Chapter 2

CHAPTER

TWO

B elle Graves took in the house, her keen eye finding and noticing details a lot of people probably wouldn’t. At the sound of footsteps behind her, she turned and found the gorgeous man who’d answered the door coming into the big multi-purpose room at the back of the house.

He hadn’t given his name, and Belle didn’t normally just enter people’s houses. Of course, men wearing only gym shorts didn’t answer the door and stand there in the frigid weather in the middle of January either.

“Give me a sec,” he said, and he turned left and went down the hallway, presumably back into the bedrooms. Belle reminded herself as she caught sight of the muscles in his back and shoulders—it was really just the cop in her that saw the little details—that she hadn’t come here to get a date.

She had someone to find, and for all she knew, Cowboy Cutie who’d answered the door could have Steven Bastian hidden in the basement.

“Sorry ‘bout that,” the man said as he returned. He had a cowboy accent, but she wasn’t sure if he was from Wyoming or not. He’d said this was his parents’ house, not his, and he could’ve been visiting from anywhere.

He now wore a dark purple shirt with four dancing potato chips on it—and they had eyes and mouths—those gray gym shorts, and a cowboy hat as he padded into the kitchen. “Coffee?” he offered in that smooth, deep voice of his.

“No, thank you,” Belle said, clearing her throat and eliminating the questions about his T-shirt from her mind. She had other things to ask while she was here. “I’m a Missing Persons Investigator for the Teton County Sheriff’s Department. I’m looking for your neighbor to the west there. Steven Bastian? Do you know him?”

“No,” the man said. “Like I said, I’m just visiting my folks.”

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Harry Young,” he said, and he watched her for a moment.

To Belle, that sounded pretty bland, and she pulled out her notebook to write down a few things. “Who are your parents?”

“Trace and Everly Young.” He pulled out the coffee pot, which already had coffee in it, and dumped it down the drain. He started to fill it with fresh water, and he looked over to her while he did. “They probably know their neighbors. Especially Ev. She runs the dance studio in town, and she knows everyone. My daddy’s a bit more of a…keeps-to-himself kind of guy.”

Belle scribbled something in her notebook she probably wouldn’t read later. She just liked getting it down, because then she remembered it. “Have you ever seen Steven before?”

“Probably,” Harry said as he measured grounds into a filter. “I lived here for several years before graduating high school.”

Belle didn’t even want to know, but she asked, “How long ago was that?”

“Uh, let’s see.”

Well, if he had to think about it, that meant it was a while ago. Belle found herself holding her breath for a reason she couldn’t name. She really wasn’t here for a date. In fact, her whole dating-men history was pot-holed at best, and she didn’t need to be trying to add another reason she crashed and burned to her personal failure resume.

Remember Buck , she told herself.

Lord, it would be great if I could focus here, she thought next. But every time she blinked, she could see Harry’s well-defined abs, those broad pecs, and as she’d moved by him—sure, she could admit she’d gotten in close to him—she’d gotten the slightest scent of his cologne.

“Almost six years ago now,” he said.

Belle pursed her lips. “Hm.” She wrote down the year, doing the math quickly, and then she wrote a 24 and circled it a few times. Was a twenty-four-year-old too young for a twenty-nine-about-to-be-thirty-year-old?

“You?” he asked.

“Excuse me?” She looked up from his age on her notepad, pure surprise coloring her thoughts.

“When did you graduate from high school?” He dipped his head into the fridge and came up with a couple of bottles of flavored cream.

Belle eyed those with extreme interest, because one of them was caramel, and she happened to have a very weak spot for cowboys with caramel cream in their big hands. “Uh, a while ago,” she said. “Longer than six years ago.”

“Like, a whole lot longer than six years ago, or just a few years more than six years ago?” Harry grinned at her, and Belle got the distinct impression he was flirting with her.

“Double the six,” she said. “You know what? I’d love some coffee.”

His smile only got brighter, and he turned to get down two mugs from the cupboard. “How long have you been a cop?”

“Eight years,” she said. “I just moved into—” She cut off, because he’d completely reversed their roles here. The house felt so hot, and Belle really needed to regain control of the situation.

“How long have you been staying here?” she asked as she moved to the end of the counter. It was wintertime; that was why the house felt so stuffy and hot. It had absolutely nothing to do with Belle’s traitorous pulse springing throughout her body .

“‘Bout a month,” Harry said.

“Wow, you don’t have a job?”

He cut her a look out of the corner of his eye, his grin fading all the way to nothing. “I have a job,” he said evasively.

“Work from home?”

“I’m on a break right now,” he said.

Belle sensed something there, all of her cop tingles sparking at the same time. “So you might have been around to see your neighbor. He lives there alone. A little older gentleman. He’s fifty-six.”

