The Trouble With Love (29 page)

She'd offered to help him that night in the bar
,
and
he wasn't ready then, but
he was
sure
as hell
ready now.
  Candy was just the type of woman he needed.  She knew the score, and liked to pl
ay the game the same way he was going to play it from now on.

Tossing the backpack duffle over his shoulder, Cole went to the garage and hopped on his bike and pressed the garage door control, then turned it around and cranked it up. 
T
he engine roared to life
, and he gunned it a time or two
.
  The force behind the powerful engine was the same force
he felt inside
propelling
him t
o get the hell away from here.
 

Cole pulled out in
the driveway then pushed the clicker to close the door
, not bothering with his
helmet
.  He needed
the wind in his face helping to cool him off.
  It was going to take a helluva lot of wind to do that.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Luke and Sabrina were about to make the turn into Cole's driveway when he came barreling past them on his motorcycle, a backpack slung over his shoulder,
with
no
helmet on!

His thick
dark blond
hair was plastered back against his head and his arms were stiff on the handle bars. 
Her breath caught in her throat when she saw him slide on the loose gravel at the end of the driveway and his back wheel slid
, but he got control
quickly, then
without even glancing at them, he squeezed the throttle to increase his speed and all she saw was a dust cloud after a very short moment.
  He was going to kill himself!

"Oh, God, Luke--follow him!" she turned to look the direction
Cole had
gone and there was just settling dust now.

"We'll never catch him, sugar.  That bike can do a quarter mile in nine seconds, and the mood he's in
,
that's probably what he's doing."

"Shit...where do you think he's going?" she asked with fear clogging her throat.

"No idea...I'll call Elmer and the Mayor and see if they know.  I don't think he'd
leave
without telling them.  He's
a boy scout like that
,
"
Luke told her.

She could only hope Cole's friend was right, or they might never find him.  That thought sent spears of despair into her heart...she had to find him.  "What else can we do?"

"Not much else I can think of right now.  If they don't know, we'll just have to wait til he
decides to
come back."
 

That might be what Luke was going to do, but she had other ideas.  She was not going to sit back and wait.  Her future had just flashed before her eyes riding on a black Harley without a helmet, and she was going to find him.  Her brother was a fricking private detective,
surely
he had sources, connections
,
that could help her.

She sat back against the seat and sighed, "Let's check the bar on the way back to the Double B," she suggested.  "Maybe he went there."

"Not a bad idea
...
but
he was headed in the opposite direction."

"Okay, I need a beer," she admitted.
  And she needed to call Gabe
in
Mesa
, and knew her cell wouldn't work at the Double B.

He smiled over at her and said, "Me too, darlin'.  We definitely need to go see if he's there."

Cole slowed down after he hit the highway, then pulled over and put on his helmet.  He was as upset as he'd ever remembered being
in his life
, but he didn't have a death wish. 
No, he didn't want to die because his best friend had lied to him, and the woman he loved didn't want to see him, was actually seeing someone else.  He just wanted to hide from the world for a while and get his rampaging emotions under control.
  Stop the merry-go-round he'd been on with Sabrina and take a breath.
 

He hadn't been able to draw a deep one since he'd seen her in the Blue Bird.  It felt like his chest was on fire and his throat had a fist squeezing it.
  Cole reached up a hand and rubbed his chest then reac
hed back down and hit the gas.

He stopped by the convenience store near the cabin and loaded up on some groceries and a lot of beer, as much as he thought he could carry on his bike, then went to the cabin.
 
When he to there, he pulled the bike around the back and parked it under the deck so nobody would see it.  They would look for him here, he knew.

During the summer as a kid, he'd almost lived here. 
He and Luke hid out here when the heat got too hot at home for Luke
.  They'd come out here and take the boat out fishing, and water ski with the neighbor kid who had a speed boat.  Those kayaks leaning against the side of the house had seen plenty of use too.  He and Luke thought they were explorers, and knew every slough in that lake like the back of their hands. 
The fire in his chest ramped up a few notches, and he rubbed it.  His fucking best friend had lied to him...over a woman.

Cole took the groceries into the kitchen then put them away, and grabbed a beer out of the case he'd bought and snapped the top off then flicked it into the trash and headed for the back deck. 
He
made
a u-turn and grabbed three more beers, then went out to the de
ck and flopped down on a chaise.

Since it was only late afternoon, when Luke and Sabrina walked into the bar and it was practically empty except for the hardcore drinkers sitting at the bar.  They w
alked over there to join them.  Luke waved at the bartender and held up two fingers and he nodd
ed then reached in the cooler.  Sabrina climbed up on a stool and took a sip of her beer when the bartender set it in front of her.  She looked over at Luke, "You don't have any other ideas of where he could be?"

Luke rolled his bottle around in his hands and was quiet for a minute, then he said, "He might have gone to the lake house," then took a long draw on his beer.
  She perked up and went to slide off the stool, but his hand on her arm stopped her.  "Give him a few days, Sabrina."

"You're sure that's where he went?
she asked wondering why the hell he didn't tell her that earlier.

