Shut Up and Kiss Me (19 page)

“Can you make it bigger?”

“Yeah. I think this is the one where you can almost make out his face. The other one, he’s standing in the shadows, but I’m almost certain it’s the same guy.” She hit a few keys and the image expanded. Sky saw a man in jeans and a navy polo shirt.

When he didn’t say anything right away, Shala glanced back. “Do you know who he is?”

“Yeah,” Sky said, and he didn’t like it.

“Who is it?” she asked.

“His name is Charlie Rainmaker.” Grabbing his phone, Sky started dialing Phillip. “He’s the main guy who was against trying to bring tourism into town. He started a petition against it.”

“Do you think he might be behind
this
?”

“I think he’s got a lot to explain.”

When Phillip answered his phone, Sky said, “Phillip, it’s Sky. Shala went through the images and found a few things that might help.”

“I’m looking at the images now,” the ranger said. “She’s a damn good photographer.”

“I know. She’s good,” Sky agreed, feeling a sense of pride. Oddly, he couldn’t ever remember being proud of
any of the women he’d dated. Well, there was the one who’d been a centerfold in
Playboy,
but that was different.

“What are the file numbers?” Phillip asked.

“Just a second,” Sky said and then asked Shala, “Can you write those file numbers down?”

“Already have.” She handed him a piece of paper, then quickly looked away as if she didn’t want to eavesdrop. Hoping to let her know she wouldn’t be intruding, he placed a hand on her shoulder while he talked.

“Okay, here’s what we got…” Sky explained to Phillip what Shala had found and then gave him the file numbers. “No, I’ll pay a visit to Charlie,” he insisted when Phillip offered to send someone. Before he hung up, he set up a time to bring Shala in to be interviewed.

Dropping the phone on the table beside the laptop, he studied her sitting there staring at the wall. “You’re okay with going in and talking to Phillip, aren’t you?” He moved to the edge of the desk. She turned her head.

“That’s fine,” she said.

“Hey.” He pulled her from her chair, turned her around, and leaned his forehead against hers. “You okay, Blue Eyes?”

She nodded ever so slightly, and a slow grin pulled at her lips.

“What?” he asked.

Her smile widened. “You lost your towel.”

Redfoot lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. The images of the dreams flashed in his head. He’d asked the spirits to tell him what to do. He had never understood the saying “ignorance is bliss” until now. If he could go back and un-ask the spirits, he would. This was not going to be easy.

Unfortunately, the spirits had given him a plan. He didn’t have to like it, but the spirits would no doubt be angry if he ignored their messages. Angry spirits were not a good thing. A man would have more luck milking a bull
than soothing angry spirits. Redfoot had tried as much in his younger years, when he’d been stupid from too much whiskey and his friends had set him up to be the fool. He still had the scars the bull had given him. And sometimes, when the elders of the tribe got together, they still told the story.

He wished he had time to stay in bed and reminisce about the past, but he needed to help make the future right.

He closed his eyes and thought of all the things he wanted to see happen in the lives of those he loved, all the things he had believed were destiny. A man never liked to be proven wrong, but accepting his mistakes and making them right were part of being a man. He got out of bed and made his way to his closet. He pushed away one shirt and then another—trying to find one that he didn’t mind getting stained with blood.

“You look good in this kitchen,” said a husky voice.

Maria swung around. Jose stood in the doorway, watching her. She felt his gaze move up and down, taking in her new sundress, which clung in all the right places—a dress she’d bought to impress Matt. The appreciation in Jose’s eyes toyed with her feminine pride. How long had she waited to see him look at her with desire? For years, before he’d finally noticed her.

“How’s your neck this morning?” she asked, noticing how his fitted and pressed jeans and expensive button-down business shirt showcased his body and conveyed his personality. Jose had never been a faded-jeans-and-T-shirt
kind of guy. Even his clothes had always set him apart from the laid-back lifestyle of their small town.

He moved his head from side to side. “Amazingly, it doesn’t hurt at all.”

“Good.” She motioned to the counter. “There’s coffee.”

“Thanks.” He shifted, and she listened as he served himself.

Closing her eyes, she wondered how she should start this conversation. Or if she should start it now. Redfoot would be out shortly. She didn’t want him to overhear.

Sometimes, she got the feeling that her foster father knew about her and Jose; other times she wasn’t sure. Redfoot never pushed people to talk. He just studied them, offering little advice, but sometimes she felt as if he could see right through her.

She turned around and found Jose leaning against the counter, studying her, reminding her of his father. She recalled that she needed to talk to him about Redfoot, about what he’d said about them. Last night when they had all been laughing in the hall, the tension had subsided, but she knew it would return if she couldn’t make both of them see that their differences shouldn’t stop them from loving one another. She needed to reconstruct the bridge that Estella had been for them. But how?

