Normally, McCall would have headed to her cabin, anxious for the peace and quiet. But it was still early and there’d been one more thing she had to do.
The sun had slipped behind the Little Rockies as she spotted Luke. She glanced past him and the skeletal frame of his house to the stock pond in the distance and felt a chill snake up her spine.
Her gaze came back to Luke, and for a moment, she wanted to stop all this. She wanted to sit down in the shade with Luke, share a cold beer, watch the sun set and forget about the past, all of it, especially the part where Luke broke her heart.
She realized she shouldn’t have come here feeling so vulnerable. For years, she’d built a shield around herself after Luke hurt her. But there were now cracks in her armor. Finding out that her father hadn’t run out on her and her mother had opened old wounds—just as Luke had by coming back to Whitehorse.
Luke’s presence had filled her head with thoughts of what could have been. What could still be if only she could forgive him.
She listened to Luke pound another nail and shelved all her crazy thoughts, especially the ones about Luke Crawford and second chances.
The air was cool in the shade. The hammering stopped. She knew Luke had already seen her coming.
As he slipped his hammer into the side of his carpenter’s apron, he turned and leaned against the opening where he’d been working. “McCall,” he said, the sound of it making her ache.
He looked wary, but who could blame him after last night? She bristled, reminded that all she’d done to him was slap him. Nothing compared to a kiss. She was the one who should be wary.
The sun lit in his dark eyes. His skin looked bronze against his pale yellow shirt, the sleeves rolled up to expose strong forearms. The jeans were worn, just like the boots.
He couldn’t have looked more appealing or more dangerous to her equilibrium, she thought as she gazed up at him.
“What brings you out here, Deputy?” he asked.
That earlier thought of sitting in the shade with him flitted past. She swatted it away. “Your stock pond.”
Luke smiled as if he thought she was kidding. He dropped the nails he’d been holding into a pocket of the carpenter’s apron. “You looking to do some fishing? There’s northern pike in there as long as your arm. But shouldn’t you have brought your fishing pole?”
“That’s not what I’m fishing for.”
He raised a brow and pushed back his straw Western hat to reveal a thick pencil stuck behind his right ear. He smelled of sawdust.
“How deep would you say the pond is?” she asked, trying to distract herself from how good Luke looked and the way being this close to him made her ache.
His lips quirked in a questioning grin, humor sparkling in his dark eyes. “At the dam end? Twelve to fourteen feet. Shallower at the other end.”
She nodded. Plenty deep enough. She felt a shiver of dread ripple through her. Her father’s pickup was in that stock pond. With the Crawford Ranch vacant twenty-seven years ago it was the perfect place to dispose of the truck quickly.
Nor was there any reason it would have been found since the place had been bought by an out-of-state corporation and had quickly gotten tied up in some legal mess before Luke bought it back.
“Then you don’t mind if I have a look?” she asked.
“Sure. What is it you’re looking for anyway?”
“I’ve got this crazy idea there might be a pickup down there.”
“In the pond?” He sounded skeptical as he untied his carpenter’s apron and dropped it on the floor before he jumped down and walked with her toward the earthen dam.
As they approached, she saw that the water was the color of a rusted pickup, much too dark to see anything in its depths.
“How are you planning to—Whoa,” he said as she took off her jacket and pulled off one boot. “You aren’t aiming to jump in there?”
“You know of a better way to find out if the truck is down there?”
“That water will be ice-cold. It’s spring fed.”
She pulled off her other boot and began to unbuckle the belt on her jeans.
“Stop. As curious as I am to see how far you’re willing to go with this, I can’t let you,” Luke said.
“I can get a warrant—”
“I’m not talking about that.” He was angry with her again. “Damn it, McCall, if there’s something in there, I’ll find out. Whose pickup is this you think is down there, anyway?”
“My father’s.”
Luke blinked. “Trace Winchester?”
“He is my father, no matter what the local grapevine says.”
“I didn’t mean—Never mind.” He pulled off his boots, tossing them down, then unsnapped his shirt and dropped it into the pile. She tried not to look at his bare chest.
Nor had she meant to make him angry with her again. “I can do this without your help,” she said, although she hadn’t been looking forward to going in that water.
He leveled his gaze on her, eyes hard as stones. “I don’t doubt you’re more than capable and determined to do anything you set your mind to and that you certainly don’t need me, but it’s my stock pond. Stay here.” In his socks, he padded around the dam to the side and waded gingerly into the water.
She could tell that the water was freezing cold from the way he tried not to show just how uncomfortable it was. When he reached chest-deep, he did a shallow dive and disappeared beneath the still dark surface.
McCall took off her good leather belt and dropped it on the ground, ready to go in after him if necessary. A meadowlark sang from the sage. In the distance, a truck shifted down on Highway 191. Nothing moved on the stock pond’s surface.
McCall held her breath as she stared down at the water and
