Hot on the Trail. Vicki Tharp

Nothing came.

      Jenna ran over. “You okay?”

      Heat ran up his face. I am a freaking idiot. He looked away, imagining what his CO would have said if he’d had to call her and tell her he’d managed to amputate his own toes. “Fine.”

      “You’ve been chopping all this time?”

      He didn’t know how long it had been, so he shrugged. He dropped the ax and started tossing the split logs onto a flatbed trailer attached to the back of the tractor.

      “You don’t have to do this,” she said. “Alby and Santos have a bunch of wood stacked from a month or so ago.”

      “If I’m going to be staying here, I figured I should pitch in. Besides, without a weight room or gym equipment, I have to find some way to continue my rehab while I’m here.”

      “Stay? Here?”

      “Is that a problem?”

      “Aren’t your parents anxious to see you? And don’t you have to be back before they think you’ve gone AWOL or something?”

      “UA,” Quinn corrected. “The Marines call it Unauthorized Absence.” Quinn stopped and gave her his full attention. “I have the time off saved up. And my parents…” There was no real way to finish that sentence without either lying or saying more than he wanted to. He bent down and started loading the trailer again.

      For the longest time, Jenna didn’t say anything. She began tossing logs into the cart. Dink ran over, jumping up and leaving dirty paw prints on his bare chest. Quinn tried to brush the dirt away, but as sweaty as he was, he only ground it in deeper. He ruffled Dink’s ears, his hand coming away with a bunch of damp fur.

      “What happened to him?” Quinn said.

      “Trust me. You don’t want to know.”

      Taking her at her word, he continued loading.

      She stopped. “Your parents don’t know you’re back, do they?”

      He glanced up at her. Her head cocked to the side, like a puppy trying to figure out the strange human.

      “Quinn?”

      The log fell from his fingers, hitting his boot. He bit back the curse, his big toe throbbing. “No. I didn’t tell them.”

      She blew out a half laugh, empty of humor and full of incredulity. “Why the heck not?”

      He picked the log back up and restarted the mindless loading. “What did the state of Wyoming want with you?”

      “Seriously? You’re just going to ignore the question.”

      Meeting her eye, he said, “Leave it be, Jenn.”

      There was more she wanted to say, apparent in her eyes, in the way her mouth opened and closed. She settled on, “Basically, if Kurt died by any means other than homicide, my program is screwed, either for good or until I can reapply. A year and a half of work wasted. Not sure I have it in me to go through that process again. And I know Dad won’t want to keep the cabins vacant for that long. Either this program runs, or he’s going to use them for some sort of dude ranch.”

      Quinn sat on the edge of the trailer. “Doesn’t seem right to wish Kurt’s death was a homicide.”

      “Who would want him dead? He wasn’t here long enough to piss anyone off enough to want to kill him.”

      “You obviously didn’t know Kurt all that well.” That got him a tight laugh.

      Dink came running back, then took off again after something only he saw or heard or smelled.

      Quinn said, “If Kurt had gotten involved in drugs again, he could have been caught up in something he shouldn’t be involved in, or he owed the wrong person money.”

      “Besides him dying of an overdose, there were no other indications that he’d started using again. No positive drug tests, he hadn’t shown up to work high. I know in the movies people are killed for owing money, but in real life, that isn’t a solid long-term business model,” Jenna said. “How can someone pay you back if they are dead?”

      “And with his left arm being used to shoot up, the missing tourniquet, the headlights from the second car the night he died, I think there’s enough circumstantial evidence pointing toward the possibility of murder. If the sheriff doesn’t want to investigate, someone has to.”

      Jenna shuddered and sat down heavily on the trailer next to him. The brim of her cowboy hat shielded her eyes but didn’t hide the worry lines radiating from the corners of them. “Is that the reason you’re staying?”

      She turned her head and looked up at him. A deep melancholy had settled in her eyes, one that went far beyond dealing with the death of his friend and the questionable viability of her veteran program. That scabbed-over wound of his—that emptiness that had settled in his heart, that dark maw of regret he’d had since the moment the words “will you marry me” had dropped like poison from his lips—rent open. He knew what she wanted, knew she wanted to know if he wanted to stay for her.

      Emotions bled out into his chest—a hot combination of anger, passion, arrogance, and guilt—making it hard for him to draw a deep breath. He didn’t—no, couldn’t—allow himself to love her again. “Yes,” he lied.

      The disappointment in her eyes dimmed her fake smile by a few watts. “Great. I could use the help.”

      Out of her back pocket, she pulled a semi-clean red bandana and held it out to him. With a tip of her chin, she indicated the patches of smeared dirt on his chest. He caught her wrist, and her pulse kicked against his finger.

      “Jenna, I—” There was so much he wanted to say, wanted to take back. He stared at the soft curve of her bottom lip.

      But what he wanted most was to kiss her.

      * * * *

      A light breeze cooled the skin on the back of Jenna’s neck. Beneath her feet, the ground shook with the canter strides of one of the newer mustangs, as Sidney worked it in the nearby round pen. Quinn leaned against the trailer they’d filled with freshly split logs, her wrist in his hand, his eyes on her lips, her heart on her sleeve.

      She leaned into the impending kiss, the one she’d waited for a long time, the one she’d thought would never come. The one she didn’t deserve.

      But that didn’t stop her from wanting his mouth on hers.

      Closing her eyes, she waited for the contact—but it never came. She bit the inside of her lip to squash the sting behind her eyes. When she dared to look up at him, he threaded the fingers of one hand behind her neck, his thumb tracing the outline of her jaw.

      He lowered his forehead to hers. “Took me a long time to get over you.”

      “Are you?” She hated the weakness in her voice, the pitiful bud of hope waiting for the tiniest bit of reason to bloom.

      Planting a long, chaste kiss on her forehead, he released her. “Yeah. I am.” What his words lacked in veracity, the shuttered expression on his face made up for. He was telling the truth.

      “Great,” she said—with the same enthusiasm she’d used when the dentist had told her she had a cavity—and forced a smile.

      She turned to head back to her office to finish up the calls.

      “But, Jenn…” His words stopped her. She glanced at him over her shoulder. His hands rested on his hips, his broad chest expanding with a deep, ragged breath. “Doesn’t mean I don’t wish it had turned out different.”

      “That’s rich.” She laughed, dark and angry, and faced him again. “Different how? Different in that you wished I had left my dreams behind for you, or different in that you wished you’d left your dreams behind for me? Or different in that you wished you’d never asked me to marry you in the first place?”

      He