“You promised me steak,” she said, lighting a candle with a wooden match. Gentle light flickered over the booth.
Covered with thick upholstered padding and wide enough for sleeping, the booths were the first thing Eric had spotted after they broke in through a window that was fortunately not alarmed. In addition, the pantry and walk-in freezer still held a stock of staples and the plumbing in the kitchen worked like a dream. They would even have coffee in the morning.
Eric set down two tall glasses of water and slid into the opposite bench. “Have I ever told you that you’re awfully picky?”
“Funny, I’ve always thought I wasn’t picky enough.” She tilted her head to the side and gave him a smile.
For a moment, he felt like they’d turned back time. That he’d never walked away from her. That no one had been killed. That the police and sheriff and half the state of Wyoming weren’t looking for them now. That all he had to concentrate on was how good being around her made him feel. To accept it. To soak it in.
It was a nice fantasy.
For a long while, all they did was eat and drink, not wasting even a moment on talk. By the time they came up for air, the bucket of chicken was empty and piles of bones lay on the plates.
Sarah tilted the bucket toward her and picked crumbs of greasy breading from the bottom. “Hope the workers bring a lunch tomorrow. This ‘being fugitives’ stuff has turned us into criminals.”
“We could always leave them some cash to pay for it.”
“How much cash do you have?”
“Under fifty dollars. Forty-eight to be exact.”
Her smile faded. Clearly she understood there was no way they could get more. Not without the law tracking them down. “I guess they’ll just have to deal with it.”
Eric was sorry he’d brought it up. For a moment, they’d had a little reprieve, food, relative safety…they’d been able to forget a little. He was sorry his comment had brought them crashing back to earth. “Ready for dessert?” The lightness in his voice sounded forced, even to his own ears.
She arched her brows. “Dessert?”
Eric thrust himself up from the booth and strode into the bar area. Even in the dim light, he could make out boxes lining the wall. What he wouldn’t give for a stiff shot of whiskey. But since Sarah couldn’t drink because of her pregnancy, he skipped over the booze boxes and found a different kind of treat. Twisting open the jar’s cap, he carried it back to the table and set it in front of Sarah.
“Maraschino cherries?” A chuckle escaped from her throat. “I haven’t had these since I was a kid with a love for hot fudge sundaes.”
“I’m afraid that’s the only part of the sundae I can manage.” Although he’d found some staples like sealed, premeasured bags of coffee that were still stored in back, steak and ice cream and other perishables were harder to find in a restaurant closed for renovation.
She plucked out a cherry by the stem and took it between her teeth. Tearing it from the stem, she closed her eyes as if it was the most decadent of treats. She opened her eyes. “Aren’t you going to have one?”
“Maybe I’ll just watch.”
Her laugh sounded deep and rich and intimate, and he realized it had been a long time since he’d heard it. “Feeling better?” he asked.
“Trying. I think my mind needed food.”
He was sure she needed sleep, too. Probably more than they could afford to take. But if she was like him, her mind churning these questions would make sleep unlikely. At least until they decided what they were going to do next. “At least we came up with a name for our murdered man.”
The candle’s flicker caused shadows to shift across Sarah’s face. “I kept finding myself wanting to tell Joy her husband was dead. It’s sad that she thinks he grew too arrogant to talk to her.”
“There are a lot of things that are sad about this mess.” He’d lost count.
“A lot that’s confusing, too. I can’t figure out why on earth a sheriff would want to kill a fingerprint analyst.”
Eric felt relieved to focus on the mystery at hand. Mistakes and motives of other people were a lot easier to examine than his own. “Because Hodgeson wouldn’t give him the result he wanted?”
“But his wife said he was retired. Has been for a while. So he wouldn’t be working on any pending cases. Maybe it was personal?”
He tilted his head to the side, considering. Could a sheriff in Norris County and a state crime lab analyst in Cheyenne have a personal connection? It was possible. Of course, knowing as little as they knew, a lot of things were possible. “Or Larry Hodgeson found evidence in an old case, something Sheriff Gillette wants buried.”
“What kind of evidence? Fingerprints they hadn’t noticed before?”
He shrugged a shoulder. “I’m just grasping at straws. But we’ll find out.”
“How?”
It was a good question. They’d gotten a break in finding this restaurant tonight. They needed another. “Tomorrow we check out junkyards, car lots, whatever. See if we can find a vehicle that runs.”
“Steal one, you mean.”
