Should Have Been Her Child

Signs of fatigue, she told herself. Which shouldn’t surprise her. She’d had little rest these past few nights. Sleep had come in fitful snatches while her dreams had been tortured with images of the man sitting across from her. She had to get a grip on herself. She couldn’t go on like this.

“Twenty-five times a day?” she asked dryly, then her eyes narrowed as something he’d just said struck her. “You said the man who died on the T Bar K. Do you know for a fact that he died there? Or was he dumped on the ranch afterwards?”

Her questions caused him to lean forward and prop his elbows atop the desk. Even with several inches separating them, Victoria could feel his presence. Strong. Virile. And unyielding. Those things that had once attracted her to Jess were now the very things that unsettled her the most.

“If the body had been dumped, then there could only be one conclusion. And that would be murder. But, I was merely making conversation, not stating facts.” He continued to regard her with mild suspicion. “Why? Do you know something I don’t?”

She made an impatient gesture with her hand. “I came to you for answers, Jess. Not the other way around.”

“If I remember correctly, you came here to see Deputy Redwing. That’s what I heard you telling Sharon.”

He was playing cat and mouse with her. Teasing her with words and phrases when all along he knew every thought that was flitting through her head. Damn him.

“I did ask to see Deputy Redwing,” she admitted. “I figured he’d be much easier to get answers from than you. And it looks as though I figured right.”

To her amazement, he chuckled. “Don’t bet on it. Daniel is kinda like me. He likes to keep things under his hat. And he’s very stubborn if anyone tries to persuade him otherwise. Including beautiful women.”

That last she desperately tried to ignore, but the foolish, feminine side of her couldn’t help wondering if he really did think of her as beautiful. At one time she’d believed he had. He’d sworn she was everything to him.

The two of them had met by happenchance. She’d been finishing up the last of her internship at a Farmington hospital. During a drive home for the weekend a perfectly good tire had blown and very nearly caused her to wreck the car.

She’d been trying to lift the spare out of the trunk when a police car had pulled up behind her. The officer on duty had been Jess and the sight of his tall, muscular frame and rugged face had instantly bowled her over. While he’d changed the tire, he’d repeatedly called her Ms. Ketchum and she’d continually watched the strong muscles in his arms and shoulders ripple beneath his uniform as he strained to loosen and tighten lug nuts.

It had been Victoria who’d taken the initiative and suggested they should get together later, when he wasn’t posing as a lawman. He’d laughed and told her he wasn’t posing. He was a lawman. And always would be.

After that day, the two of them had become almost inseparable. The attraction between them had been instant and fiery. She’d wanted to spend every spare minute with him and he with her. Suddenly her plans to simply be a small-town doctor had changed to a small-town doctor with a family. As for Jess, he’d sworn she was the only woman he would ever love. The only woman he would ever want to make a life with. And she’d believed him.

Saddened by the precious memories, Victoria rose to her feet. “I’m hardly a femme fatale, Jess. And I can see my coming here was a mistake.”

She took one step toward the door before he was instantly on his feet, blocking her exit. “Why?” he asked, his voice quietly demanding. “Does seeing me again bother you that much?”

Yes, she wanted to scream. Everything about him, from his musky male scent to his rugged features, made her ache with bitter loss.

Her gaze lifted to scan his face. “This conversation is pointless.”

A tiny grin tugged at the corners of his lips. “I don’t know about that,” he drawled. “I’m learning lots of things from this meeting.”

Feeling more than exposed, she folded her arms against her breasts. “Like what?”

Amusement deepened the lines bracketing his mouth. “Like you’re not nearly as indifferent to me as you want to believe.”

The air whooshed from her lungs. “Dream on.”

One step brought him so close that the front of his starched shirt was almost brushing the tips of her breasts. Inside, Victoria trembled like a little lost dogie in a snowdrift.

“I don’t have to dream,” he countered arrogantly. “I kissed you the other day, remember? You didn’t exactly resist.”

