Queen, page 5
“Oh, man! Even my Guns and Roses?” Donny asked with a groan.
Cody nodded and shrugged. “Sorry,” he said.
Queen couldn’t prevent a grin. Kids really put things into strange perspective sometimes. To heck with the stolen Blazer. The calamity was the missing tapes.
“Anyway, I figured I was lucky it was in one piece and not stripped and burned. I tossed the sack with your shorts into the backseat, crawled into the truck, and simply headed out of town. I didn’t think about going to tell the authorities I’d found it, because I hadn’t actually filled out the papers to report it missing. I didn’t think it would be worthwhile to report six missing tapes, and I still had that last stop to make at the grocery store before coming home.”
“We ran out of milk,” J.J. said accusingly. “But Aunt Queenie bought us more. She bought lots of good stuff. She’s a real good cook.”
Cody’s gaze centered on the woman’s flushed face. She was a strange one. Coming to the rescue out of the blue, spending her own money on total strangers, taking a strip off of him for what she imagined was neglect toward his children—and reluctant to hear someone commend her.
“Thank you,” Cody said quietly.
Queen nodded and looked away.
“But why did it take you so long to get home?” Donny continued.
Cody grimaced. “Here’s where it gets good,” he said. “I drove about five miles out of Gold Nugget and then was pulled over by a policeman and arrested.”
“Why?” Queen asked, intrigued in spite of herself.
“Because the people who stole my Blazer didn’t just take it for a ride. They had used it to rob a bank and then dumped it, leaving me to walk straight into a trap as a suspect in the robbery. It didn’t matter how fast I talked, or how much I explained, the wheels of justice grind slowly…very, very slowly.”
“Didn’t you tell them you were our dad?” J.J. asked.
Cody hugged his youngest son, trying to remember a time in his life when simply telling the truth had set things right…when things had been that simple. “I sure did,” he said. “But it didn’t seem to matter. The more I talked, the more convinced they were that I was involved. Finally I got smart and shut up.”
“You had a phone call coming,” Queen said. “Why didn’t you use it to call the boys?”
Cody raised his eyebrows. He had to give her credit: she was for the boys all the way. Obviously she still suspected his credibility.
“I did,” he said. “There was no answer…and unfortunately, the answering machine can’t accept collect calls.”
Donny ducked his head. “Sorry, Dad.”
Cody ruffled his oldest son’s hair. “You don’t need to apologize for my mess. It damn sure wasn’t your fault.”
“Why did they let you go?” Queen asked.
“Two reasons. One of my constant complaints was that my children were alone and would be hysterical. Whoever put out a missing persons report on me confirmed that part of my story.”
“We did. All of us. Even Aunt Queenie,” Will said.
“Well…we had to do something,” she said, refusing to listen to any more accolades. The warmth in Cody Bonner’s eyes was making her nervous. “And what was the other reason?”
“Early this morning, they caught the robbers in the act of repeating the same crime…in the same manner…with another stolen car. They let me go with an apology.”
Cody leaned forward and wrapped his boys in his arms, ignoring the stare of the woman across the room. “But it doesn’t matter. I’m home…and you’re safe. You’re all safe.”
Queen watched him hold his children and knew that the affection between them was genuine. She sighed. It was just as well. She didn’t have time to be worrying about men who had no business being fathers. She had a life to pursue.
And then the phone rang.
Cody dumped the boys from his lap and went to answer it. No sooner did he identify himself than Queen realized he was talking to Sheriff Miller. But the shock and then fury on his face was unmistakable and unexpected. Why should he be angry at a follow-up phone call? She noticed a muscle twitch at the corner of his mouth and his cheekbones streak with flashes of red as he started his good-bye.
“Thanks for calling, Sheriff. Yes, I’m anxious to meet you, too. Thanks for all you did on my boys’ behalf and—”
He stopped in midspeech as the sheriff assured him that it wasn’t so much what he’d done as it was a good thing his stepsister had turned up like that…out of the blue. Otherwise the boys would have been turned over to social services.
Cody looked across the room into Queen Houston’s eyes and finally admitted to himself that her presence in Snow Gap that day had saved his world. He nodded once at something the sheriff said, then smiled at her…slowly…and only once.
But it was enough. Queen felt the air leave her body as if she’d just been kicked. All sense of the world shifted sideways, and she gripped the arm of her chair to adjust to the move.
His smile had done something strange to her heart. She didn’t want what she was feeling and hated Cody Bonner for singling her out.
Finally he hung up the phone and cursed as if that moment between them had never existed.
“What?” Donny asked, surprised by the fact that twice in the space of a few minutes his father had broken a hard and fast rule by cursing in front of them.
“It seems that while they didn’t really believe me about my children being alone, they still made a report to social services, who did some checking into our background and decided that it was their duty to inform our next of kin…on record,” he added, simply for Queen’s behalf, “that I was incarcerated. The long and the short of it is that your grandparents were notified. That means they’ll probably show up soon.”
Will blanched and began to stutter. “No, no. I…I…don’t wan…want to go wit…with them again.”
