The Sheriff's Son. Stella Bagwell

twins until Roy finds the parents.”

      Kitty looked up from the cookbook. “Sounds like Sheriff Pardee works fast. But, to be honest, I don’t really know how he plans to find who the twins belong to. What does the man have to go on?”

      Justine filled a pottery mug full of coffee and took a cautious sip. “Frankly, I don’t know. But he seems confident. By the way, he’s coming back out to the ranch this evening to speak with Rose and Chloe.” Justine refused to add herself to that list. “Did I tell you?”

      Glancing over her shoulder, Kitty frowned at her niece. “You knew the sheriff was coming out to the ranch and you dressed in that getup?”

      “What do you mean? Roy isn’t coming out here to see what I’m wearing,” she said with faint irritation.

      “Why, Justine,” Kitty scolded lightly, “I didn’t imply anything of the sort. It’s just that you’re usually so conscious of your appearance. And Sheriff Pardee is a very good-looking man. Single, too.”

      Justine wasn’t surprised at the direction Kitty’s mind had taken. Her aunt was always trying to find husbands for all three of her nieces. “I heard he was divorced.”

      “Hmm…I think that’s true. Someone—maybe it was Vida—said he used to be married to the past sheriff’s daughter. But the marriage only lasted two or three months. Strange, isn’t it, two people go to all the trouble of getting married and then can’t stay together for more than twelve weeks.”

      Justine tried not to appear shocked as she gazed at her aunt. Two months after she left Roy and went back to college in Las Cruces, Roy had tried to call her several times. Each time, she’d refused to talk to him. Had he and Marla already divorced by then? She didn’t know why it should matter to her now, but it did.

      “I wonder what ever happened to Marla?” Justine asked more to herself than Kitty.

      Kitty leaned her hip against the cabinet and tapped a finger against her thumb. “You knew his wife?”

      Justine nodded, but didn’t say more. Since she returned home a year and a half ago, she’d deliberately refrained from asking her father or any of her old acquaintances anything about Roy. For one thing, she didn’t want to arouse any sort of suspicion about Roy Pardee and herself. And for another, she’d always told herself she didn’t care what had happened in his life once she went back to college.

      Kitty spoke up, totally unaware of Justine’s spinning thoughts. “Well, apparently the woman wasn’t what the sheriff expected in a wife, because they split the blanket before it ever got warm.”

      And Justine could only wonder why. Was that what he’d been wanting to tell her when he called her at NMU all those years ago? That he and Marla were finished? And what about the baby Marla had been expecting? He’d said he’d never been a father. Had the woman suffered a miscarriage?

      Oh, none of it mattered now, she wearily told herself. What had happened in the past couldn’t change the way things were now.

      “That’s his business, Kitty. Not ours.”

      Before the older woman could reply, Justine carried her coffee out through the screen door and across the small courtyard. In one corner, Charlie was playing in the sandpile her father had built for his grandson before he died.

      Smiling at the precious sight, Justine sat down beside her son and picked up a small road grader. “May I play, too?”

      “Sure, Mommy.” He pointed to a long trench he’d dug in the sand. “See, this is the Hondo River, and this is our house over here.”

      “And we need to have a bridge to cross to the other side,” Justine observed. “Maybe we can find a few twigs to use for logs.”

      Twenty minutes later, Justine was admiring the miniature ranch she’d helped Charlie construct when the screen door leading out from the kitchen softly banged closed. Glancing up, she saw Roy sauntering slowly toward them.

      Before Justine could say a word, Charlie jumped to his feet and went to meet him.

      “You’re the sheriff,” he said, smiling up at the tall man with the black Stetson and the steel-blue eyes. “Did you come here to arrest us?”

      Roy had never felt comfortable with young children. He’d never been around them much, and he didn’t know what they were capable of talking about or how their minds worked. Yet something about this sturdy little boy of Justine’s was different. For some reason, he felt attuned to him.