“Good choice,” Travis said as he turned and smiled at Kim.
Part of her wanted to say thanks, but the larger part was disgusted by what he’d just done.
“You ready for lunch?” he asked Kim.
She nodded to Carla to write up the sale, then went behind the far counter with Travis following her. “It’s ten
A.M
.,” she said, her voice cool. “It isn’t time for lunch.”
“Are you angry at me?”
“Of course not!” she snapped as she pulled out a tray of bracelets and began to rearrange them.
Travis picked up one and held it up to the light. “Nice.”
The bracelet was the smallest but the most intricate, and the stones were the best quality. It was also the most expensive item she carried. She took it from him. “You seem to have learned something about jewelry.”
“I’ve had a lot of experience.” He leaned toward her. “I have things to tell you, so let’s go walk somewhere and have lunch.”
“Travis, I have a business to run. I can’t come and go at your whim.”
He looked at Carla, who hadn’t stopped watching him, and smiled at her. “She looks capable of taking care of the place.”
Kim lowered her voice. “Stop flirting with the women in my shop.”
“Then come out with me.”
“Where were you this morning?”
His face turned serious. “I got up at five, drove into the wilderness, and went for a run. When I got back you’d left for work. It’s nice of you to be concerned.”
“I’m not,” she said as she locked the glass case. He was smiling at her. “All right! So I was worried. With the way you drive you could have run off a mountain and no one would know you were there.”
“Sorry,” he said, and he did look contrite. “I’m not used to telling anyone where I’m going or when I’ll return.” He hesitated. “Or anyone caring. Can you go out with me now? Please?”
His dark eyes were pleading, enticing even. She gave in. She went to Carla and asked if she’d look after the store for a while.
Carla bent down behind a counter and motioned for Kim to come down too. “Who is he? Where did you find him? Is
he
the emergency you had Sunday? Does Dave know about him?”
Kim stood up.
“Does
he
know about
Dave
?” Carla asked from her squatting position.
Kim rolled her eyes, got her purse out of the back, and left the store with Travis.
Before them was the entire town of Edilean, which meant there were two squares, one with a giant oak tree in the center of it.
“Shall we go sit over there?” Travis asked as he nodded toward the benches under the tree. He’d dropped his flirtatious demeanor and was again the Travis she knew.
There wasn’t much traffic in the little town as they crossed the road. Politely, he let her sit down before he sat beside her.
“Your shop is nice. Maybe someday when there are no customers, you’ll show me around it.”
“But would you enjoy it without customers?”
“I promise, no more flirting with them. Although they did buy some nice pieces. I like your things better than what I’ve seen in jewelry stores in New York.”
She knew he was flattering her, but he looked so worried that she wouldn’t forgive him, that she did. She smiled at him. “So what did you want to talk to me about?” When he didn’t answer right away, she said, “Last night, how bad was it with your mother?”
For a moment he looked ahead and didn’t answer, and she got the idea that something was bothering him. “Remember that I said she could go either way, happy or angry?”
“I know that you said women are unpredictable.”
“And you promised me
Star Wars
disks.”
“
Star Trek,
and no they’re not the same. Which way did your mom go?”
“Angry.”
Kim looked at him in sympathy, and she could tell that there was more to what had been said than just for Travis to stay out of it. “Was it very bad?”
He was quiet for a moment. “My father bawls me out all the time. He has a vile temper and he uses it to scare people.”
“Are you afraid of him?”
“Not in the least.” Travis gave a little half smile. “In fact, I like to do things to set him off.”
“But if he fired you . . . ?”
Travis laughed. “Think I don’t want him to? Which he knows. Anyway, Dad says things to me that should be demoralizing and I laugh at him. But my sweet little mother . . .” He waved his hand.
“I understand,” Kim said. “My mother screams at me until her face is red, but I pay no attention to her. But one time when I was in the fourth grade my father said, ‘Kim, I’m disappointed in you.’ I got so upset my mother made him apologize to me.”
Looking at her, Travis shook his head. “Your family sounds so normal. I can’t imagine my mother ‘making’ my dad do anything. She crumbles in front of him.”
