Читать книгу Cowboy Cavalry - Alice Sharpe - Страница 11

Chapter Two

Frankie was almost positive there was more to Kate West than met the eye, although there was nothing at all wrong with what met the eye. Midtwenties, long spun-gold hair, forget-me-not blue eyes, skin like polished seashells.

But there was something else, too. How many times had she looked at her watch for instance? Gary hadn’t said a word about her being distracted when he met her. Did that mean she normally wasn’t or had Gary been too engrossed in preproduction dilemmas to notice?

She’d contacted Gary first. He’d immediately called their historian, Patrick Lowell, to make sure she was legitimate. Pat was a fuddy-duddy of a man, a former junior college teacher turned freelance researcher, hired by Gary for several projects through the years and thorough with dates and facts. He’d confirmed Kate’s claims. Gary called Frankie who left the ranch in Falls Bluff and drove all night to meet with Gary and Pat.

Pat had admitted he didn’t know much about Kate’s current situation, just that she’d once been a grammar schoolteacher in Arizona. He’d suggested Frankie invite her to the ranch so she could meet the family. Gary had seconded that idea. Obviously, they both thought Frankie’s family would be more successful at winning her over than Frankie would.

But Frankie had settled on lunch instead and he’d gone to the restaurant dead set against inviting her anywhere. Once she’d met everyone, then what? What in the world would he do with a stranger intent on causing him problems? It was a busy time of year and taking care of her would fall on his shoulders. He really didn’t like babysitting people. Left to his own devices, he would have invited her to do her best to convince the world the documentary didn’t deserve to be made and he’d do his best to prove her wrong by making sure it turned out so damn good, there could be no doubt.

But he wasn’t in this by himself; Gary was involved, too, and so when Kate unconsciously laid the groundwork for an invitation, he went ahead and made it. The truth was that getting to know her was not an unpleasant idea. Who didn’t like a little mystery in a woman? He was even a bit disappointed that she wanted to drive separately.

But first he wanted to know what she was hiding and that’s why he’d paid for lunch and left the restaurant before her, which wasn’t easy as she was obviously champing at the bit to be gone herself.

Why? Had she privately arranged to talk to the backers earlier than she’d claimed? Had she agreed to the ranch trip just to mislead him? He intended to find out, even if it meant he had to sneak around a little.

From the restaurant exit, he glanced back at their table to see the waiter boxing his untouched lunch. Waste not, want not, huh? Maybe she had a dog. He hurried to his car and had just ducked inside when she stepped onto the sidewalk. She turned a fair number of heads as she walked down the block, blond hair floating out behind her in the gentle breeze, skirt swirling around excellent legs, small white paper bag dangling from one hand.

Babysitting her wasn’t going to be that difficult, he admitted to himself. He just had to remember to treat her like a loaded keg of dynamite and not the living, breathing, sexy beauty that she was.

As she came to a halt at a nearby bus stop, her gaze darted between her wristwatch and the street until a bus passed Frankie’s parked car and pulled to a stop in front of her. She boarded. He wasn’t sure where it was bound because he’d been too busy admiring Kate’s willowy form to notice the destination. He followed along behind as it made its way through traffic, expecting a downtown route. Instead it slowly made its way toward the suburbs and one of the many small communities surrounding Seattle proper. He continued following its stop-and-go route, watching as Kate made a couple of transfers, curious now despite the increasingly remote possibility her destination had anything to do with him. She finally got off the bus and began walking.

At first, the streets and sidewalks were crowded and all he had to do was drive slow and stay behind her. She kept making turns that led her away from the artsy-craftsy streets toward a row of ordinary houses, circa 1950. He stayed as far back as he could, her gold hair a beacon up ahead until she turned another corner and he sped up to find her again.

Many of the houses on this street were in the process of renovation but a few looked as though they hadn’t been tinkered with for decades. He stopped as she opened the gate to one such house and walked across the barren yard. It appeared to him she knocked before unlocking the door with a key she took from her shoulder bag.

So, what had he learned? Not much. She apparently lived on a street showing signs of promise in a house whose property value undoubtedly superseded the worth of the structure.

As he sat there undecided about what to do next, the door opened again and a small older woman emerged wearing nothing but a baggy sleeveless dress. The door swung closed behind her as she walked across the yard and out through the gate, right into the middle of the street. She stopped suddenly and stared down at her bare feet, clutching her thin arms with her hands, her gaze traveling the block as though trying to place herself.

Frankie looked toward the door. No sign of Kate.

