His brows lowered. “Yeah?”
Pressure squeezed at the base of her throat and hollowed out her chest. It was one thing feeling this insecurity about Eric, wondering about him deep in the back of her mind. It was another to broach the subject out loud. But after their trek through the mountains, the way her body wanted to sway into him at every touch, the way she longed for him to fold her into his arms, the need she had to kiss him… she had to know the truth. “Why did you leave? Three months ago, why did you walk away?”
He tilted his head, shadows sinking around his eyes, making them unreadable. “I used to think I knew the answer to that.”
“I remember what you told me. Every single word. That a man who climbed mountains for a living couldn’t commit to a serious relationship. That you were doing it for me, to protect me from future heartbreak. It just never made a lot of sense to me. Seemed like an excuse.”
He rolled his lips inward, pausing before he spoke. “I suppose it was.”
She leaned against the back of the bench. She felt empty, exhausted. Too tired to speak. Too tired to think. As if the fatigue she’d been struggling to hold off had swamped her. “I wish you hadn’t bothered with excuses. I wish you had just told me the truth outright. It would have been easier that way.”
His brows dipped low. He shook his head a little from side to side. “What do you think the truth is?”
“That you didn’t care for me enough. Not enough to stay, to have a future.”
“That’s not it.”
“Then what is it?”
“I’m just… I’m not good at this kind of thing. I’m just not—”
“Give me a break.” She wished she hadn’t brought any of it up. “The last thing I want is more excuses.”
“What do you want?”
“The truth.”
“The truth.” He stared at the cherry jar, as if convinced the truth was hiding between the little artificially red orbs. “I’m not sure what the truth is, but I can tell you how I felt. How I feel even now.”
“So tell me.”
“I had this sense that something was bound to go wrong. That I was losing control. Just this general sense of dread.”
“Dread? Of what?”
“I’m not sure. It was like…it was like the way I felt after my father died.”
She remembered the story, at least the facts. He’d died in a car accident when Eric was fourteen. One day he’d climbed off the school bus to find police officers in the living room and his mother sobbing. But while Eric had told her the facts, he’d never talked about the emotions. Eric had rarely talked about emotions at all.
But she knew him, the things he liked. The things he couldn’t stand. “You felt out of control?”
“My mom cried herself to sleep every night. I heard her through the walls. And there was more. She took pills. Drank. I watched her self-destruct right in front of me, like the grief was grinding down what was left of her.”
“That must have been horrible.” She ached for him, for the boy he’d been. She ached for his mother, a woman she’d never met.
“One moment my life was secure and logical, the next…it was like everything I knew had been blown away.”
She’d like to say she understood, that she knew the feeling. But the truth was, except for the ranch land itself and perhaps Layton, her life had been anything but secure and logical. Her parents’ marriage, the worries about what Randy would do next… all of that seemed subject to a cruel whim.
Of course, maybe all that made her better at adapting. “So you were worried about things changing? And that’s why you left?”
“Change? No.” Muscles drew tight around his mouth, his forehead. He looked as if he was in pain. As if the dread he talked about in the past was here. Rooted in her.
“Then what?”
“The feelings. The lack of control. I just… it scared me.”
It seemed ludicrous. Here was this big, strong man, a man who scaled mountains, and he was talking about being afraid. “What scared you? Me?”
“No, me.” He held up a hand. “I know it sounds stupid. Right now, I can hardly believe I let those words out of my mouth. But it’s the truth. When I met you, I wasn’t looking to get married. You’re right about that. I wasn’t expecting to feel as much for you as I did. It just all seemed too fast. Crazy.”
“Out of control.”
“Yeah. I needed to think. I could never really think when I was around you.” He rubbed his forehead with thumb and forefinger. “Still can’t.”
That, she understood. The fire between them had burned fast and furious from the beginning. The difference was, she could never manage to pull herself away. She never wanted to. “And now that you’ve been away? Had a chance to think?”
“I asked you to marry me.”
“Because I’m pregnant.”
“Not just that.” He leaned forward on his elbows and took her hands, one in each of his own. “I won’t leave you again, Sarah. I can promise that. I will never again let you down.”
Tears misted Sarah’s eyes, turning the dim dining room into a mosaic of shadow and light. She didn’t know how she could possibly have more tears to cry, but here they were.
Three months ago, she’d yearned to hear those words from Eric. Now she wasn’t sure what to think. But there was one thing she no longer had questions about. “I know you’ll come through for me, Eric.”
The ridges lining his forehead seemed to smooth in the flickering light.
She had the sudden urge to kiss him. To lean in and take his face in her hands. To fit her lips to his mouth. To taste him and hold him and never let him go.
She clamped her bottom lip between her teeth.
He focused on a spot above her head. When he returned his gaze to hers, his eyes glistened. “I hope you reconsider my offer. Once you’ve had a chance to think about it, I mean. Once all this is finished.”
“Our baby will be lucky to have you for a father.”
Sarah looked away from him and concentrated on the candle’s flame. She wanted to see his expression but didn’t dare meet his eyes. One look and she could change her mind. One kiss and she’d be a goner. She had to hold fast.
