Never Say Never (18 page)

Loud banging erupted on the bedroom window, hard enough to shatter the glass. Sadie screamed, barely aware that her mother had thrown her arms around her.

Chapter Eleven

“What was that?” Sadie gasped.

Her mother didn’t reply. She stared at the window. “Did you lock the front door when you came in, Sadie?”

“I don’t know. I was so upset I might not have.” She couldn’t bear not knowing what was outside her window. “You go check the door, Mama.”

“Okay.” Vera ran from Sadie’s room. She stood, slowly going to the window. Cautiously, she pulled back the second-hand curtain her mother had bought at a garage sale.

Curtis jumped up from his hiding place under the ledge. Sadie bit back a scream, knowing he was deliberately trying to frighten her.

“What do you want?”

“You, babe.” His laughter came through the thin windowpane, mean and calculated to hurt.

“Mama’s calling the police. You get out of here and don’t come around anymore.”

He held his hands up to his heart, faking fear. “I can only stay a minute, babe. Just wanted to let you know I found our little girl, safe and snug as a bug in a rug up at the Reed Ranch. You really didn’t think I’d let that skinny-assed woman have my flesh and blood, did you?”

“You leave her alone, Curtis! That’s not my baby and you’re going to get yourself in big trouble if you’re not careful.”

“Yeah, sure. Hey, how about me and you make another one of those darlin’ angels?”

Sadie could hear his sick laughter as she flung the curtain closed. Her mother stood in the bedroom doorway, her expression determined. She held a gun in trembling hands.

“Mama! What are you doing with that shotgun?” Sadie could hardly believe her eyes.

“Fixing to end my nightmare. Has he gone?”

“Yes.” Sadie glanced at the curtained window again, then ran to fling her arms around her mother’s neck. “You’ll go to jail if you kill him, Mama. We have to think of another way out of this.”

“I can’t stand the way he talks to you.” Vera’s eyes were haunted. “I’m afraid he’s going to…try to hurt you again.”

“Oh, Mama.” Sadie’s eyes welled up. “Put the gun away. We’ve got to think about Holly right now. I think Curtis is actually crazy enough to try to kidnap her.”

“Not while I can do something about it,” her mother replied.

“Do you feel like you could sleep now?” Dustin didn’t miss the flash of panic in Jill’s eyes.

“I don’t think so yet. But you don’t have to sit up with me. I’ll just sit here in front of the fire a little longer.”

They were both feeling restless since Marsh’s visit. He’d been unable to allay their fears. Though he praised Jill’s quick action, he also warned that there were to be no more outings with baby Holly. Tomorrow, he’d go by and talk to the girl and try to figure out some more pieces of the puzzle.

“We just don’t know what we’re dealing with here. We may be overplaying it, but I think caution is called for until we know what his next move might be. Though I don’t think he can trace you here, Jill, since you said you didn’t think you were followed.”

After Marsh left, Eunice had gone upstairs, carrying baby Holly in the basket to sleep by her bed. Jill protested, but Eunice insisted Jill needed one night of rest without being awakened for early-morning feedings. Dustin agreed wholeheartedly with his mother, but knew it went against Jill’s grain not to be taking care of what she perceived was her responsibility.

“Well, here, then.” He went to the hall linen closet and pulled out a few old blankets. If Jill wasn’t going to be able to sleep, he wasn’t going to leave her down here to shake in her boots by herself. After all, the reason for her distress was a situation thrust on her by the Reed family.

Tossing the blankets down in front of the fire, Dustin pointed to them. “One for you, one for me. You’ll be more comfortable there than sitting on that antique sofa.”

“Dustin, you don’t have to sit up with me,” Jill said, melting to the floor to sit on the nearest blanket. She yawned, appearing surprised. “Goodness, I just might fall asleep in front of the fireplace.”

He settled next to her, a careful twelve-inch distance between them. Resting his head on his forearms, he said, “A good sleep wouldn’t hurt you any.”

