Invincible

She made a face at her reflection. “Good girls never made history,” she told it. Then she hesitated. Yes, they did. Joan of Arc was considered so holy that her men never approached her in any physical way. They followed her, a simple farm girl, into battle without hesitation. She was armed with nothing except her flag and her faith. She crowned a king and saved a nation. Even today, centuries later, people know who she was. Joan was a good girl.

Carlie smiled to herself. So, she thought. There’s my comeback to that!

* * *

SHE WAS TYPING up a grisly report the next day. A man had been found on the town’s railroad tracks. He was a vagabond, apparently. He was carrying no identification and wearing a nice suit. There wasn’t a lot left of him. Carlie tried not to glance at the crime scene photos as she dealt with the report.

Carson came in, looking weary and out of sorts.

She stared at him. “Well, it wasn’t you, after all,” she said enigmatically.

He blinked. “Excuse me?”

“We found a man in a nice suit, carrying no identification. Just for a few minutes, we wondered if it was you,” she said, alluding to his habit of going everywhere without ID.

“Tough luck,” he returned. He frowned as he glanced at the crime scene photos. He lifted one and looked at it with no apparent reaction. He put it back down. His black eyes narrowed on her face as he tried to reconcile her apparent sweetness with the ability it took to process that information without throwing up.

“Something you needed?” she asked, still typing.

“I want to speak to Grier,” he said.

She buzzed the chief and announced the visitor. She went back to her typing without giving Carson the benefit of even a glance. “You can go in,” she said, nodding toward the chief’s office door.

Carson stared at her without meaning to. She wasn’t pretty. She had nothing going for her. She had ironclad ideals and a smart mouth and a body that wasn’t going to send any man running toward her. Still, she had grit. She could do a job like that. It would be hard even on a toughened police officer, which she wasn’t.

She looked up, finally, intimidated by the silence. He captured her eyes, held them, probed them. The look was intense, biting, sensual. She felt her heart racing. Her hands on the keyboard were cold as ice. She wanted to look away but she couldn’t. It was like holding a live electric wire...

“Carson?” the chief called from his open office door.

Carson dragged his gaze away from Carlie. “Coming.”

He didn’t look at her again. Not even as he left the office scant minutes later. She didn’t know whether to be glad or not. The look had kindled a hunger in her that she’d never known until he walked into her life. She knew the danger. But it was like a moth’s attraction to the flames.

She forced her mind back on the job at hand and stuffed Carson, bad attitude and blonde and all, into a locked door in the back of her mind.

4 (#u011b2b5b-d269-5b00-832f-441e1850574c)

THINGS WERE HEATING UP. Reverend Blair went to San Antonio with Rourke. They seemed close, which fascinated Carlie.

Her dad didn’t really have friends. He was a good minister, visiting the sick, officiating at weddings, leading the congregation on Sundays. But he stuck close to home. With Rourke, he was like another person, someone Carlie didn’t know. Even the way they talked, in some sort of odd shorthand, stood out.

* * *

THE WEATHER WAS COLD. Carlie grimaced as she hung up the tattered coat, which was the only protection she had against the cold. In fact, she was worried about going to the dance with Robin because of the lack of a nice coat. The shoes she was going to wear with the green velvet dress were old and a little scuffed, but nobody would notice, she was sure. People in Jacobs County were kind.

She wondered if Carson might show up there. It was a hope and a worry because she knew it was going to hurt if she had to see him with that elegant, beautiful woman she’d heard about. The way he’d looked at her when he was talking to the woman on the phone was painful, too; his smug expression taunted her with his success with women. If she could keep that in mind, maybe she could avoid some heartbreak.

But her stubborn mind kept going back to that look she’d shared with Carson in her boss’s office. It had seemed to her as if he was as powerless to stop it as she was. He hadn’t seemed arrogant about the way she reacted to him, that once. But if she couldn’t get a grip on her feelings, she knew tragedy would ensue. He was, as her father had said, not tamed or able to be tamed. It really would be like trying to live with a wolf.

On her lunch hour, she drove to the cemetery. She’d bought a small plastic bouquet of flowers to put on her mother’s neat grave. A marble vase was built into the headstone, just above the BLAIR name. Underneath it, on one side, was the headstone they’d put for her mother. It just said Mary Carter Blair, with her birth date and the day of her death.

