He didn’t know what she was talking about so he put out his hands in confusion.
“For their history project, each student picks an historical figure to research. Then, they write a monologue that they’ll deliver in costume as if they were wax figures that come to life.”
“Wow. We never did anything that creative when I was in fifth grade. Who’s Brady researching?”
“George Washington. His classmate—a girl he likes—is Martha. He won’t admit it but the idea of sharing the stage with Chloe Zabrinski has him tied up in knots.” She let out a tormented groan. “I really have to dash. Thanks for organizing this.”
He stuck his hands in his pockets to keep from touching her. “No problem. You know, Tucker’s dance troupe does some complicated theatrical-type performances. He might be able to give Brady some pointers.”
She paused to look at the table where Tucker and Amanda appeared deep in discussion. “I’ll ask Brady. He can be shy around men, but I think he and Tucker hit it off okay the other night. Thanks.”
Then she was gone, and the same strange and unwelcome emptiness he’d been experiencing all week returned. He’d never felt such a powerful connection to a woman—even the woman he married and later divorced. Which probably says a lot about why we’re not still together, he thought.
Flynn told himself if Ryker could find the right girl in Montana, maybe he could, too.
Was Kat the one?
Potentially, yes. Maybe. But Flynn didn’t take anyone at face value anymore. And as much as he wanted to deny it, dark clouds flirted at the edge of Kat’s life. Grief from the loss of her mother? Or did she still have feelings for Brady’s dad? Maybe, deep down, Kat resented Flynn for taking the job that could have been hers if she’d applied.
A cold gust of wind drove him inside.
“Flynn,” Tucker called, motioning him back to the table. Most of the other SAR people had split to play pool or drift off. Only Janet remained nursing the dregs of the last pitcher.
“What’s up?”
“Amanda and I are talking about a collaboration.”
Flynn made his eyebrows lift and fall in a suggestive way that normally would have made Tucker laugh. Instead, Tucker scowled. “Not that kind.”
“What other kind is there with you?”
Flynn didn’t mean to be insulting, but he’d never known Tucker to have anything but a superficial, short-term sexual relationship with a beautiful woman.
“We could help each other. I need a place to live. The Graff is nice and all, but…kaa-ching.” He rubbed two fingers and his thumb together. “She can’t put her grandmother’s house on the market until she gets your fix-it list done. My construction crew is out of work until my permits come through. So…”
Amanda made a hurry-up motion. “What your slow-talking Southern friend is suggesting is we both share Molly’s two-bedroom guest home, where Tucker can keep an eye on the work and the workers while I run my grandmother to physical therapy and all her doctors’ appointments.”
“There’s a guest house?”
“The entrance is from the alley. You probably didn’t notice because everything is so overgrown.”
“Molly built it to accommodate visits from her family, who never showed,” Tucker said.
Amanda sent him a scathing look. “We’ve already established my family is more nuclear than nurturing. I can’t change that. Believe me, I tried.”
Tucker had the good grace to look embarrassed, but Amanda didn’t seem to notice. She had her phone out and was flipping screens with her thumb. “The doctor I spoke with today says Molly will need a minimum of three weeks in rehab.” She looked at Flynn. “Is it possible to get her house fixed up—repair all those things you found—in that time?”
They both looked at him. Flynn could read a “you’d better have my back” look in Tucker’s eyes. Amanda kept her emotions completely hidden.
“Sounds doable.” Not that he had a clue.
Tucker fist-bumped him.
“Fine. You supervise the workers and in return I’ll build your zip line a website and create the relevant social media feeds you’ll need to promote it. If there’s time, I might even throw in a Grand Opening media blitz that will make you enough money to make up for your lost time.”
Tucker looked at Flynn. “Sounds like a great deal, right?”
Flynn looked between them. What was he supposed to say? My best friend plays Mozart and dances like a porn star when he’s not fighting wildfires. He knows squat about running a construction crew. But they both knew someone who did know construction.
Amanda stood, picking up her black leather envelope style purse. “I need to use the facilities.” Lowering her voice, she added, “Please tell me they’re indoor, with running water.”
Tucker rolled his eyes.
“Straight back and to the right,” Flynn told her.
Once she was out of range of their voices, Tucker let out a long sigh. “I can’t decide if the ice princess is going to make things better or worse. What do you think?”
Flynn went for diplomacy. “Too early to call. What are your concerns?”
“Rich people don’t think like the rest of us. That’s what I think. But in this case, I don’t have a lot of options.”
“The Hellers are rich?”
“Top one percenters. But that’s Amanda’s problem, not mine. Once I get this zip line up and running and I’m cleared to dance, I’m outta here, too.” He made a zooming motion. “Sounds like a plan, huh?”
Flynn took his time answering, but eventually, he asked, “What have you got to lose?”
Tucker didn’t answer. His gaze remained on Amanda as she returned to their table. Flynn could honestly say he’d never seen that kind of look on his friend’s face. Interest, with a capital I.
Chapter Eight
‡
Flynn stared at his desk calendar, wondering how he could possibly fit even a bathroom break into his jam-packed Monday. And the rest of the week didn’t look much better.
