Rogue Stallion & Need Me, Cowboy
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Diana Palmer
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36
Chapter 1
There was a lull in Sheriff Judd Hensley’s office, broken only by the soft whir of the fan. It sometimes amused visitors from back East that springtime in Whitehorn, Montana, was every bit as unpredictable as spring in the southeastern part of America, and that the weather could be quite warm. But the man sitting across the desk from Hensley was neither visitor nor was he amused. His dark, handsome face was wearing a brooding scowl, and he was glaring at his superior.
“Why can’t the city police investigate? They have two detectives. I’m the only special investigator in the sheriff’s department, and I’m overworked as it is,” Sterling McCallum said, trying once more.
Hensley toyed with a pen, twirling it on the desk absently while he thought. He was about the same build as McCallum, rugged and quiet. He didn’t say much. When he did, the words meant something.
He looked up from the desk. “I know that,” he said. “But right now, you’re the one who deserves a little aggravation.”
McCallum crossed his long legs and leaned back with a rough sigh. His black boots had a flawless shine, a legacy from his years in the U.S. Navy as a career officer. He had an ex-military mind-set that often put him at odds with his boss, especially since he’d mustered out with the rank of captain. He was much more used to giving orders than to taking them.
In the navy, the expected answer to any charge of dereliction of duty, regardless of innocence or guilt, was, “No excuse, sir.” It was still hard for McCallum to get used to defending his actions. “I did what the situation called for,” he said tersely. “When someone tries to pull a gun on me, I get twitchy.”
“That was only bravado,” Hensley pointed out, “and you knocked out one of his teeth. The department has to pay for it. The county commission climbed all over me and I didn’t like it.” He leaned forward with his hands clasped and gave the younger man a steady look. “Now you’re the one with the problems. Dugin Kincaid found an abandoned baby on his doorstep.”
“Maybe it’s his,” McCallum said with smiling sarcasm. Dugin was a pale imitation of his rancher father, Jeremiah. The thought of him with a woman amused McCallum.
“As I was saying,” the sheriff continued without reacting to the comment, “the baby was found outside the city limits—hence our involvement—and its parents have to be found. You’re not working on anything that pressing. You can take this case. I want you to talk with Jessica Larson at the social-welfare office.”
McCallum groaned. “Why don’t you just shoot me?”
“Now, there’s no need to be like that,” Hensley said, surprised. “She’s a nice woman,” he said. “Why, her dad was a fine doctor....”
His voice trailed off abruptly. McCallum remembered that Hensley’s son had died in a hunting accident. Jessica’s father had tried everything to save the boy, but it had been impossible. Hensley’s wife, Tracy, divorced him a year after the funeral. That had happened years ago, long before McCallum left the service.
“Anyway, Jessica is one of the best social workers in the department,” Hensley continued.
“She’s the head of the department now, and a royal pain in the neck since her promotion,” McCallum shot right back. “She’s Little Miss Sunshine, spreading smiles of joy wherever she goes.” His black eyes, a legacy from a Crow ancestor, glittered angrily. “She can’t separate governmental responsibility from bleeding-heart activism.”
“I wonder if it’s fair to punish her by sticking her with you?” Hensley asked himself aloud. He threw up his hands. “Well, you’ll just have to grin and bear it. I can’t sit here arguing with you all day. This is my department. I’m the sheriff. See this?” He pointed at the badge on his uniform.
“Needs polishing,” McCallum noted.
Hensley’s eyes narrowed. He stood up. “Get out of here before I forget you work for me.”
McCallum unfolded his six-foot-plus length from the chair and stood up. He was just a hair taller than the sheriff, and he looked casual in his jeans and knit shirt and denim jacket. But when the jacket fell open, the butt of his .45 automatic was revealed, giving bystanders a hint of the sort of work he did. He was a plainclothes detective, although only outsiders were fooled by his casual attire. Most everyone in Whitehorn knew that McCallum was as conservative and military as the shine on his black boots indicated.
“Don’t shoot anybody,” Hensley told him. “And next time a man threatens to shoot you, check for a gun and disarm him before you hit him, please?” Hensley’s eyes went to the huge silver-and-turquoise ring that McCallum wore on the middle finger of his right hand. “That ring is so heavy it’s a miracle you didn’t break his jaw.”
McCallum held up his left hand, which was ringless. “This is the hand I hit him with.”
“He said it felt like a baseball bat.”
