The Marriage Profile

“No. The old man is playing his cards close to the vest. I was planning to pay Ricky a visit later. But I think maybe I’ll drive out to the Mercado place and have that little talk with Ricky now. I’ll see you when I get back.”

After hanging up the phone, Justin shoved away from his desk and headed out of his office. He grabbed his hat and paused in front of Audrey Lou’s desk. “Bobby’s on his way in, and I’m going out to Johnny Mercado’s place. I need you to hold down the fort for me until I get back.”

The woman didn’t so much as bat an eye. “What do you want me to tell your sister? Rose has called for you twice already.”

“Tell her I’ll call her when I get back.”

But when Justin got back, after striking out on catching either Ricky or his father at their place near Goldenrod or the Mercado Brothers Paving, Audrey Lou was manning two phone lines and Bobby was taking down Mrs. Elkinson’s weekly complaint about the randy bull on the neighboring homestead bothering her milk cows. Wanting no part of that scene, Justin reached for the stack of phone messages Audrey Lou held out to him and headed for his office when Audrey Lou hung up the phone.

“That was Dylan Bridges’s office returning your call.”

Justin looked up from the messages he’d been skimming. “He still in his office?”

“No. That was his assistant who called to say he’s tied up until late this afternoon, wanted to know if he could call you at home tonight. I said I didn’t see why not since you don’t do much of anything but work and sleep, anyway.”

Justin ignored the dig at his lack of a social life. “Anything else I need to know?”

“Nothing except that you’ve got yourself a visitor. I put her in your office to wait.”

“Damn! She’s here already?” Justin asked, assuming it was his sister. Granted he’d called her from his vehicle and agreed to meet with her back at his office, but he’d told her he needed at least an hour. Evidently Rose decided not to wait. Which seemed to be par for the course where his younger sister was concerned this past year—starting with her running off to Aunt Beth’s in New York and shocking everyone when she came back with the news that she’d married Matt Carson of all people and was expecting his child. While the wedding hadn’t sat well with either the Carsons or the Wainwrights, the early arrival of the baby and the illness that had threatened both Rose and the baby had not only scared everyone but it had eased some of the tensions between the two families. However, his sister didn’t appear to be content with the strained truce. No, now that the danger was past, the darned female seemed hell-bent on ending the feud between the two families that had spanned seventy-six years. And for some reason, she had decided he was to be a key player in her fence-mending plans.

“You knew she was coming?”

“Sure. I talked to her about twenty minutes ago and told her to come by. Of course, I told her to give me an hour to return some of these calls. Obviously, she didn’t hear that part,” Justin said, but he wasn’t really irritated. He both liked and loved his sister, and he especially liked getting a chance to see his nephew.

“Well, you might have seen fit to tell me she was coming,” Audrey Lou sniffed. “And she might have told me you was expecting her instead of just saying she needed to see you and that she didn’t mind waiting.”

“She probably thought you knew,” Justin said, not wanting Audrey Lou angry with Rose. “She got the baby with her?”

“You mean to tell me she’s got herself a baby?”

Justin frowned. Obviously his sister Rose wasn’t the woman waiting in his office because everyone in Mission Creek, for that matter, half of Texas, knew about the recent birth of Wayne Matthew Carson and the danger that both the baby and Rose had faced. It had been the near loss of his sister’s life and the birth of the baby that had prompted Archy Wainwright to begin making amends with the Carsons, Hawk and even with his ex-wife, Kate. From what he’d seen the previous night, Justin suspected his parents were well on their way to a reconciliation—three decades after their divorce.

“Well, she never said a thing about any baby.”

“Audrey Lou, why don’t we start over? I take it that that’s not my sister Rose waiting in my office.”

Audrey Lou blinked, her big brown eyes magnified by the wire-rimmed glasses, reminding him of an owl. “Who said anything about Rose?”

“No one. My mistake. So who—”

The phone rang and she grabbed it. “Lone Star County Sheriff’s Office. Audrey Lou speaking.”

Justin strove for patience as he waited for Audrey Lou to finish the call. She’d no sooner hung up when the phone rang again. When she started to reach for it, Justin grabbed the receiver. “Lone Star County Sheriff’s Office. Hold on a minute. Now,” he said after punching the hold button on the phone, “who am I going to find waiting in my office?”

The woman gave him a look so stern, he felt like an errant schoolboy who needed to apologize for his poor manners and not the county’s sheriff and her boss.

“Thought you just said you was expecting her,” Audrey Lou told him with a sniff.

“Audrey Lou…”

“It’s your wife.”

Three

“Ex-wife,” Justin corrected. “We’re divorced.”

