by S Doyle
I was still entertaining thoughts of throwing another engagement party. Given that that would be an even smaller event, I didn’t see any problem pulling it off. I took out my phone, prepared to check out Pinterest for some party theme ideas, when I remembered I didn’t have any accounts anymore.
Facebook, fine. Twitter, fine. Instagram had hurt, but I was coping. But losing Pinterest was killing me.
Jack delivered my wine and I thought about the small salad I would order. About how maybe, instead of doing balsamic and oil, I would get a little crazy with a light ranch dressing. Then I felt someone sit next to me.
I didn’t have to turn my head. Didn’t need him to say anything to me. Garrett was like a perpetual magnet in my life, one I was constantly drawn to.
“Brin,” he said.
“Garrett,” I said.
We had left our not-a-date on somewhat awkward terms. He had walked me to my car and I had gotten in before he could suggest anything. Like, can I give you a kiss on the cheek, or why don’t we do this again, or I love you Sabrina and I always have.
It was important to avoid the traps.
I only looked back at him twice in the rearview mirror, which I considered pretty damn strong of me.
“I don’t want you to think…I mean, I usually come here after my shift for a beer and dinner.”
I did turn to him then. “I don’t think anything, Garrett.” Not that he purposefully sat next to me. Not that he wanted to talk to me, eat with me. See me. “Are you okay if I’m here?”
“Absolutely,” he said. “You know…I really am glad to have you back. I mean it. We were…friends once. Right? A long time ago.”
“Sure,” I lied. I’d never thought of Garrett as anything so simple as a friend.
In front of Garrett, Jack put down a bowl of potato chips, like fresh homemade potato chips covered in salt so that you could see the white dots all over them. Then, next to that, he added a big bowl of what could only be sour cream and onion dip.
I gently brushed the corners of my mouth to make sure I wasn’t salivating.
“Want one?” he asked. “Jack knows these are my weakness.”
I glared at him.
“One chip, with a little dip. Not going to kill you, Brin.” He was smiling, and then as if to torment me, he dug a chip through a healthy dose of dip and popped it into his mouth in one bite. I felt myself squirming on the stool. There, at the corner of his mouth, was some lingering dip. If I just leaned over and licked it off, surely it wouldn’t be all that many calories.
Focus, Sabrina! This man does not and has never wanted you.
He was wiping his mouth. Boooo. Then he repeated the motion, only this time he held it out for me.
It was like Eve and the apple, only Garrett and a dip-covered potato chip.
I reached out to take it from his fingers, but he shook his head. “It will be too messy to transfer. Just open your mouth and I’ll pop it in.”
I glared at him again.
He smirked. “Okay, there was a little sexual innuendo in that statement, but I promise you it was unintentional.”
I opened my mouth and he popped the chip in and it was everything that I remembered. Crispy, starchy, and creamy, all at once. Suddenly I realized I’d kept holding on to his hands long after I had chewed and swallowed it so I let him go.
When I opened my eyes he was staring at my mouth.
“You’ve got a little…cream at the corner there,” he said roughly, pointing at my mouth.
I found a cocktail napkin on the bar and wiped the dip away.
“Better?” I asked.
“Depends on your definition.” Again his voice was rougher than normal.
We both turned back to the face the bar rather than each other. I lifted my glass of wine and started drinking it in deep gulps. I noticed he was going after his beer pretty hard, as well. And his foot was bobbing up and down on the lower rung of his stool.
Oh, wait. Mine was, too. I finished my wine first and snapped the glass a little too hard onto the bar.
“Well, I’ve got to go. Been good seeing you, Garrett.” I put another twenty down and thought how Jack was doing all right by me with tips.
“See you around, Brin.”
He faced the bar and didn’t look at me as I left. I only turned around once to look at him before I made it to the exit.
SABRINA
The King’s Land—A Week Later
“I think I want to throw an engagement party for you and Clayton.” I was sitting on my couch, phone to my ear, in my big, lonely ranch house and I realized I needed to do…something. Calling Ronnie seemed like a good idea.
Being back in Dusty Creek was both a blessing a curse.
A blessing that not a single weird thing had happened since I’d been back. No emails, no dead animals. Since I was completely off social media there were no messages to deal with there. I felt like I had finally given whoever had been chasing me the slip.
A curse though, too, because there wasn’t a whole lot to do in Dusty Creek. There was one main street. One diner. One bar. One grocery store. Which meant any time I was out and about I was likely to run into the town’s one sheriff.
Seeing Garrett wasn’t good for my mental health. Seeing Garrett when he was being nice to me…which was, like, ALL THE TIME now…was definitely messing with my head.
That night in the bar last week, well, I didn’t even want to think about how I had practically sprinted to get away from him. Before I did something ridiculous like climb into his lap.
“No,” Ronnie said instantly.
“No, this could be good. Get rid of all the old bad memories and replace them with good ones.”
“No. It’s enough that I’ve agreed to this massive wedding.”
