Chemistry Lessons

by Rebecca H Jamison

  “We do.” Rosie reached in front of him, taking over the controls and saving Max Smash’s second life. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have distracted you.” She was really taking this game seriously.

  Not wanting to let her down, he took back the controls, trying to focus again on the screen. He didn’t want her to think he was completely incompetent. “I don’t mind your distractions.”

  Rosie remained quiet, jumping a little on her toes, until they advanced to the fifth level when she shrieked, “We did it!” Her hands flew upward, and for a moment, Destry thought she might hug him. Instead, her hands settled back onto the controls. She became intent on the game again, but he doubted it was the game that had made her suddenly quiet. The fun they were having, the teamwork, the comfortable ease they shared—would she acknowledge that this feeling was more than just a part of the game? Did she feel the pull of attraction? Something more than friendship?

  Despite the disaster with her car, he’d never seen her so relaxed. He could make her happy—much happier than he’d ever seen her with Tanner. And oh, how he wanted to see her happy like this every day. He couldn’t keep the grin off his face, but Rosie wouldn’t look him in the eye and share it with him. Whether she felt something for him or not, she wasn’t ready to act on it. This was only a fleeting excitement, as if he were up on a surfboard, riding the perfect wave. It could only last so long.

  Chapter 15

  As they drove up the lane toward the Curtis ranch, Rosie glanced across the truck cab at Destry. His hair had dried flat to his head, and water drops had left muddy trails down his neck. His formerly light green shirt was now a mud-colored tan, and on his forearms, she saw evidence of Clementine’s wrath—multiple swollen, red scratches. Yet he wore a grin. “Once I get cleaned up, I’m going to drive over to help the people who’ve had their homes flooded. Do you want to come?”

  The invitation sent prickles up her arms. He was a rescuer—one of her kind. She hadn’t seen it as clearly before today, and the realization stunned her, causing a short bout of verbal paralysis. “That’s a good idea.”

  “I guess I could call Farrah,” he said. “Since she’s been evacuated, she ought to be able to tell me what kind of help people need today.”

  “No,” she stammered. She couldn’t stand to think of him spending time with Farrah. Not that she was jealous. “Go to the big church on Main,” she said. “That’s where they have that . . . Oh, what’s it called?”

  “You mean a base of operations? A temporary shelter?”

  “Yeah,” she said, trying to remember if Farrah had ever set foot in the church. “That.”

  He pulled up in front of her grandpa’s house, parking in the only spot that seemed free of mud puddles. He opened his door and walked around to open hers.

  Thank you didn’t seem like enough. She’d already said that a few times. How could she show him how impressed with him she felt? It was a rare man who would go to the lengths Destry had. After he opened her door, she stepped toward him, wrapping her arms around his neck. He pulled her close, and it was as if his body had been designed to fit against hers. “Thanks for saving me and my cat and for trying to save my grandmother’s car.” She thought of him herding Mr. Bell’s cattle and then holding a comic book at Cottage Industries. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had so much fun. I mean, it shouldn’t have been fun, but it was.” It almost felt like they’d been on a date.

  The most natural conclusion would have been to lift her lips to his. She wanted to kiss him, to see how it felt.

  Except that she was engaged—to Tanner. For a split second, it was a deflating thought and the realization stunned her. She stepped back.

  “I feel the same way,” he said. His eyes crinkled at the edges, and his hand still rested on the side of her arm. “Let me know if I can do anything else to help. If you need a ride or—”

  She forced herself to meet his eyes. Attraction arced between them. She didn’t want to move. Not until she heard Tanner’s voice, calling from the doorway. “Are you okay?”

  Destry’s gaze remained on her.

  Rosie reached for her purse, trying to figure out what she was going to say to her fiancé. “I’m fine.” Tanner was already heading down the stairs, his boots landing heavily on each step. He looked like he wanted to punch Destry.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t get everything out of your car,” Destry said.

