“And that’s exactly why we’re having this night out,” he said, swinging into a graveled parking lot that bordered a rustic log restaurant.
“I’ve never been out here. What a perfect setting with the evergreen trees and the river as a backdrop to the log restaurant.”
“It’s been here as long as I can remember. The high school held their proms here. I don’t know if they still do.”
“Did you attend your high school proms?” she asked him.
He shook his head. “Back then I was the same height I am now, but I had two left feet and was string-bean skinny. Did you go to yours? Girls always seem to make a big fuss over getting asked by the right boy and buying the right dress.”
She didn’t answer until they were almost at the door. “I was never popular, much to my mother’s dismay. I didn’t learn to dance until I was older. And it’s been ages since I went to my last dinner-dance. I hope I don’t step all over your feet.”
The music was playing as they walked in. Duke felt Angie begin to sway, because he had his hand on her back. He asked for a table on the wraparound porch, and the hostess led them to a secluded spot. It also had easy access to double glass doors opening onto the dance floor.
“Do you want wine?” he asked her when the waiter handed him a wine list.
“Do you?” It was plain she was nervous again.
“I’m not into wine,” Duke said. “I’ll probably order a beer. If you prefer wine, I’ll let you choose from the list.”
“No, I’ll have beer, too. With prime rib and a baked potato. Did you see how great that prime rib looked as we walked by?”
“Yes, and it’s my choice, as well.” The waiter returned and Duke ordered for them, except he let Angie pick her beer. They both asked for a dark lager, so the waiter delivered a pitcher.
“I fiddled around this afternoon with a couple of ideas for a possible logo for your website. I’ll drop them by next week.... Which reminds me, Pam said her boys can practice Monday and Wednesday mornings.”
“That’ll work for me.” They talked on, covering a variety of subjects. Superficial topics, nothing personal. Duke hoped she might warm up to the rodeo, but Angie always introduced something new instead of saying she planned to attend any of the riding events.
“This meal is scrumptious,” she exclaimed halfway through. “It’s truly a treat. I can’t thank you enough. I almost called this afternoon and bailed on you. Nerves, I guess,” she said with a shrug when Duke asked why.
The band heated up about the time they pushed their plates back. Duke split the beer left in the pitcher between them and invited her to dance.
He counted it in his favor that it was a slow, dreamy tune. He drew Angie close so their bodies fused. As the dance floor got more crowded, he tightened his hold.
When she leaned her cheek against his chest, Duke rested his chin on her soft hair. He savored how she fit against him. Not for the first time he imagined how sweet it would be to explore every inch of her smooth skin; how heavenly it would be to share their days and nights.
They’d both gotten into a languid groove of barely moving to tranquil tunes of the forties, when suddenly the beat shifted. “Everybody get set for line dancing,” someone yelled. Because they were in the center of a packed floor, they were yanked into lines.
Laughing and clapping, they scooted and kicked to the ever increasingly faster pace played by the band.
Breaking once, Duke and Angie returned to their table where they polished off the warm beer. “I can’t remember when I’ve had so much fun,” Angie said, patting her hot face as Duke tucked his credit card into the bill folder. The waiter tried to talk them into dessert, but they both declined. So he took Duke’s card and brought back copies for him to sign.
Angie collected her sweater and prepared to go. The band resumed, and the song was a slow rendition of Bon Jovi’s “Make A Memory.”
Duke held out his hand. “How about one last dance?”
Nodding, Angie smiled and stepped into his arms. Mellower now, Duke hummed along and nibbled the top of her ear. When the song ended, they wandered out to his pickup, arms twined around each other’s waists.
All the way to her ranch, Angie felt the quiver of expectation knot her stomach.
Duke kept one hand on the steering wheel and thread his free hand with her fingers. They spoke little, but each basked in the glow left over from their last dance.
This part of a date Angie remembered. The thrum of her pulse, the longing she felt deep inside to take touching further. She remembered, too, the day she swore off men. But this was Dylan, and he didn’t try flattery to talk her into bed.
In fact, he walked her to her door, and Angie knew he’d leave if she requested. Then he kissed her. His kiss didn’t demand, but neither was it a friendly brush of lips like his first. Now his long, warm body pressed her against the door.
Angie’s nerves jumped as she felt every surge to his lower body. Leaning into his kiss, she eased his T-shirt out from under his belt, and moaned at the sensation of his smooth skin beneath her palms.
One of his big hands covered her breast and she gloried in the friction of her tank top’s soft fabric on her nipple.
The heat, the sizzle of the night, was suddenly broken by the blare of a raucous song spewing from between their bodies.
“My phone,” Duke grated. Plainly he fought for control as he braced one muscled arm against the door casing and worked the phone out of his jeans with two fingers.
“ ’Lo,” he growled even as he saw Angie stiffen, rake back her hair, and heard her loudly whisper, “Oh, my God, is it Luke? It is, isn’t it?” She sounded panicky.
