Page 68 of Hiss and Make Up
She squeezed past him to check for messages on her phone. The way things had been going over the weekend, she fully expected a text from Marc saying someone had dropped a half-starved lion on his front lawn.
Although, as strange and distant as Marc had seemed that morning when she’d dropped him off outside the radio station, she doubted she’d be his first call today. And she had no idea why.
Once they’d moved past her backfired plan and his injury, things had gone pretty well last night. So well, in fact, that she’d been planning to tell him she didn’t want any reward money.
She debated telling him more than that. Like how she felt. And she was feeling a lot before she went to sleep.
But then she’d woken to a major case of cold shoulder, so she’d decided to kept her mouth shut. At least until she figured out what was wrong.
No messages. Given the last few days, no messages was a good sign. Especially knowing Marc was safe at work.
When she put the phone back in her bag, she found a folded piece of paper she hadn’t noticed before. As she unfolded it and read the messy handwriting, she put a hand against the desk to steady herself.
“A check?” Dale peered over her shoulder. “Does that mean you found a second job?”
Sierra held up the check, showing him the note at the bottom.
“Reward?” he asked. “Sounds like you had a busy weekend.”
It was for a thousand dollars, and it had Marc’s signature on it.
“It’s from Marc,” she said, disbelief scratching at the edge of her voice. “I helped him with the snakes. Well, sort of.”
She closed her eyes tight against the image of those poor, dead snakes. She should have gone to them at the first sight of the house in flames. But she’d been so worried about Marc that she’d forgotten all about them.
“That fellow that came in here with you Saturday. Not too fond of this place, but fond enough of you to come inside anyway.”
She shrugged. “I gave him a good enough scare to follow me in. Doesn’t count.”
“Oh, sure it does.”
“It doesn’t matter anyway.” Apparently, nothing she did mattered. Her apology. Spending the night. Nothing. The waves of nausea she felt thinking about what that check meant. She waved it in the air. “He just bought me off.”
“Why? What did you do?”
“Why is it always something I’ve done?” Her voice had more of an edge to it than Dale deserved. “Why can’t he just be a jerk?”
Dale considered that for a moment. “Fair enough. And maybe he is an asshole, but a man doesn’t write a check for no reason.”
Sierra stuffed the check back into her bag and resisted the urge to pick up her phone again. She wanted answers, but her pride wouldn’t let her ask the questions.
“Yeah, well, I thought we were past this reward agreement.”
She’d assumed he was developing feelings the same way she was. That their only hurdle was her getting over her fear of second chances.
That was her mistake. Clearly, he didn’t feel the same way.
“How about helping me with this morning’s delivery? You can tell me all about the rest of this story while we go through the boxes.”
Sierra didn’t want to go through boxes of supplies, and shereallydidn’t want to talk about the rest of the story. But she felt like she couldn’t breathe, so she followed Dale anyway.
Out on the deck, Sierra hacked away at the cardboard while Dale matched inventory slips with the contents. She got a little thrill taking out her frustration on those packages. After she had slashed open the last box, she sat against the building and took a few deep breaths.
“Feel better?” Dale asked.
“No.”
“Want to talk about it?”
