Читать книгу The Sheriff With The Wyoming-Size Heart - Kara Larkin - Страница 9
ОглавлениеChapter One
After hours—or minutes—of concentration, the words slowed. Then ended. Margo Haynes didn’t know how long they’d been pouring from her mind to her fingers to the keyboard. It didn’t matter. Another scene had taken shape.
In the bright golden heat of an Indian summer, she pulled a second patio chair around to stretch her legs out on it. The afternoon breeze blew softly from the south. The giant cottonwood tree that shaded her back yard surrendered an occasional yellow leaf. A pair of squirrels chased each other tirelessly up and down an evergreen.
If she’d needed validation of a good choice, made at the right time, the new energy in her writing provided it. And the serenity of her new environment reinforced it.
Content, she tipped her face to the Wyoming sun and stretched her arms over her head to ease the stiffness from her shoulders. If she were to write a description of heaven right now, this minute, she would use today as her model. Cloudless skies, fresh air, silent streets. Privacy, anonymity, freedom.
Freedom.
After eleven long, torturous years, she had a home of her own, a new name in a town where no one knew her, enough work to keep her mind occupied and her hours filled, and an incredibly beautiful October day that invited her to work outside in shorts and a T-shirt. Paradise.
With peace shimmering inside her, she downed half a glass of iced tea and moved her portable computer from the patio table to her lap, adjusting the screen to eliminate glare.
She’d been in Laramie only two days, long enough to unpack her kitchen and her clothes, do a little shopping, and get her bearings. But the process of moving had interrupted her work for nearly a month, and the deadline for this manuscript loomed urgently. Rotating her shoulders a couple of times, she applied herself to the challenge of writing a smooth transition from the scene just ended to the scene about to begin.
When a voice called from somewhere behind her, as soft and sweet as the breeze, the sound barely registered in her mind.
“Hey,” the voice called again.
Turning, Margo saw a little gamine face peeping over the top of the six-foot fence that separated her yard from the back alley.
A girl. About five years old. And near enough to bring to the surface all the loss Margo had suppressed over the past ten years. She’d never seen Holly at this age, had missed this stage of her daughter’s life, and she hadn’t been around any children at all since giving her baby up for adoption.
Her heart suddenly in her throat, Margo ignored the similarities and concentrated on the differences. This child had brown eyes as round as quarters and thick red hair pulled back in a bushy ponytail. She had lightly freckled skin and a turned-up nose.
She’d wedged the toes of her sneakers into the diamond-shaped holes of the trellis fence, and her hands clung tightly to the top crosspiece. In an instant the girl’s precarious perch registered, and Margo raced for the gate. The latch jammed, but she hardly dared look to see what was the matter for fear the girl would fall if she glanced away.
The girl didn’t seem concerned. “My kitten got in your yard and he can’t come out.”
“Hold on,” Margo called. “I’m coming.”
“He came right through there.” A little hand let go of the fence rail, pointed at the ground, and grabbed the fence again. From the expression on the girl’s face, Margo knew the moment her fingers lost their grip. Forcing the gate open and bolting through, she caught the child just as she fell.
The toe of one shoe stayed wedged in the trellis, twisting the little girl’s leg. With her heart hammering against her ribs, Margo eased the foot free of the shoe. By a whisper of time she’d kept the child from falling, probably saved her from a broken leg. Or a broken neck. A mere second between safety and hurt. For once she’d been in the right place at the right time.
Without warning the girl’s soft weight sent an old, familiar longing coursing through Margo’s body, tightening her lungs until she could hardly breathe.
Holding the child close, she leaned against the fence to regain her equilibrium. Two little arms circled her neck, and Margo tried to hug her closer for comfort, but the girl eased back with a little giggle.
“You smell good.”
No sign of fear in the child. Not a hint of concern in her expression. Margo inhaled deeply to reclaim her own composure.
“Can I come and get my kitten?” the girl asked.
