The day of the bone-marrow drive dawned with the perfect sunny weather of mid April in Oklahoma. Tate awoke, just as he did at least three times a week, in the front seat of his SUV. Only this morning the blast of the Blackwood High School marching band yanked him upright. He cracked his bad knee on the steering wheel and cursed. In the seat next to him a warm wiggling form yelped, reminding him of his only reward for a sleepless night.
Last night he’d sat inside a rusted-out station wagon inside the B & D Auto Salvage where he’d observed a transaction he could only view as suspicious. To his disappointment, no hard evidence of a chop-shop operation had come his way.
A warm wet tongue scraped at his hand.
“Hey, partner.” With a grin, he stroked the skinny, red, mixed-breed pup he’d found scrounging around the Dumpsters outside B & D. He’d shared his chips and baloney with the mutt, but that had been hours ago. “I’ll bet you’re hungry as a bear.” His own belly growled. “I sure as heck am.”
Hoisting the pup like a football, he unlocked the side door to his office and, thankful for the facilities made available by his predecessor, went inside for a quick shower and shave. On his way he grabbed several pieces of ham from the small refrigerator in the employee’s lounge.
“Here you go, fella.” He laid the slices on a paper towel and filled a bowl with water. “This’ll have to do until we can get out to my place.”
Which wasn’t likely to be soon. Tired as he was, today was the day of the bone-marrow drive. And he’d be glad when it was over. Then Julee and her famous legs could go back to L.A. and leave him the heck alone.
Not that she’d actually asked that much of him, but her presence in town had caused him no little discomfort. Everyone who remembered their romance brought it up. And everyone else seemed bound and determined to involve him in Julee’s project. He didn’t want to think about Julee and the rush of longing he experienced every time someone mentioned her name.
From outside, a tuba ripped off a few practice notes. He’d better hurry. He stepped into the closet-sized bathroom and shut the door.
Every man in town was agog over Julee. Big deal. What man wouldn’t be enthralled by her combination of beauty, smarts and success? Just because she wasn’t married now didn’t mean she hadn’t been a half dozen times before. And even if she’d had as many lovers as his mother, her private life was none of his business. But he’d gone off spouting about happiness like a love-starved orphan. He’d had to bite the inside of his lip to keep from asking if she was dating anyone. And if she was, was he good to her? Did he make her laugh? Would he give her the houseful of kids she’d always wanted?
Stripping off his clothes he kicked the wrinkled jeans into the corner in disgust.
There he went again assuming she was still the same Julee he’d known, when she clearly wasn’t. Back then she’d dreamed of two things—making enough money to take care of her mother and then spending the rest of her life with him and the babies they would make together. Now, family was the last thing on her mind.
He’d known then the dream was too good to be true and that he’d lose her to California, proving what he’d always known. A shanty-town bastard with a chip on his shoulder wasn’t good enough for her or any decent woman. That was okay. He’d accepted who he was and all his shortcomings a long time ago. He didn’t deserve her, never had.
She’d been so good, his Julee. The kind of girl who championed the underdog, stood up against bullies. He smiled at that, remembering how she’d stood up to him a few times when he’d wanted to break some guy’s nose just because he was mad at the world. Sensible, gentle Julee had a calming effect on the wild, angry boy he’d been. She could make him do anything.
But not this time. Not again. He nearly hadn’t survived the last time. He couldn’t fall under her spell again.
He grabbed a towel from the tiny corner cupboard and turned the shower on full blast.
He had to get Julee out of his mind and out of his town. If he could keep his distance another twenty-four hours she’d be gone. Stepping beneath the spray, he let the warm water drown every thought of Julianna Reynolds.
In minutes, smelling and feeling considerably better and dressed in the extra uniform he kept hanging on the back of the bathroom door, Tate was out on the street. The stray pup attached his nose to the sheriff’s creased pant leg and followed.
This morning the usually early sheriff was late, a fact that disgruntled him no end. To make matters worse, Julee stood in the middle of Main Street talking to his deputies. So much for washing her out of his mind. Every cell in his body started to hum. Criminy. Why’d she have to look like that?
“Mornin’, boss.” Jeet waved a doughnut in his direction. Tate’s stomach growled again. He’d given the last of the ham to the pup. “What’s that thing following you? A piece of rusted baling wire?”
Glad for the distraction, Tate’s mouth quirked at the apt description of the skinny pup dogging his heels. “Ah, just a stray I picked up last night.”
“Another one?” Jeet’s fleshy jowls jiggled as he turned toward Julee. She looked beyond beautiful standing in the morning sun with her long brown hair gently blowing around her face. “The sheriff here’s got a dozen of these mutts running around his place. Supposed to turn them over to animal control, but he never does.”
The pup, as though terrified by the thought, rushed to the nearest fire hydrant and lifted his leg. When Tate slanted a glance toward Julee and found her holding back a laugh, he relented and grinned.
