“I would go myself, but my arthritis is driving me nuts lately. Still, I may have to ignore that and head on out.”
“That’s a bad idea, Grandpa,” Abby said.
“Probably, but it really frosts me that no one believes what I saw. Even Roarke doesn’t believe me. Am I right?”
Roarke fell back on his canned response. “It’s highly improbable that a large, bipedal humanoid could survive in this climate.”
“Bullshit. If bears can, then Bigfoot could. I sure wish you could see that. I must be losing my storytelling skills, because if you believed what I told you, you’d be out combing those woods. A brilliant scientist like you wouldn’t be able to resist.” Earl’s shoulders slumped.
“It’s a great story,” Roarke said. “But my scientific training tells me—”
“You can’t rely solely on your training. ‘To know is nothing at all; to imagine is everything.’ Einstein.”
“I’ve heard that,” Roarke said.
“But . . . I can’t force you to go out there and look.” Earl stood and held out his hand. “Thanks for coming, Roarke. It was worth a shot trying to convince you.”
Roarke stood and gripped Earl’s hand. “I wish I could say you changed my mind.” He wished he could say a lot of things, including that.
“I wish you could, too.”
Glancing at his watch, Roarke grimaced. “Sorry to cut this short, but I need to take off.”
“That’s some watch you have there.” Earl peered at it. “Doesn’t look like a Rolex. Judging from that fancy car outside, I’d expect you to wear a Rolex. What is it?”
“A Louis Moinet Magistalis.”
“Huh. Never heard of that before.”
Abby got up. “I’ll walk you to the door, Roarke.”
“Which is my cue to let you two young people have a private conversation,” Earl said. “Thanks for listening to an old coot.”
“It was a pleasure.”
“And tell Cameron Gentry I will see him in hell before I’ll let him have this land.”
Roarke couldn’t help smiling. The guy had spunk. “I’ll tell him. Take care, Dr. Dooley.”
“You, too, Dr. Wallace.”
Still smiling, Roarke walked with Abby to the front door. He wouldn’t mind continuing a friendship with Earl, but that would be impossible given the situation.
“I watched your face during Grandpa Earl’s story,” Abby said when they reached the door. “You were digging it.”
Roarke glanced down at her. “Of course I was. You were absolutely right. Nobody can tell a story like an Irishman.”
“Yes, but I think it was more than that. I can’t shake the feeling that a part of you believes in Bigfoot.”
Gazing at her, Roarke longed to give her the satisfaction of knowing he’d changed his mind. But because he’d never doubted her grandfather in the first place, he couldn’t claim an about-face. “Let it go, Abby.”
“I can’t. He’s so frustrated.”
“Then tell him this.” Roarke pictured Gentry’s fury at this decision, but he didn’t much care. “I haven’t changed my mind, but I’ll cancel the rest of my talks. He can spin that information any way he wants to.”
Abby’s eyes glowed. “Thank you, Roarke.” Placing both hands lightly on his shoulders, she stood on tiptoe and kissed him.
Her kiss was quick but potent. Her lips tasted like warm coffee, and the imprint of her velvet touch lingered long after she’d pulled away. It took all of Roarke’s willpower not to kiss her back. Somehow he managed to get out the door and into his car, but he had no memory of the drive back to the Gentry estate.
No doubt about it, Abby was big medicine. He remembered the way his brother, Aidan, had behaved after meeting Emma, and Roarke had a really bad feeling he was heading down that same path. He needed to find the mated pair and get the hell out of Portland before he did something really stupid.
Chapter 4
After Roarke left, a customer came in for some crackers and a couple packs of gum. Abby gave them too much change for their twenty and didn’t realize it until they’d driven away. That’s what she got for kissing Roarke Wallace. Now her brain was mush.
Worse yet, he hadn’t kissed her back. Instead he’d stood there like a bump on a log. Then he’d left in a hurry, as if he couldn’t wait to get away from her. How demoralizing.
