Kelton's Rules (Harlequin Super Romance)

by Nicholson, Peggy

  Thank you, she told him silently, holding his gaze. Her ex-husband loved his son, but Steve had never gone out of his way to make Skyler feel important or accomplished. He had a boisterous, challenging approach—Mr. Top Gun himself—that might have been perfect for a less sensitive boy, but for Sky… Sometimes she felt that Steve hurt Sky’s confidence or his feelings without ever intending to. So thank you, Jack. Who cared if he was the worst flirt in Durango, as long as he was kind to her child?

  Jack’s heavy brows lifted a quarter inch in wry acknowledgment and his gray eyes sparkled. Aw, shucks, it was nothing, ma’am, was the private message he seemed to be sending her across the table.

  Abby’s smile deepened. Whether he was the King of Can’t Commit or not, he had…generosity. One of the qualities she most admired in a person of either sex.

  “And I saw a hawk!” Kat announced, tired of all the building talk. “I’m going to catch it, Abby, and train it to come when I whistle.”

  “Are you?” Abby reached over to dab a smear of lasagna off the falconer’s cheek with her napkin. “I can see you with a hawk riding your shoulder. Like a desert princess.” In fact, she could see it. What a portrait that would make! Her eyes shifted to Jack’s face, filled with a parent’s rueful pride. And that’s the thank-you gift I could give you when I go, a portrait of Kat. Abruptly her own mood swerved into melancholy.

  Jack lowered his head as he studied her. “And how was your day?”

  She rallied and said, “I’ve met every last cat in Trueheart, thanks to the Cooperman brothers. And I went off on an errand…” She’d decided not to speak of DC, at least not to the kids. “But when I returned, I found that Whitey had spent more time rigging up my washing machine so I could use it than he had working on the bus’s radiator. We may not be able to escape this town any time soon, but when we do, by gosh, we’ll do it in clean clothes!”

  Jack failed to see the humor in that observation. “Yeah…” He stood abruptly. “Who besides me needs more of this astounding garlic bread?”

  ON MONDAY MORNING, Jack encountered Fielding in the parking lot behind their building. “I met your neighbor at the supermarket,” Alec announced, rising out of his ’62 Porsche coupe. “Sha—zam! Why don’t I ever get neighbors like that?”

  “I hear you also asked her out.” Jack scowled at the door of his Jeep, where Abby had dinged the paint the night they met. He needed to touch that up.

  “Oh-ho, she told you?”

  “Yup, and now I’m telling you—back off.” His tone was mild, but he underlined the message with an unblinking stare. “She’s taken.”

  Fielding crossed his arms—a not so subtle reminder that he hit the weight machines at the gym three times a week. But he wasn’t quite crass enough to flex as he smirked. “She is? I must have missed the brand, pardner. Just where on that filly is it located—flank, rump or—”

  “I’m serious, Alec.”

  “Serious with a capital S?”

  Jack didn’t flinch, not outwardly. “Don’t be ridiculous. But all the same…”

  Fielding’s grin only widened. “Does Abby know she’s taken—temporarily, so to speak?”

  “She will. So—”

  “Relax, friend.” Alec nodded toward the entrance. “I asked the fair Abby out from the goodness of my heart. To help you clarify your feelings.”

  “The only clear thing around here is an aroma of bullshit,” Jack growled, matching him stride for sauntering stride. “Save it for the jury. But keep in mind, I saw her first.”

  Fielding opened the door and waved him through. “If seeing guaranteed scoring, we’d all be contented men. But the lady struck me as a trifle…prickly. Maybe you’re jumping the gun?”

  Timing was everything, Jack had to admit.

  After she’d filed for her first divorce, Maura had gone for anything in pants. Best way to drive that rat from my mind, she’d told him with a wicked smile the first time she unzipped him, there in his office.

  In the years since Maura, he’d noticed that most of the divorced women whose cases he handled—at least those in their twenties, thirties and forties—sooner or later seemed to go through that lusty stage of the Divorce Crazies. A feminine declaration of independence. An irrevocable sundering of the marital bond. Even the man-haters donned their high heels and went hunting.

  Could he have been unlucky enough to miss Abby’s declaration? Maybe she’d already stormed through that stage—then out the far side—before she’d headed west?

  No, Jack was almost certain not. One look in her big green eyes, and you could see: Abby was still smarting from her breakup. Taking it too much to heart.

