“I eat chocolate cereal,” Kimmie said hopefully.
He looked at her. “The benefit doesn’t outweigh the negative.”
“This is where I remind you that The Bluebonnets only require us to spend one night living off the land. It’s okay to relax your standards for us civilians.”
“Relaxing standards can compromise a mission. After we hike to the campsite you’ll thank me.”
Kimmie looked up at him. “But the box isn’t heavy.”
Abby took pity on him. “I appreciate that you’re trying to explain things to her. But sometimes a unilateral no is the best course of action.”
His gaze narrowed. “Whatever you say. I don’t know much about kids.”
“That almost makes us even. I know zero about camping. Which is why I need you—” That didn’t sound right. She didn’t need him. Any beefy, brainless, no-neck outdoorsman would do. But he was none of those things. In fact, he had a nice, strong-looking neck and she would like to press her lips to a spot… Not going there, she thought. “I mean the great outdoors is why I bought you— Hired your services— So to speak.”
“I get it.”
While they talked, Kimmie started out of the kitchen with the cereal box under her arm and Abby grabbed it. “Not so fast, young lady. This stays here. Riley said no.”
Kimmie looked up as she scuffed the toe of her new pink sneaker on the tile floor. “What if I get hungry?”
“I’m sure Mr. Dixon has that situation under control.”
Abby shuddered to think what that meant. Dehydrated meals, beef jerky, energy bars hard as hockey pucks that also served as lethal weapons. As her anxiety level spiked, she reminded herself that it was one night. And she could afford to lose a couple of pounds. Every cloud had a silver lining, and she tried desperately to find it in this situation.
She glanced at Riley’s face as he watched Kimmie pick up her princess backpack. She found another silver lining in his expression, which bordered on horror. When he’d agreed to take them on the trip, she knew it was because of what Kimmie had said about disappointment. She’d watched him melt like a chocolate bar left out in the sun. That Riley would be a challenge to resist. But this Riley…his tight lips and narrowed eyes told her the bullheaded bozo was back. Resisting him would be a piece of cake.
Bring on the great outdoors, she thought happily.
Why had she ever thought that hiring an expert would make this easy? She’d left the location of the campsite up to him, but apparently she’d neglected to mention that he needed to take into account Kimmie’s age and physical limitations. The Bluebonnets weren’t unreasonable in their badge expectations, but she’d bought Rambo.
They’d walked for what seemed like days. Even after numerous stops to rest, they were exhausted. When Riley glanced over his shoulder to study them, he obviously decided they looked like something the cat choked up because he stopped for a rest. Again.
Abby and Kimmie practically collapsed on a prone log. He’d carried most of the equipment on an aluminum frame strapped to his back and looked ready to pose for the cover of Great Outdoors magazine. She and Kimmie only had their backpacks with one day’s clothing and looked like they’d been lost in the woods for a week. Thank goodness he’d confiscated the cereal box. But she was still bitter about her makeup.
After resting for a few minutes, she noticed the wind had kicked up and clouds were rolling in.
Riley frowned as he studied the sky. “There’s still a way to go yet, and we need daylight to set up camp. Shelter could be a priority. We need to get a move on.”
Abby wished for his impassive look to replace his current expression. Something told her he didn’t scare easily and that his frown was panic for anyone else. This was a heck of a time to get the meaning of “be careful what you wish for.” She’d gotten her wish, which meant they were stuck out in the middle of nowhere and taking orders from Rambo—good-looking though he might be here in his element. To make matters worse, that made her want to look her best. Which put taking a bath at the top of her priority list.
And washing her hair—it was limp and stringy because she was sweaty and dirty. After she bathed, she wanted to put on makeup and blow-dry her hair. But she couldn’t do any of that because her necessities were at home. And how shallow was she to be thinking about any of that, what with the wind kicking up.
“Abby,” he barked out. “Let’s get going.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, standing on shaky legs and saluting.
