THE BACHELOR PARTY Read online

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  Contents:

  Prologue

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

  Epilogue

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  Prologue

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  For the moment they were safe.

  Sophie Reynolds sank down on the bed and cradled her daughter, Jessamine, close to her breast. Exhausted and scared, she waited for the sound of retreating footsteps to fade before allowing herself to relax.

  Clover Rooming House wasn't as plush as the house on the Columbia that she'd planned to fill with children someday, but the third-floor room she'd just rented was large and airy and very clean, with creamy walls and starched lace curtains covering the dormer windows and plenty of room for the crib she would need to buy. Best of all, the first week's rent hadn't completely depleted her meager funds.

  Katie Jones, the woman who'd rented it to her with a cheery smile and what seemed like genuine welcome, was about her age and seemed like a lovely person. Better yet, she hadn't asked more than the usual questions about a prospective tenant, questions for which Sophie had had well-rehearsed answers. In another lifetime, they might have become friends.

  "Since she swore you were the cutest baby she'd ever seen, she's obviously a very discerning lady," Sophie murmured to her daughter bending to kiss the crown of Jessie's silky head. But not too discerning, Sophie hoped fervently. Darlene had drummed it into her over and over—"Act natural, as though you have absolutely nothing to hide."

  Before she'd left Portland, she'd spent endless hours reinventing the bare bones past of a woman named Sophie Reynolds. And then, one by one, she and Darlene had added enough details to make that past believable. It wasn't all pretense. She was a widow, and she was twenty-eight. But she wasn't from Billings, Montana, and she hadn't spent the past year keeping house for an elderly rancher in a neighboring town.

  She'd lost track of the number of times Darlene had grilled her on her new identity. Her cover story had to be flawless, with no furtive looks when she was questioned, no obviously evasive answers when she replied. Her answers were instinctive now, and she was able to give them easily, without even a smidgen of hesitation.

  Darlene had been a good friend to her, perhaps the best she'd ever had. It had been Darlene who had arranged for her new social-security card and a false birth certificate for Jessie, Darlene who had suggested the South as a place to establish her new identity. Sophie herself had picked Clover because she'd liked the name and the sense of peace and safety it had conjured up in her mind.

  "We're safe now, Jess," she whispered, watching the baby's face closely for a sign she was coming to know her mother's voice. "No one will find us here, I promise. And if anyone gets suspicious, we'll just move on."

  Jessamine gazed up at her with the distinctive brown gold eyes of her father, and Sophie's breath caught. Wells had been dead for more than a year, and yet she still flinched when she heard a voice that sounded like his or caught a sudden glimpse of a tall, well-built man with sandy hair.

  During the fourteen months since his death, she'd had plenty of time and opportunity to wish she'd stayed home to study for final exams instead of going with her roommate to listen to the Portland Pops play Gershwin under the stars. If she had, Wells Manwaring, Jr., wouldn't have seen her sitting there on her blanket, never would have offered to share his bottle of expensive French wine with her, never would have swept her off her feet and into the glittering world of Portland's upper crust before she'd had a chance to catch her breath.

  But he had seen her, and she had married him. Because she'd loved him, she'd tried to make the marriage work. It hadn't, and now she was the one being punished for its failure.

  She still remembered the numbness that had come over her at his funeral. She'd been in shock, unable to sleep, unable to eat. She could still hear the minister who had married them eulogizing Wells for his generous donations to charity and his wide circle of friends. Everyone had loved Wells, especially the students and faculty at the junior college where he'd been 'Vice President. She'd been the only one to experience his black moods and possessive rages, the only one to bear the full brunt of his constant demand for reassurances of her love and loyalty. Just thinking about how wrong she'd been about him had chills cascading down her spine.

  "You'll like Clover," she murmured, rubbing Jessie's satiny cheek with a hand that was still far too pale. She'd waited so long to be able to touch her own child that each time she did it felt as though she'd just received a precious gift.

