Where Love Grows
Cynthia Reese

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To the women who have made me who I am. I

treasure you all. And in memory of my Aunt Lou—

the inspiration for Mee-Maw.

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Acknowledgment

I couldn’t have written this book without help from a great many people—too many local farmers in my area to name individually here, but thank you all. Thanks to Kenny Chesney for the music that helped inspire this story and helped motivate me when the going got tough. A big hug goes to my better half for putting up with life on hold while I was writing. Acknowledgments also go to my critique partners Tawna Fenske, Cindy Miles, Stephanie Bose and Nelsa Roberto, to my agent Miriam Kriss, and to my absolutely wonderful editor Laura Shin, whose revision suggestions really helped me turn the corner.

CHAPTER ONE

CRAIG ANDREWS WAS moving in for the kill.

He’d trapped Becca Reynolds as neatly as any hound would trap a rabbit.

She swallowed hard, her mouth dry. To reach for the tumbler of water in front of her would be a sign of weakness, wouldn’t it?

Yes. Better to have a mouth that felt as if a sandblaster had let loose in it than to have her actions prove it.

“Miss Reynolds…”

Andrews pivoted on his Testoni dress shoes and held up a single sheet of paper. The corners of his mouth lifted, but the expression bore about as much resemblance to a smile as a shark’s chompers did.

“You based your conclusions on weather patterns and the very scientific NASA photographs.”

“Yes. Yes, I did. It is my—”

But before Becca could explain how she knew the hailstorm had been nothing but cocktail ice and a few migrant workers beating plants down in the field, he held up one perfectly manicured hand.

Really. The fop spent more on his appearance than she and her father spent on their monthly office lease.

And now she was stuck on the stand, testifying in the first federal criminal-fraud case she’d investigated. The case was a slam dunk, or so she’d assured the feds and the insurance company who’d hired their firm.

It certainly didn’t feel like that now.

“You even went so far as to say there were no tomatoes planted—”

She gritted her teeth. “No. I said there weren’t as many tomatoes planted as Mr. Palmer said. His insurance claim forms indicated he had several hundred acres—”

“Yes, yes.” He waved away her answer. “How much do you know of the weather in this part of the state?”

“I’m a private investigator, Mr. Andrews. I’m not a meteorologist.”

“Ah, but you based your findings on meteorological evidence. So is it going to rain today, Miss Reynolds?”

With the prosecution’s objection offered and sustained, and the laughter in the courtroom finished, Andrews came back. “Were you aware, Miss Reynolds, that this part of the county had heavy spring rains?”

Her stomach clenched. “No. My…recollection of the rainfall levels indicated that they were a little above average but not inordinately heavy.”

“But if your recollection—” Andrews’s emphasis of the word dripped with sarcasm “—was faulty, would that impact your analysis?”

Becca swallowed hard again and this time succumbed to the call of the water on the witness stand. No way had she goofed those rainfall levels. She’d looked at them, standard procedure. She glanced at her father, the senior partner of Reynolds Agricultural Investigations. It was only after he glowered at her in a way that screamed “Don’t screw this up!” that she answered Andrews’s question.

“Possibly. It depends.”

“You based your entire opinion on the analysis of photos. You said that you would be able to see evidence of tomato crops from satellite photos taken the week before, right? Isn’t that correct?”

“Uh, yes. The red—”

“Would show up.” Andrews spun again on his Testonis, this time to face the jury. “But if the fruit was unripened? If the tomatoes were still green on the vine…”

Becca wanted nothing more than to run from the courtroom and make it to the nearest bathroom stall. She didn’t have the luxury of that option, so she stuck it out. “If the rains were heavy enough to delay planting, the ripening could be delayed, as well. But it would have to be extremely heavy rains—”

“Something like these?” Andrews turned back and dropped the printout into Becca’s hands.

It was worse than she thought. She’d never seen this report—it totally contradicted her own research. If these figures were accurate, the farmers in the area would have needed an Evinrude on the back of their tractors to navigate these rains.

After he’d dragged the offensive numbers out of Becca and retrieved the printout, he said, “Your Honor, I would like to admit into evidence rain reports from the county extension agent in the early spring of that year.”

Becca sat, numb, twisting her hands in her lap, her fingernails digging into her palms. Andrews smiled again.

“Did anyone from Reynolds Agricultural Investigations—um, how did you put it—go on-site?”

She closed her eyes.

When would I have had time? Would that have been between visiting my dad in ICU and keeping the firm open while he was out?

But she bit back the words, which she knew would open a whole other can of worms with Ag-Sure, their client. Opening her eyes, she forced out, “I did not personally go on-site, no.”

“Did anyone from Reynolds Investigations—eh, how did you put it—go on-site?”

“No. The satellite images showed clear evidence—”

“Of unripe tomatoes. Oh, yes. Right. Perfectly understandable. I mean, you just get paid to rip apart farmers’ lives. We wouldn’t want you to get dirt under your pretty little fingernails. You should leave that to the farmers who are trying to scrape out a living.”

Even before the prosecution could get out its objection, Andrews withdrew the question. “I’m done with this witness,” he said.

“NOT GUILTY.”

Becca’s blood pressure spiked as she heard the bite in her father’s voice.

“The jury’s back already?”

“Yeah, while you dashed out for a bite to eat.”

Her fingers tightened on the fast-food bag she had in her hand, supper for the both of them. “Dad, I wasn’t gone—”

But her protest that she had truly been gone for only ten minutes got interrupted by another of his impatient growls. “The federal prosecutor isn’t happy, and neither are the insurance-company suits. This verdict torpedoes their earlier turndown. They aren’t happy in the slightest, Becca. They’re talking about using another firm.”

“Because of one—”

“One verdict? Hell, no. It’s not the verdict that they’re mad about. It’s you.”

“Me?”

“Me?” he mimicked her. “Yes, you. You blew that case. You should have been on that farm, interviewing the workers, interviewing the neighbors. You damn sure should have had the right rainfall figures. That lawyer sliced you up like a deli ham.”

Becca gritted her teeth in an effort to hold her tongue. Not for the first time she asked herself why she wanted this job, why pleasing her dad was so important to her.

Uh, maybe because after the subject of a story you wrote sued you for libel, no other newspaper or magazine would hire you?

It hadn’t been libel. Becca had written the truth in that article, and the target of her investigation just couldn’t stomach it. She’d survived a humiliating lawsuit only to lose the fledging magazine she’d started up. In the countersuit she’d filed, the jury’s decision to award her damages had come too late, and still, Becca had yet to see any money.

She tried to calm down by reminding herself who she was: An award-winning investigative reporter. Her dad had been the one, after his heart attack, to ask her to join his firm. It had seemed like a good idea at the time.

“Dad…you were sick, remember? You were in ICU with your heart attack. I couldn’t be in two places—”

“What I needed you to be doing was looking after the business. But I guess that’s too much to expect from you.”

“That’s not fair! I worked hard, gave you my best effort—”

“If that case was your best effort, then I am expecting too much from you. Honestly, I thought you’d season up. I thought you’d have gotten smarter after—”

Her father stopped in midsentence. He shook his head and turned to head down the empty courthouse corridor.

Becca’s anger bubbled up within her. She could not let her father’s dropped conversation go. “Say it, Dad. You might as well say it. I’m a failure. I’m a disappointment. You took me on only out of pity. Say it. Because that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Thinking? You really want to know?” He whirled around and stabbed a finger in her direction. “I’ll tell you what I’m thinking. I’m thinking I’m a damn fool for ever thinking I could grow you into an investigator. I’m thinking I’m a damn fool for ever thinking you’d be grateful for me bailing your butt out.”

“If you’re referring to the libel suit…and the bankruptcy, why don’t you just spit it out, Dad?”

Her father shot a look around. “If I want a prayer’s chance of saving Ag-Sure as a client, they don’t need to hear even a whisper about you getting sued for libel. But yes, that was what I was talking about. You go into business, start up that—that magazine against my best advice, you get mired in a counter-lawsuit you had no business even filing…”

Becca swallowed. The way he said those things, she might even believe she was a complete flake.

“I won that lawsuit, Dad. And that magazine had a name—Atlanta Insider. Couldn’t you just once call it by its name and not hiss and spit? It was a going business until I had one bad break. It will be again. One day. Just because the judgment is being appealed doesn’t mean I won’t eventually get my money.”

Her father blew out a long breath and looked off into the distance. “Let’s focus on the problem, okay? Right now one of our biggest clients is going south. I just wanted you to do your job. You’re here. You earn a paycheck. You know what to do. I’ve trained you.” He ran a hand through his clipped cut. “You just…lose focus. Even with your own business, half the time you were cutting deals to nonprofits—”

“It was my business, Dad. I got to choose how I billed my time.”

“Right. Well, this is my business, and I say you’ve screwed up for the last time.”

Becca sucked in a breath. “Are you firing me?” The memory of her long series of fruitless job interviews with magazines and newspapers rushed back to her.

“It’d be the smart thing to do. I’d fire any other employee who screwed up like you did.”

“I did not screw—”

“Dammit, take responsibility for this!”

Some men in suits filed out of the courtroom, and Becca saw her father’s eyes track them. She lowered her voice and said, “Dad, you have to believe me…”

“Go home. I’m going to try to save this account. You just…” He gave her a withering look. “Just go home.”

She watched him go after the suits, then she gripped the fast-food bag a little tighter in her hand and bolted for the stairs.

“AW, HONEY, DON’T FRET. You win some, you lose some.”

Gert, the office manager who’d run her father’s life for so many years that she was like part of the family, patted Becca’s arm.

“But, Gert, Dad was right. I did screw up. Those farmers were guilty—all of them—and they got off. I should have seen that delayed-planting defense coming. I’ll bet that county-extension agent was in on it from the get-go. Had to be. I checked as soon as I got loose from that courtroom, and the rest of the reported rainfall in that area was nowhere near as much.”

“Which bothers you more? That they got off…or that your dad was mad at you?”

“You have to ask?” Becca sighed and gazed off into the distance.

“I thought so. Listen, I don’t have to tell you that your dad is a type A personality who doesn’t like to lose. He gets mad. He blows off steam. He gets over it. By tomorrow, he’ll be coming in here like nothing’s wrong.”

“Yeah, right. You forget one little thing, Gert.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“You get to go home. I happen to live with the man.”

