“You wear it up a lot?”
“When it’s this hot.”
He nodded. “You have a lot of hair.” Then he added, “It looks nice down.”
She sat with that for a minute, a bit confused. Did that mean it didn’t look nice now?
The waitress arrived with a basket of rolls and whipped butter, and she decided to let it pass. Coop offered one to her first. When she declined, he tore one open, steam rising between them.
“So, you’re an artist?” he asked.
Glad to move on from hairstyles to a topic she could speak about for hours, she told him about her small gallery in Southtown, San Antonio’s art district.
“What kind of art?”
“I enjoy showcasing local artists, no matter the form, but I mostly focus on paintings. I also teach a class two nights a week.
Their food arrived, the steak taking up most of the plate. They ate as they talked. Not about dreams or warehouse raids. About her move to town and setting up her own business, and his years with the Rangers.
“Why Leon Valley and not closer to your work?”
“The noise, mostly. There’s too much of it and too many people wanting to get somewhere fast. It’s tolerable to work, since I set my own hours and commute time, but when I’m off, I need a place to breathe.”
“And you found it here, in Leon Valley?”
“For the most part.” She looked at him. “Here, the noise is manageable.”
She watched his smile fade and knew he understood. She wasn’t talking about traffic. San Antonio had 1.5 million people, all of them loud in ways most never noticed.
“Does it ever get quiet?” he asked, concerned, not probing.
“Sometimes. Mostly when I’m painting.”
“And with me?”
She held his gaze. “With you, it’s quiet in a way I’ve never felt before.”
He absorbed that. Didn’t make a joke. Didn’t deflect.
“What about you?” she asked. “Why San Antonio?”
A glass broke at the bar. The entire place went still, all heads turning. The hush ended when the raucous cowboys, their shouts and laughter growing with each round they downed, ordered another.
“Work brought me here,” Coop said, pushing his empty plate aside and wiping his mouth. “But I don’t live in the city. I’m only about a mile from you.”
That surprised her. “You don’t strike me as a small-town kind of guy.”
“After a while, you learn to look for places that aren’t already broken.”
“And Leon Valley isn’t?”
He paused with his beer almost to his lips. “It wasn’t.”
She understood immediately. Murder had come to their quiet little burg and her quieter little street. The case was still on his mind, which made her wonder if it wasn’t really closed. She didn’t press, however.
Even if she wanted to, she couldn’t. A chant had started among the cowboys.
“Shot. Shot. Shot.”
