Her gaze narrowed. “Explains what?”
“Earlier today, Harvey and I were up at the Sugarloaf Building with Cooper and he was prickly the whole time—more so than usual. When I tried to find out what had his sphincter so dang tight, he blamed work, but Harvey hinted that there was something more.”
She shrugged. “He probably is stressed about his caseload. The weird crimes around here keep piling up.”
“What do you mean, ‘probably’? Don’t you know?”
“Why would I?”
“Because you’re sleeping with him.” Was I the only one keeping score here?
“No, I slept with him down in Arizona.”
“Yeah, but …”
“Since I returned, we’ve only seen each other once, when I stopped by his office to collect my keys from him.”
Cooper had driven Natalie’s pickup home and left her to ride back north with Harvey and the fifth-wheel camper he’d towed down there. I’d gotten that crumb of information out of the ol’ dirty bird when he’d shown up for breakfast on Wednesday morning.
I adjusted the scarf again, wiping a drip of cold water off of my pant leg. “So you two haven’t done the deed since you got back home?”
She shook her head.
“Why not?” There’d been plenty of time, even if just for a quickie.
She raised her binoculars again. “Because it was a vacation-only deal.”
“Says who? Him?” That bonehead had better not have used his “I don’t date local girls” crap on Natalie again, or I’d wallop him a few more times with my purse.
“No, says me.”
“Really? That’s silly.”
“No it’s not, especially after what I overheard Hawke saying.”
“You mean about Cooper being in league with me?”
“Exactly.”
“Yeah, but what does that have to do with you and him doing the horizontal bop?”
“I’m your best friend. If Hawke finds out I slept with Coop, it jeopardizes Coop’s credibility even more.”
Maybe, but still … “So, what are you saying? You two are going to return to the miserable messes you were before you went to Arizona and blew off some steam?”
“I wasn’t a miserable mess.”
“Yes, you were.”
“Okay, maybe I was a tiny mess.”
“More like a Titanic-sized calamity.”
“But now we have that whole business out of our systems, so we can return to just being friends.”
I guffawed so loud she jumped. “If you believe that, you have noodles for brains.”
“You’re the noodlebrain,” she muttered, scanning around through her binoculars.
“Does Cooper know about this back-to-friends plan of yours?”
“No, I’ve sort of been avoiding him.”
I lowered the snow pack and tapped on my cheek. It was still tender as hell and cold now, too. “Avoidance is not going to work, you know. Deadwood is too small a town.”
“Hawke cannot know we were together. I can’t risk Coop losing his job because of me.”
That would be bad. Cooper was born to chase criminals and threaten poor innocent mothers of twins with jail time. He came naturally by the steely eyes and sharp edges needed for the job.
I raised my binoculars and focused on Hawke’s empty pickup. Like a pair of birdwatchers, we sat in silence for a moment just watching and waiting for Hawke to leave the building.
“Natalie?” I kept my eyes on the prize, only there was no prize yet.
“What?”
“Was it worth it?”
“Was what worth it?”
“Arizona. Cooper. Sex.”
She didn’t answer for a couple of breaths, and then she said, “Well, I’m in deep shit now.”
“Why?”
“Arizona, Coop, and sex.”
“That good, huh?”
“He had a lot of testosterone stored up.”
I grimaced. “Why’d you have to go and make it so clinical?”
“Would you rather I give you the sweaty details about how many times we did it and all of the different ways?”
“Eww. No.”
“Then trust me when I say he was worth the wait.”
We sat in silence a little longer.
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” I asked, lowering the binoculars so I could switch the scarf to my other hand again.
“About what?”
“You know damned well about what.”
“I don’t know. It was sort of magical down in Arizona, and I guess I wanted to keep it all to myself for a little longer.”
“So, nobody else knows?”
“Well, my cousins figured it out, of course.”
I snickered. “The Morgan sisters are no fools.”
“And Harvey knows because we used his camper.”
“It’s a wonder he didn’t want to set up a watch party and shout out pointers.”
She smirked under the binoculars. “There were plenty of jokes about it from him and everyone else down there, believe me.”
We both peered through the binoculars again for several seconds.
“Do you really think you can go back to just being pals with Cooper after that?” I asked, lowering the scarf so I could wipe off some of the cold drips running down the inside of my sleeve.
“I don’t think I have a choice right now.”
“What if he doesn’t want to be just a friend?”
“I don’t think he has a choice either, not if he wants to keep being a detective, and you and I both know how important that is to him.” Her tone had a slight bitterness to it.
Years ago, the first time Natalie and Cooper had almost played hide the pickle behind the Purple Door Saloon, Cooper had chosen his job over her. Apparently, she hadn’t forgotten that detail in spite of whatever went down in Arizona.
I set the binoculars on my lap, wringing out the scarf over the floor before rewrapping it around the shrinking snowball. “There has to be a way around this.”
“I don’t see how. Detective Hawke has gone over the deep end, and I get the feeling he’s going to try to take you, Coop, and anyone else down with him as he scrambles to land on top through it all. I won’t play a part in causing you or Coop or anyone else to end up in deeper shit than we’re already in here with this other business of yours.” She dipped her binoculars. “No offense intended there.”
“None taken. You’re right.” I returned to spying. “We need to figure out how to remove Hawke from the equation.”
“Short of taking him back
