by Ann Charles
“When did you learn German?” Kate asked Ronnie.
Ronnie shook her head. “That’s not important right now.”
“So you agree with me then that someone is probably coming for it and we’re in danger,” Claire said.
“No.” Ronnie chewed on her lower lip. “Well, I don’t think so anyway. Not yet.”
“Then why did you take the watch? And where is it?”
“It’s in a safe place.” Ronnie looked over her shoulder like the grim reaper might be eavesdropping. She wiggled her index finger for Claire and Kate to lean in closer. “The problem involves Sheriff Harrison.”
Kate groaned. “Oh God, that man is the bane of my existence. He almost always makes a point of asking me if I have new crashes to report whenever he sees me.”
“You do have a bit of a record,” Claire said, and then jerked when Kate pinched her on the back of her arm. “Ouch! Brat.”
“The Sheriff knows about the watch,” Ronnie said.
Shit! He was the last person Claire wanted to know about this. Then she thought of whomever Joe had skimmed it from and changed her mind. She crossed her arms over her chest. “What did you do, Ronnie?”
“It wasn’t on purpose and it’s not my fault.”
Kate laughed. “That’s been your story since we were kids and you rode through Mom’s prized flower garden with Claire’s bike.”
“What did you do?” Claire asked again.
“The Sheriff has been on my ass since I got to town, following me around, looking for trouble.”
“Really? The Sheriff just saw you and decided you looked like trouble right off the bat. How come I have difficulty believing that?”
“Well, maybe I was speeding once.”
Claire raised one eyebrow.
“And I might have tried to bribe my way out of the ticket with fake jewelry. Then I insulted his niece by insinuating she was a tramp. And there was that one night when I was a little drunk and sort of took my shirt off in front of him in order to get him to drive me home.”
“You what?” Kate burst out laughing, drawing several stares.
“Shhh,” Ronnie said.
Her eyes watering, Kate smothered her laughs in a bar towel.
Claire had an icky feeling swirling in her gut. “What did you do, Ronnie?”
“I think I kind of clued in the Sheriff that we have the stolen watch in our possession.”
“Oh, Christ.” Claire threw her hands up in the air. “What were you thinking?”
“I had bigger problems at the time.”
“Such as what?”
“That’s not important right now. What I need your help with is what I should do to fix this.”
“Have you thought about taking off your pants in front of him?” Kate said in between giggles. “Maybe you could do the hokey pokey with him and turn this all around.” She laughed harder. “Because that’s what it’s all about.”
“Not funny, Katie.”
Claire chuckled. It kind of was.
Ronnie turned her glare on Claire. “Stop it right now, both of you.”
“Okay, okay,” Claire said, sobering again. “So we have a problem, but at least it’s just the Sheriff of Cholla County who is onto our secret, not the guys Joe stole this from.”
“Why don’t we just contact whoever owns the castle and tell them we have their watch,” Kate suggested.
“No way,” Ronnie beat Claire to the answer. “That will bring the Feds down on Ruby, and that is the last thing we want, trust me.”
Claire noticed how rigid Ronnie’s face had gotten all of a sudden. “You sound like you have some experience with this.”
“Maybe a little.” When Claire continued to stare at her, Ronnie shook her head. “I don’t want to go into that tonight.”
“You’re going to have to find out what Sheriff Harrison really knows.”
“Or thinks he knows,” Ronnie said.
“Exactly. Once we know that, we can figure out what to do about him.”
Ronnie nodded. “Okay, I think I can figure out a way to do it without making things worse.”
“Good,” Claire said, “because we—”
“Hello, ladies.” Mac broke up their three-ring circus by sliding onto the seat next to Ronnie and shouldering his way into their conversation.
Claire blinked in surprise. She’d been so focused on Ronnie and the problem with the watch that she hadn’t seen him come in.
“Hi,” Claire said, shifting out of neutral. “You want a beer?”
“Sure, Slugger.” He leaned his elbows on the bar, his hazel eyes boring holes into hers. “And while you’re getting that, maybe you can explain to me why your grandfather and his buddies believe you’re pregnant with my child.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Monday, October 8th
The road up to the Lucky Monk was very bumpy.
So was the mood inside the cab of Mac’s pickup truck as Claire rode with him up to the mine. She had hoped that a night of sleeping on the news of her pregnancy scare would turn Mac’s frown from last night upside down. As busy as The Shaft had been, she had not been able to step outside with him and hash things out until after closing. By then, he’d told her he was too tired to talk and drove her home in silence, which was broken only by George Jones singing on the radio yet another song about drinking away his broken heart. Kate would probably toast her soda water to good ol’ George these days.
“Are you still pissed at me?” Claire asked, staring over at Mac’s stiff profile. She wanted to bridge the distance between them but was unsure that she could reach that far.
His quiet demeanor at breakfast had given nothing away. Mornings were not usually chatty times for Mac. He had smiled at his aunt and cousin, shot a wary look at Gramps, and dropped a kiss on Claire’s temple, but something was off. His chakras were misaligned or his aura was darker than normal or his vibes were not rippling right—whatever. In short, Mac was not Mac at the moment, and Claire did not want to spend the day tramping around inside of a pitch black mine with his cold shoulders.
