“I can handle it.” He didn’t want her involved in his problems, and truthfully, Sophia was getting pushy.
Bobby, who had delivered some Sheetrock and was heading to his truck, fell into step with them as they headed outside.
“You haven’t been out of the hospital that long. I can take care of you,” she insisted.
“No.” James thought for a second about their lovemaking. Tempting, but no.
Bobby pointed a finger at James. “You do what she says for a few days or you’ll find yourself back in the hospital, and we all know how much you liked that.”
“Don’t think so.” James stopped outside the barn door.
“Jesus, man. You look like shit.” Bobby woefully shook his head. “What good do you think you’re doing here with us?”
“I’m fine.”
“It’s just for a few days,” Sophia said, sending Bobby a “butt-out” glare. “Until you’re stronger.”
“I’m going home.”
“Your place is a friggin’ nightmare,” Bobby reminded.
“I’ll go back to the hotel for tonight, then. If and when you can arrange for a crew to help me get my place back in order, I’ll go home.”
“And if you fall down the stairs and break your neck?”
“I won’t do that.” Hiking his collar up around his neck, James started walking toward Bobby’s battered Silverado. “If you want to help, drive me to the police garage. Looks like my Explorer’s finally been released from custody.”
“You’re gonna drive?” Bobby questioned.
“Yes, I’m going to drive.” James was growing more irritated by the second. He’d never liked being bossed around, and now just about everyone he ran into thought they had a better idea about how he should run his life than he did.
Bobby asked, “What about the company truck?”
“Oh, fu—” He stopped himself before he cursed a blue streak, because Knowlton was right. The cops had both the Explorer and the GMC truck. “We’ll make two trips.”
“Or she can help out,” Bobby said, nodding toward Sophia. “I’ll be the lead dog in my truck; you can drive the company rig behind me, and she’ll bring up the rear in the SUV.”
“I don’t need this, Bobby,” James said coolly.
Bobby stopped to light a cigarette, bending his head and cupping the end of his filter tip as the snow fell in fits and starts all around him. “If anything goes wrong, we’re on the scene to help. That’s all.” The cigarette bobbled in his lips as he talked, then finally caught. He drew in a big lungful of smoke.
“Fine,” James grumbled, not happy, but anxious to get going, to get his life back on track.
With Ralph following at James’s heels, the three of them made their way past a delivery truck from a local appliance store that was backing up to the open barn doors. The rear warning signal was beeping insistently as the truck’s tires ground over the snow and gravel. Bruce Porter, a jack-of-all-trades, was standing in the open doorway and waving the truck backward.
They crossed the lot to Bobby’s pickup, where James found himself once again stuffed inside, squeezed between Knowlton and a beautiful woman, his dog in the passenger well at their feet.
He should just accept Sophia’s help, he thought as Bobby put the pickup into gear. Why was he fighting it?
He slid a glance in her direction to find Sophia watching him, a small, almost playful smile on her lips.
That’s why, man. You’ve got no idea what’s going on in her head.
“What?” she asked, eyes twinkling.
“Nothing.”
She pressed the length of her thigh closer to his, and despite his trepidation, he sensed that he could be easily aroused by her, that he was being aroused by her, even though he’d spent too much of the last few days thinking of Rebecca, and even though he wasn’t completely convinced he could trust Sophia at all . . . which was a pretty good summation of what his downfall had been ever since he began noticing the opposite sex. His Achilles heel had nothing to do with his heel but everything to do with his goddamned cock.
He ignored his own body’s signals as Bobby drove along the lane, wipers scraping off snow and ice, defroster working overtime, every now and then a branch from the thicket between the two lanes brushing the side of the Chevy.
Once they were on the county road leading toward town, Sophia started in again.
“I just think it would be best if you had someone taking care of you for the next week or so,” she said.
“We covered this.”
“But—”
“No, Sophia.”
She rolled her eyes.
“I’m staying at the hotel. Someone’s there twenty-four/seven. Just a phone call away.”
“The inn’s booked,” Sophia said.
“I’ll figure it out.”
“You would kick out a paying customer?” Bobby asked, giving him a look.
“If I had to. I’m capable of making my own decisions,” he added with a bit of steel in his voice.
That, at least, ended their pressure campaign for the next forty minutes until they arrived at the garage and James signed the paperwork for both vehicles.
As Detective Mendoza had promised, he was able to pick up his phone as well. Outside the garage, he handed Sophia the keys to his Explorer. “You’ll follow me,” he reminded her.
She was a tad testy as she said, “I’ll drop it off at the inn, where my car is, because I have to head back into town ASAP. I got a call reminding me I’m supposed to be at the police station in an hour. Apparently Detective Rivers wants to talk to me.”
CHAPTER 22
The Isolated Cabin
Cascade Mountains
Washington State
December 15
I wait.
Seated on the hand-built couch.
Armed and ready.
Not only do I have two pieces of razor-sharp plastic, but also the metal rack that I managed to unscrew from the back of the bathroom cabinet door. It’s heavier. Will be able to do a different, deeper kind of damage.
At that thought, my stomach curdles. I imagine swinging the weapon, feeling the soft thud as it hits flesh, then