“I’ve seen him,” Harry said. “While we were shoveling snow, and when the kids wanted me to help them build a snowman.”

“Yes, I saw that out front.” Belle smiled at him, hoping to bring back the charm and charisma the cowboy had already shown her. But he’d shut down a little, and while his mouth tipped up, his smile certainly didn’t hold the same wattage as it had before. “Your kids?” she asked, returning her attention to her notepad to madly scratch out some more items of interest about this Harry Young.

Search about him , she wrote as he said, “My daddy’s. He got remarried, oh, I don’t know. About eight or nine years ago. He and Ev have three kids together.”

“I see, okay.” She looked up, the question burning through her throat stuck there. She absolutely would not ask him if he was married or had ever been married. What would that have to do with Steven ?

“Do you remember the last time you saw Steven while shoveling or building the snowman?”

“Well, it hasn’t snowed in what? Four days?” Harry half-smiled, and oh, that was just as playful and sexy and bright as the full thing. “I swear, I love Coral Canyon, but when it snows, I do miss Nashville.”

“Ah, Nashville,” she said. “Is that where you live?”

“Sort of,” he said.

“You have a lot of sort of’s.”

“I have a place there, yes,” he said, giving her another sharp look. “But I’m buying a place here too.”

He must be famous , she thought, and she knew the type who had two homes—one of which was in Nashville.

Men who thought they ruled the world because they could play a guitar. Well, Belle could do that too, thank you very much.

“So have you seen Steven in the past four days?”

“We built the snowman on Thursday afternoon,” he said. “While Ev was teaching. I’m pretty sure I saw him then. He came home, and he was carrying in a couple of bags of groceries.” He nodded like his memory had just kicked in. “Yeah, that’s right.”

“What time on Thursday?”

“I don’t know. It was light. Afternoon. Keri was out of school, and she’s in first grade. Four?”

“Four, okay,” she said, writing it down. “And nothing since?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Did you notice any cars coming and going? ”

Harry poured the coffee as he considered her question. He set one mug in front of her and nudged the caramel cream carton closer to her, as if he knew that was why she’d decided to change her mind and accept his offer of coffee.

“I don’t recall,” he said. “To be honest, I don’t sleep here every night, and I was out at my cousin’s on Thursday and Friday nights. I came here for the weekend, because my parents went out and I babysat, and then we went to church yesterday, and today’s a holiday, so….” He trailed off then, his face suddenly blooming with the most adorable blush Belle had ever seen on a man.

Harry also had a hefty five o’clock shadow, probably because he’d shaved for church yesterday and then not again since. Belle liked the square jaw with stubble, the large, capable hands, the broad shoulders.

The potato chip T-shirt? She wasn’t sure about that, but as a cop, she’d learned a long time ago not to make too many judgments too early on.

“I didn’t see him on Saturday or Sunday,” Harry said. “I didn’t notice him at church, but I don’t know if he normally goes or not.”

“Because you don’t live here.”

“Right,” he said. “And, in complete transparency, I don’t really pay much attention to what’s goin’ on around me. My job—well, my job has trained me to focus on what’s right in front of me and not much else. He may have been there, and I wouldn’t have seen him.”

He stirred coconut cream into his coffee, no sugar, and lifted the mug to his lips at the same time his pocket rang. Well, his phone inside his shorts pocket rang, and he pulled it out. “It’s my daddy,” he said with a sigh. “I’m late for a family breakfast.”

“I won’t keep you,” Belle said. She did splash a bit of caramel cream into her coffee, and she took a hearty gulp of it as Harry slid the call to silent. “Thanks for the coffee, and thanks for answering my questions.”

She dug into her vest pocket and pulled out her card. She hated her photo on this thing, but until she ran out, she couldn’t get new ones. The county didn’t just replace perfectly good business cards because she’d pulled her hair up on picture day and now looked bald in the photo.

“If you see him, please call me. His daughter reported him missing, and we really need to locate him.” She handed Harry the card, took another sip of her coffee, and headed for the front door.

She’d rounded the corner and entered the hall when he called, “Belle, wait,” in that delicious voice. Hens and feathers, now he’d said her name, and she’d never be able to hear it in the same way again.

She turned just as he came skidding around the corner, his coffee cup still in his hand. His shoulder bumped the wall, and he grunted, and then he came to a stop in front of her. Belle raised her eyebrows as he seemed to pant in and out a couple of times.

“Yes?” she asked.

“If I wanted—I mean.” He cleared his throat and pressed his eyelids closed over those dreamy, dark eyes. “ The number on this card.” He held it up in the hand not holding his coffee cup. “If I call it, you’ll answer?”

“Yes, sir,” she said. “Day or night.”

“So it’s a work number.”

“Yes,” she said slowly. “It’s my cell phone.”

