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“How convenient,” she replied with bite. Her eyes skirted to a log that had been on its side for the better part of two years a few feet away from him. Caleb saw a pile of clothes and a pair of tennis shoes on top of it. “Could you please look away now? Or does that take away part of your fun?”
Caleb rolled his eyes, once again not liking the insinuation that he had been lying about his intentions, and made a show of turning all the way around.
“Just so you know, I’ve been coming to this stream for almost two decades. In all of that time I’ve never run into another soul.”
The woman’s feet slapped against the rocks behind him as she ran for her clothes. When she spoke he could tell she was struggling into them as fast as she could go.
“I was out checking the trail, if you must know. I was also specifically told that no one is supposed to be out here for another week,” she tried. “Especially not walking the woods.”
That got the detective side of Caleb prickling. The only people who’d been given rules on the ranch were employees and he sure didn’t remember meeting her. And, he was fairly certain he would have remembered.
“And who told you that?”
“The owners. I work here,” she said with pride. “So I suggest you get on your way before I report you to them.”
Caleb snorted.
“I wouldn’t be so smug about it,” she added. “One of them happens to be the sheriff. I don’t think he’d look too kindly on Peeping Toms and liars.”
“You’re right, Declan doesn’t like liars,” he said, feeling that heat again. He’d never been accused of such a crude thing. The only women he’d been interested in seeing naked he’d let them know, not stalked them off to the side. “He doesn’t care for trespassers, either. The ranch might be open but it’s private property.”
He chanced turning around. The woman was fully dressed in an outfit that gave credence to her claim of exercising. Her eyes drifted down to his shorts before they were back staring defiantly at him.
The resolve she’d been swinging cracked with uncertainty. Still, she held her shoulders back and her chin high. She actually huffed.
“I’m not trespassing. I’m coordinator for the Wild Iris Retreat. I just started last week.”
A snatch of conversation flitted through Caleb’s memory. His mom had been asking Madeline if she would be willing to show the new girl around town a few weeks back. That had been at the height of the Keaton case. He’d barely been around the Retreat since he’d finished the job. While they all had a stake in the Retreat, his mother was the one who ran the technical details, including the hiring. Though he still was hard-pressed to believe the woman scowling at him. All of the Nash family had agreed they wanted to hire locally. It was hard to pass on a genuine experience if the Retreat was being run by an outsider.
He ran a hand across the back of his neck. It was covered in sweat. The water sure would have felt good but he doubted the woman would stand for him stripping, too, and walking into it. He settled for leveling with her.
“I don’t remember the job being open for anyone who wasn’t local,” he said honestly.
A flicker of emotion he couldn’t decipher crossed her expression. Her scowl deepened.
“Dorothy said I gave one hell of an interview,” she shot back.
For a moment they just looked at each other. This time it was Caleb’s certainty that wavered. He believed the woman was telling the truth.
“Well I never like to doubt my mother’s decisions.”
The woman’s face pinballed between surprise, disbelief, embarrassment and stubbornness. Somehow she fell between all of them when she spoke.
“You’re one of the triplets.”
“In the flesh.”
* * *
NINA DRAKE FELT like a damned idiot.
She’d spent the last two weeks practicing what she’d say when she met the family whose ranch she was now employed by, desperate to make a great first impression. Not that she thought she’d make a bad one without the practice but because she desperately wanted the job. She needed it. So she’d gone over enough scenarios in her head about how she’d meet Dorothy Nash and her four children that by the time Nina had met the mother she’d been cool and confident.
