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After getting Danni off to school, Jolie dressed with care. She wore jeans every day in the ranch kitchen, so she liked an opportunity to wear something feminine. Everyone had always teased her about being a girlie-girl. Even when she had worn a plain green uniform in the Cactus Café, she had often added a tiny floral pin or a bow in her hair or a pair of pretty earrings to dress it up.
Today, she had put on a floaty summer skirt with yellow sun flowers on it and paired it with a white knit top. She styled her hair and put on her make-up, all with extra care. She recognized the behavior, had seen it many times in other women who worked with her in the Cactus Café when they had a boyfriend they wanted to impress. Jolie didn’t understand why she was doing this. Jake Strayhorn wasn’t her boyfriend and never would be.
She arrived at his apartment slightly before eleven o’clock. Standing on his front porch, hanging on to her purse and her sacks of goods, she buzzed his doorbell.
Though she had been counting the hours until this moment, she was so nervous she had forgotten the cake in the pickup. Before she could organize her thoughts to go back for it, his front door opened and he stood in the doorway, tall and imposing and dressed in a gray snugly fit short sleeve T-shirt instead of the long sleeve dress shirt he had been wearing every time she had seen him. His body was lean, but muscular, as if he worked out, and he had a dusting of brown hair on his forearms. In a place like Lockett, what did he do to stay in such good shape? He was without his gun, she noticed.
He smiled his glorious smile. “Hey,” he said.
“Hello,” she said with exaggerated enthusiasm, trying to overcome the flutter in her chest.
He invited her in and at the same time, reached for the two sacks in her hands. His scent surrounded her and she couldn’t keep from noticing the bunch of his biceps as he gripped the sacks. “Hope you’re hungry,” she said and stepped inside his living room.
“I am.”
With no sacks to hold, she interlocked her fingers in front of her and looked around to get her bearings and make her pulse rate settle down. The room was lit by natural sunlight. Though muted by the overhang on his porch, it streamed through one large window and cast a rectangle of light onto spotless tan carpeting. The apartment’s interior wasn’t nearly as shabby as the building’s exterior. It was clean and well-kept, but decidedly utilitarian. And masculine. Like its occupant.
She identified one concession to self-indulgence. A large flat-screen TV appeared glaringly out of place against a brown paneled wall and a DVD storage cabinet was full of DVDs. The sheriff was a movie fan?
“Kitchen’s this way,” he said with a tilt of his head. Carrying the grocery sacks, he led her to a galley-style kitchen, smaller than the kitchen in the trailer she had left behind in Grandee, and infinitely smaller than the brightly lit Circle C’s cavernous kitchen. The only object that sat on the white-with-gold-speckled Formica counter was a Mr. Coffee. The cabinets were old and painted white, but she saw a newer model stove and refrigerator and a dishwasher. Everything was as neat as the living room and it was sparkling clean. It even smelled clean.
He placed the sacks on the counter. She put her purse on one end of the counter and began to unpack them. Lifting out a small box of tea bags, she said, “I remembered that you drank tea that day in Maisie’s, so I brought some tea bags to make sweet tea.” She stopped her task, looked at him and shrugged. “I didn’t know if you’d have tea bags.”
“You’re right. I don’t.”
“You wouldn’t have a large pitcher, would you?
“Might have.” He opened a cupboard and produced a large plastic pitcher.
“Great. Do you have sugar?”
“Always have sugar,” he said, grinning. “Sometimes I like a little in my coffee. What do you want me to do to help you?”
“Well I need a couple of little pans.”
“Coming up.” He squatted on his haunches at one of the cabinets and found two small saucepans.
“Does one of these have a lid?”
“Lid?”
“Oh, that’s okay. I can use a saucer.”
“One saucer, coming up,” he said and opened the cupboard.
She filled one pan with water and set it on the stove to boil. “I make tea the way we brewed it in the Cactus Café where I used to work. It’s really good.”
“Tea’s fine. I like tea.”
“Then after I get the tea going, I’m going to chop some things for a salsa cruda. I intended to do it back at the ranch, but I ran out of time.”
“Good. I like that, too.”
She glanced at him across her shoulder. “You know what salsa cruda is?”
“Darlin’, I’m from Texas. I know a little bit of Spanish.”
“Right,” she said and laughed. “You probably have to speak Spanish in your job. I’ve learned a little since I’ve been working with Irene. Do you have a good knife and a chopping board?’
“I do have the knife, but afraid not on the chopping board. How about a plate?”
“A plate’s fine.”
“I’m good at chopping,” he said, taking a plate from the cupboard.