Not for the first time he contemplated whether or not being on the fire line led less risk than being the head of an aggregate, semi-autonomous group attached to the Crawford County’s law enforcement agency. The PR alone could bite him in the butt if he wasn’t careful.
He picked up the request Janet Haynes had left on his desk. To the casual eye, it was nothing more than a solicitation from the Marietta Fair Board asking him to be a judge on the Miss Marietta Fair Queen panel.
Hell no, he thought. What better way to alienate people than to overlook some petty bureaucrat’s baby girl?
“Knock. Knock.”
A smile started low in his core and moved upward. “Good morning, Katherine. Come in.”
He’d thought about her on and off all weekend. On Sunday, his realtor took him to a three-bedroom, two-bath home that made him a little weak in the knees when he stood in the family room and looked at a view of the mountain range he couldn’t wait to trek. The place had acreage he didn’t need, but the current owners were retired and rented the land out.
His gut told him this was the place, but his head said, “Are you out of your mind? What does a single guy need with twenty-four acres and three bedrooms?”
But looking around, he’d imagined Kat and Brady there—and maybe a couple of to-be-named kids. A quantum leap with no basis in reality, he kept reminding himself. To no avail. His dreams had all been about her lately. Good dreams, for a change. The kind that left him rested but horny.
He stood and walked to the file cabinet where he buried the fair judge request in some nameless file from some distant year. “What can I do for you?”
She looked at the floor, obviously embarrassed about something. “I hate to ask after missing three days last week.”
He picked up the file she’d left on his desk for him to read when he first came in. “There’s missing work and there’s working from home. Obviously, you put in your time. I’m really impressed, and I’d be s
urprised if both of these grant applications aren’t funded. Really good job.”
Her blush was so pretty he would have kissed her if they were any place but his office—on view for everyone to see. “So, ask away.”
“Brady’s performance is Wednesday afternoon. I’d like to leave at two-thirty, if that’s not a problem.”
“Done. No worries.”
She smiled. “Thanks.” As she turned to leave, she added, “And thanks for suggesting we talk to Tucker. He gave Brady some great pointers on stage presence and how to engage with the audience.”
“Say what? When did you…?”
“Yesterday afternoon. We bumped into him at the Palace. I decided I was too wiped out to drive to Bozeman, so I took Brady to see that new Pixar movie. It was fun. Tucker spotted us and asked if he could sit with us. He said you were house hunting and his ankle hurt too much to join you.”
The tension Flynn vaguely recognized as jealousy started to dissipate. “Yeah, I looked at two places.”
“Any luck?”
Their gazes met and held. “One is a strong possibility.”
She swallowed. “That’s wonderful. I can’t wait to hear all about it, but I have a call in with the…” He missed the last of her excuse as she turned and hurried away.
Had the room shrunk or was the chemistry between them reaching critical mass?
*
Kat went straight to her desk and swiped the mouse to open the bookkeeping program she’d been working in. The Sheriff’s Office had emailed that morning asking for a more detailed accounting of 2011. Well before her time, but she’d done her best to reconstruct what they wanted. Whoever had been doing the books at the time didn’t know squat about journal entries and making the various line items add up.
Katherine. He calls me Katherine.
Just as her grandmother always had. “Katherine, my darling, I’m going to teach you how to make snowflakes today.”
“But, Grandma, it’s July.”
“All the better don’t you think? These are made of paper so they won’t melt.”
A child could appreciate whimsy the way adults couldn’t. Mom had been so short with Grandma. Constantly annoyed by her forgetfulness and mistakes. Kat understood now it was fear that prompted her mother’s lack of patience and compassion. Fear that she was losing the woman she loved. Fear that some day she’d be in the same situation.
“There was a call for you last Friday,” Janet said, pausing to look at the computer screen over Kat’s shoulder. “Were they able to reach you? I gave them your cell phone number.”
Kat minimized the page she was working on and turned to face Janet. “Yes, thank you. They got me.”
Her property manager, Georgette, had called to say Kat’s renters had given notice. They’d been asking about the possibility of buying her house for the past six months, but Kat kept stalling. She couldn’t make up her mind. Was Marietta the right place for her and Brady or not? Did she dare sever that final tie with San Antonio?
She’d promised her property manager she’d think about it and decide this week.
Janet lingered. Since the woman wasn’t known for her diplomacy, Kat wondered what had her tongue-tied. Finally, Janet nodded toward Kat’s screen. “You’re working on old files, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Because you’re impartial. No horse in the race, so to speak. That’s why the Sheriff asked for you, specifically, isn’t it?”
Kat assumed so. “He didn’t say. He asked for this year. Because whoever did the books at the time used an older software program, I have to input some categories and numbers manually.”
“What year?”
“I’d rather not say, Janet.”
Janet took a step closer. “You have more loyalty to a Sheriff you barely see than the people you work with every day?” Janet had fifty pounds on Kat, and standing, gave off a menacing vibe even though she was perfectly harmless…Kat hoped.
“This is my job, Janet. I answer to Flynn, and he answers to the Sheriff.”
