Читать книгу The Lawman's Romance Lesson - Marie Ferrarella - Страница 11

Chapter One

Deputy Daniel Tallchief could feel his anger increasing in waves. He told himself he wasn’t going to say anything to the girl sitting in the seat next to him until he calmed down. He didn’t want to say anything to his sister that he might wind up regretting later, after he’d had a chance to cool off.

Right now, it felt as if that was never going to happen.

And keeping his temper under control wasn’t easy. Not when he wanted to shout into Elena’s face and demand to know how she could do something not only so stupid, but so incredibly disrespectful to the memory of their parents as well as to him.

So far, Daniel had been silent. Silent the entire drive home, even though he could feel angry words clawing at his throat, all but choking him in their eagerness to be released.

Elena wasn’t much help to him in that respect. His sixteen-year-old only sister was sitting in the passenger seat, obviously fuming. Her very body language, not to mention what she was actually saying to him, were goading him to lose his temper.

“I don’t know what you’re so mad about,” Elena retorted, folding her arms in front of her chest just like their mother used to do when she was displaying anger. “You told me I couldn’t have parties in our house while you were gone and I didn’t have one,” she informed him haughtily. “In case you didn’t notice, that was Matthew’s house you storm trooped into, not ours. His house is a lot nicer,” she deliberately pointed out. “Matthew has a right to throw a party if he wants to and I have a perfect right to be there if I want to.” She punctuated her statement by tossing her head defiantly, sending her long, shining black hair flying over her shoulder.

The best laid plans of mice and men, Daniel had read somewhere, often went awry—or words to that effect. Right now, that described his plans for waiting until he had cooled off to a T.

So rather than driving straight home in silence—at least his silence—Daniel pulled his car over to the side of the road and glared at his angry sister, the person who was responsible, at least in part, for his taking a job as a sheriff’s deputy rather than finishing college and getting a degree. Not finishing college put an end to his being able to go on to medical school and to eventually achieve his lifelong dream of becoming a doctor.

It had also wound up putting an end to Lana and him.

The hell with cooling off. “Number one,” Daniel enumerated, “Matthew doesn’t have the right to have a party loud enough to disturb all his neighbors just because his parents were naive enough to leave him home alone for a week. Number two, you don’t have the right to attend a party where alcohol was being unlawfully served. From what I could see, everyone there was a minor so if I was as hard-nosed as you seem to think I am, I would have arrested them all on the spot instead of giving them a warning that I’d come down hard on them if this happened again.”

Daniel took a breath. It was a real struggle to keep his voice down.

Apparently, his self-restraint was wasted on his sister.

She glared at him. “Not much that they can do in the way of partying now that you took away all their liquor.”

“I confiscated it,” Daniel corrected. “And when Matthew’s parents get back and ask about what happened to their incredibly large supply of alcohol, I’ll hand the bottles over to them.”

Elena’s frown intensified. “Along with a lecture, no doubt, about how they should make an effort to be better parents.” She fumed, looking at him darkly. “You know, not everyone wants to be like you, Daniel.”

“Right now,” the deputy told Elena, starting up his car again and heading back to town, “I don’t even want to be me.”

Refusing to appear intimidated, Elena raised her chin defiantly. “Well, it’s no picnic being your sister, either.”

Daniel bit his tongue to keep back the hot words that were hovering there, aching to be released. Saying them to Elena might very well produce momentary gratification, but he knew that he’d wind up paying for that gratification in the long run. Paying for it with the amount of damage that those words could cause to the relationship he had with Elena.

A relationship that already felt as if it was tottering on its last legs.

He and Elena had been close once. Extremely close. He’d helped raise her because both his parents were so busy trying to provide a decent life for his sister and for him. Despite experiencing the typical wants and desires of a teenager, which included hanging out with his friends and all that entailed, Daniel still doted on Elena and found time to be there for her.

But then the world had been turned upside down. His parents had been in a terrible car accident. His mother had died instantly and his father had lingered for a few hours before he died as well. So instead of graduating college and going off to medical school—he had an early acceptance letter he still carried around folded up in his wallet—he had to drop out and find a job in a hurry in order to be able to provide for Elena and take care of both of them.

And, as hard as giving up his education had been, losing Lana had been even harder on him.

