"I was just taking a nap," he said. "I'm still half asleep. I'll go take a shower and see if it wakes me up."
"Sure," Candace said. "Go ahead."
He had finished his shower, shut off the water, and was just starting to towel himself dry when Candace knocked softly on the door. "Can I come in?"
"Sure," he said, wrapping the towel around his waist.
Candace burst into the room wearing little more than a glowingly radiant smile on her face.
"Oh, Davy," she said, throwing both arms around his neck and crushing the soft flesh of her warm breasts against his damp chest. "I love it. It's absolutely gorgeous. And it fits perfectly. How did you know what size?"
For a moment or two, David Ladd didn't understand what was going on or grasp what she was talking about. Then, catching a glimpse of Astrid Ladd's ring on Candace Waverly's finger, he realized she had found it just where he had left it-on the nightstand table with his watch.
Crying and kissing him at the same time, Candace seemed totally oblivious to the droplets of water on his still-wet body. "And the answer is yes," she whispered, with her lips grazing his ear. "Yes, yes, yes! Of course, I'll marry you, even if it means living in your one-horse hometown."
Marry!At the sound of the word, David Garrison Ladd's legs almost buckled under him. For the length of several long kisses he was too stunned to reply. And by the time Candace's impassioned kisses subsided, it was pretty much too late. By then she was leading him back across the artificially darkened room to the bed.
Sinking down on the mattress, she pulled David down on top of her naked body, drawing him into her while her eager hips rose up to meet him. That wasn't the time to tell her that this was all a terrible mistake-that he had never planned to give her Astrid Ladd's ring in the first place. He did the only thing that made sense under the circumstances-he kissed her back.
Other than that, he kept his mouth shut. And after their lovemaking, while he was drifting on a pink haze, she snuggled close and kissed his chest. "What a wonderfully romantic surprise," she murmured. "But I have a surprise for you, too."
"What's that?"
Candace reached over on the nightstand and picked up a piece of paper. A check. "What's that?" he asked.
"Look at it," she said. "It's made out to both of us."
When he looked at it more closely, David Ladd's eyes bulged. It was a personal check in the amount of twenty-five thousand dollars, made out to David Ladd and Candace Waverly Ladd and drawn on a joint account belonging to Richard and Elizabeth Waverly.
"What's this?" David asked.
"A bribe," Candace answered with a grin. "For eloping. Daddy says it'll only work as long as Mother knows nothing about our engagement and hasn't had time to plan anything until it's too late. Once she gets wind of it and starts arranging things, the deal is off. He's already married off two daughters, and he doesn't want to do another one. And I don't blame him."
"Eloping," David Ladd echoed. "What are you talking about? Us? When?"
"Today, dummy," she said, snuggling under his chin and nuzzling his neck. "Right now. I thought you'd catch on as soon as you saw all the suitcases. I have it all figured out. We can drive through Vegas on our way to Tucson and get married there. It's not that far out of the way. I already have a dress and everything."
"What about your job?" David Ladd mounted one small but clearly futile objection.
"With Dad's firm? What about it? I got laid off," Candace beamed. "Yesterday afternoon. So not only do I get the time off, I can collect unemployment benefits, too. Isn't that a great deal?"
"It's great, all right," David Ladd muttered while that post-coital pink haze disintegrated into a million pieces around him. He managed to infuse the words with a whole lot more enthusiasm than he felt, although "great" wasn't exactly the word he would have chosen.
"And I love the ring," Candace continued. "It's gorgeous."
"I'm glad you like it" was all David could manage. After all, what else could he say?
After making a quick trip down the Sasabe Road to take a report on a one vehicle/one steer accident in which only the steer had perished, Deputy Brian Fellows stopped off at the Three Points Trading Post to buy himself a much-needed Coke to get him through the rest of his long afternoon shift.
As summer heated up, daytime temperatures on the arid Sonoran Desert made working the night shift suddenly far preferable to working days. One of the local radio stations held an annual contest, offering a prize to the listener who successfully guessed the correct day, time, and hour when the "ice broke on the Santa Cruz." Loosely translated, that meant the day, hour, and minute the thermometer finally broke one hundred for the year. From that time on, from the moment daytime temperatures crossed that critical century mark until well into September, Brian, along with any number of other low-totem-pole deputies, found himself working straight days.
With school out for the summer, the trading post was full of ten or so kids-two Anglo and the rest Indian-milling around between the banks of shelves. Brian smiled down at them. The Anglos grinned back, while the Indians shied away. The deputy liked little kids, and it hurt his feelings that the Tohono O'othham children were frightened of him. Because he knew some of the language, he tried speaking to them in Tohono O'othham on occasion. That always seemed to spook them that much more. Was it the color of his skin? he wondered. Or was it the uniform? Maybe it was a combination of both.
Back in his county-owned Blazer, he sat looking up and down Highway 86, watching passing vehicles made shimmering and ghostlike by the waves of heat rising off the blacktop. This quiet Saturday afternoon there didn't seem to be much happening in his patrol area, which covered Highway 86 west from Ryan Field to the boundary of the Tohono O'othham Reservation, and along Highway 286 from Three Points south to Sasabe on the U.S./Mexican border.
It was boom time once again in the Valley of the Sun. Tucson and surrounding areas in Pima County were experiencing a renewed population growth, but this part of the county-the part included in Brian's patrol area-wasn't yet overly affected. Sometimes he would be called out to an incident on Sandario Road that led north toward Marana. There he could drive for miles without seeing another human or meeting another vehicle. The same held true for Coleman Road at the base of the Baboquivaris. And the back and forth chatter on the radio seldom had much to do with the area assigned to Deputy Brian Fellows. Those long straight stretches of highway leading to and from the reservation yielded more drunk drivers than other parts of the county. They also had more than a fair share of auto accidents. Those mostly happened at night on weekends.
Brian had been a deputy four full years. Other officers who had come through the academy after him were already starting to move up while Brian was still stuck in what was-in terms of departmental advancement-the equivalent of Outer Mongolia. But Brian was resigned to the fact that it could have been much worse. If Bill Forsythe had wanted to, he could have figured out a way to get rid of Brian Fellows altogether. In fact, considering Brian's close connection to Brandon Walker, it was a little surprising that the ax hadn't fallen in the wake of Brandon's departure.
Still, Brian didn't dwell on the unfairness of it all. He was too busy being grateful. After all, he was doing what he had always wanted to do-being a cop and following in Brandon Walker's footsteps. As for the rest? Nothing much mattered. Brian was single and living at home. Taking care of his disabled mother in his off-hours pretty much kept him out of the dating game, so the low pay scale for young deputies didn't bother him all that much, either.
There were times when Brian was struck by the irony of his position. He was persona non grata with the current administration of the Pima County Sheriff's Department because of his relationship to the previous sheriff, who was, after all, no blood relation but the father of Brian's half-brothers.