Page 19 of Long Arm of the Cowboy

“Like?”

He gave her an are-you-kidding-me look.

She grinned in return. “Just lightening the mood. Back to the bomb… Don’t you think we would have blown up hours ago if this thing was unstable?”

He stared at it for so long that she started to worry something was really wrong. Then he said in a flat tone, “Thinking about defusing it.”

She gaped at him. She must have misheard him. Did he just say he was thinking about defusing it? He might be hot and rugged with a few naughty stray gray hairs at his temples, but the man had to be missing a few brain cells.

“Do you actually know how to defuse a bomb?”

“No.”

So she definitely wasn’t crazy.

Glancing at their surroundings, she had to question if this had been his plan all along. The remote meadowwasan odd choice of places to stop.

“When did you decide this?” She tipped her head to look up at him.

“Just a minute ago.”

“And the field?”

“It’s out of the way if something happens.”

She started shaking her head the minute the words were out of his mouth. “Clay, think this through. You’re supposed to be the levelheaded one of our dynamic duo.”

That caught his attention. He slowly turned his head to pierce her in his steady stare.

What she saw in his eyes sent a shiver through her.

“I can’t be driving around with this thing. The bomb specialist who looked at the video footage I sent claims that it’s not unstable, but how can he really know if he hasn’t seen it in person?”

“How canyouknow?” She folded her arms. “You’re not going to be the topic of my breakout piece in the journalism world, Clay Lexis. ‘How the Silver Fox Blew Himself Up.’”

He raised a big hand and scrubbed it over his face. When he looked at her again, he appeared to be more himself. “You’re right.”

She beamed. “Knew you’d see it my way.”

“Not the silver fox part. I’m only forty,” he clarified.

“Of course. No one’s right about everything, not even you.”

He ignored her and turned his attention back to the bomb. “I need to inspect it for a listening device and tracker.”

“So how do we go about that?”

“Wedon’t. This is on me. You’re going to walk over to those trees.”

She spun around to see what he was talking about. At the edge of the meadow stood a line of trees separating it from another field.

“Those trees? They’re about half a mile away.”

“The perfect place for you to stand while I check out this bomb.”

“I carried the thing across a guy’s driveway and loaded it into my car, Clay. We just rode with it bouncing around in the back of your truck for half a day while I sat three feet away from it.Nowyou want me to get away?”

“Lark, you’re not helping me here. Just…stop talking for a minute and let me think.”

---