Desperado: Deep in the Heart, Book 2 (25 page)

It was just a damn good thing he’d been extracareful about birth control or he might have wound up playing the prince role in happily-ever-after land.

“Uncle Cody,” said Mary, as she came out onto the porch, “where’s Stormy?”

“Gone back where she belongs.” He swiped at her hair playfully to take the harsh edge off his words.

“Oh. What did the two of you decide?”

An uncomfortable grumble worked through his stomach. “About what?”

“About me going to California to try out for some auditions? Stormy said she was going to talk to Mom and Zach and you about it.”

He ground his teeth so hard they hurt. “She did not mention that,” he gritted out, feeling the blessedly cussed, stubborn anger that he always felt about Stormy rising to the surface. It ran off all the other pitiful feelings he’d been suffering. “Maybe she called your mother. But don’t drag me into that one, because I vote no.”

Absolutely not. Uh-uh. No way did he think his ladybug was old enough to go out to California with a woman who was pregnant and not married. Cody stomped inside the house, glad for the newfound fury. Annie was a sensible woman. She would refuse this latest ludicrous idea of Stormy’s.

But if he ever got his hands on Stormy’s phone number, he was going to give that woman a piece of his mind.

Chapter Sixteen

Life as Cody had known it was over. Everyone around him had gone insane. The storm had left the movie people in a bit of an uproar, but he didn’t really care about that. Mary had finished most of her part, but she still hung around the set after school, star gazing. She’d been real quiet with him, and he suspected he’d been too hard on her about going to California. The codgers still weren’t speaking with each other. It was as if the storm had blown their wooden kegs farther apart. And he hadn’t seen Sloan in an age, which worried him. Late autumn in Desperado was turning into a strange season of confusion and restlessness. He could feel it in his steers. He could feel it in himself.

“Sloan!” he called as he walked inside the sheriff’s office. The sheriff was nowhere to be seen, which was irritating because they’d specifically planned to meet this morning at this time to discuss hauling livestock over from a ranch that was selling off. Frowning, he threw himself into a chair to wait.

Suddenly, he recognized the smell of liquor. Something pungent, obviously a strong brew. Leaning up, Cody sniffed the air again. “Whew!” he exhaled on a short breath. He got up to look at Sloan’s desk, since that was the direction the smell was strongest. His eye was caught by the liquor bottle tucked in the bottom drawer, sticking out, uncapped.

“Uh-oh,” he said, striding from the room. Sloan wasn’t in the men’s room, nor was he loitering in the hall. Growing more worried by the second, Cody went through the hall to lockup.

Sure enough, Sloan lay on a cell bed, snoring comfortably. Alcohol reeked to the rafters. In his hand, a picture frame was tucked up against his chest. “Jeez,” Cody muttered, pulling the frame from Sloan’s unresponsive hand. The wedding picture brought a grimace to his face. Woman trouble. He might have known.

“Get up, damn it,” he told Sloan, briskly slapping him on each cheek. “You need a shower something bad.” Sloan didn’t move, so Cody tucked the frame between his stomach and jeans, and leaned to haul Sloan off the bed. “You’re like a bag of lead, my friend.”

“Hey,
amigo
. Whash happenin’?” Sloan asked with a stupid, sleepy-eyed grin.

“Not much, except I may die from fumes. Don’t talk until I get you into the shower.” He helped Sloan down the hall into a cement shower area and shoved him inside, turning cold water on him full blast.

“Yi-yi-yi!” Sloan cried, trying to leap out.

Cody pushed him back under the water mercilessly.

“Let me out ’fore I hurt you! I’ll ’rrest you for this.” Drippy hair fell into his eyes, making his threats sound absurd.

Cody grunted at him. “Sober up, my friend. Then I’ll let you out.”

“I’m sober! I’m sober, you son of a bitch!”

“Wash your mouth out while you’re in there. It has bad words in it.”

“Aguillar, if you don’t turn off that water, I’m beating the skin off of you.”

He shook his head. At least now Sloan seemed fighting mad instead of falling down drunk. Switching off the water, he tossed a torn towel his way.

