Chapter 12 #3
Jeremiah was pretty sure it was iced tea. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said. “Sir.”
“Suddenly I’m sir? Shoot, you got it bad.” Garrett kept losing control of the grin he was trying to hide. “I feel compelled to look out for you, Jeremiah,” he said. “You’re my son’s brother.”
He’d had no idea the patriarch felt that way. “I don’t mean any offense, sir. Garrett. But I’ve never needed anyone looking out for me.”
“I sound like a knight. Sir Garrett.” He laughed a little, easy, and completely unoffended as far as Jeremiah could tell. “You carried me outta the flames,” he said. “That alone creates a bond.”
He didn’t agree or disagree. He hadn’t thought about it, but there had been an odd ease, and a kind of familiarity settling in between him and Garrett Brand since that day.
“I uh…I died, you know.”
The words startled him almost out of his chair. He tipped the tequila bottle to his bowl-like copita glass again. “I heard that. They said Lily did CPR, brought you back right before Ethan and I busted in.”
Garrett nodded, and for a long moment his gaze turned inward. Jeremiah watched his face, curious what he was thinking, or remembering. What had Garrett Brand experienced?
Eventually, he went on. “I came back knowin’ something. Just knowin’ it. Nobody told me while I was…I just came back knowin’.”
Jeremiah got the feeling there was a lot more to tell. “Knowing what?” he asked softly. He leaned forward without intending to.
“The only thing in this life that matters is love. Nothin’ else even comes close. The rest is…it’s made up, you know? Our governments, our businesses, our divisions—we make it all up. It’s not real, none of it. Love’s what’s real.”
His voice seemed to tighten.
“Don’t you let it go, you hear? It’s an insult to life itself to let it go. It’s precious…more precious than gold.”
Funny he should put it that particular way.
“That’s…that’s deep. Thank you, Garrett, for sharing that with me.”
Suddenly the older man clasped his forearm firmly. “It’s not an opinion, son. It’s the truth, the only truth there is when it comes down to it. You take heed, you hear?”
His eyes were alight. He meant what he was saying. Jeremiah nodded. “Yes, sir.”
Garrett smiled, relaxed his grip, then looked past him toward the bar.
Jeremiah turned and saw Willow coming back down the stairs in a pair of jeans and a pretty white blouse with lacy insets at the shoulders.
Her black hair hung loose, thank goodness.
All he ever wanted to do when it was all pinned up for duty, was set it free.
“I got one more thing to share, Jeremiah,” Garrett said.
Jeremiah nodded but didn’t look at him. His eyes were on Willow’s and hers were on him. “What’s that, sir?”
“She looks at you the same way. Just like a neon sign.” He chuckled softly. "It’s like you two are the only ones who can’t see it.” He chuckled a little harder as he got up and walked back over to the bar.
Willow came to the table just as the band started playing. People were getting up and heading through the archway onto the dance floor, a river of them cutting off her approach.
So he got up and made his way toward her, and she toward him. When they came face-to-face, she clasped his shoulder to keep from being knocked back again and he held her waist, turning her in a circle until they were out of the current.
She looked up at him. He thought maybe she believed him. She said, “I’m of no use to you now. I’m not fixin’ to give you access to stuff you ought not have access to.”
“Are you fixin’ to dance with me, though?”
She shrugged and her eyes dipped, but her lips smiled from below. “I mean, I could. Turns out I have the night off.”
He pulled her into his arms and they joined the folks heading onto the dance floor. The band tonight was Dirt River, one of three local house bands who alternated nights whenever big acts weren’t booked.
He led Willow Brand right into a two-step, and when she caught on, she smiled up at him in surprise. “You can dance.”
“One of crime-dad’s commandments. Know how to pass in society. I had to take lessons in dancing and etiquette and such.”
“He made you do this from prison?”
“He was blind to the irony,” he said.
She said, “I’m sorry your mamma was taken from you so young. It must’ve been awful, I can’t even imagine.”
“Don’t try to,” he said. “It hurt. You learn to live with it.”
“What else can you do?” she asked.
He pulled her a little closer. “More cheerful topics?”
“Sure. You can tell me what you’re lookin’ for, out in the desert with a metal detector.”
He wondered if she already knew. The answer was in his old man’s diary, and Orrin had been alone in the bunkhouse with it. He’d realized just a shade too late how seriously little Nancy Drew and her Hardy Boy Brother took their work as amateur private dicks.
Garrett Brand’s voice played through his head, with a flash of his fiery eyes. More precious than gold.
“My father told me he left some gold here in Quinn. But he didn’t say where.”
She nodded. “What if you’re wrong, and there’s no gold? Have you thought about that?”
He shrugged, because he didn’t want to think about that.
“You said someone is contesting the will. Have you looked into that at all?”
“The lawyer’s handling all that.” He frowned at her. “Why?” Did she know something?
“Look, on the way in here today, I got a message from dispatch. They sent me this.” She pulled out her phone, and tapped it.
A hushed male voice said, “I saw who stole that motorcycle that caused the accident. It was that stray Brand that wears the sombrero.”
Ice water filled Jeremiah’s veins. He looked at Willow, searching her for the accusation.
“Now listen to this,” she said, and held the phone out again.
“I saw the guy who threw the brick through the drug store window tonight. It was that blond-haired Brand, the country singer’s brother.”
He blinked. “But Willow, I didn’t—”
“It’s the same voice,” she said. “The same person is IDing you for stuff you didn’t do. We need to figure out why, and then we’ll know who. So I got to thinking about the will and how you said someone’s contesting it. I thought it might give us a possible motive.”
He blinked at her. She said, “What?”
“You didn’t ask if I did it.”
“Well, duh. I knew that.”
It took him a minute to process the words. “You didn’t think, even for a minute, that I might’ve—”
“No! Jeez, Jeremiah. No.”
“Well, why not?”
She gazed into his eyes so long it was uncomfortable, and then it wasn’t.
It was some kind of connection. “Because you’re a good person.
You’re a good person, you saved the puppy, you’re kind to orphaned children, you sprung me from the hospital, you saved my uncle’s life.
” She put a hand to his cheek and said, “How the heck can you not realize that you are good?”
He couldn’t answer. His mind was busy allowing the notion to settle in. What if she was right? What if he was actually one of the good guys?
“What if you didn’t get a nickel from your old man?
” She had stopped dancing. They stood in the middle of the dance floor.
The glass front walls were open out to the patio, with its party lights and water feature.
She was looking up at him, and everything in his body wanted to kiss her right there in front of the entire town.
Her cousins would have him lynched by morning, his own brother leading the pack.
“What would you be, if you could be anything you wanted, Gringo Sombrero?”
The words that floated to mind were, I’d be your man, Willow Brand. But he didn’t say it out loud. So instead he said, “I’m writing, some.” And he watched her face.
“Writing?”
“That’s what the journal was for. I mean, I was raised by a drug lord from his prison cell with a cast of criminal caregivers. It feels like a novel.”
She opened her mouth, closed it again. “A novel?”
He shrugged. “Although lately, I’ve been feeling a children’s book coming on. Frank and Beans.”
A smile took charge of her face. “Jeremiah, that’s amazing. I had no idea.”
He shrugged. “He’s dog-sitting tonight, did I tell you?”
“Frankie is?”
He nodded. “The girls went to live with their father. But Frankie says his grandparents are too frail to manage such a big fella. ‘Bout broke my heart. Poor kid.”
He glanced down at her to see her eyes bigger and browner than he probably ever had, gazing up at him. Her mouth was open just a little. Then she whispered, “There you are,” and she laid her head on his chest. “Oh my God, there you are Jeremiah Thorne.”