“Good like always.”
She nodded but her mind had taken a detour. She imagined herself in the role of Lady Justice—a blindfolded woman holding out a scale—with chili balanced on one side and Trey on the other. Which was hotter? Misty’s mouth burned with one, but her entire body burned with the other. No doubt, the scale tipped to Trey as the hottest of the hot.
And that fact just made her job harder now that she knew he had a beef with Texas Timber. Of all the bad luck with a guy, this was it.
She felt trapped in the middle. As far as she knew, Texas Timber was an upstanding company. Otherwise, Cindi Lou would never have recommended them and she wouldn’t have accepted the job. But now? Could Texas Timber be using her not as a troubleshooter, but to get information that would ease their way into a buyout of Wildcat Ranch? Yet, that didn’t make a lot of sense. A Texas Timber Christmas tree farm had burned before it could be harvested for the season. She’d seen the terrible aftermath with her own eyes. And she’d actually been there for a grass fire and a house fire.
If she set aside her attraction to Trey so she could think clearly, where did this new information leave her?
One: Local fires, including the one on the tree farm, were a natural by-product of the heat wave and drought. But that didn’t explain the cut or loosened fence, if that was an actual fact.
Two: A local guy named Bert was behind the house fires to make money. But that didn’t explain the tree farm fire or grass fires or cut fence.
Three: An unknown person, or maybe persons, was setting the fires, or some of the fires, for unknown reasons, as well as messing with fences. But that had no basis in fact.
Four: Trey was igniting grass fires and cutting fence that he could catch without too much harm in order to up the price on Wildcat Ranch by scaring Texas Timber with possible loss of the timber they most wanted to buy. But that didn’t explain the Christmas tree farm fire or house fires.
Five: Texas Timber was involved in the sabotage of Wildcat Ranch and their own tree farms to scare Trey into selling before he lost everything valuable. But that didn’t explain the house fires or what would be the company’s unusual willingness to lose major revenue.
She felt like scratching her head. None of the facts added up. But at least she had some facts now. Nothing fit together to make a cohesive whole. She was missing something, or a whole lot of somethings, so she simply needed more information. Hedy would be a good source. And Misty’d get back on her computer when she returned to Twin Oaks. She hoped she could find a way to put Trey in the plus column of her investigation instead of the negative—or questionable—column.
All in all, she had five possibilities, but none of them were particularly viable. She’d start the process of elimination and follow leads. She wasn’t back to square one, but she wasn’t much closer to closing her troubleshooting job and getting home by Christmas.
With her mind still on her problems, she shoveled a big bite of chili into her mouth and swallowed hard. She felt the chili go the wrong way and blaze a trail downward. She grabbed her tea and chugged the last of it, but her throat still felt on fire. She coughed, patting her chest as if that’d help, while tears blurred her vision.
“Here, drink mine.”
“Thanks.” She felt Trey thrust his glass into her hand. She gratefully took several swallows and felt a little better. She realized they’d shared the tea almost lip to lip. She quickly thrust the glass back into his hands, wondering if she’d left lipstick on his glass.
“Looks like you left a little for me.” He turned the glass so the pink telltale image of her lips faced him, and then he put his own mouth to that spot and drank the last of his tea. He set down the glass and smiled at her. “Sweeter than before.”
She couldn’t keep from chuckling at his audacity. “You’re nothing but trouble.”
“I do my best.” He grinned, joining her laughter. “Come on.” As he rose to his feet, he took money out of his billfold and tossed it on the table.
“I’ll have to owe you for lunch. My purse is in my car.”
“Lunch is on me.” Trey gave her a meaningful look. “My Granny’d give me what-for if I let a lady pay for her own meal.”
“But, Trey—”
“Not another word or you’ll be impugning my cowboy manners.”
“Guess I wouldn’t want to do that.” She smiled at his feigned—or she thought it was feigned—affront. “I’ll do something nice for you in return.”
“Now there’s a happy thought.” He smiled, then cast a quick glance around the café. “We better get out of here. If Slade thinks you can’t handle his chili, you’ll never hear the last of it.”
“I swallowed wrong.”
“No matter.”
She stood up, still taking deep breaths to relieve the heat. Slade’s five-alarm chili would be with her for some time.