Like a second assault, another wave of longing crashed over Margo, this time breaking against the wall of detachment she’d erected over the years. She wanted to draw this child into her life and learn everything about her, fill in the spaces her imagination couldn’t satisfy about Holly. But if she did that, would it open wounds that had closed but hadn’t healed?
Trying not to be battered by her own self-doubt, Margo concentrated on why she’d moved from Texas to Wyoming. Though free at last in the eyes of the law, she also wanted freedom from recognition, to meet people who hadn’t already judged her. In Laramie she hoped to create a normal life for herself—and a normal person would help a little girl find a kitten.
“Of course.”
The girl slipped her hand into Margo’s, as tender and trusting as if they were close friends. Soft and warm and slightly gritty, it sent a host of memories careening through her head. Oh, Holly. But even as longing swelled, Margo dammed it off. The past was past, Holly hadn’t been hers for over ten years. And the new Margo Haynes did not let passion rule her. She held the gate and led the little girl into her yard. “I wonder where he went?”
In a gesture of unconcern, the girl lifted her shoulders almost to her ears, then lowered them again. “Somewhere.” She dropped onto the ground, folded her legs tailor-fashion and grinned up at Margo. “Pretty soon, he’ll come to me.”
Margo had never owned a cat, but she knew a lot about waiting. Usually it led only to more waiting. “That might take awhile, and then your mommy will be worried about you.”
“Uh-uh. She’s dead.”
Dead. Gone forever. To lose a child, to lose a parent—how much difference could there be? Margo might be able to control her emotions, but she couldn’t forget them. She sat beside the little girl, barely resisting the urge to pull her into her arms. “You must miss her a lot.”
“Sometimes I do. Sometimes I can’t remember her very well.”
Margo remembered her first panic attack when she couldn’t make her baby’s face form in her mind. “Does that make you scared?”
The girl nodded and Margo found her own head dipping in concert. “Was there some special name she used to call you?”
“Merry Ariel, because Ariel’s my name. She used to sing it, like this, ‘Merry Airy, merry, merry, merry, Ariel.”’
“Oh, that’s lovely. I’ll bet you can hear her voice when you sing it.”
Ariel sang it again, then reached out and slipped her hand into Margo’s. “I almost forgot. But when sing it, I remember her.”
“Yes. And she’ll always be in your heart.” Margo savored the sweet warmth of the girl’s hand and thought of the little things that kept Holly in her heart. A handful of photos. A lock of hair. A can of baby powder she kept just for the scent.
She’d rarely regretted giving Holly to a childless couple who would love and protect her. But being sure of her decision didn’t purge the sense of loss, it just mitigated the fear for her daughter’s well-being.
And whoever loved and protected Ariel might be worried about her this very minute. “I think we’d better find your kitten, since somebody’s probably looking for you.” Margo touched her finger to the turned-up nose for emphasis.
“Uh-uh. Daddy’s at work. I came home from school by myself.”
A latch-key kid? While likely only in kindergarten? Alarm clutched Margo’s lungs. “Don’t you have someplace to go?”
“I always come home. But Mrs. Whittaker had to go to Nebraska, so she doesn’t live with us anymore.”
Outrage began to nose Margo’s fear aside. “So who takes care of you?”
Ariel lifted her shoulders again. “I don’t know.”
The father had to be an idiot, or incompetent. Did he have a clue his daughter was wandering the streets alone, talking to strangers? Confronted with both anger and fear, Margo fought against letting such strong emotions run amok. She’d find Ariel’s daddy and calmly give him a piece of her mind. “Let’s track down your kitten.”
“He’ll come pretty soon.”
In kid time or cat time? Either way, Margo figured it could be anywhere from five minutes to five hours. “Maybe we can bribe him to come out in the open. I’ll go open a can of tuna fish.”
“Okay.”
Margo entered the back door at the side of the house, walked through a utility room and then into the kitchen. Since she’d organized her cupboards just that morning, she knew where to find the can opener. She scooped half a can of tuna onto a paper plate and broke it up to release as much odor as possible. Hurrying back to Ariel, she pulled up short at the sight of a man standing beside the child.
