Wyatt's Most Wanted Wife

According to Melody, Louetta was thirty-three years old. She looked older and acted younger. She was a little taller than Lisa, which would probably make her about the same height as Jillian, who was five-seven. Although it was difficult to tell underneath those long, baggy skirts and loose-fitting, high-collared blouses, Louetta probably had an ample bosom and long legs. The woman was as plain as plain could be, but she really was sweet.

“Is there anything I could help you find?” Lisa asked.

“Oh, no,” Louetta said hurriedly. “I’m just looking.”

“You just go right ahead and look to your heart’s content.”

Fifteen minutes later, Lisa had finished straightening the display of men’s jeans and Louetta was working her way toward the front of the store. Reaching for a hanger, Lisa said, “One day soon I’ll be getting in my new merchandise. I’d planned to pick it up today, but it looks like I’m going to have to make other arrangements.”

“Yes,” Louetta said, nodding for all she was worth. “I heard about your car. I feel really bad, too. Now Mother and Isabell are going to be able to tell everyone ‘I told you so.’”

Louetta’s hazel eyes grew round seconds before a blush climbed up her face. Covering her cheeks with her hands, she said, “I shouldn’t have said that.”

Thrusting her hands to her hips, Lisa said, “Now Louetta, you haven’t told me anything I didn’t already know. I was sitting right there when old Isabell stood up at the town meeting last night.” Doing her best impression of a person with nasal problems, Lisa raised one finger and spouted, “‘Ill will come of that advertisement luring women to our peaceful town. Harlots and women of ill repute, that’s what that ad will draw. Mark my words.’”

Louetta’s eyes grew large. “Doesn’t that hurt your feelings?”

Dropping her hands to her sides, Lisa shrugged. “You know what they say about sticks and stones breaking bones.”

Lisa followed Louetta’s gaze to the toes of her sensible shoes. “I think that that saying is all wrong. I think names really can hurt. Well,” she added in a voice that was so quiet Lisa had to strain to hear, “I have to get back to the library.”

The bell over the door jingled when Louetta left, but Lisa stayed where she was, lost in thought. People had a way of amazing her. They always had. She remembered one educational summer she’d spent waitressing in an elite restaurant in Chicago. She’d made more in tips in one night than she made in an entire week anywhere else. The men who dined there wore suits a person simply didn’t find at the mall, and the women wore gowns, not dresses. They had everything: education, sophistication and money. At first sight they were the most beautiful people Lisa had ever seen. But by dessert their true colors usually reared, and it wasn’t a pretty picture. The contrast between those men and women and Louetta Graham was truly amazing. What was even more amazing was the fact that someone who was as plain as day could say something so profound that her true beauty began to emerge.

I think names really can hurt.

Louetta was right. Names were words, and words wielded incredible power. They could nurture, they could heal, and they could destroy. They were so important they even had a constitutional amendment to protect them. It was too bad folks didn’t have the same kind of protection from the people who used words in a harmful, hurtful way.

Glancing at her quiet store with all its racks of blue jeans and Western shirts, Lisa wondered if she’d hurt Wyatt’s feelings when she’d so blatantly told him he wasn’t her type. She hadn’t said it to hurt him. She’d only wanted to set him straight where she was concerned. Unfortunately, the fact that she’d had good intentions didn’t make it right. Wyatt McCully hadn’t said or done anything to warrant her curt attitude. He hadn’t really even said or done anything to lead her to believe he was interested in her in more than a friendly way. It wasn’t his fault her hormones went on red alert every time she looked at him. So he’d asked her to dinner. There was no law against that. Thirteen other bachelors had done the same thing, and she hadn’t gotten all bristly with them.

Wyatt was an honorable, steadfast man, which was exactly why he wasn’t her type. Still, if she had it to do over again, she would handle the situation in a way that wouldn’t hurt such a nice, kind, patient man’s feelings.

A horn blared out on the street. Lisa peeked around her new display just in time to see a patrol car pull up to the curb. Behind the wheel that nice, kind, patient man she had just been thinking about was laying on the horn.

She was out of the store in an instant. Leaning down in order to peer through the open window on the passenger side of the car, she said, “Wyatt, what in the world are you doing?”