  “Nope, I’m not jumping the gun.” He meant to make it happen. It was high time Abby learned to laugh again—and who better to remind her how?

  “Care to bet on that?” Alec inquired. “Double the Reuben you already owe me or nothing.”

  To refuse the bet would be to admit his fear, to himself and to Fielding, that Abby might not come easily into his arms—or at all. Unthinkable. “Taken and I’ll raise you—a Reuben every week for a year,” Jack countered. “With chips.”

  ABBY DIDN’T FIND DC-3 Monday or Tuesday.

  Wednesday, Michelle gave Doc Kerner his breakfast for free in exchange for his setting the Havahart trap out back by the garbage cans. At dusk its door snapped shut on a spitting-mad orange tomcat.

  Looking at his war-torn ears, Abby could guess why DC hadn’t returned to the café. Skyler’s pet was about as tough as a day-old marshmallow. No way would he battle this furry thug for garbage rights.

  But what other hope did she have? No one else had reported a sighting of the white cat all week. Abby reset the trap.

  And found it empty Thursday at dawn.

  Heavy of heart, she drove back to the cottage and launched herself into her yoga routine. What to do, what to do, what to do? was her mantra as she stood on her head, gazing out across the growing lawn. Since the weekend, Sky had been asking after his pet house-to-house across Trueheart, which had to be a terrible ordeal; he was almost as shy, meeting strangers, as she was. With his hopes fading, he grew bluer and sulkier by the day, despite Kat’s unflagging attempts to cheer him.

  Abby couldn’t bear it. He’d just been starting to regain his smile when DC vanished. Last night as she tucked him in, he’d muttered tearfully that he’d have never lost DC if they’d stayed in New Jersey. In other words, if I hadn’t divorced Steve…

  The grass blurred and wavered as if she viewed it through a rainy window. Abby swallowed the lump in her throat. Too soon to offer him a new pet, I suppose. Sky had the gift—or maybe the curse—of fidelity, as she had. He’d have to live with an empty and aching heart for a while, before he’d consent to let a new pet inside. Because a new cat would only seem like a trespasser until he’d gotten over the old. Oh, DC, come home, you big white doofus!

  Her head was aching as much as her heart. She needed to wipe her eyes. She brought down one leg, the second, then sat up in kneeling position, dizzy from the reversal.

  To find herself facing a long, masculine pair of legs clad in khaki—Jack’s legs. That was all she needed, to be found standing on her head, crying!

  “Yes?” she growled—and looked higher.

  He held an armload of dirty white, owl-eyed cat—DC! “I believe this is yours?” He grinned.

  “Oh!” She sprang to her feet. “Where did you—oh, Jack! Oh, bless you!” Pressing a hand to the cat’s broad back, she stood on tiptoe and leaned over him to kiss Jack’s cheek. “You miraculous, wonderful—”

  In a heartbeat, he turned his head—and caught her kiss full on the lips. She sucked in a startled breath…and tasted coffee and man. Time stopped in a moment of heat and utter astonishment.

  “Abby!” he murmured fiercely against her, bringing one hand to her nape, holding her there on tiptoe.

  Her lips moved, framing a mute rejection. She shook her head half an inch in stunned denial. But his mouth answer
ed hers and somehow the movement turned to a slow waltz…liquid, enticing… Her lashes fluttered and drifted shut, the better to taste him.

  The tips of their tongues touched—and her heart slammed back into motion. What on earth am I doing?

  Squashed between them, DC growled and lashed his tail.

  Oh, yes—DC… Abby set her shock aside, for later. Planted one hand on Jack’s hard chest and threw back her head to break free. “W-where did you find him—Michelle’s?” Borrowing the Subaru so many times this week, she’d had to tell him her reason, though she’d kept Sky and Kat in the dark.

  “Yup.” His hand moved restlessly down her spine to the back of her waist. Beneath her splayed fingers, his heart was hammering. “I figured since you weren’t having any luck in the dawn-to-dusk watch, I’d try the night hours…” His voice was husky, dreamy, half an octave lower than usual. “About 3:00 a.m., darned if he didn’t come strolling across the parking lot, smug as you please. Hopped up onto a garbage can as if he owned it.”

  The sound of the screen door creaking startled them both.

