Chapter Thirteen
“How was your shower?” Dub asked, turning from the stove as she walked into the kitchen. He stared in a kind of awe. He told himself he would never get tired of looking at this woman. Wasn’t that why he’d said he was going to marry her? He wanted to wake up to her every morning.
Her cheeks were flushed from her shower, her eyes bright.
He’d been wrong. At this moment, Clancy couldn’t have looked more beautiful.
He realized he was staring. “Sorry, you look…beautiful.” His gaze locked with hers.
More color rose to her cheeks, and he saw that he was making her uncomfortable.
“Not that you didn’t look great in that gear I got you for mucking out stalls. ”
As she put down her backpack, his gaze went to what she had in her hand, hoping to get past this uncomfortable moment for both of them. “What’s that?”
She held a plastic bag filled with what appeared to be jewelry.
“I told you that when Esther and I had our argument, she refused to pay me and tried to force this bag of cheap costume jewelry on me in payment for what she owed me. Well, this is it. I didn’t take it.
I refused because I had a bad feeling she’d stolen it.
I guess she’s a kleptomaniac. Anyway, she must have slipped it into my backpack as I was leaving her room.
I didn’t even know I had it until I dumped everything out looking for my charging cord for my phone at your house.
I never found the cord. Instead, I found this.
” She held it up, some of the jewelry catching the light.
He could tell she was upset for not mentioning it sooner.
He realized she’d been worried that the jewelry might make it look like she’d killed Esther for it.
“Come have some lunch and let’s take a look at it,” he said, wondering if the jewelry had anything to do with why this Esther woman was dead.
He dished up a plate for each of them and took it over to the kitchen table as Clancy pulled out a chair.
Her long hair shone in the overhead kitchen light.
He fought the urge to touch it, let his hand run down the length of it.
She smelled so good that for a moment he merely stood next to her, holding her plate and breathing her in. Mentally shaking himself, he put down her plate. Damn, the woman had no idea just how alluring she was.
He quickly took his plate to his seat and sat, trying not to stare at her.
Since leaving the ranch, a tiny part of him had been questioning what he was doing running off with this woman.
It wasn’t that he thought his brother was right about him being too infatuated with Clancy to see the truth. It ran deeper than that.
But he’d be a fool not to realize that he was jeopardizing his future and maybe worse for a woman he didn’t really know. As nervous as she’d been on the way here, he thought she might be having second thoughts as well.
The bag of jewelry did make him feel a little anxious about what he’d done, but then he looked at her, stared into those brown eyes, and all his doubts evaporated. Maybe he was too smitten to admit the truth. He didn’t care. Damned if he wasn’t going to marry this woman come hell or high water.
She shoved the bag over to him, and he tipped the jewelry out on the table.
He’d been so hungry, but now he had to make himself eat.
As he took a bite of the meal he’d fixed, he picked up each of the pieces of jewelry and held them up in the light.
He knew nothing about rare jewels, but he could see this stuff was just junk.
Yet he did worry about how much trouble they both might be in for having this stuff in their possession. While none of these pieces looked in any way valuable, he feared this bag of jewelry was evidence.
“After I heard that Esther had been murdered, I thought that maybe whoever had killed her had been after this jewelry,” Clancy was saying between bites.
“Not because it was worth anything, but that it would prove Esther was the Shady Rest thief and that’s why she was so anxious to push it off on me.
It was no secret that everyone at the home thought she had been stealing from them since the thefts had started right after she moved in. ”
He held up one of the larger pieces, a heavy, gaudy pendant.
His gaze went to Clancy as he reminded himself that he needed to tell her that he’d try to call his father while she was in the shower.
He didn’t want to keep anything from her.
She was only just beginning to trust him.
Maybe he also worried how she was going to react that he’d reached out to his father.
As he started to put down the pendant encrusted with rhinestone and fake pearl, it slipped from his fingers and crashed to the table.
Dub grabbed for it, but the chain slipped over the side and the pendant followed, smacking the tile floor.
Rhinestones and pearls went flying everywhere.
They both started, then looked at each other in a kind of wide-eyed horror.
