by Ann Charles
She nodded, trying to dislodge her tongue from the roof of her mouth as she watched him pull on the tap. “Uh, Butch?”
He placed a full glass in front of her. “Yeah?”
“How long have you lived around here?” Something about him gave her the feeling he wasn’t born and raised in this corner of Arizona.
“Going on eleven years now.”
“So, you know this area pretty well?”
“Sure, you could say that. Why?”
Kate licked the beer foam from her upper lip and dove in. “I was wondering if you’d mind taking me on a tour of some of the more interesting places in the area.”
The bar wasn’t exactly the most private venue to put Butch under a spotlight. She needed to get him alone, so she could slap on some lipstick and wiggle her hips until he spilled the truth.
Butch looked at her for several long seconds, his eyes searching for something, probably her angle after she had tried to screw him over at the accident. Her stomach knotted, then double-knotted, then wound itself into a hangman’s knot as she held his stare.
“What about your sister?” he asked.
“Well, I’d rather she not tag along. She’s clingy.”
A hint of a smile flickered across his lips. “I meant, why can’t she tour you around?”
“Oh. She’s too busy at the R.V. park, fixing toilets, putting out fires, chasing skunks—you know, typical busy work. She really has very little time to spare most days.”
His smile crinkled his eyes. “What about Porter?”
“He’s only been here a couple of months. I’m sure he doesn’t know this area like you do.”
“I know, but how will he feel about you and me spending time together?” He leaned close, his voice lowering. “Alone.”
The sudden heat in his eyes along with the spicy smell of his cologne had Kate gulping for air. She coughed, covering her mouth with her hand so her heart wouldn’t fly out of her throat and hit Butch in the forehead.
“He, uh …” Her voice squeaked like a rusty hinge. She swallowed and tried again. “He and I are just friends. So, that shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Okay.” He grabbed a towel from behind the bar.
“You mean, ‘okay,’ as in, ‘it’s a date’?”
“Well, I wouldn’t call it a ‘date’—unless you’re looking for something more than I planned to give.”
“No!”
Butch’s eyebrows shot northward.
“Sorry, I mean, no, I’m just looking for a good time—a nice time, not ‘good’ like ‘good-time Saturday night.’” Oh, God, she was botching this up so bad. She took a breath. “I just want you to show me some of the local sights, please.”
Grinning, Butch asked, “How about Sunday afternoon?”
“No!”
His smile widened. “Are you always this passionate, Kate?”
Was there a double meaning behind that question? Did she want there to be?
“Not usually, it’s just this weekend is Gramps and Ruby’s wedding, so that probably won’t work. I have tomorrow open, though.”
“I forgot about the wedding. Okay, tomorrow it is, but we’ll have to go in the morning.”
“You name the time, and I’ll be ready.”
“How about eight?”
“Perfect.”
A full-figured brunette wearing a tube-top and shorts that rode low on her hipbones and high on her cheeks placed a plastic pitcher on the bar next to Kate. She batted eyelashes gooped with mascara at Butch. “Will you fill me up again, sugar?”
As Butch took the pitcher, the brunette added, “Could you get me a clean pitcher? Billy sneezed in that one.”
Kate watched the bombshell ogle Butch’s butt as he turned around and bent over to grab a clean pitcher from a lower shelf. Her fingers itched to reach out and squeeze the tramp’s lashes together, gluing her peepers shut.
While Butch filled the pitcher, the tramp asked him, “How’s the takeover going?”
“According to my lawyer, we should close the deal by the end of the month.”
“Perfect. Give me a call when the dust settles, and we can make a play date.”
“Will do.” Butch pushed the pitcher across the bar.
“Thanks, sweetie.” With a wink in his direction, the tramp bounced back to her table, where two leering cowboys waited.
Kate looked back to find Butch watching her, his gaze narrowed, assessing. Assessing what, she didn’t know. Maybe her lack of mascara. She wondered if he liked his women to wear tube tops.
“Kate,” he said, leaning closer, his focus now on her mouth. “Tell me something.”
