The Granger siblings thought they’d left their ranching days behind, until fate sends them home to Wrangler’s Creek, Texas—and into the passionate arms of those they’d least expect...

It’s some run of bad luck when Sophie Granger loses her business and gets left at the altar all in one day. Desperate to not appear jilted, Sophie begs Clay McKinnon, Wrangler’s Creek’s smoking-hot police chief, to pretend they’re having an affair. But Clay refuses, leaving Sophie to retreat to the family ranch to lick her wounds.

Hoping to leave his disreputable past behind, Clay moved to Wrangler’s Creek for a fresh start. But that looks unlikely when Sophie’s ex-fiancé shows up married to Clay’s impulsive kid sister. Overcome, Sophie resuggests the affair—but this time for real. Clay is hesitant. City-girl Sophie isn’t usually his type. But he can’t deny the desire she elicits—or his yearning to have her plant her cowboy roots for good.

Praise for Delores Fossen

“Clear off space on your keeper shelf, Fossen has arrived.”

—New York Times bestselling author Lori Wilde

“Delores Fossen takes you on a wild Texas ride with a hot cowboy.”

—New York Times bestselling author B.J. Daniels

“In the first McCord Brothers contemporary, bestseller Fossen strikes a patriotic chord that makes this story stand out.”

—Publishers Weekly on Texas on My Mind

“Fossen delivers an entertaining romance between two people with real-life issues.”

—RT Book Reviews on Texas on My Mind

“This is a thrilling and twist-filled read that will keep you guessing till the end.”

—RT Book Reviews on Lone Wolf Lawman

Also available from Delores Fossen

and HQN Books

The McCord Brothers

Texas on My Mind Lone Star Nights Blame It on the Cowboy

And don’t miss the upcoming novel

in Delores Fossen’s

Wrangler’s Creek series

No Getting Over a Cowboy

To see the complete list of titles available from Delores Fossen, please visit www.deloresfossen.com.

Those Texas Nights

Delores Fossen

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Praise

Booklist

Title Page

Dedication

Those Texas Nights

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

Lone Star Cowboy

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

Copyright

To my husband, Tom. Thanks for all you do for me.

Those Texas Nights

Delores Fossen

CHAPTER ONE

SOPHIE GRANGER WIPED her eyes with the back of her hand and squeezed her mud-splattered Elie Saab wedding dress into the Wrangler’s Creek Police Department.

It wasn’t easy getting ten yards of ivory tulle through the doorway, especially while crying and being light-headed. Sophie had to gather up the sides of the dress into puffy balls and turn sideways to manage it. Even then she stumbled, and her big toe got caught in the netting so she stumbled again. With all the mumbled cursing that accompanied the stumbling, it was no surprise that she got everyone’s attention in the squad room.

Everyone in this case was Ellie Stoddermeyer, the weekend dispatcher/receptionist, and the two deputies—Rowdy Culpepper and his sister, Reena. What she got from them was silence.

And stares.

“I need to see Chief McKinnon,” Sophie said with as much dignity as she could muster. Which wasn’t very much.

Reena had her mouth open so wide that Sophie could see the quarter-sized wad of pink chewing gum on her tongue, but she hitched her thumb in the direction of the office all the way at the back of the squad room.

“He’s in there,” Ellie added once she got her mouth working. “But he’s not officially the chief until his trial period is up and Lordie knows when that’ll be. Right now, he’s just the interim ’cause the mayor and city council haven’t given him a permanent contract yet. Is, uh, there anything I can do for you?”

Since Ellie was one of the biggest gossips in town, Sophie considered asking the woman to refrain from mentioning this visit, but Ellie had already gotten herself unfrozen from the shock and was taking out her phone. No doubt to text every single human being she knew to let them know that Sophie Granger was having a breakdown along with looking like something the cat had dragged in.

That meant Sophie didn’t have much time.

Her family would find her.

Sophie declined Ellie’s offer of help, and she made her way through the squad room. Again, not easily. Like a white fluffy plow going through a farmer’s field, Sophie cleared the edges of desks and toppled over trash cans. Ink pens pinged to the floor, rolled. So did a plastic bottle of Diet Coke, and the cap gave way to the pressure of the fall and started spewing.

She tried to do a cleanup, but there was no way she could fully bend down in the dress, not with the overly cinched corset bodice vising her ribs and stomach. However, she did grab a Kleenex from one of the desks, and she put it to good use wiping away a fresh round of tears.

The door to the interim chief’s office was even narrower than the front so Sophie wadded up the dress again. Squeezed. Turned. Grunted. Until she finally broke through to the other side. She must have looked like a vanilla custard oozing through pie crust.

And there he was.

Clay McKinnon. Or the cute cowboy cop as folks called him.

Even though she didn’t make it back to Wrangler’s Creek very often, Sophie had seen him around, but she’d never seen him quite like this. Sweet heaven. There was blood in his cocoa-brown hair, a cut on his forehead and scrapes and scratches on his knuckles.

“Are you all right?” She used her bouquet to point toward the first aid kit on his desk. Little bits of petals and leaves fluttered through the air and fell to the floor.

He nodded, slid his gaze from her tiara headpiece to her muddy bare feet, before he got back to dabbing his knuckles with some hydrogen peroxide.

“I’m having a bad day,” he confirmed. “But something tells me yours is worse.”

“Possibly.”

He didn’t really look at her, but he lifted an eyebrow. “Possibly?”

“Grading on a curve here, but at least I’m not bleeding.” Sophie wasn’t a fan of tears or mud, but the sight of the blood made her queasier than she already was. “Were you attacked?”

This time he lifted his shoulder. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

Sophie was sure she’d hear the details of the incident soon enough. Well, maybe. Her situation was likely such a hot topic that folks wouldn’t bother to jabber about a puny altercation where the interim Chief of Police had been injured.

“I need a date,” she said, wiping back more of the blasted tears.

Judging from the look he gave her, he was either about to call the mental hospital or laugh at her attempted joke. Nope, no laugh. She hoped this idea of hers sounded better than it was. Actually, she hoped it not only sounded better, but that it was better. Because it didn’t sound very good in her head.

“Date as in the fruit or a date?” he asked.

“Date.” Which, of course, would require some clarification. Chief McKinnon had moved to town several months ago, but their paths hadn’t crossed enough for an actual introduction. “I’m Sophie Granger. I’m head of marketing for Granger Western.”

“I know who you are. You’re getting married—” he checked his watch “—in about fifteen minutes. But judging from your dress and the fact that you want a date, I’m figuring things didn’t go as planned.”

“No.” And that single-word answer was a huge understatement. It also brought on more crying. “My fiancé, Brantley Barnwell, came by the dressing room at the church and said he couldn’t marry me after all.”

Sophie was sure she was still in shock. Exhausted, too. And hungry since she’d been dieting for two months to fit into this breath-choking dress. Maybe she should have asked for a date of the fruit variety after all. But sadly that shock wouldn’t last, and she needed to fix this before she fell into a puddle of despair and more tears.

And anger.

Really, really pissed-off-bad anger.

Anger that she hadn’t aimed at Brantley since he’d hightailed it out of there only minutes after delivering the worst news that Sophie had ever heard.

I don’t love you.

He’d added a whole bunch of I’m sorry’s, I’m an asshole, I can’t believe this happened. Which hadn’t helped. But then that was asking a lot of mere apologies and ramblings. Nothing would have helped except his saying this had all been just a prank and that he loved her after all.

“I didn’t want my family to see me like this,” she went on. And she just kept going on and on. “Right after Brantley left, I wrote a note saying that I needed a little alone time and hung it on the dressing room door so my family would see it. Then, I climbed out the window of the church. It’s muddy from all the rain and I landed in a new flower bed. My shoes got stuck so I had to walk here barefooted.”

“And no one stopped to give you a ride?”

She shook her head, dabbed at the tears again. “The streets are empty. Nearly everyone in town is already at the church waiting for the wedding.”

Just saying that punched away at some of the shock. Punched at her gut, too. Thankfully, she hadn’t eaten anything or she would have driven down her dignity another notch by puking.

“Are you, uh, drunk?” he asked.

“Maybe a little. Brantley brought me a bottle of Jose Cuervo when he delivered the news, and I had some sips.”

Actually, she wasn’t sure just how much she’d downed before climbing out the window. Sophie also suspected the tequila was the reason she hadn’t noticed the mud until it was too late to save her shoes.

And it had almost certainly influenced her decision to come up with this date plan.

Chief McKinnon huffed, scrubbed his hand over his face and then winced when he encountered that cut on his head. “Look, Miss Granger, I’m sorry for what happened to you, but instead of looking for a date, you should just go back to the church and be with your family.”

“God, no!” She couldn’t say that fast enough. “That’s the last place I need to be without a plan. One of my brothers is there. My cousin, too. My best friend. And my mother.” Especially her mother. “They’d go after Brantley and beat him up. Then, you’d have to arrest just about everyone in the vicinity who’s related to me.”

He nodded. Stood. Handed her a fresh Kleenex. “I’ll go to the church and calm them down.”

“You’d stand a better chance getting this mud off tulle. Once they learn what’s happened, there’ll be little chance to calm them down. No, the best way to handle this is my date idea.”

He cocked his head to the side, studied her as if he were indeed about to call the mental hospital to come and get her.

“Don’t you see?” she asked, but didn’t wait for him to answer. “If you and I leave now, I can say I ran off with you. We wouldn’t really run off, of course. We could just go somewhere for a couple of hours, but I could tell my family I had second thoughts about marrying Brantley and that I couldn’t help myself, that I had to have one last fling.”

“That’s the tequila talking,” he insisted.

Possibly.

Probably, she amended.

Sophie didn’t usually have to make critical decisions and plans while under the influence, and once she sobered up and got out of the dress so she could breathe, she might be able to come up with something better. For now though, this was all she had.

“If your family thinks you’re with me, it’ll make you look bad,” the chief added. Clearly, he was grasping at straws here.

“I don’t think I can look any worse, do you?”

He didn’t argue, not with that anyway. “Basically, you want me to lie for you?”

She nodded. “But it’s for the sake of keeping peace and preventing an assault. I hate Brantley for what he did. Hate him with every fiber of my being.”

That shock was finally wearing off. Some of the tequila, too.

Fast.

Hell in a handbasket.

How had it come to this?

The hurt shoved away the anger so fast that Sophie didn’t even know it was coming. She caught on to the desk to steady herself. That didn’t help, either, and since her knees were too wobbly to stand, she just sat on the edge of the desk. Of course, she knocked things over, but she couldn’t help it.

She was no longer an engaged woman. No longer about to become Brantley’s wife. In fact, she wasn’t sure who she was and prayed that was a temporary effect of the hurt and the lack of oxygen. Because at this exact moment, she felt something she’d never felt before.

Broken.

“I would ask if you’re okay,” Chief McKinnon said, “but I already know the answer. You’re not. And that’s why you’re not thinking straight. If you just go to your family with the truth—”

“But I don’t want them in jail,” she added, just as the eighteenth round of tears came.

He glanced up at the ceiling as if seeking divine guidance. “Why me? Isn’t there someone else in town who’d have an easier time lying about this?”

It was hard to give someone a flat look while you were crying, but Sophie thought she’d managed it. “There are no other eligible straight men in town.”

He was it, period. All the others were married, too young, too old, or else they worked at her family’s ranch. Dating someone who technically worked for her was a huge no-no in her brother’s eyes. Hers, as well. And there wasn’t a single breathing soul in Wrangler’s Creek who would believe she’d ditched Brantley for some wild-oats sowing with the pig farmer that everyone called Skunk. Or Ned the pharmacist, who had a germ phobia and wouldn’t touch anyone unless he was wearing latex gloves.

Sophie kept trying despite the sobs. “Plus, folks don’t know you that well since you’ve only lived here a couple of months—”

“Nine months,” he corrected. He gave her four more Kleenexes, and she needed every one of them.

“In Wrangler’s Creek time, that’s only a couple of minutes. Skunk, the pig farmer, has lived here since before I was born, and people still call him the new guy.”

At least the chief didn’t just shoot down her idea. He bunched up his forehead as if giving it some thought. Thought that ended in a head shaking. “No one has ever seen us together before now. No way would they believe you’d run off with a man you didn’t know.”

“So we could embellish the lie and say we’ve been secretly meeting.”

“Now you want embellishment?”

“It’s for a good cause,” she pressed.

But then Sophie had to consider something that she was certain she would have considered earlier if she’d been thinking straight. “Uh, are you seeing anyone, engaged, gay?”

“None of the above. That doesn’t mean I want to buy into a lie that would snowball.”

He still clearly wasn’t on board with this so Sophie just went for broke. “I don’t want my family to see me looking this pathetic. This muddy,” she added, glancing down at her feet. “While I’m crying. Do you have any idea how hard it is to be the only sister in a family of alpha cowboys?”

“Not really.” He finally gave in and just handed her the entire box of Kleenex.

Even though he looked so ready for this conversation to be over, Sophie continued. “Well, it’s hard. I’ve had to fight and scrape for every ounce of power and responsibility I have, and if they see me like this, I’ll lose that. They’ll walk on eggshells. They’ll treat me like a hurt woman.”

“Uh, aren’t you a hurt woman?”

“Yes, but I don’t want them to know that.”

More ceiling glancing, more huffing. “Follow this through. If we pretend we’re dating, the pretense will continue because there’ll have to be a fake breakup. Your family will definitely look at you as a hurt woman then. And what kind of example would that set for me? I’ve got two nephews, and I don’t want them to think I’m the kind of guy who’d carry on with an engaged woman.”

He was making sense, but Sophie still wasn’t giving up on this plan just yet. This was one of the things she had to do often at Granger Western. She had to tweak sales proposals, marketing plans and personnel assignments. This was just another situation in need of a tweaking.

But what? How?

Sophie was asking herself those very questions when she heard something she didn’t want to hear. Voices that she recognized.

