Treasure and Protect: a small town romantic suspense novel (Heroes of Evers, TX Book 7)

by Lori Ryan

Justin packed their scraps and garbage back into the basket and handed her a glass of wine. “Scootch over,” he said, standing and carefully balancing the boat as she slid to one side of her seat.

  Cora gasped as the boat rocked and for a minute she thought they would both go over, but then he was settled on the seat next to her.

  Wine had sloshed over the rim of her glass, landing on her hand. Cora licked the drops that ran onto her wrist, then heard a groan from Justin.

  She looked over to find his eyes locked on her wrist.

  “You need to stop that,” he all but growled. It wasn’t an angry growl. It was the kind of growl that said he was at the edge of his control.

  She cleared her throat and lowered her hand. “Sorry.”

  “Ha!”

  She grinned at that. He was right. She wasn’t sorry. She appreciated that he wanted to do more with her than just make out, but she also liked the way she could make his eyes flash with lust. He’d been hiding that from her for so long, it was nice to finally see the effect she had on him.

  He slid an arm around her and buried his head in her neck, groaning again. “SO damned tempting. You smell like jasmine.”

  She flushed. “It’s my soap. I love jasmine. I’m surprised you can identify the smell. I would bet most men can’t.”

  “I have a lot of hidden skills.”

  “Like ninja skills?” she asked.

  “Yep. My hidden ninja jasmine identifying skills.” He sipped his wine. “I’m thinking of making a bucket list.”

  “Yeah?” She looked over at him. The sun was sinking in the sky and this side of the lake was quiet and peaceful. The sounds of laughter and kids playing came from the other side where a family campground and a long row of hunting cabins lined half of it. Getting over to the side they were on meant crossing through a lot of private land. Justin had gotten permission from the owners to cross through their gates and use their access ramp to the water.

  “I’m going to start working less and bring more people in to the charity to take some of the load off of my desk.”

  His shoulders, was more like it. He’d taken too much on for far too long and she knew he took it as a personal obligation more than a job.

  “I would have thought you’d crossed a lot of things off your bucket list when you were younger. Didn’t you say you were hopping from country to country partying?”

  Justin grimaced. “Yeah, it was pretty gross. But I think I can fill this bucket list with more meaningful things than blowing through money I did nothing to earn as fast as humanly possible.”

  “Like what?”

  He looked at his wine glass in the dimming light. “I’m not sure.”

  Cora couldn’t help but laugh, and when he scowled, she laughed harder.

  Eventually, she reached across the boat, feeling Justin put a steadying hand on her lower back as she did, and grabbed her purse. She handed her wine glass to him and dug in her bag for the small pad of paper and pen she kept there.

  She tossed her purse back to its spot and took her glass from Justin, settling the pad in her lap.

  “Let’s see,” she said, thinking for a minute. She wrote on the pad, covering it with her hand.

  “Are you writing my bucket list for me?”

  “I am.”

  He waited while she scribbled some more things and then took the notepad with a skeptical look and read aloud. “Spend the night in a haunted place.”

  He looked at her. “I like that one.”

  She offered a smug smile and he went back to the list.

  “Drive across the United States. Learn to bake an apple pie.” He looked at her again. “Wiseass.”

  She bumped him with her shoulder. “Keep reading.”

  “Sleep under the stars. Get a dog.”

  He’d reached the end of the list.

  “It’s a work-in-progress,” she said. “We’ll add to it as we go.”

  He took the pencil from her hand and wrote on the page before taking her wine glass. He set the empty wine glasses in the basket and showed her the list.

  “Kiss Cora Walker in a boat,” Cora read, then flushed, her cheeks heating.

  Justin tossed the pencil and the notepad into the basket and put one hand on her cheek, drawing her to him with the lightest of touches.

  She leaned into him as her lips parted and she was pretty damned sure she sighed. He brushed his lips against hers, so softly that she wasn’t sure he was touching her, but damned if it didn’t do things to her anyway.

