Lassoing the Deputy Page 2

  You’ve got to get a grip, Alma. He’s only a man. Cash Taylor is probably fat and married and nothing like you remember. So snap out of it! she ordered herself.

  She just couldn’t get his face out of her mind. His face the way he’d looked that last time they had been together. Right before he left Forever. And her. For good.

  “You okay, Alma?”

  This time it was Joe Lone Wolf asking. He was standing right next to her, she realized with a start. She hadn’t heard him come up, but then the man was a Navajo and he had a tendency to make as much noise as a shadow when he walked.

  “Yes,” she bit off, “I’m fine. Why are you asking?” she demanded.

  Joe took a step back, as if her temper had a physical side to it and it had pushed him away from her.

  “Well, for one thing, you’re frowning,” he told her. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you frown before. From the inside,” he emphasized. “It made me think that maybe something was wrong and that I could help.” He nodded at the pot. “Is it ready yet?”

  “Another couple of minutes,” she replied, relieved to have the subject changed.

  She had to stop being so defensive. Rick and Joe were only showing concern. They cared about her.

  Unlike Cash.

  She did her best to smile. “Nothing’s wrong,” she lied. That made two, she thought, wondering what her limit for lies was.

  Two?

  Ten?

  Two hundred? Just where did she draw the line? It would have been so much better if she just didn’t care. But she did. “I’m just thinking about what I was going to bring to the wedding as a gift for Miss Joan.”

  “Hey, don’t want to leave Harry out,” Larry, overhearing her, chimed in as he came into the kitchenette. “They’re going to be a set now, Miss Joan and Harry.” The young deputy shook his head. “Miss Joan, married. Wow. It’s going to be really hard picturing her that way.” He helped himself to a cup of coffee. “Wonder if that means she’s going to raise her rates after they exchange vows.”

  “What does one thing have to do with the other?” Alma didn’t see the connection.

  Larry measured out four tablespoons of sugar. Watching him, it was all Joe could do to keep from shivering at the thought of taking in all that sweetness.

  “Well, she’s going to be starting a new life as a bride, right? That means she’s going to want to have a lot of new things, isn’t she? New things cost money and her source of income is that diner of hers. Put two and two together, Alma,” Larry said loftily. “Miss Joan’s going to raise her rates, just you watch.” He frowned. “I’m going to have to start bringing sandwiches from home.”

  “That means you’re going to have to learn how to make sandwiches first,” Joe quipped quietly.

  Larry appeared not to hear, but he heard Alma’s protest loud and clear. Miss Joan had a very special place in her heart. The woman had given her a job at the diner when she was fifteen so that she, along with her brothers, could earn money to help their dad with the overwhelming medical costs that were involved in trying to keep their mother alive for just a little longer. Alma knew for a fact that Miss Joan had paid her more than the usual going rate.

  “Miss Joan’s not going to do any such thing,” Alma insisted. “She’s not like that. Besides, that’s what the bridal shower is for, so that we can give her all those little extras. She’s already got anything she might need,” she pointed out to the blond deputy. “This is Miss Joan we’re talking about. Anything she needs, she’s got either at home or at the diner.”

  “And Harry hasn’t exactly been living in a tree all these years,” Joe pointed out, joining the discussion and siding with Alma.

  Sampling his coffee, Larry found that there was something missing. He put in more cream. His coffee now resembled light tan milk. “True, he’s got that ranch of his. And the house,” Larry agreed.

  The house.

  The house where Cash had lived before he’d left for college. Before he’d left her.

  The yelp that rose from her lips had been an automatic reaction, happening so quickly she didn’t have time to stifle it. The back of her hand had come in contact with the coffeepot. Annoyed with herself, she pressed her lips together as she pulled back her stinging hand.

  “Alma, you’re going to burn your hand,” Larry warned needlessly.

  Joe was standing next to her and saw the instant patch of angry red that had popped up. “Hell, she already has,” he said. He took her hand, holding on to it by her palm. “C’mon, let’s get this under cold water first and then I can make this poultice for you—”

  She pulled her hand away from him. The last thing she wanted was to be fussed over as if she was some helpless damsel in distress.

  Get a grip, damn it! she repeated to herself.

  “I’m fine, really,” she told Joe. Looking up, she saw that Rick had been drawn back to the kitchenette, most likely because she’d just yelped and made a fool of herself. She’d worked hard to make them all respect her and now she was sacrificing it all in a few minutes. This had to stop. “All of you, stop hovering over me.”

  “We’ll stop hovering,” Rick told her patiently, “when you stop acting as if you’re expecting to see the ghost of Christmas past at any moment.”

  He knew, she thought. Most likely, so did Joe. Damn it, she was supposed to keep her feelings to herself, not have them out in plain sight where everyone could see them on her face.

  And feel sorry for her.

  “I’m not waiting to see a ghost from Christmas past or from any other event,” she retorted. “I’m just a little preoccupied today, that’s all. Nothing that none of you haven’t been at one time or other—and a lot more than me,” she declared.

