The Ranger And The Widow Woman Read online

  Slowly, she pushed through the screen door then walked down the steps and out to her son. The moment he spotted her, he looked up and grinned, and a pang of guilt rushed through Violet. Her son loved and needed her. Making his life happy and good was all she’d ever wanted.

  “Hi, Mommy. Can you play with me now?”

  She sat down beside him on the sandy ground. “I’m not finished with my work yet. Maybe I can play later. Right now, I want to talk to you about something.”

  Talking wasn’t at all like playing. He turned his attention back to his toys, and Violet watched him carefully place a Hampshire hog in the back of a pickup truck, then push the truck over to an exposed root of the cottonwood.

  “Okay,” he mumbled, his thoughts already drifting to whatever fate he had planned for the hog.

  “Did you like riding Charlie’s horse?” Violet asked him.

  The word horse did the trick. Sam looked at his mother with bright, attentive eyes. “Yeah! It was real fun!”

  “You weren’t afraid you were going to fall off?”

  His little face wrinkled up as though he considered her question ridiculous. “No, Mommy. Charlie promised he wouldn’t let me fall. And Charlie wouldn’t lie.”

  He seemed so certain, so trusting of the man. And he’d only met him yesterday. Her son couldn’t know that Charlie was a man who could ultimately hurt them both. And that was something she didn’t want her son to know. She never wanted him to learn of the threats and dark clouds hanging over their heads. One of these days it would all be over. She had to hold on to that hope, otherwise she didn’t know if she could go on.

  “I see,” she said thoughtfully. “So you believe Charlie’s going to take care of you?”

  Sam nodded emphatically. “Sure. He’s a Texas Ranger. When he works, he wears a pistol and a badge. And sometimes he rides a horse after bad guys.”

  Apparently Sam had absorbed every word Charlie had said to him and been properly impressed, to boot. “I’m sure he does,” Violet murmured, while picturing Charlie tracking down a thief, or even worse, a killer. Something about him told her he would be a relentless lawman. One who would never give up until he got his man. If he went after a woman with the same single-mindedness, Violet thought, she wouldn’t have a chance.

  “Do you still want to ride with him to hunt for cows?”

  Sam jumped to his feet. “Yeah!”

  Before Violet could say anything else, Sam was on his feet, racing to the house. “Where are you going?” she called after him.

  “I gotta get my jeans on! Charlie says I can’t ride with him unless I cover my legs and arms.”

  Violet watched her son scoot on into the house. Then she slowly rose to her feet and brushed off the seat of her shorts. She’d never seen Sam this excited over anything. Not his birthday party, Christmas presents or a trip to the zoo or swimming pool. His eagerness made her wonder even more if she’d failed to see her son’s need to be a little boy in the most basic sense.

  She left the shade of the cottonwood and went into the house. She found Sam in the bedroom. Clothes were scattered all around the open suitcase lying atop the bed. She picked up two pair of shorts from the floor and tossed them onto the bed with the rest of the things.

  “Sam, I’m not sure Charlie is ready to go yet,” she told him, then smiled indulgently when he looked at her with great disappointment. “But once you get your clothes changed, you may go down to the barn and tell him I said it was okay for you to go riding. But don’t get in the way or pester him. All right?”

  Curbing the urge to caution him further, she left him to dress himself and went back to the kitchen to continue her cleaning job on the cabinets. After a few moments she heard the front door bang and knew Sam was on his way to the barn.

  More than thirty minutes later she was standing at the sink, rinsing her cleaning cloth, when she saw Charlie leading the gray from under the loafing shed connected to the barn. Sam was already in the saddle, clinging to the big, flat horn. An old crumpled straw hat, several sizes too large was riding low on his little ears.

  Violet hurried out to the front porch, then stood on the edge, one hand braced against a post. Sam saw her and waved excitedly. Charlie glanced briefly over his shoulder at her, then swung himself up in the saddle behind Sam.