She licked her lips, nervous all of a sudden. The flare of attraction she saw in his eyes made her heart speed up. “What?”
“Hey, Butch.” A guy wearing a baseball hat backwards over a hairnet peeked out the door leading to the kitchen. “Phone.”
“You want to transfer it out here?”
“It’s Lana.”
“Oh. Can you cover for me for a few?”
The guy nodded.
Butch tapped the bar in front of Kate. “I’ll see you tomorrow in front of Ruby’s store at eight sharp.”
Kate nodded. Watching Butch walk away, Kate wondered who Lana was, what Miss Tube Top meant about playing, and if Ruby was going to be able to save her claim before Butch snatched it away from her at the end of the month.
She also wondered what Butch had wanted her to tell him right before “Lana” had interrupted, and if it had anything to do with the heat still steaming deep inside of her.
Tomorrow, Kate was going to find out some answers.
* * *
Claire’s eye began to twitch from glaring at Kate’s back for so long.
A sweaty, shirt-covered back bumped against Claire’s elbow, making her cringe. This sardine can had too many damp, oily, cologne-dipped bodies wriggling around in it. She huddled close to Porter, earning a couple of raised brows from him.
She smiled, focusing on the task at hand—drilling him for answers. “How’s the research going?”
“Good.”
“So, is your book going to be fiction or non-fiction?”
“Fiction.”
“Do you ever read for fun?”
“Sure.”
“Who are your favorite authors?”
He cocked his head to the side. “Dean Koontz and Clive Cussler, for starters. Stephen King and James Patterson, too.”
All of those authors frequently bumped into each other on the New York Times bestseller list. She would expect a writer to be more eccentric, to throw out the names of some up-and-comers, or maybe a Pulitzer-Prize winner like William Faulkner or Harper Lee.
Claire continued to smile, wishing she had some Vaseline to make it easier for her lips to slide over her teeth. “Do you like the classics?”
“Of course. What writer doesn’t?”
“Exactly.” Now she was getting somewhere. It was time for all those English Lit classes to finally pay off. “Mark Twain has to be one of my all-time favorites, along with Jane Austen, of course. What about you? Name five of your favorite classic novelists.”
He cocked his head to the other side this time. “Classic, huh? Let’s see. Charles Dickens, Edgar Allen Poe, and ummmm … who else is there … Hemmingway and Tolkien and … oh, his name is on the tip of my tongue.”
So far, he’d listed only heavy-hitters. Most sixth graders knew those names. “Steinbeck or Crane?” Claire threw out a couple of authors whose names any Classic Lit fan or college English student should know.
“No.”
“Verne, James, Alcott.” She purposely threw Louisa May Alcott in there, playing the one-of-these-authors-is-not-like-the-others game.
“His name starts with an ‘S’.”
This time, Claire listed all females. “Stoddard, Stowe, Steedman?”
“No. It’s ‘Sh’ something.” He chuckled, the usually charming grin replaced by a lopsided, nervous-look
ing, upward tilt of the lips. “I must have had one too many beers tonight.”
Claire hadn’t seen him drink any yet. “Is it Shakespeare?” If he couldn’t remember the great poet’s name, he must have been sick his whole senior year of high school.
“No, not him. I can’t believe I’m forgetting his name.”
She tried to think of male authors whose names began with ‘sh’ and came up blank. “What’s the name of one of his books?”
“Frankenstein.”
“You mean Shelley?”
“That’s it!” His grin was extra-bright and extra-charming, probably meant to blow all thoughts about classical authors from her head. “I can’t believe Mac was willing to walk away from such a smart and beautiful woman.”
Yada, yada, yada, Claire thought.
How could he not know Shelley was a woman? He liked Stephen King and Dean Koontz, for chrissake; he should at least know Shelley’s first name was Mary.
She shook off her surprise and threw him another curve. “Being an author, I’m sure you’re familiar with Robert Louis Stevenson’s work?”
