Sarah grabbed three plates and went to the stove and spooned meatballs out from the pot while Colter took a seat at the table. Opening the stove, she took out three twice-baked potatoes and plated them. She laid them on the table in front of them like they were in her home instead of in her shop and she was playing a welcoming host.
“I’m making these for the party. What do you think?” Sarah asked, clenching her hands together in front of her nervously.
Whitney followed Colter in taking a bite. She bit into the warm meatball, and its salty juices filled her mouth. It was delicious, and she popped another into her mouth. Sarah was a lot of things, and a good cook was at the top of the list. If the situation was different, Whitney would have loved to have her as a friend, a friend who could teach her the art of cooking.
“These are great,” Colter said, motioning toward his missing bite of potato.
“Well done, Sarah. I’m totally impressed,” Whitney said, wiping her mouth on a napkin.
“That’s kind of you, Whit.” Sarah lit up. “I feel like we got off on the wrong foot. I’m glad to see that I was wrong.”
Whitney wasn’t about to correct her and admit that whatever tension the woman had felt was real. This was her chance to fix things and be the bigger person, and who knew—maybe they really could end up becoming friends. Heaven knew she was a few short of a full quiver when it came to friends lately. And sometimes the unexpected friends were the ones who came to matter the most.
“Mom is going to love these,” Colter said, filling the tense silence between her and Sarah as she tried to come up with the right thing to say.
Sarah nodded. “I hope so. I’d love to keep catering your family’s events.”
“I can’t think of a reason that wouldn’t happen,” Colter said, but he glanced over at Whitney like he was trying not to step on her toes.
“Do you all have big plans for your guests, Whitney?” Sarah asked. “I’ve heard good things about you from the people staying at the ranch.”
“Well, bless your heart, Sarah. That’s sweet of you to say,” Whitney said with her best smile. “In the morning, we’re gonna be taking the high-cotton guests out for a sleigh ride.”
“High-cotton guests?” Sarah raised an eyebrow. “I’ve never heard that one before.”
“You know... The ones who’re living high on the hog.”
“Oh, I get it,” Sarah said, as she flipped back her hair. She took a bite of the meatball and swallowed it down. “Colter, I heard that there may even be a wedding or two coming up soon?”
Colter shifted in his chair and glanced toward her, before nodding. “Waylon and Wyatt are lucky men.”
Whitney prayed that the woman wouldn’t push the wedding talk any further. It made her want to sink into her chair, even though she didn’t quite know why.
“Do you know when they are thinking about tying the knots?”
Colter shrugged. “There was some talk that they would do it over Christmas. You know, when all the family is home.”
“Is Rainier getting out soon?” Sarah asked.
“Who’s Rainier?” Whitney asked, feeling as though she was an outsider in their conversation.
Sarah laughed, but checked it just as quickly.
“Rainier is my youngest brother,” Colter said, with a look of disbelief. “I thought everyone knew about him. My family always has a bit of drama, it seems.”
“Especially lately, but I hardly think any of it is you guys’ faults,” Sarah added.
“Thanks,” Colter said. “But I’m sure there are people in town who think otherwise.”
“Well, I know just as well as you do that no one should be judged by the actions of their relatives,” Sarah said, laughing as she motioned toward her cousins, who were obviously listening to the conversation but still pouring chocolate and working with the foods.
“Hey, now...” the woman closest to Sarah said with a laugh. “You ain’t no saint, either.”
Sarah nodded, looking over at Colter. “You’re right... There are things that I am not proud of. But I’m sure we could all say the same, couldn’t we?”
The statement made Whitney wonder exactly what they were talking about when it came to the perfect Sarah. Was there a side of her that she didn’t know anything about? Were there as many skeletons in this woman’s closet as there were in her own?
She doubted it.
Colter stood up, putting his napkin beside his empty plate. “I’ll let my mother know about everything. And hey, thanks for the snack.” His face was filled with an edge of panic at the reference to Sarah’s past.
There had to have been more between him and Sarah than what he had told her. Whitney stood up, and picking up their dishes, she took them to the industrial sinks. “Yes, thank you,” she said, relieved that the time had come for them to leave.
Sarah walked them to the front door as a couple made their way in. “If you guys need any other changes, it might be tough, but I’ll try my best to make them happen. In the meantime, stay safe.”
There was something ominous about the way the woman spoke, but Whitney tried to ignore the way it made the hair on her arms rise. She was seeing something that wasn’t visible on the surface when it came to Sarah.
“Oh, and hey, Colter,” Sarah called after them. “Don’t forget to save me a dance!”
The door closed behind them. Whitney tried to stop from grinding her teeth at the woman’s invitation. Now she had to be doing it to rub her friendship with Colter in her face. The woman should have known better—she had already won; she didn’t need to keep coming after him.
“I’m sorry about that. You know you didn’t have to come in with me,” Colter said, the words rushing from him.
She smiled. “That was fine. Sarah is nice.”
“You think so?” he asked, watching her as if trying to gauge her reaction.
