Lassoing the Deputy Read online

  Drawing up the lists was taking her twice as long as it should have, not because she was stumped as to what to put on them, but because her mind kept wandering back to what Miss Joan had said to her this morning about the best way to exact revenge.

  She was torn between following the woman’s advice and just continuing the way she had.

  Both sides had merit, she told herself. But only one side didn’t involve a painful one-on-one with Cash. She finally just pushed it all aside, deciding that she needed to think about it later.

  Because things were so slow—there hadn’t even been a single phone call to report a missing pet—she volunteered to take the afternoon patrol through town in place of Joe.

  Patrolling was one of Joe’s least favorite parts of being a deputy.

  “You sure about this?” he asked her.

  Alma nodded. She needed to get out and take in some fresh air. She’d already caught herself nodding off twice since she’d gotten there.

  “It’s either go on patrol or fall asleep at my desk,” she told him.

  “Can’t have that,” he agreed. Digging into his pants pocket, he found the keys to the Jeep and tossed them to her. “Just make sure you don’t go falling asleep behind the wheel,” he warned.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t wreck it. The sheriff would never forgive me.” Looking at the keys, she murmured, “Thanks,” and got up. After pushing in her chair, Alma picked up her hat—though she rarely wore it—and made her way out the door.

  Maybe the fresh air would clear her head, she thought hopefully. God knew it couldn’t do her any harm. Right now, her head felt like a battle zone and she didn’t know which side she wanted to win. All she knew was that she wanted a little peace—and she knew damn well that wasn’t in the cards for another twelve days.

  After she’d made a complete pass through the town, rather than drive back to the office, she found herself driving to the perimeter of the town instead. Driving to the one place she always gravitated toward whenever she needed to work things out in her head.

  She headed toward the cemetery.

  Specifically, she was going to her mother’s grave. To talk to her.

  Leaving her vehicle parked at the edge of the small hundred-year-old cemetery, Alma opened the weathered wrought-iron gate.

  It creaked a painful greeting at her and then creaked again as she closed it. She went directly to her mother’s grave site.

  Even if she didn’t make it a point to visit here every Sunday, she would have easily found her way. The headstone placed on her mother’s grave was, in her opinion, unique. Carved out of dark marble, there was a photograph of Anna embedded in the upper portion of the stone. It captured the way her mother had looked as a young bride.

  It was, Alma’s father had told her, the way he liked to remember his late wife, with the wind in her hair and a soft, happy smile on her face.

  The headstone hadn’t always been there. A simple cross had marked the spot for more than a year until the bills were finally paid. Then she, her brothers and her father had bought Anna Rodriguez the kind of headstone she deserved. One as unique, as beautiful, as she had been.

  Alma laid the flowers she’d stopped to buy on her way here against the headstone and then backed up a little.

  “Hi, Mom, you’ve probably been expecting me,” she said, looking at the picture. “Guess you know that Cash is back in town.” She sighed. “I just don’t know how to handle seeing him again. Part of me wants to scratch his eyes out and yell at him, a small part of me wants to throw my arms around him and just hold on, while a bigger part wants to avoid him like the plague. Except that I can’t avoid him. His grandfather’s marrying Miss Joan—can you believe it?” she interjected in a sidebar. “Miss Joan, getting married? Anyway, Cash is going to be here for the next two weeks, until the wedding. So, like it or not, I’m going to be running into him, unless he hides out at the ranch, which isn’t likely.

  “Miss Joan says I shouldn’t give him the silent treatment, that I should act the way I normally do, let him see what he’s been missing all these years.

  “I don’t know,” she confessed. “If he thought he was really missing something, wouldn’t he have been back before now?” The sigh she exhaled came all the way from her toes. “I used to think that once I grew up, I’d have all the answers.” She looked at the photograph again, wishing with all her heart her mother was actually there. To talk to her, to tell her what to do. “Nobody told me that I’d just have more questions.” She closed her eyes for a moment, afraid that she might start crying. “Damn him, anyway.”

  “I’m sorry, Alma.”

  Startled, she felt her heart leap up into her throat and threaten to remain there. Half-convinced she was imagining things, Alma swung around to look behind her.

  It wasn’t her imagination.

  She wished it was.

  How much had he heard?

  If this was autumn, she would have heard leaves crunching under his feet as he approached, but summer had only grass and it endured footfalls in silence. There hadn’t been anyone around when she’d entered and she’d really thought she was alone.

  God knew she wouldn’t have poured out her heart the way she just had if she’d thought that anyone could overhear her, especially Cash.

  “How long have you been standing there?” she said.

  “Not long.” It was a lie, but he didn’t want to embarrass her. That wasn’t why he’d made his way over after seeing her from the other side of the cemetery. “And I didn’t mean to intrude. It’s just that when I saw you standing there, I thought maybe I could finally get a chance to tell you how sorry I am for being such a jackass.”

  The apology caught her off guard and for a second, she didn’t know how to respond, so she stalled and asked him a question instead. “What are you doing here?”

  “I came to pay my respects to my parents. They’re buried over there.” He indicated a spot located beneath a tree, closer to the entrance.