She smiled at him. Billy had never helped her in the kitchen a single day that she could recall. “Okay, does it make you cry to cut up an onion?”
“Don’t think so.”
“Good. Then you can chop this.” She handed him a white onion from one of the sacks. “I always cry when I chop onions.”
“Well, we don’t want the cook crying,” he said, taking the onion and lifting a big knife from a drawer. He placed the plate near the sink and tackled the onion with fast nimble fingers. She paused for a minute, watching him. Her eyes moved from his hands to his strong facial features. Though his brows were brown and his eyes green, his lashes were black and thicker than a girl’s, a unique and striking combination.
She caught herself looking too closely and returned her attention to taking cans out of the grocery bags. “I brought canned sauce so I don’t have to take the time to make it.”
“Fine with me.”
She handed him two tomatoes, a jalapeno pepper and a little bunch of fresh cilantro. “These need to be chopped, too. You can just put them all together in a bowl.”
“Can do,” he said, continuing to chop.
The water began to boil, so she placed tea bags in it, removed it from the burner and covered the pan with a saucer. When she looked again, he had a small bowl full of finely chopped tomatoes and onion.
“You’re really fast,” she said.
He gave her a wink and a thumbs up, then turned to the sink, turned on the faucet and rinsed off the knife.
Lord, she liked him. Too much. And it was insane. She couldn’t be distracted by liking anyone. She was trying to survive.
She shook herself mentally, grabbed a spoon and gave the ingredients he had chopped a quick mix, added some seasonings and shoved the bowl into the refrigerator. She turned to the enchiladas and the black bean salad. He wanted to help again, so she set him to opening cans, which took him no time at all.
Once he had finished, he leaned his bottom and the heels of his hands on the counter edge and watched her assemble the enchiladas. She had brought an aluminum foil pan for the enchiladas, assuming he wouldn’t have a pan she could use. “Where’d you learn to be such a good cook?” he asked.
“Seems like I’ve been cooking forever. But where I learned to do it right was at the Cactus Café. We didn’t have chefs, but we had super-good cooks. It was a busy twenty-four-hour place. If we were shorthanded in the kitchen or if we were busier than usual, I helped. The cooks always taught me things. And I watch the food channel. Or I did when I had TV, that is.”
“You don’t have TV in your house?”
“The reception’s awful. There’s a tall antenna on the roof, but the reception’s still bad. There’s no cable channels anyway, even if we had good reception. The ranch house has satellite TV though.”
“Don’t feel put upon. TV reception’s the same all over this area. The county pays for Internet service via satellite for my office, but not TV. That’s why I buy movies.”
“I noticed your DVD collection,” she said, preoccupied with dipping the tortillas in warm sauce, then spooning the seasoned meat and grated cheese onto them.
“I bought that fancy TV in the living room,” he went on, “thinking I needed it for entertainment, but I don’t have much time to watch it. Don’t like the programs anyway, so if I watch TV, I usually tune in to the news and weather.”
A silence fell between them. Her hands were busy, but her mind was scrambling for something to say. He saved the day by saying, “Busy week at the Circle C?”
“Yes, actually, it was. There were some horse people there over the weekend. I think they were from Amarillo. They were talking about breeding horses.”
“Ah. The Circle C has some of the best horseflesh in Texas. Or the whole Southwest, for that matter.”
“I tried to eavesdrop on the conversations, but I didn’t understand what I was hearing. I’ve never been around animals of any kind. Did you know they have their own vet? And their own clinic for animals?”
He smiled. “Yes. I did know that.”
“I was blown away when I found that out. I can’t imagine having so much money.”
“Horse breeding’s big business at the Circle C. They produce a lot of winners of all kinds.”
“They’ve got that one horse they’re really proud of. Sandy Dandy. He’s the one everyone’s interested in. I’ve seen him in the corral. He’s really pretty. Jude says he looks so regal because he knows how important he is. I swear it seems like Jude knows how horses think.”
Jake laughed. “Jude’s been on a horse or around horses her whole life.”
“Do you have a horse?”
“Not at the moment. Someday, when I give up this job, I might like to have a couple of pleasure horses.”
“Danni’s really excited about learning to ride, but I can’t keep from worrying about her getting hurt.”
“I’m sure that’s what any good mother would do. But she’ll probably do just fine.”
Jolie had filled the aluminum pan with enchiladas and reached for the pan of warm sauce. “I try to be a good mother, especially since I’m really the only parent Danni has. Billy has no interest in being a parent. He can’t even take care of himself, much less a little kid. In some ways he’s like a little kid himself.”