“Dinah,” Duke spoke his caller’s name for the benefit of the woman he’d been enjoying kissing on her doorstep. “Another break-in? No, no, you’re not interrupting anything,” he said, grimacing. “Where? The Walker ranch on Upper River Road? I’ll meet you there.” He clicked off and shot Angie an apologetic look.
Sagging against the siding, she lifted a hand and waved him away. “That call saved us from taking a very wrong turn. Good night, Dylan.” She quickly opened her door with a shaking hand.
It wasn’t until after she had disappeared inside and shut the door that Duke realized she’d gone off and left her house unlocked when there were all these damned break-ins in her area. She wouldn’t like it, but he intended to take up that issue with her—after which he’d do his level best to convince her it had been a very right turn they’d nearly taken.
Chapter Nine
Upper River Road crossed a tributary of the Musselshell River and looped around downtown. Along it were various scenic pullouts. Duke drove past them in darkness, but he slowed and shone his pickup’s side spotlight into secluded nooks he thought were large enough to conceal a vehicle. Other ranch roads bisected Upper River Road. A thief who knew them well could probably escape.
Duke reached the well-lit Walker ranch without passing any traffic. On a weeknight, unless something big like a high school football game or the fair and rodeo kept them out late, most ranchers were up at dawn.
Dinah and Loren Walker stood outside near his collection of barns and outbuildings. Walker bred and raised quarter horses. His was one of the larger ranches in the area. The pair watched Duke’s approach as he left his Ford. Dinah ran a critical eye over him from his Sunday boots to the black Stetson she knew he saved for weddings and funerals. “Why are you all duded up?”
Ignoring her, Duke addressed Loren. “This is earlier than past thefts. What’s missing? Any horses?”
“Don’t think so. Sons o’ guns scattered my mares,” Loren said, stabbing a finger at the dark pasture that sloped into the foothills. “That’s what brought me out of the house. Earlier I brought mares due to foal down from the high range to better keep an eye on them. I’d shut off the TV and was headed for bed when I heard hoofbeats and whinnying. I thought maybe a mountain cat was on the prowl, so I grabbed my rifle. I had to stop to step into boots or I bet’cha I’d have caught them in the act of ransacking my barn. They made off with saddles, bridles and several top-of-the-line ropes.”
“You saw them or their vehicle, then?” Duke asked hopefully.
“Nope. I heard them peel out and hightail it to the highway. They used the windbreak from here to the main road as cover. They drove blacked out, no beams or taillights. I know from the sound it was a big engine.”
Dinah hooked her thumbs in her back pockets. “That’s not much help. Three-fourths of the county drive Silverados, Ford 450s or Jimmys, and their second cars are six-cylinder SUVs.” She knelt and studied the ground. “I see a lot of tire tracks crisscrossing every which way. None look particularly new.”
“This is getting annoying,” Duke muttered. “I wish you’d shot out their tires, or even levered a few rounds over their heads. Maybe that would scare them into thinking twice about stealing around here. It ought to be getting harder for them to fence items with all the secondhand dealers on the lookout.”
Walker unloaded his rifle and pocketed the shells. “Unless now they’re stealing as a lark. If it’s teens, they could stockpile their loot and keep stealing to show they can outsmart the law.”
“That would burn my you-know-what,” Dinah tossed out.
Loren shrugged. “Well, they’re plenty bold. Dinah, I’ll let you know after daylight if any of my horses are gone. I don’t think they were pulling a trailer. The last fifty feet of my access road is steep. With a trailer it wouldn’t be a quick getaway.”
Dinah closed her notebook. “That should make me feel better, but it doesn’t. If Midnight’s the only horse they took and he still hasn’t surfaced, I worry about where—how they have him stashed.”
Duke looked thoughtful. “You mean do they feed and exercise him the way a stallion needs? A horse with Midnight’s energy isn’t easily managed.”
“It would serve them right if he stomped them to hell.”
“Yeah. Are you going home or to the office?”
“Home. There’s nothing more we can do from the office that can’t wait until morning. What about you?” She had shaken hands with Loren, said she’d be in touch and walked with Duke to the vehicles. “As gussied up as you are, I still think I interrupted something big. And...you showed up here mighty quick. Another thing...” she paused for effect “...where is Zorro?”
Duke yanked open his pickup door. “Listen, Ms. Nosy, spend your supersleuthing skills on finding our thieves.”
She laughed outright then smirked. “It didn’t take much super sleuthing, as you put it, for me to add up facts. It’s Thursday. Luke Barrington is spending the night at the Marshalls’, which leaves Angie free all night. And you, dear cousin, besides being spiffed up, have never been able to lie worth a damn. But that’s okay. Your secret is safe with me. I know how our family can tease a person to death. I keep telling my knot-head brothers it’s why I’m still single, because they ribbed every guy I dated so bad, boyfriends decided I wasn’t worth the effort.”
“Is that true?” Duke shot her a sidelong glance. “I didn’t do that, did I? If so, I apologize. So was there a particular boyfriend you wanted to keep?”
She sighed. “Not really. At least none I care to stand out here in the wilds discussing. By the way, I put a revised work schedule on your desk for the fair and rodeo. Let me know if you need any changes.”