Jill leaned back, stretching her feet toward the fire. “I don’t suppose it would. But I can’t hear Holly if I’m down here.”

Dustin shook his head. “After what you’ve been through, we owe you one night of sleep without Holly waking you for her grub. Mother and I can switch off.”

He watched as her eyelids drifted closed for a second. “When does Joey return?”

“Tomorrow.” Dustin didn’t mean to sound gruff, but Maxine’s constant plaguing of him was something he didn’t want to think about right now.

“Oh, good,” Jill said. She stretched out on her back, looking like a contented cat. “I found a gingerbread man recipe in one of your mother’s cookbooks that will do nicely for our baking project tomorrow.”

She never ceased to amaze him. Joey was going to flip when he found out what was in store for him. Dustin eyed the long-legged woman, all laid out on the blanket with an extra bunching of material at the top to serve as a pillow. She’d opened her eyes again, to stare into the crackling fire. He thought about what she was risking for his family and realized that, no matter how much it went against his nature to talk about his personal situation, he owed her an explanation about some things.

“Jill, there’s something you need to know.”

She rolled her head to glance his way. With the firelight playing on her skin and the contented expression on her face, Dustin felt himself beginning to heat.

“What is it?”

He took a deep breath. “I have a custody hearing in one week that will decide who gets Joey. Me, or the Copelands.”

Her eyes widened, the lashes fanning nearly to her eyebrows. “No wonder you don’t like them very much. Why are they trying to get custody of your son?”

Dustin turned his head to stare into the fire, wishing with all his heart he didn’t have to tell her. But it was the only fair, right thing to do. After all, she needed to know that matters might get even more out of line at the ranch—none of which she’d counted on when she was looking for a place to heal her wounds and start over.

But he couldn’t skirt the issue forever. Taking a deep breath he said, “The Copelands’ daughter, Nina, was my wife. We didn’t have the best of marriages, although I will admit that I was crazy enough about her in the beginning. Even when she told me she was pregnant, I thought marriage between the two of us would be a good thing.” He dropped his head to his hands, hating the sound of his own failure. “It wasn’t.”

“Every marriage has its ups and downs.”

Jill didn’t sound condemning at all. He glanced up, almost surprised at her quick defense of what he’d just told her. Her face, sweetly rounded in the flickering light, held an encouraging expression.

“Yeah. Well, maybe ours had more than most. We both made mistakes. But it wasn’t destined to work.” He wasn’t about to say that Nina’s allure had quickly worn off with her constant demands for more, more. More of anything than he could provide. The dairy farm that had been in existence since his grandparents’ day was doing poorly; milk prices had bottomed out. When he’d taken over, he’d sold off the stock and carefully purchased high-quality beef stock. With a couple of good calving years, and taking on some select customers whose cattle he allowed to graze on his ranch, he’d begun to turn the ranch around.

Apparently though, Nina had married him believing that money was no object once she married into the Reed family. They had plenty, of course, but he hadn’t wanted to foot huge shopping forays into Dallas while he was trying to trim costs at the ranch. One month Nina’s credit card bill had been the same as his feed bill for the cattle.

To make matters worse for his new bride, all that working to salvage his family’s livelihood meant he hadn’t been home a lot. Nina was certain he’d been having an affair. Dustin snorted, knowing who had most likely planted that insidious seed into his wife’s brain. Once there, it had taken root, growing like the wildest Johnson grass.

“The night Nina died, we’d had an argument,” he said quietly, staring into the fire as if any answers to what had gone wrong might be contained in the hot-burning coals. “We had the worst argument we’d ever had in our whole marriage. For the first time, I…”

He cut off his words, unhappy to have to release his deepest, darkest demon. Risking a glance at Jill, he saw that she continued to give him her undivided, seemingly nonjudgmental attention. “Well, for the first time, I major league lost my temper. As much as I hate to say this, I’m amazed my nearest neighbor didn’t call the police. I didn’t know I could yell so loud.” He shook his head. “The only shouting I’d ever done before was at the cattle.”

