Turn Me Loose (Paradise, Idaho)

by Rosalind James

  He stood with her and pitched right in clearing the table. “I’m thinking maybe my original idea for the afternoon might work, though. For everybody, even.”

  “What’s that?” Rochelle asked.

  “I was going to go check out Elk Creek Reservoir. Swimming outdoors sounds real good right now. Wash the taste of this away. Plus, it’s hot. Just for an hour or two. Who’s in?”

  “Up there in the trees,” Luke said. “Great idea. Let me go check with Kayla.”

  He took off after his wife, and Rochelle carried a load of dishes into the house and started loading the dishwasher. Travis brought in the salad bowl and the plate of sandwiches, leaned against the counter, and said, when she didn’t speak, “What? No good? Don’t like to swim? Or was all that too upsetting?”

  “No.” She pulled out a plastic container and began to transfer the salad into it. “I mean, it’s upsetting, sure. Really upsetting. But bad things happen. I know they do.”

  “They do.” He was standing still, as usual. Watchful. Travis didn’t fidget, she realized. “So . . . what?”

  “Would you go get the glasses, please?”

  He turned without a word and went out for them, and she tried to have a talk with herself and pretty much failed miserably.

  “Right. What?” he asked when he’d brought the glasses back in and, without her asking, started loading the dishwasher himself. Which was a promising thing to see.

  “Maybe I’m just thinking that swimsuits aren’t the best option,” she finally said. It wasn’t her only reservation, of course. The truth was, she was all over the map. The elevator, Cal, that poor girl dumped in a ditch. It had been too much emotion, so much more than she wanted to show Travis. Than she wanted to show anybody. She needed to be cool to deal with him. She needed to be in control, and she was nowhere close.

  His face cleared, though, and that half smile appeared. “Ah. Well, yeah. If we’re going to jump back into life here—yeah. I could say I hadn’t imagined what kind of suit you might have and how you might look in it, but I’d be lying. Please tell me it isn’t some kind of racing tank.”

  She had to smile herself. “I’ve got more than one.” Back to flirting, and back to life. She’d keep it here. She’d keep it light.

  “You’re just torturing me now,” he said, and she laughed and felt so much better.

  “Chaperones,” he suggested. “Family outing, assuming the others come. We can take your sister, too, if you want. How PG can you get?”

  “And you’re not going to be thinking about me naked?”

  “Hey. There’s a limit.”

  She wasn’t able to convince Stacy to come, though.

  She’d told her sister about Cal’s discovery. No way to keep that quiet, not in Paradise.

  “Who was it?” Stacy asked. She was sitting on her bed, propped against the pillows, a textbook lying on the bedspread beside her. “Was it . . . was it somebody we know?”

  “Cal couldn’t tell,” Rochelle said. “It had been a while, and the coyotes had gotten to her.”

  Stacy nodded. When you grew up on a farm, you knew about death, because you saw plenty of it. Death, and its consequences. Which didn’t make it easier to think about. Rochelle had to swallow hard, and she could see Stacy doing the same thing.

  “He didn’t say much,” Rochelle went on. “But you see why I want you to be careful,” she couldn’t help adding. “You see why I worry about who you go out with, and what you do out there. About keeping yourself safe. And when you’re not sober, you’re not safe. Especially if you pass out.”

  “What, she made it happen?” Stacy was glowering now. “Are you blaming her? Somebody killed her and dumped her in a ditch, and it’s her fault?”

  “No,” Rochelle sighed. “Of course I’m not. I’m saying, I want you to be safe. And I want you to come with me today.”

  “I can’t. I need to stay here. I’ve got too much homework.”

  Rochelle studied her face, and Stacy’s eyes slid away under her gaze. Her sister pulled her legs up and wrapped her arms around them. Not a good sign. “I need to stay here,” she said again.

  “I wish you’d come. It’s only a couple hours.” Please don’t be waiting for Shane, Rochelle wanted to say, but didn’t.

  “You’re the one who’s been saying I need to be responsible. I know it. I’m trying. And you’re going with Travis anyway. I don’t care how boring and steady he is, he isn’t going to want your little sister in the car.”

