Chapter 4
“I’ve known Mrs. Grimes most of my life. I never knew she was a gamer,”
Sara said, laughing.
“It’s a new world. My mother, God rest her soul, wouldn’t have known a game controller from a TV controller.”
She studied him quietly.
“I wouldn’t have taken you for a gamer.”
“You’d be surprised at how many of us there are,”
he replied.
“It’s a help if you go into the military. The same sort of software used in gaming is used to control drones.”
She nodded.
“I’ve read about that.”
He smiled.
“I like your little brother,” he said.
She smiled.
“I like him, too.”
“How did Hartman like Goose?”
he asked abruptly.
“He doesn’t like animals. Or much of anything else,”
she said shortly, her hands gripping her purse tightly.
He glanced at her and back at the road ahead.
“He’s never let sentiment get in the way of making more money,”
he said curtly.
“Money.”
She sighed, shaking her head.
“I mean, it’s nice to be able to pay the bills and afford an occasional cup of fancy coffee or an ice cream cone. But you can’t take it with you.”
He smiled gently.
“You’re an odd person.”
“I am?”
“I don’t mean that in an insulting way,”
he said easily.
“I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone quite like you.”
“I had a fraught childhood. I learned to duck and hide and run for my life early on,”
she added with a grin.
He laughed, as he was meant to.
“Your father spent a lot of time getting wasted in bars. Do you know why?”
“He lost Mama and he couldn’t go on,” she said.
He gave her a long look as they stopped for a traffic light.
She narrowed her own eyes.
“You know something that I don’t,”
she guessed.
He nodded.
“Going to tell me?”
she asked softly.
He hesitated.
“It can’t be anything from my childhood,”
she said, thinking aloud.
“So it has to be before I was born, right?”
She was quick-witted. He hadn’t meant to say anything, but perhaps he should. She was carrying a lot of emotional scars because of her father.
“You almost had a brother before you were born,”
he said quietly.
“Your father knew your mother was friendly with a former boyfriend, and he got it into his head that the child was the other man’s.”
“But Mama would have never . . . !”
she began earnestly.
“Everybody except your father knew that,”
he continued.
“Anyway, she was determined to prove her innocence so she had bloodwork done that would prove it.”
He concentrated on the road ahead.
“The day the DNA profile came back. She lost the child.”
“Oh, my gosh,”
she said, grimacing.
“They said he went mad when he had the evidence that cleared her. It was too late for the child, of course.”
“What did Mama do?”
“Old man Wheeler said she came to him, hoping to buy a ticket back to Texas, where her people were. But your father followed her to town, in tears, and begged her to stay, apologizing literally on his knees.”
He glowered.
“So she stayed. He was never vicious to her during any of her next two pregnancies, and Wheeler said he was over the moon when your little brother came along. He finally had his son.”
“Yes. He wasn’t particularly fond of me,”
she said philosophically, with a sad smile.
“He thought girls were useless.”
“But he thought about that first child, and Wheeler said it played on his mind that he’d caused the death. He started drinking more than ever. Sheriff Ralston and his deputies spent a lot of time at your house when you were a kid. He stayed sober for a while after your brother was born, but the boy only reminded him of the child he’d lost. His conscience tormented him. He took it out on all of you, even your little brother, at the last.”
She sighed, leaning her head back against the seat.
“I figured there had to be a reason for it. I just wish he’d had therapy. It might have helped all of us.”
“He didn’t believe in such things.”
She laughed softly.
“He didn’t believe in anything, to hear him talk. But when he was dying, he prayed.”
Her eyes had a faraway look.
“Faith was all I had during those years. My knees got a workout.”
She glanced at him.
“Did you know my father?”
He smiled mysteriously.
“Let’s not open that can of worms tonight.”
So there was something more, something he knew that he hadn’t shared. She turned her purse over on her lap, fidgeting. She glanced at him. He was in his early thirties. Certainly he wasn’t old enough to have known her father when she was a child.
