Christine tripped on a tree root. She immediately regained her balance and turned around. “Are you sure? This town doesn’t have a lot to offer.”
“It has you.” He felt like all his travels, all his wandering, had brought him to Christine.
She ducked her head as if his simple statement flustered her. “What are you going to do here?”
He hadn’t thought that far ahead. He remembered something he had heard about Cedar Valley. “According to Darrell, this is the Pacific Northwest’s premier weekend destination.”
Christine made a face. “He may have exaggerated.”
“I can make it better.” He didn’t know if his travel experience would help or if he was setting himself up for a big failure, but he was ready for the challenge. The idea, the future, excited him. But first he had to address one of his biggest failures. “I do have to leave soon to help my friend Aaron.”
“The one with the emerald?” she asked, a smirk on her face.
“It’s true! He had an emerald. He found it when we...” Travis winced. “You know, I’d better not tell you that story. It doesn’t make me look very good.”
She pressed her lips together to refrain from smiling. “There’s a story that makes you look worse than the one where you lost the emerald?”
“Yes,” he said. “There are a lot of unflattering stories about me. I have had so many injuries and bad luck when I was going after something. But I hope to make up for it when I find the emerald. I lost Aaron’s lucky charm and I have to help him.”
“I understand,” she said as she continued making her way through the forest. “You need to fix it or you’ll never forgive yourself.”
“But there is one thing I want to take care of in Cedar Valley before I leave.”
Christine paused in midstep. “What’s that?”
“I’m going to clear your name,” he said as a protective instinct welled up inside him. “I’m going to find out what happened to Faye Lamb’s bracelet.”
Christine turned. “How are you going to do that?”
He had no idea, but he had to do something. “Just wait and see.”
She smiled. “You don’t have a plan, do you?”
“Christine, you should know by now that I never have a plan.”
15
“TRAVIS, WE’VE GONE through this a hundred times,” Christine complained the next morning as they sat on the porch swing drinking coffee. She was swaddled in her pristine white bathrobe while Travis only wore jeans. She didn’t want to discuss the theft anymore but she knew Travis would not be distracted. “None of our theories make sense. We have no idea who took the bracelet.”
“What does your gut instinct tell you?” he asked as he looked out onto the street.
That we won’t get to the bottom of this case and should leave it to the experts. “I don’t think it was any of my coworkers. It may be that I’m too close to them, but I don’t think they had the opportunity. Who do you think did it?”
“I agree,” he said. “It had to be Faye or Bonnie.”
“They have no motive,” she felt compelled to point out again.
Travis took a sip of his coffee. Christine knew he was deep in thought. The lines in his forehead deepened and he clenched his jaw.
“What can you tell me about the Lamb family?” he finally asked.
“Not much. They have been comfortably wealthy since I can remember.” Her family didn’t really socialize with the Lambs. “Todd and Bonnie are at least twenty years older than me, so I don’t really know them.”
He tilted his head as he continued to watch the empty street. “What’s the gossip about them?”
Christine took a sip of coffee and spluttered. “You want to gossip?”
“Gossip has its place, especially in small-town living,” he admitted with great reluctance. “Let’s say Laurie sees Harold doing something dishonest. She would want to warn others. Some of the talk is to discuss how a person did something wrong, but Laurie also wants to save people from getting caught in a dishonest deal with Harold.”
“Not all gossip is correct. Remember the rumor that I won you in strip poker?”
Travis glanced at her and smiled. “That’s not on your bucket list?”
She made a face. “That’s not even on my sexy bucket list.”
“Maybe not now, but I’m sure with very little convincing...”
Christine gave him a warning look. “Back to the Lamb family.”