She squatted down and smoothed the gravel near the headstone. She took out the faded plastic poinsettia she’d decorated the grave with at Christmas and put the new, bright red flowers, in their small base, inside the marble vase and arranged them just so.

She patted her mother’s tombstone. “It isn’t Valentine’s Day yet, Mama, but I thought I’d bring these along while I had time,” she said, looking around to make sure nobody was nearby to hear her talking to the grave. “Dad’s gone to San Antonio with this wild South African man. He’s pretty neat.” She patted the tombstone again. “I miss you so much, Mama,” she said softly. “I wish I could show you my pretty dress and talk to you. Life is just so hard sometimes,” she whispered, fighting tears.

Her mother had suffered for a long time before she finally let go. Carlie had nursed her at home, until that last hospital stay, taken care of her, just as her mother had taken care of her when she was a baby.

“I know you blamed yourself for what happened. It was never your fault. You couldn’t help it that your mother was a...well, what she was.” She drew in a breath. “Daddy says they’re both gone now. I shouldn’t be glad, but I am.”

She brushed away a leaf that had fallen onto the tombstone. “Things aren’t any better with me,” she continued quietly. “There’s a man I...well, I could care a lot about him. But he isn’t like us. He’s too different. Besides, he likes beautiful women.” She laughed hollowly. “Beautiful women with perfect bodies.” Her hand went involuntarily to her coat over her shoulder. “I’m never going to be pretty, and I’m a long way from perfect. One day, though, I might find somebody who’d like me just the way I am. You did. You weren’t beautiful or perfect, and you were an angel, and Daddy married you. So there’s still hope, right?”

She moved the flowers a little bit so they were more visible, then sat down. “Robin’s taking me to the Valentine’s Day dance. You remember Robin, I know. He’s such a sweet man. I bought this beautiful green velvet dress to wear. And Robin’s rented us a limo for the night. Can you imagine, me, riding around in a limousine?” She laughed out loud at the irony. “I don’t even have a decent coat to wear over my pretty dress. But I’ll be going in style.”

She caressed her hand over the smooth marble. “It’s hard, not having anybody to talk to,” she said after a minute. “I only ever had one real girlfriend, and she moved away years ago. She’s married and has kids, and she’s happy. I hear from her at Christmas.” She sighed. “I know you’re around, Mama, even if I can’t see you.

“I won’t ever forget you,” she whispered softly. “And I’ll always love you. I’ll be back to see you on Mother’s Day, with some pretty pink roses, like the ones you used to grow.”

She patted the tombstone again, fighting tears. “Well...bye, Mama.”

She got to her feet, feeling old and sad. She picked up the faded flowers and carried them back to her truck. As she was putting them on the passenger’s side floor, she noticed a note on the seat.

Keep the damned cell phone with you! It does no good sitting in the truck!

It was signed with a big capital C.

She glared at it, looking around. She didn’t see anybody. But he’d been here, watching her. He’d seen her talking to her mother. Great. Something else for him to hold against her. She started to crumple up the note, but it was the first one he’d ever written her. She liked the way he wrote, very legible, elegant longhand. With a sigh, she folded it and stuck it in the glove compartment.

“Mental illness must be contagious,” she muttered to herself. “Maybe I got it from Rourke.”

She got in under the wheel and started the engine. It didn’t occur to her until much later that it seemed to matter to Carson if something happened to her. Of course, it could have just been pride in his work that she wouldn’t get killed on his shift. Still, it felt nice. Unless he’d seen her talking to Mary and thought she needed to be committed.

* * *

HER FATHER CAME in with Rourke that night just as she was taking the cornbread out of the oven. She’d made a big pot of homemade chili to go with it.

“What a delightful smell,” Rourke said in the kitchen doorway.

She grinned. “Pull up a chair. All you need is some butter for the cornbread. I have real butter. Homemade chili to go with it. There’s always plenty.”

“By all means,” Reverend Blair chuckled. “Carlie always makes extra, in case I bring someone home with me.”

“Do you do that often?” Rourke asked.

“Every other day,” the reverend confessed. “She never complains.”

“He only brings hungry people who like the way I cook,” she amended, and laughed. Her face, although she didn’t realize it, was very pretty when she smiled.

Rourke studied her with real appreciation. If his heart hadn’t been torn, he might have found her fascinating.