Chapter 4
Four
JJ was put to bed in the guest room. He was fascinated by towels that matched and sheets that didn’t have holes. Heather even
read him a bedtime story. He cried a little more over his dad and she comforted him. He was already in her heart. And vice
versa.
Later, sitting in the living room, Heather wanted to know about JJ’s dad. Josie told her what she knew. “He lost his mother
several years ago,” she said. “That was a talking point, because I lost mine a year ago. He said it was just him and his dad,
no other family, and that he’d begged his dad not to go to the rodeo.” She grimaced. “But they didn’t have the rent, and JJ’s
dad didn’t want him growing up living in a damned pickup truck,” she added, biting her lip. “Sorry, that slipped out,” she
said in apology. “We’re the richest country on earth. Why are poor people having to live in cars or tents on the streets?”
she asked. “Why is rent out of reach except for the one percent?”
“I wish I knew,” Cole said. “When Heather and I got married, it was a different world. There were bad things, but not like this. People could afford to buy houses or pay rent.” He shook his head. “Greed has taken over.”
“That, and corporate rule,” John added with a sigh. “It’s a shame.”
“We vote people into office, but there’s so much corruption,” Josie said.
“Even people with the best intentions get turned once they’re in DC,” John agreed.
Josie looked at Cole and Heather. “You’re going to foster him?” she asked with a warm smile.
“Going to adopt him, I think,” Heather said softly, glancing at Cole, who smiled and nodded. “I have a terrible case of empty-nest
syndrome, even though John is still in residence. One day inevitably he’ll get married and move out and I’ll go crazy. JJ
will save me.”
John grinned. “And Dad will have somebody to grumble at besides me,” he chuckled.
Cole just laughed.
Josie smiled. “I’m glad that JJ will have a real home,” she said quietly. “It was kind of you. I’ve seen a few good foster
homes, but the majority are overcrowded and the foster parents overwhelmed. It can lead to tragedy.”
“It can,” Heather agreed.
“He’s a good boy. He has a big heart,” she added. “He’ll make you proud.”
“I know he will,” Cole said and smiled at her.
“Well, if you don’t mind driving me to Percell, I have to get back to my room.”
“Oh?” John asked. “Expecting visitors, are you?”
“Only the sheriff,” she said with quiet venom.
“Plenty of guest rooms,” Cole mentioned. “And if you leave tonight, JJ will be upset in the morning. Just a thought.”
“We’re pretty much the same size,” Heather added. “I can loan you a gown. John can drive you back in the morning.”
She looked at John, whose expression made her accept. “Then thanks,” she told Heather with a smile. “I’ll stay. Uh, the cage
really is padlocked, right?”
John got to his feet, smoldering. “I’ll go put damned superglue on the lid right now,” he muttered, and stomped off toward
his room.
“Oh, dear,” Heather groaned.
“Doesn’t he remind you of me at that age?” Cole teased Heather.
“Oh, very definitely,” she said, and chuckled.
“I didn’t mean to set him off . . .” Josie apologized.
“Don’t worry, it’s just the way he is,” Heather said.
“He won’t mind JJ . . . ?”
Heather put an arm around her. “He loves children. He works with disadvantaged kids in a program in Big Spur. It isn’t JJ
that’s bothering him.” She gave Josie a long look. “You really are familiar. I know I’ve seen you somewhere before.”
Josie’s pulse jumped but she just smiled. “I must have a doppelganger,” she teased.
“Could be, could be. Come on. I’ll get you a gown.”
They were walking past John’s bedroom when the door opened. He held up a tube. “Superglued it!” he said with a vicious glare
at Josie.
“John!” she and Heather exclaimed.
He slammed the door in their faces.
“He can make biscuits!” Heather told Josie, shaking her head. “I’ve never known a boy his age who could cook!”
“Dad couldn’t boil water,” JJ said as he finished cutting out biscuits and putting them on a black iron griddle ready to go
into the oven. “It was self-defense.” He grinned at them.
“Well, you’re already a treasure, my darling,” Heather told him and bent to kiss his brown head of hair. “I’ll take the bacon up and then I’ll start scrambling eggs.”
“Can I help?” Josie asked.
“Can you scramble eggs?” Heather asked.
Josie grinned. “I used to fill in as bunkhouse cook when ours was too drunk to do it.”
“Bunkhouse?”
She nodded. “My dad had a ranch up in Wyoming,” she said, letting it sound as if her dad was gone.
“I’ve had my turn cooking for the cowboys, too,” Heather agreed. “Everybody’s a critic.”
“Tell me about it,” Josie replied as she got eggs out of the fridge and assembled spices and butter and salt. “Do you guys
like salsa with your eggs, and do you have fresh tomatoes, peppers and onions?”
