Play It Safe (41 page)

“Who’s that?” I whispered, getting closer and pressing to his side.

“Jeb Sharp,” Gray answered tersely, I sucked in breath and I saw Lenny get up close to Jeb Sharp as the remaining three officers staggered themselves between Sharp and Gray, preparing, should Gray lose it, to lock him down.

Lenny and Sharp had words I couldn’t hear even if they weren’t that far away. Lenny shook his head then moved his body as if to block Sharp but Sharp shook his head too and rounded Lenny.

“Not a good idea, Jeb,” Lenny called after him as Sharp approached Gray and me.

Gray, already tense, went so solid I feared touching him would make him shatter. Still, I curled into him and put my other hand on his abs.

Sharp, astutely, stopped outside arm’s reach.

He was like his son, good-looking. But he was that way in the way Gray was. He’d be that way until he died. There were lines on his face that came from hard work in the sun and hard laughing often in his life. There was a burn in his eyes that came from not a small amount of anger and a hint of shame he couldn’t quite hide but he was trying. I knew he was Buddy’s Dad and, one look at him, I still couldn’t help but like him.

Then he announced, “I’ll deal with this, son.”

“Time for that’s passed, Jeb. Got seven dead horses and no barn,” Gray returned.

“You’re smart, you’ll let me take care ‘a this,” Jeb said quietly.

“He’s been gunnin’ for me since junior high and tonight he put my woman in danger. Not feelin’ like bein’ smart right about now,” Gray replied.

Jeb’s eyes came to me, his hand went to the bill of his baseball cap for a second before it dropped and he muttered, “Ma’am.”

I lifted my chin to him but no more and he looked back at Gray.

“Ask you one more time, Grayson, let me deal with this.”

“You do what you gotta do. Len’ll do what he’s gotta do. And I’ll do what I gotta do,” Gray stated.

Jeb Sharp held my man’s eyes.

Then he whispered, “Fair enough.” Then his eyes went to the barn and he kept whispering when he said, “Cryin’ shame.”

He was not wrong about that.

I pressed closer to Gray and Gray’s hand squeezed mine tighter.

Sharp looked through me and back to Gray.

“You need help cleanin’ up and buildin’, you call on me. I’ll send some boys,” he offered.

When Gray made no reply, I had a mind to suggest he didn’t hold his breath but I kept my tongue.

“Right,” Sharp muttered, knowing exactly what Gray’s non-response meant then he looked to me. “Mizz Larue, wish we’d met under more auspicious circumstances.”

“Me too,” I whispered.

He nodded. Then he looked at Gray. Then he sighed deeply. Finally he turned and walked away.

That was when I sighed.

Jeb Sharp got in his truck, turned it around and drove down the lane.

I felt some of the tension leave Gray’s body and he turned us to face the destruction.

Wood barn, it went up like tinder, came down in no time flat.

“I’m gonna go make coffee for the firemen, honey,” I whispered.

“Good idea, baby,” Gray murmured, his eyes never leaving the barn.

I squeezed his hand. He squeezed mine back but he did it not looking away from his loss.

I let him go, took two steps away then turned and took two back.

Pressing again to his side, I lifted up until I was as close as I could get to his ear and whispered, “Say you love me, Gray.”

I rolled back to the soles of my feet and watched as he closed his eyes then he opened them and turned to me.

His hand came up, he cupped my jaw and his eyes moved over my face.

Then he said, “I love you, Ivey.”

I grinned a small, sad grin.

He gave me the same.

Then he bent and touched his mouth to mine, dropped his hand and I turned and went into the house to make coffee for firefighters.

* * * * *

Three hours later…

Dawn was hitting the sky, weak light beginning to glow through the window.

Gray and I had had showers but no sleep. We were in bed, Gray on his back, me pressed to his side, my head on his pectoral, hand flat and lightly trailing his chest and gut, his arm around me, hand in my panties cupping my ass.

We’d been there awhile, lying close, not speaking but also not sleeping.

Finally, I broke the silence by whispering, “You okay?”

“No.”

I pulled in a breath. Then I slid my hand up his chest, lifted and turned my head and rested my chin on my hand under me.

