Page 59 of Killer on the Homestead
He liked her bluster. He liked the hint of something softer underneath. He liked her, plain and simple. No doubt if he didn’t, it would have been easy enough to let her leave last night.
He wrapped his good arm around her from behind to pull her closer. She stiffened a little, but then she relaxed. It was starting to irritate him. The push and pull. It’d be one thing if she had no interest. If she flat-out rejected him, but she hadn’t.
“Look, Duncan…”
Unless she was about to.
“You should probably know, I’m not much of a good bet,” she said firmly. Like she’d really been thinking them over and had come to this very clear conclusion.
Except it made no sense.
He couldn’t see her expression since he was standing behind her. He could only look down at the top of her head. There were a lot of complexities about Rosalie. No doubt. Hidden things under her brazen surface.
But she was not a woman who suffered from a lack of confidence. So he tried to unearth what shereallymeant by that, but couldn’t. Because it just didn’t add up. “You’re not? Or I’m not?”
She didn’t push away from him, and he’d expected her to. It kept his frustration with her in check, that she’d lean against him and have this conversation.
She didn’t answer, and he wasn’t in the mood to fight, so he figured they could set this aside for now. Get back to murder. Tonight, they could wade through all this.
So he kissed her cheek. “You seem like a pretty good bet from where I’m standing. I’m going to walk up to the main house. See if Dad can come up with a list of anyone who definitely couldn’t have been at the bunkhouse between the detectives and us yesterday morning. Shouldn’t take too long. You take your time waking up. I’ll be back. It’ll probably be another hour or two before we can get into the bunks undetected.”
He felt her gaze as he released her and walked for the front door. He didn’t look back, though he wanted to.
“Duncan?”
Slowly, he turned to face her. Standing in his kitchen, in his shirt, still looking half-asleep and gorgeous.
“Maybe it’s not me. Maybe it’s the whole…relationship thing. It’s a lot of trust. I’m not sure I’ve got that in me.”
He figured it was fair that trust had to be earned, and they had a ways to go on that front. But he was a patient man. A goal-oriented kind of guy. He could prove it, earn it. He would. Not with words. But with the same kind of stubborn tenacity that had led him to success in his career.
“So find it in you, Rosalie. I can wait,” he replied, then went ahead and left rather than allow her to keep talking herself out of what they’d already started.
Because they were both people who saw through what they started. She’d come to that conclusion too.
He wasalmostsure of it.
He walked up to his parents’ house and let himself in after a brief tap on the door. They were both in the kitchen eating breakfast. They exchanged a look he didn’t quite understand, then smiled at him.
“Morning,” Mom offered. “What brings you up?”
“Some questions, unfortunately. Last night Rosalie and I had a bit of a break in the case, I guess you’d say. I need to know who on the ranch might have been unaccounted for between the time the ambulance took Owen away, and the time Rosalie and I looked through the bunkhouse yesterday.”
Dad scratched a hand through his hair. “Well. Your mother and Terry were at the hospital. Everyone else would have been doing their assigned job.”
“Is there a way to verify they were doing it? Especially if Terry wasn’t here?”
Dad seemed to consider this. “Everyone had jobs to do since it’s busy season,” Dad said. “Terry and I sit down and discuss progress every other day during the busy season—and that’s where he’d mention if someone was slacking off or something didn’t get done. We didn’t last night with the hospital hubbub. I can try to pin him down this morning. Get a rundown of yesterday.”
“That’d be good.” Would it give them answers? Before he could say anything else to Dad, his phone chimed. Duncan pulled it out of his pocket and read the text from Rosalie.
Owen’s awake. Headed to the hospital to talk to him. Text after.
The phone on the wall rang, and Mom got up to answer. Duncan could tell by her reactions that she was getting the same information that Rosalie had just texted him.
She hung up then smiled over at him. “Owen’s awake, and Sharon thinks she can get me in to see him today. So I’m going to head up to the hospital. I know Terry is worried sick about that boy. I’m going to call down and see if he wants to ride together this time.”
Duncan nodded but before his mother could lift the receiver again, the words caught up in his head. “This time? You two didn’t ride together yesterday?” he demanded.
