She realized they were walking along a ravine. “Don’t fall into that,” Jarrod commented.
“I-I won’t,” she said, totally insulted. Just as her foot slipped and she went down.
She let out a small squeak, hit the ground hard, and rolled. All she could think about was the snakes. Forget the fact that she had no idea where she was going.
Jarrod spun when he heard Cassidy’s squeal. Somehow she’d managed not to scream as she disappeared over the edge of the ravine. He dove after her, gripping his gun, glad it was still unloaded as he moved down the steep incline. He could hear her grunting each time she crashed through the underbrush.
“Cassidy,” he whispered as loudly as he dared. “Where are you?”
“I’m over here,” she groaned, and he angled toward her soft grumble.
“Where?” He used the screen of his phone for a little light. They were down in the ravine, so he figured they were safe from being seen here.
“Over here.”
He saw her then, sprawled on the muddy bank of the stream that ran at the base of the ravine.
He crouched down beside her. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” He helped her sit up. She was covered in mud and her hair . . .
“I’m getting dadgum tired of rolling around on the ground all the time. It’s like I can’t stay on my own two feet these days. It’s really ticking me off.”
He chuckled. He couldn’t help it. “Well, look at the bright side. You’re not lying on top of a cactus, so you’re doing good.”
She grunted and spat a leaf out of her mouth. “Yeah, but my rump hit more rocks on the way down than I care to count. I have a feeling I’m going to relive each and every one of them come morning.”
He cringed. “I hate to agree, but it’s true. And I hate to say it, but I tried to get you to stay home—”
“Right. Don’t say it. Now help me stand up and let’s go find some rustlers. One thing’s for sure. I’ve officially got my camo gear on now.”
“True.” He holstered his phone, took her hand, and tugged her up. She came easily, despite having slid down the incline. His heart was still thundering with fear, and before he could stop himself he’d yanked her into his arms and held her close, not giving a fiddle that she was getting his clothes muddy. It was a mistake. He knew it, but there was no stopping it.
She went still in his arms. “I’m glad you’re not hurt,” he said gruffly into her hair. She tilted her head and he found himself looking into her eyes. Even in the near black of the night he could see the whites and the flash of her irises.
He could feel her breaths coming in short intakes as she continued to stand still in his arms. The last time he’d held her like this there had been fireworks exploding, but tonight it was only darkness. Yet he knew if he lowered his head and kissed her there would be fireworks again.
“Jarrod,” she whispered. “The butt of the gun is digging into my side.”
He jerked his arms away, having forgotten that he still gripped the gun in one hand. “Sorry,” he grunted this time. “We better go.”
“That’s exactly what I was thinking.”
They moved silently up the hill, through the long grass and rough ground, and Cassidy never complained. Just as they reached the top he caught the lights of a truck in the distance, disappearing into the trees.
Cassidy spoke first. “They’re going to be off the property soon.”
“You’re right, we have to hurry.”
By the time they jogged to his truck and he drove as fast as he dared back the way they’d come, the other truck and trailer was a good distance away. Once they made it to the road he could barely make out the trailer lights disappearing down the hardtop.
“Faster, Jarrod! We’re going to lose them!”
He’d already hit the gas and she slammed back against the seat. “Buckle up,” he warned. In the dim light of the dashboard he saw her fumble for the seat belt. At least she wasn’t arguing about that.
Tires spinning, he drove across the pasture, careening over ruts and thick clumps of thornbushes that desperately needed spraying. He made it to the exit at last, and once he was on the road he turned on his lights and took chase. But they had long gone.
“Well, that just stinks.” Cassidy glared down the empty road. She turned fiery eyes on him. “So now what? Did they have cattle in the back of that truck? Your cattle?”
The woman was hot. “I imagine so. I’ll have to check it out tomorrow in the daylight. That’s one of the places I had the cattle put and there are a couple of cameras in place. Maybe I’ll have something on one of them.”
“I want to check with you.”
“Cassidy, maybe you should stay home and tend to all that you’ve got going on.”