  How could she have forgotten that both his parents were laid to rest here? But then, he hadn’t been by in all these years, and she had no reason to believe their paths would cross here. For that matter, she was surprised that he remembered where the graves were.

  “You said something about being a jackass?” she prodded. Maybe it was petty of her, but she wanted to hear the rest of his apology.

  Rather than dismiss his words, the way she half expected him to, he nodded. “I thought when I saw you here that I was getting a second chance to try to make amends. I should have apologized right off,” he told her.

  “Technically it’s a third chance,” she corrected. When he looked at her a little uncertainly, she clarified. “The first was in the sheriff’s office yesterday. The second was later at Miss Joan’s diner. That would make this the third time,” she concluded.

  “You’re right,” he agreed. “A third chance.” And then he paused for a moment before continuing. “I was sorry to hear about your mother passing away.” He should have been here with her for that. Maybe he should have been here all along. He wouldn’t have earned any huge fees or accolades, but the Douglas family would have still been alive.

  The thought almost closed his throat, choking him. “Grandpa told me,” he finally explained.

  She nodded. “At least you kept in touch with him.” She knew that from the questions she’d asked the old man in the beginning, hungry for any news of Cash. That was back when she still thought Cash was coming back.

  He knew what she was saying and he wasn’t going to lie or sugarcoat it so that he could come off well. “It was more like he kept in touch with me. He wrote to me all the time,” he said ruefully. The old man had never stopped, even though Cash rarely found time to answer even a tenth of those letters. “I did send him money regularly as soon as I was earning a living, but to be honest, I more or less distanced myself from that part of my life.” And it made him ashamed to admit this now. Forever was the only place that seemed genuine to
him, the place where people looked out for one another rather than looking to take advantage of one another.

  “Yes,” she said, nodding her head in response to his last words. “I noticed.”

  And that was his cue to apologize again, he thought. Not that he felt he could be forgiven. But he wanted her to know, to believe he was genuinely sorry.

  “I was an idiot and I have no excuse for behaving the way that I did,” he said earnestly. “You have every right in the world to hate me.”

  “I don’t hate you,” she protested, and it was true, she didn’t. Love and hate might have very well been two sides of the same coin, but she had never felt the need to flip it. “I did have the uncontrollable urge to beat on you from time to time and to give you a piece of my mind rather loudly,” she admitted. “But I never hated you.”

  “You should have,” he said. “I wouldn’t blame you if you did.” He wanted her to know that. That he would be perfectly understanding if she turned on him. “I let myself get sidetracked by all that gingerbread without realizing how that would hurt you.”

  “And yet I survived,” she concluded loftily, wanting to bring an end to that line of conversation. The second he’d told her to be angry at him, she couldn’t be angry any longer. His apology took the wind out of her sails and let her navigate into calmer waters.

  She changed the subject. “Your grandfather said you were working for a high-profile firm. He keeps a scrapbook on you, you know.”

  Cash laughed softly to himself. The sound was empty. “Sounds just like him. He’s a really good man,” he said.

  Okay, just what was going on? she wondered. The moment Cash began talking at any length, she could hear the sadness all but pulsating within his voice. And as he spoke, the pain seemed to grow deeper and deeper with each word he uttered.

  Alma forgot about wanting to beat on him, forgot about how deeply hurt she’d been. Instead, what she felt now was concern.

  And that had a lot to do with her inherent nature. Ever since she could remember, she had always been a sucker when it came to the hurt and the maimed. As a child, she was the one who was forever bringing home wounded animals and insisting on nursing them back to health. Usually, she did. But when she couldn’t accomplish that, when the poor creature was beyond help and died on her, she would cry bitterly, mourning each and every loss.

  “Your problem is that your heart is just too darn big,” her father used to lament, trying to still her tears.

  But she’d never seen that as being a problem.

  Except for maybe now.

  She knew that another woman would have seen Cash’s crushed spirit, at the very least, as payback. Karma with its classic refrain of what went around came around was never more apparent than here, at this moment.

  Still, she didn’t think that anyone deserved to feel as much pain as Cash was apparently feeling. Because it involved feelings and they had been all but strangers these past ten years, she approached the subject carefully. “Cash, is something wrong?”

  He watched her for a long moment before finally answering. “Other than my realizing how badly I treated you?”

  That wasn’t what she was concerned about right now. “Yes.”

  “No,” he replied perhaps a bit too quickly, a bit too tersely as he shook his head. And then, as if sensing that she wouldn’t be satisfied with just this, he added, “I’m just realizing how many wrong turns I’ve taken since I left Forever.”

  He was lying to her, Alma thought. Something else was bothering him, she would swear to it. But she couldn’t exactly demand that he come clean. There was no way to force him to tell her what she wanted to know. And there was such a thing as privacy.

  Besides, as compassionate as she might be, she was still coming to terms with having been one of the walking wounded herself, so right now, her mind wasn’t as clear as it could be.

  She suppressed a sigh. She had a little time to spare. Cash would be here until the wedding and maybe by then she could get him to level with her and say what was really bothering him. It had to be more than the way he’d treated her.

