Authors: Diana Palmer
Her face tightened. “Don’t
you
psychoanalyze
me!
” she gasped, throwing his earlier words right back at him.
“If I’m locked up inside, so are you, honey,” he drawled, watching her react to the blunt remark.
“My personal life is my own business, and don’t you call me honey!”
She started to turn, but he caught her by the upper arms and turned her back around. His eyes were merciless, predatory.
“Were you raped?” he asked bluntly.
“No!” she said angrily, glaring at him. “And that’s all you need to know, McCallum!”
His hands on her arms relaxed, became caressing. He scowled down at her, searching for the right words.
“Let me go!”
“No.”
He reached around her and relocked the truck. He helped her into his car without asking if she was ready to come with him, started it and drove straight to his house.
She was numb with surprise. But she came out of her stupor when he pulled the car into his driveway and turned off the engine and lights. “Oh, I can’t,” she began quickly. “I have to go home!”
Ignoring her protest, he got out and opened the door for her. She let him extricate her and lead her up onto his porch. Mack barked from inside, but once Sterling let them in and turned on the lights, he calmed the big dog easily.
“You know Mack,” he told Jessica. “While you’re getting reacquainted, I’ll make another pot of coffee. If you need to wash your face, bathroom’s there,” he added, gesturing toward a room between the living room and the kitchen.
Mack growled at Jessica. She would try becoming his friend later, but right now she wanted to bathe her hot face. She couldn’t really imagine why she’d allowed McCallum to bring her here, when it was certainly going to destroy her reputation if anyone saw her alone with him after midnight.
By the time she got back to the living room, he had hot coffee on the coffee table, in fairly disreputable black mugs with faded emblems on them.
“I don’t have china,” he said when she tried to read the writing on hers.
“Neither do I,” she confessed. “Except, I do have two place settings of Havilland, but it’s cracked. It was my great-aunt’s.” She looked at him over her coffee cup. “I shouldn’t be here.”
“Because it’s late and we’re alone?”
She nodded.
“I’m a cop.”
“Well…yes.”
“Your reputation won’t suffer,” he said, leaning back to cross his long legs. “If there’s one thing I’m not, it’s a womanizer, and everyone knows it. I don’t have women.”
“You said you did,” she muttered.
He looked toward her with wise, amused eyes. “
Did,
yes. Not since I came back here. Small towns are hotbeds of gossip, and I’ve been the subject of it enough in my life. I won’t risk becoming a household word again just to satisfy an infrequent ache.”
She drank her coffee quickly, trying to hide how much his words embarrassed her, as well as the reference to gossip. She had her own skeletons, about which he apparently knew nothing. It had been a long time ago, after all, and most of the people who knew about Jessica’s past had moved away or died. Sheriff Judd Hensley knew, but he wasn’t likely to volunteer information to McCallum. Judd was tight-
lipped, and he’d been Jessica’s foremost ally at a time when she’d needed one desperately.
After a minute, Sterling put down his coffee cup and took hers away from her, setting it neatly in line with his. He leaned back on the sofa, his body turned toward hers.
“Tell me.”
She clasped her hands tightly in her lap. “I’ve never talked about it,” she said shortly. “He’s dead, anyway, so what good would it do now?”
“I want to know.”
“Why?”
His broad shoulders rose and fell. “Who else is there? You don’t have any family, Jessica, and I know for a fact you don’t have even one friend. Who do you talk to?”
“I talk to God!”
He smiled. “Well, He’s probably pretty busy right now, so why don’t you tell me?”
She pushed back her long hair. Her eyes sought the framed print of a stag in an autumn forest on the opposite wall. “I can’t.”
“Have you told anyone?”
Her slender shoulders hunched forward and she dropped her face into her hands with a heavy sigh. “I told my supervisor. My parents were dead by then, and I was living alone.”
“Come on,” he coaxed. “I may not be your idea
of the perfect confidant, but I’ll never repeat a word of it. Talking is therapeutic, or so they tell me.”
His tone was unexpectedly tender. She glanced at him, grimaced at the patience she saw there—as if he were willing to wait all night if he had to. She might as well tell him a little of what had happened, she supposed.
