Handing me the bag with our lunch, he hefted his backpack. Soon we were heading up the incline toward a higher location on the plateau. “There’s a bit of a canyon through here,” he said. “That’s where I need to go first.”
I was already glad I’d worn tennis shoes because this was not what I’d expected.
We began a long hike through tall red rocks. Every so often, Gage would take out his chisel and hammer to chip away at the rocks, carefully documenting where he’d taken the sample with the marker directly onto the bag, using a GPS to pinpoint our exact position. Sometimes he collected some of the dirt as well. Several times, he had to do a little climbing or digging to get samples that satisfied him. Eventually, we entered a small valley and began to circle around, and I saw a pattern to his work.
The valley wasn’t green, and there weren’t many trees, with the exception of a few hardy pines, but the place had an austere beauty and gave me the sense that no one had ever been here before except us.
“What?” Gage asked, seeing my smile.
“It seems like we’re the only people in the entire world.”
He laughed. “That’s what’s so great about my job. I love exploring new places and knowing I’m the only human for miles.”
“Must get lonely sometimes.”
“Sometimes.”
We were standing very close. I became aware of him—his stance, his eyes, even the smell that was uniquely his. My heart was doing strange things in my chest, banging so loudly he could probably hear it. I wasn’t the only one. I could see his pulse beating in his neck. The expression on his face told me he was feeling something, too.
“We’d better get going.” His words came with effort.
I was glad when he moved away.
No, I wasn’t. I’d wanted him to look at me that way. It did a heck of a lot for my bruised ego. I also knew what I was doing wasn’t wise. It felt a lot like falling in love.
It’s just the scenery, the whole scary convict thing, Julian’s betrayal, I told myself.
Blame whatever I wanted, the fact remained the same. I liked Gage Braxton. A lot.
Now that I was getting to know him better, and the tumult of events was subsiding a bit, I remembered more of our talks over the past year. I remembered him telling me how much he loved to camp. How he hated peanut butter, loved cinnamon bears, and enjoyed the smell of rain on the pavement.
He was already several yards ahead of me, so I shelved the memories and started out after him. We took five more samples before he stopped in the shade of a rock outcropping. “This looks good for lunch.”
I nodded and sank onto a rock. Not exactly an ideal spot for a picnic, but it felt right. We ate sandwiches made of last night’s pot roast, cut vegetables, packaged raspberry-filled donuts that were surprisingly good, and water to wash it all down.
“Look over there,” Gage said.
My eyes strained in the direction he pointed, but all I saw was rock. “What?”
He moved closer. “A lizard. Over there.”
“Where?”
He put his arm around me and pointed. I saw it now, staring at us with unblinking eyes, almost blending into the rock where it lay.
I turned to say something to Gage, but he was no longer looking at the lizard. His eyes were on my face, and there was something deep and compelling in his gaze. I couldn’t look away.
His hand came up to stroke a bit of my hair that had come loose from the ponytail. I’m sure the humidity was not being kind to it, but he seemed fascinated and didn’t withdraw his hand. The tension between us built—a wall of water behind a dam that could never hold. When at last he kissed me, I let him.
Fire ignited between us. His hand on the back of my neck urged me closer, and for a long moment I was lost in the feel of his lips and the delicious fire that heated but did not burn. His lips left mine to trail across my cheek and down to my throat. I shuddered. His breath and my own came faster as our lips met again in a burst of flame. Yet amidst the heat and passion was another emotion, one I couldn’t identify. Something that made it feel right. I floated on the wave of my heartbeats. Or were they his?
When we pulled away at last, Gage said a little hoarsely, “Sorry about that.”
“Me too.” But I wasn’t, and I didn’t think he was, either. What was going on with us?
We were silent a long moment, exchanging wary, longing glances. “What I said yesterday,” Gage said finally. “About doing it all again? I lied. If I had it to do over, I’d plead innocent, but at the time, I thought it was the only thing I could do to protect my sister. She was so broken, so destroyed, and I couldn’t let her suffer anymore. But now I don’t think they would have gone after Mia. If I’d insisted I was innocent, they might have looked to find who really did it.”
“You don’t sound certain. About them looking.”
His green eyes were haunted. “What if she did do it?”
“What are you saying?” I knew he was trusting me with this confession, but I didn’t like the idea of Mia killing an unconscious man—no matter how much he’d deserved it.
“You didn’t see her that night, the night of the attack. She called me crying from the convenience store where she worked. He’d jumped her in the parking lot. She was a mess when I got there, her clothes torn and dirty. The look in her eyes . . .” He stopped a moment, struggling for control. “She wouldn’t let me take her to the hospital or anything. She went crazy when I tried. She was strong—she threw me off as if I weighed nothing. I’d never seen her so wild. I called Aiden because I knew how he felt about her, and he called his friend from the police department. They came to the house. No one could do anything for her except Aiden, who kept talking to her real calm until she fell asleep in his arms. I was useless. I felt so angry.” His jaw clenched and unclenched. “I went looking for Skeet that night. If I’d found him then, I would have killed him.”
“Maybe. Maybe not—probably not. What happened the next time you saw him?”
