LITMIR.BIZ

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years, Cass had been his surrogate mother, his mentor and the best thing that had ever happened to him. Then, a little over two months ago, she’d been killed in a tornado that had ravaged the Oklahoma countryside.

      She’d been hit in the head by a tree branch. Her body had been found between her big ranch house and the bunkhouse where her cowboys lived. They all believed she’d been on her way to warn them about the approaching vicious weather when she’d been struck down.

      For the dozen cowboys Cass had nurtured from troubled teens to good, responsible ranch hands and upstanding, confident men, nothing had been the same after she was gone.

      “Why don’t we go shoot a game of pool?” Chad suggested and gestured toward the back room, where three pool tables were located. Two were in use, but one was vacant.

      “You’re not going to distract me from my mission of drunkenness,” Nick replied wryly. “Besides, shooting pool has never been my thing.”

      “It’s a stupid mission, Nick,” Chad replied. “If you want a mission, then you should be spending your time helping to find out who killed Wendy.”

      Nick frowned. “I’m not on the police force. I’m a person of interest in the case.”

      “There’s no way I think that Dillon really believes you had anything to do with Wendy’s murder,” Chad protested. “He hasn’t even brought you in for questioning yet.”

      “Yet being the key word in that sentence. He will. I’m sure I’m at the top of his list. The problem is Wendy and I spent a lot of time together, and as far as anyone can tell, I was probably the last person who saw her alive.”

      Nick took another drink of his beer and wished he’d never met Wendy Bailey. If he hadn’t have met her then he wouldn’t be hurting over her loss right now.

      “She was missing for almost a month,” Chad continued. “From what I’ve heard, they haven’t even been able to pinpoint the exact time of death. Everyone thought she’d just left town. Her motel room was empty and her car was gone.”

      “I thought she’d left town,” Nick agreed. “I was surprised and a little hurt that she hadn’t told me goodbye, but she was an impulsive free spirit who I figured just heard the call of a new adventure and went for it. When they found her she was wearing her café work T-shirt, so she was probably killed on Friday night after her shift and after she visited me at the ranch.”

      “Obviously somebody went to a lot of trouble to make us all believe she’d just moved on. Her car and personal items have never been found.” Chad frowned as Nick downed the last of his second beer and motioned to Janis for another.

      “Stop giving me dirty looks,” Nick said. “I’m only just now starting to get a little bit of a buzz.”

      “You’ve always been a lightweight drinker, and the way you’re slamming back the beers, I figure within a half an hour or so there will be at least three of us pulling you out from under the table and carrying you to my truck. And just so we’re clear, if you throw up in my truck, I’m beating the hell out of you tomorrow when you get sober.”

      Nick was surprised by the small burst of laughter that escaped his lips. “You and what army?” he replied. Chad was half a foot shorter than Nick’s six-two and weighed at least twenty-five pounds less.

      Janis arrived with the third beer and the two men once again fell silent. Nick brooded, drank and listened to the ancient jukebox where somebody had paid a quarter to hear an old sad George Jones song.

      Nick had no idea why Wendy Bailey had glommed on to him in the initial days of her arrival in Bitterroot. They’d met at the café, where she’d gotten a job as a waitress, and before Nick knew it, they were sharing a pizza or going to a movie together or just sitting under the stars and talking.

      Nick had never had siblings and found his role of surrogate big brother to her a surprisingly pleasing one. He’d known if she’d grown more comfortable with some of the younger crowd in town she would have drifted away from him, and that would have been okay, but she’d never gotten the chance.

      In the first week of Wendy’s disappearance, Daisy, the owner of the café, had printed up posters indicating that Wendy was missing. She was adamant that Wendy wouldn’t have just left town without telling Daisy she was going. Even after chief of police Dillon Bowie had checked out Wendy’s motel room and found it empty, Daisy had been hard-pressed to believe that the waitress had just up and left town with no notice to anyone.

      Daisy had been proved right. Wendy hadn’t left town. She’d been murdered. Like Cass’s death, Wendy’s murder was a tragedy on a hundred different levels, and for Nick it was a personal loss in a stream of losses that had begun in his dysfunctional youth.

      “So what did you tell Penny you were doing tonight?” he asked Chad in an effort to stop his mood from plunging to new depths, if that were even possible.

      “I told her the truth, that a friend needed me tonight and I’d talk to her sometime tomorrow.”

      “She’s a keeper. You going to marry her?”

      Chad grinned. “If she’ll have me. I’ve already bought an engagement ring, but I haven’t given it to her yet. I’ve got to figure out some amazing way to officially propose. Penny won’t settle for anything except amazing.”

      “Then, why is she with you?” Nick replied with a forced lightness.

      “Ha-ha,” Chad replied. His gaze went over Nick’s shoulder at the same time an unfamiliar female voice spoke Nick’s name.

      “Yes, I’m Nick Coleman,” Nick replied.

      He half rose from his chair and turned to see a petite woman with long chestnut-colored hair and blue-green eyes.

      Before he could say another word, her arm reared back and her small fist connected with his left eye, a perfect center smash that drove him back into his chair.

      “What the hel—” he sputtered.

      She swung at him again, her eyes swimming with tears as her arms windmilled in an attempt to connect with him.

      He jumped up out of his chair, vaguely aware that everyone in the crowded tavern had frozen, their attention on Nick and his pint-size attacker.

      Nick had never seen the woman before. He had no idea what her problem was, but there was no way he intended to just stand there and get pummeled in public. Especially by a woman. He already felt the pressure of his eye swelling from the sucker punch she’d managed to land.

      He grabbed her and trapped her arms at her sides, but she immediately started to use her feet as weapons. She kicked and thrust her knee upward in an attempt to make dangerous bodily contact with him.

      Nick would never hit a woman, but he definitely needed to take control of the situation. He heard the low rumble of male laughter coming from the crowd, laughter that assured Nick he’d be fodder for the gossip mill the next day.

      With Wendy’s murder, there was already enough gossip swirling around town with his name all over it. Nick drew a deep breath, dodged another knee to his groin, then finally managed to pick her up and throw her over his shoulder like a sack of squirming potatoes.

      She smelled like lilacs and vanilla, he thought, even as she kicked and screamed and beat her fists on his back. He carried her through the bar and out the front door. He put her down on the sidewalk and then stepped back a safe distance from her.

      “Lady, what in the hell is your problem?” he demanded.

      For a long moment, she looked stunned, and tears streamed down her face. “It was you,” she finally said. “It was you who murdered my sister.”

      It was only then that Nick realized the small firecracker standing before him, the pretty woman who had hit him hard enough to swell his eye almost shut, was Adrienne Bailey, Wendy’s older sister.

      * * *

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