The Love of a Lawman, The Callister Trilogy, Book 3 (12 page)

She could almost see his brain gears working. A commission on two hundred thousand dollars should make a difference in anyone's thinking.

"What percentage?"

"Two percent, maybe."

He chuckled, showing even white teeth and a twinkle in his green eyes. "C'mon. That doesn't amount to gas money. You gotta do better than that."

She thought he might be teasing her. "Well, I could pay you two percent and let you fill up out of my stand tank."

John laughed. He had a deep male laugh that she liked. "The county buys my gas, even for my own rig."

"Oh. Well, then, guess I'm out of luck. I don't have anything else to offer."

A dare flickered in his eyes. "C'mon, now. I can tell you're an old horse trader, so let's deal. I could be talked into waiting for the pay—if you're willing to double the percentage."

Damn.
She did a calculation in her head. She had no idea if she would get her asking price for the horses. She gave a little gasp. "You're talking about a healthy chunk of change. And what if the horses never sell? I won't be able to pay you and you'll arrest me or something."

He tilted his head and raised a palm. "Nope. Fair deal. If nobody buys them, I'll just say I worked for fun."

She cast him a dubious look. What was he up to? Probably something she wouldn't like. "I'll have to think about it."

By the time they returned to the corral, the temptation of having him help her won out. She swung out of the saddle and led Trixie outside the corral. John dismounted and began to unsaddle Dancer. She watched a few minutes, debating how best to approach a deal with him and tamping down one of her greatest fears. What if he asked for something in writing? "We don't need to put anything on paper, do we?"

His eyes bored into hers. "I trust you." He walked over and put out his right hand. "And if all of Callister County trusts me,
you
oughtta be able to."

In spite of her uncertainty, she smiled and shook hands, feeling the warmth and greater strength of his. Calf ropers did have good hands. A strange little shiver traveled through her.

"Okay," she said. "Four percent. I hope I don't regret this."

Chapter 8

As they carried their gear toward the tack room, Izzy told him she had to go to Ontario and return before Ava came home from school. John glanced at his watch. The small city of Ontario was over an hour away. He volunteered to finish up in the barn.

She told him thanks and headed for her truck, then waved as she rolled down the driveway.

John put away their tack. Leaving the barn, he stopped at the stand faucet beside the barn door, wiped the spigot opening with his shirtsleeve and knelt for a drink of cold, pure well water. He missed having well water to drink. The tap water in his apartment tasted like bleach and slid down his throat like oil.

He missed more than well water. He missed living in the country. He and Julie had owned a hundred-acre place outside Marsing. They'd had half a dozen good horses and a few cows, a new truck, an SUV and a John Deere farm tractor John used for plowing snow when necessary and doing chores in general. All but the truck and the SUV had been sold during the divorce.

Plopping down on a bench in the barn's shadow, he looked around. The sun had burned off the frost and etched the landscape in colors as vivid as a painting. A hawk hovered over the greening pasture, riding a thermal against an azure sky. A thousand birds perched on the bare branches of an oak tree standing at the corner of the barn, all chittering at once. He heard no other sounds. He loved it.

A profound sense of being severed from his world came over him and he pondered how he had come to the point in his life where he had nothing and nobody. He had been valedictorian of his high school class. He had graduated in the top ten percent of his class at Boise State University and come away with a B.B.A. degree. At one time he held standing in the top ten calf ropers in the country and had numerous endorsements from major companies.

He had fathered two healthy, smart children.

Now, here he was, age thirty-two and broke. All he had to his name was a pickup truck, a horse and a trailer and some riding gear and he didn't even have a pasture for the horse. He had no workable plan for his future. He enjoyed the company of his children only for short spurts and only at his ex-wife's whim. And as for productive work in which he could take pride, he filled a chair in the most ridiculous endeavor in which he had ever involved himself.

He steered his thoughts back from the dark side, needing to home in on constructive events. Something positive
had
happened today. Helping Izzy with her horses might not aid him much in making his child support payments, but doing it broke the monotony and bleakness of single life in Callister. He had to not lose sight of that.

He returned to the tack room, unstrapped his chinks and spurs and hung them on a nail on the wall, thinking as he did it about the permanence implied by leaving his chaps here.

On the way back to town he continued to muse on how much he had enjoyed the morning and how the solitude and vastness of the outdoors at Rondeau's place touched so deep a chord within him that it set off the uncharacteristic depression.

A few minutes later he pulled into the driveway of his happy home—a two-bedroom apartment that was half of a duplex two blocks from the courthouse. It wasn't the Ritz, to be sure, but it provided the necessities—a big-screen TV in the living room, a functioning refrigerator in the kitchen, a firm, name-brand mattress in one bedroom and exercise equipment in the other.

"Well, you've hung your hat in worse," he mumbled as he killed the truck engine. In fact, when he had been rodeoing and sending all his money home to Julie and the kids, he lived in or slept in everything from an eight-by-ten motel room to an RV to a horse trailer, depending on where his pursuit of a ProRodeo calf-roping prize took him. He didn't miss the joys of too much fast food, sleeping in unfamiliar beds and waking up hungover, but he did miss the camaraderie of fellow competitors, individuals driven to risk limb and life to be the best at their chosen sport.

