The Love of a Lawman, The Callister Trilogy, Book 3 (35 page)

She sauntered toward the door, speaking to someone as she went past. Yep, he was glad he had stopped going into Java Junction. He cut a look toward Izzy, sure she had seen him and Rita sitting together.

He watched her chat with Lorraine. Ava set her satchel on the floor and climbed up on a stool at the yellow Formica-topped counter. Soon came a drink in a tall cup. He couldn't hear her conversation, but he could see she was talking ninety miles an hour, as usual.

Anguish built within John. He missed that kid and her nonstop talk and unfettered opinions about any subject you could name. Seeing Isabelle reminded him how her and her daughter's absence had left a ragged hole in the very fabric of his life.

Soon a heavyset woman he recognized as Nan Gilbert came in. John hadn't seen her since high school when she was a good fifty pounds lighter. With her were two dark-haired girls who looked to be near Ava's age.

The girls sat down beside Ava and they talked and giggled. Nan leaned on the counter, laughing with Izzy and Lorraine. Soon Nan adjusted her purse on her shoulder and told the girls in a loud voice she was ready to go. They all hugged, Ava picked up the satchel and left the cafe with Nan and the two girls. John surmised Ava was going somewhere for the night.

John hadn't talked to Izzy once since the morning after Paul's arrest. He watched as she paid at the cash register. When he saw her walk out, a longing besieged him and the progress he had made putting her out of his mind deserted him. He pushed aside his slice of the TV cook's apple pie, left the table and paid for his lunch, then followed behind her.

When he reached the sidewalk, she was climbing into her truck at the end of the block. She drove away before he could get her attention.

Though he usually walked from the courthouse to Betty's, today, with the inclement weather, he had come in the Blazer. By the time he reached the rig, Izzy's Sierra was out of sight. He tore through town and turned onto the county road, attempting to catch up with her. When he saw her truck again, she was turning into her driveway. He had come this far, so he followed it all the way to the house and stopped behind it.

She slid out and waited for him beside the driver's door as he dismounted and walked to her, squinting his eyes and hunching his shoulders against a fine cold mist. "Just wanted to say hi," he said and wondered just how pathetic he sounded.

She started walking toward the back door, her head down."Okay, hi.... How was lunch?"

He walked beside her, stuffing his hands into his coat pockets for warmth and passing over the pointed question. "How you been?"

"Okay."

Encouraged that she hadn't told him to get lost, John tried for an engaging smile. "Don't suppose you've got a cup of coffee."

She looked up at him. "I think there's some left from this morning." She opened the back door. "If you can stand it, you're welcome to it. I
didn't
have it specially ground at Java Junction."

"C'mon now. I haven't been in that coffee shop in weeks and you know it." John followed her into the porch and was met by Harry and Gwendolyn, their toenails clicking on the plywood floor as their tails lashed his boot tops. "They're getting big." He bent down and scruffed their heads with his knuckles.

"They keep Ava busy." She unhooked a slicker from an iron horseshoe hook on the mudroom wall and threw it around her shoulders. Then she reached for two leashes and snapped them onto the pups' collars. "You can stay indoors where it's dry. Help yourself to the coffee. Heat it in the microwave."

"I'll just walk with you." John followed her outside, shoving his hands into his pockets as he walked beside her.

"So you've gone back to fooling around with Rita Mitchell," she said. "That's good. You need—"

"I've never fooled around with Rita Mitchell, so I haven't gone back to anything."

The speech she had made in the sheriff's office the morning after Paul's arrest had come back to John a hundred times and left him wondering if she had indeed taken her brother into her house to live. Even with Callister's gossip gazette, he hadn't heard yes or no. "Paul moved in with you?"

"No. He isn't in town. I don't know where he is."

That could be good news or bad. "I see."

She gave him a sharp look across her shoulder. "I'm sure he's fishing or something. You don't have to worry about him."

"I wasn't worried. I saw in court he can be responsible. I believed him when he told Judge Morrison he'd shape up."

In spite of his upbeat words, John still had a vivid visual of the heavy-bladed knife lying on the bottom shelf of the sheriff's office safe. And every time he removed his clothes, he saw a red scar on his stomach that reminded him of Paul Rondeau.

"I was proud of Paul that morning," she said.

"Yeah, he did okay. The judge thought so, too, or things could've gone south."

"Did you speak for him to the judge? I'm sure you were asked for your opinion."

"To be honest, no. But I didn't speak against him either."

"That's fair, I guess."

"Yeah, well, fair is what I'm supposed to be."

John didn't want to discuss Paul. She seemed to want to hear praise for the guy and John had none to offer. "I saw Ava leave the cafe with Nan Gilbert. I didn't know her and Roger had kids Ava's age."

"That was Paul's daughters, Emily and Olivia. One of Nan's kids is having a birthday, so she's giving a party."

"That was something you wanted, wasn't it? To get Paul's daughters to come up?"

"Yes. I told Nan and Paul's wife I'd teach the kids to ride. The weather's too nasty for it, so Nan put together the party."

They completed a wide circle around the pasture and returned the dogs to the porch. She retrieved a towel from the mudroom cabinets and began wiping their feet. Ignoring his own feet, which felt like frozen stumps, John helped her.