“Busy little mind, spinning around looking for truth,”
he mused.
“Careful. You might find it one day.”
“It won’t be for lack of trying.”
The purse stilled in her pretty hands.
“You haven’t lived here for a long time,”
she began, trying to put things together from vague clues.
“Nope,”
he agreed.
“You keep to yourself. No housekeeper, only a few cowboys to help you run the ranch, and they’re old friends, everybody says. No strangers. No women, at all.”
“I had a fiancée,”
he replied curtly.
“She was jealous and violent with it. I kept women away from the place.”
She wasn’t sure if it was safe to ask him anything about the shadowy woman who had shattered his life.
It had been several months, but townspeople said it was dangerous to ask him about her.
She decided that her questions weren’t important enough to take the chance.
She looked out the window instead.
He smiled, understanding her silence without saying it out loud.
She wasn’t a pushy sort of woman.
She seemed content with her lot, although selling that painting had astonished her.
She’d been practically giving away her work, with no real knowledge of its worth.
Now she’d have some sort of financial security. She could have a life of her own. Although, the child would make that difficult. He frowned.
Children had been a sticking point with his vanished fiancée.
He wanted them.
She didn’t.
And it was a position she wouldn’t even discuss.
He’d been almost suicidal after losing her.
His agent had been ecstatic.
He hadn’t produced anything in months, because his fiancée was jealous of the computer.
He’d thought about sharing his work with her, until she complained that people in the arts were just lazy layabouts with no ambition, and she’d never get mixed up with one.
It had shattered him.
He was well-known in his field, and he’d grown wealthy from its pursuit.
But the love of his life had no place in hers for a career-oriented man. So he’d pretended for those months that he was financially secure due to an inheritance, and kept the rest to himself. The computer probably had spiderwebs by now, he thought, and chuckled.
“What’s funny?”
she asked, diverted.
“Spiderwebs,”
he murmured.
She gave him a stunned look.
“I was picturing them on my computer,” he said.
“Oh. The gaming one.”
She nodded, remembering what he’d said about his hobby.
“That’s right,”
he replied.
“The gaming one.”
She frowned.
“Didn’t she like it when you played?”
“Not particularly,”
he said, and this time his deep voice had a bite in it.
“Sorry,”
she said softly.
“I didn’t mean to dig up bad memories.”
He shifted behind the wheel.
“I’m less touchy than I was,”
he said after a minute. He glanced at her and then back to the long road ahead.
“Haven’t you ever thought about a home of your own, a family? I know you love your brother, but there are good foster homes . . .”
“No.”
Just the one word. But the inflection in it alluded to fire and brimstone if anybody tried to take away her baby brother.
“It will stunt your social life,”
he said.
“Most men don’t want to be part of a ready-made family.”
“That’s their loss,”
she said.
“I promised myself when Mama died that I’d take care of Ed until he was grown, and that’s what I’m going to do.”
“How old are you?” he asked.
He’d forgotten. She’d told him before. She sighed.
“Twenty-four.”
“And he’s, what, four? By the time he’s in college you’ll be thirty-four. That’s a bit too late for a woman to get married and start a family.”
“I might never marry,”
she said simply.
“Lots of people don’t.”
He just shook his head.
“There’s this thing called responsibility,”
she said quietly.
“It’s not talked about much, because it’s easier to pass the buck, to blame somebody or something else if you mess up. I’m old-fashioned enough to believe in it. That, and accountability, and purpose.”
She turned in her seat.
“Do you ever watch Congress on C-Span?”
she asked.
He grimaced.
“I try not to.”
“Yes, because every person who’s brought before it has the same excuse. I was just doing my job. I failed because such and such other person failed. What I said was taken out of context. That’s not what I meant. I don’t have that information right now.”
She rolled her eyes.
“They talk in circles. You can’t get one single person who heads any government agency to answer a question. They answer a question that wasn’t even asked, or they stonewall. The kindest thing that could happen to this country would be if one of those unidentified flying objects came down, sucked up every politician in D.C., and carried them off to some other planet!”
