LITMIR.BIZ

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he only took a small step back, Victoria felt his distancing as if he’d thrown up a wall between them.

      He nodded his head briefly at the quartet seated at the table.

      “Goodnight, ladies—Doug.” He glanced briefly at Victoria, his gaze polite and distant. “Thanks for the dance, Victoria.”

      Victoria was speechless. She watched him shoulder his way through the crowd until he disappeared through the arched doorway before turning to Lonna.

      “What was that all about?” she demanded, stunned hurt and confusion quickly being replaced by growing anger at Quinn’s abrupt departure.

      The four occupants of the booth exchanged uncomfortable glances and shifted uneasily against the red vinyl seat. An unspoken message passed from Nikki to SueAnne.

      “C’mon, Doug,” SueAnne caught the cowboy’s hand and tugged him after her out of the booth. “Dance with me—you don’t want to hear this girl-talk.”

      “Thanks, SueAnne,” Nikki said gratefully. “Sit down, Victoria.”

      Victoria glanced over her shoulder at the doorway where Quinn had disappeared before she allowed Lonna to tug her down onto the bench seat.

      “So—” Victoria lifted a questioning eyebrow at Lonna. Her cousin’s gaze met hers for a brief moment before she looked at Nikki. Victoria’s glance followed Lonna’s and found the redhead staring at her guiltily, her deep brown eyes worried and faintly embarrassed beneath the fine arch of her dark brows.

      “I’m sorry, Victoria,” Nikki said earnestly. “Me and my big mouth—I shouldn’t have told him you’re an attorney. I was so surprised to see him with you that I didn’t think…” Nikki’s shoulders lifted in a helpless shrug, and she turned to Lonna with a silent plea for help.

      “Why would he care if I’m an attorney?” Victoria felt as if she’d started reading a mystery in the middle of the book.

      “You’re female and a lawyer,” Lonna interjected. “And that means that you, Victoria Denning, are a leading candidate for Quinn’s least favorite person.”

      “He doesn’t like women lawyers? Why?”

      “Because his stepmother hired a hotshot woman attorney from Helena to contest the will when his father died,” Nikki said. “Local gossip claims that when Charlie Bowdrie passed away two years ago, he left the bulk of his estate to Quinn and Cully. His sons got most of the financial assets, including the machinery and livestock. Eileen got the house in town and a comfortable trust fund, but she was furious that the boys received more. So she took them to court. The case finally went to trial three months ago and the judge made a decision last week. I’m not sure what happened, exactly, but both Quinn and Cully hate Eileen Bowdrie’s attorney. Gossip says she behaved like a real barracuda, raking up the illegitimacy of the boys, the scrapes they got into when they were kids…all sorts of things that didn’t seem to have a lot of direct connection to the case. Cully said that Quinn was more furious with the attorney than with his stepmother. And of course,” she added, “Quinn doesn’t have a lot to do with women in general.”

      “He doesn’t?” Victoria was dumbfounded. The man that made her bones melt when he smiled didn’t like women? And when he’d kissed her… She shivered and pulled her wayward concentration back to Lonna and Nikki. “A bad experience like that might have soured him on women attorneys, but that doesn’t explain why he doesn’t like women in general.”

      Lonna sighed. “Unfortunately, his stepmother is probably the reason for that, too.” She paused a moment before continuing. “I don’t like to repeat gossip, Victoria, but Eileen Bowdrie is a mean, spiteful woman. She and Charlie Bowdrie never had children—I don’t know if they simply couldn’t, or she wouldn’t, but Charlie wanted sons. He had a liaison with a young woman in the next county that scandalized Colson and fathered two sons. No one knows what happened, but one day Charlie brought Quinn and Cully home with him and told Eileen that he was going to raise them on the ranch, whether she liked it or not. She’s resented Quinn and Cully ever since, and rumor says she made their lives hell when they were growing up.”

      “How old were the boys when they went to live with their father?”

      “I think Quinn was about eight, which would make Cully four or five.”

      Appalled, Victoria shook her head. “That’s terrible—they were so young. What happened to their mother?”

      “No one knows. My mother told me that she simply disappeared. No one’s seen her in all the years since.” Lonna spread her hands in a gesture of helplessness. “Quinn keeps to himself and rarely dates. I don’t know that it’s accurate to say that he doesn’t like women. I think it’s more that he’s very cautious and keeps a lot of distance between him and any interested women. As a matter of fact, I haven’t heard of him taking a woman out since he was in high school.” She lifted an eyebrow. “Although it’s no secret that he’s visited several willing women in neighboring counties over the years, I’ve never heard of him actually dating anyone.” She glanced at Nikki for confirmation. “Have you?”

      “No, never. He’s always polite to me,” she added. “But he’s quiet. I certainly don’t know him as well as I know Cully—and I can’t claim to be really close to Cully.” She smiled wryly. “Much as I wish I were. The truth is, there’s something a little dangerous about the Bowdrie boys.”

      A small shiver of awareness raced up Victoria’s spine.

      “Dangerous?” she asked carefully. “What do you mean, exactly?”

      “It’s hard to explain.” Nikki paused, a small frown creasing her brow. “Not only is there just something you feel when you’re around them, but there’s always some story circulating about them.”

      “She’s right,” Lonna agreed. “Though I’m skeptical about most of the stories. The last one I heard was a year or so ago when rumors said Quinn got a local girl pregnant and then paid her to leave town.”

      Victoria recoiled inwardly. “Was it true?”

      “I doubt it.”

      “I don’t believe a word of it.” Nikki firmly echoed Lonna. “Cully and Quinn have always refused to deny rumors. They hate gossip. But if either of them knew that they’d fathered a child, they would have insisted on marrying the woman and raising the baby.”

      “The only part of the story that’s confirmed is that Angie Patterson left town. The rest is pure speculation,” Lonna added. “Personally, I think Quinn is a far better man than either he or his stepmother think he is. He and Cully grew up knowing they were illegitimate and so did everyone else in Colson. That set them apart. It’s tough to be different in a town as small as Colson. Of course,” she added with a twinkle, “it didn’t help their reputations that they were both pretty wild when they were teenagers.”

      “That’s true,” Nikki agreed. “My favorite story is the one about Cully climbing the water tower and spraypainting it with red, white and blue stripes on the Fourth of July.”

      Victoria had a quick mental image of the town’s medium-size water tower. “The whole thing?”

      “Almost. The mayor caught him before he finished. But the mayor was afraid of heights and wouldn’t climb the ladder, so Cully ignored him and just kept painting until the sheriff arrived and went up to get him. I think he was about twelve at the time, and his dad had to bail him out of jail.”

      Lonna laughed. “I’ll never forget the time they drove a herd of cattle through the middle of town. The merchants were furious, but Quinn told them his dad told him to move old man Johnson’s cattle from his pasture outside town to the rodeo grounds on the other side of Colson. The shortest route was down Main Street. Since it was the merchants who’d asked Johnson to move the cattle, they couldn’t convince the sheriff to charge Quinn and Cully with anything.

      “And then there was the time Quinn broke his

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