“I really wish I was,” he answered in an eerily subdued voice.
Rae took a deep breath, telling herself to let him drop the story right here, to just walk away before this got any worse. But she found that she couldn’t. She was rooted to the spot and would remain that way because she needed answers.
She always did.
It was her failing.
“Was this someone you were pursuing, or someone who got away?” she asked him.
He finished the last dish and handed it to her. “Someone I was pursuing.”
“And?” she asked. Rae set aside the dish he had handed her and just looked at Sully, waiting for him to give her more.
“And I caught him. My team and I did,” he amended, because, in the end, it had been a team effort, although there had been a very brief period when it had been just him and the depraved psychopath in that room. Along with almost an overpowering desire to wipe him off the face of the earth and rid the world of this monster. It had taken everything he had not to blow the man away. That’s when he knew he had to get away. “Look, no disrespect, but I don’t want to talk about it.”
She raised her hands as if to show him that she understood what he was saying. That it was hands-off and as one human being to another, she gave him that.
“I understand,” she told him in a calm voice, and for the first time since he’d met her, he felt as if they were just two people having a conversation. “Why don’t you go to your room?” she told him. “I’ll finish these. They’re almost done, anyway.”
But he shook his head and remained where he was, washing the one remaining pot as well as all the silverware that had been used at dinner. “I always finish whatever I start.”
She accepted his explanation, and they worked in silence for the last few minutes until the pots and dishes were done and put away. Only then did Sully wipe off his hands and begin to leave the kitchen.
Rae stood there quietly. She was going to let him leave, but then at the last minute she called after him. “Sully.”
He turned around in the doorway, raising one eyebrow. Waiting.
“Good for you,” she told him.
He didn’t know if she was referring to what he’d said about always finishing what he started, or if she was commenting on the fact that he had caught the killer who had terrorized so many people for a year and a half. But he didn’t ask; he just smiled and nodded before he slipped out of the room.
He’d said enough about the latter subject for now.
Chapter 7
Over the next few days, Sully found that the work on the J-H Ranch was more or less a carbon copy of the first day. His workday started at sunrise and went until sunset. After his day was over, he had dinner at the ranch house. He had breakfast there, as well. Lunch came in the form of whatever was packed into the brown bags that had been left for him and the other two men.
Daily conversation while he worked came in the form of grumbling and resentful looks from Rawlings. In Sully’s estimation, the other man, Warren, wasn’t much of a talker, either, but when Warren did talk, it was usually about something benign ranging from sports to how much everything seemed to cost these days. Unlike Rawlings, however, Warren didn’t complain about the size—or lack thereof—of his weekly pay. He seemed satisfied with the sum.
Sully had a feeling that Warren was new to this life and that the man wasn’t any more of a wrangler than he was. Still, when it came to getting the job done, Warren did the best he could and tried to hold up his end.
Rawlings made no secret of the fact that he had no use for either of them and even less for the chores that were assigned to them.
Cleaning out the stalls in the morning left him in a particularly foul mood. From what Sully could gather, Rawlings didn’t much like horses. Working with them, trying to get them used to their saddles, was particularly disagreeable for him. Sully had no doubt that the horses sensed that.
“Why’re you working on a horse ranch?” Sully couldn’t help asking the wrangler as all three were finishing up their daily chores in the stable.
“’Cause he’s afraid of cattle,” Warren confided, then added in a more audible voice, “I don’t much care for cattle myself. Takes next to nothing to spook a herd and start a stampede.”
Not having any experience in that area, Sully had no idea if Warren was pulling his leg or sharing an actual experience.
“I’ll take your word for it,” he told Warren affably.
“I wouldn’t take his word for anything,” Rawlings declared, raising his voice from over in the far corner of an adjacent stall.
“What’s he got against you?” Sully asked Warren.
The other man shrugged, his shoulders moving loosely within the shirt that appeared to be two sizes too large for him. Sully had already decided that Warren had either lost a lot of weight or was wearing someone else’s castoffs. In either case, he didn’t see it as really being any of his business.
“Beats me,” Warren confided with a knowing smile. “Most likely the same thing he’s got against everybody. He was probably one of those kids whose kindergarten teacher would’ve told his mama that he didn’t play well with others.”
The comment, completely out of left field, had Sully wondering what Warren’s story was. The man definitely didn’t fit in here, Sully thought. Not any more than he really did.
Although he told himself to forget about the matter, Sully couldn’t help wondering about Warren and about what had prompted the man to come to Forever and to work on the ranch in the first place. He didn’t seem comfortable doing any sort of ranch work. He looked happier having his head in the book that he carried around with him and opened whenever he took a break.
Although Sully had come out here to isolate himself, to just work with his hands until he’d managed to completely deplete his brain of all thought, his mind seemed to have other ideas.
