“Thanks,” she said, turning her SUV and driving toward Clay’s ranch.
She parked and got out, then went around the back of the house, saw the wall of two-by-fours with targets tacked to it and bullet holes.
Yeah, she’d just bypass that, thank you very much.
She needed nothing else to remind her of the person Clay was.
He wasn’t that person anymore though.
She walked between the apple trees, her hands going up and touching them. She pulled one down and took a bite. He wouldn’t mind. And if he did, too damn bad.
She’d consider it payment for having to track his butt down and him avoiding her text.
All night, she tried to think of how to play this.
It was a needed distraction from her interaction with Fredrick.
Seriously? She couldn’t catch a break.
If it wasn’t him, then it was his ex. Her ex’s ex.
She shook her head. Too much confusion.
She looked down at her sneakers, glad the ground wasn’t too wet, but they’d get messy out here.
The end of September air was brisk, the wind blowing slightly. In a few hours, it’d warm up more, but it was only nine in the morning.
It took her almost ten minutes from when she parked to get to Clay. The path wasn’t horrible, but she was pushing bushes and twigs out of the way, stepping over stumps in the ground.
She saw him standing on the bank, a pole in his hand, reeling it in, then tossing it out again.
“How many times did you trip on your trek out here?”
He hadn’t even turned to look at her. “How did you know who it was?”
“Because you made enough noise to scare the fish away,” he said.
He still wouldn’t turn and look at her.
Talk about rude.
But she was coming to expect that from him too.
“Doesn’t look like you’ve caught anything so far. Don’t blame it on me. Maybe you’re scaring them away with your tone and frown.”
“I don’t talk to the fish and they sure the hell can’t see me.”
He reeled the line in again and then tossed it out. Still not looking at her.
She stopped to stand next to him. “I bet they can just feel your annoyed, frustrated presence. Or maybe they are baiting you too. Seems like you draw that out of people.”
He turned his head to look at her grin. “You keep coming back for more.”
“If you answered my text this morning, then you’d know what I wanted and we could have avoided this. Unless you wanted me to seek you out. I believe I’ll go with that. Deep down, I think you like me coming back to you. You enjoy our brief interactions.”
“You’re full of yourself this morning,” he said drily.
“I’ve got to be,” she said. “It’s not as if anyone compliments me.”
