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The SUV screeches to a halt, and the door pops open. A familiar brown head emerges.
Landon and I take a look at each other before sprinting for the door.
We meet Nora on the front porch. Her face is twisted in anger, and when she sees Landon, her blue eyes darken.
“You!” she seethes, her teeth bared in a snarl. “You tried to kill me!”
“Excuse me?” Landon says, all hints of humor gone from his voice.
“You came up on me when I was fixing the fence, you messed with my auger, and then it freaking exploded!” she yells. Now that I’m closer to her, I can see that she’s got some ashy-looking burn marks on her clothes. She smells like smoke, too.
“What happened?” I rumble, genuinely concerned.
Nora spins. “Exactly what I said. Your boy here—” She jabs a thumb at Landon, “—tried to kill me.”
“I would literally never do that, Nora,” he says.
She freezes, turning back to both of us. “How do you know my name?” she asks in a dark voice.
I sigh. “Why don’t you come in?”
“Not before you tell me how you know my name. Were you stalking me?”
“Because we’d have to be stupid not to,” I respond. “You can’t walk ten feet in town without hearing about Nora Foster. We’ve been told dozens of stories about you, from everyone who has ever met you. When you said the other day that you were the Foster kid, we put two and two together. No one was stalking you, and no one messed with your shit.”
Nora’s eyes narrow. “I don’t trust you.”
“Good.” She blinks in surprise, and I can tell that I’ve taken some of the wind out of her sails. I continue. “You shouldn’t trust us. I wouldn’t, if I were you. But, since you’re here, and since it sounds like it was pretty unsettling, why don’t you sit down?”
Nora looks like she would rather swallow glass than sit with us.
“I know you were close with the old neighbors. Let’s honor that. Come in. Sit a spell. Let’s be neighborly,” I say in my nicest possible voice.
She wavers. But I know that the appeal to being neighborly is going to hit a nerve.
“Fine,” she says, muttering. “I’ll sit.” She storms past us into the kitchen. Landon looks at me, giving me a shrug, before he follows.
In the kitchen, I try not to look at her. “Can I get you something to drink? Beer? Water?”
“No.”
Fuck, it’s like trying to talk to a stone wall. “Okay then. Just want to remind you that my name is Shane, his is Landon. In case you forgot.” I wink.
She glares at me, no response.
I plop down in one of the chairs and look at her. “So, tell us about yourself.”
“No, thanks.”
Landon slides in, too. “I wouldn’t have tried to hurt you, Hellcat.”
“Why do you call me that?”
She took the bait. Finally.
Landon smiles. “Because when we saw you out in the field, that’s what you reminded me of. A cat that we stumbled across. One that came straight from hell.”
“Is that meant to be a compliment?” She’s glaring at him, but her tone is lighter.