Kim had some ideas about how his mother
should
have stood up to her husband when Travis was a boy, but she didn’t think now was the time to say so. “If your mother thinks this is none of your business, why did she call and tell you she wanted a divorce?”
“That’s exactly what I asked her. Unfortunately, it was after I had made some rather unfortunate remarks about the man she wants to marry.”
“You didn’t!”
“I’m afraid I did. Between seeing all the equipment he’d bought for that new shop, and the sheer size of him, I jumped to some conclusions. And maybe I told her too much of what I thought.”
“I told you Joe Layton was a good guy.”
Travis picked up her hand and kissed the back of it. “So you did. I wish I’d listened to you.”
Kim was looking at him with wide eyes. He was holding her hand, massaging it actually, as he stared ahead. He didn’t seem to be aware of what he was doing. “What exactly did she say?”
“She told me to stay out of it. She said she’d get herself a lawyer and that she’d fight Dad on her own.” He took a breath. “And she said I was free to stop working for him because she no longer needed my protection.”
“Oh,” Kim said as she looked at his profile. He was frowning. “Is that what you’re going to do?”
“Certainly not!” he said as he put her hand back on her lap.
In front of them was a mother with two young toddlers, a boy and a girl, probably twins. Kim didn’t know the family. The children had balloons on long strings that they were looking at in fascination.
When Travis said nothing more, she looked at him. “What’s your plan?”
“I haven’t made one yet.”
A howl made Kim look at the children. The little boy’s balloon had escaped his hold and was floating up into the tree.
Seconds later, Travis stood up and looked up into the tree, as though surveying it. To Kim’s astonishment, he grabbed a branch and swung up. Standing on a limb, he looked down at her. “I talked to Mom this morning and told her I wanted to meet this guy, so she’s given me a week before she—” He walked out on the branch, then swung up on a higher one. “Before she tells him that I’m here,” he said down to her.
By now the little boy had stopped yelling as he watched the man in the tree, and a couple of teenagers were also looking up at him.
Kim was pretty much speechless. She stood up.
“You think you could help me arrange a meeting with Mr. . . .” He glanced at the people near her. He didn’t want to say the man’s name in public. “With him?” He was now quite high up, on his stomach, and easing out onto a branch that didn’t look large enough to hold his weight.
Kim held her breath as she nodded yes to his question.
“And I have to decide about the . . .” He was inching his way out on a very fragile-looking branch, his left arm extended toward the yellow balloon.
Kim put her hand up, her knuckles in her mouth.
“Who the hell is that?” came a voice in her ear.
Turning, she looked at the wide, solid chest of her cousin Colin, Edilean’s sheriff.
Kim looked back up at Travis in the tree. She couldn’t get any words out.
Colin stood by her and watched as Travis moved forward until he reached the balloon string and grabbed it.
“Vacation.” Travis looked back down at Kim. “Good morning, sheriff,” he said just before the branch broke.
A girl screamed, and everyone drew in their breaths.
On his way down, Travis grabbed a branch with his right hand while holding onto the balloon with his left. He twisted the string around his fingers, then threw his legs over the branch. He pulled himself up, straddled the limb, stood up, and walked his way back to the core of the tree and went down.
He landed on two feet, walked a few steps to give the balloon back to the little boy, and dusted himself off as he went back to Kim. “What do you think?”
She just stared at him.
Colin said, “He’s asking what you think he should do on his vacation in Edilean.” He seemed highly amused by what he’d just seen.
“Travis!” Kim said at last.
Colin snorted. “You’re in for it.” When Kim started to speak again, he interrupted her. “You do that kind of thing often?”
“I used to,” Travis said. “I worked in L.A. as a stuntman for a couple of years.”
Colin was looking him up and down. “Still keep in shape?”
“I try to. What do you have in mind?”
“Sometimes tourists get stuck in situations in the preserve and we have to get them out. I’m the closest, so I usually get there first. Sometimes I need help.”
