Lawman's Redemption (9 page)

“Brilliant like Barney Fife,” Les replied with a snort.

Brady chose to ignore the insult. “When are you moving in?”

“The furniture we picked out this afternoon will be delivered tomorrow, and I plan on sleeping in my very own bed tomorrow night.”

So tomorrow night—and every other night she stayed in Buffalo Plains—she would be sleeping only a five-minute hike away. How easy was it going to be for him to sleep then?

Not at all.

Abruptly Les muted the television. “Did you bring my stuff?”

He was still thinking about Hallie in her bed and him in his own, so close but apart. Blinking, he focused on Les. “Your…Yeah, it's in the truck.”

“Can I have it?” she asked with exaggerated patience, as if that had been her question all along.

If the duffel were in his pickup, he would toss her the keys and let her get it. But it was in his sheriff's vehicle, along with handcuffs, Flex-cuffs, his radio, his shotgun and plenty of other stuff he'd prefer she not get into. “I'll get it.”

It took him maybe two minutes to get the bag and return. She
was waiting impatiently at the end of the sofa, and as soon as he set it down, she hefted it over her shoulder, then looked around. “Where can I put it?”

Feeling helpless, he looked around, too. “I told you, I have only one bedroom. You'll have to sleep in here.”

“Oh, that's just great.” She flung out her arm to point at the closed door across the hall. “What's in there?”

“Just stuff.” It had once been a guest room, but when he found the time, he intended to knock out the wall and enlarge the living room. What did he need with an extra bedroom? Logan was the only relative he could face without the very real threat of violence, and the chances that
he
would come knocking on Brady's door after seventeen years were nil. His only friends were Reese and Neely, who had their own place. He never brought women home with him, and the odds of him ever having a family of his own were slim.

Slimmer this morning than they were tonight.

“I'm fourteen years old,” Les complained. “I can't camp out on the sofa like…like a boy. I need my privacy!”

“Maybe…” He glanced at Hallie, who looked as uncomfortable as he felt, then back at Les. “Maybe tomorrow you can pick out a bed, and I-I'll clear a space for it.”

“You're damn right you will!” Dropping the duffel to the floor with a thud, she stomped down the hall to the bathroom and slammed the door hard enough to send vibrations through the air.

In the silence that followed, Hallie softly said, “Teenagers. Aren't they lovely?”

E
xhaling loudly, Brady sat down at the opposite end of the sofa. “I'm not surprised Sandra raised a self-centered brat. She intended for her little girl to be a mirror image of herself, and since
she's
a spoiled brat…”

Hallie considered all the things she could say, and settled on the most innocuous. “You married a purple-haired, pierced and tattooed girl?”

“No,” he said sullenly, then unexpectedly he grinned. Sort of. “I bet it drives Sandra crazy to look at her.”

“And anything that drives Sandra crazy can't be all bad, right?”

The sort-of-a-grin faded. “Why is she so angry?”

Hallie glanced toward the hallway, then stood up. “Let's go see the horses.”

On the way through the kitchen, he stirred the spaghetti sauce, then picked up a handful of apples and tossed one to her. She took a bite as she went out the back door and down three steps into the yard.

“Hey, that's for the horses.”

“I know. I'm just making sure it's nice and sweet for them.”

His yard was broad and long and, she would bet, pretty much self-sufficient. He didn't strike her as the kind to spend his time watering, fertilizing and feeding. Keeping it mowed appeared to be the extent of his green thumb. It was empty of garden-y touches like flower beds, but there was a nice variety of trees—oaks, maples, dogwoods, redbuds and mimosas, as well as a row of crape myrtles on one side and another of forsythia opposite. No doubt it was a pretty place in the spring, as well as the fall. Not that she would be around to see it.

That thought shouldn't dim her pleasure at being there that very moment, but it did. Should that worry her?

They strolled back to the fence, where he gave a low whistle that brought five of the six horses grazing at a trot. Hallie leaned her arms on the top rail of the fence and watched while Brady fed apples to the first two horses.

“You want to feed one?”

“No, thank you.” She would much rather photograph him doing it, but her cameras were back at the motel. One of these days she would get back in the habit of taking them with her wherever she went.

“You're not afraid of horses, are you?”

“Nope. I just don't like horse slobber on my hand.” She waited until he'd run out of apples, then handed hers over. When it was gone, too, she shifted her gaze to him. “Les is angry with you, and from her perspective, she's got very good reasons. You disappeared from her life when she was a baby. You never called her, never sent her birthday or Christmas cards, never invited her for a visit. You abandoned her, and you bet she's angry about it.”