I snorted. “Hardly massive. You talked me out of what I wanted to do. Well, I should say, you got Clayton to lower the boom on me. A hundred and seventy-five people here at the ranch? That’s like child’s play. The food is done, the flowers are done, the invitations are out. The entertainment is pending, but that’s just because I’m waiting for a contract. Did I mention the ice sculptures?”
“Ice sculptures? In June in Texas? For an outside wedding?”
I smiled. Now probably wasn’t the time to tell her about the fireworks.
She sighed. “Sabrina, Clayton and I don’t need any more exposure to the world. Besides, you know we’re already married. An engagement party seems silly.”
I suppose it did. Ronnie had dropped that bomb on me a few days ago. Apparently they were so in love they had both decided they didn’t want to wait for the deadline to get married. When I asked Clayton why he’d done it, he just said he’d been waiting for five years and didn’t want to wait any longer. The moment Ronnie told him she loved him, he’d taken them to a courthouse in Dallas to make it legal. He still wanted the big to-do, though. For Ronnie—and maybe himself, too.
“Fine. Maybe I’ll just call it a party and be done with it. I’m me. People expect me to have fun parties all the time. This would be just one more.”
“Tell me again why you need to throw a party.”
“Because I’m bored!” I shouted and threw myself back on the couch. “I need something to do, and if you say shop, I’m never speaking to you again.”
“Wedding planning is work.”
I sat up. It wasn’t enough to keep me occupied. To stop me from thinking about Garrett. And sour cream onion dip.
“I told you, most of it is already done. You and Bea need dresses. At some point I’ll come to Dallas...”
“Oh, no. I’m not letting you bully me about dresses. I’ll pick my own. Bea can pick her own, too.”
Bea picking her own dress? This made me fractionally worried. “I did mention there is going to be press at this wedding, right? And cameras, lots and lots of cameras.”
“I promise. I’ll have a proper wedding dress. But we still don’t need an engagement party.”
“I need it,” I
groaned.
“You could get a job,” Ronnie said gently.
“You’re so funny,” I quipped. “Me, working. Now that’s the real joke.”
“What about stuff around the ranch? We are more than oil and big energy industries. I believe The King’s Land has a hundred and fifty head of cattle. Plus our stock-horse breeding program. Maybe start learning the family business.”
“You mean go outside?” I asked incredulously. “In the dirt and mud with the animals? What shoes would I wear?”
“You mean they don’t make Prada cowboy boots?”
I squinted my eyes. “Are you being for real right now? Because I could do some serious research.”
“I have to go. Clayton’s calling, but whatever you do…don’t call it an engagement party. Too many bad memories!”
She hung up and I pouted. Didn’t she get it? The point of replacing one engagement party with another was to erase all the bad memories. Like that night never happened.
The phone, still in my hand, started to ring again. I answered without even looking because I just assumed it was Ronnie calling me back, saying she forgot to tell me something.
“Yep,” I answered. “What did you forget?”
There was a pause. As if she was surprised I had picked up so quickly.
“You can’t run from me, Sabrina. I’ll always find you. Soon we’ll be together.”
The strange dark voice echoed in my head and I dropped the phone like I had been holding a rattlesnake up to my ear.
I immediately reached for it and ended the call. Then I blocked the number.
I sat down on the couch and considered what had just happened. My hands were shaking and I shoved the phone between the cushions of the couch like that buffer might protect me from the person on the other end of the line.
I thought about the voice. It hadn’t been normal. It was distorted, somehow. Something to disguise it so I wouldn’t recognize it when I heard it in person. Why bother? Unless it was possible I knew this person? No, that couldn’t be. There was a time I’d suspected people from the show, but nothing ever came of it.
But how did he keep getting my phone number? The last time I had changed numbers I hadn’t really told Ronnie or Bea why. Only that a stupid fan had hacked my phone so I was taking precautions.
No biggie. Nothing to see here.
But if I changed my number twice in two months, they would definitely suspect something. Bea absolutely would call me on my bullshit. I couldn’t think about that. For now the number was blocked and I would be super cautious about answering any calls.
But it meant he wasn’t gone. I thought back to that day in Dallas, at the running trail. This was how I had felt then, certain I was being watched.
Was it just my phone or did he know where I lived? It wasn’t like it would be hard information to find. I was the daughter of oil baron Hank King. The King’s Land had been featured in multiple magazines. Yes, the ranch was isolated. With wide-open views in every direction. Not an easy place to sneak up on undetected.
Still, a girl had to take precautions.
I made my way back through the house to Hank’s study. There was a gun safe in a corner of the room. I knew the combination, we’d all known the combination growing up. Hank was a believer in arming his girls for protection.
I pulled a nine millimeter Glock from one of the shelves. I would sleep with it under my pillow tonight and then think about what action I would take tomorrow.
My options seemed limited. I could wait it out, but I had done that these last few weeks by leaving LA and that hadn’t worked. I could tell Garrett, let him know to be on alert, but everything in me cringed at having that conversation.
There was another option. An option that money provided. Money I wasn’t certain I had yet, but maybe I could take the risk. I could hire a bodyguard. A professional who would come out to the house and stay here.
But for how long? Indefinitely?
Would this person ever give up? Or would it get worse?