  “Boring and steady” wouldn’t be exactly how Rochelle would have described Travis, but she didn’t disillusion her sister. “All right, then,” she said. “Salad for dinner. Too hot for anything else.”

  “See.” Stacy picked up the heavy book beside her titled Statistics for Scientists. “I’d totally be thinking about making out on a towel if a cute guy took me up there, and you’re thinking about dinner.”

  Rochelle had to laugh at that. “All right, then. See you later.”

  By the time they got to the park, though, she wasn’t thinking about dinner.

  She and Travis had made the thirty-minute drive without talking much. He’d turned the radio to a country station and cranked up the volume some, and she hadn’t been able to resist slipping off her sandals, putting her bare feet up on the dash, and doing some singing along. Because she was alive, it was warm out, and she was with a big, strong man with a quiet gaze, warm eyes, and laugh lines around the corners of his mouth. Because life might not always be good, but this moment was.

  When they arrived, she hopped out of the truck and led the way onto the grass. The others were already here, she saw. Kayla was all the way over on the island in the middle of the cattail-lined lake with Eli, who was throwing a stick for an exuberant Daisy, while Luke was swimming a lazy lap around the island.

  First things first. Rochelle dropped her bag, crossed her arms over her body, got the hem of her T-shirt in two hands, and pulled it slowly over her head, shaking her hair free and not looking at Travis. Not much at all.

  “Oh, yeah,” he said. “That’s what I’m talking about.”

  She smiled, and if her smile was a little seductive? Too bad. “I seriously considered a navy-blue racing tank. And then I thought . . . nah.” She slipped the hair elastic from her wrist, lifted her hands behind her neck, and fastened her hair into a braid, then made an unnecessary adjustment to the halter tie of the forties-style, red-and-white-checked bikini top, and he couldn’t even pretend to be staring at her face. And then she slid her skort slowly down her legs, kicked it loose, and showed him her pinup-girl bikini bottoms with the buttons in a vertical row on either side. Her stomach wasn’t all that flat, and she could tell Travis didn’t care one bit. So she might have had to make an adjustment at the back of those, too, and do some more wriggling around. It wasn’t her very sexiest suit, but it was working.

  “So,” she said when she’d finished, “you planning on getting in the water yourself here? Or is this strictly a spectator sport?”

  “You know,” he said, “some men might take your attitude as a challenge.” He pulled off his cap, tossed it onto the grass, and ran his fingers through that slightly-longer hair while she tried not to imagine her own fingers in there and failed. Then he began to pull his T-shirt over his head, and she forgot all about their sparring practice.

  She’d forgotten. Or he’d changed. Or something. He was just so . . . tall. For one thing. Every inch the T-shirt rose revealed delicious new territory. A flat belly with that arrow of hair she loved, leading straight down into his waistband, plus some very nice horizontal ridges and that special diagonal line on either side. More arrows to a place she wasn’t going. Probably. Hopefully. And then the broadening of his chest the higher up the shirt went. That was good, too. She hadn’t remembered quite that much shoulder. Those weren’t gym muscles, either. Those were man muscles, long and lean. How had he gotten them?

  “Hey.” Kayla chose that moment to arrive on shore, pick up a towel, an
d wrap it around herself. “The water’s great. You should get in.”

  Travis grinned at her and said, “Yep.” And then he left Rochelle there, ran down the shore and straight into the water, started swimming, and kept right on going, powering toward the distant shore.

  “Wow,” Kayla said. “He is fast. Also, um, I shouldn’t look, or I shouldn’t care, but . . .”

  “Yep,” Rochelle said. “Yep. He sure is.” She walked down to the water for a swim herself, feeling, all right, just a little miffed that he hadn’t stuck around.

  She managed to forget about him, though, as she swam until she’d worked off some of her nervous energy, avoiding the overexcited Daisy, who was still paddling madly after sticks. After a while, she rolled over, floated on her back, and rested, looking at blue sky and white clouds drifting slowly overhead, the dark green of pines and firs solid and comforting at the edges of her vision, and the blue bulk of Paradise Mountain and its low sister buttes rising in the distance. Her ears were full of the excited shouts of kids and the slow slap of water against the docks, and the sun was warm on her skin. Her mind drifted to Stacy and what she might be doing, and she thought, Macho Taco. Tomorrow, and then she opened her hands like starfish and let the thought go.