“But I didn't know—”

“We're talking her perspective, remember? She doesn't know what her mother told you. All she knows is she's grown up without a father, and now she's finally met him and he's not at all happy to see her. She came here most likely with some fantasy of telling you who she was and being welcomed with open arms into your home and your life. Instead, you're treating her like some alien being who's more a nuisance than anything else.”

He turned so the fence was at his back and leaned there. Accepting that there were no more apples, all the horses but one wandered away. That one, black and beautiful, nudged Brady's shoulder, then stuck his face right up next to Brady's. Absently he reached up to pat the horse.

Lucky animal.

“I don't even know how to talk to her,” he said at last.

“Maybe you could start by telling her you're glad she's here, that you welcome this opportunity to get to know her.”

“You mean, lie to her.”

Hallie wasn't sure which of them her heart ached for more—Les, who would deny it until she was blue in the face, but who desperately needed someone to love her, or Brady, who would also deny it, but who also needed badly to love and be loved.

“Would it be such a lie?” she asked softly. “Does she have to prove she's your daughter before you can care about her?”

He didn't answer, but stared off toward the house, his expression troubled and grim.

Hallie touched his arm. “Have all the doubts and questions you want. But for the few days or weeks she's here, can't you pretend to be who she thinks you are? After all, she might really be your daughter, and if you lose her now, you may never get her back.”

“And what if she's
not
my daughter?”

She shrugged. “If that proves to be the case, what will it have cost you? A little hope?”

“And what will it cost
her
if I pretend to be her father and I'm not?”

“At least she'll find out you had a reason for abandoning her. That's got to be better than believing she wasn't good enough for her own father to love her.” After another moment's silence, she asked, “How old was Les when Sandra told you you weren't her father?”

“Three months.”

“Remember how you felt about her before that? She was your family. She depended on you to take care of her, and you were there for her. As far as she knows, that hasn't changed. She's still your family, and she still needs you.”

“It's damned hard to reconcile that kid in the house with the baby I used to get up with in the middle of the night for feedings,” he said dryly.

“We all grow up. I used to be a prissy little girl who played with dolls and cried if someone looked cross-eyed at me. And look at me now.”

He did, his gaze starting at the top of her head and working its way down to her Pearly Pink Pale toes, and in the process warming her almost beyond bearing. “Yeah, and now you're a prissy woman who plays with men and can probably still turn on the waterworks at the drop of a pin.”

“I'm not prissy,” she said primly, “and at this point in my life, I don't even like men, but yes, I can cry on cue with the best of 'em.”

“You like
me.
”

Hallie studied him. Even though his mouth wasn't smiling, there was mischief in his blue eyes. Brady Marshall was
teasing.
This must be a day for the record books.

She screwed up her face as if his comment required serious thought. “Well…you
are
awfully cute, and you're a very nice man when you aren't so busy being distant, and you are definitely well worth playing with. Not that I make a habit of doing that.”

“So why did you do it with me?”

With a blush warming her cheeks, she pushed away from the fence and started back toward the house. “Refer back to the ‘you're awfully cute' part,” she said when he caught up with her.

“That's all it was? If you hadn't liked the way I look, you would have chosen someone else?”

“Why did
you
do it with
me?
You could have accepted the beer I offered and told me to get lost.”

“Men don't tell women like you to get lost.”

“Every man I married did.”

“You married fools.” He said the words with a dismissive shrug, as if it was so obvious a fact it hardly needed stating. The very matter-of-fact-ness of it salved some little bit of the ache
deep inside her and smoothed over some little bit of the wound to her pride.

She climbed the first step to the stoop, then turned to face him. The extra height put her eye-to-eye with him. “So that was it?” she asked, mimicking his own questions. “If you hadn't liked the way I look, you would have gone home with someone else?”

“I liked the way you looked, and the way you talked…” He took a step up, forcing her to move up one more, too. “And the way you felt, and the way you smelled…” He took one more step, and so did she. “And I liked the way you smiled, and the way it was obvious you didn't make a habit of doing that sort of thing, and I especially liked the way you—”

She was on the stoop, her back to the wall and the railing against her hip, and he was mere inches away, leaning closer, his mustache tickling her ear, when a disgusted snort broke the mood.

“Jeez, act like adults, would you?” Les said, her voice dripping disdain. “That sauce on the stove smells like it's burning, and someone named Willl-burrr is on the phone.” She did a creditable imitation of Mr. Ed on the name, then managed to sound pretty horsy as she stomped away.

