The Sheriff's Son

“I will. And thank you, Roy.”

She thought she heard him sigh. “Good night, Justine.”

“Good night.”

Slowly, Justine replaced the receiver, then stared blankly at the floor. After a moment, tears blurred her eyes. She wiped at them viciously and tried to swallow away the tightness in her throat.

She didn’t know what was the matter with her. Her sisters were going to be very happy, and Roy had been almost nice to her. There was no reason for her to get emotional. No reason at all.

A light knock sounded on the bedroom door. Justine quickly wiped her eyes again. “Come in.”

Stepping into the room, Chloe looked hopefully at Justine. “Did you call the sheriff?”

Justine nodded. “We can keep the babies.”

Chloe gasped with joy. “Oh, Justine, that’s wonderful! See, I knew you could persuade him!”

Justine sighed. “Believe me, Chloe, there was no persuading to it.”

Chloe eased down on the bed beside her sister. “You don’t sound very excited about it.” She peered anxiously at Justine. “Have you…been crying?”

Justine quickly shook her head. “No, of course not. I think—I might be coming down with a cold. The clinic has been full of sniffling people.”

“Why don’t you go to bed early tonight?” Chloe suggested as she rose to her feet. “Rose and I will see to the babies. She’s gone up in the attic right now, to see if she can find our old baby bed and playpen. I’d better go see if she needs some help.”

“What’s Charlie doing?”

Chloe laughed. “He’s playing with the twins. He thinks those babies are the grandest things to come along since dump trucks and tractors.”

Justine smiled wanly. She’d never wanted Charlie to be an only child. But time had a way of passing on. Now he was five, and she was no closer to marrying and adding to her family than she had been when she gave birth to him.

Rising from her seat on the bed, she said, “I’m glad he’s taken to the twins. But right now it’s getting close to his bedtime. I’d better go coax him into the bathtub.”

As the two sisters walked down the wide hallway, toward the living room, Chloe slung her arm around Justine’s shoulders.

“Do you realize how lucky you are to have a child, Justine?”

In spite of Roy, and the fact that Charlie was growing up without a father, Justine was very aware of the precious blessing her son was to her. She wished with all her heart that Chloe could have the chance to be a mother.

Slipping her arm around her younger sister’s waist, she gave her an affectionate squeeze. “I realize it every day.”

Chloe sighed. “You know, there has to be a reason for those babies showing up here on the ranch.”

“I’m sure there is. We just don’t know what it is yet.”

“Well, I think they’re a gift from God. He took Daddy from us, so he’s given us the babies to fill his place in the family.”

Justine glanced anxiously at her sister. “Chloe, Roy wanted me to remind you and Rose that keeping the babies on the ranch is only a temporary thing. You’ll have to give them up eventually. You know that, don’t you?”

“You wouldn’t give Charlie up, would you?”

She tried to imagine Roy filing for custody of his son, and found the image so frightening that she instantly put it out of her mind. “Not for anyone or anything. But, Chloe, Charlie is mine. There’s a difference.”

“Well, those twins are going to be mine. You just wait and see,” she said.

Justine didn’t argue with her sister. Instead, she silently prayed that Roy would soon solve the case.

The next morning, Justine was taking a much-needed coffee break on a little bench outside the clinic building when she saw Roy walking up the sidewalk toward her.

He was dressed as he had been yesterday, in jeans, boots and a khaki shirt. Justine couldn’t help but notice his long legs and lean waist, the width of his broad shoulders beneath the close-fitting fabric. He was a very sexy man. But sex was all he had to offer a woman. She knew that better than anyone.

“How did you know where I worked?” Justine asked as he came to a halt in front of her.

A faint smile touched his lips, as though he found her question amusing. “I’m the sheriff, remember? I can find out most anything I need to know.”

Not everything, she promised herself as her thoughts went to their son. He could search all he wanted to, but there was no way he was going to find out he’d fathered Charlie. Unless she told him. And right now, she couldn’t see herself ever doing that.

“What did you need to see me about?” she asked, her fingers curled tightly around the foam-cup of coffee in her hands.

He pulled a piece of paper out of his shirt pocket and unfolded it. “I need your signature on this before I take it back to Judge Richards.”

She accepted the paper from him and read it carefully. Once Justine was satisfied that she understood it, she slipped a pen from a pocket of her shift and quickly signed her name.

Handing it back to him, she asked, “Do you have any new information about the twins?”

He pushed the legal document into his pocket. “No. Other than that no children fitting the twins’ description have been listed as missing in the state in the past twenty-four hours.”

“Does that surprise you?”

He watched Justine sip her coffee. The morning was cool but clear. The bright sunlight caught her red hair and turned the wavy tendrils to molten bronze. She was still by far the most beautiful woman he’d ever know, and he wondered what had happened between her and Charlie’s father. Why hadn’t the man married her? Or had it been Justine’s choice to end their engagement?

“Not really,” he said in answer to her question. “Like I said, whoever left the twins intended your family to have them. They’re not going to go to the police. Unless they have a change of heart.”

“Then how do you plan to start an investigation without anything to go on?”

“I already have. My deputies are out now, questioning everyone and anyone up and down the streets of town to see if the twins were seen around here yesterday. It could be they traveled through Ruidoso before going on to the Bar M.”

Ruidoso wasn’t a particularly large metropolis, but it was a heavily traveled tourist town. Thousands of people came to see the horse races at Ruidoso Downs, shop the unique little stores lining the highways and simply enjoy the sight of the cool, beautiful mountains. How could anyone remember one set of babies, when they saw tourists with babies every day? Justine wondered.

“That’s another thing that puzzles me,” Justine mused aloud. “How did this person or persons know where the ranch was?”

“Because they know you, or at least know of you. That’s why you and your family need to rack your brains. You might come up with something or someone.”

Her break time nearly over, Justine rose to her feet and brushed at the wrinkles in her straight skirt. “Of course, we’ll try. Now I have to get back inside.”

Roy needed to get to work himself. But he was reluctant to leave just yet. Last night, after Justine called, he’d spent hours thinking about her, the way she’d looked and sounded, and the way he’d felt upon learning that she’d loved some other man enough to have his child. He hadn’t expected to feel anything like regret. Six years ago, when he became involved with her, he hadn’t been ready for marriage or children. So why did it hurt so much to think of her turning to another man?

“How long have you worked here?”