He was roaring with laughter.
“Well, it’s the truth,”
she said, calming down.
“Yes, it is,”
he agreed. He pulled into a long driveway.
“But you’d better keep those thoughts to yourself just for this evening.”
He stopped the truck under an archway of a huge, lighted mansion, got out, helped her out, and tossed the keys to one of the valets.
“Why do I need to keep it to myself?”
she asked, as they walked up the wide steps.
“Because the senior senator from Colorado lives here,”
he whispered into her ear, and chuckled when she started and almost tripped.
He escorted her into the luxurious dining room, where trays of canapés were being placed on long tables, sharing space with champagne and hard liquor and crystal glasses.
“Wow,”
she murmured.
“This is a far cry from a McDonald’s coke with a straw in a paper cup.”
“It’s another world,”
he agreed, handing her a glass of champagne.
“I don’t drink,”
she said, trying to put the glass down.
“I’m driving. It’s just for one night, to be sociable. Keep it.”
She sighed, and took a sip. She wrinkled her nose.
“It tickles.”
“The more you drink, the less it tickles,”
he assured her.
She shrugged, and took another sip.
Their hosts from the previous party in Denver were also guests here. They came to renew acquaintances.
“Ty, it’s so nice to see you out again,”
the wife of the gallery owner said, smiling.
“Twice, in one month, too.”
She leaned closer.
“Don’t tell me you’re dusting spiderwebs off the computer, too?”
He laughed.
“I guess I am.”
“About time!”
she told him.
“Everybody’s looking forward to the sequel.”
He put his finger to his lips while Sara wasn’t looking. The other woman caught on quickly. She grinned and nodded.
About that time, Danny Hartman spotted them and made a beeline for Sara. Out of some ancient darkness, Ty recalled why Danny had no business trying to take over Sara’s life. He reached down for her hand and slowly locked his fingers into hers.
Her small hand jerked faintly at the unfamiliar touch. Her breath caught. Her heart ran wild. She tried valiantly to stop her involuntary reaction to him. He was very attractive, and just being with him made her happy.
Warning bells went off in her head. She looked up at him.
“Is this some reverse psychology sort of thing?”
she asked in a whisper.
He blinked.
“A what?” he asked.
“Well, you told me not to weave daydreams about you,”
she said. She indicated their linked hands.
“You shouldn’t encourage me.”
He chuckled. She was a constant delight. He hadn’t had any joy in his life for so long. He’d almost forgotten how to laugh.
“And no fair making fun of your admirers,”
she added.
“Heavens, I might push you down on the floor and kiss you to death! You don’t know!”
He was almost bursting now.
Danny Hartman walked up, frowning.
Blakeney had refused a ride for her to the gallery.
Hartman had hoped to have her to himself so that he could pry into her life and seduce her, as he’d seduced many other women—including Blakeney’s promiscuous former girlfriend. But apparently Sara was now in his nemesis’s crosshairs.
He wondered how much she knew about the man holding her hand.
He was dangerous.
Hartman left him strictly alone, despite the fact that even one chapter of Blakeney’s life would outsell anything Hartman had ever published. He’d tried and failed a few years back to do a story about the man beside Sara.
He’d carefully approached the chief editor about doing an article on Blakeney.
He was given a go-ahead, but a single phone call from D.C.
had caused the editor to stop Hartman in his tracks. He was told never to ask questions about Blakeney. The consequences could be dire.
So Hartman left the enigmatic author strictly alone except for occasional sarcastic digs at parties.
Even then, there was a red line.
Nobody sane crossed it.
Blakeney’s books were full of espionage and firefights.
They referenced subjects rarely discussed outside spec ops teams.
Which led Hartman to ponder how Blakeney obtained that information.
It would take a high-security clearance and probably permission from some shadow agency to even be able to refer to it in a work of fiction.
Whatever Blakeney knew had made him a bestselling author, published all over the world.