  “I like my list,” he said, then closed in and kissed her deeply. A long, slow kiss that told her just how much he liked the last addition to the list.

  Cora moaned and tried to get closer to him. He lifted one of her legs and laid it across his lap, and she slid fully onto his lap. The sky had been growing darker and now the sun fell beneath the horizon as his hands moved over her and their bodies rocked together on the water.

  20

  “Do you need help?” Ashley asked as Cora stood to head to the kitchen.

  Cora smiled at her sister. Ashley and Garrett sat on the couch. Justin was in the armchair. They were having dinner together.

  Our heroine is buzzing with excitement. Cora’s internal narrator wouldn’t shut up, despite the fact she’d shown she had no talent for writing like Ashley.

  Still, Justin had given her some ideas for some of the more exciting scenes in Ashley’s books. Not the shoot-em-up kind of excitement. The between-the-sheets kind of excitement.

  “No, I got it. About ten more minutes for the rice to finish and we can eat.” She was making tofu with an Indian curry sauce.

  The smells filling the house told her it was going to be good. She planned to add extra spice to Justin’s serving since he liked spicy food.

  She checked the rice, then stirred the curry simmering in a pan. She pulled a large portion out and put it in a separate pan and began adding the seeds from the chilis she’d used in the initial sauce. She would let those cook down and then add a little chili oil, as well. It was some kind of chili oil she hadn’t heard of before but she’d found it in the hot sauce section of the grocery store and hoped it would be good.

  “Garrett, do you like your curry spicy?” She called out. She already knew Ashley didn’t.

  “Sure, spice is good!” Garrett called back.

  She didn’t want to change the underlying flavors of the sauce too much, but she wasn’t used to cooking spicy foods, so she wasn’t sure how much to add. She added what she thought of as a small dash of chili oil and then turned the temperature down and left it simmering on the stove before going back into the living room.

  “I haven’t felt sick for the last couple of weeks, so I’m hoping it’s over,” Ashley was saying. She and Garrett were beyond excited about the baby. Come to think of it, the whole family was.

  Ashley had been pregnant once as a teenager but she’d lost the baby during a violent attack from her foster father. This pregnancy would be different. This one was filled with hope and love and nothing but excitement for the baby to come.

  “I can’t wait to shop for tiny baby clothes,” Cora said, smiling at Ashley. “You know you have to find out what the baby is, so we can start shopping soon.”

  “It’s gonna be human, I’m pretty sure. At least, I think so,” Ashley said.

  “Wiseass.” Cora didn’t tell Ashley she’d already bought an adorable pair of ivory baby shoes that could be worn by either a boy or a girl. She couldn’t resist. They were too cute for words.

  Ashley grinned at her. “They’ll do another ultrasound in two weeks. As long as the baby is turned the right way and everything, they should be able to tell at that visit.”

  Cora’s phone beeped marking the end of the timer she’d set for the rice. She stood. “That’s the rice.”

  The others all stood and everyone followed her into the kitchen. She didn’t have a large dining room table to entertain guests at, so they’d be eating at her kitchen table.

>   She piled rice onto the plates and then spooned tofu and vegetables onto the plates, giving Garrett and Justin the spicier version of the curry. She set dishes of each of the curries on the table so people could get seconds if they wanted them. She also had a basket of naan bread she’d bought at the store and warmed up set in the middle of the table.

  Conversation was light and easy as they sat down to eat, but Cora was nervous, just the same. She wondered if it had been stupid to suggest the double date. Maybe it was too soon to be doing such couple-ish things. Was she pushing this along too hard, too fast? Would Justin run if he felt too much pressure?

  Garrett coughed and took a sip of his beer and Cora realized Justin was doing the same.

  “Oh no, did I make it too spicy?”

  Justin waved away the question. “No, it’s good.” He went back to eating, but she thought it might be with just a little too much gusto.

