Page 27 of First Date: Divorce
Bodie Smith, known to the wide world as Boone Dorsey Smith, clapped Eric on the shoulder.“Don’t worry.Grif brought a couple bottles of wine to spare himself a repeat of the moonshine experiment.”
*
Grif shared a red wine K.D.had never had before — Medoc.She wasn’t much of a drinker, but she liked this.And it went wonderfully with the beef roast Jessa served.
“From Cambria’s family’s ranch,” she said in response to the compliments.
“The Weston place is where we stashed your vehicle,” Cully told K.D.as he carved.
“The B&B?”
“B&B and working ranch,” Cambria said.“My dad handles the cattle, Irene — my mom — handles the hospitality.”
“And Cambria handles the business that lets them keep doing those things,” Bodie said with clear pride.
Eric held his own with the ranching talk.Not bad for someone who’d only been in Wyoming a year and not directly involved with ranching.Although he clearly spent time at Cambria’s family ranch.
She’d been around ranching all her life and knowing it was a necessity for law enforcement in Cabot County.But her mother, who’d lived in Montana all of K.D.’s life, wouldn’t have known half of what Eric did.
As the conversation broadened from ranching, it remained relaxed and easygoing.
Driving back to Eric’s house, she said, “I’m glad I’m not really your estranged wife.”
He turned to her with a quizzical expression.“Feeling like you dodged a bullet?”
“If I’d been at dinner tonight with your friends as the woman about to take you through the divorce wringer, I can’t imagine it would have been anywhere near that friendly.”
“Oh, I don’t know.They might’ve sided with you over me.”
“Not a chance.You have good friends, Eric.You’re fortunate.”She looked at him through the flashing dark and light of thinning streetlights and thought his friends were also fortunate.“You’re going out on a limb for Cully.If this blows up, won’t it hit your practice?”
“It won’t.”He gave her another sideways look.“You don’t have a group of friends?”
“Growing up, we moved a lot.Mom mostly had a couple jobs, so I’d be in after-school programs.Depending on her job and where we lived, the program changed a lot.As soon as I could, I worked to help out.But I also already knew I wanted to be in law enforcement.”She smiled.“That eliminated some kids I might otherwise have hung around with.”
“Because they didn’t approve of you or because you didn’t approve of them?”
“Both.”
“Why law enforcement?”
“Nothing dramatic, like being saved by a police officer or seeing them arrest a bad guy.I want to be one of the people doing the right thing.And even before the academy I knew I wanted to investigate.Make things right that have gone wrong.”
He grunted.“Sounds like law.Prosecuting, you try to set things right for the people as well as the victims.Private practice, it’s narrower — one person or a few — but it can run deep into a client’s life.Change everything for that person.”
She understood his liking that.
She shook her head at her thought — he was a stranger, not someone she understood — then followed up with words to give her gesture another meaning.“None of this is helpful, since we can’t talk about my law enforcement background at Marriage-Save.”
Another brief look away from his driving and toward her, this one hard to read — impossible, actually.“That’s right.We’d need to get into the wild world of insurance investigating to get into your work life.”
Both laughed.
She had the feeling they’d stepped near something, then backed away.
CHAPTER TEN
WEDNESDAY
