Page 20 of Deputy Brand Gets Her Man
“Well, we can start with the meal, and see where it leads.”
She lowered her eyes, but raised them again, seemed to square her shoulders, and said, “I’m not ready for it to lead anywhere, Jeremiah.”
She was serious. He felt a crushing sense of disappointment.
And yet he heard himself saying, “I hear you. Listen, I know you don’t want the family gossip to get hold of us having another midnight meal together. You want to come to my place?”
“Your place is the bunkhouse.”
“I can meet you somewhere so you don’t have to bring your car. Nobody would come knocking at midnight, short of an emergency. And it can just be food, nothing else.”
She looked at him in a way that made him feel transparent. She said, “I’ll see how I feel after my shift. I might be too tired. I’ll text you, all right?”
“All right, yeah. Sure.”
She opened her pickup door.
He put his hand on the roof, and looked around just in case, and then leaned in for a kiss, and she kissed him back, but very softly. It was almost a sad little kiss. What the hell?
He said, “Thanks for the help today.”
“Any time,” she said with a smile that didn’t reach her liquid brown eyes.
He’d screwed up, somewhere along the line, he’d screwed up, and knowing that was like drinking battery acid. He wanted to fix it, but he wasn’t sure where he’d gone off track.
He headed for his Jeep, digging the keys out of his pocket as Willow drove away. She didn’t even look back.
Jeremiah Thorne was looking for something and lying about it. Moreover, Willow thought he might be using her to help him find it. That burned.
She changed into her uniform in the gas station restroom while Willie gassed up her Department SUV. Willie was a long-faced young man who slouched when he walked, and kept his head and his gaze lowered. He was shy and would back away if you got too close to him. He’d been that way since high school.
She’d have used the nicer restroom, the private one upstairs at Two Lilies, but she’d wanted—no needed—to get away from the Gringo. When he was close, all she could think about was getting closer. Even when they were just sitting in the truck together, she kept wishing he’d slide over or put his hand over hers on the shift-knob.
She couldn’t go to the bunkhouse tonight, she thought, heading back across the gas station pavement toward her truck at Pump Three. Other vehicles were pulling in, pulling out, and sitting still in all directions and heat rose in invisible ribbons from the blacktop. She couldn’t be all alone with Jeremiah Thorne in the bunkhouse, a place where nobody was going to walk in and interrupt them. She’d been alone with him in her own cottage, and even now, she was unsure how far that would’ve gone if her mom hadn’t come along.
Jeez, what would Ethan say if she had sex with his brother?
Honk! Honk!
She all but jumped clean out of her skin, then saw the big red pickup and recognized the very cousin she’d been thinking of. He pulled up beside her, “Hey cuz. You seen Jeremiah today?”
“What? Why?”
Her reaction had been abrupt and strange, she realized, so she quickly said, “You scared the daylights out of me. Gimme a second.”
“Sorry. You seemed deep in thought. Everything all right?”
At that moment, the radio in her car crackled. The windows were up, so she couldn’t make out the words. “Last I saw the Gringo was when I dropped him off at Two Lilies. Don’t know where he was goin’ from there.”
She started for her car.
Ethan and his big truck rolled along with her. “Why’d you drop him off at Two Lilies?”
Shoot, she’d said too much. “‘Cause that’s where he left his Jeep.”
“So you two were together this morning?”
“I’m helpin’ him trace his father’s…your father’s…de Lorean’s time in Quinn. You know, that time he came looking for you, crossed the elder Brands, and wound up in prison.”
