flushed. “I see.”

  He felt like a dog, so he was more antagonistic than he would have been normally. “You needed help, and I did what I could for you. But I’d have done it for anyone. You expected more than I could give you. I’m tired of having people gossip about us. That’s over. I don’t want you, Grace. Go home.”

  She couldn’t even manage a comeback. Her heart was breaking inside her. She knew that her face had gone deathly pale. She turned away, went back down the steps, got into her car and drove away.

  Garon cursed until he ran out of breath. He’d made her leave. Now he had to find a way to live with the guilt he felt about the way he’d treated her.

  GRACE WENT THROUGH the motions of living during the next week, but she didn’t feel much of anything. She went to her jobs and was glad that Garon didn’t come into either of the businesses. She didn’t want to see him ever again.

  But suddenly, he was everywhere. She went to the bank the following Friday, and there he was, standing in the next line. He looked at her and glared, as if he thought she’d followed him there. She ignored him.

  The next day, the local fish pond opened for business—a stocked pond with bass and bream, where customers could rent tackle and catch all they liked, paying for the fish by the pound.

  Grace was excited, because she usually entered the local fish rodeos in the summer. She grabbed her pole and bait and minnow bucket and drove to the pond. It was crowded, which was nothing unusual for the time of year. It was almost spring, after all, and this day it was unusually warm. She was wearing jeans and a tank top with a big gray plaid flannel overshirt. She and her grandfather had been fishing buddies. He’d taught her all she knew about the sport.

  She’d hoped to take her mind off Garon, because it was painful to remember the things he’d said to her. But she stopped dead when she was almost at the pond, because there was Garon, also in jeans and a chambray shirt, with a spinning reel, standing on the bank.

  He turned and saw her standing behind him and his eyes flashed with fury. He threw down the reel and strode to her. She back
ed up a step, intimidated by the look on his lean face.

  “I told you I wasn’t interested, Grace,” he said through his teeth. “Following me around isn’t going to get you anything! Didn’t you get it? I don’t want you!”

  His voice carried. At least one of the fishermen was a regular patron at Barbara’s Café. He stared at Garon with surprise, and then at Grace, who was flushed and sick, with pity.

  She turned on her heel and marched right back out the gate, her heart shaking her with its wild, helpless throb. The animal! How could he have embarrassed her so? What did he think, that she had so little pride, she couldn’t help but stalk him like a predator? She cursed under her breath as she made it back to her car. She threw her paraphernalia into the back seat, started the car and drove herself home.

  It was the weekend, so she didn’t have to go to work. Instead she finished her small sewing project and mailed off a package that carried all her hopes for the future. She finished pruning her roses, planted two new ones she’d ordered through the mail, and cleaned the house from top to bottom. She slept very well from the exhaustion. She dreamed of Garon, though, and the dreams taunted her with what she would never have with him.

  Monday morning, she went back to work at Judy’s florist shop and spent the day working on arrangements for two funerals of local people. At least when she was working, it was possible to forget Garon for a few minutes at a stretch. If only she could forget him for good!

  GARON HAD LONG SINCE contacted headquarters to do a profile on the child killer for Marquez, to help narrow down the list of possible suspects. Anyone who’d ever done time for crimes against children was immediately on the list. Detectives were going door to door again in the neighborhood where the child had lived, to ask about suspicious activity around the time of the child’s abduction. Garon hadn’t worked out of the San Antonio office long enough to develop a good network of informants, but one of his colleagues had. He went out and put his snitches to work, listening for word on the street of the child killer.