“I’ve got all summer. There’s no rush. Besides, I’ve got a bone to pick with these dudes. I’m going to have a few bruises tomorrow and I blame them personally.”
He cocked his head and studied her. In the dim light of the cab he could see that her hair had gathered a few things on its trip down the hillside. Twigs and leaves were matted up in that mass, and there was also a scrape on the nape of her neck he could see under the mud.
He reached out and touched it. “You’re bleeding. Not bad, but you scraped your neck.”
She waved a hand in the air. “Phew, it’s nothing. I’m tougher than I look. Believe me.”
He chuckled, then turned the truck around. It was time to take her home. “You’re something, that’s for certain. I haven’t exactly got you figured out, Cass. You’ve changed.”
“Jarrod Monahan, are you just now figuring that out? Because if you have even the slightest idea that I’m still that naïve, poor little neighbor girl you used to know, then you don’t know me at all.”
He turned into her drive and glanced her way. Conviction not only rang in her voice but in her eyes and the set of her jaw.
“Oh, I noticed,” he drawled, pulling to a stop.
She arched an eyebrow. “I’m so over having folks feeling sorry for me. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Before he could say more, she hopped from the truck and strode to her house. At the door she held up a hand in goodbye and slipped inside. He could see Duce waiting for her as she went in.
All the way home he should have been thinking about a plan to catch rustlers, but he wasn’t. He was thinking about Cassidy.
And she was right. She wasn’t the girl he’d once known. She was a full-grown woman, and if she thought he hadn’t noticed that then she didn’t know him.
18
“I’m selling the Sweet Dreams,” Pebble announced from the beauty shop chair at the Cut Up and Roll Hair Salon on Wednesday morning. It was her weekly visit.
“Do what?” Reba gasped and dropped the bottle of hot-pink nail polish she’d been holding. It hit the floor and splattered its contents all about.
Clara Lyn’s mouth fell open. “Hold on,” she declared, raising a hand into the air, the horde of bangle bracelets jangling in chorus. “Just hold on. Surely I did not just hear you correctly. I could have sworn you just said you were selling the Sweet Dreams.”
Reba scrambled to her knees and was mopping up the mess with a white towel she’d snatched off her pedi-chair. She paused to gape at her partner. “Clara Lyn, there is nothing wrong with your hearing and you know it. She did say that. Pebble, why would you want to go and do a thing like that? You’re joking, right?”
Pebble had known they would react this way. Known they’d be shocked by the idea. She had been at first, and that was why she’d waited a few days, prayed about it, and contemplated it. “I’m not joking. I’m serious. I’m about to go have Doobie and Doonie list it.”
Her friends looked from her to each other, then back at her.
Clara Lyn hurried to the front door, flipped the Welcome sign to Closed, and yanked down the window blind. Then she spun back. “Are you sick? Is there something you haven’t told us?”
“That�
��s right.” Reba halted her scrubbing. She pushed her blunt-cut brown hair behind her ear and stood up. “You can tell us. We’re here for you.”
Pebble had made a mess of this. “Girls. Girls. Please, sit down. I did not mean to put you both into a tizzy. I’m fine. Really.”
They just stared at her.
“Go on, sit down and I’ll explain.”
Clara Lyn sank into the pedi-chair and Reba sat on her manicure stool. Both gave her expectant glares.
“We’re all ears,” Clara said. “Let’s hear this crazy idea of yours.”
“I am ready for something new in my life. I’m ready to shake things up a bit. And do you realize that my every move for over thirty years has revolved around that motel?”
“But you love your motel.” Reba rubbed her temple. “I am really confused.”
“Are you having an after-mid-life crisis of some sort?” Clara Lyn asked. “I’ve read that it can happen later in life. Especially to someone like you who has always been a Steady Eddie.”