“I was twenty,” she said. “Grass green and sheltered. I knew nothing about men. I was sent out as a caseworker to a house where a man had badly beaten his wife and little daughter. I was going to question his wife one more time after she suddenly withdrew the charges. I went there to find out why, but she wasn’t at home and he blamed me for his having been accused. I’d encouraged his wife and daughter to report what happened. He hit me until I couldn’t stand up, and then he stripped me….” She paused, then forced the rest of it out. “He didn’t rape me, although I suppose he would have if his brother-in-law hadn’t driven up. He was arrested and charged, but he plea-bargained his way to a reduced sentence.”
“He wasn’t charged with attempted rape?”
“One of the more powerful city councilmen was his brother,” she told him. She left out the black torment of those weeks. “He was killed in a car wreck after being paroled, and the councilman moved away.”
“So he got away with it,” McCallum murmured angrily. He smoothed his hand over his hair and
stared out the dark window. “I thought you’d led a sheltered, pampered life.”
“I did. Up to a point. My best friend had parents who drank too much. There were never any charges, and she hid her bruises really well. She’s the reason I went into social work.” She smiled bitterly. “It’s amazing how much damage liquor does in our society, isn’t it?”
He couldn’t deny that. “Does your friend live here?”
She shook her head. “She lives in England with her husband. We lost touch years ago.”
“Why in God’s name didn’t you give up your job when you were attacked?”
“Because I do a lot of good,” she replied quietly. “After it happened, I thought about quitting. It was only when the man’s wife came to me and apologized for what he’d done, and thanked me for trying to help, that I realized I had at least accomplished something. She took her daughter and went to live with her mother.
“I cared too much about the children to quit. I still do. It taught me a lesson. Now, when I send caseworkers out, I always send them in pairs, even if it takes more time to work cases. Some children have no advocates except us.”
“God knows, someone needs to care about them,” he replied quietly. “Kids get a rough shake in this world.”
She nodded and finished her coffee. Her eyes were curious, roaming around the room. There were
hunting prints on the walls, but no photographs, no mementos. Everything that was personal had something military or work-related stamped on it. Like the mugs with the police insignias.
“What are you looking for? Sentiment?” he chided. “You won’t find it here. I’m not a sentimental man.”
“You’re a caring one, in your way,” she returned. “You were kind to Ellen and Chad.”
“Taking care of emotionally wounded people goes with the job,” he reminded her. He picked up his coffee cup and sipped the black liquid. His dark eyes searched hers. “I’ll remind you again that I don’t need hero worship from a social worker with a stunted libido.”
“Why, McCallum, I didn’t know you knew such big words,” she murmured demurely. “Do you read dictionaries in your spare time? I thought you spent it polishing your pistol.”
He chuckled with reserved pleasure. His deep voice sounded different when he laughed, probably because the sound was so rare, she mused.
“What do you do with yours?” he asked.
“I do housework,” she said. “And read over case files. I can’t sit around and do nothing. I have to stay busy.”
He finished his coffee and got up. “Want another cup?” he asked.
She shook her head and stood up, too. “I have to get home. Tomorrow’s another workday.”
“Let me open the latch for Mack so that he has access to the backyard and I’ll take you over there.”
“Won’t he run off?” she asked.
“He’s got a fenced-in area and his own entrance,” he replied. “I keep it latched to make sure the neighbor’s damned cat stays out of the house. It walks in and helps itself to his dog food when I’m not home. It climbs right over the fence!”
Jessica had to smother a laugh, he sounded so disgusted. She moved toward the dog, who suddenly growled up at her.
She stopped dead. He was a big dog, and pretty menacing at close range.
“Sorry,” McCallum said, tugging Mack toward his exit in the door. “He’s not used to women.”
“He’s big, isn’t he?” she asked, avoiding any further comment.
“Big enough. He eats like a horse.” He took his keys out of his pocket and locked up behind her while she got into the car.
They drove back toward her place. The night sky was dark, but full of stars. The sky went on forever in this part of the country, and Jessica could understand how McCallum would return here. She herself could never really leave. Her heart would always yearn for home in Montana.
When they got to her cabin, there was a single lighted window, and her big tomcat was outlined in it.
“That’s Meriwether,” she told him. “He wandered
up here a couple of years ago and I let him stay. He’s an orange tabby with battle-scarred ears.”