He pulled the car forward and got out. He stood there a second, kind of lurking behind a bush, willing Kate to come out and take care of this woman before he had to blow his cover and do it himself. The door stayed closed. A car came around the corner and started down the street and he knew it was time to act. He took off his jacket as he crossed to the woman and draped it over her shoulders. The car sped by them and Frankie suppressed a wave of anger lest the old woman thought it was directed at her.

“Can I help you?” he asked gently.

She didn’t respond. He applied soft pressure to her arm to urge her to come with him back to the curb. She looked up at him as though just aware of his presence. “Do you know where Dennis is?”

“No, ma’am, I’m sorry, I don’t,” he said.

She looked down the street but didn’t move.

Another car had pulled to a stop a few feet away and the impatient driver tapped the horn. The old lady jumped.

Frankie cast the driver a look that would have sent a pack of coyotes off at a run. “Ma’am, please,” he said. “Come with me.”

She peered at his face and blinked. “Do you know where Dennis is?”

“Gram!” Kate yelled from the yard. She tore open the gate and ran out into the street, glancing up at Frankie as she ground to a halt in front of him. To say she looked surprised to see him was an understatement. Shocked was more like it. The old woman gazed at Kate without changing expression. Kate’s arm wrapped protectively around her shoulders. “Your dinner is almost ready, Gram,” she said softly. “Let’s go back inside. It’s chilly out here.”

“I can’t find Dennis,” the old lady mumbled.

“We’ll look for him in the house,” Kate promised as she led her grandmother back to the yard where Frankie now saw another woman waiting on the porch. Kate took Frankie’s jacket from around her grandmother’s shoulders, hooked it on the gate and glanced back at him, anger blazing in her eyes.

“Kate,” he said but she shook her head and held up a hand as if to silence him. Without another word, she took her grandmother’s arm and ushered her quickly inside the house, the other woman following behind. The door closed with a resounding thud.

Frankie, still in the middle of the street walked toward the car that had honked. The driver’s window rolled open.

“You proud of yourself?” he asked the driver.

A narrow-faced man about his own age responded. “Just get off the damn street before I run you down!”

There had been a period in Frankie’s life where he would have pulled this bozo out of his car and punched him square in the nose. The desire to do just that was still there but time had tempered him. He stepped toward the curb and the car sped by.

Frankie retrieved his jacket from the fence and stood there awhile, sure Kate would come back outside and demand an explanation although he wasn’t sure what he could offer. The door stayed resolutely shut. She’d really meant that final shake of her head. He finally got back in his car and drove off toward the airport where he rented a room for the night.

Would Kate show up tomorrow? Doubtful bordering on hell, no. He didn’t have her phone number. Of course, he could call Gary and get it, but then Gary would sense there was a problem...no thanks, he didn’t want to start fielding questions, not yet anyway. Besides, part of him admitted he’d already intruded enough.

The older woman was obviously Kate’s grandmother but who was Dennis? Did these people have something to do with Kate’s desire to stop the filming of the documentary?

Why hadn’t he quit following her when it was obvious she wasn’t going to a business meeting? What had compelled him to know about her? Was he treating her like an adversary? That was fine if that was the case because she was an adversary, she’d chosen that role when she announced her intentions.

As he lay in bed that night, he knew that he had probably just sabotaged his own project and he swore under his breath. If Kate refused to talk to any of them again and went instead to the backers fueled by her anger with him, he didn’t think he’d have the stomach to try to stop her.

* * *

“IS THERE ANYTHING I can get you before I leave?” Rose McFadden whispered from the doorway.

Kate glanced from her slumbering grandmother to the retired nurse and shook her head. Her voice equally soft, she responded. “No thanks.”

“I’m going home to pack a bag but I’ll be back tomorrow morning bright and early, okay?”

“I don’t know,” Kate said. “I’m not sure—”

“Now, please, child, listen to me,” Rose said, stepping into the room. “I’d hate to see you cancel your trip because of what happened today. Anyone can make a mistake and forget to lock the door after themselves.”

“I never have before,” Kate said. She’d been preoccupied when she got home, her mind processing the lunch with Frankie Hastings, reliving the conversation, wondering if she’d slipped up anywhere. And as a result, she hadn’t relocked the door and her grandmother had walked outside into the middle of the street. If Frankie hadn’t been there who knows what would have happened?

“I’ll be here like we arranged,” Rose said. “I promised Mr. Abernathy I’d help you and your grandmother and I intend to keep my word. Try to get some sleep.”

Kate sat in the darkened room for what seemed like hours, the sound of her grandmother’s breathing the only noise in the whole world. Today was the longest she’d been gone in a year. How could she leave again? What had she been thinking to agree to this?

List your choices, her subconscious demanded. Easy: zero.