Not for the first time did Becca grieve over the loss of her own space. Just two years before she’d had her little house, her business, a future separate from her father’s. Then, bit by bit, she’d lost it all.

First came the libel suit, stemming from a puff-piece-turned exposé on a prominent Atlanta businessman’s not-so-squeaky-clean business practices. Then, just to come on with a strong offense, Becca had countersued with defamation charges. Later, when she’d won the libel suit and a half-million-dollar judgment from the countersuit, she’d counted on the money to help bail her out of bankruptcy.

Only, it hadn’t come. Neither had any job offers from the multitude of weekly and daily papers and magazines she’d applied to. Even if Becca had prevailed, just the fact that she’d been sued was enough to make an editor or publisher wary.

“Your father loves you.”

“Yeah, but that box isn’t on an employee performance review, and you know it.”

Gert didn’t contradict her, but then that was to be expected. They both knew Becca’s father only too well.

Becca slid from the corner of Gert’s desktop and made a beeline for her computer. The one thing that could make her feel better might await her in her in-box.

There it was: an e-mail from Rooster.

You nail that big presentation?

That was all, just that in the subject line. So like Rooster, straight to the point. She’d met him on an online farming community a few months before, and the two of them had hit it off.

“Uh-huh, I heard that sigh. It’s that online fella again, isn’t it?”

Gert’s all-knowing smirk couldn’t take away from Becca’s pleasure.

“If you must know, yes.”

“Sometimes I wonder. Why don’t you go out with a real flesh-and-blood guy?”

“Like I have time.”

“You would if you didn’t stay on the Internet all the time, wasting your life away mooning over some guy who could be a psychopath, for all you know. He could be right here in Atlanta, right across the street with a telescope, casing the joint.”

“Uh, Gert, I think you need to lay off the crime dramas. To put your overactive imagination at rest, Rooster and I agreed a long time ago not to mess things up by trading any identifying info. No real names, no locations, not even the names of pets. Simpler that way.”

“If you say so. Me? I think you’re just afraid of disappointing some other guy besides your dad.”

Gert’s comment hit close to home. Becca fretted at the pang she felt from it.

A part of Becca had been excited to work for her dad. Finally she’d had the chance to earn his approval and help him out with his investigative firm, to show him she could use her journalist skills on this job.

Today had left her feeling the eternal screwup, still haunted by her past bad decisions.

But before she could say anything, the office door opened, letting in a sweltering wave of Georgia heat—and her father.

Her dad’s face was a perfect mirror of the weather.

He approached her desk and slapped down a file folder.

“Your last chance.”

“What?”

“I’m a fair man. The suits at Ag-Sure have given us one more shot at getting things right, so I’m passing on the favor.”

“They want us to reopen the case?”

“No. That ship has sailed. This is another one. It took me a lot of talking to convince them that we wouldn’t make a hash out of this one, too. It’s here in Georgia, about halfway between Macon and Savannah, so you get your butt down I-75 and nail these guys. Fast.”

Gee, Dad. Most fathers would have just said, “I’m sorry for losing my temper.” In her heart, though, Becca knew how hard this was for her dad, how scary it was for him to let her take on a case that could well determine their future with Ag-Sure.

She met Gert’s gaze across the room and took in the office manager’s almost imperceptible nod. Yep, this was as good an apology as she was going to get.

She flipped open the file, scanned it. “Asian dodder vine? I’ve never heard of it.”

“Never been east of the Mississippi, according to the insurance company. But there’s a group of farmers claiming it’s overtaking their cotton like kudzu.”

“But, Dad, how can you fake kudzu?”

“That’s your job to figure it out. Get busy. You’ve got a day to research, and then you’d better be packed and headed south. The insurance company wants to see results…If you don’t, they’ll have our heads on a platter.”

Sunny_76@yoohoomail.com: I’m leaving on a business trip that I have to take, don’t know if I’ll have Internet access, so I may go radio silent for a few days.

Rooster@yoohoomail.com: I thought you just finished up that big project for work? Figured you could take a break.

Sunny_76@yoohoomail.com: I did finish it up, but it sort of imploded on me. I screwed up. So this trip is a penance of sorts.

Rooster@yoohoomail.com: Your job’s not on the line, is it? Because if you’re short on rent money there in the big city, you can always head down here, grab a hoe and remember what it’s like down on the farm.

Sunny_76@yoohoomail.com: I miss being on a farm…well, my grandparents’ farm, at least. Sometimes I wish I could go back.

CHAPTER TWO

“WHOA, LADIES! Easy! No call for fighting!”

But Ryan MacIntosh’s exhortation fell on the deaf ears of a pair of six-year-olds bent on destruction. He pulled back just quick enough to escape a female fist flying for the other’s face.

He made a grab for the fist, saw that the nails were done in a metallic purple nail polish with a constellation of stars. He closed his fingers around the wrist and shoved—as gently as he could—the two girls apart.

Stepping between them, his chest heaving, Ryan struggled for some earthly clue as to what to do next. “Enough!”

“But she started it!”

“She did! She was holding!”

Ryan squelched back his own temper, not an easy thing to do with the August sun beating down on his red hair. He set his jaw and gazed at the upturned faces of the two soccer players.

“Both of you. On the bench.”

When they would have argued with him, he shook his head and pointed toward their respective benches. “Go on and you might get a shot at playing again before the game ends.”

As the girls trudged off the field, Ryan could feel parental wrath lasering in his direction. A fight had to break out on the one game that the referee didn’t show up for.

The other coach shrugged his shoulders and called for a time-out. Ryan indicated for his crew to get a drink. He didn’t have to say it twice. They gathered around the Thermos like cows around a salt lick.

Cows would be easier, he thought. A chuckle brought him back from a momentary image of cows in shin guards, kicking a soccer ball up and down the field.

The chuckle came from Jack MacIntosh, his cousin—and the reason Ryan was here rather than on his John Deere, plowing his sadly neglected back forty.

“What?” he asked.

Jack laughed again. He adjusted the casted leg he had stretched out on a folding chaise lounge. “You nearly got clocked by a six-year-old. Doesn’t say much for your reaction time.”

“Hey. It was supposed to be you out there, remember? I could have left your sorry—” Ryan did a quick edit, mindful of the small fry around him “—rump in a sling after you broke your leg.”

“Begging your pardon, cuz, but you forget that I broke this leg hooking up your satellite antenna.”

True enough. Despite Ryan’s griping he enjoyed coaching soccer. This was Jack’s cup of tea usually, what with Jack’s daughter, Emily, involved in whatever the rec department offered. But since Jack was laid up with a bum leg, Ryan had discovered just what a great feeling it was to coach the kids.

He caught the glowering looks scorching between the two girls involved in the fight and sighed, amending his last thought. He liked coaching soccer—not preventing hand-to-hand combat.

He’d done enough of that earlier in the day dealing with Murphy.

Crooked SOB. Murphy’s words came back to him.

“Some investigator type’s supposed to be coming down here to sign off on these claims, Ryan. Now, don’t muck it up. Just say what you gotta say, keep your mouth shut and we’ll have a check cut before you know it.”

Right. Slugging Murphy probably hadn’t been the smartest thing to do, but the guy just would not take no for an answer. He wanted Ryan neck-deep in his scam, for insurance purposes if nothing else. It didn’t matter that Ryan was as good as an accessory for knowing about the plan, even if he kept his mouth shut.

If I could only be sure Gramps hadn’t been involved.

The Blue Devils coach hollered, “Hey, MacIntosh! You ready to finish up this game?”

Returning to the present, Ryan swigged down a healthy gulp of the orange atrocity he’d gotten from the Thermos. As he headed back for the game, he saw a woman pushing her way through the gate.

Even if she hadn’t been a knockout, he would have noticed her. It was the way she dressed—a lightweight blazer paired with jeans that clung to well-proportioned legs. Who wore a blazer to a kids soccer game in south Georgia?

As he hollered for Emily to throw the ball in, Ryan stole another glance in the new arrival’s direction. Honey-brown hair that would go golden in the summer sun, a little smile playing on her lips, more than a dab of confidence in her walk. This was a woman who knew what she wanted—and where to find it.

Ronnie Frasier’s girl took off on a long drive the wrong way. Ryan hollered for her to stop, but his soccer player never heard him. Instead, the ball went into their own net with frustrating ease.

He stood, moved his cap from his head and used his forearm to wipe away the perspiration that had beaded there. Honestly, this was harder work than getting the harvest in.

If there is any harvest this year.

Ryan pushed the thought from his mind. He glanced over at Jack, saw his cousin talking to the new arrival.

Saw Jack pointing in his direction.

Ryan’s stomach sank. Had to be that private investigator the insurance company had said they were sending.

Just his luck.

But then, he’d had a crop of bad luck for the past six months. If Ryan had believed in karma, he’d be convinced he’d been a scuzzball of the first order in a previous life.

All he’d wanted to do was save his grandfather’s farm and look after Mee-Maw.

And avoid Murphy.

Somehow Ryan didn’t think his goals would mesh with those of the pretty little thing waiting for him on the sidelines.

Just his luck.

BECCA SURVEYED the pack of girls running after the soccer ball. Some of them were pretty good for their age. Well, compared to her. But then Becca had entertained herself picking dandelions from a forsaken corner of whatever athletic field she’d graced.

Give her tai chi any day; it was more her style. No scoreboard to let her know how far along the game was. From the looks of the tall redheaded coach—Ryan MacIntosh, she knew from one of the parents—it had lasted too long already.

Still, MacIntosh seemed to remember why they were here. A few minutes after one girl scored on her own net, he stopped to give high fives for effort when his team managed to recover a turnover.

He looked even better in real life than he had in the few photos she’d dug up on the Internet. He didn’t look like the brain trust of a complicated farm scam.

At that thought, her father’s words when she’d said as much came back to her:

“Becca, remember, he’s a crook. A scammer. You’re just buying into the stereotype that crooks look like crooks.”

MacIntosh had that going for him. With his red-blond hair and his muscled legs that showed off a tan darker than usual for guys his coloring, he certainly didn’t fall into the Wanted-poster category. He was good with the kids, patient. She’d seen him break up a fight earlier. He’d handled that well. Odd for a guy who didn’t have kids of his own.