  And if he didn’t tell her, if he stubbornly maintained his own counsel, continued to live within his own eternal hell, well, he was an adult and ultimately entitled to do whatever he wanted to. All she could do was be available to him if he needed to talk.

  “This probably seems quaint to you in comparison to Los Angeles,” she finally said, thinking it was a safe bet that he couldn’t wait to leave again.

  “Yes, it does,” he agreed. And then he said something that took her completely by surprise. “There’s a lot to be said for quaint.”

  That alone told her that there was more going on with him than he was admitting.

  And then he abruptly changed the subject by looking at her, a hint of a smile curving his mouth. “A deputy, huh? I’ve got to admit that I never envisioned you as a deputy sheriff.”

  “Why not? I was always interested in criminology,” she reminded him.

  “I know, but I guess I thought that you were probably going to go into ranching. That criminology was, you know, like a hobby with you.”

  Hadn’t he been paying attention the many times they’d talked about the future? Or had he just forgotten? “I guess that maybe you didn’t know me as well as you thought.”

  “No,” he agreed sadly, “I guess not.”

  There it was again. The bottomless sadness in his voice. In his eyes.

  The hell with backing off.

  That wasn’t in her nature anyway. She made up her mind to talk to his grandfather. Maybe Harry knew the reason for the haunted look in Cash’s eyes. She couldn’t fix what she didn’t understand.

  And she intended to fix whatever was wrong with Cash. For old times’ sake.

  Chapter Five

  Strange the way things arranged themselves, Alma thought as she walked back to the cemetery’s front gate with Cash. If anyone would have told her last night that she would propose to help him now, she would have said they were crazy.

  And yet, here she was, extending not just an olive branch but the whole damn tree. All because he’d apologized and looked so incredibly sad.

  “Barring Forever’s first-ever crime wave suddenly taking place, I’ll be off duty at six tonight,” she began, carefully measuring out each word before she said the next one. “If you don’t have any kind of plans, would you like to get a cup of coffee with me?”

  For a second, stunned, Cash said nothing. This was a complete one-eighty reversal from the way she’d behaved yesterday. He’d known Alma to be impulsive at times, but she had never been mercurial. Could she have really changed that much?

  Why not? He had. Maybe she had, too.

  Whatever the reason, he was glad she was willing to spend some time with him, even if it was at the diner, most likely under the watchful eye of his grandmother-to-be.

  The corners of his mouth curved. “No, I have no plans.”

  They were outside the cemetery now. She noticed a cream-colored new Mercedes parked not too far from the Jeep she’d driven here. His? No one else around the area had the kind of money that the car required, which meant he had to have driven here from Los Angeles rather than flown. Why? Something to ask him tonight if there was a lull in the conversation.

  “Good,” she responded. “Then I’ll meet you at Miss Joan’s after six. We can grab a table, have some coffee.” Her eyes met his. “Catch up.”

  Was it her imagination, or did he look just the slightest bit uncomfortable when she’d mentioned the last part?

  “Sounds good,” Cash agreed after a beat. “But I have to ask,” he confessed, changing the course of the conversation as he walked her to her vehicle. “Why the change?”

  Because you look so sad and lost. Because I could never walk away from someone who needed help—even if they weren’t willing to admit it outright.

  She knew that neither reason was something he would want to hear. Most likely, if she told him either one, he
wouldn’t show up tonight.

  “I’m a female. We’re allowed to change our minds. It’s in our bylaws.”

  He shook his head and she could have sworn she heard what sounded like a soft laugh pass his lips. She took it as a good sign.

  “See you later,” he told her.

  “Later,” she echoed, except that she made it sound more like an order.

  She left first, driving away before Cash even began to head toward what she’d assumed was his car. The idea of meeting him later was creating a fluttery feeling deep in the pit of her stomach.

  Just like in the old days, she thought with a pang.

  Except that back in the old days, it was because she was so attracted to him and she was afraid of doing or saying something that would make her look like a fool in his eyes. This time the flutter was there because she didn’t feel comfortable around him after all this time and she wondered if the conversation between them would turn into a jumble of stops and starts.

  She needed to make sure that didn’t happen. She’d never get to the bottom of why he looked the way he did if they couldn’t talk to each other. With a wave of sadness she recalled that she had talked to the old Cash for hours on end. But this new version would be a challenge.

  What she really needed was a host of topics she could refer to, picking up one if another fell flat.

  Alma glanced at her watch, gauging how much time she had to prepare mentally before she saw Cash again later.

  *

  THE MOMENT SHE GOT BACK to the office, she went straight to her desk and called Cash’s grandfather at home. But after twelve rings, there was still no answer. The man could be anywhere. Tending to the horses, out with Miss Joan or even doing a little shopping for a gift for the bride on her wedding day. There was no way she could reach him. He didn’t have a cell phone, said he couldn’t be bothered with anything like that.

  He did have an answering machine, she recalled, an ancient one whose prerecorded message abruptly cut off before completing the sentence about leaving a name and number, but at least it worked. Not that she intended to leave a message because, with her luck, Cash would accidentally overhear it. She had a feeling he wouldn’t take kindly to having her ask questions about him.