“I won’t tell you where he hit me before he started ranting about shooting,” the detective replied, turning to the door. “And if I didn’t work for you, a loose tooth would have been the least of his complaints.”
“Jessica Larson is expecting you over at the social-services office,” Hensley called.
McCallum, to his credit, didn’t slam the door.
Jessica Larson was fielding paperwork and phone calls with a calmness that she didn’t feel at all. She’d become adept at presenting an unflappable appearance while having hysterics. Since her promotion to social-services director, she’d learned that she could eat at her desk during the day and forgo any private life after work at night. She also realized why her predecessor had taken an early retirement. A lot of people came into this office to get help.
Like most of the rest of the country, Montana was having a hard time with the economy. Even though gambling had been legalized, adding a little more money to the state’s strained coffers, it was harder and harder for many local citizens to make ends meet. Ranches went under all the time these days, forced into receivership or eaten up by big corporations. Manual labor, once a valuable commodity in the agricultural sector, was now a burden on the system when those workers lost jobs. They were unskilled and unemployable in any of the new, high-tech markets. Even secretaries had to use computers these days. So did policemen.
The perfunctory knock on her office door was emphasized by her secretary’s high-pitched, “But she’s busy...!”
“It’s all right, Candy,” Jessica called to the harassed young blonde. “I’m expecting McCallum.” She didn’t add that she hadn’t expected him a half hour early. She tried to think of Sterling McCallum as a force of nature. He was like a wild stallion, a rogue stallion who traveled alone and made his own rules. Secretly, she was awed by him. He made her wish that she was a gorgeous model with curves in all the right places and a beautiful face—maybe with blond hair instead of brown. At least she was able to replace her big-rimmed glasses with contacts, which helped her appearance. But when she had allergies, she had to wear the glasses...like right now.
McCallum didn’t wait for her to ask him to sit down. He took the chair beside her desk and crossed one long leg over the other.
“Let’s have it,” he said without preamble, looking unutterably bored.
Her eyes slid over his thick dark hair, so conventionally cut, down to his equally dark eyebrows and eyes in an olive-tan face. He had big ears and big hands and big feet, although there was nothing remotely clumsy about him. He had a nose with a crook in it, probably from being broken, and a mouth that she dreamed about: very wide and sexy and definite. Broad shoulders tapered to a broad chest and narrow hips like a rodeo rider’s. His stomach was flat and he had long, muscular legs. He was so masculine that he made her ache. She was twenty-five, a mature woman and only about ten years younger than he was, but he made her feel childish sometimes, and inadequate—as a professional and as a woman.
“Hero worship again, Jessica?” he chided, amused by her soft blush.
“Don’t tease. This is serious,” she chided gently in turn.
He shrugged and sighed. “Okay. What have you done with the child?”
“Jennifer,” she told him.
He glowered. “The abandoned baby.”
She gave up. He wouldn’t allow anyone to become personalized in his company. Boys he had to pick up were juvenile delinquents. Abandoned babies were exactly that. No names. No identity. No complications in his ordered, uncluttered life. He let no one close to him. He had no friends, no family, no connections. Jessica felt painfully sorry for him, although she tried not to let it show. He was so alone and so vulnerable under that tough exterior that he must imagine was his best protection from being wounded. His childhood was no secret to anyone in Whitehorn. Everyone knew that his mother had been an alcoholic and that, after her arrest and subsequent death, he had been shunted from foster home to foster home. His only real value had been as an extra hand on one ranch or another, an outsider always looking in through a cloudy window at what home life might have been under other circumstances.
“You’re doing it again,” he muttered irritably.
Her slender eyebrows lifted over soft brown eyes. “What?” she asked.
“Pigeonholing me,” he said. “Poor orphan, tossed from pillar to post...”
“I wish you’d stop reading my mind,” she told him. “It’s very disconcerting.”
“I wish you’d stop bleeding all over me,” he returned. “I don’t need pity. I’m content with my life, just as it is. I had a rough time. So what? Plenty of people do. I’m here to talk about a case, Jessica, and it isn’t mine.”
She smiled self-consciously. “All right, McCallum,” she said agreeably, reaching for a file. “The baby was taken to Whitehorn Memorial and checked over. She’s perfectly healthy, clean and well-cared for, barely two weeks old. They’re keeping her for observation overnight and then it will be up to the juvenile authorities to make arrangements about her care until her parents are located. I’m going over to see her in the morning. I’d like you to come with me.”