  Her heart sank as he reined the horse toward the north away from the house. He wasn’t going to bother riding by the porch to assure her Sam would be safe, that she was right in letting her son go, or even to tell her a simple goodbye.

  What was he, she asked herself, as she watched the horse and riders head toward the desert hills. A rock? A man without a heart or the ability to possess any sort of compassion or understanding where women were concerned?

  The memory of Charlie hugging his mother flashed through her mind and she knew she could not doubt his love for Justine Pardee. It was the rest of the female population she had her doubts about.

  “Mommy, we saw cows and a big windmill. It was going round and round in the wind, and it made water pour into a big tank so the cows and horses could drink. And we saw cactus called cho—choya. It had yellow flowers all over it, and I wanted to bring one home to you, but Charlie said if I did I’d get stickers in my hand and that would be painful.”

  Violet watched her son cram forkfuls of meat loaf into his mouth. “Sounds like you had a good time.”

  “It was lots of fun. And Joe is nice and really smart. Charlie doesn’t even have to tell him where to go. He says that Joe’s nose tells him where the cattle are, and he goes right to them.”

  “Is that so?” She glanced across the pine table at Charlie. He seemed to be concentrating entirely on his food and had said little more than five words since the three of them had sat down to supper. “What about coyotes? Did you see any of them?” she asked Sam.

  “Naw,” he answered. “Charlie says they’re crafty and don’t let humans see them too much.”

  Sounded like Charlie had said lots of things, Violet mused. Although it was hard for her to imagine. She got the impression it pained him to say anything to her unless it was something crass, a reprimand or a lecture.

  Even though he hadn’t acknowledged her gaze, Violet continued to look at Charlie. “Uh—what about rattlesnakes, did you see any of those?”

  “No,” Sam said with great disappointment. “Charlie says they don’t let people see them, either. He said I needed to watch and be careful not to get too close to one because when they bite you it can make you very sick and even die.”

  Sam was only four, nearing five years old. Too young to have to understand what the severity of “to die” meant. But he did. He knew his father had died when his plane had crashed to the earth, and he knew it meant Brent would never come back.

  “Charlie is right,” she told Sam.

  This brought Charlie’s head up, and his blue eyes looked straight into hers. She felt jolted at the contact.

  “Can I go outside and play now, Mommy? I’ve ate all my food.”

  Violet forced herself to break his gaze and look at her son’s plate. Seeing it was empty, she nodded her head at him. “Yes. But don’t go any further than the tree in the backyard.”

  Sam scurried out of the room and left the two adults in strained silence. Violet finished her meat loaf and creamed spinach, then left the table to pour herself a cup of coffee.

  She was standing at the cabinet counter, stirring cream into her coffee when he spoke, and her frayed nerves jerked at the unexpected sound.

  “Sam is an obedient boy. He doesn’t test the rules given to him.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t have any problem with him,” she said stiffly. “Are you ready for coffee?”

  “Yes.”

  She poured him a cupful. As she placed it at his right elbow she couldn’t stop her eyes from gliding over his thick, sandy brown hair, the wide width of his shoulders and the corded muscles of his forearms. He had everything a woman admired, except a heart.

  “Th
anks,” he murmured.

  With Sam out of the room, Violet couldn’t bring herself to sit back down at the table with him, yet she didn’t want to be so rude as to leave the room before he’d finished his meal.

  Carrying her coffee cup with her, she ambled over to the screen door. Late-evening shadows were creeping across the barren yard. Sam was back in his spot beneath the cottonwood. No doubt hauling his Hampshire to a new farm.

  “I don’t think you understand what it’s like to have a child,” she said after a few moments.

  He glanced over to where she was standing at the door. Her nose was against the screen, her expression wistful.

  “Obviously I can’t. I don’t have one.”

  “You don’t understand that he’s all I have in this world.”

  Charlie’s cup stopped halfway to his mouth as it struck him that she wasn’t just a woman mouthing words or fishing for sympathy. And that made it all the more terrible.

