A Bad Day for Sunshine (Sunshine Vicram #1) - Darynda Jones Page 0,69
to make such a great sheriff. “Of course I care about her; I just don’t think she cares much for me.”
They’d sworn a pact to keep up the pretense no matter what, but she did want to tell him that she cared very much for his little sister. That she had grown to love the woman. A woman who, like Levi, grew up in a horribly broken home.
But she didn’t dare. Doing so could put Hailey in danger, as well as Jimmy and Levi.
“You’ll be able to leave in a few minutes. We called out the crew to clear the road to town.”
“You can do that?”
“When it’s your crew, yeah.”
“What are you going to do?”
“We’re going back to the house to change again and get back out there. There’s a trail where we can take our ATVs up.”
“Levi, does he know what to do? How to survive?”
“Yes.” He bit down and looked out the window. “I’m just worried he panicked and went too far into the forest. He knows how to make a shelter and start a fire, but this is more than even most experienced hunters could manage.”
She tried to swallow the turmoil wreaking havoc on her chest. “Can I go out with you?”
He studied her a moment, a long, tense moment, then shook his head. “You’d only slow us down.”
Sun didn’t take offense. He was right. He knew this area and knew how to cover it quickly. If he had to watch out for her while doing it . . .
It was the first time she’d ever truly been alone with him, and the circumstances were the worst kind imaginable. But it was nice to hear his voice.
“I wish I could do something.”
“You can. Go home so I don’t have to worry about finding a Sunshine Popsicle on my next pass.”
“Okay, but I’m leaving under duress and against my better judgment.”
“Yeah, well, your judgment was never that great.”
What was that supposed to mean? “What’s that supposed to mean?”
If perfection manifested into human form, it would look exactly like the man sitting in her passenger’s seat. The one with the annoyed look on his face. “What it means, Vicram, is go home.” He said her name like it was something he would spit out if he were starving.
Before she could argue the point again—and take up more of his precious time—he climbed down from her cruiser and slammed the door. Then he pointed, telling her to lock it.
She obeyed almost faster than his cousin had. There was something about the way he gave an order. She felt that ignoring it would be risky.
But he hadn’t replaced his face mask and goggles. She waited and watched as he trod back to his truck, his hair whipping about his head, until he was safely inside. Then she released the breath she’d been holding.
Yet not five seconds after he got inside, he opened the door again, reached over his windshield, and pulled off her stupid note, the one that the storm had surely melted the lettering off. Humiliation burned through her.
He looked at it, the wind almost ripping it out of his hands. Then he looked back at her and let it go, the blizzard carrying it into oblivion before climbing back into his truck.
She rolled down her window and shouted, “That’s a five-hundred-dollar fine, mister!”
A backhoe drove past then. Levi turned the truck around to head back to his house, but he waited for her to do the same, for her to follow the backhoe. She did, and when they arrived back at 63, Sun and the backhoe went one direction while Levi and his cousin went the other.
Just like she and Levi always seemed to do.
Auri couldn’t sleep. She knew it would be an issue the next day, what with her coloring and the fact that dark blue circles just didn’t look good under her hazel eyes. But it didn’t matter.
Cruz’s dad had taken her home just as the winds picked up and the sky started dumping snow like it was a Christmas in Denver.
She enjoyed talking to Cruz’s dad—with Cruz interpreting, of course—on the short drive home. He was a nice guy and made a killer hot chocolate. The real stuff. Not the powdered stuff in a can.
Cruz walked Auri to the door when they got to her grandparents’ house.
“Do you like it?” he asked, gesturing toward their apartment in back.
“Are you kidding? I love it. Which part did you work on?”