“I don’t need to see it—”
“Her,” she corrected. “Baby Jennifer.”
“—to start searching for its parents,” he concluded without missing a beat.
“Her parents,” Jessica corrected calmly.
His dark eyes didn’t blink. “Was there anything else?”
“I’ll leave here about nine,” Jessica continued. “You can ride with me.”
His eyes widened. “In that glorified yellow tank you drive?”
“It’s a pickup truck!” she exclaimed defensively. “And it’s very necessary, considering where I live!”
He refused to think about her cabin in the middle of nowhere, across a creek that flooded with every cloudburst. It wasn’t his place to worry about her just because she had no family. In that aspect of their lives they were very much alike. In other ways...
He stood up. “You can ride with me,” he said, giving in with noticeable impatience.
“I hate riding around in a patrol car,” she muttered.
“It doesn’t have a sign on it. It’s a plainclothes car.”
“Of course it is, with those plain hubcaps, no white sidewalls, fifteen antennas sticking out of it and a spotlight. It doesn’t need a sign, does it? Anyone who isn’t blind would recognize it as an unmarked patrol car!”
“It beats driving a yellow tank,” he pointed out.
She stood up, too, feeling at a disadvantage when she didn’t. But he was still much taller than she was. She pushed at a wisp of brown hair that had escaped from the bun on top of her head. Her beige suit emphasized her slender build, devoid as it was of any really noticeable curves.
“Why do you screw your hair up like that?” he asked curiously.
“It falls in my face when I’m trying to work,” she said, indicating the stack of files on her desk. “Besides Candy, I only have two caseworkers, and they’re trying to take away one of them because of new budget cuts. I’m already working Saturdays trying to catch up, and they’ve just complained about the amount of overtime I do.”
“That sounds familiar.”
“I know,” she said cheerily. “Everyone has to work around tight budgets these days. It’s one of the joys of public service.”
“Why don’t you get married and let some strong man support you?” he taunted.
She tilted her chin saucily. “Are you proposing to me, Deputy?” she asked with a wicked smile. “Has someone been tantalizing you with stories of my homemade bread?”
He’d meant it sarcastically, but she’d turned the tables on him neatly. He gave in with a reluctant grin.
“I’m not the marrying kind,” he said. “I don’t want a wife and kids.”
Her bright expression dimmed a little, but remnants of the smile lingered. “Not everyone does,” she said agreeably. The loud interruption of the telephone ringing in the outer office caught her attention, followed by the insistent buzz of the intercom. She turned back to her desk. “Thanks for stopping by. I’ll see you in the morning, then,” she added as she lifted the receiver. “Yes, Candy,” she said.
McCallum’s eyes slid quietly over her bowed head. After a minute, he turned and walked out, closing the door gently behind him. He did it without a goodbye. Early in his life, he’d learned not to look back.
The house where McCallum lived was at the end of a wide, dead-end street. His neighbors never intruded, but it got back to him that they felt more secure having a law-enforcement officer in the neighborhood. He sat on his front porch sometimes with a beer and looked at the beauty of his surroundings while watching the children ride by on bicycles. He watched as a stranger watches, learning which children belonged at which houses. He saw affection from some parents and amazing indifference from others. He saw sadness and joy. But he saw it from a distance. His own life held no highs or lows. He was answerable to no one, free to do whatever he pleased with no interference.
He’d had the flu last winter. He’d lain in his bed for over twenty-four hours, burning with fever, unable to cook or even get into the kitchen. Not until he missed work did anyone come looking for him. The incident had punctuated how alone he really was.
He hadn’t been alone long. Jessica had hotfooted it over to look after him, ignoring his ranting and raving about not wanting any woman cluttering up his house. She’d fed him and cleaned for him in between doing her own job, and only left when he proved to her that he could get out of bed. Because of the experience, he’d been ruder than ever to her. When he’d gone back to work, she’d taken a pot of chicken soup to the office, enough that he could share it with the other men on his shift. It had been uncomfortable when they’d teased him about Jessica’s nurturing, and he’d taken out that irritation on her.
He hadn’t even thanked her for her trouble, he recalled. No matter how rude he was she kept coming back, like a friendly little elf who only wanted to make him happy. She was his one soft spot, although, thank God, she didn’t know it. He was curt with her because he had to keep her from knowing about his weakness for her. He had been doing a good job; when she looked at him these days, she never met his eyes.