  The moment was broken. She stepped back. “I’m sorry too . . . I mean, I’m sorry I caused so much trouble . . . I can replace all the things in my car.” She felt something rub against her leg. Looking down, she saw Clementine and bent to pick her up. “I can’t believe she’s home already.”

  “Amazing,” Destry said. “She made it home before we did.”

  Tanner arrived at her side and placed a possessive arm around her shoulder, pulling her toward the house. “We’d better get you inside.”

  She stepped to the side, but he maintained his hold.

  “Don’t forget this,” Destry said, handing Tanner her canvas bag.

  Tanner chewed his mint gum using his front teeth and snatched the bag from him as Destry got back in his truck.

  “He saved my life,” Rosie muttered, jerking away from him. She wasn’t going to let him drag her around as if he were her parent. “The least you could do is thank him.” She waved to Destry as he started his truck and drove away from them.

  Tanner walked up the stairs and swung open the storm door, slamming it into the side of the house. “He already got all the thanks he wanted.”

  Rosie marched inside after him. “What do you mean by that?”

  “What did you mean by that hug you gave him?”

  “He saved my life,” she said, her volume rising. She noticed Grandpa sleeping in his armchair nearby. Cheddar was still inside, resting beside him. She lowered her voice. “I only wanted to thank him—as a friend. I don’t know why you’d think it was more than that.” Heat bloomed on her cheeks. It had felt like more than that, but Tanner didn’t have to know every detail. Right now, he didn’t deserve to know every detail either. He should have been grateful for Destry’s help.

  She sniffed, turning her attention to the aroma of spicy meat wafting through the house, making her mouth water. She hadn’t realized she was so hungry until now. Tanner must have been cooking. Nothing that Grandpa made had ever smelled so good.

  Tanner folded his arms. “It took you two hours to get home.” The set of his jaw let her know that he’d been angry about it, not worried.

  Rosie set the cat down on the floor and pulled off Destry’s raincoat. She’d forgotten she was even wearing it. “We got stuck behind a herd of cattle.” She didn’t mention the visit to Cottage Industries. It had been a necessary relief, one Tanner wouldn’t understand. “Then we had to take a detour in Morrisville. The floods washed out part of the road there. I’m not sure you understand all we went through. It was scary.” She hung the coat over the back of a kitchen chair to dry. Tanner’s laptop occupied her spot at the table. “I hope you got some work done while you waited.” Better yet, Rosie hoped he was already searching for her replacement car. He had a knack for finding the best deals.

  “Jade came by to talk to you,” he said.

  “In this weather?” It must have been something really important for Jade to drive out to the ranch during a flood. Was she butting heads with Mr. Moore again?

  Tanner sat down at the table and turned his laptop for her to see. “She found some articles about Destry. It turns out he’s not the person we thought.”

  While Destry was saving her life, Tanner and Jade were digging up dirt on him? She glanced up at Tanner with a look of incredulity. He hadn’t been worried about her at all, and her annoyance grew as she sat there shivering in her wet clothing. “What do you mean?”

  Tanner pulled out a chair and sat down. “He’s under investigation for insider trading of some tech stock. He sold all his shares the day after he played golf with the stock company’s
CEO—over a million dollars worth.” His voice was getting louder and picking up speed. “Think about it. He owns the stock for years, watching it go up and up and up. Then he sells it right before some bad news breaks. He had to have known.”

  What Tanner said made sense, but she had seen how people rushed to fabricate stories around town. A lot of things that made sense simply weren’t true. “If Destry was guilty of something, wouldn’t that have turned up when the school did a background check?”

  “That’s the thing about cases like this—they’re hard to prosecute. It never went to court.”

  Rosie bent to look at the article Tanner had pulled up on the screen, reading through the damning evidence. She couldn’t believe Destry would do something so dishonest.

  Tanner pulled up another article. “There’s more too. Look at this. Did you know he fired his own brother?”

  “You mean Cody, his brother who died?”

  Tanner pointed to a picture of Cody on the screen. “Yep. He died two days after Destry fired him, the very same day Destry sold all that stock. Tell me that’s not suspicious.”