Oh, God. They’d found her.

“Is my sister here?” someone barked. Garrett, her oldest brother.

Garrett sounded both concerned and pissed. Not a good combination. He was the one most likely to kick Brantley’s butt, but he would also berate her forever about getting involved with the man he’d always said was all wrong for her. Of course, any man who wasn’t a cowboy would have been wrong for her in Garrett’s eyes.

“Is my baby girl all right?” Voice number two.

Her mother, Belle. The one most likely to coddle her, but the coddling would quickly turn to smothering. Then nagging. Then, she’d go after Brantley with a vengeance.

“We know she’s here. We followed her muddy footprints.” Voice number three. Lawson. Her cousin. He’d berate her, coddle her and then assist Garrett and her mother with giving Brantley a serious butt-kicking.

The only Granger missing was her other brother, Roman. He’d been invited to the wedding, of course, but he hadn’t shown and probably wouldn’t. Too bad, because if Roman had come, then it would have taken some of the ugly spotlight off her. A black sheep brother could do that.

“We need to see her.” Voice number four. Her best friend, Mila Banchini. There’d be no nagging, butt-kicking and only minimal coddling from her, but for the next decade Sophie would have to listen to Mila’s attempts to find her a suitable husband.

“I’m sorry,” Sophie said to the chief.

“For what?”

“This is the only tweak I can think of.” And despite it being a stupid tweak, Sophie launched herself into Chief McKinnon’s arms.

From the corner of her eye, Sophie watched her family and friend trickle in. She also felt the chief’s muscles go statue-stiff and expected a similar reaction from the others.

That didn’t happen.

They were standing there. Three Grangers and Mila, who was wearing her champagne maid of honor dress. Each of them looked at her not with sympathy, exactly. There was something else. Something that caused her to go still.

They didn’t rush to coddle her. Didn’t issue death threats about Brantley. And they especially didn’t ask what she was doing in Chief McKinnon’s arms. The chief remedied that, though. He backed away from her, staying by her side and studying her family.

“We know about Brantley,” Garrett said. “He came and talked to us right after he spoke to you.”

Oh. Sophie hadn’t expected that from the man she was now thinking of as freshly dropped cow dung.

“I know it’s hard,” her mother added. “You’re crying.”

It was the right thing to say. The right tone, too, but the four were still standing in the same spot as if someone had magnetized their feet to the floor. And Lawson and her mother were dodging her gaze. Definitely not a good sign.

“Did someone die?” Sophie came out and asked. Then, she got a horrible, gut-twisting thought. “Did one of you kill Brantley?”

“No,” Garrett answered. He didn’t add more because his phone buzzed. He mumbled something about having to take the call and walked out.

That knot in her stomach got worse. Because here she was jilted and broken, something Garrett would have almost certainly realized, and yet he’d taken a call.

“Did Brantley do something to harm himself?” the chief asked.

Evidently, he was also aware that something wasn’t right about this visit. Something other than the obvious, that is, since she’d just been jilted and her family had seen her with her arms wrapped around the police chief.

“As far as I know, Brantley’s okay,” Lawson said.

There was a huge but at the end of that. Sophie could hear it. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

Her mother, Mila and Lawson volleyed glances at each other, but they didn’t say a word. They appeared to be waiting for Garrett to return, which he did a couple of moments later.

“Anything?” her mother said to him.

Garrett shook his head and drew in a long breath as if he would need it. He went to Sophie, taking her by the shoulders. “I know this is a shitty day, but I’m about to make it even shittier.”

Not possible.

But a moment later, Sophie learned she was wrong about that. A whole new level of shitty had been added to her life.

CHAPTER TWO

A FAILED WEDDING. Now a funeral.

Not a literal funeral, but to Sophie it certainly felt like another sucker punch of fate. This couldn’t happen. It had to be a mistake.

“It’s a mistake,” she repeated, this time aloud, but Garrett didn’t react. Probably because she’d already repeated it a dozen times, and he’d likely gotten tired of telling her that it wasn’t.

That something very bad had indeed happened to Granger Western.

Just how bad, they didn’t know yet because they didn’t have answers. Answers they needed from their chief financial officer, Billy Lee Seaver, who’d seemingly taken money and lots of it from the company.

Sophie held on to the seemingly part, figuring this was all some kind of banking error or a computer glitch, and she made a call to the next person on her contact list. The first sixteen calls hadn’t produced much, and this one was no different. Saturday evenings apparently weren’t a good time to reach business associates who would perhaps know Billy Lee’s whereabouts.

When she struck out with the next two calls, Sophie looked at Marcum Gentry, their legal advisor, to see if he’d had any better luck. Judging from his body language that would be a no. He was pacing while having an intense conversation with someone at Austin PD. Marcum’s pricey shoes clicked and tapped on the hardwood floors as he went from one side of Garrett’s office to the other.

Her brother wasn’t pacing, though. Garrett was seated behind his desk, looking very much like a troubled cowboy rather than a concerned CEO. He was in his usual jeans, his Stetson sat on the corner of his desk and he’d ditched the two items he rarely wore—a jacket and a bolo tie. Sophie hadn’t even tried to talk him into wearing dress pants for the wedding because she was reasonably sure that her brother didn’t own dress anything. However, he had put on his good boots to attend the ceremony, which he’d also already swapped out for his usual ones.

The boots and his clothes were the only thing usual about this day, though. Garrett was having his own intense conversation with one of their accountants he had managed to reach. Sophie watched Garrett’s mouth move, and she was hearing him say the words. But her brain just wasn’t processing what he was saying. Perhaps it was the tequila aftermath or maybe her mind just couldn’t handle two major shocks like this in the same day.

At least she wasn’t having to deal with this shock while wearing her wedding dress. Once they’d arrived at the Granger Western building in downtown Austin, Sophie had made a beeline to her office and changed into one of the spare business suits she kept there. Thankfully, none of their employees had been around to see her.

Of course, having their employees see her was the least of their problems.

If the initial reports were true, then Billy Lee had basically screwed them six ways to Sunday by embezzling a fortune. And after doing that, he’d disappeared.

Much as her ex-fiancé had done.

Too bad her heart hadn’t done a vanishing act along with them because she wasn’t sure how much more she could take. The panic was rising inside her. The pressure in her chest, too, and if this was some dream, she prayed she’d wake up from it soon.

Sophie forced herself to her feet, and while dodging Marcum’s pacing pattern, she walked to the floor-to-ceiling window in Garrett’s office. It was identical to hers, which was just next door. The view of downtown Austin was one of the best in the city, and it normally gave her a jolt of pride.

This was theirs.

The company their great-grandfather Zachariah Taylor Granger had built from the ground up. To remind them of that, there was a massive twelve-foot-high oil portrait of Z.T. on the wall of Garrett’s office. Not an especially good portrait, Sophie had always thought, what with his stern gaze, slightly narrowed eyes and a “don’t screw this up” sneer.

Garrett and she hadn’t screwed it up. They’d nearly doubled the size of what customers affectionately called Cowboy Mart, had put it on the Texas financial map. It’d made them wealthier. Happier. It’d made them who they were.

It had to stay that way.

Marcum finished his latest call, but he didn’t stop pacing. He kept moving until he was right in front of Garrett’s desk. That cued her brother to make a quick end to his conversation.

“You want the good news or the bad news first?” Marcum asked them.

“Bad,” Garrett and she said in unison.

Despite their quick agreement, Marcum still took a couple of moments to answer. “Billy Lee robbed you blind. We don’t know how exactly, not yet, but he embezzled nearly ninety percent of the company’s operating funds.”

Sophie decided it was a good idea to sit down, but since there wasn’t a chair nearby, she just sank to the floor.

“Fuck,” Garrett growled.

Sophie wanted to growl something, too, something equally as bad as the f-word, but she couldn’t get her mouth working.

“How?” Garrett added. It was also growled.

Marcum shook his head. “That will take some time to unravel, but Billy Lee must have had the pieces in place for a while to do this. I don’t suppose you had any checks and balances on him?”

“No,” Garrett and she answered in unison again.

“He’s my godfather,” Sophie added. “Our late father’s best friend.”

Garrett had his own adding to do. “Billy Lee’s worked for the company for forty years and never gave us any reason not to trust him.”

Until now.

God, until now.

“What’s the good news?” Sophie asked Marcum.

“I don’t think Garrett and you will have to go to jail.”

Sweet baby Jesus in the manger. “Is that stating the obvious, or was there actually a chance of that happening?” she pressed.

“A chance,” Marcum answered without hesitation. “It appears that over the past couple of months, Billy Lee might have dabbled in some money laundering with the funds he was embezzling.”

Sophie thought she might not be able to stave off that puking any longer. Her stomach balled up into a knot, started dribbling like a point guard on the basketball court and she got to her feet in case she had to make a run to the bathroom.

“Billy Lee must have snapped,” Garrett mumbled.

That stopped her for the time being, and she latched on to that like a lifeline. Yes, that had to be it. Because with the stomach knot and crushed heart, Sophie couldn’t grasp that a man who was part of their family had done this to them.

“Maybe someone set Billy Lee up?” she suggested.

Both Garrett and Marcum made sounds of agreement. Weak agreement, though. But it was another lifeline that Sophie was choosing to grab.

“What do we do now?” Sophie asked.

“Get drunk,” Marcum readily answered.

“Will that help?” And she was serious.

Marcum shrugged. “Only if you drink enough to pass out.”

Sophie decided to keep that as an option.

Her phone buzzed at the same time that Marcum’s rang, and Marcum stepped into the hall to take it. Maybe because he didn’t think it would be wise for them to get another dose of bad news so soon after the last one.

But it was too late for that.

Brantley’s name was on her phone screen.

She debated letting it go to voice mail. Debated answering it just so she could curse him. Debated the getting drunk option again. But after five rings, Sophie hit the answer button.

“Are you all right?” Brantley blurted out before she could curse him.

No, she wasn’t, but her pride prevented her from saying that. “If you’re calling to grovel, it won’t work. I won’t take you back after what you did to me. How could you do this to me? How?” Now, she added some of that profanity.

“I’m not calling to ask you to take me back,” Brantley interrupted. His words sounded a little slurred or something. “I meant it when I said I can’t marry you.”

That stomped on her pride and her heart some more. “Then why the heck did you ever propose to me?”

Silence. Which was just another form of heart stomping. The least Brantley could do was apologize and call himself some of the names she’d just called him, but the silence dragged on and on.

“Look, I’m busy,” she finally said in the same moment that Brantley said, “I thought I loved you, Sophie. But I was wrong.”

Mercy. Each word was like another little dagger. He hadn’t loved her? “You did a darn good job of faking it, then.”

“I know. I’d fooled myself, too. It’s because we’d been together so long. I kept thinking it was time for the next step, but the next step should have been for me to break things off.”

That stomach ball started to bounce against her other internal organs. She was definitely going to puke.

“I should have never let things get as far as they did,” he said. At least that’s what she thought he said, but he was slurring.

“Are you drunk?” she snapped.

“Uh, no. It’s nothing. I’m fine, really.”

“I don’t care a rat’s butt if you’re fine or not. And I have to go,” Sophie insisted.

Brantley blurted out something just as she hit the end call button. Something about a belt. She probably should have been concerned that he was about to hang himself, but her concern meter for him was tapped out. Besides, Brantley had plenty of faults, but he wasn’t the sort to kill himself.

Sophie put her phone in her pocket, looked at her brother, and that’s when she realized he had his attention nailed to her. Marcum did, too, though he was still talking on his phone.

“Anything about Billy Lee?” she asked Garrett as a preemptive strike. Sophie definitely didn’t want to talk about Brantley and what he’d just said to her.

He hadn’t loved her.

The anger ripped through her. A better feeling than the soppy tears because she didn’t need to blow her nose, but she needed to blow off some of this rage. She yanked off her two-carat engagement ring and threw it against the wall. Probably not the smartest idea she’d ever had because it hit the oil painting of their great-grandfather and made a dent in the canvas just below his left nostril.

“I’m guessing that call didn’t go well,” Garrett said on a heavy sigh.

“But please tell me your call went better.”

Garrett lifted his shoulder. “It was Chief McKinnon. He was checking on you.”

Great. Now, her date was chiming in on this. She didn’t want anyone checking on her. Especially anyone who’d seen her make a fool of herself. At the moment, though, that included pretty much everyone in Wrangler’s Creek. Later, in a day or two, she’d need to call him and apologize. Perhaps blame what she’d done on the tequila and temporary insanity.

Marcum finished his call, glanced at the two-carat ring that was now on the floor, before his gaze volleyed between Garrett and her. “You want the good news or the bad news first?” he asked again.

“Bad,” Garrett and she said in unison for a second time.

Marcum nodded. “The company’s assets will be frozen while the feds investigate the money laundering charges.”

Sophie’s mouth opened but no sound came out.

“Frozen?” Garrett snapped. “For how long?”

“I’m not sure. These things can take awhile.”

“Define awhile.” Garrett’s snap was even snappier that time.

“Months. Maybe years. And it’s possible everything will be seized if Billy Lee really was using this company as a money laundering operation.”

Still no sound. Her breath had vanished, and she figured it was a good time to sit back down on the floor again. Good thing, too, because the bad news just kept on coming.

“The frozen assets include both your apartments here in Austin since they’re company holdings,” Marcum added. “Your cars, too.”

No car, no apartment. It wouldn’t be as great of a loss to Garrett as it was for her because he split time between Austin and Wrangler’s Creek. And she doubted he’d ever even started the company car since he still drove their late dad’s truck. But for her, the apartment was, well, home.

“The investigators will be going through everything in the offices,” Marcum continued. “The vehicles and apartments, too.”

They wouldn’t find anything. Well, they wouldn’t unless Billy Lee had truly gone bonkers and stashed some stuff there. Though with the way her luck was running, there’d be a counterfeiting machine, a kilo of cocaine and Jimmy Hoffa’s body beneath her bed.