It was as if he really needed to find some sort of a puzzle for his brain to hone it and make it sharp again.
He kept on wondering about Warren as well as why Rawlings seemed to be both so irritated by the man and so interested in Warren at the same time.
Puzzling things out helped make the time go by for Sully.
* * *
“There’s a party tomorrow at Murphy’s,” Rae said by way of an announcement the following Friday evening when they were all gathered at the table. “Miss Joan wanted me to tell all three of you that you’re welcomed to come. The whole thing starts at five.”
“Miss Joan?” Sully repeated, puzzled. “But didn’t you just say that it was being held at Murphy’s?”
He hadn’t been off the ranch since he’d arrived, but there wasn’t much to memorize when it came to Forever’s locale. He knew that there was only one saloon and one place to eat, and the two didn’t cross over into each other’s territories. That meant that Murphy’s didn’t serve food and Miss Joan didn’t serve alcohol in her diner. Had that suddenly changed?
“I did and it is,” Rae said, finishing the last piece of fried chicken on her plate. “In keeping with her no-alcohol rule, Miss Joan decided it would be better to hold the party at Murphy’s. She’s having Angel make the food,” Rae added quickly, anticipating the next question that one of the men might ask her—most likely Sully.
Warren looked happy about the upcoming diversion. “What’s the occasion?”
“Cash and his wife are going to have another baby—Cash is Miss Joan’s stepgrandson,” Rae interjected, glancing toward Sully, who she assumed might not be up on who was related to whom just yet.
“He’s the town lawyer, right?” Warren asked.
“One of them,” Rae answered.
For his part, Rawlings appeared less than impressed by the promise of a party or its excuse for being thrown. “Yeah, whatever.”
“Well, count me in,” Warren told the forema
n with a happy grin. “I could definitely go for an activity that doesn’t have any dirt or blisters associated with it.”
“The liquor there gonna be free?” Rawlings asked, suddenly speaking up as the question occurred to him.
Rae made a calculated guess. “Probably up to a point.”
Rawlings made an unintelligible sound, then said, “Yeah, well, maybe I’ll come—if I’m not doing anything else.”
Sully suppressed a laugh at Rawlings’s qualification. From his own experience these last two weeks, there was nothing to do here except for work. Granted, he wasn’t spending his nights in the bunkhouse—another bone of contention as far as Rawlings was concerned—but he sorely doubted that there was anything in that small building that Rawlings could find interesting enough to keep him away from a break in the combination of work and monotony.
“How about you?” Rae asked, trying not to sound like she was interested in his answer as she looked at the newest addition to the workforce on the ranch. “Are you planning on going?”
He thought of the unexpected invitation to a party. He supposed that the people weren’t really all that different, whether they were in Texas or in California. The idea of an impromptu party being thrown reminded him of his uncle Andrew back in Aurora. The former police chief had found his calling in whipping up culinary magic, and he would use any excuse imaginable to gather the family together and feed them.
Usually he didn’t even need an excuse. Andrew just put the word out to come if they were in the neighborhood. And invariably it seemed like everyone almost always was.
“Sure,” Sully answered. “You said five, right?”
She nodded, wiping off her fingers. “Right.”
“Just who’s going to be at this so-called party?” Rawlings asked suspiciously.
It seemed as if the man was always suspicious. About everything, Sully thought.
“Everyone who says yes,” Rae answered simply. Then, sounding a bit annoyed, she told Rawlings, “Miss Joan didn’t give me a personal accounting.”
Sully wondered if the woman was any friendlier in a party setting than she appeared to be at the ranch. Finding an answer to that question was reason enough for him to attend.
“Dishwasher fixed yet?” he asked. He’d waited until after Warren and Rawlings had left the table and gone to the bunkhouse.
Rae sighed. She’d meant to get to that, but every day there was something to make her forget until it was too late to call Mick, the town’s auto mechanic and all-around repair guru.
“I haven’t had time to call Mick and tell him about it.” Rae pressed her lips together, relaying the information begrudgingly. She assumed that that would be the end of it.
But it wasn’t.
“Mick?” Sully asked.
“He’s the local mechanic,” she explained, realizing that he probably didn’t know that. Why should he? His car was running fine. “Mick fixes cars mostly, but he’s pretty handy fixing other things as well—as long as it’s nothing fancy. Why are you asking?”
“That’s my roundabout way of finding out if you needed help with the dishes again.” Even as he said it, he was already taking several plates into the kitchen. He placed them into the sink.
“You don’t have to keep doing this,” she insisted, exasperated, as she followed behind him.
“Sinking my hands into sudsy water is just about the only way I seem to be able to get the day’s dirt out from under my fingernails. In a way,” he said, tongue in cheek, “you’re doing me a favor.”
The expression on her face told him she wasn’t buying that. “Well, just remember I didn’t ask you to do this,” she told him.