“Stupid mutt.”
She giggled, a fresh sound that made his stomach lift. Just what he needed. More reminders of the teenage Julee. For some reason, he thought she would have lost that hiccoughing giggle in the slick professional atmosphere of California.
“Do you really have a dozen strays at your place?” A wisp of hair blew across her mouth, clinging momentarily to the soft, rosy smudge of color. Mesmerized, he watched her push it back, remembering the softness, the heat of those lips.
The bom, bom, bom of a bass drum brought him to his senses. Pulling his gaze from her face, Tate hardened his resolve not to be affected by her kissable lips or her million-dollar legs.
“Not quite a dozen,” he said grudgingly.
“How many?” Unmindful of his inner turmoil she pressed, blue eyes twinkling up at him in the morning sun.
“Too many.”
“Why not let animal control take them?”
He frowned and her smile disappeared. Lots of dogs around town were euthanized but not the ones on his shift. Though he didn’t expect Julianna Reynolds to understand that. “Even a stray deserves a chance.”
Her kissable lips formed an O.
“You mean, animal control would—?” With a grimace, she stroked a finger across her throat.
“Yeah.”
“That’s awful.”
Julee crouched down to pet the dog as it sidled up to her, pink tongue lolling. As her long nails stroked the animal, Tate felt an unwelcome response in his gut. This morning Julee was dressed in a straight red skirt he considered too short, though he figured every man in town would argue the point. Her legs were her claim to fame and from the looks of her, she didn’t mind using them to get what she wanted. Once she’d have been embarrassed at such attention, but as he kept reminding himself, this was a different Julee altogether. Polished, self-assured, she was every inch the successful California model, and he was still the country boy from the wrong side of town.
Tearing his thoughts from Julee and her legs, he glanced up and down the street, noting with relief that the barriers were in place, the ropes strung across intersections to keep traffic out during the brief parade. “Looks like everything is ready.”
“Yep. Miss Reynolds wouldn’t let us rest until it was.” Jeet beamed a besotted smile at Julee. “She was here before daylight.”
Daylight? He had to hand it to Julee; she wasn’t afraid of hard work and long hours. All week, to his dismay, every time he’d looked up she’d come whipping around the corner to recruit someone else to her cause. Though he’d successfully run a political campaign, he’d never observed such effective and efficient organizational skills.
From her crouched position beside the pup, Julee returned Jeet’s smile. With great discipline Tate refrained from staring at her legs.
“You’ve all done a fabulous job. A lot of good will come from your efforts.” She gave the little dog one last stroke and rose. “I don’t know how to thank you.”
Jeet’s beam grew wider. “Heck fire, Miss Reynolds, we’re just tickled to have you back in town. This drive of yours has got the whole county buzzing.”
Tate grimaced at the adulation.
“Say, Miss Reynolds,” Jeet went on. “Would you like an escort over to the Community Center? I’d be honored to take you in my car after the street clears.”
“You’d better stick around here with me, Jeet,” Tate found himself saying. “Just in case your wife shows up.”
Jeet blushed crimson and Tate wished he’d kept his cranky mouth shut. But good grief! The deputy was making a fool of himself over a woman who would forget his name before her plane touched down at LAX.
A siren split the air and a city police car made its way down the street as a signal to clear the path. The pup yelped, tucked his tail and shimmied up Tate’s pant leg.
“Here they come,” Julee exclaimed. Clapping her hands over her ears, she hopped onto the sidewalk beside Tate.
Hoisting the quivering dog beneath one arm, Tate watched Julee and her parade. Her elegant perfume scented the fresh spring morning and her eyes glowed with a fanatical passion that made him wonder. She’d always been passionate. A passionate champion of the underdog. Passionate in her desire to make a better life for her mother and herself. Passionate in his arms. But this was different.
“Looks like you’ll get a good turnout,” he said above the noise.
Julee glanced up, her blue eyes nearly level with his. The fire of hope burned bright in their depths. “Does that mean you’ll take part? Say you will, Tate. Please.” She clutched his arm with an expression that shook him. “You could be the person to save someone’s precious child.”
Tate pried the red mutt out from under his armpit and squirmed uncomfortably. It was happening to him. One more minute, one more of her eager blue-eyed looks and he’d fall under her spell again. Only the discipline he’d learned the hard way enabled him to utter his oft-repeated excuse. “I don’t get along too well with needles.”
Some of her glow dimmed. Gnawing at her bottom lip, she loosened her hold and turned back toward the street, dejected.
Tightness banded Tate’s chest. Once they’d stood on this very street corner and watched the homecoming parade, his arm slung over her shoulders, hers around his waist. That night he’d fumbled the touchdown pass that would have won the game, but afterward Julee had been there for him, comforting him.
