The Love of a Lawman, The Callister Trilogy, Book 3 (14 page)

He was near enough for her to see the late-day stubble on his jaw, the thick brown brows. "When you got married, you must've had some idea about kids. You, for sure, knew what caused them. What
did
you plan for?"

"What I
planned
was becoming a world champion calf roper. But what I became was a father. Then I got married. Everything pretty much went downhill from there. Julie... well, I'll just say there were people she liked better than she liked me." John reached for another plate, dried it and carefully stacked it on top of the one he had just finished. "How about you and Billy? What did you plan for?"

A huff blurted out. Billy couldn't stick to a plan of any kind for more than thirty minutes. "Well, Billy didn't intend to be a father, that's for sure. He didn't even want to be a husband. He hated the whole time I was pregnant. He was at a horse show in Wyoming when I delivered." She laughed, as she always did when she thought about going to the hospital alone and giving birth among total strangers. "Not that I needed him. What could he do except get in the way?" She handed him a rinsed bowl. "I thought in time Ava would grow on him. I mean, how can you not love a little baby? But—"

She stopped herself. Lord, a conversation about her life with Billy could have her wailing all night. "If I had it all to do over, I'd recognize him as a poor choice for a father."

"He doesn't stay in touch with Ava?"

"Heavens, no." Isabelle felt too humiliated to tell him that Ava's father hadn't even helped choose her name.

"Does it bother her, not seeing her dad?"

John's interest seemed intense, so she couched her answer with care. "I don't think so. Even when we lived together, he didn't give her the time of day. Except for how his leaving uprooted our lives, I think she didn't care much." She handed him another rinsed bowl and went back to her dishwater.

Playful barks came from the porch and they both looked in that direction. "I'm glad everything's working out with the dogs. I worried about it. At the time I brought them out here, I didn't think about how pushy it was."

"They make Ava happy. And right now I'm looking for anything that makes her happy."

"Why? Is she a problem?" He started on the silverware.

"Gosh, no. At least not a problem child. She's wonderful. But her life has been turned upside down. She was born in Weatherford. She's never known anywhere else. Add that to the fact that Billy and I weren't model parents to begin with. She's spent so much time with babysitters instead of me. It feels like she doesn't—I'm just trying to make up for all the time I devoted horses that I should have spent with my daughter."

What was she doing? She had no intention of discussing with anybody in Callister her shortcomings as a parent or her unusual relationship with her daughter's father.

"When I first saw her, I wondered if she was Billy's daughter. I couldn't tell by looking. I don't see much of Bledsoes in her. She looks like you."

Isabelle felt her cheeks warm up, the compliment making her self-conscious. "Poor kid."

John's brow creased into a frown. "Why would you say that? You're a pretty woman, Izzy—Isabelle."

"Uh-huh, I call all these freckles beauty marks. And this wild hair? Every day I debate if I should cut it off even with my ears. You'd think I would have at least inherited Pa's orderly black hair, like Paul did."

"Don't put yourself down like that. I guess you never knew, but when we were in high school, you were all I thought about. But you turned around and went the other direction every time we ran into each other." His voice turned soft and she sensed his eyes on her. "I had, uh"—he made a low chuckle—"well, I'll put it this way—I dreamed about you damn near every night."

She looked up at him, knowing what he had almost said and feeling both flattered and fearful of what she saw in his earnest expression. "We were kids, John. We were different people."

"Amen to that." He folded the towel into a crooked but neat square and smoothed it out on the counter. His hand came to rest on her shoulder. He lifted a russet ringlet and rubbed the strands between his thumb and finger. "I always wanted to touch your hair," he said. "Don't cut it."

A dozen emotions passed through his expressive eyes. She dropped her gaze to his mouth and his slightly parted lips. She could feel his breath, smell the faint hint of the spices they had eaten. A frisson shot through her. She looked away quickly and cleared her throat, thankful to have her hands immersed in dishwater because she could feel they were trembling.

She didn't reply to his remarks, concentrating instead on washing the last dish. Anything she said could open a conversation for which she wasn't ready. She couldn't guess his thoughts, but hers were all over the place—ranging from wondering about the meaning of his touching her and his comment on why his wife left him to where he lived and, God forgive her, how he would look without his clothes.

"I think it's time for me to hit the road," he said, telling her with his eyes he knew as well as she that something had passed between them, something they might renounce with words but could never erase.

A slutty side of her nudged her to say,
Stay,
but the reformed parent dried her hands, went to the living room and returned with his hat. She walked behind him toward the mudroom where he had left his jacket. "Thanks for being good to my babies."

"It was my pleasure. I've got some ideas we could discuss one of these days. About the horses."

"Okay, sure. I'm open to suggestions."

He shrugged into his coat, ran a hand over his hair and set on his hat. Ava jumped up from playing with the puppies. "Mama cooks supper every night," she said. "We always have a lot."

Isabelle did a mental eye roll. Indeed she did cook every night, but how desperate did it sound having her daughter imply that John should come and eat. "Have you done your homework?" she asked Ava. "Didn't you have geography questions?"

"They only take a minute. I already know all the answers. I learned geography a long time ago."

"I used to be good at geography," John said with an easy grin. "Someday we'll have a contest. See who knows the most."

