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“Your boss doesn’t trust you anymore then,” she said worriedly. “They could arrest you, too, Dawg. ”
“Stop worrying. ”
Stop worrying?
“One of us should worry here,” she gritted out. “Dawg, if he’s got someone watching me, then he thinks I was involved. ”
“If he had proof, he would have had you arrested at the spa. He wouldn’t have someone watching you. Not to say that he’s not suspicious. But Cranston doesn’t make a move without proof. He doesn’t have proof. ”
Crista bit her lip, chewing at it worriedly as she watched the road ahead of her.
“You sound certain. ” She needed him to be certain.
“I know Cranston. But I am interested in what is going on. Natches should be able to figure that one out; then we’ll figure out where we go from here. ”
“The note was in the Rodeo,” she whispered. “I left it there. I know it was in there. I was going to look for it, but you kept dragging me away from it. ” And then it had blown up.
“Don’t worry about it. ” His voice became more clipped as he turned up another road, a graveled road rather than dirt.
Pristine white fences ran along
the side of the road. A few dozen cattle meandered in thickly grassed pastures, their heads lifting curiously as the truck sped down the road.
“I do worry about it. That was the only proof I had. ”
Dawg knew that. Just as he knew that proof was safely locked away in his safe.
It was hidden. Just in case. But damn, telling Crista he had it all along was going to piss her clean off. That wasn’t what he wanted today.
He would tell her tomorrow. He wasn’t letting anything interfere in his appreciation of her slick, honeyed flesh when the time came.
Just a few more hours. Six hours at the most, and the sensitivity of the delicate flesh that had been waxed should be back to normal. The spa, Kelly swore, had the best technicians in the business, and the emollients they used after the waxing soothed the irritated flesh immediately.
He would tell her about the note tomorrow. The letterhead of the delivery company, the date, and note would help. Unfortunately, it hadn’t been signed by the delivery person. At least the handwriting on the note definitely wasn’t Crista’s.
That added to the fact that even with Natches’s contacts, computer abilities, and general sneakiness, he couldn’t find so much as a spare penny in Crista’s name in the house she shared with Alex or anywhere related to her. And he had spent the better part of the past days searching for it.
Crista wasn’t the money girl, the lone female that had taken the buyers’ million dollars, supposedly in the thieves’ interest.
The men in custody hadn’t named her, but Dawg hadn’t been able to interrogate them, either. And he was damned sure it wasn’t Crista.
Where had that trust come from? That question rolled through him as he passed the cattle guard in the road that led to the property he had been working on for years now.
The land, over two hundred acres of woodland and pastures, was bordered by an arm of Lake Cumberland. The sprawling two-story log cabin he had begun building the summer before sat on the rise overlooking the lake, surrounded on three sides by fir, oak, and maple trees. The ranch yard was surrounded by the same white fences that stretched along the road. Stables sat a quarter mile to the left, and the barn and tractor sheds to the right. All the buildings were placed so that they were protected on three sides by the dense woods that surrounded the area.
The little coves of cleared land that had been created inside the tree line gave the land a natural, peaceful appearance. It also pleased his need for space and privacy.
This was Dawg’s. Bought by the money he saved while in the Marines and then the ATF, along with part of the profits from the lumber store in the past four years. It wasn’t bought from his father’s inheritance, and it wasn’t tied to memories of his parents.
It was his. Just his. Just as Crista was.
“Stop worrying. ” He glanced at her and saw the frown on her face. “No one knows we’re here.
Hell, no one in Somerset but Natches, Rowdy, and Kelly even knows about this place. ”
“Where are we, anyway?”
“Jabez. We’re still in Pulaski County. You can see the lake from the back, but it’s a small distance to it. ”
