Avery gave Carlee a smile of thanks, more for not commenting on the unexpected offer of money than the preparation of the necessary paperwork. Leanne probably wouldn’t take kindly to a witty zing about recouping expenses for a rescue horse that hadn’t been as useful to their program as the others. Avery hadn’t a doubt that all of her team were close and definitely had each other’s back but they weren’t above sniping at each other over differences of opinion.
Avery’s gaze tracked Carlee as she walked away. The girl had covered her bruises with makeup which she rarely wore and Avery suspected that was more to keep concern and comments at bay than from vanity. Otherwise, Avery could see no sign of the soreness she knew the girl had to be feeling in her back and shoulders and neck. The doctor had warned that the third day would actually be the worst so Avery would be particularly watchful in the morning. For now, though, Carlee seemed truly fine and Avery let go of a little more of her anxiety.
Avery was on the point of turning back to Malone when she saw Carlee change her angle to intercept Dirks who was walking their way. The sight of him made her heart leap a bit. She’d done her best to put the memory of that kiss from her mind but it had crept in at odd moments and came flooding back now. I’ll work just as hard to prove you innocent as guilty, he’d said. But would he? Could she trust him? Trust these feelings she didn’t want to have for him? Craig had been a bitter, bitter lesson but Dirks was a different kind of man. One that appealed to her on every level, she had to admit.
When Dirks shifted his gaze to hers, she realized she was staring at him. She realized something else as well, Carlee was still facing him and there was something in the line of her body, in the way she leaned slightly forward, and in the tilt of her chin that shot a line of discomfort straight through her as if she’d been caught eavesdropping on a personal moment. She shifted her attention quickly away, not returning the quick smile Dirks had sent her.
When she glanced back a moment later, Dirks was staring after Carlee and she wondered what would be revealed if she could see his eyes. One thing was sure, she would never be in competition with any woman for a man’s attention, particularly not with the young woman she considered as much her daughter as any person could ever be.
Dirks watched Carlee walk away, still unsure what that exchange with her had been about. She’d commented only that she’d met his security team, Rick and Jeremiah, but her tone had conveyed that she was unimpressed by their quiet, polite manners. She’d been civil when she asked Dirks if he considered them a match for the trouble hounding the ranch but her expression said clearly that she, personally, did not. Dirks had assured her they were professionals and known only for success not failure. He had no intention of telling her they were retired Special Forces. He didn’t believe anything he said would sway Carlee’s opinion, anyway.
She made no secret of the fact that she was suspicious of Dirks, his motives, his reasons for being there, and – most pointedly – his interest in Avery. She was protective, fiercely protective of Avery. Dirks didn’t find that unusual from all he knew about the relationship between them, but he did find the vehemence of it a little off-putting. He had a sense that there was more than concern in Carlee’s attitude toward Avery, perhaps a hint of jealousy and a determination to keep Avery’s affection to herself. He would expect that in a child or even a teen, all things considered, but he didn’t expect it in what appeared to be a strong and self-sufficient young woman. But he knew as well as anyone that there was a reason for the old adage that appearances could be deceiving.
Putting thoughts of Carlee aside, Dirks walked toward Avery, keeping his stride quiet and easy though his thoughts were anything but. He wanted her. He wasn’t supposed to and wasn’t sure what to do about it but it was there. He supposed the first necessity – beyond keeping her and everything she loved safe – was proving her innocence in whatever financial shenanigans her ex had had going on for the past year. The second necessity, and it was a necessity to him at least, was to convince her that he was someone she could trust, someone she could count on. That, he suspected, was going to be a hard sell when her last example had been the likes of Craig Danson.
He found no lingering remembrance of their kiss in the cool glance she turned his way as he reached the paddock. In fact, she seemed even more remote now than before that moment of undeniable heat in his truck.
Dirks smiled, nodded, shook hands through the introduction with Malone Summers. Then he hung back, quiet and patient, watching as a pretty mare was loaded onto a long, aluminum trailer. Papers were exchanged as Carlee rejoined the group.