“Get in.”

“What?” she asked.

“Get in.”

“Now why would I want to do that?”

His eyes darkened as he held her gaze. “Because I have business in Pierre and I figured you might as well ride along to pick up your merchandise.”

“I see.”

“I highly doubt that. I’ll give you a ride to Pierre. And like I said before, I have every intention of getting your car back for you. Since I doubt that’ll happen by tonight, you’ll have to find another ride down to the rodeo in Rosebud, because that’s where I draw the line.”

Lisa hadn’t expected Wyatt to be the type who drew invisible lines. She hadn’t expected him to be the type who didn’t let a person get a word in edgewise, either. But evidently he was on a roll.

“I’m supposed to be in Pierre in thirty minutes. And it’s a forty-minute drive. Are you coming?”

He didn’t say, “Or aren’t you?” but he might as well have. She stared at him for a full five seconds, amazed to find that the good sheriff had an ornery side.

Much to her surprise, she grinned. With a mock salute and her famous wink, she called, “Aye-aye, sir.”

Still smiling, she dashed away to get her purse and lock the store.

Lisa glanced over her shoulder at the boxes stacked in the back of the cruiser, then settled herself more comfortably in her seat. The check she’d written to pay for the new merchandise had nearly scraped the bottom of her bank account. But her rent was paid through the end of the year, and if she watched her spending, she might be able to make it until the store started showing a profit.

Keeping her fingers wrapped firmly around the hair at her nape, she turned her face into the warm air streaming through the open window and watched the scenery going by. This was definitely ranching country. The land was mostly flat, with occasional rolling hills dotted with small herds of cattle. The ranch houses were few and far between, rough-hewn fences and telephone poles stretching as far as the eye could see.

From the corner of her eye she saw Wyatt shift in his seat and rotate a kink out of his shoulders. She’d done everything in her power to cajole him out of his dark mood. So far she hadn’t been successful. That was unusual. People almost always responded to her sultry laughs and brash smiles. Evidently, the good sheriff was holding a grudge.

Trying to fill the silence stretching between them, she pointed to a gray wall of clouds on the horizon. “It looks like another thunderstorm is forming.”

He made a sound that meant yes, then fell silent once again. Lisa wanted to scream. She’d heard of yup and nope talkers, but this was ridiculous. Trying again, she said, “That’s good, isn’t it? Those clouds have a lot of dry weather to make up for. Maybe the ranchers out here won’t starve this winter after all. Maybe I won’t, either.”

She felt his eyes on her, but by the time she turned her head, he was watching the road again, his fingers looped around the steering wheel. Releasing a pent-up breath of air, she said, “No, business hasn’t really been very good. It’s so kind of you to ask.”

Wyatt bit down on the inside of one cheek, doing everything in his power to hold on to his vexation. Not that Lisa was making it easy. She’d been sultry and warm and more than a little brash since the moment they’d pulled away from the curb in front of her store an hour and a half ago. Whether she believed him or not, he had a lot on his mind.

Earlier he’d driven to her place on Elm Street to take a look around. The rain had washed away any tire tracks there might have been in the gravel driveway, but there was one faint impression left in the mud by a cowboy boot. Wyatt had measured it against his own foot. Although the print was smaller than his size twelve boots, it wasn’t much help. Other than Clayt and Luke, practically every man in the county had a smaller boot size than his. Lisa’s neighbors hadn’t seen or heard anything out of the ordinary. Whoever had taken that car hadn’t left many clues. Wyatt had been giving the matter a great deal of thought. People out here just didn’t steal cars. Or at least they never had. Why would someone steal Lisa’s?

He’d been giving the curt little declaration she’d made concerning his invitation to dinner a lot of thought, too. She had a smile that could warm him twenty degrees and a laugh that took his fantasies to another level entirely. And her body, well. She filled out her shirt to perfection, and he’d bet his badge that every last inch of her was the real thing. He’d lain awake imagining how her breasts would feel beneath his hands, his mouth. Wyatt McCully wasn’t exactly a ladies’ man, but no matter what she said, no matter what she claimed, the attraction between them was mutual.

