Page 54 of Traces Of You
“I have to. I have to know everything. If she kept this from me...”
“It won’t change how you feel,” Clay said. “And that’s where you’re struggling.”
14
SECRET FORM OF PROTECTION
“Are you smuggling drugs?”
“What?” That question couldn’t have been any more shocking to her than if Ford asked if she was a big hairy gorilla.
“You heard me,” he said, walking into the cabin. He’d said he would be over tonight to check in, but she hadn’t known it was going to turn into an inquisition of unrealistic questions.
“I’m not sure I did.”
“Reenie,” he said. “I asked a straightforward question. We haven’t been in each other’s lives in twenty years. I don’t know what you did or do and you’re on the run and don’t want me to run your name. Now I’m wondering if maybe there is a warrant out for your arrest.”
She blinked her eyes a few times, her heart hammering in her chest. “You don’t believe me?”
She never expected this to happen. Not the one person in her life who was there for her when no one else was.
The person she was opening her heart to again in just the short week she’d been here.
He stepped closer, the pain in his eyes reflecting her own. Whatever she was feeling, he was battling just as hard.
“I want to. Desperately. But the information I received tells me I’ve got to look at this another way. I don’t want to be blind to something right in front of me. I can’t be and have to think of you as I would any other part of my job.”
“What information?” she asked. She didn’t want to be hurt that he considered her his job and nothing more.
If that was truly the case, why was he so upset over this?
He put his hands on her arms, not letting her move. He held her stare. His dark eyes drilling for knowledge out of her.
Knowledge that she read he hoped wasn’t true.
“Information that helps you and now I’m wondering what side of the law you might be on.”
She swallowed past the lump of disappointment in her throat. There was a time in her life she’d expect to be hit with words like this. Not by Ford. He’d never physically hurt her.
But emotionally was another thing.
Once again, she opened the door a tiny crack to let someone in and then it was slammed shut on her toes, crushing the bones, and freezing her in place.
“Answer my question first. It’s not a hard one. Yes or no,” he said, his displeasure and anger barely controlled despite his quiet tone.
“No! I’d never do that. I’ve never done drugs. I have never even smoked a cigarette or tried weed. Nothing.”
Her voice was loud. Louder than she’d spoken to him since she’d been here.
She needed him to believe her.
If he didn’t, she’d have to leave. She could sneak out tonight when he was gone.
But she didn’twantto do that.
She didn’t want to see Ridgeway Orchards and Ford in her review mirror.
She wanted to drive up to him headlights to headlights.