  Bad things happened. Pain and trouble and death happened. But life was for living, surely, and moments like this were meant to be savored. No matter who was or wasn’t watching.

  PATIENCE

  Travis hadn’t counted on Rochelle totally ignoring him and taking her own long, leisurely swim, but he should have known she’d do what he least expected. If this were a game, he wasn’t the one getting the moves right. But then, he wasn’t much of a game player. Not with real people.

  He’d needed to work out anyway, though, after all that sitting, and he’d needed to cool off, too. If driving up here with Rochelle’s skirt all the way up her thighs and her pretty pink toes on his dash had been tough, watching her strip down had been tougher. But she wanted him to prove he was willing to wait for her? Then he was going to do it. For as long as it took.

  He was loose, relaxed, and sitting on his towel a half hour later, with Kayla beside him reading a book while the faint buzz of insects filled the air. Kids splashed in the lake, and the occasional shout drifted over from behind them, where Luke and Eli were tossing a football with Daisy in hot pursuit. All slow, easy, and lazy-summer . . . that is, until Rochelle finally emerged from the water, her hip-first glide drawing every male eye, the water sliding down her luscious body as if it wanted to kiss every inch of it. Just like he did.

  And that was before she stood in front of him and slicked her hair back with one hand, then bent down for her towel.

  You’ve seen it all before, he reminded himself desperately as he stared down the most dangerous cleavage he’d ever had the pleasure of encountering, at the droplets of water glistening against her lightly tanned skin, just asking him to lick them off.

  He’d seen it before, yeah. Didn’t make him one bit less eager to see it again.

  She looked at him, the gleam in her eye telling him that she knew exactly what she was doing, and purred, “Payback yet?”

  “Oh, yeah. You bet.” He might not be good at games—not outside the bedroom, anyway—but she was great at them.

  Patience, he told himself, and looked up at her and thought, Just you wait, baby. You’ll see.

  She smiled down at him like a cat who’d found the cream, then put the tip of her tongue out and slowly licked her entire upper lip before her tongue disappeared tantalizingly into that Marilyn mouth again.

  He said, “OK. The porn-star thing is carrying it a little far.”

  She laughed, gave it up, and sat down beside him. “I’ve never done that before. Just wanted to see if it worked.”

  “It works.” He was feeling a decided need to jump back in the water again. “Stop it.”

  “Mm.” She dried her legs, then lay down on her stomach. “Does it help if I do this? And tell you that you’re one heck of a swimmer?”

  “No,” he said, “because your back view’s almost as good as your front. And swimming’s what I do. Went to college on a swimming scholarship, in fact.”

  “Really.” She lay with her cheek on her folded hands, and her pink mouth curved in a delicious smile. “An athlete. I should’ve guessed.”

  “Southern California variety. What, you wanted football?”

  “Mm. No. I’ll take swimming. And now go away, please. I want to talk to Kayla.”

  Kayla looked up from her book and said, “Don’t mind me. I’m having a good time pretending not to listen.”

  “Hey,” Rochelle said. “Maybe I want to watch Travis run around with his shirt off.”

  “Works for me,” he said. He sprang to his feet, jogged over to Eli and Luke, clapped his hands for the ball and made a pretty good diving catch, then turned and waved the ball at Rochelle. After that, he didn’t show off. Much.

  Twenty minutes later, Travis was on his towel again, one lazy eye on Eli, who was back in the water. The rest of them were just hanging out, too drugged by exercise and warmth and quiet to get back in the trucks and drive home. And then Rochelle had him readjusting again.

  “I’ve been thinking,” she said, rolling over onto her back and hauling herself up to sit. “About what Cal said. There’s something funky about it.”

  “Funky how?” Travis asked, shifting his attention with a serious effort from all that sumptuous . . . Rochelle. If there was ever a woman who’d been made to fill out a bikini, that woman was Rochelle. And if there was ever a man who was lucky to have been stuck in an elevator, that man was him.