"Seventy-five percent sure...if that's not where he went, you won't find him."

Oh, yes she would...she was going to call Gabe
,
if it turned out
Cole
wasn't there.
  "Why don't we go there now?  I need to talk to him."

"He won't talk to you while he's in the state he's in
," Luke told her and took another sip of his beer then told her, "
Cole doesn't lose his cool often, he's not like me.  He
's
always the one taking care of me when I get in that kind of mood. 
When he's
upset
, h
e just shuts down, and slices and dices things
,
until he understands or can cope with them."

"But I don't want him to slice and dice them...he needs to know that
Wade
is Kenny's brother and not someone I'm dating," she told him then took another sip of her own beer then added
in a voice shaky with emotion
, "and that I love him."

"That's not the main issue he's upset with, honey
, but
that didn't help, I'm sure..
.
.
"

"You should have seen his eyes today, Luke...I swear it was like h
is heart was dying right there," she told Luke then huffed out a frustrated breath, "If it's not that, what then?"

"
I did see
, but the issue is that
h
e thinks we both lied to him...and that you did it because you didn't want to see him.  He feels like both of us betrayed his trust...and the sad part is, he's right."

***

Sabrina hadn't liked it, but she went along with Luke's suggestion that she wait before she went to talk to Cole.  For the last two days, she'd been shoveling out stalls, washing horses, and riding out
them out
to the pastures in the evening in the guise of exercising them for Cassie. 

In reality, s
he needed those peaceful sunset rides as much as the horses did
.
 
It gave her a chance to breathe, and untangle the ball of yarn her emotions had become. 
She kind of understood why Cole had needed space now.  The space she'd found at the Double B with the horses gave her time to evaluate her life and what she wanted from it.

Her Captain had replaced her in
Phoenix
...she'd expected him to
,
with her being gone so long.  When the underlings in the cartel had cut a deal with the government to turn state's witness against the leaders, she and Gabe had been basically let off the hook.  The
feds used the information the gang members gave them
to take
down the whole operation
.  Since they had better witnesses
now
, they didn't need her and Gabe to testify anymore.
  Those guys wouldn't be seeing the light of day for a long time...and they weren't a threat to her and Gabe any longer. 

But that hadn't done her any good as far as keeping her job.  Their department had been short-staffed, and
her Captain didn't have any choice but
to replace her. 
She wasn't extremely upset about it
, though
.
..the life she'd been leading in
Phoenix
before, wasn't what she wanted anymore.
 

Susan Whitmore had offered her a job with the FBI, but she'd declined.  She'd seen enough of their operation to know, her personality wasn't suited for their organization...at all.
  As much as she respected Susan Whitmore, she knew they'd lock horns, and she'd wind up out on her butt before it got comfortable in her chair at the agency.
 

Sabrina
had
experienced
enough drama and excitement lately to last her a lifetime anyway.  She wanted peace in the worst way...normal
sounded
real good right now.

That's why when Cassie had
found out she had the cast off of her arm, and had
offered her the job helping her with the horses, she'd jumped on it. 

As much as she liked
working with Cassie, though
,
Sabrina
knew this was just a stopping off point to what she really wanted to do. 
Her dad had left her a comfortable nest egg when he died, enough to get her started in something else
, and she had money from Kenny's retirement and life insurance policy
.  So, that day she'd been in the Blue Bird with
Wade
,
before Cole had shown up,
she'd talked to the owner
, Lou Bell,
and felt her out about selling the place to her.
 
The older woman told her
,
with the right offer, she'd seriously consider it, because her sister in
Florida
was sick, and she'd love to be able to move there and help take care of her. 

Sabrina was going back over there at the end of the week to meet with her and look over the books, so she could make her an offer.  The place did a steady business, and ran pretty smoothly as far as she could see.  With some improvement to the menu, she felt like it could be an extremely good investment for her.
  And it would allow her to stay in
Bowie
.
  She'd come to love the little town...and its people...well one in particular.

And that was who she was going to see, as soon as she got back to the barn, and could go shower.  She'd waited long enough to go see Cole.
..or
to
see if he was at the lake house.  Luke said he hadn't gone by there, because h
e wanted to give Cole space too, so he had no idea if that's where his friend was yet.
  He'd also been hard at work getting the cows and calves ready for the sale they were having next weekend.
 
Getting the sale
catalog
together and finding a sale company to handle it was
evidently
very time consuming.

Walking the mare she'd been riding into the barn, she untacked her
,
then brushed her out and put her in her stall with an extra share of hay, and a treat
.  After she
put the tack away
she
walked to the house to get ready.
 

Running upstairs,
Sabrina took a quick shower, then braided her hair and went back to her room
where she
put on her red bikini.  She had a black one, but she wanted to make a statement and the black one was too sedate for that.  She topped it with a red checked shirt
Cassie had loaned her,
and tied that around her mid
-
drift
,
then put on a pair of short
jean
cutoffs and her red boots
.  To finish it, she picked up the raw edged straw hat she'd picked up in town at the hardware store and popped it on her head.