He shifted on the bench. “But?”
“But you don’t love me.”
“You don’t know how I feel.”
“Neither do you.” She brought her gaze to his despite the risk. She saw something there. Affection, certainly. Caring. Always desire. But love? She didn’t know what that would look like.
“What if I told you I think I’m falling?”
She shook her head.
“What do I need to do? Make me understand. What do you want?”
“I—I want you to be different.”
“Different?”
“Stupid, huh?” She let out a stab of laughter. It echoed through the room, stiff and inappropriate.
He didn’t say anything. He obviously didn’t know what to say.
She couldn’t blame him. But the fact was, he didn’t need to speak. She did. He just needed to listen. “I won’t have an empty marriage like my parents did. I want a man who loves me. I’ve always promised myself that, and I won’t give it up. Even for you.”
“I don’t want you to give that up.”
“No?”
“I just want you to give me a chance.”
Sarah pressed her fingers to closed eyelids until color exploded in plumes and swirls. She wanted to. She wanted him. Enough to make excuses of her own, rationalizations just to be with him, to believe he loved her like she deserved. Like she needed. And that he always would.
“I’m sorry.” She shook her head. “I can’t do that.”
______
Eric jolted off the bench. For a moment, he didn’t know where he was. Dark shapes loomed to either side. The odor of paint and newly laid tile hung in the air. Outside, a truck roared past. His heart pounded against his ribs. He gasped air as if he’d been running for his l
ife in his dreams.
Was that what had awakened him? A dream?
He knew instinctively he’d been asleep for only a few hours, and those hours had been anything but restful. All he remembered was the feeling of chaos, of searching for Sarah, of finding her. Then they were climbing without harnesses or ropes or anchors. She started falling, and he grasped her hand. But she refused to grab back, and he couldn’t hold on. Couldn’t save her. Her hand slipped from his, and she was gone.
It didn’t take a psychiatrist to interpret that one.
His mind adjusted along with his eyes. Darkness still cloaked the dining room, sunrise just starting to pink the sky through windows facing east. A rustle of movement came from the next booth.
“Sarah?” he whispered.
“Yeah?”
“Did you hear something?”
“I… I don’t know. What was it?”
He levered himself off the bench and onto his feet. He wasn’t sure. It didn’t make sense for construction crews to be here so early, did it? And on a Sunday? “A rattle, maybe. Like someone opening the lock.”
Sarah climbed out of her booth as well. “Front or back?”
He tried to recreate the sound in his memory. “I’m not sure, but I’m betting back.” He grabbed the backpack from where he left it after refilling the water bottles. He strained to hear more, the creak of a door, a footstep.
A clatter rose from the kitchen.
Eric gestured to Sarah with a tilt of his head. He set off for the back dining room, trying to keep his footsteps as quiet as possible on the tile. He could faintly hear Sarah follow behind, running on her toes.
He didn’t want to jump to conclusions about who might be in a closed restaurant this early. It could simply be a manager. An owner. Someone working on the renovations. If the police had tracked them down, they would storm the place, wouldn’t they?
Not that it mattered. If whoever was here found them, their first move would be to call the police. It wouldn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out the woman and man who were camped out in the dining room of a closed restaurant probably weren’t your average tourists.
“You sure it’s in here?”
Behind him, Sarah jumped at the male voice echoing from the waiter’s station outside the kitchen.
Eric grabbed her arm and ducked behind the back dining room’s open door.
Two young men dressed in jeans, boots and hats swaggered between tables. The way they were dressed probably ruled out construction workers, and they didn’t look nearly old enough to own or run a place like this. If Eric had to guess, he’d put them at barely out of high school. They passed the doorway and headed toward the bar.
Eric pushed up from the wall just as the tinkling sound of a giggle followed in the boys’ wake.
He flattened back into the shadow. Sarah did the same. Seconds seemed to stretch longer than minutes before two girls walked past, heels clacking unsteadily on tile. They didn’t spare as much as a glance in Eric and Sarah’s direction.
Eric let a relieved breath stream through his lips.
The foursome crowded behind the bar where Eric had pilfered the bottle of cocktail cherries the night before.
“Any beer?” a male voice said.
“Ain’t you had enough beer? We got some good whiskey here. Look at this.”
“Can you make Sex on the Beach?” one of the girls asked.
Now was their chance. Eric nodded to Sarah, and they made their way to the fire exit at the back of the dining room. Bracing himself for an alarm, Eric pushed the door open.
No sound but the predawn tweet of birds met his ears.
The two of them rushed outside. The cool morning air felt like a slap to hot cheeks. Eric stopped dead in his tracks and stared.
A gray SUV that should have been junked long ago sat outside the kitchen entrance, no doubt waiting while its driver and his friends stole some liquor so they could continue their party.
And the engine was still running.
______
“Sarah? I found something. You’re not going to believe this.”
The tension in Eric’s voice zinged along Sarah’s nerves and curled in her chest like a spring. They only had one free computer at the tiny library, so she’d let Eric take the Google honors, pulling a chair up next to him to see what he turned up. Unfortunately the morning light streaming through the front window was making the print on the screen fade into oblivion.