He turned when the screen door banged shut behind her, and immediate images imprinted themselves on her brain. Reddish gold hair. A sprinkling of freckles. Dark eyes locked with hers, challenging and furious.
Was he a threat? To Ariel? The twin beasts of fear and anger roared inside her. “Who the he—”
Then his uniform registered, and her fingers crushed the edge of the paper plate.
A cop. A big one. Over six feet with shoulders wide enough to fill a doorway. Her heart sprinted into double time, and a lump formed in her throat too large to swallow around. She’d never met a cop who wasn’t hard, cynical, detached, driven by duty. She’d met plenty who pretended compassion only to manipulate.
This one intimidated her by his size and his demeanor. She ran a nervous tongue over her bottom lip, and hated herself for even a minor show of weakness. She channeled her defensiveness into indignation. “You’d better have a very good reason for being in my yard.”
“I came for my daughter.”
Ariel’s daddy. Indignation magnified into outrage at his carelessness. She let anger flow without restraint. “Your daughter? And you let her wander the streets alone? Are you out of your mind? She’s too young to protect herself, or even recognize a dangerous situation. If you don’t know better as a father, you should as a cop. What if something—”
He held up his hand. His hard eyes bored into hers. “That’s exactly why I’m here.”
As quickly as her anger rose, fear took its place. She wanted to stay on the good side of the law, to avoid doing anything that might cause suspicion. Regaining control, Margo struggled to make her voice calm again. “She came for her kitten.”
“That’s what she said.”
Margo edged past him and handed the plate of tuna to Ariel. Ariel grinned up at her father and put the plate in her lap.
“Ariel knows she’s not supposed to walk home from school by herself.”
The man’s tone raised hairs on the back of Margo’s neck. Did he think she’d kidnapped the cat just to get her hands on his child? Possibly. Heaven knew, she understood the force of circumstantial evidence. She met his eyes, determined to regain impassivity, and offered no apology.
He held her gaze until silence grew heavy between them. Margo’s nerves stretched as she wondered what he saw, what he thought, what he’d do. Then Ariel tugged on his pant leg and pointed up into the big cottonwood.
“It’s working, Daddy. Look, Jelly was in the tree and now he’s coming down all by himself.”
As soon as the kitten settled into the feast, the man took the plate of tuna away, handed it back to Margo, and swept both Ariel and Jelly into his arms. “Hold on to him, okay?”
“Okay, Daddy.”
As he strode toward the trellis fence, Ariel peeped over his shoulder. “Bye,” she called, waving her adorable little hand.
“Bye,” Margo murmured.
“Can I come again?”
“Perha—” Margo began.
“We’ll talk about it at home,” the man interjected.
Putting her hand on her father’s face, Ariel pulled it around to make him look at her. “She’s nice, Daddy.”
The man stopped to unlatch the gate. “You know the rules, Scooter. You stay at the school until someone picks you up.”
“Daddy—”
“No exceptions.”
Shooting Margo one last piercing glance, Ariel’s father carried the little girl across the back alley. He opened a gate into the yard immediately behind hers.
Only when they’d disappeared inside their house did Margo’s legs collapse under her. She crumpled onto the ground, right where she’d sat in blissful ignorance and enjoyed his daughter’s company. God. A cop. The sheriff to be precise. And she’d ripped into him without the slightest concern for the consequences.
Damn. Hadn’t she worked for years to overcome her old tendency to let passion rule her actions? Hadn’t she identified when and where she was most susceptible? Hadn’t she made a science of the self-control she longed to have?
Obviously she’d met with so little challenge these past few years that the new concept of herself had never been tested. Until now. Today a flash flood of emotions had washed toward her and her dam of self-protection had given way.
Closing her eyes, she dragged deep calming breaths into her lungs and tried to imagine how it had looked through the cop’s eyes. Her anger had been out of concern for his child. Maybe that was all he’d see. Maybe he’d even appreciate Margo. for her concern when he had a chance to think about it. Maybe everything was okay.
She’d done nothing she couldn’t defend, said nothing she regretted. She had to believe she hadn’t put her new life at risk.