“After five days Mia went back to work as if nothing had ever happened. She wasn’t the same, though. She was afraid of her own shadow. Could barely ring people up when they came in to buy something. But she insisted on keeping her job, and her co-workers covered for the hours she spent crying in the bathroom. She was near the end of her shift about a week after the attack when the guy working with her that night went outside to fix the tire pump. He didn’t come back. They found him later, unconscious behind the station.
“Fortunately, Aiden and I were keeping a close eye on Mia, taking turns picking her up before the end of her shift. It was my turn that night, and I arrived in time to see Skeet walk in. You can bet I ran in after him. He started waving money at her, saying he’d pay her if she’d keep her mouth shut. I slugged him. He was strong. He was on something—I’m sure of it. He had a knife, and he knew how to fight, but I managed to get it away from him. The last thing I remember is him falling back and hitting his head on the counter. I must have collapsed.”
“And the poker?”
“I was working full time at a fireplace store and going to college part time.”
“Don’t tell me—the poker matched one sold there.”
“They couldn’t tell one way or the other. It looked like pokers that are sold anywhere.”
Was he telling the truth? I thought so, but I wasn’t the best judge of character these days. He could be lying, and whatever my heart said, I wanted my mind to be in charge of whether or not I should trust him.
Yet wasn’t I already trusting him? I was alone with him in a place where not even my cell phone worked. Then again, I wasn’t the slime Skeet had been, and I was positive he wasn’t the cold-blooded killer those ladies in Vegas wanted me to believe.
“Prints?” I asked. “On the poker?”
“Nothing. Not even mine. They said it was probably wiped off.” He paused for several heartbeats before adding, “Maybe I did do it. People have blocked out worse. I was certainly angry enough.�
� He gave me a smile that chilled me despite the heat lifting off the rocks around us. “And it’s in my blood.”
Because of his father. But I wasn’t about to pursue that conversation. “Mia doesn’t think you did it.”
“Mia loves me.” He began to put things away. “There aren’t many samples left to take. Another fifteen minutes, and we’ll be out of here.”
I knew the discussion had ended.
By the time we returned to our original location, my legs felt a little shaky from so much unexpected exercise, but in a good way. It’d been too long since I’d experienced nature or worked out with any diligence.
“This is fun,” I said, meaning it. “Makes me regret my degree even more.”
“Not a lot you can do with liberal arts.”
I frowned at him, trying not to read too much into the fact that he remembered. “Yes, good old liberal arts, the degree you end up with when you degree hop too often.” There was no excuse except that I wasn’t really interested in any of the subjects, and I’d always known I’d end up at my father’s company. Now that seemed poor foresight.
“It’s not too late to do something new,” Gage said. “You have your general education taken care of, and that’s half the battle. I finished my degree in prison.”
The word prison sat between us, as large and unwieldy as if he’d put it there on purpose to keep me away. It worked. We walked the rest of the way in silence.
“I need to stop by my house,” Gage said, when we reached the bike. He hefted the pack, now rather decidedly bulky, into the container on the bike, barely fitting it in. Thankfully, the insulated lunch bag was collapsible. “That won’t be a problem, will it?”
“Not unless my family is camped outside, which I doubt. If they have pinpointed where you live, they still wouldn’t be looking for you there since they think we’re off, uh, celebrating.” I was glad I was already flushed from the physical exertion, or my embarrassment would be more plain.
The sun was now making the day uncomfortable, and I was all too aware that we still had a long drive back to Kingman after we stopped at Gage’s. I was glad when the wind began hitting me in the face and drying the sweat from the back of my neck. The closer we got to my parents, the more my heart hammered in my chest. I felt like a nervous wreck when we finally pulled into his subdivision.
“Nice,” I said, looking over the front of Gage’s house. I’d only seen the back of it from the path that ran between our properties, and I hadn’t really been sure which house was even his. Unlike the brick on the other houses, his sported a band of narrow rocks along the bottom of the brown stucco. The windows had fake shutters, which I’d always thought were silly, but they gave the house a homey feel. I loved the cactus in the rock flowerbed.
Inside, there wasn’t much to see, and I suspected he hadn’t spent enough time there yet to leave his mark. The sparse furniture appeared new and unused. Only on our way to a back bedroom that had apparently been set up as a lab did I spy a sitting room with an old easy chair and a large screen TV that looked more like home.
“So what did we come here for?” I asked.
“Just the original report and some geological information I gathered about the area.”
“It looks like you do actual tests here.”
“Sometimes. But I’m dropping these off in town. I have an assistant who agreed to come in and start the preliminaries for me. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll call him to make sure he’s on his way.”
“Take your time. I’ll wait outside. I need to stretch my legs anyway after being on that bike again.” That was an excuse because what I really wanted was to look in on Serenity. Who knew when I might see her again.
I cut around to his backyard and over the lawn, which was practically the size of a postage stamp. There was a short chain-link fence separating his property from the path and a small gate—exactly like the rest of the houses. The path was shaded by the trees from my parents’ place, and underneath them the temperature was decidedly lower, almost pleasant. I went through our gate and stayed in the trees in case someone in the house was looking this way.
