LITMIR.BIZ

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toddling all over the place.

      Vita huffed as if that was the dumbest question in the history of dumb questions. Lawson huffed as if her huff was the dumbest sound in the history of dumb sounds.

      “They’re separate things,” she said. “Just like the horns. The final part of the curse is water.”

      He started walking again. Since the ranch was near the creek and it’d been raining on and off for two days, water was a given. Still, it gave him a split second of concern. He was having a house built close to that very creek, and it was possible the land could flood. Of course, if that happened, it’d have nothing to do with a curse, but Vita would likely take credit for the fates foretelling it.

      “Horns, concussions, babies and water,” Lawson repeated. “Sounds as if the fates had a little too much time on their hands when it came to me. Four things instead of just the butt stitches.”

      She wagged her bony finger at him. “Don’t sass the fates, young man. And I only said concussion as in one, not multiple. But I am sorry to be the bearer of such bad news. If you need any soothing potions or such, just let me know.”

      Lawson made a grunt of agreement, knowing there was nothing that could make him turn to Vita for that, but he did manage a polite goodbye and thank you before she scurried away toward her bicycle. It was her standard mode of transportation, and she’d “parked” it in the side yard.

      He dropped off the saddle in the tack room so he could head to the house to find Garrett. Then he could go over the schedule and take care of some paperwork. Not his favorite part of the day, but later he’d be able to work in a ride to see how the new herd was doing. And check on the progress of his house. The sooner the construction was done, the sooner he could get out of his place in town and move closer to the ranch.

      There was plenty enough to do if he wanted to beat the next wave of rain that would hit in a couple of hours. But knowing it still didn’t cause Lawson to keep walking when he reached the guesthouse. It wasn’t as if he’d gone out of his way to get there. It was in the backyard between the main house and the barn.

      Everything seemed normal—making him wonder why Garrett had issued the warning. Or rather it seemed normal until Lawson had a closer look. There was something brown on the welcome mat. At first Lawson thought it was an animal turd, but no.

      It was a horn.

      “What the hell?” He nudged it with the toe of his boot. Yeah, definitely a horn. Not from a cow though. His guess was maybe a goat, and there weren’t any of them on the ranch.

      It was impossible for him not to think of the curse. Impossible, too, for Lawson to see this as anything more than a coincidence. Heck, Vita could have put it there before he even arrived. After all, she’d been waiting for him when he’d first pulled up. And she was fond of leaving weird gifts and offerings.

      Just in case Vita had left something inside, too, Lawson reached for the doorknob to have a look around the place. But reaching was as far as he got.

      “Wait!” Garrett called out to him. His cousin was on the back porch of the sprawling main house, and Garrett barreled down the steps. “Don’t go in there.”

      Lawson had worked on the ranch for seventeen years, and as best as he could recall, it was the first time any of his cousins had told him something was off-limits. It was one of the reasons this place had always felt like home. Ditto for Garrett seeming more like a brother to him than his own brothers did. But that wasn’t exactly a brotherly look Garrett was giving him now.

      “Uh, someone’s staying there,” Garrett added.

      His cousin seemed to have a lot of urgency for something that wasn’t that out of the ordinary. Plenty of people stayed in that guesthouse. Garrett’s sister, Sophie, had a lot of college friends who came and went. So did her mother, Belle. However, Lawson was pretty sure that wasn’t just an ordinary FYI that Garrett was giving him.

      His cousin stopped directly in front of him and was a little out of breath from his sprint across the yard. He opened his mouth, no doubt to start explaining, but his attention landed on the horn.

      “Shit. How’d that get there?” Garrett asked, but it seemed rhetorical since he just kept talking. “I tossed one just a half hour ago.” He glanced around as if looking for the horn-dropper before his attention came back to Lawson. Garrett’s eyebrow lifted.

      “Hey, I didn’t put it there. I think it was Vita’s doing. She said my curse has something to do with horns.”

      Garrett kept looking around. “You’re cursed again?”

      “Appears so. It’s becoming a quarterly thing now.”

      “Did Darby have Vita do this?” Garrett asked.

      Lawson sighed. “No. This is all Vita and her fate friends. The horn could be her attempt to make sure at least some part of it comes true this time.”

      “No. I don’t think it was Vita.” Garrett paused, scrubbed his hand over his face. “I think we’ve got a trespasser who’s leaving gifts for our guest.”

      For just a handful of words, they sure packed a punch. Everything inside Lawson went still. It would have been hard for a normal person to connect guest, horn and trespasser, but for him, there was only one logical conclusion.

      “Eve,” Lawson managed to say.

      There was a frog in his throat. Heck, an entire pond of frogs and their lily pads, from the sound of it.

      Garrett nodded, confirming what Lawson had just pieced together. His cousin didn’t jump right into an explanation, though, of why Eve Cooper was here. Garrett seemed to know that Lawson would need a minute. Heck, he needed a week.

      Lawson was long over the pain of having Eve crush his heart when she’d walked out on him when they’d been seventeen. He was long over the fact that she’d forgotten her down-home roots when she’d become an overnight teen TV star.

      Well, maybe he wasn’t completely over it, but it wasn’t hurt he was feeling now. It was indifference. Maybe mixed with a smidge of being pissed off.

      “That explains the horn,” Lawson mumbled, and he, too, looked around for the culprit.

      Eve had been the star of Demon High, where she’d played Ulyana Morningglory, a teenager who secretly fought demons in between pom-pom practice and dating her hunky half-demon boyfriend. The boyfriend, Stavros, had horns—ones that looked like curled turds. To Lawson’s way of thinking, anyway. Others clearly hadn’t felt the same because Eve-Ulyana, Stavros and the horns had become a cult classic. The most rabid of fans had dubbed themselves the hornies.

      Or so he’d heard.

      Since the show had been off the air for more than a decade, Lawson would have thought the horn-lovers would have found something else to glom on to but apparently not.

      Lawson had plenty of questions—for starters, why was Eve here after all this time? She no longer had family in Wrangler’s Creek and hadn’t been especially close friends with Sophie, Garrett or their brother, Roman. She no longer fell into the friend category with Lawson, either.

      “I’m not sure how long she’s staying,” Garrett volunteered. “I haven’t even seen her myself because she got here late last night. My mother’s the one who gave her permission to stay.”

      Ah, Lawson had forgotten to factor in Garrett’s mom, Belle, in this particular equation. Vita held the record for being the town’s craziest resident, but Belle could often give the woman a run for her money.

      Even though Belle no longer lived at the ranch, she seemed to like creating uncomfortable living arrangements. Two years ago, she had invited a group of widows to live in one of the houses on the grounds, and some of them were still there. Now she was rubbing salt in Lawson’s old wound by putting Eve right underneath his nose.

      “The person who left that horn trespassed because of Eve,” Lawson commented.

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