A short while later, Malone Summers pulled out of the drive. Carlee shot Dirks a look over Avery’s shoulder. It wasn’t hostile but it wasn’t friendly either. For a moment, he wondered if she would deliberately pull Avery away on some pretext but, after a moment’s hesitation, she turned and walked away with Tucker and Leanne.
Dirks’ patience was rewarded when Avery turned, saw him still standing there, and walked his way.
She stopped in front of him and just said, “Hi.”
To Dirks’ amusement she seemed as if she didn’t quite know what to say now that she had given into the impulse to seek his company, and he was pretty sure it had been impulse. The sunlight caught in her hair, pulling hints of bronze from the coffee-colored curls. He fought the urge to touch an errant tendril.
“Good morning,” he said in turn. “I’m headed into town shortly. Need anything?”
“Not that I can think of.”
“Mind if I pick up some steaks for that big-ass grill you never use? I’d like to pull my team together with yours for shift turnover every evening until we get things sorted out. Might as well get everyone fed while we’re at it.”
This time the hint of a smile on her lips reached her eyes, not big and bright like he hoped one day to see but at least it was there. “Sure. I have a few clients until early afternoon but there are peas in the freezer I can put on slow simmer.”
“Sounds good to me.” And because he couldn’t help himself, he reached out to touch her face, just once, very lightly.
Dirks used the drive into town to sort through his thoughts. What he suspected, what he thought he knew, what he knew for sure, as well as some facts and figures from files he’d studied and then restudied.
Someone had signed Avery’s name to government issued payments for veterans. Craig was the most likely culprit because he damned sure didn’t believe Avery had done that. And it was Craig who’d siphoned money on a regular basis through an ATM card, Craig who was in financial straits. Avery, along with the ranch, was solvent but she’d, no doubt, been unable to grow her business as quickly as she likely would have.
He knew Carlee had money from her mother’s insurance as well as from her share of the ranch proceeds. Her car payment and cell phone were automatically deducted from her checking account. Occasionally, she bought clothes, mostly jeans and shirts and boots, but not often and not extravagantly. She was as solvent as Avery and wanted Avery to remove her from her will.
Tucker made a better than average living at the ranch and, like Carlee, he saved most of his earnings and lived well within his means. Leanne and her husband were renting a small ranch house while saving money for a home of their own. Still young and childless, they indulged once a week or so in dinner with drinks, beer for him, a glass of wine for her. Their vehicles were well-used and equally well-maintained. No large debt, no large luxuries.
Craig was the financial gap. He gambled wildly and, while he didn’t lose big, he lost regularly. Interspersed with the frequent losses were the occasional large wins, probably just often enough to keep him coming back for one more try.
In addition to siphoning money from the ranch until Avery caught him at it, Craig had cheated the owner of a lumber store and taken money for a horse he didn’t own. Both actions made him a prime candidate for prosecution. With no reliable means of income, he’d be getting desperate now.
Carlee
may not have positively identified her father as the driver who’d run her off the road but her suspicion was more than clear. She believed him at least capable of killing Avery to get his hands on the ranch, the horses, and the money through her. So far neither the sheriff nor his deputies had been able to find Craig for questioning. Was Carlee beginning to wonder if her own life would be in danger if her father became desperate enough and she withheld money from him?
Dirks parked at the edge of town and walked through it as he had only a couple of days earlier but this time with a different end in mind. Before, he’d been hunting for clues to a way to clear Avery’s name with the government and ensure she was safe from her ex-husband’s enemies before heading back to D.C.
This time, he was contemplating the town through an altered viewpoint, wondering if this was a place he could live with a woman who had built a life and a business here, a business that enabled her to live well and help others – both equine and human. He’d never ask her to leave. He wasn’t ready to talk marriage and she wasn’t ready to hear it, but if he didn’t think this was a place he could make his home, it was a conversation that would never happen. He wouldn’t do that to himself or to her.
