LITMIR.BIZ

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more than five minutes before the verbal dueling began.

      That wasn’t the kind of relationship Lucas wanted. He knew some might consider him too picky, but he still hadn’t met that special someone to whom he wanted to make a lifetime commitment. It wasn’t that he had anything against commitment, or marriage, for that matter. On the contrary. If anything, his estimation of the institution was probably unrealistically high. But that was to be expected, he supposed, having been raised by parents who shared the kind of relationship about which love songs were written.

      “Well?” Tucker said. “Aren’t you going to interrogate me?”

      Lucas had already heard Mo’s version, and he didn’t expect that Tucker had anything new to add. Still, it never hurt to be thorough. “All right. Tell me about yesterday afternoon, Tucker.”

      “Mo’s new pup had run off, and she needed an extra pair of eyes to look for him. So, I volunteered for the job on account of I’m pretty good at finding things. We were driving up on Summit Trail when…”

      He droned on. If there was one thing Tucker liked more than Mo’s cooking, it was telling a story. No one could spin a yarn like Tucker, with just the right twists and turns. The problem was figuring out where the truth stopped and Tucker’s embellishments started.

      Half-heartedly, Lucas listened to the complicated tale of how Mo and Tucker found the body of Hugh Miller and rescued Lexie.

      “We were almost back to the ranch,” Tucker said, “when I realized I’d seen her before.”

      “Who?” If anyone else had been talking, Lucas would have been all over them with questions, but Tucker’s imagination was nearly as big as his appetite. “Are you saying that you’ve met Lexie before?”

      “Well, it isn’t that I’ve met her—not in person, you understand. But she looks so darned familiar. I’d swear I’ve seen that gal’s face before. Didn’t I say so, Mo? Right after we found her?”

      “You know I don’t listen to half of what you babble on about,” Mo replied.

      “I said ‘That young lady is pretty enough to be a movie star.”’ He tapped the front page of The Exposé where banner headlines screamed about some starlet’s latest hairstyle and aliens landing in Central Park. “You all make fun of me for keeping up with the world news, but I’m beginning to think that’s where I’ve seen her, right here in these pages. If I could only remember when…” He began to flip back to the front page.

      Lucas shook his head. He wasn’t in the mood for this kind of nonsense when there was a murderer at large. “You want me to believe that a woman who’s staying in one of Mo’s rental cabins is some sort of celebrity?”

      “I’d bet good money on it, Lucas,” he said, coming to his feet. “I know I’ve seen a picture of that little gal somewhere.”

      “Sure,” Cal put in. “And maybe she brought a couple of those Central Park aliens with her to Colorado.”

      Mo chuckled appreciatively. “Or maybe she’s one of those miraculous women who’s a hundred and fifty years old but doesn’t look a day over twenty-five.”

      “Go ahead and laugh,” Tucker said as he grabbed another cinnamon roll and headed for the kitchen door. “But you know what they say, fact is stranger than fiction, my friends. Just take ol’ Tucker’s word on that.”

      Lucas gave little credence to Tucker’s declaration, but he had to admit that the idea that a rich and famous woman choosing Destiny Canyon as a vacation spot made more than a little sense. True, there were few amenities, certainly not the hot and cold running servants that a celebrity might require, but the remote mountain location would afford privacy.

      If Lexie Dale was famous—or even infamous—maybe that would explain why she’d gone so far out of her way to find this place. And it might also explain the motive behind the abduction attempt. So, who was she? And how had she learned about Destiny Canyon Ranch in the first place?

      The need to question her nagged at him even harder. He took a last swig of coffee. “Well, I’d better go talk to our guest and find out for myself if there’s any truth to what Tucker said.”

      “You’re not going to wake that girl, are you?” Mo asked, her disapproval ringing in every word.

      “Only if she’s still asleep,” he said.

      Before Mo could stop him, Lucas strode out the kitchen door and across the pine-paneled great room, toward the wide, hardwood staircase.

      At the second-floor landing, he made a right and walked past the door to his father’s room to the guest room at the end of the hallway. He raised his hand to knock, when the door behind him opened slowly.

      “Mo? Honey, is that you?”

      Lucas turned around and walked back to where his father stood in the doorway. “Morning, Pop. How’re you feeling today?”

      “Not too bad for the shape I’m in.”

      The specialists had said Will wouldn’t make it through another Colorado winter, but Doc Rogers said he wouldn’t put it past Will Garrett to live a hundred years just to spite them. Lucas was less optimistic. Ever since his mother died five years ago, his father had been going downhill. Without the love of his life beside him, Will just didn’t seem to have the heart to go on.

      “Lots of excitement around here yesterday,” Will said. “I suppose you’ve got your hands full with this homicide investigation.”

      “Seems like,” Lucas confirmed. “But I don’t want you worrying about it, Pop. Everything’s going to be all right. I’m going to catch this guy before anyone else gets hurt.”

      “I’m not worried,” Will said. “I know you’re going to do whatever it takes to bring him in. This county is lucky to have you on the case, son. I just hope that sweet little blonde is going to be all right.” He cocked his head in the direction of the guest room down the hall.

      “Then, you’ve met Miss Dale?”

      “Lexie?” Will smiled and for an instant, his eyes seemed less tired. “Oh yes. Last night, around midnight, I was coming back from the bathroom and stopped to rest a spell on the window seat. She asked if there was anything she could do to help me and I invited her to sit and chat a while.”

      The small effort of standing seemed to weaken him. Though Lucas wanted to know what Lexie had said, his concern for his father took precedence. “Maybe you should lie back down, Pop.”

      “No, son. I want to go downstairs. I’ve been aching all morning to get outside and sit on the porch for a spell. Your mother and I used to do that, you know. It was one of our favorite pastimes. After I retired, Rose and I had the time to sit and enjoy the view. Just looking out at the mountains and talking about all the things we’d done with you kids and the way we’d built this place…well, it was a sweet time, son. It truly was.”

      Ten years ago, when Will had finally agreed to retire, Lucas had been fully immersed in his career in lawenforcement. Cal had not only had Lucas’s blessing, but a measure of gratitude, when he’d agreed to take over the reins of the Garrett ranch. Cal’s father, Duncan Garrett, had been Will and Rose’s first born son, the older brother Lucas had never known. Duncan’s life had already been lost in the jungles of Vietnam almost five years before Rose and Will Garrett’s late-in-life son, Lucas, was conceived.

      After his father’s death and his mother’s subsequent abandonment, Cal and his younger sister, Jolie, were raised as Lucas’s siblings on the ranch. With three active young children to raise, Rose Garrett depended heavily on her older daughter, Maureen. Lucas sometimes marveled at the degree of dedication Mo had shown the family. But if the sister who was some twenty years his senior ever resented the years she’d spent tending her younger brother and two young cousins, she’d never shown it. In fact, if anything, it seemed the difference in their ages had given them a special closeness. Lucas adored his mother, but in Maureen

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