Angel's Dance (4 page)

Something about his flippant attitude
set her off. “Like I would even know where to begin? Obviously a
lot has changed in your life in the last six months! Rather than me
playing 20 questions, you could just fill me in!” Unless he didn’t
want to fill her in. He had pretty effectively cut her out of his
life. Obviously he didn’t want anything to do with her and was only
here because he needed help finding his daughter. The thought
sobered her and she added more quietly, “If you wanted to. It’s
really none of my business.”

Grant cut his eyes at her,
then sat quietly for a minute. He took a deep breath. “You are
right. My life has changed a lot in the last six months and
it
is
none of
your business.”

Clear heard the resentment in his
voice and her temper flared again. How dare he! He was the one who
never called her, not the other way around!!!

Grant continued, “But… it’ll kill
time, so I might as well. After, you can tell me all about Mr.
Fancy Pants.” Clear wondered for a moment who he was talking about,
but then he began his story and she was much more interested in
that.

“
Do you remember one of
the victims from the case, Kary?”

Images of a dark haired girl floated
in Clear’s mind, but she couldn’t be sure. She shrugged.

“
Anyway, before I decided
to… trust you, I interviewed her family a couple of times and found
out that their mom was on her own and there was some questionable
stuff going on in the home. Kary had been taking care of her
siblings before she got kidnapped, but without her they were sort
of in a mess.” Grant’s eyes got a faraway look in them then he
seemed to snap back. “Anyway, after the case closed the Chief gave
me a month’s paid vacation and with all that time on my hands, I
figured I’d look into the situation. It became even clearer that
the kids were in serious trouble. The mom was a druggie and… there
was other stuff going on. No dad in the picture. Alice had moved
out with a friend, but couldn’t really do much for them. No one
wanted to take on five kids. The kids didn’t want me to contact
social services, because they couldn’t bare the thought of being
separated. What else could I do?”

“
You didn’t call me?”
Clear muttered.

“
What?” Grant glanced at
her incredulously.

“
What? I have plenty of
room!” Clear snapped defensively.

“
I was under the
impression you valued your privacy,” Grant responded stonily. After
a heartbeat he added. “You had been through a lot… and you’re just
a kid,” he muttered.

“
I am 24 thank you very
much!” Clear retorted icily. So that was why he never called her
back. She was good enough to have sex with, but not to have a
relationship with! “I know plenty about kids!” She flipped her hair
over her shoulder and looked out the window. “Besides it would have
been better than having all those young girls living with a
bache..” she clasped her hand over her mouth, her eyes wide at what
she had been about to say.

“
A bachelor? Trust me,
there are plenty of people in town who aren’t too happy about it
either… especially given Alice’s age. But I figure they can say
what they want, none of them were doing anything about
it!”

Clear couldn’t help but smile at his
attitude.

“
Well, it is good to know
that a public servant is concerned about such things!” she
smirked.

“
To hell with it. As long
as they re-elect the chief I’ll still have a job. This was never
supposed to be a permanent solution… but they’ve had so much loss
already, and now I’m leaving them too.” He became very gloomy and
his voice trailed off.

“
This must be difficult,
being torn between your own kid and these kids that you’ve taken
in.”

“
Actually it wasn’t so
bad. They keep me busy, but I needed something to keep me busy
after everything.” His eyes drifted again. “Until this whole mess
happened, everything was looking up. Kat has become very close to
all of them. She and Alice talk all the time. They were inseparable
over Christmas break. She was even going to come visit this
summer….” His fingers bit into the steering wheel and his knuckles
turned white. Clear waited for him to continue, but the silence
grew as he wallowed in his own thoughts.

After a moment, Grant added, “So… uh…
your turn.”

Clear stared at him blankly, having no
idea what he was talking about.

“
Mr. Fancy Pants?” He
sounded like he was trying a little too hard to be
nonchalant.

“
I, well… I have no idea
who you are talking about,” Clear admitted.

“
The guy at your house?”
Grant asked incredulously.

Clear couldn’t help but laugh loudly.
“Ah…” she said, after laughing so hard that her stomach hurt,
“Right, Mr. Yarborough. He’s just a client. He came in from Glasgow
to buy a horse. I only met him yesterday.”

Grant cocked his eyebrow at her.
“Really? Hmm…”

Clear splayed her hands across her
lap, studying her fingernails. “With Anne’s help, I have taken over
the sales operations of the ranch. We have opened to a broader
clientele. It’s been… good.” She could hardly tell him that the
reason she had done it was to block memories of him out of her
waking moments.

He didn’t say anything and she didn’t
know what else to say. Her heart full of sadness, she leaned back
in the chair and began to do her own wandering in her own mind as
she watched the road roll by.

Chapter Three

Clear woke suddenly, feeling very
disoriented. Out the window she saw waves of wheat fields flowing
by. The sun was just beginning to set. Her head was pounding
slightly and her brain felt very muddled, almost as if she had been
drinking. She tried to think about what she had been dreaming….
What had startled her awake?

“
You alright?” Grant’s
gruff voice startled her and she felt herself jump.

“
Um…. I think so…” She
peeked at him through her hair, wondering what she might have
mumbled in her sleep, not sure she wanted to know. “Why?” What the
hell, she felt that she had been on the tip of something… but
couldn’t place it. Maybe something he overheard could
help.

Grant shrugged, never taking his eyes
off the road. “Nothing in particular, you just squirmed a lot.
Didn’t seem to be a very restful nap.”

She chewed the inside of her lip. She
knew it wasn’t, so his little insight wasn’t very helpful. “I…
didn’t say anything?”

“
Nope. Were you dreaming
about something?”

“
I don’t know,” she
muttered, glaring out at the fields. “How much further?”

