Once Forbidden...

“Last I heard, he’d retired to Florida and was spending his days playing golf.” Johnna opened her briefcase on the table in the center of the room and pulled out a pad and pencil. “Why?” She looked up at him. “What made you think of him?”

Jerrod walked over to the table and sat in the chair next to where she would be sitting. “I was just remembering how often in my wicked youth I heard one of those steel doors slam shut behind me.”

“Sheriff Kiley was just trying to keep you out of trouble by locking you up,” Johnna said.

Jerrod nodded, knowing she was right. He’d never been charged with anything, but occasionally he’d get in a foul mood, have a snoutful of beer and try to pick a fight. Kiley would keep him overnight until he’d sobered up or calmed down, then release him with a stern lecture.

The air in the tiny room was stuffy and, within seconds, filled with the scent of her. The scent of wildly blooming flowers with a hint of vanilla was the same fragrance she’d worn years before. To his surprise, it still had the power to stir him.

He stood and paced the room, amazed by how quickly he’d responded to her scent, and tried to dispel the memories that assaulted him. Memories of Johnna, warm and yielding in his arms. Johnna, eyes blazing flames of heat as she clung to him in breathless wonder.

Broder appeared at the door, Erin looking small and defenseless in front of him. He felt Johnna’s shock when she saw the black eye and swollen lip Erin sported. “Just bang on the door when you’re done,” the sheriff said, then closed the door and left the three of them alone.

“Thank you for coming,” Erin said to Johnna with as much dignity as possible in her current situation.

Johnna nodded and gestured the petite blond into a chair across from her at the table. “I hope Jerrod explained to you that I haven’t agreed to represent you yet.”

Johnna sat down as Erin did the same. As she began to ask background questions and make notes on the pad before her, Jerrod studied the two women who had played the most important roles in his life.

Erin—childhood friend, confidante and fellow dreamer. They had commiserated together, schemed together and, in one moment of sheer insanity, had effectively destroyed any hope Jerrod had of a future with Johnna.

He frowned and studied Johnna, seeing the changes the years had wrought. She was thinner than he remembered. And in his memories, her eyes had always been the soft gray of a predawn sky. As he had yesterday, he noticed no softness in those eyes now, rather a brittle hardness.

He wondered what life experiences had stolen the softness from her. He certainly wasn’t egotistical enough to believe that it had been his long-ago betrayal. In the years since he’d been gone, surely she’d had other lovers. Funny how that thought bothered him more than just a little bit. He frowned and focused on the conversation.

“Erin, I haven’t read any of the newspaper articles or listened to any news reports concerning your husband’s murder. I’ll need some background on your marriage…but let’s start with what happened the night of the murder.” Jerrod noticed that as Johnna spoke to Erin, she kept her gaze focused on the pad before her.

A muscle ticked just below Johnna’s right eye, a sign of tension Jerrod recognized from the past.

Erin sat back in her chair, tears welling up in eyes that looked as if they had already shed enough tears for a lifetime.

“It was Wednesday night. Richard had a business meeting and afterward he and some clients went out for a couple of drinks. By the time he got home around ten, he was drunk. And whenever he got drunk, he got mean.” She swiped at her eyes, as if finding her tears more a nuisance than anything. “He’d slapped me around a hundred times before, but this time was worse than ever.”

“Worse how?”

“Always before he’d been controlled with his beatings. He never hit me in the face and rarely where somebody might see bruises or cuts. But that night he was crazy.”

“What set him off?” Johnna finally looked at Erin, the tic beneath Johnna’s eye more pronounced.

“His navy-blue dress shirt.” Erin stared at the tabletop. “I accidentally washed it with a white towel and it got white lint all over it. I’d set it on the dryer and was going to wash it again, but he saw it that night and went ballistic.”

“He beat you often?” Johnna asked, and Jerrod realized the tic had vanished.

“He beat me whenever he drank. And Richard drank a lot.”

“Are there police reports, hospital records, anything to chronicle the previous instances of abuse?”

“There are some hospital records, but we always lied to the doctors.” She laughed bitterly. “You know, I stumbled down the stairs, I walked into a door…I was just clumsy and accident-prone. I don’t know about police reports. Richard’s best friend is…was Sam Clegg.”