“I was not pissed.” Mac slowed for a strip of washboard in the dirt road. “I told you that when I dropped you off at the Skunkmobile last night. Surprised? Yes. Disappointed? I guess that, too.”
“About me not being pregnant?”
“No. That was all too new for me to digest yet, and you confirmed what I had believed before I even walked in the bar—that you weren’t pregnant.”
“Disappointed in me then?” That was nothing new for Claire. She had grown up disappointing her mother on a weekly basis. But Mac feeling that way about her was very different. The cut went deeper because he had believed in her from the start, and letting him down stung like the dickens.
“I’m not disappointed in you.” He glanced over at her, his lips flat. “I’m not Deborah.” He swerved to avoid a deep rut. “But you are who you are, Claire, and I know that commitment in any shape or form scares the shit out of you.”
She stared out at the desert with its barbed outer layer of cholla, barrel, and prickly pear cacti. Why did she get such stomach flutters at the idea of letting someone come close? Mac was so careful not to push her too fast or ask too much of her. While her brain insisted that settling down and spending her life growing old with him might not be such a bad deal, her adrenal glands pumped like a firehose whenever the word “marriage” was uttered.
Maybe it was because her parents’ marriage had sucked. After three decades of staying together through yelling and fighting, they’d ended it with more pain and anger.
Her grandparents on the other hand had seemed to be happy throughout their wedded life. But now Claire knew that while her grandmother may have made a good wife, her mothering skills had been lacking. Had Grandma given all of her attention and devotion to her husband, ignoring her daughters in the process? Claire should probably ask Gramps for his version of the past before painting any pictures on her own.
“You must h
ave been stressed out this last week,” Mac’s voice interrupted her commitment phobia therapy session.
Her laugh held no humor. “Having a baby is some serious shit.”
“I know.” Mac pulled to the side of the dirt road and killed the engine. “I should have been here with you.” He frowned out the front window, nodding his head at the mountain that held the Lucky Monk in its belly. “Someday, I would like to be one of the people you lean on. Like you do with your family.”
“What are you talking about? I lean on you.”
“Ha!” He grabbed his backpack from the seat between them and shoved open his door. “When have you ever leaned on me, Slugger?”
“How about Sophy and all of the crazy stuff that went down with her?”
He bent down and peered inside the cab. “You weren’t leaning on me. You were confiding in me.” He shut the door and waited outside for her.
She grabbed the flashlight and hardhat he had insisted she bring and joined him out on the path that led up to the mine. “How about when I needed your help back in August, figuring out who was trying to take Ruby’s mines away from her?”
He ducked under a mesquite tree and held the thorny branches back for her to follow unscathed. “You didn’t ask for my help with that; Ruby did.”
Oh, yeah. Hmmm.
Now that she thought about it, Ruby had been turning to Mac for help since Claire had met them both. Was that why he wanted her to turn to him for help? To be more like his family? She thought of Gramps and his grumping and growling since he had broken his leg. Now it all made sense. He saw Ruby always asking Mac for help, too. Gramps wanted to be the one she turned to for help, just like Mac wanted Claire to lean on him.
“You were going to figure out on your own who was trying to screw Ruby out of her mines,” Mac said over his shoulder. “You’re doing the same thing with that pocket watch, figuring it out.”
“That’s not true. I asked Kate to help me.”
“Exactly.” He turned around, walking backward for a couple of steps. “You asked your sister, not me.”
“That’s because you thought I was making a big deal out of nothing.”
He held onto his rebuttal until he made it to the base of the path leading up to the Lucky Monk where he waited for her to catch up. “That’s not what I said.”
Claire closed the distance. “That’s what I remember.”
“You remember wrong, then.” When she frowned up at him, he grabbed the brim of her Mighty Mouse cap and tugged it sideways a little. “My concern from the beginning was that you were nosing into something that would get you into trouble again. Judging from what you and Ronnie told me last night about Sheriff Harrison and that article about the watch being stolen from a German castle, it appears I was right to worry. Trouble is on its way.”
She straightened her hat. “Not if Ronnie can fix this mess first.”
His eyebrows tipped down in the middle. “You really think she can figure out a way to convince the Sheriff to overlook this?”
“I don’t know. Ronnie is different these days. I have faith in her ability to dig herself out of a mess. She claims to have gotten out of worse during her divorce.”
“Worse what, I wonder.” He grabbed her hand and tugged on it. “Come on. Let’s get you up this hillside.”
She scoffed. “You say that as if my legs are wet noodles.”
His grin warmed his eyes. “I’ve hiked with you before, Slugger. You aren’t exactly outdoors material.”
“Kiss my ass,” she said, passing by him on her way up.
“I’ll take a raincheck on that,” he replied about sixty seconds later when she slowed, huffing, and he cruised on by her.
Dust coated her throat and skin as she climbed behind Mac, taking his hand whenever he offered it. Her pride took a back seat to a heart attack. Under the warm sunshine, sweat ran down her back, soaking the waistline of her jeans and top of her underwear. Mac on the other hand had barely broken into a dew. The bastard.