  Rosie could see the resemblance between Cody and Destry. They had the same dark hair, the same blue eyes, but the angles of Cody’s face were softer. Everything Destry had said about Cody came back to her—his drug abuse, his love for animals, and his desire to help people. “Don’t tell me you think Destry killed his brother.” Rosie knew for sure that Tanner was wrong about that.

  “I’m saying it’s suspicious.” Tanner clicked through a few more articles. “Here’s the one I was looking for—an interview with one of Cody’s friends. He was the only one Cody talked to after he got fired. You know what Cody told him?”

  “What?”

  “He said Destry had been embezzling money from the company pension funds. When Cody found out about it, Destry fired him.”

  That was a serious allegation. Rosie rubbed her forehead, feeling a headache beginning, and trying to process it all. “Cody was a drug abuser. He could have been lying.”

  Tanner scrolled down to the bottom of the screen and pointed to the last paragraph. “According to this guy, Cody never did drugs until his supposed overdose.” It sounded like Tanner had already decided that Destry was guilty.

  Rosie read through the article, but the reporter had it all wrong. Destry wasn’t the threatening type; he was the rescuing type. She couldn’t let Tanner and Jade ruin Destry based on evidence from one flimsy article. “Is there any proof that Destry’s guilty of any of this?”

  “Of course not. Guys like him know how to cover their tracks. The last thing we need is for him to work at the school. We should tell the administrators.”

  Rosie straightened. This could ruin Destry. “I’ll talk to Jade about it. As far as I’m concerned, these articles are nothing more than gossip. We can’t show them to Mr. Moore. Destry could get fired.”

  “That’s the idea,” Tanner exploded, jumping from his chair. He ran his hand through his hair, pacing. “The last thing we need is a guy like him working at the high school.”

  She took a minute to reply, and when she did, she paced her words, packing each one with emotion. “I think he’s innocent. He doesn’t set off my creep alarms.”

  “Creep alarms?” Tanner’s lips pulled down on one side.

  “You’d understand if you were a woman.”

  Tanner pounded his fist on the table. “Just because a guy wears designer clothes and gets his hair cut at a salon doesn’t mean he’s harmless.”

  Rosie set her hands on her hips and kept her voice calm. “It has nothing to do with that. There’s something I feel when I’m around a bad man—it’s like my stomach twists into a knot. Grandma taught me to recognize the feeling when I was a little girl.”

  Unlike Rosie’s mother, her grandma hadn’t been afraid to talk about the dark side of life. She’d sat her down on the scratchy wool sofa and told Rosie all about bad men. Grandma had never liked her stepdads—not any of them. Sure, she was polite and allowed them to eat at her table. But when the other adults weren’t around, she taught Rosie where to kick with her knee and how to scratch with her fingernails.

  Rosie had first felt the knot when stepdad number-three moved into her mom’s house. Over the next few months, it tightened, pinching every time he stepped into Rosie’s bedroom. Then there was the day he bought her a new dress. He’d taken her to the most expensive store in Albuquerque and let her pick out exactly what she’d wanted. When she got home, she couldn’t wait to put it back on. Her stepdad couldn’t wait either. He walked into her bedroom while she was still in her underwear. Rosie had the sense to run to the bathroom and lock herself inside. “Your mom won’t be happy when she hears how you’re acting,” he yelled after her.

  Rosie knew it was the truth. Her mom hadn’t believed her previously when she had talked about the knot, which had cut off her appetite and had grown into a pee-her-pants kind of panic, the kind she might feel if she’d happened upon a rattlesnake.

  Rosie had waited in the bathroom until she heard her stepdad’s pickup backing out of the driveway. After that, she collected all the money from the shoebox on her closet shelf and called her grandma to ask if she could come for a visit. The next day, her mom helped her buy the bus ticket to Lone Spur, and the knot had dissolved.

  She’d never felt that feeling around Destry.

