LITMIR.BIZ

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“Live in the present, Bram,” she usually told him. “Let the past stay in the past.”

      She always had something good to eat in her apartment above the Black Arrow Feed and Grain Store, a business that had supported the WhiteBear-Colton family for a good many years, and Bram enjoyed a cup of coffee and a slice of Gloria’s delicious cinnamon-applesauce cake while they talked. She was very proud of his being sheriff, which she considered to be a very high position in the United States government. Bram let her think it, for anything that made her happy pleased him.

      “Gran, Willow’s been working in the store long enough to take over. Isn’t it time you retired?” he said just before taking his leave.

      “You’ve been trying to retire me for years, Bram,” Gloria said briskly. “What do you want me to do, sit around up here in this apartment and watch soap operas and talk shows on TV?”

      Bram had to laugh. “Forget I mentioned it, Gran.”

      “And you forget it, too.”

      “For tonight,” he agreed with a twinkle in his eye. Leaning down, he kissed her cheek. “See you soon.”

      Bram’s home was a two-hundred-acre ranch twenty miles out of town. Known in the area as the Colton Ranch, it had a big rambling house, a couple of barns, and fertile soil—soil rich enough to produce a nutritious grass ideal for raising quarter horses. The ranch had belonged to his parents, Trevor and Sally, and had been passed to their five children after their deaths. None of the five wanted to sell the family home, but the only one who wanted to do any ranching and live on the place was Bram. Much as he liked his job as sheriff, there was something in his blood that demanded a portion of his life be lived outdoors.

      And he loved horses, as his Comanche ancestors had, for history books touted the Comanche as the most skilled riders of the Southwest. Bram broke and trained his own horses, but he was so good at the craft that sometimes other ranchers asked him to break one of their wild young stallions. He did it willingly and free of charge. What he knew about horses, he believed, was in his genes and had come to him from his ancestors.

      Bram also had a dog, and when he arrived home that night Nellie came bounding out of the smallest barn, barking a joyous hello and wriggling her hindquarters back and forth. Nellie was a black-and-white Border collie with pale blue eyes. She was a love of a dog, and her main goal in life was to herd sheep, cows, horses, chickens or anything else that moved. Anytime Bram wanted some horses brought in from a pasture he whistled to Nellie, and off she’d go to get them. Bram’s best friend, his fishing and hunting buddy, Will Mitchell, had three wild little boys, and all three adored Nellie and would let her herd them around Bram’s yard when Will brought them out to the ranch.

      Bram knelt down now and gave Nellie a hug, then scratched her ears. “Did you get lonesome today, girl?”

      She wriggled again and licked his face. “Hey, that’s going too far,” Bram said with a laugh, rising to his feet. “Come on, let’s go and scare you up some dinner.”

      It had been a long, busy day, and when Bram went to bed he was ready for sleep. But as he closed his eyes he promptly saw an image of Jenna Elliot. Punching his pillow in frustration, he turned to his side and tried to relax. But Jenna was still there, glowingly beautiful and causing him all sorts of physical distress.

      Bram always thought of Jenna as Black Arrow’s golden girl. Her hair had been twisted on top of her head today, but he knew what it looked like cascading down her back—like a golden waterfall. Its color nearly drove him mad, and he was positive it would feel as silky as it looked. Even Jenna’s flawless skin had a golden hue, as though sprinkled with gold dust. Add her deep blue eyes to that mix and she sparkled. In Bram’s eyes, anyway, Jenna Elliot sparkled more brightly and more beautifully than any Fourth of July fireworks he’d ever seen.

      He recalled how much easier he’d breathed when she went away to college, and how the world had begun spinning crazily again when Jenna came home to help care for her terminally ill mother. After Mrs. Elliot’s funeral Bram heard that Jenna had left town again, but not to return to college; she had decided to become a nurse. That had surprised him. Nursing was a service profession much like his own, and he’d wondered about a golden girl working such long hours. It wasn’t as if she had to earn a living. Old Carl owned half the town and almost as much of the county. Everyone knew he had more money than he could count, and that he doted on Jenna. Hell, she’d never have to work a day if she didn’t want to.

      So that nursing business confused Bram, and he’d decided it was nothing but rumor, until he heard Willow mention it. He never asked Willow about Jenna because his baby sister was sharp as a tack and would catch on in a heartbeat if Bram so much as hinted he gave a damn about anything Jenna Elliot might do or say. But every so often he would pick up a tidbit of information about her from Willow. She had no idea that Jenna haunted her big brother’s dreams. No one had any idea about that.

      Bram fully intended to keep it that way, too. In truth, he would give almost anything to have Jenna move away permanently. He’d sleep better, since every single time he’d seen Jenna—starting with the day he’d discovered, or admitted, how she affected him—was lodged in his brain and came roaring out too damned often, especially at night.

      One of the memories driving him batty had occurred on a hot day last summer. He had been slowly cruising a downtown street when he’d spotted Jenna strolling along the sidewalk, looking into store windows. She’d had on white shorts and a blue tank top. The sight of her long, gorgeous, deeply tanned legs had made him forget all about being behind the wheel of his prowl car and he’d come dangerously close to running into a light pole.

      He’d hit the siren and taken off so fast that his tires had squealed, but he was pretty sure Jenna hadn’t seen his embarrassingly narrow miss with that pole.

      It was a memory Bram actually hated, for invariably it was followed by sexual contemplation of how it would feel to have those incredible legs wrapped around him, which led to other erotic thoughts that never failed to cause him more misery than he believed he deserved.

      Sucking in a ragged breath, he forced himself to think about something else. The first topic to come to mind was the odd events occurring around town—the fire at the courthouse, for one, and the burglary of the local newspaper office for another. It appeared the fire had been arson, which made little sense, for why would anyone want to destroy Comanche County’s courthouse? Of course, arson was usually senseless to everyone but the person who actually lit the match. It was too bad Jared and Kerry hadn’t gotten a look at the arsonist that night. It was almost inconceivable that they had been in the very next room when the perpetrator had lit those candles. Thank God they’d seen the glow of the fire once it had gotten started, or there wouldn’t even be a shell of the courthouse left. But the whole thing was as disturbingly mysterious tonight as it had been from the start.

      And why in hell would someone break into the newspaper office and then leave without taking anything, when there’d been computers and other costly items throughout the place? That reporter had been right to question the motivation for that seemingly senseless crime.

      There was one more thing nagging at Bram. He’d heard rumors about two different strangers asking questions about the Colton family. They had to be connected to the courthouse fire and possibly the Chronicle break-in, but why didn’t they simply contact him? Or his grandmother? No one knew Colton history better than Gloria, or Great-granddad WhiteBear. But there were plenty of Coltons to confront if someone wanted to know something of their ancestry. Even so, Bram couldn’t make heads or tails of the whole thing, for why would any outsider give a whit about any of the Coltons, none of whom had anything to hide? It was a damn weird mess, Bram decided again, having reached that conclusion quite a few times in the past few weeks.

      Then, even through that maze of thoughts, Jenna’s image threatened again, and Bram groaned and sought another subject to dwell on until he fell asleep. Fishing was a good nerve-settling topic, and Bram grasped at it, pondered it for a while and then decided to ask Will if he could go fishing this coming weekend. They had a couple of favorite fishing spots, and Bram never cared if Will took one or more of his sons with

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