Running Blind (16 page)

He started to grumble as he headed for the kitchen, but stopped when he noted that the piles of laundry were
significantly smaller, and that his boots and shoes had been lined up neatly and, he was pretty sure, cleaned.

Carlin had her back to him as she unloaded the dishwasher. Another load would need to be run before she called it a day, and he was happy to leave that job to her capable—if paranoid—hands.

“This isn’t exactly New York City, you know,” he said, sounding more than a little grumpy.

“My bad. And here I was all set on going to a Broadway show on my half-day off,” she responded calmly, without turning to look at him. “I guess I’ll just have to use my opera glasses to spy on cows.”

Zeke started to grin, caught himself, and growled, just a little. He didn’t want or need to be entertained by her, but damn, it was hard to resist. The thing was, unless he was wrong about her, she
wanted
him to get grumpy at her verbal jabs. “They don’t dance much, and they never sing. I hope you didn’t have your heart set on a musical.”

Instead of giving as good as she got, as usual, she laughed. It was a nice laugh.

He needed to change the subject. Standing in the kitchen and sparring with Carlin was just too damn much fun. “The locks are a little much, in my opinion, but I suppose if it makes you feel better …”

“It does. I put a set of keys on your bedroom dresser,” she added, “and a spare set is hanging on a hook in your office. I have keys of my own, of course, but when I leave I’ll hand them over.”

She finally turned to face him. A few strands of hair were falling from her once-neat ponytail, and her face was flushed. There were a number of stains on her oversized apron. And damn, she was beautiful—not because of the food, not even because of her face, but because of the fire he could see in her spirit.

“You know,” she continued, a definite hint of reprimand in her voice, “you really should tell Spencer that
the proper word is ‘
voilà
,’ not ‘
viola
.’ He’s going to embarrass himself one day.”

Zeke grinned. “I tried to tell him once. He said in his family they pronounce it ‘
viola
.’ As far as he’s concerned, that’s the final answer.”

He leaned against the cabinets and watched her move back and forth, putting the dishes away, trying to think what he should do now. He had time to catch a little television, if anything worthwhile was on, but he’d had so little down time since Libby left that he didn’t know what came on, or when. Or, hell, he could just go to bed early. Either way, he really needed to get out of the way and leave Carlin to finish up in the kitchen. But,
damn
, he liked watching her. She didn’t seem so thorny tonight. Maybe, even though she’d just been here a day and a half, she was already settling in, feeling at home.

She straightened, gave him what he could only classify as a modified death stare. “I guess I’ll see you in the morning, then.” It was a dismissal. A nice one, he’d give her that—she hadn’t asked him what the hell he was doing in her kitchen or ordered him to get out—but it was a dismissal nonetheless.

“We’ll head to town after breakfast,” he said. If she could be all business, so could he—for now. The bank opened at nine and so did the library, but she’d already know that.

She stuck with the all-business theme. “I wasn’t sure how long the trip would take, so I planned sandwiches for tomorrow’s lunch. If I’m back in time to put things together, fine. If not, I figure the guys can fend for themselves.”

“They can.” He needed to say good night and leave, but instead he settled in, still watching. He liked watching her, so why
should
he leave? He wasn’t in the way. He wasn’t harassing her. He wasn’t coming on to her. He was just watching—and she knew he was watching. He could
tell by the tension that was slowly building in her body. She ignored him and continued to work, but some of the ease he’d noted earlier was gone, and he both hated that he’d been the cause of it and was gratified that she wasn’t oblivious to him. But maybe now was the time for some strategy.

“Do you mind if I grab a cup of decaf?” There was enough left in the pot for a cup, or two. “I don’t want to get in your way, but you do make good coffee, and I hate for it to go to waste.”

It wasn’t his imagination that she relaxed a bit, thinking he was hanging around for decaf, not her.

“Of course.” She grabbed a mug, filled it. Zeke moved up behind her and reached around to take the mug from her hand. For the moment they were close, so close that he could dip his head a little and smell her hair, which he did, and lean in and touch the length of her body with his, which he
didn’t
do.

