LITMIR.BIZ

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had coffee with my grandmother?”

      He nodded. “She introduced me to Donna Bradley at The Daily Grind.”

      “You had coffee with my grandmother,” she said again.

      He studied her as he tipped his bottle to his lips, swallowed. “Why does that bother you?”

      “It doesn’t bother me,” she denied. “But it’s a little weird.”

      “Why?”

      “Because she’s my grandmother and you’re...”

      “The guy you had lots of naked sweaty sex with?”

      “Okay, yes,” she allowed.

      “I didn’t tell her about the naked sweaty sex,” he promised.

      “Thank you for that,” she said drily.

      He just grinned.

      And that smile did strange things to her pulse...or maybe it was the heat from standing so close to the stove.

      “But I haven’t stopped thinking about it—or you,” he continued. “I applied for the job before I met you, but you were definitely a factor in my decision to accept it.”

      “We weren’t ever supposed to see one another again,” she reminded him of the agreement they’d made in Boulder City.

      “And yet, you went to Echo Ridge last weekend.” The surprise must have shown on her face because he explained, “You left a message with Deputy Ryker.”

      She nodded. “A friend of mine from law school lives in Texas. Since I was there, I thought I’d stop by to say hi.”

      “Texas is a pretty big state.”

      “Chloe lives just outside of Dallas, so a side-trip to Echo Ridge wasn’t really out of my way.”

      “Oh,” he said, sounding disappointed. “I was kind of hoping you’d made the trip to see me.”

      The timer on the stove buzzed, granting her a temporary reprieve from the increasingly awkward conversation.

      “Dinner’s ready.”

      * * *

      There was something on her mind.

      Something more than concern about the client who’d brought her into his office a few hours earlier. When Luke Ryker told him that she’d shown up at the Sheriff’s Office, he’d hoped it was memories of the nights they’d spent together that inspired Katelyn to track him down. But she certainly wasn’t giving the impression of a woman motivated by carnal desires.

      And though she kept up her end of the conversation while they ate, her thoughts were obviously elsewhere.

      “Is it convenient or tiresome to live above your office?” he asked, attempting to engage her attention.

      Katelyn twirled her fork in her pasta. “It’s convenient,” she said. “Certainly a lot more convenient than driving twenty miles into town from the Circle G Ranch every day.”

      He’d heard of the Circle G—reputedly the biggest and most prosperous cattle ranch in all of Haven County. It was also, if he remembered the story correctly, half of the property that was the original source of friction between the Gilmore and Blake families when they settled in the area more than one hundred and fifty years before.

      According to local folklore, back in the spring of 1855, a developer sold a 100,000-acre parcel of land in Nevada to Everett Gilmore, a struggling farmer from Plattsmouth, Nebraska. The same developer also sold 100,000 acres to Samuel Blake, a down-on-his-luck businessman from Omaha. Both men subsequently packed up their families and their worldly possessions and headed west for a fresh start.

      Everett Gilmore arrived first, and it was only when Samuel Blake showed up with his deed in hand that the two men realized they’d been sold the exact same parcel of land. Since both title deeds were stamped with the same date, there was no way of knowing who was the legitimate owner of the land. Distrustful of the local magistrate’s ability to resolve the situation to anyone’s satisfaction—and not wanting to publicly admit that they’d been duped—the two men agreed to share the property between them, using the natural divide of Eighteen-Mile Creek as the boundary between their lands.

      Because the Gilmores had already started to build their home in the valley—on the west side of the creek—the Blakes were relegated to the higher elevation on the east, where the land was mostly comprised of rocky hills and ridges. The Gilmores’ cattle immediately benefitted from grazing on more hospitable terrain, while the Blakes struggled for a lot of years to keep their herd viable—until silver and gold were found in the hills on their side of the creek and they gave up ranching in favor of mining.

      “Is there any truth to that story about the ancestors of the Gilmore and Blake families coming to Nevada to settle the same piece of land?” he asked her now.

      “It’s all true,” she assured him. “The Gilmores still own the fifty thousand acres on the west side of the creek and the Blakes own the fifty thousand acres, including all the gold and silver, on the east.”

      She put her fork down and picked up her glass of water. “You were going to tell me why Trent was given a court date and Aiden was locked up,” she reminded him.

      “Because Trent was a passenger in the car that Aiden was driving.”

      “Where’d they find the car?” she asked.

      “Parked, with the key in the cup holder, in the driveway of the owner’s house on Mountainview Road.”

      Katelyn shook her head. “Anyone who leaves, in plain view, the key to a fancy car deserves to have it stolen.”

      “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear you say that.”

      “How mad was Rebecca Blake when she realized her car had been taken?”

      “Beyond mad,” he admitted. “And more than a little embarrassed, because she knew that she’d left the key in it.”

      “She was at Elsie Hampton’s funeral—and she’s known Aiden since he was in diapers,” Katelyn told him. “As mad and embarrassed as she was, I’m a little surprised that she wanted to press charges.”

      “It wasn’t her choice,” he said.

      “You do know you’ll never get a conviction on grand larceny, don’t you? It would be a waste of time and resources to even take it to trial.”

      “That’s an argument better saved for your discussions with the prosecutor,” he suggested.

      “Maybe it’s different in Echo Ridge, but here the prosecutor doesn’t usually make decisions about the disposition of charges without first consulting the Sheriff’s Office.”

      “I investigated the complaint of a stolen vehicle and made the appropriate arrests,” he said. “Now it’s up to your pal in the ADA’s office to decide what to do with the defendants.”

      “Dustin Perry’s not my pal,” she told him.

      “I saw the two of you chatting while waiting for the judge. He seemed...favorably inclined toward you.”

      “You know, for a guy who was quick to point out that he’s not a lawyer, you sound an awful lot like one at times.”

      He frowned. “Are you trying to spoil my appetite?”

      She looked at his almost empty plate. “Not much chance of that.”

      “What can I say? This is great pasta,” he said.

      And it was. The red sauce had chunks of tomato, pepper and onion and was just a little bit spicy. But while he’d been mopping up sauce with a second slice of crusty bread, he noticed that she’d hardly touched her meal. She had her fork in hand and was pushing the pasta around on her plate, but she’d rarely lifted

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