  "Did you notice how warm it was outside, even in September? And it's such a pretty place." And as far away from Portland as the money she'd scrounged for their escape had allowed.

  Jessie gurgled, then succumbed to a huge yawn that wrinkled her tiny forehead and made Sophie smile. "Looks like it's bedtime for my darling girl," she murmured as she gently laid the baby in the middle of the bed and got to her feet.

  They'd been on the bus more than thirty hours, and she was grimy and stiff. Traveling with a six-month-old infant had been more trying than she'd expected, but somehow she'd managed to keep Jess well fed and clean. She, herself, however, had eaten sparingly in an effort to save her money, and she was beginning to feel light-headed.

  "Maybe I should try some of your yummy formula," she crooned to Jess, who was beginning to fuss. It wouldn't be long before Jessie made her wants known, and when her little girl got wound up, her crying could shake walls, even in an antebellum house built to last forever.

  "It's coming, sweetie," Sophie murmured as she hurriedly opened a can of formula and poured it into a bottle. Knowing she would be traveling, she'd purchased the kind of bottles with disposable liners and a larger-than-usual diaper bag. Carrying it and a squirming baby from the bus station to the rooming house had tired her back and strained her shoulder. Tomorrow, first thing, she would have to find a way to bring her things from the station where the ticket agent on duty had agreed to keep them overnight. And then she would find a job. Any job. She wasn't proud. In the past year, she'd scrubbed toilets and washed dishes until her hands bled, just to keep her body active and her mind numb.

  "First thing tomorrow, Jessie Bear, you and I are going to buy a newspaper and scour the want ads," she murmured as she slipped the nipple into the baby's eager little mouth. Jessie's tiny fingers opened and closed against her mother's hand, and her brown eyes looked up with her perfect trust. Sophie's chest swelled with love until it ached.

  Nothing was more important than Jessie. Not the words uttered by some coldhearted judge in a Portland courtroom, nor the determination of dispassionate officers of the court sworn to enforce those words. Not even the teachings of the parents she'd adored.

  Without Jessie, she had no life, no reason to open her eyes every morning, no hope. No matter what hardships she had to face or lies she had to tell, she would never let anyone take her child from her again.

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  Chapter 1

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  It was 6:20 on a raw Monday in early December when Sophie felt the air change and knew that Sheriff Ford Maguire had just walked into Peg's Diner.

  She'd been working at Peg's for nearly three months now, and just about every morning at twenty past six he walked through the front door, looking grumpy and intensely male in his always-crisp khaki uniform, his stride more swagger than hurry, a lethal-looking .45 on one lean hip, and a small gold badge glittering on the left side of his wide chest, just above his heart.

  To her dismay Sophie was finding it difficult to dislike the man, even though he was a living, breathing, intensely masculine symbol of all that she feared. Something about the way he kept part of himself distant from others, even when he joined in the morning b
anter, had touched her deeply—like the lone wolf who patrolled the perimeter of the camp on the darkest, coldest nights so that those he guarded stayed warm and safe.

  No matter how drawn to him she might find herself, however, she needed to remember that he was an officer of the law and, therefore, a man to be avoided at all costs. Unfortunately, that was exactly what she couldn't do when he sat at her station every morning.

  Grabbing a quick breath, Sophie reached for the coffeepot and turned to greet him. Keeping her hand steady even as her stomach did its usual clenching routine when he was near, she took her time pouring steaming coffee into one of Peg's oversize mugs and set it carefully in front of him.

  "Looks like it's fixin' to blow up a storm out there this mornin'," he drawled in a scratchy baritone uniquely his, like flint scraped over hide, she'd decided one morning when she'd been in a whimsical mood.

  He dropped his winter Stetson on the counter and unzipped his down vest before settling his lean length on the stool. Unlike his sister, Lucy, who had an almost Madonna-like paleness about her, Ford had thick black hair without a hint of curl, an aquiline nose and sun-bronzed skin, suggesting an Indian branch or two on the Maguire family tree. His mouth, though, was pure stubborn male, only just saved from cruelty by the added fullness of his lower lip.