Would it get dangerous?
GARRETT
Dusty Creek
I was coming out of the diner after lunch when I spotted her. Not that she was easy to miss, with her red leather jacket and four-inch high heels. Her long dark hair swinging down her back.
She was wearing the big round sunglasses again, and just like last time, I wanted to pull them off her face.
I shouldn’t have followed her. In my gut I knew that. Sabrina King was part of my past, not part of my future. But she was crossing the street on her way to the grocery store, and suddenly I couldn’t help myself.
I made my way down the sidewalk toward her. I told myself I had a bunch of reasons. I wanted to know why she’d bolted the other night when we were having drinks. I wanted to know if I had said or done anything to upset her. Had she been offended I had even offered her a potato chip?
Really, I think I just wanted to see her again. Make her smile.
I was coming up on her but I could tell she hadn’t noticed me.
“Sabrina,” I called to her. For a second she froze, and then she screamed. I saw her reach for her purse as she turned in my direction, and it was the craziest thing, but I felt like I needed to reach for my sidearm.
What the fuck?
As soon as she saw it was me, her body relaxed.
“Brin, what the hell?” I said as I approached her.
“You startled me.” Her voice was a little raspy.
“In the middle of the day in front of the Piggly Wiggly?”
“So? I’m jumpy. Big deal.” She had her arms crossed over her middle as if she was trying to protect herself.
Something didn’t make sense, but I was starting to figure out that if I pushed her, her MO was to bolt.
I looked down at the purse she was clutching in her hand. “You carrying?”
Immediately her back went up. “I have a license. I’m allowed. Do you want to have a conversation about my Second Amendment rights? Do you?”
“Not particularly. I was just curious.”
“Oh.” Again her body seemed to relax. “Anyway, did you want something?”
I wanted to take her glasses off. I wanted to see her eyes. I wanted to know if she was really afraid of something or this was just Brin being Brin and putting on a show.
“No, I just needed to pick up some stuff for dinner. Now that spring is here I can grill again. I was thinking barbecued chicken. You should come over.”
“Over where?”
“To my place. For dinner. When was the last time you saw the Pine ranch? Probably not since you were a kid.”
She hesitated, but I kept walking toward the store and eventually she fell in step beside me. I picked a cart and started rolling it down the narrow aisles of Dusty Creek’s lone grocery store.
Most folks did bulk shopping at the Costco two towns over. But the Piggly Wiggly served most of my needs.
Except they didn’t sell condoms. The owner didn’t believe in birth control, which was a pain in the ass. Buying condoms in bulk made me feel like more of a player than I was. And there was something depressing about seeing this massive box of unused condoms in my bathroom cabinet.
Wait. Why was I thinking about condoms?
Brin stayed mostly quiet until she started to pick up some fruits and vegetables and put them in my cart.
“I’ve never been to your ranch,” she said quietly.
“Never? Huh, that seems crazy, but I guess all the big events happened at The King’s Land.”
“I guess.”
“We can grill those peppers if you want,” I suggested.
“I was buying them because I needed them for me. I suppose I should get my own cart.”
“You can put them in mine. Just get extra, then.”
She put them in the cart, then added a few of different colors. I didn’t know why, but it made me happy to see our groceries comingled. Like I had won some kind of trust from her, in her allowing me to haul ar
ound her produce.
I picked up macaroni salad and potato salad. She picked up spinach and mushrooms.
“You need more vegetables in your diet,” she grumbled when I reached for some coleslaw.
“You need more mayonnaise in yours.”
She smirked at me and I felt like I had won again. The Sabrina who had walked into the grocery store had been distracted and tense. So tense that she’d screamed at just hearing her name.
Now she was herself and relaxed. We took our combined cart of food items and checked out what was hers and what was mine. Except when she reached for the peppers I stopped her.
“No, those are mine. Remember, I’m grilling them for us tonight.”
She put a hand on her hip. “I don’t even remember agreeing to have dinner with you.”
“Sure you did. I said barbecued chicken, you said let’s grill some peppers with that. I said let’s add some potato salad…it’s all right here,” I said pointing to the counter of mixed food.
Once we had our groceries sorted and bagged, I walked her back to her car.
“What time can you come over?” I asked her.
“What time do you want me?”
Now, I thought. I wanted her now.
I shrugged. “I should be done my shift by six, so seven works.”
She nodded and let me put her bags of groceries in the back of her sleek Mercedes. When that was handled, we stood there for a minute and I realized I couldn’t let it go.
“Why are you carrying a gun, Brin? It’s Dusty Creek. You know the crime rate here. If I make an arrest once a month that’s a lot, and it’s mostly Joe Kregger for getting drunk and disorderly again.”
“I wanted to feel safe,” she muttered. But the glasses, which she’d had perched on her head while we were shopping, were down now, over her eyes. I hated it.
“You don’t feel safe in my town?” There was a little bit of pride on the line. I was the sheriff.
“I’m just taking precautions. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
No, there was nothing wrong with that. “Okay. I’ll let you go and I’ll see you tonight.”
She nodded and stood back as she got into her car. Then I watched as she pulled away.