Page 98 of Cowboy Heat

I jump at the sudden noise, ending our kiss.

Together we look down at the caller ID flashing across the screen.

“It’s Mimi,” I say, breathless to my own ears.

I’ve never been more disappointed.

Beau seems to be struggling in his own way. He’s breathing heavy too. He nods but his hand stays right where it is beneath my bra strap.

It’s only when I shift to grab the phone that he ends the contact.

NowI’ve never been more disappointed.

We separate completely while I dance away to talk to Mimi. It times right with someone calling him, and then I’m back to standing in front of him as he finishes his call.

Then we both know something that neither of us admit.

The moment, whatever it was, is gone.

Now we’re back to our problems.

“That was Lee,” Beau says. “He directed Detective Wayland to Dan Cleary’s body.”

“She can’t have been excited about that,” I figure.

“Lee said he’s never had to out-talk himself this hard before, but he doesn’t think thatshethinks we were the ones behind him being there.”

“What about the Fulton house?”

My mind has been doing a fine job of pretending that I’m not a woman holding one bloody shoe waiting for the other one to be thrown at her. I can still feel the gun in my hand, and I’m not sure that’s a good thing to be feeling. Neither is the fact that my brain has been trying to fill the silences with the sound of Grant’s head cracking beneath the weight of the toilet lid in my hand.

Beau, though, answers without any open concern.

“He said she’d called in an ambulance after securing the scene, but that the Fulton house was a part of a much larger conversation we’re about to have with her.” He looks down at his shirt. It’s somehow made it to the ground.

“So you don’t think she’s going to arrest us?” I ask.

Beau shakes his head.

“I don’t think so. Not yet anyways.”

He’s so cavalier about it that I let out a nervous laugh.

It seems to clue him in on the gravity of his “not yet.”

“I’m trying to put myself in her shoes,” he explains. “We’d be suspects for sure if it was me.Butthere’s also enough happening here in Robin’s Tree that I’d have a good amount of doubt that we were involved past getting caught in the crossfire. Then there’s the fact that we’re calling things in to her and not at all hiding.” He nods in the direction of Big House. “Which is why I think we need to meet her at the house. Show her that we’re just two good people trying to live a good, normal life.”

He didn’t outright clump me into his home life, but the idea does get me a touch flushed.

Still, he doesn’t look convinced at his own words.

“But you’re worried about being there. With me.”

This would be the perfect moment to feel some subtext there, but our moment in the sun is over.

Beau nods.

“We don’t know that the men at the Fulton house were for sure after you,” he reasons. “But, well, those coincidences keep piling up. It would be a bigger jump to say that they weren’t in part coming for you.”