Page 36 of Killer on the Homestead
“Go out with me.”
She didn’t stiffen at those words, at the calm, casual way Duncan threw them out. She didn’t let herself react outwardly. She just carefully raised her gaze to his. “We’re working, Duncan.”
This did not deter him. “I heard there’s a hot-ticket, high-school baseball game tomorrow night at Bent County High.”
That shocked her enough to forget about keeping her guard up. He wanted to go to Sarabeth’s baseball game? “You want to take me to a high-school baseball game?”
“Sure. Why not? We’ll see what that kid’s got in the tank,” he said, clearly referring to Sarabeth. “She seemed pretty sure of herself. Turns out, I like sure of herself.”
It really was no wonder she liked him, because that simple summation of Sarabeth, and whatever interest he had—real or feigned—would make that kid’s day, and that made Rosalie far too warm and fuzzy.
But she just couldn’t…trust this.Him. What was she going to do? Go out with him? Sleep with him? Then what?
There was nothen whatin her future. Why couldn’t he get that through his thick skull? Well, it probably wasn’t hisskullthat was making his decisions, was it? And he’d been away enough to forget that small-town liaisons tended to bite you in the ass. If he really stayed, they were going to be neighbors for the rest of their lives.
“There’s a murderer running around,” she told him firmly. And ignored the fact she didn’t say the simplest thing, which would have been no.
“You have the lamest excuses, Rosalie.”
She didn’t want to laugh. Damn it, it wasn’t funny. But the sound bubbled up inside of her anyway.
He was grinning back, but then sobered some, in his eyes. “I set up a security system at the house this morning. Mom… Before the cops came out last night, she… Well, she’s worried about so much. Murder at the center, but me in the fringes. It’d help, I think, if she thought I wasn’t flinging myself into murder investigations like some kind of distraction.”
“So you’re only asking me out to keep your mom happy?”
“Sure, if that’s what it takes to get you to say yes.”
She didn’t know what to say to that. She was torn between being insulted and that horrible, creeping warm feeling. It was terribly sweet, and she didn’t want him to want to date her anyway. So why shouldn’t it be about his mother?
Because it’s not, and you know it’s not.
“What security company did you use?” she asked, hoping maybe she could work her way around the entire subject. Hoping this somehow just…went away. Which had never been her MO in her entire life, but it felt like the only way to survive one very charming Duncan Kirk.
“Some company in Bent. Run by a Delaney.”
“Cam Delaney. We used him ourselves at the ranch a few years back. Does good work. A security system can’t cover a whole ranch, though.”
“No. We talked about some solutions there, but I knew my parents would flip if they thought I was going overboard. I can get away with the house. Use guilt and all that, but the whole ranch? Dad’ll put his foot down there. Until I wear him down.Hopefully we’ll have everything solved quickly so I won’t have to wear him down.”
Rosalie wanted to smile at the fact Norman Kirk was the most quintessential kind of Wyoming rancher, but nothing about this feltquickenough to suit her. She looked back down at the map. She couldn’t make sense of the cattle missing from a pattern of places along a path and a cut-through. But the pattern of it all wasn’t a comfort. It was an annoying and painful hangnail. A puzzle sheshouldbe able to solve, but couldn’t.
“Come to the game with me, Rosalie.” He said it in that same straightforward, calm way he’d said “let me.” An order, wrapped up in something that left room for her to say no.
Except deep down, she didn’t want to, and she supposed he knew that, and it’s why he said it that way.
Wanting aside, sheshouldsay no. She needed to keep her eyes on the map—because if she looked at him, she’d forget all aboutno. She’d forget about too many things.
But she looked up at him, because it was hard to be a coward. That too-handsome face, that cocky smile. But there was something soft under all that. His connection to this place, his parents. His wanting to solve this murder to ease their worry . He would have grown up on that solid Kirk foundation, and as much as she wanted to believe that all his years away, all his fancy, high living could have—wouldhave—changed him, she knew they hadn’t.
He was a damn good man, and that was a damn big problem.
Problems had always been her weakness. “All right.”
Chapter Eleven
Duncan had given Rosalie space after that. He had a bad feeling if he was around her too much, she’d change her mind.
So he’d taken her little biographical sketches on the different ranch hands back home. He’d gone over them, added his own notes to the margins. Tried to draw some conclusions and come up empty.