Serenity was nowhere to be seen. The barn was the only place she could be, though that seemed unlikely since she rarely went inside unless it was storming. Had my mother given her away in revenge? Feeling anxious, I left the cover of the trees and slipped inside the barn. To my relief Serenity was shut in her stall, and she whinnied a greeting as she spied me.
“Sorry, girl. I don’t have any sugar for you.”
I’d been hoping my mother had remembered to call Sinclair when I disappeared so he would come in earlier than we’d planned to care for my horse. Though Serenity had plenty of grazing in the field and water in her trough, I’d still worried. Obviously someone had been here, or she wouldn’t be in her stall in the middle of the day. But why was she locked up?
Wait. What was that on her leg? I bent down to look. She’d cut herself on something sharp, and it looked as though it needed medical attention.
“I don’t see how the animal could have hurt herself,” came a voice I recognized all too well.
Mother.
I eased away from Serenity and climbed the short ladder into the small hayloft to hide. I was still on the ladder when Sinclair came through. His eyes widened in surprise, but I held my finger to my lip and heaved myself the rest of the way up. I prayed that he wouldn’t say anything. I had missed my wedding, and the last thing I wanted now was to confront my mother on her own turf.
CHAPTER TEN
“I shut her in the stall so she wouldn’t injure herself further,” Sinclair said to my mother. “I found the damage in the fence—probably some kids. It’ll need to be fixed. I can do that and call the vet for you.”
“Vet? It’s that bad?”
“Yes.”
“I see.” There was a little silence in which my mother was presumably examining the cut.
I peered through a small crack in the loft floor, curious to see my elegant mother with Serenity. To my knowledge, she hadn’t been out here since the day she’d given Serenity to me when I graduated from high school. She was stroking Serenity’s neck, who had her nose buried in her hand.
My mother was feeding Serenity sugar cubes? I wasn’t sure what to think, but a strange lump formed in my chest.
“Sinclair, please do call the vet,” my mother said. “And add the time you take fixing the fence to your hours so we can be sure to pay you. I appreciate you bringing this to my attention.”
“You’re welcome. She’s a sweet horse.”
“Yes, she is.” I couldn’t see my mother’s face, but she sounded peaceful.
“Well, I’ll get started.”
Sinclair left, and I felt an urge to call out to my mother. Crazy. She wouldn’t be pleased with anything I’d done. Truth was, I wasn’t all that pleased myself. I’d taken the coward’s way out by running away and not confronting Julian, but I still believed that if I’d talked to him, I would have made the biggest mistake in my life.
Now there was Gage. I wasn’t sure what I felt about him, but I wanted to find out. Besides, there was that little matter of how he kissed me. What if a miracle happened and things worked out between us? I’d live close. Maybe my mother and I could be friends. Start over.
This daydream was shattered by another familiar voice. “Mrs. Crawford?”
“Who’s there?” My mother’s hand disappeared from Serenity’s neck.
“Julian Willis.”
“What are you doing here? I told you I don’t know where she is.”
“I’ve done a little research. Braxton has a sister in Kingman, and they might have gone there.”
“On a honeymoon?”
“You know it’s not real. She doesn’t love that man.”
“Apparently, she doesn’t love you, either.”
“She’s just hurt.”
“And whose fault is that?”
“I take full responsibility. I even understand in a way
. But if I can see her, I know I can make it work out.”
“That’s the very thing her father told me—that you would make it work out if we could find her. Maybe she did the right thing leaving like she did.” I was surprised to hear the faintest hint of approval in my mother’s voice, and I wondered if she’d wished her younger self had made the same decision. Would it have made a difference in our lives? I rarely saw my father, especially when I was young, and he’d had little to do with our upbringing. If I’d had a father who had played with us, asked us about school, who’d maybe attended one of Lily’s plays or my volleyball games, would it have made a difference? We were always on our best behavior on the rare occasions when he was home, and my desire to please him was one of the biggest reasons I’d gone to work for his company.
Not to mention one of the reasons I’d started dating Julian. A business merger for the company was all well and good, but a personal merger cemented the deal.
These thoughts flooded through my head, leaving as fast as they entered.
“I thought you approved of our marriage,” Julian said, a pout in his voice, but also a bit of warning.
“What if she’s in love with this Braxton character?”
Silence. Then Julian’s voice again. “He’s a convict. She doesn’t love him. She’s trying to make a point. Look, I love Tessa, and I won’t let her throw her life away. I’ll make this right.”
“Then you have my blessing.”
It was an odd exchange, and I didn’t understand any of it—my mother’s ambiguity, Julian’s insistence on his love for me. That wasn’t the Julian I knew. When someone hurt him, he became angry and withdrawn. When we had fought, I was always the one who had to initiate a resolution. The making up was good, but getting there took a lot of effort. Sometimes I was so tired of it. So utterly tired. Just once I would have liked to see him come after me and beg me to talk things out.
Well, I was through with that now. Maybe I’d never have to deal with Julian again. I shifted my weight, and my foot scraped against the floor of the loft, making a loud sound that echoed through the barn.
Tell Me No Lies Page 13