“Very funny.” But in his eyes there was a spark of what appeared to be genuine amusement.
She looked at the dark clouds. “It looks like a storm’s moving in. But I checked the weather.”
“Me, too. It was supposed to be clear and mild,” he said. “I guess this is a rogue. We need to hurry.”
Kimmie stood beside her and slid her hand around Abby’s waist. “I can’t go fast. My new shoes hurt.”
Abby pulled off her daughter’s socks and shoes and saw she had blisters on both feet. “Why didn’t you say something, sweetie?”
“It wasn’t so bad.” She looked at the sky as she brushed away the hair that had blown into her mouth. “Is there gonna be thunder?”
“Maybe,” he said, resting his hands on lean hips.
“I don’t like thunder,” she said. “Sometimes there’s tornadoes when there’s thunder.”
“Not always.” Abby tucked a strand of hair behind her daughter’s ear. In seconds, the wind had blown it free. She wasn’t into predicting weather, but it seemed as if it was getting darker.
“But sometimes,” Kimmie said, “we go to our safe room when the wind gets really bad.”
“That’s right.”
Kimmie looked up at her with a trusting expression on her face. “Do tents have safe rooms?”
Abby glanced at the compactly compressed wad of nylon on Riley’s backpack. “Good question, kiddo. Riley?”
He stopped studying the clouds and met her gaze. “Yeah?”
“What happens if things get worse?”
“These blow up suddenly and are gone just as fast. But I’d feel better if we had camp set up. We can bandage those blisters and she’ll be good to go.”
Kimmie clung to her and started sniffling. “Mommy, I’m scared.”
“It’s okay, honey. We’ll be all right. Riley knows what he’s doing.”
“But he can’t make the storm go away,” her daughter pointed out.
As if to give her statement an exclamation point, the echo of rumbling thunder drifted to them.
“Mommy?”
“I know, sweetie.” Abby patted her daughter’s back as the child buried her face in her shirt. “Riley, do you think this is a good idea? Do you think we should stay out in the open?”
He squatted down in front of them, his forearm resting on his thigh. In spite of her mounting anxiety, Abby noticed the way the denim pulled across the muscles in his leg.
“That storm is at least ten miles away. Unless the wind changes, it will miss us by a lot.” He looked at Kimmie. “In frontier days, they didn’t have houses as strong as we do now,” he pointed out. “And they survived. Isn’t that what The Bluebonnets is all about? Seeing how the pioneers lived? Survival under adverse conditions?”
“Yeah. Survival is the key thing here,” Abby agreed. “And that wind is making me question survival. What if there is a t-o-r-n-a-d-o?”
Kimmie was pretty bright, but Abby didn’t think she could spell that yet. Deliberately, she kept her voice neutral instead of letting it shoot up an octave into a shriek the way she wanted. Kimmie was quivering against her and Abby didn’t want to lose her composure and scare her daughter even more than she already was.
Riley smiled. The man had the audacity—or maybe it was the insanity—to look completely unconcerned. “The last time I checked, Texas is pretty big. The odds of a t-o-r-n-a-d-o landing on us are slim to none.”
Kimmie burrowed closer. “It landed on Dorothy’s hous
e.” This was a heck of a time to find out how good a speller her child was.
Riley frowned. “Who’s Dorothy? Someone in Charity City?”
“No, a character in The Wizard of Oz,” Abby clarified.
“Oh.” He stood and looked down at Kimmie with what could only be described as a tender expression. “That’s just a movie.”
Kim met his gaze. “I know. But I’ve seen real lightning. And real thunder. Then the wind gets real bad. It knocked down my grandma’s fence and blew her roof off. It’s real scary.”
He looked at Abby. “It did,” she confirmed. “A couple years ago, there was a bad storm that spawned twisters in several areas around here. Kimmie was little, but she never forgot.”
“Kimmie, it’s a fact,” he said, “that every year more people are killed by lightning than tornadoes.”