When they made it to the mouth of the mine, he paused to let her catch her breath.
“Isn’t there … an easier way … up here?”
“Not on two legs.”
She needed to hire a mule.
“Take off your shirt, Slugger.”
She frowned up at him. Had she heard that right? “Did you just tell me to flash you?”
Chuckling, he unzipped his bag and pulled out one of his T-shirts, holding it out to her. “Yes, but for honorable reasons. Your shirt is too sweaty to wear for long in there. You’ll be shivering in no time. As much as I enjoy your body’s reaction to cold …” His gaze lowered to her chest and hovered there for a handful of heartbeats. “I’d rather have you dry and comfortable.”
“Oh, good point.” She shrugged off her T-shirt and took his shirt. “What about my bra?”
“I like the blue polka dots,” he reached out, running his fingertips over the mound of flesh just above the bra. “What do they look like on the inside of the bra?”
She watched his hand explore her flesh and then looked into his eyes, her body tingling from the current crackling between them. This was what had been missing since last night, his flirting and teasing.
She caught his hand. “I’m not asking for your opinion of my bra. You made that loud and clear when you tore it off a few weeks ago on your way down to my underwear. I’m asking if I should take it off as well since it’s damp?”
Mac grimaced. “As much as it pains me to say this, leave it on.” He pulled back and jammed both hands into his front pockets.
Claire pulled his T-shirt on over her head. It hung down to her thighs, so she wound it and tied it at her hip. She took off her Mighty Mouse cap and slapped on her hard hat.
“Okay, let’s go.” She led the way inside the mouth, pausing to turn on her flashlight.
He came up behind her, wrapping his arm around her waist and pulling her back against him. “How do you feel about having sex in a mine this morning?”
“I bet you say that to all the girls.”
He kissed the back of her neck, his lips soft and tickling, and then chuckled all warm and husky in her ear. “Kissing you after that hike up here is like licking a salt block.”
She pulled away and wrinkled her nose at him. “A salt block? You could have lied and said I tasted sweet.”
“Why?” He grabbed her hand and pulled her along. “I like licking salt, especially off of your skin.”
“That’s a little better.”
They walked in silence for a way, and then she remembered something he had said back in the pickup. “What are you disappointed in, if not me?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” He let go of her hand and pulled out a folded map of the mine.
“Why not?”
He paused, using the light on his much fancier hard hat to spotlight the map, and traced one of the lines on it. “Because it will sound stupid if I say it aloud.”
“Try it.”
Folding the map, he took off again, walking faster, pulling away from her in the darkness. “I’m disappointed in us, Claire,” he said quietly, his voice almost blocked out by the sound of their boots on the rock floor. “I thought we were farther along with all that has gone on between us.” He rubbed the back of his neck, turning to her. “See, sounds silly, right?”
Silly? More like a little gut squirmy. As much as commitment made her antsy, she wanted Mac to remain strong and steady in her world. He was kind and smart and witty, and he knew all of her bells and whistles in bed, and in the shower, on the kitchen table, and … she was digressing.
She caught up to him, catching his hand and squeezing it. “I told you last night at the bar, I planned on telling you as soon as we got a moment alone. But lately it’s been hard to steal any time away from everyone else with the new restrooms going up and all of my family hanging around.”
“I don’t know if you realize it, Claire, but it’s always like that now.” His beam of light
landed on her for a moment before he turned forward again. “I practically need to kidnap you in order to get you to myself these days. I’m looking forward to the day when you come home without Ronnie in tow.”
A squeaky moan leaked out from her throat before she could catch it.
“What?” he asked, slowing.
“Well,” she winced as she spoke, “you know how Kate’s pregnant.”
“Yes.”
“I sort of offered to let her stay with us in Tucson until she has the baby and gets back on her feet.”
Mac stopped. “You did what?”
She shielded her eyes in the light from his hard hat. “She needs me, Mac.”
“Don’t we all,” he said and did not sound a bit happy about it. He walked away, shaking his head, his light beam moving side-to-side on the walls.
“I’m sorry,” she called after him. “It’s your house and I should have talked to you about it first.”
“It’s our house, Claire. But it would have been nice to be able to offer an opinion in the matter.” He looked down one of the side drifts but kept moving forward. “For once.”
“Hey,” she caught up to him. “You’re the one who invited Ronnie to stay, not me. I knew better.”
“You’re right.” He looked down at his map again. “What was I thinking?”
“I’ll tell you exactly what you were thinking if you’d slow your ass down.”
He stood and waited for her, his arms crossed. “I’m all ears.”
She walked up and grabbed him by the shoulders, pulling his mouth down to hers. Their hats clacked together. She tipped her head sideways and kissed him hard on the lips.
“You were being a nice guy who was helping his girlfriend’s sister because he wanted to help her family like he always helps his.”
“Wow.” He trailed his finger along her jawline. “I was thinking more along the lines of me being a big sucker, but I like your version better.” He leaned his hard hat against hers. “I’ll do whatever it takes to get you to come home with me, Claire.”
She took his hand and kissed his knuckles. “Thanks.”