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CHAPTER SIX
“It’s late, but we need to talk.” Dana stood on the other side of his screen door, her arms folded over her chest. The determined tilt to her chin told Zach that she wasn’t leaving anytime soon.
“Sure.” Zach unlatched the hook he’d installed high on the door, to make sure Katie didn’t wander away, and ushered her in. Outside, the sounds of crickets and bullfrogs echoed through the damp night air. An eerie, faraway whinny to the west invoked the distant, answering calls of other horses unseen in the darkness.
“Hey, when did you get rid of your splint?” She eyed him with suspicion. “You didn’t take it off yourself, did you?”
Zach shrugged. “A local doc took it off this morning. He said everything looked fine, but I should take it easy.”
“Is Katie awake?”
“She’s asleep in the back bedroom already. I’ve come to believe that naps and early bedtimes are a gift from above.”
He smiled, but Dana ignored his subtle bid for friendship. She swept past him, the lemony scent of her shampoo trailing behind her, and he found himself wanting to run his fingers through that silky blond cap to see if it felt as soft as it looked.
He had a pretty good idea of why she’d come, though, and it wasn’t to start where they’d left off fifteen years ago. There was little doubt that her son had seen too much. “Anything wrong?”
She halted in the middle of the kitchen and turned to face him, her expression troubled. “Alex was over here this afternoon.”
“Your friend Francie sent him over.” He gestured toward the sack still lying on the counter. “Want some coffee and a taste of her chocolate chip cookies?”
Eyeing him closely, she shook her head. “Why are you back in Fossil Hill?”
“A few months of vacation. Some time to heal,” he said easily. “I figured it would be nice to step back in time for a while.”
“But you don’t have relatives here—probably not even any close friends, since you were here for less than a year as a kid, right?”
Now there was an understatement. By the time he and his mother had landed in Fossil Hill, they’d lived so many places that he no longer bothered to make friends, and he’d had a chip on his shoulder the size of Texas. Dana, with her ready smile and big blue eyes, had been his only friend. “We were here as long as anywhere else.”
“Are you in trouble?”
He feigned ignorance. “We’ve settled in just fine.”
She stepped closer, until they were practically toe-to-toe. “My son came home worried about something. He didn’t want to tell me, but...” She colored slightly. “He finally told me that you have weapons here. Is that true?”
“It’s hardly unusual. A Colorado pickup without a gun rack across the back window is rare as an albino Angus.”
“The average cowboy carries a rifle.”
“True.”
“They don’t carry automatics—much less several. My children live right next door, Forrester. Believe me when I say that I won’t allow anyone, or anything, to place them at risk.”
He lowered his voice. “You must not remember me very well.”
Unfolding her arms, she impatiently waved away his comment with one hand. “I don’t think you’d hurt them. But if you’re in some kind of trouble, that could bring danger to my back door. Are you on the run?”
