style="font-size:15px;"> Now it was Owen who looked away. “Just wanted to make sure I wasn’t dealing with something more personal here.”
“You mean like a lover’s spat gone wrong,” she muttered. The fact he had even considered that twisted away at her almost as much as the regret over lying to him.
“No. Like Terrance McCoy killing your assistant as a way of getting back at you.”
Everything inside Laney stilled. Only for a moment, though. Before the chill came again. Mercy. She hadn’t even considered that. But she should have. She was so tied up in knots over Emerson having killed Hadley that she hadn’t looked at this through a cop’s eyes. Something she’d always prided herself on being able to do. She’d never quite managed it with Hadley, though.
“Hadley’s my blind spot.” Laney groaned softly and pushed her hair away from her face.
She steeled herself to have Owen jump down her throat about that, to give her a lecture about loss of objectivity and such. But he didn’t say anything. Laney waited, staring at him. Or rather, staring at the back of his head because his attention was on the window.
“Addie’s my blind spot,” he said several long moments later. “I didn’t want her in the middle of whatever this hell this is, but she’s there.”
Laney had to speak around the lump in her throat. “Because of me.”
“No. Because of whoever hired those men to come to my house and go after you.” He paused, turning so they were facing each other. Their gazes met. Held. “Don’t ever lie to me again.”
Not trusting her voice, Laney nodded and felt something settle between them. A truce. Not a complete one, but it was a start. If she was going to get to the bottom of what was going on, she needed Owen’s help and, until a few seconds ago, she hadn’t been sure she would get it.
The deputy took the turn off the main road to the Slater Ranch, which sprawled through a good chunk of the county. Kellan ran the main operation, just as six generations of his family had done, but Owen and his brothers Jack and Eli helped as well, along with running their own smaller ranches.
Separate but still family, all the way to the core.
It occurred to her that she might have to go up against all those Slater lawmen if it did indeed come down to pinning this on Emerson. But Laney was too exhausted to think about that particular battle right now.
“For the record,” she said, “I told you the truth about most things. I grew up with horses, so I know how to train them. And every minute I spent with Addie—that was genuine. I enjoyed being with her. Francine, too,” she added because the part about Addie sounded...personal.
A muscle flickered in Owen’s jaw. “What about the day in the barn?” He immediately cursed and waved that off.
When he turned back to the window, she knew the subject was off-limits, but it wasn’t out of mind. Not out of her mind anyway. And she did not need him to clarify which barn, which day. It’d been about a month earlier after he’d just finished riding his favorite gelding, Alamo. Owen had been tired and sweaty, and he’d peeled off his shirt to wash off with the hose. She’d walked in on him just as the water had been sluicing down his bare chest.
Laney had frozen. Then her mouth had gone dry.
Owen had looked at her and it had seemed as if time had stopped. It had been the only thing that had stopped, though. Laney had always known her boss was a hot cowboy, but she’d gotten a full dose of it that day. A kicked-up pulse. That slide of heat through her body.
The physical need she felt for him.
She hadn’t done a good job of hiding it, either. Laney had seen it on his face and, for just a second—before he’d been able to rein it in—she had seen the same thing in Owen’s eyes.
Neither had said anything. Laney had calmly dropped off the saddle she’d been carrying and walked out. But she’d known that if she hadn’t been lying to him, that if they’d been sitting here now, with no secrets between them, she would have gone to him. She would have welcomed the body-to-body contact when he pulled her into his arms. And she would have let Owen have her.
Owen knew that, too.
Just as they had done that day in the barn, their gazes connected now. They didn’t speak, and his attention shifted away from her just as his phone dinged with a text message.
“Jack’s got Francine and Addie all settled in,” Owen relayed. He showed her the picture that his brother had included with the text. It was of Addie, who was sound asleep.
Laney smiled. Addie looked so peaceful and, while it didn’t lessen her guilt over the attack, at least the little girl didn’t seem to be showing any signs of stress.
Laney was still smiling when she looked up at Owen and realized he had noticed her reaction. And perhaps didn’t approve.
Despite that shared “barn memory” moment, he probably didn’t want her feeling close to his daughter. Laney certainly couldn’t blame him. She was about to bring up the subject again about her making other arrangements for a place to stay, but Owen’s phone rang.
It was Kellan and, while Owen didn’t put the call on speaker, it was easy for Laney to hear the sheriff’s voice in an otherwise quiet cruiser.
“Just got a call from the CSI out at your place,” Kellan said. “They found something.”
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