Cleo closed the door, went behind the desk and finally looked at him. “Sorry about the ‘Judd the Stud’ thing, but I called you that after I broke up with that Realtor I’d been dating and was whining to Daisy about there not being any good men. The rhyme just sort of rolled off my tongue, and I didn’t expect her to remember it.”
“A rhyme,” he muttered. It was stupid to feel any kind of pride over being called a stud, but that brainless part of him behind his zipper seemed to like it. “Good thing my name isn’t Rick or the rhyme might not have been so flattering.”
She smiled again, and because “brainless” had gotten in on this, Judd wanted to say something else to put that light back on her face. He might do it, too, after he got a few more explanations, and one he needed was about the bar itself. The other was about why she’d called him. Judd just made a circling motion with his finger for her to start talking.
For such a simple gesture, Cleo immediately understood what he wanted. She blew out a breath, motioned for him to sit down. “I bought the bar, but it’s in Daisy’s name.”
He gave that a few seconds of thought and figured it out. “Because of your criminal record. You thought you might have trouble getting a liquor license.”
She nodded, smiled. “Are you going to arrest me?”
Judd studied her and sank down into one of the chairs. “No. But I’m not sure you needed to do things this way. You were arrested for stealing a car when you were barely sixteen. That’s a juvie record and doesn’t usually have any weight once you’re an adult.”
“I was arrested again when I was eighteen,” she confessed. “I helped someone get out of a bad situation when she was trying to get away from a guy who was whaling on her. I was charged with breaking and entering after I picked the locks on his apartment so she could get her things. I didn’t do any jail time for it, only got probation, but I didn’t want to take any chances that it would interfere with the liquor license.”
Judd got that. Didn’t like it much, though, because she was bending the law. “You trust Daisy?”
“Absolutely. We’ve been friends for years now, and she spent time in the system, too.”
The system. Such sterile little words that always made Judd’s stomach tighten into a rock-hard knot.
“Daisy didn’t have it as bad as we did,” Cleo went on, and she immediately waved off that answer with a gesture of her hand and another smile. “Thanks for coming.” She paused. “Are you okay?”
Okay was a little word, too, but it could open a big-assed conversation that he didn’t want to have so he settled for a nod.
“When I called Buck, he mentioned that you’d had a bad time a while back,” Cleo added.
Now his gut tightened for a different reason. Buck was Buck McCall, the last foster father Judd and his brothers had had after a long string of foster dickheads and assholes. The same applied to Cleo, since she’d landed under the care of Buck, and his then wife, about the same time as Judd. Buck was decent, as solid as they came.
And apparently he was also a blabbermouth.
“I’m fine,” Judd said once he got his jaw unclenched. When he got back to Coldwater, he’d be having a chat with Buck about keeping private shit private.
“Don’t be mad at Buck.” Cleo obviously noticed the jaw reaction. She fluttered her fingers toward the photo. “He remembers how close we were, and he didn’t get into specifics. He only said you had been through a rough patch. Your brother Nico also mentioned it. Again, no specifics.”
Judd had no intention of filling her in on those particulars, but he got a nasty flashback of himself falling down drunk. Literally. He’d ended up at the bottom of his porch steps.
“You talk to Buck and Nico often?” he asked, wondering if that’s why she’d left that voice mail. Buck was recovering from cancer treatments. Also, he was no spring chicken, and it didn’t take a cop’s eye to see that the man hadn’t been looking his best. Too pale, and just the day before, Judd had walked in on him napping. Buck wasn’t a napper.
“Nico and I talk every now and then,” Cleo explained, “and he’s stopped by a couple of times to see me.”
Well, Nico sure knew how to keep a secret because he hadn’t mentioned a word of it. Apparently, Judd would be chatting with his little brother...after he’d dealt with Buck.
“As for Buck,” Cleo went on, “I try to call him at least every other month, and I visit him when I can.” Cleo finally sat, then picked up an ink pen and fidgeted with it.
