“No,” she snapped.
“You hungry? Because I’m about to fix myself something.”
Her eyes cut to the left. “No.”
He recognized the lie. “I make a mean omelet. Cheese, a little ham…might even have mushrooms.” When she swallowed, he said, “I’ll take that as a yes.”
She didn’t contradict him, so he grabbed the eggs from the fridge and snagged a bowl from the cabinet. “So, you’re from Houston, huh?” When she didn’t answer, he looked. Her cute rear end remained planted in the leather recliner, and her arms continued to cover her breasts. A shame.
“What did you do,” she asked, “have a background check run on me? Maybe see if I’ve taken other illegal photographs?”
“I’m the police chief. What do you think?” he asked, and couldn’t resist a grin. He considered what all he should divulge, then decided what the hell. “You’re divorced. You live in a small house northwest of Houston. You have a brother who lives in California with a couple of kids. You have a thing for long baths and lavender candles. You have a quirky sense of humor, and you love animals—cats more than dogs, which was evident on the porch and during the little incident out by the park.” He laughed. “Though I have to admit that dog seemed crazy about you.”
Her blue eyes narrowed, and for some reason he regretted teasing her. That’s when he recalled what else he knew, the thing they shared. “You lost both your parents when you were a kid. You and your brother were raised by your grandparents, who unfortunately have also passed.”
She stiffened. He’d clearly overstepped his bounds. Feeling bad, he went for something less personal. “You’re damn good at your job. You’ve helped put over a dozen Texas towns on the tourism map.”
She shook her head. Her hair stirred around her shoulders. He itched to touch it.
Her frown deepened. “So you hit my website, read some of my published essays, probably my Facebook page, and checked a few references. Is that supposed to impress me?”
“I was hoping.” He smiled. She didn’t respond, so he cracked several eggs in the bowl and reached in a drawer for a fork. “I actually was copied on all the e-mails between you and the mayor, which had your personal references. I was forwarded links to your essays by…others. But I did check out your website and blog on my own. I’ll have to try your Facebook page. Will you friend me?”
She didn’t answer. He beat the eggs into a nice yellow froth. The silence hummed. Funny how his cabin seemed quieter now than when he was alone. Which probably explained why he preferred being alone—or at least why he was better at it. Anything more than a casual affair felt like a pair of handcuffs.
“This is a small town, Shala. Your coming was frontpage news. By now I’ll bet my mailman has checked out your website.” He knew for certain the tribal council had.
She stood, and her arms dropped from her breasts, offering that nice view again. “So you know who I am and what I’m doing here, yet you’re still pulling this…this ridiculous stunt with my camera.”
“It’s not a stunt.” He reached into the fridge for the grated cheddar cheese, mushrooms, ham, and a bag of grapes, then glanced back at her. “The rules were posted. You broke the rules.” He rinsed the grapes, dropped them in a bowl and popped one into his mouth. The tart sweetness burst on his tongue.
Anger brightened her eyes again. “I didn’t take a picture!”
“Maybe you did. Maybe you didn’t.”
“Did you check? Did you even look at the shots?”
“Not yet. But either way you broke the rules.”
“Your rules are stupid. Tourists coming to the powwows are going to want to take pictures. Not that I took one. I just didn’t want to risk leaving my expensive camera behind.”
He walked to where she stood, halfway between the living room and kitchen. “Tourists coming to the powwows should respect our rules. You obviously have a problem with that. If you’re planning on winning over the tribal council, that’ll have to change.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t be working for Precious,” she said, not giving an inch.
He held his temper in check and a grape to her lips. He couldn’t stop her from walking out on the job, and come hell or high water, he wouldn’t give her camera back until next week. But he hoped she wouldn’t walk out. The mayor wouldn’t be happy. Hell, neither would half the town. And neither would he.
He tapped her lips with the grape. “Take it, it’s sweet.”