He sipped his beer, glowering at the memories. His free hand dropped to the head of his big brown-and-black Doberman. He’d had the dog for almost a year. He’d found Mack tied in a croker sack, yipping helplessly in the shallows of a nearby river. Having rescued the dog, he couldn’t find anyone who was willing to take it, and he hadn’t had the heart to shoot it. There was no agency in Whitehorn to care for abandoned or stray animals. The only alternative was to adopt the pup, and he had.
At first Mack had been a trial to him. But once he housebroke the dog and it began to follow him around the house—and later, to work—he grew reluctantly fond of it. Now Mack was part of his life. They were inseparable, especially on hunting and fishing trips. If he had a family at all, McCallum thought, it was Mack.
He sat back, just enjoying the beauty of Whitehorn. The sun set; the children went inside. And still McCallum sat, thinking and listening to the hum of the quiet springtime night.
Finally, he got up. It was after eleven. He’d just gone inside and was turning out the lights when the phone rang.
“It’s Hensley,” the sheriff announced over the phone. “We’ve got a 10-16 at the Miles place, a real hummer. It’s outside the city police’s jurisdiction, so it either has to be you or a deputy.”
“It won’t do any good to go, you know,” McCallum said. “Jerry Miles beats Ellen up twice a month, but she never presses charges. Last time he beat up their twelve-year-old son, and even then—”
“I know.”
“I’ll go anyway,” McCallum said. “It’s a hell of a shame we can’t lock him up without her having to press charges. She’s afraid of him. If she left him, he’d probably go after her, and God knows what he’d do. I’ve seen it happen. So have you. Everybody says leave him. Nobody says they’ll take care of her when he comes looking for her with a gun.”
“We have to keep hoping that she’ll get help.”
“Jessica has tried,” McCallum admitted, “but nothing changes. You can’t help people until they’re ready to accept it, and the consequences of accepting it.”
“I heard that.”
McCallum drove out to the Miles home. It was three miles out of Whitehorn, in the rolling, wide-open countryside.
He didn’t put on the siren. He drove up into the yard and cut the lights. Then he got out, unfastening the loop that held his pistol in place in the holster on his hip, just in case. One of Whitehorn’s policemen had been shot and killed trying to break up a domestic dispute some years ago.
There was no noise coming from inside. The night was ominously quiet. McCallum’s keen eyes scanned the area and suddenly noticed a yellow truck parked just behind the house, on a dirt road that ran behind it and parallel to the main highway.
Jessica was in there!
He quickened his steps, went up on the front porch and knocked at the door.
“Police,” he announced. “Open up!”
There was a pause. His hand went to the pistol and he stood just to the side of the doorway, waiting.
The main door opened quite suddenly, and a tired-looking Jessica Larson smiled at him through a torn screen. “It’s all right,” she said, opening the screen door for him. “He’s passed out on the bed. Ellen and Chad are all right.”
McCallum walked into the living room, feeling uncomfortable as he looked at the two people whose lives were as much in ruin as the broken, cheap lamp on the floor. The sofa was stained and the rug on the wood floor had frayed edges. There were old, faded curtains at the windows and a small television still blaring out a game show. Ellen sat on the sofa with red-rimmed eyes, her arm around Chad, who was crying. He had a bruise on one cheek.
“How much longer are you going to let the boy suffer like this, Ellen?” McCallum asked quietly.
She stared at him from dull eyes. “Mister, if I send my husband to jail, he says he’ll kill me,” she announced. “I think he will. Last time I tried to run away, he shot our dog.”
“He’s sick, Ellen,” Jessica added gently. Her glance in the direction of the bedroom had an odd, frightened edge to it. “He’s very sick. Alcoholism can destroy his body, you know. It can kill him.”
“Yes, ma’am, I know that. He’s a big man, though,” the woman continued in a lackluster voice, absently smoothing her son’s hair. “He loves me. He says so. He’s always sorry, after.”
“He’s not sorry,” McCallum said, his voice deep and steady. “He enjoys watching you cry. He likes making you afraid of him. He gets off on it.”
“McCallum!” Jessica said sharply.
He ignored her. He knelt in front of Ellen and stared at her levelly. “Listen to me. My mother was an alcoholic. She used a bottle on me once, and laughed when she broke my arm with it. She said she was sorry, too, after she sobered up, but the day she broke my arm, I stopped believing it. I called the police and they locked her up. And the beatings stopped. For good.”