  “That girl had to be killed by somebody from right around here, I’ll bet,” she said. “But not anybody real familiar with farming.”

  She was frowning, because the discovery of the body, and the way it had affected her friends, was still getting to her. He’d seen all of them work to shake it off. He noticed that, as soon as Rochelle had mentioned it again, Luke’s hand had gone out to hold Kayla’s. Cal wasn’t the only protective man in the Jackson family.

  “She had to have been dumped there,” Rochelle said again, then stopped.

  “Yeah?” Luke asked. “And?”

  “Well, she couldn’t have been killed there. Not right there. She didn’t stumble into that ditch and die, like Cal says. And she wasn’t killed in there, either. A farm ditch . . . that’s going to be narrow and two, three feet deep,” she explained to Travis. “And those weeds are high. Nobody could stand in there and do that. She’d have been put there to hide her, so her body wouldn’t be discovered for a while. Maybe never, who knows. Nobody’s going to clean out one of those ditches. So why that field?”

  “Ah,” Luke said. “Ah. I’m getting it. It couldn’t have been somebody familiar with crops.”

  “What?” Kayla asked. “Explain.”

  “Lentils?” Luke said. “No way.”

  “No way lentils?” Kayla’s pretty face showed her bafflement. “What difference does the crop make?”

  “Harvest is almost over,” Rochelle explained. “Only thing left to go is the lentils and garbanzos, right?” She looked at Luke, who nodded. “The wheat and barley are done.”

  “I’m sorry,” Kayla said. “I still don’t understand, even if everybody else does.”

  “I don’t quite,” Travis said. “We don’t do lentils back home. But I’m getting an idea.”

  Luke’s gaze sharpened. “You got folks who farm?”

  “Yeah. Used to.”

  “Right, Kayla,” Rochelle said. “So if you’ve got some fields cut and some not, and you’re dumping a body, or choosing where to kill somebody? If you want someplace remote, someplace where it won’t be discovered, at least for a while, where the farmer won’t be coming back for a good month or so? Where do you do it?”

  “Oh,” Kayla said. “Someplace that’s already been harvested.”

  “Right. A stubble field, that’s where you’d put it. And an
y country guy would think of that, even if he wasn’t a farmer himself. He’d know it was harvest. You can’t exactly miss it. He wouldn’t dump the body right where the farmer would be driving through in a combine the next day, or the next week. If he wanted to hide it, and he obviously did, he wouldn’t take that risk.”

  “So he wasn’t from around here,” Kayla said.

  “Not quite that simple,” Rochelle said. “I think he was from around here. Or at least that he lives here now. He knew that there were such things as farm roads and ditches, and that he could find one, and that it would be a good hiding spot. Maybe even that he could find a farm road right there. Maybe he’d driven by it before. He just didn’t know enough about farming. Lentils are low and dry and kind of . . . raggedy-looking. They look like a stubble field, especially if they’ve got weeds in them. Thistles, like you get in lentils?”

  “Cal’s fields don’t have thistles,” Luke put in.

  “All right. No thistles. But still,” Rochelle said. “A lentil field doesn’t actually look like anything’s ready for harvest there, not if you don’t know enough to recognize the crop. I’ll bet it was somebody who was from around here, but not country. They couldn’t tell a field of lentils from a stubble field—a cut field—especially not at night.”

  “Could you?” Kayla asked.

  “Of course I could,” Rochelle said. “If I was looking to dump a body of somebody I’d murdered? You bet I’d make sure I was really looking at a stubble field.”

  SOME MAN

  “That was a good time,” Travis told her a while later, jerking her out of her near-doze. “Just what I needed.”

  They were back in his pickup and headed home. He’d opened the door for her again, too. She did love a man with manners.

  “Mm.” He had the radio on once more, but softer this time. She swung her legs up again and crossed her ankles, then caught the glance he threw her way and wiggled her toes. “What? Bothering you? No feet allowed on your dash?”

  “You can put your feet up on my dash anytime. And yeah, you’re bothering me.”