She shifted on her chair, perching on the edge of one hip and leaning forward. From here, she could smell Eric’s shampoo and the soap they’d picked up at an area Wal-Mart. They’d used some of their money to buy new shirts, too, and cheap jackets, although they didn’t have enough for new jeans. They’d showered at a campground, and Eric had even shaved. Between that and a box of hair dye that changed his hair from sandy to dark, he looked like a different man. But although she’d considered cutting her own hair, she’d settled on plaiting it into a thick braid, a move that always accentuated the tiny bit of her ancestry that was Native American.
What she failed to pick up was a pair of sunglasses. She squinted against the glare, trying to see the newspaper story on his screen. “Where?”
He pointed to a spot midway through the article. “Woman killed in a car accident eight years ago. Driver left the scene. He was caught by matching fingerprints in the stolen car to prints police had on file. The woman’s name was Marion Strub.”
She leaned toward him a little more. “And the punchline?”
“Her maiden name was Gillette.” He turned and looked at her, the glow from the screen making his green eyes look electric against his new dark hair.
“The sheriff’s daughter? Sister?”
“Sister.”
So his sister had been killed in an accident. Sarah hadn’t remembered that. Of course, eight years ago, she hadn’t had a lot of reason to think about Sheriff Danny Gillette. She hadn’t even voted for him. “And Larry Hodgeson? Is there some connection with the fingerprints?”
“That’s how I found the story. Hodgeson matched the prints and testified in the drunk driver’s trial.”
She searched her mind, trying to come up with a reason that could lead to the sheriff wanting Hodgeson dead. She knew she felt a sharp need for the men who killed Randy to pay for what they’d done. Maybe Gillette felt that way, too. “And the driver got off?”
“Nope. He had a long history of driving drunk, and he was slam-dunked by the fingerprints. He’s still in the state pen in Rawlins.”
“How does—” She caught the glare of the librarian at the circulation desk across the room. She hadn’t spoken above a whisper, but apparently, even that was too loud. She gave the woman a sheepish smile and mouthed I’m sorry, then brought her finger to her lips, warning Eric. The last thing they needed was to draw attention.
She lowered her voice until she could barely hear it herself. “How does that explain anything?
“At least we have a connection between them.”
“Hodgeson worked a lot of criminal cases. Surely there have to be more from Gillette’s county that went to the state crime lab for analysis. Something.
“Got another hit on Hodgeson. But different county.”
“What is it about?”
He held up a hand as he read the story.
She squinted, straining to make out the words through the glare. She wished she could stand and lean over Eric’s shoulder, but that might make her more noteworthy to the librarian. She didn’t dare risk it. Besides, being that close to Eric, smelling his scent, moving her face next to his… bad idea.
“It’s a drug case. Methamphetamine. Police found a trailer home that was being used as a meth lab. A guy named Walter Burne owned the land and the double-wide, but his prints didn’t end up matching the prints inside. The jury decided that added up to reasonable doubt.”
“And Hodgeson analyzed the fingerprints?”
“Yeah. But there’s no connection to Gillette. Not t
hat I can see here.” He grabbed for the mouse, and clicked back to the search window.
Something shifted in Sarah’s memory. “Wait.”
Eric paused.
“Go back to that last story.”
He did as she asked.
“What was the guy’s name again?”
“Walter Burne. You know it?”
She did, didn’t she? “Is it spelled with an e on the end?”
“Yeah.”
“There’s a guy named Burne at the Full Throttle. Spells his name with an e. I don’t know his first name.”
“You’re drinking at biker bars now?”
“It’s not a biker bar, really. Not anymore. But it’s still a rough place. Maybe rougher than it used to be. The guy named Burne is the new owner.”
Eric stared at her as if she were speaking a language he couldn’t understand. “Biker bar, rough bar, what are you doing hanging around at a place like that at all?”
“Randy was. It was the first place he went when he got out of jail. Keith saw him there, was worried he was up to no good. And he said he’d also seen Randy with this Burne guy back before his arrest.”
Sarah hadn’t taken Keith’s warnings very seriously. The kid had an ax to grind with just about anyone, it seemed. She merely told him she’d talk to Randy about it. And she had meant to the next day… after he returned from Saddle Horn Ridge.
Eric tented his fingers in front of his lips. “Maybe Gillette’s not the connection.”
“Randy is.” Sarah blinked back tears just in time to see the librarian abandon the circulation desk and start walking their way.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“SHE MIGHT JUST BE GOING to warn us to keep it down.” Sarah’s whisper quavered.
She might be right, but Eric wasn’t about to count on it. He noted the name of the reporter who wrote the article was the same as the last one and clicked the mouse, bringing the computer back to the blank search screen. “I’ll talk to her. Get up and head for the bathroom. Take the back exit like we planned.”
“Not without you.”
“It’s not like she can physically stop me from leaving. I’ll meet you at the SUV. Go.”
Sarah pushed out of her chair and walked for the hall that housed the restrooms… and the back exit.
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