Angels Fall

wants to take it. Go around to the back. I don't want the two of you spitting at each other over my counter."
    He did as Joanie suggested, then brushed right by Pete and took Reece's arm. "Outside."
    "I'm busy."
    "It'll wait." He hauled her straight out the door.
    "Just a damn minute. I'm working. Nobody comes in and pulls on you when  you're  working. If you have something to say to me, you can say it when I've finished."
    "Why the hell didn't you call me when all this crap happened today?"
    "As usual, word travels." she said sourly. "And I didn't feel like calling you. If you're here to ride to the rescue, keep right on riding. I don't need a hero. I need to do my job."
    "I'll wait until you're finished and drive you back. We'll go see Rick in the morning."
    "I don't want anyone waiting for me, and when I'm finished I have plans."
    "What plans?"
    "Ones that don't concern you. I don't need you to go to the sheriff with me. I don't need a babysitter or a white knight or pity any more than you need me to make your bed and do your laundry. And it's not time for my break."
    When she turned toward the door, he took her arm, pulled her around again. "Goddamn it, Reece." He sighed, gave up. "Goddamn it," he said quietly now. "Come home." She stared at him, then she shut her eyes. "That was a sneaky punch." And it took her breath away. "I think we both better take a little time thinking about that. I think we'd both better be sure just what that means, and if it's what we both want. Maybe we'll talk tomorrow."

    "I'll sleep in my office, or down on the couch."
    "I'm not coming to your place so you can protect me. If it turns out it's more than that, we'll see what happens. You'd better figure it out before we talk again."
    She left him, baffled and edgy, to go back to the grill.

Chapter 22

    ONE BEER. Reece thought. If a woman couldn't afford to buy herself one beer, what was the point of holding down a job, and working at it so that the small of her back quietly wept at the end of a long day?
    Clancy's was hopping with locals mixing and mingling with the tourists who'd sprinkled into the area to fish or float, to hike or horseback ride. The long, tall Reuben had the mike and was doing a soulful version of Keith Urban's "You'll Think of Me." A group of cowboys had flirted a couple of town girls into a game of pool, so the balls cracked amid a thin sexual haze. Two couples from back East were hoisting drinks and snapping pictures of themselves against the backdrop of elk and sheep's heads. At the bar, his boot propped on the rail, Lo brooded into his bottle of Big Horn.
    "He looks like he's suffering."
    At Reece's comment. Linda-gail shrugged. "Not enough. This time around, he's going to have to come my way, hat in hand. I can wait." She-popped one of the pretzels out of the black plastic bowl on the table, crunched down hard. "I've been hung up on that stupid cowboy most of my life, and I've given him enough time, enough space to finish rid-ing the damn range."
    "Nice metaphor," Reece told her.
    But Linda-gail wasn't in the mood to take a compliment. "I figured Lo carried around more wild oats than most, so fine, let him sow them, get all that business out of his system. Man like him, women are always going to jump when he crooks a finger."
    Reece raised a hand. "I didn't."
    "Yeah, but you're crazy."
    "True. I guess that explains it."
    "But I'm ready to start building the rest of my life now." With her eyes narrowed at Lo's back, Linda-gail crunched another pretzel. "He either catches up, or he doesn't." Reece considered it. "Men are assholes."

    "Oh well, 'course they are. But I just don't like women in the same way. So I'm going to need one to get things going."
    "What sort of things?"
    Propping her elbow on the table, Linda-gail rested her chin in her palm. "I want to buy my house from Joanie. She'd sell it to me if I asked her to. And when she's ready to take a step back. I want to manage Angel Food."
    Unsurprised, Reece nodded. "You'd be good at it."
    "You're damn right I would. And I want a pair of silver candlesticks to put on the dining room table. Nice ones that I can pass down to a daughter. I want a daughter, especially, but I'd like it best if I could have one of each. A boy and a girl. I want a man who'll work beside me for that, and who looks at me like I'm the reason. I want to hear him scrape his boots outside the door at night when supper's cooking. And every once in a while,just now and then, I want him