Ralphie's Wives. Christine Rimmer

      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.

      Not for one second had it occurred to her that maybe he couldn’t.

      But there had been a whole lot of women in his life. And, until Darla Jo, he’d failed to father a single baby or even get a woman pregnant that Phoebe had ever heard of—and she was staring into her coffee cup again, feeling a definite reluctance to meet Rio’s waiting eyes.

      “Phoebe.” He said it softly, coaxingly.

      So she looked at him, making her lips a flat line, narrowing her eyes a little, sending the clear message that just because he said something didn’t make it true. “How, exactly, do you know he was sterile?”

      Beneath that cheap suit, one hard shoulder lifted a fraction in a hint of a shrug. He took off those absurd square-framed glasses and hung them from the breast pocket of his jacket. “I told you. He said so.”

      She canted forward, sharply. “Why would he tell you if he never told me?”

      He eyed her with wariness. “You about to go off on me here?”

      “Just answer the question.”

      Carefully, he suggested, “Come on, Phoebe. What does it matter, who he told—or why?”

      She tightened her fingers around her coffee mug. It mattered. Probably more than it should have. “Ralphie lied all the time. He was a master at it. He made lyin’ the next thing to an art form.”

      Rio shook his head. “All right. It’s no secret that Ralphie never put a lot of emphasis on honesty. But a man doesn’t lie about something like that, not without a damn good reason.”

      What he said made sense. Too much sense. She swore under her breath. And then she slumped back in her chair, lifted her arms and scraped her hair back hard off her forehead with both hands.

      The movement had her braless breasts poking hard at the thin fabric of her old T-shirt. Rio looked. She caught him at it. One black eyebrow canted up, but he didn’t say anything. Neither did she. She was too busy feeling hurt and defiant. Too wrapped up in ignoring the sudden sluicing of heat, down low, where it had no damn business being, and remembering…

      Ralphie. That evening in early December. Sitting across from her in the same chair where Rio sat now….

      Her stove had gone on the blink again and Ralphie had come over to fix it. As always, within ten minutes, he had it working like new. She’d offered him a beer and he sat down and got out his Marlboros. Squinting through the curling smoke, he’d announced, “This is it. My last pack of smokes.”

      Phoebe had to laugh at that one. “Ralphie, you’ve quit more times than any man I know.”

      “This time’s for real, babe. Darla asked me to.” He sucked that coffin nail hard, tipped his head back and tapped his cheek. Five perfect rings rose toward the ceiling, quivering a little on the still air before they slowly faded to nothing. He gave Phoebe that charming, naughty-boy smile. “I’m marryin’ her, babe. She’s the one.”

      Phoebe felt so happy for him that night. She saw in his face that this one would be different. She knew it, deep down, no matter what anyone else said. She reached across and laid her hand over his long, skinny one, all ropy with veins. “Go for it.”

      “Oh, I most definitely am.”

      Later, when Ralphie was leaving, he told her he was inviting Rio Navarro to the wedding. “Damn, I hope he comes. I been trying for half my life and most of his to get his ass to Oklahoma. I want him to meet you.”

      She’d seen the matchmaking light in those watery blue eyes and she’d almost warned him not to even go there. But no. Let Ralphie imagine his two longtime friends falling hard and fast for each other, the way he had for Darla. What could it hurt for him to scheme on that? It wouldn’t cost her any money, the way most of Ralphie’s big plans did….

      Phoebe blinked and shook her head, and ordered her mind back to today, to the large man in the bad suit sitting across from her—and to Darla, about to have a baby that might not be Ralphie’s, after all.

      She let her arms drop to her sides. “So what now?”

      He rose and circled the table to set his mug on the counter. “You make that list. And I’ll go have a talk with Darla Jo. See if I can find out who the real father of that baby is—and if maybe he had a problem with Ralphie claiming his child.”

      She was on her feet before he finished that sentence. “No.” He stuck his hands in the pockets of his ugly slacks—and