“You know, Wyatt,” she grumbled, “although I truly appreciate the ride into Pierre and the little lunch you treated me to, this trip would go a lot faster if you’d keep up your end of the conversation.”

He glanced at her, and found her looking out the window. One hand was on her seat belt, the other was holding her hair in a low ponytail at her nape. The breeze streaming through the window toyed with the strands surrounding her face. He liked the way the wind pressed her plain white T-shirt against her body, but he had to admit he liked her straightforwardness just as much.

“Okay.”

She turned her head slowly. “What do you mean ‘okay’?” she asked, suspicion raising her voice and widening her eyes.

He managed to keep a smile off his face, because she had every reason to be suspicious. “Okay,” he repeated. “I’ll see what I can do about keeping up my end of the conversation.”

“You will?”

He nodded. He didn’t see any harm in talking. In fact, talking might just lead to a little insight and a lot of understanding.

Turning off the highway near Capa, he said, “Do you have any theories as to why business hasn’t been very good so far?”

“The economy hasn’t exactly been the greatest since I moved to town, you know? I think the drought has made everyone leery of spending a dollar they might need to feed their families next winter.”

Wyatt hadn’t realized he’d gripped the steering wheel tighter, but Lisa must have noticed because she was watching him closely. This time his silence hadn’t been intentional. He was always quiet when he crossed the bridge spanning the Bad River. Today, the river wasn’t the only thing on his mind.

Wyatt was a rancher’s son and a rancher’s grandson. He’d grown up in a family that had relied on elements like rain and snow and bottomed-out beef prices to make a living. He’d gone without new shoes and new clothes on more than one occasion. To this day, he remembered how his father used to say, “You can wear secondhand clothes, but you can’t eat secondhand food.”

Most of the folks out here had their priorities firmly in order. Even though Lisa hadn’t been here long, she’d put her finger on the pulse that made these people who they were. He didn’t know why, but the fact that she seemed to understand them on an instinctive, fundamental level made his heart feel two sizes larger.

Pointing to a place a hundred yards downstream, he said, “My parents drowned on the other side of that bend in the river.”

Wyatt clamped his mouth shut. For crying out loud, where had that come from? He sure hadn’t intended to tell her that. He wanted a response from her, but he wasn’t looking for sympathy, not by a long shot.

“Do you want to tell me how it happened?” she asked.

He tried to square his shoulders against her allure, but he made the mistake of looking into her eyes, and he was lost. Aw, hell. Now that he’d brought it up, there wasn’t much else he could do except finish it. Staring straight ahead, he said, “They were crossing an old bridge after a spring downpour. The river was dangerously high, but my mother was sick, and my father was trying to get her to the clinic in Pierre. The river took out the bridge, and them with it.”

Wyatt had been eleven that year. Since then, he’d experienced a lot of important days in his life. The day he graduated from high school, the day he first pinned on his badge, the day he stood up as Clayt’s best man. But he’d never experienced another day that was as vivid and clear in his mind as that day had been.

“What were they like?”

“They were honest, hardworking folks. My father’s name was Joe, my mother’s was Eleanor. Everyone called her Ellie. They were good people, and like most ranchers around here, they were used to doing without. I guess some things never change. The bachelors can attest to that. We’ve certainly had to get used to doing without, and I can’t think of anybody who’s happy about it, except maybe Isabell.”

Lisa laughed. It was the last thing he’d expected her to do, but it made him feel a little taller, a little broader. Her laugh was deep, throaty, sexy. It let him know that she was well aware of exactly what it was he’d been doing without.

“I’m sorry, Wyatt. I don’t mean to seem irreverent about what happened to your parents. Tragedy has a way of shaping us, forever changing us. It’s just that I think you’re right. Old Isabell is probably as pleased as punch about your, er, predicament.”

Heat crept through him. He knew where it came from, and he knew where it was headed. He hadn’t been exaggerating. The nights out here had grown longer and lonelier with every passing month. In its heyday some thirty years ago, Jasper Gulch had had more than seven hundred residents. With the steady departure of its single women these past three decades, the number barely reached five hundred today. Sixty-two of the current residents were bachelors between the ages of twenty and seventy-five. Until Lisa and Jillian’s arrival last month, and a handful of single women since, there had only been six marriageable women.