The death of their parents had its effects on Elena as well. Always bright and studious, she’d gradually turned her back on all that. Instead, she just focused on living in the moment.

Partying in the moment.

And frustrating Daniel to the point that he was all but incoherent, like now.

“I don’t even know you anymore,” he told Elena after another ten minutes of silence had passed.

Exasperated, Daniel pulled his car up in front of the small, three-bedroom, single-story house that had once known such happiness but now stood as a lonely reminder of what no longer was.

“That makes two of us,” Elena shot back. “I don’t know you anymore, and I can’t trust you, either.”

He bit his tongue again to keep from saying the first thing that popped up in his mind. Instead, he took a breath, tried to collect his thoughts. “I’ve got to go to the sheriff’s office to log this in,” he told her, indicating the bottles of alcohol in the back. He looked into his sister’s eyes. “I want your word that you won’t leave the house until I get back.”

“I thought you didn’t trust me,” she taunted, her tone haughty and arrogant.

“I don’t,” he answered honestly. “But I’m hoping you’ll want to prove me wrong more than you want to run off to find another party that I’ll just have to shut down.” He let his words sink in before noting, “That can’t be making you very popular, being the girl whose brother follows her around, shutting down the parties she attends.”

“It doesn’t,” Elena snapped, glaring at him. She pressed her lips together, as if going over several things in her mind. “All right, you win. I’ll stay home,” she pouted.

Instead of getting out, Daniel remained seated behind the steering wheel. Eyeing his sister, he asked, “I have your word?”

Elena blew out a long, dramatic breath. “Yeah, yeah, you have my word.”

“Good.” Daniel nodded, getting out of the vehicle. “Why don’t you study while you wait for me to get home?” he suggested. He saw her roll her eyes. It took effort to hold onto his temper. Taking a breath, he told her, “You used to be a great student.”

“And then I got smart,” Elena responded sarcastically.

Daniel’s eyes narrowed as he looked at her. “Not really,” he countered.

Elena uttered a frustrated, guttural sound and then stomped all the way to the front door.

Getting there ahead of her, Daniel unlocked the door then opened it and let her in. For his part, he remained standing outside. “I’ll get back home just as soon as I can.”

“I can’t wait,” Elena retorted sarcastically.

Rather than say anything, Daniel quickly closed the door the moment she was inside the house and then locked it.

“Oh gee, now I can’t get out,” Elena called out, raising her voice so that it carried to him through the door.

“No, you can’t,” he informed her. “Because you gave me your word.”

Daniel heard another sound, louder and more guttural this time. He could picture the look on his sister’s angry face.

He walked to his car and really hoped that he wasn’t being an idiot to believe that, despite everything, Elena was going to live up to her promise.

Daniel got into the vehicle.

“Really wish you guys were still here,” he murmured under his breath to the parents who were no longer there to hear him.

He would have missed his parents no matter what, but being left to grapple with trying to raise a headstrong, overly intelligent sixteen-year-old teenage girl made everything three times worse. And it really made him miss his mother and father.

* * *

When Daniel walked into the sheriff’s office fifteen minutes later, he was surprised to see Joe there.

Senior Deputy Sheriff Joe Lone Wolf was the reason he had this job. He’d known the older deputy by sight when they were both growing up on the reservation. But then his parents had moved him and his sister into town and the next time their paths crossed, Joe was a deputy, working for Sheriff Rick Santiago. Joe’s influence in the scheme of things increased a great deal when he wound up marrying Ramona, the town’s veterinarian. Ramona also happened to be Rick’s sister. And when Daniel suddenly found himself in need of a job, Joe was the one who not only vouched for him but took Daniel under his wing, teaching him everything he needed to know. It wasn’t the job he had dreamed of having, but it was one he felt he could do justice to.

“I didn’t know you had the night shift tonight,” Daniel said to the other man.

“I didn’t. I traded Rodriguez for it. I had a feeling, when you went to answer that domestic disturbance call coming in from the better part of town, that you might wind up coming back.” Craning his neck, Joe looked around behind Daniel. “So where’s Elena?”

It was unnerving the way that Joe seemed to know about things before they became public knowledge. “She’s home.”

Joe’s eyes never left his face as he rocked back in his chair. “Let me guess, she promised to be on her best behavior.”

