Rosalie automatically dropped back a step to let him in. Automatically stopped breathing for a second or two as well. Gabriel had that effect on her. It was as if her body had become so preoccupied with him that it forgot how to make sure she drew air into her lungs.
“I’m not here to kiss you again,” Gabriel said straightaway as he came inside, moving in such a way so that they didn’t accidentally touch each other. “But I owe you an apology—”
Rosalie closed the door, and in the same motion, she came up on her tiptoes and kissed him so he didn’t have a chance to finish that. She wasn’t sure who was more surprised about that, Gabriel or her, but she thought she might have won that particular prize.
She kept the mouth-to-mouth contact short and sweet. Well, as sweet as it could be, considering her mouth was on Gabriel’s.
“There,” she said as if proving a point. Exactly what point, she didn’t have a clue, though. “Now I owe you an apology, too, so that makes us even.”
His eyes were hot, like the rest of him, and he aimed all that hotness at her. She expected him to start counting out all the reasons why a kiss like that shouldn’t happen again. And maybe that was what he had planned. But the argument seemed to vanish before he even got out a word of it.
“Two things,” he said, using his cop’s voice to go along with his cop’s expression. “Reggie Dalton paid me a visit this morning to tell me that you two would be getting back together soon.”
Crap on a cracker.
Once Rosalie had gathered enough breath to voice a response, she made a low snarling sound that she knew was very much like a growl. “No, we’re not getting back together. He cheated on me. Not that I’m telling you anything I’m positive you haven’t already heard, but I walked in on him when he had his hand up his dental assistant’s skirt. I don’t think he was trying to help her fix the elastic in her panties, either.”
Gabriel’s quick nod let her know that, yes, he had indeed already heard that. “Reggie seems to believe you’ll forgive him for that.”
“I won’t,” she assured him without a drop of hesitation and with a whole lot of conviction.
He stared at her, as if trying to decide if that was true. It was, but Gabriel might be doing this assessment so he could be sure he wasn’t horning in on someone else’s relationship. Obviously, that wasn’t something Reggie’s dental assistant had ever considered, but in hindsight, Rosalie believed the woman had done her a favor. Best for her to have seen Reggie’s true colors before they set a date and went through with theI dos. If that’d happened, Rosalie was certain she would have soon been needing the services of a divorce lawyer.
“So, it’s really over between the dentist and you,” Gabriel finally said. But he didn’t move in to kiss her or anything.
Instead, he took out his phone and lifted the screen to show her a photo. Not the one he’d taken of the silver box at the cemetery but of an elderly man with a mop of frizzy gray hair. Even though she’d never seen Hamish wear his hair that way, she instantly recognized his face.
“You found him.” She hadn’t expected that—not this soon, anyway. “You found your great-uncle.” Rosalie took the phone and had a closer look. It appeared to be a DMV photo.
“That was taken nine years ago in Dallas,” Gabriel explained. “The license has expired, and Hamish didn’t renew it.”
That sent her gaze locking on to his to see if he was about to tell her that Hamish was dead, this time for real, but Gabriel shook his head. “He’s alive, still in Dallas, where he collects his monthly Social Security payment and apparently lives quite comfortably after winning the lottery shortly after he left Last Ride. He goes by his middle name, Clyde, these days.”
“Alive,” Rosalie repeated, and apparently better off financially than he had been when he’d lived here. “Carmen knows?” she asked.
“Yeah. I stopped by and told her before coming over here. She handled the news—” he paused “—okay.”
Okaydidn’t sound okay enough to Rosalie, and she made a mental note to call the woman and arrange a visit so she could check on her. After all, none of this would have happened had she not gone out to the cemetery to get a photo of the tombstone. Or at least it probably wouldn’t have happened so soon, anyway. Hamish’s tombstone was at the far back of the cemetery, and it might have been weeks or even months before someone noticed it.
“There’s no record of Hamish having a phone, but he could be using prepaid ones,” Gabriel went on. “With no way to call him, I contacted an old friend of mine in Dallas PD, Lieutenant Miguel Rodriguez, and he sent one of his uniforms out this morning to do a face-to-face check on Hamish. When Hamish didn’t respond to the knock on his door, the officer left a message with his neighbor.”
So, Hamish likely knew by now that his secret was out, and Rosalie wondered how he would react to that. And how Carmen would handle it if Hamish decided to contact her. She doubted the woman would just beokaywith it.
Rosalie felt the surge of emotion. Not the heated attraction for Gabriel this time, but anger, and she heard herself make that snarling sound. Hamish had done a low-down dirty thing by abandoning his wife, faking his death and leaving her that ha-ha inscription in his fake grave. If he’d wanted to end his marriage, he shouldn’t have done it the cowardly way and made a joke out of it.
“The SOB needs to pay for what he’s done,” she grumbled. “Can you arrest him for something, for anything?”
Gabriel shook his head again, but she saw the emotion flare in his eyes, too. “As far as I can tell, he hasn’t broken any laws,but trust me, I’m looking into what he’s been doing for the past fifteen years. I’m looking hard.”
She didn’t doubt that and was about to ask him if this latest news on Hamish had gotten around town, but her phone dinged with a text from Alma Parkman, the president of the Last Ride Society.
In light of what’s happened with Hamish lying through his teeth and all, please come in and draw another name to research, Alma had messaged.
Apparently, Rosalie wasn’t the only one angry about what the man had done. “If he comes back to Last Ride, Hamish won’t be getting a visit from the Welcome Wagon,” Rosalie remarked.
When Gabriel didn’t respond to that and when he just continued to stand there and look at her, Rosalie studied his face. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I was thinking about how much this is probably bothering Carmen, but you’re having to deal with it, too.”
Gabriel seemed to dismiss that. “What made you decide to break up with me in a letter instead of telling me in person?”