  “I recall you said you were adopted. But don’t you have aunts or uncles or grandparents somewhere?”

  The shortness was gone from his voice, and Violet decided to walk back over to the table. As she took the seat across from him, she said, “I have one uncle back in Georgia. But he...isn’t much better than my father. I don’t have anything to do with him.”

  Even though Charlie’s grandparents were also gone, his family was still huge. If he were to ever need any sort of help they would come running. Violet was alone. Maybe he couldn’t fathom the real meaning of that. Maybe no one could unless they were in her shoes.

  “Did you ever try to get your father off alcohol?”

  His question made her cringe inwardly. She’d done everything she could, not only to get her father off alcohol, but to try to make him see her as his daughter, to make him love her. Her efforts had not only failed, they’d gotten her into trouble. Trouble that was still looming over her head like an ominous thundercloud.

  “I tried everything. I... well, I did the best I could to help him. But I never had much influence on my father. He didn’t want an adopted child. He wanted one of his own. He went along with Mom’s wishes to adopt me because she was ill and couldn’t conceive. But later he made us both pay,” she said bitterly.

  “I can see why you might hate the man.”

  Hate him? Violet liked to believe she wasn’t capable of hating anyone. But if it were possible, her hate would be directed at Rex, not Leroy. If given the chance, her father-in-law would try to take everything from her, whereas her father had only hurt her with his resentment and indifference.

  Sighing, she jammed her hands into the pockets on her shorts. “No. I don’t hate Leroy. I’m just wise enough to know that Sam and I are better off staying away from him. But none of that matters anymore, anyway. I simply wanted you to understand why I...get so protective of Sam sometimes. I wouldn’t want to live without him.”

  It was plain that she loved her son, which was as it should be. But Charlie wasn’t altogether sure the extent of her feelings was a good thing. She was a young woman. She should have wants or needs of her own, rather than just living for her son.

  Charlie reached for a plate of cookies she’d set out for dessert. “Does Sam know he has a grandpa?”

  Violet nodded. “Yes. The one in Amarillo. He’s never seen my father, and it’s very doubtful he ever will.”

  She said it with such gritty conviction that Charlie had to figure Violet’s father was a pure bastard. She didn’t seem the sort of woman who would turn her back on anyone, unless they had hurt her badly in some way.

  As he had hurt her this afternoon, his thoughts tacked on. A part of Charlie felt bad about upsetting her. Yet he was still angry and perplexed because he didn’t know exactly what he’d said or done to cause such an explosion in her. Maybe he’d been a little arrogant, but hell, all men were that way from time to time. He hadn’t meant to hurt her.

  “So this father-in-law back in Amarillo is basically the only family you have?”

  Violet kept her eyes carefully on her coffee cup. “Yes.”

  Beneath a veil of dark brown lashes he studied her covertly. “Why didn’t you want to stay there? Surely after all this time you acquired friends you enjoyed spending time with?”

  His persistent questions not only annoyed her, they frightened her. She didn’t want to think about her life back in Amarillo or what might happen if it ever caught up to her. She’d learned that Rex was a corrupt man. Legal or illegal, he would do anything to gain what he wanted. And he wanted total control of his grandson.

  Lifting her head, she frowned at Charlie. “Can you ever stop being a Ranger? I’ll bet you even wear that badge of yours to bed.”

  A surly grin twisted his lips. “Maybe I would if I had something to pin it to.”

  The meaning of his words hit her like a mouthful of hot chili peppers. Heat flooded her body and marked her face with color. “Why don’t you try your chest? Your hide seems tough enough to handle it.”

  Before she knew what was happening, he was around the table, jerking her to her feet.

  “What are you doing?” she gasped as he pulled her up against him.

  “I’m going to show you something.”

  Violet’s eyes widened at his menacing tone. “I don’t—”

  Her words stuck in her throat. Her heart hammered out of control as he tugged her hand up against his chest. “You really think I’m that hard?”