“I don’t think that girl has any ‘best behavior’ to fall back on anymore,” Daniel responded. There was no missing the disgusted note in his voice. “But she gave me her word that she wouldn’t leave the house until I got back.”

Joe laughed dryly. “Then I guess you’d better hurry back before Elena’s tempted to break her word again.” And then he looked at Daniel, studying him. “Why did you come back?”

“Well, I wanted to log these in at the station,” Daniel answered. The next minute, he was going out the front door.

“These?” Joe repeated, following the younger man out.

Daniel paused to reach into the backseat and take out the carton he’d used in order to carry all the liquor bottles out of Matthew McGuire’s house.

“These,” Daniel repeated as he carried the carton crammed full of bottles back past Joe and into the sheriff’s office.

Joe uttered a low whistle as he looked at all the semi-filled and three-quarters-filled bottles stuffed into the carton.

“What was the kid doing? Competing with the Murphy brothers’ saloon?”

Daniel glanced down at the bottles in his arms. “I’m guessing these belong to his parents.”

“Speaking of his parents, just where are these fine citizens?” Joe asked him.

Daniel thought back, trying to remember. “According to what Elena told me through her clenched teeth and her hostile attitude, I gather that Matthew’s parents are away for the week, touring a couple of colleges with his older brother.”

Joe smile was grim. “In other words, when the cat’s away, the mice’ll play.”

“And get drunk,” Daniel added with a deep, disapproving frown.

“Evidence?” Joe asked, nodding at the liquor bottles and curious as to exactly what Daniel planned to do with all of them.

“My first thought was to get these things out of the kids’ reach,” Daniel confessed. He put the carton down on his desk. “When Matthew’s parents get back into town, they can come by the station and get them.”

“My guess is that they’re not going to be happy about that,” Joe commented.

Joe took a couple of the bottles out of the carton one by one and looked at the labels. He wasn’t a connoisseur when it came to alcohol, but he could see that there were some very expensive bottles in the carton.

“I’m counting on it,” Daniel told him. “Maybe his parents will think twice before leaving Matthew alone with all this temptation again.”

“What did Elena say about you doing this?” Joe asked.

Daniel blew out a breath. “Not anything I feel like repeating right now,” he answered.

Opening his desk’s middle drawer, he took out a pad and a pen and began to write down the various names that were on the labels.

“Here, let me do that,” Joe told the younger deputy, taking the pad and pen away from Daniel. “You go on back to your sister. Like I said, the sooner you get yourself back home, the less tempted she’s going to be to fly the coop again.”

This was where Daniel would have wanted to say that since Elena had given him her word she’d stay home, he felt confident that she would be there when he walked in through the door. But the truth was that he wasn’t confident she’d be there. Not confident at all.

Joe was right. The sooner he got home, the more likely it was that he’d still find Elena at home. Because if she decided to take off again, this time he wouldn’t be able to just shrug it off or let it slide. This time, he was going to have to come down on her.

Hard.

And that would do even more harm to their relationship, causing it to splinter and break apart that much more. Maybe even irreparably, because he was only able to hold on to his temper for so long before it exploded on him.

“Thanks, Joe, I owe you,” Daniel said, heading for the door.

“Damn straight you do,” Joe called out, his voice following the other deputy as Daniel went outside to his vehicle.

How did it all get so confused and heavy-handed? Daniel couldn’t help wondering as he got in behind the wheel of his car again.

How did he and Elena go from being practically best friends to being these people who kept snapping at each other and regarding everything the other person did as being suspect?

He wished he knew. Daniel couldn’t even remember how it all had started to unravel. All he knew was that somehow, it had. And not just slowly but with what felt like lightning speed. One day he was Elena’s confidant, her shoulder to cry on, the next day, he was her enemy, part of “them,” otherwise known as a grown-up. And everyone knew that grown-ups or adults were the ones who stood in the way and impeded anything that even remotely looked like fun.

Elena stopped telling him things, stopped confiding in him, stopped looking at him the way she used to. These days, she wasn’t proud of him. She was just leery of him and it showed in everything she did, everything she said to him.

How did he go about changing that back to what it had been?

And just as important, how did he get Elena to realize that getting an education was the only way she would ever get out of Forever?