Chemistry Lessons (14 page)

As they drove up the lane toward the Curtis ranch, Rosie glanced across
the truck cab at Destry. His hair had dried flat to his head, and water drops
had left muddy trails down his neck. His formerly light green shirt was now a
mud-colored tan, and on his forearms, she saw evidence of Clementine’s
wrath—multiple swollen, red scratches. Yet he wore a grin. “Once I get cleaned
up, I’m going to drive over to help the people who’ve had their homes flooded.
Do you want to come?”

The invitation sent prickles up her arms. He was a rescuer—one of her
kind. She hadn’t seen it as clearly before today, and the realization stunned
her, causing a short bout of verbal paralysis. “That’s a good idea.”

“I guess I could call Farrah,” he said. “Since she’s been evacuated,
she ought to be able to tell me what kind of help people need today.”

“No,” she stammered. She couldn’t stand to think of him spending time
with Farrah. Not that she was jealous. “Go to the big church on Main,” she
said. “That’s where they have that . . . Oh, what’s it called?”

“You mean a base of operations? A temporary shelter?”

“Yeah,” she said, trying to remember if Farrah had ever set foot in the
church. “That.”

He pulled up in front of her grandpa’s house, parking in the only spot
that seemed free of mud puddles. He opened his door and walked around to open
hers.

Thank you
didn’t
seem like enough. She’d already said that a few times. How could she show him how
impressed with him she felt? It was a rare man who would go to the lengths
Destry had. After he opened her door, she stepped toward him, wrapping her arms
around his neck. He pulled her close, and it was as if his body had been
designed to fit against hers. “Thanks for saving me and my cat and for trying
to save my grandmother’s car.” She thought of him herding Mr. Bell’s cattle and
then holding a comic book at Cottage Industries. “It’s been a long time since I’ve
had so much fun. I mean, it shouldn’t have been fun, but it was.” It almost
felt like they’d been on a date.

 The most natural conclusion would have been to lift her lips to his.
She wanted to kiss him, to see how it felt.

Except that she was engaged—to Tanner. For a split second, it was a
deflating thought and the realization stunned her. She stepped back.

“I feel the same way,” he said. His eyes crinkled at the edges, and his
hand still rested on the side of her arm. “Let me know if I can do anything
else to help. If you need a ride or—”

She forced herself to meet his eyes. Attraction arced between them. She
didn’t want to move. Not until she heard Tanner’s voice, calling from the
doorway. “Are you okay?”

Destry’s gaze remained on her.

Rosie reached for her purse, trying to figure out what she was going to
say to her fiancé. “I’m fine.” Tanner was already heading down the stairs, his
boots landing heavily on each step. He looked like he wanted to punch Destry.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t get everything out of your car,” Destry said.

The moment was broken. She stepped back. “I’m sorry too . . . I mean, I’m
sorry I caused so much trouble . . .  I can replace all the things in my car.”
She felt something rub against her leg. Looking down, she saw Clementine and
bent to pick her up. “I can’t believe she’s home already.”

“Amazing,” Destry said. “She made it home before we did.”

Tanner arrived at her side and placed a possessive arm around her
shoulder, pulling her toward the house. “We’d better get you inside.”

She stepped to the side, but he maintained his hold.

“Don’t forget this,” Destry said, handing Tanner her canvas bag.

Tanner chewed his mint gum using his front teeth and snatched the bag
from him as Destry got back in his truck.

“He saved my life,” Rosie muttered, jerking away from him. She wasn’t
going to let him drag her around as if he were her parent. “The least you could
do is thank him.” She waved to Destry as he started his truck and drove away
from them.

Tanner walked up the stairs and swung open the storm door, slamming it
into the side of the house. “He already got all the thanks he wanted.”

Rosie marched inside after him. “What do you mean by that?”

“What did
you
mean by that hug you gave him?”