She couldn’t give away anything that would make him see the jealousy and insecurity she was feeling. When it came to this, she had to stick to her guns—and what she knew was right, regardless of what she wanted. And the only thing that was right was for Colter to be with a woman who would fit in his life, not a woman he would have to help conceal from the hands of a madman.
Chapter Ten
Why did Sarah have to make everything awkward for him? After what felt like months of trying, Whitney was starting to open up and really talk to him, and then he found himself in the middle of some weird game he didn’t understand. Whitney was staring out the window as they made their way toward the ranch.
The last place he wanted to be was back at the ranch. No doubt as soon as they hit the parking lot, Whitney would disappear and any progress they had made today would disappear right along with her.
“Do you want to go get some dinner or something before we get back?” He motioned toward the clock on the dashboard. “By now they’ve all eaten dinner. We’re going to be on our own.”
Whitney looked at him with a soft, placating smile on her lips. “We just ate at Sarah’s.”
“Right,” he said, chastising himself for such a stupid idea. “But that wasn’t a lot of food. You have to still be hungry.”
She gave a resigned shrug, and the motion was so full of sadness that it made a pit open up inside him.
“There really isn’t anything between Sarah and me, I promise,” he said, trying to bring back the girl he had seen not an hour before—the bright, vibrant version of her that he loved so much.
“There should be something going on between you two—you’re perfect for each other. You both have your lives together. My life...” Whitney threw her hands up in the air. “There’s nothing about me that you should be attracted to. I have nothing to offer you. Nothing like Sarah does. She’s smart, funny, ambitious, and she clearly is into you.”
“Don’t compare yourself to her. You are nothing like her,” he argued.
“That’s exactly my point, Colter.”
“I meant that as a compliment. I mean that you’re your own person. I don’t know exactly what happened...you know, in Kentucky, but from what you told me, you are already stronger in my eyes than most women.”
“How is running away strong?”
Was that what she had done—run away from home, from the man who’d tried to kill her?
“Is the guy still on the loose—your ex?”
Whitney looked over at him and he could tell by the set of her jaw that she was trying to decide whether or not she should tell him what she was really thinking.
“He got off with a slap on the wrist and credit for time served. In the end, even though he had burned down my family’s barn and killed three prize horses, and nearly me—which is what he was after—he ended up only serving three months. You can read all about it on the internet. The jury decided that it wasn’t premeditated—it was just some accident.”
“But it wasn’t?”
She shook her head and tears filled her eyes, but she wouldn’t allow them to fall. “He wanted to kill me. He told me that he was going to. He locked the doors...” She took a deep breath. “I can still smell the smoke.”
He knew the smell, that deep tarry scent of the world around him erupting into flames. He had dreams sometimes in which he was standing in the middle of a burning house without an exit—forced to face the flames and knowing that he would die. Yet he always woke up from the terror of his dreams. It was another thing to be standing there, in the middle of the flames, with nowhere to go and nowhere to hide.
“I knew that if I got out of the barn...he would be there waiting for me. Yet I had to try. I broke through the side of the wall near where the fire had started.” She pulled back her sleeves. There, on the backs of her arms, were the telltale marks of third-degree burns. “I covered my face, but a piece of siding fell on me when I was running.”
“Holy...” He reached over and ran his finger down the rough edges of her scar. She jerked at his gentle touch but didn’t pull her arms away. “I’m so sorry, Whitney. I had no idea how bad...” He stared at the puckered pink scars on her arm.
“When I got back up, I could hear the sounds of Rudy in the barn. He was so scared. I ran to go back inside, but just as I got to the barn another piece fell—it knocked me out. And I...I let the thing I cared most about in the world die.” Her voice was thick with her checked tears, and though they brimmed in her eyes, she wouldn’t let them come.
“That fire. Rudy. None of it was your fault,” he said, pulling the truck over to the side of the road so he could just talk to her. “Even if you could have gotten to your horse, the chances are that you would have been killed trying to get him out. You never go back into a burning building.”
“But that’s exactly what you do. Why is it so different for me to try and save something I loved?”
He moved closer to her and pulled her into his arms. She didn’t resist; instead she put her head on his chest and let him hold her.
“Baby, what I do and what you did are two different things. I have gear. I’m trained to know how to read a fire’s behavior. I know when and how it’s safest to go about these things. And if the firefighters made it to your barn and didn’t go in for the horses...then you have to know that you shouldn’t have gone back in, either.”
Her breathing was deep and he relished the feeling of her body against him. “I should never have left without him in the first place. I opened his stall, and the other horses’, but he wouldn’t come to me, and I went to open the barn door and found it locked. If I had just grabbed him and made him come with me... But I was...I was so scared. All I could do was just stare at the door, praying that it would fly open and we could all be free.”
He didn’t know what to say that could make her feel better. He couldn’t imagine all the things she was feeling right now, but it was no wonder she had gone just about as far away from Kentucky as she could get.