“Your personal bank accounts are also frozen for the time being,” Marcum went on. “But I feel that’s something we can resolve faster than the company assets.”

There was no way for the ball in her stomach to get any tighter or bounce any harder.

“So, basically everything we own, including where we live, has just been taken away from us, and we might never get it back?” she asked.

“Pretty much,” Marcum agreed.

“I’d like to hear that good news now,” Sophie grumbled.

“The ranch.” And apparently Marcum thought that was enough of an explanation. It wasn’t. Sophie motioned for him to keep going. “The ranch and the operation there aren’t part of the company or your own personal assets. That’s because Roman legally owns it, and he has no connection to the company.”

She gave Marcum a very blank look.

“So, you know what this means, right?” Marcum asked.

Sophie thought Marcum might be trying to tell them something more than the obvious here. “We won’t lose the ranch,” she concluded.

“It’s more than that. It means you’ll have a place to live. I just got the okay from Roman, and you and Garrett will be closing things down here in Austin and moving back home.”

* * *

HOME SUCKED.

This was not what Clay had in mind when he’d moved to Wrangler’s Creek. He’d come here to take over for the retiring sheriff. Also for some peace and quiet and to keep an eye on his kid sister, April. At the moment, neither was happening.

There was a toilet in the corner of what was supposed to be his living room. The bathtub was where he’d hoped to have a sofa. The toilet was obviously hooked up to some sort of plumbing because it was making a loud gurgling sound that Clay could hear even over the tile saw that was screeching in the kitchen.

“Yeah, I know,” Freddie said, scratching his head. Freddie Shoemaker was the only contractor in Wrangler’s Creek, and that’s the reason Clay had hired him to renovate the old house he’d bought.

Freddie was clearly an idiot.

“The guest bathroom’s not right,” Freddie conceded. “They put the plumbing in the wrong place so they just hooked it up where the fittings stopped. I left instructions with my crew, but they musta read it wrong.”

Yeah, or else they were idiots, too. Since the crew consisted of Freddie’s two sons and a nephew, that was a strong possibility.

“I don’t guess you could get used to having it this way?” Freddie asked. “It’d save you a lot of money if we didn’t have to undo all of this.”

No one had ever accused Clay of having a friendly face. It was a by-product of having been a cop for twelve years. First in Houston. Then, here in Wrangler’s Creek. And Freddie got a whopping big-assed dose of that nonfriendly face.

“Put the guest bathroom fixtures in the guest bathroom,” Clay snarled. “And no, it won’t cost me a lot of money because I’ll only pay for the work you do right.”

Freddie mumbled an “okay, you’re the boss” and headed toward his rust-scabbed truck parked just outside. Apparently that meant he was done for the day even though it was barely 3:00 p.m.

Clay tried to call April again. Again, no answer. He wasn’t ready to sound the alarms just yet because April wasn’t the most reliable person, but it’d been two days since he’d heard from her. Her boss at the hair salon where she worked had said April had asked for time off. She hadn’t been at her house, either, when he’d dropped by, which meant something was up. With April, something was up usually went hand in hand with trouble. She was twenty-three, eleven years younger than Clay, but plenty of times she still acted like an irresponsible teenager.

Clay growled out another voice mail for April to call him, and he followed the sound of the tile saw into the kitchen. The saw was going all right, but no one was cutting the backsplash tiles. In fact, no one was in the kitchen at all. Clay unplugged the saw to kill the noise and went in search of any signs of progress or intelligent life.

He found neither.

There was still a hole in his bedroom floor marked with a scrawled sign that said hole. No windows, just tarp where they should be. And there was a fridge in the master bathroom, something that hadn’t been there that morning. That didn’t qualify as progress.

The fridge door was open, and one of Freddie’s sons—Mick—was peering inside. Not foraging for food apparently but rather using it as a makeshift air conditioner to stave off the already sweltering April heat. He looked to be having an orgasmic moment with his eyes closed and his head going back and forth like an oscillating fan.

Clay cleared his throat, and Mick jumped nearly a foot off the floor. It was the fastest Clay had ever seen the man move.

“Shit,” Mick repeated a couple of times. “You scared the dickens out of me, Chief.”

Ditto. But Clay wasn’t afraid of Mick. He was afraid he was going to have to live with these clowns for the rest of his life.

And learn the meaning of dickens.

Mick didn’t close the fridge door. He just stood there enjoying the cool air on his backside and was seemingly oblivious to the fact that Clay wanted to rip off his arm and beat him with it.

“Why’s the fridge in here?” Clay asked.

“Oh, it’s temporary,” Mick said as if that explained everything.

Clay decided to give very specific instructions and use small words. “I want the fridge in the kitchen, and the toilet and bathtub out of the living room and into the guest bath.”

Mick looked at him as if that were a tall order but then nodded.

Even though Clay figured this was going to be just another exercise in frustration, he still wanted some answers. “Why exactly is the fridge in here anyway?”

“The plug.” Mick hitched his thumb to the outlet.

“Did the electrical plug in the kitchen quit working?” Clay pressed when Mick didn’t add more.

“Nope. I needed it for the saw, and since I wanted to keep my Pepsi cold, I brought the fridge in here. Didn’t think you’d want it in your bedroom.”

“I don’t want it anywhere but the kitchen.”

Again, Mick made it seem as if that would be a tall order. “Say, in case you didn’t notice, the phone next to your couch is blinking. Guess that means you got a message or something.”

Yeah, or something, but Clay didn’t want to deal with that right now. The landline had come with the house, and while he hadn’t given the number to April and didn’t use it as his contact information, his neighbors sometimes called him on it. Along with one other person who’d managed to get hold of it.

And that particular person did leave messages.

Apparently, this was Clay’s day to receive one. But not now. He’d listen to it when he was alone.

“Your face and hands are healing,” Mick remarked. “Those chickens messed you up real good, didn’t they?”

Yeah, and it pained Clay to admit it, but he’d actually checked for the feathered critters to make sure they weren’t around before he got out of his truck and went into the house. The chickens weren’t his. They’d sort of come with the property, but as soon as Clay could catch them, he was having a barbecue.

Clay shut the fridge door, hoping it would spur Mick to get back to work, and the man did follow Clay back into the living room. But apparently it wasn’t to work. It was to chat.

“Guess you heard all about Sophie and Garrett having to move back a couple of weeks ago?” Mick went on.

Clay nodded. Hard not to hear what was the number one gossip topic. It had even surpassed Sophie’s jilting and the talk about Sophie showing up at his office and asking him on a date. Of course, it was possible the date-thing was still the hottest topic, but the townsfolk were keeping quiet about that around him.

“I heard the FBI fellas took all their money and stuff.” Mick followed him when Clay went out the back—after he checked for the feral chickens.

Apparently, they were still on the topic of the Grangers, but Clay ignored him and walked to the pasture fence. Now, here was why he’d bought the run-down place that folks called the old Pennington ranch. The land and the barn. No more boarding his horses, Sal and Mal. The pair were in the pasture and looked a lot more content than Clay did at the moment.

But Clay did have plans for the place. Plans that included a house where everything was in the right room. That way he could get on with the peace and quiet part of his life.

Man, he needed it bad.

“Don’t know how their cousin, Lawson, is taking Sophie and Garrett coming back and being right under his nose,” Mick continued. “Guess you heard about all the bad blood there?”

“I heard,” Clay settled for saying, and he hoped that put an end to this conversation.

It didn’t.

“Sophie and Garrett’s great-grandpa was Zachariah Taylor Granger, or Z.T. as people called him,” Mick explained. “Lawson’s great-granddaddy was Jerimiah, Z.T.’s brother. Both of ’em made a fortune to pass onto their kids and grandkids. Z.T’s kin live here on the Granger ranch. Jerimiah’s kin live nearby, but they don’t come into town much at all. The two families own so much land that it almost bumps right up against each other.”

“Are you telling me this for a reason?” Clay asked. He used the same tone he did when interrogating felony suspects.

“Sure am. I’m telling you because there might be trouble with Lawson. Ever since he had a falling-out with his brothers about five or six years ago, he’s been working the Granger ranch on Roman’s behalf. Roman doesn’t want to work it because of a falling-out he had with his mom and on account of him being so busy.” He paused. “A lot of the Grangers have falling-outs.”

“And you’re telling me this for a reason?” Clay repeated.

“Yeah, it could be real important that you get the whole messy picture when it comes to the Grangers. Roman won’t be trouble. He lives in San Antonio and owns a rodeo business. But Lawson’s a different story. He might not be so happy now that Sophie and Garrett are back to take over things.”

Maybe that was true, but Clay still couldn’t find any angle that connected him to this situation. This all sounded like gossip.

“You figure Sophie Granger and you will get back together now that things are off with Brantley and her?” Mick asked.

So, that was the angle.

Clay gave him an annoyed glance. “Sophie and I were never together.”

Mick made a yeah right sound, and Clay didn’t bother to set him straight since it wouldn’t do any good. Because Mick, like most other people, believed that Sophie and Clay had had a “thing,” and that’s why her ex-fiancé had called off the wedding. Apparently, Brantley was still well liked in town, and Sophie was getting the blame for ruining things with Mr. Perfect.

Other than Sophie launching herself into his arms the day of the jilting, Clay had never laid a hand on her. And wouldn’t. Sophie wasn’t exactly the peace-and-quiet-inducing type.

Plus, there were her eyes.

Clay figured a lot of men looked at Sophie and saw an attractive woman. And she was. But Clay just couldn’t get past those eyes because they reminded him, well, of things he didn’t want to be reminded of.

He mentally put those eyes back in the memory box in his head that he’d marked as “shit to forget.” It worked, but in those couple of seconds that it took him to move it there, the images came. He felt the sick feeling of dread in his stomach.

And he saw her.

Hell. He saw her, her face way too clear for just a tiny piece of a nightmare.

“Say, are you okay?” Mick asked.

“Fine,” Clay lied, and he tried to look normal. Whatever that was. Maybe he needed to create a normal box in his head that he could pull out and use to fool people. Of course, it probably wasn’t hard to fool an idiot like Mick because he seemed to buy right into Clay’s “fine” lie.

“They haven’t found Billy Lee.” Mick again. He paused. “Since you’re a cop, you’ll probably know the answer to this, but what would make a fella run off with all that money?”

“Greed.” And you didn’t need to be a cop to know that.

Even though Billy Lee didn’t exactly fit the profile of an embezzler and money launderer. The man didn’t have so much as a parking ticket, and from what Clay could gather from the gossip, Billy Lee had been a father figure to Sophie and Garrett since their dad had passed away about ten years ago.

If Clay were leading the investigation, he would look for mitigating factors. Like maybe Billy Lee was being blackmailed or something, but this wasn’t his rodeo, wasn’t his bullshit to shovel.

Peace and quiet.

And a job where someone around him didn’t get killed because of something he’d screwed up.

He’d trade the adrenaline rush of the rodeo for that.

“Guess you’ll get more horses soon.” Mick again. “Maybe make it the way it used to be.”

“Yes, and that includes not having a toilet in the living room. You need to go take care of that now. I’d actually like to have a finished house before I reach retirement age.”

Mick laughed as if it were a fine joke rather than one of Clay’s genuine concerns. Clay would have spelled out his concerns—in both writing and while using sentences with small words—but the sound of a car engine snagged his attention. He got a jolt of relief then anger when he saw that it was April’s powder blue VW convertible.

She stepped from the car as if all was right with the world, and she wasn’t alone. His two-year-old twin nephews, Hunter and Hayden, barreled out the moment their mom freed them from their car seats, and they ran toward Clay as if he were a major prize at the finish line.

That’s exactly how he felt about them.

They owned his heart, and the little shits knew it.

Clay scooped them up, kissed them both and got some sweaty, sticky kisses in return. Judging from the smell and stains on their shirts, they’d been eating chocolate ice cream. Of course, the ice-cream kisses and cuddles didn’t last. The moment the boys spotted the horses, they wiggled to get out of his arms so they could get closer to the animals.

“Don’t climb the fence or I’ll arrest you,” he warned them.

Hunter giggled like a loon, and Hayden immediately tried to climb the fence. Clay took hold of him like a wiggly football and tucked him under his arm while he gave April a once-over. She wasn’t hurt, but she did have new purple streaks in her dark brown hair. And a hickey on her neck.

“Obviously, you’re not dead in a ditch,” Clay growled.

She was still smiling when she kissed his cheek and grabbed Hunter when he tried to climb the fence. “Nope. Not dead. And I don’t go near ditches. According to you, they’re death traps for kid sisters.”

“Then there’d better be a good reason why you didn’t return my calls.” Normally, Clay would have punctuated that with a curse word or two, but he was in the little pitcher, big ear zone.

Still smiling and still with a kid in her arms, April twirled around like a ballerina. She sort of looked like one, too, in her pink dress.

“I do have a good reason.” She stopped twirling long enough to thrust out her left hand for him to see the diamond ring sitting on her finger.

Clay sure didn’t smile. “Please tell me that’s a fashion statement and not what I think it is.”

“No fashion statement.” Another twirl, and she set Hunter back on the ground. “I’m engaged.”

“For shit’s sake.” Clay mumbled it again when he realized he’d said that out loud. “The ink’s barely dry on your divorce,” he reminded her. “And you haven’t been dating anyone that I know about.”

“I’ve been divorced three months. That’s plenty of time for the ink to dry.”

“Yes, but not enough time to meet someone, fall in love and get engaged.”

“Maybe not for a stick-in-the-mud like you, but for me it was like that.” She snapped her fingers. “Love at first sight.”

“More like lust,” Clay grumbled, but he didn’t grumble it softly enough because both Hayden and Hunter started a babble fest with shit and lust. “Where were the boys during all of this?” He snapped his fingers to imitate April’s description of the joyous event.

“With their dad. Spike and I worked out a custody schedule. We’ll alternate weeks.”

