by Christa Wick
Ashley felt the sides of her face pull in opposite directions.
“Really?” she asked, eyes watering as she tried not to choke on the mint water again. “That’s what the dynasty was built on?”
Walker must have snuck into the house because he was suddenly behind Ashley, leaning over the couch so that his words caressed her ear.
“If you read Sarah’s diaries, you’ll know it was built on love,” he countered. “Love, and a Turk male who was a hopeless romantic.”
“All Turk males are hopeless romantics,” Lindy sighed.
Planting a kiss along the edge of Ashley’s ear, Walker whispered just for her.
“I know I am.”
Chapter Nineteen
Walker waited until he could get a moment alone with Ashley. He hadn’t lied when he said he needed to check on the crew’s progress while he was away. But once he was out of his truck and walking around, he’d been just as busy on the phone, calling or texting.
“So,” he started, lifting her bag onto the bed and unzipping it. “I was thinking about your furniture situation.”
Ashley closed her eyes and shook her head, the overall expression one of benevolent indulgence.
“I know you want to buy your own.”
Opening her eyes, she shot a warning look. “I am buying my own.”
Pulling out one of the long t-shirts she slept in, Walker nodded. “I only mentioned that to bring up interim options.”
Her shoulders relaxed a little, but her gaze remained wary.
“Like I have a sleeper sofa in my home office. And there’s extra seating in the upstairs library. The chaise would be perfect for having your leg up and the pieces would only be a little mismatched.”
“What you’re suggesting,” she started, her voice a soft tiptoe around the offer. “Is a lot of effort for a short—”
“Six weeks isn’t a short period, Ash. I know the doctor said three to six weeks, but, with the level of pain I see when you walk around, three weeks with the cast isn’t going to cut it.”
Clasping his hands behind him, Walker fought the urge to brace them against his hips, a habit he’d developed watching his daddy when the man felt like he had to lay down the law to one of his kids.
“It would be a kindness to me,” he added, “having the pull out there.”
“No,” Ashley said, shaking her head so hard he realized he had a much bigger problem ahead of him than getting her to accept a loan of furniture.
“You can’t be considering driving yourself this week,” he rumbled, his hands finally finding his hips.
“I was going to arrange something on Uber or…”
She stopped talking as Walker prowled from the foot of the bed to where she sat with her back against the headboard. With little more than a hand’s width of mattress between her body and the edge of the bed, he sat down and placed a palm on each side of her, his face just far enough back from hers that neither of them went cross-eyed meeting the other’s gaze.
“No,” he rasped. “I don’t care if you’ve got a gun strapped to your hip, that’s not safe.”
“You’ve have a business to run,” she countered.
“Something I’ve been doing for going on five years, day after day.”
Her hands moved between them, coming to rest against his chest, palms open, the fingertips hypnotically stroking at his collarbone.
“With someone trying to sabotage it?”
He shook his head, dislodging the spell her touch created.
“That’s over. We both know it was all about the park. Those guys have moved on.”
With a snort, she gave a soft push against his chest.
“You’re starting to sound like Moske.”
“Play nice, baby.” Walker leaned in, his breath reflecting off her cheek. “I understand you still investigating, but those men at least know their original plan has been burned.”
Circling Ashley’s wrists, he brought her arms up around his shoulders. His hands slid behind her back, pulling and holding her to him. His mouth found the shell of her ear and took a soft bite.
“Mama and Daddy had six kids.” He took another nibble and felt some of the fight leaving Ashley’s body. “Each one of us learned how to work the ranch and run timber.”
His teeth brushed a line to the edge of her jaw, the light scraping sending a shiver through her body.
“We don’t put up with incompetent employees,” he coaxed. “Kostya’s been logging for almost as long as I’ve been alive.”
Walker finished the argument with his lips on hers, her mouth opening to release a shaky breath. She arced in his arms as his fingers ran down her spine.
A groan left Ashley, her body going limp for a second.
“You win,” she whispered, pushing him away but catching and holding his gaze. “I’ll accept the furniture loan and you can drive me this week if that’s what you want to do.”
“And the festival,” he demanded with a wink and a grin. “I can always throw on a lumberjack outfit and blend in.”
“And the festival,” she relented.
Leaning in again, he brushed the back of his fingers against her cheek.
“I know it’s hard, Ash, but thank you for letting me take care of you.”
She nodded, eyes misting and the muscles of her throat tightening.
Sensing he was close to pushing Ashley too hard, Walker planted a soft kiss on her forehead before retreating to the bedroom door.
“I’ll let you get some sleep.” He pointed to the wall the headboard rested against. “I’m just two doors—or a text—away.”
“Thank you.”
He dipped his head, but not before seeing the brief smile she forced. Slipping into the hall and pulling the door shut behind him, Walker wondered—how was he going to get someone as independent as Ashley to let him take care of her forever?
Chapter Twenty
Day one of the festival started with a complimentary breakfast for the museum’s “living exhibits” and the extra volunteers. Walker was there in contemporary clothes with a blue smock marked STAFF in yellow and deep pockets to hold information cards.