“Mommy?” Her voice was just this side of full on hysteria. “I wanna go home.”
“Good one, Ace.” Abby glared at him.
“It’s statistically true.”
“And chronologically she’s six.”
“Mommy,” she said, “I really, really wanna go home. I don’t wanna stay out here. Please?”
Abby pulled her daughter into her lap. “Remember, Kim, you need to do a hike, then spend one night camping outdoors. We can’t do it in our backyard because that’s cheating. If we don’t do this, you won’t get your survival badge.”
“I don’t care,” she wailed. “I wanna go home.”
She looked at Riley. “What do you think?”
He glanced at the sky. “Right now, we have enough light to make it to camp and set up. Once we have shelter, we can wait it out,” he suggested.
“If it doesn’t blow over, she’ll be hysterical all night. And the trauma of that could be worse than winding up in Oz.”
Riley ran a hand through his hair. “It’s your call. But you have to make it quick. If we wait too long, it’ll be dark. And hiking back to the car under those conditions would be more dangerous than riding out the storm.”
“Kimmie,” Abby said. “You need to really think about this. If we don’t stay, you’re not going to get your badges.”
After a rumble of thunder that sounded a little closer, Kimmie looked up, her lips trembling. “I wanna go home.”
Abby held her close. “The thing is, she’s been up since oh-dark-thirty. And she’s not used to this much prolonged activity. She’s not capable of a rational decision. But I won’t force her to do this.”
“Okay.” He nodded. “Let’s go back.”
Abby took care of the blisters and they were out of there quickly. Adrenaline moved them along, and there was little dissension in the ranks. They made pretty good time back to the car, then headed for Charity City. It seemed a short time before Riley pulled up in front of the house. He carried their backpacks to the front porch and set them down. Abby unlocked the door and Kimmie raced inside.
“Thanks for trying,” Abby said, looking up at him.
“I’m sorry.” He didn’t look sorry. He still looked tall. “For the record, I did take you. That fulfills my obligation.”
“Yeah.” She cocked her thumb over her shoulder. “I better make sure Kimmie’s okay.”
He nodded and jogged down the steps to his car. Biting her lip, Abby watched his taillights as he slowed for the Stop sign at the end of her street. It bothered her that he thought of them as an obligation. She didn’t like being a burden to anyone. But she had her own burdens to worry about. How was she going to make sure Kimmie got her badge now? And how many cold showers would she have to take to freeze out memories of a man like Riley Dixon?
Chapter Three
Charity City High hadn’t changed much since he’d been a student there. Riley was back, this time to work up a detailed security recommendation since he had a signed contract from the Board of Education. After they approved it, he’d install all the systems on campus. The library was his last stop and he scoped it out, vaguely remembering the last time he’d seen it. Scoping out had been his mission then, too—a girl, a cheerleader. He’d been pretending to study for finals.
Tall shelves of books still lined the perimeter of the room with more shelving taking up space in the center. Tables and chairs filled the rest of the area. One difference was the cubicles with computers against one wall. But the librarian’s work station was still an oblong area just inside the door. That was going to have to be moved to make room for metal detectors.
It was about 4:45. The principal had told Riley that class let out around three and by five the campus would be locking down for the night. The fewer students around for his evaluation, the better. Right now, the library was empty.
Maybe not so much, he thought as a familiar slender figure rounded one of the book shelves. Abby. The sight of her spiked his pulse as surely as shouts of incoming enemy fire. At the same time, he felt all the blood in his body head for points south of his belt. It had been a week since the aborted camping trip and just that morning he’d flattered himself that stray thoughts where she was concerned were nearly under control. One brief glimpse of her put the lie to that fantasy. Which begged the question: what the heck was she doing here?
She looked up from the book she was scanning and faltered momentarily before continuing to the librarian’s area. “Riley. Hello,” she said, moving into the center of the work station. “What are you doing here?”