  Garrett took a spoonful of the milder version of the curry and mixed that with the curry on his plate. Before he continued eating.

  The conversation had stopped as Cora and Ashley watched the men eat. Cora knew she’d added too much chili oil. That was becoming abundantly clear as Justin continued to clear his throat a lot and a small sheen of sweat broke out on his forehead.

  “Justin, you don’t have to eat it. There’s plenty of the mild one left if you’d rather have that.” Cora fidgeted in her seat.

  Ashley laughed. “Aww, he’s making himself eat your crappy cooking.”

  “I’m not a crappy cook!” Cora said.

  “I love it,” Justin offered. Cora and Ashley ignored him. Garrett was damned near having an aneurism laughing at Justin at this point.

  Justin drank more beer.

  “You’re not normally a crappy cook,” Ashley continued, as though the dinner wasn’t devolving into some bizarro see-how-red-Justin-can-get show. “But, apparently, you don’t know how to make something spicy without killing people.”

  “Your nose is running,” Garrett said to Justin. Garrett had given up and added even more of the mild curry to his plate, stirring it into the concoction.

  Justin just shook his head and kept going.

  “It is sweet that he’s eating,” Ashley murmured.

  Cora tried to pull the plate away but Justin held it in place. “It’s good, Cora, really.”

  His voice came out a bit more croaky than it should have been. He sounded more like an amphibian than a man at this point.

  Cora chewed her lip and watched Justin as he grabbed for the naan and tried to use that to counter the spice.

  Ashley and Garrett were both laughing now.

  Justin took one more bite and seemed to put a great amount of effort into chewing and swallowing it, but she could see the sweat growing on his face.

  He held out about three more seconds before breaking for the refrigerator and grabbing the milk carton. He chugged straight from the carton.

  Maybe he’d gotten a mouthful with one of the dashes of straight chili oil she’d sprinkled on his plate just before serving it.

  21

  It was all over the town by noon. A group of kids playing at one of the houses near Mr. Knight’s property had found a metal drum sticking up out of the ground. Actually, it was only the corner of a drum. The rest of it had been buried deep under the ground.

  When the mom came out to see what the kids were banging on, she’d realized it might be related to the well poisoning and she’d called the police. They’d called in a state agency to look into it, and ten rusted barrels had been recovered from the site.

  “I doubt we’ll know anytime soon whether they’re related to the furniture company, but they have to be, don’t you think?”

  Cora listened as the women behind her in the diner talked. She was waiting for Laura, Ashley, Julie, and Presley to join her for lunch.

  “There’s no way it’s not related. I mean, really,” another woman said, “the furniture company had that storage facility out that way and now, these show up buried not ten miles down the road?”

  The two women were standing now, gathering their things. Cora looked up as her friends came from the other direction and sat down, Ashley taking the seat beside Cora, and Laura, Julia, and Presley slipping in across from her.

  It didn’t take long for the conversation to move to the drum discovery at their own table.

  “Okay, who has details to share?” Ashley asked.

  “I thought you would know,” Presley said. “You’re married to the Chief of Police.”

  Ashley shook her head. “He’s too by-the-book for me to get anything out of him.”

  “I heard the containers were too rusted to have any labels or anything like that, but there are some numbers stamped right into the metal,” Julia said. “I bet those match the furniture company.”

  Presley closed her menu and put it down. Cora wondered why she even looked at it. They’d all eaten at the diner so many times, there was no way they didn’t have the menu memorized.

  “They do.” Presley looked around like it was normal for her to have detailed information. It wasn’t at all normal.

  Presley and her boyfriend, James, both tended to steer clear of gossip. They were by far the most reserved people in their group of friends, choosing to stay home often, even when the whole group went out. James suffered from some serious PTSD so social situations could be hard on him.

  “I went over to the site this morning,” Presley said. “I wanted to see how far it was from the ranch so we’d know if we need to worry about this affecting the horses.”

