LITMIR.BIZ

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he spoke again.

      “Ma’am?” Then his voice changed, dropping even lower. “Ginny? Is that you?”

      It had been so long since anyone had called her by that name. For just a second or two, she felt a tug of sweet nostalgia, until she remembered the last day she’d seen him. The day he’d shattered her dreams.

      Instinct urged her to hang up but then Mabel’s sweet face swam into her mind and she swallowed.

      Her fingers gripped the phone so hard she felt them cramp. The three thousand miles between them melted away and she felt as if he were right there in the room with her. She loosened her grip and struggled to keep her voice as casual as possible. “What are you doing there, Cully? Where’s Jim?” A rush of alarm tightened her nerves. “There’s nothing wrong with him, is there? Is Mabel there?”

      “Ginny…”

      She heard something else in his voice then and the chill spread rapidly throughout her body. For some idiotic reason she didn’t want to hear what he had to say and went on talking as if he hadn’t said her name in that awful tone that smacked of sympathy and sorrow. “Their answering machine doesn’t seem to be working and I was worried…”

      “Ginny, listen to me.”

      She pressed a hand over her mouth as she heard him say the unbelievable words. Mabel and Jim died in a car wreck on the mountain, both dead, funeral was yesterday.

      “No-o-o-o-o!” The hollow cry echoed around her living room, bounced off the colorless walls and beat mercilessly back into her ears. Vaguely she heard Cully’s voice repeating her name over and over but nothing made sense. Nothing. They couldn’t be dead. It had to be a mistake.

      “Ginny, please, don’t hang up.”

      Cully’s urgent voice finally penetrated the loud humming in her head. Holding back a sob, she whispered, “How did it happen?”

      “We don’t know.” He sounded ragged, weary, as if he hadn’t slept in days. He’d always had a huskiness in his voice—a sexy rawness that had once thrilled her to the core. But it was more pronounced now, as if every word he spoke were painful. “It was late at night. You know how that road winds down the mountain. It was dark, not much moonlight…”

      She couldn’t take any more. “I have to go. I can’t…”

      “Ginny, don’t hang up! Don’t!”

      The urgency in his words frightened her. “I’m sorry.” She gulped, afraid she was going to bawl right there into the phone. “I know it must be hard for you, too. But right now I don’t feel much like talking.”

      “Wait, I’ve been trying to find you.”

      His pause seemed fraught with tension. She gripped the phone, prepared to stand her ground if he asked her to come home. There was no point now.

      “Ginny, the will is being read in two days. You need to be there.”

      She shook her head at him, even though he couldn’t see her. “No, I don’t see why. I’m not a relative.”

      “Paul Bellman, he’s the Corbetts’ lawyer now. He needs you there.”

      She swallowed. “Did he say why?”

      “No, he didn’t.”

      Her mind raced with questions. She couldn’t be a beneficiary. The Corbetts had been her foster parents, as they had to dozens of kids in their lifetime. As far as she knew they had nothing to leave, anyway.

      “Ginny? Come home. You should be here. At least give me a number where I can reach you.”

      Her instincts, honed by months of hiding in the shadows, bunched into a solid wall. “No, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

      She felt sick, still unable to believe that the only real parents she had known were gone. Yet somewhere in there, she felt guilt, as well. She had never had the chance to say goodbye. The least she could do was visit their graves and say her goodbyes there. It would give her closure, if nothing else.

      Before she could change her mind again, she said sharply, “Never mind. I’ll come home. I’ll be there tomorrow.” She hung up then and gave herself up to the awful, tearing sobs of grief.

      THREE THOUSAND miles away, Cully let the receiver fall gently onto its rest. He should have told her all of it. He just hadn’t been able to bring himself to hurt her even more than she was already.

      This way he could give her a little time to get over the shock, before she found out that the Corbetts hadn’t died in an accident after all. Before he had to tell her that the couple she had loved as parents had been brutally murdered.

      Chapter Two

      It was late afternoon, the following day, when Ginny drove the white Taurus she’d rented into Gold Peak. There was only one motel in that whole miserable town and it was the last place on earth she wanted to stay. The motel had been built before she was born and the ancient, decaying building she remembered had not improved with time.

      She’d thought about staying in Rapid City, which at least boasted a halfway decent hotel but that meant driving the extra forty miles back to town and she was already exhausted. A sleepless night and the scramble to get on a plane early that morning had taken its toll.

      All the rooms had outside doors that faced onto the parking lot and the only way to reach the upper floor was by a weather-beaten flight of stairs. Rather than walk up those creaking steps, she asked for a room on the ground floor.

      The room, as it turned out, wasn’t quite as bad as she’d feared. The bedding, though shabby, looked reasonably clean and the plumbing at least seemed to be working. The seascape hanging above the headboard looked out of place—a poor attempt to make the room less forbidding. It failed miserably.

      Reminding herself that it was only for one night, she took a quick, refreshing shower and changed into shorts and a T-shirt.

      Seated on the edge of the bed, she studied the phone for a long time before finally reaching for it. After stabbing out Cully’s number, she waited, heart thumping unevenly, for him to answer.

      His voice sounded wary when he answered, as if he’d known it would be her calling.

      She spoke quickly, afraid her raw emotion would be misinterpreted. “Cully? This is Ginny. I’m at the Sagebrush Motel. I just got into town. I need to talk to you. Is now a good time?”

      A slight pause, then his voice, deeper now, drawled in her ear again. “It’s almost suppertime. How about I meet you at the Red Steer in a half hour? We can get a bite to eat and talk there.”

      She’d deliberately held the memories at bay as she’d driven into town. There were things she didn’t want to remember about her life in Gold Peak. But at the mention of the Red Steer tavern, the past surged back into her mind just as sharp and as painful as if it were just a few days ago.

      It was there at the Red Steer when she’d first stepped into Cully’s arms. He’d asked her to dance and, egged on by Sally Irwin, her best friend, she’d accepted the challenge in Cully’s dark eyes. The moment his arms had closed around her, she’d known that nothing would ever be the same again.

      “Ginny?”

      She jumped and answered quickly. “I don’t want to take up too much of your time. I just have a couple of questions, that’s all. I plan on visiting the graves, then getting to bed early. I have to drive back to the airport tomorrow.”

      “You gotta eat, don’t you?”

      “Well, yes, but I thought a pizza in my room…”

      “The steak’s still real good at the Red Steer. You always enjoyed a good steak. Besides, there’s something I need to tell you.”

      “Can’t you tell me on the phone?”

      “I

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