Yesterday he’d seemed interested, but yesterday she’d been wearing a killer outfit. Maybe he was just that shallow. Now she was embarrassed for choosing to wear her Kiss me, I’m Irish sweatshirt. She’d thought doing that would be flirty and fun, when in fact it had only added to her humiliation when Roarke turned to stone at the touch of her mouth on his.
Grandpa Earl might deserve some of the blame for that. His suggestion that Roarke take Abby camping had been a blatant attempt at matchmaking. Roarke probably had a girlfriend back home and he’d only shown interest yesterday out of courtesy or habit. When he realized her grandfather was ready to welcome him into the family, he’d slammed on the brakes. God, she wished she could take back that kiss!
“Abby,” Grandpa Earl called from the back room. “Come look at this.”
With a glance toward the parking lot to make sure nobody had driven up, she started toward the back room. Business had fallen off lately, which Earl attributed to the Gentrys’ smear campaign but Abby thought might be due to the convenience store that had opened about four miles down the road. It offered longer hours and served soft drinks from a dispenser. People liked that.
She walked into the back room. A door to the right led to the living quarters, which must have been cramped for a family of four back in the day, but were about right for a widower and his occasional guest, Abby.
Grandpa Earl sat at the desk in an armless swivel chair that he could get out of without struggling. He was hunched over his aging computer staring at the monitor. “Come look at what that watch of his sells for,” he said without looking up.
She didn’t have to ask who he was talking about. Obviously he meant the nonkisser, Roarke Wallace.“Grandpa, I know he has money. His parents are friends with Cameron’s parents, so it stands to reason that he’d be wearing a pricey watch.”
“I guess pricey describes a watch worth eight hundred and sixty thousand dollars. I assume that’s before they add tax.”
Abby gasped. As a claims adjuster she’d dealt with some expensive items, but she couldn’t remember ever hearing about a watch in that price range. No wonder Roarke hadn’t wanted to get involved with her. She was from the wrong side of the tracks.
Grandpa Earl punched a few more keys. “Here’s some information on his family.” He gestured toward the screen. “I gather that the Wallaces are to New York City what the Gentrys are to Portland.”
“That explains a lot.” Abby flopped into an old easy chair beside her grandfather’s desk. Her Grandma Olive used to sit there with her knitting while her husband researched Bigfoot on the Internet. Olive’s knitting basket still sat beside the chair and no one had ever suggested moving it.
“It does, but it makes me sad.” Earl sat back in his chair and glanced over at Abby. “He may be a rich boy, but he’s a professor at a prestigious university. As such, he should keep an open mind and not allow other considerations, like loyalty to the Gentrys, to interfere with scientific inquiry.”
“You gave it a good try, Grandpa.”
“Not good enough, obviously.”
“I don’t think it helped that you practically threw me at him.”
Her grandfather blinked. “Who was throwing? I just thought—”
“That he should take me camping? That’s a very intimate thing to do.”
“Not if you sleep in separate tents! Did I say you should share a tent? No, I did not. I said he should take you along. Men and women go on scientific explorations all the time without hav**g s*x, Abby.”
Her cheeks warmed. He was right. She was the one who had jumped to the conclusion that if Roarke took her camping, they’d sleep together. Her mind had been on sex, but her grandfather’s mind had been on creating a team of two people for scientific exploration.
Come to think of it, Roarke probably went on trips like that in his field work as an anthropologist. He might not have interpreted Grandpa Earl’s suggestion as matchmaking, after all. He simply hadn’t wanted to go.
She understood that, in a way. He’d been flown here to take care of a problem—Grandpa Earl’s supposed sighting of Bigfoot and his mate. Going out to search for the very thing he was supposed to discredit wasn’t in his job description. He took the chance of alienating the Gentrys, who were friends of his family.
Viewed that way, Roarke’s decision not to tramp through the woods with her became less personal. Still, she would have liked to see some sort of reaction when she’d kissed him. But she hadn’t, and that was that. End of story for her and the gorgeous Dr. Wallace.
“Abby, I need to ask a favor.”
“That’s why I’m here. To help.”
