Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Zoe
E very time Warrick even so much as looked at me, I wanted to curl into a hole and disappear. I was beyond embarrassed or ashamed…I was goddamn mortified .
The memory of me screaming that I was going to die rested on top of my head like a bag of bricks, and nothing I did or said would reduce it. I knew he was trying to be understanding about my scare last night, and maybe he was trying to backstep on the would-be, could-be, almost kiss, but I didn’t know how to look him full in the eye.
Until now.
He was trying—maybe I should meet him halfway.
“I think I’d prefer the coffee last,” I replied as he drove off.
He turned down a street I couldn’t get the name of, even though I’d stared at the sign. God, I was frazzled. “I’m going back to the ranch tonight. Do you want to come or stay in the inn?”
“What? No, I don’t want to stay in the inn when I can go to see your ranch again,” I almost spluttered. “I want to come.”
“Okay,” he nodded and squinted at the lane across from us. He turned down the lane, and we stopped at a known cellphone provider.
Leaving the car, I tried to stifle the urge to look over my shoulder, but I couldn’t stop the reaction and twisted my neck—and then I fucking tripped. I expected a hard smack on the floor, with stars shooting through my vision and blood?—
But two hands grabbed me while my head was still ready for the slam. When it didn’t happen, I realized my nose was buried in the crook of his neck. The one thing that hit me was that he smelled of musk, salt, leather and pine. Of a masculinity that twisted my gut in two.
“Whoa, whoa, there,” Warrick said. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah—” I said, swallowing another lump of shame to add to the mountain already on my chest. “—I’m okay. Just clumsy.”
Ignoring the tremors wreaking havoc on my common sense, I glanced up. His expression was calm as he set me back on my feet.
I felt two inches tall as we headed into the store and began to look over the selection. I wanted something serviceable but not too expensive. I didn’t need something that could get easily hacked, which meant an iPhone, Google phone, or a Blackberry. It was outdated, but I had to be careful.
A bubbly girl met us. “Hi, can I help you with something, sir? You know it's that season when all the missus want their new upgrade.”
My jaw met the floor.
Did this girl think I was his wife?
“N-no, no—” I spluttered, waving my hands like a windmill. “—I’m not his?—”
“Oh, come on, darling,” Warrick stopped me. “We’re not dating anymore. I know you forgot your ring, but stop joking.”
She huffed. “ Now you have a funny bone.”
For once in my life—or possibly his—he laughed, a low husky tone that washed over me like warmed honey. Finally, he turned to the girl, “She’s right. I am sorry, we’re not married. Forgive me, I’m just joking.”
“You’re being a jackass,” I huffed. “I need something solid, not too fancy, not too expensive. I don’t need the latest model, just functional email, notes, and web browser.”
“We have a good selection,” the girl led us to a row, and I sorted through the choices, reading the specs and finally chose a budget for a hundred and ten bucks, its twelve-dollar case and a thirty-dollar monthly plan.
“That comes to one hundred fifty-two dollars and eighty-nine cents,” the girl said while packing the items.
“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” I stopped her.
“I’m sorry,” she gave me a reluctant smile. “It’s store policy.”
I reached for my wallet when a silver card was slid over the glass top. Both our eyes, hers and mine, flew to Warrick, who looked nonplussed. “Please, it’s on me.”
“Warrick, you don’t have to?—”
“I know I don’t,” he nudged the card further. “I want to, please.”
With a last look at me, the girl took the card and tapped it, then reached for the printing receipt. She handed it to him to sign and then slid the package to me. “Thank you and have a good day.”
Still stunned into silence, I took the bag, headed to the truck, and climbed in. Dropping the bag to my lap, I buckled in and stayed quiet as he drove off. I had no words to say until we arrived at the coffee place. This time, I shifted. “You really didn’t have to do that.”
He shrugged. “Call it an expense. You’re my PA, and you need to have the tools to do your job, and that is on me to furnish. Don’t worry; it won’t cause havoc with our bottom line.”
“Thank you, though,” I replied, while pulling the cell out and booting it up. I dropped in a few numbers, the most important being my FBI handler, and saved it under the name Local Pizza Place . “What’s your cell?”
He gave me a string of numbers that I punched in as he parked at the curb for the coffee place.
“A quick cup?—”
“Or three.”
“—and then we’re back to the inn to grab an overnight bag for you and head up to the ranch,” he said. “The mayor will alert me when the fairgrounds are back in order, and then we’ll be down again.”
“Okay,” I said, shoving the excess packaging into my bag and exiting the vehicle.
Entering the place, I stopped short and blinked. Was this right? While the scent of coffee filled the air, the place looked like a shoebox. I was no builder, so I didn’t know much about length, but I would be hard-pressed to say this place was larger than thirty-five square meters of space.
Low light in the restaurant bounced off the eye-catching wood-paneled, mirrored interiors, and soft music murmured around us. A marble bar held espresso machines and delectable arrays of mouth-watering pastries and chocolates in display cases.
This was no Starbucks.
“What do you get here?” I asked.
“The most popular Italian coffees are the standard espresso,” he said. “The double espresso, the macchiato—you should know what that is—but I doubt you have heard of the moracchino.”
I spied a table in the corner, and we went over there, watching him closely for any signs of limping—there were none. “As for the moracchino, it’s espresso, chocolate syrup, milk, and cocoa.”