Becca had made it her business to find out all she could about Ryan MacIntosh before she’d arrived. Thirty-two. Never been married. No scrapes with the law. He’d graduated with an associate’s from Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College and a bachelor’s and a master’s from University of Georgia. Then he’d taken a sales position with an agriculture chemical company. Moved to middle Georgia to run his grandfather’s farm after his grandfather’s death the year before.

The farm had been in his family for five generations. On it, Ryan MacIntosh had grown soybeans, corn and cotton. Lately, though, it seemed that MacIntosh’s chief crop was desperation.

Right now, the farm was the smallest in acreage owned by any full-time farmer in the county—and in the past it had been in tax trouble. She’d turned up a few closed-out liens, as well.

Yup. Ryan MacIntosh was a desperate man.

And, according to her dad, probably a crook, even if he did give peewee-soccer players high fives.

The game played on with Ryan’s Bulldogs taking a beating at the hands of the Blue Devils. Had he chosen that team moniker out of loyalty for his alma mater? What did a person do with a degree in agronomy, anyway?

“Hey, shove that Thermos over and have a seat. This thing could take awhile.”

Becca glanced over at the dark-haired guy with the cast. “Really? I figured it was just about over.”

“Nah. We got started late—the referee stood us up. I’m Jack MacIntosh.”

She moved the Thermos and reached over to shake his hand. “Becca Reynolds. Any relation to Ryan?”

“Sure, first cousins, but we’re more like brothers. Ryan hadn’t mentioned meeting any ladies.”

A smile tugged at her lips as she thought how Ryan was not going to like meeting her in the slightest. “We haven’t actually met.”

Jack raised an eyebrow. “Oh. One of those online deals?”

His words made her feel a little guilty as she thought about her own Rooster—whom she owed an e-mail and hadn’t had a chance to pay that debt since she’d been researching MacIntosh and the other players in this scheme.

“No. This is business.” Becca fished out a card and handed it to him.

“Reynolds Agricultural Investigations.” Jack looked up from the card, a chill in his eyes. “You’re what? A hired gun for a crop-insurance firm?”

Becca had seen that chill before. Farmer types didn’t much care for her or her dad.

At least he didn’t make a cutesy remark about me investigating how many peppers Peter Piper picked. “I’m a private investigator. I work as a consultant for the insurance company that covers several of the farmers in this area, yes. I wouldn’t say a hired gun—”

“I know about people like you. I own an insurance agency.”

Her alarm bells started jangling. “Crop insurance?”

He laughed, a derisive snort. “You kidding? You can’t make any money selling crop insurance in south Georgia. No, strictly homeowners and auto, as well as life and a few health-insurance policies.”

Becca nodded, staying quiet to see what else Ryan MacIntosh’s cousin would volunteer. She didn’t have to wait long.

“So why are you investigating Ryan?”

“Who says I’m investigating your cousin?”

A shadow fell across her, and Becca looked up to see the man in question standing over her.

“Hand me that stack of cups, if you don’t mind.”

Ryan’s voice was clipped. She picked up the requested cups and extended them his way.

He knelt down beside her to get a refill. The hair on his muscled forearms glinted golden in the late-afternoon sun, and his T-shirt clung damply to a well-sculpted set of pecs that indicated he lifted something besides bales of hay.

He downed the sports drink and crumpled the cup in his hand. Rising to his feet on those marvelous legs of his, he stuck out a hand.

“I gather you’re looking for me. I’m Ryan MacIntosh.”

His clear blue gaze unsettled her. She felt heat rising in her face, struggled to remind herself that he was the one who should be on the defensive, not her.

“Becca Reynolds.” She started to reach for another card, but Jack reached up and handed Ryan the one she’d just given to him.

It was telling that Ryan didn’t even look at it. He never took his eyes off hers. Funny. She’d have sworn that a man with his coloring would have had green eyes.

“Richard Murphy told me somebody would be sniffing around. You already inspected his farm?”

“No. I thought I’d start with yours. I called ahead, and a lady gave me directions here, said I’d find you at the rec department.”

“That’d be Mee-Maw.” A small trace of pain flickered over his features. “She’s my grandmother—our grandmother. She’s nearly eighty-five.”

“Really?” Becca chose to ignore his veiled hint to back off in deference to his grandmother. “On the phone, she sounded younger than that.”

“Longevity runs in our family. Right, Jack?” But again, Ryan never took his eyes off Becca’s.

“Yup. Gramps worked that farm till the day he died—and he was eighty-six when he passed on.”

“I look forward to meeting her,” Becca said.

Again pain crossed Ryan’s features. Truth be told, Becca did feel a stirring of remorse. She hated the way the firm’s investigations caused so much collateral damage.

But as her dad so frequently reminded her, they simply exposed the ugly truth people tried to hide. They weren’t the ones who’d created it. No, that lay at the feet of scammers.

Like this guy?

But he looks…honest. Direct. Straight.

“You want to see the farm now?”

“Why not?” she asked.

“Get it over and done with,” Ryan agreed. “I hope you like chicken-fried steak. That’s what Mee-Maw is cooking for supper.”

Panic bubbled through Becca. Getting up close and personal with the family of her target wasn’t in her plans. It was better to avoid all the messy touchy-feely stuff that could cloud an investigation. That was her father’s mantra.

The beauty of analyzing satellite images was they couldn’t charm the pants off you.

“Oh, I couldn’t—”

But Becca’s attempt to politely decline Ryan’s invitation was met with a decisive shake of his head. “Mee-Maw would count it a personal insult if you came at suppertime and didn’t stay to eat. Besides, if you’re gunning for me, you’d best get a little nourishment before you get started, because it’s going to be a long and thankless job.”

Sunny_76@yoohoomail.com: No four-star lodging for me. The mattress is like concrete and the walls are so thin that I can hear people scurrying around in the next room.

Rooster@yoohoomail.com: Sure it’s people? Could be a mouse, you know.

Sunny_76@yoohoomail.com: Well, you’re comforting!

Rooster@yoohoomail.com: How come a farmer’s daughter is afraid of a little ol’ mouse?

Sunny_76@yoohoomail.com: If you could see the size of the cockroaches in this place, you’d be scared, too.

Rooster@yoohoomail.com: Where are you? Chernobyl?

Sunny_76@yoohoomail.com: Waaay in the backwoods, not a Starbucks in sight.

CHAPTER THREE

BECCA TRIED TO TAMP DOWN the adrenaline buzzing through her as she sat on the rough wooden bench. The second half of the soccer match was coming to a close now. She could tell by the way the parents were folding up their chairs and gathering up drink bottles.

If Ryan MacIntosh shared any of her nervous anticipation, he didn’t let on. Instead, he kept his attention on his soccer team and didn’t spare her a glance.

She discounted the flutter shimmering through her. Nerves. Way too much was riding on the outcome of this investigation.

My sweaty palms have nothing to do with that hunk on the field. He’s a target, remember? At best, he’s a material witness. At worst…

She’d know more once she had a look at his farm. Confident, wasn’t he, to invite her out for a drop-in visit? But then, he had mentioned Murphy.

Richard Murphy had made a killing off of the weather the past few years. If he didn’t suffer through a drought, then it was spring rains. If it wasn’t the weather, then it was a bad lot of seed. Murphy was an inveterate frequent flyer of the crop-insurance programs. She knew that from the dossier the insurance fraud guys had put together for her dad.

Any friend of Murphy’s should be suspect in Becca’s book.

Beside her, Jack lumbered to a standing position, balancing on his crutches. When she would have helped, he forestalled her with one derisive look.

Right. She was the bad guy.

A blond-haired little girl dashed up. “Daddy! Daddy! Did you see the goal I made? I did it!”

Ryan came up behind the girl, ruffling her hair. “Next Mia Hamm, yes, sir. Jack, you and Marla may have that retirement problem solved after all.”

“I won’t stop the IRA contributions just yet,” he told Ryan. A quick telltale glance toward Becca, and Jack added, “Uh, call me, okay? Let me know how things go.”

Ryan didn’t bother with circumspection. He eyed Becca openly. “How it’s gonna go is she’ll get the nickel tour, Mee-Maw’s chicken-fried steak and then adios, amiga. Because there’s nothing going on for her to find. Is there, Jack?”

Jack shifted. Becca couldn’t decide whether the shift was to accommodate his leg or a sign of his discomfiture. “Right,” was all he said.

Ryan grabbed the five-gallon beverage cooler. “Ready? Or do you know the way?”

“I have a map, but I’ll follow you. Need a hand?” Becca reached for the cups.

One of his big hands scooped them up before she could retrieve them. “Not from you, I don’t.”

He marched off toward the gate. Becca looked over at Jack. “Is it just me or is he always like this?”

Jack shrugged. “The ladies around here tend to think he’s hot stuff. So I’d figure…it was you.”

She followed Ryan to the grass parking lot. He was busy loading the cooler and a couple of soccer balls into their mesh bag on the back of a dented pickup. The truck in all its rusty glory held her attention.

Becca had expected a big, shiny extended-cab model, fresh off the showroom floor. What she saw was a truck at least fifteen years old that bore the scars of work.

It didn’t jibe with the typical scammer’s profile.

Ryan shot her a smile that was short on any real welcome. “I’m about ready. Do you need a lift to your car?”

“It’s right here. The red Mini Cooper.”

He looked past her, toward the only Mini Cooper in the lot. Now his lips twisted a little. “That thing run on golf-cart batteries?”

She was accustomed to people teasing her about her car; Becca didn’t care. Buying that car was one of the truly profligate things she’d ever done—but her aunt would be smiling down on her for it.

Becca swallowed hard, wishing for just an instant that her aunt Mala were with her. Her father’s younger sister had adored Mini Coopers when the imports had become popular, and she’d worn red until the day she’d died of breast cancer. She’d encouraged Becca early on to be a tad whimsical. Despite her father’s pragmatic bent, Becca had to admit to succumbing to Aunt Mala’s teachings with the car.

Besides, it reminded Becca of a time not so long ago when her own business was going great guns, she’d bought her own house and the future looked bright. The car was the one thing she’d kept from her old life.

Now Becca returned to the present. “Betcha my Mini would beat your old truck.”

Ryan slid a hand over the dings and scratches. “This isn’t any old truck. This belonged to Gramps. What’s good enough for him is good enough for me. I wouldn’t bet the farm on your little Matchbox toy, not until you’ve looked under the hood of my truck.”