“I want you to watch the store so I can go back out and find Bigfoot and his mate.”
Abby thought carefully about her answer. She didn’t want her grandfather to think she considered him incapable of that, but she couldn’t let him go out by himself and wander around in the woods. He didn’t move very well, and he could trip.
Maybe if he’d been willing to carry a cell phone, she’d feel better about his hiking alone, but he wasn’t. The computer he’d bought ten years ago was as far into the electronic world as he wanted to go. Besides, cell phone reception wasn’t very reliable in the woods.
“You don’t think I’m up to it,” her grandfather said quietly.
“You’d probably be fine, but I would spend the whole time you were gone worrying about you. At some point I’d probably close up the store and come after you, which wouldn’t be a good thing for business. If you want more evidence, and I don’t blame you for that, then I’ll go.”
“I wish we’d been able to talk Roarke into searching. It’s better if two people go. Then even if the camera malfunctions, you have a witness to what you’ve seen.”
“But Roarke doesn’t want to go, Grandpa. So you’ll have to make do with me.”
His expression was adorably serious. “I couldn’t ask for a better person than you, Abby.”
“So do we have a deal?”
“How would you feel about camping out by yourself ?”
Abby hesitated. She’d never actually done that. Pitching a tent in the backyard wasn’t quite the same as hiking into an unspoiled forest and setting up camp all alone. A person would be pretty damned isolated out there.
“You don’t have to stay overnight,” he said gently. “It was only an idea. Hiking in a different area every day will probably accomplish the same thing.”
Abby nodded enthusiastically. “I’m sure it will. In fact, I’ll take a short one this afternoon. I’ll do a grid search over the next few days and chart where I’ve been. This’ll be great. I’ll take my camera, and . . . damn. I probably need a better camera than my little digital.”
“Take mine.”
“I hate to tell you, but I don’t like yours. With the zoom attached, it’s awkward and heavy.”
“But it’s far better than that little toy of yours, Abby. Maybe I should go, after all. I know that camera, and if I keep the zoom attached instead of carrying it separately, then I won’t have the same problem that—”
“Let me try it this afternoon.” She dreaded hauling that monster zoom around, but her grandfather was right about the quality of the pictures it took. She’d have to spend a bundle to get a small camera that would come anywhere close.
He brightened. “Good. I’ll bet once you’ve worked with it awhile, you’ll come to appreciate what a great camera it is.”
She doubted it, but now that she’d volunteered herself to go on a Bigfoot search, she was determined to do it to Grandpa Earl’s satisfaction. Hearing him repeat his story to Roarke had impressed her all over again. He might not have convinced Roarke, but he’d convinced her. Bigfoot was out there. Although her chances of spotting the creature were slim considering she had only limited time to look, she had to give it her best shot.
Many hours later, as she trudged through the forest with her grandfather’s camera looking like an AK-47 concealed under her jacket, she began to doubt again. Maybe she’d secretly thought that agreeing to carry the big-ass camera would give her the reward of an immediate sighting today. Instead, she was sick to death of hauling the damn thing with nothing to show for it.
Out of sheer boredom she’d taken some outstanding close-ups of a squirrel. While zooming in on the squirrel, she’d realized that Photoshop might be able to transform a squirrel into a Sasquatch. Who was to say that any of the photos used to prove Bigfoot existed were legitimate? Even if she stumbled upon an actual creature, what kind of proof would that be without a witness swearing she hadn’t doctored the shot?
Although the rain had stopped earlier in the afternoon, the drizzle had returned and the light was fading. She pictured herself wrapped in a quilt, sitting in front of the potbellied stove and drinking hot coffee laced with Baileys. Maybe it was time to give up for the day.
She was so intent on her image of a warm fire and a hot drink that she almost missed seeing movement about a hundred yards away. There. Somebody . . . or something was walking through the trees.
Heart pounding, she raised the camera and zoomed in. What she saw made her blink in surprise. Had Roarke changed his mind about looking for Sasquatch on her grandfather’s land? She couldn’t imagine any other reason he’d be there.