“He saved my life,” she said, her volume rising. She noticed Grandpa
sleeping in his armchair nearby. Cheddar was still inside, resting beside him.
She lowered her voice. “I only wanted to thank him—as a friend. I don’t know
why you’d think it was more than that.” Heat bloomed on her cheeks. It had
felt
like more than that, but Tanner didn’t have to know every detail. Right now, he
didn’t deserve to know every detail either. He should have been grateful for
Destry’s help.

She sniffed, turning her attention to the aroma of spicy meat wafting
through the house, making her mouth water. She hadn’t realized she was so
hungry until now. Tanner must have been cooking. Nothing that Grandpa made had
ever smelled so good.

Tanner folded his arms. “It took you two hours to get home.” The set of
his jaw let her know that he’d been angry about it, not worried.

Rosie set the cat down on the floor and pulled off Destry’s raincoat.
She’d forgotten she was even wearing it. “We got stuck behind a herd of cattle.”
She didn’t mention the visit to Cottage Industries. It had been a necessary
relief, one Tanner wouldn’t understand. “Then we had to take a detour in
Morrisville. The floods washed out part of the road there. I’m not sure you
understand all we went through. It was scary.” She hung the coat over the back
of a kitchen chair to dry. Tanner’s laptop occupied her spot at the table. “I
hope you got some work done while you waited.” Better yet, Rosie hoped he was
already searching for her replacement car. He had a knack for finding the best
deals.

“Jade came by to talk to you,” he said.

“In this weather?” It must have been something really important for
Jade to drive out to the ranch during a flood. Was she butting heads with Mr.
Moore again?

Tanner sat down at the table and turned his laptop for her to see. “She
found some articles about Destry. It turns out he’s not the person we thought.”

While Destry was saving her life, Tanner and Jade were digging up dirt
on him? She glanced up at Tanner with a look of incredulity. He hadn’t been
worried about her at all, and her annoyance grew as she sat there shivering in
her wet clothing. “What do you mean?”

Tanner pulled out a chair and sat down. “He’s under investigation for
insider trading of some tech stock. He sold all his shares the day after he
played golf with the stock company’s CEO—over a million dollars worth.” His
voice was getting louder and picking up speed. “Think about it. He owns the
stock for years, watching it go up and up and up. Then he sells it right before
some bad news breaks. He had to have known.”

What Tanner said made sense, but she had seen how people rushed to
fabricate stories around town. A lot of things that made sense simply weren’t
true.  “If Destry was guilty of something, wouldn’t that have turned up when
the school did a background check?”

“That’s the thing about cases like this—they’re hard to prosecute. It
never went to court.”

Rosie bent to look at the article Tanner had pulled up on the screen,
reading through the damning evidence. She couldn’t believe Destry would do
something so dishonest.

Tanner pulled up another article. “There’s more too. Look at this. Did
you know he fired his own brother?”

“You mean Cody, his brother who died?”

Tanner pointed to a picture of Cody on the screen. “Yep. He died two
days after Destry fired him, the very same day Destry sold all that stock. Tell
me that’s not suspicious.”

Rosie could see the resemblance between Cody and Destry. They had the
same dark hair, the same blue eyes, but the angles of Cody’s face were softer.
Everything Destry had said about Cody came back to her—his drug abuse, his love
for animals, and his desire to help people. “Don’t tell me you think Destry
killed his brother.” Rosie knew for sure that Tanner was wrong about that.

“I’m saying it’s suspicious.” Tanner clicked through a few more
articles. “Here’s the one I was looking for—an interview with one of Cody’s
friends. He was the only one Cody talked to after he got fired. You know what
Cody told him?”

“What?”

“He said Destry had been embezzling money from the company pension
funds. When Cody found out about it, Destry fired him.”

That
was
a serious allegation. Rosie rubbed her forehead, feeling
a headache beginning, and trying to process it all. “Cody was a drug abuser. He
could have been lying.”

Tanner scrolled down to the bottom of the screen and pointed to the
last paragraph. “According to this guy, Cody never did drugs until his
supposed
overdose.” It sounded like Tanner had already decided that Destry was guilty.