Maybe it was the way he’d touched the truck with such reverence. Maybe it was because he, too, let his choice of transportation be a way to connect with someone he’d loved. Whatever it was, Becca felt an immediate kinship spring up between them. For the first time, she allowed herself to hope that maybe things weren’t as they seemed.

BECCA KEPT the Mini Cooper well back from the billows of dust Ryan’s truck churned up on the dirt road. She couldn’t decide whether it would be wiser to go slow over the washboard surface and save the car’s alignment, or go fast—thereby missing most of the bumps and saving all the jostles to her neck and shoulders. They were stiff from the three-hour ride from Atlanta.

She’d stopped just long enough to get a room at the local motel, with its 1960s decor and its view of the pitted parking lot. Becca could have gotten a room at any of the el-cheapo but known motels in Dublin, but her dad had always advised to get a room close to the investigation. You picked up things that way, and you didn’t waste time in transit.

Up ahead, she saw Ryan’s brake lights pop on and the truck pull off on a narrow drive. It wound through two big pastures dotted with cows that seemed undisturbed by the truck.

Now she saw the tin roof of the farmhouse glinting in the setting sun. When she pulled to a stop, she gave the single-story house with its steeply pitched roof an appraising look.

The house was white-framed, with a deep wraparound porch graced by restrained gingerbread trim, a swing and some rockers. The biggest chinaberry tree Becca had ever seen shaded the porch. A cracked and uneven walk curved between two beds full of red and yellow and orange roses.

This could be Nana and Papa’s.

The homeplace wasn’t just like Becca’s grandparents’, of course, but the simple, unfussy style of the house was akin to many of the farmhouses in the south. Becca closed her eyes, sniffing in the late-evening air.

Yep. There it was. The redolent scent of honeysuckle.

“You gonna stand out here all night, or are you coming in?”

“Uh, sure.” Becca was embarrassed that Ryan had caught her reminiscing. She closed the gap between them. “I was just admiring the house. It’s beautiful.”

“Tara, it’s not, but I like it. Gramps built it himself, just after he came home from the Pacific theater. He was in World War II.”

“He seems to have been quite a guy.”

“He was.”

Again she heard that prickle in Ryan’s voice, that note of defensiveness. But before she could address it, the front door swung open.

“Ryan, that you? What you doing coming in the front door? Oh! You got company!”

The words, strong and vibrant and with a country twang, held a note of pleasure and came from the tall woman at the screen door. Her hair was thick and white and scooped up in a bun. Her tanned face seemed curiously smooth, except for a few deep crevices.

“Mee-Maw, this is Becca Reynolds. She’s a crop-insurance investigator.”

Amusement rippled over the old woman’s features at the sour warning in Ryan’s voice. “Well, Ryan, I guess everybody’s gotta do something to keep body and soul together. Child, come on in. My grandson did invite you to supper, didn’t he? Or did he completely forget his raisings? I sure hope you like chicken-fried steak.”

“I do appreciate the offer, but I can get something in—”

“Hush, child. You won’t get anything at all like my chicken-fried steak in town, so you might as well come on in and wash up. I was just getting ready to put it on the table, so you can get the ice in the glasses, how ’bout that?”

Ryan grinned at Becca. “Told you. When Mee-Maw gets her mind set on anything, you might as well just go along with it.”

A hint of the supper wafted out, and suddenly Becca did want to sample Mee-Maw’s cooking.

Or maybe you just miss your grandparents. Don’t get too close, Becca.

Aunt Mala’s whimsical nature—and the promise of a good homecooked meal—got the best of her. “Sure,” she said, deliberately not looking at Ryan. “That sounds great. Just point me in the direction of the glasses and the ice.”

“C’MON, CHILD, you know you can eat more—one little piece of steak is all you’ve eaten. There’s plenty more.”

Becca shook her head. The “little” piece of steak that she’d eaten was twice what she’d needed. To go with it, she’d tucked away a mountain of mashed potatoes floating with gravy, butter beans and thick slices of tomatoes.

“No, ma’am. I couldn’t hold another bite. Besides, it’s getting late, and I’d like to take a look around before dark.”

“Pshaw, honey. It won’t get dark until nearly nine. But you two young folks go ahead. I’ll get the dishes.”

That led to a tussle between Ryan and Becca to see who would take the kitchen cleanup task away from Mee-Maw. It at once felt odd and right to Becca to think of her target’s grandmother as Mee-Maw, but that was the name the woman had insisted she use.

“It’s what everybody calls me,” Mee-Maw had said. “The only Mrs. MacIntosh I ever knew was my mother-in-law—God rest her soul, ’cause I don’t want that old battle-ax comin’ back from the grave!”

Ryan ungraciously conceded that Becca could at least assist him with the dishes. They worked in silence. His familiarity around the kitchen told her that he’d done this before.

Maybe Dad was wrong. Maybe Ryan’s not involved. I’m wasting my time here. It’s Murphy I should be going after.

According to Ag-Sure’s people, the insurance company was betting that the dodder vine had been planted intentionally. Since Ryan and Murphy had been the first in the area to submit a claim, Ag-Sure had tagged them as the most likely suspects.

Now Becca wasn’t so sure. Maybe it wasn’t a scam.

The last pot dried and put away, Ryan picked up a platter of table scraps. “Let me just feed Wilbur and I’ll show you whatever you need to see.”

“Wilbur?”

“That ol’ dog!” Mee-Maw shook her head. “He’s an old sooner that came wanderin’up last winter, nothin’ but skin and bones. Ryan found him slippin’ round the hog pen, survivin’ off what food he could steal from my sows. I named the old mutt Wilbur after that pig in Charlotte’s Web.”

“So you have hogs and cows?” Becca’s research hadn’t turned up this.

Ryan shook his head. “After Gramps passed away, the guy who helped us took off. Guess he didn’t think I could make a go of the farm. Anyway, it was too much work for one person, taking care of hogs, so we sold them. But we kept Wilbur. The name suits him—he sure thought he was a pig.”

Hmm…a disappearing hired hand. That’s a bit convenient. I wonder if this hand knew about the scam and was persuaded to get himself lost. She filed away the thought and commented, “I thought dogs weren’t supposed to get table scraps.”

Ryan chuckled. “Tell that to Wilbur—or whoever fed him scraps to begin with.”

Becca followed Ryan out the kitchen door. A big brown dog loped up the back steps. He sat down on his haunches, pawed the rough floorboards of the porch and whined.

“Here you go, boy.” Ryan dumped the scraps into a stainless steel bowl. Wilbur thumped his thick tail hopefully. “Okay, eat.”

“Wow. You’ve got him trained. My old dog would be all over me.”

“What sort of dog?”

“A collie. We lost her to cancer last year.”

“We? You’re married?”

Was that disappointment she detected in Ryan’s tone? Becca shook her head. “No. I live with my dad. Kind of weird, I know. But it’s just been me and him forever—my mom died when I was young. It’s his firm that I work for—so we just, um, decided it was simpler to live together. Makes it simpler.”

Becca hoped she hid her shame at having returned home.

“Hey, you’re talking to a grown man who still lives with his grandmother.” Ryan shrugged. “I did the single-bachelor deal and the roommate deal and the live-in deal…and, you know, Mee-Maw beats ’em all when it comes to cooking and sharing a roof. Besides, this way, I get to keep an eye on her. It’s been hard on her since she lost Gramps.”

Again that feeling of kinship sprang up. They had so many things in common that, in other circumstances, they might well have hit it off from the start.

Becca covered her conflicted emotions by scratching Wilbur behind the ear. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Ryan look away from her face to do a discreet check of the rest of her. Her mouth went dry as he surveyed her with unabashed interest.

“Ahem, well. Where’s that nickel tour you promised?”

“Right. Let me put this up.”

She stayed outside while he washed the final dish. Back outside, he rubbed his hands together—working man’s hands, she noted, but with nails neatly trimmed and clean.

“So…where to?”

“Let me see this vine everybody’s complaining about.”

“Sure. But can we take a detour so I can feed the fish in the pond?”

“No problem. As long as I can get out of here by dark.”

She fell in step beside him, crossing the backyard to the pond that lay in a pool of golden sunset. “Oh, my. This is gorgeous.”

“Yeah. It is. The rest of the world can keep its beachfront condos—this is my favorite place on earth. Me, my hammock and Wilbur at my feet.”

Becca thought about Rooster and his hammock and his similar sentiments. Must be a man thing.

But the peaceful stillness of the pond stirred some understanding in even her restless soul. She finally got what Rooster had meant by needing a little solitude—and sitting still while you had it instead of racing down a highway.

“I don’t see any hammock.”

“It’s over there. Underneath the willow tree near the dock. See the willow that’s arched over? My cousins and I—”

Becca’s breath caught. She didn’t hear the rest of what he said. She couldn’t, not over the thump of her heart. She stood stock-still and saw afresh the pond. The house. The dog who scarfed up table scraps.

She looked at Ryan, who stared back at her with a worried expression on his face. Ryan. The target of her investigation.

No.

Rooster.

CHAPTER FOUR

“ARE YOU—DO YOU NEED to sit down? You look like you’re going to pass out. You’re not a diabetic, are you?”

Ryan’s words, as well as his hand on her shoulder, yanked her out of the swirling maelstrom of her thoughts.

Tell him. Tell him you know him.

No, you could be wrong. You’d sound like a nut, or a loser—a loser who has to go online to find someone to talk to and then doesn’t even know his name. Wait. Be sure.

But Becca was sure, to-her-bones sure. She smiled at him in what she hoped was a reassuring way. “Uh, headache. I guess…the sunset?”

“Migraine?” Ryan made sympathetic noises that triggered a flood of guilt within Becca.

“My camera…I forgot it. I’ll just…walk back and get it, okay? It’s in my car.”

He would have followed her, but she waved him off. “You feed the fish. I’ll get my camera…and some medicine.”

As if to make her words true, a headache blistered forth like a blacksmith’s red-hot poker. Whether it was stress or punishment for the lie, Becca couldn’t say, but she was grateful for the time alone.

At the car, she fumbled for her camera. The bag’s heft felt dear and familiar in her hand. The camera had been one of the small things she’d managed to salvage after the debacle at the magazine. Becca pushed aside resentful thoughts of libel suits and searched for some quick-dissolve pain medicine.

She sat in the driver’s seat and closed her eyes, praying that the medicine would kick in before the pain settled for a long stay. The inner debate raged on. With some force, she managed to tick off the pros and cons of telling him the truth.