Clay thought a week was too long for the boys to go without seeing one of their parents, especially since it would be Spike’s, aka Ryan’s, folks who ended up taking care of the boys when it was his week of custody. Ryan’s folks were decent enough people and were well respected in Wrangler’s Creek, but like April, Spike had some growing up to do. But that was another debate for another day. Right now, Clay had bigger fish to fry.

“Who’s your fiancé?” Because as soon as he had a name, Clay would run a background check on him. He loved his sister—most of the time anyway—but April was a turd magnet when it came to men.

April quit smiling. “Now, before you bad-mouth him, or me, just hear me out. I’m in love with him, and he’s a decent man.”

Hell. That couldn’t be good. “What’s his name?”

“When I tell you, you’ve got to promise not to curse or yell. This could work out good for you, too. Well, since rumor has it that you’re seeing Sophie Granger and all.”

He pulled back his shoulders. “Sophie? I’m not seeing her. And what the heck does she have to do with this anyway?”

Clay looked at the ring. At the hickey on his sister’s neck.

And the answer hit him like a fully loaded Mack truck exceeding the speed limit.

CHAPTER THREE

CLAY PULLED TO a stop in the circular drive that fronted the Granger ranch. To say he was dreading this visit was like saying it got a little bit hot in Texas during the summer.

This was his first trip here, but he’d driven past the place plenty of times. Hard to miss it with the sprawling house, sprawling pastures and miles of white fence. It looked the way he wanted his own place to look one day. Scaled down, of course, and with a real house with stuff in places where stuff belonged.

He was betting the Grangers didn’t have a toilet in their living room.

Clay got out of his truck, taking his time and hoping this went better than the scenarios playing out in his mind. Of course, there weren’t any good scenarios in this situation except that maybe Sophie had already moved on with her life and didn’t give a rat’s ass about anything.

He certainly did, and in Sophie’s and his case, they had a rat in common.

Brantley.

Sophie needed to know that Brantley had proposed to April. That didn’t mean the marriage was going to happen. For Clay, this qualified as one of those “over my dead body” situations. Brantley was only a month out of a long-term relationship with Sophie. A relationship he’d apparently ended because of some “love at first sight” shit with April.

Yeah, definitely over Clay’s dead body.

He made his way up the porch steps but before he could ring the doorbell, Clay heard something he didn’t want to hear. It sounded as if someone was crying. He went to the end of the porch and looked in the side yard and spotted the crier.

Sophie.

She was standing beneath a massive oak while she brushed down a bay mare. A tabby cat was coiling around her legs. No wedding dress today. She was wearing jeans and a white top. But like the day of the failed wedding, tears were streaming down her face.

Hell.

That wouldn’t make this visit any easier, and he got out his handkerchief and went to her. She must have heard him coming because when he was still several yards away, her head snapped up, and she immediately started wiping away the tears with the back of her hand. He spooked the cat, too, because it jetted out of there as if Clay had scalded it.

“Don’t tell Garrett,” Sophie said, moving away from the horse.

He handed her the handkerchief. “Don’t tell him what?”

She motioned toward her face. “He feels I should be over this by now, that my ex isn’t worth the tears.”

He’s not.

But Clay kept that to himself for now.

“It’s stupid,” she went on. Since she didn’t ask him why he was there, it was obvious that Sophie had some things she wanted to get off her chest. “I’m over him. I really am. And I hate him. But sometimes, things close in around me like a dark cloud, you know?”

He did know. Clay had a dark cloud of his own. One even darker than Sophie’s.

She looked at him then, her gaze connecting with his. He glanced away but not before practically getting lost in those deep blue eyes. The color of a fancy stone in an equally fancy ring.

The color of her eyes.

Until he’d seen Sophie’s, Clay had been sure there’d been only one pair of eyes like that. He’d been wrong.

“I went to the old gypsy lady who lives in the trailer just up the road,” Sophie continued. “You know about her?”

Clay nodded, made sure he didn’t make direct eye contact with Sophie. The woman’s name was Vita Banchini. She was a local legend, like Big Foot, except she supposedly doled out curses and love potions. She was also Clay’s nearest neighbor.

“Vita’s my best friend’s mom,” Sophie went on. “Mila. But if you see Mila, don’t mention I went there. Don’t mention you saw me crying, either.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Besides, he doubted Mila and he would ever have a conversation about anything, especially this. The few times he’d seen Mila at the bookstore she owned, she hadn’t spoken a word to him. Rumor had it that she was the town’s thirty-year-old virgin.

“You’re going to think I’m crazy, but I had Vita read my palm.” Sophie groaned softly. “And she said it was over between me and my ex—that I needed to look elsewhere for the future I’ve been planning. That tells you how crazy I am to do something like that. I don’t even believe in fortune-tellers.”

She must have taken his grunt as a conversational green light because she kept talking. “Today would have been our one-month wedding anniversary. If the wedding had actually happened, that is. On top of everything else, it just got to me.”

Clay grunted again. If he kept this up, she’d think he had indigestion. Maybe social anxiety, too, what with him not actually looking her directly in the eyes.

“How is everything else?” he risked asking.

Sophie opened her mouth, maybe to give a polite “fine” answer, but it must have stuck in her throat. “I’ve avoided going into town. Gossip.” She hadn’t needed to clarify that. “And I’ve banned anyone on the property from saying my ex’s name.”

Which meant she probably hadn’t heard the news about Brantley and April’s engagement. Their temporary engagement, that is.

Clay wasn’t sure why he felt the need to come and tell her in person. This certainly wasn’t a police matter, and after the date debacle at the station, Sophie likely wanted to avoid him as much as her ex.

Or not.

That wasn’t exactly a get-lost gesture she was giving him, and just as she’d done in the police station a month ago, she launched herself into his arms. “Play along, please,” she whispered.

Clay glanced around to see what had put her up to this and soon spotted the source. Her cousin, Lawson. The lanky cowboy was making a beeline toward them. Clay knew him, of course, and vice versa. Knew plenty of gossip, too, and not just what he’d heard from Mick. Lots of people were concerned that Lawson would feel pushed out of the place he’d worked. He’d made his home in Wrangler’s Creek as well, since he and his girlfriend lived in a house just up the street from the police department.

“Chief McKinnon,” Lawson said. “Or I guess that’s still interim chief?”

“It is, but call me Clay.” They exchanged nodded greetings despite the fact that Sophie still had her arms around him.

Sophie finally stepped back, but she stayed right by Clay’s side. “My allergies are bothering me again,” she told her cousin. No doubt to explain the red eyes.

Lawson shook his head. “Bullshit. But as your older male cousin, I have a genetic responsibility to ask if the bawling is about the numb nuts whose name we’re not allowed to mention or if Clay is responsible.”

Since Lawson said Clay’s name as if he were an incurable toenail fungus, it was possible he believed the latter. Or maybe this was just more of his obligatory genetic responsibility. If so, that was good, because it meant Lawson wasn’t harboring any ill feelings about Sophie’s return to the ranch.

Of course, there was another possibility.

Even though Sophie hadn’t been into town to hear the gossip, Lawson likely had been, and Lawson’s stink eye was possibly for the part Clay had in this relationship mess. Not that Clay actually had a part in it, but maybe Sophie’s cousin thought he was guilty by genetic association.

“It’s about the numb nuts,” Sophie admitted. “But don’t tell Garrett.”

Lawson made a locked motion over his mouth and shifted his attention to Clay. “Did you really get attacked by chickens?”

Hell. Was that going to follow him around for the rest of his life? “Feral chickens,” Clay corrected.

Sophie shifted her attention to him, too. “The Penningtons didn’t take those hens with them when they sold the place?”

“No.” Clay could say that with absolute certainty. They were there and in the attack mode whenever they saw him. Something he’d never admit. His manhood had already taken a nosedive because of the little bastards.

“Heard, too, that you were renovating the place,” Lawson went on.

Yet another pride-reducing topic that Clay wanted to avoid. He settled for a nod.

“When you’re done with your visit,” Lawson said to Sophie, “Garrett wants to see you. He’s in the barn right now, but he needs to go over some business stuff. Heads up, though—he’s not in a good mood. Paperwork,” he added.

Sophie made a sound of agreement. “Garrett hates paperwork,” she explained to Clay. “Actually, he hates anything that requires a desk. And pens. Computers, too.”

Strange, considering Garrett was the CEO of a business. But in a way, that didn’t really surprise Clay. The few times he’d seen Sophie’s brother, Garrett had looked more like a ranch hand than the boss. Plus, even before their financial mess, Garrett had actually spent plenty of time here. Unlike Sophie.

“Take your time before you see Garrett,” Lawson went on. “Get your allergies under control first.”

She nodded. Huffed.

“By business stuff he means cows,” Sophie said when Lawson strolled away. “Lawson normally runs the day-to-day operation of the ranch, but things are far from normal right now. Apparently, we’re buying a big herd of cows with money from our trust funds. Long story,” she grumbled.

From what Clay had heard it wasn’t that long. Sophie and Garrett needed an income, and the ranch would provide that if they worked it as it should be worked, that is. A ranch meant livestock. While it was a subject that interested him, he’d already wasted enough time on small talk and catching up. Best to go ahead and tell Sophie the reason for his visit.

However, once again she spoke before he could say anything. “I owe you two apologies. One for the hug a month ago and another for the one I just gave you.”

He lifted his shoulder. “No apology needed, but FYI, I don’t think the hugs are convincing anyone that we’re together.”

“Probably not.” She glanced up at him. “But thank you for coming out here to check on me. After the fool I made of myself, I figured you’d want to keep your distance.”

He did want that but not for the reasons Sophie was thinking. “You didn’t make a fool of yourself,” he said, and maybe that would help with what he had to say next. “You know I have a sister, right?”

She looked at him. Clearly puzzled. Probably because she didn’t have a clue what a fool and his sister had in common.

A lot.

Sophie nodded. “April. She moved to Wrangler’s Creek a couple of years ago when she married Spike Devereaux, and she works at the Curl-Up and Dye Salon.”

“She still works there, but Spike and she got a divorce.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Fresh tears sprang to her eyes, maybe because it reminded her that her own marriage hadn’t worked out. “Didn’t they have kids?”

Clay nodded. “Twin boys. They’re two years old.”

And he felt another punch in his gut. Something that he’d been feeling since April had shown up at his house the day before with the news. His nephews were the main reason he’d moved to Wrangler’s Creek, so he could make sure they weren’t getting jacked around.

Clay had failed big-time.

And he was failing now, too, because he just couldn’t think of how to tell Sophie what he didn’t especially want to tell her. He opened his mouth to blurt it out when her phone buzzed. She yanked it from her jeans pocket and grumbled something he didn’t catch when she looked at the screen.

“I’m sorry, but I have to take this. Roman,” she greeted the moment she hit the button to answer it.

Her other brother. The one with a police record. Judging from the fact that he hadn’t come to his only sister’s wedding, Clay figured it wasn’t much of a stretch to say their relationship was strained.

And one-sided.

Other than her greeting, she didn’t manage to say anything. Clay was close enough to hear the chattering on the other end, but he couldn’t hear what her brother was saying. Whatever it was though, it clearly didn’t please her because her forehead bunched up.

She stepped away from Clay, maybe to give herself some privacy, and she even glanced at him to see if he was staying. He was. That caused her to put a little more distance between them.

“I really would like you home right now,” she said to her brother. “At least for a little while.”

Clay decided it was a good time to stroll toward the back to get a better look at the place. Unfortunately, the breeze didn’t cooperate because it sent the sound of Sophie’s voice right at him.

“All of that happened years ago,” Sophie argued. “Garrett and I need you here if for no other reason than to sign all these papers.” She paused. “You can’t give us the ranch—you know that. You know the terms of Daddy’s will as well as I do, and you can’t give or sell it to anyone. It’s yours until you die.”

Clay walked even farther away. Apparently, Sophie was getting hit on several fronts, and Clay had heard at least some of the story with Roman. From the bits and pieces he’d heard, it wasn’t the first time they’d argued about the terms of their father’s will. Whatever the problem was, it was big enough for Roman to stay away.

“No, I don’t want you to kill Brantley for me,” she continued. She shot a look at Clay, who tried to pretend he hadn’t heard what she’d just said. “Don’t even joke about something like that... Of course, you’re joking. And no, the ranch won’t fit up that particular cavity of Brantley’s body. Just consider coming home. Please.”

Sophie finished her call, and she joined him at the corral fence. “Sorry about that. My brother. Another long story.”

Clay hated to get in the middle of this, but there seemed to be an obvious solution. “Roman lives in San Antonio. Less than an hour from Wrangler’s Creek. Since he doesn’t want to be here, maybe you could hire someone to courier the paperwork back and forth?”

She nodded. “That works when he’s home, but he’s on the road a lot for his rodeo business. By choice. He’s got people who can travel for him, but he likes doing that himself.” Sophie took in a quick breath. “Now, what were we talking about before we got on the subject of my brother?”

Clay didn’t get a chance to say because they were interrupted for a third time when someone called out her name. It wasn’t a voice that Clay immediately recognized, but Sophie apparently did. Her shoulders snapped back, and she caught on to Clay’s arm.

“Oh, God. It’s Brantley.”

Shit.

This was about to get ugly. Well, unless Brantley had had a change of heart and was here to grovel at Sophie’s feet. Even then it could still get ugly.

“Clay,” Brantley said, extending his hand for him to shake.

Clay tried not to break his fingers. All right, he didn’t try that hard, and it felt a little too good to see the man wince.

Still wincing and wiggling his fingers after Clay let go, Brantley volleyed glances between them. “So, you told her, I guess?”

Clay had to shake his head. “Not yet,” he said at the same moment that Sophie asked, “Tell me what?”

Clay debated what to do. The news should come from Brantley, but he honestly hadn’t expected the guy to show up and do this face-to-face. Maybe he did have some balls after all.

Good. Because it would give Clay something to bust.