  Everything about him was hard, Violet thought, even the stare of his cold blue eyes.

  “You’re...awful! Despicable!”

  Her response brought a quirk of mocking humor to his face, and it was all Violet could do to keep from kicking his shin.

  Without speaking one word, Charlie loosened a button on his shirt and slipped her hand inside. Violet’s knees grew dangerously weak, and she closed her eyes as she fought to ignore the pleasure of his warm skin against her fingers.

  “Does that feel tough to you?”

  She silently groaned. “It’s what’s underneath that I have a problem with.”

  His eyes narrowed. “You don’t know what’s underneath. And don’t go getting the idea you can find out.”

  His sarcasm put a snarl on Violet’s face. “Just like I’d want to,” she grumbled. “You must think I’m a complete idiot!”

  “No. I think you’re a liar.”

  Her face paled as fear lanced through her. Had he guessed, did he know she was hiding, running to escape?

  “What have I lied about?” she whispered hoarsely.

  His fingers curled around her chin, and his face dipped down to hers. “This,” he murmured.

  Confusion parted her lips, and Charlie was quick to take advantage. Like before, he hadn’t planned to kiss her, but somehow he’d ended up doing it, anyway. But this time he realized he wasn’t blinded by anger or caught off guard by something she’d said. This time he simply wanted her, and he needed to prove to her that she wanted him, too.

  As Charlie’s firm lips consumed Violet’s she felt herself wilting like a sunflower in the broiling heat. Her head lolled back, and her shaky legs forced her to grab on to his shirtfront.

  The thought of pulling out of his embrace never entered her mind. She was too caught up in the taste of him, the feel of his strong body crushed against hers. She’d never felt so lost, so wild, so totally female in her life. It was a heady, addictive feeling, and every inch of her sizzled with the need to be closer to him.

  Long minutes passed before he finally ended the possession of her lips. By then Violet was too weak and breathless to even open her eyes.

  “You know you’d like to get under my skin,” he murmured against the smooth curve of her throat. “You’d like to know what makes me tick so you can push my buttons.”

  She didn’t want to push his buttons, she thought wildly. She didn’t want to be here in his house or his arms! But, oh, it was heaven to her starved heart.

  “Is that what you’re trying to do to me, push m
y buttons?” she asked breathlessly.

  He nuzzled her nose and hair, then turned droopy eyes on her face. “No. I think Sam has become your whole life. I wanted to remind you that you’re a woman.”

  “And I’m beginning to think you’ve been a Ranger so long you’ve forgotten how to be man!”

  His nostrils flared and his hold on her chin tightened ever so slightly. “You like what I’m doing to you.”

  His lips hovered just above hers and his breath rippled like a warm, seductive breeze across her cheeks. Violet had to fight everything in her not to reach up, pull his head down and close the tiny gap between their lips.

  “Maybe I do. But it takes more than that to be a real man.”

  She stayed in his arms long enough to see surprise flood his blue eyes, then she twisted out of his arms.

  Stunned by her counterattack, Charlie could only stand there and watch her go out the screen door. Seconds later he could hear her in the backyard, talking to Sam. The air whooshed out of him like a deflated balloon.

  What the hell did she know about men, he asked himself fiercely. What did she know about him? Nothing. And that was the way he was going to keep it. She might prick his ego, but that was a whole lot better than breaking his heart.

  Chapter Six

  Charlie never knew a child could talk so much in such a short span of time and ask questions for which he had no answers. He tried to tune him out and concentrate on the blooming sage, the grama grass, and the bright blossoms adorning the sticky choya. Late spring rains had blessed the high desert country of Lincoln county, and the evidence was all over the Pardee Ranch.

  After he’d become a Ranger and started earning a living on his own, his father had allowed him to become a financial partner with him in the Pardee Ranch. It was a step Charlie was proud of, a decision he would never regret. Even though his life was in Texas serving as a Ranger, he could never forsake this land that had always been his home.