“True, but working behind the bar is just as risky, isn’t it? If the people who robbed you happened to walk into the bar, they’d recognize you instantly, but you might not know them.”
“Yes, but since Granger is at least a hundred miles away from the ditch where I woke up, the odds are good that won’t happen.” He narrowed his eyes, considering. “Unless, of course, the people who dumped me are from Granger.”
“But that’s not likely, is it?” Lori frowned. “I grew up here and know almost everyone, one way or another. I can’t think of a single person likely to commit such a crime.”
“I hope you’re right. If you are, my chances of being found by the wrong people are slim to none, and hiding in plain sight until I can recover is the best bet.”
Chapter Five
Trey left Lori discussing Ralph’s order of fresh vegetables with the delivery driver. He went upstairs, where he crawled back into bed. After several hours of sleep, more coffee and a plate of spaghetti, by one in the afternoon he was feeling much more himself.
I shouldn’t have told Lori I can’t remember my family, he thought as he reentered his apartment after eating in the kitchen downstairs. If she decides to help Troy Jones find his parents or brothers or whoever he’s got, I’m in trouble.
And from what he’d observed so far, it would be just like her to care enough to become involved.
He tossed the apartment key on the table and raised the blinds. The window looked out on the alley that ran behind the bar and restaurant. Directly across from him were the wide double doors on the second floor of the local feed store that were used to load and unload hay. Below the hayloft, at alley level, was the rear entrance to the store.
As he stared broodingly down at the empty passage, Lori exited the restaurant and crossed the alley to disappear through the back door of the feed store. Her hair gleamed silver beneath the hot sun, falling in a spill of platinum down her back. She wore a green cotton top, faded blue jeans covered her long legs and she carried a sheaf of papers in one hand.
On impulse and with a vague idea that he should find a way to convince her not to get involved in his identity search, Trey left the apartment, jogging down the back stairs to the alleyway.
Lori waved a hello at the clerk behind the feed store counter. Busy with a customer, he lifted a hand in acknowledgment and she climbed the wood plank stairs to the second floor.
Ashworths had rented storage space here since her grandfather’s day, and as a child she’d often come here with her father and played in the hay while he inventoried supplies in their section.
The dozen keys on the large brass ring jingled and jangled as she searched and finally found the large one that fit the old lock.
Outside, the hot sunshine dimmed and thunder rumbled in the distance.
I hope it rains. The early-morning weather report had predicted thunderstorms and lightning but whether it would also bring rain was questionable. She hoped so; she loved storms, and her garden and lawn could use the water.
She left the storage room door wide-open to let in the sound of the approaching storm, flicked on the overhead light and, list in hand, started down the first aisle. She worked her way halfway down the row of shelves, counting the number of napkins and making a note to order more.
“Hey.”
Startled, she looked over her shoulder. Trey strolled toward her.
“Hi.” She smiled, delighted. “I thought you’d sleep all afternoon since you were up so early this morning.”
“I went back to bed after I left the kitchen,” he said. “But I seem to be programmed to wake up around noon.”
“I think most people who work the late shift are. Off work at 2:00 a.m., bed by three or four, and up again at noon. Crazy hours for some folks. Does it bother you?”
“Doesn’t seem to.”
“Maybe you’re naturally wired to be a night person.”
“Could be.” He looked at the documents in her hand, then glanced at the shelves. “What are you doing?”
“Checking inventory.” She rolled her eyes and made a face. “One of my least favorite chores.”
“Want some help?”
“I’d love some. Are you sure you want to spend your afternoon counting cocktail napkins and stir sticks?”
“Absolutely.”
She laughed. “Okay, but just remember when you get bored, you volunteered. It’s not my fault.”
“I won’t blame you.” He gestured toward the papers she held. “Do you want to take notes while I count?”
“Sure, that would be great.”
“Wait a second.” He disappeared through the doorway and came back carrying a short wooden stepladder. “Here, you can sit on this.”
“Thank you.” Not only is he gorgeous, he’s thoughtful. I wonder how I can convince him to stay in Granger permanently?
Time passed as they moved up and down the aisles, talking while they worked. They discovered they didn’t always agree — he was a Republican, she leaned toward the Democratic party. They both loved country and western music and classic rock ’n’ roll, agreeing they’d grown more fond of Elvis since working with Ralph.
Lori wanted to ask him if there were areas of his life in which he could remember his favorite things, like music, and areas he couldn’t. But she didn’t want to destroy the easy camaraderie between them, so she contented herself with letting the conversation drift where it would.
“That’s all of it,” she said as she jotted down a total for reams of computer paper stored on the last shelf. She slipped off her perch on the ladder and turned to fold it.
“I’ll get that.” Trey reached past her, his arm brushing hers, and picked up the stepladder.
“Thanks.” Her skin heated where he touched her, awareness sizzling along her nerve endings.
As they reentered the part of the loft used to store hay, thunder roared and boomed, filling the open space with noise.
Startled, Lori jumped and dropped the sheaf of papers. “Shoot,” she muttered, bending to retrieve them.
Trey leaned the ladder against the wall and went down on one knee to help gather the scattered sheets.