She had a new start in a new town where no one knew her or her past. She had a new identity that would give her the freedom to be a regular citizen and have normal relationships. She had a career, writing to her heart’s content, creating worlds, characters, crises, and above all, happy endings.
Riley’s concern for Ariel’s safety didn’t evaporate just because he had her safe in his arms. The three weeks since he’d lost his housekeeper hadn’t gone smoothly, but he’d managed. Evenings and weekends he had a list of teenagers to choose from. During the day, when he couldn’t get to the school himself, someone had filled in for him.
Today he’d been a little late, but it wasn’t the first time. And until today Ariel had always persuaded a friend or two to stay and play with her while she waited. Finding her gone, he’d put out an alert and within minutes all his deputies and most of his staff were looking for her. His whole available force. And the entire time, she was practically in their own backyard. He’d hear about this one for a while.
With Ariel still in his arms, he picked up the phone to have Liz send out the word she was okay.
“Daddy, we need to feed Jelly. Can we give him tuna fish?”
“You want to reward him for running away?”
“Oh, Daddy.”
Ariel squirmed, so Riley let her slide to the floor while he placed the call. The dispatcher’s relief told him Ariel would be the queen of the station after causing such a stir. Speak of reinforcing unacceptable behavior. Resigned, he hung up and turned to Ariel.
At five, she went her own way so engagingly he found it difficult to be strict with her. And he was her father. Everyone else catered to her as if she were royalty.
“So do I spank you, or send you to bed without dinner, or ground you for the rest of your life?”
She giggled and his stomach clenched. “It’s not funny, Ariel. I’ve been looking for you for almost an hour, and so have a lot of other people. We worry about you.”
“But, Daddy, I came straight home from school. Clara and James don’t have to wait for someone to pick them up. Why do I have to?”
“Because Clara and James walk together, and they go to Clara’s house, and Clara’s mommy is there waiting for them.”
“It’s not my fault I don’t have a mommy. And when you don’t come, it’s boring at the school.”
Riley swallowed a sigh. He couldn’t refute her logic, and he didn’t know how to instill a sense of caution in her without scaring her to death. “I know, Scooter, but—”
She opened the pantry and got out a can of cat food. “Don’t be mad, Daddy.”
“I’m not mad, Ariel, I’m—”
“Then don’t frown.” She scrunched her face into a glare, held it for about two seconds, then burst into a little giggle.
“Okay, I’m mad. I don’t want you to ever leave the school alone again.”
Ariel only laughed, reminding him far too vividly of Kendra. Once, his wife’s confidence that life held no dangers had captivated him; she’d believed in her own invulnerability and insisted on pushing the edge of the envelope. Two years ago she’d challenged a blizzard, relying on a lifetime of experience with Wyoming roads. But she’d lost control of her car, and he and Ariel had lost her. In his daughter, that same conviction of immunity kept him constantly on edge.
Ariel pushed a chair over to the counter and climbed up to fit the cat-food can into the electric can opener. Her cool competence in the kitchen reminded him how quickly she was growing up, and reinforced his fear.
“Did you hear what I said? I don’t want you wandering around by yourself.”
“okay.”
But the promise came so easily that Riley doubted he’d gotten through to her. It terrified him to think what it would take to instill caution in her. He hated that there were enough mean, angry, scary people out there to make prevention necessary.
Once she had the cat food open, Ariel looked over her shoulder at him. “That lady was nice.”
“Was she?” With effort, Riley pulled himself out of his deep thoughts to reconnect with the present. That lady. Their new neighbor across the alley. He’d thought her both feisty and remote. It would take a meeting when his own emotions weren’t topping the chart to form a real opinion of her temperament.
“Oh, yes,” Ariel continued. “And pretty.”
“Yeah?” More like beautiful, in an exotic sort of way. Her olive skin, dark eyes and black hair indicated a Hispanic or Mediterranean heritage—probably Hispanic, given the Southern inflection of her words. Her fine bones and delicate features gave an impression of fragility that would bring out the protective instinct in any man. Definitely beautiful.