Almost against her will, her mouth opened, and he slowly pressed the fruit inside. He studied her soft pink lips and wondered if kissing her would be stupid. It might possibly scare her into leaving. But wouldn’t that be best? He needed to think, to figure things out. So, no kissing, not now. Not yet. He took a step back.
Her expression changed as if she’d had some unpleasant thought. “How did you know about the dog by the park?”
He could lie, but given the choice, he always preferred the truth. It was a bad habit he’d learned from Redfoot. “I was there. By the picnic tables. I was coming to your rescue, but you made it to your car first.”
“You just happened to be there?” She looked suspicious.
“No. I’ve been keeping an eye on you since you got here.” He reached for a skillet under the cabinet.
“So you’ve been stalking me.” She studied him as if confused. “Was it you in the sedan?”
“Sedan?” he echoed. “No. Has someone been following you?” When she didn’t answer, he put the skillet on the burner, turned that on, and reached into the refrigerator for butter. “Keeping an eye on you isn’t the same as stalking. Has someone—?”
“So says the stalker,” she interrupted.
He dropped butter in the pan. “Look, some people in town are less than thrilled you’re here.”
“And you head up that committee, right?”
“Actually, I headed up the pro-Winters side.” When their eyes met, something told him she believed him. “I wasn’t stalking. I was making sure you weren’t bothered while you did your job.”
“And you couldn’t have just introduced yourself?”
Not without causing all kinds of talk about visions and soul mates. But he couldn’t tell her that, so he offered a different truth. “I guess that would have been better, huh?”
He reached for the bowl of eggs and offered her another grape. She took several. They stood there, eating grapes and staring at each other. The melting butter in the pan sizzled and popped. The air between them did the same.
Redfoot took off down the street, his pills in his pocket and his son and Maria on his mind. How could he get Jose to come home before Maria did something stupid and committed to the wrong man? As he turned the corner onto Veronica’s street, he heard an owl. Tonight, when he went to sleep, he would ask the spirits for guidance.
Before taking the path cutting between houses, heading to Veronica’s back door, he made sure no one saw him, but a flash in the lodge window across the street caught his attention. He stared, thinking maybe he’d just imagined it, but the circle of light flickered across the window again. Someone was inside the lodge, someone with a flashlight. Why, when the lights worked just fine?
Redfoot remembered the nine thousand dollars in cash in the safe from the powwow. He took off at a dead run.
CHAPTER FIVE
Shala watched Sky turn and pour the eggs into the pan. Her gaze lowered to his backside, and she remembered how it had looked in just a loincloth. “Where is it?” she asked, determined to stop thinking about his body parts.
He looked over his shoulder. “Where is what?”
“My camera.”
“It’s safe,” he said, and retrieved a spatula from a drawer.
“You realize how ridiculous this is.”
He turned. “Why don’t you put in some toast for us? Toaster’s on the counter.” He gestured with the spatula. “Bread’s in the pantry.”
Shala closed her eyes, fighting the need to scream. “You do realize,
when the mayor gets back in town he’s going to chew you up and down for this.”
“Yup, I know that,” he said.
“And he’s going to make you hand over my camera.”
“That I don’t know.” He gestured again to the pantry. “I’m cooking the omelet. You could do the toast.”
She stood there staring at him, trying to decide whether she should (a) go bat-shit crazy on him, (b) storm out of his house, or (c) try to talk some sense into him. Maybe because she could smell the eggs and her stomach was tired of sucking on her backbone, she chose (c). And maybe it was because in spite of how insane it felt, she had accepted the truth: she’d been a little wrong. When she took her camera into the powwow, she’d broken a rule. She just had to get him to make this situation an exception…and perhaps convince him that the rule needed to be axed altogether.
Wasn’t that part of her job, to make the town more tourism friendly? Befriending the town’s chief of police would help. But to do the job she’d been sent to do, she needed her camera. Surely he could see that—or he would once they both calmed down and she got him to see reason.