If Porter was really an author (and Claire was beginning to have serious doubts that he was), he should recognize that name because according to Jess, he’d been thumbing through Treasure Island when she caught him in Ruby’s office last night.
“Sure.”
“Which of his stories do you like best? Jungle Book or Gulliver’s Travels?” Neither was written by Stevenson.
The charm in his smile dimmed. “That’s tough. Both are great stories, but I’d have to go with Jungle Book.”
Of course he would, because if Disney hadn’t made it into a cartoon, he’d probably never have heard of it.
Claire lowered her gaze, not certain she could keep suspicion from her eyes.
It was apparent that Porter didn’t know classic literature from a Chilton’s car repair manual, which in itself wasn’t a federal crime, but why did he claim to be a fan then? What need was there to lie? It couldn’t be to impress her, could it?
Now that she’d discovered his knowledge about classic lit could fit into a shot glass, Claire decided to stop messing around and get to the point.
“Ruby has quite a collection of classics,” she said, purposely not mentioning that they were in the basement office, which left Porter the opportunity to come clean about Jess finding him red-handed.
“I know.”
“You do?”
Finally, a slice of hope for Matthew McConaughey’s twin. Maybe he’d just been trying to impress Claire after all.
“Her daughter showed them to me yesterday before you returned from Yuccaville.”
Wowzer. That was a liar-liar-pants-on-fire doozy. While the diameter of Jess’s open jaws may be measurable on the big-mouth-bass scale most days, the kid wasn’t a liar. Unlike Porter.
Now that she knew for sure he was lying, she needed to figure out why, and that was going to take some help.
Good thing Kate was going to be in town for a couple more weeks.
“Thanks for the dance, Porter.” Claire backed out of his arms. “How about a drink? Kate’s buying.”
Chapter Twelve
Wednesday, August 18th
“Where are we going?” Kate asked Butch’s backside as she followed him along a winding trail through a thicket of bushes with hanging yellow flowers, bean pods, and inch-long thorns that kept snagging her blue linen miniskirt. This was so not what she’d had in mind for this morning’s interrogation.
Somewhere overhead, a bird screeched, sounding very perturbed at having uninvited guests. Not exactly the bluebird of happiness.
Kate flipped it off.
“It’s just a little farther.” Butch plowed ahead. “Where that tall cottonwood tree rises out of this bosque of mesquite.”
“This what of what?” Kate frantically brushed a cobweb from her eyebrows and chin, worried its creator was now hitching a ride in her now not-so-coiled chignon.
“Bosque is the Spanish word for forest, and mesquite is a type of tree. These are velvet mesquite, to be exact.”
Velvet, huh? She rubbed her nose. The way the thorns kept scratching her, they should’ve been named porcupine trees.
Dust coated the inside of her nose and crusted her dry lips, her sheen of lip gloss long wiped away. She plodded onward and upward as the trail climbed.
Sandals had seemed the best choice this morning, not only to keep her cool, but also to show off her manicured mauve toenails dotted with little white daisies. Had she known she’d be traipsing through a “bosque,” she would have donned the hiking boots Ruby had offered.
If this was Butch’s idea of a non-date, she could only imagine where he’d take her if it was the real thing. Skydiving? Spelunking? Cow tipping?
The warm breeze she’d felt when she crawled out of Butch’s dented old Chevy pickup seemed to have been swallowed by the bramble of trees, leaving an uneasy stillness.
As the trail steepened even more, the trees closed in around her, grabbing at her with their bristly arms. Mottled rays of sunshine penetrated the branches and rows of skinny leaves, alternately highlighting and shadowing Butch’s white cowboy hat.
With the only sign of civilization being a wispy contrail high in the cobalt sky, Kate wondered if hiking alone with Butch into the middle of nowhere was the smartest thing to do. Ditching a body would be an easy job in this tangled wilderness.
Clearing her throat, she swallowed what felt like a tablespoon of dirt.
“Is this your land?” She kept her tone extra light and happy, straight out of a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical.
“No, it belongs to old Dick Webber.”