When breakfast was over and the exhibits were given their briefing for the day ahead, Walker helped clear the tables. Finding Ashley frequently peeking over her shoulder to watch him work, Lindy patted her hand.
“He’s still there, dear,” she whispered. “He’s a Turk. He’ll always be there.”
After that, Ashley didn’t look over her shoulder again until the briefing finished. She wasn’t trying to keep their relationship secret—that cat had jumped out of the bag with Walker spending his second week in a row at her apartment. But she didn’t know how to explain what was going on with them. They didn’t discuss their feelings beyond both of them wanting the relationship to progress at the right time.
For her, that was the absolute truth, but she knew better than to trust that a man’s words always aligned with what went on inside his head.
Stuck in a weird kind of limbo, Walker tucked her into bed each night with a kiss then slept on the pullout couch.
Not every kiss was chaste. Some nights proved almost impossible for one or the other of them not to push a little further, to caress a spot they hadn’t dared to touch before.
Her palm cupping the front of his jeans while Walker sucked at her throat. His fingers caressing high up on her thighs as his lips whispered over the fabric covering her breasts.
Ashley shut the memories down almost as soon as they rose up. The dress and elaborate hairdo she wore for the exhibit was a mobile sauna. Thinking about some of those nights that Walker had put her to bed could easily ignite the fabric.
As the coordinator finished setting out the rules for the exhibits, Walker came over with a bottle of water in each hand and one in the pocket of his smock.
“Mrs. Danver said you could slip these in your skirt pockets.”
Ashley and Lindy murmured their thanks.
“And, u
nless you signal me for a refill earlier,” he said. “I’ll grab you another bottle at the end of my first shift.”
“Sounds good,” Lindy answered.
They had agreed that he would spend the first two hours in the main exhibit with them, his duties consisting of handing out pamphlets. Then he would take a short break before assisting with the group tours for another two hours, followed by an hour of his own choice before they gathered in the staff break room and left for the day.
“Here,” Lindy said, stopping in front of a map on their way to the exhibit. “Restrooms, drinking fountains, staircase, and elevator.”
Turning to Walker, she squeezed his shoulder.
“Sadly, that covers more than ninety percent of the questions visitors will ask you.”
Entering the exhibit room, Ashley wanted to groan. Catching the direction of her gaze, Walker chuckled.
“It’s not all knitting baskets, washboards and butter churning,” he whispered. “This is Mama’s.”
Representing Sarah Bradley, the matriarch of the Turk family who had arrived in the early 1880s, Lindy’s stage included a large desk with an original Remington typewriter, a small printing press and, within arm’s reach of the high backed office chair, a cradle.
“She never stopped doing her pamphlets on women’s rights,” Lindy explained. “But she also started the first newspaper in Willow Gap and one of the first newsletters for the cattle industry. She educated her children and grandchildren, boys and girls studying the same subjects. You might even say she was an early forensic accountant.”
“Your stage,” Walker said, pointing across the room.
A painted backdrop displayed teepees, covered wagons, and mining operations.
“I feel guilty for just glossing through her biography,” Ashley whispered as she hobbled up the steps and took her place.
“That’s why they provide a cheat sheet,” he said. “And you were pulling twelve-hour days all this week. Nothing to feel guilty about.”
Her face screwed up as tight as if she sucked on a lemon wedge. For all the time she’d spent at work trying to find some lead on the man who had rented a space at Joyce Franco’s camp, Ashley had come up empty. So had Thomas and Siobhan. Worse than no leads, she now had more puzzle pieces that probably meant nothing.
“They are long gone,” he whispered. “Relax and try to have fun.”
Fun! She forced a smile to her face, but a growl rumbled in her head. Moske was punishing her with the assignment. It was the kind of thing a far newer agent or intern would be saddled with.
Ashley put her antique crutches behind the traveling trunk filled with the only personal items a young Mary was allowed to take on her trip out west. Settling into a chair, she picked up the book with the loose sheets of notes about Mary’s life tucked between its pages. She gave the notes another quick read as a tour group entered the room.
The first question came from a skeptical child.
“Did you really come here in a covered wagon?”
No, I came in a quad cab diesel truck driven by a really hot lumberjack.
“Yes,” Ashley answered. “It was pulled by horses and I often had to walk behind the wagon to keep from overtiring the animals.”
By the end of the second hour, she had explained a dozen times over that there were no restaurants or hotels on the route, no phones or electricity, few doctors, and plenty of danger.
Always, there was danger.
At the end of two hours, the volunteers closed the doors to the exhibit for a short break. The fifteen minutes allotted was just enough time to figure out how to use the restroom in a heavy, voluminous dress further hampered by the soft cast on her left leg.
That, and steal a kiss from Walker before the doors opened once more and he left to assist one of the tour guides.
The kids that came through the room during the second block had less energy. They asked fewer questions. The littlest among each group often demanded one of the adults carry them. Lindy had warned Ashley about the difference between the morning and afternoon crowds and how half the exhibits would find themselves struggling to stay awake from lack of engagement.