“Personal? Or one the Sheriff’s Department issued to you?”

She cocked her head at him again, trying to get a read on him. He seemed to be putting off a very flirty vibe, but his face didn’t show it, and she couldn’t quite reconcile him.

“Where is the Teton County Sheriff’s Department?” he asked.

“Jackson,” she said. “I live there.”

“Ah, I see.”

“We come out to the surrounding towns as needed,” she said. “It’s a pretty drive, even in the winter.”

“So you wouldn’t be interested in maybe getting dinner with me?”

There it was, and Belle could admit that warmth seeped through her whole body. Despite the ugly, black khakis she had to wear for the job, despite the bulky vest she wore identifying herself, despite letting him steer this Q&A for a few minutes, he’d found something he liked about her.

What, she wasn’t sure, but could she give him dinner to find out?

“Depends,” she said.

“On what?”

“It seems to me, Mister Young,” she said. “That you don’t really have roots. You’re here, you’re there, you’re in Nashville. I’m in Jackson, and that’s not here, there, or Nashville.”

“It’s just dinner,” he said.

She shook her head, feeling a little flirty and reckless herself. “I don’t date for ‘justs,’” she said. She nodded to the card in his hand. “If you see Steven, please call me immediately.” With that, she turned and exited the house she never should’ve entered in the first place.

Harry didn’t call for her to wait again, and Belle gave herself an extreme amount of credit for striding down the front sidewalk to the driveway, and then back to her SUV, which she’d parked in front of the house next door, all without looking back once.

Only then did she eye the light gray house where Harry Young had answered the door. She made a few more notes, and then took out her phone to do a quick search for the man. Horror filled her with the half-sentence that came up under the first search result.

The prodigal son of country music sensation, Trace Young, Harry has taken the nation by storm with his ? —

“His what?” Belle asked herself, but she already knew.

Country music sensation, Trace Young.

Harry had a home in Nashville. He was “on a break” in his job.

She tapped and opened the link, the picture there making her breath catch and her pulse sprint.

Sexy, young, brilliant Harry Young on a stage, a guitar in his hand, that radiant smile blasting out to the whole world as he sang for them. He wore a pair of jeans, not gym shorts, and a T-shirt with a volcano on it that had a conversation bubble above its head that said, “I lava you.”

The cowboy boots, a big shiny belt buckle, and that black cowboy hat completed Harry Young into Cowboy Perfection, not Cowboy Cutie. She quickly scanned the article about him, and he sure seemed like a superstar in his own right.

Belle looked over to the house again, but Harry wasn’t there. She didn’t have his number, and she would never humiliate herself by walking back to the door and telling him she’d changed her mind about going to dinner with him.

“It’s just dinner,” she said with a scoff. She’d done the casual dating scene, and it had sickened her. No, she was ready for serious, and Harry didn’t even live here. Even if he did, an hour drive and fifty miles separated Coral Canyon and Jackson Hole, and Belle could barely keep up with her job, watering her plants, and feeding her cats.

She most certainly didn’t have time for Harry Young.

Before she could shelve him the way she had other handsome cowboys that didn’t fit into her life, her phone chimed. She pulled it out and swiped to get to the text.

This is Harry Young. My near future is a tiny bit up in the air at the moment, but I’d still love to take you to dinner. It wouldn’t be JUST dinner. It would be us getting to know each other to find out if we have something.

“Something?” she wondered.

Another text came in as her eyebrows puckered .

Because I felt something between us, and I want to explore it. If you didn’t, that’s fine, and I will pray with everything I have that I don’t see Steven so I don’t have to call you and see you again, because wow, how embarrassing, right?

He’d included a smiley face, and honestly, Belle wasn’t even sure how he’d typed all of that so fast. The man did have nimble fingers to be a country music star and—what had that article said?

“He’s one of the best and rarest talents on the guitar,” she said aloud, the words right there in her memory, as if her cop-brain knew she’d need them later and had catalogued them.

Let me know. I’m in town for at least another month.

Belle wanted to say yes, but she wasn’t sure she should. What she did know was she had a debriefing meeting in seventy minutes, and she needed to make the drive back to headquarters.

She started her SUV but stalled in putting the vehicle into gear when she saw the front door of that gray house open and Harry himself jog down the front steps to the truck parked in the driveway. He launched himself behind the wheel, backed out of the driveway, and drove off.

Belle wanted to follow him. She wanted to text him back and say she’d go to dinner with him. She wanted to keep her job, which meant she had to get to her meeting.

And yet, she sat there on the side of the road, trying to decide what to do. Text Harry, follow Harry, or get on back to work ?

Realistically, she couldn’t sit there and she couldn’t follow Harry. So, she started the drive back to Jackson and headquarters, a new dilemma in her mind now.

Go out with Harry? Or ignore his texts completely?