Heather grinned from ear to ear. “We do, and I have. In the crisper. And you’re from Wyoming?”
“I’m a Texas transplant,” Josie teased, and it was true. She did work out of the San Antonio office as a rule. She’d been
loaned to another office in Fort Worth for this particular sting operation. “In San Antonio, if you don’t eat salsa with your
eggs, you can get pelted with rotten tomatoes!”
“Truer words were never spoken,” Heather agreed.
Josie was carefully cooking eggs when John walked into the kitchen half-asleep, his shirt hanging open over a hair-roughened,
muscular chest. Josie just gaped at him.
He gave her a poisonous glare, and she went right back to her eggs, just in time to keep them from burning.
“What are you doing in the kitchen?” he asked JJ and actually smiled at him as he buttoned his shirt.
“Cooking biscuits,” JJ said. “I can make bread from scratch, too. One of the ladies who used to babysit me taught me how when I was just little. Well, littler,” he amended, bending to look in the lighted oven to check on the progress of his bread.
“Will wonders never cease,” John murmured. His eyes went to Josie. “You can cook?” he asked in mock-astonishment.
“Keep it up and I’ll put nagas in your salsa,” she muttered.
A laugh escaped him before he could stop it. “Where are you going to find a naga pepper?”
“I grow them,” she said, and it was true. She had a container garden on her patio, if she ever got back to it.
“Dad tried to eat a naga pepper once. He threw up,” JJ said.
“John did, too, except he didn’t throw up. He . . .”
“Aaaahhhh!” John corrected his mother.
“He shot it,” she whispered with glee.
Josie, who’d just taken up perfectly cooked eggs, gaped at him. So did JJ.
“You shot a pepper?” she exclaimed.
John glowered at her. “Something that evil deserves to die.”
“Naga peppers aren’t evil. They’re just made for people with guts.”
He glared.
She glared back.
“Biscuits are done,” JJ said. “Now all we need is butter and strawberry preserves.”
Heather reached up into a cabinet and put down a Mason jar.
“Wow!” JJ said. “Homemade preserves?”
“You bet.” Heather grinned. “I make my own.”
“Can you teach me?” JJ asked.
“You bet I can.” She glared at her son. “I tried to teach him, but he upended my water bath and ran away.”
“I don’t cook. I breed cattle,” he said haughtily.
Josie was staring at him and smothering diabolical laughter. She was almost bursting with it.
“All right, you cut that out!” John snapped at her, reading the vicious meaning in her eyes.
Cole, walking in the door, stopped and glanced around. JJ was taking biscuits out of the oven. Heather was taking up bacon.
John was glaring at Josie, who was laughing her head off.
Heather glanced at him. “Oh, good morning, sweetheart. Coffee’s almost ready. Sit down.”
“I feel like I should be cooking bacon or something,” Cole told them.
“We have it all under control,” Heather teased, and bent to kiss him warmly.
She checked the pot, turned it off and poured his coffee. She put it down in front of him.
“You still look lovely in the morning light,” Cole mused as Heather bent down and kissed him again.
Josie, watching them, felt a hollow place inside herself. Her parents had raised her, but her father was always absent, often
away with girlfriends. Her mother took care of her and the ranch and wore herself out in the shadow of her husband’s indifference.
If only she’d had parents like these, a family like this. Her eyes reflected her delight and her envy.
John noticed that stare and his silver-blue eyes narrowed. She was a conundrum. He knew she was mixed up with a bad element,
but she had compassion for a child who’d lost his parent. It would have been so easy for her to just turn her back and let
somebody else worry about JJ. But she hadn’t. She’d stayed right with him, and she’d been very protective.
Josie caught him at it. She stared at him and glared. But after a minute, the glare faded into fascination. He was staring
back and neither of them were glaring. Josie felt her stomach turn over as she looked into those pale eyes, so piercing and
straightforward. Her heart shot up like a balloon. She became flustered and dropped her fork, breaking the spell.
Now John was back to glaring, over a plate heaped with biscuits and preserves and eggs and bacon.
Josie forced her eyes back to her own plate. Around them Cole and Heather were discussing practical matters, like beginning
the adoption process so that they could keep JJ. The little boy, still missing his dad, now had a future to look forward to.
“I didn’t mention the funeral,” Cole told John as he and Josie prepared to leave.
“Dad, a memorial service might be easier on the boy,” he said softly.
“That’s what your mother just suggested.” He smiled. “It’s amazing, how things happen. Heather was so depressed. She hadn’t
worked for weeks, nor wanted to. And a little orphaned boy walks in the door, and suddenly she’s in her twenties again, all
aglow with plans—clothes for JJ, enrolling him in school. She’s been given a new lease on life.” He cocked his head. “I never