Helen Myers - The Officer And The Renegade

Prison had indeed changed him, hardened and embittered him. If necessary, he could stand before this entire town and tell them all to go to hell. At least that’s what he’d believed before Taylor had driven up here. But now...

Hell, it wouldn’t take a magnifying glass to spot the chink in your armor, pal.

If only time hadn’t been so kind to her. He’d always thought her a natural woman, someone not unlike his mother who had a no-nonsense approach to her gender, but Taylor was more feminine nonetheless. That’s why it had been such a shock to learn she was a cop. Shapeless T-shirt and ancient jeans aside, she remained one of the sexiest women he’d ever known, her fine-boned, slim body always moving with an easy grace he knew she didn’t recognize let alone appreciate. Lady Blue, Wind Woman, he’d dubbed her when as kids they’d ridden over the hills and prairies. He had only to close his eyes to remember her incredible hair back then, how it would fly behind her like a golden eagle’s wing. How could she have cut it off? He didn’t want to acknowledge that the shorter style accented the angles and contours of her face, and added a youthfulness and vulnerability that was echoed by her sensitive mouth.

Damn. He had to forget that mouth.

“Can they do it?”

He welcomed his mother’s intrusion into his thoughts. “Anybody can do anything if they’re determined enough.”

“Then what are we going to do?”

“Ignore them for as long as we can. Take one day at a time.” It was a lesson he’d learned white caged. Consequently, he doubted few people out here could match his patience. In prison there had been little else to do but wait...and try to survive. “Don’t dwell,” he said as much for his own benefit as for his mother’s. “You knew my coming back wouldn’t be easy.”

“Knew, yes. But a mother can still hope.” She glanced at the departing Blazer. “It wasn’t fair of Emmett to send her. That cunning coyote never did play fair.”

She hadn’t always spoken with such resentment toward the Bennings. Once she’d treated Taylor, who’d been motherless for most of her childhood, as tenderly as she had Noel. Then Piers Marsden raped his little sister. Everything changed after that.

Fourteen years. Noel was thirty-one now, and although still single, she was finding some peace living in Arizona where she worked for a private foundation that helped women in trouble. Several times over the years she had tried to convince their mother to join her out there. So far she hadn’t succeeded.

“Would it be so bad to move?” he asked, curious to see if his mother had reconsidered.

“Your father was born here. He’s buried here. This is my home.”

His father had been Laughing Max Blackstone, half Jicarillo Apache and half Navajo, a strong, kind man who had been the center of Hugh’s life. A state road department supervisor, he had been killed at a job site when an eighteen-wheeler lost its brakes and had gone out of control. Hugh had been twelve, Noel seven. Their mother had just opened the feed store only weeks before, and suddenly what had begun as a comfortable life became a challenging one as they all worked together to make ends meet. There had been some insurance money, but their mother had tried to keep those funds for his and Noel’s education. He’d made her use his share for other things because he hadn’t been in a hurry to go off to college, not when she’d become so dependent on his help. There had also been Taylor...

Words couldn’t explain the way it had been between the two of them. Kindred spirits seemed a flowery, empty expression, and yet from their childhood they’d shared a strong connection, an understanding. By the time he was graduating from high school, friendship and adoration had grown into an unbelievable passion, and the mere thought of being away from her—even if only until weekends— had been unacceptable. He’d been willing to wait until she started college and his mother’s business was solid to where extra help could be hired. But then Piers Marsden entered their lives and sent everything and everyone into a tailspin.

“That settles things, then,” he said, turning back to the feed sacks. “You’re too stubborn to leave, and I have nowhere to go. Guess we’ll hang around and see what happens.”

“What about Taylor?”

“What about her?”

“Don’t try acting indifferent with me. I lived those years right beside the two of you. I had eyes, and there’s nothing wrong with them yet. Will you be able to cope, to deal with seeing her every day?”

Just the idea of that made him feel as if he’d swallowed a plateful of broken glass, but he managed a one-shouldered shrug. “We’ll find out that, as well.”

“But—”

“Mother,” he said with quiet warning. “Enough for now.”

His mother sighed, and once again glanced outside. “I wonder why she never married. Did you notice? She’s not wearing a ring.”

He’d noticed. And his heart continued its assault on his ribs thanks to that brief but intimate contact with her. Thanks to a lack of female companionship over the years, he knew he would have reacted to almost any woman; that it was Taylor who had reawakened his sexual appetite had to be the cruelest of jokes. So was finding himself pleased that she remained single.

“We aren’t going to get past this if we keep talking about it,” he muttered. He flung a fifty-pound sack onto the new pile with a little too much energy. As it landed, the multilayered brown paper split as though it was the finest wrapping.

Brown oblong pellets poured across the concrete floor. Hugh swore.

His mother eyed the mess and nodded. “I’d better go make some iced tea. You’re going to need some cooling down. Are you getting hungry yet?”

“No!” he snapped, glaring at what constituted several dollars of wasted feed. But he quickly checked his temper. “No, thanks. The tea will be fine for now.”

“I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Hugh didn’t reply and didn’t watch her head back toward the office. But once he heard the door shut, he walked out onto the dock—not in search of more air than was available in the stifling warehouse, although he did rub his forearm across his sweaty brow—to look farther down the road.

The Blazer was gone. For the time being. However, it would be back, and he and Taylor would cross paths again. For both of their sakes, he hoped it wasn’t soon.

“So what did he say?”

The screen door barely had time to shut behind her, yet Taylor’s father was already sitting up on the couch and lowering the volume on the TV. She looked from him to her son sprawled on the armchair beside him. Kyle’s open curiosity made her wish he’d waited until she’d sent the boy from the room.

“Use your imagination. It certainly wasn’t, ‘Gee, I’m glad to see you again. What? You want me to leave town? Sure, no problem.’”

Her father grimaced and scratched carefully at the two-inch scar beneath his chin where days ago stitches had been. Fingernails against several days’ growth of beard stubble sounded like sand being crushed under the sole of a boot. “Guess I deserved that, but can I help it if the suspense is killing me? Will he or won’t he cooperate?”

“My gut hunch is that I doubt it. At the same time, he doesn’t want trouble. I came away with the feeling that if people leave him alone he’ll reciprocate in kind.”

Her father didn’t look pleased. “That’s not going to satisfy Murdock or his allies.”

“Then you’re going to have to talk to Mr. Marsden,” Taylor replied, slipping off the borrowed hat. “Because I happen to believe that if the parole board saw fit to release Hugh, he has a right to try to start his life over wherever he pleases.”