The Love of a Lawman, The Callister Trilogy, Book 3 (21 page)

In the bathroom she filled the claw-footed tub nearly to the top with hot water and bubble bath. She hadn't ridden for a whole day in months and her sore muscles reminded her she was no longer a kid. As she stripped, she thought about the age of her body compared to the age of John Bradshaw's. Three years wasn't a huge age difference. He didn't seem to care, but she had seen the buckle bunnies who hung out around the cowboys at rodeos. She suspected John had never seen or touched a female body as old as hers.

She sank into the warm bubbles and closed her eyes, letting her mind wander where it would. It settled on John and how, at intervals through the day, she hadn't been able to keep from watching him—his incredible expressive eyes, his quick-to-grin mouth and white teeth, his narrow waist and firm butt in tight jeans. She admired the agility and athleticism in his big body, which made her think of all that masculinity pressed around her, against her.

In her.

She lounged in the bubble bath until the water turned cool, then climbed out and dried herself with a thick towel. In front of the mirror over the sink, she studied her thirty-five-year-old self. No discernible wrinkles, no sagging skin, breasts not quite as perky as they had once been but probably still enjoyable to a man's hands. Or mouth.

A cape of freckles draped over her shoulders, upper arms and chest. For some reason, her breasts weren't freckled. They were white and porcelainlike, with vivid rosy nipples. John had stared at her breasts, touched and kissed them all over.

Her belly, the same white color as her breasts, appeared to be as flat as it always had been, except that now there was something different. John's tongue had traced a trail across it just above her pubic hair and sent erotic sensations all through her. As if the line were highlighted in neon, she could still feel it.
Damn.

What would he think or say the next time they met?

What would
she
say?

She opened the medicine cabinet, took out a jar of sweet-smelling cream and began to rub it over her arms, her elbows and shoulders. What now? If they couldn't move past the temporary insanity in the barn, she would have to find someone else to help her with the horses.

She sat down on a small stool beside the tub and smoothed the soft cream over her feet and ankles, paid particular attention to her heels and the cuticles around her toenails. She moved up to her legs and rubbed her calves and shins and finally, rubbing the silky cream onto her thighs, she thought of John again and his hand between her legs.

She wanted him, more than she dared admit outside this room, more than she had wanted any man since Billy. Would his erection be as his body indicated, long and thick? The old saying came to her about the size of a man's feet. John's boot size must be a twelve or thirteen and a vague visual formed of him standing naked in front of her. In a telephone gossip session, her cousin Nan had told her John had been with a lot of women. Did he have fingers that were good for more than tying a calf in less than ten seconds? Did he have an agile tongue that could make her shudder and cry out as Billy had done?

A profound need gripped her. Her sex began to tingle. She closed her eyes, let her thighs fall wide and gently massaged herself with her fingers. Her belly muscles clenched. Her breath became a pant and she clenched her teeth as intense pleasure took her. When the moment passed, a shiver passed over her.

"Damn, Isabelle," she whispered. "What's wrong with you?"

Chapter 13

As she made coffee and prepared Ava's breakfast, Isabelle's mind volleyed between the conversation with John about the horses and the memory of their encounter in the barn. She had been so brazen, unhooking her bra herself, then letting him touch her everywhere. When had she become so desperate she couldn't control her urges? Would he think her a slut, as she had been called in high school?

With her history in Callister as a teenager, no one except for Billy would believe that she had no experience with sex. She had never wanted to be with anyone but Billy. When things had been good between them, the sex had been intense and erotic. After he left—well, to be honest, before he left, too—a few men had made passes at her, but she rejected all of them.

Now, after all this time, becoming intimate with any man in Callister reflected something more unsettling than the horse-ownership dilemma. Perhaps she hadn't succeeded in moving past Billy's desertion after all. Maybe it had deeply affected her as a woman. Did the barn incident prove it?

Shoving the scene to the back of her mind, she addressed the easier, more practical need. She called her cousin, Nan Gilbert, and made an arrangement to visit her after Ava left for school.

Since her return from Texas, Isabelle had been to the Gilbert home only once. The house was old, but its barn-red color and white trim gave it a clean, new look. A tall white fence and a locked gate closed off the front yard, tacitly directing traffic to the back of the frame house.

As soon as Isabelle knocked once, the back door sprang open and her chubby cousin greeted her with a hug and a dimpled smile on a wide, round face. "I'm so glad you came to see me," Nan said.

Compared to Isabelle, in tight jeans and turtleneck shirt, her cousin looked comfortable wearing oversized sweatpants and a huge green ski sweater peppered with a white snowflake design.

Isabelle stepped into an added-on room that was almost the size of the rest of the house. It obviously served a multitude of purposes. A sewing machine, an ironing board and a stack of clothing to be mended or ironed sat in front of a TV. A long table against the wall was covered with Roger's tools and supplies where he reloaded his own ammunition. He was an avid big-game hunter, like most of Callister's males.

In a wood heater, a fire burned and the room felt toasty. Isabelle removed her jacket and Nan held it up, inspecting the rust-colored tapestry fabric decorated with black and brown galloping horses. "Wow," she said. "Great jacket. Expensive, huh?"

Expensive being a relative description, Isabelle laughed off the remark. "Not really."

"I knew you'd have great clothes. Fancy horse people just do."

Isabelle had never classified herself as "fancy horse people," though she knew a few individuals who fit that category.

Nan hung the jacket on a coatrack in the corner. "Want some coffee? There's some left from breakfast."

