Baby Dreams

She shook her head in wonder. It was finally sinking in. He really thought she was the outlaw. This wasn’t just some strange coincidence. She was being booked. She might go to jail. Impossible as that was to believe, it seemed to be coming true. A small flare of panic lit in her breast. She had to do something.

“Where’s the warrant?” she asked, leaning forward and pressing her lips together with new determination.

“The warrant?” His dark gaze was veiled.

“For this Billie Joe Calloway’s arrest.” She put out her hand authoritatively. “Let me see it. I want to see the picture.”

He hesitated, gazing at her speculatively. “There is no picture.”

“What?”

“I don’t have a fax. We’re out in the country here, in case you hadn’t noticed. I have to wait for mail. I just got the information on you today, mixed in with a long list of fugitives from the law.” He glanced at a stack of papers on his desk. “I will tell you this. You’re listed as one of the three most dangerous.”

She groaned and looked at him beseechingly. “But it’s not me! Don’t you get it? I’m innocent.”

He turned away. There was no point in getting into a hassle over this. “Hey, tell it to the judge,” he murmured, rolling the paper into a new position in his typewriter.

“I’d love to,” she snapped, tossing her thick blond hair. “Where is he? When do I get to see him?”

He squinted at the window, plastered white with winddriven snow. “I don’t know. With this storm, it may be a while. Considering the judge is in Santa Fe.”

“Santa Fe?” She’d been there only that afternoon. It seemed like days ago. Another lifetime. “That’s almost three hours away.”

“You got that right.” He nodded, eyeing her. “Three hours on a sunny day.”

She stared at him in horror. It had all seemed so simple at first. Now she was beginning to get the picture, and the scene before her was abhorrent.

“So, even though I’m innocent, I have to sit around here for hours and hours, waiting to prove it?”

He didn’t look up. There seemed to be an awful lot of words and numbers he had to fill into slots on the form. “Looks like,” he murmured, his voice barely audible, as though she hardly counted any longer.

He was a very annoying man and she was beginning to get really angry. This was all his fault. Anyone with any sense would have realized long ago that she wasn’t a criminal. She glared at him furiously, but he didn’t look up, so the effect was lost.

“Well, there has to be somewhere we can call, something we can do.” Cami wasn’t used to being told there was nothing she could do. She was used to action, to coming across a problem and dealing with it right then and there. She moved restlessly in her chair, anxious to get on it. “I suppose a lawyer would be hours away in Santa Fe, as well?”

He nodded. “I’m not asking you to make a statement until we get hold of one.”

“How very thoughtful of you,” she noted dryly. But hardly helpful. There had to be another way to attack this thing. “Where did you get the listing from, anyway? Maybe we could call them. Or we could call the different police who claim Billie Joe did these things. Just ask them a few questions and I’m sure you’ll start to see she’s not me. Or I’m not her. Or whatever.”

He nodded again. He was planning to do those very things, but not until he had the paperwork done. Forms were the worst part of the job, but they had to be filled out. “We’ll make some calls. All in good time.”

He went back to his work and she swung her feet, impatient and frustrated. Her mind went back over the past few weeks—how she’d received the invitation from her best friend from college, Sara Parker, to come to her baby shower in Denver—how she’d planned her trip with stops along the way to visit with some of her regular contributors to the journal—how they’d wined and dined her in Santa Fe and sent her on her way much later than she’d planned—and how the storm had caught up with her. And now she was here, sitting in this ancient building with this disturbing man, accused of being Billie Joe Calloway. It was all so ridiculous.

She glanced at the sheriff. He was going to feel awfully foolish when the truth came out. Right now, that was her only solace. She could tell he was a proud man, used to being right. It wasn’t going to be easy for him to face this mistake.

Good. Served him right.

“Do you have any tea?” she asked, looking around. “A nice cup of tea would taste so good right now.”

He shook his head, not looking up. “There’s a coffeepot by the TV,” he said. “Go ahead and pour yourself a cup.”

“Coffee?” She shuddered. “No thanks, that would just make me shaky. I only drink coffee for breakfast. You’re sure you don’t have a little tea bag hiding around here somewhere?”

