Five #2
Clint’s gaze lingered over her longer than anyone else’s might have, like he was figuring angles no one else could see. She was glad Beck didn’t tell him her full name. The less this man knew about her, the better.
“Settling in all right?” Clint asked her.
“I am.”
“Big place out there,” he said. “Some folks spend a lifetime trying to get a piece of ground like that.”
Jackie didn’t like the uneasy feeling he gave her. “Bought and paid for, so that makes me fortunate.”
“Yeah.” His smile didn’t reach his eyes. “That’s one word for it.”
Beck straightened his stance. “We’re done here, Clint. We’ve got things to do. Wasting time with you isn’t one of them.”
“Funny thing about land,” Clint went on, still watching her as if Beck hadn’t spoken. He stepped closer, boots crunching gravel. “It doesn’t always end up with the people who worked for it.”
Beck moved with him—just enough to keep the space between them even.
“You’re starting to sound like you’re owed something,” he said.
Clint’s smile thinned. “Reckon I am.” He moved the cigarette, one side of his mouth to the other, and studied Beck. “You still doing everything by the book, Archer? Following orders. Playing it straight like a good little soldier?”
“Better than making excuses when things don’t go your way.”
Clint jerked back. “Seems to me, you spent a long time doing things the right way. Heard you were in a POW camp. Bet that was a lot of fun for you, wasn’t it?”
Jackie sucked in a horrified breath. “That’s enough.” She moved to Beck’s side and curled her arm around his, the need to protect him, to shield him from Clint’s hateful attitude, surging strong through her veins. “He fought for this country. For you. Show some respect.”
His insolent gaze returned to her. “And where did it get him?”
Beck intertwined his fingers with hers, palm to palm, his grasp warm. Strong.
“It got me home,” he said.
Heard you were in a POW camp.
The words struck hard within Jackie and dragged up memories she’d never forget.
Bet that was a lot of fun for you, wasn’t it?
She’d seen the danger. She’d known it was there.
And still—it hadn’t been enough to keep him from being taken.
It got me home.
Her fingers tightened instinctively within his, a grateful prayer in her heart.
He was here.
Solid. Real. Resilient.
He’d survived….
Beck’s shadowed gaze hardened. “It ends here, Clint. You can leave now.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He took a step closer toward his black truck, then another, but not before he snared Jackie with more of his insolence. “Don’t forget, Lady Pilot. Some things have a way of working themselves out, just so you know.”
She didn’t know what he meant, and didn’t know if she should, but her eyes smarted from all he made her feel. The guilt she’d worked so hard to overcome, the insults he’d hurled at Beck who had suffered enough because of her and didn’t deserve a single bit of it….
Blinking fast, she pulled away from Beck’s grasp and pivoted toward her Jeep. After yanking the door open, she dropped into the seat and grabbed her purse to find her keys, all the while still very much feeling the lingering effect of Beck holding her hand and his lean fingers laced through hers.
If she could, she’d hold his hand forever.
“Hey.” Beck reached through her driver’s door window and gently knuckled her chin toward him.
He was closer than she expected.
Close enough that the brim of his hat shadowed the space between them. The sunlight caught the edge of his cheek and the line of his jaw, already faintly bristled after an early morning shave.
His eyes were steady on hers—probing, concerned. His expression softened, just enough to take the edge off the hostility from the man she’d faced a moment ago.
His thumb touched a tear that threatened to leak out, so gently she nearly worked up a few more. “He’s a real ass, but not worth fussing over, okay?”
She huffed. “He’s not very nice, is he?”
She swallowed down her emotion and hated her weakness, fretting over a man like Clint Varner for all the unkind things he’d said to Beck.
She hated even more that Beck didn’t know all she was responsible for.
“No.” His low voice carried a husky intimacy, just the two of them talking in the street through a car window with their faces only inches apart. “And you know what else?”
She shook her head. “Tell me.”
“I’m thinking he was the one in the timber. His truck might’ve been the one you saw.”
Her glance jumped toward Clint, standing with his back to them while he pumped gas.
“Look at the stock rack, Jackie,” Beck murmured.
At first, she didn’t see what he wanted her to see, until there it was, near the tailgate.
A small length of branch, snapped clean.
“Ponderosa,” she said with a little gasp.
“Yep.”
“You’re thinking it’s the break we saw by the tire tracks?”
“Strong chance of it.”
She bit her lip and forced herself not to stare at the black truck anymore. What if Clint turned around and saw them?
“But nothing we can prove,” Beck added, grim. “Lots of ponderosa pine around here. Could’ve snagged it anywhere.”
Her mouth tightened in reluctant agreement. “It’s his word against ours.”
“And we don’t have anything solid to confront him.” Beck appeared to choose his words. “Clint’s got a burr under his saddle when it comes to me and my family, Jackie. He’s been carrying it a while.”
That she hadn’t expected. “Oh-oh.”
“His old man helped Roy Kincaid once in a while. More toward the end. Might be Kincaid talked too much, promised too much, but Clint and his father got it in their head Kincaid owed him. Old man Varner passed away before Kincaid could follow through. Now Clint’s looking for a way in,” he said.
“For what?”
Beck shrugged. “Land.”
The pieces connected, and her eyes widened. “Mine?”
“If he set the fire, and we’re both thinking there’s a strong chance he did, he hit near the east pasture.” He paused. “Which is your pasture.”
The words held her riveted in the seat, her mind swirling with the repercussions. The possibilities.
Your pasture.
If Clint had set that fire—it hadn’t been random.
Her gaze shifted to the gas pumps, but he was gone. The truck… both of them gone, and she hadn’t known.
The weight of it lodged in her throat. Something she couldn’t quite name yet—not fear. Not uncertainty. But she was circling it, an unmistakable sense that Clint Varner wasn’t finished.
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to start work on widening those barn doors,” Beck said in a firm tone, as if he wasn’t going to let her refuse. “Can’t hangar your Cub until they’re done.”
Beck, it seemed, wasn’t finished, either.
His offer felt like a decision he’d already made—to stay close—and, really, she should resist. Keep things clear, separate, and she had no right to want his help. Not after she’d failed him.
And yet… she didn’t want to tell him no.
“Sure,” she said. “And… thank you.”
“Doesn’t need saying.”
For a moment, neither of them moved, their faces still inches apart through the window, their voices still hushed. Just between them.
She expected him to move away. And for a second—just a second—it felt like he might close that last bit of distance. Angle his face closer to hers….
But then he drew back, chucked her under the chin, and broke the moment before it could become anything more.
He touched a lean finger to the brim of his Stetson.
“All right,” he said. “We’ll get it done.”