“I’ll remember,” Sully replied. Then, unable to suppress the question, he had to ask her. “Why do you always sound so angry about everything?”
“Why do you always ask so many questions?” Rae countered. She absolutely hated being put on the spot.
Getting the rest of the dishes and putting them into the sink, Sully shrugged in response to her question. “I guess that’s just the detective in me.”
Had she caught him in a lie? Rae wondered. “I thought the whole point of you being out here was for you to forget you were a detective.”
“No, not forget I was a detective,” Sully corrected. “Just to forget what I’d seen as a detective. There’s a difference.”
“Whatever you say,” she answered, doing her best to sound totally uninterested in the subject, although in actuality, she wasn’t. That was part of what was bothering her. She didn’t want to take an interest in this man. Her only job was to keep this ranch running efficiently, and that meant taking care of the horses and the men only in so far as having them take care of the horses. “I don’t really care.”
“You didn’t answer my question,” he reminded her. When she merely stared at him, he repeated it. “Why do you always sound as if you’re so angry about everything?”
She didn’t drop her eyes from his. “Maybe because I am.”
“About everything?” Sully questioned. That didn’t sound right to him unless she was a sociopath—and she wasn’t.
“No, just about having people sticking their noses where they don’t belong,” she retorted.
“You make it hard for people to like you,” he told her philosophically.
Reaching for the container of dishwashing soap underneath the sink, he measured out an amount and turned the water on. Bubbles filled the sink.
“Maybe I don’t want people to like me,” she told Sully.
“Everyone wants people to like them,” Sully contradicted mildly.
Rae laughed harshly in response to his statement. “Tell that to Rawlings.”
“Okay,” Sully said agreeably, pretending to reconsider what he’d just said. “Almost everyone wants to be liked—at least by one person,” he qualified further. And then glancing at her, he asked with a hint of a smile, “Better?”
“Better would be if you stopped talking altogether, but I guess you just can’t help yourself,” Rae answered as if she was resigning herself to that fact.
She grudgingly grabbed the dish Sully had just washed and was now holding out to her. The dish was wet and she’d expected that, but for some reason it seemed more slippery than the last one he had handed her, and it slipped out of her hand.
Rae made a grab for it at the same time that Sully did.
Going for it simultaneously, neither one of them caught the dish, but they did manage to bang their foreheads against one another.
The resulting impact had them both falling backward and landing on the floor.
“I’m sorry,” Sully apologized.
“No more than I am,” Rae retorted, rubbing the sore spot on her forehead.
Sully tried to grab her hand to help her up, and she pulled back just as he did so. The unexpected maneuver threw him off balance. This time he would have wound up on top of Rae if, at the last minute, he hadn’t anticipated that unplanned collision and managed to brace his hands on the floor on either side of her.
If anyone had looked in just then, it would look as if Sully was doing a rather erotic push-up directly over Rae’s body.
Rae’s heart suddenly launched into double time. “Are you planning to get up or just loom over me like that?” she asked, trying very, very hard not to sound breathless.
Sully had not only knocked the wind out of her, his close proximity had also managed to do something else. Something she hadn’t been anticipating.
Something she told herself that she didn’t like—but she knew she was lying to herself.
“Do you mean I have a choice?” Sully deadpanned, his face only inches from hers.
“Not if you don’t want to spend the weekend walking funny,” she warned him.
Sully laughed in response, something else she hadn’t expected.
Contact had no sooner registered than Sully stepped back, putting some distance between them.
But the unexpected contact had done its damage. It had left an impression, and she felt her body tingling in response.
“Are you all right?” Sully asked. She could feel his eyes traveling over the length of her as he went on to ask, “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
“I’m fine and no, you didn’t hurt me.” Rae all but fired the words at him in staccato fashion, struggling to get herself under control.
What was wrong with her? she silently demanded.
“I didn’t damage that happy-go-lucky disposition of yours, either, did I?” Sully asked with a touch of amusement.
Picking up the dish that was still on the floor, Rae handed it to him, a somber expression on her face. “This has to be washed again.”
His eyes met hers, and he found himself struggling not to say anything. Struggling, too, not to do what he found himself wanting to do. That incredibly brief contact between them had managed to arouse things within him that he had just assumed had gone dormant.
His last manhunt had forced him to shut down nearly all of his emotions in order for him to deal with the things he had to on an almost daily basis. He couldn’t allow himself to feel and do the things he had to do.
The trouble with shutting things down was that after a while, they just naturally remained that way.
And he had started to believe that they always would.
It was surprising as well as a relief to discover that he had been wrong about that.
But Sully had to admit that it was a little unnerving to have discovered all this while making unexpected bodily contact with a woman who seemed to cherish her reputation of having a tongue like a viper.
The smile on Sully’s rather full lips managed to unnerve her. It was different from his usual occasional smile.
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