Smoking Hot (4 page)

“Thanks, Mr. Unger.” Raine gave one more tug on the tarp that covered the sacks of feed they'd loaded onto her truck.

“Yeah, no problem. Your papa was a good man. He made sure the deputies watched my feed store every night. Not one break-in since I opened. Sheriff Barnes is a good man, too. Anytime you want, I'll stay here. Not everyone would come home to take care of family. You're a good kid.”

She smiled and didn't try to explain she wasn't the same little girl who would stop by every once in a while to say hi. She was a grown woman. Mr. Unger was nice and he stayed past closing hours so she could get feed before her shift and not have to make a special trip into town.

She turned the key and, after a couple of false starts, the pickup started. She waved to Mr. Unger who smiled and waved back. Next stop, the drugstore. It was only a few minutes away, but then everything in town was only a few minutes away. She parked the truck and went inside.

“How can I help you?” the clerk asked.

“I need to pick up pills for Sock McCandless.”

The girl nodded, moved to a row of white paper sacks, and glanced through them. “Here they are.” She looked at the ticket. “It'll be twenty-two fifty.”

They'd gone up again. Figured. Raine reached in her pocket and pulled out her cash. She hated to part with her last twenty but she didn't have a choice. She handed the girl the money and left the store.

She climbed in the pickup again and slipped the key in, but this time the damn motor didn't even try to turn over.

“Having problems, ma'am?” asked a male voice with a lazy Texas twang.

“It won't start, so yes, I'd say I have a problem.” She turned to glare at the man, but as soon as she shifted in her seat and got a good look at the guy, she knew who it was and her stomach began to churn uncomfortably.

Raine lost her virginity to Dwayne Freeman in Grandpa's barn one hot summer day. She was fifteen and he was seventeen. The rumor going around was that Dwayne had experience. The rumor was true.

That summer she fell in love for the very first time. He taught her a lot in those three months, but then school started. Dwayne made the football team and started dating a cheerleader. He never gave Raine a second look. She'd cried for weeks.

A few years later, he and his two younger brothers inherited the salvage yard when his mother died. His brothers were still in high school and would be for another three or four years. They were a little slow on the uptake.

Dwayne thought his looks and expertise in bed would carry him through life. They didn't. Carousing all night with his buddies was aging him fast. His hair was thinning and he carried a definite paunch. He looked fifteen years older than Raine instead of only two.

“I heard you were back in town.” He leaned against the door.

“Looks like you heard right, then, doesn't it.”

He grinned. “You've gotten kind of uppity since you moved off to the city.”

She cocked an eyebrow.

He laughed as he swaggered to the front of the truck and raised the hood. He disappeared for a few minutes, then stuck his head out from under the hood. “Now try it.”

She turned the key and the engine fired up. “Thank goodness,” she mumbled. She couldn't take another expense.

Dwayne looked around for something to wipe his hands on, then leaned against the door again. “You should bring it by the yard and I'll go over it real good. I'll take care of you, Raine. You know I can. Besides, I'm working on old vehicles now. Going to get me another business on the side. I should be rolling in greenbacks in a few months. We could have us a lot of fun. Catch up on old times.”

Barf. His lines might have worked when she was an innocent kid, but the grown woman was a little smarter and a whole lot wiser. “I've got to get to work,” she said.

He wiggled his fingers. “Got anything I can wipe my hands on?”

She didn't point out that they weren't that clean before he stuck them under the hood; instead she reached into the floor of the pickup and scooped up a white rag, shoving it at him. “Uh, thanks, Dwayne,” she called out as she quickly shifted the pickup into reverse and backed out of the space. And she
was
grateful. But not grateful enough she wanted to be friends or anything.

It was sad to think Dwayne starting Old Red was the best thing to happen to her that day. It wasn't going well at all. She couldn't convince her grandfather to stay at Tilly's. Grandpa had a mind of his own and he wasn't about to let her talk him into leaving his bed. Not that Raine blamed him. She would probably be just as stubborn if she lived to be seventy-five years old.