“No.” He glanced at her coolly, his gaze just skimming her, not lingering too long in any one place. “No tea. Just coffee. Take it or leave it.”

She stared at him, affronted by his attitude, but at the same time, she knew she was being ridiculous. He wasn’t her host, after all. He’d arrested her. He couldn’t be expected to provide hospitality, now could he? Still, she couldn’t help but resent it.

“No tea,” she muttered. “No fax machine. How do you get fingerprints and stuff like that? Do you have to wait for the mail for that, too?” She paled, suddenly realizing just exactly what that meant, and when she spoke again, her voice was pitched higher. “Am I going to have to wait for the mail in order to get out of here?”

He glanced at her, then back down at his paper. “Don’t worry,” he told her smoothly. “Either Santa Fe will send someone for you, or I’ll take you down in the morning.”

No. Something had to give before that. Morning seemed very far away right now. Rising, she paced restlessly through the room. She had to get out of here. There was just no way she was staying. Somehow, something had to be done. But what? The storm was slashing snow against the windows and whistling through the tiles on the roof. It was dangerous out there. She whirled, feeling frustrated.

“Previous arrest record?” he asked, and she spun, dropping back down to sit in the chair.

“None,” she said crisply. “Unless you count the time old Mr. Campbell caught me stealing gum out of the broken gum machine at his store when I was ten years old.”

He looked up at her. He couldn’t help it. He looked up at her and he noted her eyes, the pale blue of icy Arctic caverns, and her pretty mouth—it looked soft and smooth and very warm. Fire and ice—an intriguing combination, a pairing that stirred him in ways he didn’t want to admit.

And then he looked away and uttered a few obscenities silently and to himself. He had to keep from doing things like that. If he didn’t watch out, he would let her see the way she was affecting him, and if that happened, he would have a hard time maintaining his authority over her. He knew very well what could happen, the games men and women played with one another. And he wasn’t going to let himself get pulled into them.

“What did he do to you?” he asked gruffly, forcing his mind back to the childhood story she was telling.

She thought back, her eyes suddenly dreamy. “He gave me a lecture and made me sweep the floor.” An irrepressible smile curled her lips at the memories. “And then he gave me a whole bag of gum balls to take home. I was the most popular kid on the street that night.”

“Ah.” He nodded wisely, a sardonic look in his eyes. “So that’s what started you on your road to crime. You found you could gain popularity from handing out things that didn’t belong to you to your friends.”

Her jaw dropped and she sputtered incoherently. Grinning, he pulled out the paper and turned it to fill in the back, feeling very pleased with himself for having annoyed her. “Education?” he asked.

“Hidden Valley College in Marin County.” She looked at him defiantly. “I graduated, too.”

“Congratulations.” He typed in the words. “Well-educated criminals are the best kind.”

“Oh!” Exasperated, she rose again, throwing a quick glare his way, and went back to pacing the room. “If you weren’t a cop…”

She left the threat up in the air, but it hit home. He was a cop and he’d better not forget it. Looking at her, he wished he could take her back up on the ridge route and start this all over again. Somehow they had gotten off on the wrong foot. He wasn’t acting like himself at all. He was usually cool and detached, a complete professional. Where had he lost that reserve? To make up for it, he was going to have to be tougher than usual. Mean. Could he be mean to her?

She turned her head and her golden curls danced in the harsh light and something curled inside him like a coiled spring. He groaned silently. No, he couldn’t be mean to her. And if he didn’t watch out, the cop in him would disappear, and the man was going to take over. No matter what, he couldn’t let that happen. Hardening his mouth, he tried to harden his heart at the same time, and years of practice made it that much easier to do.

“Let’s just get this done, Miss Calloway,” he said firmly.

She glanced at him and frowned, wanting to shake him, wanting to shake up everything and get to the truth. The truth should be plain for him to see, if he would only look at her without all his preconceived ideas.

“This is crazy,” she muttered, still pacing. Suddenly she found herself nearing the corner of the room she’d been avoiding, where the bars were, and her steps slowed. Reaching out, she tentatively touched the lock on the little cell. The door swung away from her and she stared into a space hardly big enough to keep a cat in. There was a simple cot and a chair, and that was it. Was she going to end up spending the night in that place? No way!

