by Nora Roberts
"Now I want my place. To do a good day's work, and be able to have a drink with a friend."
"And Brody?"
"I can't imagine not wanting him. He came back into the kitchen tonight, dragged me out the back."
"What? What?" Linda-gail set down her fresh beer so quickly, foam sloshed over the rim to dribble down the sides. "How did I miss this? What happened?"
"He wanted me to go back home with him."
"And you're here nursing a beer and listening to bad—and I do mean bad right at this particular moment—karaoke because?"
Reece's jaw set. "I'm not going back until I know he wants me. Not that he wants to protect me. I'm going to get a dog," she said with a scowl.
"I'm lost."
"If I only want protection, I'll get a damn dog. I want a lover on equal terms. And it I'm going to be in that cabin with him, I don't want to feel like a guest. He's never even offered to give me a drawer in his dresser.
Pouting now, Linda-gail propped her chin back on her hand. "Men suck."
"They do, entirely. I'm so pissed off that I'm in love with him."
With a mournful look, Linda-gail tapped her glass to Reece's. "Right there with you."
Then she glanced toward the bar and noted that Lo was telling his troubles to one of the waitresses. One of the women she knew bed bounced on at one time or another.
"Let's dance."
Reece blinked. "What?"
"Let's go over, see if a couple of those fly-fishing types want to take a turn on the dance floor."
The dance floor consisted of a stingy strip of wood in front of the stage. And the fly-fishing types were rowdy and half-lit. "I don't think so."
"Well, I'm going over and pick me one out of the pack." She shoved back. She dug in her purse first, pulled out a tube of lipstick. She painted her lips perfectly—a bold, kick-ass red—without the benefit of a mirror. "How do I look."
"A little dangerous just now. You ought to—"
"That's perfect." Shaking her hair back, Linda-gail glided over, making sure she moved into Lo's line of sight. Then she braced her palms on the table where the three men sat, leaned over.
Reece couldn't hear what was being said. She didn't have to. The men were grinning; Lo looked murderous.
Just a bad idea, Reece thought. Those kind of games were always a bad idea. But Linda-gail was sauntering hand in hand with one of the men while his companions whistled and cheered. She led him to the strip of floor, put her hands on his shoulders. And led with her hips.
At the table, the two left behind whooped. One of them shouted: "Go for it. Chuck!"
And Chuck planted his hands on Linda-gail's ass.
Even with the distance, even through the blue haze of smoke, Reece saw Lo's knuckles go white on the long neck of his beer.
Seriously bad idea, Reece decided. Her conclusion was confirmed when Lo slapped the bottle back on the bar and strode onto the dance floor.
She could hear bits. "It's my ass, you jerk," from Linda-ga.il. "Mind your own business, buddy," from Chuck.
The two women who'd moved from Shania Twain to a slurred version of "Stand by Your Man" stopped singing and watched in bleary fascination.
Chuck shoved Lo; Lo shoved Chuck. Linda-gail put her full hundred and twenty pounds into it and shoved them both.
Any hopes that would be the end of it shattered when Reece saw Chuck's friends push up from the table.
The small herd of cowboys playing pool stepped forward. Lo was, after all, one of their own.
She was going to be in the middle of a bar fight, Reece thought with full amazement. About to be caught in a melee in a karaoke bar in Wyoming.
Unless she managed to grab Linda-gail and run.
She glanced around quickly to check the direction and distance to the exit.
And saw, moving through the noisy, surged-to-its-feet crowd, a man wearing an orange hunters cap.
Her breath hitched and tore. She lurched up, knocking her half-full beer to the floor, where the glass shattered with a sound like a gunshot. She stumbled, shoving into one of the cowboys as she tried to get clear, and sent him bumping hard into one of the fishermen.
Fists flew. Onstage, the women screamed and clutched at each other. Bodies thudded against, or in some cases actually leaped onto, table and bar. Glassware, bottles crashed and shattered, wood splintered. She swore she heard someone yell "Yee haw!" before an elbow caught her along the cheekbone and sent her sprawling onto the floor and into spilled beer.
REEKING Of BEER and smoke, holding an ice pack to her throbbing cheek, Reece sat in the sheriff's office. If she'd been more humiliated in her life, her brain wouldn't allow the previous incident to surface. "Last thing I expected from you was to pull you in here out of a bar fight."
"It wasn't in my plans for the evening. It just happened. And I wasn't fighting."