And he missed having a willing woman, even one he barely knew by name, heat up and relieve that ache low in his belly.

From out of the blue, he remembered the doghouse he had promised. Anticipating the four walls of his empty apartment felt more dismal than usual and he
had
taken the whole day off. He cranked the engine and pointed his pickup south. Tomorrow he would deliver a new doghouse to Izzy and her little girl.

He returned late afternoon with a fiberglass doghouse to fit a large-sized dog. He hadn't had to go all the way to Boise to buy it after all. He found one at a farm and ranch supply store fifty miles from Callister.

He also found a birthday present for his mother—a pair of silver-and-turquoise earrings he was pretty sure were authentic Zuni. The storeowner's wife had even gift wrapped them. His mom would like them better than the bouquet of flowers he had planned to pick up at Fielder's Mercantile.

He stopped off at the mailbox in front of his apartment before going inside. Though he received little mail, he always checked, just in case one of his sons wrote him. When he pulled out a letter, saw his ex-wife's handwriting and a California return address he didn't recognize, his heart made a happy little leap. At the same time, unease pinched him. She never wrote. She phoned when she wanted something.

John continued to study the letter as he walked into the chilled apartment. He often left the heat off in his absence, so he turned up the thermostat and listened to be sure the antiquated oil furnace clicked on. A few times it had failed and left him shivering through the night.

After what Dancer had put him through, he was stiff. Even working out on his home gym hadn't prepped him for an hour aboard a badass horse. Tomorrow he would be lucky to be able to get out of bed. Damned if he hadn't gotten soft in the past year or two.

He dropped Julie's letter onto the seat of his reclining chair in front of the TV, his memory of their lives together setting off a growing suspicion that the letter held something he wouldn't like. When they were married, he had called her high-strung, a description that gave her the benefit of a doubt and excused some of her more malicious conduct. If someone asked him to describe her now, the words that came to him were "bad temper," "hysteria," "chaos" and "confusion." It was Julie who taught him how much turmoil one small woman could cause.

Without removing his jacket, he put coffee on to drip. While he waited in the kitchen's dull light for the warmth of the coffee and the furnace, he listened to his phone messages. Rooster had been out on a family disturbance call. The other messages were unimportant.

The letter from Julie nagged at him. He sat down with it and a mug of hot coffee. He tore the end off the envelope and pulled out two crisp pages filled with his ex-wife's small, perfectly aligned script. The handwriting style was a reflection of her uptight personality, for sure.

Dear John,

The boys have adjusted to school here and are doing fine. Cody is super smart and making good grades. Trey is struggling with reading like always, but on the whole, they love this place. Carson signed both of them up for Little League when we first got here. They are practicing in a park up the street from our apartment.

John looked up and stared across the room at pictures in silver frames of his towheaded sons, ages ten and almost nine, trying to imagine them playing baseball in a park or closed up in an apartment somewhere in the sea of humanity that was Los Angeles. When they had lived in Marsing, Trey and Cody had their own horses and John took them on trail rides in the mountains.

He sipped his coffee to ward off the pang that settled in his gut and returned to the letter.

There is much to like, living here. Southern California is nothing like Idaho, or Washington either. There is so much opportunity and exposure to so many cultures. It will be super good for the boys.

I would have called you about this, but I was afraid I might catch you when you couldn't talk or something.

She wants more money
was John's first thought.

I don't know anything else to do but just come right out and say why I'm writing you. I know you don't like people beating around the bush, so here goes. Carson wants to adopt the boys.

John's fingers began to tremble. He felt a quickness in his chest. Burning moisture rushed to his eyes.

He's so good with them. He helps Trey with his reading every night, takes them to all the fun stuff to do here. They've already been to Disneyland, Magic Mountain and the other places that kids love. Carson has so many influential friends who can open doors for them and he wants to be able to legitimately call them "his sons." Like he says, if we're going to be a family, then every one of us has to belong to him.

I know you, so you're going to say no. But before you do, I hope you'll think of the boys and what a wonderful opportunity this could be for them.

"No," John said. "Goddammit, no!" He wadded the letter into a ball and threw it across the room, stopped himself just before the coffee mug followed. He sprang to his feet and stomped outside to his truck, clapping on his hat as he went. He jerked open the door and climbed in, fired the engine, then sat there with it idling. He had nowhere to go.

A stunning realization came to him. Not so long ago, a bar would have been his destination of choice.

He crossed his arms over the steering wheel and gazed out at the waning day's golden air. Had Julie gone crazy? Did she honestly believe there was a chance on God's green earth he would give his sons over to some panty-ass he had seen once in his life? He loved those kids and she knew it. He was a good father. No damn way would he give up his sons.

He drove the two blocks to town, crept up the deserted main street, looked, but didn't see much action around the three bars. He followed the street on out of town until he came to the Stony Creek Road intersection. Before he knew it, he had turned off the pavement and headed toward Izzy's house. Why not? He had a doghouse to deliver.

He pulled up near the backyard gate, climbed out and lifted the doghouse over the tailgate. Ava ran to meet him, the puppies at her heels. He hoped she had them under control and was teaching them to stay home. Dealing with another dog incident and Art Karadimos was something John didn't relish.