Page 18 of Gentle Persuasion

“The sweatshirt’s either J.D.’s or Dusty’s.” Cole answered her question before it was asked. “It was in my trunk. I found it when I went to get my sweats. Good thing they’re a lot shorter than I am, or you’d be lost in here.” He ruffled the top of her curls. “I also found the matching pants. Want to try them? They have elastic at the ankles and a drawstring waist.”

“Please.” Debbie was trying to keep her teeth from chattering.

She used Cole for a leaning post and quickly thrust her legs into the blue sweats. They bagged around her ankles as she tried to find the drawstring at the waist.

“Here, let me,” Cole said, and slid his hands beneath the sweat shirt, fumbling in the semidarkness surrounding the bonfire Lee Whaley had built at the edge of his property.

Debbie held her breath, closed her eyes, and pretended that the touch of his hands at her waist was a prelude to more.

The voices of the other guests at the Whaley residence faded into the background as they ranged from the second-story deck of the home to the water’s edge and scattered along the beach. People were more than replete from the evening’s meal and trying to walk off their binge.

Cole had wanted to do the same, but for different reasons. He’d hardly eaten a thing, for watching Debbie mingling with his friends. The men had begun to reminisce about a narcotics bust they’d made last year that had made national news. The longer they’d talked, the more graphic their stories became. They were too proud of the fact that they’d taken down one of the larger drug lords in the area to let it be forgotten.

Cole sat and waited for a reaction from Debbie that never came.

She listened. Cole started to think she was going to let it slide. But what she finally said wasn’t what he’d expected. It wasn’t horror at the tales, and it wasn’t a put-down of their occupations. She’d simply caught one of the men in a slight fabrication of the truth.

“I don’t see how that happened,” Debbie said, trying not to grin at a statement one of the men had just made.

“What don’t you see, little lady?” the detective asked. He rolled his eyes at Cole, thinking he was going to get her good.

“Well…just a few minutes ago, you said you fainted at the sight of blood. If that’s true, then I don’t see how you managed to take the entire bunch into custody alone. You said they were ‘all shot up.”’

The men erupted into laughter as the off-duty officer grinned at Debbie’s remark.

“Yeah, I do,” he’d answered. “But I always manage to slap the cuffs on them before I pass out.”

Cole had laughed along with them. Instinctively she’d hit on the right note with these guys. They were serious when it mattered and got through the horror of what they saw by laughing at it.

He wanted to believe she could fit in. He wanted to believe that he could begin a life with her. He wanted to, but the certainty wasn’t there. Debbie might be strong enough…but he didn’t know if he was strong enough to lose her if she wasn’t.

He tugged at the drawstrings and then tied them snugly, tucking the dangling ends inside the pants.

“That better?”

Debbie nodded and opened her eyes, willing him to make a move. He did.

“Want to go for a walk?” Cole held his breath, waiting for her to answer.

“I thought you’d never ask.”

***

The tide had swallowed the shoreline as Debbie knew it. It was another something that would take getting used to. In Oklahoma, water stayed put. Except for intermittent floods in certain areas, water pretty much knew its place.

The words of an old Gatlin Brothers’ song came to mind. She didn’t know about all the gold still being in California, but California definitely was a brand new game.

Her foot crunched upon something half-buried in the sand. She bent down, dug until she found it, and lifted it up, using the moonlight to see by. It was a shell. Small convoluted swirls formed the white conical shape into something special and secret.

“Look!” she cried. “My first seashell!”

Cole caught her hand and carried it to his lips. “You’ve had a lot of firsts today, haven’t you, lady?”

There was something about the way he was touching her, something in his voice that gave her hope.

“It was my first time to see the ocean.” Her voice was breathless and soft. “It was my first time to eat clams.” His hands cupped her face and tilted it. “I found my first—”

His mouth took the rest of her words as his hands stole her heart.

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