“Ever think of closing the shop during the midday doldrums?” he asked, a suspicious lift at one corner of his mouth.
She narrowed her eyes. “Why would I do that?”
He checked behind him again as if reassuring himself they were alone. “So you could join me in the break room for a little…treat?”
The seductive way he saidtreatand the wicked grin that lit his face sent tingles of anticipation through her. Gripping the edge of the counter to steady herself, she lifted her chin. “If that’s your idea of a sexual proposition—”
“Only if you want it to be. Otherwise, I meant I have a picnic lunch waiting in my Jeep including leftover desserts from Saturday.”
Jules thought about the paltry cold cut sandwich she’d brought for herself, and her stomach rumbled.
Cal laughed. “I’ll take that as a yes to lunch and cupcakes.”
Seeing no good reason not to join him for lunch, she turned over theOpensign and stuck a handwritten note on the door that read, Back at 1:00 p.m.
From his Wrangler, Cal retrieved a cardboard box laden with fruit, cheeses, fried chicken and potato salad. And three kinds of dessert—chocolate cake, peanut butter cookies and Kelly’s divine strawberry cupcakes. Jules stuffed herself. On Sunday, between visiting Abby and stressing over the intruder in her room, she couldn’t find the appetite to eat. Today, she was ravenous.
“When can you stake out Hamilton’s activities again?” she asked between bites of cupcake. “I can’t stop thinking about themultitude of ways he could be getting up to no good yesterday while we weren’t watching him.”
“Who said I wasn’t watching him?”
Jules stopped with her dessert halfway to her mouth. “You followed him without me?” She slapped the flat of her free hand on the table and grunted. “Dang it, Cal! I thought we were doing this together. I don’t like being excluded!”
He bit a fresh strawberry and let the juice trickle down his chin before slowly wiping the sticky sweetness with his finger and licking it off.
Jules couldn’t say if the heat that pulsed through her watching Cal was lust or anger or some confusing combination of the two. He could be the most infuriating prankster and at the same time tease her desires without even trying. Just being… Cal.
Once he’d swallowed, he put the strawberry stem on his plate and held her gaze. “I’ve made sure the patrols around Zoey Rogers’ house, Hamilton’s rental and the Red Grove Food Distributors Warehouse were maintained through the weekend. Our friend doesn’t appear to have done more than shopped at the Cash Wise Saturday and picked up supper at the Dairy Queen drive-through Sunday night.”
Jules leaned back in her chair, only mildly comforted by this news. “So was someone following him all weekend? Even Saturday night?”
Cal dusted off his fingers after selecting a cupcake from the Tupperware he’d transported them in and tilted his head. “Why Saturday night in particular?”
She stared down at her plate and twisted her mouth as she debated what to tell him.
“Jules? What happened Saturday night?” he asked, his tone brooking no resistance.
She sighed and met his gaze. “When I got back to my motel room after you dropped me here at the shop—” She paused as her lunch rolled in her belly and a shudder chased through her, remembering the man’s rough hand, the flash of metal.
“Tell me, Jules,” he said, his tone gentler now.
“A man had broken into my room. Not hard to accomplish because the lock was flimsy as hell, but…”
Cal’s blue eyes flashed with alarm. “And?”
“He grabbed me. Had a knife, but…the night manager was with me, and I guess he spooked the guy away. He ran when he realized I wasn’t alone.”
Cal bit out a hard curse, his hands fisting and his face growing rigid. “Why didn’t you call me when it happened? Hell, why didn’t you call me at all?”
“What could you have done? The guy was gone. You weren’t going to isolate his fingerprints in a motel room where there are already traces of dozens of travelers and housekeeping staff.”
“Maybe because I care about you, and if you’re attacked, I want to know—sheriff or not.”
He cared about her?She didn’t know what to do with that admission, so she shoved it aside. “There’s more.”
He folded his arms over his chest and gave her a stern look. “Go on.”
“Friday afternoon, after we gave up on Chase—”
