door of her Victorian fixer-upper, walked out of her garden clogs and into the kitchen without breaking stride. The room was a chaos of half-finished jobs, but she didn’t have time to worry about the cupboard doors waiting refinishing in the barn or the last wall of wallpaper waiting to be stripped. “We’re going to be late for soccer practice.”
“I can’t find my shoes.” The small voice came from somewhere in the front. She suspected the living room where her six-year-old son had surely parked his butt before the forbidden television. Her five minutes of picking basil leaves had turned into an hour of weeding, and he’d taken advantage of her distractibility.
Luci stuck her hands under running water and washed off the rich garden dirt with a homemade cake of rosemary soap. “They’ll be much easier to find once you turn off the TV.”
“Aww, Mo-om.”
“Come on. We have to pick up Jeff.” Jill’s carnival committee meeting was running late—as usual. On the positive side, if Jill hadn’t called requesting a ride for her seven-year-old son, Brendan might have missed practice altogether. Again. Luci still had summer’s unstructured time on her mind and, one week into school, she hadn’t quite gotten into the fall routine yet. She had to learn to wear a watch and not let time get away from her. Other moms managed to keep a regular schedule. She should be able to also.
“Do we hafta? He’s such a baby.”
Like a six-year-old was all grown-up. Luci transferred the cell phone from her sweatshirt pocket to her purse, then collected the storage bag of oranges she’d quartered earlier from the fridge. “He’s your cousin and you’re to be nice to him.”
“He’s a dork.”
“A dork who fixes your computer games.” That Jeff wasn’t athletic wasn’t his fault. His talents had a more intellectual bent—something she’d wished for her own son. To her utter devastation, Brendan had inherited his father’s craving for risk. She’d spent enough time at the local emergency room to be on a first-name basis with both first-shift and second-shift personnel.
Luci strode into the living room, flicked off the television and urged her son off his nest of plush pillows and toward the kitchen. Maggie, the brown-and-blond mutt seemingly put together from spare parts, jumped off the couch with a guilty look and slunk into the kitchen, wagging her tail warily. Luci didn’t have time to care about dog hair, so ignoring the transgression seemed best for her sanity at the moment. “Come on, Brendan. Your shoes are by the door where they belong.”
“Can we stop at the playground on the way home?”
“Not today.” Luci ruffled her son’s shock of dark hair.
“How come?”
“We don’t have time. I have a batch of pesto to get ready for the country club restaurant by tomorrow morning.” Not to mention the herb logs or the herb vinaigrette. And that didn’t take into consideration the gardens that needed cleaning up or the goats that needed feeding and milking on a regular basis. She loved all of it, really she did. She just needed a few more hours every day to make it all work out.
“Aww, Mo-om.”
“Aww, Bren-dan.” She grabbed her purse and the bag of orange sections. The dog danced all around her, wound up by the buzz of energy Brendan and their lateness created. Surveying her son, she noted the shin pads loosely cuffed around his lower legs and mouth guard dangling from a finger. “Do you have water?”
Brendan lifted his Nalgene bottle from the deacon’s bench by the door. “And my ball.” He scooped the black-and-white ball out from under the bench with his sock-clad foot.
“Let’s go.” She slipped on a pair of felt clogs, grabbed the cleats, opened the back door and shooed out the dog.
Just as Brendan maneuvered the ball out the back door, the strangled sound of the bell on the front door rang. Not now. She snagged her van keys from the horseshoe-shaped holder by the door. “Get in the van and wait for me. Don’t touch anything. And we’re not taking Maggie, so don’t let her in.”
As Luci pounded to the door, she juggled everything in her arms to free a hand. She opened the door, ready to put her ill-timed visitor off. Whatever word had meant to cross her lips remained locked in her voice box.
“Hi, Luce. Can I come in?”
The sight of Dominic Skyralov, big as life and broad as a bull, knocked her back two steps and seven years. His blond hair had darkened to caramel. But otherwise, nothing much had changed about the smooth-talking cowboy. His blue eyes still matched the well-washed denim of his skin-hugging jeans, still could read right through her, still made her want to confess her deepest sins. He’d been her best friend for four years. Then everything had changed. Now the sight of him called back her darkest memories and the nauseating disorientation that came with them.
“No.” She hung on to the brass doorknob as if it could save her from the flood of pain that rushed through her. “You can’t come in.”
“I need to talk to you.”
“I’m sorry.” She shook her head, trying desperately to break apart the image of blood, of horror, of Cole dead on the floor, of red staining the dirty boards of that bleak North Texas shack. “I’m on my way out.”
Dom nodded. A good-old-boy gesture that was as part of him as his inbred politeness. “I’ll come back, then. When would be good for you?”
Never. Her ears rang. Her vision narrowed and blackened. Oh, God, no. Him coming back would make this even worse. She’d have all the time in between to relive her worst nightmare over and over again. Cole falling, bleeding, dying. Closing her eyes, she swallowed hard. “Say whatever you have to say and leave. I’m in a hurry.”
“It’s a nice place you’ve got here.”
“No, Dom, don’t.” Her voice strained between clenched teeth. “I know how you work. Put your subject at ease, then slip in the punch. Just get to the point, okay?” She couldn’t take his smooth negotiator’s voice, that slow Texas drawl, chipping away at her calm until he found her soft spot and bored in for the kill.
“There’s a con man in town. He marries divorcées and bleeds them dry. I need you to help me gather evidence and provide me with some cover.”
Why don’t you just take a knife and twist it in my guts? “You are not bringing trouble here. Do you hear? You are not bringing trouble to this family. You are not bringing trouble to this community.”
“He’s engaged to your sister.”
The soft punch of his words knocked her breathless. “Now I know you’re lying. My sister isn’t seeing anyone.”
Then Luci remembered Jill’s bubblier-than-usual voice this morning as she’d issued a dinner invitation for Saturday and added she had a surprise. Luci had assumed Jill had scraped up another blind date to force on her. Jilly, what have you done? “I’m leaving now. And when I get back, I don’t want to see you or your truck in my driveway. Is that understood?”
Another nod. But he wasn’t moving. He wasn’t leaving. His big body became an iceberg she feared wouldn’t melt away until he’d done what he’d set out to accomplish. “Thing is, Luce, whether you want it or not, trouble’s here and it’s not me. The last woman
