Chapter 7
Imay not have known the dog’s real name, but I enjoyed having him for company that afternoon as I harvested mushrooms. Unlike the woman who’d asked me to look after him, he was a good-natured, likeable dog. I christened him Duke.
Brooklyn had rushed off without arranging to pick the dog back up, so I took Duke back to the Donner Bakery around the time I figured she’d finish work. Sure enough, the bakery’s back door opened just after four o’clock, and she was backlit by the warm glow inside. As she stepped out, she was still looking behind her and calling out a goodbye to whoever was in there. Then she let the door close with a loud sigh, as though relieved.
She was wearing the same tight dark-red pants, leather jacket, and shiny black shoes as this morning, but her hair was in a ponytail and her shoulders were slumped. As she walked toward me, I could tell she’d had a long day. Her posture seemed tired, the light gait she’d had this morning gone. Now her steps were heavy, and she was favoring one leg.
I didn’t want to talk to her or interact in any way. I was only there to give the dog back and wasn’t asking for more insults. But she was limping, and no matter how much I disliked her, I was still a gentleman.
“You hurt your foot?” I asked. “Do you need help?”
She waved a hand, dismissing my offer. “Wore heels today, that’s all. I thought they’d be comfortable enough.” She didn’t stop, but limped determinedly past me, heading toward one of the pickup trucks in the parking lot. She was getting around town in Noah Malone’s distinctive truck with flames painted on its sides and over the hood. Hard to miss.
“Here’s the dog.” I went after her, holding the end of the leash out for her to take. We’d had two dogs when I was a kid, and I’d searched through the junk in my daddy’s attic until I found an old collar and leash that were serviceable enough to use.
“He’s not my dog.” She pulled her jacket tighter around her, not looking me in the eyes. “He’s better off with you.”
“Wait.” I caught her arm to stop her forward momentum, turning her to face me. “You haven’t found his owner yet?” From the way she was acting, I knew the answer before she shook her head. “I only said I’d take him for the day,” I reminded her. “Now he’s yours again.”
Brooklyn let out another sigh. Her eyes looked as tired as her gait, and despite what a terrible person she was, I felt sorry for her. How exhausting had her day been? Hadn’t she gotten any breaks?
“I can’t have a dog,” she said. “And I don’t know the first thing about them. You obviously do.”
“Now, wait a minute...” I stopped talking when a muffled ringing sound came from her jacket pocket.
Tugging her phone out, she looked down at the screen and drew in a ragged breath. She bit her lip, staring at the phone for a moment, and her face lost its color. Whoever it was, she seemed uncertain about talking to them. Then she squared her shoulders. “I need to take this,” she said. Turning her back to me, she brought the phone to her ear. “Yes, Spike?”
I frowned. Spike was an unusual name. Was she talking to her boyfriend?
“I’m sorry, but I can’t do more than I’m already doing. I’m trying to arrange for?—”
The person on the other end cut her off, and she listened for a moment, shaking her head. “No,” she said. “There’s no point in threatening me. I can’t give you what I don’t have.”
Brooklyn’s tone was matter-of-fact, but her words made me stiffen. She was being threatened?
“That kind of talk won’t get you anywhere,” she added. “Scare me as much as you like, but I can’t get you the money any faster. All I can do is my best.” She listened a moment longer, then hung up.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
She clenched her jaw, lifting her chin. Her eyes had lost their tired look, and they flashed as though she was angry. But her cheeks were pale and there was a deep furrow in her forehead. I was pretty sure she was fighting against being afraid.
I used to see a look like that in Ruth’s eyes when my daddy’s biker friends would turn up at our house. Though I’d done my best to shield my sister from them, I’d been a boy, and they’d been grown men. As far as I knew, they’d never actually hurt her. But the threat of it had been as strong as the stench of sweat and dirty leather.
My gut roiled at the memory.
“I’ll take the dog,” Brooklyn said, putting out her hand for the leash I was holding. “Thanks for looking after him today.”
“You’ve changed your mind?”
As I wasn’t giving it to her, she stepped forward to take the leash from me. I didn’t miss her wince as she took the step to reach me.
“I might as well keep him overnight.” She looked down at Duke, and I had a feeling she was weighing up his guard dog potential. Did she expect to be in physical danger?
“Who was on the phone?” I asked, my tone rougher than it should be seeing as I hardly knew her. Not that I could help the way I sounded when my throat had gone dry and my muscles were tense. Though Brooklyn wasn’t anything like my sister, my reaction to a potential threat had been triggered as though Ruth were the one in danger.
As a boy, I’d lived in fear. And when fear keeps hold of you for long enough, its dark fingerprints on your thoughts can become a permanent stain.
“It’s personal.” With her chin lifted, she gave me another of her defiant looks. Or maybe that was her normal look, and anything softer was unusual.
“It sounded like you need help.”
“Nope.” She walked toward her pickup, the dog trotting at her side.
“I’ll stop at your place to check everything’s okay there,” I said as she reached her truck. “I live past your place, further up the mountain, so it’s on my way.”