Travis smiled as he remembered the way Kim had gushed about this man and her brother being super-heroes in rescuing people. There was no way Travis was going to turn down the opportunity to help out—and maybe to impress Kim. “Do you have your cell phone with you? I’ll put my number in it.”
Colin handed him his cell, Travis called himself, then put his name by the number. He returned the phone. “Any time, night or day, I’d be glad to help. I’ve had some experience with ropes and climbing, but I’ve never rescued anybody. Not for real anyway.”
Colin smiled. “Welcome to Edilean.” He looked at Kim. “Glad to see you got a
useful
one this time,” he murmured, then started toward his office.
“Say hi to Gemma for me,” Kim called after him before looking back at Travis.
“I have three weeks’ vacation.” He still seemed to be waiting for an answer.
“My son wants to say thank you,” the mother said, and Travis knelt to the little boy.
“Thank you,” the child said, and hugged Travis. The little girl, not to be left out, hugged him too.
The mother smiled at Travis, her eyes lingering on him a bit too long. “Maybe we could have you over for dinner some night.”
Travis’s dark eyes went to that smoldering look again. “That would be—”
“He’s busy,” Kim said and her look told the woman to go away.
Still smiling, she took her children and left.
“Can you arrange a meeting?” he asked.
“Travis,” Kim said, “what you just did was very scary. You could have been seriously hurt. You could have—”
Bending, he kissed her cheek. “I find that having someone worry about me feels good.”
“Does that mean you’re going to pull more stunts like that one? It doesn’t make sense to risk your life for a balloon.”
“At no time was my life in jeopardy and I couldn’t care less about the balloon. It was the look in the eyes of that little boy that made it all worth it.”
Kim had no reply to that, as he was right.
“So what about a meeting with the man my mother wants to marry?”
“This is Edilean. You don’t need an appointment. Mr. Layton’s probably at his store right now, so we can just go over there and you can talk to him.”
“What excuse will we give him for showing up?”
“To say hello,” Kim said, frustrated and somewhat annoyed at his formality—and the way he had flirted with the pretty young mother. “I’ll ask how Jecca is or something. Uh-oh.”
“What is it?” he asked.
“Here comes my brother. I bet Colin called him. The snitch! Now you’ll be grilled within an inch of your life. This won’t be easy.”
Travis couldn’t help smiling at her words. In courtrooms all across the U.S. and in a couple of foreign countries he’d been interrogated by some of the most brilliant lawyers in the world. He had no doubt he could hold his own against Kim’s physician brother.
But when Travis saw the man walking toward them, he turned pale. He’d seen Reede Aldredge before, and not under the best of circumstances.
Travis and his mechanic had been in a car race in Morocco. As they came around a corner outside a remote village, they saw a man leading a heavily laden donkey right across their path.
Travis had done well in not hitting the man. He’d turned his car so hard that it had spun in a circle. It had been difficult to keep it under control and not turn over, but he’d done it.
Unfortunately, in the near crash, the boxes on the donkey had hit the ground. When Travis got his car heading back in the right direction, he saw that there was liquid seeping out of the boxes and the man was shaking his fist at them. His furious face was embedded in Travis’s memory.
As they drove away, he’d told his mechanic to call Penny to find out who the man was and to replace whatever had been lost. Days later she’d mentioned that the man was an American doctor and that she’d sent him replacement supplies. And she’d also made a donation to his clinic. She’d not told Travis the doctor’s name and he hadn’t asked for one.
That man, the doctor who’d yelled obscenities at him in Morocco, was now walking toward him.
“Can I tell him the truth about you?” Kim whispered.
For a moment he thought she meant about the race, but she was talking about their childhood. “Sure,” he said, “just don’t say that Lucy Cooper is my mother.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” she said under her breath as she smiled at her brother.
“Kimberly,” Reede said rather sternly. “I hear that you’ve been causing some commotion this morning.”
“Travis rescued a kid’s balloon,” she said as she looked up at him, but he had his hand up by his face. “This is—”
“Not
the
Travis,” Reede said. “Not the boy you’ve fantasized about since you were a kid?”
“Reede!” Kim said as she felt her face turning red. “I never did any such thing!”