Now he wanted so badly to comfort her, to explain. Yet, the truth was he couldn’t explain what he didn’t fully understand. The only thing he was sure of was how dangerous it was for him to be anywhere near her.
“Julee,” he began softly. Fool, fool, fool, his brain chanted.
Blue eyes filled with hope and pain and fear met his, and again he wondered what demons chased Julianna Reynolds.
“Yes?”
Before he had a chance to say something he was certain to regret, fate intervened. The high-school marching band, resplendent in red-and-white uniforms, paraded by, blasting out an energetic version of “Another One Bites the Dust.” Over the drums and the tubas and the trombones, he heard a shout.
“Sheriff!”
Tate whirled toward the sound.
A couple of hardheaded teenagers, not unlike the boy he’d once been, had chosen this morning to vent their frustrations outside the Hamburger Hangout. A teenage girl stood nearby, crying and shouting while the boys flailed at one another.
Grateful for the opportunity to escape, Tate loped toward the fight.
Sometime later, when he finally arrived at the Community Center, Tate could hardly believe his eyes. In a carnival-like atmosphere, the citizens of Seminole County swarmed around the transformed parking lot like happy honeybees. A raucous beat throbbed from a flatbed trailer as the high-school cheerleaders performed an energetic dance routine. Nearby, the scent of barbecue wafted from the Boy Scouts’ smoker. Tate’s belly reacted with a growl. The mutt must have felt the same for he looked longingly in that direction and whined, his thin tail working overtime.
“Soon, fella,” Tate murmured. Even the dog had to understand that duty came before anything else. Once he’d made the rounds and checked in with the other law-enforcement groups he’d feed himself and the pup.
He headed toward the far end of the parking lot where uniformed medical personnel escorted children through an ambulance and a life-flight helicopter. From there, the kids climbed into the fire department’s “smoke house,” a unit designed to teach them to exit a burning building safely.
He was impressed. Julee’s blood drive was doing far more good for the community than he’d imagined.
Stopping frequently to greet the townspeople, while keeping an eye on his peacekeeping duties, Tate made his way around the area. But no matter where he went or who he talked with, his attention always came back to one spot.
Right smack in the middle of all the activity was a bloodmobile. The glamorous Miss Reynolds stood outside in her too-short skirt, smiling a million-dollar smile. All day long she moved up and down the endless line of prospective blood donors shaking hands, handing out I Donated stickers, and occasionally tossing back her long brown hair to laugh.
With grudging admiration he realized she’d done it. In a week’s time she’d pulled together enough civic groups to draw a huge crowd of people to her cause. The smallest group was the Seminoles, the people Julee specifically wanted to register. There was a mild turnout, thanks to the few phone calls he’d made, but with a twinge of guilt Tate knew he could have done more. He had great rapport with the tribal bands, and though they jokingly called him an “apple”—red on the outside, white on the inside—his total involvement would have guaranteed more people.
Full of remorse, he saw just how wrong he’d been to let his confused feelings for Julee cloud his sense of right. He should have done more. Little kids with cancer shouldn’t suffer because he was lousy at love.
He glanced around for the mutt. The drive lasted until seven. With four hours left he had time to make more calls.
“Sheriff McIntyre.” Timothy, a third grader from his Little League team, tugged on his arm.
Tate hunkered down beside the boy. “Hey, Tim. What’s up?”
“Jeremy says it hurts bad to give blood. Is that true?”
Tate studied the solemn freckled face. Jeremy was Tim’s eighteen-year-old brother. “Did Jeremy donate?”
“Yeah,” Timothy breathed in amazed admiration. “And he’s got a Band-Aid on his arm.”
“That was mighty brave of Jeremy to want to help other people that way.”
“Yeah.” Timothy dropped his head. “He said only a man could give blood and I was just a little pip-squeak who couldn’t do nothing for nobody. I wish I could, though. I would if I could.”
“I know you would, bud.”
“You’re going to, ain’t ya, Sheriff?” the boy asked eagerly. “You’ll let ’em take blood out of both your arms, I’ll bet. That’ll show Jeremy he ain’t the bravest man in town.”
Tate’s heart squeezed at the open hero worship. When he was a kid, he’d have given anything for a father figure to admire and respect. Instead, he’d had to fight everyone who had called his mother a whore, while longing for the day his father would appear and lay claim to him. It had never happened. Though his mother admitted what his face told him—that he was part Seminole—she’d never given him a father to adore.
Clasping Timothy on the shoulder, Tate’s gaze drifted back to Julee, now talking earnestly with the mayor. She seemed to sense his attention because she looked up and caught him staring. She smiled and his heart lifted foolishly.
“Huh, Sheriff? Are you going to?”
If he did, would the guilt of not helping more go away? Would he stop wanting to pull Julee into his arms and shield her from the anxiety he felt in her?
