LITMIR.BIZ

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Not a lie, exactly—her dad didn’t want to hear what Bobby had actually said, or the vocabulary he’d used to say it. “His shower was running as I came down the hall.”

      “Get him outside by six, with or without breakfast. You coming, Peace?” Opening the door to the mudroom, he asked the question without looking back for an answer.

      “Right behind you.” The manager gulped down the last of his coffee. As the door shut behind Boss Maxwell, Herman cocked a thick gray eyebrow and grinned at Thea. “Man’s just a bundle of sunshine in the morning, ain’t he? Have a good one,” he told his sister, planting a kiss on the woman’s cheek. “I’m hoping for stew tonight.”

      Beth pretended to push him away. “You’ll take what you get and be satisfied.” But she smiled and lifted her hand as he backed through the door. Then she dished up Thea’s eggs and bacon and toast, set the plate on the table, and poured another glass of juice.

      “Thanks, Beth.” Thea sat down to her meal, hoping the housekeeper had something important to do besides ask questions.

      No such luck. “The deputy sheriff brought Bobby home last night?” Mug in hand, Beth sat in the chair her brother had vacated. “Drunk?”

      Chewing, Thea just nodded.

      “Fighting?”

      “Uh-huh.” She gulped down the orange juice.

      “What are we going to do with that boy?” A worried frown creased Beth’s smooth, plump face. “He’s getting wilder every day. Your father should have let him go to California to college. Jolie would have looked out for him.”

      “But Bobby would never have come back.” Thea had given up trying to figure out why. All her brother had to do was show some interest and he’d have Walking Stones and everything it stood for handed to him on a platter. While she, who would give her right arm for the privilege of tending the land…

      She shoved the thought out of her mind. There was no time for bitterness this morning. Bobby had less than five minutes for breakfast. She scooted her chair back from the table. “I’d better go see if he’s on his feet.”

      Beth nodded. “I’ll make him a sandwich to eat as he rides.”

      The door to Bobby’s room was still shut. Thea knocked, got no answer, and turned the knob, dreading to see her brother still in bed. All hell would break loose if Bobby had gone back to sleep.

      But the situation wasn’t quite that desperate. He was awake and dressed, more or less, though his shirttail hung outside his jeans and the cuffs were unbuttoned. He sat on the bed wearing one boot, with the other lying on the floor between his feet. Head propped in his hands, elbows on his knees, he didn’t look up when she stepped into the room.

      “Dad said to have you outside by six. We’re pushing the deadline.”

      Bobby drew a deep breath. “Tell him I’m sick.”

      “Hangovers don’t count, you know that.”

      “Tell him I’m dead.”

      “I’m not sure even death would be an excuse for you not showing up for work this morning.”

      That got her a ghost of a chuckle. “Damn, my head hurts.”

      “Maybe you could remember that feeling before you start drinking?”

      “Maybe.” With a sigh, he pushed his hands through his thick, wavy hair and reached for the other boot. “I must’ve been totally plowed last night. I don’t remember driving home.”

      “You didn’t.” Thea kept her mind blank. “The deputy brought you.”

      Bobby looked up, his sleepy eyes a little wider. “Yeah?” He thought a second. “Oh, yeah. He pulled me out of the truck and dumped me in the rain.”

      “He what?” Being furious with Rafe Rafferty felt really good—like Christmas and the Fourth of July rolled into one. “That’s why you were so wet? I thought you’d just climbed out of the truck cab.” If she ever saw that deputy again—which she would avoid if at all possible—he would get a sharp piece of her mind about trying to drown teenage boys who’d had a little too much to drink.

      “I wasn’t climbing anywhere if I could help it.” He jerked on the right boot, eased to his feet and tucked his shirt into his jeans. Tall, like their dad, narrow of hip and wide of shoulder, Bobby had the looks of a movie star. Or a model.

      Good thing he’d never expressed any interest in being either. Thea didn’t want to think about Robert Maxwell’s reaction to those ambitions. “Ready to ride?”

      Her brother just looked at her. “Are you a sadist?”

      From the back of the house came a bellow Thea recognized as their dad calling Bobby’s name. She grabbed her brother’s arm and pulled him after her into the hallway. “You tempt me, boy. You really tempt me.”

      RAIN-WASHED, Paradise Corners looked fresh and clean when Rafe started for the office on the morning after his visit to the Maxwell ranch. The business district covered a square of about twelve small city blocks—mostly independent merchants, a lawyer or two and the post office, plus the courthouse and four churches, one on each corner of the main intersection, which gave the town and the street their names.

      Most residents lived south of Main Street, in tidy houses under old pine and cedar and oak trees. The Methodists, late arrivals to this part of Montana, had built their church to the south, in the lower foothills, rather than downtown with the Baptists, Mormons, Catholics, and Lutherans. Bars and gas stations clustered at the western end of Main, around the road heading toward the mountains. East of town, the north-south state highway ran toward the two-lane road leading the unwary out to Walking Stones Ranch. Rafe didn’t plan to make that trip again any time soon.

      On the north side of town, rough lanes wound high into the foothills of the Crazy Mountains and the Gallatin National Forest, with isolated houses tucked into corners here and there. Rafe’s rented house sat north of Main Street, too, but closer in—a brisk three-block walk brought him to the bustle of Saturday morning in a ranching town. To his right stood Grizzly’s Diner, the only decent place to eat if you didn’t want to cook. Leaving Jed posted just outside the door, Rafe stepped into a wave of friendly chatter that suddenly lulled as customers reacted to his arrival.

      In a couple of seconds the talk resumed, quieter than before, as if people didn’t want to be overheard. Sitting at the counter, Rafe fought to ignore the fact he was being stared at and studied the menu.

      “Coffee, Deputy.” Mona Rangel, the owner, set a mug down at his right hand, already mixed with sugar and milk, the way he liked it. “Something to eat?”

      Rafe grinned his appreciation. “Let’s try something really wild today—scrambled eggs instead of fried. Think we can stand the shock?”

      Her gray eyes flickered with humor, but she didn’t break a smile. “Three scrambled with bacon and toast, coming up.” She turned toward the kitchen, cutting off his only friendly contact in the place.

      Halfway through his second mug of coffee, somebody actually joined Rafe at the counter, on the very next stool, no less. He glanced to the left and caught the eye of Judge LeVay, his ostensible boss and the main representative of the law in Paradise Corners, besides himself.

      “Good morning, sir.”

      “Deputy.” LeVay nodded. He looked the part of a wise old western judge, from his thick white hair and mustache to the black suit and vest and string tie. “Just coffee,” he told Mona when she appeared.

      The judge said nothing until the coffee arrived and had been sampled. Rafe endured the silence without comment—he had no illusions that this was a chance encounter. Or an invitation to join the local shooting club.

      “Got a call early this morning,” LeVay said finally. His voice barely carried over the noise of the crowd.

      Rafe

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