  Abby pushed off and retreated a step, then turned. On the back stoop, Sky stood frozen, his mouth agape.

  His jaw snapped shut; his eyes narrowed dangerously behind his thick lenses. His gaze moved from her pinkening face—to the cat in Jack’s arms. “Oh… Oh, DC!” He leaped every stair to hit the ground running. Gathering the cat into a hug, he buried his face in white fur. “You luggums, spaceshot, good-for-nothing furball! Where’ve you been?”

  He looked up, laughing and weeping. “W-where’d you find him, Mr. Kelton?”

  While Jack explained, Abby caught a movement at the corner of her eye. Glancing aside, she spotted Kat, kneeling in the gap of the fence that was her own special passage between the yards. The girl gripped a picket on either side—and smiled.

  And just how long have you been lurking? Abby wondered, warily returning her mischievous grin. Had both of their children witnessed that kiss?

  “WHATCHA DOING?” Kat asked later that morning, finding Abby at her drawing table in the living room.

  “Making a thank-you poster for everybody in Trueheart who helped look for DC.” Abby had already completed her brushwork rendition of Sky, face radiant as he hugged his cat. She’d made dozens of sketches all morning while he washed the tomcat, scolded him, sat dotingly alongside as DC crouched over a bowl of food, then stroked his fur while he snoozed. But this particular drawing seemed to say it all. DC’s home and we’re so grateful!

  “Maybe you and Sky could run it down to Hansen’s for me, when I’m done?” Abby was learning to economize her efforts. One poster taped to Josie Hansen’s counter would tell the world—and dash the Cooperman brothers’ dreams of untold wealth and lethal weapons. While her very best sketch of her son and his pet, a quarter the size of this thank-you poster, would make a gift for Michelle as soon as she could frame it.

  “Sure, we could do that.” While Abby lettered her message, Kat wandered the room, fiddling with the pens and pencils on the table, then the jars of cut flowers arranged on the mantelpiece. She dropped onto the couch to open a book of Toulouse-Lautrec posters that Abby had left on the coffee table. “When’s your vacation over?” Kat asked idly, turning a page.

  “Hmm?” Lips pursed in concentration, Abby completed the downstroke on a G.

  “When are you guys going home? To New Jersey?”

  Abby brushed a lock of hair off her forehead with her wrist. “We’re not going home. I mean, New Jersey isn’t our home anymore, sweetie. We moved.”

  “Oh.” Kat turned another page. “Then Sky’s dad is flying out here? To meet you guys?”

  “No-o.” Surely Sky had told her? But apparently not. “No, Kat, he’s not. He and I are divorced.”

  “Oh…” Kat sat very still. “But Sky said…”

  Abby glanced around at her warily. “You know what that means, right? Divorced?”

  Kat nodded vigorously. “You and Sky’s daddy broke up.” She smiled, closed the book and bounded to her feet. “Well, see you later!” She darted for the door.

  “Don’t run off, okay? I’ll have this ready to go in twenty minutes.”

  What was that about? Abby wondered with a frown, returning to her poster. Something to do with the kiss this morning, she supposed. Kat liked everything clear and direct. She was a forthright child who needed to know precisely who was on first—and on second. Or who’s kissing her daddy—a married lady or a divorced one?

  A frisson of remembered sensation wafted down Abby’s spine. Her toes curled in her shoes. Oh, that kiss! Like a girls’ boarding school dream, exactly as Michelle had said. A glimpse of wet, warm heaven. A trembling started below her navel and climbed all the way to her breasts, then rattled her shoulders. Cut it out, she scolded herself. That kiss had been nothing but gratitude on her part.

  And on Jack’s?

  She punished her bottom lip with her teeth.

  So the flirt copped a freebie. Turned a chaste thank-you into a cosmic meltdown. Still, embarrassing though the incident had been, she had no reason to take it seriously.

  Men were inclined to grab what they could, as the ex-wife of Steven Lake should know. “That doesn’t mean it’s personal,” Steve had protested when she’d finally confronted him with his infidelities. “Or that it means anything at all. Why shouldn’t I feel good when I get the chance? You only go around once, baby, but it’s got nothing to do with love—with us!”

  Maybe so. Doubtless so, but it wasn’t Abby’s way. She wanted her kisses to have meaning, or she wanted none at all.

  Right now she’d take none, thank you.