With a self-deprecating shake of his head Tate gazed at the adoring boy. “If I do, will you watch my dog?”
Julee could barely tear her eyes away from the tall, popular sheriff who stared at her over the top of a small boy’s head. Something in her reacted wildly to the picture of him with a fatherly hand on the child’s shoulder. Would he have been a good daddy to their daughter?
He was a good politician; that was for certain. And something she’d never have believed if she hadn’t watched him all afternoon. Watching him had nothing at all to do with the fact that he was gloriously handsome and wonderfully warm and friendly to everyone. No matter that he’d hurt her so badly all those years ago, he was Megan’s father, and she needed to know what kind of man he’d become. That was the only reason she couldn’t take her eyes off him.
“That sheriff sure is something, isn’t he?” The hospital administrator had come out of the bloodmobile to stand beside Julee. “Little kids are crazy about him.”
“He must be a wonderful father.”
“Would be if he had any kids.”
Julianna frowned. “But I thought—Don’t he and Shelly have two children?”
“Good land, Julee, this is old news, but I guess you don’t know it.” The woman stared at her, incredulous. “Shelly and Tate only stayed together a couple of years. Shelly married Larry Wilkins about five years ago and has two kids with him.”
“I have been gone a long time, haven’t I?” She tried to laugh it off, to sound disinterested, but her insides went crazy at the implication. Tate wasn’t married, hadn’t been for a long time.
The hospital administrator moved on, washed away in the crowd, but Julianna’s focus remained on Tate. He wasn’t married? Hadn’t been for years? She watched him more intently now, blood humming in her temples.
A swarm of little boys had followed him around the parking lot off and on all day, hero worship on their faces. At noon he’d bought them sandwiches and soft drinks, even feeding the bedraggled little pup a hotdog. More than one attractive woman had stopped him, too, and he’d talked and laughed with them, his smile white against mocha skin.
Feeling a sense of loss at the wide gap between herself and the father of her child, she ran a weary hand through her hair and turned back toward the bloodmobile. Tate couldn’t stand the sight of her, couldn’t wait for her to leave town. One thing for sure, no matter how much she dreaded the confrontation, now that she knew he had no family, if he didn’t give blood before this day was over she would tell him that he had a daughter.
Moving up the steps, she went inside the cool, quiet unit to take her turn at passing out juice. To her satisfaction, all the booths were filled with donors. With every tube of blood drawn Julianna rejoiced for some mother somewhere who wouldn’t have to go through this agony of fruitless searching.
Relieving the orange juice volunteer, she readied a half dozen paper cups for the line of people coming through the doors. As she handed a cup to one of the firefighters, the door opened and a tall uniformed figure ducked in from the sunshine.
When the county sheriff removed a gray Stetson Julee’s heart skittered to a stop, then started again, pounding wildly. Her hand shook, slopping juice onto the friendly firefighter.
“Oh! I’m sorry.” Grabbing a paper towel, she blotted the mess on the man’s pant leg. All the while her attention remained riveted to the front of the bloodmobile.
The firefighter chuckled and grabbed her hand. With her preoccupation with Tate, she’d strayed too far up the thigh. “I gotta say, ma’am, getting juice spilled on me has never been so much fun, but we do have an audience.”
Embarrassed and jubilant at the same time, she gave the firefighter another towel, apologized again, and moved to the next donor.
Tate was inside the bloodmobile. She struggled to hold back the exultant tears. He was here. Did that mean…?
“I hate needles,” Tate declared to the pretty blond technician in turquoise scrubs.
“You’re in good hands, Sheriff. I’m the best.”
He cocked his finger and pointed it at the woman. “You’d better be or you’re under arrest.”
The technician laughed. “What’s the charge?”
“Assaulting an officer of the law.”
With a stab of envy Julee observed the teasing exchange. Years ago, she’d seen flashes of this side of him, though he was much more mellow and gentle now than he had been then.
Obviously flirting with the handsome sheriff, the technician laughed again and led him to the first available booth. With some difficulty, Tate managed to fold his long legs into the narrow space. A grimace of pain came and went as he settled in, and Julee thought his knee must bother him a lot more than he let on.
He stretched his long, muscular arm along the small counter provided for that purpose. A wild thrill of joy shot through Julee.
He was going to do it. He was going to save Megan’s life.
Heart jackhammering, Julee watched the procedure with the interest of a starving vampire.
Absently handing out more juice as she went, Julianna edged toward the booth where Megan’s life hung in the balance. With every drop of Tate’s rich dark blood that flowed into the tube, hope lifted, her mother’s heart certain he was the match Megan needed. Everything would be all right now. Tate had finally agreed to give his blood, and she was convinced he’d give his bone marrow when the time came. And patient confidentiality would keep him from ever knowing that he’d saved his own daughter’s life.
Nothing could go wrong now. Absolutely nothing.