She parked the pickup, got out, and went inside the sheriff's office. She headed straight for the coffee pot. She was drinking her second cup when Darla, the night dispatcher, came inside.

A door slammed.

Raine flinched.

“You're jumpy tonight,” Darla said as she grabbed a soda from the refrigerator.

What would Darla say if Raine told her an angel said she would die tonight? An angel—
reall
y
? You would think he could've come up with something a little more plausible.

Raine studied the thirty-year-old divorcee. Knowing Darla, she would probably ask if her intruder was single and worry about the rest later. Darla went through men as fast as she did packages of chewing gum.

Raine held up her cup and kept her thoughts to herself. “Too much caffeine.” The last thing she needed was another person thinking she was crazy.

Darla puckered her mouth. “Coffee goes with working the graveyard shift. If it's not a man screwing up my nights, then it's the frigging hours I work.” She chuckled at her own joke.

There was something Raine liked about Darla, although they had absolutely nothing in common. Darla had been married three times and had two children. She loved men and she didn't mind telling people. She lived by one rule: she didn't date coworkers. Everyone else was fair game.

“I heard someone broke into your house. You okay?” Darla watched her as if she thought Raine might suddenly break into tiny little pieces.

She shrugged. “He was probably a drifter. I took one of the horses and searched the area, but he was long gone. I doubt he'll come back since he knows I'm armed.” She drained her coffee and carried her cup to the sink.

“And Grandpa?”

Raine rinsed her cup. The first time Darla met Raine's grandfather she'd given him a great big hug, then blushed. It was rare that anything embarrassed Darla. Grandpa had good instincts, though. He guessed Darla needed roots after bouncing around from town to town when she was growing up. He hugged her back and told her and the boys to call him Grandpa, which absolutely thrilled Darla.

“He's fine,” Raine said, drying her cup before returning it to the cabinet. “He wouldn't go to Tilly's though.”

Darla nodded, then began to chew her gum so fast Raine was afraid she might break a tooth.

“What?” Raine asked.

“What's what?” Darla repeated.

“Your jaw will be sore if you don't slow down.” Raine could almost see the light bulb go off in Darla's brain.

“Oh, my gum. When I get nervous I chew faster.”

“I know.”

Darla chewed faster, then realized she was doing it again. She spit her gum into the gray trash barrel.

Raine had never known Darla to be this skittish. Something was on her mind. “What's bothering you?”

“Is Grandpa getting old-timers?” Darla finally blurted. She twined her fingers together, biting her bottom lip.

Old-timers? “You mean Alzheimer's?”

She nodded, bleached blond ponytail bouncing around her head. “Yeah, the disease that makes people forget everyone.”

“Of course not,” Raine reassured her, hoping she spoke the truth, but the same thought had crossed her mind more than once. He didn't leave water boiling on the stove, and most of the time he told her where she left
her
keys. No, he wasn't losing his mind. He was a little gullible but that didn't mean he was crazy.

“Ethan said your burglar told Grandpa he was an angel and Grandpa believed him. Not that I believe everything Ethan tells me, but I think the other deputies do. Ethan said Grandpa should be in a nursing home so people can look after him. He said Grandpa's a danger to himself and if you wouldn't do anything about it, he might not have a choice. What did he mean?”

Nursing home? Locked away? Ethan might do it, too. If he called in Adult Protective Services they might think the same thing. In any case, it would be more problems for her to deal with and she had more than enough now. The room swam in front of Raine. She put her hand on the counter to steady herself.

“You okay? I didn't mean to upset you. Are you going to be sick?”

Raine turned the water on and began washing her hands. “I'm fine. Ethan is an idiot. Grandpa trusts people more than he should, but it doesn't mean he's losing his ability to function.” She yanked a paper towel from the roll and dried her hands. When she faced Darla, Raine's emotions were under control. “There's nothing wrong with Grandpa except he's getting old. Ethan doesn't want me working here and this is another way he's trying to force me to quit.”