“I hate cats,” he murmured as he stopped the car at her front door.
“That doesn’t surprise me, McCallum. What surprises me is that you have a pet at all—and that you even allow a stray cat on your property.”
“Sarcasm is not your style, Miss Larson,” he chided.
“How do you know? Other than the time you were sick, you only see me at work.”
He pursed his lips and smiled faintly. “It’s safer that way. You lonely spinsters are dangerous.”
“Not me. I intend to be a lonely spinster for life,” she said firmly. “Marriage isn’t in my plans.”
He scowled. “Don’t you want kids?”
She opened her purse and took out her house key. “I like my life exactly as it is. Thanks for the lift. And the shoulder.” She glanced at him a little self-consciously.
“I’m a clam,” he said. “I don’t broadcast secrets; my own or anyone else’s.”
“That must be why you’re still working for Judd Hensley. He’s the same way.”
“He knew about your problem, I gather?”
She nodded. “He’s been sheriff here for a long time. He and his wife were good friends of my parents. I’m sorry about their divorce. He’s a lonely man these days.”
“Loneliness isn’t a disease,” he muttered. “Despite the fact that you women like to treat it like one.”
“Still upset about my bringing you that pot of soup, aren’t you?” she asked him. “Well, you were sick and nobody else was going to feed and look after you. I’m a social worker. I like taking care of the underprivileged.”
“I am
not
underprivileged.”
“You were sick and alone.”
“I wouldn’t have starved.”
“You didn’t have any food in the house,” she countered. “What did you plan to do, eat your dog?”
He made a face. “Considering some of the things
he
eats, God forbid!”
“Well, I wouldn’t eat Meriwether even if I really were starving.”
He glanced at the cat in the window. “I don’t blame you. Anything that ugly should be buried, not eaten.”
She made a sound deep in her throat and opened the car door.
“Go ahead,” he invited. “Tell me he’s not ugly.”
“I wouldn’t give you the satisfaction of arguing,” she said smugly. “Good night.”
“Lock that door.”
She glowered at him. “I’m twenty-five years old.” She pointed at her head. “This works.”
“No kidding!”
She made a dismissive gesture with her hand and walked up onto the porch. She didn’t look back, even when he beeped the horn as he drove away.
J
essica unlocked her front door and walked into the familiar confines of the big cabin. A long hall led to the kitchen, past a spare bedroom. The floor, heart of pine, was scattered with worn throw rugs. The living and dining areas were in one room at the front. At the end of the hall near the kitchen was an elegant old bathroom. The plumbing drove her crazy in the winters—which were almost unsurvivable in this house—and the summers were hotter than blazes. She had no air-conditioning and the heating system was unreliable. She had to supplement it with fireplaces and scattered kerosene heaters. Probably one day she’d burn the whole place down around her ears trying to keep warm, but except for the infre
quent cold, she remained healthy. She dreamed of a house that was livable year-round.
A soft meow came from the parlor, and Meriwether came trotting out to greet her. The huge tabby was marmalade colored. He’d been a stray when she found him, a pitiful half-grown scrap of fur with fleas and a stubby tail. She’d cleaned him up and brought him in, and they’d been inseparable ever since. But he hated men. He was a particularly big cat, with sharp claws, and he had to be locked up when the infrequent repairman was called to the house. He spat and hissed at them, and he’d even attacked the man who read the water meter. Now the poor fellow wouldn’t come into the yard unless he knew Meriwether was safely locked in the house.
“Well, hello,” she said, smiling as he wrapped himself around her ankle. “Want to hear all about the time I had?”
He made a soft sound. She scooped him up under one arm and started up the staircase. “Let me tell you, I’ve had better nights.”
Later, with Meriwether curled up beside her, his big head on her shoulder, she slept, but the old nightmare came back, resurrected probably by the violence she’d seen and heard. She woke in a cold sweat, crying out in the darkness. It was a relief to find herself safe, here in her own house. Meriwether opened his eyes and looked at her when she turned on the light.
“Never mind. Go back to sleep,” she told him gently. “I think I’ll just read for a while.”