Nerves, Judd knew. And he waited for her to voice the same concern Judd had for their foster father’s health. Since Buck was recovering from cancer, the concern was justified.
Still fidgeting, Cleo glanced at the picture. “You and I go back a long way. Seventeen years. Friends,” she added, as if testing that word to see if he agreed with the label.
Not quite friends. More than that. Then less, once she’d been moved to another foster home shortly after that picture on her bookshelf had been taken. Judd had stayed in Coldwater with his brothers and Buck, while Cleo had been placed with a family in San Antonio only days after Buck’s wife, Anita, had been killed in a car wreck. The system hadn’t thought it appropriate for a teenage girl to be living in the house with four teenage boys and a foster father when there was no female around.
“Remember the night I left you a note on your bed and asked you to do me a big favor?” The smile she flashed him was laced with nerves now, too.
“Sex,” he provided. “You wanted me to rid you of your virginity.” And she’d done that with a “check yes or no” box with the question “You want to get lucky tonight?”
“You obliged me,” she said.
Judd lifted his shoulder. “I was sixteen. It didn’t take any arm twisting. I checked that ‘yes’ box pretty damn fast.” He paused, studied her. “You didn’t ask me here to have sex with you, did you?”
He knew the answer to that was “no.” Cleo and he hadn’t had sex in seventeen years, not since she’d moved to San Antonio. Still, it took her several long moments to confirm his “no” by voicing one of her own.
She looked him straight in the eyes. “You remember how bad it could be in the system.”
Yeah, he remembered. Still had nightmares about it, but he settled for a nod. One that accompanied what Judd was certain was a confused look. Why the hell was Cleo digging up this old dirt and memories?
“I need you to go somewhere with me,” she said, standing. She scribbled a note and put it in the center of her desk. It said, “Daisy, I’ll be back soon.”
Judd looked up from the note and stared at her. “Go where?”
She opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again and repeated the process until she took hold of his arm, pulling him up from the chair. “Please, just come with me.”
“What’s this about?” Judd demanded.
“Another favor.” With her grip tightening, she led him out the door. “A big one.”
CHAPTER TWO
WHEN UNDER STRESS—like now—Cleo liked to play a little mind game that she called BS, as in “best scenario.” The rules of BS were simple. She mentally skirted past all the bad and unfortunate things that could happen until she reached the one that was good and fortunate.
In this case, she might have to settle for fair to middling.
“What’s this about?” Judd repeated, and even though he pushed off the grip she had on his arm, he continued to follow her out the back exit and to her car. What he didn’t do was get in after Cleo used her keypad to unlock the passenger-side door for him.
She considered what to say and how to say it and decided she’d been right that showing him was the only way. If she spelled it out now without Judd seeing the situation firsthand, he was going to tell her a flat “no” instead of the fair to middling response that she hoped he’d give after some serious thought.
“Remember when you beat up Simon Peterson because he was harassing me?” she asked.
Judd’s dark right eyebrow winged up over his equally dark eye. Actually, a couple of things were dark about him. Midnight black hair, deep brown eyes and a skin tone that she’d heard Buck say was a legacy from Judd’s Apache grandmother. His expression was dark, too. Always had been, with some serious intensity thrown in. In a nutshell, Judd was tall, dark and dangerous-looking, but Cleo knew his touch could be incredibly gentle. That’s why she’d gone to his bed seventeen years ago.
That’s why she’d wanted him here now.
Not for his gentle foreplay, though. But because he was the perfect package for what she had in mind. Of course, Judd wasn’t going to see it that way.
“I’m not going to beat up Simon Peterson for you again,” Judd growled. “He’s a preacher now and has six kids.”