Wearing a slicker and all-weather boots, Izzy had stayed dry, but John's canvas coat felt wet and heavy and the saturated grass had soaked his street boots and his jeans all the way past his knees.

As she stood up and peeled her slicker off, her gaze fell on his boots. "There's a fire in the fireplace if you want to take those off."

He pried off his boots. His socks were wet, too. "If you wouldn't mind, I'll just set these on the hearth to dry out for a few minutes."

"Sure," she said. She braced a hand against the mudroom door, pulled her own boots off and slid her feet into slippers.

Feeling chilled through and through, John carried his boots to the living room and warmth. The mantel clock struck two, but the drizzly day made the room gray and dim. A low fire in the fireplace cast the red-brick hearth in a soft amber light. He sat down on the hearth, pulled off his socks and hung them across his boot tops.

A few minutes later, she brought steaming mugs from the kitchen, handed him one, then sank cross-legged onto the rugs in front of the fireplace. "Everything feels so damp," she said and sipped. "I'm having some of Ava's hot chocolate."

He sipped the coffee, but it didn't do much to warm up his feet. "I was thinking, we've never gone out, just the two of us. Want to drive up to the ski lodge for supper? I could go back to my apartment and get some dry clothes and—"

"It's so cozy here, I hate to leave. You can't afford supper at the ski lodge anyway. I'm sure asking me out to dinner isn't why you came."

"I just now thought of it. Something to do, a place to sit and talk."

She smiled up at him and some of the weight lifted from his heart. "We've had some of our best conversations right here," she said. "What do you want to talk about?"

As if she didn't know. He looked down at the dark liquid in his mug. "I miss you like hell, Isabelle. I don't like my life without you in it."

"Don't say that, John. I've been thinking ever since that day in your office. We
can't
keep on like we were. It causes too much trouble for all of us, you most of all. We both should have known better. We can be friends. We can't be lovers."

He looked up, across his shoulder, and to his dismay, saw not just sadness, but sincerity in her expression. A kink began to form in his gut. He didn't want to be
friends.
No relationship as close or as hot and passionate as theirs could fall in the "friendship" category. "I'm your friend, if that's what you mean," he said, as if her words hadn't sliced into him deeper than her brother's knife. "I always have been."

"I believe that." She ducked her chin and stared at the contents of her mug. The dampness had caused her hair to frizz. The firelight reflected in it, making a fiery aura around her head. He loved her hair, loved how the thick curls fell halfway down her back, loved how it smelled, loved burrowing his hands in it. His throat constricted at the thought of losing that.

"And I hope you'll continue to be," she went on. "I just think I need to concentrate on what I'm supposed to be doing, which is building a horse business and making a good life for me and Ava. I have too much to lose here to be behaving in an irresponsible way that reflects badly on me. Or doing things that don't have a future. After your agreement with the county commissioners is done, you're moving on, remember?"

The future. For sure, they hadn't discussed the future. The truth was he had been too engrossed in the here and now to consider the tomorrow and next year. He couldn't read her today, but he could see she wasn't leveling with him.

Something was bothering her, but it wasn't her reputation or concern for his honorable intentions.

"If it's gossip that's worrying you, everybody in town knows about us. No one thinks we're doing something wrong."

"I don't care what they think, not really. I mean, I do, but it's a small thing."

"Since when?" He bent his head to make eye contact. "Up to now it's been a big thing. If it's gotten small all of a sudden, then why don't you tell me the other big thing that's a problem?"

Chapter 23

Isabelle could see the emotion in John's eyes. Why didn't he leave well enough alone? Except for Ava's surly attitude, the past two weeks had been almost a relief, a reprieve from looking forward to and waiting for his arrival on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. She drew in a deep breath. "It's too hard to overcome who I am, who my brother is."

How could she explain that she would let nothing, including what she felt for John, prevent her from having a relationship with or defending her brother?

"We all grew up together. Don't you think I already know who you are, who your brother is? I don't hate him, Isabelle."

"I don't think you could hate anyone, John. You know he's one of the reasons I came back here. It's true I didn't realize how bad things had gotten with him, but I won't forsake him. It isn't fair for me to impose such a conflict of interest on you."

"Can't I decide what's fair for me?"

She smiled. "You sometimes have impractical expectations. Just like when we were kids."

"Impractical expectations are the foundations of hope, Isabelle. That's what put me on the Wrangler rodeo team, what took me to the finals in professional rodeo. If we didn't have hope, how could we look forward to anything?"

She couldn't keep from smiling. She had never known anyone with more ideals or a more positive attitude than John Bradshaw. "That's exactly what I'm talking about. You're a half-full-glass kind of guy."

"And that's a bad thing?"

"No. It's something I admire about you. I tend to be the opposite."

He set his mug on the hearth, moved down and sat beside her on the rug, hip to hip. He braced himself on one hand and cocked his knee, placing one pale bare foot on the floor in front of them. His feet were long and high-arched, narrow for a man's, like his hands and fingers. They had to be freezing after being wet for so long, but he wasn't a complainer. "At least there's something you can admire," he said.

She could feel her resolve slipping away. How could she be just friends with a man who had touched every part of her body and soul?

Knowing she was inviting trouble, she set her mug on the hearth beside his, picked up his foot and began to rub it between her palms, like she sometimes rubbed Ava's. "Your feet are cold," she said.