Chapter Four
Honor’s Edge Investigations Office
“You’re okay with this, right?” Sam hung up her coat on the hooks next to the back door of the office.
She’d gotten the rental papers from the realtor last night and would hand them over to Cal to sign this morning.
But she still had the nagging feeling there was something Nate wasn’t telling her about how he felt about this.
Nate hung up his coat, too, after scraping the slushy snow off his boots. “It’s your apartment, Sam.”
“It’s your brother, Nate.”
Nate glanced up the staircase next to them that led up to Sam’s old apartment, where Cal had spent the night. “Who is also an adult who can make his own decisions.”
“But you don’t like his decisions,” Sam continued.
If he thought he could blandly answer her away, he was going to be sorely disabused of that notion.
Nate sighed, clearly a little irritated with her. But she was irritated with him for not being forthcoming. So there.
“I’m worried about him being alone,” he grumbled. “But other than that … I’m glad he’s back. I’m glad he’s got plans.”
“Is it because of the drinking?” Sam had witnessed Cal being all too happy to get drunk a few times herself.
She’d watched Nate and Landon be concerned about it. Watched Cal be belligerent about their concern. It wasn’t her business, exactly, but she didn’t want this thing she was doing to cause a wedge between her and Nate.
All because he wouldn’t just talk.
“Yeah, and…” But Nate trailed off and then started walking into the main part of the office.
Sam scurried after him. “You can’t just yeah and then walk away.”
Nate shrugged. “We’re at work. We should focus on work. You’ve got just as much to do today as I do. God knows Mrs. Hyatt’s going to be badgering me soon enough.”
“Do you really think I’m going to let that go?”
He sighed and settled into his desk. He glanced up at the ceiling, like he could see Cal up there.
“Look, I don’t know. I just hope he’s doing this for the right reasons and not in reaction to something else.”
“Nate, I swear to God, if you don’t get less cryptic …”
“Something about Aly and Landon …” Nate shook his head. “I don’t know. I get the feeling he doesn’t really like to be around them in a couple capacity, and with the wedding coming up … maybe he just needs to be away from it, and this is as good a place as any. Certainly better than Texas … maybe.”
Sam also looked up at the ceiling. She had noticed Cal be a little weird around Aly and Landon. She’d just figured it was about the brothers slowly easing back into having a real relationship instead of a mean, contentious one.
But … “Maybe he’s got a thing for Aly.”
Nate looked at her like she’d grown a second head. “Cal?”
Sam shrugged. “Sure. Why not?”
“I don’t know.” He shook his head. “I just never got that impression.”
“I never did either, but why else would the wedding bother him?”
“Weddings and commitment can be a sore spot for people for all sorts of reasons,” Nate said, kind of blandly.
His look was not pointed, because he wasn’t looking at her, but it felt a bit pointed all the same.
So, okay, maybe that was fair. Because she didn’t get weirded out about wedding talk … until Nate gave her that look.
Like that was where they were headed, and they both knew it, but their own issues kept them right where they were.
Thank God.
And on that note, they both got to work for the day. Cal came down and signed the rental agreement, after being an ass and trying to argue a few points. Cal might have all that lawyer polish and impressive argument skills, but they had nothing on Sam’s stubbornness … if she did say so herself.
She did some more work on trying to trace Glenda’s husband’s family. No one could quite agree when her muteness started, but Sam was still intrigued by the fact Glenda had sold off so much of her ranch before he’d died.
She’d talked to a few of Landon’s ranch hands who would have been around when Benjamin Bennet bought that land, but none of them had given her anything to go on in regard to reasons.
It had to be in there somewhere. Somewhere with her late husband. Not that nothing else traumatic could have happened, but…
If Glenda was already hermiting in that little cabin when her husband was still alive, maybe the answer lay in his life. Not hers.
So, after a brief lunch and a conversation with Nate about Aly wanting them to come up to the ranch for dinner, Sam situated herself back at her computer for the afternoon and lost herself in trying to unearth anything there was to unearth about Gerald Arthur Harrington.
She hadn’t found much on the man. He was the most typical rancher stock around these parts.
Not much of a digital footprint—which made sense since he’d died in the nineties.
She’d need a trip to the library to find some old news articles about him or his family, so that’d be tomorrow’s job.
She sent his information off to a genealogist she sometimes worked with who might be able to give her a clear picture of the history of his family—not just Glenda’s.