Apparently, Simon had come a long way from the time he’d grabbed her boob. Then when she’d put Simon in his place by yelling at him, he’d made it his teenage life’s mission to harass her. That had included flicking globs of spit-filled gum in her hair, tripping her and shoving her into a mop bucket that the janitor had left out. Cleo wasn’t especially proud to have come to Judd for help with that, but Simon had outsized her by eight inches and a hundred pounds.
Those were the days before she’d learned a good kick to the balls was the great equalizer.
“Just please get in the car,” she begged. “This won’t take long.”
She held her breath, waiting, and mercy, the man did indeed make her wait. It was probably only the risk of heat stroke that had Judd finally sliding into her car. Before he could change his mind, she put on her seat belt and drove out of the parking lot—fast.
With Judd staring at her.
“If this is about Buck,” he grumbled, “just give it to me straight. Did his cancer return?”
“It’s not about Buck.” And she wanted to assure Judd that Buck was in good health, but even when she played the BS game, the best she could do was that everything was possibly all right when it came to their former foster father. “The last time I spoke to him, he did mention that he was going back in for a regular checkup. Did he?”
Judd lifted his shoulder in that casual shrug that was as easy as the smoky drawl of his voice. “If he did, he’s not talking to me about it. He just said he was fine,” Judd said, emphasizing the last word.
Cleo wondered if Judd knew that was the exact word he himself had used when she’d asked how he was. Probably not. She hadn’t believed it any more than Buck’s fine. And that troubled her a lot.
Maybe what she was going to ask Judd to do would be too much for him. She knew about his drinking problem. Buck had mentioned it. She’d heard gossip. Plus, five or so years ago when she’d stopped by Buck’s on Christmas Eve, she’d also decided to say hello to Judd, who lived in a house on Buck’s ranch. When Judd hadn’t answered her knock, she’d peeked in the window and had seen him passed out on the sofa, an empty bottle of whiskey next to him on the floor.
The devil you know.
As bad as the whiskey devil was, she knew from what Judd had muttered in his nightmares that he often battled with far worse demons. Both those demons and the booze could drag him down, but Buck had assured her that Judd was now clean and sober.
Those clean and sober eyes were now drilling into her. “I don’t like surprises,” he reminded her.
She nodded. “And I’m not being secretive to piss you off. It’s just a picture is going to be worth a thousand words.” Cleo paused. “And then I can ask you for that huge favor.”
He continued to study her. “Is the favor legal?”
Since the BS answer to that was “possibly,” Cleo just stayed quiet and took the turn into the Pleasant Park neighborhood. Years ago, when it’d been in its prime, it had deserved that name, but it certainly didn’t now. It was a long street of run-down houses, trash, gang graffiti and abandoned cars.
When she pulled to a stop behind one of the cars spray-painted with anatomically impossible sexual suggestions, Judd slid his hand over the weapon in his shoulder holster. “This isn’t my jurisdiction, and I’d rather not have to shoot anyone.”
“Shooting won’t be necessary.” She hoped.
Steeling herself, Cleo went to the door of the small wood-frame house with its blistered blue paint and rust-scabbed iron porch railings. Since what was once a doorbell was dangling from what had once been its mount, she knocked. Waited.
Prayed.
And knocked again.
Her heart was doing a pitter pat, and not in a good way, then the door was opened by a pint-size cowboy wearing just a pair of tighty-whities, boots and a hat. He was eating a red Popsicle that had melted down his arms and onto his belly. A little gray kitten pranced and coiled around his legs.
“Aunt Cleo!” he squealed, and launched himself, Popsicle and all, to hug her legs. She scooped him up, kissed him on the cheek and made a mental note to take her dress to the dry cleaners.
Judd didn’t say a word, not verbally, anyway, but he knew she didn’t have any siblings. “This is Leo.”
“Little Leo,” he corrected, and he held up five fingers of his left hand to indicate his age, something he was proud of since he’d only held that age-five distinction for a week.
One very long, very shitty week.
