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“Yes, Liam. Oh, yes, Liam.” She laid her head on his chest and whispered, “Let’s go home.”
He grabbed up his hat and her computer. She got her purse, and they headed out to his truck. The sun was out, the dirty, still under repair streets suddenly looked beautiful and Chloe could have danced all the way to the ranch.
“Hey, Liam!”
They stopped at the shout and saw one of the construction guys at the Texas Cattleman’s Club waving them over. As they walked across the street, Liam kept one arm around Chloe’s shoulders as if half-afraid she’d get away from him. That so worked for her.
“Hey, Bill, how’s it going?”
“It’s a damn mess is what it is,” the man said, then nodded at Chloe. “Sorry, ma’am.”
Bill was burly, with a scruffy red beard, stained white overalls, and wiry red hair sticking out from under his painter’s cap. “This the lady you got stranded with here?”
“Yeah.” Liam dropped a kiss on top of her head. “This is my fiancée, Chloe Hemsworth.”
“Ma’am.”
“We tried not to wreck anything while we were upstairs,” Chloe said.
“Oh no, ma’am, it wasn’t the two of you.” Bill shook his head and threw a scowl over his shoulder at the open front door of the building. “This used to be a hotel sort of, you know?”
Liam nodded.
Chloe looked past Bill into the interior of the TCC and noticed a crowd gathering.
“Well, the basement of this place has been under water since the flood,” Bill complained. “We finally got a big enough sump pump out here, but it’s hard going getting the water out. We’ve got to drain it into the street, but not so fast that it’ll get the storm drains blocked again.”
“Sounds bad,” Liam agreed.
“And the smell down there?” Bill shook his head again. “Had to come up here for some fresh air.”
Inside the building, more men were gathering in a circle and Chloe tried to see what was going on. She tugged on Liam’s hand. “Something’s happening in there.”
“What?” Bill turned around. “Guess we’d better go see.”
Liam shrugged and murmured, “Yeah, I should check. Let Sterling know if something’s wrong.”
Just then, someone shouted, “Holy God, that’s a dead body!”
Bill scurried inside and Liam was right behind him. Chloe held on to him, and they stepped carefully across tarps and supplies strewn across the damaged floor. The whole place smelled of paint and lacquer and sawdust.
“Maybe you should wait—” Liam broke off at Chloe’s narrow-eyed stare. “Never mind.”
Chloe was with him when the crowd of men parted, allowing them to see what they’d found. At the bottom of the stairs, floating in the muddy water, was a badly decomposed body. Chloe closed her eyes instantly and turned away. But the damage was done. She’d never forget.
“You’d better call the police, Bill,” Liam said, and steered Chloe to the other side of the room.
“Was it here since the storm?” she whispered. “Were we here in the building with a dead person?”
“Looks that way.” Liam’s mouth flattened into a grim line. “I’ve got to call Sterling about this, Chloe. He’ll want to know.”
* * *
Sterling Perry was feeling satisfied. He’d done his good deed for the year in talking to Liam. “Hopefully, he won’t mess things up with the Hemsworth girl,” he murmured with a laugh. Hell, everyone on the ranch had seen Liam taking that long slide into love. It was only Liam himself who’d been blind to it.
Shaking his head, Sterling got down to business. Sunlight poured in through the office windows, and he glanced out, admiring as always, his view of the ranch he loved. Things were going well.
His construction company was back on track at the TCC building. Work on the place had been slow because half of Houston needed the equipment required to clear the place of floodwaters. Soon though, they’d have that storm behind them and they’d be ready to open up the Houston branch of the club.
Sterling intended to be the first president. Blast Ryder Currin to hell if he thought he was going to step in and take over.
