License to Love Series:Trilogy (Contemporary Western Cowboy Romance)

by Rose, Amelia

The next time he looked up at the clock it was after two in the morning, and he flipped the top of the computer shut and tried to shut his eyes. Somewhere between the sounds of the motel customers coming and going and the constant chirping of the window AC unit, he managed to fall into an uneasy sleep.

  Chapter 14

  Melinda had just stepped out of the shower when the pounding on the door began to crescendo in increasing waves. She ran to the door, clinging to her towel, her wet hair leaving trickles of water down her back. All she could think about was that there had been some kind of emergency notice pop up on the computer that she hadn’t had time to check.

  She peered through the door’s peephole and then flung open the door to see Cale standing there, his hand still half raised to continue knocking.

  “What’s going on? Is it Woody and Shad?” she asked, her eyes searching around him to make sure that no one else was able to see her in her barely there towel as she ushered him into the room.

  “No, it’s nothing like that…” he started, but she cut him off, the anger rising back up in the back of her throat and replacing the fear that had almost paralyzed her moments before.

  “What do you mean ‘nothing like that’? She clarified. “The way you were pounding on that door someone had better be dead or dying. Now if you don’t mind, I need to finish getting dressed,” she said, cutting him off and reveling in the astonished look on his face. Melinda was going to make it clear that she was asserting her control over the situation. Without allowing him any time to respond or defend himself, she snatched her clothes from the back of the chair and stalked back into the bathroom, slamming the door shut behind her.

  Once she was in the bathroom she took her time putting on her shorts and t-shirt, but even then it only took her a couple of minutes. Brushing out her still wet hair she walked back into the room.

  He watched her with a cool even-measured stare and she found herself wondering if last night had been anything special to him or if she was just another conquest. The cool calm green of his eyes revealed nothing.

  “What’s all the excitement about this morning?” she asked as she went around the room gathering up her small cache of belongings and shoving them back into her duffle bag.

  “Good, you’re packed. I’ve already got my stuff loaded up in the car. We probably need to get on the road immediately so that we can catch up to Charles.” He didn’t move as he spoke, but instead watched her calmly.

  “What do you mean, catch up with him?” she asked, pausing mid-stride and turning around to face him.

  “That’s what I came here to tell you. I got an alert on my phone that he used one of his credit cards. I went into all his accounts and set alerts to go up to my phone for purchase receipts. Apparently the card was used this morning in a small town about four hours north of here. With that, he turned and went back out the door. Melinda started grabbing up all of her items and tossing them in the bag.

  She could not believe that he was the one being calm and rational and worrying more about the case than what had happened last night, and it ratcheted her anxiety level up even further. Going back into the bathroom to double check for items she might have missed Melinda took a moment to look herself over and take a few deep breaths.

  Don’t worry what he thinks, Melinda thought as she brushed her dark hair behind her ears and fought off the tears that threatened to spill out, he doesn’t have to know.

  Melinda had only been with a small handful of men, and she’d never done anything like what had happened last night. It had been a step outside of her comfort zone and it was not something that she was going to let happen again. She pushed her feelings for Cale down into the deep well where she hid all of her emotions and stared calmly at herself in the mirror until she once again regained complete control of her facial features.

  Going over the room once more, she forced herself to focus on the external matters at hand and evaluated the room area by area. When she did walk out to the car, bag in hand a familiar sense of detached serenity had overcome her.

  “So, where are we going?” she asked him as she tossed her bag in the back of the car and climbed in.

  Cale followed her, and for a moment she thought she saw a shift in his demeanor, a coldness that had crept into his eyes. Forcing herself to stare straight ahead and avoid eye contact when he climbed into the car was a little awkward, but she was afraid that if she looked at him her mask of resolve would crumble. Melinda gulped down a deep breath and forced herself to keep going on autopilot. As soon as his door was shut, she started the car and backed out of the parking spot. She was halfway across the parking lot before he answered her initial question.

  “A little town in the northern part of the state called Alva,” Cale said into the emptiness of the car, his loud voice startling her from her reverie. “The notification I got said the card had been used at a motel and a gas station there. It went through early this morning, so chances are he used it late last night.”

  Melinda nodded. “I know where Alva is and it’s about a four hour drive from here. Hopefully though, we’ll be able to get up there and catch him before he leaves the hotel,” she said as she looked at the clock in the dash. It read 7:38. That would put their time of arrival shortly before noon, which was checkout time at most motels.

  When she pulled out onto the open road, she pushed the accelerator down and put the Volvo through its paces. At the same time she leaned over and kicked on the AC and the radio. Yesterday they hadn’t even touched the radio, their constant banter and discussion about Charles’ potential whereabouts had been enough to fill the silence. Now, the car was pregnant with the unbridled tension from last night’s encounter and she was afraid that if she didn’t have something as background noise she was going to go stir crazy.

  Cale sighed and shifted in the seat next to her. She risked a glance over at him and saw that he was looking up something on his phone. Turning her attention back to the road she eased her foot down on the gas pedal even more.