Pebble giggled. She couldn’t help it. “No, Clara Lyn, I am not having a crisis. Well, maybe a touch of one. I am a Steady Eddie. I like being that way too. But, well, I looked at my life and I could live to be a hundred. Do you know that is over thirty more years? I buried my Cecil nearly eleven years ago. And I’m still doing the same thing I was doing thirty years ago when he and I bought the motel. I love it. But I want to do something else now.” And that was the truth.
Reba stood up, placed her hands on her hips, and eyed her. “This has something to do with that scoundrel Rand Ratliff, doesn’t it?”
“I knew it.” Clara Lyn slapped a jingling hand to her thigh. “Have you decided to marry Rand?”
“No.” This was getting out of hand. “Look, girls. This is not about Rand. This is about me. Rand is, well, he is recovering. I promised him that I would stand by and be his friend through his rehab, and I have. But that is all we are, friends. I can make a decision about my life that doesn’t revolve around anyone but me.” She stood up shaken and a little rattled that their reaction had been quite so overboard.
“Well, don’t get all huffy,” Clara gasped. “This is clearly unlike you, Pebble.”
“She’s right, Pebble. Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine. Great, actually. Once I sell the motel I might just go on a cruise, or maybe I’ll go to Tuscany. What do you girls say? Would you like to do a little traveling with me?”
“Oh.” Reba gasped this time. “Well, that does sound fun. I have always wanted to go to Tuscany. You know, rent one of them little tiny cars and drive across the picturesque landscape—”
“Reba,” Clara Lyn barked. “You couldn’t fit into one of them little cars. Your head would ram the ceiling.”
“We could rent a convertible. And I could too fit into one. That handsome hunk Russell Crowe fit into that tiny car in that movie he made over there. If he could fit so could I. We. We could all fit.”
Pebble’s heart lifted on a cloud of excitement. “Oh, Reba, certainly we could all fit.”
“Well, I’m not too certain I could do a cruise,” Clara Lyn said. “Sharks and all. But maybe I could fly over there and squeeze into that car with y’all.”
They all stared at each other and then burst into laughter.
“Pebble,” Clara Lyn said when they finally stopped laughing, “I still am not convinced selling the Sweet Dreams is going to make you happy, but maybe we should have done this traveling thing a long time ago.”
“Oh, I agree,” Reba said. “But I have to ask, and please don’t get upset, but what about Rand? The man is clearly head over heels in love with you, Pebble. And he has been working hard to prove that to you. I have to say I’ve been hoping we’d be planning a wedding soon.”
Pebble’s smile faltered. “I care for Rand. But I’m not certain where he and I stand. I just know I’m ready for a change in my life, and this is where I’m starting.”
Cassidy could hardly wait for Jarrod to come for her the next afternoon to go look at the rustlers’ tracks. She called him and left a message on his machine to pick her up at the peach orchard. Every moment counted if she was going to get those peaches picked. She should have waited to paint and picked peaches yesterday, but she’d gotten a wild urge to paint and had gotten off track by giving in to it.
Now she was going to get more behind by going with Jarrod to hunt rustlers, but she couldn’t help herself. And to tell the truth, she was a little bored with peaches. Just her and peaches to pick and quiet days alone were beginning to seem endless.
She’d ordered some supplies for her strawberries and was about to start work on getting the ground ready. She also had the cool cabinet to refurbish, and she’d begun thinking about how she could take a section of the barn and turn it into some sort of store for her fruit. But she thought she might actually start refurbishing furniture for resale as well. That would take up some of the time she was going to have on her hands over the coming years.
Thank goodness she had Duce. He was a great companion, and she was so glad to see him feeling much better. She could pick him up now and put him in the truck to ride along with her and he loved it. He’d hang his head out the window and let his tongue hang out as he lapped at the wind, like he was doing now. She laughed, and in response he barked with a wag of his tail. “You’re my guy,” she said, reaching across to pat his hip.
She realized it was time to get his stitches taken out. They were puckered and ready to be removed, and she cringed looking at the crisscross of thread. She hoped Jarrod hadn’t been pulling her leg, because if he couldn’t do this she was taking her dog to Doc. She wasn’t having Duce suffer through a clumsy attempt at playing doctor.
