She gulped the next spoonful of soup and it burned her throat. What possible reason could Duke have for joining her for dinner? Maybe he wanted to grill her for information this time.
“The seafood bisque is good.” She drew a circle around her bowl of soup with her spoon.
Chloe returned to the table, practically bursting at the seams. “Are you Beth’s cameraman?”
“Would it get me a beer faster if I were?” Duke lifted one eyebrow at Chloe, who turned three different shades of red.
“Of course not. I mean, what kind of beer would you like?”
“Do you sell that local microbrew on tap here?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll have that and the pork chops with the mashed potatoes, and you might as well bring me some of that soup she’s slurping up.”
Beth dropped her spoon in the bowl. “Why did you join me if you’re going to sit here and insult me?”
“That wasn’t an insult. Are you getting overly sensitive out there in LA? You used to be a tough broad, Beth.”
Rolling her shoulders, she exhaled out of her nose. Duke liked to needle her. It hadn’t bothered her before—when they’d been in love. But now that he hated her? She couldn’t take the slightest criticism from him.
“Pile it on, Duke. I can take it.” She set her jaw.
“Relax, Beth. Your slurping made the soup sound good. That’s all I meant.”
Relax? Was that a jab at her anxiety? She squeezed her eyes closed for a second. If she didn’t stop looking for innuendos in his conversation, this was gonna be a long dinner.
She scooped up a spoonful and held it out to him with a surprisingly steady hand. “Try it.”
He opened his mouth and closed his lips around the spoon. “Mmm.”
Heat engulfed her body and a pulse throbbed in her throat. My God, she couldn’t be within five feet of the man without feeling that magnetic pull. And he knew it.
She slipped the spoon from his mouth and lined it up on one side of the bowl just as Chloe brought Duke’s beer and another bisque.
“Are you done, Beth?”
“Yeah, thanks.” She pushed her bowl toward the eager waitress.
When she disappeared into the kitchen, Duke took a swig of beer and asked, “What’s up with the waitress? Is she your new best friend or what?”
“She dated Wyatt Carson and thinks that’s going to get her camera time.”
“You have that effect on people, don’t you? They tend to fall all over themselves in your presence.”
She stuck out her tongue at him and took a gulp of wine. She needed it to get through this meal.
“Interesting case, Wyatt Carson.” Duke flicked his bottle with his finger.
“I know, right?” Beth hunched forward. “Why do you think he did it? Hard to imagine he’d want to put other families through that hell when he’d suffered the loss of his brother.”
“One of two things.” Duke held up two fingers. “Either he missed the attention and limelight of those days when his brother went missing or he really did just want to play the hero. He kidnapped those kids and then rescued them. Maybe he thought he could get past his survivor’s guilt by saving other children when he couldn’t save his brother.”
“Twisted logic.” Beth tapped her head.
“Do you want a slurp, er, sip?” He held his spoon poised over his soup. “I had one of yours.”
“No, thanks. I have some fish coming.”
“Yeah, yeah. I know the camera adds ten pounds. You still run?”
“There are some great running trails here. Did you bring your running shoes?”
“Of course. Running is the only thing that kept me sane...keeps me sane with the pressures of the job.”
“Same here.” So the loss of his partner must’ve weighed heavily on him. Did he suffer from that same survivor’s guilt as Wyatt Carson?
“You doing okay with all that—” he circled his finger in the air “—panic stuff?”
“I’m managing.” Did he care? He’d acted like he wanted to strangle her today in the woods. Of course, she’d just nailed him with some expired pepper spray.
“How are your eyes? They still look a little red.”
“I’m managing.”
Chloe brought their entrées at the same time and hovered for several seconds. “Can I get you anything else?”
“Not for me.”
Beth shook her head. “No, thanks.”
As Duke sliced off a piece of pork chop and swept it through his potatoes, he glanced around the room. “Does the entire town of Timberline know why you’re here?”
“I don’t know about the entire town, but everyone in this restaurant has a pretty good idea by now, thanks to Chloe.”
“Do you think that’s a good idea?” His lips twisted into a frown.
“How else am I going to investigate, to get information?” She squeezed some lemon on her fish and licked the tart juice from her fingers.
Duke shifted his gaze from her fingers to her face and cleared his throat. “I guess that’s how you operate. Stir up a bunch of trouble and heartache and move on.”
Beth pursed her lips. “None of the original families is even here anymore. Wyatt Carson was the last of Stevie’s family in Timberline. Kendall Rush, Kayla’s sister, blew through town, got caught up in Wyatt’s craziness and then hightailed it out of here. And Heather’s family... They moved away from Timberline, to Connecticut, I think.”
“You’ve done your homework.”
“I always do, Duke.”
“What I can’t figure out—” he poked at his potatoes “—is why you were attracted to this cold case. It hardly has all the elements you usually look for.”
“And what elements would those be?”
“You know—sex, drugs, grieving families, celebrity.”
She chewed her fish slowly. Duke hated what she did for a living—had hated it then, hated it now. She didn’t have to answer to Special Agent Duke Harper or anyone else.
She drained her wineglass. “I was following the copycat kidnapping story and got interested in the old story, like a lot of people. There seemed to be heightened interest in the Timberline Trio and talk of some new evidence, so I figure I’d capitalize on that. Right up my alley.”
“Excuse me, Ms. St. Regis?”
Beth turned and met the faded blue eyes of a grandmotherly woman, linking arms with another woman of about the same age.
“Yes?”
“I’m Gail Fitzsimmons and this is my friend Nancy Heck. We wanted to let you know that we were both living here at the time of the Timberline Trio kidnappings and we’d be happy to talk to you.”
“Thank you.” Beth reached into her purse for her cards, ignoring Duke’s sneer—or what looked pretty close to a sneer. “Here’s my card. I’ll be doing some preliminary interviews before my crew gets here.”
Nancy snatched the card from Beth’s fingers. “You