The glare she gave me was impressive. “No, thank you. My husband is twice your size. He’s there right now with his gun collection and an itchy trigger finger. So drive right past, and don’t even slow down.”
She wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. Maybe I was wrong, but I suspected she was making up a husband to keep me away. And who could blame her? I was a big man with a bad reputation.
“I understand you might be afraid of me,” I said. “But I’m?—”
“I’m not afraid of you.” She opened her truck door and the dog jumped in. “By all means, stop by. The last creep to follow me home is still alive. Mostly. Apparently, having to be fed through a tube isn’t so bad. And the chance of a bullet going through one of your major organs is only fifty-fifty. Why not risk it?”
The woman was infuriating. Still, I had to admire her quick tongue. She didn’t give an inch.
“All I’m suggesting is that I take a quick look to make sure everything’s as it should be,” I said. “No need for me to come inside.”
Maybe nobody in Green Valley would want a Baxter hanging around, but I couldn’t leave her to fend for herself.
She slid into her driver’s seat. “I might have let you borrow the dog, but that doesn’t make us friends.”
“You let me borrow—?” The slam of her truck door cut off the rest of my incredulous question.
She didn’t turn the truck on right away, but bent over in the driver’s seat. It wasn’t until she pulled them off that I realized she had been fiddling with her shoes. She probably had blisters.
I got into my truck, and when she pulled out of the parking lot, I followed her all the way up to the Malones’ farmhouse. It was a pretty house, neat and tidy, with a vegetable garden and a chicken run. It was close to what my own family home had looked like once, before my momma’s death and the house’s subsequent years of neglect.
When Brooklyn slid out of her truck, she was in bare feet with her shoes in one hand. She’d taken her hair out of its ponytail so it was loose around her shoulders. Duke leapt out with her, bouncing around like he was overjoyed to be there. Probably knew he was likely to get fed.
She glared at me as I got out of my pickup. “What don’t you understand about the words go and away? Do you need me to spell them for you? Shall I write them on flash cards?”
I held up both hands. “I don’t mean you any harm. But if someone you’d rather not see is fixing on paying you a visit, maybe you should let me?—”
“You’re the person I’d rather not see.”
“Good grief. You’re impossible.” Shaking my head, I gave up. “I’ll be on my way then, ma’am. Have a pleasant evening. Or not. I can’t bring myself to care much either way.”
Getting back in my truck, I tried to start it. The engine turned over but didn’t catch. I tried it again. Same thing.
I held in a curse. The battery needed replacing, and I should have done it already, when it first showed signs of giving out. Getting a new battery put in would make me late, and Gemma was waiting at home for me. Not that she’d miss me much, seeing as she wasn’t currently speaking to me.
Sliding out, I opened the truck’s hood.
Brooklyn hadn’t gone inside but was watching from the porch with narrowed eyes. “Your truck’s broken down, huh?” She made quotation marks with her fingers around the “broken down” part, as though I might have somehow faked the death of my battery. “I suppose now you think I’ll invite you in?”
I scratched my beard, thinking about what to do next. “Now we have two choices,” I said. “First option is that you pull your truck up to mine so I can use jumper cables to start my engine.”
She folded her arms. “Option two?”
“I could call Winston Auto Shop, see if Cletus or Beau will come out to switch out the old battery with a new one.” She was still glaring with her arms folded, so I added, “Seems like that’s the best option. I’ll stay out here and make the call. You can go inside and carry on with your regular business. Sharpen your fangs, or cook up some small children for your dinner. Don’t worry about me.”
Brooklyn pushed her lips to the side, looking me up and down. Then she gave an impatient huff of breath. “I’ll move my truck closer. It’ll get you out of here faster.”
“A highly desirable outcome for both of us,” I agreed.
She positioned her pickup so its hood was almost touching mine. While I hooked up one end of the cables, she did the other. She was in bare feet and walked gingerly, still favoring one leg.
“You’ve done this before,” I remarked as she deftly attached her end of the cables to the right battery terminals.
Her gaze jerked up to mine. “You sound surprised. You think a woman can’t know how to start an engine?” Her tone held a note of challenge.
I shrugged. “There’s a woman working at Winston Auto Shop who seems like a great mechanic. But you don’t look much like a car person.”
She tossed her long hair back from her face, the gesture full of that fiery attitude I’d been so attracted to when I’d first seen her, before the insults had started.
“What exactly does a car person look like?” she demanded.
“Dirtier.” I cast a meaningful look at her red pants. Though I couldn’t help but admire the way they hugged her shapely legs and bottom, they clearly hadn’t been designed with greasy engines in mind.
She waved a dismissive hand. “I’ve done this plenty of times. When my boyfriend’s band was playing in small venues, they used to haul their gear around in a van that broke down all the time.” She pressed her lips together as though the memory wasn’t a good one. “I was the sap who always helped out.”
It seemed like it was a sore point with her, so I didn’t comment. Besides, the word boyfriend had started a number of questions circling in my mind, like sharks in a small pool. Was she still dating him? Had he been the man threatening her on the phone? And why was I wondering about the dating habits of the rudest, most unlikeable woman I’d ever had the misfortune to meet?