Ava giggled. Isabelle opened the back door.

"Far as I can tell now," John said, "I won't get back 'til next week. I stick close to town on Friday and Saturday nights."

"Because of the bars?"

"Yep. You never know which sets of drunks are gonna try to kill one another."

Isabelle's thoughts flew to Paul.

Chapter 9

A houseful of people celebrated John's mother's birthday. His sister, Jessica, and brother-in-law, Richard, had come from Twin Falls for the occasion. Some cousins from Spokane and a few of his parents' friends from town showed up, too.

The home of John's youth was old, roomy and warm from a fire smoldering in a stone fireplace. It was also bright with natural light. No curtains hung on the row of east windows that brightened both the dining room and the great room and none ever had. Katie Bradshaw wanted to look at nature.

With the weather too inclement for a backyard barbecue, John's dad cooked steaks—Bradshaw's own beef—over hot coals on the brick indoor grill in the kitchen. They ate in midafternoon.

After the dishes had been cleaned up, Jessica brought out a large, flat cake and set it on one end of the varnished pine dining table. The confection was big as a saddle blanket and heaped with swirls of colorful frosting. Miniature plastic cows grazed on a green-sugar pasture and plastic bucking broncs reared behind a fence of chocolate strips.

The thing looked too pretty to eat. Jessica produced a camera and snapped pictures.

A pile of gifts covered the opposite end of the long table. As the well-wishers gathered around, Richard pulled bottles of champagne from the refrigerator. John's mother was coaxed from the kitchen to the table by Jessica and listened, her face flushed, while the group toasted her, then sang "Happy Birthday."

Jessica presented a fancy wrapped box from the Bon Marche in Boise. John's mother opened it and lifted out clothes that John thought looked frumpish for a woman who roared around a ranch on an ATV.

The outfit came with a lecture about how she should get out of those jeans and into some feminine clothing now that she was getting older. What in hell did Jessica mean? Their mother was only sixty-three and she still cut a fine figure in a pair of jeans. Mom gushed over the gift John knew she would never wear.

John didn't pretend to understand his sister. With her being ten years older, he felt almost as if they had grown up in different families. She had met Richard in college. Before John reached high school, both she and Richard had graduated from U of I with degrees in elementary education and certificates to teach. They had been married nineteen years, had no children. They did have a dachshund they treated like a child and called Adolph. The name fit the demanding little fart. Adolph was the only dog Mom and Dad had ever allowed in the house.

The dachshund and their teaching careers appeared to be his sister and brother-in-law's existence. Neither of them had an interest in ranching or livestock. They sided with the radical environmental groups that believed grazing cattle were a blight on the earth, but, John noticed, they didn't turn down a good steak when it was offered.

At some future point, if his parents didn't sell out, he and his sister would inherit the Lazy B, which encompassed some premium pastureland, a sizeable government grazing allotment and a herd of well-bred cattle and other livestock. When that thought barged into his head, John always set it aside, unprepared to face his parents' passing or the aftermath.

As he knew they would be, the turquoise Zuni earrings he gave his mother were a hit. He and Mom had always understood each other. She put them on immediately. Dad gave her a new watch, which she promptly put on and showed off for all to admire and covet. If John knew his dad, the watch had cost several hundred dollars.

John looked on with something akin to awe as his parents hugged and kissed. There had always been an abundance of expressions of affection between his parents—touching, kissing, hugging. Watching them, he suspected their sex life had been hot and healthy, though try as he might he couldn't imagine his dad as a lover. The testy old guy must have something going for him, though, because even now, at sixty-seven, when he put his hand on Mom's bottom, she sidled closer to him for more.

Growing up, John had taken for granted that the warm give-and-take between his parents defined married love. That was before he got hitched to Julie, who dashed the illusion in a hurry.

Richard opened champagne, Mom blew out candles and cut the cake. John passed up the champagne for coffee and carried his serving to the sofa near the fireplace. Other than being friendly and making empty talk, he had managed to steer clear of his dad all day. No point ruining Mom's birthday party with a sarcastic exchange between him and Dad. Fortunately, enough people milled through the house to capture and hold the patriarch's attention.

Mom brought her glass of champagne and sat down beside him. "No bubbly?"

John had avoided alcohol since the day he agreed to take on the sheriff's job, believing it tarnished his image as the chief law enforcer in the county. Excessive use of it had damaged him as a man and though he'd seen many a cowboy drown in a lake of booze, some inner force he didn't understand or question had saved him from becoming one of them. He swallowed a sip of coffee and gave his mother a smile. "You never know. I might get a call to go back to town."

She stuck out her arm. "Like my new watch?"

"It's cool. You're a cool lady, Mom."

"Your dad spoils me." She turned and straightened his shirt collar and fondled the shaggy back of his hair that had grown past his collar. "When you were a little boy, those curls were cute, but now—"

"I know, I know. I need a haircut." He grinned, tilting his head away from her fingers, and had another sip of coffee.

"What you need is some doting female to look after you."

Izzy Rondeau's smile and the supper they had shared three nights ago flew into John's mind. He thought about her attempts to elevate his mood, about helping her with the dishes and touching her fragrant hair. The intimacy of hanging his chinks in her tack room. What would his mother make of all that?