  “Oh, that’s good thinking,” Ashley said.

  Presley was a former grand prix horse jumper. She kept her horse over at Bishop Ranch, the ranch owned by Laura’s husband’s family. It made sense that she’d have wanted to know right away if the discovery of buried chemicals might threaten her horse’s safety.

  “They weren’t letting people near the site, of course, but you could see what they were doing from the road.” She shrugged a shoulder. “It was interesting.”

  “So, how did you find anything out?” Cora asked. She’d thought of calling Ethan. He lived two houses over from where the drums had been found, and they were probably on land that once belonged to his family. She just hadn’t felt right calling for details when his dad was likely sick because of those drums.

  “I overheard some of the workers talking as they were leaving. They didn’t seem to notice that I was listening. One guy said the furniture company was screwed now and the other guy said a company representative was already scrambling to show those drums were turned over to a legitimate transport company who was supposed to take them to a disposal facility.”

  Cora frowned. “I wonder if they can prove that.”

  “I hope so,” Ashley said. “I know what’s happened to Mr. Knight is horrible, but I hate to think what will happen to all the people who work for the company if they shut down.”

  “It’s not just Mr. Knight anymore,” Cora said. “There are two kids on neighboring properties that were checked into the hospital. I haven’t heard what their exact diagnoses are, but I don’t think it’s good.”

  They were interrupted by Gina. “Hey ladies, we’re out of potatoes and I don’t have any more meatloaf, but the chicken sandwich today is to-die-for. Tina made a new secret sauce for it, and it’s going to make the menu permanently, it’s so good.”

  The women looked at each other for a stunned second. Even though the food the sisters served was all fantastic, they rarely added anything new to the menu.

  “The chicken sandwich, please,” they said in unison.

  “Four chicken sandwiches,” Gina said. “Ice teas all around?”

  The women nodded.

  Three days later, Cora pulled up in front of Mr. Knight’s house and got out of her car. The people from the state had left, but they’d sealed off a large area of what used to be Mr. Knight’s land and there were warning signs to keep people out. Cora would bet plenty of peo
ple had ignored the signs and any risk the barrels of crud might pose and went snooping anyway.

  She thought about skipping her Sunday delivery of muffins to Mr. Knight. Now that she knew Ethan was here living with him, she didn’t really need to come out and check on him or keep him company. Plus, it was a little weird since she’d had a few dates that went nowhere with Ethan. Still, they said they’d be friends and his dad had come to expect Sunday muffins. She hated to let him down.

  She took the plastic container out of the passenger seat, but left her purse and phone sitting on the seat. In the hill country, you didn’t need to worry about whether someone would steal your purse or your car when you went to visit someone. Not this far from town, at least.

  She’d doubled the muffin recipe this time, knowing Ethan and his dad would be fighting over them. Ethan’s truck wasn’t in front of the house, so she guessed he was working in town or out running errands.

  She knocked on the door, but it swung open when she did. “Mr. Knight?” She called out and stepped into the house. She’d found the door open plenty of times before and didn’t think anything of it. She should mention to Ethan that the door latch didn’t catch well. He could probably fix it for his dad.

  “Mr. Knight, it’s Cora Walker!”

  She walked through the entryway and turned toward the den to see if he was in his chair napping. He liked to sit in the beat-up armchair in front of the television, even though he rarely watched any shows.

  A shadow at the bottom of the stairs caught her eye as she turned and she changed course, heading deeper into the hallway toward the staircase.

  “Mr. Knight?”

  A crumpled form lay at the bottom of the stairs, still and silent. Dread and shock warred in Cora’s gut as she realized it was Mr. Knight.

  “Mr. Knight!”

  Cora dropped the muffins and her bag in the hall as she ran to his side.

  Full understanding dawned as she saw the blood. He was facing away from her, but when she came close, she saw the gash in his forehead. It was swollen and bruised and blood pooled beneath him.