Free Latimer's Law by Mel Sterling Page A

teach her a lesson.
    When she hadn’t moved, Latimer looked up at her. “Abigail.”
    Jolted from her thoughts, she blinked rapidly, scrambling to respond. “What about your dog?”
    “He won’t bother you unless I give the word. Or you make a sudden move. So don’t try something stupid like running away, and you won’t have any trouble.”
    Abby moved slowly toward the truck. Mort was all attention, ears pricked forward, dark eyes unblinking, head turning as she moved. She kept her eyes on him, even as she stretched to reach the bag of charcoal and drag it out onto the tailgate. The matches were a different issue, however, since the toolbox was all the way to the front of the truck bed. She would have to climb in to get them.
    She looked over her shoulder at Latimer, who stood at the picnic table with the reel in his hands, grinning. The small jerk of his head indicated she might as well get on with it, so she crept into the truck bed and opened the toolbox.
    “That wasn’t so bad, was it?” he asked, when she walked past him, still barefoot on the campsite sand.
    Abby said nothing, shaking the charcoal into the cement fire ring, slipping a few twigs and dried, crackling live-oak leaves into the pile to catch the flame of the match and hold it long enough to light the briquettes. When a couple of the black squares began to glow at their edges, she got to her feet and went stolidly back to the table. At least the sun was getting low enough to put the table in the shadow of the scrub oaks.
    Before an hour had passed, Latimer was cooking a steak on the iron mesh grill of the fire ring, using a fork and his pocketknife to turn and trim the meat. Mort received the tossed trimmings, catching them deftly and snuffling for more. Latimer gave Abby tomatoes to slice on a paper plate, and handed her a can opener and a can of green beans to heat on the grill. When she had finished slicing, he pointedly held his hand out for the return of the steak knife she’d been using.
    She wondered if he planned to let her join him in the meal. She shook her head at herself. Don’t be stupid. This isn’t a date, Abigail. It’s house arrest. Perhaps he wouldn’t make her feel guilty if she fetched her sack of groceries, and opened the chips and chili. Now that she was calmer after the storm of tears, she was hungry. She sat on the picnic bench with the bottle of water, desultorily shooing flies and the occasional wasp from the tomatoes, watching Latimer grilling meat. The label on the green beans slowly charred and flaked away, and steam rose from the can’s open mouth. He pushed the can to a cooler spot on the grill.
    With Latimer, minding the grill was almost an art form, a choreographed dance. He half squatted, his haunches firm in their blue jeans. She could see the strength in his legs when he rose or crab-walked to stay out of the smoke. In the dance of the grill, there was the bend, the prod of the meat with a fork, the quick flip, the test of the thick part of the steak with the tip of a hunting knife he’d pulled from somewhere on his person. Abby had never even known it was there. Knives, gun. Attack-trained dog. Fishing pole. Camping gear. If she didn’t know better, she’d have said Latimer was running away from something himself. The irony made her lips quirk.
    He caught the faint smile on her face as he looked up from his squatting position, his leanly muscled body folded in on itself, ready for action. “Smells good, doesn’t it?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Get three plates ready. I’m feeling generous.”
    Abby obeyed without comment, taking paper plates and disposable cutlery from a plastic bin in the back of the truck. She had a couple of bottles of water in her hand when Latimer spoke up.
    “Bring me a beer, too, please.”
    Abby swallowed down her suddenly queasy stomach. Did everything have to conjure up Marsh? She visualized her brother-in-law sullenly cracking a can of beer, but in the cooler were only green