I got into my pickup to start it up. When I turned the key, it roared to life. Leaving it idling, I got out to retrieve my jumper cables.
“Thank you,” I told her, stowing them away. “And goodbye. Hopefully forever.”
She chewed her lower lip, frowning at me like she was trying to figure something out. “You’re really leaving,” she said, as though she hadn’t been sure.
“As fast as my truck will take me.” I walked to my driver’s side door.
“So you just stopped to check I wasn’t in danger?”
“My mistake. Won’t happen again.” I slid behind the wheel and swiveled to look out the back window, ready to reverse out of there.
She rapped on my window, the sharp sound of her knuckles on the glass startling me.
I stomped on the brakes and wound down the window. “Did you forget something?”
“Do you know how to work an oven?”
I turned the sentence over in my head, looking for a hidden meaning. Didn’t everyone know how to work an oven?
“You having trouble getting Hansel and Gretel up to roasting temperature?” I asked.
She shot me a withering look, but turned away so quickly, I half suspected she’d had to stifle a laugh. Then she motioned to the house. “Would you come in for a moment?”
“Why?”
“I need help deciphering the symbols on the oven. Please. It’ll only take a second, and believe me, I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t desperate. I can’t eat burned cheese again.”
She walked toward her porch, as though hoping I’d follow. But I just sat there, debating whether I should. Why suffer through more time with her when I could just drive away?
As I watched her climb the steps to her porch, I noticed she was still limping. And dammit, if she needed help, it was all but impossible for me to refuse. I just wasn’t wired that way.
Still, I cursed out loud before I got back out of my idling truck and followed her inside, sure I was going to regret it. Duke rushed down the hallway in front of us, his tail wagging furiously. I’d never seen a bouncier dog. He was practically on springs.
The farmhouse was as nice inside as out. As I walked down the hallway to the kitchen, I noticed the things that made it seem homey. Like how well the color of the curtains complemented the walls. And the fresh herbs on the kitchen windowsill that were in cheerful pots. Although when I took a closer look, the plants were limper than they should be, as though deprived of water.
But on the whole, the place had a stylish yet comfortable feel. And the difference between this place and my daddy’s—my—neglected old house reminded me how I’d let Gemma down by letting her live somewhere that was so rundown. I should be working harder to fix it up.
Once in the kitchen, Brooklyn shrugged off her leather jacket. My thoughts about how I could make my house look more like hers screeched to an abrupt halt. Underneath, she was wearing a black shirt that hugged her top half just as well as her red pants hugged her bottom half. Which was to say, very well indeed.
That proved the old saying about not judging books. She might have a deceptively pretty cover, but inside she read like a horror story.
Moving to Brooklyn’s oven, I peered at the dial. “That symbol there, with the line on top? That’s for broiling. The one with two lines is for baking. The one with the fan?—”
“Which one for pizza?” Brooklyn interrupted. She moved next to me, and I became sharply aware of the soft line of her cheek as she peered at the dial. The scent of the bakery was on her, and the hint of baked goods was delicious. But underneath that was another scent. Something feminine and sexy.
How could someone so abrasive be so beautiful? It didn’t seem right. But my body was reacting to her, my blood pumping faster. My biology didn’t care that she called me rude names. It was more interested in the sensational curves under her clothes.
“Frozen pizza?” I gave myself a mental shake. If a flower was poisonous, did it really matter how good it looked?
She nodded. “That’s what I want to cook for dinner.”
“This symbol here. Set it like this, then turn this knob to four hundred. And see how the rack’s at the top? Put it in the middle.” I slid the rack into place for her.
“Four hundred. Okay, got it. Thank you.”
Next to my bulk, she seemed small. She only came up to my shoulder. Her size reminded me of the conversation I’d overheard. If someone was threatening her, how could she protect herself?
“You’re staying here by yourself?” I asked.
She narrowed her eyes, suspicion returning to her expression. “Of course not. My husband’s out back, wiring up some of his explosives.”
I lifted both hands, motioning for her to simmer down. “You’re in no danger from me, ma’am. That phone call made me concerned for your safety, but I can see you’re already fully armed. Your tongue is sharp enough to be lethal.”
“Did you miss the part where I said my phone call was none of your business? And don’t call me ma’am. It makes me feel like I’m starring in a Western.”
Turning my back on her, I headed toward the door. “Well, I sure hope Noah and his girlfriend come back soon,” I said over my shoulder. “I liked it better when they were living here.”
“Wait. You know Noah?”
Stepping outside, I glanced back at her and nodded. “I grew up here. I know lots of folks, and lots of folks know me. At least, they think they do.” I tried not to sound bitter, but it wasn’t easy. I hadn’t cared what people said when I was here by myself, but having to expose Gemma to the town’s gossip mill didn’t sit well with me. “Ask me, they’re overly interested in things that don’t concern them.”
“Ugh,” Brooklyn muttered as she moved to shut the door behind me, “that’s what I was afraid of.”