“
I figured we would stop
for dinner and a motel in the next town, about an hour
away.”

“
Oh… we aren’t driving
straight through?” Clear loathed motels. It wasn’t so much the
physical filth that bothered others, but the mental filth that
tended to torment her alone.

“
I suppose if you would
like to take a turn driving, that could be arranged, but I am dead
beat.”

Clear eyed the stick shift
accusatorily. Her parents had taught her how to drive a stick, but
she had never really gotten the hang of it and had a tendency to
kill clutches. But was it worth the possible expense to make Grant
let her drive? Then again, she wasn’t sure how abused this clutch
had been. What really mattered was whether it was worth the
possibility of being stranded out here indefinitely and the delay
it would cause in getting to Chicago? As much as she hated it, she
could not justify driving straight through and risking them
breaking down.

“
I would…. but sticks and
I don’t tend to get along.”

Grant’s jaw tightened. She wasn’t
sure, but suspected that he was trying not to smile.

“
I’ll cover the cost and I
can get you your own room.”

Clear turned out the
window as her eyes went wide. She hadn’t even thought of that!
‘
Geez, that would be
uncomfortable
!’ But he had already offered
and she wasn’t going to refuse her own room. The car was feeling a
little crowded as was. “Whatever works for you,” she replied
nonchalantly.

Clear stared silently out the window
watching the sky change from soft golden hues to fiery oranges and
reds, to the lighter and darker blues of night. She let her mind
focus on the colors in hopes of releasing her subconscious enough
to remember what she had been dreaming. As the velvety purple
descended, the sky ahead began to lighten with the artificial light
of the town. Frustrated at not being able to remember anything from
her dream, she decided it was probably because it had nothing to do
with Grant’s daughter.

Clear stretched. “So, where are we?”
she questioned.

“
Millston,
Wisconsin.”

“
Wow, Wisconsin
already?”

Grant gave her a look. It was only for
a split second, but she thought she saw something in that look,
something that felt familiar. But then he was back on the road.
“We’ve been in Wisconsin for a while.”

“
Hmm…. We never stopped
for lunch, did we?”

“
You were sleeping…. Look,
up there is a little diner, we’ll stop there.” Grant pulled into
the diner parking lot and Clear got out of the car and stretched
and stomped her feet. It was starting to get cool at night here and
she sort of wished she had not packed her hoodie in her bag. She
looked up at the diner as she stamped her feet trying to restart
the circulation. Her body ached from head to toe. She did not think
she had ever sat still for so long in all her life.

The diner was a relic from the days
when everyone did their traveling by car. Now the parking lot had a
few heavy duty trucks, two cars (probably belonging to the two
employees that could be seen) and a couple of RVs. Clear groaned,
really not wanting to go in. But her stomach rumbled as she watched
the plain little waitress pick up a huge burger. She looked
sideways at Grant.

“
Well, shall we?” he
nodded toward the diner. She took a deep breath and walked stiffly
to the front door.

The waitress seated them with a smile
and offered drinks. Clear ordered a soda. She had a grimy taste in
her mouth and hoped her breath didn‘t smell bad. Not that it really
mattered, she supposed.

Grant looked at the menu for several
minutes then ordered coffee. Clear looked at him
surprised.

“
I thought we were going
to stop for the night?” she nodded towards the coffee as the
waitress set it down in front of them.

Grant nodded then looked at the
coffee. “Oh, it’ll be fine.”

The waitress pulled out a pen and a
very wide smile for Grant. “What’ll it be, Hon?”

Grant looked to Clear, “Ladies
first.”

The waitress turned to Clear and she
couldn’t help but notice that the wattage cranked down a lot for
her. The girl obviously was catering to the tipper.

“
I’ll just have a burger
and fries,” Clear muttered, not sure why she was feeling irritated
all of a sudden. It couldn’t be because of the waitress flirting
with Grant, could it? She sighed and looked around as Grant
ordered. There were four large men in one corner booth that all
looked like they belonged to the big rigs outside. Two were
laughing and chatting, while the third listened, but the fourth sat
by morosely, looking about as miserable as Clear felt.

There was a couple with a young child
sitting by the cook line and the child was curled up in her
mother’s lap. The rest of the place was empty except for one
middle-aged woman leaning against the juke box. The woman put in
some quarters and an old country western song began to blare from
the tiny jukebox. Clear didn’t know the song, but she cringed at
the wailing tinny voice of what could only be Hank Williams. Even
though she had grown up in Montana, where there was little else but
country music channels, Clear had never been able to appreciate the
music. She preferred classical and, strangely enough, hard
rock.

“…
alright?” Clear caught
the last part and realized that Grant had been speaking to her. She
vaguely suspected that he had said something to her before and this
was a second attempt to get her attention.

“
Hmm… wha… I’m sorry, what
did you say?” She turned back to him and felt her anger spike
almost uncontrollably. The shock of it made her gasp. It had been
so long since she had felt this before that she had forgotten how
it could be. She looked around again and tried to pinpoint where
the emotion was coming from.

“
Clear, what is the
matter?” Grant scooted in beside her on her side of the table and
grabbed her arm. “Are you… you know?” he whispered.

“
I…I..” all she could do
was nod. Where was it coming from? She just couldn’t really tell.
When she focused on the morose trucker, nothing changed. She tried
to shake it off, reminding herself that it didn’t matter and that
she needed to focus on Grant and his daughter, not random
stranger’s emotions.

She physically shook herself and
turned back to Grant. “Sorry… someone is really angry and… well, it
is hard… to… hard to focus. So much for those great walls I had
built up!” She slammed her fist into the table then looked at Grant
in surprise as the sound echoed through the room.