Burying Water (Burying Water #1)(49)

That was almost three weeks ago. We’ve since fallen into this routine where she hands me a list on Thursday night and I go grocery shopping on Friday after work. In that time, I’ve happily cooked every night and brought the dishes down to her front porch. And yet she still gives me a list with chicken, potatoes, and beans, even though I’ve now stopped buying them.

Amber glances at her watch. “I’ve gotta go. I have a hair appointment.”

“So, movie this weekend, right?” We try to go for coffee or out to a movie at the Bend theater at least once a week, if her crazy work hours permit it. She even took me horseback riding on Felix the Brown a few times.

“No, better.” Her eyes lights up. “A couple of my girlfriends are coming back into town for the Memorial Day long weekend. We’ll all go out, okay?”

“Maybe? I guess?” The same nervous blip of excitement and trepidation stirs inside me as it does every time I’m around new people. Which is everyone.

She reaches out and squeezes my shoulder, a gesture that she’s obviously learned from her mother. “It’ll be fine. I promise.”

A sudden blast of rock music spills out of the speakers and we both jump.

“Have fun,” Amber whispers wryly and heads quickly out the door.

Dakota pushes through the bead curtain a few moments later. “So are you going to charge me seventy-five dollars for being stupid, Chuck?”

“Lucky for you this is a small town and I’m related to my boss. I’ll see what I can do about waiving the fee. Just make sure you check the plugs next time, okay, Dakota?”

She salutes him, her face a picture of chagrin.

“And tell Ginny that the Fanshaws say hi,” he says to me as he walks past, throwing me another wink before passing through the door. I guess he’s a winky kind of guy.

“Oh, wow! How’d this get here?” Dakota traces the edge of the black horse on the new quilt with her finger.

“Amber Welles.”

“Hmmm . . . sheriff’s daughter, right? I remember her.” Dakota’s even tone and calm demeanor don’t give much away. “She was one of the popular girls. Honor roll. Rodeo Queen. Really into sports. On all the school councils, running all the dances. You know the kind, right?”

“Right,” I lie, pulling down the other display quilt. Rodeo Queen? I haven’t heard about that.

“Some of her friends were a bit much, though. Very self-absorbed. A few ranch princesses, too. They’re a nice family, though, aren’t they? The Welleses, I mean.”

“Yeah.” I can’t explain just how nice they are without divulging information I don’t care to share, even with someone as seemingly harmless as Dakota. So I simply say, “They’re great.”

“Have you met her brother?”

“Jesse? Yeah. Well, not really. I’ve met him, but he hasn’t been around much.” Actually, I haven’t seen Jesse since the middle of April, when he waved at me and then peeled out of the driveway. Every weekend, when I wake up and go down to feed and groom the Felixes, I check the garage next door, tucked in amongst the trees. He’s never there.

“He’s cute, that one. Looks like his daddy.”

“He is,” I agree. Except, when I hear “cute,” I think of Felix’s kittens bounding after their mother, their hinds tipping and spilling because they haven’t grown into their feet. But Jesse, with his dark eyes, his strong jaw, the way his body moves . . .

Jesse is gorgeous.

I think somewhere deep inside, I knew that the first moment I saw him.

“What a troublemaker, though.”

“I keep hearing that. What do you know about him?” I ask casually.

“Oh, you know how it is. The smaller the town, the bigger the mouths. I don’t know what’s true and what’s rumor. Being the sheriff’s son, people loved talking about him and he seemed to love giving people something to talk about.” She takes a sip of her coffee and waves at Ms. Milliken, the florist from down the street, her eyes glazing over slightly.

“Dakota?”

“Hmm?” She turns to look at me. “Oh, right. Jesse. Well, he used to hang out with these two hooligans—Ian and Dirk—and everyone knew them as a trio of trouble. Anytime something happened in town, you could guarantee that those three were involved. But . . . Jesse always seemed different from those two. They were loud and obnoxious and . . . rude. Jesse wasn’t. He was just there, usually hanging back, more cool and composed.” She pauses to take a gulp of her coffee. Dakota drinks her coffee fast. “So when Tommy Myers was stabbed at that party—”

“What?” Stabbed?

Dakota nods. “Yeah, that was a big deal for this town. I don’t know exactly what happened, but there was this house party and Tommy got stabbed on the street after a fight. Sheriff Welles threw Ian, Dirk, and Jesse behind bars. Ian and Dirk said it was Jesse who stabbed Tommy. There were no other witnesses except them, and Tommy was in a coma.”

Jesse stabbed someone? “What about fingerprints?”

“It was winter. They all had gloves on. But Tommy survived. Whatever he told the sheriff got Jesse off and put Ian and Dirk in jail, like the dirt bags they are.”

My face twists with horror.

“I know, right? Tommy’s fine now. Living in Bend and married, the last I heard. Likes to show his scars at parties.” Her eyes flicker to the side of my face. I quickly turn to the window display, setting the old quilt gently on the floor.