LITMIR.BIZ

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barn, following Merle. Maybe that was what the knot was all about—what they were about to find. No doubt the place would be filled with their investigation and forensics team, and the coroner would soon arrive. Then the questions would start. She’d have to keep her story straight, and she’d never been one for lying.

      “Laura, how about you and I go ahead and step inside.” Mrs. Fitzgerald motioned for her to follow her into the house. “Unless you need to get running.”

      The word running echoed in the air, almost as though someone had struck a bell. No matter how badly she wanted to leave the ranch and resume her normal life, she couldn’t go anywhere. They would have questions for her about her involvement, and if she left, she would only fall under further scrutiny.

      “I could go for a cup of coffee,” Laura agreed.

      “So could I,” Rainier said, but not before darting one more glance after his brother.

      They made their way back inside. Though it hadn’t been that long since Laura had been in the kitchen, with everything that had happened in the last hour, it felt as if days had passed. As she made her way through the living room, the sparkle of silver bows atop colorful presents under the Christmas tree caught her eye. There were piles of wrapped gifts—red, green, blue and even a stack of pink ones adorned with Disney princesses.

      “Do you have grandchildren, Mrs. Fitzgerald?” she asked, gazing toward the princesses in her best attempt to mask the elephant in the room—the coming investigation.

      Eloise beamed. “Just one for now, a beautiful little girl named Winnie. She, Christina and Waylon should be home in a couple of days. He’s in the army, working as an MP, and they’ve been living at the base. I couldn’t be more proud of them.”

      “I’m sure. That’s something to be quite proud of,” Laura said, but as she spoke she noticed the way Rainier’s entire body seemed to tense as they mentioned familial pride and accolades.

      “They’re going to get married soon.” Mrs. Fitzgerald reached over and gave Gwen’s hand a quick squeeze. “Just like my Gwen and Wyatt, and Whitney and Colter. I was hoping that we could have one big wedding over the holidays—you know, put everything bad behind us and use it to start the New Year off with something to really celebrate. Whitney and Colter have been in Spokane, getting everything they think they’re going to need. She sent me a picture of her dress the other day. It’s just beautiful.”

      So all the brothers were engaged, except Rainier. Laura had an idea how he must be feeling. Both her sisters were spoken for, but not her. Her mother had made talking about her failing love life into one of her favorite pastimes. And she loved nothing more than giving Laura regular style hints. Last week’s had been that she should dye her hair, as she was starting to, as her mother put it, “get a little less shiny...you know, that happens as we ladies age.”

      Laura had no idea how dying her hair would make it shinier, but she doubted her mom had meant it as anything other than another jab at her aging-spinster lifestyle. She was the same with her sister—which was part of the reason the three of them rarely had anything to do with one another. Recalling her mother’s words nearly made her groan aloud, but she checked herself. Whether her mother knew it or not, Laura had no intention of living a life completely devoid of love from the opposite sex. She just had no desire to have a relationship her family knew anything about. She hadn’t forgotten how poorly it had gone the last time she’d brought a man around.

      The other ladies made their way into the kitchen, while Rainier walked over to the Christmas tree and ran his fingers reverently over one of the boughs, rolling the needles between his fingertips. His simple action made Laura smile.

      He had missed so much in the last couple years. The closest he had probably been to a Christmas tree had been seeing them in pictures in the magazines that had been passed around his unit.

      “Did you miss this?” she asked, gesturing around the room at the holiday trappings.

      She suddenly realized how alone the two of them were, and it made her feel something almost like attraction toward him. She tried to stuff the feeling away. There could be none of that nonsense.

      Maybe she’d identified her feelings incorrectly. Maybe it was just that she pitied him. If that was the case, she couldn’t fall into the trap of letting her empathy for him morph into something it shouldn’t be.

      “You know, growing up, I used to love Christmas,” Rainier said. “We always had a tree like this one—spruce. Those and ponderosa pine grow all over in this area. It was such a big deal to go pick one out. We’d spend all day in the woods, Dad pointing out what he thought was the perfect tree and my mother inevitably shooting each and every one of them down. It was like a game between the two of them, and it would only come to an end when the daylight faded and they were forced to compromise.”

      That was a far cry from her family’s out-of-the-box trees that they had thrown together each year in just a matter of minutes. One year they had even plastic-wrapped the tree with the ornaments still on, so they wouldn’t have to bother decorating it again the next year.

      “We would have hot chocolate and s’mores that my mother would warm up on the heater on the dashboard,” Rainier continued, as he picked up a red ornament that had fallen to the floor and rehung it on a branch.

      “That sounds really special,” Laura said, not quite sure if she should interrupt his reminiscing.

      He nodded, but she could tell from the distant look on his face that his mind was in the past.

      “It really was.” He turned to face her, and she could see a glistening in his eyes that hadn’t been there before. “I just can’t believe that I’m at risk of losing them all again.”

      Oh, so that was what this was—some veiled attempt to pull at her heartstrings in order to make sure she wasn’t tempted to change her mind about his fate. She wouldn’t let him play that game, either.

      “You have it all wrong if you think you can make me your mark,” she said, taking two steps back from him.

      “Huh? What are you talking about?” he asked.

      “You can’t try and manipulate me to get what you want. I know all about your kind.”

      “My kind?” He spat the words. “You mean convict, or do you mean orphans?”

      He was trying to pick a fight. It was a good diversionary tactic from the real issue at hand, but she wasn’t going to let him pull that one over on her, either.

      “I’m just saying that you’re not the first ex-con to think he’s smarter than me.”

      Or hardly the first man who thought himself smarter than me, either, but she bit her tongue before she let the words slip from her. She didn’t want to come off like some scorned woman. She wasn’t anything of the sort, but Rainier needed to remember his place—and his place, right now, was under her thumb.

      “If I was smart, the last place I’d be right now is here.” He stared at her.

      “If push came to shove, if a deputy found out I’d lied for you, I would likely be charged with accessory after the fact,” she whispered, just loudly enough for him, but not the women in the kitchen, to hear. “That would mean we would both be headed to prison. Have you thought about that?”

      “I know what you did back there was a gamble,” he said, tipping his chin toward the barn outside. “Your sacrifice doesn’t go unnoticed. You can trust me when I tell you that I had nothing to do with that body.”

      He moved toward her, and she carefully stepped back until her legs pressed against Mrs. Fitzgerald’s ’80s model velveteen sofa. The little hairs of the couch upholstery jabbed into the back of her calves, but it was nowhere near as uncomfortable as Rainier was making her when he looked at her like he was now...a look of compassion, respect and maybe something more.

      “You have to know that I would never compromise you like that,” he added. “Though I’ve only

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