LITMIR.BIZ

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      “YOU WANT ME to marry the cowboy?” Laura asked. “You expect me,” she punctuated the word with a tone of disbelief, “to marry him?”

      Even as she spoke in her low, cultured voice and brushed a strand of blond hair off her face, securing it back into the neat French braid she favored, Clint Marshall knew their boss had already made up his mind. They had been called into his office to receive their marching orders—not to debate whether or not they wanted the assignment.

      Still, he found it downright amusing to watch patrician Laura Carter try to wiggle her skinny behind out of the assignment. Her cold-blue eyes, a color that reminded Clint of the silver blue of a Texas sky just before a storm, swept over him, quickly dismissed him and returned to Captain Clark.

      Clint slouched farther down on the hard wooden chair and crossed one well-worn cowboy boot over the other. He felt Laura’s gaze fall on the scuffed leather. He swung the foot back and forth as if he were relaxing on a rocking chair on his mother’s porch and wished he had a cowboy hat he could tilt forward and drive little Miss Prim and Proper plum crazy. Not that she showed it, but he knew his good old boy routine had gotten to her as she sat even straighter in her chair. Not for the first time he wondered what a Boston blue blood was doing on the Chicago police force.

      Or why in the world their captain would be assigning the two of them to work together.

      Undoubtedly the skinny, pale man standing in the corner of the office had something to do with this. From the stranger’s expensive, but ill-fitting, suit and polished shoes Clint knew he wasn’t a regular cop. He didn’t look like a guy who knew what the inside of a patrol car looked like much less smelled like. He reminded Clint of an accountant.

      In fact he reminded Clint of Jason Fairmount, a nervous tweedy fellow who arrived in Two Horse Junction twice a year to offer his accountancy services. Clint’s mother always had Jason over for dinner whenever he was in town, saying she admired him, and that she wished one of her sons could be as responsible and reliable as Jason.

      The skinny, pale man wiped his brow and waited for Captain Clark to speak. Clint kept his mouth shut. There was no point in asking why he and the ice princess had been chosen for this confidential assignment. Captain Clark would tell them when he

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