Angela tensed at the sound of Justin’s voice just outside the door. Despite a sleepless night and the lecture she’d given herself this morning, she was every bit as anxious at the prospect of working with Justin now as she had been when she’d agreed to take the assignment. But even if she could convince the FBI and the police chief to release her from her agreement to work the case, her conscience would never allow her to walk away. That meant she had to face Justin now and try to make him see that this wasn’t about them, but about the welfare of a missing little girl.

Bracing herself, Angela turned away from the window she’d been staring out of and watched Justin saunter into the room with that same purposeful stride she’d noted the first time she’d set eyes on him. His air of self-confidence had always fascinated her. Perhaps because she’d had so little self-confidence growing up and throughout their marriage. It had only been in the past few years that she’d begun to feel more sure of herself.

She hadn’t been mistaken in her impressions of him last night, she mused. Age hadn’t diminished Justin’s looks in any way. If anything, he was even more handsome in the slate-gray sheriff’s uniform than he had been the previous evening in the expensive suit. The silver badge pinned on his shirt gleamed beneath the office lights. With his service revolver strapped to his waist and the Stetson in his hand, he could have stepped right off the pages of some slick magazine showcasing lawmen hunks of the Southwest. Right down to the forbidding scowl on his face. She wasn’t sure if that grim set of his lips was due to her presence or to Audrey Lou’s reference to her as his wife. Probably both, she decided.

“For what it’s worth, I did try to explain that I was your ex-wife,” Angela told him. “And the truth is, I was surprised that Mrs. Cox even remembered me, let alone the fact that we were once married.”

“Audrey Lou’s got a memory like a computer chip,” Justin informed her as he made his way over to his desk. “The woman doesn’t forget anything when it comes to the citizens of Lone Star County. And there’s very little that goes on in this town that she doesn’t know about.”

The mention of how everyone knew everyone’s business made her smile. “I guess I forgot what a small town Mission Creek can be at times,” Angela offered.

“It’s not all that small of a town. But then I suppose that depends on the person and what they want.”

Angela knew it was a dig at her because she’d opted to move to the big city of San Antonio instead of remaining in Mission Creek and trying to salvage their marriage. Since Justin had refused to admit five years ago that the real problems at the core of their marriage had little to do with their careers and everything to do with their relationship, she doubted that rehashing her reasons for leaving would serve any purpose. Deciding to let the remark pass, she said, “Well, I’m sorry, anyway, about the confusion and any embarrassment it caused.”

“The confusion was of my own making. I thought you were Rose,” he explained as he dropped his hat on the corner of the paper-laden desk. “As for embarrassing me, you didn’t.”

“I’m glad. That I didn’t embarrass you, I mean,” she added nervously. “But I suppose I should have made sure Mrs. Cox understood.”

“She understood, all right. But whether we’d been divorced five years or fifty, it wouldn’t have made a difference to Audrey Lou. As far as she’s concerned, you’re still my wife.”

“I take it she’s not too fond of divorce?”

He made a dismissive sound. “That’s like asking if water is wet. The woman thinks the only time a marriage ends is when one of the pair dies. As far as she’s concerned, ‘until death do us part’ means just that. And since she’s been married to the same man for over forty years, I guess I can understand why she feels the way she does.”

“I suppose so,” Angela offered, feeling more awkward by the second. “The idea of two people spending their lives together, well, it is a lovely sentiment.”

“I guess that would depend on the two people and whether or not the marriage works out. In our case, it didn’t.”

While he didn’t say “because of you,” Angela could almost hear the words he’d left unsaid. Uncomfortable, she stared down at her clasped hands a moment. She’d long ago accepted blame for the failure of their marriage. Looking back now, she could see so clearly that their marriage had stood little chance of succeeding. How could it? Even without the added strain caused by Justin’s family’s objections to his choice of her as a wife and her inability to conceive a child, the marriage had mistake written all over it from the start. Someone like her wasn’t meant to be anyone’s wife—especially not the wife of a man like Justin Wainwright. Yet knowing that, she’d been too blinded by her love for him to say no when he’d proposed. And because she’d been selfish, she had married him and had made them both miserable.

Shoving aside the sad thoughts, Angela lifted her gaze again and found Justin’s eyes on her. And as had so often been the case during their marriage, those cool green eyes of his gave away nothing of what he was thinking. Growing more stressed by the minute, she decided the best thing to do was to get this over with and tell Justin the reason she was there. “Justin, I—”

“Listen, Angela, I—”

He chuckled.

So did she. And she let out a breath as some of the tension eased. Even though she realized that she was simply delaying the fireworks that her announcement was sure to set off, she said, “Go ahead. You first.”

“I was about to say that considering how our conversation ended last night, I’m surprised to find you here.”