He had four pillows bunched haphazardly behind his head and shoulders (this was his way, my man liked pillows) and his eyes dipped to me.

“Please don’t kill Buddy,” I said quietly. “Just got you back after seven years. I don’t want to spend the next seven visiting you in the penitentiary.”

His face softened but he didn’t smile.

Still, he replied teasingly, “You’re in the mountain plains of Colorado, dollface. No jury from these parts would convict me for killin’ a man who killed seven horses.”

His joke fell flat, I knew he saw it on my face just as I saw it on his but I suspected his was worse. He was a cowboy, horses were kind of important to cowboys.

I lifted up, pushed up closer, sliding more onto his chest, my hand moving to curl around the side of his neck all as I whispered, “Baby, I don’t know what to do to help you.”

That was when he grinned. It wasn’t a big one and it didn’t warm his beautiful eyes the usual way but it still warmed his eyes.

His hand left my panties so his arm could close tight around the middle of my back and he told me, “You’re doin’ it, Ivey.”

I nodded and smiled.

Then I said gently, “I’m sorry, Gray.”

“Me too.”

“We’ll be okay.”

It was his turn to nod. “One thing I got is insurance. So, yeah, eventually, we’ll be okay.”

It was good to know he had insurance but that wasn’t what I was talking about.

“That isn’t what I meant, honey.”

“I know that, darlin’, and my response still stands. We’ll be okay in all ways. Just that right about now, when we need to crash so we can get at least a little sleep so we can face whatever the day’s gonna bring, you need to know that it’s
all
gonna be okay.”

He was right.

I tipped my face so I could kiss his chest. Then I repositioned and looked at him again.

“Do you get sleepless nights often?”

“Nope, work hard all day, sleep hard all night.”

“So, you waking up is unusual?”

“Can’t say it’s never happened, can say it’s so rare don’t remember when it happened last.”

“So what woke you?”

That got me a different kind of grin but he still wasn’t committed to it.

“Thought it was my subconscious reminding me you’d gone to sleep without your panties on.”

I grinned back then pressed gently, “But that wasn’t it?”

“If you’re askin’ if I heard somethin’, then no. I heard somethin’, I’d look. I wouldn’t start somethin’ with you. If you’re askin’ if I got a sense of somethin’, a vibe, who knows? What I do know is, awake or asleep, I’d hear that blast. I sleep hard but I don’t sleep so deep I’d sleep through that and I know since I didn’t the last time.”

“Mm…” I muttered, my eyes sliding away.

“Ivey,” he called and my eyes slid back. “We got a mess outside and a fight that was already pretty fuckin’ ugly that just got a whole lot uglier. We need to sleep so we can be prepared to face the day.”

He was right.

“Okay, honey,” I agreed and started to move to settle back into him but stopped when his arm gave me a squeeze and I focused back on him.

“I’m not used to sleepless nights but that don’t mean after what happened tonight, seein’ you run around a burnin’ barn, I won’t start to have them.”

I knew where this was going from my macho man rancher cowboy so I opened my mouth to cut him off.

He saw it and his arm gave me another squeeze.

“Let me finish, baby, yeah?”

I closed my mouth and nodded.

“You saved five horses,” he whispered.

I did. I did do that.

Gray wasn’t done.

“You runnin’ into that barn like that, workin’ to save those horses, this ranch, I didn’t like it and pray to God nothin’ like that’ll happen again. But I gotta say, wherever you were born and whatever you did, pool hustler, showgirl, tonight, you were a rancher’s woman and just like you, when you do somethin’, you’re the best there is.”

That meant so much, was so beautiful, my nose instantly started stinging and his face got fuzzy as tears filled my eyes.

He pulled me up his chest, ignored my burgeoning tears and ordered, “Now, say you love me, Ivey, kiss me then settle and go to sleep.”

I swallowed then whispered shakily, “I love you, Gray.”

“Now, kiss me,” he whispered back.

I touched my mouth to his and he pulled me back down his chest.

“Now, go to sleep.”

I put my cheek to his chest nodding and deep breathing.

I didn’t go right to sleep, it took me awhile just as it took Gray but I eventually got to sleep and I did it before him.

