LITMIR.BIZ

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to be ordering for the spring line and the samples will be coming in any day now.” She sent him a cynical look from under her lashes. “I don’t expect you to understand.”

      If he was stung by the remark, he showed no sign of it. “Paul was pretty insistent you be there. He’s been trying to get ahold of you. No one knew where you were. Not even Mabel or Jim. I didn’t even know you were in touch with them until you called yesterday.”

      She dropped her gaze and fiddled with the stem of her wineglass. “I can’t imagine why their lawyer would need me there.”

      Cully shrugged. “Maybe he wants you to take care of their personal effects. What with Jim or Mabel not having any family and all, someone needs to clear out the house before it’s sold. Though I think Paul has a list of things they wanted to leave to some of the kids.”

      For a long time she stared at her glass, struggling with indecision. Then she said wearily, “I suppose I could talk to him. I really hadn’t planned on staying that long.”

      “So you said.”

      Ignoring the irony in his voice she said sharply, “There’s something I don’t understand about the accident. You said it happened late at night?”

      “Yep.” He reached for his second beer and she had the feeling he was deliberately avoiding her gaze.

      “How late?”

      He shrugged and answered reluctantly, “Around two in the morning.”

      “And Jim was driving?”

      He swallowed several mouthfuls of the golden liquid then slowly set the glass mug down in front of him. “He was behind the wheel when the truck crashed.”

      She knew him well enough to know when he was keeping something from her. Her hand trembled as she lifted her glass. She let the mellow wine slide down her throat, then said carefully, “Cully, you know as well as I do that Jim never drove at night. He had night blindness. They rarely went out at night, certainly never that late and if they did, Mabel always drove.”

      The silence between them stretched into minutes, while a nasal voice from the speakers, accompanied by guitars, sang about a mangled heart.

      Finally Cully sighed. “I know. I had the same thought. Which is why I had the wreck investigated. I guess this is as good a time as any to tell you. I figured you wouldn’t want to be alone when you heard. It wasn’t an accident, Ginny. Jim and Mabel were already dead when the truck went off the road. I’m real sorry.”

      Her breath seemed to be caught somewhere in her throat. This was worse than anything she could have imagined. For some silly reason, it was on the tip of her tongue to remind him her name wasn’t Ginny anymore. Except it didn’t seem to matter now. She’d always been Ginny in her heart, no matter how hard she’d tried to escape the past.

      She made her lips move. “What happened?”

      “They’d both been shot at close range. We think by Jim’s shotgun, which is missing. Could have been a burglary that went bad, though there was no sign of a break-in. Then again, it could have been a drifter looking for a handout. Knowing Jim and Mabel, they might have invited him in for a meal and things got ugly. The house looked like a tornado had gone through it. Lamps smashed, chairs overturned, drawers pulled out of dressers…a real mess.”

      She shuddered. “And you have no idea who it was?”

      “Not yet.” His mouth tightened in a grim line. “But I will.” For a long moment he kept his gaze on his hands then slowly, he raised his chin.

      Her twinge of awareness took her by surprise. She felt as she had that first time, the little kid in awe of the big, bold cowboy. She hadn’t expected to be still affected by him like this. If she had, she would have refused his invitation. She made herself look into his eyes and saw nothing there but concern.

      “Look,” he said softly, “I know all this is a shock to you and that you’ll need some time to deal with it. But I could use your help. You probably remember better than I do what the Corbetts had in their home. I need you to take a look and see if you can figure out if there’s anything missing. It might help catch the bastard who did this.”

      Still dazed, she muttered, “I don’t understand how anyone could hurt Mabel and Jim.”

      “I know,” Cully said grimly. “I have a bad feeling about this. A feeling somehow that this isn’t the end of it.”

      His words made the back of her neck prickle. At that precise moment, a shadow appeared at the window behind him. She hadn’t been directly looking in that direction and by the time she did, whoever it was had disappeared. It was more an impression than anything but something about that fleeting silhouette disturbed her.

      She shook her head, impatient with her erratic mind. Cully’s words had put her on edge, making her imagine things that weren’t there. The very idea of someone killing Jim and Mabel shocked and sickened her. No wonder she was feeling jittery. She couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to harm such generous, giving people as the Corbetts, people who just about everyone in Gold Peak had known and loved.

      The steaks arrived, brought to the table by a young man with a scruffy stubble darkening his jaw and a plaited gold ring in his right ear. He stared hard at Ginny as he set down the plates.

      “This is Luke Sorensen.” Cully waved his hand at the frankly curious man. “He helps out on Sally’s night off. He lived with the Corbetts for a while, right Luke? Meet another one of the Corbetts’ foster kids. Ginny Matthews.”

      “My name’s not…” she began, then shrugged her tired shoulders. It didn’t matter anymore. Brandon was dead. It didn’t matter what people called her now.

      She shook the reluctant hand Luke held out. “I was so sad to hear about the Corbetts’ deaths. I wish I could have been at the funeral.”

      “Yeah, it was bad news,” Luke muttered. He dropped his hand and slunk back to the bar.

      Ginny frowned at Cully. “You said something about Sally. You don’t mean Sally Irwin, do you?”

      Cully picked up his steak knife. “Yeah, that’s our Sally. Oh, right, I forgot. You two used to be pretty good buddies.”

      “Best friends.” She stared at the thick steak on her plate, wondering how on earth she was going to eat anything at all. “We lost touch over the years.”

      “Yeah, city life will do that to you.”

      Deciding to ignore the sarcasm in his voice, she tackled the steak, realizing all of a sudden that she was starving.

      Across the table, Cully watched her out of the corner of his eye. She’d changed. It shocked him how much she’d changed. It wasn’t so much the hair, cut short and lighter than he remembered. It wasn’t even that she was older. She didn’t look that much older than the day she’d left town to move to Phoenix. The Arizona sun had given her a few faint lines here and there but she still had that fresh, clear skin. In the tight jeans and T-shirt she wore her body looked just as firm and as slender as the night he’d covered her with his naked body and taken them both to another world.

      Angry about his obsession with the past, he concentrated on the present. She’d become citified. Even the jeans couldn’t hide that air of sophistication that set them worlds apart. She looked out of place, like a tourist trying to blend in somewhere she didn’t belong.

      It was more than that, though. There was something else. It was in her eyes. That unforgettable blend of green and gold still reminded him of cool forests and sunlit waterfalls but there was a look in them that worried him.

      He’d seen that look before, in the eyes of a bruised and battered woman he’d pulled out of busted-up trailer after arresting her raging, drunken husband. The look of the hunted. The terrified. The victim.

      He swallowed a bite of steak then asked abruptly, “How come your husband didn’t come with you?”

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