“I was about to ask you the same thing.”
“This is where I work. I’m the librarian.”
And that was the first time he realized that during their long hike, he’d never once asked her what she did for a living. So much for the attention to detail he’d always prided himself on. Abby Walsh was beating his pride to a pulp.
“Why are you here?” she asked again.
“I’m working, too. My firm was contracted by the school district to install security systems and procedures.” He was surprised she didn’t know. That meant communication from administration to the rank and file was a weakness. He’d look into that. “You weren’t informed I’d be here today?”
“Maybe. I haven’t had a chance to read the daily announcements,” she admitted. “It’s Monday and I hit the floor running.”
“Noted.” But unacceptable. Communication was a key ingredient in security. And an area of concern for his report.
Right now, he needed to assimilate the fact that his job had just gotten a little harder, and more interesting. Because it was one of the larger buildings on campus, the library would require a lot more of his on-site time. He already knew the job would take several months to complete. Now he’d learned Abby worked here, which meant he would see her a lot. He couldn’t get her out of his mind when he didn’t see her. How would he handle it when he did?
“Speaking of running,” she said, “it’s time for me to go.” After grabbing her purse from the bottom drawer of a file cabinet by her desk, she rounded the counter and headed for the door. “Bye.”
When the door was closing behind her, he scratched his head. That went well. “Not.”
And here was his problem. He was actually sorry to see her go. It was a gut-level reaction—the surge in blood pressure at the first glimpse of her and the fact that he’d instantly recognized her. Then the way his spirits took a dive at the sight of her leaving. Obviously these feelings weren’t mutual. Could she have raced out of there any faster? Just as well. He was here to do his job in the place where she worked. Nothing more.
It took him only a few minutes to finish his preliminary analysis of the premises. After making some notes, he headed out to where he’d left his car in the faculty parking lot. As he walked toward his SUV, he noticed the car he’d seen in Abby’s driveway. In fact, he saw her behind the wheel and heard the sound a car makes when you turn the key in the ignition and nothing happens.
He stopped and tapped on the driver’s window. When it rolled down, he said, “Car trouble?”
She sighed. “I kept hoping it woul
d turn over if I tried long enough.”
“I think the battery might be dead. Mind if I take a look?”
“Be my guest.”
After she released it, he lifted the hood and glanced at the engine. There were no obvious loose connections. Nothing that gave him a clue why it wouldn’t start—or an easy fix.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, when he went back to her window.
“I wish I knew.”
She sighed. “I thought you survival types could make anything work with a little elbow grease and spit.”
“Only if we know what to spit on,” he admitted. “But I’d put my money on a dead battery.”
She opened the door and he stepped back so she could get out. “I guess I’ll have to go to the office and use the phone. My cell phone needs a charge. Apparently I’ve got battery problems all around.”
“Use mine,” he offered.
“I don’t want to inconvenience a busy man like yourself.”
“No problem. I’m finished for the day.” He held out his phone.
“Thanks.”
She dialed a number, then explained her situation to whoever picked up on the other end. It must have been about child care because she told whoever it was she was going to be a little late picking up Kimmie. After flipping the cell closed, she held it out.
“What about your car?” he asked. As he took the phone, he could almost see sparks where their fingers brushed. The way her gaze skittered away from his told him she’d felt it, too.
“I’ll go to the administration office and see if anyone’s still there to help me. Doggone it, I was planning to get a new car as soon as I saved the down payment. This thing’s got to last just a little longer.”
“I know a good mechanic,” he offered. “And he’s not too expensive.”
“Translation—he won’t take advantage of a woman who doesn’t speak fluent automotive.”
“Pretty much.” He saw her hesitate. “I could give him a call and have him swing by. If necessary, he can tow it into the shop.”
“I guess I don’t have much choice. And that sounded terribly ungrateful.” She sighed. “Thank you. I’d appreciate that.”
That Touch of Pink Page 4
