LITMIR.BIZ

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mother. “But then, you’re not exactly Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly.”

      “Oh, damn, and I thought I was.” Matt walked to the fireplace and warmed the back of his legs against the flames. “I’m crushed.”

      “That’ll be the day.” Nicole shook her head, her amber eyes bright with mischief.

      Harold was lying in his favorite spot on the rug near the fire. He lifted up his head and yawned, stretching his legs before he perked up one ear and snorted, looked as if he might climb to his feet, but didn’t bother and let his snout rest upon his paws again.

      “Well? What did you find out?” Thorne, on crutches, hitched his way into the room and plopped into the worn leather recliner where he propped up his injured leg. He was wearing baggy khaki pants that covered up the cast running from foot to thigh, and his expression said more clearly than words, “I’m tired of being laid up.”

      “Nothing. The damned sheriff’s department doesn’t know diddly-squat.”

      “You talked to Espinoza?” Thorne asked.

      Boots pounded from the back of the house, heralding the arrival of their youngest brother.

      “Wait a minute!” Juanita’s voice echoed through the hallways. “You take off those boots! I just mopped the floor. Dios! Does anyone ever listen to me? No!”

      “Hey!” Slade appeared in the archway separating the living room from the foyer and staircase. He didn’t bother to answer Juanita, nor did he shed his coat. “Where the hell have you been?” Black eyebrows were slammed together over intense, laser-blue eyes as he stared at Matt. “We’ve got stock to feed, and Thorne’s not a helluva lot of help these days.”

      “Cool it.” Thorne’s gaze moved from his youngest brother to Nicole’s daughters who, if they’d heard the swearing, were too busy banging on the piano keys to notice. “Matt was down at the sheriff’s office.”

      “They found anything?” Slade asked, his belligerence fading as he walked to the liquor cabinet set into the bookcase and unearthed an old bottle of Scotch. “How ’bout a drink?”

      “No, they don’t know anything else and yeah, I could use a shot.” Matt couldn’t hide his irritation that he hadn’t gotten more definitive answers.

      “None for me.” Thorne shook his head. “What did Espinoza have to say?”

      “He wasn’t around. I talked with the woman.”

      “Kelly Dillinger,” Nicole said as the twins, bored with making their own kind of music, climbed down from her lap and hurried out of the room. A tall woman with brown hair, a sharp wit and a medical degree, Nicole Stevenson was more than a match for his brother. She was smart, savvy, and as an emergency room physician, wasn’t used to taking orders from anyone—just the kind of woman to tame Thorne and settle him down.

      “She’s the one.” Matt accepted a short glass from Slade, took a swallow and felt the warm fire of liquor burn a welcome path down his throat. And he shoved any wayward thoughts of Detective Dillinger from his mind. It wasn’t easy. In fact it was damned near impossible. That fiery redhead had a way of catching a man’s attention. Big time.

      “A drink?” Slade asked Nicole as he poured another glass.

      “I’d better take a rain check. I’m scheduled at the hospital later,” she said, and as her words faded she froze and cocked her head. “Uh-oh, it sounds like someone’s waking up.”

      Matt heard the first cough of a baby’s cry, and he was amazed at how women seemed to have a sixth sense about that sort of thing.

      “I’ll get him,” Nicole said, then turned her head and looked over her shoulder at Thorne. One sleek eyebrow rose as she added, “but you uncles are going to be pulling duty later this evening.”

      “We can handle it,” Thorne said, as if a baby were no problem at all. But then Thorne thought he could handle the world. And he wasn’t too far off.

      “Yeah. Right.” Nicole wasn’t buying her fiancé’s confident routine. She climbed the stairs to the nursery, and her laughter drowned out the baby’s fussy noises.

      “So what did the detective say?” Thorne asked Matt as he pushed the recliner into a more upright position.

      “Same old runaround. They’re looking into all possibilities. They have no evidence of foul play. There are no suspects. When Randi wakes up, then maybe they’ll be able to piece more of it together. All a load of bull if you ask me.” He downed his drink, irritated all over again. The heat from the fire felt good against the back of his legs, the liquor warmed him on the inside, but he was restless, anxious, needed to take action. He’d been staying at the Flying M for nearly a month, ever since he’d been called and told about his half sister’s accident. He’d driven like a madman, camped out and done what he could, but he was frustrated as hell because he felt like he was spinning his wheels. He had his own place to run, his ranch near the Idaho border. His neighbor, Mike Kavanaugh, was looking after the place while he was gone and had hired a couple of high school boys to help out, but Matt was beginning to feel the need to go back and check on the ranch himself.

      “Detective Dillinger is a looker, if ya ask me,” Slade offered up as he took a swallow from his drink.

      “No one did,” Matt grumbled.

      Slade’s chuckle was deep and wicked, and Matt caught the teasing glint in his brother’s blue eyes. “Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed.”

      Matt snorted. Lifted a shoulder.

      “Come on, admit it.” Slade wasn’t about to give up. “You’ve always had an eye for the ladies.”

      “It takes one to know one.”

      “Enough,” Thorne said just as Nicole returned toting the baby. Matt’s heart melted at the sight of little J.R., the name the brothers had come up with since Randi was still in a coma, didn’t even know she had a son. They figured they could call him Junior or John Randall, like the kid’s grandfather. As he had dozens of times, Matt wondered about the baby’s father. Who was the guy? Where the hell was he? Why hadn’t Randi ever mentioned him?

      Matt felt a slash of guilt. The truth of the matter was that he, and the rest of his brothers, had been so caught up in their own lives, they’d lost touch with their half sister, a firebrand of a girl who, for years, had been the bane of her older siblings’ existence, the daughter of the woman whom they blamed for wrecking their parents’ marriage.

      Now, looking down at the baby, his downy reddish-gold hair sticking up at odd angles, Matt felt a bit of pride and something more—something deeper, something that scared him, as it spoke to the need for roots, and settling down and marriage and children of his own.

      Nicole handed the bundle to the man she intended to marry. “Here, Uncle Thorne, you deal with J.R. while I see if Juanita needs some help with dinner.”

      “Me, too. I help,” Molly offered, dashing into the room only to take a spin around her mother and race off toward the kitchen.

      “How about you?” Nicole asked Mindy, who was tailing after her more exuberant sister.

      “Yeth. Me, too.”

      “Come on, then,” she said, casting one final glance at her soon-to-be husband and shepherding the girls down the hallway. Harold gave up a disgruntled “woof” and slapped his tail onto the braided rug. Matt swallowed a smile at the sight of his eldest brother—millionaire, CEO of McCafferty International, heretofore international jet-setter and playboy—reduced to juggling a one-month-old infant in his awkward hands while propping up his broken leg.

      “Hey, I could use some help here,” Thorne grumbled, though he grinned down at the baby.

      “Didn’t you say something about feeding the stock?” Matt asked Slade.

      “That I did.” The

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