Page 8 of Guarded Secrets
“What about your other source?” Cam asked.
“The other source is Mateo, who saw him leaving the parking lot and flooring the Bronco to speed down Main Street. Owen’s always a cautious driver, but last night with Keeley alone on the side of a mountain road, he wasn’t wasting any time getting to her.”
“This is all nonsense, you know that, right?” Keeley stared at her friends. “I wasn’t in danger, and mymomcalled Owen.
“Owen and my parents are friends. He and Dad bonded over their Marine Corps experiences, and Owen’s been a good guy and helped them out a few times.
“He went looking for me because Mom asked. Before last night he hardly ever talked to me, and if he did, he was always growly and bossy. He was better last night. I’ll give him that. I wouldn’t say he wasnice,he was still Owen-intense, which is his default, but he didn’t make me feel like a pain in the butt because he’d had to come get me.”
She gave herself a mental finger-scolding to stop rambling. “Anyway, last night was an anomaly because normally I annoy him more than anything else. Me breathing annoys him. There’s no way he thinks of me as ‘his woman.’ That’s ridiculous.”
She stopped talking and her friends looked at each other, then at her, wide grins breaking out on their faces. Keeley crossed her arms over her chest. “What?”
“You’re flustered,” Emery observed.
“I am not.” She was. Damn it. “Okay, maybe I am. A little bit. And maybe I have a tiny little crush on Owen. A super small, tiny little crush. But I’ve pretty much killed it, and since it’s a one-way kind of thing, it has no bearing on Owen doing a favor for my mom.”
“I knew it,” Delaney crowed. “I knew you had a crush on Owen. You’d check him out every time we went to Easy Money. Just like he checked you out,” she added with a smirk.
Cam had wiped down a section of the quartz countertop and was now sprinkling it with flour. “I agree. I think he’s into you. But setting that aside, what happened last night when he got there and didn’t make you feel like a pain in his exceptionally fine butt?”
Keeley kept her attention on working the apple peeler-slicer gadget with more focus than was probably necessary. “Nothing happened. I’ll admit he was a bit, um, forceful when he first got there because I’d walked a bit trying to get cell service.
“Apparently in Owen’s world, that was risky.” She didn’t mention he’d held her hand because it hadn’t meant anything. Orthat he’d loaned her his wonderful Owen-scented sweatshirt. As to him being forceful, that was probably more irritation at having his evening disrupted than anything else.
She cleared her throat. “I told him he wouldn’t be able to change the flat tire either, and he gave me this look like ‘Don’t you worry, little lady,’ but then he saw how my car was Tetris fitted and said it could wait until today.”
“Hmm, I’m with my sisters on this,” Emery chimed in. “Evidence supports Owen having a thing for you.”
“He was doing a favor for my mom,” Keeley repeated, working to keep the whine out of her voice. “Anyway, he texted this morning to tell me he was taking care of the car. I told him I could do it, because it’s my problem, you know? But he overruled me, and my mom had already given him the spare set of keys. It’s hard to text argue with someone when they respond with like four words. It’s annoying.”
“You’re nervous. You talk too much when you’re nervous.” Delaney grinned as she poured water into mugs for tea for her and Emery.
“I’m not.” She totally was.
“Plus,” Emery bobbed her tea bag in the hot water, “I don’t know Owen very well, but I think what he did last night? That’s his love language.”
“Doing my mom a favor is his love language?”
“No, dropping everything to get to you when he thought you might be in danger is. Dealing with your car this morning is.”
Keeley dumped sliced apples into a big yellow mixing bowl and sprinkled carefully measured sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg over them. It wasn’t that she discounted her friends’ assessment, but they hadn’t witnessed Owen’s surliness toward her over the past year or so.
Cam draped the rolled crust over a pie tin and used a sharp knife to trim the excess dough around the edges. “I can verify Owen tracks you whenever our gang has a barbecue or hangs out at Easy Money. As long as you’re not looking at him, he’s got his eyes on you andknows where you are. Then for him to drop everything when you needed rescuing? That’s telling.” She bumped Keeley’s shoulder and shot her a grin. “Since you have that tiny crush, having his attention is a good thing, right?”
“If he has a thing for me, why doesn’t he ask me out? Instead, he acts like he’s the boss of me, and that’s so not going to fly.” She and Cam worked in tandem. Keeley poured in the apple mixture and Cam carefully placed the top crust over the pie, then used a knife to cut slits. Keeley crimped the edges and slid the pie into the hot oven.
Cam wiped down the countertop while Keeley squirted dish soap and ran hot water into a basin.
“Thanks for the use of your kitchen, friend,” she said as she set the mixing bowl onto the drainer.
“Anytime,” Cam murmured.
When the kitchen was back in order, she and Cam sat on stools across the island from Delaney and Emery.
Delaney sipped her hot tea and looked like she was trying not to grimace. Keeley narrowed her eyes, her gaze traveling to each of the women in turn as Delaney raised her mug again, the tag from the tea bag hanging over the side. “You’re drinking tea. You hate tea.” She turned to skewer Emery with a laser-sharp look. “And you, you drink Earl Gray in the morning, but now you’re drinking herbal. In fact,” Keeley turned to Cam to confirm the absence of a coffee cup, “not one of you is drinking anything with caffeine. Are you all pregnant or something?”
CHAPTER FOUR