“Yes. And she helped me remember Mommy.”
“Oh, Scooter.” Riley closed the distance between them and cupped her chin tenderly with his palm. The last two years had been tough on them both.
“I sang, ‘Merry Airy, merry, merry, merry, Ariel.”’
He hadn’t heard the familiar tune since Kendra died, but over his daughter’s high little voice, he heard Kendra’s rich alto singing the love ditty she’d made up the day they’d named their baby. Along with Kendra’s voice he could hear her laugh, almost feel her touch.
Unwilling to confront ghosts of the past, he shut the images away. After two years he thought of his wife only when, with a word or a gesture, Ariel brought her suddenly to mind. He didn’t need to start hearing the Airy tune on Ariel’s lips.
Pulling his daughter into his arms, he sat on the chair. She straddled his legs and wrapped her arms around his neck.
“Scooter, I know you miss—”
“Now I’m not scared I’ll forget what she looked like.”
“Were you?” Before he could guard against them, a flood of memories poured over him. Almost curiously, he sifted through them, but he couldn’t find a clear image of Kendra’s face. Snatches of conversations, impressions of good times, a whiff of her scent, the feel of her hair, a flash of her smile. But no firm, indelible picture.
Stunned, he stared at Ariel and tried to find Kendra’s face. It wasn’t there.
After two years of trying not to remember, it shocked him to realize he couldn’t.
Ariel sighed and lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “Only sometimes. Like when I’m unhappy and I want her, and she just isn’t there.”
It took Riley a second to retrack their conversation. It hadn’t occurred to him his daughter could be longing for the very thing he’d been trying to bury. “I miss her, too.”
“That lady knew I was scared I’d forget, so she told me just to sing. Then she made Jelly stop hiding. I like her.”
“I can see that, but—”
“Please let me go back, Daddy.”
Ariel’s plea took Riley back another couple of steps. She wanted to visit their new neighbor. In this, he had no muddled feelings. “What have I always taught you about talking to strangers?”
Ariel widened her eyes artlessly, indicating she thought she had him licked. “People who live in the same neighborhood can’t be strangers.”
“We don’t know anything about her.”
“We can ask.”
Ariel was right. Sort of. In Laramie, so far, neighbors were not strangers to each other. But the horrors endemic to other, bigger cities were moving in. And sometimes danger hid in unlikely places. He cupped Ariel’s face in his palm. “Promise me you won’t go over there alone.”
“Then come with me. Please. Because she might die, like Mommy did, and I don’t have a way to remember her.”
Riley cuddled Ariel against his chest. A child should not have to deal with the unpredictability of life. She shouldn’t have to play little games to remember the face of someone she loved. And she shouldn’t be deprived of kindness just because one icy night her mother died in an automobile accident and left her father leery of the unknown.
“Let me think about it. In the meantime, don’t go over there alone.”
“Thanks, Daddy.” Ariel gave him a noisy, giggly kiss. Then she grew solemn again and pulled back to look at him earnestly. “Daddy, will I ever have a mommy again?”
“I don’t know.” He thought about it occasionally, especially when he didn’t know how he could give his daughter everything she needed. Or when she seemed too much child for one person to handle. He’d thought about it today, when she’d disappeared from the school before he could pick her up.
But marrying again didn’t mean Ariel would automatically have a full-time mother—or that he would find a woman who could curb Ariel’s recklessness. And more than that, he wasn’t sure he could add the anxiety he’d feel for a wife to his worry for his daughter. Before Kendra’s death, he’d taken life’s risks as a matter of course, as part of his job. Now he measured every aspect of his life against them.
“When Whiskers got lost and I missed her so much, we got another kitten.”
Not quite sure what she needed, Riley folded his daughter in his arms. “We were really lucky to find another kitten that was just right.”
“Can we look for another mommy?”
“I’m afraid it’s not that easy, Scooter.”
She wriggled free of his embrace and giggled. “But, Daddy, it is. I wished for Jelly and I got him. So I’ll just wish for a new mommy.”