Queen was in shock. What was going on here? Why were the grandparents so feared?
“Will, don’t,” Cody said quietly, shocked by the recurrence of stuttering that had all but disappeared over the last few weeks. He took the child up in his arms, as if to shield him from what he’d said, but it was hopeless. All he could do was hold him, so he did, hugging him tight against the world and its unknowns.
Will forgot that he’d just turned ten years old. He forgot that he’d been the tallest boy in his class for more than two years running. All he could think of was the fear of losing his father…again. He buried his face against Cody’s neck, wrapped his legs around his waist, and hung on for dear life.
Cody was overwhelmed by his son’s emotional collapse. His arms tightened around Will’s thin shoulders until he feared the child could not breathe, yet still Will would not turn him loose. The horror of the past months and the helpless fury of the past three days caught up with Cody Bonner.
His voice reverberated with anger and conviction when he spoke. “I will allow them to come…and maybe someday you will learn to enjoy their visits. But I swear to God they will never…absolutely never…take you away from me again.”
The boys seemed to accept his fervent announcement with sighs of relief. Daddy could fix anything. But Queen shuddered. She’d seen the look in his eyes and the soldier inside the man. It had been full of hate…and almost ready to kill. No matter what they’d done in the past, she almost pitied the unsuspecting grandparents. They couldn’t know what they’d unleashed.
Cody stood outside on the deck surrounding his house and stared up into the vast and star-studded night sky. A slow breeze came through the trees and slowly cooled his anger. It was good to be home.
In spite of his vow that Claire’s parents could no longer hurt him or his family, he was afraid. He knew them. They’d grab on to this latest fiasco without thought to what it would do to his sons. They seemed hell-bent on replacing their dead daughter with his boys. He sighed and buried his face in his hands. He’d do anything to keep from having to put the boys through another round of the judicial system.
“The dishes are done.”
Cody turned and stared at the woman standing in the shadows just beyond his reach. “Thank you,” he said. “For everything. What you did was above and beyond the call, lady. You’ll never know how much it meant to me.”
“I didn’t do it for you,” she said. “I did it for them.”
Cody heard the censure in her voice. Somewhere in her past she’d lost complete and total trust in men. He wondered who had hurt her…and why…and then wondered why he cared.
“Just the same.” He shrugged and turned away, unwilling for her to see his fears. It was the acknowledgment of weakness in him that had started all this mess in the first place. If he’d been a man about the damned nightmares he kept having, none of this would have happened.
“Will you give me a ride into town tomorrow? I need to catch a bus.”
He nodded.
“Why did you go see a psychiatrist? Why did your wife’s parents try to take your children?”
Cody inhaled sharply and spun back around. He was about to shout, to order her off the place and back to wherever the hell she’d come from, and then he saw genuine concern on her face and bit his lip instead.
“I’m not asking to butt into your business. It’s just that the boys are…I’ve come to…” She turned and started to walk back into the house, realizing that she’d overstepped her bounds.
“I’m having nightmares. Hellfire-and-brimstone-breathing nightmares. I’ve had them ever since the night I came to in the Saudi desert after ejecting from the jet and realized I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face.”
Queen shuddered. The lack of emotion in his voice made the telling of his story all the more horrifying. She could do nothing but listen, because there was nothing left to say.
“I realized moments later that I was blinded by blood, not the accident, yanked the helmet off my head, and cleared my vision. I checked to see if my location transmitter was sending. It was. I knew it would only be a matter of time before someone found me. But the longer I waited, the less certain I became that it would be the right side. I could hear as well as see the ground fire. That told me I was too damned close to enemy lines for ground rescue. I started trying to walk out.”
“Trying?”
“Broke my left leg.”
Queen closed her eyes and swallowed the lump in her throat. So much pain. Why did people have to endure so much pain?
“Were you captured?”
“Naw,” he said, and grinned. “But it took our side two days to get to me.”
Queen was horrified. He had crashed in the middle of a war, been left two days without food and water, and had had to walk on broken bones. “And the cops in Denver caught you without a fight.” She hadn’t realized she’d said the last of her thoughts aloud.
Cody jerked as if she’d just socked him in the middle of the back. He stared into the shadows and then started to grin. And then he laughed. Surprised by the sound of it, he stopped almost instantly. It had been a long time in coming, but afterward he felt a strange sort of relief, as if a few old fears had gone along with it.
“So, you’re worried about your dreams,” Queen said. “Dreams can’t hurt you, Cody Bonner. Only people can hurt you.”
“I know that. That’s why I’m scared as hell. My in-laws, the Whittiers, will show up when I least expect them. They’ll use what just happened, as well as the fact that I’m a single father with no extra help, to prove my lack of parental worth. They’ll try to take my kids away again…I just know it. Ever since Claire’s death, they seem to have lost perspective.” He sighed. “It didn’t help that I went missing for several days, either. When the war was over, that was the main reason I took early retirement. I suddenly realized my boys had come too damned close to being made orphans.”
Unknown to either of them, J.J. had slipped outside and had been standing in the dark, listening. Reacting to the fear in his father’s voice, he slipped his arms around one of Queen’s long legs and started to cry.