He went from being the owner of a broken-down ranch to a man who could pay cash for a Rolls-Royce.
Hartman hated him for that.
He had talent.
He wrote for a major news organization. That should have been him making that sort of money, not Blakeney, who was more a recluse than a party goer.
“Thanks for bringing my girl up for the party.”
Hartman threw down the gauntlet, ignoring those locked hands.
“I’m not your girl, Mr. Hartman,”
Sara said, smiling blithely.
“As you can see”—she held up her clasped fingers—“I’m doing my best to worm my way into Mr. Blakeney’s heart. Please don’t interrupt me.”
Blakeney burst out laughing, which made Hartman even more furious. His face grew red with temper.
“You won’t be laughing when I finish my investigation,”
Hartman told the other man with narrowed eyes.
Blakeney just shrugged.
“You’re welcome to investigate all you like,”
he told Hartman. He even smiled.
“Until you hit the stone wall ahead of you at top speed.”
“How do you get all that information?”
he wanted to know.
“My contact says you have a higher security clearance than some members of Congress!”
Blakeney cocked his head and just stared at the other man.
“There are many levels of classification,”
he said patiently.
“But it’s not what you know. It’s who you know.”
“I’ll find out,”
Hartman threatened.
“You won’t,”
was the firm reply.
“And if you dig deep enough,”
he added in a soft, deep undertone.
“you’ll bury yourself.”
“Is that a threat?”
“It’s a fact,”
Blakeney replied. He looked over Hartman’s shoulder at Senator John Hughes, a tall silver-haired man with great dignity, who was coming toward them.
“But don’t take my word for it. Ask John,”
he added, smiling at the senator as he approached.
“Well, damn, are you still alive?”
John Hughes laughed, shaking hands with Blakeney, who still had his left hand tightly entangled with Sara’s.
“Still alive and kicking.”
Blakeney chuckled.
“Hartman, isn’t it?”
Hughes added, and his tone changed as he faced the reporter. His eyes narrowed.
“You and I will never see eye to eye on any political issues. I didn’t appreciate your slanted piece on the legislation I suggested to the House committee last month.”
“It was hardly slanted . . .”
Hartman began defensively.
“It was slanted so far that even my worst colleague said it was overdone,”
he interrupted.
“Journalism involves fair play. You tell both sides of the issue, not just the one you prefer, and you let the public decide. You don’t get behind people and push them toward your point of view.”
“My editor . . .”
Hartman began again.
“Your editor is lining up for an investigative committee hearing,”
was the senator’s reply. He smiled coldly.
“I have that from the highest authority. You have permission to pass it along. You might add that I’m quite aware of his shadow dealing, and he’s already attracted the attention of the one agency you don’t want coming up behind you in a dark alley. He’s passed a red line. A very red line.”
Hartman’s heart was racing. He and the editor both had invested in what sounded like a sure thing, even though it was just past the limit on legal activities.
They both knew how their investments were handled farther down the line.
They knew how deadly their colleagues were.
They thought that, because they were so deadly, no politician would dare stick his nose into an investigation.
But he knew which agency the senator was referring to, and it struck him like a lightning bolt.
If it came out publicly, his paper would lose subscribers and he would lose his job, if not his freedom.
The publisher, who rarely stuck his nose into the businesses he owned, had no idea what his chief editor and his chief reporter were dabbling in.
Even less did he know that their illegal dealings could land all of them in prison.
Hartman felt his feet go cold as he contemplated what Senator Hughes was saying.
“You can tell your editor that he’d better back out of any upcoming deals and find legal counsel.”
He leaned forward.
“That goes for you, too, Hartman. All the deals being made undercover are being brought out by citizen journalists on the Internet. You can’t hide anymore. People are tired of unpunished crime. The penalties in the future will make this decade look like an amusement park for crime. If I were you,”
he added.
“I’d pull my neck back while there was still time.”
Blakeney hadn’t said a word.
The hand holding Sara’s was warm and strong and firm.
