Page 43 of Reckoning with the Cowboy
“Not me.” She could tell that her friend didn’t want to touch that remark with a retort. “Let me know when they come back.” As she disconnected, she looked down the road out of town, frowning as she felt wisps of the darkness moving in. “Oh, Amy Sue, what have you done?”
* * *
Cordell had beenmentally kicking himself since the night he and Josie had dinner at the hotel. “She couldn’t have made her wishes clearer,” he told his brother when he took Max lunch from the café. “I keep thinking about the look in Josie’s eyes standing by that king bed in the owner’s suite.”
They were eating on a picnic table in the grass behind the sheriff’s department. “Wait, aren’t you the owner?” Max said between bites of his sandwich.
“I’m staying in one of the rooms until…” Cordell shrugged.
Max stopped eating to stare at him. “You’re saving that room for when Josie…does what?”
“Realizes she can’t live without me and marries me,” he said indignantly. “I want a commitment from her. I’m not looking for a roll in the hay.”
“Hay, or in your big king bed, either, it appears,” his brother mumbled. “When did you become such a romantic?” Max demanded, making it sound like a bad thing.
Cordell bristled. It was one thing for him to call himself a fool, but he resented it when it came from his brother. “I don’t want a relationship like you’ve had with Goldie where neither of us commit for years. If she wants me, then she has to be all in. She has to be my wife.”
Max dropped his half-eaten sandwich back on the waxed paper it had been wrapped in as if he’d lost his appetite. “You know why I can’t commit to Goldie.”
“Roger Grimes is dead. For real this time. Max, we survived it. The worst thing we thought that could possibly happen, happened and we all lived through it. We’ve had weeks to process what happened down there. Everyone is fine. Grimes is gone for good. It’s over. We can finally put the past behind us. No one cares about our childhoods. People are just glad that we’re here and life is going on. So tuck your ego into the hip pocket of your jeans and tell Goldie how you feel about her.”
His brother shook his head stubbornly. “I’m not like you. It’s not that easy for me to brush off everything as if the bad things never happened or couldn’t happen again.”
Cordell shook his head. “You’re scared. I get it. You could have died.”
“And left Goldie a widow, left our kids fatherless.”
“But you’re making a mistake, brother.” Cordell rose from the picnic table, wadding up his trash. “Spend your life alone, a miserable old man that no one wants to be around. Your choice, but a woman like Goldie is only going to wait so long before she finds someone else.”
* * *
Max balled uphis sandwich and threw it in the trash container behind the sheriff’s department, his brother’s words dying off as he left. Hewasalready miserable. Cordell didn’t get it. Goldie had been abducted and held at gunpoint. She could have been killed—all because of him and from his past that he’d thought he’d outrun.
Hadn’t he always known it would follow him to Dry Gulch, the one place he had felt safe? He no longer felt safe, and worse, he knew that the people of this town weren’t safe. Maybe if he left…
“I heard you were back here,” said a lilting young female voice.
He turned to see Lindsey Dean standing in the doorway. The sixteen-year-old wore a pair of cutoff jean shorts and a tank top that hugged her ample body, leaving nothing to the imagination. Her long dark hair was pulled into a ponytail to one side. She tilted her head as she grinned at him, her hair swinging.
All he could think about was that if he and Goldie had gotten married when he was twenty, they could have a daughter this age. “You need something, Lindsey?” Max asked. He’d heard she’d been helping out down at the café after the “incident.” He hoped this wasn’t about Goldie.
She grinned. “I’m selling raffle tickets to raise money for my cheerleading squad so we can go to Billings for the finals.”
“Sure,” he said. “Just tell Deputy Fletcher I said to buy a half dozen. He can use the money from the swear jar.”
Lindsey laughed, her breasts jiggling. What was she doing not wearing a bra? “I can’t imagine you swearing, Sheriff.”
He rose from the table, feeling much older than thirty-five. “Lindsey, as sheriff, I want you to go home and put on a bra. And those shorts are way too short and stop flirting with men who are old enough to be your father.” Her eyes widened in alarm. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. “Now get out of here before I call your mother. Come back when you are properly dressed, and I’ll be happy to buy some raffle tickets.”
And Cordell thought his brother would turn into a miserable old man. Max was already there, he thought with a curse.
* * *
Josie couldn’t concentrateon work. For starters, Cordell was doing some painting on the front of the hotel. He had his shirt off, his skin darkly tanned, his muscles rippling as he worked. She was tempted to close her office blinds, but she was too anxious for her sister to return to her SUV.
When was Amy Sue going to tell her about this man? she wondered. How had she met him? When had she met him? And why had she kept him a secret?
Josie had thought they shared everything.