She turned back to look at the sheriff, scared but unwilling to let him see it. “You call this a jail?” she said scornfully.

He barely looked up, still involved in paperwork. “It’s got bars, doesn’t it?”

She made a face at him, secure in the knowledge that he couldn’t see it. “So does the Las Vegas strip.”

He nodded, then looked up and actually cracked what might be considered a smile. “Yeah, but I don’t have the key to that,” he said.

Their gazes met, the lights flickered as a gust of wind hit the building, and something else happened.

She wasn’t sure what it was, but it hit her hard. Time seemed to stand still. His dark eyes turned smoky with a mystery she suddenly felt an aching need to unravel. All in a moment, she was intimately aware of his wide, sensuous mouth, his rock-hard shoulders, his long, lean, muscular hands. At the same time, she was alive to an acceptance within herself of an emotional embrace. This was not at all like her, and scared her to death. She’d never felt anything like this.

“No,” she whispered, still staring into his eyes. “No.” And then, finally, she tore her gaze away from his. “No, I’m out of here,” she muttered, rejecting it all as she whirled and began a headlong flight for the door.

He swore softly as he sprang up to catch her. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he demanded, grabbing her by the arm and jerking her around to face him.

She stared up at him as though she were afraid of what she might see, and shook her head. If he hadn’t sensed what she’d sensed, so much the better. But it didn’t really help her. “I can’t stay here with you,” she said hoarsely.

His head went back and his eyes took on a distant look. “Why not?”

But she couldn’t put it into words. Putting it into words would mean acknowledging it, and that would only make things worse.

It seemed he hadn’t felt the stinging connection she thought she’d experienced. That was a relief, she supposed. Maybe. Or maybe he was just pretending not to notice. Or maybe he made these sensual links with women all the time.

Well, she didn’t. And she wasn’t about to go where such things inevitably led. What she really had to do was get out of here.

“I…I just can’t, that’s all. Let me go. Come on.” She looked up at him beseechingly. “You know, deep down, that I’m not a criminal. Just let me go and I won’t tell anyone you ever saw me. Nobody will know and…”

“Stop it,” he demanded, frowning at her as his fingers tightened on her arm. “Don’t get all worked up. There’s no point to it.” He jerked his head toward the outside world. “You hear that wind? You can’t go out in this storm, no matter how innocent you are. You’re stuck here. You might as well relax.”

Relax? Relax? When every nerve ending was quivering inside her? She took a long, deep breath and closed her eyes.

He was right. She couldn’t go anywhere until morning. At least she wasn’t huddled in her car on the side of the road, wondering if she was going to freeze to death.

She opened her eyes again and managed a bleak smile. “Okay,” she said softly, pulling away from his touch and turning back into the room. “I guess I’m more tired than I realized.”

But her gaze flickered from one corner of the room to another, looking for a possible escape route, something he noted with a cynical gleam in his eyes. He took hold of her again, by the shoulders this time, just to drive the point home. “Don’t get any more ideas, lady,” he said firmly. “You’re not leaving here until I let you go.”

She stood stock-still, her gaze icy. It was obvious to her that she was going to have to defend herself against him—or at least, against letting him beguile her in any way. “You’re touching me,” she said. “That’s not allowed, is it?”

His fingers tightened, and so did his mouth. She was getting to him at last. Anger was smoldering in his dark eyes.

“Isn’t it?” he said softly. “It all depends on whose rules we’re following.” But he released her, standing back as she flexed her shoulders and glared at him.

“You’d better just hope I don’t get any bruises,” she said smartly. “I’ll charge you with police brutality.”

His head went back. “You know all the buzzwords, don’t you?” Real anger shot through him like a hot gulp of whiskey.

Those were city words, words he hadn’t heard for a long time, words he had come here to forget. Around here, he was a part of the community. Everybody knew him. Everybody turned to him with their problems, with their worries, anytime they needed help—not every time they needed a scapegoat. No one here would ever think to charge him with brutality. It made him angry to have her bring city words and city concepts here. He reached out and took up the handcuffs, then turned toward her with a glint in his eyes.