Feeling her eyes on him, he said, “Then you believe me when I say we’ve suffered?”

She turned her head, but not before he saw her smile. “Oh, I believe you. I’m just a little surprised so many women left, that’s all.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, there aren’t many job prospects out here, other than becoming a rancher’s wife, that is. The girls who left didn’t want the seclusion of a rancher’s life. They wanted more.”

“I’m surprised at least one of them didn’t want you.”

Lisa clamped her lips together, thinking her mouth was going to be the death of her yet. It had gotten her into a lot of trouble over the years. Until about five seconds ago, she’d thought she’d outgrown it. Since there wasn’t much she could do except look at Wyatt to gauge his reaction, she turned her head.

She was in trouble all right. His eyes had closed partway and had warmed to a darker shade of brown. One corner of his mouth lifted, creasing one lean cheek. If she’d been a woman who played games, she would have touched that crease with the back of her finger. But she hadn’t come all the way to Jasper Gulch to play games. She came to start over and to find a man like her.

No matter how interested Wyatt was, no matter how that interest made her feel, she knew what she had to do. This time she’d do it in a way that didn’t hurt his feelings.

She was still trying to find the proper words when he said, “Now that you know about my past, how about telling me about yours?”

Lisa’s mind cleared, and her objectivity returned. She’d been searching frantically for a way to put an end to his interest once and for all. Unknowingly he’d handed her the perfect opportunity. Now if she could just bring herself to talk about her least favorite subject in all the world.

Pretending to watch the scenery going by, she said, “What would you like to know?”

Chapter Three

“For starters,” Wyatt said in a voice just loud enough to be heard over the country-western song playing on the radio, “you could tell me where you grew up.”

Lisa tried to concentrate on the way the wind whipped her hair into her eyes. She tried to imagine how long it was going to take to get the tangles out, and how much work she had ahead of her emptying boxes once she got back to the store. She tried to think about anything that didn’t have to do with her childhood. But Wyatt had asked, and she knew she’d answer, eventually.

She would have preferred him to ask why she’d decided to come to South Dakota or why she’d wanted to open a clothing store or how she’d earned her living before moving out here. But people always seemed more interested in where she’d been and what she’d done a long time ago.

Taking a deep breath, she began in the usual way. “I was born in Chicago, but I grew up in a lot of places.”

“Did your parents move around when you were a kid?”

“I moved around on my own.” If she’d looked at him, she probably would have seen questions in his eyes, but she had to hand it to him, he didn’t pry.

Since she had good reason for telling him about her childhood, she waded through a few more moments of silence then said, “I ran away a couple of days before I turned fifteen.”

He didn’t ask why. He didn’t ask how. He simply waited for her to continue. After a while she said, “Come on, Sheriff, you must be dying to know why I ran away.”

He seemed to be taking his time searching for the appropriate reply. By the time he spoke, they’d reached the village limits on the north end of town. “I’d be surprised if you didn’t have good reasons for doing what you did. Did you ever go back?”

It wasn’t the question people normally asked at this point. It confused her and sent a strange, disquieting feeling through her. He didn’t know her very well, yet he seemed to believe in her. What was a woman supposed to do with a man like that?

Staring at the hard, lean lines of his profile, she said, “I went back a few times. The cops’ idea, not mine. But I always left again.”

Wyatt could see Lisa out of the corner of his eye. She’d let go of her hair, and it was whipping across her face, into her eyes and mouth. He’d wondered where she’d acquired her strength and her independence of spirit. He was beginning to get a pretty good idea. In his mind he pictured a police officer dragging a skinny girl whose dark brown eyes were too big for her face back to a place she didn’t want to go. Something told him she wouldn’t have been a willing passenger. Oh, no, Lisa Markman had probably gone back kicking and screaming bloody murder.

“No wonder you’re leery of a man wearing a badge.”

“What makes you think that?”

It was his turn to be surprised. “You implied that.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Then you don’t dislike men in uniform?” he asked.

“Of course not.”

“What about me? Do you dislike me?”