She looked up from stepping over a raised root just in time to collide nose-first into Butch’s green T-shirt-covered sternum. He caught her by the shoulders as she teetered backward and waited for her to gain her footing before releasing her.
Blushing for absolutely no reason she could think of—except for the fact that she always seemed to have two left feet whenever Butch was within stumbling reach—Kate took a step back to put some much-needed space between her and his dark blue eyes.
“Sorry.” She adjusted her perfectly straight skirt. “I seem to have developed a bad habit of colliding with you.”
“I don’t mind.” Holding out his canteen to her, he added with a grin, “Unless you’re sitting behind a steering wheel.”
Her face burned hotter. Grateful for the shadows cloaking her at the moment, she grabbed the canteen and took a swig, letting the lukewarm water soak into the lining of her mouth before she swallowed it.
She handed the canteen back. As Butch took it from her outstretched hand, his fingertips touched hers and lingered. Kate felt sixteen again all of a sudden, full of silly crushes and raging hormones, her heart beating in her throat.
Then, without wiping the mouthpiece, he tipped the canteen back. As he capped it, he watched her, his eyes narrowed, assessing. She resisted the urge to tuck loose strands back into her chignon.
“Has anyone ever told you that you have cute ears?” he asked.
“Uh, no.” She squeezed her right earlobe, realizing that in the midst of trying on six different outfits for her non-date with Butch, she’d forgotten to put in any earrings.
“Well, you do.” Without another word, he turned and continued up the path.
She frowned after him. As far as compliments went, she wasn’t even sure that registered on the charts.
Butch glanced back. “You coming?”
With a mental slap to knock some sense into the overheated gray matter in her skull, she trudged along behind him.
When she’d asked him to show her the sights around Jackrabbit Junction, she’d figured they’d head to Yuccaville, maybe meander through a mining museum; or drive to the top of one of the mountains ringing the valley and stare out across the endless shades of brown as she cunningly probed him for answers.
Instead, he’d spread out a blanket under a hundred-
year-old cottonwood tree and treated her to a breakfast of granola bars, bacon, grapes, and bottled orange juice.
The second stop on his tour had been a huge ocotillo plant sporting more than seventy thorn-laden, green branches covered in tiny leaves. While botany field trips were more Claire’s cup of tea, as evidenced by her numerous courses on the subject, Kate had actually enjoyed Butch’s explanation on the many uses of the ocotillo, so much that she’d forgotten she was supposed to be playing Mata Hari with him.
Now, as Butch dragged her along to see his “hidden gem,” Kate cursed herself for failing to figure out a clever way to prod him about his connection to the Copper Snake Mining Company. Not to mention asking him about Valentine, Lana, and Miss Tube Top.
Further up the trail, Butch paused and waited for her to catch up.
“So,” she spoke between heavy breaths as she drew near. “Mr. Webber doesn’t mind us trespassing on his property?”
“No, he’s my neighbor. I hike up here periodically, checking his fences, looking for stray cattle, keeping an eye out for more coprolites to add to his collection.”
Kate choked out a laugh between her parched lips. “He collects petrified shi—uh, dung?”
Butch nodded.
“What does he do with his collection?” She imagined an old guy dusting each piece with a paintbrush, labeling them, and enclosing the whole collection in a glass case.
“You don’t want to know.” Butch pushed aside a thick jumble of branches. “It’s right through here.”
Giving him a wary glance, she ducked under his arm. After several steps along what looked like a deer path, she stepped out of the thick brush and into a meadow lined with willows, cottonwoods, and stunted sycamores. Small clusters of vivid orange and red flowers dotted the meadow floor and undulated as the air breathed around her, cooling her sweaty skin. A mourning dove cooed.
Wow! Where were Adam and Eve and the apple tree?
Butch rustled through the trees behind her, joining her.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“It’s beautiful. Those are pretty red flowers.”
“The Indian paintbrush is nice, but that’s not what I’m talking about. What do you think of the ruins?”
Ruins? Until Butch pointed it out, Kate didn’t notice the alcove in the cliff to her left.