It gave her a feeling of utter security, shelter in the storms of life.
And even while she was feeling that, she knew that this man was more eagle than songbird.
He wouldn’t be nesting in some safe tree.
He’d be out hunting, free and unfettered by emotional ties.
It was just that the feelings she had were new and exciting.
Her life so far had been one of service and sacrifice.
She’d had no time or opportunity for any romance in her sad life.
It made sense that she’d go giddy the first time a man, an attractive man, came close to her.
But she had to force down these emotions.
They were unwelcome and not just to her.
She could absolutely feel the tension in the man next to her. He was hating this pretense.
Actually, he was feeling the same things Sara was.
Comfort.
Security.
Compassion.
All those things, and more.
He had a rough past that he was still dealing with, ten years after the fact.
People whose lives had brushed his at any point were a painful reminder of things he’d done, things he’d seen.
He’d had a brief round of psychological help, after the fact.
But the therapist hadn’t been able to get him to open up about his past.
He shared it with nobody, least of all his former girlfriend who’d abandoned him for somebody richer.
Actually, the joke was on her, because now he had more assets than her new paramour.
She’d abandoned him too quickly.
Amusedly, she’d tried to get him back the week before.
She’d called and complained that her new boyfriend neglected her and she was so lonely.
Wouldn’t he like for her to come back and visit? He’d laughed, told her sorry, he was through with that part of his life.
She’d slung insults at him.
He hung up in the middle of them and didn’t even feel regret.
It was that day that he’d had coffee with Sara in the coffee shop in Benton.
He smiled to himself at the memory.
He’d been a little morose after the conversation as he remembered good times with his former girlfriend.
But Sara, level-headed Sara, had dug out the pain and replaced it with simple compassion.
He looked down at her.
She was striking in the silver dress that matched her pale eyes.
The contrast with her dark, wavy hair was also striking.
She wasn’t beautiful but she had a warmth that embraced everybody she came close to.
People responded to her.
It was a gift, like her ability to see inside people.
He’d never known anyone like her. And he didn’t like the feelings she aroused in him. But he couldn’t abandon her to Danny Hartman. The man was brutal. Blakeney knew things about him that Sara wouldn’t have dreamed. He couldn’t share them without revealing his own past. But he wasn’t going to let Hartman one step closer.
Hartman was fuming.
He’d been checkmated without making a single move.
He glared at the senator, who was still listing his grievances.
But the veiled threat from Blakeney affected him much more.
He thought the activities of the men he and his editor backed were unknown to polite society.
Now he knew differently.
And he didn’t know what to do. For the first time in his life, he was frightened.
Blakeney saw that panic and understood it.
His hand held Sara’s more securely and drew her just a little closer.
She looked up at him with faint surprise.
He met that wide-eyed stare with an unsmiling one. His heart was beating double time. He stared into her pale silver eyes and felt the reaction go through him like a blow.
There were places inside him that no one had ever seen, places he kept hidden from everyone. But Sara looked at him and he could see himself through her eyes, see the soft interest, the warmth, the comfort that he’d been seeking all his life. What a strange place to find it, in a young woman he barely knew. But then, he’d known her forever. It felt like that when he was around her. As if there were no secrets that they hadn’t shared.
He had beautiful eyes, she thought as she stared into them. He was beautiful, in a rough-hewn sort of way. He was the end result of all the tragedies of his life. He thought they were hidden, but he bore the scars. Sara didn’t have to see them to know they were there.
She understood, because she’d gone through the wars in her own way, with her brutal parent.
“Ty!”
He started at the sound of his name.
The senator chuckled; he could see the attraction between his friend and this young lady. He expected that Ty would fight it to the death. The man was a loner if there ever was one. Or, at least, he had been before that spider of a woman got her claws into him. What luck that she found another sucker before she destroyed Ty’s life. She’d already cost him months out of publication, which was deadly even for a top-ranked author. The public forgot quickly when the books stopped coming, and they found other authors to fill the gap. Ty was well rid of her.