“Is there a problem?”
Both women turned to find Flynn standing a foot away, arms crossed.
Janet’s cheeks flushed an unattractive shade of red. “No. I was just asking her a question.”
“Did she give you an answer?”
Kat would have been quaking in her boots if he’d aimed that take-no-prisoners tone on her.
“Y…yes. I guess so.”
“Then, please, go back to your desk and finish your work. If you have any questions about the ongoing audits that this office will be conducting in the next few months, bring them to me. I chose Kat to do this job because she’s the most qualified of you all, and because, other than me, she’s been here the shortest amount of time.”
He looked around to be sure he had everyone’s attention. “Maybe it’s time to point out the elephant in the room and clear the air. I’ve been on the job two weeks and in that time I’ve seen nothing—” He paused to make his point. “Nothing that makes me believe the previous administration was anything but corrupt, self-serving and incompetent.”
The others exchanged looks.
“I’ve given you all the benefit of the doubt because I know what it’s like to work under a greedy, manipulative boss. I was young at the time and I’d just had the rug pulled out from under my cushy life. I needed the money that job provided simply to put gas in my car to get to work. But I left the job the first chance I got because right is right and wrong is going to catch up with you eventually.”
Nobody said a word. Kat felt her cheeks burn, too. She never had to lie or forge anything or break the law while she worked for Ken—mostly because other people did that sort of thing for him, but she’d put up with his groping, his innuendo and flagrant sexism the whole time she’d been here, simply because she needed the job.
But look what she’d given up. Her self-esteem for one thing.
Chewing on her bottom lip, she went back to work, making damn sure she filled in every blank and uncovered every single mistake or blatant lie.
Chapter Nine
‡
D-day.
Or, rather, P-day—as in his class’s historical monologue play—had finally arrived.
Brady knew his lines. Unlike half his class, he didn’t need a script to remember his monologue. The only part that made his stomach feel like he’d just eaten a box of live insects was his exchange with Chloe Zabrinski. Whenever she looked at him—or, George Washington, as he was supposed to be—she’d break into a giggle. A girl giggle. The kind he’d heard behind the backs of the hands of the girls in his class ever since he moved here.
He’d always assumed those snickers were trained at him. Now, he wasn’t so sure. Maybe she giggled because she was nervous. Like him.
“You two stand over there,” their teacher told them. “They’re opening the doors in a few minutes.”
“Is your mom coming?” Chloe asked.
He nodded. His throat felt too tight to risk a word. It might come out as squeaky as a cat toy.
“My dad and stepmom are here—and my new baby sister, Arya. Mom’s in Atlanta with my stepdad.”
“Is your dad’s name Paul?”
“Uh-huh.”
His grandmother told him all about the Zabrinski family one day when they were supposed to be playing Go Fish. “The grandmother was a witch, some say. She put a hex on a dishonest banker and he died a few days later. Nobody ever crossed Hilda Zabrinski.”
Brady liked the witchy part of the story. He wondered if she had a black cat, too. Then Grandma rattled off a bunch of names that didn’t mean anything to him. Sons and daughters-in-laws, grandchildren. But he remembered Paul’s name because he was the youngest, born a year or two before Brady’s mother. “I got to hold him once when his daddy brought him to the store,” Grandma said.
Brady wasn’t very old at the time—seven or eight, maybe, but he remembered thinking that didn’t sound right. If Mr. Zabrinski told GG he l
oved her, why didn’t he leave his wife and kids and marry her? Wasn’t GG good enough for him? Wasn’t Mom good enough to be a Zabrinski?
The idea made Brady mad.
He intended to ask the man the first chance he got.
He looked at Chloe so long she squirmed and touched her wig. “What? Is my wig crooked?”
“No. It’s okay. Your eyes are the same color as my mom’s.”
She made a face. “Jenna said you were weird, but I told her you were just super smart. Maybe she’s right.”
She thinks I’m super smart? Did that change things? No. Not really. “What about your grandparents? Are they coming today?”
If Chloe thought his question strange, she didn’t show it. “Maybe. They just got home from down south. They go to Arizona every winter. Grandma said they’re going to try to come.”
She kept reading her lines and closing her eyes afterward as if to memorize each word.
Too late for that, Brady thought. But he kept this opinion to himself.
He hoped her grandparents would come. He was curious to see what they looked like. After all, they might be his grandparents, too. Or, rather, her grandfather might be his grandfather.
How was it GG put it?
“I fell in love with the wrong man. He loved me, too, but he couldn’t marry me. His family would have disowned him if he’d tried. They were Catholics and they didn’t believe in divorce. Plus, I was half-Jewish and half-Hippie.” She’d laughed at that, but then she got sad. “Your mom doesn’t know how close she came to being Katherine Zabrinski from Marietta, Montana.”
*
Flynn fought the yawn that threatened to escape. He hated paperwork. What the hell was I thinking when I took this job?
Luckily, his cell phone rang. The Whitney Houston tune I Wanna Dance brought a smile to his face. “Hello, Tucker. Happy Hump Day.”
“Am I interrupting anything exciting—or vaguely humpish?”
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