“You can ride. I’m doing fine,” she said. She motioned toward the bit of Christmas lights that were glowing in the distance. “We’re almost there.”
He took her hand, and his warmth burned through her gloves like he was on fire. He frowned as he must have felt the chill. “No, you’re not,” he said, lifting her hand to blow on her fingers.
They ached as the heat of his breath moved over her nearly frozen skin, but it wasn’t her hands that came alive with his touch and his kindness; rather, it was her heart.
Chapter Thirteen
Everything last night had gone wrong. Until they had gotten back to the ranch and found his mother and father warmly tucked in their bed. He hadn’t bothered to wake them up when he found out that they were safe and sound.
He hadn’t been that scared of losing his parents in a long time. That fear of what could possibly have happened to them had brought up so many memories of when he’d been young and his biological parents had left him alone. He’d always thought they were never coming back, that something bad had happened—until the last night he had spent with them, and his father had left him on the fire department’s doorstep. As a child he had often wondered if all that worry had caused all the bad that had come of them—almost as though he had wished it upon his parents.
He had given up the thoughts of a boy. He had finally found some reprieve thanks to his new life and the realization that he wasn’t in control of anyone else’s destiny but his own. He hadn’t caused his parents to leave him, he hadn’t caused their addiction or neglect, and he couldn’t cause his parents to be hurt just because he had secretly wanted them to disappear.
Yet, last night, that fear had returned—as though perhaps his curse had returned and because he had even voiced the possibility that his mother had been hurt. He had half expected to find her on the floor, and the illogical thought made goose bumps rise on his arms.
Colter shook his head as he went out to the barn and looked in on the horses. Two of the escapees were poking their heads over the doors of their stalls and they nickered as he grabbed a handful of pellets and made his way over to them.
“You rebel,” he said, feeding the mare, Jingles, a pellet. As she nibbled at his hand, looking for another, he scratched her forehead. “At least one of us got a little sleep, I hope.”
The horse stopped nibbling and looked up at him, and he could have sworn that she was laughing at him.
When they’d gotten back to the barn, they found the door open and the stalls unlocked. Though they had questioned everyone at the morning meeting, no one had come forward and admitted to any wrongdoing—not that he had expected anyone to, especially with his mother in the state she had been in.
There was only one other time he had ever seen her so mad, and it was the day that Rainier had been arrested.
The barn door opened behind him with the familiar sound of grinding metal.
A dark-haired man about sixty, his hair slightly too long and pulled back into a tight man bun, poked his head inside.
“Can I help you?” Colter asked, not recognizing the man as an employee but he had seen him somewhere before.
“I was just looking for Sarah. Is she around?” the man asked, his voice the throaty rasp of a smoker’s.
“Sarah...Sarah Rizzo?” he asked. “The caterer?”
The man nodded. “She asked me to meet her here today about a job.”
“Why would she want to meet you here?”
The man shrugged. “Look, buddy, I was just doing as I was told.”
“What’s your name?”
“If Sarah isn’t in here...” The man ducked out of the door without bothering to answer Colter’s question.
He rushed after the stranger. “Wait up!”
The man was halfway across the parking lot, on his way to the ranch office, before Colter caught back up with him. “Stop, man. What’s your name?”
The man stopped and turned to face him. “The name’s Daryl.”
“Daryl what?” Colter pressed.
The man looked toward the office almost as though he wished he had walked a little bit faster so he wouldn’t have had to answer any of his questions. “It’s Daryl Bucket.”
The name rang a bell. “Do I know you?” Colter stared at the man and the way his mouth puckered at his question, making the fine smoker’s lines around his lips deepen.
Daryl shrugged. “Who am I to go on and say who you know and who ya don’t?”
Was this the kind of guy who was really coming to Sarah in hopes of getting a job? What did he plan on doing—pissing people off?
“I don’t think Sarah’s here. I haven’t seen her to—”
“In that case, I’ll just go on into the office and wait for her.” The guy motioned to Whitney’s office.
The last thing Colter was going to do was leave this guy alone with her. Not on his life. “Why don’t you just move along? I’ll tell Sarah that you stopped by.”
The guy smiled. There was something dangerous about the way his lip quivered over his stained yellow teeth. “I don’t know who you think you are, man, but I need a job. I’ve been a trucker all my life and things dried up. It’s the holidays. I got bills rolling in that need to be paid. I ain’t gonna screw this chance up.”
The dude could play at his heartstrings all he wanted, but with things like this, Colter always trusted his gut, and it was warning him that there was more to the guy than what he was telling him.
The door to the office opened up, and his father, Merle, and Whitney walked outside. As his father saw the man, his face lit up. “Daryl, is that you, old man?”
Daryl smiled, the motion losing its dangerous edges as he looked over at Colter’s father.
“What are you doing here?” his father asked as he and Whitney made their way over to them.
“I was hoping to get a job with your party’s caterer. She wanted to meet me here when I told her about you and I.” The man looked over at Colter. “Your man here was giving me a hard time.”
