RaeAnne Thayne - Currant Creek Valley

“What about in the summer?”

Did he really want to know about her or was he simply being polite, laying the groundwork for what he hoped might eventually be a seduction? It was always a hard call on a first date. Not that this was a date, she reminded herself firmly.

“I hike. Mountain bike. Garden. Hang out with my family and friends.”

“Your family lives close, then?”

“Just about all of them. I come from a pretty big family. Six kids. My mother and four of us children still live here in Hope’s Crossing. Two of my sisters live out of state, one in California and one in Utah.”

“Wow. Six kids. Seriously? That must have been crazy. I can’t even imagine having that kind of family.”

“It has its moments. Some bad but most of them good. We McKnights are all pretty close. Amazingly, we all get along. Except Riley, the only brother. He can still be a pest sometimes. It doesn’t help that now he’s a pest with a badge.”

“Right. You mentioned he was the police chief.”

It took her a minute to remember she had threatened him with calling her brother when she thought Sam was breaking into the restaurant the day before. Heat soaked her cheeks and she really hoped she wasn’t blushing. She never blushed.

“What about you?” she asked, to distract him from remembering what an idiot she had been. “Do you come from a big family?”

“One brother, that’s it. He lives in Denver with his wife and kids. That’s where my s...” His voice trailed off. “My stuff is. I’m between places.”

She had the distinct impression he meant to say something else. What? She had a zero-tolerance policy for deception in a man.

“So how long have you been out of the Rangers?”

“Three years.”

Now, there was a verbose answer. Did his clipped tone indicate a hot button?

“What did you do for the Rangers?”

He took another bite of the burger and a drink of beer before answering. “Oh, the usual. Kick butt, take names, general mayhem.”

He spoke in that same clipped tone, but she saw a little muscle quirk at the edge of his mouth as if he were working to hold back a smile.

She really liked Sam Delgado.

Too bad.

“General mayhem, hmm. I imagine building my kitchen must seem fairly tame to a guy like you, then.”

“Not really. You’d be surprised how satisfying it can be to set those stainless-steel countertops exactly how the customer, in this case you, envisioned.”

No trace of sarcasm or irony there. He was dead serious, she realized. She very much respected a man who enjoyed his work.

“Why did you leave the Rangers?” she persisted. The routes people took in their lives to bring them to a certain point in time endlessly fascinated her.

“Didn’t really have a choice at the time.” Again, the clipped tone.

“Conscientious objector or dishonorable discharge?”

He laughed roughly. “Anybody ever tell you you’ve got some cheek?”

“So my family says.” She had always been the sassy, smart-mouthed sister. Since she didn’t feel as if she could compete in looks or brains with four older sisters, she had found her own way to stand out.

After their father left, that had been one more way to manage the pain.

“So why did you leave the Rangers? Judging by your ink, you were a loyal soldier. I figure somebody who cares enough about a particular branch of the military to make it a permanent part of his body ought to stick with it as long as he can.”

He sighed. “You’re not going to let up, are you?”

“Would you like me to?”

He gave her a long look and appeared to be choosing his words as carefully as she picked over the fresh fish selection from her suppliers.

“I left the Rangers after my wife was diagnosed with stage-four breast cancer.”

And there was the problem with being a smart-mouth. Sometimes you missed important signals and ended up feeling like a jerk.

She remembered him telling her the only Mrs. Delgado was his brother’s wife. She believed him, so either his wife had gone into remission and divorced him or she had lost her battle. Alex was afraid it was the latter.

“I’m sorry.”

He shoved away from the table, long fingers loosely clasped around the neck of his brew. “That was delicious. Let’s go play some pool.”

He obviously didn’t want to talk about his late wife. It was one thing to flirt with a player who had no more interest in anything long-term than she did. It was something else entirely when the man was a grieving widower whose pain was so raw he couldn’t even talk about it.

She grabbed her mineral water and followed him to an empty pool table. The Lizard had four billiard tables, two of them currently in use.

To reach the table where Sam was now setting up, she had to pass a group of college-age guys—mountain biking tourists, if she had to guess. With them was one woman wearing a skintight pair of pegged jeans and a white halter top that was completely inappropriate for a Rocky Mountain spring night.

She laughed suddenly, overloud and overfriendly, and playfully punched one of the young studs on the shoulder.

Only when Alex had nearly reached Sam’s table did she happen to glance at the woman from an angle where she could see her face, and a shock of recognition just about made her stumble.

Of all the people in town she might have expected to find flirting and half-drunk at The Speckled Lizard, Genevieve Beaumont would have come in dead last. Even behind Katherine Thorne.

“Hey, Genevieve.”

The younger woman shifted her gaze, and her eyes widened. “Alex.” She gave a noticeable sniff and turned back to her boy toys.

Bitch.

On some level she had sympathy for Gen Beaumont, who had been through some definite emotional turmoil the past year. She also would freely admit to a healthy degree of respect for at least one of Gen’s decisions to break off her engagement a year ago when she found out her fiancé impregnated Alex’s niece Sage.

But Gen had taken her anger at her fiancé and turned it into definite antipathy toward all things McKnight, as if the whole family was responsible for the man’s decision to screw around with a vulnerable young woman.

Sage was doing well now, busy at school studying to be an architect like her father, Jack, but Alex had deep sympathy for what she had endured with her unexpected pregnancy. She had planned to put the baby up for adoption but, in the end, Maura and Jack had adopted the baby and were raising Henry as their own son instead of their grandson. On the surface, it might look as if everything had worked out for all parties concerned. That pretty picture tended to gloss over all the complicated snarls of emotions.

She pushed away her family dramas and any concern for Genevieve Beaumont and the old tendrils of pain, and grabbed a cue off the rack on the wall.

“You want to break?” Sam asked her.

“Sure. I’ll warn you, I haven’t played in a long time. I’m afraid I won’t be able to give you much of a game.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m pretty rusty, too.”

An hour and three games later, he won two out of three, but just barely.

“Not much of a game.” He snorted. “I haven’t had to work that hard for a win since basic training, when I came up against a guy who hustled new recruits for fun.”

She smiled. “We had a pool table in the basement when I was growing up. My dad, brother and I used to play for matchsticks. At last count, I think Riley owed me about eight hundred thousand. One of these days, I might have to collect.”

“Why do I feel like I’ve just been scammed?”

She smiled. “You won, didn’t you?”

“Barely.”

“I wasn’t lying when I said I hadn’t played in a while. But I guess it’s like so many other things. Once you take those first strokes, it all comes flowing back.”