“I think you’re very nice.”

Easing into a small, tentative smile, he said, “Nice enough to take in dinner and a movie with me?”

“Too nice for that.”

Suddenly the word nice sounded as grating as fingernails scraping a blackboard. “I beg your pardon?” he croaked.

Her hands covered her cheeks. “Oh, my gosh. I’ve done it again, haven’t I? I’m sorry if that sounded like an insult. It was far from intentional. You really are a very nice man. You’re like one of those good guys on TV, right down to your white hat. You probably go to bed by eleven every night and to church every Sunday. Heck, you were probably a choirboy when you were a kid. Now that you know about my past, you should understand why I’m looking for someone completely different.”

It took a lot to make Wyatt mad, but no matter what she said, he was no saint. He clamped his mouth shut and jerked the car to a stop in a parking space in front of the store. He threw the gearshift into Park, got out, kicked his door shut and gave the back door a yank. Slightly dismayed, Lisa got out, too. Hoisting a heavy box into his arms, Wyatt looked at her over the top of his car. The smile she attempted did nothing to put him in a better frame of mind.

“Look,” she said, carrying a smaller box to the front door, “I probably didn’t say any of that the way I should have. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

Instead of replying, he waited for her to unlock the door, then plowed past her into the store and dropped the box on the floor, only to stride back out to the sidewalk to get another. Lisa figured there was nothing like anger to light a fire underneath a man’s feet. By the time the trunk and back seat were empty, Wyatt had made two trips for every one of hers. And he still hadn’t uttered a word.

She felt horrid, but for the life of her she didn’t know what to do or say to make things right. Still, she had to try. “Look, Sheriff—”

He stopped abruptly. Spinning around, he hiked the box to one hip and scooped his hat off his head. “If you’re thinking about apologizing again, there’s no need. Your opinion of me is certainly humbling, but no matter what you think, I don’t spend all my time rescuing kittens out of trees.”

“Of course you don’t. I didn’t mean to imply—”

“For your information, I broke up a band of cattle thieves a few years back, and I once arrested a bank robber down in Westover.”

Wyatt crammed his hat on his head and hid a world-size cringe. Why didn’t he bring up the trophy he took for roping calves when he was thirteen, for cripe’s sakes?

They stared at each other. Neither of them smiled or moved or said a word. Her dark hair was messed, wispy tendrils framing her face in total disarray. Wyatt imagined it would look much the same after a long night of making love. He spent so much time on that thought he had to remind himself to breathe, but he certainly didn’t have to remind himself what the heat coursing through him meant.

Watching the play of emotions cross her face, he couldn’t help wondering what she was thinking. If their hearts weren’t beating the same rhythm he would eat his hat. She may have thought he was nice on an intellectual level, but physically her body was thrumming with something much more earthy and sensual and wild, and so was his. He moved closer, his breathing a husky rasp in his own ears, his eyes trained on her mouth, his thoughts slowing to only one.

A sound near the door stopped his forward motion. Wyatt glanced up as Cletus rushed in, winded. “Boy, I’ve been waiting for you to get back for hours.”

“What is it, Granddad?”

“Mertyl Gentry’s fit to be tied. She was almost in tears the last time she called. Made me promise I’d tell you the second you pulled into town.”

Wyatt nodded abruptly, hoping the gesture would spur his grandfather to tell him what the old woman was upset about. Mertyl Gentry was a seventy-eight-year-old widow who’d lived in the same house on Pike Street for sixty years. A few days ago he would have assumed she was calling to complain about neighbor kids trampling her flowers. Now that he knew a car thief was on the loose, he wasn’t so quick to dismiss the possibility of something much more serious.

“Is Mertyl all right?” he asked.

“Far as I know.”

Wyatt glanced at Lisa and found her eyes mirroring his own concern. “Granddad,” he sputtered. “Are you going to tell me or aren’t you?”

Cletus snapped his suspenders and raised his craggy chin. “I’m gettin’ to it, I’m gettin’ to it. Ya don’t hafta get huffy. It’s that confounded cat of hers. Went and got himself stuck up in a tree again. Mertyl says you’re the only person she trusts to get him down safe and sound.”