“Deputy Clegg?” Johnna’s eyebrows rose.

Erin nodded. “When things got bad and I could manage it, I’d call Sam and he’d come over and calm Richard down, but I don’t know if he ever made any reports. A couple of other deputies showed up a few times, but they always just talked to Richard.”

Johnna’s pencil flew over the page of the legal pad as she scribbled note after note. Jerrod watched her intently, recognizing that, despite whatever reluctance she’d felt initially in meeting Erin, she was now completely caught up in the drama. She even seemed to have forgotten his presence.

Erin leaned forward and grabbed one of Johnna’s hands. Johnna sat up stiffly, as if unaccustomed to any sort of physical contact.

“Johnna, I know we’ve never been friends, that there was a time you had reason to hate my guts. But I swear to you, that night, the night of the murder, Richard hit me so hard he knocked me unconscious, and when I came to, he was dead. Somebody had bashed his head in, but it wasn’t me. I didn’t kill him. I swear I didn’t.” She released Johnna’s hand and again tears glimmered at her bruised and swollen eyes. “You’ve got to help me.”

Johnna stood and paced in front of the table. “Why me, Erin? Like you said, we’ve never been friends. Why would you want me to represent you?”

“Because Richard had powerful friends in this town, and I know you won’t play any games. Because I think if you agree to take my case, you’ll do everything in your ability to help me. I know you’re honorable, Johnna, and I trust your integrity.”

For a long moment Johnna stood staring at Erin, her forehead wrinkled with thought. She turned her head and gazed at Jerrod, and in the depths of her gray eyes, he saw a flash of vulnerability, a whisper of pain.

“Will you do it? Will you help me?” Erin asked softly. Johnna looked back at Erin, then nodded curtly and once again sat down across from her.

As the two women discussed the fee, Jerrod wondered why he had the strangest feeling that in helping one, the other might be healed.

Ridiculous, he scoffed inwardly. Erin needed help, but Johnna Delaney certainly didn’t need to be healed. Still, he couldn’t get that momentary flash of pain in her eyes out of his head.

In encouraging Johnna to represent Erin, he had either done a good thing or lit a fuse on a powder keg of emotions that might explode in all their faces. Only time would tell what the outcome would be.

Chapter 3

“How about some lunch?” Jerrod said as they left the jail.

Johnna looked at her watch in surprise. It was after eleven. She hadn’t realized she’d been speaking with Erin for more than two hours.

Her first inclination was to reject his offer. She didn’t want to have lunch with him. She didn’t want to have anything to do with him. And yet, her pride alone didn’t want him to think that she harbored any ill will toward him.

To let him know how deeply he’d hurt her all those years ago would give him power over her. And her pride wouldn’t allow that. “Sure, lunch sounds good,” she agreed.

“The diner?”

She nodded and they set off walking down the sidewalk. She’d been shocked to see him at the jail, hadn’t anticipated he would want to be a participant in her interview with Erin. She should have known better. It was obvious he and Erin had maintained contact in the years Jerrod had been gone from Inferno.

“So what do you think?” he asked.

“You mean do I believe her?” Johnna thought about all the information she’d gained from Erin about the night of the murder. “I don’t know…maybe. Although it really doesn’t matter what I believe. It’s what I can convince a jury to believe. I need to meet with Chet Maxwell before the arraignment Monday and see if there’s a possibility he’ll charge her with manslaughter rather than murder.”

“She won’t take a plea. She’s innocent.”

They ceased speaking until they were seated in a booth in the diner and had ordered lunch. Johnna’s head spun as the realization of what she’d just agreed to sank in. She was going to defend Erin McCall—a woman she’d spent the last nine years resenting.

“Your brother and his new bride didn’t plan much of a honeymoon,” Jerrod said when the waitress had brought their drinks, then left. “Didn’t I hear they were just spending one night at Rose’s Bed-and-Breakfast?”

“That’s right,” Johnna said, then took a sip of her iced tea. “This is the busy season at the ranch and they’ve planned a more extended honeymoon when the ranch is dark in November.”