“I don’t want to live with Grandma or Grandpa Whittier. I want to stay here with you and Daddy.”
Without hesitation Queen bent down and lifted the child into her arms. She hugged him gently. “You’re going to be fine, honey,” she said softly. “Your daddy is a big, tough guy, right?” She smiled at the urgent nod of the boy’s head and couldn’t resist pressing a kiss on the crown of his head. “He won’t let anyone hurt you, ever.”
“Promise?” J.J. asked.
Queen looked across J.J.’s shoulders toward Cody Bonner. “Promise,” she said, staring intently into his eyes.
Cody was impressed by the way Queen had held his son, as if she truly cared. With J.J. she was soft and gentle and had openly touched and caressed as easily as she took a breath. He had not known that side of her even existed and suddenly realized why his boys had accepted her so quickly.
It was that thought and the look she gave him that prompted Cody to do something he would later realize was unforgivable. But at the moment he’d have done anything to insure his boys welfare, and having an on-site nanny when the Whittiers made their appearance would help immensely.
“Would you stay?” he asked her, and then, before she could voice the objection he saw on her face, he added, “Just until the Whittiers come and go? It would help my case if I had a housekeeper in residence. I’d pay you for your time, of course. It would be nothing more than a job of baby-sitting, and then you could be on your way.”
“Yeah!”
J.J. shrieked and wiggled to be put down. Queen let him go without removing her gaze from Cody’s face. When the child had disappeared out of sight and sound, she let her fury fly.
“How dare you? How dare you put me on the spot in front of that child? You knew I couldn’t say no in front of him. He’s been hurt enough as it is.”
Cody stood his ground. “Well? Will you?” He was determined to get what he needed with no regard for what it might cost others.
Queen shuddered and drew herself up to her full height of nearly six feet. Then she came up so close to him that he could feel her breath.
“I’ll stay,” she said. “But like I told you before, only for the boys. And you know something else, mister?”
He shook his head, wondering if he should be afraid to hear what she thought.
“For a short time earlier this evening, I thought you were different, but you’re not. You’re no different from any man I’ve ever known. They’ll do or say whatever they have to just to get what they want, and anyone who stands in their way can move or go to hell. For now…I’ll stay. But after your in-laws leave, I’m gone.”
Just when Cody thought she was finished with him, she added a postscript that hit home in a particularly vulnerable place.
“I’ll be the housekeeper and nothing else, and don’t you forget it. I take care of your boys and their needs…not yours. If you so much as look at me cross-eyed, or try to make a move on me, I’ll shorten your life span, and everything else that matters on your body…and it’ll hurt when I do.”
She stomped away, leaving an aura of heat and hate in her wake. He shuddered. He’d been right to be afraid after all.
He’d had an instant impression of a cat, hackles raised, claws unsheathed, spitting and clawing at everything within reach.
My God. I must be losing my mind. I just asked a total stranger to stay in our home and look after the most precious thing in my life, my children. And if I’m not mistaken, she just threatened to neuter me if I get too close.
Cody shook his head and then straightened as determination sharpened his features. If he’d been as tough as a man should be and not gone to see the damned psychiatrist, none of this would have happened. But, he told himself, it won’t happen again. I won’t let it.
Chapter 4
Within the space of a week, Queen had gone from the Houston household, which was dominated by females both in number and in strength of character, to an entirely male-oriented one. Everywhere she turned she was instantly reminded that she was living in a whole new world.
Male paraphernalia abounded: jockey shorts and model cars, rubber snakes and comic books depicting musclebound heroes. It would have been laughable if she’d had someone to share the joke with. But the Bonners saw little humor in her offhand remarks and often missed the point of them altogether.
With the return of Cody Bonner, the sleeping arrangements had shifted to accommodate Queen’s temporary residence. Donny willingly gave up his room to her and moved in with Will and J.J. The two younger boys in turn offered to share a bed so that Donny could have one of his own. None of them seemed to mind giving up their space, but getting all three to sleep at night had become something of an unending marathon.
Being in close proximity to so many males of varying age and size made something happen to Queen that she hadn’t expected. She began to miss her father. Alive, he’d been the bane of her existence as well as a constant source of shame; but suddenly she found herself longing to recapture that part of her old life.
Johnny Houston’s death had come without warning, as unexpected as all of his plans had been. He’d gone to Whitelaw’s Bar, as he had every day since they’d moved to Cradle Creek, and that night he hadn’t come home. He’d died as he’d lived, playing cards.
Burying him had come and gone while Queen and her sisters had been in a state of shock. It was only now, with nothing and no one left to worry about except herself, that she allowed herself to grieve, and as she did, she felt able finally to forgive him for the loss of her childhood.
Queen forced herself to concentrate on the basket of laundry she was struggling to carry. She had plenty to do here without letting her emotions get the best of her. Later, when she was alone, she would let the feelings come and remember Johnny…and her sisters. For now there was too much work to do.
She dumped an armful of wet clothes into the dryer and then filled the washer she’d just emptied with another load of dirty clothes. Laundry was never-ending.
