Page 16 of Fatal Deception
It scraped at him, the vulnerability and sheer unfairness in this question. “Isn’t your brother-in-law loaded?” he asked,not kindly. Because he didn’t want to be kind or worried aboutvulnerability.
She shook her head. “I’m not taking Duncan’s money.”
It was none of his business. None of this was any of his business, except getting to the bottom of whoever was doing this to her. “I’ll help you clean and board up.”
“You don’t have to—”
“Maybe your family loves the martyr bullshit, but I don’t. I’m going to help. And then you’re going to have three choices until we find out who did this,” he said, holding a finger up for each of them. “Go over to the Kirks and stay with them. Go into Bent and stay with Hart and Vi. Or I’m bunking here.” He knew she wouldn’t take the last one, but hopefully it’d spur her in the right direction faster.
She laughed. “Copeland, I am not putting anyone I care about in danger. I’m not even going to worry them. I can’t leave. I have cattle and work to see to morning, noon and night. And you are most definitely not going to stay here. That’s absolutely ludicrous.”
He shrugged, not about to let her call his bluff. He’d call hers first. “Watch me.”
She stared at him, her mouth a pretty littleOof shock. Which quickly sharpened into anger. “Fine.” She hopped back into a standing position, anger overtaking the fear and the sadness. “I’dloveit if you stayed, because anything is better than putting everyone I care about in danger.” She lifted up that surprisingly stubborn chin. “I’ll make you up a room. We’ll have to pull out all the blankets. It’s going to be a cold one even once we get that boarded up.” She gestured at the broken windows where the frigid wind swept in.
But he wasn’t about to retreat now. She’d relent before he did. “Great.”
“Fantastic.” She whirled away from him and stormed upstairs.
And he took the broom and attacked sweeping up more glass.
She’d change her mind by the time it was cleaned up.
He was almost sure of it.
Chapter Six
Audra gathered all the blankets upstairs when she should be downstairs cleaning up. When she should be doing anything but proving a stupid,stupidpoint.
Still, she was upstairs making up Rosalie’s old room so Copeland could allegedly stay there—she wouldn’t bet on it—because she needed to have a bit of a cry, and she’d be damned if she’d do it in front of Copeland Beckett.
Well, she didn’t like to cry in front of anyone, but there was something about Copeland that made thatextraimportant.
Once the room was made up, and she’d let out a sufficient amount of tears, she moved into the bathroom where she’d holed up in terror at someone shooting up her house. She didn’t want to think about that. She’d rather focus on anger and pride, and never think about the sounds of gunshots and crashing glass again.
She washed her face with cool water even though the house was already getting cold. She blotted away the water and tried to blot the redness from crying along with it. Once she was satisfied there was no trace of tears on her face, she went back downstairs.
He’d made a dent in the amount of glass that had shattered on the inside. A little prick of guilt settled in her gut. It wasn’t his mess to clean up, and no matter how irritated she was at him, that didn’t mean she should have left him to clean uphermess.
Deep down, she knew there was something a little twisted about considering thishermess, since she didn’t ask anyone to shoot her windows out. But she didn’t have time fordeep downsright now.
“If you sweep up the rest of this mess, I can get started on boarding up the windows,” he said to her.
He was telling her what to do as just a matter of course without thinking it through atall. Guilt turned over into frustration. “You don’t know where the boards, hammer, or nails are.”
“Alright, then I guess I’ll keep cleaning and you can go get the stuff.” He said this with an easy shrug, dumping another dustpan full of glass into a new paper bag.
“Thank you for taking charge,” she replied dryly. “How would I know what to do without you?”
He stopped what he was doing, glanced over at her. His expression was one of frustration, and she figured that was fair because it matched her own.
“I never said you had to clean up,” she said, before she could help herself.
“What am I supposed to do? Just stand around in the middle of a bunch of shattered glass not doing anything like a jerk?”
She wanted to say something nasty, like:if the shoe fits. But it wasn’t fair. He wasn’t being a jerk at all. Just…bossy. Which was probably natural for him, considering he was a detective. And he’d been a detective at a much bigger and busier police department before he’d landed in Bent County.
She had to stop snapping at him. It wasn’t like her, and it wasn’t nice. She prided herself on being nice. On being the calm, even-keel that Rosalie wasn’t.