Yet, Little Leo still managed a smile—and an immediate interest in Judd. Leo eyed Judd’s face, his cowboy clothes, his gun and then his badge before he started squirming for Cleo to put him down. The moment his feet were back on the floor, Leo took off running away from them.
“Beck!” the boy yelled as he ran, his cowboy boots clomping on the floor.
“His big brother,” Cleo explained to Judd. “Beckham will probably think you’re here to arrest him.”
“Did Beckham do something to warrant an arrest?” Judd sounded very much like the cop that he was.
On the BS test, the answer to that was another “possibly” so Cleo kept quiet and stepped inside.
The place was a cluttered mess, just as it had been the other times Cleo had visited, and the TV was blaring with a talk show where people were yelling about the paternity of a baby being held by a crying woman. Everything smelled of booze, piss and other things she didn’t want to identify.
“What the hell’s going on here?” Judd demanded, still using his cop’s voice.
She closed the door to stop the loss of the meager amount of cool air from the AC. “Yesterday, I went to the funeral of a dear friend, Miranda Morrelli. Cancer,” she added.
Cleo blinked back the tears that she swore she wouldn’t spill. There’d already been enough tears, and now it was time to woman up and try to do the right thing for her friend.
“Little Leo is her son,” Cleo went on. “He’s named after me,” she said, hoping it would tell Judd just how close Miranda and she had been. No way could she say it with words right now because those tears would just leak out and her throat would close up from the grief.
Like his tone, Judd’s gaze was all cop as it slid around the room. “What the hell is going on here?” he repeated.
Cleo tried to give him a quick summary before his patience wore out. “Miranda died only three weeks after her diagnosis. She got a very aggressive form of cancer, and there wasn’t time for her to finalize giving me custody of the boys. That’s how they ended up here with Miranda’s mother.”
And speaking of the devil, Miranda’s mother, Lavinia Mercer, staggered from the kitchen and into the living room, a can of beer in one hand, a cigarette in the other. She was wearing a flimsy gown, with no bra. Cleo had no trouble determining that because the woman’s boobs sagged practically to her belly button, and they flopped when she walked.
Lavinia’s bloodshot eyes immediately narrowed when they landed on Cleo. “You’re not wel
come here,” Lavinia spat out. “I don’t want no hoity-toity bitch looking down on me.” Since Lavinia tripped and fell onto the couch, Cleo had no choice but to look down on the crone.
“I came to see the boys,” Cleo said. “To make sure they’re okay.”
“They’re fine. Now get the pissing hell out of here.” Lavinia’s scowl got harder when she looked at Judd. “Get out and take your cop friend with you.”
“Not until I see the boys.” Cleo took Judd’s hand, leading him to the hall. Lavinia continued to shout at them, but Cleo was hoping the woman was too drunk to get up and follow them.
Thankfully, Judd didn’t three-peat his question about what the hell was going on, but Cleo did some silent cursing when she stepped into the small bedroom. Little Leo was there, his Popsicle still dripping while he watched Beckham try to pry open the paint-stuck window.
Isaac, the third brother, was on the bed, playing a video game. He only spared Cleo and Judd a blank glance.
“He’s not here to arrest you.” Cleo hurried to Beckham, and even though the fifteen-year-old towered over her, she still spun him around to face her. Beckham might have been the size of a man, but that face was all boy, and she immediately saw the grief, anger and fear.
Feelings that Cleo was experiencing herself.
With some more steeling up, Cleo hooked her arm around Beckham’s shoulders and, with a little force, turned him toward Judd. “This is Beckham, and that’s Isaac. You’ve already met Little Leo. Guys, this is Judd Laramie, an old friend of mine.”
All three pairs of eyes went to Judd. Suspicious eyes except for Leo, who held out his Popsicle to Judd to offer him a lick. Judd declined with a head shake before he did another of those cop sweeps around the room.
“We need to talk,” Judd told her. No cop’s voice this time. It was more of a pissed-off warning.
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