She topped off the pan of enchiladas with the rest of the sauce and grated cheese and slid it into the oven. Then she started on the black bean salad. “I hope you like black bean salad. I made it a couple of nights ago for the family. Jude said Brady loved it.”
“Brady was a bachelor for a while. He’s probably like me. Just about any food he doesn’t have to fix for himself tastes good.”
A laugh burst from Jolie. “Thanks a lot.”
He looked at her with puzzlement, then as he realized what he had said, his expression changed to one of apology. “Oh, hell. I didn’t mean it like that.”
She laughed again. “I know what you meant.”
Then, the oven timer buzzed. The tea was made, the black bean salad was finished and the small kitchen was filled with delicious spicy aromas. They had been talking nearly an hour, but it seemed like a few minutes. She pulled the pan of enchiladas from the oven.
“Oh, man,” Jake said. “I can’t remember the last time this kitchen smelled this good.”
Suddenly she remembered the chocolate cake. “Oh my gosh. I left the cake in the pickup. I hope the frosting hasn’t melted. I’ll be right back.” She hurried to the door, berating herself for being such a nervous ninny that she forgot the cake.
***
WHILE JOLIE WAS GONE, Jake brought out a couple of plates and silverware and carried them to his small round table in the tiny eating area off one end of the kitchen. The space and the table barely accommodated two people. Not since he had been living in the county’s facility had he had a female guest in it to eat. Not even one. He always kept his social activities out of town.
She came back into the apartment carrying a cardboard box. “I think I got it just in time. The frosting’s soft, but it’s not melted. Thank goodness it isn’t that hot outside.”
He took the box from her and looked down on a round chocolate cake that looked as good as any he had ever seen in a bakery. It had little curlicues of frosting around the edge and little flower-like things made out of frosting here and there. “Wow. That looks too pretty to eat.”
He set the box on the counter and she lifted out the tall cake. He felt his eyes widen. It looked even better out of that box.
“It’s a three-layer cake,” she said anxiously. “Devil’s food.”
“You made that?”
“Well, yes, I—”
“Man, oh man. Darlin’ I can’t remember the last time I had chocolate cake.”
“Really? But you like it, don’t you?”
She seemed to be waiting for his reply. “I love it. I just never get to have it.”
“The plate isn’t mine. It belongs in the house where Danni and I live, so I’ll have to get it back from you.”
“No problem.”
She lifted her arms and let them drop to her sides. “Well I guess we should eat.”
They sat down at the table and Jake let her place two enchiladas on his plate and top them with a spoonful of sour cream. She added a helping of the black bean salad and they dug in.
“I would’ve made quacamole, but Lucky’s didn’t have any good avodcados.”
The meal was the best he had eaten in a long time. He didn’t often get homemade food. Hoping he was showing his appreciation, he raved about it throughout the meal. After he had cleaned his plate, he had no room for cake. “I’ll probably have a big slice of that cake and a glass of milk for supper. You are going to leave it behind, right?”
“I made it for you,” she said. “I’m going to leave all of this food with you.”
Then they were out of things to say. And Jake felt he had said enough about the food.
She looked around. “This is a nice apartment.”
He looked around, too. “It’s not a bad place, considering its age and the county’s lack of funds. I added a few things on my own, such as all the new appliances in the kitchen. The old ones that were here weren’t safe. New carpet. He lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “It’ll do. My needs are simple.”
“You certainly keep it clean.”
“Habit left over from my years in the army. And a local woman comes in and cleans for me once a week.”
Jake was having a good time. Jolie was down to earth and without guile. No agendas and no axe to grind. He felt comfortable and unthreatened. “Want to see the rest of it?”
“Sure.”
They picked up their plates and placed them on the counter, then he walked her through the apartment. “There’s three bedrooms,” he said as they walked from room to room. “The last sheriff had a family. But to tell you the truth, I don’t know why a man with a family would want to live here.”
“I see what you mean. Where would kids play?” Even where the beat-up trailer she had shared with Billy was located, there was a place for Danni to play outside.
One bedroom held weights and workout equipment. Now she knew why he looked to be in such good shape. One bedroom held a desk and bookshelves. Of course, he would read books. He was smart.
They reached a room where a king size bed almost filled the small space. A person would have to walk sideways around it. It was covered with a blue spread and pillows. Everything in the place was either blue, tan or brown, just like the living room.
“And this is my bedroom,” he said.
She looked at the bed, then looked up at him. She couldn’t hold back a laugh. “It’s almost wall-to-wall bed.”
“I’m a big guy,” he said sheepishly. “I like having room to stretch out.”