“Later,” Jose said, glancing toward the door, “when we won’t be interrupted, I’d like for us to talk.”

Surprised, she managed only to nod.

Redfoot walked into the kitchen. He stood by the table, frowning, and eyed Maria and then Jose.

Maria watched the two men acknowledge each other’s presence. Nodding. They were back to only nodding. “There’s coffee.”

Redfoot sighed. “I’ll grab some while I’m out.”

“Out? Where?” Maria asked. “Shouldn’t you take it easy today?”

“The doc said I was fine.”

“Yes, but…where are you going?”

A frown formed between his eyebrows. “To talk to a man about a horse.”

Maria recognized Redfoot’s pat answer that meant none of her business. She wanted to push, but pushing Redfoot was like training rocks to tango.

The stubborn old man moved across the room, snagged his keys from the hook beside the door, and looked back at Jose. “You coming?”

“Me?” Jose asked. “I…need to come with you to talk to a man about a horse?”

“Yup. You got a dog in this fight, too.”

“What dog?” Jose asked.

“What fight?” Maria added, but Redfoot had one foot out the back door.

“What’s going on?” Jose asked Maria.

“How the hell am I supposed to know?” she said. “But go watch out for him.”

Jose dropped his cup in the sink and hurried after his father.

“There’s coffee,” Lucas said as Shala and Sky walked out of the bedroom.

Shala hadn’t considered being embarrassed about sleeping with Sky until she faced Lucas. Now she had the overwhelming desire to belt out “Nothing happened.” But something
had.
Well, almost. But the “almost” felt like something. It had felt wonderful and it had felt wrong. But the wonderful outweighed the wrong.

“I’m going to have to pass,” Sky said. “I need to have a little talk with Charlie Rainmaker.”

“I thought that was him when Shala showed me those pictures,” Lucas said.

Shala moved away from Sky and filled one of the cups for herself. She recalled Sky’s mouth on her breasts, his hands slipping inside her panties. She recalled telling Sky that she just needed a little more time. Which basically meant she’d agreed to eventually sleep with him.
Which basically meant she’d decided to toss her emotional insurance to the wind.

What in God’s name had she been thinking? Wait, that was it: she hadn’t been thinking. She’d been feeling. Bringing the mug to her lips, she saw Sky studying her. He smiled and winked. She felt her cheeks grow warm.

Yup, she’d been feeling all right—sexy, wanted, alive, and a heck of a lot happier. The only question was if she could feel her way through this without getting her heart shattered.

“Cream’s in the fridge, if you take it,” Lucas said, then looked back to Sky. “Do you think your friend will be able to get you something on the sedan driver?”

“I don’t know,” Sky replied. “I just called Phillip, and he’s looking at the images now.”

“If you need help, let me know,” Lucas said.

“I’ll remember that,” Sky said.

“Are you a cop, too?” Shala asked Lucas. She’d asked him what he did for a living, and he’d told her he did odd jobs here and there after being mostly retired from the military. Did a former military career earn him enough to afford this place and the nice furnishings? And wasn’t he too young to be retired?

“Nah,” Lucas said. “Just know a few people.” He turned back to Sky. “I’m going to have to make a run to the store. We ate up all my rations yesterday. What’s your schedule?”

Sky looked at his watch. “How about you two head over to the diner? I’ll meet you there as soon as I finish up with Charlie, and I’ll buy breakfast. Then I’ll take Shala over to talk to Phillip. Depending on what Phillip and his guys are doing, I might drop her back off here after that.”

“Do I really have to be babysat twenty-four/seven?” Shala asked.

Sky and Lucas looked at each other and then at her, and they said at the same time, “Yes.”

She rolled her eyes.

Lucas eyed Sky. “We’ll be at the diner, then.”

Sky started to leave, but he stopped when he reached the door. He turned, walked right up to Shala, and pressed his lips to hers. His tongue swept inside her mouth, his hand moved slightly down her waist to her bottom, and the kiss rang all of her bells.

“See you later.”

His smile, sexy as sin, had Shala forgetting about inappropriateness and Lucas altogether. Emotional insurance be damned; she wanted to experience this. Wanted Sky. Sure, she might end up getting hurt, but what if she didn’t? What if Sky was her someone special, special like her father had been special to her mom? Shala could still remember them putting on music every Friday night and dancing and laughing. She could remember her granddad and Nana going through life, through sickness and health together, for sixty years. Shala wasn’t stupid. She knew true love was hard to find. But these last few years, she’d somehow forgotten it even existed. And if she could just remember that, then maybe she could believe it was worth risking her heart to try and find it.

