Larkspur Road (22 page)

“You wouldn’t.” Mia’s dimples popped out as she looked into Travis’s determined blue eyes. Suddenly she had to bite back a laugh. “Seriously, Travis, not a good idea.”

He pulled her into his arms. “I do have a
few
good ideas, though. Like kissing you. Right now. Long and deep and slow. Sounds damned good to me.”

“Um, I don’t think so.”

Following her glance he saw that Grady, Justin, and Evan had just raced to the front of Ellis’s house and were now sharing two skateboards, each of them taking turns riding up and down the street.

Grady waved happily to him and Travis let go of Mia to wave back.

“Bad timing,” he muttered as she laughed and slid away, putting a few respectable inches between them.

“Okay, I’ll take a rain check on the good stuff.” Travis settled his back against the swing, looked at her with a grin. “So how about dinner? You, me, Grady—Lucky Punch Saloon. I hear there’s a Monday special on T-bones.”

Mia was trying not to stare longingly at his mouth. She knew from past experience—too many past experiences—how those firm lips felt against hers, how they tasted of fire and spice.

She knew what his kisses did to her.

“I have a better idea.” With an effort, she willed her attention back to practicalities. The boys were yelling as they skateboarded, and Samson was barking at them from her front lawn like he’d never seen boys playing before. “I already have chicken ready for frying. And I was going to fix fresh green beans and mashed potatoes, too. There’s some leftover chocolate-frosted brownies for dessert.” Her head tilted as she studied him. “Why don’t you and Grady join me and Britt?”

Britt
. He needed to talk to Mia about Britt. But first things first. She was watching him, waiting for an answer.

“Would that be your mom’s fried chicken recipe?” Travis’s smile was hopeful. He’d been invited to Mia’s house for dinner countless times when they were dating. Her mother knew how much he loved her fried chicken and made it more often than not when he was joining them.

“The one and only.”

“And your grandmother’s chocolate-frosted brownies?”

“None other.”

He grinned. “You got yourself a deal. But I get a rain check on the Lucky Punch.”

Mia wanted so much to reach out, brush her hand across his dark-stubbled jaw. She wanted to smile at him and lean closer, breathing in his scent, his strength, the easygoing warmth that had drawn her to him since that day when she was fourteen and he lifted up her fallen backpack, making everyone else in the high school hallway fade to a nondescript grayish blur.

Instead she exercised every bit of her willpower and merely nodded and stood up. “Sure,” she said casually. “You want a rain check, cowboy, you’ve got one.”

Before he could guess how close she was to doing something impulsive and dangerous, like smiling at him, running her fingers through his dark hair, or kissing him in broad daylight, she walked into the safety of the house and started fixing supper.

As it turned out, Britt wasn’t able to make it home for dinner. She called Mia to say she had a date with Seth and promised to be home by ten thirty.

Grady, on the other hand, devoured his supper. He seemed to love her mother’s fried chicken recipe every bit as much as Travis did. After making short work of four chicken legs, a thigh, and three helpings of mashed potatoes, he pronounced it the best supper
ever
. He was halfway through his second brownie when Ellis called Mia’s cell, inviting Grady to join her grandsons at a sleepover.

Ellis’s daughter and her husband had gone out of town overnight and Ellis said she had the night off from the hospital and would be keeping the boys until tomorrow. “We’re going to roast marshmallows in just a few minutes, and then Justin and Evan are planning an Indiana Jones movie marathon. They want to know if Grady can join them. He’s very welcome to come.”

Grady turned eagerly toward Travis when Mia repeated the invitation, his face flushed with excitement. “Can I? Please, Dad?”

“Sure. It’s nice of Mrs. Stone to invite you, so remember to thank her, okay? How about if I go home and pack up your pajamas and toothbrush and bring them back for you?”

He might have offered the boy the moon, the stars, and all of the planets Mia had been teaching him about that afternoon.

Grady leaped out of his chair. “Can I go over there right now? Please?”

Ellis heard him over the phone. “We’re about to roast those marshmallows,” she reminded Mia with a laugh. “So the sooner he gets here the better.”

Mia relayed the message and Travis said, “First you might want to thank Mia for the wonderful supper.”

“Thank you for the wonderful supper. It was great!” he added enthusiastically. “Especially the mashed potatoes and the chicken!”

Then he hugged his dad, grabbed his backpack with his books and homework, and raced out the door.

Travis helped her clean up and load the dishes in the dishwasher. He insisted on washing the pots and pans while she wrapped up the leftovers and wiped the table.

“Come back to the ranch with me while I get Grady’s gear,” he said when the kitchen was tidy. “After we drop his stuff off at Ellis’s, we’ll go for a ride.”

“A ride?” Her brows lifted. “Where?”

“The cabin. It’s in pretty good shape now, if I do say so myself. I want to show it to you.”

Say no.

She and Travis all alone out there at the old Tanner cabin? Half a mile from Sage Ranch and no one around except the rabbits, deer, and coyotes?

It was a terrible idea.

She opened her mouth to tell him a more tactful version of that. The words
Maybe another time
were on the tip of her tongue. But instead she heard herself say, “I need to take Samson for a walk first.”

“Great.” He flashed her a quick, easy grin that made her stomach do a few somersaults. “I’ll go with you. You never know what kind of lowlifes might be lurking on Larkspur Road.”

With that, he picked up the dog’s leash from the countertop, and Samson, done with his kibble, came running.

