LITMIR.BIZ

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      “Gina Petrillo has gone where?” Rafe O’Donnell’s head snapped up at his secretary’s casual announcement.

      “Wyoming. She called an hour ago and rescheduled the deposition,” Lydia Allen repeated, looking entirely too cheerful.

      If Rafe didn’t know better he’d think she was glad that this Gina had escaped his clutches. He scowled at the woman who had been assigned to him when he’d first joined the firm, Whitfield, Mason and Lockhart, seven years earlier. At the time, she’d been with the firm for twenty years and claimed that she was always assigned to new recruits to make sure they were broken in properly. She was still with him because she swore that, to this day, he was too impossible to foist off on a less-seasoned secretary.

      “Did I say it was okay to reschedule?” he inquired irritably.

      “You’ve been in court all day,” she said, clearly unintimidated by his sharp tone. “We reschedule these things all the time.”

      “Not so some crook can go gallivanting off to Wyoming,” he snapped.

      “You don’t know that Gina Petrillo is a crook,” Lydia chided. “Innocent until proven guilty, remember?”

      Rafe held on to his temper by a thread. “I do not need to be lectured on the principles of law by a grandmother,” he said, deliberately minimizing whatever legal expertise she might legitimately consider her due.

      Typically, she ignored the insult. “Maybe not, but you could use a few hard truths. I’ve eaten at that restaurant. So have most of the partners in this firm. If you weren’t such a workaholic, you’d probably be a regular there, too. The food is fabulous. Gina Petrillo is a lovely, beautiful young woman. She is not a thief.”

      So, he thought, that explained the attitude. Lydia was personally acquainted with the elusive woman and disapproved of Rafe’s determination to link Gina Petrillo to her partner’s crimes. As softhearted as his secretary was, she’d probably called Gina and warned her to get out of town.

      “You say she’s not a thief,” he began with deceptive mildness in his best go-for-the-jugular mode. “Mind telling me how you reached that conclusion? Do you have a degree in psychology, perhaps? Access to the restaurant’s books? Do you happen to have any evidence whatsoever that would actually exonerate her?”

      “No, I do not have any evidence,” she informed him with a huff. “Neither do you. But, unlike some people, I am a very good judge of character, Rafe O’Donnell.”

      Rafe was forced to concede that she was...usually.

      “Now that Roberto,” she continued, “I can believe he’s stolen from people. He has shifty eyes.”

      “Thank you, Miss Marple,” Rafe said snidely. “Roberto Rinaldi was not the only one with access to the money.”

      A good chunk of that money happened to belong to Rafe’s socialite mother. She had been taken in by the man’s charm. Rafe hadn’t explored the exact nature of the relationship, but knowing his mother’s track record, it hadn’t been platonic. He was no more oblivious to his mother’s faults than his father had been before the divorce, but he did his best to keep her from getting robbed blind.

      “But Roberto is the one who’s missing,” Lydia pointed out. “He’s the one you should be concentrating on.”

      “I would if I could find him,” Rafe said, not bothering to hide his exasperation. “Which is one reason I want to talk to Gina Petrillo. She just might know where he is. Now, thanks to you, I don’t even know where she is.”

      “Of course you do—I told you. She’s gone to Wyoming.”

      “It’s a big state. Care to narrow it down?”

      She frowned at him. “There is no need to be sarcastic.”

      Rafe sighed. “Do you know where she is or not?”

      “Of course I do.”

      “Then book me on the next flight.”

      “I doubt that Winding River has an airport. I’ll check,” she said, her expression unexpectedly brightening.

      “Whatever,” he said, not one bit happy about the images of Western wilderness that came to mind. “Just cancel everything on my calendar and get me out there by tomorrow night.”

      “Will do, boss. I’ll go ahead and cancel everything through next week. You could use the time off.”

      Lydia’s sudden eagerness, the spring in her step as she started to leave his office, had him frowning. “I don’t need time off,” he protested. “I’ll take care of this over the weekend and be back here on Monday.”

      “Why don’t you just play it by ear?”

      His gaze narrowed. “What are you up to?”

      “Just doing my job,” she said with an innocent expression.

      Rafe seriously doubted her innocence, but for the life of him he couldn’t figure out why Lydia was so blasted anxious for him to jet off to Wyoming. She was not the kind of secretary who used the boss’s absence to sneak out and shop or even to take long lunch hours. No, she was the kind who meddled, the kind who took great pride in making his private life a living hell with her well-meant pestering.

      And she liked this Gina Petrillo, he thought, suddenly making the connection.

      “Lydia!” he bellowed.

      “You don’t have to shout,” she scolded. “I’m just outside the door.”

      “When you book my room in Winding River, make sure I’m all alone in it.”

      She feigned shock. “Why, of course I will.”

      “Don’t look at me like that. It wouldn’t be the first time some hotel mixup had me sharing a room with a woman you thought I ought to get to know better.”

      “I never—”

      “Save it. Just make sure of it, Lydia, or you’ll spend the rest of your career at Whitfield, Mason and Lockhart doing the filing.”

      She shot him an unrepentant grin. “I doubt that, sir. I know where all the bodies are buried.”

      Rafe sighed heavily. She did, too.

      * * *

      When the Winding River Wildcats did a class reunion, the festivities went on for three solid days. There was a welcome barbecue on Friday night, a rodeo during the day on Saturday, a dance Saturday night and a farewell picnic on Sunday. It all flowed right into the town’s annual Fourth of July celebration.

      Gina was less interested in all of that than she was in spending a few quiet hours with her oldest and dearest friends. For just a little while she wanted to forget all about that slime Roberto Rinaldi and the financial mess he’d left her to clean up.

      “Couldn’t we just go down to the Heartbreak, have a few beers, listen to some music and chill for a few hours?” she pleaded, even as the others were coaxing her off her parents’ front porch and toward a car on Friday night.

      “There will be beer and music at the barbecue,” Emma told her. “Besides, since when have you ever turned down the chance to party? The only one in our crowd who was any wilder was Cassie.”

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