For now, though, he had to tell Sophie the news that would likely make her cry again. Not here in front of them. But as soon as she could get somewhere private, she would.

“Brantley proposed to my sister,” Clay said.

Clay gave her a moment to let that sink in. Sophie’s mouth was slightly open, and her stare was fixed on him.

“My sister said yes,” Clay went on, “but I’ve asked her to reconsider.”

Truth be told, he’d demanded it. Because there was no way she should be getting involved with a man like Brantley, especially this soon after her divorce.

Still no reaction from Sophie. Damn. She might be going into shock.

“Did you hear me?” Clay asked her. “Brantley and my sister are engaged.”

Brantley shook his head. “Actually, we’re not.”

Thank the Lord and anybody else who’d had a part in this. April and Brantley had come to their senses and called off this nonsense. Clay didn’t whoop for joy, but he would later. For now, it was time to get out of there so Sophie and this clown could perhaps work out a reconciliation. Even though Sophie deserved a hell of a lot better.

“Are you engaged or not?” Sophie asked Brantley just as Clay turned to leave.

“No.”

There was something in Brantley’s one-word answer that had Clay stopping in his tracks, and he turned around just in time to see Brantley reaching out to Sophie. Except he wasn’t reaching. He was extending his left hand.

To show her the ring he was wearing.

“Not engaged,” Brantley clarified. “April and I are married.”

CHAPTER FOUR

SOPHIE’S THROAT SNAPPED SHUT, and that’s why she was surprised she’d managed to make a sound. Unfortunately, the sound that came out of her mouth was profanity. Stupid, G-rated profanity.

Turd on a turkey.

It wasn’t the right thing to say, of course. Not just now but in any situation whatsoever. Nor was it good for her to have what was no doubt a thunderstruck look on her face. She should have steeled up, put on the best mask she could muster and pretended that Brantley hadn’t just ripped out her heart. Clearly, she’d failed at that.

“I know this is a surprise,” Brantley continued.

He didn’t continue talking, though, because Clay came back toward them and got right in Brantley’s face. And Clay cursed, too. His profanity was a lot better suited to the situation than Sophie’s.

“That’d better be a fucking joke, you dickhead piece of shit,” Clay growled.

Brantley lowered his hand, dropped back a step, and his eyes widened. He looked genuinely surprised that Clay was upset with his news. That took some of the spotlight off her, and Sophie used that time to try to get control of her emotions.

“Uh, I thought April told you,” Brantley said to Clay.

Sophie moved to Clay’s side but not too close. He looked ready to implode. A first. Every other time she’d seen him, he’d been cucumber-cool. Now he was more like lava-hot.

“No, she didn’t tell me,” Clay answered. He whipped out his phone, no doubt to call his sister, but he was gripping it so hard she was surprised it didn’t shatter. He also didn’t make the call. Maybe because his grip was too tight to make his fingers work. “How the hell did this happen?” he snarled.

Even though Brantley likely wanted to drop back another step, he held his ground. “I love April,” he said.

All in all, it was a good answer. Possibly the best one he could have given a new brother-in-law who looked ready to rip off every protruding part of Brantley’s body.

Brantley turned to Sophie. “You knew how I felt about April,” he added.

“Uh, no I didn’t.”

But Sophie certainly knew how she felt. The ache came. And thankfully vanished because the anger roared in behind it to push it away.

“I didn’t know,” Sophie stated, but she had to do it through a clenched jaw. Though her jaw was practically slack compared to Clay’s.

“I told you,” Brantley insisted, “when I called you...well, a few hours after we were supposed to be married.”

Sophie remembered the call that had come in while she’d been at the office. She’d hung up on Brantley but not before he’d said something she hadn’t caught.

“You mentioned a belt,” she offered.

Brantley shook his head and seemed confused before an aha look went through his eyes. “I didn’t say belt. I said bolt as in lightning bolt. Because that’s the way I felt when I first saw April. It was love at first sight. Real love,” he tacked on as if it might help.

It didn’t. It didn’t help Sophie with her anger, and judging from the way Clay looked, it didn’t help him, either.

“Real love?” Clay repeated. His voice had a dangerous edge to it that sent Sophie’s pulse skittering. “My sister’s barely out of one bad marriage. She doesn’t need another one. Her boys don’t need another one.” The edge in his voice had gone up a notch.

“This isn’t a bad marriage,” Brantley argued. He huffed. “Look, I didn’t think this news would be such a shock. In fact, I thought it’d be welcome now that Sophie and you are seeing each other. Sophie has moved on, and that’s a good thing.”

Oh, if only that were true. Then again, she had moved on from the raging anger to wanting to throw that turdy turkey at him. But that probably wasn’t the direction Brantley was looking for her to go. Nor was it the direction Clay was taking.

Clay’s index finger landed on Brantley’s chest. “If you hurt my sister or my nephews, this badge will come off and I will make you pay. In fact, I might make you pay even if you don’t hurt them.”

It didn’t sound like a bluff, but Brantley didn’t have time to call him on it. Garrett came strolling out of one of the nearby barns, cursed, his profanity waffling on the air so they caught every word, and made a beeline toward them.

Great. Now, he’d get involved. At least she wasn’t crying, though. Maybe it would stay that way.

As Garrett got closer, Sophie caught his usual scent. A mixture of bullshit from his boots, sweat and the woodsy aftershave he sometimes remembered to use on the days he remembered to shave. It was hit or miss, but he’d hit today, and there was the added aroma of leather from his saddle. Heaven knew where he’d been riding, but he was always looking for any excuse to be anywhere but inside his office.

“It’s true?” Garrett snarled, looking not at Clay or her but at Brantley. “You’re married? Meredith told me,” he added to Sophie before she could ask how he’d found out.

Meredith, Garrett’s wife. Apparently, the gossip flow had taken the direct route to her. Ironic since Meredith spent more time at her dad’s house in Austin than she did at the ranch, but she did spend more time on the phone than Sophie did.

Brantley bobbed his head in a series of nods, a motion that mimicked the movement of his Adam’s apple. He lobbed some very concerned glances between her brother and Clay as if debating which of these two were about to end his existence on Earth. It was a toss-up, but since she didn’t want either to go to jail, she stepped between them.

“Yes, Brantley is married,” Sophie volunteered. “And he was just leaving.”

“No, he wasn’t,” Clay argued. “Not until he explains to me what the hell he was thinking by marrying my kid sister.”

“And when the shit bag is done explaining that, he can tell me why he jilted my kid sister.” That from Garrett. “You’ve been dodging me. Lawson, too. And it’s high time you grew a pair and manned up about why you did this.”

Brantley looked at her as if she might have the answers to prevent him from getting a butt-whipping. She did. Well, she had answers to her brother’s question. Brantley hadn’t loved her. Not enough, anyway. But while that was true, it might not stop said butt-whipping.

This was what she’d tried to avoid that day at the police station, and part of her knew she had to grow her own pair and stop it from happening now.

“I have moved on with my life,” Sophie said to no one in particular and hoped they didn’t ask for proof of that. She also hoped this next part didn’t stick in her throat. “Brantley did me a favor by breaking things off.”

Clay and Garrett stared at her, and both looked about as unconvinced of that as anyone could.

“See?” Brantley added. “It’s all okay. Sophie and Clay are together, and April and I will start our lives as newlyweds.”

“We’re not together,” Sophie said.

Clay talked right over her, though, so she wasn’t sure anyone heard her. “You’re not starting anything,” he warned Brantley. “Where’s April?”

“My house here in Wrangler’s Creek. Our house,” Brantley corrected. “I just moved her and the boys in.” And despite Clay’s intense glare, Brantley managed to hike up his chin and look as if he’d located his backbone.

The backbone display didn’t last long, though.

The color bleached from Brantley’s face when Clay took hold of his arm. Hard. The kind of grip he no doubt used when making an arrest. “Come on. You, April and me are about to have a little talk.”

* * *

TALKING SUCKED, TOO.

At least it did when a big brother was talking to a knot-headed kid sister. After an hour of trying to drill home why marrying Brantley was a stupid idea, Clay had left to regroup and try to come up with an argument that might get April to come to her senses and annul the marriage. Or at least rethink it.

In the meantime, he hoped Brantley didn’t a) break her heart b) stunt the emotional development of his nephews or c) knock April up. Just in case of the latter, Clay made a mental note to send April a jumbo box of condoms.

That hadn’t worked with Spike and her, but maybe this time April would remember to have Brantley use them. Even though he wouldn’t trade his nephews for the world, his sister needed another kid to raise even less than she needed another dickweed husband.

Clay walked into the police station, and of course, all eyes immediately went to him. Ellie’s, Rowdy’s and Reena’s. The gossip had probably already reached them, and they might be concerned that he’d assaulted Brantley.

“Brantley’s alive and in one piece,” Clay greeted to put their minds at ease and to stop them from asking him anything. But it was clear that it eased nothing.

“Uh, you got another of those envelopes,” Reena said, scrubbing her hands down the sides of her jeans, and she immediately looked away. “I put it on your desk.”

Clay didn’t ask for any details because he knew what she meant by those envelopes. Reena and the crew had no idea what was in them, though. They only knew he got one on the first of each month and that he only opened them behind closed doors. They also knew the envelopes put him in a shit-kicking mood. Since his mood was already at the shit-kicking level, it didn’t bode well for workplace morale.

He made his way to his office, and right off he spotted the large document-sized envelope in the center of his desk. Hard to miss it since it was Pepto-Bismol pink. Like the others, it was addressed to Detective Clay McKinnon, care of the Wrangler’s Creek PD and was postmarked from Houston. Also like the others, the sender had made a heart of the o in his surname.

Because he needed a minute—he always did when it came to these deliveries—Clay sank down into his chair and considered a drink. He kept a bottle of cheap Irish whiskey in his bottom drawer. It was on top of a copy of his resignation papers from Houston PD, which in turn was on top of his last case file when he’d worked there. Beneath that were more pink envelopes, one for every month he’d been at Wrangler’s Creek PD.

Just opening the drawer was like going into his “shit to forget” box in his head so he decided to pass on the whiskey. Good thing, too, because there was a knock at the door, and it opened.

Before the woman even stepped into his office, he caught a whiff of her. Garlic, for sure. Limburger cheese, maybe. And Listerine. It was his neighbor, Vita.

Clay wasn’t sure exactly how old Vita was, but she had to be a lot younger than she looked because she had a thirty-year-old daughter, Mila. Yet she looked to be a hundred and sixty. Or maybe that wasn’t actually wrinkles upon wrinkles but instead she was smearing her face with Limburger cheese.

Like the other times he’d seen her, Vita was wearing a long brown skirt, so long that the hem was dusting the floor, and enough cheap bead necklaces to act as an anchor if she ever got caught in a tornado.

“I came,” Vita announced as if he was expecting her. He wasn’t. But then you never really expected Vita. She was like a cold sore and just showed up.

Best to cut her off at the pass and make this visit as short as possible. The longer she stayed the more air freshener he’d have to use. “If this is about my sister and Brantley—”

“No. There’s nothing to be done about that.” Her attention landed on the pink envelope. “Or that, either.”

Well, this was a cheery visit. Not that he had any faith whatsoever in Vita’s future-telling/ESP powers that she claimed were in her gypsy blood, but if she’d offered him any hope, he might have latched on to it.

“I came about the chickens,” Vita said. “They’ll attack again soon.”

That got his attention, and Clay frowned over the way his gut suddenly tensed. “How do you know this? Have the chickens been talking to you?”

The woman didn’t crack a smile at his bad joke, but she did take something from her skirt pocket. An egg. Not a clean one that came in a carton from the grocery store. This one had what he was pretty sure was a smear of chicken shit on it and a bit of a feather.

“It belongs to one of them,” Vita went on, her voice all low and dramatic. “Keep it with you at all times, and they won’t attack. Their scent is on it, and they won’t risk hurting one of their own.”

Clay had no idea how to respond to that so he just grunted. Vita must have taken that as an agreement that he would go along with this because now she smiled. The joke hadn’t amused her but a grunt had.

He made a mental note to talk to her daughter about getting her some psychological help.

Vita pulled something else from her pocket. A massive can of Mighty Lube. It was shaped like a penis but double the size.

“For Sophie,” Vita said.

All right. Clay wanted to know why Vita believed Sophie would need glorified vegetable oil and why the woman couldn’t just give it to Sophie herself. But he was afraid this was meant to be a sex aid, and like feral chickens, he didn’t want to discuss that with Vita. He just thanked her, said goodbye and asked her to close the door on her way out. She did those things but not before uttering what sounded like a threat.

“If you hurt Sophie, you’ll be sorry. I’ve read her palm so I know your paths cross.”

“Of course they cross. It’s a small town.”

But he seriously doubted that Vita meant that.

“They’ll cross,” she went on, “but it’ll be up to you which direction she takes after that. Hurt her, and you’ll have to deal with me.”

As the interim chief of police, Clay supposed he should remind her that it wasn’t a good idea to threaten a cop, but instead he reached for the air freshener in his bottom left drawer. It was next to the whiskey. Once the Limburger smell had been cloaked with the scent of fake flowers, Clay turned back to the envelope. Best not to put this off. He reached for it, but reaching was as far as he got because there was another knock at the door.

Hell.

“Yeah?” he snapped, not bothering to sound even remotely receptive to a repeat visit from Vita. But it wasn’t her. It was Garrett.

“Got a minute?” Garrett asked, coming in before waiting for an answer.

Reena was right behind him, and since she was frantically trying to fix her hair, it was obvious she wanted to impress their visitor. Clay had noticed that a lot whenever he’d observed women near Garrett. Even though he was married to the town’s former prom queen, Sophie’s brother caused women to primp, flirt and do other things that were normally directed at good-looking, single men.

Clay had seen a whole lot of eyelash batting going on.

“Vita,” Garrett remarked, glancing at the egg.

