Chapter Three
Nicki pulled into Three C’s front lot just after six. Her stomach was growling but only part of it could be blamed on hunger. The other part . . . Well, it didn’t bear thinking about. That was a different kind of hunger entirely, one she’d done well ignoring the past few years.
She walked up to the front porch, sneakers crunching on gravel. She’d changed into jeans and a navy tee and was already realizing her mistake—the temperature dropped like a curtain around here, from the nineties to the fifties in a blink as soon as the sun set. It was sinking toward the hills now and she’d be shivering in an hour.
Maybe he’ll offer you his jacket. Maybe it smells like leather and sage grass and cowboy.
“Keep it in your pants, girl.” She mounted the porch steps and passed the swing, marched up and rang the bell.
She heard a distant call, probably Miah letting his mom know he was answering it. Then steps. And then, there he was.
He popped the screen door open. “Hey, Dep—”
“Nicki,” she corrected, teasing. “No uniform tonight, no badge. Call me Nicki for God’s sake or I’m turning around and going home.”
He beckoned her inside, laughing. “Sorry. Maybe we could compromise. Nicole?”
“Ugh, no. Not Nicole.” She stepped into the front hall. “Never Nicole, please.”
“No?”
She smirked as he led her into the kitchen. “Nicole Ritchey?”
He frowned and shrugged.
“Have you not heard of Nicole Ritchie?” she asked.
“Should I have?”
“I think it’s to your credit that you haven’t, actually. Anyhow, try it with me now—Nicki. Nicki . . .”
He smiled, rolled his eyes. “Nicki. I got it, I swear.”
“How would you feel if I called you Jeremiah?”
“I don’t mind. Used to give me flashbacks to when I was a kid—nobody busted out the full name unless I was in trouble.”
She laughed.
“But half the hands call me that, and all the folks we do business with. Call me whatever you want.”
“Deal. You want to . . . ?”
“Yeah, just gimme one second. I was throwing some sandwiches together.”
If stomachs could leap the way hearts did, hers was midair, shaking pom-poms.
“Roast beef okay?” he asked. “You’re not a vegetarian, are you?”
“Nope. Sounds great.”
“Beer?”
She pursed her lips to quell a smile; this couldn’t be all grief counseling, if there was a picnic about to go down. “How long will we be gone?”
“Long as you feel like.”
“Well, give me enough time to walk it off and sure, I’d love a beer.”
He dropped a couple sandwiches into a Ziploc and grabbed two beers from the fridge door, then tucked it all into an old canvas shoulder bag. Nicki looked around the room—such a huge, beautiful, lived-in room, its floor made of thick old boards and dominated by a vast trestle-style table, big enough to seat twelve. Miah paused, hands on his hips, casting her a funny look with his black eyes narrowed.
“What?”
“Two questions for you.”
“Shoot.”
“One, would you mind carrying the food?”
She shook her head.
“And two, the reason I ask that is because if we’re walking on the range, I’m bringing my rifle. You okay with that?”
“For protection?”
“Mostly pest control. And possibly for protection, though it’s been months since anybody’s seen a cougar.”
Cougars? Jesus. She’d forgotten they were actual animals, not merely hot-blooded middle-aged women. You’re not in Chicago anymore.
“Or a poacher,” Miah added.
“Either way, I don’t mind. Sounds better than getting rustled or eaten alive.” She shouldered the canvas bag and followed Miah back into the front hall.
“You bring a jacket?” he asked.
“No, sadly. And it’s already getting cold.”
He grabbed a magenta fleece zip-up off a hook by the door, no doubt his mother’s. Poof went Nicki’s fantasies of borrowed leather and stolen sniffs of cowboy musk. And probably just as well. You’re not ready to date and you damn well know it. It had been ages since her divorce, but she was too busy getting settled into her new job, her new home, her new life.
I might just be ready to make out with a hot rancher, though.
She got the jacket on when Miah made a stop at his truck. He slammed the door and strapped his rifle around his back, looking like a photo shoot for some unspeakably rugged product.
He bellowed, “King!” and seconds later a dog came rocketing around the side of the farmhouse. During the day the animal was practically glued to Miah.
“Hi, boy. You friendly?” Nicki asked, then looked to Miah before stooping to pet King. She knew not to go treating working dogs like pets.
“She’s off duty,” Miah assured her.
Nicki crouched and went in for a good neck scratch. “She?”
“Yeah, I know. King IV. I’m not very imaginative when it comes to dog names. Her name used to be Duchess, but when she took over for King III, I couldn’t quite seem to make the switch.”