The double doors looking out on the alley stood open, but instead of the bright sunshine that had poured in when they’d started the inventory, the sky outside now rolled with black clouds. The far corners of the room were shadowy, the rafters beneath the roof lost in gloom.
Just as they collected the last of the spilled documents and Trey stood, the skies opened and rain bucketed down. It pounded on the roof and quickly sluiced in rivers from the eaves, bouncing on the pavement below.
Lori crossed to the doors and peered out, taking care to keep far enough back to avoid the splashes that spattered the rough wood floor in front of the wide opening. “I love storms, don’t you?” She turned her face up, drawing in the moist scent, mixed with the pungent aroma of dried alfalfa in the loft.
“Yeah, I do.” He joined her, standing just behind her, not quite touching. “I guess we aren’t going anywhere, not unless you’re willing to get soaking wet.”
She looked down at the alley, where water ran in rivulets. “We’d be drenched, even though it wouldn’t take more than a few seconds to get to the bar. It’s pouring out there.”
For several moments they stood quietly, watching the rain, whipped by occasional gusts of wind, come down in sheets and then settle into a steady downpour.
“It looks like we’re going to be here awhile.” Trey left her and took a bright red wool blanket from atop a saddle on a nearby sawhorse. “Might as well get comfortable.”
He shook out the throw, letting it settle over a pile of loose hay and looked at her, his expression enigmatic.
Lori hesitated, and a slow smile curved his mouth.
“I don’t bite,” he drawled. “At least, not unless you want me to.”
“Then I don’t have anything to worry about, do I?” she replied, mimicking his drawl.
He laughed,
his eyes lighting with amusement, and she stepped past him to sink onto the blanket. The hay beneath made a comfortable cushion and she slipped off her sandals, put her papers and pen on the floor, then drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around them. She rested her chin on her knees, staring out the doors at the falling rain.
Trey’s weight rustled the hay as he settled beside her. “After all the hot days, it’s nice to smell rain.”
She nodded. “It feels like we’re cut off from the world, doesn’t it? In a way, I suppose we are. No one’s likely to venture out in the wet.”
The deluge outside created a cocoon of privacy, intimate and quiet.
“I used to come up here with my dad when I was a little girl,” Lori commented.
“Did you help him take inventory?”
Lori shook her head. “Not until I was older. When I was really little, maybe three or four, I played in the hay.” She laid her palm flat on the blanket. “Sometimes I’d climb into one of the saddles stored up here and pretend I was a cowgirl.”
Trey’s hand covered hers. “You miss him, don’t you?”
“Yes.” She glanced at him and he seemed suddenly closer, looming over her. “Troy…”
“Yeah?” His voice was lower, rougher.
“I don’t make a habit of grabbing strange men at ball games and kissing them. Especially when they work for me. In some circles, that’s called sexual harassment. In fact,” she added over his instant laugh, “I can’t think of one single prior instance when I’ve done that. Just in case you were thinking that was normal for me — I wanted to make it clear, it’s not.”
“Here’s what I think…” His hand closed over the curve of her shoulder, his gray eyes dark as the storm outside. “I think the kiss in the bleachers ended way too soon. I think we should try it again — so I can find out if you taste as good as I remember.”
“You do?” she murmured, her voice a husky thread of sound.
“Yeah.” He bent toward her, his lips brushing hers. “I do,” he whispered. And with slow precision, he fit his mouth over hers.
The same hot flush of need and yearning that she’d felt at the ball game washed over her. She felt wooed, drugged by the seductive movement of his warm lips.
He pushed her gently down on the blanket, following to half-lie over her, his kisses turning urgent.
“Hey, Lori, you up there?”
The male voice startled them. Lori froze and Trey lifted his head, his eyes heavy and slumberous.
“You’ve got a phone call — it’s Ralph. Says he needs to talk to you.”
“I’ll be right down, Jess.” To her surprise, her voice sounded almost normal.
Trey rolled to his feet and held out his hand. She let him pull her to her feet, brushing stray bits of hay from her hair.
“We’ll continue this later?” he murmured, his gaze following the movements of her hands.
“Yes, let’s.”
His eyes gleamed and he smiled, standing back to let her walk ahead of him down the stairs.
Much to Lori’s delight, over the next few days Trey made a habit of stopping by her office mid-morning to say hello before joining Ralph in the kitchen. The two men seemed to have bonded over food prep and chopping knives, a fact which made her smile since she adored Ralph and was becoming increasingly charmed by Trey.
She knew he would be leaving in a few weeks and returning to Four Buttes, but in the meantime she saw no harm in flirting with him. Whether or not she wanted more than hot kisses was still undecided.
One evening, she stayed late in the office, struggling to locate an accounting glitch that had her baffled.
Lori frowned at the screen. Why isn’t this balancing? According to the register receipts, she was short twenty dollars from last night’s cash.
It took a half hour to pinpoint the problem. She saved the data to a disk and filed it away, then shut off her computer.
“Hey.”
Trey leaned against the doorjamb, his arms crossed.
“Hello.” She couldn’t help but smile. Just seeing him made her heart sing. No guy should look this good. He wore jeans, boots and a black T-shirt with the logo Granger Bar in small white type on the left side.