  "Miss Rose Ruth is convinced it's going to be a bad winter," she murmured as she sat the pot on the gleaming countertop and pulled her order pad from the pocket of her apron. "She claims she saw the leaves outside her window shivering this morning when she took Beau out for his constitutional."

  Ford cocked his head and gave her a wry look that crinkled the corners of his eyes into sun-weathered lines. "Beau? Is that old hound dog still alive?"

  She flipped to a clean page in her pad and took out her pencil. "He was this morning when I left."

  His smile was slow forming, taking a long time to reach his eyes. "That old hound has to be goin' on sixteen years if he's a day."

  "Seventeen. He just had a birthday." Sophie had bought the nearly blind dog a soft chew bone as a present from Jessie who loved to pull the elderly basset hound's floppy ears.

  Turning to the side, Ford stretched out his long legs awkwardly, making her wonder why he had chosen to sit at the counter instead of a table where he'd have more room.

  "I remember when she got that old dog. It belonged to a man by the name Boone who used to live out by the landfill. Had him a good recycling business going, turnin' half-rotten potatoes into moonshine in the back room of his cabin. Finally had to arrest him when he ended up damn near poisoning a half dozen of his best customers, old Judge Calhoun among 'em."

  She laughed, then hastily bit her lip when she realized she was attracting curious stares. Peg Jones, the "Peg" of Peg's Diner, had worked hard to make the large room seem more like a family kitchen than a restaurant, with the Jones family ancestral pictures lining the walls and gingham covering the windows and tables. That Peg had succeeded was admirable, but sometimes the sense of family tended to press too close for someone like Sophie who had to guard her privacy so zealously.

  "You're making this up," she accused in a low voice.

  He shook his head. There was a small half-moon scar right below his lower lip, and his hair seemed to fall into a natural part that was endearingly off center. Though she'd heard a lot of comments about him in the past weeks, not once had she heard a single soul praise him for his looks. Somehow, though, when he was teasing her in that slow, somber way of his, his too-angular, too-rawboned face had a way of making her forget his lack of conventional sex appeal.

  "No, ma'am, that would be lyin' to you, and I was taught never to lie to a lady."

  Or anyone else, she suspected, especially if all the stories she'd heard about Clover's straight-arrow sheriff were true. "What about the dog?" she reminded him.

  His mouth slanted. "Well, it's like this. When His Honor got over having his stomach pumped, he ordered me to arrest Boone and haul his sorry self into jail. Darned if this little bitty pup didn't jump in the squad car with the old man. I tried to get him out, but he set up such a howl, I just took him along for the ride. Nobody wanted him, he was such a wrinkled-up bag of bones, so I took him to Miss Rose Ruth. She's just naturally a pushover for helpless things."

  "Yes, I know," Sophie murmured before asking him what he wanted for breakfast.

  Wondering what he'd said to put her back up all of a sudden, Ford glanced over her left shoulder at the blackboard where Peg had printed the breakfast specials in brightly colored chalk every morning since he couldn't remember when.

  "Guess I'll have the biscuits and gravy," he said, working up a smile, which was as close as he ever came to flirting with a pretty woman.

  "Good choice," she returned politely before collecting the coffeepot and leaving. Not being one to miss a chance to enjoy female beauty from all angles, he watched her walk away from him, her too-skinny hips swaying just enough in the pink uniform skirt to send his normally well-disciplined mind running to hot summer nights and cool sheets.

  Not that he intended to do more than look, he reminded himself, downing half his coffee in one greedy gulp. He'd never cared much for small women, especially one like her who was on the thin side. From the time he stopped reading comic books and started sneaking looks at the magazines in brown wrappers behind the counter at Cliff Phelps's Pharmacy, he'd liked his women tall and. built generous. And when he wasted more than a second look, it was almost always a green-eyed blonde who'd caught his eye.