Colter’s dad looked over at him and gave him a wink. “Oh, he can be a tough one when it comes to strangers. We tried to train it out of him, but, well...you can see how well that worked out.”
Daryl gave him the side-eye.
“Mr. Fitz, this poor gentleman is going to think you’re serious,” Whitney said, coming to Colter’s rescue.
He gave her a smile, but as he looked at her, he couldn’t quite catch her gaze. He couldn’t be sure if she was intentionally avoiding his eye or not, but he hoped for the latter. They had moved quickly last night, but he didn’t want her to regret it. For him, their time together was something special, and something he wanted to repeat, but if he had another chance he’d love to see it to completion.
“Just joshing you, Daryl,” Merle said, slapping the man on the shoulder. “This is my son Colter—the fireman.”
Daryl’s eyes widened with surprise and he stared at him, not speaking for a minute.
“Nice to meet you, officially,” Colter said, attempting to mend the broken fences between them for his father’s benefit.
“Yeah, likewise,” Daryl said, but he looked Colter up and down like he was trying to figure him out.
“Daryl used to work at the ranch when we were first starting up. It’s been a long time. Hasn’t it?” Merle asked.
Daryl nodded but didn’t really say anything, nor did he look too happy.
“Daryl did a great job teaching me how to use the heavy equipment and getting the ranch up and running.”
“I always had a connection to this place,” Daryl said.
“As you can see,” Merle said, motioning to the world around them, “we made things work. Couldn’t have done it without you.”
Colter’s father might have liked the guy, but t
hat didn’t mean he had to.
Thankfully, Sarah drove up in her black this-year’s-model Chevy truck and got out. She waved as she walked over. Everyone stared at her, the seconds ticking by as slow as cold oil dripping out of its jug. He tried to ignore the dread that crept through him with each of her nearing steps.
“Heard you all had a little bit of a rodeo when you all got home last night,” Sarah said with a laugh.
“Nothing we couldn’t handle.” Whitney’s face pinched, but she forced a smile. “How’d you hear about it all so fast?”
Sarah waved her off. “Oh, you know nothing that exciting can go too long without hitting the phone tree. Your mom had business this morning with Ms. Babinski, who called her sister, who called Mrs. Long, who called me.”
It was a wonder anything ever stayed private in their little town with an information dissemination system as active and on-it as the women of Mystery.
“What happened last night?” Daryl asked, making Colter feel at least a little bit better in the knowledge that not everyone in the town knew every one of their movements.
“They near ran into one of our horses who, along with his comrades, managed to escape. Got run off the road,” Merle said. “They’re damn lucky that they made it home before they froze their buns off. Weatherman said with the wind chill it was nearly forty below last night.”
“Were the horses okay?” Daryl asked, looking toward the barn.
For the first time since he’d met the guy, Colter actually found something to like about him.
“Yeah, they are all fine. Luckily, they had pretty good coats going, but they were all a little out of sorts this morning, so we gave them a little extra hay.”
Daryl nodded his approval.
“What are you doing here, Sarah?” Whitney asked.
Colter was sure that she hadn’t intended to sound suspicious, but her tone was less than cordial. After their taste testing at the shop, he had thought things between the two women had started to get better, but on their walk back, Whitney had asked about the woman’s family—making him wonder if she suspected that Sarah was in some way involved in the horses’ escape.
He looked over at her and Sarah sent him her best dazzling smile and a lift of the brow as though she had heard the implication in Whitney’s tone, as well. Sarah was conventionally pretty, skinny and blonde, what most guys would call stacked thanks to her ample upper assets, but she wasn’t his type. However, no matter how much he tried to convince Whitney, the more she seemed to dig her heels in when it came to believing him. He could hardly wait for Yule Night to be over so he wouldn’t keep running into the woman, but without the coming festivities it also meant he had less of a reason to keep popping in at the ranch—and seeing Whitney.
“I have a few interviews this morning,” Sarah said, her tone almost questioning. “I just thought your boss, Mrs. Fitzgerald, would want to weigh in on my selection.” She turned to the man standing next to Merle. “I assume you are Daryl?” She stuck out her hand and Daryl gave it a tight and swift shake. “Why don’t we head to Mrs. Fitz’s office? I know she’s going to be waiting for us.”
Merle glanced down at his watch. “If you don’t mind, Colter, I’m going to talk with Daryl. I’ll take a hand to go and get your truck in a bit.”
Whitney looked as though she was literally biting her tongue as Sarah, Merle and Daryl made their way toward the house.
“Sarah, wait!” Whitney called after her. She gave Colter an apologetic tip of the head, but turned and walked toward the woman.
Sarah stopped, motioning for the men to go ahead. “Can I help you?” She put her hand on her hip as she turned to face them.
Colter followed Whitney, and the dread he had been feeling intensified. Whatever Whitney was planning on doing with Sarah, it wasn’t going to play out well. He could feel it in his toes. There was just too much tension between the two women for any progress to be made. He wished he could just make them both stop. There was enough going on at the ranch without him having to stand between the two women.