She slid off his lap, picked up the can of cat food and skipped across the room to empty it into Jelly’s dish. Great. Now Ariel was wishing for a new mommy, as if people gave them away through the Want Ads, like a kitten. Free to good home. Box trained.
Ariel was a terrific kid, and he’d give her the moon if he could. She’d adjusted to losing Kendra better than anyone expected. In spite of being one of the youngest in her class, she did well in school. She might be too adventuresome for his comfort, but her spunk made her popular with the other kids. So why couldn’t they go on as they were?
She’d just thrown him a curveball he couldn’t possibly hit, and now she knelt on the floor, petting Jelly as if—
The bottom of her left sock was dirty and grass-stained. “Ariel, where’s your shoe?”
She sat back, stretched out her legs and wiggled her shoeless foot. Hunching her shoulders, she looked up at him solemnly. “I don’t know.”
“When was the last time you saw it?”
She pondered for a while, but he didn’t hold much hope she would remember, since she hadn’t even realized it was missing.
“I had it when I came home from school.”
“Did you have it when you came home here?”
“Maybe.”
“Did you have it on when you were visiting the lady?”
She lifted her shoulders again. “I don’t remember.”
“Sheesh, Ariel. How could you forget losing your shoe?”
Sticking out her bottom lip, she examined her foot again. “It has to be somewhere.”
Yeah. Anywhere between the kitchen and the school. Which covered about two square miles, since he doubted she’d taken a direct route or could retrace whatever way she’d come. It wasn’t worth a full-scale search, but he could check with their new neighbor.
In fact, the missing shoe would be a very good excuse to pursue Ariel’s request. He could pay their new neighbor a visit. Learn her name. See if he could depend on her concern for Ariel. Because at the very least, it never hurt to have as many people as possible keeping an eye out for his headstrong little girl.
Margo couldn’t get Ariel—or Ariel’s father—out of her head. Between the two of them, they’d left her mind in a whirl, and nothing she’d tried had restored her equilibrium.
Not a shower, not fixing supper, not unpacking a couple more boxes. Even her heroine’s next exploit couldn’t hold her concentration. Finally she gave up the effort.
She brewed a pot of decaf, put some melancholy music on the stereo and wrapped herself in an afghan by the fire.
She wasn’t sure who had affected her most, the girl or her father. The father was a sheriff. And so what if he was? Past was past, right? With her new identity, she had a spotless record, a clear conscience, and a limitless future.
Unfortunately, she also knew both people and the system too well to be neutral. With people, a hint of suspicion would lead to judgment, an impression too quickly became a fact, and past sins were never forgotten. With the system, a single misstep could tumble a person into a legal landslide, and from then on you could kiss a normal life goodbye.
She sipped her coffee, leaned back and closed her eyes. No, society wasn’t perfect, and most people did the best they could. She had no one to blame but herself.
Looking back, her fault had lain in how recklessly she’d followed where her emotions led. She’d let grief after her grandmother’s death lead her into a relationship with Nick. She’d let herself need him so much that she did anything he wanted and made excuses for his abuse. Her love for their baby had made her blind to the downward spiral of her relationship with Holly’s father.
Since coming to that conclusion, she’d worked at self-discipline. She’d practiced deliberating alternatives and thinking before she acted. She’d learned to look ahead and imagine where different alternatives would lead. She thought she’d mastered control.
Ha!
Just today, so many emotions had erupted in such a short space of time, she couldn’t catalog them all. Starting with feelings she hadn’t experienced since losing Holly.
She hadn’t been a part of her daughter’s life since Holly was eight months old. She hadn’t watched Holly learn to walk or count or tell time. She didn’t know if Holly took music lessons or played soccer or could ride a horse. She had never heard Holly sing a song. In giving her daughter a chance for security, she’d forfeited any right to ever be a part of Holly’s life.
Could anyone blame her for enjoying Ariel’s company for a little while?
The girl’s father could. He obviously did.
Margo sighed. It was just as well. She couldn’t picture herself becoming very well acquainted with a cop—no matter how close they might live as neighbors. No matter how much she might like to know his daughter better.