  She watched as Tanner paged through more articles. “Your creep alarm didn’t keep you from going to homecoming with Phil Barton,” he said. Phil Barton was currently serving time for burglarizing one of the restaurants in town.

  “I felt it with Phil, but not until the middle of the dance. That’s why I called Grandpa to pick me up early.”

  Tanner turned his attention back to the screen, clicking from article to article. “It’s finally starting to make sense why he came here. People in Lone Spur have never heard of him. He’ll be able to take advantage of them.” His voice bounced with excitement. Why was he bringing up such a stressful issue now? Couldn’t he see she’d already had enough stress for one day?

  Rosie brushed a hair out of her face, trying to calm herself. “He doesn’t need anything from us—he has more money than all of us put together. He just wants to build a resort, so he can help people.” She didn’t want to go into the specifics about Destry’s plans, not when Tanner was already riled up about this court case. “Don’t you think there are more important things to worry about today than some stupid articles about Destry?” she asked, trying to keep her voice calm. “There are people who’ve lost their homes.”

  Tanner rested a hand at his hip. “You call them stupid articles, but what if they’re true? What if you’ve spent the past two hours with a murderer?”

  “Can you just quit being jealous and trust me?” She’d said it without thinking. After the incredulous look that came to his face, she regretted saying it.

  He blinked. “Is there a reason I should be jealous?”

  “No,” she huffed.

  Tanner glared at her as if she were a student who had misbehaved, his jaw working like he wanted to say something else.

  How dare he look at her that way? She balled her hands into fists, feeling her nails dig into her palms. “You aren’t telling Mr. Moore about this—at least not until we get the story straight.”

  Tanner didn’t respond. His eyes narrowed.

  He was acting immature and unreasonable, but if she told him that, she’d have to spend at least an hour reassuring him that she really loved him. Feeling it would be more work than it was worth, she let out her breath and ended the conversation before things got any worse. “It’s been such a stressful day. Can we talk about this tomorrow?”

  Tanner threw his hand up and turned back to the computer screen. “Fine, but I’m not dropping the issue.”

  Her damp, muddy skirt scratched against her legs, keeping her cold and miserable. Stripping it off and soaking in a hot bath was sounding better and better, but there wasn’t time for that either
. “I’d better go change.”

  She walked to her bedroom and, with shaking hands, changed into work clothes. Wile E lay asleep beside her bed, his legs and cast twitching in dreams. He woke when she sat on the edge, and she reached to pet his fur. Could the same man who saved Wile E be guilty of killing his own brother? It was ridiculous to even consider it. She couldn’t trust those articles any more than she could trust some of the stories she heard from Betty. She would have to find out for herself whether he was guilty of insider trading or embezzlement, though she doubted those accusations were true.

  Now that she was home, she wished she and Destry had stayed longer in Morrisville. It would have been fun to show him the farm store, where you could buy nuts and bolts by the pound. Then they could have had lunch at Sarah’s café. Sarah always made the best bread.

  She curled her legs up to her chest and recalled what Destry had said about her having a golden touch. She had never been one to watch romantic movies, and she never thought she would feel flutters when a man looked at her. These feelings were foreign, yet wonderful, and she didn’t want to let go of them yet. Never had a man made her feel so important or beautiful. Not even Tanner. How was it possible that she even wanted to kiss another man?

  Engaged women were supposed to be immune to that sort of temptation.

  Chapter 16

  Every able-bodied citizen was expected to help with the flood clean-up, so Rosie should have been doing something other than sitting on the edge of her bed, thinking about her day with Destry.

  She’d heard about married women who became infatuated with doctors or firemen. It was completely normal to crush on someone who’d saved your life. This thing with Destry was simply a result of gratitude mixed with pheromones. She probably would have felt this same rush of first attraction with Tanner when she first started dating him if she hadn’t known him so long before that. Infatuation was a stage in most romantic relationships—a stage that never lasted. She couldn’t abandon Tanner simply because she’d enjoyed a morning with Destry.