Sky drove through the reservation toward Charlie’s house, mentally tallying up all he knew about the man and trying to forget how he’d lost his head and kissed Shala in the middle of Lucas’s kitchen.
Yeah, think about Charlie,
he told himself.

Charlie had a temper. He loved being a rebel. At any meeting, be it the town council or an open-house tribal-council meeting, Charlie arrived ready to cause havoc. His long-winded speech about not wanting strangers in town had struck a chord with a lot of the townspeople. And when, after several more meetings, the town voted in favor of bringing in Winters Tourism, Charlie hadn’t been happy and had started holding meetings to try and stop it.

Temper ran in Charlie’s family—and a bad one. Charlie’s
brother was doing life for murder. Did that make Charlie capable of murder? Sky sure as hell hoped not, because his own family history made Charlie’s sound pretty good.

Sky’s old man had been a mean and miserable son of a bitch. The only thing he’d loved was Sky’s mom. His mom must have loved his dad back, because she’d put up with more from him than Sky cared to remember. Of course, Sky couldn’t remember everything, because his old man had knocked him out once when he’d gotten between them. To this day Sky wondered what might have happened if he hadn’t been spending the night with his next-door neighbor, if he could have stopped his father from killing his mom. He wouldn’t have tried to stop the old man from turning the gun on himself, though. No, Sky would have loaded it for him.

Sky pulled up in front of an old house with chipped paint and pushed his personal issues aside. He had other problems. Would Charlie have hired someone to steal Shala’s camera? Did Charlie even have the money to hire someone? If Charlie’s intent had been to scare her out of town, why take it so far? It didn’t make sense. Then again, he’d clearly been following Shala.

Charlie’s old Chevy wasn’t parked under the carport. Getting out of the truck Lucas had loaned him, Sky knocked on the front door.

Mrs. Rainmaker answered, and Sky immediately noticed her bloodshot eyes, unkempt hair, and clothes that looked slept in. Her drinking was no secret, especially to Sky, who’d arrested her twice and personally made sure her driver’s license got revoked. It was a sad condition, too common among his people. Sky had insisted to the mayor that Precious offer free counseling to anyone who needed it. He’d even told Bo and the bartenders at the Funky Chicken to call him, night or day, if anyone needed a ride. He had zero patience with anyone who would drink and drive, especially after a local drunk two years
ago had taken not only his own life but also the life of an innocent teen.

“Why do I think you’re not here just to shoot the shit, Chief?” The woman leaned against the door frame.

“Wish I could I say I was,” Sky said.

“Well, it ain’t me you’re here for this time. I haven’t driven a lick.”

“And I appreciate that. I need to talk to Charlie. Is he around?”

“Can’t say he is. What’s he gone and done this time?”

“I just need to speak with him.” No need to alarm the woman. “Does he have a cell phone?”

“Sure does. Not that it’ll you do any good. I tried calling him all last night and he’s not answering. I figured I got lucky and he ran off with that slut he’s been seeing at the Funky Chicken.”

Good ol’ marital bliss.

“Well, if you don’t mind giving me his number, I need to talk to him.”

She went back inside and brought out a scrap of paper with the number scratched on it. “If you get him, tell him he still has to pay the rent.”

Sky started to leave.

“This isn’t about that tourism woman, is it?” Mrs. Rainmaker asked.

Sky stopped, tucked the paper in his pocket, and faced her again. “You know something about that?”

“I know he was following her around. Keeping an eye on her. Is that a crime?” She wore a smirk he didn’t understand.

“It could be considered stalking,” Sky said.

“Then you might want to slap some handcuffs on yourself. Because he said he spotted you playing Peeping Tom, too.” She laughed. “Of course, with her being your soul mate and all…”

Sky bit back a retort and said, “Have a good day, ma’am.”

When he got into his truck, he dialed Charlie’s number. The man didn’t answer. Damn. He’d come here for answers and all he’d gotten was another long list of questions.

“Aren’t you going to tell me where we’re going?” Jose asked his father. It wasn’t like his old man to play tricks like this.

“See for yourself.” Redfoot pulled into the diner parking lot. It was the only restaurant in Precious that was open on Sundays.

Jose looked around. Why had Redfoot been so secretive about coming here? “So, where’s the man and the horse?”

“He’s here.” Redfoot surveyed their surroundings. “They both are.”

Jose followed his dad’s gaze to the end of the parking lot. “Oh hell, no!” he snapped, and looked back at his old man.

Too late. Redfoot had one foot out of the truck.

Reaching across the seat, Jose grabbed his arm. “Are you looking for trouble?”

His dad sighed. “Sometimes you just have to stare trouble right in the face and spit in its eye.” He slid the rest of the way out of the truck.

“Dad, get back in!”

Redfoot slammed the door and started for the diner.