Home to Whiskey Creek

“Her panties were...you know...on and intact.”

Baxter looked baffled. “So...what was the point of taking her?”

Noah sighed. “No idea. Maybe he intended to rape her, but she fought too hard and he gave up.”

“Wow. After that welcome home, I bet she’s ready to leave town again.”

“She can’t.”

“Why not? She left before, didn’t she?” Baxter started cleaning up the kitchen, which he’d probably been itching to do from the second he got there.

“Milly’s getting too old to run her restaurant. That’s the reason Addy came back.”

“It’s a good thing you were there and that you heard her. The Jepson mine’s not stable. She could have...”

He let his words trail off, but Noah knew what he’d been about to say.

Instead of following up with a comment about Cody, Noah focused on the mundane. Avoidance was always easier than trying to cope with the loss he still felt. As far as he was concerned, that was private. “Stop doing my damn dishes!”

“Why?”

“Because it makes me feel like a slob.”

“You are a slob,” Baxter joked, but there was no real energy or accusation in the statement. Noah could tell he was thinking about Cody. The three of them had been inseparable as children. Baxter wasn’t a stellar athlete, but he’d joined all the same teams Noah and Cody had been on, even if he didn’t get to play on game day.

“Compared to you,” he said. “You iron your sheets and underwear.”

“Makes them feel great. You should try it sometime.”

Noah rolled his eyes. “No, thanks. I have better things to do with my time.” He rinsed off a plate, but Baxter took it and put it in the dishwasher as if Noah would only put it in the wrong slot.

“Do you think Chief Stacy will catch the guy who kidnapped Milly’s granddaughter?” Baxter asked, returning to their conversation.

“Not if she doesn’t give him some sort of description.”

“Maybe it was someone who followed her here from wherever she lived before.”

Noah remembered how reticent Addy had been after he’d pulled her out of the mine. Wouldn’t most women be shaking and crying and begging to go to the police?

She’d wanted to pretend the whole thing had never happened.

“It has to be someone she knows.” He couldn’t get around that. She’d said it wasn’t her ex, but...was she lying?

“Why?” Baxter spoke above the sound of the kitchen faucet.

“Because she acted strange, wouldn’t give me any details. She wouldn’t even let me take her to the hospital or the police.”

“There could be other reasons.”

“Like...”

“Maybe she hit her head, wasn’t in her right mind. Or...it’s possible that she was raped and she’s too embarrassed and humiliated to talk about it.”

Noah doubted she would’ve allowed him to remove those slivers if she’d just been violated. “That’s not what happened. I believe she’ll try to play it off as if it was a stranger. But...”

“What?”

He rinsed off another plate. “I got the impression it wasn’t.”

Baxter kept loading the dishwasher. “I’m not sure that makes sense. If she knew him, why not point the finger?”

“My guess? She’s afraid.” Actually, it wasn’t a guess. She’d said as much, hadn’t she?

“That he might get to her before the police can get to him?”

“Absolutely.”

“If she wasn’t raped, what could her abductor have wanted? Was it a robbery?”

“No.” Noah felt certain she would’ve said so if that were the case.

His cell phone vibrated on the counter, but when he saw the incoming number, he ignored it. It was a woman—a tourist he’d met when he’d stopped for a drink at Sexy Sadie’s during the summer. She’d come through town with her sister, they’d spent one night together and she’d been calling him ever since.

The noise caught Baxter’s attention. “You’re not going to get that? Why not? Don’t tell me Shania’s been calling you again.”

Noah wrung out the dishrag so he could wipe down the counters. “No, I think she’s finally accepted that I’m not going to take Cody’s place in her life. It’s Lisa. Again.”

“I thought you liked her.”

“As a friend.”

“She wants more?”

“She hasn’t asked for a commitment, but she sure wants to see me a lot.”

“She’s the one who took off your clothes in the car.”

Noah could easily remember that night. Few women had come on as strongly as Lisa. And yet she’d seemed almost straitlaced when they were talking in the bar. “That’s the one. She’s been hounding me ever since.”

Baxter’s smile shifted to one side. “I guess you’re just that good in bed.”

Was there an undercurrent to that statement, too? It felt as if maybe there was, but Noah couldn’t figure out why there would be. What was Baxter feeling? Jealousy? Envy? Or was there some criticism in those words? “Very funny.”

The buzzing of his phone stopped but started up again a second later.

“You’re right,” Baxter said. “She is persistent. Maybe you should answer it and tell her you’re not interested.”

“I don’t want to hurt her feelings. I don’t mind seeing her now and then.” As long as they were in the company of others. He was growing bored with the kind of sexual encounters that didn’t mean anything, and had begun to think he was missing out on a whole other dimension. Actually, after seeing how happy and in love Gail and Cheyenne and Callie were, he knew he was missing something.