It was a peaceful place, a pretty place, with parks and restaurants and theaters, with businesses and shops and boutiques, not too far from larger towns with brighter nightlife but not too close to them either. So where, exactly, did that realization leave him?
He’d never been tempted to marry and he wasn’t sure why that was. Over the years, he’d had a series of love interests, some more serious than others, but he’d let each slip away and hadn’t looked back with more than a twinge of regret. That twinge was not because he’d wanted forever after with any of them but because he’d truly cared about each one - just not enough to propose they tie their lives together forever. And eventually, each one of them had accepted that - some with tears and melodrama, some with a hug and a smile of regret - and moved on to a man more inclined to think in terms of forever.
It was true there were times he wondered what his life would have been like with a son to play ball with, a daughter to take to some father-daughter middle school dance. In the thick of action, though, as he held men dying with whispered regrets and sorrow over a family left to grieve, he knew he’d made the right decision for him. But that was then.
Now? Now was different. Now there was Avery.
He passed the sheriff’s office but didn’t drop in. He and the sheriff had already talked by phone about the biker, the tag number on his Goldwing, and his odd tattoo. If Ben Farley had learned anything new, he’d know it. He had that much faith in the lawman and suspected the lawman now had that much faith in him. They were on the same side in this quest to return Avery to a place without turmoil and without dread that something or someone she loved would be hurt or taken.
Just as he’d decided to return his truck and head to the local meat market, a young woman stepped out of the feed and tack store, clearly intent on locking up. Dirks was surprised when she called out to him. “Aren’t you the guy out at Summer Valley Ranch? The government guy looking at the place for some kind of veterans program?”
“I am.” He introduced himself and shook the hand she offered so casually.
“I’m Kelly. Are you headed back to the ranch now?”
“Yeah, I am, after another stop.”
“Great. I have some calendars I’d love for you to take to Avery if you don’t mind. She doesn’t come into town that often - none of them do - and I’m dying for her to see what the photographer did. They’re right on the counter. It won’t take me a minute to step back in to get them.”
She was already unlocking the door and Dirks doubted she even realized she hadn’t given him a chance to agree or refuse.
When she stepped back out, she was beaming. She handed him the top one on the stack. “Isn’t that place gorgeous?”
He supposed it was, but all he saw was the woman astride a magnificent horse he recognized as Jack, and he knew he’d found his answer. She was half turned from the camera so that the photographer had caught little more than the lift of her chin and curve of her cheek with that tumble of hair to her shoulders. Her back was slim, straight and he could see the strength in her as much as the beauty. Yeah, for her, he’d live here in this pleasant little town - or anywhere else she chose to be.
Chapter Sixteen
True to her word, Avery had tender peas simmering in vegetable stock. It had been a busy afternoon. She’d worked with three clients, pulled salad greens and vegetables from her garden, showered, dithered over make-up, no make-up, and back again. She suspected the kitchen smelled more like the bacon she’d fried to season the peas than the light fragrance of her soap.
When Dirks opened the back door without knocking, it felt right and she tried not to let that bother her. Just go with it, she told herself as she glanced over her shoulder at him from her place by the stove.
He placed the steaks on the granite counter, followed by a bag of what most assuredly was hand-selected baking potatoes. Her eyes widened at the amount of both. “How many armies are you feeding?”
“Just one small one,” he answered with a grin. He stepped closer to peer into the cast iron roaster she was stirring. “Oh, man, I don’t know when I last had fresh corn creamed by hand rather than dumped out of a can. I almost swung by the open air market for salad things, but it looks like we don’t need them.”
She liked his grin, realized she liked it too much so turned her attention back to the roaster of corn. “Need or not, we’ll have those salad things, fresh from my back yard, washed, and in the ‘fridge. There’s beer in there, too, if you’re interested.”