Then again, if Jarrod said he could do something, she had a tendency to believe him. There was no reason for him to boast about something like that anyway. Jarrod wasn’t one to boast. Jack was the one who had the overblown ego.
Reaching the orchard, she unloaded Duce and he followed her to the first tree, sitting on his haunches to watch her work. She had just started picking peaches when she heard a purr of an engine, and she glanced around thinking she would find Jarrod driving up. She was startled to find the ladies of the Cut Up and Roll Hair Salon, along with Pebble, come riding up in Reba’s truck.
“Whoo hoo,” Clara Lyn hollered out the window. “We came to help you pick peaches.”
“But what about work at the salon?”
The ladies all clamored from the truck. They had on jeans and big shirts and colorful, floppy hats.
Reba strode her way, grinning. “Don’t you worry about the salon. We are working tomorrow and that’s plenty. We decided a little sunshine and helping out our neighbor was a great idea. A whole group of ladies wanted to come out and help, but we weren’t sure how much you still had to get done.”
“Looks like a lot,” Clara Lyn huffed, hands on her hips as she studied the trees. “Land’s sake, there’s a bunch of these rascals.”
Pebble looked wide-eyed as she stared up at the trees. “They are beautiful. Roxie would be proud to know she planted such a great orchard.”
That made Cassidy smile bigger. “Yes, it would. Y’all look in my truck and grab a bucket.”
Clara Lyn came her way as Reba and Pebble looked into the bed of the truck.
“Reba and I are really running an emergency intervention,” she whispered to Cassidy. “Pebble is having a crisis of major proportion. She is putting the motel up for sale.”
“Oh really,” Cassidy whispered, worry filling her. “What’s wrong? I can’t believe she is doing that. What will she do?”
“It’s Rand Ratliff. He told her he didn’t want her to ever have to worry her pretty self about him falling off the wagon and ruining her life. That he was just going to be her friend from here on out and she wasn’t to keep worrying that he was going to pressure her into marrying him ever again. Of course, she didn’t tell us that at first. She just told us she was selling th
e Sweet Dreams and going to start traveling. Which is all well and good and we went along with it because, girl, we can have us some fun trips. But when she finally admitted what Rand had told her, we knew it had triggered all this. She said it didn’t matter, but we know different. That man. I could just pinch his head off sometimes.”
Cassidy was shocked. “Wow.”
“Exactly. You get the gist of it all. Pebble loves that man and is worried about him. And I’m getting the feeling that she’s mad at him too. Shh, here they come. I just wanted to fill you in on what’s going on.”
“This is so beautiful up here,” Pebble said. “Oh, who is this?” She bent down and rubbed Duce’s ears. “Is this that poor dog you rescued?”
“Yes, ma’am. He’s doing better. See his stitches? Jarrod is supposed to remove them today or tomorrow.”
Everyone looked at her.
Reba pushed her hair behind her ears and smiled. “Is Jarrod coming around very much?”
“Well, some. But he’s a busy man.”
“But he can be neighborly.” Clara Lyn swatted at a bee and the bracelets on her arm jangled like chimes. “He is all alone out here, you know. Roxie used to say he was the catch of Wishing Springs. She was really fond of him.”
That got Cassidy to wondering how close Jarrod had been to her aunt. Had he helped her out a lot?
As if she heard her thoughts, Reba spoke up.
“You know he’s the one who found her in the garden. He came over every day and checked on her.”
Cassidy’s mouth dropped open. “No one ever told me that. He never told me that.”
“Well,” Clara Lyn offered, “It was a busy time. He is the fire chief, you know, so he tends to things. But his looking after her seemed personal to him.”
“Yes,” Reba added. “Because I know for a fact that Roxie always baked goods and sent him homemade jams and such. Your aunt had a heart of gold and a love of the dirt and it made for terrible fingernails. She would come in once a month for me to try to undo some of the damage she had done to her poor hands. And she would talk.”
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