Nicki stood, dusting her hands off on her jeans. She looked to Miah’s rifle as they crossed the yard, heading north toward the scraggly red range. “I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about firearms when I decided to move here. I’m used to them, obviously. I carry one; so do all my peers. But I wondered, which would be more intimidating, the civilians who carry back home—the gang members, I mean. Or the . . .” She trailed off, at a loss for the right word.
Miah looked to her in the orange-pink wash of sunset, smirking. “We prefer ‘redneck’ to ‘white trash.’”
“I’d never say white trash. Not with everything my people have been called. Redneck’s not very kind either. But you know . . . Well, maybe you don’t. What it’s like, being pretty much the only black person in a sea of white folks, out here in the wild west.”
“I know what it was like as a kid, being mixed. That was bad enough. How has it been?”
“Not entirely friendly,” she admitted. “We moved here just after Christmas, so it’s been eight months. I’d hoped by now people would’ve gotten used to me.”
“But no?”
“Not especially. There’s a certain breed of adult male who doesn’t relish being reprimanded by a patrol deputy, and to make that deputy a black woman . . .”
Miah winced. “I’ll bet.”
“Don’t get me wrong—the majority of folks are fine. But I won’t lie, it’s challenging.”
“What brought you out here, anyway?”
“Change of scenery. Bit of an adventure.”
“Oh?”
She nodded, watching their long shadows trail across the rust-colored earth and pale green brush. “After my father was killed, I never settled back into my job. I’d always been cool, calm, collected, but ever since that, I was a jumpy wreck. Not jumpy like I was in danger of hurting anybody, but paranoid. I looked forward to going to work when I started, but after he died, my alarm clock would go off, and every minute from then until I got in my car I could feel my heart beating faster, faster, harder, harder.”
“Damn.”
“It was when my doctor suggested seeing a specialist and maybe getting a prescription for antianxiety medication that I said, ‘Fuck this. This isn’t sustainable.’ Pardon my French.”
“Not at all.”
“It just felt too dangerous,” she said, “and the older my son got, the more threatening the street culture felt. We didn’t live in a terrible area, but the gangs and the dealing are an epidemic. So I thought, now or never.”
“Why Fortuity?”
She laughed, feeling corny. “I want to say it’s because of my mother’s arthritis—dry air’s good for her. But honestly, I think it just sounded romantic. I feel silly saying that to a cattle rancher, but when you’re not from a place like this, it really is something out of a movie. Tumbleweeds and sage and red mesas and all that.”
“Don’t feel silly. I ride through this land all day, every day, and it never fails to take my breath away.”
“That’s good to hear . . .” She studied his face for a few paces, and those dark eyes she’d grown so fond of since the spring. Especially now, with no sorrow dulling them. She realized she was staring, and locked her gaze on the horizon. “Anyhow, it was the differentness that made me apply for the job. Dry and vast and wild versus the big old humid, blizzardy, urban clusterfuck of Chicago.”
“You don’t miss it?”
She laughed again. “Only constantly. I miss the stores, the city, my friends . . . Hell, just seeing other dark faces. But I try to focus on the things that are exciting here. I mean, it’s gorgeous. Like, gorgeous. And it’s magic not to sweat even when it’s a hundred out, and my hair always looks great. And the air’s freakishly clean and the stars are like . . . I honestly never knew there were so many stars.”
“No?”
She shook her head, searching the deepening cobalt of the sky above, already finding a couple white points to the east. “The first month we were here, Matty and I had a tradition on the nights I wasn’t on patrol: make cocoa at sundown and lay on the picnic table and watch the stars come out. Make up constellations or pretend like we could count them all.”
“Sounds nice.”
“It was. I wish he’d still do it, but I guess the thrill wore off.”
“Not for you?”
She made a big show of scanning the heavens, dazzled in that way that hummed in your chest. “Nope. I’m still amazed.”
“That’s good. I was thinking I could show you another natural wonder they probably don’t have back in Chicago.”
Are you going to take your shirt off and rope a calf? “Do tell.”
“It’s a surprise, though.”
“How far?”
“A mile or so. Fifteen more minutes.”
“I’ve got fifteen minutes in me.”
“Then it’s a date.”
Nicki felt her cheeks heat, thankful she was a dark girl. It was absurd how much pleasure that casual turn of phrase gave her. She’d come out here happy to be a friend, an open mind and a sympathetic ear. She wasn’t even entirely sure she’d say yes if he ever did ask her out—dating intimidated her far more than cougars—but she wouldn’t turn down a little flirting. She still knew how to flirt. Probably. Plus with Mathias and her mother both out of town and the night off work, she felt undeniably twentysomething again. Young and free, if only for an evening.