“I said, I have to leave early. I’ve got to get back to D.C. tonight,”
John told Ty. He shook hands.
“Try to stay out of trouble.”
“I never get in trouble,”
Ty said with a grin.
“Any day now . . .”
Hartman grumbled with a glare.
“I was about to say the same thing to you, Hartman,”
Ty said with a faint smile.
“Don’t forget what I told you,”
Hughes told Hartman, and he wasn’t smiling.
“You and your editor are under the magnifying glass. You’re being watched.”
Hartman went pale as Hughes turned back to Ty.
“I’ll be in touch,”
he promised.
Ty chuckled.
“It won’t help.”
“One day you’ll agree,”
the senator assured him.
Ty shook his head.
“Not my thing,”
he said.
“Not anymore.”
“Oh, that’s rich,”
Hartman said coldly.
“Isn’t that what you said last time . . . ?”
“Just before your little hit piece came out, you mean?”
Ty asked him. One eyebrow lifted.
“I was going to say no. But this time there were children involved,”
he added coldly.
“And you know exactly what I mean.”
Hartman swallowed. Hard.
“I . . . I do not,”
he faltered.
“You’d better hope for a friendly journalist to cover what’s coming up,”
Ty told him.
“Or you’ll be fried like a big fish, on the same grill with your idiot editor.”
Sara was staring at Hartman, as if she saw something that puzzled her. And, in fact, she was puzzled.
“You didn’t care where the money came from,”
she said, as if in a trance.
“But then you don’t know what happened to the children who were taken away from their families when they reached the sanctuary. And you didn’t care. But you will,”
she added softly. She grimaced.
“I’m sorry for you.”
Hartman was offended.
“Be sorry for yourself, getting mixed up with him,”
he said, indicating Ty.
“Nothing I’ve ever done is half as bad as the things he’s been accused of. And he’s so protected that he never gets called out for it!”
“That’s enough,”
Ty said. His whole demeanor changed. He went from placid conversation to quiet fury in seconds, all without raising his voice or moving a muscle. But Hartman actually backed up a step.
He turned away.
“If you’ll excuse me, I have important people to talk to.”
He didn’t look at them as he made his way through the crowd to the drinks table.
Sara moved closer to Ty, so close that she could feel the heat and strength of his fit body. He smelled of soap and spices. Her hand in his became quietly caressing.
“It’s all right,”
she said softly.
He was so enraged that his body felt like iron. But as he looked down into Sara’s soft face, his anger seemed to flow down through his shoes into the floor. He took a breath and it was like coming up out of tremendous depths.
“What?”
he asked, going blank for a few seconds, with painful memories.
“It’s all right,”
she repeated.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,”
he said icily.
Her pale eyes searched his strong, taut face.
“Yes, I do,”
she replied.
“War invites all sort of tragedies. It enables actions that are illegal but necessary to save lives.”
She reached up with her free hand and touched his chin.
“You aren’t the only one who came home with nightmares,”
she added in a slow, tender voice.
“Blaming yourself for things you can’t control, that’s not sensible.”
He took another breath and slowly shook his head.
“How do you do that?”
he asked softly.
“Do what?”
He linked their hands closer and turned toward her.
“Face a charging bear and turn it into a stuffed animal,”
he mused, smiling.
She shrugged.
“Sometimes it doesn’t work,”
she said, and pain was in her beautiful eyes as she recalled trying to talk her father down from a drunken rage.
He winced, because he could almost see it through her eyes.
“Long years of practice,”
he murmured.
She nodded. She took a breath and smiled.
“Life hurts,”
she said simply.
He smiled back. He just nodded.
They left while the party was still going on. Sara made two new contacts in the art gallery owners who attended, and she promised canvases if they could send her photographs of the people they wanted her to portray.
“Heavens, I’ll have to learn to paint with both hands as well as both feet,”
she exclaimed on the way home.
“How could I be so stupid? I’ll never get caught up!”
He just laughed.