The biggest reason was her gut. It had never steered her wrong before—well, save one biggie in the form of her countersuit, but in the end, even a jury of her peers had said her gut had been right.

Maybe, though, her instinct to blurt out “Are you Rooster?” came from her distaste of lying, even by omission. Deceit never felt right to Becca.

But this situation was different.

You don’t know if it’s Rooster. You have no way to verify it, except for some story about a willow tree. He can’t have been the only one who’s ever put a hammock under a willow tree.

Yeah, right. And just what did her dad say about coincidence?

Her dad. Becca’s stomach did a nauseating roll and twist the way it did whenever she’d topped a roller coaster and prepared for the final gut-wrenching loops. Her father would kill her. Becca could imagine the scathing words her dad would say to her if she trotted back to Atlanta to tell him some sorry tale about how she knew Ryan MacIntosh was innocent because he’d turned out to be her online buddy.

Knowing Dad, he’d say it was no coincidence at all. He’d swear Ryan had targeted Becca.

The possibility niggled at her. It would explain how Becca, who never managed to win a door prize or a lottery ticket or even a church bingo game, had hit the trifecta of coincidence.

But, no. She had six months of correspondence with Ryan, anonymous correspondence. She knew him—knew him how it counted. He couldn’t be scamming her. He couldn’t be mixed up in some complicated conspiracy to defraud the government and Ag-Sure.

Could he?

Okay, so she couldn’t say anything to her dad. She had to go forward with the investigation if she wanted to keep her job.

So…

Maybe there was no fraud. Maybe it was some wildly improbable, but still true, story about a vine that had somehow gotten transported from Texas to Georgia. Truth was stranger than fiction, right?

All she had to do was prove that the story was true. All she had to do was figure out how it got there. Then not even the insurance company could fault her.

If she did it quickly enough, Ryan wouldn’t have to know now. Plenty of time to help him anonymously. Plenty of time to tell him later. He’d understand about conflicts of interest.

The tremulous panic within her subsided as she settled on a course of action. Becca drew in an easier breath. She could do this.

A tapping at the window made her jump. She opened her eyes to see a concerned Ryan crouched down, peering at her.

Right. Well, checking on her tallied with the considerate Rooster she knew.

She gripped her camera bag and opened the car door. Time to get the show on the road.

“I got worried,” Ryan told her. “You looked so…”

“Thanks. I took some medicine. It happens, these headaches. I get stressed out and boom. A good night’s sleep will put me to rights. Fish fed?”

“Yeah. Um…you have some different shoes? Those aren’t exactly…”

She glanced down at her leather slip-ons. “Oh. Right. Let me change into the sneakers I brought.”

Ryan dropped onto the grass while he waited for her to swap shoes. Wilbur nosed up to him and flopped down beside him. She watched the two of them roughhouse while she tied her last sneaker. It felt odd to see Rooster in the flesh, see him do the things he’d described in what he’d supposed was an anonymous way. They’d revealed more than they’d realized about each other.

The trick, of course, was not to inadvertently reveal that she was Sunny. That would be a devil of a dilemma. After all, hadn’t she let Rooster—Ryan, she corrected herself—into her soul? Wouldn’t it be as easy for him to spot her as it had been for her?

Becca gave an extra hard yank to her shoelaces and stood up. The quicker she could stamp Closed on this case, the better. “Let’s take a gander at this vine, shall we?”

A FEW MINUTES LATER she was jouncing up and down behind Ryan on the back of a four-wheeler, with Wilbur running alongside them. Rows of cotton slid past them as they headed into the field.

She tightened her grip on Ryan to avoid being bounced off when they hit a rut—and was rewarded with the feel of rock-solid abs.

“Sorry!” he yelled over the roar of the two-cycle engine. “Didn’t see that one.”

His scent—a mix of soap and water, her favorite laundry detergent and the faintest trace of some sort of drive-a-woman-wild aftershave—tickled her senses. She inhaled again, this time deliberately. This was what she’d been missing all these months. Too bad e-mails didn’t come with a scratch-n-sniff option; she would have discarded the blanket of anonymity months ago if she’d had a hit of this.

All too soon, Becca felt the four-wheeler slow and then stop. She climbed off the machine, tried to tell herself that the unrelenting vibrations were what had made her knees weak.

Becca couldn’t convince herself of that one.

“Well. There it is. The giant Asian dodder vine. Ugly critter, isn’t it?”

It was ugly. Thick vines with no leaves strangled the cotton. To Becca, the vines looked like nothing so much as some sort of monochromatic python.

She fumbled in her camera bag for her reporter’s notebook and a pencil, old habits so ingrained that she never could get accustomed to using anything else. “Right. So how long has this been here? When did it first show up?”

Some of Ryan’s earlier disgust came back. “Don’t you guys even bother to read the insurance claim forms? Or are you hoping I’ll trip myself up so you can stamp Denied on my claim and then go on your merry little way?”

Ouch. His tone had hurt. She was about to snap back with something like “Hey, easy, buddy, I’m on your side,” but she stopped herself.

Don’t assume that Ryan is going to treat you like he knows you. To him, you’re the bad guy, remember?

Becca struggled for professionalism. “Yes, I have those forms—I’ve read them, I assure you. But I think it’s best if you just think of me as a glorified insurance adjuster. I’m here to help, okay? The computer’s flagged this and other similar claims for a variety of reasons. It’s in your best interest to help me so that this case is resolved quickly. Then Ag-Sure’s happy, you get your money and you’re happy, too. After all, if everything’s on the up-and-up, you’ve got nothing to hide, right?”

The color heightened in Ryan’s face, and he glanced away. Damn. She wished he hadn’t done that. It set all her alarm bells clanging.

Maybe he was still just mad.

“Right, Ryan?”

His nod lacked a certain ringing conviction of innocence. It troubled her that he didn’t enthusiastically say “Of course I’ve got nothing to hide.” But she ignored her worries and focused on doing her job.

Because doing her job would be what saved both of them.

“So, then, how you can help is to tell me, to the best of your knowledge, the time line, how this vine came to be.”

“I don’t know how this ‘came to be,’” Ryan growled at her. “All I know—all I can tell you—is that one morning, I got up to come plow my cotton and I saw this. Do you realize that I can’t even plow it? Not this section, anyway. The vines are too thick. They wrap around the implements and the discs, and I spend half a day getting them unwrapped. Forget harvesting this in any sort of mechanized way—even the good plants that aren’t affected—the vines are too close and mess up the harvester.”

But Becca had already started counting off rows…and she realized something. The knots of snakelike vines were in a pattern. Several rows would be untouched, and then one lone row or two would be taken over by the dodder. Then it would repeat—within the distance of the common width of plows.

She looked from the field to Ryan. No. It couldn’t be. But another count of the rows confirmed that the pattern was too consistent to be natural.

There’s got to be an explanation for this.

But that desperate thought vied with another.

Face it. He’s hiding something—and not very well.

Becca disguised her suspicion by taking pictures. She stepped back, steadied her pen on her pad and pressed on. “I have to admit, I know zip about this plant except what I could find online. And what the insurance company provided for me.”

“Right, of course. I’m sure they were most helpful.”

“It’s your chance, Ryan. Tell me.”

Becca willed him to come clean with whatever was so obviously on his mind. She could see something warring within him, knew instantly that he was experiencing the same inner debate she’d had earlier.

He’d tell Sunny.

For an instant, it was on the tip of her tongue to tell him the truth. Just blurt it out and see if he’d take her into his confidence. But then, maybe it was best that Ryan didn’t know who she was. The insurance company would yank her and her dad off the case for sure, and then what sort of investigator would Ryan get?

No. Better to do it the way she’d planned.

He’d come to a decision, she could see that.

“From my research—and my experience, unfortunately—this stuff grows at, like, six inches a day. It has no roots, no leaves—doesn’t need ’em. It just attaches itself to a handy plant and sucks it dry. Then it spreads to the next plant. And the next. I have no clue how it got here. A bit of a vine could have dropped here, could have been blown in by the wind from some of these other farms. It could have been trucked in. It just happened to drop in a spot, sniffed out a plant it liked and boom—suddenly I’m out of business. Bad luck. Bad timing.”

“So herbicides won’t work?”

“Sure. Kill the host plant and you kill the dodder vine. You don’t make anything on cotton even when the rains come when they’re supposed to and the weeds are the everyday garden variety. I swear to God, though, this is the scariest thing to hit cotton since the boll weevil.”

Becca’s headache came back full force. She realized that darkness had crept up on them when Wilbur came bursting out of a particularly thick patch of cotton.

“Um…look, I’ll have loads more questions than I feel up to asking about tonight. Can I bug you tomorrow after I’ve had a chance to get some rest?”

“Do I have a choice?”

Again, her heart ached. She wanted to yell at him, “Don’t hate me! It’s me! It’s Sunny! I’m here to help.”

Until she knew what was going on, though, she didn’t dare.

Ryan didn’t wait for her answer. “C’mon. I’ll take you back. We’ll go a different way so you see how far down it goes.

“Listen…maybe I came across all wrong. I’m just really frustrated by all this. All I want to do is get this harvest in some way, somehow, or else call it a loss and take my lumps. Trust me. I’ll make more money if I can get the harvest to market than I would with the insurance. All the insurance money will do is maybe pay off my seed money, my fertilizer and my pesticide bills. Diesel? Electricity? My labor? Forget that. But—”

She lay a hand on his arm. “I’m not the enemy, Ryan. I know how hard farming is, how dicey it can be. You have to trust me.”

He nodded, an abrupt jerk of his head that told her he didn’t, in fact, trust her.

Ryan seemed more rigid, less at ease, on the trip back. They left the field behind and came into the farmyard proper, whizzing past a big old barn, a grain silo, some outbuildings. Ahead, she could see the lights of the house, contrasting with the descending twilight.

They slowed as they passed a tiny but colorful vegetable garden.

“Wow! Look at the size of those tomatoes! You really know how to grow ’em!”

“That’s Mee-Maw’s. Want some? I need to pick the ripe ones for her anyway—Son of a—”

He braked suddenly, the movement jerking her forward.

“What?”

Ryan switched off the four-wheeler’s engine, stalked over to the vegetable garden and knelt down. With one hand, he began jerking up a perfectly healthy tomato vine by its roots, the careful framework of stakes tumbling to the ground.