She picked up a favorite romance novel from her shelf and settled back to read it. She liked these old ones best, the ones that belonged to a different world and always delivered a happy ending. Soon she was caught up in the novel and reality thankfully vanished for a little while.
At nine o’clock sharp the next morning, McCallum showed up in Jessica’s office. He was wearing beige jeans and a sports jacket over his short-sleeved shirt this morning. No tie. He seemed to hate them; at least, Jessica had yet to see him dressed in one.
She was wearing a gray suit with a loose jacket. Her hair was severely confined on top of her head and she had on just a light touch of makeup. Watching her gather her briefcase, McCallum thought absently that he much preferred the tired woman of the night before, with her glorious hair loose around her shoulders.
“We’ll go in my car,” he said when they reached the parking lot, putting his sunglasses over his eyes. They gave him an even more threatening demeanor.
“I have to go on to another appointment, so I’ll take my truck, now that it’s been fixed, thanks to you….”
He opened the passenger door of the patrol car and stood there without saying a word.
She hesitated for a minute, then let him help her
into the car. “Are you deliberately intimidating, or does it just come naturally?” she asked when they were on the way to the hospital.
“I spent years ordering noncoms around,” he said easily. “Old habits are hard to break. Plays hell at work sometimes. I keep forgetting that Hensley outranks me.”
That sounded like humor, but she’d had no sleep to speak of and she felt out of sorts. She clasped her briefcase closer, glancing out the window at the landscape. Montana was beautiful in spring. The area around Whitehorn was uncluttered, with rolling hills that ran forever to the horizon and that later in the year would be rich with grain crops. Occasional herds of cattle dotted the horizon. There were cottonwood and willow trees along the streams, but mostly the country was wide open. It was home. She loved it.
She especially loved Whitehorn. With its wide streets and multitude of trees, the town reminded her of Billings—which had quiet neighborhoods and a spread-out city center, with a refinery right within the city limits. The railroad cut through Billings, just as it did here in Whitehorn. It was necessary for transportation, because mining was big business in southern Montana.
The Whitehorn hospital was surrounded by cottonwood trees. Its grounds were nicely landscaped and there was a statue of Lewis and Clark out front.
William Clark’s autograph in stone at Pompey’s Pillar, near Hardin, Montana, still drew photographers. The Lewis and Clark expedition had come right through Whitehorn.
Jessica introduced herself and McCallum to the ward nurse, and they were taken to the nursery.
Baby Jennifer, or Jenny as she was called, was in a crib there. She looked very pretty, with big blue eyes and a tiny tuft of blond hair on top of her head. She looked up at her visitors without a change of expression, although her eyes were alert and intelligent.
Jessica looked at her hungrily. She put down her briefcase and with a questioning glance at the nurse, who nodded, she picked the baby up and held her close.
“Little angel,” she whispered, smiling so sadly that the man at her side scowled. She touched the tiny hand and felt it curl around her finger. She blinked back tears. She would never have a baby. She would never know the joy of feeling it grow in her body, watching its birth, nourishing it at her breast….
She made a sound and McCallum moved between her and the nurse with magnificent carelessness. “I want to see any articles of clothing that were found on or with the child,” he said courteously.
The nurse, diverted, produced a small bundle. He unfastened it. There was one blanket, a worn pink one—probably homemade, judging by the hand-sewn border—with no label. There was a tiny gown, a pretty lacy thing with a foreign label, the sort that
might be found at a fancy garage sale. There were some hand-knitted booties and a bottle. The bottle was a common plastic one with nothing outstanding about it. He sighed angrily. No clues here.
“Oh, yes, there’s one more thing, Detective,” the nurse said suddenly. She produced a small brooch, a pink cameo. “This was attached to the gown. Odd, isn’t it, to put something so valuable on a baby? This looks like real gold.”
McCallum touched it, turned it over. It was gold, all right, and very old. That was someone’s heirloom. It might be the very clue he needed to track down the baby’s parents.
He fished out a plastic bag and dropped the cameo into it, fastening it and sticking it in his inside jacket pocket. It was too small to search for prints, and it had been handled by too many people to be of value in that respect. Hensley had checked all these things yesterday when the baby was found. The bottle had been wiped clean of prints, although not by anybody at the Kincaid home. Apparently the child’s parents weren’t anxious to be found. The puzzling thing was that brooch. Why wipe fingerprints off and then include a probably identifiable piece of heirloom jewelry?
