good,” he commented.
“Why not?”
One black eyebrow arched. “You wouldn’t know what to do with me when you got my clothes off.”
There was a clatter of falling potatoes on the floor.
Judd and Christabel stared toward the door where Maude was standing with both hands on the edges of her apron and potatoes still spilling out around her feet.
“What the hell is your problem?” Judd asked darkly.
Maude’s eyes were like saucers.
“Oh, I get it,” Christabel said, grinning. She had one hand on Judd’s shoulder and the other on his tie. “She thinks I’m undressing you. It’s okay, Maude,” she added, holding up her ring finger. “We’re married.”
Judd gave her a royal glare and gently dumped her out of his lap and onto the floor. She grinned at him from the linoleum. He leaned back in the chair and finished adjusting his shirt. “I was showing her one of my scars,” he told Maude.
Maude had picked up the potatoes and she was trying very hard not to say anything stupid. But that innocent remark produced a swell of helpless laughter.
“Now don’t do that,” Christabel groaned, getting up. “Maude, it was very innocent, and he really was showing me his scar.”
Maude nodded enthusiastically and went back to her potatoes. She cast a quick, amused look at Judd, who had a forkful of apple pie suspended in midair and was glaring at her.
“Sure he was,” Maude agreed.
Judd’s eyes narrowed. “I’m armed,” he pointed out.
Maude put down her knife and potato and spread out her arms. “Me, too,” she said, wiggling her eyebrows.
Judd glowered at her, and at Christabel, who was grinning from ear to ear. “Now I know where she gets it from,” he told Maude.
“He’s just jealous because he can’t make jokes,” Christabel said wickedly.
Judd gave her a measuring glance and went back to his pie.
2
That night, after Judd had gone back to his apartment in Victoria where he was stationed, Christabel lay awake for hours worrying about Tippy Moore and Judd’s odd reaction to the news that she was going to be in the movie. He seemed fascinated by the woman, just from her photographs, and it was obvious enough to be painful. He might hold Christabel on his lap and reassure her about her scars, but it was impersonal. He’d never even touched her in an inappropriate way, despite her efforts.
Her mind went back to that Saturday long ago when her life had changed so drastically. She could smell the scents of blood and leather, feel the whip on her back...
* * *
Through waves of pain, she heard a deep, gravelly voice cursing steadily. It was the only sound audible, although five other cowboys were standing around her with grim faces and stiff postures where she lay. The corral was dusty, because it hadn’t rained, and there were traces of hay in her disheveled blond hair. She was lying on her stomach and her blouse was in ribbons. Blood seeped from the deep cuts in her back. There had been hard thuds and groans from somewhere nearby, followed by sounds of a door slamming. A minute later, she felt someone kneel beside her.
“Christabel, can you hear me?” Judd’s voice asked harshly at her ear.
Her dark eyes opened, just a slit. It was hard to focus, but she remembered that Judd Dunn was the only person who ever called her by her full name. Everybody else called her “Crissy.”
“Yes?” Was that her voice? It sounded weak and strained. The sun was so bright that she couldn’t get her eyes open.
“I’m going to have to pick you up, honey, and it’s going to hurt,” he said curtly. “Grit your teeth.”
She swallowed hard. Her back felt raw. Her blouse was sticking to the lacerated skin and she could feel the hot, wet blood cooling as it soaked the fabric. It had a funny smell, like metal.
Judd’s strong arms slid under her legs and around her rib cage as carefully as he could. He swung her up, trying to avoid gripping the torn flesh. Her small breasts were pressed hard against the warm muscle of his chest and she sobbed, trying to stifle the sound as pain lanced through her viciously.
“What about...Daddy?” she choked.
His black eyes flashed so violently in that lean, tanned face that two of the cowboys climbed the corral fence to avoid him. “He’s in the tack room,” he said shortly. “He’ll stay there until the sheriff’s deputies get here.”
“No,” she cried. “Judd, no! You can’t have him...arrested! Mama’s sick and she can’t run the ranch. I can’t, either...!”
“He’s already under arrest,” he bit off. “I’m a Texas Ranger,” he reminded her. “But I had your foreman radio the sheriff’s office from my car. They’re already on the way.”
“Who’ll run our part of the ranch?” she repeated, still mostly in shock from what had happened so unexpectedly. Her father had a history of violent behavior when he drank. In fact, Ellie, her mother, was now an invalid because Tom Gaines had knocked her off a ladder in a drunken rage and broken her pelvis. Emergency surgery hadn’t completely healed it, and she had weak lungs to boot.
“I’ll run the ranch, your part and my own,” he said shortly, and kept walking. “Be still, honey.”
Tears ran down her pale cheeks. Her eyes closed and she shivered. He looked down at her with his lips in a thin line. Her long blond hair had come loose from its ponytail and it was matted with her own drying blood. He cursed under his breath, only stopping when the ambulance came careening up in the driveway.
Maude, the heavyset, buxom housekeeper, was wringing her hands on the porch. She ran forward, her hair disheveled. “My poor baby,” she sobbed. “Judd, is she going to be all right?”
“She will be. I can’t say the same for Tom. If she won’t press charges, by God, I will!”
A small thin woman with gray-streaked fair hair came hobbling onto the front porch in a tattered old chenille robe, tears running down her cheeks as she saw her daughter.
“She’ll be all right. Go back to bed, Ellie,” Judd called, and for her his voice was gentle. “I’ll take care of her.”
“Where’s Tom?” she asked shakily.
His voice changed. “Locked up in the tack room.”
Her eyes closed and she leaned against the post. “Thank God...!”
“Maude, get her the hell back to bed before she passes out on the floor!” Judd yelled and kept walking straight toward the EMTs who were just getting out of the ambulance. Behind them, a sheriff’s patrol car arrived with lights flashing and a deputy got out of it to approach Judd.
“What happened?” Deputy Sheriff Hayes Carson asked, his eyes on Christabel’s back.
“Tom happened,” he replied tersely, waiting for the EMTs to get the gurney ready for Christabel. “He was beating her filly with a quirt. She tried to pull him off.”
Hayes winced. He’d been a deputy for five years and he’d seen plenty of battery cases. But this... Christabel was barely sixteen, thin and fragile, and most people around Jacobsville, Texas, loved her. She was forever baking cakes for bazaars and taking flowers to elderly shut-ins, and helping to deliver warm meals to invalids after school. She had a heart as big as Texas and to think of Tom Gaines’s big arm bringing a quirt down on her back with all his might was enough to make even a veteran law enforcement officer nauseous.
“Where is he?” Hayes asked coldly.
Judd pointed in the direction of the