“You sorry-ass—”

Cody reached for the water. Sloan held up his hands in surrender.

“I suppose you want my thanks,” he grumbled.

“No. I want you to pull yourself together so we can discuss business.” Cody turned his back and walked from the room. “Hope you have dry clothes.”

“In my truck.” Sloan came out, muttering under his breath.

“You know that if Widow Baker had seen you like that, you would have never lived it down.”

“I know,” Sloan said under his breath. “I should thank you. But I was enjoying a private party when you crashed it.”

“Have anything to do with her?” Cody pulled the frame from his jeans and handed it to Sloan.

“Nope. It doesn’t,” Sloan snapped, tossing it into a drawer and locking it.

“Sure it does.” Cody took the chair he’d sat in before. “Women are usually the reason a man tries to pickle his organs, though it’s a bad reason to do it. A woman isn’t worth that kind of damage to your body. But if it’s not her, maybe you went on a bender because you’re an alcoholic. I don’t know.”

“I’m not.” Sloan shot him a nasty look. “It’s my anniversary, okay? I’d like to celebrate my anniversary in peace, if you don’t mind.”

“That was celebrating? Remind me not to get married.” Cody stared at the ceiling, telling himself not to think about Stormy and her engagement ring and elderly husband-to-be.

“Nobody has to remind you because you’re dead set against it. Some of us made it down the aisle, okay, and lived to regret it. I’m over it.”

“Ah, yeah?” He moved his gaze to his fingers so he wouldn’t look at Sloan. “You never told me.”

“It’s none of your business.”

“True.” Cody nodded. “Care to celebrate the day you got married with some breakfast now? We’ve got work to discuss.”

“I would.” Sloan jammed his hat on his head. “But for your information, I wasn’t celebrating my wedding day. I was celebrating the day I got divorced, eight years ago today. Not that it’s any of your business.” He stomped past Cody. “I’m going to get my clothes out of my truck.”

“Fine. Fine and dandy.” Cody remained where he was. Dang, but if he was celebrating his divorce by drinking himself into a stupor, he must not have been the one who’d wanted out of the marriage. Cody bit at a hangnail, considering how a tough guy like Sloan could allow himself to get so riled over a female. Of course, the woman in the picture had been attractive, but that wasn’t a good excuse.

He must have really loved her.
Cody worked that over for a moment. Some raw part of his emotions warned him that he’d better examine his own glass house before he threw rocks, although his first reaction was that he would never let himself get to the point where Sloan had been. A woman wasn’t worth it.

Stormy is,
his mind insisted. Though his heart didn’t want to listen, didn’t want to fall into the prison of loving someone, he knew it was true.

“Damn it!” he heard Sloan shout. “Cut that out!”

Cody shot to his feet, striding outside. A throng had gathered, cheering and clapping over something. He elbowed his way through the crowd and groaned. Wrong-Way and Hera were having an all-out, fighting-mad bout over something. Sloan stood in the middle of the two combatants, trying to keep them separated.

“You lying piece of horse dung!” Hera screamed, reaching around the sheriff for a good grip on Tate’s shirt.

Beyond reason, she shoved Sloan out of the way with her free hand and grabbed Tate for a round of jerking and pulling. Tate’s head snapped around as if it were on a rubber band, and buttons popped off his shirt like popcorn to lay in the dirt.

“You’re under arrest,” Sloan said, trying to come to his feet. Still off-center from the effects of the alcohol, he couldn’t move quite like he wanted, and ended up taking the brunt of Tate’s body as big Hera whirled the hapless cowboy in a circle.

Cody leapt forward and pulled the sheriff out of the dogfight before he could get stomped on. “You’re gonna get yourself killed doing that,” he warned him. “Maybe we ought to stay out of this one.”

“But she’s manhandling him. As an officer of the law, I’m obliged to make certain that she doesn’t beat him to death. There’s assault and battery to consider here, Cody!”

He nodded, picking up Sloan’s hat which had fallen into the dirt. “Yeah. But don’t let your bad feelings about women get you heated up too quickly.”

“I’m not! This has nothing to do with my…celebration.”