  Chapter 15

  Cale felt the car come to a stop as his eyes shot open. The first thing he realized was that his forehead was leaning against the car window. The second was that they were parked out in front of the AmericInn Hotel.

  The last few hours had been torturous and he had spent most of them pretending to mess around on his phone and read through his notes just so that he didn’t have to say anything to Melinda directly. Everything that was brought up was met with quick clips and indifference. He’d spent the entire time trying to push away the memory of how responsive she had been to him last night, how they had been so closely intertwined. But that was before she had completely rejected the encounter.

  Looking at his watch, he realized it was only a little after eleven. They had made the trip in three and a half hours. Cale climbed out and stretched his legs, taking a few moments to look around the parking lot for Alyssa’s missing Honda. As he did, he noticed Melinda motioning to him from behind the glass entrance at the front desk of the motel.

  Walking over to the door, he pulled out the credit card information he had copied down earlier. He had no doubt that was what Melinda needed. Otherwise she probably would have tried to take care of everything herself. There was rarely a missed opportunity for her to show him exactly how little she needed him.

  However, when he got to the desk Melinda turned to face him and looked directly at him for the first time since they’d gotten in the car.

  “They have no record of a room being rented out with Charles’ card.” Melinda told him as he approached.

  “Are they sure? I don’t know for sure that the name on it was Charles, but I have the card number here.” Cale told her as he held out the slip of paper where he had copied over all the information.

  Instead of reaching for it, Melinda just shook her head. “No they don’t have a record of any room being rented out to an individual.”

  Furrowing his eyebrows, Cale looked from her to the desk clerk in confusion,
the slip of paper still dangling from his fingertips. Finally, after a few moments the clerk spoke up, her gaze travelling back and forth between him and Melinda in confusion.

  “As I told her, the entire hotel has been rented out for the last three weeks by Devon Energy. They are drilling some new wells in the area, and they rented out the hotel to use as temporary housing for the rig hands. We haven’t had a single room to rent out since then. Unless someone had a reservation beforehand, but I have no record of that being the case last night.”

  Cale stood there for a moment trying to let what she had said sink in. Then he shook his head and approached the desk once again. The clerk was a younger woman, probably in her early twenties with jet black hair and a lavender streak running down the side. She was wearing some dark horn rimmed glasses and her eyes widened as he approached.

  He realized that his expression must be a serious one and that she was probably worried. Reminding himself to smile, he pulled out the online receipt of the transaction and handed it to her. “This is what showed up on my credit card statement.”

  She relaxed a little when he smiled and took the slip of paper from him and laid it next to her keyboard. They watched and waited as her fingers flew over the keys with such fierceness and precision that it sounded almost as if tiny artillery were in the room with them. After a few moments she whispered a small “gotcha” into the room and looked back up at them.

  “It wasn’t run through our front desk. It looks like it was but this transaction was done online and linked into the desk. The room that it listed isn’t even in this hotel.”

  “Which hotel was it for?” Melinda asked, her voice rising a little with each word. Cale knew that her anxiety was rising again. She was worried that they had wasted a whole morning chasing down a lead that would prove to be futile. He, however, was not as convinced.

  The feeling that was beginning to overwhelm him had more to do with being led like a rat in a trap than it did into being duped.

  The girl’s fingers tapped on the keyboard again, and then she looked up at them, her eyebrows drawn together in a puzzled gaze. “Um, it appears that the charges and the room belong to a hotel that we haven’t finished building yet. I’m not actually sure how it was even able to be billed at all.”

  Melinda and Cale thanked her for her help and turned to leave. On a lark, Cale went back and wrote down his cell phone number. “If anything else happens on this account, or if you see the man from the photograph we showed you before, please give me a call.”

  She smiled and nodded. “Sure thing.” Her voice was much softer now, almost purring, and Cale gave her a lopsided smile as he felt Melinda’s gaze boring into his back.

  Sure enough, when he turned around, Melinda’s eyes were focused on him like laser beams, her arms crossed defiantly across her chest. She could pretend all she wanted that last night meant nothing to her but her reaction to the girl’s attention was all the confirmation he needed.

  When they left the cool comfort of the air conditioned lobby and stepped back into the raging furnace that was Oklahoma in the summer time the difference was so sudden that he felt his throat close up a little. Cale had never been around heat like this and it always took him a moment to adjust to the difference.

  “Nice to know we’re being led around by our noses,” Melinda said as they climbed into the car.

  Cale waited until both doors were shut and they were back on the road to respond. “I don’t know. I’m not so sure we were duped. I think he’s toying with me,” he admitted.

  Melinda stared at him for a moment, sizing him up as she waited at the edge of the parking lot. Originally, she had the blinker turned on to head right, and therefore back out of town. However, at the last minute she turned left.

