Chapter 11
A
nnie was out at the barn, checking the siding in preparation for the first big storm of winter. There hadn't been much snow so far and it was already December. But it would come.
Her phone chirped in the pocket of her down vest. Annie took it out and looked at the screen.
It was a text message from Marshall Stone. Annie tapped the screen.
Rowdy's missing. Have u seen him?
That wasn't good news. She texted back. No.
She counted to ten. Against her better judgment, she typed another text. Want to meet up to look for him?
Sure.
Annie took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Seeing Marshall Stone again might not be the best idea. But she did care about the dog.
An hour or so later, they were driving around, looking for a flash of black-and-white fur. Rowdy was nowhere in sight.
“I let him out this morning and went back to get his leash. So it's my fault,” Stone admitted. “When I got outside, he was gone. I whistled and whistled, but he didn't come back. I sure hope he didn't get hit by a car.”
“It happens.”
“I made a couple of calls. No one's reported a lost dog.” He kept scanning the sides of the road and looking into the distance.
“If he did get hit and he's injured, he might stay away from anyone trying to help.”
“True.”
“Or maybe his real owner came back for him.”
Marshall scowled. She guessed he was thinking about the Dumpster and whoever had abandoned the dog there in the first place. “I doubt that,” he muttered.
There was a distant sound of barking. He listened carefully.
“Is that him?”
“I think so.” His expression brightened considerably.
He kept the windows rolled down as he zeroed in on the barking. Soon enough, they spotted Rowdy, playing ring-toss in an open field with several young women. They looked like college students. Had winter break already begun? Annie guessed that it had.
“What an operator.” Stone laughed.
Takes after you.
Annie didn't want to say it. Marshall Stone wasn't her boyfriend. Just a good-looking guy women noticed. That wasn't a sin, per se.
“How am I going to persuade him to go home with me?” he asked as he got out of the truck.
Annie was irked by the way Stone's intent gaze moved from his dog to the girls, who squealed and giggled, amused by the antics of the happy-go-lucky stray.
“Hi there! Is this your dog?”
It was impossible to tell who'd asked the question.
“Yes.” Laconic as ever. But Marshall had a huge, annoying grin on his face.
The girls were all pretty, without a care in the world, a mix of blondes and brunettes, their long hair tousled by the breeze despite their headbands. Annie couldn't help noticing the expensive ski jackets they wore, new for the season, thinking that she hadn't been able to afford even closeout items for some time.
“Do you have any dog treats?” she asked tightly from inside the truck.
“Look in the glove compartment. I think I stashed some CrunChees in there.”
Annie pushed the button in the center of the molded door and opened it. There was a plastic bag with a couple of orange-cheese-colored dog biscuits stuffed next to the owner's manual.
“Yup. Here.” She handed them over and shut the compartment.
Apparently Rowdy's new best friends were thinking along the same lines.
“Can we give him a snack?” one called, trying unsuccessfully to catch the playful animal. “He looks hungry.”
“No, he doesn't,” Annie muttered. Rowdy had filled out fast. She knew perfectly well that the playful young women were more interested in the dog's owner than the dog.
Stone opened the driver's side door without responding to her sarcastic comment. Or maybe he hadn't heard it.
“He has you fooled, ladies.” He held up the treat bag. “That dog eats more than I do.”
Stone grinned again in response to a wave of feminine laughter. Annie scowled.
Rowdy shook off the snow in his fur and trotted toward the truck.
“That can't be true,” one said.
“He stole half the Thanksgiving turkey right off the counter,” he informed them.
Annie shot Stone a look. She hadn't asked him how he'd spent the traditional holiday, figuring at the time that he'd probably zoomed up overnight to Wyoming on the interstate and returned by Sunday.
“Gosh. He looks so innocent.”
About as innocent as his ruggedly good-looking master,
Annie thought.
“And he's so friendly,” someone else said. She was having trouble keeping track, what with all the gushing.
“We figured he had to belong to someone. But he didn't have a tag.”
Again, it was kind of hard to tell which girl had said it. They tended to talk over each other and laugh a lot. Annie saw Marshall bend down and examine the dog.
“Hmm. Guess he managed to lose that. But it could've fallen off.” Rowdy sat before he was asked to and got a CrunChee for his trouble. “Well, thanks for taking care of him.”
“No problem.” They kept on chattering like happy birds in the sunshine, ignoring Annie, who was still in the truck. Maybe they just didn't see her, what with the glare off the windshield. Or maybe it was the blinding brilliance of Marshall Stone's sexy smile.
She narrowed her gaze when one young woman approached the truck.
Oh, please,
she thought. She wasn't in the mood to chat with anyone.
The girl ran her mittened hand over the gleaming fender. “Ooh, nice truck. Is it new?”
Masculine pride tinged Stone's reply. “Yup.”
The sun went behind a cloud and the reflective glare on the windshield vanished. The girl suddenly saw Annie and stepped back, her mascaraed eyes widening for a second. “Um, hello.”
Annie managed a thin smile. “Hi.”
The other girl effectively dismissed her by addressing her next remark exclusively to Marshall. “I didn't know you were with someone.”
He barely glanced sideways at her, to her further annoyance. “That's Annie. She's a friend. I'm Marshall Stone.”
“Oh, okay. Well, I'm Jill.”
She didn't offer a last name and he didn't supply any additional clarification as to who Annie was to him.
Not really anyone,
she thought crossly. There was no other term besides
friend
for their relationship so far. It was difficult to define and probably didn't even technically qualify as a relationship, but even so, it seemed to Annie that he could have been more enthusiastic about introducing her.