"You pushed Jud Horst into one Robert Gavin, inciting the incident. You threw your beer."
"No, I didn't! I knocked my beer over when I tried to get up from the table, and I slipped into Jud. It was an accident."
"You were drinking," Rick continued.
"A half a beer. For God's sake. I was in a bar, of course I was drinking. So was everyone else. And I wasn't drunk. I panicked, okay. Fine. I panicked. I saw…"
"You saw?"
"I saw a man in an orange hat in the back of the crowd."
Rick's weary, annoyed expression sharpened. "You saw the man you previously saw by the river?"
"I don't know. I couldn't see that well. It all happened so fast. I got up. I wanted to get away. I wanted to see him better."
"Which was it?"
"Both," she snapped."I was scared. I knocked the beer over. I slipped That's all."
He let out a windy sigh. He'd been pulled out of bed by a screaming call from one of Clancy's waitresses. He'd barely closed his eyes when he had to get up and dressed again, and go down to clean up the mess in the bar.
Now he had property damage, bodily injuries, possible civil and criminal charges to wade through.
"Min Hobalt claims you struck her. I got another statement here that says you shoved over a table, causing a beer mug to land on the foot of a Ms. Lee Shanks from San Diego. I've got a tourist with a broken toe."
"I didn't hit anyone." Had she? "Not on purpose. I was trying to get clear. I got jabbed in the face. I was seeing stars. I was scared. I fell into a table, which is a hell of a lot different than shoving one over. I got hit in the face," she continued. "I've got bruises over most of my body."
He puffed out a breath. "Who swung first?"
"I don't know. The guy they called Chuck gave Lo a little shove; Lo gave him one back. Then I saw… I saw the hat."
"You saw the hat."
"I know how ridiculous that sounds. And yes, yes, I know a lot of men around here wear those damn hats. But I was jumpy because I could see a fight coming, then I saw the hat, and I freaked out a little. Big surprise."
"Clancy said he was moving in to break it up when that glass hit the floor. Says it was like the bell going off in the boxing ring. And when that cowboy bumped the tourist, that's all it took."
"So it's my fault," Reece said evenly. "Fine. Charge me with inciting a riot, or whatever you want. Just give me some goddamn aspirin before you lock the cell."
"Nobody's going to lock you up. Chrisssake." Rick rubbed his face, pinched the bridge of his nose. "The thing is, you've got a habit of stirring things up. You had some trouble down at the hotel laundry today?"
"I…" Of course he knew about it. Brenda was tight as spandex with Debbie, the sheriff's wife. Reece imagined she'd been the hot topic of conversation around the Mardson dinner table that night.
"That was different. Someone played a joke on me. I didn't think it was funny." While he waited, brows lifted, for her to explain. Reece contemplated the wisdom of telling him the truth.
And the truth, she decided, would sound, at the moment, like nonsense. "It was nothing. It doe
sn't matter. Do you interrogate everyone who has words with the hotel's desk clerk, or is it just me?"
His face hardened. "I've got a job to do, Reece. You don't have to like how I do it. Now I've got to sort through this mess. I may need to talk to you again tomorrow."
"Then I'm free to go?"
"You are. You want Doc to look at that cheek?"
"No." She got to her feet. "I didn't start what happened tonight, and I didn't finish it. I just got caught in it." She turned for the door.
"You've got a habit of getting caught in things. And, Reece, if you jump and swing every tune you see orange, we're going to have a problem."
She just kept going. She wanted to go home where she could burn off her anger and humiliation in private.
But first, she noted, she'd have to get through Brody.
Since he was sitting in one of the visitors' chairs in the outer office, legs stretched out, eyes half closed, she tried to simply go around him.
"Hold on there, Slim." He got lazily to his feet. "Let's have a look at that face."'
"Nothing to see."
He got to the door first, closed his hand around the handle, then just leaned on it. "You smell like the barroom floor."
"I spent some time on it tonight. Will you excuse me?"
He opened the door, then curled his fingers around her arm the minute they were outside. "Let's not go through the ridiculous routine about you walking home alone. It's late, I'm driving."
Since most of her body ached, including the knee she must have fallen on during the scuttle, she didn't bother to argue. "Fine. What are you doing here?"
"Linda-gail called me in case you needed somebody to post bail." He pulled open the passenger-side door. "You sure keep life interesting."
"I didn't do anything."
"You stick with that."
