“Emailing, I think. Last I heard, they were all going to Vegas for a pre-wedding bachelorette deal later this month.” Jace lifted a brow. “I take it you haven’t heard from her.”
Sawyer gave a nonchalant toss of his head. “It was better to just end it. Who needs the fucking friend zone?”
Sawyer watched his two cousins weighing his words. Clearly, he wasn’t fooling them.
“Did she say she just wanted to stay friends?” Cash studied him.
She hadn’t said anything—that was the damn problem. “More or less.”
“More or less? Speak English, writer boy.” Jace poked Sawyer in the shoulder. “You screwed it up, didn’t you?”
Yeah, probably. He should’ve pushed, should’ve been more forthcoming about his feelings. But it wouldn’t have made any difference. “Can we talk about something else, for God’s sake?”
“Remember what you told me when I was limping around, crying in my coffee over Charlie?”
“Or me, when I couldn’t get my shit together about Aubrey?” Cash pinned Sawyer with a look. “You told me to cowboy the hell up. Right back atcha, partner.”
“Yeah, yeah. Seriously, I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” Sawyer pulled his sunglasses out of his front pocket and put them on. “Cash, did you get ahold of anyone else about Angie and the US Marshals Service situation?”
They’d briefed Jace on everything they’d learned thus far. Like them, Jace’s lips were sealed until they knew more.
“Still working on it,” Cash said, but there was a hesitance in his voice. He knew something. Sawyer had dealt with enough itchy sources to know when someone was holding back.
“You’ve got something, don’t you?”
Cash tipped his head. “Not ready to talk about it yet.”
Sawyer started to press, but Jace held up his hand. “Let Cash do his thing.”
Okay, Sawyer got it. It was like when he roughed out the first draft of an article with an editor looking over his shoulder, asking a lot of stupid questions before he’d had the chance to flesh out the story. Cash would talk when he had the full picture, not partial facts.
“I’m going home.” He waved his hat in the air and started across the field.
Soon, the days would go from being oppressively hot to pleasantly warm. Jace’s wedding would be here. Then they’d move the cattle down from the hills before the first freeze.
Before all of that, he’d travel to Central America for his magazine story, an assignment he’d been dragging his feet on accepting. If he didn’t sign the contract that had been sitting on his desk for weeks,Esquirewould find someone else to do the piece.
He’d sign, scan, and send it as soon as he got home, he decided. There was nothing pressing to keep him here. And a set of new surroundings would do him good.
Keep the memories at bay.
On the way to his loft, he took a detour to Charlie’s. She was behind the barn, refinishing an old beadboard hutch on a drop cloth underneath a market umbrella.
She took the bandanna tied around her head and wiped the perspiration off her face.
“Hey, what brings you by?”
“Just to say hi.”
“I’d give you a hug but I’m disgusting.”
“What are you planning to do with that?” He pointed at the antique cabinet.
“Right now, just clean it up, maybe give it a fresh coat of chalk paint. Why? You interested?” She smiled, teasingly.
He cleared a tree stump that Charlie had been using as a table to hold her tools and took a seat. On the dead grass sat an upside-down clawfoot tub. He supposed it was next in the queue for some tender loving care. “How’s business?”
“Good. A woman who’s opening a bed-and-breakfast near the American River dropped eight-thousand dollars here yesterday. She’s thinking of hiring Aubrey to do some design work.”
