“I’m off the clock, Molly.”
“You’re in my backyard, Dan.”
His mouth slid into a grin as he tipped his bottle her way as if to say touché. That little stitch inside her tweaked again.
“Got an extra beer?” she asked.
He jerked his thumb in the direction of a cooler. “Help yourself.”
She extracted a cold bottle, twisted off the cap and took a long drink. “That’s good,” she said, folding her legs and lowering herself to the ground beside his chair. “I keep forgetting how much I enjoy an occasional beer. Salud.” She reached up to tap her bottle against his.
Dan promptly switched his beer to the other, more distant hand, sighing at the same time and recrossing his legs.
“How’d you get the scar?” Molly asked.
“What?”
“Right there.” She touched her finger to the gnarled tissue on his thigh. “How’d you get it?”
“Staple gun.”
Molly blinked. “What?”
“A staple gun. I was putting down a carpet and I stapled myself to the damned floor.”
She laughed. “I don’t believe you.”
“Okay.”
“How did you get it? Really.”
“I’d tell you,” he said, “but then I’d have to kill you.”
“Right.” Molly took another sip of the cold beer. Be persistent, she told herself. What would Raylene do now? “I’ve got a scar in just about the same place. Wanna see it?”
“No.”
She was already edging up her hemline to disclose the spot where shrapnel from the Chemistry Building basement had supposedly penetrated her leg. The final consensus was that it was a fragment of a Bunsen burner. “Right there. See.”
His gaze drifted almost lazily from her ankle to her thigh, idled there a moment, then turned away. “Nice,” he murmured.
Good God. Her leg felt warmer somehow just from his gaze. Imagine if he touched her.
“Don’t you even want to know how I got it?”
“Nope.”
“Aren’t you even the least bit curious?”
This time his sigh was closer to a growl. “Molly, I’m sitting out here trying to medicate myself into a few hours’ sleep. I’m not in the mood to play Twenty Questions about damaged body parts. Okay?”
“Sorry.” She pushed up from the ground, then furiously whacked twigs and grass clippings from the back of her skirt. Hot tears were stinging her eyes so she didn’t see Dan rise from his chair, but he must have, because the next thing she knew, she was wrapped in his arms and his lips were close to her ear.
“You don’t want this, Molly,” he whispered roughly. “Trust me on this.”
“I wasn’t…”
“Yes, you were.” His embrace tightened painfully around her ribs as his hot breath nearly seared her ear. “Now leave me the hell alone.”
When he practically pushed her away, Molly was hard-pressed to keep her balance. And even though she could hardly see for the tears in her eyes, even though she wanted to run, she and her bruised ego walked slowly toward the house and slammed the door behind her.
Sometime during the night, somewhere between the low trill of the crickets and the high whine of the locusts, Dan thought he heard the insistent ringing of a phone through the open trailer window.
He wrenched up on an elbow, eyed the clock and listened to the sound of Molly’s voice floating through the air.
Who the hell was calling her at three in the morning?
He dropped back on the air mattress, scowling, and let darkness wash over him again.
Molly was slamming around the kitchen the next morning, opening drawers for no reason, slamming them shut again, cursing the slow-brewing coffeemaker, crashing a mug down so hard on the countertop that it broke in her hand. She didn’t even hear the back door squeak open.
“Morning, sunshine.” Dan dropped his toolbox on the kitchen table. “If you’ve got another cup, I could use some coffee.”
She ripped the pot from beneath the brew basket, sloshed the dark liquid into a mug and slapped it down on the table. “There you go.”
“Molly, about last night…”
She held up a hand. “I don’t want to discuss it, Dan. Please. Let’s just pretend it didn’t happen.”
“Fine with me.” He took a tentative sip from the steaming mug. “Who called you last night?”
“What?” She could feel her eyes widen perceptibly. How did he know?
“I heard your phone ringing around three. Who called?”
“Nobody.”
“Somebody,” he countered, eyeing her over the rim of the mug.
“It was a wrong number.”
“Do you always chat with strangers in the middle of the night?”
“The guy was very contrite,” she said. “He apologized. At length.”
Molly couldn’t tell if he believed her or not. Those green eyes could be so cool and inscrutable sometimes. What business was it of his, anyway, that her phone had rung last night at three, or that a man’s raspy voice had asked for Kathryn?
“You seem a little edgy this morning,” he said, slinging a hip on the table. “Anything wrong?”
“Wrong?” she croaked. “What could possibly be wrong? I make a blatant play for every man who comes to do work on my house. Sometimes they respond. Sometimes they don’t.” She lifted her shoulders in an exaggerated shrug. “No big deal.”
Just like the phone call, she told herself. It was no big deal. She probably only imagined that the caller had asked for Kathryn. It made sense. She always dreamed about her old self, and her dream had simply carried over to the caller’s question. The guy had probably asked for Carolyn or Marilyn or somebody. Not Kathryn. It had nothing to do with the terrorists. Anyway, the Marshals Service would have alerted her if anybody was snooping around. They had told her that.
She glared at Dan. “Are you here to work or not?”
He drained the mug and put it down on the table. “Have hammer, will travel, darlin’. Wire Dan. Moonglow.”
Dan was up on the roof with a mouthful of nails when Molly came out the door wearing her floppy hat, with her straw bag hooked over her shoulder. She lifted a hand to shade her eyes when she called up to him. “I’m going into town. Need anything?”
He spat out the nails. “Hang on. I’ll go with you.”
“Oh, that’s okay. I won’t be gone long. You just keep on keeping on.” She gave him a sprightly little wave and started down the driveway.
Dan muttered a curse, shoved the hammer through his belt loop and started a controlled slide down the pitch of the roof toward the ladder. He realized immediately that loose and rotten shingles precluded any notion of control, and the next thing he knew he was hanging on to the guttering for dear life while his legs flailed in empty space.
Okay. Damn. He loosened one hand and reached for the ladder, only to send it sliding down the sidewall to hit the ground with a distinct thud.
“Molly,” he yelled.