Chapter Five
Rose didn’t know what to expect in life anymore, but she did guess that during her three-day stay in the hospital, a reporter or two might eventually find her.
To the hospital’s credit—and the sheriff’s department’s best attempts—no one made it past the invisible line outside of her room. At least not until the last day there.
Rose was sitting next to a vending machine, hand wrapped around a water and an empty candy wrapper on her lap, when a man sat down next to her wearing a smile. There was a cast on his arm and hand. She recognized him with a deep sigh.
“It sure is a small world, isn’t it?”
The reporter from the parking lot the morning of the explosion gave her a smile and a small wave of the arm in a cast. He wasn’t in a hospital gown but was instead sporting a collared shirt tucked into professional-style dark khakis.
His hair was shaved close to the scalp and helped confuse her about where exactly his age fell within the thirties or forties bracket.
He looked young but oddly felt older. The hospital’s horrible fluorescents probably weren’t helping that sentiment either.
No one looked good beneath them, she had woefully decided after seeing her reflection in the bathroom mirror that morning.
Rose didn’t feel the need to pull up a polite smile yet. It wasn’t like they had met on the street again, after all.
“Living in McCoy County means always living in a small world,” she said. “I could throw a rock in the lobby and probably hit one or two people I grew up with, whether we like that fact or not.”
The man bit out some laughter. It didn’t feel forced, but it somehow didn’t feel genuine either.
Rose realized then that she had never actually learned the reporter’s name. The business card he had slipped into her hand she’d placed into the pocket of her jeans. Those jeans had been stripped off and thrown away by hospital staff after the explosion.
Now, at her second meeting with this man, she had no name to anchor him.
It bothered her.
“That’s true,” he said. “Sometimes I forget that there are people who just stay forever in small places like Seven Roads. Just because I can’t imagine wanting to, doesn’t mean it isn’t the plan others follow.”
He was smiling. With or without his name, she found that she still wasn’t a fan.
“And yet I’ve run into you twice in McCoy County in as many days,” she pointed out. “If you’re not a local then there must be something good that keeps bringing you back.”
The man laughed again and Rose regretted not eating her last hospital snack in her room.
At least she had already ditched her hospital gown.
Thanks to Deputy Collins’s wife, she was wearing an old high school T-shirt and a pair of dark sweats.
It wasn’t exactly her uniform, but it made her feel a lot more secure than the gown had.
Though that sense of security didn’t do much as he turned to face her directly.
“And what if I said you were that good thing I’m sticking around for?” he asked.
Just as she wished she had on more professional clothes, Rose was internally berating herself for leaving her new phone back in her hospital bed.
She didn’t know where her conversation was about to go but she felt deeply that avoiding it would be her best play.
Now she didn’t have her phone to use to help her excuse herself.
So she reverted to the only other tool all Southerners wielded in the face of strangers.
Rose decided to be polite. She smiled. Before she could reply, though, he swooped back in.
“I was in an accident when I was leaving town,” he explained. “I came back today to give thanks to the staff here and then saw you sitting here alone. I may not be here for you, but I can’t just ignore the Rose Little either.”
Rose was surprised at the sudden and aggressive urge to wish this man would ignore her. She didn’t dislike reporters in general, but since her rescue at the research annex, she had become wary of them. And that had been before her adventure with the car bomb.
Rose glanced down at his hands to see they were empty. If he was wanting to record her—or already trying—whatever he was using wasn’t out in the open.
“I’m not that interesting,” she said, meeting his eye again. “If you’re looking for a good story, I promise it’s not going to be with me.”
“Says the deputy who’s become quite popular lately for always acting like an action hero.” His smile managed to stretch even more. At this rate it would fall off his face. She was losing the polite battle.
So Rose took a breath and decided to be blunt.
“Listen, I’m sorry you were in an accident too, but if you’re chatting with me now hoping for an exclusive or something you can post about what happened a few months ago or a few days ago, you’re going to be disappointed.
Everything I’ve said before, right now, or in the future is off the record.
And honestly, I’m not going to say anything remotely interesting enough for any record to begin with. What happened, happened.”
She balled up her candy wrapper and stood with as much authority as she could muster while looking nowhere near professional.
“Now, I have things to do, so I’ll be leaving,” she continued. “I hope your recovery goes smoothly and you make it back home without any problems this time.”
Since there was nothing more to say Rose assumed the conversation was over. She started to turn away, relieved that her hospital room was empty at the moment.
However, the man clearly wasn’t done.
He stood to his full height, a great skyscraper to her ground-level height. Then he balled his hand at his side into a fist.
Rose went on high alert.
“You know, just because you act the hero doesn’t mean everyone is ready to bow at your feet and treat you like one.
I was just trying for conversation, I don’t need to know who you ticked off to suddenly have them going to such extremes to teach you a lesson.
” His smile stayed and his fist relaxed into a hand against his thigh as he spoke.
However, his words had lost their shine.
“You’ve given yourself too much credit, Deputy Little.
I don’t actually care about you at all.”
Rose’s high alert has switched to an overwhelming need to defend herself.
She didn’t think she was that interesting.
She wasn’t trying to give herself any kind of credit either.
Hadn’t he been the one who had followed her less than a week ago, praising her?
Asking for her story? Had she really misunderstood his intentions?