Maybe the air freshener hadn’t done its job. Or else Garrett guessed that Clay wasn’t the sort to have a shit-streaked egg on his desk. Thankfully, his attention didn’t seem to land on the Mighty Lube, or Garrett might have had some questions that Clay couldn’t answer.

Garrett looked at Reena. Smiled. It seemed a little forced to Clay, but he wasn’t exactly a smile expert. Still, it started the eyelash batting, and Reena coiled a strand of hair around her finger.

“I need to speak to Clay in private,” Garrett added to the deputy.

“Oh, sure.” Reena stuttered out a few more syllables, and eyelash batted her way out the door. Which she closed.

Clay had already done some bud-nipping with Vita, but he figured he was going to need another round of it with Garrett. “If you’re here to threaten me not to hurt Sophie—”

“I am. In part. But since you’re not involved with her, not yet anyway, just keep the threat for future reference.”

It probably wasn’t the average response, but Clay liked the guy. It’s something he would have said to anyone getting involved with April. Of course, Clay’s threats hadn’t worked, and in Garrett’s case, it wasn’t needed. Clay wasn’t getting involved with Sophie.

“The other part of why I’m here is something I’d like to keep just between us,” Garrett went on. “I’d like for you to question Arlo Betterton.”

Clay knew the name. Arlo owned the run-down gas station on the edge of town. He was in his sixties and resembled Santa Claus in grease-splattered overalls. “Has he committed a crime?”

Garrett shrugged, put his hands on his hips. “He was Billy Lee Seaver’s best friend when they were kids.” No need for Garrett to clarify who Billy Lee was. “The feds have already talked to him, but Arlo probably didn’t do much talking back. He might know something, though, and you might have better luck getting it out of him.”

“I doubt it. To Arlo I’d be as much of an outsider as the feds or Skunk the pig farmer.”

Garrett didn’t argue with that. “Lie to him. Cops can do that. Tell him you’re sleeping with Sophie, and you’re worried about her. Tell him that you need to find Billy Lee because you’re afraid Sophie’s about to fall apart.”

“Is she about to fall apart?” Clay asked before he could think about why he shouldn’t ask it.

It was a personal question, not related to this investigation. And it was what his granddaddy would have called a red pecker flag. Pecker as in dick. Flag as in Clay’s dick that had prompted the personal question about Sophie. Garrett picked up on it right away and scowled.

“No, she’s not about to fall apart,” Garrett assured him. “She’s a lot tougher than she realizes, and that means she doesn’t need a shoulder to cry on or a fuck buddy to console her. She just needs time to realize that Brantley is cow shit and that she deserves a whole lot better. Sorry,” he added, no doubt because Garrett remembered that the cow shit was now Clay’s brother-in-law.

Clay was sure he scowled, too, at that thought, but it was easy to push cow shit aside when Garrett had just dished up some official business. “Wouldn’t you have better luck talking to Arlo than I would?”

“No. He doesn’t trust me. He thinks all I want is to find Billy Lee, lock him up and throw away the key.”

“Don’t you?”

Garrett opened his mouth as if he might say something to contradict that, but he shook his head. “Just talk to Arlo when you get a chance.”

“Okay. I will.” It was the closest thing to any real police work as Clay might get. Plus, he might get lucky if he played the fake dating-Sophie card. Of course, that would only keep the rumor mill spinning about them, but as long as Garrett seemed to know the truth, that was okay with him. “And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry about what happened to your business.”

Garrett shrugged. “It was something my great-granddad started, a family legacy of sorts. Personally, I thought the ranch was legacy enough, but my dad and granddad wanted to keep the business going so we did. But it meant more to Sophie and my wife than me. And it’s not like we’re homeless or broke.”

No, even though the gossips were divided on the Grangers’ adjusted net worth. It varied from ten million to six billion. Clay figured it was on the lower end of those estimates, which meant they were still rich but had perhaps fallen out of the stinkin’ rich tax bracket. With all the work Garrett was doing at the ranch though, they’d be back in that bracket in no time at all.

Garrett tipped his head to Clay’s desk. “Sophie has one that looks exactly like that.”

It took Clay a moment to realize Garrett was looking at the envelope, and his ribs nearly cracked when his heart slammed against his chest. “Sophie got a letter like this?”

“Similar to it.”

Garrett kept on talking, but Clay could no longer hear him. That’s because his pulse was drumming in his ears. Hell. Sophie wasn’t part of this. Clay was about to snatch up the phone, but then he caught some of Garrett’s words.

Father. Thirtieth birthday.

“What did you say?” Clay asked.

Another head tip toward the envelope. “I was saying that my father died ten years ago when I was twenty-four, but he left us letters to be opened on our thirtieth birthdays. Sophie’ll open hers in November. For some reason, he put hers in a pink envelope. Mine and Roman’s were in white ones. For a second there, I thought maybe Dad had left you some kind of instructions, too.”

“No,” Clay quickly assured him. “It’s not from your father.”

Garrett leaned in, had a closer look, and he must have noticed the heart o because the corner of his mouth lifted into a near smile. “Good. Because so far my dad’s letters have been, well, a mixed bag of news, and you’ve already had enough of that.”

Yeah, he had. And Clay didn’t want to include Sophie in any of his personal mixed bag.

As Vita had done, Garrett left and shut the door behind him. Clay waited to see if there’d be more interruptions, but when a couple of minutes crawled by without another knock, he knew he should just get this done. Fast. Like ripping off a bandage. It would still hurt, but at least it’d be over.

For another month, anyway.

The sender, however, probably wouldn’t wait a month to leave a message on the landline phone at Clay’s house. Those didn’t come with the same regularity as the letters. But still, they came.

Clay used scissors to open the envelope, and he eased out the three pieces of paper. Two were pictures. One before. One after. He looked at both with the same reverence a good priest would look at a dying patient getting last rites.

Seeing the pictures was a sort of penance. They told a story, but they sure as hell didn’t change anything.

Neither did the third paper.

But he studied it anyway. Not that there was much to study. Like the other three pages in the other envelopes, this one had a single word handwritten on it.

Killer.

* * *

CLAY PULLED HIS cruiser to a stop on the side of Arlo’s Pump and Ride. He wanted to think that Arlo Betterton hadn’t had a dirty mind when he’d named the place back in the early ’70s, but since Clay had gotten complaints about Arlo’s too-prominent display of adult magazines, the name had likely been intentional.

Before Clay even made it to the front, the door opened, the bell attached to it clanging, and Arlo stepped out. “If you’re needing some gas, you’re parked in the wrong place, Chief.” Arlo was wiping his greasy hands on an equally greasy rag.

There were no other customers, no employees, either, which meant Arlo and he might be able to have a private conversation. Clay wasn’t holding out hope that it would be a productive one, but he wanted to be able to tell Garrett that he’d tried.

Clay glanced around, taking in his surroundings. Old habits. The only danger here was slipping on some motor oil and throwing out his back, but after so many years of being a cop, it was hard to turn off his cop’s eyes. Hard to turn off his brain, too, and since the contents of the pink envelope were still plenty fresh he hadn’t been able to wrestle away the demons.

Killer.

Not a pretty label.

“If you’re not needing gas then,” Arlo went on, “come inside, and I’ll get you some coffee. Made it myself just a couple minutes ago. It’ll give you something to drink when you tell me why you’re here.”

“I’ll pass on the coffee.” And not because he didn’t want to drink anything Arlo had made with those hands but because Clay’s nerves were already jangling. No need to fuel those nerves with caffeine.

“Suit yourself. I’ll pour myself one.” Arlo went to the counter. Also grease stained. Ditto for the coffeepot. Probably the coffee, as well, since there seemed to be a mini oil slick swirling on top of the cup. “So, are you here because of Vita?”

Clay tried not to look surprised and held back from saying “why the hell would I be here because of Vita?” He’d learned that some folks gave him more info when he didn’t actually question them so he just raised an eyebrow.

Arlo huffed. “Vita was in earlier, whining about feed. She accused me of feeding those chickens that’ve been pestering you out at your place. She said she saw feed on the ground. Well, it wasn’t me. I got no reason to want chickens to stay around so they can go after you.”

All that from a raised eyebrow so Clay raised his other one. Later, he’d check and see if there really was feed on the ground near his house.

“It’s true.” Arlo huffed again. “But there are some folks who might want to see you...pecked a little. But not me. I’m not bothered by cops, even when they’re just an intern one, but some folks are.”

Clay just kept his eyebrows raised and didn’t correct “intern” to “interim.”

Arlo added some profanity to his huff. “Ask Ordell Busby about the feed ’cause I’m betting it was one of his boys. They’re always up for a good prank.”

Clay knew about the Busby boys’ penchant for pranking. It was harmless stuff like TP’ing yards and trying to tip a cow. To the best of his knowledge, they’d never actually succeeded at a prank without getting caught, but it wouldn’t be hard to get away with tossing out some chicken feed.

“I’ll talk to them,” Clay said, and he didn’t budge. He just stood there, eyebrows raised and perhaps looking as if his forehead had had a run-in with some extra potent Botox.

The seconds crawled by. And crawled. But Arlo eventually huffed. “So, you’re really here about Sophie.”

Clay made a sound that could have meant anything. Or nothing. Arlo opted for the something because he started huffing, cursing and talking again.

“I heard Sophie’s down in the dumps. Heard it might be more than just down, that she might have that depression people have to take pills for. Guess you haven’t been able to cheer her up any?”

Clay had to lower his eyebrows because his facial muscles were starting to twitch, but Arlo must have taken it as a cue to continue.

“Don’t guess anything but getting her business back would chase away those blues. Well, I can’t help you there, intern Chief. I don’t know anything about where Billy Lee is right now at this moment.”

You didn’t have to be a cop to hear the slight pause Arlo made before right now at this moment, but Clay decided it was time to do more than offer up facial gestures. “Do you know where Billy Lee is, was or has been in the past month since he’s been missing?”

That brought on more cursing from Arlo. “I already told those FBI fellas I didn’t know, and now I’m telling you the same thing. Billy Lee’s not here, and I haven’t seen him.”

Clay decided to use his cop’s voice for the next question. “Have you communicated with Billy Lee in any way in the past month?”

Arlo looked him straight in the eyes. “No.”

Clay studied him, trying to decide if he was lying. Strange but he didn’t seem to be. Just in case though, Clay upped his stare a while longer, waiting to see if Arlo would break down and start blabbing. But he was literally saved by the bell. The one clanging over the door.

“Gotta go,” Arlo said. “Got a customer.”

Clay didn’t stop him, but he did make a mental note. There was something going on with Arlo. Maybe something connected to Billy Lee. And he needed to keep an eye on it.

CHAPTER FIVE

THIS WAS A new level of Hell. Sophie was sure of it.

It was barely 8:00 a.m.; she hadn’t even finished her first cup of coffee and had paperwork to do on the sperm and the bull pump Garrett wanted her to purchase. But she wasn’t doing paperwork. Mila was on one side of her, Sophie’s mother, Belle, on the other, and they both had opened tablets to show Sophie what they’d found through their internet search.

They’d found Hell aka dating sites.

“It’s been six months since the unfortunate incident,” her mother reminded her. “It’s time to move on before winter sets in.”

Maybe winter was a metaphor for life passing her by, but knowing her mother she could simply be thinking of Sophie needing someone to snuggle with once it got cold. And she did miss snuggling. But she doubted she’d find that on a site called Type-A-Businessmen.com.

“They’re all professionals,” her mom said as if that would help.

“Brantley was a professional,” Sophie pointed out. A lawyer. On paper he was perfect for her, but Sophie hadn’t been able to marry the paper.

Her mother hesitated, no doubt thinking up a comeback. “Well these are professionals who haven’t jilted anyone.”

Sophie had no idea if that was actually in the bios or if her mother was just making that up to get her to take that first step into Hell.

“There are plenty of other sites,” Mila piped up. To prove that, she promptly showed Sophie the page for Cowboy-Match.com.

After one glance, Sophie concluded that not all cowboys were hot. Some were downright ugly and one had what appeared to be a lump of chewing tobacco in his jaw, complete with brown spittle on his chin.

“You like cowboys,” Mila added, frowning at the spittle guy.

Sophie did. When she was looking at shirtless pictures of them on the internet. She liked the snug jeans, boots and hats. She liked the way chaps framed their junk. But those cowboys who’d posed for man candy pictures probably didn’t need dating sites.

“How about this one?” Her mother pulled up another site. “This one is Well-Endowed-Hunks.com.”

Both Mila and Sophie turned to her mother, giving her blank stares.

“What?” Belle protested. “There’s nothing wrong with a man being large in that area.” She pointed to her own nether region.

So, her mother did know what it meant. Sophie had considered that maybe she thought that meant they’d inherited a lot of money.

You couldn’t always tell if her mother was clued into reality or not. She looked prim and proper as if she should be on one of those TV shows from the sixties, the ones where the moms wore high heels to do housework. Not a hair out of place. Lipstick was a necessity, and she wore hard padded bras that could bruise you when she gave you a hug.

“Well, if you don’t want a large endowment,” Belle went on, “I’ll look for a site for men with small weenies.”

Sophie groaned. “Don’t. Please don’t. In fact, you both need to leave so I can get some work done. Mila, shouldn’t you be at the bookstore?”

“It doesn’t open for another hour.”

Sophie groaned again. “Well, I need you both to leave. I have to order a machine to jack off the bulls. After that, I have to order some sperm.” If she’d had her coffee, Sophie was certain she would have phrased that better. Supplies for the ranch would have sufficed.

The color blanched from her mother’s face. Not a pretty sight since that only made her bright red lipstick glare like a baboon’s butt. “God, Sophie, you’re not thinking of artificial insemination.”

She wanted to groan again, but her throat was getting sore. “No. It’s bull semen for all those cows that were delivered yesterday. Garrett wanted the machine so the hands could, well, get some from the bulls we already have. But it apparently won’t be enough so I have to buy more. And I really do need to get it ordered this morning to stop the cows and Garrett from getting testy.”