"Sure." As Isabelle followed her cousin to the kitchen, which smelled of coffee and something baking, she glanced into the dining room and saw a child sleeping under a blanket in a playpen. That would be Amy, the youngest.

Amid an assortment of bowls and pans, Nan poured coffee into a thick ceramic mug and passed it to Isabelle. "Want sugar? Cream?" Nan didn't pour a cup for herself.

"No, thanks. You aren't having any?"

"Coffee's been giving me indigestion." Nan smiled, her brown eyes warm and happy. "I think I'm pregnant. I'm two weeks late."

"Oh," Isabelle said, unsure how to respond. Nan and Roger already had four children and Roger's income from his job as a heavy-equipment operator at the sawmill had to be small. "Congratulations, huh?" She leaned her rear end against the counter and sipped the hot, strong coffee.

Nan gave a jolly laugh. "We weren't expecting it, but when you've got a houseful, what's one more?"

Isabelle glanced at the sleeping child. "You don't use birth control?"

"Oh, sometimes. But when Roger wakes up all hard and ready to go, we aren't always careful." Her lips curled into another smile. "I can tell you the minute it happened this time."

Sex.
Well, Isabelle thought, that was a topic of which she need not be reminded. "Can't you say no?"

"I can, but I don't." The oven timer went off with a buzz. "Wait. Let me take this cake out of the oven. With six of us, we eat a cake a day around here." She grabbed hot pads and slid two chocolate layers from the oven and set them on trivets on the countertop. "Roger's real good. Know what I mean?" She reached across the stovetop and switched off the oven, then turned to Isabelle, wiggling her dark brows.

Isabelle winced inside, remembering John's fingers stroking between her thighs. Somehow she knew John Bradshaw would be real good, too, and she felt a little flash of heat. Embarrassed, she laughed to cover her discomfort. She didn't have conversations about sex with people she barely knew, even relatives. She could discuss with anyone the mating process between a mare and a stud and their respective reproductive organs, but she had never had girlfriends with whom she discussed sex between humans. "You're such a character, Nan. I hope Roger likes kids."

"He does. But I keep telling him if he doesn't go get cut, we're gonna have a dozen and I'm gonna weigh four hundred pounds. He just laughs and tells me how sorry I'd be if the doc made a mistake and whacked off two inches. And he's right. I'd be sorry." She tilted her head back and cackled.

Isabelle laughed with her, enjoying the wicked female camaraderie that was rare in her life.

"You're probably in a hurry," Nan said. "The computer's in our bedroom. C'mon back." She led the way up a short, tight hallway. "We keep the monster back here so we'll have control of the kids using it."

The bedroom was small, the bed rumpled and unmade, and Isabelle thought of sex again. Nan plopped into a straight-backed chair in front of the monitor and booted up the computer. Isabelle forced her mind to the task for which she had come, handed her cousin the address book and dictated a short, to-the-point letter to Billy Bledsoe. When they were satisfied with the content, Nan printed two copies on plain paper and passed them to her. "Want me to write the address on the envelope for you?"

"Would you? It would take me forever to do it and I don't know if anyone but me could read it."

"Sure." Her cousin reached for a pen and a plain white envelope and wrote the Oklahoma address. "You never did go and take therapy or classes or something, huh?"

"I took some remedial reading classes in Fort Worth." Isabelle folded one copy of the letter, slid it into the envelope and licked the flap. "But I don't know how much good it did." They walked back toward the kitchen. "Thanks for taking the time to do this for me. Ava has a computer, but I couldn't ask her to help me write a letter to Billy. She doesn't even talk about him."

Nan shook her head. "Jerk. I hope he lives to regret what he's done. Hey, I'll bet Ava's a big help now that she's older."

"She is. Me being a poor reader and writer has made her and me both smarter. You'd be amazed at some of the stuff she knows. She reads me technical stuff out of vet books."

In the kitchen, as Nan deftly turned the cooled cake layers out of the pans, Isabelle looked around at the dirty dishes on the counter and in the sink. "Did you make that from scratch?"

"Heavens, yes. We buy groceries in bulk, which eliminates most instant stuff."

"Oh, of course," Isabelle said, thinking of what it must cost to feed a family of six. She picked up her coffee cup, leaned against the counter and sipped, watching. "You do that so easily. I couldn't bake a layer cake from scratch if I was going to be shot. If the directions on cake mixes weren't in pictures, I couldn't even manage one of those."

"Just 'cause your mom was a cook doesn't mean you have to be one. You can do other things. I heard in town you can talk to horses in a way they understand."

"Really. I was wondering what they were saying about me in town. I won't ask what else they're saying." As a Callister native, Isabelle knew better than to wade too deep into the swamp of local gossip.

Nan moved to the refrigerator and disappeared behind the heavy door. "I'll tell you anyway if you won't get mad." She surfaced with a package of butter and a jug of milk and carried them to the counter.

"Do I have a choice?"

"They're saying the sheriff's hanging out at your house, helping you with your fancy horses and Lord knows what else." She set up the mixer and dumped sticks of butter into the bowl.

Isabelle cringed inside, knowing better but wondering anyway if a spy had been hiding in her barn. To throw her cousin off the track, Isabelle gave her a squinty look of disbelief. "He's riding for me. And there is no what else."

"You know people in this town are gonna talk. You're fresh meat and the sheriff ain't just any ol' guy. I think he's hot, myself." Nan laughed as she pulled powdered sugar, cocoa and vanilla extract from the cupboard.