  Except that a kiss once flown could never be recalled. The taste of Jack lingered on her lips like honey.

  YOWZA! HOLY TOLEDO! That kiss was strobing in his brain, throbbing in all points south. Jack relived it roughly every forty seconds throughout the day, and when he grew tired of the factual replay, he spun it into a thousand fantasy versions: him kissing Abby standing on his head. Kissing her under water. Pulling her up from a tango dip to kiss her dizzy. Him kissing her all beaded with sweat and velvety naked.

  Maybe he should kidnap her cat, recover it and collect another delectable reward?

  Nah. There had to be some more efficient way. Like maybe I say, “Let’s kiss”? And Abby says… No, she doesn’t speak; she just grabs my tie… He was wearing a tie in this scenario. And she—

  He looked up to find Emma Castillo standing in his office doorway, holding a sheath of papers, her eyes narrowed. “You’ve been playing golf again?” She blew a lock of cobalt hair off her forehead.

  “Uh, no.” For politic’s sake he’d played a few rounds this spring with Judges Rankin and Grew, but it bored him silly. “Why do you—” Shut up, Kelton. The first rule of the courtroom was that you didn’t ask a question if you didn’t know the answer.

  “That day you hit a hole in one, you— Oh.” Emma clapped a hand over her mouth and giggled behind it. “Oh, yikes! These are ready for your signature.” She smacked the papers down on his desk and fled.

  I look like that? If kissing Abby once could do that to him, what would he look like if—

  When, he told himself sternly. Got to think positive, here. When.

  This weekend, he promised himself. Today was Thursday. By Sunday at the latest he’d have another kiss to match the first.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “WELL, YOU TELL YOUR MAMA we’re all mighty pleased that DC-3 came back.” Mrs. Hansen held the new thank-you poster at arm’s length to peer at it over her glasses. “Handsome cat he is, too. And this looks just like you, doesn’t it?”

  “Arrr-um.” Sky shrugged and stared at his sneakers. He wished his mom hadn’t put him in the drawing. Oh, well. “Could I please have a chocolate cone?”

  Kat chose the special, which was cherry-blueberry with bits of red licorice this week, then they stood, licking solemnly, till Mrs. Hansen had taped the poster to the front of her counter.
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br />   “There!” She nodded to herself, satisfied. “Your mama ought to do portraits like your granddaddy. I knew a horse painter once who made good money.”

  “What color did he paint ’em?” Sky asked, picturing a man in a painter’s cap, rolling blue paint on a Clydesdale. Kat giggled and elbowed him hard. Mrs. Hansen darted him a suspicious glance, then sniffed and bustled away.

  “So now what?” he wondered, pausing on the walk outside the store. Kat was supposed to be sanding the last of the workbench planks for her dad. But it was too pretty a day to go straight home. DC was tucked away safe in Sky’s room, catching up on his “beauty rest,” as his mom had put it. All was right with the world—or as right as it could be for now, he told himself with a twinge of guilt.

  “Let’s go visit the fish.” Kat led him down the path behind the library, then over the grass to the park.

  A group of older girls were sitting on the steps to the gazebo. Kat stopped short and muttered, “Uh-oh.”

  “What’s the matter?” Sky asked in an undertone, pausing beside her.

  “It’s Marylou.”

  The blonde who used to baby-sit Kat, Sky remembered. The one Kat claimed to have seen kissing ol’ Cowboy Hat. “So?”

  “So she never really liked me. It was all an act she put on for my dad, so he’d pay her. But after you and me had that—”

  “He-ey, Kat. What are you, a snob?” the pretty blonde called merrily.

  “Nope.” Kat sighed and strolled on down the path. “Hi, Marylou.”

  “Ooo-ooh, would you look at that black eye? Isn’t that gorgeous?” Marylou nudged the chubby brunette beside her, then leaned to whisper something in her ear.

  The brunette let out a squeal of laughter.

  “I hear you’re fighting with boys now,” continued Marylou.

  Kat tipped up her chin. “And whippin’ their skinny butts.”

  “Oh, right! You and who else, your little four-eyed friend?”

  “You’re just mad ’cause Pete’s grounded for the summer,” Kat said with steely calm as Sky bristled. “But he’s stuck out on the Jarrett ranch, ridin’ and ropin’, so I bet he’s not missing you at all.”