***
INSTANTLY JOLIE THOUGHT of him sprawled on the bed and wondered if he slept in pajamas. Of course not, something told her. He wasn’t a pajamas kind of guy. Her next thought was of his big powerfully-built body and she couldn’t keep from imagining him naked.
“It’s a little crowded,” he was saying, bringing her back to earth. “But since I’m the only one who lives here, it’s fine for me. Obviously, if I had a family, I’d live somewhere else.”
“Why don’t you live out at the Circle C?” she asked. “No one uses even half of that big house.”
“Not a good place for me,” he answered. “Since there’s only three of us in the sheriff’s department, me living close to the office and the jail is more convenient anyway. So tell me about your family.”
Oops. He slid past that question about the Circle C in a hurry. She shouldn’t have asked it. She made a mental note to avoid talking to him about the ranch. There had to be a good reason he didn’t even go there to visit. “My family? There’s not much to tell. My mom lives in Terrell, but she works in Dallas. Last I heard of my sisters, one was in California and one was in Bossier City. She works in one of the casinos. After all of us got grown, we sort of drifted away from each other. What about you? Do you have brothers and sisters?”
He shook his head. “Only child.”
“Gosh, you don’t have family, either. Guess we have that in common.”
“Do you mind if I ask how old you are?”
Why would he want to know? She cocked her head and frowned. “I don’t mind. I don’t care about age. I’m twenty-seven, but sometimes I feel like I’m a hundred.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ve never fit in with girls my own age. Why do you ask?”
***
JAKE WAS DISAPPOINTED. He knew Billy was nearly thirty-one. He had hoped she was the same age, which would make her only a few years younger than he. Jolie was the kind of woman he wanted as a life partner—honest and with no hidden motives. Trustworthy. When it came to women, trust wasn’t something he had seen in abundance. But he didn’t want to be called a cradle-robber. “No reason. You do seem older.”
“A lot of people tell me that. It’s probably because I sort of grew up early. I’ve been holding down a job for as long as I can remember. I quit school a little before Danni was born. I started working full time when I was seventeen. And I sort of raised my sisters. I’ve always had responsibilities.”
He could tell that about her. Responsibility, if one assumed it, made a person grow up fast. He knew that much from his own experience. After his mother and he left the Circle C, she suffered a breakdown and never quite recovered. Jake had gone to high school and run their household until he graduated.
They had made a full circle and were back in the kitchen. “It’s almost time for me to go,” she said. “I’ll clean up my mess and—”
“No, no. You don’t have to bother. I’ll do it and if I don’t get finished, the woman who cleans for me will do it.”
“But I hate leaving a mess behind.”
“It’s not a problem.”
“Well, uh, just let me know when you’re finished with the plate the cake’s on and I can drop by and pick it up.”
“I’ll do that.”
Jolie hated to leave, but she picked up her purse from the end of the counter. “You mentioned age. Could I ask how old you are?”
His eyes leveled on her face. “I’m thirty-six.”
Nine years. He was nine years older than she. Their gazes locked for a few seconds, then she turned away and started toward the living room. “I, uh, enjoyed the visit.”
“So did I. And it was a real nice meal.”
“I could do it again,” she said quickly, hating to leave even more now that she knew his age. “I mean since you don’t have anyone to cook good food for you and—”
“I’d like that. But I don’t want to impose—”
“It’s not imposing. I like doing it.”
“Jolie. You don’t owe me anything.”
“I know. But I’m grateful for your looking out for me and Danni.”
Their gazes locked again and she saw the hint of a frown line between his thick brows. She couldn’t tell what was going on inside his head. “Damn,” he finally mumbled and looked at the floor.
“It isn’t that I don’t feel safe where I am, but...”
When she didn’t finish her thought, he looked up. “He’s going to show up. You know that, don’t you?”
She swallowed. “How—how do you know?”
“I know his type. You’re the closest thing to grounding he’s got. They won’t keep him in jail in Dallas forever on a low-grade drug beef. If you know any more about him than what we’ve already discussed, or what he might try when he gets out, it’ll help if you tell me.”
She suddenly felt cold, as if all the blood had drained from her body. Her life had been so calm since she had come to Lockett, a part of her had deluded herself into believing Billy would never find her. “Well, I don’t know. He’s, uh...”
Her voice trailed off as she remembered she was speaking to a cop. As much as she trusted Jake Strayhorn, she couldn’t bring herself to tell him about her relationship with Billy and all she had tolerated as his wife.
“When you left him, did you leave clues behind that would indicate where you might be?”
“I don’t know. I tried not to, but I just don’t know.”