“Oh no,” Dub said, hoping he hadn’t destroyed something that should be in the sheriff’s hands—not his own, obviously. “I think I broke it.” He saw Clancy’s lips twitch and they both burst out laughing.
* * *
IT FELT SO good to laugh. Clancy couldn’t remember the last time she had.
Tears rolled down her cheeks from the joy of it.
The earlier tension between them quickly melted away as they dropped to the floor under the table to begin gathering up the pieces.
She’d been on edge for so long, even before Esther’s murder.
With her birthday approaching, she couldn’t bear the thought of turning twenty-five and not getting away even a hundred miles from where she was born.
She looked over at Dub, the two of them on their hands and knees under the table.
His eyes were bright. He looked as relaxed as she felt.
Earlier, she’d feared he was having second thoughts about taking off with her the way he had.
She wouldn’t blame him. There was a good chance a killer was still looking for her and now she’d dragged Dub into danger along with her.
As she held out the plastic bag for Dub to empty the pieces he’d collected into it, she met his gaze.
They were so close. Her heart began to beat harder.
They were only a breath away from each other in the tight space as he dumped everything he’d gathered into the bag.
Then he shifted, putting them even closer.
Clancy saw the kiss coming. There wasn’t time to come up with all the reasons why kissing Dub Crawford was a bad idea.
His lips brushed over hers, tentatively at first. As the kiss deepened, he moved, reaching up to cup her cheek in his hand as he drew her closer.
She felt herself surrender to his touch, to the surge of emotions she’d been feeling, to his kiss.
A kiss is just a kiss. Wasn’t that a line from a song?
Only this kiss was anything but. She felt her body react, wanting and needing and demanding more, and Dub gave it.
Heat rippled through her to pool at her center.
They both shifted as they attempted to get closer.
A rhinestone bit into her palm about the time Dub smacked his head on the bottom side of the table.
They jerked apart, Clancy also hitting her head before they began to laugh again.
Feeling shaken, they moved apart. Dub crawled out first and reached back to take her hand and help her.
He was still holding her hand in his warm and large and reassuring hand, as she got to her feet next to him.
The temperature between them had dropped a little, but the chemistry still arced like an electrical current sparking between them.
She didn’t have to question whether or not he’d felt the intensity of their kiss.
Clancy saw the answer in his eyes and the way he was looking at her.
His cell phone rang. They both froze for a moment before he reached back to pull it out of his hip pocket. One glance at the screen and he said, “It’s my dad.” He let go of her hand, his look apologetic. “I have to take this.”
* * *
THE MOMENT HE answered the call, it was his brother’s voice he heard instead of his father’s. “You are in so much trouble.” Tanner sounded excited. “Now the sheriff has a BOLO out on you and your truck. Hope you like prison, dumbass.”
“Give me my phone, Tanner,” he heard his father say.
As the phone changed hands, Dub didn’t need his father to tell him he was disappointed in him and Clancy as well. “We could have talked about this,” John Crawford said.
“There wasn’t time. I knew Tanner couldn’t wait to call the sheriff. I had to get her away from the ranch and hear her side of it.” He could still hear Tanner complaining in the background.
“Just a minute.” His father had covered the phone, but Dub still could hear him telling Tanner to get out of the room and to close the door behind him. After hearing a door shut, he heard his father come back on the call. “What is her side of it?”
“She didn’t kill anyone. She ran because the killer saw her. Unfortunately, she can’t identify the person because it was dark and she didn’t get a good look at him.”
“You know she has to go to the law and tell the sheriff what she knows.”
“I do and so does she.” He could still taste her on his lips. “I haven’t had a chance to talk to her about it, but I plan to. She’s scared. She’s worried the killer is after her.”
“Son, if there is a killer after her, then he is now after you.”
“Believe me, I’ve thought of that.”
“Dub, I trust you to make the right decision that will keep you both from getting killed.”
He chuckled. “I appreciate your faith in me. I’ll be in touch.” He disconnected, thankful his father was nothing like Tanner. He wished some of what Tanner said hadn’t rung true, though. Maybe he was blinded by Clancy and his feelings for her. He’d never felt this way about anyone before.
* * *