“Tell you what,” he said, eyes narrowing. “I’m going to have to put the cuffs back on you.”

She shrank back. “No!”

He moved toward her, holding the cuffs up where she could see them. “You tried to make a break for it, lady. You’re not cooperating like you should. There’s no reason not to suspect you might do it again. You don’t have a leg to stand on.”

She glared at him, but when she spoke, she worked hard to keep her voice low and polite. “I’m sorry I did that,” she said, backing away as she spoke. “I won’t do it again. Honest.”

He watched her for a moment, dangling the cuffs before her. “It’s your choice,” he told her at last. “As long as I can trust you…”

“Oh, you can trust me,” she assured him hurriedly. “Believe me, you can trust me.”

He hesitated. She was saying the right words, but the look in her eyes told him she was feeling anything but meek. Still, what was he going to do, tie her up?

No, he reminded himself. He was going to put her in a cell.

And even at that, a part of him cringed. She was so pretty, so…

No. He turned and dropped the handcuffs on the desk. What was the matter with him? He’d locked up prettier women than this, back in Los Angeles. There was that time he’d been in on that raid of the porno movie set in Burbank. And the time he and his partner had broken a ring of young women who pretended to sell cosmetics door-to-door but were really casing the houses for visits later on in the night. And Doris, the sticky-fingered contortionist. Gorgeous women, every one. He’d locked them up without a qualm. And he was going to do the same here.

But not yet. They still had paperwork to finish. It could wait.

Three

Rafe Lonewolf, sheriff, and Billie Joe Calloway, con artist extraordinaire. This was going to be some night. He looked at her narrowly, and she looked right back. It was evident that whatever had spooked her a few minutes earlier was under control now. She had her confidence back, and her spirit.

She plunked herself in the chair and he sat back down in front of the typewriter, and she watched for a moment as he filled in spaces on the form.

He was just a man. And as the song went, she’d known a lot of men before. Now that her pulse had calmed and her nerves had steadied, she couldn’t imagine what had upset her so much a few minutes earlier. She couldn’t let this situation, this man, this night, get to her. She was woman, she was strong, and all that. And he was just a man.

And she was no victim. She could hold her own, and she could act like an equal. She could, in fact, go on the offense. That was often the best defensive strategy anyway. Put him off his guard. Keep him guessing. She wet her lips and launched her game plan.

“That’s quite a little Hitler complex you’ve got there,” she said, speaking softly, as though she were musing about an interesting detail rather than accusing him of being a world-class despot.

He glanced up, determined not to take her too seriously. “No. I’ve got a cop complex. That’s all.”

“Hmm,” she reflected, studying her fingernails. “Suspicious, cynical, mean. It can’t be much fun going through life like that.”

He leaned back in his chair and looked at her as though she’d brought up speaking ancient Greek as a recreational activity. “Fun isn’t what life is all about,” he reminded her.

She nodded. “You’re right. But it sure does help you get over the rough spots.” She glanced around the room. “What do you do around here for fun? Or is arresting innocent people the way you get your kicks?”

“No. I work. I sleep. I read.”

She stared at him. Suddenly she was really concerned. “That’s it?” she said incredulously. So that was the answer, that was what made him so mean. He was a grouch because he was badly socialized. Hope surged again. Cami was a can-do woman, and she liked nothing better than finding potential solutions to problems. She’d been struggling with this problem, this man, for about an hour now. And finally she saw light at the end of the tunnel.

Nothing could be simpler. All she had to do was make friends with him, like you would a snarling dog, bit by bit, offering a snack, extending a hand…

“Listen, you need to break out of your routine,” she told him kindly. “You need something new in your life.”

“Thanks, but no thanks.”

He didn’t look grateful for her sensitive suggestions. Still, these things took time.

He typed another line in the form and she frowned, trying to think of something to offer him. “You know, I’m probably a faster typist than you are,” she said. “Would you like me to fill it out?”