“You strike me as a fairly even-tempered person.”

Jill’s eyes were warm, glowing with an understanding Dustin knew he didn’t deserve. He’d had no business letting his temper get away from him that night. It was no excuse to say that all the little things he’d tried to shrug off had festered and suddenly blown up—the infidelity accusation had rubbed him rawer than anything. All he knew was that he spent his life working his butt off so Nina could have a roof over her head and some nice clothes and a trip into Dallas every once in a while. To find that he’d been tried and damned in the court of infidelity had shook him to the core. He’d known Nina needed lots of attention; as the only child in Maxine and David’s family this meant she’d spent her life being catered to. But hell, she’d known what kind of man he was when she started cozying up to him He’d never had a reputation for being a woman chaser. He worked hard to succeed, to keep the ranch together that had provided housing and food for three generations of Reeds.

Nina had admitted once that marrying him was a dream come true for her. She liked the sound of Nina Reed, Mrs. Dustin Reed. She’d liked having accounts all over town where she could purchase whatever her heart desired with only a signature on the bottom line. He got the bills.

But none of this needed to be said in his defense. The cold, hard fact was that he was as much to blame in the marriage as Nina was. And he had lost his temper in a frightening way that night. It was as if she’d pushed all the right buttons and suddenly there was an atomic explosion.

Damn it.
Dustin closed his eyes, remembering Nina’s limp, lifeless body. The price had been much too high.

“Dustin?”

He glanced toward Jill, shaking his head. “I like to think I keep a cool head. Unfortunately, I upset my wife so badly she left in a killing thunderstorm. I basically signed away her life.”

“Oh.” Jill was looking at him with those bottomless blue eyes of hers. Dustin felt shame wash over him. But at least it was out. Now she knew the truth, knew what she was up against.

“Yeah. Oh,” he repeated her words softly. “That’s why the Copelands want Joey. They feel I murdered their daughter.”

Jill had been lying on her back, but now she rolled to her side and propped her chin on her hand. She didn’t say anything, but he knew she was listening. As if she knew it didn’t matter what she said; nothing could be changed. But at least she listened.

“So.” He sighed deeply. “Because of that, and the fact that I’ve pretty much ignored Joey since Nina died, they filed for custody. On the grounds that I’m an unfit father.” He snorted. “An unfit human being.”

“You’ve made great strides,” Jill said. “It was only a matter of time, and you’ve been getting the hang of it. Not every man becomes a great father just because a wet, sticky, yelling infant has been handed to him. It takes practice, for men and a lot of women, too.”

He was warmed by her quick support on this issue. Actually, the charge that had hurt him the most was that he wasn’t a fit parent. As if Joey were neglected, unloved. He would take part of the blame for Nina’s death—he
had
lost his temper that night. As much as he would have liked to stop her from going out into the storm, she’d wanted to go home to her mother. She’d insisted on taking Joey. What could he have done—except what he hadn’t been able to, with his pride caught tightly inside him. He should have apologized. Should have said something.

But he’d thought letting her go was the best thing to do. It had been a treacherous mistake.

He did love his son. Unfortunately, with the suit filed before he’d gotten over the shock of his wife dying, Dustin had been stricken, unable to cope with the thought that now Joey was being torn from him. He hadn’t known what to do. Maxine was relentless in telling people in the town what a lousy father he was, what a dirty rotten husband he’d been.

It had all taken a toll on him. He’d lain awake nights thinking about how he was going to explain all this to his son one day.
Son, I love you, I honestly do, no matter what the court records say. But they said the Copelands were more fit to raise you…

“You’ve helped me,” he finally said. “You’ve helped me unbend. I’ve been too afraid of letting go with Joey.”

“He loves you,” she said softly. “He idolizes you. I’ve never seen a child love his daddy so much. What big boots he tries to fill.”

Dustin felt tears stinging his eyes. “The whole thing just pisses me off so much. Have you ever listened to my boy stutter?”