Her face flamed as heat rushed from the soles of her feet all the way to her scalp. “That was a purely physical reaction!”

His brows lifted mockingly. “You analyze all your kisses that way, Doc?”

She didn’t have any kisses to analyze. But she wasn’t about to admit such a thing to him. She didn’t want him to learn that after him, she’d forsaken men. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing he’d ruined any chances of her loving another man.

“I didn’t come here to discuss kisses!” she said, her voice rising with each word. “I came here to see if you’d made any progress on finding out the identity of the body!”

Unaffected by her outburst, he said in a voice that could only be described as a purr, “If you ask me, I think the kissing is much more interesting.”

Her teeth ground together as her gaze whipped over his leering face. “Why? I’m sure a man like you has all sorts of women to discuss such frivolous things with.”

His features twisted with even more sarcasm. “Yeah, but me and my…women don’t have a past like you and I do.”

To her horror, tears were suddenly collecting in her throat, sending a fiery ball of pain to the middle of her chest. “Our past—is forgotten,” she said tightly.

The taunting expression on his face suddenly disappeared and before she realized his intentions, his hands were on her shoulders, their warmth radiating up the sides of her neck and down her arms.

“Not for me, Tori.”

“Why?” she whispered huskily. “There can be no good in us remembering.”

His fingers tightened perceptively. “Something happens to a man when he’s rejected by the woman he loves. It flattens his self-worth. It makes him keep wondering why.”

Victoria couldn’t continue to look at him. It hurt too much. Instead, she turned her back to him and drew in a ragged breath that seared her lungs. “We both know you never loved me, Jess. So don’t try to act like the injured soul.”

A tense, pregnant moment passed. Finally he said in a soft, accusing voice, “You don’t know anything about me. I don’t believe you ever did.”

She swallowed, struggling to push down the tears that continued to scald her throat. “I know enough. I know that if you’d really wanted me, you wouldn’t have let me go. You wouldn’t have walked away. And you wouldn’t have waited four years to come back.”

Behind her, Jess closed his eyes while silently cursing himself. He shouldn’t be saying any of this to her. She was right. All that had happened between them was over. Long in the past. Yet in his heart their affair was as fresh as the scent of flowers on her skin.

“Maybe I was waiting on you to come to me,” he countered.

Gasping softly, she whirled to face him. “That’s a lie. If I heard correctly, you got married not long after you went to El Paso.”

Shadows flickered in his gray eyes as he tried to tamp down a barrage of bitter emotions. “After a few months I had to accept you weren’t ever going to change. Or leave your daddy. I had to get on with my life.”

Back then, the news of Jess’s marriage had very nearly destroyed Victoria. Even now the idea crushed her with loss and regret. She’d desperately wanted to marry him, be his wife and make their home on the Hastings ranch. But then he’d gotten the chance to join the border patrol and suddenly it was more important for him to go to Texas than to stay in New Mexico with her.

Looking back on it now, Victoria could see he’d been testing her, forcing her to choose between going with him or staying behind with her father. No woman should be forced to make such a choice, she thought sadly. Either option was going to make her a loser. And it had. She’d not only lost Jess, but now her father was gone from her life, too.

“Is that why you haven’t spoken to me since you’ve come back to San Juan County?” she asked him. “Because your wife would be jealous? Or did you ever tell her about me?”

He stared at her, his brow puckered with a bewildered frown. “Don’t tell me you haven’t heard?”

Victoria shook her head as a strange premonition washed over her. “Heard what? That you’re divorced? That doesn’t surprise me. You certainly aren’t behaving as if you’re a married man.”

The frown on his face deepened and she watched him swallow convulsively as he glanced away from her. “My wife and I divorced more than a year ago. But since then Regina was killed.”

Stunned, Victoria stared at him. Why hadn’t Alice or Will told her, she wondered. Had he ordered them not to? “I—I’m sorry. I didn’t know,” she murmured brokenly. “How? When?”