Finding a loaf, she popped bread into the toaster. The aroma made her mouth water, and her stomach rumbled. She looked at Sky, hoping he hadn’t heard. He grinned, damn it.
“You like cheese, ham, and mushrooms, right?”
“Yes.”
He pulled out a cutting board and started cutting. The man knew his way around the kitchen. She’d never known a man who could or would admit to being so domesticated, especially one so outwardly masculine. Maybe that’s why he could do it. It sure wasn’t hurting his macho image.
She studied the way his muscles moved beneath his shirt as he chopped, then shifted her gaze to his straight black hair resting above his collar. “Did you cut your hair, or was that a wig you were wearing?”
“It’s part of the headdress,” he answered. “The plates are in the cabinet.” He pointed with his knife.
She opened the cabinet door and stared at the row of plates. Top shelf. She had to push up on tiptoes to reach them.
“Here. Let me.” He stepped behind her. “I didn’t realize you were so short.”
“I’m not short.” Feeling him against her, she stared into the cabinet.
“Okay, petite. It wasn’t meant to be an insult.” His words brushed the back of her right ear, hot breath against the tender skin. He didn’t reach for the plates.
“I’m five foot three. That’s not petite,” she said, almost afraid to move. With him behind her, several inches over six feet, she did feel petite…and feminine.
“Am I picking up on a Napoleon complex?” He chuckled.
“No.” Okay, maybe a little, she admitted to herself. She’d always longed for a few more inches of height.
Fighting the sensations caused by their proximity, she considered which way to step to avoid physical contact. Then his chest moved against her shoulder as he reached for the plates. The warmth of his body invaded her space. She held her breath, and his nice clean scent tickled her nose and made her wish she’d had the chance to shower. Not that her deodorant was failing, but standing this close made her want to be…fresh.
That’s when the absurdity of this entire freaking situation smacked her right in the face. She’d come to retrieve her camera, not to have the man cook her dinner and for them to play house. What was she doing?
Redfoot reached the door. The lock had been broken. He pushed inside the lodge and moved as quietly as he could through the darkness. The scent of rosemary filled his nose. Maria, who did the accounting for the tribal council, constantly burned scented candles at her desk. He could see a flashlight moving across the floor in the next room.
Was this some wayward teen? Maybe one of his own tribe. In the bad economy, people got desperate. Desperation drove people to do bad things, and so Redfoot’s gaze shot to the safe beside the desk. A safe in plain sight. A safe that appeared untouched. What was the thief looking for, if not money?
Pulling his carving knife from his pocket, Redfoot took another step. A loose piece of pine flooring creaked. Shifting, he bumped a wooden chair. He caught it, but books on the seat tumbled to the floor. The orb of light in the next room shut off. The thief had heard.
Redfoot’s hold on his weapon tightened. He hoped the intruder was one of his people, someone he could convince to walk away, nothing taken, no harm done. But standing straight, prepared to defend himself, he felt every one of his sixty-six years.
The intruder shot toward him. Redfoot raised his knife and stared. The man wore a ski mask. His large body did not seem familiar, but for some odd reason Redfoot remembered his dream of a bulldog. The man shifted, and Redfoot noticed pale skin where the intruder’s collar met his mask. This wasn’t one of his people.
The man’s hand rose, and Redfoot realized his mistake: never bring a knife to a gunfight. He remembered his dream and all the blood. What he hadn’t realized last night was that the blood spilled would include his own.
CHAPTER SIX
What the hell am I doing? The question bounced around Shala’s head. Sky’s proximity as he reached for the plates had every one of her nerve endings standing on its head, kicking its feet in glee, and singing “God Bless America.” She could smell him. She could feel him. Oh, mercy, could she feel him!
His chest brushed her shoulders, his knee pressed against her thigh. His pelvis fit against her backside. Finally, he had the plates in his hand. He lowered the dishes for her to take and then stepped away.