She didn’t find an answer before the man’s gaze went up above and over her shoulder in a quick flit.
That smile kept. His words were absolutely sharp.
“And on that note, I think it’s time to go,” he said. “I have my own schedule to keep.”
He was quick to leave the hallway—Rose was slow to realize what had grabbed his attention before he left so abruptly.
She turned around, looking for whatever the man had seen.
Or who, rather.
James Keller was a wall of man, wrapped in coveralls.
His arms were crossed over his chest, and he was watching after the reporter’s retreating back without Rose even remotely blocking his view.
There was a plastic shopping bag hanging from one of his wrists, but it did nothing to take away from the sheer amount of intimidation his stance was exuding.
His deep voice was just as formidable as he addressed her without looking down.
“Who was that guy?”
Rose momentarily forgot herself. She blinked up at James with an eyebrow clear to her hairline.
“Wait. Why are you here?” she returned instead.
James shook the plastic shopping bag on his wrist.
“I heard you were still in here and thought you might want some food since the cafeteria is going through renovations. I didn’t know what you liked, so I made some sandwiches. Who was that guy?”
He spoke in one, nonchalant breath until he got to the repeat question. He wasn’t happy. It pulled Rose back to her senses. She turned to see the man, but he had already disappeared from view.
“He’s a reporter,” she said. “He tried to get an interview from me earlier this week about the—well, the other thing I went through. I turned him down. I thought he was going to ask me for another interview just now.”
“What’s his name?”
Rose’s brow knitted together.
Once again, she hadn’t learned the man’s name.
If that was a note about her character or his, she didn’t know.
She shrugged.
“If his business card had survived the explosion, I’d tell you.”
James made a noise that sounded vaguely like disapproval. His expression convinced Rose even further of that theory.
“Don’t talk to him anymore,” he rumbled out.
Rose’s cheeks heated at his words. She poked his chest through it.
“Hey, now. Why are you telling me—an independent, smart, and capable woman of the law, by the way—that I can’t talk to someone?”
The poke did its job. His chin, and stare, tilted downward.
Green, brown and gold came together in a stare that fell the foot or so between them and right down into Rose’s upturned gaze. It was only by the grace of God that she kept her expression frozen when he answered her, voice deep and brimming with certainty.
“Because I don’t like him.”
* * *
ROSE TOOK THE turkey and cheese sandwich. James took the peanut butter and jelly. They were eating both twenty minutes later when the doctor gave the all clear for Rose to leave. She made her sandwich disappear almost as fast as she went through the discharge process.
One minute they were eating, the next they were standing outside of the hospital.
Rose stretched her arms out wide and made a show of letting the sun hit her face.
Like James, there was some bruising across her skin. It was faded but there. Though Rose didn’t seem like the kind of person to care much. She shouldered her bag and pulled out her phone with a heavy sigh of relief.
“I would very much like to not be back here anytime soon,” she said. “I’m not knocking the service, but I’d rather not see this place for a long, long time.”
James couldn’t see what she was doing on her phone, but he guessed she was trying to arrange a ride. When Mr. Donahue had heard the news that she was still in the hospital, James had been sure that at least one person might be hovering around her. If only for protection’s sake.
He’d thought it was more than appropriate to check. The food had been an afterthought. One he thought had been unnecessary as he’d walked off the elevator and saw Rose and a man chatting at the vending machines.
It had taken less than the walk between them to realize the man was not anyone she was friendly with. Never mind his balled fist or the smile that looked so forced.
However, Rose had been James’s biggest red flag. He hadn’t been able to see her face, but her body language was off. Considering James had seen her look more relaxed with a bomb strapped to the car they were sitting in and standing next to, her posture told him everything he needed to know.
Maybe he should have explained his bad vibes to the woman herself, instead of acting like some kind of jealous boyfriend. Instead, he’d simply given her a sandwich and been fine with not talking about the reporter again.
Now James couldn’t help but wonder again if Rose actually had a boyfriend, jealous or otherwise.
“Is someone coming to pick you up?” he asked, deciding to get right to the point. “If not, I don’t mind giving you a ride.”
Rose shook her head, eyes still on her phone screen.
“I didn’t know when I was going to be discharged, so nothing was set in stone for anyone to get me,” she answered. “I’m just letting the sheriff know I’m out right now. I want to see him before he benches me completely from the investigation.”
Her head turned with a swivel. Her eyebrow was raised.
“By the way, have you gotten any updates on the case? Has anyone asked you any more questions or anything?”
It was James’s turn to shake his head.
“I was told I would be contacted if anyone needed anything else from me. I also got a promise that I’d be called when the investigation was over so I could follow up with the insurance company for the shop.”
An expression he couldn’t place flashed across Rose’s features. She looked like she wanted to say one thing but decided against it in the moment.
“So you’re probably not working today, then, are you?”
That conversational swerve threw James off, but he answered quickly with a no. It surprised him further when she nodded to herself and smiled.
“Then I’ll take that ride,” she said. “But I have one condition first.”
James could have pointed out that giving her a ride was a favor, one that would help her out and not him, but the way she was staring up at him, almost excited, had his interest piqued.
He couldn’t help it. He asked her what she meant.
“What one condition?”
Wildcard Rose didn’t miss a beat.
“I need you to come home with me.”