My eyes narrowed. “You brought me here for revenge on my venti caramel Frappuccino with nonfat coconut milk, two and a half c?—”
“If you repeat that heresy of a coffee order, I will have them feed you espresso alone,” he said as he picked up a menu. “I brought you here to appreciate real coffee and not that sugary crap.”
“Jokes on you,” I said. “This affogato looks like a ball of ice cream showered with espresso, or caffè con panna…coffee with whipped cream. Sounds like a big bag of sugary crap to me.”
“Were you a parrot in your past life?” he asked. “You parrot a lot of my words back to me.”
“Is it irritating?”
“Immensely.”
I snickered. “I would apologize for that, but nah. You do deserve it.”
A waitress came over and took our orders; an espresso and biscotti for him and a cappuccino and tiramisu for me. As she walked off, I texted my handler.
I’ll have a large pie with pepperoni and sausage with cola.
I set the cell aside as the drinks came, and I sipped mine and tried to get acclimated to the taste. Authentic Italian coffee tasted good, stronger than I’d had before, but it was growing on me.
“A splash of bourbon in this and I would be set,” I murmured.
He peered at me. “You’re a buck ten dripping wet. I doubt you can handle strong liquor, but if that is what you want, order a caffè corretto. It’s a shot of espresso with a small amount of liquor, usually grappa, sometimes sambuca or brandy.”
“You know a lot about these things,” I said. “Travelled a lot?”
“I’ve been around,” he said. “I went around Europe for half a year when I was eighteen, seeing Spanish matadors, and I was in Italy while the Pbr world circuit was there. The riders were so magnificent that I couldn’t help but want to follow their footsteps.”
“You decided to ride a death machine at eighteen?” I gaped. “Were you insane?”
“I could be,” he replied shortly.
I knew I couldn’t get a word about that accident from him.
But that was always his way, wasn’t it? To clam up about the accident that ended his career, to keep his mouth shut. Warrick requested a coffee to go, and before the opportunity left, I asked for that caffè corretto because, why not?
When the bill came, I gave Warrick a narrow-eyed, daring glare while sliding my cash over. He stared back and, thankfully, didn’t try to be slick and slide his card under my twenties. He kept his hands where they were.
“You’re a stubborn one, aren’t you?”
“Like a bull with a matador waving a red flag in his face,” I replied flatly, eking a raspy laugh from him.
Sitting back, I canted my head to the right. “I think that is the second time I’ve ever heard you laugh. You don’t do it much, do you?”
“I never had much of a reason,” he replied with a wry downtick of his lips while getting out of his seat. “Now, I might.”
“Is that supposed to mean…me?”
He lifted his coffee and flatly shut me down. “Caffeine and dopamine, a feel-good cocktail.”
“Ouch,” I slapped a hand to my chest. “That hurt.”
“You’re a tough girl.” He held out the door for me. “You’ll be all right.”
I suppose we were ignoring the elephant in the room—my freakout last night.
Fine by me. I’d rather not remember it, either.
As we drove off, my phone pinged: a text from Local Pizza Place. We’re running behind but your order is archived. A courier is coming with your order.
Meaning they know where I am, that I was okay, and they will tell me what they’ve found on my almost killer.
“Do you have a lot of horses?” The question came out of nowhere, but I didn’t mind. Warrick and I were starting to get a rapport, a strange one, but one nonetheless.
I wanted to know more about his business, and while it felt strange to make small talk, what else could I do? I could hardly pour out my heart to him and tell him the convoluted reasons why I had dropped by his doorstep. I had to keep the focus on him.
No matter how kind he was, he was still a stranger, and I hoped to keep my shit to myself. He did not need to get dragged into my mess.
He glanced over at me again. “We do, almost thirty-five, and we have a stud breeding operation with the horses and the bulls,” he explained. “For the most part, we’re self-sufficient when it comes to keeping our stock going.”
“And what happens if it dips?”
“I call Rhys and Anna Channing from the Winding Ways Ranch,” he said. “That man is a genius when it comes to genetics. He’ll send me a cryogenic cylinder, and I’ll get a new herd that is impervious to foot rot, pink eye, and gout.”
I laughed. “I don’t think cattle get gout.”
“Well, if they did, he’d cure it,” Warrick replied.
Half an hour later, after grabbing an overnight bag from the inn, we crested the hill and headed to the main house, but I decided to pay attention to the surroundings I had not seen the night we dashed to the ranch.
As we grew closer, I damn near plastered myself on the window; while the ranch house was in the distance, I saw extensive grasslands that spread out beyond it to the Western Larch, Grand Fir, and Blue Spruce shrubs.
Corrals, red-roof barns, and a couple of other buildings, such as these outhouses, or maybe bunkhouses for his stable hands, spotted the area. Large cattle roamed in a field beyond the corrals, and I saw a long-slanted roof with solar panels and a couple of work trucks and ATVs beyond the line of sight.
As we approached the ranch house, I saw that it had a wraparound porch and tall sycamore trees on either side of it. Grassy lawns surrounded the place.
“I hadn’t seen all this last night.” I smiled at him. “I like it.”
“Why, thank you,” he said. “I try not to live in a cave or in a shack. Now,” he shut the truck off and reached for his coffee, sipping it and wincing. “It’s cold.”
“Cold Joe is the pits,” I pulled the inner handle and stepped out, dragging my overnight bag from the backseat. “Would you mind if I asked one of your guys to show me around for a while?”
“Get Isaac or Santos to do it,” he said while stepping out. “Frankie is a smartass at best and, I hate to say it, a douche at worst.”
I laughed. “Noted. Now, can I get my coffee warmed up first?”