“You’re working late tonight.”
“I know.” She waved a hand at the pile of register tape, sales slips and the money bag atop her desk. “It took me forever to find a twenty-dollar shortage. Turns out one of the waitresses punched in forty-three instead of twenty-three when she rang out a customer.”
“Easy enough to do. Are you almost finished?” he asked, one dark eyebrow arching upward.
“I just turned off my computer,” she said with satisfaction.
“I’m not working tonight. How about having dinner with me before you go home?”
She glanced at the clock. It was six-thirty. “I hadn’t realized how late it was.” She pressed a hand to her midriff. “Nor how hungry I am. I’d love to join you.”
He waited while she cleared her desk, slipped the cash and checks along with the receipts into a bank bag before tucking it into the wall safe.
“Do you want to eat here?” she asked.
“If you’d like to — or is there someplace else in town you’d rather go?”
“I love the Italian food at Uncle Joe’s,” she confessed. “Do you like pizza?”
“Love it,” he said emphatically.
“Great, it’s just down the block.”
The restaurant was redolent with the aroma of Italian cooking. Trey’s eyes half-closed. “Tell me that’s lasagna I small.” His voice was reverent.
Lori grinned. “Actually, it’s the best lasagna in Montana.”
“Yeah?” He eyed her with interest. “How do you know?”
“Because Joe says so.” She took his arm and drew him toward an empty booth. “He’s Italian and swears his lasagna is truly the best in Montana.”
They lingered over pizza and lasagna, accompanied by glasses of the house wine, before Trey walked her home in the warm darkness.
It wasn’t until he’d kissed her good-night and she was lying in bed that she realized he’d asked her lots of questions about her life in Granger, but had shared little about himself.
Her smile turned to a faint frown.
Was he being purposely enigmatic? Or was he simply interested in her?
Tomorrow I’m going to make him tell me what he does with his free time when he’s in Four Buttes. She punched her pillow and rolled over, her frown deepening. She’d never met a guy who didn’t want to talk about himself. Curiouser and curiouser, she thought drowsily.
Chapter Six
“Are you sure you want to go out with Harry again?” Lori dropped a cherry into a glass of vanilla-flavored cola and set it on the bar in front of her mother. “This is your sixth date. He might think you’re serious.”
“Don’t you like Harry?” Risa asked, carefully pulling the glass nearer with her fingertips. She sipped, then put it back down on the counter to frown at her fresh, not-quite-dry red nail polish. “I’m not sure about this color — does it really match my lipstick?”
Lori glanced from the long, scarlet fingernails with their tiny starburst pattern to Risa’s pursed lips. “Yes, definitely.”
“Good.” Risa hummed with satisfaction and smoothed her palm over the red-poppies-on-white-background silk skirt. “I hoped it would, but didn’t have my dress or the lipstick with me when I picked it out.”
Her mother’s attention still on her nails, Lori rolled her eyes in exasperation. She had a healthy interest in fashion, but her mother’s endless fascination with the details of her appearance often made Lori want to tear her hair and groan with frustration. Besides, Risa often used her obsession with fashion trivia to avoid questions she didn’t want to answer, like the current one about Harry.
“Does Harry like scarlet?” Lori asked.
Risa flicked her a swift accusatory glance. “I don’t know.”
“Hmm.” Lori hid a
smile.
“Why are you working behind the bar?” Risa swept the room with a searching gaze. “Where’s Troy?”
“He went to get a case of ginger ale from the storeroom in the kitchen. Did you need him for something?”
“No, I just wondered where he was. It seems I rarely see one of you without the other lately.”
Lori busied herself washing the few dirty glasses, avoiding her mother’s sharp eyes. “He’s been very helpful and given me some good ideas for streamlining service and making the business run more efficiently.”
“And how come he knows so much about managing a restaurant and bar?” Risa asked. “He seems way more experienced than an ordinary bartender.”
“I suppose because he’s worked in a lot of different places,” Lori replied. “And he’s intelligent, with an interest in the industry — I assume he gained expertise with each new job.”
“Humph,” Risa sniffed. “Maybe. But if you ask me, there’s something not quite right about your Mr. Jones.”
“He’s not my Mr. Jones,” Lori said.
“Well he certainly acts like it. He’s hardly looked at another woman since he started working here. And don’t think they haven’t been flirting with him.”
“I’m sure they have. He’s a very attractive man, Mom,” Lori said reasonably, hiding the burst of pleasure at her mother’s observation that Troy wasn’t interested in anyone else. She picked up a towel and began to dry the clean glasses.
A man and woman entered, pausing to look around the bar, empty at the moment except for Lori and Risa.
“Good morning,” Lori called, glad for the interruption. She really didn’t want to discuss Troy with her mother, especially since she couldn’t figure out exactly where her relationship with him stood. “Come in and have a seat,” she invited.
They weren’t locals. The man was tall with a powerful build and an air of authority. He had black hair and a strong-boned, handsome face with ice-blue eyes beneath the brim of his white Stetson. Despite the hat, boots and jeans, he didn’t look like an ordinary rancher, Lori thought.
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