More than a little regretful, Hallie smiled at Brady, still close enough to send her heart rate into double time. “I'll check the sauce. You talk to Wilbur.” Ducking underneath his arm, she opened the screen door and went into the kitchen. A moment later he followed, taking the call on the phone mounted near the hall door.

She stirred the sauce, lowered the heat, then put a pot of water on to boil, and listened only partly to his conversation. Wilbur, she was able to pick up, was the night jailer and was apparently having trouble with one of his prisoners.

It was the sort of homey scene she remembered from her childhood—her mother fixing dinner, her father talking. It was the kind of scene she'd envisioned herself a part of when she grew up and married, but she couldn't recall a single time it had ever happened. The Madison family joke was that she'd made a career of marrying well if not wisely. Even in her first mar
riage, when she was only twenty, her husband had come with a large house, a housekeeper and a cook.

She'd envisioned a lot of things about marriage when she was a kid. That she would have as many babies as they could afford. That she and the children would be the most important things in her husband's life. That they would be together forever. That he would love her dearly, faithfully, endlessly.

What a joke.

Maybe someday her heart would harden enough that she could laugh at it.

When he got off the phone, Brady buttered thick slices of French bread, sprinkled them with garlic and put them in the oven, then set the table in the dining room. Was he as sorry as she that Les had interrupted them outside? Would he have kissed her if she hadn't? Would he try again? If he were any other man, she would say of course. After all, he'd spent two nights with her.

But he'd turned down the invitation for a third one.

And then he'd asked her to lunch, and then to dinner.

With him and his daughter.

Aw, heck, she'd never been any good at figuring out why a man did the things he did or what he might do in the future, and trying only made her head hurt. Better she should stick with something she
could
handle.

Like pasta.

 

Brady woke up in the middle of the night, groggy, disoriented and unable to kick his brain into gear. For a moment he couldn't figure out what had awakened him, then he heard voices and saw a dim glow at the end of the hallway and remembered.

Les.

Pushing back the sheet, he sat up and pulled on a T-shirt. He'd taken only a few steps, though, before heading back to grab his jeans off a chair and slide into them. There was nothing immodest about boxers—Les had changed into a pair of red-and-blue plaid ones and a T-shirt to sleep in—but it seemed improper for him.

He went down the hall and stopped in the living-room door
way. The light came from the TV. She was curled on her side on the couch, pillows under her head and a sheet tucked around her, and was watching a rerun of an old show he remembered from his childhood. After watching one episode, Logan had turned to him and innocently asked, Are other families really like that?

Had Les ever wondered the same thing? Had she wondered where
her
perfect family was, or what she'd done to deserve the life she had?

After a moment, he walked into the room and sat down on the arm of the easy chair. “Having trouble sleeping?”

Her expression swiftly turned to distrust and wariness. “I didn't have it turned up loud.”

“No, you didn't.” He gestured toward her. “You're almost too tall to fit on the couch.”

“It's okay,” she said with a shrug, then added, “For one night.”

“I'll try to take off after lunch tomorrow and we'll go shopping for some furniture. I don't know if I'll have time to get that room cleaned out before the weekend, but at least we'll be able to get the bed in there.”

“Yeah, sure.”

After an awkward silence, he slid down into the chair. It had been almost ten o'clock when Hallie went home, and Les had walked out to the convertible with them. They'd had just enough privacy for Hallie to say one thing—
Remember what we talked about.
Since he had little doubt she would ask him about it the next time he saw her, he took a deep breath and said, “Listen, Les…”

She slowly sat up on the couch, and her entire body grew stiff. She was looking at him as if she expected the worst and hated him for it. Seeing things from her point of view, he couldn't blame her.

“I, uh…” What would he say to her if he knew beyond a doubt that she was his daughter? The answer came easily. Giving voice to it was another matter. “I know you probably can't tell it by the way things have gone, but…I'm glad you're here. I, uh…I've thought about you a lot.” That part was true, just not
recently. In the first months after he left Texas, both she and her mother had been on his mind constantly. After a while, though, he'd been forced to distance himself from them, just as he'd done with Logan after he'd disappeared.

You're a very nice man when you aren't so busy being distant, Hallie had said. What she didn't understand was that being distant was how he'd survived. His parents might not have taught him much, but they'd taught him how to disconnect, and damned if he hadn't learned the lesson well.

“
She
told you to say that, didn't she?”

Deliberately, he avoided answering. “You know, I've lived my whole life without Hallie telling me what to do. Not that I wouldn't take advice from her if she offered it. She's a lot smarter than she's given credit for.” And a lot better with people than he'd ever imagined being.