Becca gasped. “What are you doing?”

He shoved it at her. “Pick off the tomatoes—ripe and green. Throw the vine down way over yonder—don’t put it down near the garden. I need to check the rest of these plants.”

Bemused, she did as he ordered, stacking the round red fruit on the seat of the four-wheeler. It was only as she turned the vine over in her hands that she saw what had made him yank up the bush.

Wrapped around the base of the tomato plant, as thin as a garden snake, was a young dodder vine.

CHAPTER FIVE

BECCA’S HAND INSTANTLY recoiled from the vine, though she told herself she was being silly. The plant, no matter how serpentine it looked, wasn’t dangerous to anything but a hapless plant unlucky enough to be its target.

Behind her, Ryan let loose a string of expletives, half muttered under his breath. She turned from plucking the last of the green tomatoes off the bush to see him yanking up still more plants by their roots.

The investigator in her noted the placement of those plants. The vine had grown on host plants in a checkerboardlike pattern all over the garden. She’d been around farming all her life, and she knew that what she was seeing was not natural.

No, if this had been a natural invasion of a parasitic plant, the vine would have attacked one spot and spread outward in a radius.

How had it traveled all the way from the cotton field—far enough that it took a four-wheeler to get there—to the kitchen garden so close to the house?

Squash plants, pea plants, okra, cucumber—one or two each joined the tomato plant Becca had discarded well away from the garden. Ryan crossed over to a shed, came back with a handful of kindling and a box of matches. He knelt, building a quick funeral pyre for the plants and tossed in a lit match.

“You’re not playing around.” Becca studied him for a long moment. Was his reaction normal frustration or a little too vehement?

For now, Becca was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt…but knowing her dad wouldn’t do the same ate at her.

“If there’s even a scrap of these left, the vine can spread. Mee-Maw’s worked too hard on this garden for her to lose it now.” His features were grim as he watched to be sure the plants caught.

The flames shot up higher and smoke billowed, hanging low in the twilight. Becca said nothing, still just observing, wanting to believe in Ryan. Abruptly, he turned and started back for the shed.

“Watch that for me,” he said. “I need some old bricks to surround the fire. All I need is for this fire to get out of control. It’s dry enough that it would spread. There’s a water hose coiled up near the back porch if it spreads.”

He was back again in a few moments, laden down with chipped and broken bricks. By the time Ryan had made a ring around the fire, the green plants had decided to succumb. Becca noted that the thicker dodder vines were more resistant to the flames than the tender green leaves of the vegetable plants.

Ryan seemed to read her thoughts. “First time I spotted this stuff in the cotton field, I thought that the best way to handle it was to burn it. So I doused a pile of cotton plants and vines with a little lighter fluid and tried to do just that. A day or so later I noticed that not all the vine had been destroyed and that it had latched on to whatever thick, bushy plant it found near enough to grab hold of. It’s downright creepy, if you ask me.”

The heat of the fire was suffocating in the muggy August evening, but Becca was still mesmerized. She pulled her eyes from the hypnotic flames. “So, you have to build this big a fire?”

Sweat had beaded up on Ryan’s brow, and his T-shirt clung to him. “All I can figure is the vines have sucked so much water out of host plants that killing the vine itself is that much harder. You have to burn it a long time…kind of like getting seaweed started for an oyster bake. For a whole field of cotton, that’s not so easy…but at least I know what to do to save Mee-Maw’s tomatoes.”

Mentioning Mee-Maw seemed to summon her. His grandmother swung open the back door and stepped out onto the porch. “Ryan? What in tarnation are you up to? It’s too dry and too late for a bonfire—not to mention it’s got to be eighty degrees out here even at this time of night!”

Ryan sighed. “Help me carry these tomatoes to her, will you?”

Becca gathered up an armload of tomatoes and followed him to the back porch.

“Mee-Maw…I’m afraid that vine’s spread to your garden. I had to destroy some of your plants, okay? I’m sorry, but if you want a chance at salvaging the rest of it, the host plants had to be burned.”

Mee-Maw’s face sagged, and suddenly Becca could see the woman’s years. “Here, let me get a pan to put ’em in. We’ll fry the green tomatoes, and the ripe ones needed picking anyway.” She cast a nervous glance at Ryan. “You keep an eye on that fire. Should have got an old barrel out of the—”

“Yes, ma’am, Mee-Maw. I know. I should have.”

The old lady hustled into the kitchen for a pan, shooing Ryan away as soon as he’d dumped his cargo. “You go on back to the fire.”

Becca, though, followed her into the house, the dog at her heels. “Is it okay? The dog, I mean?” she asked. She piled the green tomatoes down atop the red ones. “They’re beautiful tomatoes. It’s a shame.”

“Wilbur’s fine. He likes to loaf, but he stays inside mostly. Thank you, ma’am, ’bout my tomatoes. Some of ’em are turning, looks like. You like fried green tomatoes?”

Becca nodded, gazing out the window over the sink at Ryan as he poked at the fire with an iron rake. When she turned her attention back toward Mee-Maw, she saw the woman was looking out the window, as well. “Yes, ma’am. My grandmother sure could make a mean fried green tomato.”

Mee-Maw sank into her chair at the kitchen table and buried her head in her hands. “First I lose Mac, and then J.T. has to leave the day after Mac’s funeral…then that blamed vine starts springing up. Bad enough it got into the cotton, but now the vegetables? And with money so tight!”

“Mac?”

“My husband. Ryan’s grandfather. Mac’s daddy gave us this little corner of land to build the house on. He was in the Pacific, Mac was, during World War II. Spent the whole entire war surrounded by water. Swore if he could ever make it back on dry land, he’d nail his feet to the ground, and he just about did. Don’t get me wrong—we battled hail and sleet and drought and floods and just about everything the Lord could hand us…but I never thought I’d see anything like this…this blamed vine.”

“Is J.T. one of your sons?”

“J.T.?” For a moment, Mee-Maw looked a little startled. Her face resembled Ryan’s as it closed down, defensive and wary. “No. J.T. helped us out around the farm. Me and Mac, we were no spring chickens, you know, and we needed someone with a strong back. Ryan was on the road with that chemical company back then, and Jack’s always so busy with his insurance agency.”

“So your children…”

“Jack’s dad got killed in a wreck, oh, ten years ago. And Marshall, Ryan’s dad—he’s my youngest—he’s teaching at the agricultural college. That’s a good three hours away.”

Mee-Maw sighed again. “I didn’t know what I’d do when J.T. had to leave. I thought for sure I’d have to give up this place. But then Ryan came back and helped me keep the farm going. He’d been itching to for years, but he kept putting it off. Besides, he didn’t want to seem like he was pushing his gramps out of the tractor seat.” She snorted. “As if anyone could have, even if he’d wanted to.”

“Why did J.T.—”

But before Becca could get the question out, Mee-Maw had pushed up from the table and crossed to stand beside Becca at the white enamel sink and drainboard, muttering something about Ryan and the fire.

“Ma’am?”

“Fire. Hate the stuff. Lost everything we had to a fire when I was a kid. An old cookstove messed up—ain’t nothing sadder than to stand outside in the middle of the night and see every stick of furniture, every scrap you own, everything you worked for…gone. Makes me the pack rat I am, I guess.

“Go on out there, will you? Make sure he banks that fire. I know he will, mind you, but just humor a silly old woman.”

Becca crossed the backyard to the bonfire—and stopped in her tracks.

Ryan had stripped off his T-shirt and laid it aside. The fire lit the planes of his chest, highlighting well-developed pecs and a firm, flat abdomen.

His skin was damp from his exertion and the heat of the flames licking over the dodder vine at his feet. Ryan seemed intense, focused, apparently unfazed by the smoke and the crackle of sparks that shot up from the wood into the dark night sky.

The sight made Becca’s belly flutter. She tried to quench the butterflies with a good dose of common sense.

First she’d mooned over his scent and now she was ogling him? Her dad would yank her off this case so fast…She knew better than to get involved with the target of an investigation.

But you’re already involved.

“Mee-Maw said to be sure to bank the fire.”

Ryan jumped. “Damn. You scared me. I figured you’d gone by now.”

“No. You know, I should have gotten pictures of the vine before you burned the plants.”

“Yeah, well, chalk that up to my thinking it was more important to get a harvest than an insurance settlement.”

Or was it to cover something up? She silenced her dad’s whisper in her head, but it was there for a reason. While she’d always prided herself on being objective and open-minded, she had enough of her father in her to avoid being led down many a primrose path.

“Ryan…” Becca fought the urge to touch him. It was so hard to act as though she’d only just met him. “Before I close out this investigation, I’m going to need detailed time lines, to establish where this vine first popped up, how it spread. Your claim forms are pretty scant on details like that.”

“You see how it spreads!” He scowled and gave the fire a jab with his rake, sending off an explosion of sparks. “It’s like damn toadstools—one day it’s not there, the next, it’s strangling half a garden. Fill out all the blanks and check all the boxes you want to on your forms, but it all comes down to the same thing—I don’t know how it got here. I can speculate, but it doesn’t change the fact that I’m fighting something here—we’re all fighting something—that could wreck agriculture in this part of the state.”

“Whoa. A bit of hyperbole, isn’t it?”

“No. Another farmer who has this stuff in his fields says it’s resistant to the one herbicide that ought to kill it.”

“I thought you said if you kill the host plant—”

“If you starve it out, sure. But in his case, the vine just found something else to latch on to. Look—I know insurance companies don’t want to pay out claims. Hell, they’ve got shareholders, and I know whose tune those insurance execs are marching to. But rather than send us someone to investigate us—” this he made sound like the basest of insults “—why not send us someone to solve the problem?”

“And who might that be? What experts have you called in?”

Again, Ryan gave her a look that screamed his discomfiture.

“Well? Surely you—”

“I’ve put in calls to every expert that might have the faintest clue of how to get rid of this vine. They all say the same thing—drag a firebreak around the affected acreage, throw in a match and watch what little profit you have left go up in smoke. Believe me, I’ve been tempted. And tonight…tonight I’m past temptation.”

“No! You can’t do that. It could be evidence—”

“See? You do think I’m running a scam.”

“Evidence can prove you either guilty or innocent, Ryan. But if you destroy it, you destroy any chance of me helping you.”

“You? Helping me? Why would a hired gun from Ag-Sure want to help me?”