Rosie read through the article, but the reporter had it all wrong.
Destry wasn’t the threatening type; he was the rescuing type. She couldn’t let
Tanner and Jade ruin Destry based on evidence from one flimsy article. “Is
there any proof that Destry’s guilty of any of this?”

“Of course not. Guys like him know how to cover their tracks. The last
thing we need is for him to work at the school. We should tell the
administrators.”

Rosie straightened. This could ruin Destry. “I’ll talk to Jade about
it. As far as I’m concerned, these articles are nothing more than gossip. We
can’t show them to Mr. Moore. Destry could get fired.”

“That’s the idea,” Tanner exploded, jumping from his chair. He ran his
hand through his hair, pacing. “The last thing we need is a guy like him
working at the high school.”

She took a minute to reply, and when she did, she paced her words,
packing each one with emotion. “I think he’s innocent. He doesn’t set off my
creep alarms.”

“Creep alarms?” Tanner’s lips pulled down on one side.

“You’d understand if you were a woman.”

Tanner pounded his fist on the table. “Just because a guy wears
designer clothes and gets his hair cut at a salon doesn’t mean he’s harmless.”

Rosie set her hands on her hips and kept her voice calm. “It has
nothing to do with that. There’s something I feel when I’m around a bad man—it’s
like my stomach twists into a knot. Grandma taught me to recognize the feeling
when I was a little girl.”

Unlike Rosie’s mother, her grandma hadn’t been afraid to talk about the
dark side of life. She’d sat her down on the scratchy wool sofa and told Rosie
all about bad men. Grandma had never liked her stepdads—not any of them. Sure,
she was polite and allowed them to eat at her table. But when the other adults
weren’t around, she taught Rosie where to kick with her knee and how to scratch
with her fingernails.

Rosie had first felt the knot when stepdad number-three moved into her
mom’s house. Over the next few months, it tightened, pinching every time he
stepped into Rosie’s bedroom. Then there was the day he bought her a new dress.
He’d taken her to the most expensive store in Albuquerque and let her pick out
exactly what she’d wanted. When she got home, she couldn’t wait to put it back
on. Her stepdad couldn’t wait either. He walked into her bedroom while she was
still in her underwear. Rosie had the sense to run to the bathroom and lock
herself inside. “Your mom won’t be happy when she hears how you’re acting,” he
yelled after her.

Rosie knew it was the truth. Her mom hadn’t believed her previously
when she had talked about the knot, which had cut off her appetite and had
grown into a pee-her-pants kind of panic, the kind she might feel if she’d
happened upon a rattlesnake.

Rosie had waited in the bathroom until she heard her stepdad’s pickup
backing out of the driveway. After that, she collected all the money from the
shoebox on her closet shelf and called her grandma to ask if she could come for
a visit. The next day, her mom helped her buy the bus ticket to Lone Spur, and
the knot had dissolved.

She’d never felt that feeling around Destry.

She watched as Tanner paged through more articles. “Your creep alarm
didn’t keep you from going to homecoming with Phil Barton,” he said. Phil
Barton was currently serving time for burglarizing one of the restaurants in
town.

“I felt it with Phil, but not until the middle of the dance. That’s why
I called Grandpa to pick me up early.”

Tanner turned his attention back to the screen, clicking from article
to article. “It’s finally starting to make sense why he came here. People in
Lone Spur have never heard of him. He’ll be able to take advantage of them.”
His voice bounced with excitement. Why was he bringing up such a stressful
issue now? Couldn’t he see she’d already had enough stress for one day?

Rosie brushed a hair out of her face, trying to calm herself. “He doesn’t
need anything from us—he has more money than all of us put together. He just
wants to build a resort, so he can help people.” She didn’t want to go into the
specifics about Destry’s plans, not when Tanner was already riled up about this
court case. “Don’t you think there are more important things to worry about today
than some stupid articles about Destry?” she asked, trying to keep her voice
calm. “There are people who’ve lost their homes.”