There was nothing he could do about that. “I doubt forty-eight bucks will buy one.”
“And then?”
“We need to find out more about Larry Hodgeson. If we know who he was, what he worked on, maybe we can come up with why someone would want him dead.”
She nodded. “But how do we do that? That’s what I can’t figure out. We can’t very well drive down to Cheyenne and waltz into the crime lab. Seems a bit bold.”
He gave her a teasing grin. “You’ve got to admit, Sheriff Gillette wouldn’t expect it.”
“Right,” she said, tone dry as the Bighorn Basin in August.
“Actually I was thinking of newspapers.”
Sarah nodded. “The writer. Joy said he was talking to a writer.”
“Exactly.”
“We can search for news stories mentioning him online. The library has computers we can use.”
“Still risky.” He still felt shaken by their close call at the rodeo grounds. Even now the police could be tracking them down. Closing in on the restaurant under the cover of darkness.
He watched Sarah pop another cherry into her mouth. Whenever he looked at her, touched her, heard the sound of her voice, a need to protect her welled up inside him like a snow-melt flood.
He’d always felt too much for her, and the past two days, those feelings had grown tenfold. The threat of something going wrong, her getting hurt, something happening to the baby…all of it was hard to take. And the hardest thing to accept was that he had so little control over what happened next. From the moment Randy had been shot and the sheriff had shown up at Sarah’s ranch, he had been scrambling to react, to keep disaster from crashing down on them and sweeping them away. So far, he’d barely been half a step ahead.
“What is it?” Sarah leaned forward, hands splayed on the table in front of her.
He forced himself to take a deep breath. “Nothing. I just…the risk can’t be helped. But we’ll find a library in some other town. They’ll have their eyes out for us here in Cody.” He looked down at her hands.
Her fingers were trembling. She folded her hands together. “Okay.”
For all their attempts at lightness and conversation, they were both exhausted. It was amazing they were still holding it together as well as they were. “We’ll find answers, Sarah. I promise.”
“That’s a promise you might not be able to keep.”
Maybe not. But at least he could try. He could give it everything he had.
He fitted his hands over hers and gave them a gentle squeeze. Her fingers felt so fine in his big mitt, so delicate. Yet he’d seen her use those hands to rope cattle and string fence right along with the men who worked for her. She was strong. But even strong people had vulnerabilities. Even strong people needed to be able to rely on someone.
A tremble centered deep in his chest. Had he been afraid of being that some
one? Was that why he left just as things between them were getting serious? Was that what caused the jumble of emotion inside him whenever she was near?
He wasn’t sure. But there was one thing he did know. Now that Sarah was in danger, now that they had a baby on the way, he no longer had the right to opt out. Scared, confused, none of that mattered. He had to be that someone Sarah could rely on. And he couldn’t let anything get in the way.
Chapter Twelve
Sarah soaked in the feel of Eric’s hands sheltering hers and watched the candle’s flicker play across his face. Over the months since he’d told her he couldn’t see her anymore, the months the life they’d created was growing inside her, she’d longed for moments like this. His eyes looking at her as if she was the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen. His skin touching hers. His voice washing over her, full of feeling he didn’t often show. She wanted to believe all of it was real. Lasting. Not merely the by-product of their situation.
Unfortunately, she was far too pragmatic for that. “I have to know something. Something kind of off-topic.”
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. It 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 for me that way.”
His brows dipped low. He shook his head a little from side to side. “What do you think the truth is?”
It seemed obvious. “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 at that moment 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.”
Inwardly, she braced herself. “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?”
He shook his head. “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 he’d gone through. Eric had rarely talked about emotions at all. But she knew him, the things he liked. The things he couldn’t stand. She remembered. “You felt out of control?”
He let out a heavy sigh. “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 that just 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 is it?”
“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 get away and think. I could never really think when I was around you.” He rubbed his forehead with thumb and forefinger. “I 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? Now that you’ve had a chance to think?”
“I’ve 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 you 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. That commitment. That promise. 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 drew in a breath and 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.”
She looked away from him and concentrated on the candle’s flame. “Our baby will be lucky to have you for a father.” 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 eyes 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.
He reached across the table and took her hand back into his. “What if I told you I think I’m falling?”
She shook her head.
“What do I need to do? Mak
e 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.”
She 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, Eric.” 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 life 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 grasp his other hand, 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?”
Rocky Mountain Fugitive Page 10