Shala drew in a mouthful of mind-cleansing oxygen. What the hell am I doing? The question ricocheted back at her. The oxygen must have worked, because somehow she answered. My job. That’s what she was doing. And right then she decided to stop acting like a schoolgirl around a star quarterback and more like Shala Winters, owner of Winters Tourism. Owner and entrepreneur who, in spite of insinuating that she might walk out, needed this job almost as much as Precious needed her.
The bad economy meant small towns were looking to tourism to keep them afloat. Unfortunately, the bad economy also meant fewer towns had money to throw around. And plain and simple, she didn’t come cheap. Not that she wasn’t worth it. As Mr. Gomez implied, she had a good résumé.
Another gulp of oxygen, and she decided she could do this. She was smart, a good communicator, and she excelled at negotiating. Standing a little taller, she set the plates on the oak table.
“Silverware?” she asked, looking back at Sky to catch him studying her. She completely ignored his hooded gaze. Yup, best to ignore that.
“Top drawer.”
He focused on the stove again. She focused, too. Hopefully, over dinner she could establish a reasonably pleasant, purely platonic relationship with him—one that led to his returning her camera. Yes, that was a damn good plan.
Aware of the silence, and remembering something he’d said earlier, she pulled utensils from the drawer. “Were you actually in favor of my coming to Precious?”
“Yes,” he replied.
“Really?”
His right eyebrow arched, as if he didn’t like to be questioned.
“It’s not as if I don’t believe you. I just know Mayor Johnson said most of the Native Americans were against my coming.”
“I’m not most of the Native Americans.”
“Right.” She smiled but wasn’t sure it came off well, because he didn’t react. Her nerve endings started to twitch again, so she turned around and went to work collecting the toast. “I appreciate dinner. I’m starved.”
“You should taste it first,” he said.
“It smells wonderful. Do you want butter? For the toast?” She glanced back and tried to smile again.
He nodded. “It’s in the fridge.”
She retrieved the butter—real butter, not margarine—and set it on the table. The silence grew awkward, and she realized it was easier being angry with him than playing nice. But damn it, she could and would do this.
“Shou
ld I get us something to drink?” She put a hint of cheeriness in her tone.
“There’s milk.” He leaned against the counter and continued to study her. “Glasses are in the cabinet over the toaster.”
She got the milk, poured it, and set the glasses on the table. Uncomfortable with his perusal, she looked around. “You have a nice place. Did you decorate it yourself?”
“You’re not getting your camera back tonight.” He picked up the frying pan and delivered half an omelet to one plate and half to the other. Putting the pan in the sink, he faced her.
“You think I’m just being pleasant to get my camera back?”
“Not only do I think it, I’d stake my right eye on it.” He dropped into a chair and motioned for her to do the same. “Not that I’m complaining, but I wanted to be upfront.”
“Perfect.”
Maria Ortega read the last line of the last page, sighed, and closed her book. She smiled and set it on the bedside table beside the six others waiting to be devoured, then fell back on her pillow. Her day job of running a small accounting business often gave her plenty of reading time. Other than creating pottery, books were her favorite pastime.
Okay, so she might be slightly addicted to romance novels. Yet considering her heritage and past, there were worse things to be addicted to. A lot worse. And it wasn’t as if she honestly believed in happily-ever-afters; life had already disproven those. She placed a hand over her navel, where she had once carried a child. Jose’s child.
Don’t go there. She pressed a hand to her forehead.
Letting go of things she couldn’t change, she sat up and reached for another novel, thumbed through the pages. No, life wasn’t perfect. Not that she expected it to be. But was it too much to ask for it to be pleasant? Was it too much to ask that she find someone who wanted the same things in life as she did—a home, someone to lean on when the not-so-perfect times came crashing down? Maria remembered Redfoot and his wife Estella before her brain aneurism. They’d been happy, their love good. Maria hoped she and Matt could find the same kind of happiness.
Shut Up and Kiss Me Page 4