  “Yeah, but you’re Alma. You don’t do things like that,” Joe pointed out in his calm, mild voice. “You’re supposed to be the one who keeps the rest of us in line, remember?”

  “Flattery, nice way to defuse the situation,” Rick commented, amused, after Alma had retreated to the communal restroom to run cold water over the red mark on her hand.

  “Works with Mona,” Joe said with the barest hint of a smile.

  Rick laughed. “Maybe I’ll try that on Olivia, see if it works next time she’s got her back up about something.”

  Larry shook his head in disbelief. “Henpecked, both of you.”

  “Not henpecked,” Joe corrected. “Thoughtful.”

  “And smart,” Rick interjected. “You get more flies with honey than you do with vinegar.”

  “Yeah, if flies are what you’re after,” Larry cracked.

  Joe and Rick exchanged looks. “He’s missing the point,” Joe commented.

  “Completely,” Rick agreed. “Get back to us when you’re married, Larry. We’ll talk.”

  “Married?” Larry echoed. “You’re kidding, right? Same routine every night? No, thanks. I’m never getting married.”

  “Right. You just keep on living the dream, Larry,” Joe said, patting the other man on the shoulder.

  “You really don’t know what you’re missing,” Rick told the younger deputy as he walked away.

  He meant what he said. Because, for the first time in his life, he knew the difference between just being resigned to his lot and being really happy about it. And Olivia and their daughter made him happier than he had ever thought possible.

  Larry muttered something unintelligible under his breath and went back to his desk.

  “Jealous,” Joe concluded.

  “Obviously,” Rick agreed. And then he became serious for a moment as they passed the restroom. “Do me a favor. Keep an eye on Alma,” he requested in a lower voice, nodding toward the restroom door.

  “No problem,” Joe said.

  On the other side of the door, about to walk out, Alma overheard the sheriff and Joe. There was no point in saying that she didn’t need anyone’s eye on her. What she needed was for Cash not to come back to Forever and mar what would otherwise be a very festive occ
asion.

  But there was no way around it. Harry had been very excited when he’d told her. Cash was coming back for the wedding and she was just going to have to find a way to live with that until he left again.

  It wasn’t fair, Alma thought, putting back the coffee can in the cupboard and automatically tidying up the kitchenette. It wasn’t fair that she cared after all this time and Cash obviously didn’t.

  But she’d dealt with everything else that life had thrown at her; she could get through this, as well.

  Hadn’t she dealt with her mother’s illness and with having to pitch in with her brothers to earn extra money to help her father pay all the medical bills that had accrued? Bills that had to be paid despite the fact that in the end, her mother hadn’t been saved. She’d succumbed to the insidious disease that had eaten away at her, a shell of the bright-eyed, vibrant woman she’d once been.

  And hadn’t she dealt with the harsh reality that she wasn’t able to go away to college even as Cash, thanks to his grandfather’s insistence, left to pursue his dreams of becoming a lawyer?

  She could have just given up then, but she didn’t. At that time she’d still believed that Cash would come back to her once he got his degree. Determined that he would never have cause to be ashamed of her, she’d been hell-bent to make something of herself. So, continuing to work at Miss Joan’s diner in order to earn a living, she took courses online at night.

  It took a while, but she had finally gotten her degree in criminology. She’d always wanted to go into law enforcement and had been overjoyed when Rick had hired her on as a deputy.

  Her eventual goal was to become a sheriff if and when Rick decided to move on.

  If he didn’t, then most likely she would. But all that was for a nebulous “someday.” Right now, for the time being, this town where she’d been born was still her home.

  A home that was about to be invaded.

  She would have to psyche herself up, that was all, Alma silently counseled herself.

  After she finished tidying up, she folded the kitchen towel, left it on the minuscule counter and walked back to the main room and her desk.

  She was just going to have to—

  Her thoughts abruptly came to a screeching halt and then went up in smoke just as her heart went into double time.

  Cash was standing, bigger than life, right there in the middle of the sheriff’s office.

  And right in front of her.

  Chapter Two

  “Hey, Alma, look who I just found walking by our office,” Larry called out. It became apparent that the blond-haired deputy had snagged Cash and brought him in, thinking perhaps that he was doing a good deed. “The city-slicker lawyer is finally paying the country mice back home a visit.” Larry chuckled at his own display of wit. It was a given around the office that he was always his own best audience. “How’s it going, Cash?” he asked, pumping Cash’s hand. “Any of those fancy ladies in Los Angeles manage to lasso you yet?”

  “It’s going well,” Cash replied mechanically. “And no, they haven’t.” He wasn’t looking at Larry when he answered. He was looking at Alma.

  And she seemed to be looking into his soul.

  That was what he used to say to her, that she was his soul. It was a play on her name, which meant “soul” in Spanish. But, even so, back then, he’d meant it. He’d really felt as if she was his soul. His beginning, his ending.

  His everything.

  In that last summer, during the space between graduation and his going off to college on the West Coast, no one was more surprised than he was when he found himself falling for her. Really falling for her. They had grown up together. When he and his mother had come to live with his grandfather, he’d been seven years old, and after a while, it felt as if he had always lived here and always known the Rodriguez kids.