The woman hadn’t been exaggerating.
Ashley powered through the boredom by studying the visitors, categorizing their appearance just as she had that day she looked through the window of her Jeep at Walker Turk for the first time.
Big picture first—hair and skin color, height and basic dress. Then narrow down to the finer details, like how long or wavy the hair was, whether lips were thick or thin and the nose small or bulbous.
She was halfway through cataloging a man’s discrete details before she zoomed out again and realized the stranger reminded her of a slightly younger, sparer version of the fake Michael Abbot—the male who had rented a space at Joyce Franco’s campsite.
“This is so stupid!” the child with him complained.
Ashley glanced at the kid, a girl, maybe nine or ten, old enough to have her own cell phone and snap a selfie with a finger pointed at her head, the hand held like a gun.
Reaching into her skirt pocket, Ashley retrieved her own phone and turned the video camera on as the man peeled away from the tour group, his hand roughly squeezing the back of the girl’s neck.
The man and his young charge headed for the main hall. Ashley flashed the camera toward the tour guide they were abandoning so she could ask the woman questions later, then signaled to one of the volunteers that she had to take a break.
Leaving her crutches on stage because there was no time to grab them, she hobbled down the steps and into the main hall, her gaze and the phone’s camera scanning the crowd for the man.
Ashley spotted them leaving through the front entrance. She followed, each step fresh agony.
By the time she pushed through the glass doors into the sunshine, sweat poured down her face, stinging her eyes. More than perspiration blurred her vision. Pain sank its claws through muscle and bone, forcing her over to a bench with the threat that she was about to pass out.
That’s where Walker found Ashley fifteen minutes later, her head still reeling from the pain.
* * *
“He’s waiting for me to leave,” Siobhan whispered from her side of the bed where she had her computer propped on her lap. She had just sent a copy of the video from Ashley’s phone to Sheriff Gamble and Emerson.
“He’s furious with me,” Ashley whispered in return, parts of her quailing with the knowledge that she had jeopardized her relationship with Walker by chasing after the fake Michael Abbot’s lookalike.
Siobhan shook her head then typed a few words on her computer, showing them to Ashley just long enough to read before deleting them.
That’s the way he looked when Dawn and Uncle Brody died.
Guilt wrapped its hands around Ashley’s throat and started to squeeze.
Siobhan shut her computer down, slid it into her oversized purse then opened the door. Her lips parted, like maybe she wanted to chirp something annoying at her cousin, but then her mouth slammed shut. Raising up on tiptoes, she kissed his cheek instead.
She glanced at Ashley. “I’m heading back to the office. I’ll get a list going of potential matches for the partial plate. Hopefully it wasn’t stolen like the RV plate.”
“If it even has anything to do with the investigation,” Walker rumbled.
Siobhan’s footsteps faded down the hall. Walker remained outside the guest room. The longer he waited out there, the more Ashley doubted that Siobhan had correctly identified what he was feeling.
Even odds, he really was furious with her.
She swiped her jaw, gaze locking on what she thought the most damning screen capture for the video.
Ashley hadn’t picked up where the man and girl disappeared, but the camera did. It showed them getting in a full-size beat up truck driven by a big hairy male, the general details of his appearance matching the giant on the trail cam who had carried two packs instead of one.
&nb
sp; That meant there were either two doppelgängers or the big hairy ape was the man on Joyce Franco’s trail cam and the other guy was a close relative of the fake Michael Abbot.
“You’re mad,” she said, tired of waiting for him to soften the least little bit.
Closing her computer, she slid it into her bag and moved the bag on the floor in an unspoken invitation for Walker to leave the hall and sit next to her.
He stayed in the hall.
She glanced up to find his face caving in on itself.
“Please,” she rasped, her hand drifting to where she wanted him to sit. “It hurts enough without you being this angry at me.”
“I’m not angry, Ash.”
Evidence suggests otherwise, she thought.
Sitting straighter, she wrapped her hands beneath her left knee so she could ease the leg off the mattress.
“What are you doing?”
Was that worry or a warning in his tone? She couldn’t tell, had never heard this voice from him before—except maybe a little that first day when the tree fell. She had thought him furious then.
Walker finally entered the room. Standing at the foot of the bed, arms folded across his chest, he glared at her.
“If you don’t tell me what you’re doing, I have to assume from the look on your face that you think you’re leaving.”
She stayed silent, all her effort directed at the dual task of stopping the quiver that threatened to vibrate her lip while ignoring the renewed waves of pain cascading through her leg.
Growling, Walker dropped his arms, marched to the other side of the bed and sat exactly where she had wanted him to earlier. Saying nothing, he reached out and grabbed a handful of her shirt so she couldn’t further retreat from him.
“I know you love your job, Ash, but it’s dangerous. If either of those two men is involved in what happened at the park, you were in no position to defend yourself. Did you even think about that? I know you didn’t think about the extra damage you were doing to your leg.”