Frustrated, she ground her teeth. “I am not a hired gun. The outcome of this case—at least from my point of view—is not a foregone conclusion, okay? But you’re being so damned paranoid that you’re sure as hell acting guilty.”

“Sorry,” he mumbled. “I’m just frustrated, okay?”

“Okay. But believe me. I’m here to help. Surely you can’t have tapped out all the experts on this sort of problem.”

The flicker of hope in his face died, and the corners of his mouth twisted. “You might as well know since you’ll find out sooner or later—if you don’t already know.”

“What?”

The bonfire crackled as the flames fed on the pine resin. Bits of ash rained down on Becca and Ryan, but she waited. She tried to read anything but misery in Ryan’s expression.

She couldn’t.

“One of my last projects with the ag chemical company I worked for was on a farm in Texas with this same dodder vine. I didn’t have a clue what to do to help them, and neither did anybody else. And I damn sure,” he bit out, “don’t know how to get rid of it here. I was there, on-site, equipped with means and opportunity to bring the vine east. So, you still think this case has no foregone conclusion?”

Sunny_76@yoohoomail.com: Have you ever wondered about me? I mean, what I look like, who I am? If you’ve ever passed me on the street?

Rooster@yoohoomail.com: I know pretty much everybody on the streets I’ve been on, but I’ve wondered, yeah.

Sunny_76@yoohoomail.com: What would you say if you met me, but you weren’t sure it was me? If we did meet up?

Rooster@yoohoomail.com: I probably wouldn’t say anything—what if it wasn’t you? She’d think I was nuts.

Sunny_76@yoohoomail.com: So do you think one day we ever will meet?

Rooster@yoohoomail.com: Maybe…but part of me doesn’t want to spoil the way things are.

CHAPTER SIX

RYAN’S PATH WAS BLOCKED by a four-foot-ten-inch pixie with the saddest eyes he’d ever seen.

“Charlotte, I swear. I don’t know where J.T. is,” Ryan told the diner waitress. “I haven’t heard from him in months—since Gramps’s funeral. You just need to…”

Ryan tried to swallow the anger he felt whenever he thought of the disappearing J. T. Griggs. The man had taken advantage of at least two women—Charlotte and Mee-Maw—left them high and dry, and still they defended him.

“You just need to forget J.T.”

Charlotte Hooks shifted her weight from one rubber-soled foot to the other, the carafe of hot coffee sloshing dangerously in her hand. “I can’t. He was a good man. I—I just don’t understand it, Ryan. J.T. just wouldn’t vanish this long without telling me where he was going. He wouldn’t leave Mee-Maw in a crunch, leaving right after Mr. Mac’s funeral. He had respect for Mr. Mac, and you know that. He flat worshipped the ground that man walked on.”

“Maybe he went back to Texas?”

Her brows drew together in an even darker frown. “They have phones in Texas, last I heard. If he’s that tight for money, he could at least send me a postcard. Besides, J.T. swore he wasn’t ever going back there. Wasn’t anything there for him, he said.”

Ryan eyed the glass door leading to the private dining room, the one where Murphy was holding court—and waiting for him.

He didn’t need to be here. He needed to be out plowing—and making sure that damned vine hadn’t taken any more potential harvest.

Ryan had been on a tractor, in fact, when Murphy had called this impromptu meeting this morning. Some people didn’t apparently have to work for a living.

But calls from Murphy—what with his web of connections to local politics and his big fat checkbook—were the equivalent of a command performance. Mee-Maw—and what she might have done to protect Gramps’s memory—was part of this equation, as well. Ryan hated the doubt and suspicion that had clouded his thoughts about her lately.

Besides, Ryan had a few things to unload on Murphy.

Not that it would do any good.

First, though, he had to get past Charlotte.

“I swear, scout’s honor, I have no clue where J.T. is. He hasn’t called me, hasn’t written, hasn’t left a crop circle or a message in skywriting. But if he should, you’ll be the first to know, okay? I know…I know you miss him, Charlotte.”

Her mouth twisted, and tears gathered in her eyes. “I’m worried. That’s what I am. He had so much going for him. He was finally getting his life together. He wouldn’t throw it all away. He wouldn’t.”

Maybe he didn’t have a choice.

Ryan shook off the dark thought. “That’s right. I’m sure he’ll let you know where he is and what he’s doing. How about getting me a cup of that coffee and bringing it to me in the back dining room?”

“That’s another reason why I thought…You never come here anymore. I thought maybe you knew something and weren’t telling me.”

I never come here anymore because I’m flat broke and even a dollar for a cup of joe is hard to come by.

“If I find out anything about J.T., I’ll tell you. Now, how about that coffee?”

After Charlotte trudged off for a cup, he proceeded back to the dining room.

Murphy looked up from his plate of grits, eggs and bacon. “’Bout time you got here. We’ve been waiting on you.”

The we included a motley crew of area farmers, some clearly straight from the fields as Ryan was, others in pristine golf shirts free from any signs of true labor. Murphy was part of the latter, his white knit cotton stretched taut over a big belly. Five minutes in a tractor and that shirt would have been history.

It also, Ryan realized with a sick twist of his stomach, included Jack.

Ryan pulled out a chair and sat down. He gave Jack a penetrating look, but his cousin merely shrugged in reply. The other men stared at Ryan, waiting for him to speak. When he didn’t, Murphy forked in another bite of fried egg, chewed, cleared his throat and spoke.

“The fellows here are hoping you can tell them what to expect from that lady investigator. Understand she started with you last night. And stayed pretty late.”

“Now you’ve got me under surveillance?” Ryan glanced Jack’s way. Had his cousin told Murphy?

“Small town, Ryan. You know that. A gnat can’t fart in this town without someone knowing about it.”

The crude comment evoked a titter of uneasy laughter from the men at the table, but it did nothing to ease the tension.

“Well? Tell us about her. What’s she like? What’s she askin’?” a farmer named Steven Tate finally blurted out.

The whole scene did not sit well with Ryan. He hated feeling as if he was a spy.

“Ryan, your grandfather knew how important it was for all of us farmers to stick together. You could learn a thing or two from Mac.”

That not-so-subtle warning from Murphy served to goose Ryan into reluctant action. “She’s nice enough. She asked the obvious questions—when did it start? How did it start? What had I done about it?”

Nobody spoke, not until Murphy had sopped up his grits and cheese with a bit of biscuit. “She seem satisfied with your answers?”

Translation: was Becca Reynolds going away anytime soon?

“For now…but she wants to nail down a detailed time line of the spread of the vine. She really wants to know how it got from Texas to here.”

That last bit was inspiration on Ryan’s part. Maybe he could force Murphy into revealing just how he’d pulled that trick. Murphy had been hinting for weeks that Gramps had had a hand in it…and the threat had a way of keeping Ryan in line.

But Murphy simply spat out a foul curse. “Detailed time line? What the hell’s the point? It’s here. She could see it. You showed her, right?”

“You have to admit, Murphy, it looks suspicious. No reports of infestation between here and Texas? Of course the first question the insurance company is going to ask is what train it rode in on.”

“Maybe we could buy her off,” offered Doug Oliver, who fidgeted with his cap. “She look like the type who could come to some sort of understanding?”

Murphy shot a quelling look at Oliver. “It’s too soon for that. But it raises a good question. She the type, you think, Ryan? If push comes to shove?”

“No. And I won’t be a part of it.” Ryan’s blood hissed in his ears.

Murphy’s answering chuckle was a short, sharp bark. “You’re already a part of it. You’re here, aren’t you? This dodder vine was your idea, wasn’t it?”

Ryan made to push his chair back. “I’m here out of respect for Gramps’s memory and his long association with most of you. You keep saying this whole thing was my idea, but I don’t have a clue in hell why you think that. I had nothing to do with any of this.”

“Nope. Not a clue. Didn’t tell Mac anything about a slam-dunk way to get crop insurance to pay off, did you?”

Ryan seethed at the way Murphy was twisting the truth. He would have shot back a reply, but Murphy had moved on.

“What’d you tell her? What’s she got planned?”

Believe me. I’m here to help. That’s what Becca had said to him last night, and damned if he didn’t believe her. But why? Why would she go out on a limb for the likes of him? What made her think he could be saved—was even worth saving?

“Ryan?”

Ryan dragged his thoughts back from Becca’s motivations. “She seems pretty bent on doing a thorough investigation…but on the flip side, she’s ready to give us the benefit of the doubt.”

“Maybe she’s angling for a little grease on the wheels, eh?” Oliver said.

Everybody ignored him. They waited for Murphy’s answer.

“She’s here for the long haul? Say anything about inspecting the other farms?”

“No, but I expect she will. She seems to know her stuff.”

“I don’t like it,” another farmer spoke up. “I thought this was supposed to be a slam dunk like Murphy said. After that insurance adjuster came, they were supposed to cut a check, and then we could start burning off our fields. As it is, I’m spending out the wazoo to tend a crop I for one didn’t think I’d have to be fooling with at this point. Pretty soon, I’ll be in the hole, even with the insurance money.”

“You’ll get your money,” Murphy told him. “Everybody just stick together, stick with the story, and you’ll get your money.”

“Maybe you guys should just cut your losses,” Ryan said. “I’m telling you, you let this stuff go unchecked for much longer while you wait on an insurance company to decide, and it’ll gain a foothold. Then next year you won’t even be able to put in a crop. You guys just don’t understand how bad this particular vine can be. It’s already jumped the cotton fields and got into Mee-Maw’s garden.”

To his satisfaction, Ryan heard a collective gasp. That’s right, scare ’em into doing the right thing.

But Murphy seemed unperturbed. “Well, now, Ryan. Guess that shows you how important it is that we get this woman in and out on the double-q. Before anything happens to y’all’s precious Mee-Maw. Glad to hear you’re grasping the situation.”

It took a moment for Ryan to catch Murphy’s drift. “You son of a—” Now he was on his feet, with Jack struggling to get up, too, but hampered by his leg. “You were the one who planted that stuff in—”

“That’s no way to talk to your gramps’s friends, is it? Mac never talked to us like that. All I was saying is that we need to answer this woman’s questions and send her on her merry way before that stuff spreads any more. After all, you know what it can do. So it’s in everybody’s best interest to persuade her to get this investigation over and done with.”

Tate leaned forward. “Murphy, if we can’t persuade her, then we might have to—” the farmer scratched his chin “—consider other options.”