  Mrs. Sophie Reynolds wasn't any of those things. Her hair was more brown than blond, the color of prime tobacco right before it was picked, and her eyes were so blue they seemed almost purple at times. 'Course she did have nice legs, what there was of them, which wasn't all that much since she was a little thing, not more than five-two would be his best guess, and maybe a hundred pounds after a good soaking, with a bosom that wasn't hardly worth that first look, let alone a second.

  Sipping his coffee, he let his mind absorb the conversations going on around him, his gaze skimming the familiar faces without really seeming to. Two minutes later he knew that Brod Eggers had a dandy of a hangover and that the Yankee honeymooners staying at the Old Magnolia Bed and Breakfast were glaring at each other as though they were already working on a divorce. He'd also heard Roy Dean Stevenson and Gator Haley at the "regulars" table wrangling over which fishing hole to try later, but even as he watched Sophie heading his way with his breakfast, he still hadn't figured out why he kept thinking he'd seen her somewhere before.

  "Looks good," he said, watching her instead of the food she set before him. He guessed her to be around Lucy's age—twenty-six, twenty-seven, something like that—though her eyes were much older.

  "More coffee, Sheriff?" she asked, holding the heavy pot a few inches above his almost empty mug.

  "Yes, ma'am," he said, pulling his plate closer before picking up his fork. "Looks like you've done this kind of work before."

  "A few times."

  "Close by, or up north?"

  "In Montana. I'm from Billings."

  Ford figured most folks wouldn't have noticed the split-second hesitation before she'd answered. He'd noticed because it was his job to notice. He didn't figure it mattered much why she'd had trouble with the question. Still, it didn't hurt to file away the fact that she had.

  "Findin' Peg pretty demanding, are you?"

  "A little, but I like to know exactly what my employer expects." Her smile was restrained, her answer cautious. He understood caution, even respected it. He just didn't find it very often in Clover.

  "That's Peg, all right," he drawled, deliberately holding her gaze with his. "Taught my sister and half the females in Clover at one time or another how to wait tables and bring home big tips without losin' their virtue."

  "Believe me, Sheriff, I'm beyond the stage where I worry about my virtue." He watched the bitter curve of her lips and wondered about that, too. Before he could scare up more conversa
tion, however, she was off again, filling mugs and removing dirty plates.

  Ford rubbed the back of his neck and gave some thought to the way she'd deflected his questions. It could be that she was as wary of sharing private information as he was, but most folks he knew loved to talk about themselves. Even those who didn't were usually enough intimidated by the uniform and badge to tell him just about anything he wanted to know.

  Sophie didn't look like the kind of person who had anything to hide, but still, he couldn't afford to give a newcomer too much slack. Even a small-town cop learned right quick to expect the worst and act accordingly.

  More than once Lucy had let fly at him for always looking at the dark side of human nature. Each time she took out after him, he kept his mouth shut and let her have her say. Since that day when he'd been nine and held her in his arms only hours after she'd been born, he hadn't been able to deny her that first little thing. That didn't mean he'd let her change him any, though, and she knew it. He deeply and firmly believed that a day—or more likely a night—would come when his refusal to take anyone at face value would save the life of a more trusting soul, maybe even his own, flawed as it was.

  Not that he thought Sophie was a danger to him or anyone else, he hastened to remind himself. For sure, the feeling he got when he watched her was different from the tightness he got in his belly when he spied a couple of local toughs hanging out down at the old forge. It was more like an itch he couldn't scratch—or the hotwired irritability that came on him when he'd gone without sex for too long a time.

  He was still mulling that over when Abraham Washington claimed the empty stool to his right. "'Mornin', Ford. Looks like we got us a real winter day workin' out there, don't it?"

  "Yes, sir. Might be one of the coldest we've had so far this December."

  Close to eighty, Bram Washington had been the janitor at the Clover High School for as long as Ford could remember. Retired now, he spent his time teaching his grandson, Charles Thomas, how to coax a succession of wily old mud cats out of the ooze of Yahoo Creek and onto his fishing hook.