It Was Family

The morning after the fire, early, we got visits from Shim and Roan. Roan on his way to work, Shim with the flatbed of his pickup filled with horse feed and hay. This was kind since ours went up in smoke, something they both obviously knew (thus the visits) since news travels fast in a small town even through the night. It was also a testimony to the kind of man my cowboy rancher was that he accepted it considering Shim was still a ranch hand on Jeb Sharp’s land. It was too early for the feed store to be open so it was likely this was given to us by Sharp, not Shim.

For reasons unknown to me, regardless of the fact I was exhausted and dragging, I started the day by tricking myself out. I didn’t put on one of my fabulous dresses but did the hair, makeup, designer jeans, complicated but casual (and expensive) top routine. I didn’t strap on high heels, however, instead I slipped on some fabulous flip-flops. But I went for the gusto with everything else. It could be I needed my armor for the day after a tragedy. It could be that was just me.

In the end with who came calling, I was glad I did.

The night before, after the fireman and cops left, they cordoned off the barn with police tape. One could say waking up and looking out your window to see part of your property lined with yellow police tape was not a sight you wanted to see in the morning

Or ever.

After I fed my man and served coffee to him and his friends, I dug out the insurance papers. Then I called Gray’s insurance company and left them a message stating that after the police and arson investigators released the scene, we needed an urgent visit because we had seven dead horse carcasses fifty yards away from our house and we needed to put those bodies in the ground so we could put those souls at peace.

The arson investigator showed shortly after Shim and Roan left and Gray asked, while he was dealing with things on the ranch, if I would go to the nursing home to break the news to Grandma Miriam. Seeing as our phone was ringing off the hook already and it was just eight o’clock, he was worried news would travel and she’d learn from someone else.

So I hightailed it into town and, in a futile effort to soften the blow, I bought her another book, some magazines and a shed load of candy bars. I figured a nursing home was kind of like prison, you had to have the proper currency to make your way and garner favors and for oldies it wasn’t cigarettes. So I bought enough candy bars to make Grandma Miriam the queen of the swanky retirement estate. I also got some for Gray since there was a reason there were so many candy bar wrappers in his truck. Gray did not reach for a Power Bar or a banana when he got peckish and considering his day was physical activity from dawn practically to dusk, he got the munchies often. Though I did make sure most of his had peanuts so he had protein.

I was dreading my task and once the news was delivered I felt little relief. Grandma Miriam was stunned, scared for Gray and me and heartbroken that the barn built by her husband’s father, a barn she saw out the back window while she was doing the dishes every day for over fifty years, no longer existed not to mention how she reacted when I told her we lost seven horses. And I was right, she was happy for her book, magazines and candy bars but they did not do one thing to soften the blow.

Before I left, her hand clutched mine with a surprising strength borne of fear, her fading blue eyes locked to me and she whispered fervently, “You and Gray stay safe, child. Promise me, please, you two will stay safe.”

I promised her yet again that Lenny was on it, Jeb Sharp was on it and that her grandson would never let anything happen to him or me. It was this last that got her hand to relax in mine. Then again, it would. She knew Gray so she knew this was the truth.

I drove home to see an SUV and pickup parked by the house and to find out from Gray that his morning had been busy. Half of Mustang had been by and I knew this was a fact when I hit the kitchen and found the farm table practically covered in dishes, pans and plates filled with casseroles, pies, cakes and brownies. Gray said his big shed where he kept tools, equipment and peach tree things was now filled near to overflowing with horse feed, hay and used bridles and saddles that folks had popped by to bring.

For the next hour, I would experience this same thing as folks brought food, pop, beer and equipment but I was surprised to see these folks were not lookee-loos. They came, they gave us their sentiments, they dropped off their generosity and they left. They knew Gray and I had things to do and other things to occupy our minds. They knew they’d be underfoot. They knew it was taxing to have unexpected company. So they shared their kindness then they got the hell out of there.

I’d never experienced anything like it.

It was like experiencing beauty.

It was early afternoon and Gray and I had just had huge plates filled with Ang, the waitress (still!) at the diner’s Mexican chicken, cheese and tortilla casserole. We were still at the table when his head came up and turned. Mine did too and we looked out the big window over the cabinet at the side of the kitchen.