“You’ll find a way.”
She leaned back and stretched.
“I can try.”
She laid her head back against the seat and looked at him while he drove.
“You and Danny Hartman have a past.”
Her perceptions didn’t disturb him so much anymore. “Yes,”
he said simply.
“He’s doing some really terrible things,”
she remarked.
“Worse than you know. And the ax is about to fall.”
“Good. A better neck would be hard to find,”
she muttered.
He burst out laughing.
“I mean it,”
she insisted.
“I thought he was such a nice man. He wanted to do a story about me. He wanted to help me find buyers for my art. He even offered to come all this way and drive me to that party in Denver.”
She grimaced.
“I finally saw through him. I’m glad I ran into you at the coffee shop. You saved me.”
He’d saved her from more than she knew. And he hadn’t run into her by accident. He knew a lot about Danny Hartman. Too much to abandon her to his predatory stalking.
“Thanks,” she said.
“Don’t mention it,”
he replied.
“Next time, you can save me.”
She laughed.
“From what?”
“Predatory females?”
She smiled.
“Found a lot of those, have we?”
He glanced at her amused expression. She didn’t know him yet. She wasn’t aware that he had a huge reader base, along with female fans who had actively pursued him in the past.
Of course, he’d been out of circulation for a year. He frowned. He had to do something about that. He’d go fishing tomorrow, he thought. The weather was unseasonably warm and he knew a good spot to just sit and think. He had several ideas whirling around in his head. He’d have to grab a few and put them together.
“What are you thinking about so hard?”
she wondered.
“Fishing.”
She laughed.
“No, really. I like fishing.”
She nodded.
“Me, too. I used to go to the river with my grandad and fish for trout. That was years ago.”
“Trout fishing is fun. And even though it’s barely March, despite the recent snow, there’s rainbow and brown trout in the rivers.”
She grinned.
“Grandad didn’t think it was fun. I caught three trout. He caught an old boot.”
He chuckled.
“Poor old man.”
“Yes, I know. It wasn’t even his size!”
He shook his head. He couldn’t remember ever having such fun with a woman.
Sara was thinking the same thing about him. She’d been afraid of men for a long time. But this one, even when he was furious, was calm and quiet. She wasn’t afraid of him. Not at all. Her eyes moved over his face like exploring fingers.
“Don’t,”
he cautioned.
“What?”
“Don’t start daydreaming about me.”
“Well, darn,”
she muttered.
“Who else am I going to daydream about? And if you say Danny Hartman, I’ll hit you with a dead fish.”
“Where will you get one?”
“I’ll fish one up and bring it to you,”
she said.
“Then I’ll hit you with it.”
“Might take some time.”
“I’m in no rush,”
she countered.
“In that case, you can go fishing with me tomorrow. Is Ed in school yet?”
“No, but he has a drawing class in the morning from nine ’til noon.”
“I’ll pick you both up at a quarter to nine. We can drop Ed off on the way. What about puppy dog?”
“The wuppie?”
she teased, all alight about the fishing trip.
“I’ll get a babysitter.”
He chuckled.
“Got it all worked out already?”
“You bet! I haven’t been fishing in years!”
She grimaced. “Oh, no!”
“What?”
“I don’t have a rod and reel,”
she groaned.
“I’ve got half a dozen. You can take your pick,” he said.
“In that case, I’ll be ready to go on time. Ed, too.”
She hesitated. “Thanks.”
“For what? Sticking you on a riverbank with stinging insects?”
“For asking me to go,”
she said.
“I haven’t been anywhere except home and work for . . . for a really long time, except for two parties in Denver.”
He felt those words keenly, but he didn’t let on. He smiled blandly.
“No problem. Fishing helps me solve problems sometimes.”
She nodded. “Me, too.”
She didn’t add that he was likely to become her biggest problem. He didn’t want her daydreaming about him. But it was getting to the point that he was all she did daydream about. She was headed for tragedy and she knew it. But she couldn’t help herself. Not at all.