Watching him snap the leash on her little dog, Mia wondered if she should be running, too. In the opposite direction.

But, she thought as the three of them slipped out the front door into the early evening hush of the neighborhood, maybe it was time she stopped running from her feelings for Travis. Maybe what she needed was to stand her ground and figure out where they went from here.

During the drive to the cabin, Travis filled Mia in on everything that had gone down with Brittany at A Bun in the Oven.

She listened in taut silence, hearing him out completely before speaking.

“And she was frightened? You’re sure? Or was she only upset about dropping that pie?”

“She looked frozen.” Travis glanced away momentarily from the empty road to note the apprehension in Mia’s eyes. “I’m not trying to scare you, but something definitely didn’t feel right. I’d never seen the guy before, but from the instant he walked in, Brittany seemed to freak out. Right before he arrived, she was doing fine, and then she dropped that pie and…” He shook his head. “She was scared. I’d swear to it. Not that she admitted it when I asked her if anything was wrong.”

Tension knotted in the pit of Mia’s stomach. Her heart began to race—and not in a good way. “I really don’t like the sound of this. At all. Tell me what he looked like.”

Travis made a left turn off Squirrel Road onto Hawk’s Way. They were nearing the cabin.

“I’d put him at five ten, eleven tops. Husky build, short, sandy-colored hair. Smiled a lot. He wore flashy cowboy boots so I took him for a tourist. I’d put his age around nineteen or twenty. I haven’t seen him around before.”

A tiny chill quivered down Mia’s spine as a memory struck her.

That day she and Britt had gone shopping at Top to Toe. She’d watched Britt head toward the bakery, and Seth hold the door open for her.

A boy was watching from across the street. A boy with a husky build, short fair hair…

“I think I may have seen him—or someone who looks like him. There was a boy who stared at Britt one day when she was going back to work. I didn’t think anything of it at the time—she’s so pretty, and boys always look at pretty girls.”

“Where was he exactly? Did he approach her?”

“No, he wasn’t anywhere near her. He’d just come out of Ponderosa Earl’s. He seemed to be watching her while she was fooling around with Seth. They were just talking and laughing in the doorway of the bakery, like kids do. Then they went inside and…” Mia broke off. “He saw me looking over at him. But it didn’t seem to bother him at all. He smiled at me and then he walked away. He had a large shopping bag—lots of purchases from Earl’s. It looked like one of them was a sleeping bag. I didn’t think anything of it. And I haven’t seen him around since.”

She grabbed her purse and dug for her cell. “Travis, Brittany left Butte for some reason she never explained. She showed up at my house right before Sam left for her honeymoon. She refused to stay with her father as she’d planned, and wouldn’t tell me or Sam why.” Panic rose in her chest as she finally seized her phone and began punching in Britt’s cell number. “What if this boy had been bothering her?
Following her, stalking her or something? And she was trying to get away from him? What if that’s why she came to Lonesome Way? I need to talk to her right now and see if she’s all right.”

Travis was silent as he parked the Explorer in front of the cabin. He hated seeing the tension in her face as she pressed the cell to her ear, her fingers clamped around it. Even the muscles in her slender throat were tight.

“She’s not answering. I don’t like this.” Mia chewed her lip in frustration. “Maybe we should…Oh! Britt! Britt, honey, are you okay? Where are you?”

The tension in her face eased as she listened to her niece’s voice. “All right, enjoy the movie. But I need to talk to you. As soon as possible. No, honey, your mom’s fine and so’s your dad. We just need to talk. So come straight home after the movie, okay? Promise me.”

Slowly she lowered the phone and dropped it back into her purse. “She’s okay, she’s with Seth. They met for supper at the drive-through and now they’re at a movie.” Her shoulders slumped with relief.

“The movie’s about to start, but I told her…well, you heard. I’ll talk to her later and this time I’m going to get some answers.”

“If you want I’ll hang around and talk to her, too. If you think it would help.”

Gratitude welled in her throat. “Thank you. I might take you up on that.”

Her heart rate was finally returning to normal. At least, she thought, as normal as it could get with Travis sitting two feet away, looking too handsome for words, and as at ease in this big open clearing as a mountain lion on a bluff.

She pushed the door of the Explorer open and climbed out before she could get lost in those distractingly sexy blue eyes.

But as she closed the SUV’s door and glanced around, she got lost in something else—the delicate beauty of the
rose and gold sunset—and the sight of the sprawling cabin before her.

Nestled amid tall cottonwoods and pines, the cabin looked big and sturdy against the sunset-painted sky. Her gaze took in the generous-sized porch. There was plenty of space for a garden and a barbecue pit, along with a patio or deck.

The setting couldn’t have been lovelier with its backdrop of trees and the sweep of grassland and mountains as far as the eye could see. Tall peaks loomed dark in the distance as the glowing apricot sun dipped behind the pines, and lavender night rolled in like soft thunder.

A sharp wind blew down from the mountains, rustling the summer leaves. Mia had changed into jeans and a tan cotton sweater before leaving her house since even in the summer the temperature could dip into the forties at night, but she realized she could have actually used a jacket tonight. Shivering a little, she turned toward Travis as he came up beside her.

“It’s wonderful. I’d forgotten what a beautiful spot this is.”

“I’d forgotten, too. I’ve been away too long.” As she shivered again, he took her hand and drew her toward the house.