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Chapter Twenty-One
Her crew watched them as they passed behind the couch, heading for the foyer, and she turned to address the room.
“Sorry to interrupt a good time,” Rose began, straightening to look more in command of herself. “Can you turn the volume down for a minute?”
Somewhere in the room, someone punched the Pause button so that The Last Crusade froze.
“I’ve had a family emergency come up and need to jet down to my dad’s ranch to pick up my son.” She looked around, probably for Howard, not seeing him, and continued. “I’ll talk to Howie about taking over temporarily.”
Muttering ensued. “What happened?” Kelsey piped up, and judging by the hesitancy on Rose’s face, she was searching for an excuse. She hadn’t told anyone else about her mother, it seemed.
“My mom’s in the hospital after a fall.”
Some muttered exclamations and condolences followed. It wasn’t a lie, Toby realized, but it omitted all of the truth, all the same.
“Anyhoo, I gotta run. My dad can’t watch Sage while he’s at the hospital, and my family is pretty shaken up. I’ll text Howie and get everything all lined up for tomorrow, but I can’t take Sage onto the worksite, so you’ll have to follow Howie’s marching orders in the morning.”
No way. Toby couldn’t allow that douche to get any credit for Rose’s project.
“Actually, Rose, why don’t you let the boy stay here?” Toby said, surprising himself with the offer. Surprising the room, too, by the look of widened eyes. What in the hell? He had no idea from Rose’s descriptions just how much of a challenge her son might be. But the offer was out there, and he’d be damned if he rescinded it.
She stared at him and fell silent. He’d put her on the spot, but like hell that asshole Howie would get to take over when that’s all he’d wanted from the beginning.
“He can chill with me while you get back to work,” he added.
Coming to her senses, she shook her head. “I can’t ask that of you.”
“We going through this again, girl? I ain’t waiting for you to ask. The offer’s there. He can ride in the truck with me while I mend fences with my guys. If he’s still here next week, he can come on the hike with the summer camp and hang with those other kiddos.”
“I don’t want to put you out.”
He leveled a look at her, as if the subject were already decided, and crossed his arms. She glanced at the bulge of his muscles over his hands, and he smiled, puffing his chest up a little more.
“I’ll get a guest room ready so your boy don’t have to sleep in the camper. What’s he like to eat? I’ll make a grocery run to stock up on grub.”
She glanced at her students’ curious faces, and his eyes trailed over the path of her gaze. They were silent, rapt by the offer.
Hunter mouthed something at her that looked suspiciously like his Van Halen quote from earlier, that he hadn’t thought Toby had heard.
“Come on, Doctor R,” someone said. “It’s not field school without your movie jokes. Howie can’t do that. He’d just stare at his phone the whole time.”
Some chuckling at Howard’s expense followed.
“You don’t have to do this,” she said, shaking her head and adjusting her pack on her shoulder. “This is my problem.”
“It ain’t your problem. It’s a problem, and we find a solution.” His fake hardness softened, and a smile misted his lips. “I want to. You got enough to worry about. Don’t need to hand over your job to some undeserving asshole, too—”
“How about we talk outside?” She said, grabbing his sleeve and pivoting him toward the front door like a teacher directing a naughty child. They pushed through it, and she shut it with a hard click. “You can’t just go insulting my crewmembers, Toby, especially in front of the others…no matter how much I might dislike them.”
That last bit gave him pause. Her words had darkened in a way they hadn’t done before. He thought for a minute. Howard and Rose had been alone in the kitchen together that evening, he’d seen them…right before he’d found Rose ashen-faced and staring too hard at the trays of fajita meat. Was Howie the source of her earlier distress?
“That piece of shit,” he muttered, his eyes reconnecting with hers. “What’d he do to you tonight? It was him, right? The problem with a crewmate you wouldn’t tell me about?”
She shook her head again, clamming up, but he wasn’t having it this time. “Tell me.”
She laughed wryly. “I’m kind of worried that if I do, you’ll drag him out of his trailer and confront him.”
Anger flared in his gut, and he felt his blood kick for a fight, tingling his skin and hardening his jaw. “Sounds like whatever he did is deserving of a good old-fashioned confrontation the way you premise it.” He folded his arms again to keep from wrenching her too roughly into his embrace. “Either you tell me or I go drag him out of his camper anyway and demand answers.”