It didn’t feel like a lead or even progress, but it was something.
On a frustrated sigh, she looked up from her computer when the bell on the door sounded.
She was surprised it looked like it was already getting dark out—and even more surprised when she glanced at the time on her computer and it was nearly five.
When she was supposed to quit for the day and head up to the Bennet Ranch.
She’d really been in the zone. So she tried to shake the cobwebs away and focus on the here and now.
She smiled at the woman. “Welcome to Honor’s Edge. Can I help you with something?”
The woman wrinkled her nose, like Sam had said something distasteful. Which was an odd reaction when this lady had walked in here of her own accord.
“I was looking for—” Everything in the woman’s demeanor changed. “Oh, Nate! I was looking for you.”
Sam looked back at the entrance from the backroom where Nate had just walked in. He stopped abruptly at the sight of the blonde. Sam couldn’t even begin to read his expression because it went very, very blank.
“Mrs. Hyatt. I didn’t know you were coming by,” he said, very flatly.
Sam’s eyebrows rose. This was Mrs. Hyatt? Sam had never seen her in person because Nate had taken that first consultation and the case, and Mrs. Hyatt had always wanted to meet in Livingston. But Sam had created a kind of image in her mind of what a scorned wife might look like.
It wasn’t … this.
This woman was tall, lithe, blonde. Built. Hair and makeup done just so. Sam wouldn’t have been able to guess an age because the woman seemed almost … ageless.
It wasn’t a competition, so it shouldn’t matter. But Sam suddenly felt very tiny and frumpy in a way she hadn’t thought much about since she’d been a teenager worried over every silly thing.
Particularly when Mrs. Hyatt all but rushed over to Nate and looked imploringly up at him with tears in her pretty blue eyes.
“I’ve thought a lot about what you said about it not being a good idea for me to come with you to get the pictures of Michael. But I wanted to talk to you more about the possibility.” Mrs. Hyatt reached out and put her hand on Nate’s elbow like it belonged there.
Nate stood still as a statue, that blank look on his face Sam didn’t see often these days, so rigid Sam wanted to be amused. She really did.
But she couldn’t muster it.
Especially when the woman glanced over at Sam, who found herself standing for some reason she couldn’t fathom.
It was a kind of down-the-nose dismissal. “I don’t suppose we could have some privacy,” Mrs. Hyatt said, looking at Sam a bit like Sam assumed this woman would look at the help.
Sam found herself momentarily speechless. Privacy. This was her office, her building, her company, and this woman had the gall to ask for some privacy while trying to paw her boyfriend.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Hyatt,” Nate said, formal but firm. “Sam and I have dinner plans. Why don’t you call back in the morning, and we’ll set up a meeting that works for both of us?”
Mrs. Hyatt pouted. “I thought we’d agree that you’d call me Jules.”
“And I thought we’d agreed that it goes against our policy at Honor’s Edge for you to accompany me on any excursion to investigate your husband. If you want that, you’re going to have to hire someone else.”
“Oh, don’t overreact, Nate.” She sighed gustily. “Fine, I’ll call in the morning.”
Temper flashed in his eyes, but either Jules didn’t see it or didn’t care. She was still pouting, and Sam still found herself watching the whole display speechless.
Particularly when Mrs. Hyatt turned away from Nate, gave Sam another once-over, then walked—no, sauntered—out of the front door.
“You ready to go?” Nate asked gruffly.
Sam still found she couldn’t quite form words, because … well, everything about this case suddenly made sense. Why the woman was insisting on accompanying Nate. Why she was a problem. Why she made Nate edgy and pissed off.
Mrs. Hyatt was hitting on him.
Half of her wanted to laugh, and half of her … was all twisted up in ways she didn’t like at all.
So, Sam only nodded and locked the front door, then followed Nate out back to his truck. She didn’t broach the topic at first. In fact, she thought about ignoring it completely. None of her business, but…
Well, guys could be kind of dense. Maybe Nate wouldn’t be quite so pissed off if he knew that Mrs. Hyatt—Jules—was being difficult for his attention, not just to be difficult.
“You do realize what she’s doing, don’t you?” she asked him as he navigated off the highway and onto the road that would lead them up to the Bennet Ranch.