The double meaning in Tate’s brief statement was enough to sink a flotilla. Ryan could barely hold on to his temper. The thought that Murphy had deliberately put that vine in Mee-Maw’s garden was enough to leave him speechless with rage.

But Tate practically threatening violence?

Murphy gave his head an abrupt shake. “You leave the Reynolds girl to me. Last thing we need to do is get her more suspicious. I know how to handle her kind. They come on strong, but when they see how things work in the real world…”

Behind Ryan, the glass door swung open. He turned to see Becca, clad in snug-fitting blue jeans and a V-necked T-shirt, taking in the gathering. Her eyes went from one farmer to the other, finally landing on Ryan.

Was it disappointment he saw in them?

BECCA KNEW A WAR ROOM when she saw one, and despite its Rotary banners spouting “Is it the truth?” this was most definitely a war room.

She looked past Ryan, his face taut with emotion—rage? Worry? She couldn’t be sure—and met the cool, implacable gaze of Richard Murphy.

At least that’s who she thought the man sitting at the head of the long table, radiating authority like a lord over his fiefdom, must be.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” she said. “I was looking for a Mr. Richard Murphy.”

She hadn’t been wrong. The man pushed back his chair and rose to his feet. “That’d be me.”

“I’m—”

“Becca Reynolds. Ryan here was telling us all about you.”

Becca took in the way Ryan’s mouth turned down even more at the corners.

He’s not happy about whatever is going on.

“Well, good. That saves me the trouble of explaining things. I was wondering if you’d be available to show me your…infestation later today.”

“We all will. Right, boys? We certainly want to cooperate with Miss Reynolds so she can get her job done.”

“That’s—that’s great.” This was creepy, the way the men around the table—including Jack MacIntosh—all nodded enthusiastically at Murphy’s directive, though their expressions looked anything but.

“Uh…Becca. You said you had some more questions for me. We can handle them now, if you want to follow me back out to the farm. Or are you here for breakfast?”

Ryan’s voice seemed strange, forced. Was he following orders or just using her as a handy excuse to ditch the meeting?

It didn’t matter. She knew him in a way she didn’t know the other men in the room. If she was going to get to the bottom of this, she’d get the full story out of Ryan quicker than she would anyone else. She was convinced he wanted to tell her the deal.

Or maybe you’re just fooling yourself.

“Sure, I’ll follow you. I’ve already eaten.”

Ryan threw down a couple of bills onto the Formica table. He exchanged a long look with Jack, but he didn’t, she noticed, say goodbye to anyone. Everyone else seemed to be waiting for her to get out the door so they could resume the meeting.

“Looking forward to seeing you later today, Miss Reynolds. Just come on when you will.”

Murphy’s invitation reeked of phony goodwill as his words didn’t match the hard, speculative light in his eyes.

“I’ll do that, Mr. Murphy. Ryan? If you’re ready?”

They headed outside into the early-morning sunlight. She took a stab at loosening some details from Ryan.

“I didn’t mean to drag you away from your breakfast buddies.”

“They’re not my buddies,” he growled.

Well. That was a reaction. It cheered her immeasurably, save for a niggling doubt about what Ryan’s cousin had been doing there. She tackled Ryan about it. “Not your buddies? What about Jack?”

Ryan’s dark glower morphed into worry. That was then smoothed into something more inscrutable. “He was probably there for the same reason as me—waiting to see what Murphy had to say.”

Maybe. But Jack did sell insurance—though not for crops—and he wasn’t happy to have someone poking around. She’d need to keep an eye on Jack.

The thought that someone other than Ryan could be the focus of the scam eased some of the anxiety eating at Becca. She’d spent an insomnia-plagued night second-guessing herself, and then had been awoken at 6:00 a.m. by her dad’s phone call.

Becca hadn’t exactly lied to him, she just hadn’t spilled the whole truth. It was too complicated, and she wanted to figure out a few things first. He’d been satisfied to hear that she thought something hinky was going on.

“Thought so,” her father had said. “Mighty funny that a guy with MacIntosh’s know-how is at the epicenter of a bunch of claims on some parasitic plant. Mark my words, he’s in it up to his neck.”

Becca looked at Ryan now. She prayed that he’d talk to her, come clean about whatever had been said in that room. If it were a conspiracy, he would be considered just as guilty as the rest of them if he knew what was going on and said nothing.

“Mee-Maw wanted me to invite you to lunch today. It’s leftovers, mind you, but Mee-Maw’s leftovers are better than a lot of people’s fresh-cooked.”

“I’ll definitely take her up on it.”

“She likes you.”

What about you, Ryan? Do you like me? Don’t you see any of Sunny in me? Won’t you trust me?

“Ryan!” a woman called from the diner’s door. She hurried over to where Becca and Ryan stood.

“Charlotte, I told you—”

“I know, I know. I’m a worrywart, and you want me to quit nagging you about J.T.”

J.T. again. Becca tried to fade into the background to hear anything that might prove enlightening.

Ryan shot a sideways glance toward Becca. Was he in a hurry to cut the waitress’ conversation short?

“I promise, when I find out anything, you’ll be the first to know,” he answered the woman cryptically. “Becca? Are you ready? I’m already so far behind I’ll never get caught up.”

With that, he strode off toward his pickup.

CHAPTER SEVEN

RYAN PUT THE TRUCK in gear but held the clutch for a moment longer as he stared in the rearview mirror. Becca was in a deep conversation with Charlotte.

His stomach flipped. Just what he didn’t want—both Becca and Charlotte asking questions and comparing notes about J.T.

Real smooth, MacIntosh. You couldn’t have been more obvious if you’d circled Charlotte with a pen and scribbled Clue!

Becca handed Charlotte something, a card probably, and headed for that oversized-lawn-mower car of hers.

Ryan gnawed at his lip, considering. What could he safely tell her? He’d be dumb as a load of bricks to fall for her “I’m here to help” routine. She probably did that to all her targets.

Highly effective on a sap like you, too, isn’t it?

He groaned. Gramps, I wish you were here. This was the kind of deal Ryan always went to him about. If Gramps were still around, they’d pop open a couple of colas and a pack or two of peanuts, and Ryan would tell him the whole sorry tale. By the time the peanuts were gone, Gramps would have kicked his butt and put him on the road to right.

He ran his fingers over the dash of the truck, closed his eyes. With a sigh, he shook off the grief and the longing to dump this whole mess onto the capable shoulders of someone wiser, more experienced.

No point in it. He had to get back to the farm, answer what questions he could, avoid the ones he couldn’t and do it as quickly as possible.

His cell phone buzzed. Ryan fished it out of his pocket, keeping one hand on the wheel.

“Hey, Ryan, I wanted to explain—”

Ryan cut off Jack in midsentence. “Yeah, I’m waiting. What the hell were you doing there this morning?”

“Same as you. Murphy called me first thing. I aim to keep him happy—and you should, too. You know what he’s got over us—over Mee-Maw.”

“You don’t have to remind me.”

“I think I do sometimes. Look…we’ve talked about this before. Let’s just keep our heads down, get through this season as best we can, start fresh next year. For Mee-Maw’s sake.”

“He planted—”

“Because he thinks you’re not playing ball, Ryan. I don’t like it any better than you, but…we’ve got no choice. You know that. Right?”

Ryan expelled a long breath. “Right.”

“What’s the deal with you and the Reynolds woman, anyway?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean. I saw the way you were looking at her. Don’t fall for it, cuz. Don’t let a pretty smile take us all down.”

“What the hell is it—” Ryan bit back the protest he’d been about to utter. “Look, I’m just cooperating with her. You heard Murphy. We’re all supposed to make nice. I’ll talk to you later, okay?” He hung up and glanced in the rearview mirror to see Becca’s Mini behind him. If only he and Becca hadn’t met like this.

Maybe Jack was right. If Ryan was going to dig his way out of this mess, he couldn’t afford to waste time stewing over regrets or missed goodbyes to Gramps. He had to think of Mee-Maw.

MAYBE IT WAS SILLY, but to channel Gramps’s wisdom, Ryan pulled out two bottles of Coke and the peanuts and laid them out for Becca. She sat across from him on the front porch, in the chair he’d always sat in for long confessionals with Gramps. As he sat in Gramps’s high-backed rocker, he didn’t feel worthy of the seat. He’d screwed up and he didn’t know quite how to fix things. Had Gramps ever felt that way?

Ryan worried that maybe, in those last days, Gramps had.

Don’t even think that, MacIntosh. Gramps was as straight as an arrow, despite what that SOB Murphy says.

He waited for whatever Becca would unload on him. Lord, she was pretty. He could almost fool himself that this was a Sunday-come-a-courtin’ conversation and that the biggest thing at stake was whether he’d get a goodbye kiss.

Be nice if it were that simple.

“So…you farmers frequently have meetings first thing in the morning?”

Ryan harrumphed. “That wasn’t first thing in the morning for any self-respecting farmer. And no, we don’t. At least I don’t. Who has time to fool with breakfast out when you’ve got a to-do list that stretches to the moon and back?”

“It felt like a board meeting.”

“Murphy’d like that analogy. He’s a little full of himself, you ask me.”

“You mean, you’re not best buds with him?”

“’Fraid not. First of all, Murphy doesn’t have time for a Podunk farmer like me. He’s not the, um, mentor I’d choose for a fount of wisdom. He got where he is by a few lucky breaks and the money that came from them.”

Becca lifted a honey-colored brow. “Funny. I’d say, looking back at all of Murphy’s crop-insurance claims with Ag-Sure, that he was one of those guys you don’t stand near in a lightning storm for fear that when he’d get struck, you’d get hit, too.”

“You ask Murphy, he’ll tell you a sad story, all right.”

“I will ask him. I’ll ask everybody. But I’m starting with you. So, do you have anything you might want to share?”

He couldn’t meet her eyes. The way she made him feel was the way Gramps had over the years. Whether he found a garden snake in the house, an unexplained dent in the bumper of the truck, an angry girlfriend, Gramps had always used a soul-searching stare and unrelenting silence to get the truth out of Ryan. Becca was no different.

“I’ve pretty much said it all, I think.”

She looked disappointed. But she didn’t waste time dog-gnawing him or haranguing him. “I got the distinct impression this morning that I was about as welcome as the tax man. I assume that meeting was called to discuss how to handle me?”

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