“Okay.”
“We’ll work regular hours tomorrow. Did you see the carnival crew haul in the midway rides today? They’ll have the carnival operating by tomorrow night.”
“I saw their rigs roll in. I supposed they wouldn’t open until Saturday. I need Monday and Wednesday mornings off to work with the boys and the ponies.”
“How’s that going?”
“It’d be better if Tommy wasn’t so full of himself.”
“I did warn you. Hey, buzz me if you see anything suspicious driving home. Providing you’re going home and not out to spend the rest of the night at the rescue ranch,” she drawled, looking at Duke to see if she’d get a rise out of him.
“Good try, Dinah. I’m going home. But because I don’t care who knows it, I did take Angie to the Prime Rib and Fish House for dinner and dancing tonight. I’d just driven her home when you called. Now, have I satisfied your curiosity?”
Dinah paused half in, half out of her vehicle. “I jabbed at you, but I admit I’m surprised. You’ve always been the family loner. Jeez, Duke, if you go and get married like Ace and Colt, I’ll be the old, single member of the family.”
“One date is far from marriage and you’ve left out Beau and Tuf. But if you’re old, I’m purple. Hey, maybe you’ll meet Mr. Right in Billings at a workshop...unless you intimidate all the guys in the advanced firearms class.”
Dinah switched on her lights. “I can outshoot most guys at the shooting range. Frankly, if I have to dumb down at anything to interest a man, I am so going to remain single until I’m hobbling about with a cane.”
Amused, Duke laughed as he cranked over his engine. He drove out ahead of her, but then he thought about what she’d said. No one in the family would want her to dumb down to attract a man. Ace bragged that she was gutsy. Like Colt and Beau, he maybe teased her, but they’d take on anyone outside the family who gave her grief. If Tuf were back, he’d champion his sister. That started Duke wondering again if his aunt or Ace had heard from the youngest Hart. Tuf got his nickname by being a scrapper. When it came to rodeo, he could ride anything. After he’d graduated they’d all bet he’d win the all-around. But he up and joined the Marines.
The family couldn’t be prouder of him, but it didn’t mean they weren’t also all worried about why he wasn’t coming home.
Preferring to not end his fantastic night with Angie on such a somber note, Duke shifted back to imagining how his night may have ended had Dinah not phoned when she did. That more pleasant image lingered until he got home to be greeted by Zorro’s sloppy doggie kisses. They certainly didn’t compete with kissing Angie.
To work off excess energy his memories stoked, Duke took Zorro out for a run.
* * *
THE NEXT TWO DAYS DUKE SPENT his free mornings pulling together ideas to promote Angie’s horse-cookie business on the web. He couldn’t wait to give her some possibilities to look at. He was partial to graphics depicting a horse. His favorite was more a cartoon where the horse was plainly chewing something and smiling. Another, more traditional image showed a silhouette of a disembodied hand feeding a horse. He ended up printing both, and working them in with her AB logo.
Before he left for his job Saturday, he phoned Angie. She didn’t answer at the house, so he loaded the laptop he planned to give her and swung past her ranch, assuming she’d be out on the property. Her vehicle was gone and her house quiet.
He thought she could be at her new shop, but he didn’t really have time to go there, so he wrote her a note saying to call him if she had questions, and left the b
ag of items by her kitchen door.
Off and on while he patrolled, he made a point of trying her home number to no avail. Late in the day he gave up, figuring he’d offer to drive his aunt to church the next morning where he’d surely catch Angie.
* * *
“MOM, THIS DUMB OLD FAIR is bo-r-ring. Do we gotta do this every day? Why do I hafta stay in the b-booth?” Luke whined, but stuttered minimally.
“Honey, I can’t let you wander around the fairgrounds alone. There are more people here than I ever imagined would come to Roundup. I know you’re dying to go on the rides. How about if I ask Bobby and Tommy’s mom if she plans to take the boys? Maybe she’d let you go along.”
Luke flopped back down on one of the folding chairs Angie had brought for each of them to sit on during slow times. A flurry of customers came up to buy horse cookies, or learn about them. The minute they all left, Luke popped up again. “You can call Duke on your new cell phone. M-maybe he’d take me on rides.”
“Luke, we can’t bother him when he’s working.” She felt her cheeks flame a bit, recalling how they’d parted Thursday night. “Uh, since you mentioned my new phone, I need to write down the number for you to carry with you.” Angie tore off a piece of paper and scrawled the number. “Don’t lose this, Lucas. Now you can reach me anytime.”
Luke took the paper and stuffed it in his pocket. “How many days are we gonna be here?” he asked again.
“The fair runs from now through the end of the rodeo.”
“B-but we get t-to see the rodeo, right?”
Angie turned aside and sold two packets of horse treats to a local rancher. “Luke, you know I am not a fan of rodeos,” she said after the customer left. “I thought maybe you could go to the pony race with Pam.”
Harts Of The Rodeo 3 - Duke - Deputy Cowboy Page 13