The last thing she needed was to think she had another stalker, though she might classify him more as a predatory employer.

“You’re doing good,” he said, keeping his voice low because they were so close. “With the exception of the cake, that is.” He grinned, and Carlin gave in to a smile herself.

“I need to ask Kat what I might’ve done wrong,” she said, moving around him and resuming her chores. She grabbed a broom and started vigorously sweeping. He didn’t think it was an accident that she now held a makeshift weapon, or that there was a broom between them.

She hadn’t been kidding when she’d told him the
C
on her uniform stood for Cautious.

He lifted the coffee cup in a small salute, and headed for the door. “See you in the morning.”

“Yeah,” she said, sweeping hard. “Good night.”

Zeke didn’t look back, but he thought, as he headed for the den and the television he might stare at for a while, that he could get accustomed to having Carlin Hunt in the house.

C
ARLIN FINISHED UP
in the kitchen and headed for her rooms. A shower and bed were the next items on her agenda. If she turned on the television and sat down in front of it, she’d be out like a light in no time.

Behind closed doors she stripped off her clothes, threw them into her dirty clothes hamper, and headed for the bathroom. She was exhausted; curiously content, but exhausted. Feeding Zeke and the hands and catching up on what appeared to be months of neglected housework and laundry had her hopping, but she liked being busy, liked feeling that she’d accomplished something. She could see the light at the end of the tunnel, though; once she was caught up on the housework, she’d be able to take some time for herself in the afternoons—not a lot, but she could catch a nap, or watch TV, or read. Zeke would question her trips to the library if she didn’t read
something
.

The spray of hot water felt good, really good. For a while she just stood there and let the spray pound her tired muscles. She didn’t think she’d have any trouble getting to sleep tonight.

This job was almost perfect. She was definitely off the grid, there were now decent locks on the outer doors, and most of the men she’d been feeding were perfectly nice. Darby was a jerk, but wasn’t there always one in every group? Patrick was very quiet, and you never really knew what a quiet man was thinking. Spencer was a sweetheart, though, and Walt was almost like a father-figure to them all.

But damned if she could figure out Zeke Decker! One minute he was annoying as hell, and the next he was
being nice to her. How dare he? He should pick one and stay with it, because she hated trying to predict what he would do and how she should react. Being physically attracted to the man was enough of a problem, even when he was being a shithead; if he made a habit of being pleasant, how would she push the attraction away?

Scrubbed clean, Carlin stepped out of the shower and briskly dried herself. She’d deal with him somehow. One thing was for sure: the first time he came home and she instinctively greeted him with a sweet “How was your day?” she’d know it was time to move on.

C
ARLIN ENTERED
W
HARTON
’
S
grocery store with Zeke on her heels. She didn’t like that he was there, didn’t like the way he was right behind her, didn’t like the way he made her feel as if she were under guard. She wanted to take her time shopping, not feel as if he had a stopwatch in one hand and a whip in the other, in case he thought she was taking too long. Slave driver? Oh, yeah. The only thing that kept her from braining him with something was that he pushed himself as hard—or harder—as he did everyone else.

She had a list; if she went strictly by it, she could gather the items and be out of the store within half an hour, maybe even twenty minutes. But she’d been reading a lot of cookbooks and she had a gajillion recipes dancing in her head—two or three, anyway. She wanted to look at stuff, think about what she could do that both sounded interesting and that a bunch of unadventurous men would eat. She might see ingredients that weren’t on the list, and be inspired. She might—

Who was she kidding? And what in God’s name had she been thinking? Cooking had never been her thing, yet here she was, devoting most of each and every day to thinking about cooking, getting ready to cook, cooking, then cleaning
up after cooking. Something was wrong with this picture.

Working on an isolated ranch, getting paid in cash, going under an assumed name—it had all seemed like such a perfect situation, a perfect plan for staying under the radar, making some money and saving it, catching a breather from the stress of constantly running and being on guard. Working her butt off was okay, but she was being taken over by cooking. She was fairly certain there was some DNA-altering going on, because otherwise wouldn’t she be able to just say “Oh, well” about that damn lying-ass no-fail white cake and move on, instead of obsessing about tackling it again until she got it right?