She stewed until he'd skirted the hood and climbed behind the wheel. "You think this is funny?"
"It has several of the classic elements necessary for farce. Yeah, I think it's funny. The only other woman I've ever had to spring from the cops was a stripper I knew back in Chicago who beaned a guy with a beer bottle when he got a little overenthusiastic during a lap dance at a bachelor's party. She was a lot more grateful than you."
"Linda-gail's the one who called you, not me." Reece folded her arms, and wished desperately for ice and aspirin. "And it's her fault anyway. None of this would've happened if she hadn't gotten a wild hair to make Lo jealous."
"Why'd she do that?"
"Because she's in love with him."
"She's in love with Lo, so she incited a bar fight. Makes perfect sense." In the bizarro World women lived in. "Okay, Slim, your place or mine?"
"Mine. You can drop me off and consider your Good Samaritan duties at an end."
He started to drive, tapping his fingers against the steering wheel. "Do you want to know why I got out of bed and came to get you when Linda-gail called?"
Reece closed her eyes. "Because you have a need to play savior for strippers and lunatics."
"Maybe. Maybe I care about you."
"Maybe you do. Let me know when you decide."
"Damn it, you know I care about you. Why else would I have been lying awake in bed cursing you when your partner in crime called?"
"I couldn't say."
"I think about you. It gets in my way." Resentment rippled in his voice. "You get in my way."
"As this is the second time you've popped up in front of me tonight. I'd say you're getting in my way." She stirred enough to shift in her seat when he pulled up behind her car. "You wanted me out of your house. I left. You wanted me to back up. back off, I did. Your whim changes, Brody, that's not my problem."
"Hard-ass," he retaliated. "I felt squeezed this morning. You start off with Italian wedding soup, for God's sake."
"What's wrong with Italian wedding soup? It was one of my specialties when… Oh, you idiot. Wedding? You shudder in fear of the word?"
He very nearly squirmed. "Nobody's shuddering."
"I'm going to make soup and you get it into your pinhead that I'm picking out the china? Jerk."
She started to yank the door handle, but he leaned over her, clamped his hand on hers. He preferred being pissed off to squirming. "Making the bed, offering to do my laundry. What do I want for breakfast."
She put her tree hand on his chest, shoved. "I slept in the bed, so I made it. You let me stay at your place when I needed a sanctuary, and I was doing laundry anyway. I thought I could pay you back a little by doing some of the housework. I like to cook for you. I like to cook period. That's all it was."
"You said you loved me."
"I did. I didn't ask you to love me back. I didn't write off for my subscription to Brides magazine. I never even asked you to clean out a drawer so I had somewhere to put my things. I never asked you for anything but companionship."
It was hell being absolutely wrong. '"Okay, so I overreacted—"
"So you said before. I'm tired, Brody. If you want to hash this through, it'll have to be some other time. I want to go to bed."
"Wait. Damn it." He sat back, raking his fingers through his hair, his expression both pained and frustrated. "I was out of line this morning. I'm sorry."
She said nothing for a moment. "Ow. I bet that hurt you as much as my face hurts me."
"Maybe more. Don't make me repeat it."
"Once does the job." She touched his arm, then reached for the door again.
"Will you wait? Jesus. Listen."
At the ensuing silence, she studied his face. "I'm listening."
"Okay. Before you said you didn't want me to take care of you. That's fine. The thought of wanting to take care of you is scaring the hell out of me. But I want to be with you. There's no one else I want to be with. Can we get back to that?"
She pushed open her door, then stopped. Looked at him. Life was so terrifyingly short. Who knew that better than she did? "That's all I was looking for. Do you want to come up?"
"Yeah." He waited while she walked around the car, then held his hand out for hers. "Come here a minute." Leaning down, he brushed his lips gently over her bruised cheek. "Ouch."
"You can say that again. You ought to know I'm not going to be very good company. All I want is a hot bath, a bottle of aspirin and a soft bed."
"You don't have a soft bed."
"I'll compensate." She unlocked the door. "I feel like I've been in a soccer match. As the ball."
As she opened the door, he pulled her back, shifted his body in front of hers.
"What's that sound?" she demanded. "Do you hear? It sounds like water running."
"Stay right here."
Of course she couldn't, and eased in behind him when he stepped in. started across the room. "In the bathroom," she whispered. "The door's closed. I never close the door because I need to be able to see inside the room when I come in. There's water running. Oh God,