“Well, then, just stay out of it for a second. You know very well Tate’s a sidewinder. Give Hera a chance to sort him out.” Cody leaned back against the courthouse wall and watched as the skinny cowboy took a roll in the dirt. On the sidelines, Curvy and Pick watched with great enthusiasm. Tate let out a yelp as Hera sat on him, bouncing up and down for good measure.

“Have any idea what this is all about?” Sloan glanced at Cody.

“She might have realized he has no intention of marrying her.” Personally, Cody felt sorry for Hera. Tate had been leading her up the garden path for a long time, with absolutely no inclination to make an honest woman of her. Men who didn’t make an honest woman out of a woman they bedded, especially more than once, deserved—

Whoa,
Cody told himself.
Hang on here. You knew you weren’t going to marry Stormy. You had no business taking her to bed, and you sure didn’t have a right to her virginity.

“All right, Hera,” he called, moving forward swiftly. “Let Wrong-Way up.”

“He’s led me in the wrong direction for the last time!” She threw pieces of paper she’d torn in half into the dirt. “Either he heads to the courthouse right now to get the marriage license, or I stomp him.” She bounced on him again for emphasis.

“You’re crushing my spine, Hera!” Wrong-Way glanced toward Cody and Sloan for assistance. “Get this woman off of me!”

Wrong-Way wasn’t a friend of his. He wasn’t doing him any favors. Cody shook his head, and reached down to swipe the two pieces of white paper from the ground. “Stormy Nixon,” he read. Her company name and several phone numbers were on the card. Blind anger and sudden jealousy roared through him. “How did you get your paws on this, Tate?”

“Stormy gave it to me.” The cowboy tried to wriggle out from underneath Hera without success.

Cody glared down at the slightly built, flailing man. “Why would she give you this?”

“She said I could call her.”

“You call her and you ain’t ever calling on me again,” Hera stated. She kept her ample bottom on Wrong-Way like a boulder-sized paperweight.

Cody himself wanted a turn at Tate. How in the hell had that weasel charmed Stormy’s personal phone numbers out of her, when she hadn’t so much as given him her work number, for crying out loud? He’d had to pry that out of the movie set people, and even then, he hadn’t been able to get in contact with her. Frowning, he remembered that Stormy had tried, the very first time she’d come to his house, to give him a white card like this one. He’d shoved it back in the ridiculous carpetbag she carried, not wanting anything to do with her.

He damn sure didn’t want Tate having anything to do with her.

“Careful,” Sloan murmured next to him. “Remember. You’re the one who said that a woman wasn’t worth it. But I see blood in your eye,
amigo
.”

Very casually, very deliberately, Cody slid the halves of the business card into his jeans pocket. “Wrong-Way, it looks like you have two choices. It’s either the courthouse for a wedding license, or hell for eternal damnation. Look at it this way. With Hera, you spend one day a week in church wishing you didn’t have to be there. In hell, you spend every day wishing you weren’t there.”

The gathered crowd grew silent, waiting expectantly for the pinned cowboy’s answer. Cody couldn’t help feeling sorry for a man who was being forced to do something he didn’t want to do. Lord only knew he hadn’t enjoyed jumping out of Stormy’s window. The guy deserved this humiliation, though, for cheating on Hera. Tate liked availing himself of a good woman’s charms, then not following through on his promises.

I never made Stormy any promises,
Cody comforted himself. Still, he enjoyed watching the cowboy suffer for even thinking he had a chance with Stormy.
Stormy’s a free woman.
And he was a free man. They were both satisfied with their situation.

“I’ll go!” Wrong-Way suddenly shouted. “I’ll get a marriage license!”

The crowd burst into applause. Mayor Curvy did a little jig with his thin, crooked body. “Our two towns will be united at last!” he cried jubilantly.

Pick clapped his hands together gleefully, reaching out to Curvy to take his arm. Without hesitation Curvy set his arm around Pick’s, and they continued the jig together.

Hera got up off her groom, lifting him to his feet and dusting him off quite proprietorially. Then she gave him a great, smacking kiss which took up half his cheek, much to the delight of the onlookers.