She blocked the thought.
Handling one worry at a time right now was about all she could manage.
“Well, now, that’s a fair question.” Erik tapped the tines of his fork softly against the surface of the plate a few times before he set the fork down altogether. He slowly tugged off his sunglasses and dropped them on the countertop next to the coffee mug.
Then his gaze lifted to hers, and Isabella’s heart nearly skipped a beat.
Violet. His eyes were violet. Elizabeth Taylor violet. Surrounded by thick, spiky brown lashes that ought to have looked feminine but didn’t. Nor did she make the mistake of thinking the color was derived from contact lenses. Not with this man.
“You bring him out next Saturday,” he said, mercifully unaware of her thoughts. “Not this week. I’m busy moving stock with my uncle. But next. For four hours. We’ll see how it goes from there. If he works hard, maybe he won’t have to bless me with his charming company all the way through spring and summer, and we’ll call it quits after a few months. If he doesn’t…” He shrugged and picked up his fork again, looking as if it made no difference to him whatsoever.
She chewed the inside of her lip. It was late March. She was praying she still had Murphy come the end of the summer. “But if he does work steadily, you’ll consider everything squared? Maybe even by the end of the school year?”
His gaze didn’t waver from her face. “I won’t call the sheriff, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
She didn’t care about being so transparent. When it came to Murphy, she didn’t have that luxury. “It is.” She wanted to look away from Erik’s mesmerizing eyes but couldn’t seem to.
“Got a pen?”
She automatically handed him the pen from her pocket. He leaned across the counter and grabbed a fresh napkin from the metal dispenser near his coffee mug, his arm brushing against hers. Without so much as a blink, he sat back on his stool and scratched out a few words on the napkin.
There was no quelling the shudder rippling down her spine as she whirled around, busying herself with the coffeepot that needed no busying. Without looking at him, she grabbed the cleaning rag she’d abandoned when she’d heard the commotion outside and started running it over the vinyl seats of the stools lining the long counter. When she reached Erik, she stopped and looked at what he’d written.
Four hours every Saturday through end of school year but no later than end of summer in return for destruction of stained-glass window.
He’d signed and dated it.
Hardly legalese, but she didn’t care. He was Lucy’s cousin and she could only hope that he was just as decent. The fact that he hadn’t immediately summoned the sheriff when he could have was already more than Murphy deserved. “Do you want me to sign it, too?”
He shook his head. He jabbed the pen in Murphy’s direction. “He does.”
Chapter Two
“You let a set of pretty eyes and a smokin’ body get to you, didn’t you?” Erik’s cousin Casey gave him a knowing look before focusing on lining up his pool shot. With a smooth stroke, he broke the balls, sending them rolling across the felt, sinking two. Case straightened and walked around the table, studying his options. “Otherwise, you’d have hauled that kid straight over to Max.”
Max was their cousin Sarah’s husband. He was also the local sheriff. “I thought about it,” Erik admitted. He picked up the chalk from the side of the table.
It was a Friday night. He’d spent half the past week hauling Double-C cattle with his uncle Matthew. They were playing out at Erik’s place tonight because lately Case had taken some aversion to playing at their usual spot in town. Colbys offered up plenty of pool tables as well as a cold beer and a burger. But getting his cousin over there these days was like pulling teeth.
Instead, Casey willingly drove forty minutes outta town to come to Erik’s place.
Leaving that particular mystery alone for now, he thought about his encounter with the Lockhart woman and her kid the week before. “I didn’t even notice her eyes—” bull “—or anything else about her. It was remembering the times when I could have been hauled into the sheriff’s office for some stupid stunt.” He chalked his cue even though it didn’t look as if Case was going to stop clearing the table anytime soon. “Same as you.”
His cousin grinned slightly. “Yeah, but that was when Sawyer was sheriff. He’d have gone easy.”
Erik snorted. Sawyer was their uncle. A Clay through and through who put family above nearly everything. Except the law. “He’d have skinned us and hung us up to dry just to teach us a lesson.”
“Or handed us over to Squire.” Case was still grinning. “Let the old man teach us a lesson or two.”
Squire was their grandfather. And if his sons were a hard, demanding lot, they came by it honestly enough from him.
“Dad told me the other day he thinks Squire’s mellowing in his old age.”
At that, his cousin finally missed a shot. “Right,” he drawled. “And you didn’t notice the Lockhart lady’s pretty eyes.”
Erik ignored that and took over the table.
“So she’ll be bringing the kid out here tomorrow morning?”
“Yup.” He sank a ball and moved around to the end of the table, lining up his next shot.
“What’re you gonna have him do?”
“Shovel crap by hand for a few hours. Hell, I don’t know. Pick rocks outta that field I haven’t cleared yet.” He got pissed all over again just thinking about it and he blew the shot.
Case grinned. “Just hand your money over now,” he suggested as he took over the table again.
Erik grimaced and slapped a ten down on the side of the table. Then he returned his cue to the rack on the wall and went behind the wooden bar that Case, his father, Daniel, and Erik had built a few summers earlier. He grabbed a cold bottle from the refrigerator beneath the bar.
His cousin had the pool table cleared in seconds. “You want one?” Erik asked.
Case stuck the cue he’d been using in the rack. “I want a real beer. Not that prissy stuff you drink.”
Erik pulled out a longneck and slid it across the bar. “Don’t be sneering at my root beer,” he said mildly. They both knew that if he chose to, he could drink Casey under the table. “Ordered this up special on the internet from some place in Colorado.” He held up the dark brown bottle and smiled. “Home-brewed and smooth as cream. Lady who makes it is as old as Squire, or I think I’d be in love.”
His cousin rolled his eyes. He took the beer and they headed up the stairs, ending up in the kitchen, where Erik had a pot of chili on the stove. He wasn’t much of a cook, but a thirty-one-year-old man whose closest dining alternative was forty-minutes away tended to be able to scrounge a few things together. Between that and the frozen stuff his mother, aunts and cousins kept him supplied with, he managed well enough.
They filled their bowls and then went onto the porch that overlooked Erik’s land.
“You gonna tear that old barn down anytime soon?” Case asked after he’d shoveled in most of his chili.
They leaned back in the oversize chairs that Erik had bought from a woodcrafter in Gillette, their boot heels propped on the wood rail in front of them. “Sometime this summer, maybe.” The barn was the only structure still standing from when Erik had bought the property four years earlier.
He could have helped Matt run the Double-C. The Clay family ranch was the largest one in the state. But Erik had wanted something to call his own. “Gotten sort of used to looking at it.”