  Cale watched, but didn’t say anything as she navigated her way through the town and into the wilderness on the other side. After roughly twenty minutes they pulled into an area that was marked as Alabaster Caverns State Park. Melinda had not said a word since he’d confided his suspicions in Charles to her, and he had followed suit.

  Now, they both climbed out of the car and Melinda headed over to a small seating area that was in the shade.

  “I take it there is a reason we’re here,” Cale said as he walked up and took a seat next to her on the concrete bench.

  “I don’t know your brother as well as you do,” Melinda told him while keeping her gaze focused on the ground. “If you think he’s doing this to toy with you, with us, then I don’t want to be taken in blindly. I want to have a game plan, but I don’t know that the car is a safe place to talk anymore.”

  “That’s something I hadn’t considered,” he admitted. “But it is a fairly logical assumption to make, especially considering that he would have been watching for us at the hotel. Why did you come here, though?”

  When silence greeted him, Cale began to worry that Melinda was so upset at him that she was not going to talk to him at all. Just as he was thinking about walking over to the cave entrance to have something to do, Melinda started talking. Her gaze had moved from the ground to the trees but her expression was vacant. Cale could tell that there was a terrible struggle going on inside of her,but for now her false front was holding.

  “When we were little, my dad used to bring us up here,” she began. “We would tour the gypsum cave and have a family picnic. Those days were always so memorable.”

  She paused for a moment and sighed. “I realized how close we were when you said that you thought Charles was setting us up for a trap and it was the first thing that came to mind. A place where we could regroup and plan out what our next move would be.”

  Without thinking about it, Cale reached out and wrapped his arm around her. He expected her to pull away but instead she relaxed, and leaned against him. “This place was a little more than a secondary thought, wasn’t it?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” she admitted. “I’ve been thinking of it since this morning. This place was always somewhere that I felt safe.”

  Cale didn’t press her for anything more. Instead they just sat there on the bench for a few minutes watching the families wonder through the park. Leaning over, he kissed the top of her forehead and whispered, “I’m sorry.”

  She stiffened a little but she didn’t pull away.

  Chapter 16

  Melinda had not been expecting Cale to react to her so gently. When he’d first put his arm around her she had wanted to pull away but it had felt so nice and secure. However, the kiss on the top of her head took her completely by surprise and she allowed herself to sit there for a moment and bask in the warmth of his embrace.

  After a little while she found her voice and finished detailing her plan for bringing them to the caverns. “They have a camp site here, too. I thought that we could stay here for tonight. If we get one of the secluded areas it will be easy to keep an eye out in case Charles tries anything.”

  “Do you think it’ll work?” he asked.

  “I hope so,” she answered back honestly.

  Melinda didn’t voice her concern that bystanders might be affected. However, she had considered the plan and she knew that it would either risk a very limited number of potential bystanders here or a much larger number if they were to stay in town or at a hotel.

  Again the realization crossed her mind that she was sitting here allowing herself to be comforted by Cale, when she was seriously considering that she might very well have to kill his brother. The guilt started to creep in again and she pulled away from him. The moment his arm dropped from her shoulders, she felt its absence as sharply and as painfully as if he had gotten up and left.

  Taking a deep breath she went back to the car and opened the trunk.

  “I don’t suppose you just happen to have any camping gear in there?” he asked jokingly.

  “My daddy always taught me to be prepared,” she replied, a tentative smile crossing her lips when she turned to face him. “That being said, all I have is a couple of blankets and a f
lashlight.”

  “I’m going to rent out a camping area and I’m going to see if I can’t get a whole block of them. That way we won’t be that closely connected to anyone else’s camp site.”

  Cale nodded, understanding seeping into his eyes. She had been thinking about bystanders because that was her job. It hadn’t even crossed his mind that something like that might happen until she’d mentioned it. Although he hid it well, worry started to work its way into the edges of his face and she knew that she would not be the only one staying awake all night worrying about an attack from Charles.

  Melinda opened the door on the Volvo and sat in the front seat. She looked up at Cale and winked before she started talking. “We’ll stay off the grid and camp out here instead of getting a motel. That way Charles won’t be able to catch up with us as easily if you are right about him tracking us.”

  Cale nodded and responded cautiously. “That sounds like the best plan. Then we’ll head out first thing in the morning to try and get a jumpstart on his location.”

  “And since there is limited phone reception and no internet, it will be perfectly shielded. Now I’ll just go get the camping slot reserved. I’ll put it under my name, hopefully that will confuse the situation even further,” Melinda replied again before getting out of the car and shutting the door.

  They were walking over to the area where they would get a camping spot before either of them said another word.

  “Do you think he’ll fall for it?” Melinda asked.

  Cale was staring up at the trees, studying their foliage and the sky. If she hadn’t known better, she would have thought he was daydreaming. But that faraway gaze was actually one of concentration. He was putting together all of the information, trying to work out the details precisely. After a long pause where the only sound was their steady footsteps along the gravel path and the birds talking to each other in the trees he whispered so softly that she strained to hear his words even in the relative peacefulness of the park.