Chapter 21
It was exactly how Sawyer predicted it would be. Even the Los Angeles Times had picked up the story about Candace Clay’s revenge publicity hoax. It was all the morning shows could talk about.
Candace would probably never work again. If she had any hope of redeeming herself, she’d take a page out of the Wendy Dalton playbook and announce that she was checking herself into rehab and later write an apologetic autobiography.
Purina wanted her to have her own dog food line, Saturday Night Live asked her to host and ChefAid had come crawling back with their tail tucked between their legs. Sawyer had no idea whether Gina had agreed to take the company back, but she could probably demand her price.
As far as her show, she was in negotiations for two more seasons and was the top contender to host a new FoodFlicks reality show: Home cooks competing to make the best dish out of random pantry staples or some such nonsense.
Sawyer had ascertained all of this information from his mother. It had been two weeks and he hadn’t heard a word from Gina.
“Why don’t you call her?” Cash had offered as if Sawyer hadn’t thought of it himself. At least a dozen times he’d started to dial her number and hung up before her phone rang.
She was a star again, which was all she’d ever wanted. And he was free to continue his nomad’s life as a reporter. Different lanes, he reminded himself.
“Wake up.” Jace snapped his finger in Sawyer’s face. “Where’d you go?”
“I was just thinking about my new assignment,” Sawyer lied. “What? What did I miss?”
“Rumor is Randy’s got another buyer, someone other than Mitch.
” Jace hung his arms over the corral fence railing while Cash threw a couple of flakes of hay to the horses.
It was Sunday and they could linger over their morning ritual.
“Word is that Mitch tried to lowball him and in the eleventh hour someone else swooped in.”
“Must’ve been another developer to sell that fast.” Sawyer assumed it was a company from Sacramento or the Bay Area, which might be even worse. Mitch was at least local and would probably make mild concessions on the scope of the project to appease the neighbors.
“I was at the coffee shop yesterday and no one seemed to know anything about it,” Cash said.
Sawyer nudged his head at Jace. “Who’s your source?”
“Charlie knows the real estate agent. She’s bought a couple of pieces from the store and told Charlie there was someone else, someone with deep pockets. That’s all I’ve got. But isn’t it a public record?”
Nodding, Sawyer leaned against the side of the barn. “But not until it closes escrow and even then the buyer could’ve used an obscure company name.” He shrugged. “But how long can it stay secret in this town? I suspect that within the next couple of days everyone will be talking about it.”
He puffed out a breath in the still air. The sale should’ve set him off, but his mind was elsewhere these days.
“If it was Mitch, the whole world would’ve known about it by now.
” Cash wiped his hands on his jeans and joined them at the fence.
“The sumbitch would’ve gloated. If not him, Mercedes would’ve screamed it from the rooftop of Reynolds Construction.
I’ve never met a more devoted secretary.
You’d think the woman was his mother. Or lover. ”
“No one will be gloating when the project comes up on the city council agenda and I go to the meeting and object to it. I’ll get every damn neighbor to come with me.”
The folks around here would walk through fire for Jace, Sawyer had no doubt about that. Jace wasn’t just the sheriff, he was a friend to everyone in the county. But even so, he was no match for the machine.
“As soon as we find out we’ll come up with a plan,” Sawyer said. “Until then there’s not a whole lot we can do about it.”
Jace gave Sawyer a once-over. “You look like shit.” Sawyer hadn’t been sleeping well. “Charlie says Gina’s back on top, kicking ass and taking names.”
“They’ve been talking?” A wave of jealousy hit him, which was ridiculous. He was happy Gina and Charlie were friends. Aubrey too. The three women had gotten tight while Gina lived on the ranch. He would’ve lost respect for Gina if she’d thrown them over once she’d reclaimed her supernova status.
“Emailing, I think. Last I heard, they were all going to Vegas for a pre-wedding bachelorette deal later this month.” Jace lifted a brow. “I take it you haven’t heard from her.”
Sawyer gave a nonchalant toss of his head. “It was better to just end it. Who needs the fucking friend zone?”
Sawyer watched his two cousins weighing his words. Clearly, he wasn’t fooling them.
“Did she say she just wanted to stay friends?” Cash studied him.
She hadn’t said anything—that was the damn problem. “More or less.”
“More or less? Speak English, writer boy.” Jace poked Sawyer in the shoulder. “You screwed it up, didn’t you?”