Marshall looked a little nervous, as if he'd been caught playing the field. Or maybe a guilty look would be more accurate. She wondered, if she were just a friend and nothing more, if he kissed all his female acquaintances the way he kissed her. She looked out the side window at nothing and sighed inwardly.
Rowdy jumped in when his master whistled, giving Annie an enthusiastic greeting despite his betrayal.
“Quit it,” she told him. But she patted him, even though he was getting snow all over the seat. He panted with happy tiredness, letting his tongue loll out as Marshall got back in, leaving the window rolled down to give a final wave.
More squeals and giggles.
Now they all seemed to be admiring the truck, egged on by Jill. They probably took Stone for a rich young rancher. They had no way of knowing that he wasn't from around the area because they weren't local either.
A redhead joined the group. Where had she come from? Annie sat bolt upright when the redhead slipped off her jacket. She was wearing a hot pink sweater. Annie thought, uncharitably, that it clashed with her hair, which looked dyed.
The color of the sweater wasn't proof of anything. Annie hated herself for jumping to conclusions. There had to be a hundred million pink sweaters in the US, and Colorado could probably lay claim to about ten million of the total. It didn't mean a damn thing. But she had to admit that the visual connection had jolted her for a second.
Then she realized that Marshall was waving to that one in particular.
“What are you doing here?” the redhead called.
“Picking up my dog,” he called back. “I'm not sure he wants to leave, though. Tough luck. I have things to do and places to go. You know how it is.”
It sounded like he expected the newcomer to understand what he meant. Annie's jealousyâshe had to admit to itânotched up.
“Got it. By the way, thanks for the ride the other day,” the redhead added with a wink. “Bye, Rowdy!”
Okay. That was proof enough. The redhead had to have been the person who'd opened the truck door when Annie had spotted the flash of pink from up on the mountain.
Stone nodded and rolled up the window before he drove away.
“Funny how she knew the dog's name when you didn't say it and he didn't have a tag.”
A minute or so passed. She didn't like how she felt or how she was acting, but she couldn't help the reaction.
Some people have real problems,
she reminded herself sternly.
“Let me guess,” Stone finally spoke. “You don't think it's funny at all. You'd like to hit me with a brick, but we could end up in a ditch.”
“That's about right. Also, I don't have a brick. Remind me to bring one next time I help you find your poor little lost doggy.”
Rowdy gave her a soulful look. Annie half thought that Stone had put him up to this. Was it possible to train a dog to get lost? More to the point, could a man be trained to do the same thing?
“Nice girls, don't you think?”
That was at the top of the list of Questions She Had No Intention of Ever Answering.
“I'm glad he found them. Or vice versa.” She could feel his quick sideways look at her. “Something on your mind?” he asked.
“Not really.”
“I take it you didn't know any of them.”
She gave an indifferent shrug. “They're not from Velde.”
He pondered that for a moment. “Probably just passing through. Like me.”
Annie had no comment.
“Okay, spit it out. Something is bugging you.”
“Why do you want to know?”
“Because you're obviously upset.”
“Aww. Next you'll be telling me that you care.”
Stone cleared his throat. But he didn't say anything more. The tension between them stretched to the breaking point.
“Did I marry you and not remember it?” he asked in a low voice. “Because if I didn't, I believe I have the right to do what I want.”
Annie stared straight ahead, fuming. “Who is that redhead?”
“I think her name is Bunny.”
“You think.” Annie didn't need one more reason to be suspicious. Of course, he didn't need to know a redhead's full name to spend an afternoon with her. Or even her real name, which probably wasn't Bunny.
“Her car broke down out at the subdivision. I gave her a lift to the service station. So what?”
He slowed down at an intersection of several country roads. They were in the middle of nowhere, but Annie reached for the door handle. She heard a click as he pushed a button that locked it.
“Don't. It's much too cold to walk by the side of the road. I'll drop you off wherever you like.”
“In town. Anywhere on Main Street.”
“Will do.”
A headache-inducing silence prevailed until he pulled up into the first parking spot he saw. Annie got out and slammed the door hard enough to hurt her own eardrums. It rankled the hell out of her when she saw his handsome face through the windshield. She bent down to scoop up a handful of snow, which she packed into a ball and threw at him.
Stone turned on the wipers for a few seconds and grinned at her.
There hadn't been any car out at the subdivision. Just his goddamned truck. The worst of it was, there wasn't anyone she could tell about him being a heel. Even Darla would think she was stupid for believing him in the first place.
Annie headed away from his truck, not looking when she heard him drive past. She wasn't sure where she wanted to go or what she ought to do with the rest of her day.
A misspelled cardboard sign outside the church social hall caught her eye.
X
MAS
P
AJUNT
R
EEHERSUL
A
T
4.
Annie looked at her watch. It was 3:30. She walked up to the sign and read the fine print.
P.S. W
E
N
EED
H
EY FOR THE
M
ANGER
.
It looked like a kid had done the lettering. Annie's bad mood started to fizzle out. She'd missed the pageant when she'd been working in Aspen and Vail. Not this year. And she wasn't just going to watch it. She was going to volunteer. Right now. There were several bales of hay in the Bennetts' barn that she could bring over later.
Just thinking about Stone's self-satisfied grin made her do an especially good job of stomping the snow off her boots in the entryway to the social hall. She was somewhat calmer when she went in.
Kids were running around everywhere, doing more laughing than rehearsing. The chorus director, Opal Lawson, was trying to keep order, without too much success.
“Need some help?”
“Annie, how nice to see you! Yes. If you could get the shepherds on stage, that would be great.”
“Which ones are they?”