“And Frank...” she continued. “I had a restraining order filed against him, but just one week out of jail he came back and came after me. Paperwork doesn’t stop hate. In fact, I think it only made it worse.”
“Did he threaten you? What happened?” He tried to stop the anger from filling his voice with hatred, but even he could hear its hard edge.
She pushed her hair behind her ear and didn’t say anything. Instead she pressed her head harder against his chest. “I can hear your heartbeat,” she said.
“Answer me. Do you think he is going to keep coming after you? Do you think he could know that you’re here, in Montana?”
She nibbled her lip. “I haven’t told anyone where I am, but you know as well as I do that if someone is desperate enough—they will find you. I just want to stay hidden as long as possible. Maybe he’ll come to his senses and fall in love with someone else. Maybe he will realize that what he did is wrong.”
“People like him don’t change. He won’t stop. Sure, he may leave you alone, but you know he’s just going to refocus his attentions to someone else.”
“Or something else—like Dunrovin,” she whispered.
“Do you think he’s the one behind the floor—the bomb?” he asked, anger filling him with a fire of his own.
She shook her head. “If he wanted to come after me, he isn’t coy. He drinks. That’s what always starts it. He gets drunk and thinks he can take on the world. The next day, when he sobers up and realizes what he did, he comes around and apologizes. Then he feels bad and gets drunk again. It’s a vicious cycle.”
He ran his hand over his face as he thought about Frank coming after his family. He reached up and grabbed the red envelope off the dashboard. No one at the ranch, besides Whitney, knew the man. He flipped it over and, reaching around her, pulled the picture out. “Do you think he would have done something like this?”
She took the picture and stared at the faces before flipping it over. “‘Mess with my family. I’ll mess with yours,’” she said, reading the note on the back aloud. Her face looked paler in the thin moonlight that streamed through the front window of the truck.
Sitting up, she slipped the card back into the envelope and gingerly laid it back on the dashboard. After a moment she turned to face him. “I...I don’t think he would do something like that. He wouldn’t come after all of you—only me.” She ran her hands over the knees of her jeans. “He never went after my parents. He is terrifying, but I don’t think he wants to kill everyone who’s ever been around me. I mean...” She motioned to the space between them. “You and I... We haven’t even kissed. He couldn’t know—”
So she was finally admitting that she felt it, too—the spark that always seemed to fill the air when they were near each other. He was glad he wasn’t alone.
“That you’re attracted to me?” he asked, with a teasing lilt to his voice.
She smiled. “I’ve said this a few times over the last few days, Colter Fitzgerald, but please let me remind you again—you are not God’s gift to women. No matter what you think.”
His laughter rang through the cab of the truck, and with its arrival some of the tension seemed to disappear and he was able to relax again.
“You say that, but your smile says something else,” he joked.
She stuck out her tongue at him.
“My mother always used to tell me that if you stuck your tongue out, a bird would come along and poop on it,” he said with a laugh.
“That’s ridiculous. Plus, it’s the middle of winter, at night, in a truck, and we’re in the dark.”
He lifted his hands in surrender. “Hey, it’s just something my mom always said.”
She laughed. “My mother always told me not to go to bed on an empty stomach,” she
said with a lift of her brow. “If you’re still up for it, we could go somewhere... Get ice cream or something.”
“Ice cream. In the middle of December?”
She shrugged. “We all have our vices—mine just happens to be ice cream and chocolate. Preferably, I like to have them together, but concessions can be made.”
He laughed. “I always like a woman who knows her own mind but is willing to compromise when push comes to shove.”
“Oh, and you know I would shove someone to get to Rocky Road.”
It felt good just to laugh.
He turned the truck around and headed the couple of miles back to town. It had started to snow again, the tiny glittering flakes reminding him of a snow globe and how, even though his world had been shaken, it could still be beautiful in all its swirling chaos.
The town’s other café, the Dew Drop, was closed, and the only Open signs on as they drove through town were in the steamy window of the bar and at the gas station just down the street.
“Do you ever feel like it’s just not your day?” he asked with a laugh.
“What does that say, since you are hanging out with me?” She gave him a playful little shove.
“Trust me when I say that you are the best part of my day,” he said, reaching over and resting his hand on the seat between them, waiting for her to slip her hand in his. “To tell you the truth, I didn’t have to come to the ranch today. I knew my parents could handle whatever was thrown their way.”
“So why did you come?” she asked, her voice playful and soft. She tiptoed her fingers across the seat to him and rested just the tips of her fingers in his open hand.
“Do I need to say it out loud?”
She smiled. “Well, I’d hate to assume something that I might have all wrong.”
“What is it that you’re assuming?”
She ran her fingers over the line of his palm as he pulled the truck into the gas station and parked. “I wasn’t assuming anything,” she said, her face catching the reds and blues of the neon lights that adorned the twenty-four-hour convenience store. “I guess I was just hoping that you had come to see me. I know it’s a long drive from your house. And I’m sure you have better things to do.”
Mr. Taken (Mystery Christmas Book 3) Page 8