LITMIR.BIZ

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She wondered why it bothered her.

      Harley picked her up punctually at five on Friday night for their date. He wasn’t overdressed, but he had on slacks and a spotless sports shirt with a dark blue jacket. He wasn’t wearing his cowboy hat, either.

      “You look nice,” she said, smiling.

      His eyes went to her neat blue sweater with embroidery around the rounded neckline and the black slacks she was wearing with slingbacks. She draped a black coat with fur collar over one arm and picked up her purse.

      “Thanks,” he said. “You look pretty good yourself, Alice.”

      She joined him at the door. “Ooops. Just a minute. I forgot my cell phone. I was charging it.”

      She unplugged it and tucked it into her pocket. It rang immediately. She grimaced. “Just a minute, okay?” she asked Harley.

      She answered the phone. She listened. She grimaced. “Not tonight,” she groaned. “Listen, I have plans. I never do, but I really have plans tonight. Can’t Clancy cover for me, just this once? Please? Pretty please? I’ll do the same for her. I’ll even work Christmas Eve…okay? Thanks!” She beamed. “Thanks a million!”

      She hung up.

      “A case?” he asked curiously.

      “Yes, but I traded out with another investigator.” She shook her head as she joined him again at the door. “It’s been so slow lately that I forgot how hectic my life usually is.”

      “You have to work Christmas Eve?” he asked, surprised.

      “Well, I usually volunteer,” she confessed. “I don’t have much of a social life. Besides, I think parents should be with children on holidays. I don’t have any, but all my coworkers do.”

      He paused at the door of his pickup truck and looked down at her. “I like kids,” he said.

      “So do I,” she replied seriously, and without joking. “I’ve just never had the opportunity to become a parent.”

      “You don’t have to be married to have kids,” he pointed out.

      She gave him a harsh glare. “I am the product of generations of Baptist ministers,” she told him. “My father was the only one of five brothers who went into business instead. You try having a modern attitude with a mother who taught Sunday School and uncles who spent their lives counseling young women whose lives were destroyed by unexpected pregnancies.”

      “I guess it would be rough,” he said.

      She smiled. “You grew up with parents who were free thinkers, didn’t you?” she asked, curious.

      He grimaced. He put her into the truck and got in beside her before he answered. “My father is an agnostic. He doesn’t believe in anything except the power of the almighty dollar. My mother is just like him. They wanted me to associate with the right people and help them do it. I stayed with a friend’s parents for a while and all but got adopted by them—he was a mechanic and they had a small ranch. I helped in the mechanic’s shop. Then I went into the service, came back and tried to work things out with my real parents, but it wasn’t possible. I ran away from home, fresh out of the Army Rangers.”

      “You were overseas during the Bosnia conflict, weren’t you?” she asked.

      He snapped his seat belt a little violently. “I was a desk clerk,” he said with disgust. “I washed out of combat training. I couldn’t make the grade. I ended up back in the regular Army doing clerical jobs. I never even saw combat. Not in the Army,” he added.

      “Oh.”

      “I left home, came down here to become a cowboy barely knowing a cow from a bull. The friends that I lived with had a small ranch, but I mostly stayed in town, working at the shop. We went out to the ranch on weekends, and I wasn’t keen on livestock back then. Mr. Parks took me on anyway. He knew all along that I had no experience, but he put me to work with an old veteran cowhand named Cal Lucas who taught me everything I know about cattle.”

      She grinned. “It took guts to do that.”

      He laughed. “I guess so. I bluffed a lot, although I am a good mechanic. Then I got in with this Sunday merc crew and went down to Africa with them one week on a so-called training mission. All we did was talk to some guys in a village about their problems with foreign relief shipments. But before we could do anything, we ran afoul of government troops and got sent home.” He sighed. “I bragged about how much I’d learned, what a great merc I was.” He glanced at her as they drove toward San Antonio, but she wasn’t reacting critically. Much the reverse. He relaxed a little. “Then one of the drug lords came storming up to Mr. Parks’s house with his men and I got a dose of reality—an automatic in my face. Mr. Parks jerked two combat knives out of his sleeves and threw them at the two men who were holding me. Put them both down in a heartbeat.” He shook his head, still breathless at the memory. “I never saw anything like it, before or since. I thought he was just a rancher. Turns out he went with Micah Steele and Eb Scott on real merc missions overseas. He listened to me brag and watched me strut, and never said a word. I’d never have known, if the drug dealers hadn’t attacked. We got in a firefight with them later.”

      “We heard about that, even up in San Antonio,” she said.

      He nodded. “It got around. Mr. Parks and Eb Scott and Micah Steele got together to take out a drug distribution center near Mr. Parks’s property. I swallowed my pride and asked to go along. They let me.” He sighed. “I grew up in the space of an hour. I saw men shot and killed, I had my life saved by Mr. Parks again in the process. Afterward, I never bragged or strutted again. Mr. Parks said he was proud of me.” He flushed a little. “If my father had been like him, I guess I’d still be at home. He’s a real man, Mr. Parks. I’ve never known a better one.”

      “He likes you, too.”

      He laughed self-consciously. “He does. He’s offered me a few acres of land and some cattle, if I’d like to start my own herd. I’m thinking about it. I love ranching. I think I’m getting good at it.”

      “So we’d live on a cattle ranch.” She pursed her lips mischievously. “I guess I could learn to help with branding. I mean, we wouldn’t want our kids to think their mother was a sissy, would we?” she asked, laughing.

      Harley gave her a sideways glance and grinned. She really was fun to be with. He thought he might take her by the ranch one day while she was still in Jacobsville and introduce her to Mr. Parks. He was sure Mr. Parks would like her.

      Chapter Five

      The restaurant Harley took Alice to was a very nice one, with uniformed waiters and chandeliers.

      “Oh, Harley, this wasn’t necessary,” she said quickly, flushing. “A hamburger would have been fine!”

      He smiled. “We all got a Christmas bonus from Mr. Parks,” he explained. “I don’t drink or smoke or gamble, so I can afford a few luxuries from time to time.”

      “You don’t have any vices? Wow. Now I really think we should set the date.” She glanced at him under her lashes. “I don’t drink, smoke or gamble, either,” she added hopefully.

      He nodded. “We’ll be known as the most prudish couple in Jacobsville.”

      “Kilraven’s prudish, too,” she pointed out.

      “Yes, but he won’t be living in Jacobsville much longer. He’s been reassigned, we’re hearing. After all, he’s really a fed.”

      She studied the menu. “I’ll bet he could be a heart-breaker with a little practice.”

      “He’s breaking Winnie Sinclair’s heart, anyway, by leaving,” Harley said, repeating the latest gossip. “She’s really got a case on him. But he thinks she’s too young.”

      “He’s only in his thirties,” she pointed

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