  Hardly a day went by that he and Alma didn’t see each other, play with each other. Fight with each other. He was friends with her brothers, especially Eli and Gabe, and she always found a way to tag along, no matter how hard he and her brothers initially tried to ditch her.

  It seemed that the more they tried, the harder she was to get rid of. Back then, he’d thought of her as a royal pain in the butt. He couldn’t remember exactly when all that had changed, but it had. Slowly, she became his friend, then his confidante, and then, ever so gradually, his best friend.

  And finally, his first love.

  Now that he thought about it, Alma had been part of his every day.

  Until he left for college.

  He’d left to make a future for himself and for her. That was what he’d told himself, what he’d believed. But somewhere along the line, he’d let himself get caught up with the newness and of life in a major city like Los Angeles. He was the country boy who hailed from a speck on the map and he wanted to be as polished, as sophisticated as the students he saw around him in his classes.

  Still, in the beginning, while he was still homesick, he looked forward to Alma’s letters. He devoured them like a starving man devoured every last morsel of a meal.

  But he soon discovered that his tall, blond good looks and Southern accent attracted more than just a handful of women. Male students befriended him, wanting him to be their wingman, their “chick magnet.” And female students just wanted him.

  After a while, Cash forgot to answer Alma’s letters. And then he forgot to read them. He told himself he was too busy studying for exams, but the truth was that he’d been too busy cramming as much life as he could into his existence. It was as if he’d felt compelled to make up for lost time.

  He had still studied hard, but every weekend saw him partying equally hard, each time with a different girl. That way it couldn’t be construed as anything serious and the tiny part of him that still had a conscience argued that he wasn’t being unfaithful to Alma.

  Cash told himself that he was just becoming a more rounded person. He was socializing and making connections that would help his future once he became a lawyer.

  Instead, it made him, Cash now realized, as incredibly shallow as the people with whom he socialized.

  It had been a hell of a ride, though. Somehow, despite all his frantic partying, he wound up graduating near the top of his class. Offers came in from major law firms to intern with them. He made up his mind quickly. He picked the firm with the highest profile, one that dealt in criminal defense cases.

  Once on board, he dedicated himself to becoming the best damn intern Jeffers, Wells, Baumann & Fields had ever had in their one-hundred-and-three-year history. He achieved his goal, rising through the ranks faster than any of the partners who had come before him and were now firmly entrenched in the organization.

  And all through his rise, there’d been victories and accolades. And women. Many, many women whose names and faces now seemed to run together.

  Somewhere along the line, he didn’t know just when, he’d managed to lose his soul without realizing it. It hadn’t really bothered him very much.

  Until that horrible day when everything just blew apart.

  All this went through his head in a nanosecond as he stood, looking at Alma, too hollow to even ache. “So how are you, Alma?” he asked quietly.

  It almost didn’t sound like Cash. Had she ever known this man? Or had she just imagined it all?

  “I’m fine,” she answered politely. Then, because the silence felt awkward, she added, “Your grandfather mentioned you were coming, but I didn’t expect to see you until just before the wedding.”

  She didn’t tell him that Harry had gone out of his way to tell her—to prepare her—and that she’d dropped the glass she’d been holding, breaking it on the diner’s counter when she was given the news.

  Cash had initially toyed with the idea of waiting until just before the big day, but he knew that if he waited until then, he might not be able to come at all. By then, the despair that held him captive, that ate away at him daily, might have grown too large for him to handle.

 
But all this was darkness he wasn’t about to share. It was his cross to bear, no one else’s.

  So instead, he shrugged in response to her words and said, “I had a little extra vacation time coming to me. I thought I might just come early and catch up on things I’ve let slip away.”

  Just like that, huh? You come sashaying back and we’re all supposed to put on some kind of show for you, is that it?

  “Good luck with that,” she heard herself saying. With that, she walked past him, deliberately avoiding making contact with his eyes.

  His voice followed her. Surrounded her. “My grandfather told me you became a deputy sheriff.”

  She turned around. Considering that she was wearing the same khaki shirt and pants that the three men in the office had on, it would have been hard to make any other conclusion.

  “I did.”

  He laughed softly, but there was no humor in the sound. “Guess I had to see it for myself.”

  She glanced down at her uniform, then back at him. “Well, you did.”

  Even as the words came out of her mouth, Alma almost winced. Could either of them have sounded any more stilted, any more awkward, than they did?

  That last summer, before Cash went away to college, leaving promises in his wake, they had talked about everything under the sun and the stars. There wasn’t a topic they hadn’t touched on.

  More than talk, there had been trust. She’d trusted him the way she had never trusted anyone else, not even her brothers. And he had opened up to her, sharing his thoughts, his dreams for a future together with her. When he spoke, he’d created vivid pictures with his words. It had been exciting just to listen to him.

  Together, they were going to change the world.

  He’d even, at the last minute, she recalled with a pang, urged her to come with him.