Whitney stopped just out of the woman’s reach. “What did you do after we left your shop last night?”
“What? Why?” Sarah asked, looking to Colter as if asking him to help her decipher Whitney’s sudden line of questioning.
In all truth, Whitney’s suspicion had gotten him thinking, and after he kissed her good-night he’d gone back to his place and had tossed and turned all night as he tried to come up with a list of possible suspects. Sarah didn’t seem to entirely fit the bill, but no one he had thought of really did, either.
He knew it was naive, but the only thought that had finally allowed him to get some sleep was the hope that all these little incidents would simply come to a stop. Perhaps whoever had left him the threatening picture would come to realize that this wasn’t a fight worth having.
“Colter, are you really going to let your little secretary treat me like this? I’ve been nothing but good to your family. I can’t imagine what she is trying to get at,” Sarah said, motioning toward Whitney.
He was pretty sure he could almost see the steam rising from Whitney as her face pinched into a tight scowl at the woman’s questions. “Look, Sarah. You’re right. You’ve been great to work with so far. We’ve just been running into a few things that are a bit strange and worrying. If you’d just tell her where you were last night after we left, then we’ll be along. No big deal. We just want to make sure that we cross all the innocent people off our list.”
“How big is your list?” Sarah asked. “Only me?”
He scuffed his boot against the grit they had put down on top of the ice in the parking lot. “Where were you, Sarah?”
She huffed. “I was working on getting the appetizers together last night. My cousins and I were there until about ten and then we went home.”
“Did you go home alone?” Whitney pressed.
“What is that supposed to mean?” Sarah asked, affronted. “Do you think I’m going home with random men? What do you know about your little friend here, Colter? Has she told you who she really is? About her past?”
He looked over at Whitney. Her jaw was clenched tight and her face was red, but he doubted that it was because of the cold. “This isn’t about Whitney and her past. This is about you and where you were and who you were with. Don’t try to deflect, Sarah.”
“This is crazy, Colter. And if you don’t see that, then you deserve to be with a woman like her—one with a closet full of skeletons...and not just the figurative kind.” Sarah pointed toward her. “I don’t know what she has you thinking about me, but all I care about is my business and my family.”
Whitney gave a derisive snort. “How did I know you would say something about your family? You say you’re innocent...but it’s strange how everything we know about the suspect points straight toward you.”
“What’s in this for you, Whitney?” Sarah asked, turning toward her so their faces were only a few inches apart. “Do you think you can come here and stir up trouble in hopes that it will make people forget about who you really are? What you did? I know all about you—and how you falsely accused your boyfriend of starting a fire in your barn... All so you could get the insurance money. You should be in prison.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Whitney said, the color draining from her face. She looked toward him. “Don’t listen to her. I promise it’s not like she said. I had nothing to do with that fire.”
“From what I heard, she staged the whole thing,” Sarah said, looking to him with self-righteous indignation. “If you were smart, you would have her hit the road before a mysterious fire breaks out here. Dunrovin doesn’t need any more trouble—especially her kind.”
Chapter Fourteen
Whitney stormed off, bumping against Sarah as she made her way to her office, and s
lammed the door. He thought about going after her, but he’d learned long ago that sometimes the best thing he could do when it came to dealing with an angry woman was to give her a few minutes to collect her thoughts. And he still had Sarah to deal with.
“That was cruel, Sarah,” he said, though he could think of several more colorful words he could have used instead of cruel.
She looked at him, her eyes brimming with angry tears. She looked like a broken woman. “You don’t think I wanted to call her out like that, do you?” she asked, motioning after Whitney. “She just made me so angry. I wouldn’t do anything to hurt this ranch or stand in the way of its success. Your success means my success. Just like everything else in this community, we are all interconnected. A rising tide raises all boats, you know?”
He believed there was some validity to what she had to say, but the way she was fighting so hard and throwing such low blows made him wonder if there weren’t some things she was hiding as well—things that Whitney had brushed against, and had caused the woman to lash out.
“Did you go home alone last night?” he asked, his voice as soft and understanding as he could make it.
She sucked in a breath. “The only person I want to go home with is you, Colter.” She reached out and took his hand.
Her touch felt foreign, cold and unwelcome even though she was wearing thick black gloves. She squeezed his fingers, but instead of returning her affection, he pulled out of her grasp. “That’s not a good idea, Sarah.” He couldn’t look her in the face. He hated this moment, when people weren’t at the same emotional place. It always made things so awkward. “You are a great gal, but I’m—”
“Dating her?” Sarah interrupted, finishing his thought.
He nodded. “She’s pretty amazing, regardless of what you seem to think about her.”
“You are being stupid, Colter. You are passing on someone, me...a woman who has her life together, all so you can play house with her. She is nothing but trouble.” She looked up at him, anger filling her eyes. “You’re going to regret this.”
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