She could have sworn he was rolling his eyes, but he didn’t turn back to face her, so she couldn’t tell for sure.

“No,” he said simply.

“Could I get you a fresh cup of coffee?”

“No, thanks.”

Her mouth tightened. If he wasn’t going to cooperate, this experiment in the building of an understanding between them was going to be harder than she’d thought at first. A tiny doubt tugged at her. What if he were incapable of unbending? What if he were just born mean, and that was that? But she couldn’t accept anything so hopeless. She was made of sterner stuff. She pressed on, thinking hard.

Suddenly she sat up straighter, struck with an idea. “How about this? How long has it been since you’ve had your fortune read?”

That got to him. He turned and stared at her. “My what?”

She stuck out her slim fingers. “Give me your hand,” she ordered.

“What?”

“Your hand,” she said impatiently. “Let me see it.”

He shook his head. No way. Was she crazy? The prisoner did not act like this. Prisoners were scared and hesitant, or they were brash and unruly, in which case they had to be cuffed. One or the other. Prisoners did not offer to make you cups of coffee. Prisoners did not ask to see your hand.

So why was it that he was extending that very same hand, palm up, and letting her hold it? He didn’t know. Forces beyond his understanding seemed to be at work here. They weren’t following the rules. Things were very close to spinning out of control.

Her touch was cool and smooth and light. He felt a strange buzzing in his ears as she held his hand, like the fleeting high from a quick drink taken on an empty stomach. He was crazy to let this go on. But it sure did feel nice.

His hand was in hers and she was studying it closely, noting its clean, hard lines, its strength. He had nice hands with straight nails and hard yet uncallused palms. She liked them. But she wasn’t going to let things go in that direction again, so she sealed off that side of her emotions and got on with it.

“You’ve got a long life line,” she told him, gazing down thoughtfully. “Look.” She traced it with her finger. “Look how far it goes. I’ve never seen one this long before.”

“And you probably never will again,” he noted dryly. “That’s an old scar from breaking up a bar fight.” His mouth quirked at the corners. “I didn’t know at the time it would add years to my life, or I would have done it more often.”

“Oh.” Her gaze met his and they almost laughed together.

Almost, but not quite. They caught themselves in time. Rafe pulled back his hand.

“Some fortune-teller. You’d better keep your day job,” he advised her.

“Wait,” she protested quickly. “I haven’t got to the part about the tall, dark stranger in your future yet.”

His mouth twisted in a way that might have been a smile, but she wasn’t really sure. “I think a short, ditzy blonde in my present is more like it,” he said gruffly, turning back to the desk. “We’ve got to finish this paperwork if you ever want to get to the call to Santa Fe.”

She made a face at him, knowing he wouldn’t see it. “I’m not short,” she said softly, but he ignored it.

She sighed. So it did no good to get friendly with him. Back to square one, and the original plan. When in doubt, tough it out. That was what her father always used to tell her. Funny but she’d never realized his words to live by would come in handy someday. She had to curb her natural inclination to be reasonable and give everyone the benefit of the doubt. She knew what her rights were. Maybe it was about time to see that they were upheld by this country sheriff.

“When do I get to make my phone call?” she demanded, prepared to fight about it.

“When I’m good and ready to let you make it.”

“I have rights,” she reminded him, raising one eyebrow. “Does it usually take this long? Or am I just special?”

He met her gaze and held it, as though evaluating his options. Finally he picked up the phone and plunked it down in front of her. “Go ahead. Just keep it short.” But as she picked up the receiver and began to dial, he reached out to stop her, adding, “Who are you calling?”

She held the receiver away from him and frowned at him furiously, sure he was still trying to thwart her. “Do I have to tell you? Is that in the rules?”

He looked pained. “I’m not trying to figure out your strategy. I just wanted to advise you to be careful who you call and how you do it. By law, you get one call. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.”

She frowned suspiciously, not ready to accept that at face value. “But if the first phone call doesn’t work out, surely there’s another one allowed.”

Squaring his shoulders, he couldn’t keep the gleam of satisfaction out of his voice. “Nope.”

Her eyes sparked. “The deck is really stacked in your favor, isn’t it?”