When Snow Falls (Whiskey Creek #2)(70)
Author: Brenda Novak

No matter what happens I will always think of you as a hero.

Cheyenne

“Wow…” he breathed, feeling as if he’d just been sucker punched. He’d certainly never seen this coming.

“Wow what?” Sandra asked. “Everything okay?”

Joe had been so engrossed he hadn’t realized his employee had poked her head into the garage. Trying to rally from the shock, he got up. “Fine. It’s just…her car needs some work.”

“She had to ask me for a stapler to be able to tell you that?”

He didn’t answer, but his silence didn’t deter Sandra from speaking again. Nothing deterred Sandra. But he knew she meant well.

“I wonder if she’s found her sister.”

“Her sister?” he asked, glancing up.

“That’s the reason she came here in the first place. She was looking for Presley, said she hadn’t seen her all day. Knowing Presley, I wasn’t overly concerned. You can’t keep track of someone who’s hell-bent on destroying herself. But I said I’d keep an eye out. Then she came back a few minutes later with that.”

Joe needed to think about what Cheyenne had revealed, figure out how it affected what he felt for her. But now was not the time. Sandra was being too nosy. “Maybe I’ll go by and see if Presley’s back.”

“That would be nice. Presley’s troubled, but Cheyenne’s sure a great person.”

24

Cheyenne’s car was gone but Dylan knocked, anyway. She didn’t answer, confirming his first guess. She hadn’t found Presley. She was still out searching for her sister.

He wondered if she was doing it alone.

Maybe she had Joe, her knight in shining armor, to help her.

Despite his own sarcasm, Dylan hoped she did. He hated to think of her trying to cope on her own—frantic, heartbroken, vulnerable.

He lifted his hand to bang on the door again, just in case he was wrong and she was inside, asleep. It was eleven, certainly late enough for that. She could’ve left her car elsewhere and had someone drop her off.

The sound of an engine made him turn. The vehicle pulling into Cheyenne’s drive wasn’t the Oldsmobile or the Mustang, however. He couldn’t determine the make or model, but the headlights blinding him were too high for either.

This was a truck—and once he could see it clearly, he realized who it belonged to.

Suddenly, Dylan wanted to be anywhere else, but he forced himself to stand on the stoop and wait until Joe turned off his engine and got out. If he was bringing Cheyenne home, at least Dylan would be able to reassure himself that she was okay.

But she didn’t get out of the truck. It was only Joe who walked toward him. “She’s not home?” he said, his voice clipped, not open and friendly like it had been at the Victorian Christmas celebration.

Dylan figured it was finding him on Cheyenne’s doorstep so late that accounted for the change. He shook his head. “She’s not with you?”

“No.”

They stared at each other for several seconds, opponents for the first time, a subtle but unmistakable shift. Then Joe shoved his hands in his pockets and heaved a sigh. “She told me about you.”

Instantly wary, Dylan narrowed his eyes. “Told you what about me?”

“That you two—” he shrugged, obviously looking for the right words “—were together,” he finished with a wince.

Dylan frowned. “Telling you was a hell of a risk to take. But…somehow it doesn’t surprise me.”

Joe stepped closer. He seemed intent on seeing Dylan’s face. “Why not?”

“She’s been in love with you since she was fourteen, thinks you walk on water. Didn’t she tell you that, too?” The jealousy he was feeling leaked into his voice, but Dylan couldn’t help it. His chest was so tight he could scarcely breathe, let alone talk.

Joe stopped a foot or so away and toed the dirt between the dead clumps of grass. “She didn’t say that, exactly.”

“She’s wanted you for a long time. So…” He met Joe’s somber gaze. “I hope you won’t let what happened between us get in the way.”

A touch of confusion showed on Joe’s face. “Something like that’s hard to forget, Dylan.”

Especially when he’d already dealt with a cheating wife. His background would make it even harder. “I’m just telling you it would be a mistake. What we did didn’t mean anything to her. It was…an act of desperation, I think. I hit on her in a vulnerable moment.”

“So…more your fault than hers.”

“Definitely.” He knew that should be an easy sell. People in Whiskey Creek liked to blame him for whatever went wrong. In high school, he’d deserved a lot of that blame. He’d broken into the school and vandalized it, he’d stolen a car and gone on a joyride, he’d started a bonfire in an abandoned building so they could roast hot dogs and gotten in more trouble for that than the car incident. So maybe blaming him had become a habit. Regardless of the reason, he’d been picked up three different times since then for shit he didn’t do.

“Nice of you to take responsibility.”

Dylan managed a cynical smile. “Yeah, well, I wouldn’t want to stand in the way of true love.”

Joe jerked his head toward the house. “So what are you doing here now? Hoping to get lucky again?”

Cigarettes. Dylan needed a smoke, but he patted empty pockets. He’d bought a pack, since his brothers had taken his advice and thrown out what they already had. However, he’d subsequently tossed that new pack, too. “I was just trying to check on her.”

“Sure you were.”

“I don’t owe you anything, Joe. If she comes back to me, I’m going to take all I can get.”

Joe’s voice dropped low. “Stay away from her.”

“It would be a mistake to try to enforce that,” Dylan said, and walked off before the temptation to leave Joe writhing on his back could get the best of him.

* * *

Cheyenne had never been so cold. But she refused to go home to an empty house. She would find her sister first. She hadn’t come this far to let her life fall apart now that Anita could no longer affect her.

“Presley!”

There was a movement across the river. She angled her flashlight in that direction, but succeeded only in startling several deer. They bounded away, snapping twigs and crashing through branches.

It took a moment to absorb this latest disappointment. She’d gone down as far as Carl Inera’s and was on her way back following the river, but darkness, thick vegetation and rocks, both sharp and slippery, made the journey difficult. She’d already passed the swirling pool Presley favored. But she had to keep searching. She could easily imagine her sister getting high and wandering around out here until she either fell into the river or froze to death.