Darla's features relaxed. “You're right, but I was worried there for a moment. Ethan better leave Grandpa alone or I'll send him on calls to the end of the county.” She grinned. “Maybe he'll get lost and never come back.”

Raine doubted that would happen. Her luck wasn't that good. “I'm going to make a couple of runs through town.”

“And I need to get back to the dispatch desk.” She rolled her eyes. “Justin hates being there by himself. Did you know he's barely out of high school? Lives will be in his hands when I get through training him. He told me that manning the call center terrifies him.” She chuckled. “Does he think someone's going to rob the bank?” Darla was still laughing as she left the break room.

Raine didn't see the humor.

She left the station and climbed into her patrol car to begin her rounds. Raine and Leo were the two deputies on the night shift. He was probably on the other side of town at the truck stop. There was a new waitress and it was a well-known fact he liked to flirt.

As she turned the corner, her cell phone began to ring. She slipped it out of her pocket. “Hello?”

“I was worried about you,” her grandfather said.

His voice brought a smile to her face.
He
was worried about
her
. “I'm fine. Why aren't you asleep? It's after midnight.”

“Restless, I guess. Seems like the older I get the less sleep I need. I went out to the barn. I sort of found a stray tonight.”

Grandpa was bad about
finding
strays. He once nursed a raccoon that got its paw mangled somehow. Her father hated the animal and told Grandpa he'd better get rid of it or else. The raccoon stayed and her father never pushed the issue.

Raine guessed the raccoon was just so old and tired of fending for itself that the animal decided he would hang around for a while since he got free food and a warm straw bed in the barn. A couple of years later the old raccoon passed away in his sleep. Her father was the one who dug the grave behind the barn and put fresh straw inside the hole. Grandpa and Raine made a cross out of two twigs and tied them together with string.

“What kind of stray?” She barely made enough money to feed them and the livestock. Another animal was out of the question, and this time she would be firm.

“I'm going to call her Lady.”

“Grandpa, we can't—”

“She's a beauty, little girl.”

Grandpa was playing dirty using the nickname he'd given her. His ploy wouldn't work. They couldn't afford to nurse another animal.

“She's a golden retriever and has the sweetest nature, but right now she's a little scared of people. I…uh…think she might have been abused. Mind you, I don't know that for sure 'cause I don't know who the owner could be, but she's a little skittish.”

Abused? Like the horse he rescued? Oh no, that was the reason he was on probation.

No, Grandpa wasn't foolish enough to steal another animal. He'd promised. That didn't mean they could afford to feed another animal. She mentally calculated the cost of a bag of dog food. A golden retriever would eat a lot. No, they couldn't keep her.

“Her front leg is cut kind of deep. I put a poultice on it.”

She heard the hopeful note in his voice. He'd lost so much over the years. His wife, his son. “We can only keep her until she's healed,” Raine finally told him.

“Of course,” he quickly agreed. “I better go check on her.”

“Grandpa, I don't want you wandering around outside at night.”

“I know, I know. That's why I brought Lady inside.”

She opened her mouth to tell him the dog absolutely could not stay in the house, but couldn't bring herself to say the words. “Are you sure she doesn't have rabies or something? No tags, identification of any kind?”

“I'm positive. She doesn't have a thing wrong with her other than a cut leg.”

Maybe the dog would watch over him. She knew a little about the breed and they were good animals. When did life get so complicated? “Okay, Grandpa, I'll see you in the morning.”

“Be careful.”

“I will.” She touched
end
and tossed her cell phone in the passenger seat as she turned the corner. They would manage somehow. She supposed if the dog didn't stay long, the cost wouldn't break them.

Her radio crackled and drew her attention back to her job. She waited for Darla to talk.

“Hey, Raine,” Darla's voice came over the radio. “I almost forgot. Ethan wants you to go by Dwayne Freeman's and ask if he knows where his brothers were last night. That new math teacher's house was papered and whoever did it got a little carried away. They busted a taillight on her car and shoe-polished that antique light at the front of her house. The teacher said she put the boys in detention for a month, and the rumor going around is that they were going to get even with her.”