He was still frowning when he turned back to Jessica. She was just putting the child into its crib and straightening. The look on her face was all too easy to read, but she quickly concealed her thoughts with a businesslike expression.
“We’ll have to settle her with a child-care provider until the court determines placement,” Jessica told the nurse. “I’ll take care of that immediately when I get back to the office. I’ll need to speak to the attending physician, as well.”
“Of course, Miss Larson. If you’ll come with me?”
McCallum fell into step beside her, down the long hall to Dr. Henderson’s office. They spoke with him about the child’s condition and were satisfied that she could be released the next morning.
“I’ll send over the necessary forms,” Jessica assured him, shaking hands.
“Pity, isn’t it?” the doctor said sadly. “Throwing away a baby, like a used paper plate.”
“She wasn’t exactly thrown away,” Jessica reminded him. “At least she was left where people would find her. We’ve had babies who weren’t so fortunate.”
McCallum pursed his lips. “Has anyone called to check on the baby?” he asked suddenly.
“Why, yes,” the doctor replied curiously. “As a matter of fact, a woman from the
Whitehorn Journal
office called. She wanted to do a story, but I said she must first check with you.”
McCallum lifted an eyebrow. “The
Whitehorn Journal
doesn’t have a woman reporter.”
He frowned. “I understood her to say the
Journal.
I may have been mistaken.”
“I doubt it,” McCallum said thoughtfully. “It was probably the child’s mother, making sure the baby had been found.”
“If she calls again, I’ll get in touch with you.”
“Thanks,” McCallum said.
He and Jessica walked back down the hall toward the hospital exit. He glanced down at her. “How old are you?”
She started. “I’m twenty-five,” she said. “Why?”
He looked ahead instead of at her, his hands stuck deep in his jean pockets. “These modern attitudes may work for some women, but they won’t work for you. Why don’t you get married and have babies of your own, instead of mooning over someone else’s?”
She didn’t answer him. Rage boiled up inside her, quickening her steps as she made her way out the door toward his car.
He held the door open for her. She didn’t even bother to comment on the courtesy or question it, she was so angry. He had no right to make such remarks to her. Her private life was none of his business!
He got in beside her, but he didn’t start the engine. He turned toward her, his keen eyes cutting into her face. “You cried,” he said shortly.
She grasped her briefcase like a lifeline, staring straight ahead, ignoring him.
He hit the steering wheel with his hand in impotent anger. He shouldn’t let her get to him this way.
“How can you be in law enforcement with a temper like that?” she demanded icily.
He stared at her levelly. “I don’t hit people.”
“You do, too!” she raged. “You hit that man who threatened to pull a gun on you. I heard all about it!”
“Did you hear that
he
kicked me in the… Well, never mind, but he damned near unmanned me before I laid a finger on him!” he said harshly.
She clutched the briefcase like a shield. “McCallum, you are crude! Crude and absolutely insensitive!”
“Crude? Insensitive?” he exclaimed shortly. He glared at her. “If you think that’s crude, suppose I give you the slang term for it then?” he added with a cold smile, and he told her, graphically, what the man had done.
She was breathing through her nostrils. Her eyes were like brown coals, and she was livid.
“Your hand is itching, isn’t it?” he taunted. “You want to slap me, but you can’t quite work up the nerve.”
“You have no right to talk to me like this!”
“How did you ever get into this line of work?” he demanded. “You’re a bleeding-heart liberal with more pity than purpose in your life. If you’d take down that hair—” he pulled some pins from her bun “—and keep on those contact lenses, you might even find a man who’d marry you. Then you wouldn’t have to spend your life burying your own needs in a
job that’s little more than a substitute for an adult relationship with a man!”
“You…!” The impact of the briefcase hitting his shoulder shocked him speechless. She hit him again before he could recover. The leather briefcase was heavy, but it was the shock of the attack that left him frozen in his seat when she tumbled out of the car and slammed the door furiously behind her.
She started off down the street with her hair hanging in unruly strands from its once-neat bun and her jacket askew. She looked dignified even in her pathetic state, and she didn’t look back once.