Yeah, probably. He should’ve pushed, should’ve been more forthcoming about his feelings. But it wouldn’t have made any difference. “Can we talk about something else, for God’s sake?”
“Remember what you told me when I was limping around, crying in my coffee over Charlie?”
“Or me, when I couldn’t get my shit together about Aubrey?” Cash pinned Sawyer with a look. “You told me to cowboy the hell up. Right back atcha, partner.”
“Yeah, yeah. Seriously, I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” Sawyer pulled his sunglasses out of his front pocket and put them on. “Cash, did you get ahold of anyone else about Angie and the US Marshals Service situation?”
They’d briefed Jace on everything they’d learned thus far. Like them, Jace’s lips were sealed until they knew more.
“Still working on it,” Cash said, but there was a hesitance in his voice. He knew something. Sawyer had dealt with enough itchy sources to know when someone was holding back.
“You’ve got something, don’t you?”
Cash tipped his head. “Not ready to talk about it yet.”
Sawyer started to press, but Jace held up his hand. “Let Cash do his thing.”
Okay, Sawyer got it. It was like when he roughed out the first draft of an article with an editor looking over his shoulder, asking a lot of stupid questions before he’d had the chance to flesh out the story. Cash would talk when he had the full picture, not partial facts.
“I’m going home.” He waved his hat in the air and started across the field.
Soon, the days would go from being oppressively hot to pleasantly warm. Jace’s wedding would be here. Then they’d move the cattle down from the hills before the first freeze.
Before all of that, he’d travel to Central America for his magazine story, an assignment he’d been dragging his feet on accepting. If he didn’t sign the contract that had been sitting on his desk for weeks, Esquire would find someone else to do the piece.
He’d sign, scan, and send it as soon as he got home, he decided. There was nothing pressing to keep him here. And a set of new surroundings would do him good.
Keep the memories at bay.
On the way to his loft, he took a detour to Charlie’s. She was behind the barn, refinishing an old beadboard hutch on a drop cloth underneath a market umbrella.
She took the bandanna tied around her head and wiped the perspiration off her face.
“Hey, what brings you by?”
“Just to say hi.”
“I’d give you a hug but I’m disgusting.”
“What are you planning to do with that?” He pointed at the antique cabinet.
“Right now, just clean it up, maybe give it a fresh coat of chalk paint. Why? You interested?” She smiled, teasingly.
He cleared a tree stump that Charlie had been using as a table to hold her tools and took a seat. On the dead grass sat an upside-down clawfoot tub. He supposed it was next in the queue for some tender loving care. “How’s business?”
“Good. A woman who’s opening a bed-and-breakfast near the American River dropped eight-thousand dollars here yesterday. She’s thinking of hiring Aubrey to do some design work.”
“Nice.”
They let the silence stretch while she went back to sanding and he finally said what he came for. “How’s Gina doing?”
She stopped and wiped her face again. “I was wondering how long it would take you to get to that. Other than the fact that she’s being pulled in a thousand different directions, she seems okay. More tense than she was when she was here.”
Tense is what he would expect from a woman who ran a multimillion-dollar business. “I’m glad everything worked out for her.” He rose. “Take it easy, Charlie. Stay out of the heat.”
He started to walk away when she called him back. “It’s none of my business, but you two seemed good together.”
Funny, he thought his and Gina’s short-lived fling had been fairly covert, even if his nosy cousins had been watching from the sidelines. Apparently their women were keeping tabs on his love life—or lack thereof—too.
“Not that good,” he said and went home.
* * * *
Sawyer opened his front door the next morning to find Cash standing there.
“You going somewhere?”
“Thought I’d stroll over to the horse barn.
” It wasn’t like he was getting anything done in the apartment.
For the last hour he’d been attempting to make a pot of coffee.
The first time, he’d forgotten to add beans and had had to start from scratch.
On the second try, he forgot to refill the well with water.
If he didn’t screw his head on straight he was liable to leave the house without his clothes on.
Just to be sure, he looked down to see if he had buttoned his fly.
“Can I come in?” Cash waited for Sawyer to move away from the entrance.
“Yeah, sure.” Sawyer shook his head as if to clear it of its cobwebs and motioned for Cash to follow him upstairs. “What’s up?”
Cash went to the kitchen and helped himself to a mug of Sawyer’s third-time’s-the-charm coffee. “Let’s sit in the front room.”