Page 31 of Deadly Evidence
He reached over and turned the radio on, cranking up the volume so he wouldn’t have to think up anything to say on the long trip into town.
From the corner of his eye he saw her bow her head and fold her hands in her lap. Her dark hair swung forward, obscuring her face.
She didn’t say a word until he pulled to a stop in front of Grover’s Drug, where the Greyhound stopped on its way through town.
“Thanks,” she said in a small voice as she unbuckled her seat belt. “You don’t have to wait.”
She’d acted like a princess since she’d arrived and he’d purposely avoided her. The way she’d treated him at the cantina that first day was still embarrassing.
But now she was making him feel guilty, and that was even worse.
He stepped out of the truck and hauled her suitcases up to the bench in front of the store.
She followed and sat down. Her short white skirt hiked higher when she crossed her long, slim legs, and that snug red top hugged her slender figure.
She looked like someone in a magazine, not someone who would be sitting in Saguaro Springs waiting for a bus.
A couple of cowboys passing in a dusty white Chevy pickup apparently thought the same thing, because one of them whistled at her. The truck slammed to a halt and backed up.
The driver was hidden in the shadow of the cab, but the passenger took a deep drag from his cigarette, then reached through the window and beckoned. “Hey, sugar,” he called out. “Need a ride?”
Mia shuddered and stared at him with horrified fascination. “Hemustbe joking. Oh,no—he’s getting out!”
Dante had intended to drop her off and head straight back to the ranch. Now, duty made him stay. “When does your bus come?”
“Half an hour.” She cast a nervous glance toward the front door of the store. “Maybe I should go inside.”
He considered the elderly woman who ran the store along with her young grandson and the time it usually took for a county deputy to arrive.
When Anna had reported some stolen cattle it had taken over a day for one to show up.
“Go ahead, but I think I’d better stay anyway.”
The cowboy was swaggering up the sidewalk now, with the cigarette dangling from a corner of his mouth and an ain’t-I-cool jut to his chin.
The ragged scar on his jaw suggested he’d seen trouble before.
Dante surveyed the guy’s stocky frame and age—he had to be forty or more—and flexed his fists. “She’s not interested.”
“And what would you know, punk?” The cowboy spat on the ground and smirked, his eyes pinned on Mia who now stood frozen, one hand on the front door. “Hey, honey, I haven’t seen you around here before.”
“She isn’t interested,” Dante repeated. “Leave her alone.”
“Son, don’t mess with me.” His eyes glittered with challenge. “I could have you for breakfast.”
Maybe the guy was a bar-room brawler, buthehadn’t spent time at Millville Detention Center, where fights were common and never fair.
Dante caught him in midstride with a right cross to his jaw, then plowed a fist into the guy’s gut. The cowboy doubled over, gasping. Dante caught his chin with a knee, sending him backward to the ground.
“Dante, stop!” Mia’s voice rose to a frightened wail. “You could kill him!”
Glaring at the man on the ground, he ignored her. “Get out of here. And you tell your buddy that I’ll look forward to dealing with him, too. You hear?”
The cowboy winced, scrambled backward, then staggered to his feet and stumbled toward the pickup.
Once safely inside with the door closed, he glared at Dante. “You ain’t seen the last of me,” he snarled. “You can bet on it.”
From behind the wheel, the driver leaned forward and gave Dante a long look, then the truck roared off, kicking up a spray of gravel that pinged against the handful of dusty ranch pickups parked beside the road.
