He laid three out on the counter.
She rang up his bill and he’d barely gotten the items paid for when his phone rang.
“Yes?” He expected to hear Sage telling him that she had been waiting for ten minutes, but instead she was out of breath.
“I ran into an old friend and we got to talking and I’m just now in the paper store. Give me ten more minutes.”
“You got it,” he said.
A window display caught his eye as he slowed his pace and took his time getting to the rendezvous place. He stopped and a wide grin spread across his face. There was the perfect gift for Sage. She’d all but stolen his favorite red and black plaid flannel shirt, and hanging right there on a mannequin was one very similar to his. The plaid was a little smaller and the flannel not as soft since it hadn’t been washed a hundred times, but she’d love it for a nightshirt.
He walked into the store and bought the shirt. It was the last one so they had to take it off the mannequin. They wrapped it for him in shiny red paper and slipped it down into an enormous plastic bag with the store logo on the front. He put his leather purchase bag and his jewelry store bracelet down in the bag with the package and tied a knot in the top. The two ring boxes were in his coat pocket.
* * *
Sage was on her way to the meeting point when someone ran up behind her and touched her on the shoulder. She whipped around and came face-to-face with Victor Landry.
“Sage Presley! It is you!”
“Hello, Victor. What in the world are you doing in Amarillo, Texas?”
“My folks moved here last year. I can’t believe after all this time that you are right here in front of me. I hear you are the next rising Western art star. I’ve got to be honest—when you left college, I didn’t expect much.”
She winced.
“Well, you did have commitment issues. I figured it was in all things, not just relationships, but I was wrong.” He ran a hand down her arm. “Let’s go to dinner and talk art.”
Dammit!
She hadn’t wanted to go to dinner with Victor when they were practically living in the same dorm room. She damn sure didn’t want to go to dinner with him that day.
“Hey.” Creed waved from ten feet away and quickly joined her.
“Creed, meet Victor Landry. Victor, this is Creed.”
Sage felt his eyes go to her left hand but it was holding so many bags that there was no way she could shove it into her pocket.
Creed shifted his bags to his left hand and stuck the right one out. “Pleased to make your acquaintance. You live around here, do you?”
“Victor and I were art students together at college,” she explained.
“I remember being quite a bit more than that,” he said. “And to answer your question, no, I live in New Orleans. It’s a wonderful place to feel the art.”
He was a tall, lanky, blond-haired man. He wore black dress slacks and shoes with tassels on the toes. A pale pink shirt collar showed from under a pink and gray argyle sweater and his watch was a very good Rolex knockoff.
“Well, it was good to see you, Victor. We’ve got to get home and do chores before dark. If you see any of our old crowd, tell them hello for me.” Sage’s voice was so high-pitched that it even sounded strange in her ears.
He stuck a hand between the V-neck sweater and the pink shirt and handed her a card. “Call me, darlin’. We really should get together and talk art.”
She pocketed the card. “Got to run. Come on, Creed. Cows have to be fed.”
She didn’t even look back to see if Creed was behind her but set a course out of the mall as fast as she could go.
“What was that all about?” Creed asked when they were inside the truck.
“It was about nothing. Victor and I had a six-month thing. He wanted more than I wanted to give. End of story. Now let’s go home.”
“Must be old flame week. I walked into the…into a store and there was my ex-fiancée working behind the counter. Her husband got transferred to this area and she’s teaching school down in Hereford.”
“What’s she doing working in the mall?” Sage asked coldly.
“Selling stuff while she’s not teaching, I guess,” he said.
Sage looked out the window and bit her lip to keep