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“I know why you’re here.”
“Sure you do. I told you, I’m taking samples.”
“That’s not the only reason. You’re proving to those men—” she made a sweeping gesture to Johnson’s land where Ben Marx was pretending not to see the ensuing argument “—that I can’t tell you what to do.”
“They have nothing to do with this.”
“Like hell!”
His face went taut, his chin tight with determination. “For once, just trust me.”
“Chase—”
But he was backing up again, watching the water as it rushed into a thicket of brush and trees at the corner of the field. The stand of cottonwood and pine offered the only seclusion and shade in the entire field. Beneath the leafy trees, hidden in the brush, Chase was out of view.
Dani had to walk into the thicket to carry on the conversation. She had to bend to avoid the low branches that caught on her blouse. Chase had stopped between the scraggly cottonwoods clinging to the banks of the stream. Ignoring her, he began once again to take samples of the water.
Furious, Dani stood on a large boulder near the water’s edge. “I thought you understood.” She glanced upstream, but couldn’t see if Chase’s men were watching. The branches offered both shade and privacy as a slight breeze whispered through the canopy of leaves above the creek.
“I do. But this was something I had to do, okay?”
“And leave it at that?”
“For now.”
“No, Chase. No, it’s not okay. Look, I thought you were different from the rest of Caleb’s hands. I thought you would keep to your part of the bargain.”
His muscles tensed and he replied flatly. “My bargain’s with Johnson.”
“I see,” Dani said, her stomach tightening with disappointment. Despite his arguments otherwise, Chase was solidly in Caleb Johnson’s corner. He was the enemy. “Then I think you’d better move it and get out of here because I really am going to call Tim Bennett.”
Chase raised a skeptical brow but continued to work. “He’s the sheriff,” Dani clarified.
“I know who he is. I just don’t give a damn.”
“You’ve certainly got a lot of nerve! More nerve than brains.”
His shoulders slumping slightly, Chase dropped the final vial into his creel and stared up at her. Even enraged, she was beautiful.
Standing on the bank, with the warm morning sunlight drifting through the shimmering leaves of the cottonwood, her arms crossed angrily under her breasts, her chin held high, Dani looked almost regal. She hadn’t bothered to tie her long hair back and it billowed away from her flushed face in the heavy-scented summer breeze. “And you’re gorgeous,” Chase replied, studying the pucker of her lips and the fire in her hazel eyes.
“I don’t want to hear it.”
“Sure you do.”
“Calling attention to my looks right now in the middle of this argument is a typical male trick to change the subject!”
“It’s no trick,” he said calmly, wiping his wet hands on his jeans while he stared at her.
Dani’s eyes followed the movement and she had to tear them away from his flat abdomen and the tight faded jeans that rested on his hips.
She licked her dry lips and he smiled; that same lazy, seductive grin that made her heart flutter expectantly. “Just get out of here,” she said, hating the breathless tone of her voice.
“Dani—”
“What?”
“Why don’t you ask me to stay?” He stuffed his gloves in his back pocket and began slowly walking through the knee-deep water and toward the shore.