Maybe it wasn’t altered DNA. Maybe it wasn’t a form of mental illness. Maybe she was just being competitive. She was okay with being competitive. If she looked at it that way, trying the damn cake again was more admirable than alien.

But she couldn’t shop effectively with Zeke-the-dragon breathing fire over her shoulder, telling her to hurry. And he would; she could feel the first “hurry it up” coming her way, probably within … say, five minutes, if she wanted to bet with herself.

Well, he could just breathe fire all he wanted, she thought grimly.
She
was in charge of this expedition, and if he didn’t like doing it her way then he could just find somewhere to sit and wait until she was finished—

Uh-oh
. Reality abruptly punched her between the eyes. She looked at her list again and almost groaned aloud. The list itself wasn’t extraordinarily long, but she needed a
lot
of the items on it. She didn’t need five pounds of flour, she needed at least twenty. Ditto for the sugar. She was buying multiples of literally everything, which meant there was no way it would all go into one cart; she’d need at least two, maybe three—and that meant she needed Zeke.

But along the silver-lining-in-every-cloud line of thought, at least he could do the grunt work.

She jerked and tugged a cart out of the line, shoved it toward him, then freed another one. “Ground rules,” she said tersely. “Don’t try to hurry me up, or I’ll forget something. Don’t mess with me while I’m thinking, or I’ll forget something—”

“How can you forget anything? You have a damn list. Just check off each thing as you get it.”

“And don’t interrupt,” she added. “Any idiot can get what’s on a list. It’s what
isn’t
on the list that requires creativity.”

“It’s a shopping list, not a work of art.”

“But it isn’t a
complete
list. That’s why I need to think, and why you need to just follow along and be quiet.”

A thin, elderly white-haired woman wearing jeans, boots, and a denim shirt pushed a cart past them and said, “You tell him, honey.”

Zeke gave his head a little shake as he watched the elderly woman walk away and, raising his voice, said wryly, “Thanks, Mrs. G.”

“You’re welcome, darling.” Mrs. G. never looked back, just trundled on into the produce section where she stopped and began examining every offering of lettuce.

Carlin pursed her lips thoughtfully, then cut her gaze up at him. “Ex-girlfriend?”

“First-grade teacher.”

For some reason, imagining him as a gap-toothed six-year-old made her stomach squeeze. As she’d cleaned the house she’d seen a couple of pictures of him—not many, which made her think he’d probably packed most of them away—so she had a good idea of how his adolescent face had morphed into the hard-edged features of the man, but she hadn’t seen any of him as a child. It kind of made sense. What man wanted his baby pictures sitting around? Pictures of his own babies, yeah, but not
of himself. Okay, that was another stomach-squeezing moment, thinking of Zeke as a father. No, actually, it was the baby-making part that affected her stomach. Oh, God, instead of getting used to him and building up immunity, she was actually getting worse.

“You look like you’re about to puke,” he observed, pushing his cart forward.

With a quick, inner shake she gathered herself and cut him off to take her rightful position as lead cart. “I was trying to imagine you as a kid. It was horrifying.”

He grunted. “You’re on the right track.” Then he grinned. “But Mrs. G. had my number. She could back me down with a look.”

“I gotta go talk to her.” Just to get a rise out of him, she actually steered her cart in Mrs. G.’s direction, but he reached out and locked a hand over the cart handle, stopping her in her tracks.

“I don’t have all day. Let’s get these groceries bought and get out of here.”

Too bad she hadn’t made that bet with herself on how soon he’d say “hurry up”—or words to that effect—because she’d have just won the jackpot.

“All right, but—” She shook her finger at him. “Remember the rules: follow me, pick up what I tell you needs picking up, and don’t talk.”

“Oh, so now I’m supposed to do your manual labor for you?”

“A smart worker uses whatever tools are available to her,” she said, leaving it to him to decide exactly what she meant by that.

“A smart worker stops wasting time, and starts working.”