Ralphie's Wives

“She came in the bar looking for work last September.”

“Ralphie met her at the bar?”

Phoebe nodded. “Darla was just twenty-one, fresh out of some tiny town in Arkansas. She met Ralphie the night she started working. He was gone on her at first sight. It took her longer. But not that long. Within a few weeks, she’d moved in with him. They got married last December, though I guess you know that, since he invited you to the wedding.”

Rio took a small spiral notebook and a pen out of his breast pocket. He flipped the notebook open and jotted down the major points. “The brother?”

“Boone’s twenty-six. He’s Darla’s half brother. Same mom, different dads.”

“Last name?”

“Gallagher.” She spelled it out for him. “Darla’s name was Snider—with an i.”

Rio nodded. “Go ahead. About the brother.”

“He’d been living down in Texas. Came up for the wedding and decided to stay in town. I hired him. He’s a good worker, dependable.”

“Did they fill out applications before they went to work for you?”

“Yeah.”

“They give you social security numbers?”

“Of course.”

“That’ll help. A lot. I’ll want to have a look at those.”

“An employment application is strictly confidential.”

“Think of it this way….”

Her sweet mouth turned down at the corners. “I don’t like the sound of this.”

He almost smiled. But not quite. “You use the information on an application to check your people out, right?”

She qualified, “I can check them out, if I think checking them out is necessary.”

“Because you’re their employer.”

She put it together. “Oh. And now, so are you.”

“Which means I have every right to run a few checks on Darla Jo and her half brother Boone.”

She leaned in, craning that smooth white neck across the table, her sleep-wild hair swinging forward, brushing the tabletop. “I just want to know. Why are you after them?”

He set down the notebook. “I’m not after them.”

“You know what I mean. Why are you suspicious of them?”

Rio considered evading some more. But to get information, you had to be prepared sometimes to give a little back. “I’m not suspicious of either of them. I am a little curious about Darla.”

“Why?”

He went ahead and laid it on her. “That baby she’s having? It’s not Ralphie’s.”

Outrage sparked in her eyes. “How do you know that?”

“Ralphie told me.”

She blinked. “Ralphie told you that Darla was havin’ some other man’s baby?”

“No. He told me I was the son he could never have. Ralphie Styles was sterile.”

CHAPTER FOUR

More on the subject of sparkling comebacks.

Man: I want to wake up with you beside me. How do you like your eggs in the morning?

Prairie Queen: Unfertilized.

—from The Prairie Queen’s Guide to Life by Goddess Jacks

“STERILE.” PHOEBE repeated the word. It tasted dry in her mouth. And also impossible. A word without meaning in relationship to Ralphie Styles. “No…”

The man across the table from her didn’t speak. He didn’t have to. Those black eyes said it all. She saw sympathy in them at that moment—sympathy that went well with the ugly suit and the glasses. With the rest of him? Not so much.

Then again, why shouldn’t a big, dangerous macho-type guy be capable of showing a little sympathy? It could happen. Maybe not in Phoebe’s own personal experience up till now.

But there was always a first time.

And the sympathy in Rio Navarro’s eyes wasn’t the question, anyway. The question was: Could Ralphie have been sterile?

And more to the point, if he was, shouldn’t Phoebe have been the first to know?

Phoebe had been Ralphie’s wife for three years. Once, for all the wrong reasons—because she knew she was losing him, because she needed a way to bind him to her—she’d begged him for a baby.

“Now, babe…” A rueful, tender smile had curved those big, soft lips of his when he’d answered her. “It’s not the time and you know it.”

“No. I don’t know it.”

“Come on. Ease off. Maybe later, huh?”

“When?”

“Can’t say. But don’t you worry. We’ll both know when it’s right….”

She’d known him well enough, even then, at a still-starry-eyed twenty-two, to get the message: The time would never be right; Ralphie would never have a baby with her.