Picnic in Someday Valley (Honey Creek #2)(17)
She had claimed him as hers with one great kiss in front of half the town after the courthouse fire five months ago. But he wasn’t sure he wanted to be a “boyfriend.” They were both in their thirties. To be more, they’d have to take the next step. Something he’d never done.
Colby smiled and kept walking. He wouldn’t mind being her full-time lover, but she seemed to want to keep that fact a secret. The hidden room upstairs at the café was proof of that.
He felt like he was playing poker with two cards. He might be sitting at the table, but he wasn’t in the game.
No surprise that he was gun-shy of commitment. His parents played ping-pong with their marriage. When he was five they divorced. A year later they started dating, then remarried six weeks later. That marriage lasted until he was ten. Mom moved out. Dad wouldn’t sign the divorce papers. They argued about it for a year. Dad won and Mom moved back home, with her demands posted on the refrigerator.
They had separate rooms from then on. The rest of the house was their battleground. In his teens they’d take turns slamming the door and moving out, but they always came back.
Colby finally figured that they simply loved to hate each other. Last time he called home, they were living under the same roof but not speaking to one another.
Colby never wanted that life, loving someone you can’t be happy with. Jennifer had said Piper needed cheering up. Was he the problem or the cure?
He had the weekend to figure it out. He wasn’t looking for complications this early. They’d known each other for five months, but they hadn’t spent a dozen nights together.
He made it all the way to the radio station, only to find it locked up. Rambling Randy didn’t waste any time after his one-hour talk show on Saturday morning. Colby walked the main street. The farmers market that had filled one side of the town square five months ago was gone. Now Honey Creek looked abandoned in the fog.
He peered up at her fourth-floor office at city hall across the street. The entire building looked dark inside. He thought of walking around the square and looking for her van, but it made more sense to walk back to the café and wait. Maybe Piper would remember where she left him and come back for him. Maybe she’d call if she noticed he’d texted her twice during her interview. The only answer was she’d turned her cell off and forgot to turn it back on.
He needed a bit of time to think.
As he walked past a new bakery, Sam Cassidy crossed his path. The fire chief was so deep in thought he almost didn’t look up.
Both men smiled. They’d fought a fire together last spring. They’d forever be comrades.
“Morning, Colby.” Sam offered his hand. “Glad to see you back.”
“Good to be back, if only for a few days.”
Sam tilted his head. “You got a minute, Trooper? I mean Ranger McBride. I need to talk a problem out.”
Colby pointed at the bakery window. “Buy me donuts and I’ll listen.”
Without another word they walked into the town’s only bakery and took the table by the window. Sam ordered while Colby watched the street, hoping to see Piper drive by. This was a small town; he’d find her in time, but right now he ached just to see her. During the workdays in Austin he was too busy to think of her much, but at night she kept him awake with longing.
How could the sex be so great but the communication so complicated?
When the baker delivered a plate of donuts and two coffees, the men started talking. They worked their way through the “hellos” and “what’s ups” before Sam finally got to the point.
“You probably heard about the excitement last night.” Sam looked tired. “It was a long shift.”
Colby nodded. “Rambling Randy mentioned it on his morning report. Is the drunk all right?”
“He’s got a broken arm, several deep scratches, and part of his ear is gone. In Joey’s case I would have sworn he couldn’t get much uglier, but somehow he managed it.”
“All this from being shoved in a slot meant for abandoned babies?”
“No, he was beat up before he reached us.” Sam ate half a cherry-glazed donut in one bite, leaving red icing on both corners of his mouth. “Problem is, Joey wouldn’t tell us anything about the fight. Which leads me to believe Joey was probably doing something wrong. We’ve got a crime, trying to break into the fire station, on top of another crime the sheriff knows about. I saw the friends who dropped Joey off. They all had been involved in something. They didn’t want to hang around to answer any questions and all were in bad shape. Black eyes, cuts, bruises.”
Colby took a drink of the best coffee he’d had in months, then said, “Let me guess. This Joey isn’t too bright sober. When drunk, he’s an idiot. Maybe they were in a rival gang fight.”
“This town is too small to have two dumb, drunk gangs. Joey and his band of half-wit drunks are an embarrassment to humanity. Something happened over in Someday Valley last night. All we saw here was the end of the trouble. Otherwise, why would his friends abandon him? Why wouldn’t Joey tell us how he broke his arm?”
Colby finished off his second donut. “Maybe it was just a bar fight. They’ll forget about it.”
Sam shook his head. “My wife, who is the lawyer representing most of the Joey-types in court, says people over in Someday Valley hold grudges. She promised me there would be payback.”