Sophie might as well have been talking to her coffee because once her mother got back her color she just continued advancing into those levels of Hell.

“Here’s one I bookmarked. NicheDating.org, and you put in exactly what you want, and it matches you with your dream guy.”

Sophie laughed and didn’t bother to take the sarcasm out of it. She drank some more of her coffee and started filling out the sperm order, hoping it would prompt her best friend and mother to leave. It didn’t.

“Go ahead,” her mother insisted. “Tell me your dream man, and I’ll type it in for you.”

“Tall,” Mila answered for her. “And dark hair.” She stopped, snapped her fingers. “What about Shane Whitlock, the hand who used to work here? He owns his own ranch now near Bulverde, and I’m pretty sure he’s single.”

Shane. The guy Sophie had had a semicrush on in middle school. Because her attention had turned to Brantley in tenth grade, the crush hadn’t led to anything, and it wouldn’t now.

“I’ll look up his number for you.” Mila opened another browser screen and got started on that.

“I don’t want Shane’s number,” Sophie said. “And I don’t want my dream guy from Niche.com.”

They didn’t listen so Sophie ignored them, too, and got busy on the paperwork. Hard to tune out their comments, though.

Her mother: “You really should get serious about this. You’re only weeks away from your thirtieth birthday.”

Mila: “You’re not like me. You like having a man in your life.”

Her mother: “And I’ll never get grandchildren if you stay a virgin like Mila.”

Mila was indeed a virgin, but Sophie didn’t tell her mom that she’d lost her virginity when she was eighteen. Not to Brantley, either. They’d just broken up for the umpteenth time, and Sophie had met a bull rider in San Antonio. Lucky McCord. She had some sweet memories of him, but even if she’d wanted to reconnect with him, she couldn’t because she heard he’d gotten married.

“If these dating sites are so great,” Sophie argued, “then why haven’t the two of you used them? Mom, you’ve been a widow for ten years, and Mila, you could certainly find that special someone you’ve been looking for on a site called NicheDating.org.”

Her mother: “I don’t want another man. Your father was more than enough for me.”

Which could be taken several ways since her father could be an overbearing control freak. He was still controlling them in a way with letters he’d written and had arranged to be opened after his death. Heck, he’d even left her mother appointment calendars with reminders of birthdays, to schedule physicals, etc.

Mila: “I’m not looking for a man.”

Oh, yes, she was. But she was looking for Mr. Special.

Sophie wouldn’t bring it up in front of her mother, but Mila was obsessed with a BDSM Fifty Shades of Grey guy and wanted that kind of experience for her first lover. Sophie had figured her friend would give up by now, but the obsession was hanging on a little longer than her previous obsessions with Mr. Darcy, Captain Jack and assorted The Lord of the Rings characters.

Mila had somewhat eclectic tastes when it came to her fantasies.

“Seeing someone will help you get over Brantley,” Mila said, obviously moving this conversation back to her.

“I am over Brantley,” Sophie insisted.

But they ignored her again.

Her mother: “People feel sorry for you. I feel sorry for you.”

Sophie suddenly felt sorry for herself. And not because she’d been jilted six months ago but because two people she normally loved were making her insane.

“What about Chief McKinnon? He’s hot, and you like him,” Mila asked.

This was an easy argument to win. “He’s Brantley’s brother-in-law.”

And it didn’t matter that last she heard he still wasn’t happy about his sister’s marriage. Sophie didn’t want to get involved with someone who had that close a connection to a man she now saw as navel lint. Of course, she’d seen Clay since then. Hard to miss anyone in a small town, but thankfully he’d seemed as eager to avoid her as she had been to avoid him.

Man, oh man, she’d made a fool of herself twice in front of him. Once the day of the wedding that didn’t happen and again when she’d gone mute after hearing that Brantley and April were married. It was best if she didn’t get close enough for round three. Her foolery seemed to escalate whenever she was near him.

“Probably for the best that you aren’t looking in Clay’s direction,” Mila went on. “There’s something a little off there.”

That got Sophie’s attention. “What do you mean?”

“Well, there’s almost nothing about him on the internet. No social media accounts, only a smidge of info about him being a cop. You’d think there would be plenty more since Reena said he’d been a Houston cop for twelve years.”

Sophie shrugged. “Not everybody splashes their lives on social media.” Though it did seem off that there’d been nothing about his investigations.

“Reena thinks maybe Clay did hush-hush cases, like undercover stuff,” Mila went on. “But whatever he did, something must have happened for him to give it up and move here.”

“He moved here for his sister.” At least that was the main reason. But maybe there was something else.

“Ohmygod,” her mother blurted out. “Look who popped up as a match when I put in all the things you wanted in a man.”

Since Sophie was reasonably sure her mother didn’t know what she wanted in a man, she didn’t hold out much hope for an accurate match. Still, she had no choice but to look because her mother put the tablet right in her face. And she saw a familiar face.

Shane’s.

Mila squealed. “It must be fate because I just found his phone number.” She scribbled it down on a piece of paper and tried to hand it to Sophie, but when she didn’t take it, Mila stuffed it in the back pocket of Sophie’s jeans.

Fate. Was this really some kind of cosmic sign that she needed to start dating? She didn’t have to think long on that.

No.

It wasn’t a sign. It was a coincidence, and she wasn’t ready to risk her heart again on an eerie happenstance.

“Am I, um, interrupting anything?” someone asked from the doorway.

It was her sister-in-law, Meredith, looking her usual perfect self despite the fact Meredith wasn’t a morning person.

“Not interrupting a thing,” Sophie assured her.

“Sophie’s going on a date with this hunk,” her mother announced, turning the tablet so that Meredith could see Shane’s picture.

“No, I’m not,” Sophie mumbled, but she must not have said it loud enough because Meredith didn’t seem to hear her.

“Uh, that’s nice.” Meredith barely looked at the tablet. Barely looked at any of them. “I just wanted to let you know that I’ll be back in Austin for a while.”

Something was wrong. Of course, something had been wrong for a while because it was obvious Meredith didn’t like being at the ranch.

Sophie slowly got to her feet. “Does Garrett know?”

“Yes. We just finished talking. He just left, too, for a cattle buying trip to Laredo.” Meredith tried to scrounge up a smile. It wasn’t the sort of smile that’d won her all those beauty competitions. She glanced around as if she might have forgotten something and then waved. “I have to go. Daddy’s expecting me.”

Meredith walked away, leaving Mila, her mother and her to stand there gaping at the empty doorway. “Poor thing,” her mother said, “she’s still trying to get over that baby she lost.”

Maybe, but that had happened nearly two years ago, and Sophie had never been convinced that Meredith was thrilled about becoming a parent. Unlike Garrett. He’d been over the moon about it, and if anyone was still trying to get past the loss of the child, Sophie would put her money on her brother.

“I hope she and Garrett can work it out,” Mila added. “I think of them as that couple in the bull riding movie with Clint Eastwood’s son. Opposites, yes, but crazy in love.”

Sophie hated that this might be the split that she had felt coming. Hated that Garrett might be going through his own version of hell right now, but at least this got the attention off her and those blasted dating sites.

Or not.

“If you don’t want to go out with Shane,” Mila continued, “here’s another dating site for ranchers.”

Sophie went to the window and watched Meredith get into her silver BMW and drive away. She also looked around for Garrett’s truck, but it wasn’t there. She had no idea when he’d be back from the trip and even when he returned, he probably wouldn’t want to talk, but Sophie would try.

Hell. Now, there’d be two mopey Grangers under the same roof.

“Garrett will be fine, I’m sure,” her mother said. “Meredith, too. They just need a little time to make their way back to each other. Unlike Brantley and you. You know that door’s closed for good so that’s why Mila and I are trying to help.”

Sophie managed one of those fake smiles like Meredith, and she grabbed her purse. If she couldn’t order sperm in peace, then she’d go in search of her brother. “Garrett will likely stop in town before leaving for Laredo, and if I hurry, I might be able to catch him.” She raced out the door as fast as her feet would carry her.

“We’ll look at the dating sites when you get back,” her mother called out to her, assuring that Sophie would make this trip as long as possible.

After she returned, Sophie might even set up a base camp office at the guesthouse or one of the barns. There was also a house on the sprawling stretch of Granger land, a Gothic monstrosity that Z.T. had built decades ago. Her mother made sure the place didn’t fall in, but that was one of the few good things Sophie could say about it. Unfortunately, the easiest way to get to it these days was on horseback, but heading there was a better option than going another round with the matchmakers.

Sophie got into one of the ranch trucks, and she drove straight into town. A short trip of less than two miles, and she slowed when she got to Main Street so she could look for Garrett. No sign of him so she turned on one of the side streets, hoping he might have stopped in at the Maverick Café for breakfast before heading out on his trip.

Nope.

She tried his cell. No answer. But with Garrett that could mean he was simply on the phone with someone else. Then again, he wasn’t the sort to want to share his feelings. With anyone. Including her.

Since she didn’t want to go back home so soon, Sophie pulled into the parking lot of the Maverick to get a coffee to go. It was a risk because it was packed, and someone would perhaps give her the “poor, pitiful Sophie” routine where the jilting would be rehashed to make her the victim. It was a testament to how much she needed caffeine that she decided to go in anyway. However, she hadn’t made it to the door yet when the sound of laughter stopped her.

But not just laughter. Giggling.

She whirled around and immediately spotted Clay coming out of the café. Not giggling, though. Two toddlers were responsible for that. He had what appeared to be a goblin under one arm and some kind of pint-sized superhero under the other.

Clay stopped when he saw her. The kind of stop a man guilty of something might make. Probably because these were no doubt his nephews. And therefore Brantley’s stepsons.

The boys continued to giggle and poke at each other when Clay stood them on the ground. “Halloween costumes. They’re heading to playgroup over at the library.”

She’d forgotten that Halloween was coming up. Actually, she’d forgotten it was October. She really did need caffeine. And a life.

Maybe sex, too.

But she only had that thought after seeing Clay.

“If you try to run, I’ll arrest you,” he warned the boys, causing the giggles to escalate. One immediately started to run, and Clay scooped him up so easily that he must have done it dozens of times. The other clamped onto Clay’s jeans-clad leg and stared up at Sophie as if she were a deranged killer holding a blood-soaked machete.

“What are their names?” she asked just to be saying something.

Best not to stand there, thinking of sex and caffeine with the kiddos around. It was best not to think of those things with Clay around, either.

“Hayden,” he said, tipping his head to the leg hugger. “And this is the troublemaker, Hunter.”

Their faces were smeared with assorted colors of makeup, but she figured that they were cute beneath. Cute and perfect. The kind of kids that Brantley and she had planned on having. Of course, they already had a father, Spike Devereaux, but Brantley was probably having a ball playing part-time daddy.

“Are you okay?” Clay waited until her gaze came to his and he looked away.

“Sure.” And because she felt she owed him more than that, she added, “I’m over Brantley. Really.” She paused, shifted the conversation a little. “How are things with you and your sister?”

“S-h-i-t-t-y,” Clay spelled out with a smile. “I’m sure you’ve heard all about it from the gossips.”

Sophie shook her head. “I’ve been avoiding the gossips. Avoiding town, too. And phone calls from anyone and everyone who wants to spill things that I don’t want to talk about.” She could add life and sex to that list of avoidances.

Mercy.

She wished sex would stop popping into her head.

“I’m trying to make sure none of that s-h-i-t falls on these guys,” Clay added. Hunter, the troublemaker, repeated the shit, letter for letter, causing Clay to groan.

“You’re a good uncle.” And then she remembered her conversation with Mila. “Good brother to your sister, too. I mean, you gave up your job in Houston to move here to be closer to her.”

She’d meant that to sound casual, but a muscle flickered in Clay’s jaw. “Yeah,” he said, but she got the feeling there was more.

Maybe he’d gotten fired. Or had burned out. It didn’t matter—it wasn’t any of her business. Even if it felt as if it was.

“So you’re taking them to playgroup?” she asked. Not that she wanted to hurry along this conversation, but they were starting to attract a crowd. Some of the diners in the café were gawking at them through the window.

Clay didn’t nod, didn’t shake his head. “No, I’m here with April and Brantley. The boys were getting restless so I brought them outside.”

“Oh.” Probably not the best response she could have come up with, but Sophie figured she should get out of there. She fluttered her fingers in the direction of her truck. “Well, I should be getting...somewhere.” Anywhere but here.

Now Clay nodded.

And that prompted Sophie to say something. “I really am over Brantley, and I’m happy for him and your sister.” The first part was true. The last part not so much. She wanted them to make the marriage work for the sake of the toddler goblin and his superhero twin. “It’s just it might make them uncomfortable if they see me.”

Too late.

The café door opened, and Brantley and April squeezed out together. Squeezed because they had to make their way through the gawkers and also because they were practically wrapped around each other, making it difficult to fit through the door. Like the boys, they, too, were giggling, but those giggles froze when their attention landed on Sophie.

Sophie did another finger flutter toward the truck. “I was just leaving. It was good seeing you, Clay.”

She lifted her foot to get moving, but her foot froze in midstep. That’s because Sophie noticed Brantley’s right hand. It was on April’s belly. And while it was an average-sized belly, there was something about Brantley’s hand placement that had big bells clanging in Sophie’s head.

Good gravy.

“Yes, we’re expecting,” April announced. Her voice was crisp, her eyes slightly narrowed. “Other than Clay, we haven’t really told anyone yet, but I’ll be showing soon, and it won’t be a secret much longer.”

At least she didn’t assume that Sophie would be thrilled for them. In fact, April was sort of glaring at Sophie as if daring her not to be happy.

Oh, it took some doing, but Sophie scrounged up a smile though it must have looked on the creepy side because Hayden cowered even farther behind Clay’s leg. She even managed a nod that she hoped seemed like some kind of approval.