“I am.” He pulled one out, saw the Chardonnay chilling, and asked, “Wine?”
She hesitated ... not a date, not a date, not a date ... then said, “Sure.”
Beer and wine and steaks wouldn’t make it a date. It was a military strategy session, nothing more. Even so, she sensed the change in him. She just wasn’t sure what that change was, what it portended, if anything. They’d shared meals early on – before she realized she was in his line of fire for assigning guilt – but that was then and this was now and now felt very different.
She pretended not to notice as he rummaged through her cabinets, passing up her everyday wine goblets to find what he wanted in a lighter-than-air crystal tinted a rich emerald green.
He pulled the cork on the wine with quiet expertise and poured. When he handed her the glass, he smiled. “Almost the same shade of the green in your eyes.”
And her heart tilted. She took the glass he held out to her, their fingers barely brushing, but the touch, soft as butterfly wings, had her heart dropping as if on the wildest roller coaster.
Once Dirks started the grill, the team started gathering. With her part done, Avery took her wine glass to the double-glider, dropped her sandals to the deck and tucked her feet under her. Trouble bounded agilely to the seat beside her and curled up, waiting in anticipation of steak she supposed.
Tucker came first, sniffing appreciatively at the scent of hickory flavored charcoal. “Oh, man, I know that stuff ain’t good for you, but it’s so worth it.”
Dirks just smiled and offered him a beer from the kitchen as if it were his to offer. Avery lifted a brow and smiled as Tucker stepped in and grabbed a bottle and a glass and returned just as quickly. He took a seat on the back step and poured his beer into the glass.
“I don’t think grilling over gas is considered any healthier than charcoal,” Dirks offered.
Tucker frowned at that, considering, and then shrugged. Apparently, all he cared about in that regard was the steak. “You learn anything new or interesting while you were in town?”
“Not new, but interesting. Just reaffirmed some things in my mind.”
Avery wondered what that meant but had no intention of asking him. She thought Tucker might ask but Carlee walked up and, as usual, there went Tucker’s attention. She’
d smile if she thought Carlee had any real interest in him. As it was, she feared Tucker was in for a real heartbreak if he got any more serious. She hoped he wouldn’t. The team worked well together. A failed romance or broken heart could ruin that. And she wasn’t entirely selfish in her hope. Tucker didn’t deserve heartbreak. He deserved the love of his life to love him back. And there she went again, believing in fairy tales.
Leanne arrived next, her husband with her. “Avery, hey, Leanne said I was welcome to join y’all.”
Avery stood and gave him a hug. “You’re always welcome here, Jason, and you have as much right as any of us to know what is going on. Especially now. This is probably not what you expected to come home to.” She still felt guilty that Leanne was at any kind of risk because of her problems.
Jason had wide shoulders, a full head of dark hair without a hint of curl to it and dimples that Leanne told her he preferred to call creases. Leanne went straight to the kitchen to get them a drink and Jason pulled two of the wooden chairs closer to the action.
For a moment, it seemed to Avery that the atmosphere was turning almost festive, at least until Carlee stepped out of the house with a glass of ice water in her hand. The glance she gave Dirks at the grill was just as cool as the drink she carried as she moved close to Avery.
“Are you still feeling sore?” Avery asked, scooting over to make room. Trouble leapt to the deck, not looking back at the two of them, as he curled his tail around him.
“Hardly at all. Quit worrying.” It was an order but Carlee said the words lightly with a smile. She glanced around. “Are we eating out here? It’s cool enough for a change.”
“I actually cleared the dining table, but we could I suppose.”
Before the suggestion could become a debate, Dirks’ security duo arrived.
With the potatoes roasting on the grill and the group settled in various places, Dirks took the lead, giving quick introductions to those who hadn’t yet met. Avery immediately liked the two men Dirks had brought in but she was uncertain that they could be effective when no one could guess where the next risk lay. She wasn’t surprised when Carlee said as much.
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