She glanced from the stack of bills on the corner of the desk visible through the open doorway to the unframed window she was in the process of replacing here in the bedroom. The house needed new plumbing, the roof was forty years old and she suspected termites had had their way with the foundation. She was going under, not slowly, but fast.

When Kate’s grandfather had died, Kate had cried for days. That was the last time she’d allowed herself tears. She didn’t even cry for Luke because she was afraid if she started she’d never quit. But now she felt them swell in her eyes and roll down her cheeks and she seemed unable to stop them.

“Dennis?”

Kate’s head jerked toward the bed where she found her grandmother staring up at her. “No, Gram, Grandpa isn’t here right now. It’s just me, Kate.”

Gram blinked a couple of times as though trying to process Kate’s words. She’d once had dark blue eyes like Kate’s but as the fire inside her soul slowly fizzled away, it seemed her eye color followed suit. Kate hastily wiped at her cheeks, but her grandmother caught a tear on her finger and touched it to her own lips.

“Oh, Gram,” Kate said. It had been two decades since Gram had done the exact same thing when Kate ran her bike into a mailbox and gave herself a black eye.

Kate scooted down on her chair until she could rest her head on Gram’s pillow. The old woman grasped her hand and Kate started talking in a soft, unhurried voice. “A week ago, I met an old friend of yours named Greg Abernathy,” she began. “He’s been abroad for years but he recently moved back to Seattle and came to see you. He was so sad that Grandpa had...well, he got all choked up. And then he told me something.

“He and Grandpa were coworkers a long time ago. He remembered Grandpa telling him about a long distant uncle who was a diamond merchant. When this guy stopped during his travels, he would put his diamonds in the bank of whatever town he was staying in. Well, it turns out that this one time, the bank was robbed and the diamonds were taken along with the gold. He never made a claim on what he’d lost because he didn’t want anyone to know what he did for a living.

“Now this is where fate takes a hand,” she continued. “Mr. Abernathy and Grandpa shared an office at the college. When Mr. Abernathy left to teach overseas, he stored a whole lot of boxes of books and papers. When he got back to Seattle recently, he decided to clean out the storage and it was while he was doing this that he found a file of Grandpa’s in with his things and in the file was a copy of a paper detailing where the diamonds had been hidden after the robbery. He came here to give the file to Grandpa and to ask if Grandpa had ever tried to recover them.”

Kate lowered her voice. “Mr. Abernathy could see that we’re...struggling. Those diamonds are yours now, and they could make all the difference in the world. It’s not a fortune, but it’s probably enough to get the house up to code so we can remortgage and get some of the bills paid. The trouble is, they’re on the land of a greedy, possessive man. If he were to claim the diamonds as his own and take us to court—well, how could we pay for that and, anyway, by the time it was settled it would be too late for you...for us. I have to find them, Gram. Mr. Abernathy said he would go but he’s old now and, besides, this is my obligation, not his. It’s an opportunity and I can’t think of anything else to do. Only thing is, it means I have to leave for a couple of days...”

Gram’s hand had grown slack. Kate turned her head to find the older woman’s eyes closed. Kate had a very strong premonition that if she left her grandmother’s side it would be for the last time. Of course, she felt that way every time she left the house, every time she kissed her good-night. It was always goodbye.

“I don’t know what to do,” she whispered into the night.

* * *

FRANKIE ARRIVED AT the car rental place early armed with coffee and a sheaf of papers Gary had given him to look over. He’d give Kate an hour to stand him up and then he’d hit the road.

A female shape pushed off from where she’d been leaning against a fence and he recognized Kate’s lovely face despite the huge sunglasses resting on her nose. As she approached, he reminded himself to close his mouth instead of gaping in shock. She’d come?

Why?

As he grabbed the door handle to get out of the vehicle and start the process of renting her a car, she opened the back door, shrugged off a backpack and set it on the seat where it clanked as it landed. A second later she slipped into the passenger seat.

Today she wore jeans and a black windbreaker. Her long, blond hair had been woven into a thick, loose braid that trailed down her back. She took off the sunglasses as she turned to face him. Dark smudges under her eyes were more pronounced than they’d been the day before.

“I can’t believe you came,” he heard himself say.

“Neither can I but I said I would so I did. Let’s get something straight, though. My grandmother is none of your business.”

“I—”

“You went behind my back. You asked me to trust you and then you—”

“Sneaked around,” he interrupted. “I know. I’m sorry. I wish I could take it back—” The scowl on her face cut his words short. “Okay, I get it. Well, let’s rent you a car and get on our way.”

“There’s no need now,” she said. “I just didn’t want you to know where I lived. I like my privacy.”

“I sort of figured that,” he said dryly.

“Let’s just go.”

“Sounds good to me,” he said, and started the engine before she could change her mind.