Sophie looked at Clay to see how he was handling this, and he seemed a little shell-shocked. The fact that it was only a little meant he was either very good at masking his feelings or else this hadn’t hit him as hard as it was hitting her.

“This should show you that it’s really over between Brantley and you,” April added. “We’re a happy family now and don’t want anyone from our pasts trying to spoil our future.”

“Rein in your insecurities, sis,” Clay grumbled.

“Just stating the truth,” April grumbled back. “Brantley and I are committed to each other, to this marriage. I’ve quit my job to be a full-time mom to the boys and this baby.”

“I really have to go,” Sophie said, and she put her feet on autopilot, hoping that they would get her to the truck. Somehow, they did, and she got the engine started so she could leave fast.

She didn’t get far. Sophie made it to Main Street and pulled into one of the parallel parking spaces outside Mila’s bookstore, which her friend had given the odd name of Sniff the Pages. If anyone saw her, they wouldn’t think anything of her stopping by her best friend’s business. Well, they wouldn’t think anything unless they looked closer and saw her shaking.

“I am over Brantley,” she repeated. “I am.”

But it was going to be a bitch to deal with the fact that he was not only truly over her, but he’d also moved on to the life that he’d always wanted.

Sophie didn’t cry. She made a promise to herself then and there that she’d never shed another tear over Brantley or what might have been. Instead, she fished around in her back pocket and came up with the slip of paper that Mila had put there.

Shane’s number.

And Sophie called him before she could change her mind.

* * *

CLAY STEPPED OFF the walkway to his house and ducked behind a scrawny hackberry tree. He only hoped that no one saw him doing surveillance of the chickens.

There were three by the side of his house, and they were doing what appeared to be normal chicken things by pecking at stuff on the ground. Maybe feed that someone had maliciously strewn, maybe just bugs and such.

Occasionally, one of them—the biggest one—would lift her head and look around as if doing surveillance, too. Clay didn’t want to believe they could recognize him and want to use him for chicken ninja training, but after three attacks to date, his pride couldn’t stand another go-round with the little bitches.

He considered just shooting them where they pecked, but the shots would spook his horses. Plus, it might spook Freddie or one of his sons if they were inside the house actually working. Clay doubted they were since there was no other vehicle around, but maybe he’d get lucky. He didn’t hold out hope, though, that whatever Freddie and the boys might be working on would be done right.

After all these months, Clay had given up on right, but he hadn’t given up on the remodeling. Even if it took him the rest of his life, he was going to hold Freddie’s feet to the fire and get the projects done. To the best of Freddie’s and his son’s abilities, anyway. Which wasn’t much.

After he was satisfied that the chickens were staying in the same general area, Clay left the cover of the hackberry, and yeah, he hurried to the porch. He threw open his front door and nearly had a heart attack.

“Surprise!” someone yelled.

He cursed and reached for his gun before his brain shifted from the cop to the brother mode. This wasn’t a threat that his body had prepared itself for. It was April with Brantley by her side. Brantley had some yellow balloons in his hand, and his sister thrust out a cake she was holding.

A birthday cake.

It took Clay a moment to realize that the cake was for him. And that this was indeed his birthday.

“FYI,” Clay said, taking his hand from his gun, “it’s not a good idea to start any conversation with a cop by yelling surprise. Nor is it a good idea to hide in his house and yell at him when he walks in.”

“How else were we going to give you a surprise party?” April answered. “We parked in the back so you wouldn’t know we were here.” She grinned, kissed his cheek.

Clay didn’t grin back. In fact, he narrowed his eyes, his normal reaction when it came to his kid sister and her husband. He’d accepted the marriage because he didn’t have a choice, but he hadn’t accepted that they’d been stupid enough not to use those condoms he’d sent them.

Hell.

His sister would be the mother of three—maybe four if she had another set of twins—before her twenty-fourth birthday.

April and Brantley had told him the happy news at the café the same day Sophie had found out. Clay had to hand it to her—Sophie had kept her cool despite his sister’s witchy comment. He’d kept his cool, too, but only because he hadn’t wanted to act like a horse’s ass in front of his nephews.

Of course, now he’d have another nephew or niece, and he would love him or her just as much. But since he didn’t have stars in his eyes like April, Clay knew she had a tough road ahead.

“Hayden and Hunter fell asleep so I put them on your bed,” April explained when Clay looked around for them. “Say, did you know you have a toilet in your closet?”

Clay could only sigh. No, he hadn’t known. The last he’d seen, it’d been in the corner of his bedroom, waiting to be installed in the guest bath. He hoped Freddie and/or his offspring had only moved it there to get it out of the way and that they hadn’t actually misrouted the plumbing again.

“So, is your mood better today?” he asked April, and he didn’t clarify what he was referring to because she knew.

April’s chin came up. “I meant it. I don’t want Sophie interfering in our lives. That includes your life.”

“I’m thirty-four. Last I checked, that makes me old enough to decide who I see or don’t see.”

“And you want to see my husband’s ex?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “Brantley and I have enough adjustments to make without Sophie Granger watching our every move.”

“I doubt she’s watching anybody’s moves. She’s got her hands full with the ranch.” But he was talking to air.

“I don’t want her in our lives,” April declared.

The silence came. So did Clay’s temper, and he considered telling his one-and-only sister to take a hike. But he remembered this level of bitchiness. It’d happened with the last pregnancy so maybe it was just the hormones.

“We got you some presents.” Brantley tried to sound happy and not like he’d just got caught in the middle of a sibling shit-storm. He tied the balloons to the leg of the coffee table and took a couple of bags from the sofa. “The first one is from Vita.”

Clay’s hand hesitated in midreach.

“Vita saw us in town and said to give it to you but to be careful because it could break,” Brantley added.

Clay was certain that put a fresh scowl on his face, but he took the bag, looked inside and saw yet another crap-streaked chicken egg.

Brantley had a look at it, as well, though Clay doubted it was his first look. “Vita said the other one she gave you was too old and that you needed a fresh one.”

Even though he didn’t come out and ask, there was a definite question mark at the end of that information. Brantley and everyone else in town probably knew about Vita helping him with the feral chicken problem. Or rather what Vita considered to be helping. But Brantley must have guessed that if Clay didn’t volunteer anything, then it was a subject best not discussed.

But the first egg hadn’t exactly gotten old, not on his watch, anyway.

He’d tossed it the day Vita had brought it to his office, but Ellie had fished it out with the claim that she would keep it for him, that it wasn’t a good idea to diss Vita’s cures. So, Ellie had put it in double Ziploc bags and shoved it in the tiny freezer of the office fridge.

This one was going in the trash.

Clay put it aside for now and took the other bag, this one tagged from April and Brantley. There was a bottle of his favorite whiskey inside and an envelope.

“Now, don’t get mad,” Brantley said before Clay could open it.

Like the word surprise, that was not something he’d especially wanted to hear. At least it wouldn’t be news of April being knocked-up since she already was. And he doubted it was a divorce announcement since she was clinging like a vine to Brantley.

“It’s a subscription to a dating site,” April blurted out. She sounded considerably less bitchy than she had a couple of seconds ago. Maybe the shit-storm had passed. Maybe her hormones had leveled out.

“It was April’s idea,” Brantley quietly added.

No doubt. It was exactly the kind of thing his sister would do, and Clay would toss it out with the egg as soon as they left.

“It’s time you started dating again,” April went on, “now that things have cooled between Sophie and you.”

Things were never hot between Sophie and him. Well, they were, but only in a lustful sort of way. Hell, he’d never even kissed her.

Something he suddenly wished he’d done.

Clay frowned at that thought. He already had enough complications without adding his brother-in-law’s ex to the mix. Plus, Sophie hadn’t exactly stayed in touch or anything.

“The boys have gifts for you, too.” April made air quotes around gifts. “And I can’t wait for you to hear what Hunter told us.”

“He said he wanted to be a top like his Nunk Cay,” Brantley provided, followed by a laugh. “It was cute as all get-out.”

Cute, maybe, but also confusing. Clay got the Nunk Cay part because that was Hunter’s attempt at Uncle Clay. But it took him a second to realize that top was cop.

“No,” Clay snapped, a little sharper than he’d meant to. “You talk him out of that.” It made his stomach twist to think of a grown-up Hunter going through what he’d been through.

April rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right. As if I’ve ever been able to talk Hunter out of anything. He’s like a mini version of me.”

He was, and that was even more reason to steer Hunter in another career direction. The next time he was at the bookstore, Clay would pick him up some kiddie doctor books. Lawyer books, too, if they published such a thing. Even books about cowboys. Anything but a cop.

“I’ll put the cake in the kitchen,” April volunteered. “We can cut it when the boys wake up. Oh, and we bought some steaks and burgers to grill for dinner.”

Clay thanked her and would have gone into his room to change if Brantley hadn’t caught onto his arm. “Can we talk?”

Hell. That was yet something else he hadn’t wanted to hear. “You’d better not be about to tell me that you’re dumping my sister.”

Brantley’s eyes widened to the size of salad plates. “No. Of course not. I love April. I love the boys, and I love our unborn child.”

“Good. And you’d better keep on loving them, or I’ll kick your ass into the next county.”

Brantley stared at him. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re scary?”

“All the time. And I also carry through on my threats.”

Clay waited. When Brantley didn’t say anything he asked, “Was that what you wanted to talk about—the threats?”

“Uh, no.” Brantley glanced into the kitchen as if to make sure April was still there. She was. “This is about Sophie.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “I was, well, hoping you’d ask her out.”

Clay huffed. “First a dating site subscription and now this? I can handle my own love life.” Or lack thereof. “And didn’t you hear what your wife just said? She doesn’t want Sophie anywhere near her gene pool.”

Brantley huffed, too. “I’m not saying to ask Sophie out for your sake but for her own. She could be headed for some trouble.”

Until Brantley added that last part, Clay was about to tell him to mind his own business, but that got Clay’s attention. “Explain that.”

“Shane.” And Brantley must have thought that was enough of an explanation because he paused.

“Shane, the guy she’s got a date with tonight. Yeah, I know about it.” Clay had heard it from at least a dozen people who doled out sympathy over his and Sophie’s breakup. Apparently, Sophie was meeting this guy in a couple of hours at the Longhorn Bar at the end of Main Street.

“Shane Whitlock,” Brantley provided. He made another of those kitchen glances and leaned in closer. Clay was reasonably sure there was nothing Brantley could say that would interest him about Sophie’s date.

But Clay was wrong.

CHAPTER SIX

SOPHIE HADN’T KNOWN there was a level of Hell below the internet dating sites, but she could say for certain that there was.

It was the date itself.

She’d been so hopeful about seeing Shane. Or at least curious. And eager to get on with her life and dipping her toes back into the dating pond so that her mom and Mila would get off her back. But what she hadn’t counted on was that she didn’t have much in common with a boy she’d crushed on in middle school. A boy she hadn’t even actually known that well.

Shane looked pretty much the same. An older version of the blond, blue-eyed kid who had first stirred her girl parts. He still had that little gap in his front teeth, a tiny flaw that she’d once thought of as a perfect imperfection. It was around the time she’d started reading Jane Austen books so she had been in somewhat of a romantic phase. In fact, maybe she should credit Jane’s books for helping stir those parts.

Her parts weren’t stirring now though, unless she counted her butt going numb from sitting so stiffly on the hard leather seat in the booth.

“And so after I got back from Italy, I moved in with a modern artist in Soho,” Shane went on. He was forty-five minutes into answering her question: So, what have you been up to for the past seventeen years?

From what Sophie could tell, he was on year seven or eight now.

“You know modern art?” he asked, gobbling down one of the nachos they’d just been served. It was the best one on the plate, loaded with jalapenos and dripping with cheese. Sophie had had her eye on it, but she apparently wasn’t fast enough because Shane had moved the plate closer to him.

“Not really.”

“Well, you should study up on it. Interesting stuff. There’s nothing like seeing a really good painting and just looking at it for hours to try to see what the artist saw.”

She made a noncommittal sound, reached way across the table to retrieve a less generously topped nacho. She also checked the time again on her phone. It wasn’t even eight yet.

Time had apparently stopped in this level of Hell.

“Anyway, after Soho,” he went on and on and on, “I moved to Merida down in the Yucatan. Hooked up with another artist there. Man, she was amazing.” He paused only long enough to drink some of his beer to wash down that nacho and move the plate even closer to him. “You’re sure you’re not into art?”

“Not really,” she repeated, and she prayed for an earthquake or something. Nothing major, just enough to shake things up so she could say she needed to leave to check on the ranch.

At least Shane hadn’t brought up the family business and their financial troubles with Billy Lee. Maybe because he already knew all the details from the gossips. Maybe because he didn’t want to bring up such a sour subject on a date. Or perhaps because her life in no way interested him.

“Merida was incredible,” he continued after wolfing down another nacho. He talked around the crunching and the swipes of his napkin to get the cheese drippings off his mouth.

Sophie listened in case she had to grunt in response or something, and she looked across the bar at the back booth where Mila was sitting. As planned.

Well, as Mila had planned, anyway.

She’d told Sophie that she wanted to be there for moral support, but Sophie figured Mila had also wanted to make sure she stayed put and went through with the date.

The door opened, bringing in a gust of the October wind. Not cold exactly, but since she was wearing a thin top—which she’d chosen because it was flattering—with her jeans, Sophie shivered a little. Her shiver turned to a shudder when her mother walked in.

Belle didn’t own any bar/clubbing clothes and had perhaps never been in the Longhorn, but she’d tried to dress to fit in. She had on mom jeans, one of Sophie’s work shirts and cowboy boots that she’d likely taken right out of the box. She smiled at Sophie, gave her a toodle-do wave and made her way to Mila’s booth. Apparently, her mom was there for moral support, too.

“...and after a year in Merida,” Shane was saying, “I stayed a while in LA. Great place. You know LA?”

Sophie caught enough of that so she could answer, “I’ve been there a couple of times on business. We distributed rodeo gear to—”

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