Ellen wiped at her eyes. “Weren’t you sorry? I mean, she was your mother. You’re supposed to love your mother.”
“You don’t beat the hell out of people you love,” he said coldly. “And you know that. Are you going to keep making excuses for him until he kills your son?”
She gasped, clasping the boy close. “But he won’t!” she said huskily. “Oh, no, I know he won’t! He loves Chad. He loves me, too. He just drinks so much that he forgets he loves us, that’s all.”
“If he hurts the child, you’ll go to jail as an accessory,” McCallum told her. He said it without feeling, without remorse. He said it deliberately. “I swear to God you will. I’ll arrest you myself.”
Ellen paled. The hands holding her son contracted. “Chad doesn’t want to see his daddy go to jail,” she said firmly. “Do you, son?”
Chad lifted his head from her shoulder and looked straight at McCallum. “Yes, sir, I do,” he said in a choked voice. “I don’t want him to hit my mama anymore. I tried to stop him and he did this.” He pointed to his eye.
McCallum looked back at Ellen. There was accusation and cold anger in his dark eyes. They seemed to see right through her.
She shivered. “He’ll hurt us if I let you take him to jail,” she said, admitting the truth at last. “I’m scared of him. I’m so scared!”
Jessica stepped forward. “There’s a shelter for battered women,” she replied. “I’ll make sure you get there. You’ll be protected. He won’t come after you or Chad, and even if he tries, he can be arrested for that, too.”
Ellen bit her lower lip. “He’s my husband,” she said with emphasis. “The good book says that when you take a vow, you don’t ever break it.”
McCallum’s chin lifted. “The same book says that when a man marries a woman, he cherishes her. It doesn’t say one damned thing about being permitted to beat her, does it?”
She hesitated, but only for a minute. “I have an aunt in Lexington, Kentucky. She’d let me and Chad live with her, I know she would. I could go there. He doesn’t know about my aunt. He’d never find us.”
“Is that what you want?” Jessica asked.
The woman hesitated. Her weary eyes glanced around the room, taking measure of the destruction. She felt as abused as the broken lamp, as the sagging sofa with its torn fabric. Her gaze rested finally on her son and she looked, really looked, at him. No child of twelve should have eyes like that. She’d been thinking only of her own safety, of her vows to her husband, not of the one person whose future should have mattered to her. She touched Chad’s hair gently.
“It’s all right, son,” she said. “It’s gonna be all right. I’ll get you out of here.” She glanced away from his wet eyes to McCallum. Her head jerked toward the bedroom. “I have to get away. I can’t press charges against him....”
“Don’t worry about it,” McCallum said. “He’ll sleep for a long time and then he won’t know where to look for you. By the time he thinks about trying, he’ll be drunk again. The minute he gets behind a wheel, I’ll have him before a judge. With three prior DWI convictions, he’ll spend some time in jail.”
“All right.” She got uneasily to her feet. “I’ll have to get my things....” Her eyes darted nervously to the bedroom.
McCallum walked to the doorway and stood there. He didn’t say a word, but she knew what his actions meant. If her husband woke up while she was packing, McCallum would deal with him.
She smiled gratefully and went hesitantly into the dimly lit bedroom, where her husband was passed out on the bed. Jessica didn’t offer to go with her. She sat very still on the sofa, looking around her with a kind of subdued fear that piqued McCallum’s curiosity.
Jessica drove her own truck to the bus station, parking it next to the unmarked car in which McCallum had put Chad and his mother. It was acting up again, and she tried to recrank it but it refused to start.
They saw the mother and son onto the bus and stood together until it vanished into the distance.
McCallum glanced at his watch. It was after midnight, but he was wound up and not at all sleepy.
Jessica mistook the obvious gesture for an indication that he wanted to get going. “Thanks for your help,” she told him. “I’d better get back home. Could you take me? My truck’s on the blink again.”
“Sure. I’ll send someone over in the morning to fix the truck and deliver it to your office. I’m sure you can get a ride to work.”
“Yes, I can. Thanks,” she said, relieved.
He caught her arm and shepherded her into the depot, which was open all night. There was a small coffee concession, where an old man sold coffee and doughnuts and soft drinks.
Jessica was dumbfounded. Usually McCallum couldn’t wait to get away from her. His wanting to have coffee with her was an historic occasion, and she didn’t quite know what to expect.