He didn’t answer right away, so she glanced at his profile. She couldn’t quite read it in the dim light of the truck cab. But she noticed he shifted in his seat just a fraction, which was as much of an answer as anything.
“I guess I do,” he said carefully, not looking over at her.
“And that’s why you wanted to switch cases with me.”
He slid her a glance before turning his attention to the road. “Maybe.”
Sam hated the prick of jealousy. Because Nate was going to end up working with women—beautiful, built women at that—on occasion, and what was the point of loving him if she didn’t trust him?
But that didn’t mean she could just … get rid of jealousy. It also didn’t mean she had to act on it. She could be calm and rational and normal. “You think avoiding it and her is going to work?”
“I think it’s the only thing that might get through to her.
Look, this isn’t about me. I’m … a symbol.
She wants to get back at her scumbag husband.
” He lifted a shoulder. “Can’t blame her on that score, but me being very clear and very firm hasn’t worked.
So unless you’ve got any great ideas on how to get through to her, she’s all yours.
Because she’s certainly not going to paw all over me while I’m trying to take pictures of her husband cozied up with his coworker. ”
*
Nate couldn’t look over at Sam again while he drove up the narrow road. But something about her reaction to this whole thing … bothered him.
He really didn’t want to analyze why.
Everything about Jules Hyatt bothered him. Particularly the lack of subtlety and then pretending like he was insane when he called her on it.
He didn’t want to take her case. He didn’t want to deal with her.
And part of him thought that was why he had to.
He wasn’t a coward. She was just a woman. Everything she was doing wasn’t about him.
But he didn’t know what karmic debt he was paying to be the one dealing with it.
Nate had no doubt Mrs. Hyatt’s husband was cheating on her—Nate worked those cases more than any other. There was a certain kind of man he could almost guarantee thought more with his dick than even an eighth of his brain.
The problem was, he didn’t think Jules was a full-on victim here—at least when it came to the way she dealt with him. She had some kind of angle, and she wanted to use him on the way.
He parked his truck in front of his childhood home, started getting out, but Sam grumbled something that sounded a lot like…
“You could tell her not to paw at you.”
He could have pretended he didn’t hear her, but he was intrigued she’d finally said something that acknowledged pawing. “Thank you. Hadn’t thought of that,” he returned mildly as he met her in front of the truck.
She stood on the long two-by-four that acted as the end of the driveway. It didn’t even put her up to his chin.
The sun had set, but the sky to the west still glowed enough to cast a light on her features. She was looking up at him, studying him. She had a way of studying him that he never could quite read. There was something wary in it, but not altogether bad. More … considering.
He couldn’t deny that he liked all of her looks, especially when they were geared at him. He reached out, tucked a strand of hair behind her ears. “Jealous?”
She lifted her chin. “Never.” A little temper flashed in her dark eyes, and yeah, jealousy.
It soothed that little wriggle of something unpleasant.
He didn’t want her to be jealous, per se, but in this case … well, he supposed he kind of did. Just a little proof that she felt what he did.
He knew that was a little messed up. They lived together. Went to bed every night in the same bed next to each other and said I love you more and more easily. They were in a functioning, supportive, positive adult relationship.
But he wanted her to be a little jealous someone was hitting on him.
“Not even if I admitted I’ve been jealous of literally every guy who looks at you twice, even though I know I shouldn’t be.”
She looked up at him in the falling light, something like humor in the slight curve of her mouth. “Every one?”
“Every. Single. One. Want me to name them?” He tapped his temple. “Got a list right up here.”
Her mouth curved up even more. “So what if I was jealous?”
“My ego would be greatly soothed.”
She reached out, pressed her palms to his chest. “Your ego is just fine,” she murmured, then she pushed to her toes and pressed her mouth to his.
She kissed him, even when the sound of a car engine had him pulling away. A door slammed, and Cal’s voice cut through the quiet.
“What the hell is wrong with you guys? You have a house. You do not need to make out in front of this one.”
“We have great sex, Cal,” Sam replied cheerfully. “You should try it.” Then she bounced off the two-by-four and sauntered toward the house, clearly pleased with herself for sending Cal sputtering and making him uncomfortable.
“She’s got a screw loose,” Cal muttered passing Nate on the way up the walk to the front door.
Nate laughed. “Maybe,” he agreed. But he loved her, screw loose and all.
Enough, he supposed, to handle the handsy Mrs. Hyatt, one way or another.