them in dizzying swirls.
“He’s welcome to try,” Hutch said, hackles rising again. Did everybody, even his best friend, think he had a fat lip and a shiner coming to him just because he hadn’t gone through with the wedding?
Boone opened his cruiser door, leaned in and shut off the lights, which was a relief to Hutch, who was starting to get a headache. “Go home, Hutch,” Boone said. “I’ve got one loose cannon on my hands in Treat McQuillan and I don’t need another one.”
“I’m not breaking any laws,” Hutch pointed out, putting an edge to the words. There it was again, somebody telling him where to go, what to do. Damn it, the last time he looked, he’d still lived in a free country.
“True,” Boone agreed. “But if Walker hadn’t gotten to McQuillan first, you’d have clocked him yourself, and don’t try to claim otherwise, because I know you, Hutch. You’ve got pissed-off written all over you, and if you hang around town on the lookout for trouble, you’re bound to find some.” The sheriff sighed again. “It’s my job to keep the peace and I mean to do it.”
Hutch’s strongest instinct was to dig in his heels and stand up for his rights, even if Boone was making a convoluted kind of sense. And it still stung a little, remembering how Walker had gotten in his way back there when McQuillan crossed the line with Brylee. He felt thwarted and primed for action at the same time—not a promising combination.
Before he could say anything more, though, Boone changed the subject in midstream by announcing, “My boys are coming for a visit. Spending the Fourth of July weekend with me.”
Hutch went still. Grinned. “That’s good,” he said, pleased. Then, after a pause, “Isn’t it?”
“Hell, no, it isn’t good,” Boone answered, looking distracted and miserable. “That trailer of mine isn’t fit for human habitation. I wouldn’t know what to feed them, or what time they ought to go to bed, or how much television they should be allowed to watch—”
Hutch laughed, and it was a welcome tension-breaker. The muscles in his neck and shoulders relaxed with a swiftness that almost made him feel as though he’d just downed a double-shot of straight whiskey.
“Then maybe you ought to clean the place up a little,” he suggested. “As for bedtime and TV, well, it shouldn’t take a rocket scientist to figure those things out. These are kids we’re talking about here, Boone, not some alien species nobody knows anything about.”
Boone ground some gravel under the toe of his right boot. “That’s easy enough for you to say, old buddy, since you don’t have to do a damn thing except share your infinite wisdom with regard to parenting.”
Hutch slapped Boone’s shoulder. “What if I told you, old buddy, that if you can take a day or two off from sheriffing, I’ll come over and help you dig out?”
Boone narrowed his eyes. “You’d do that?”
Hutch pretended injury. “You doubt me? You, who was almost the best man at my almost wedding?”
Boone eased up a little himself, even chuckled, albeit hoarsely. “I’ll have to deal with McQuillan, one way or the other, but I can take tomorrow off and part of the next day, too.”
“Fine,” Hutch said. “Give me a call when you’re ready to start and I’ll be at your place with a couple of machetes and some dynamite.”
Boone laughed, this time for real. “Machetes and dynamite?” he echoed, taking mock offense. “No flame gun?”
“Fresh out of flame guns,” Hutch answered, walking away, getting into his truck and starting up the engine.
He honked the horn once and headed for home.
* * *
KENDRA, HAVING JUST dropped Madison off at preschool and Daisy at Tara’s for a doggy playdate with Lucy, stopped by the Butter Biscuit Café to buy a chocolate croissant and a double-tall nonfat latte before heading to the office the next morning. She was in a buoyant mood, since Walker Parrish had shown definite interest in the mansion the day before when she’d taken him through it. He hadn’t come right out and said the place was exactly what his mystery friend was looking for, but Kendra’s well-honed sales instincts had struck up an immediate ka-ching chorus.
No offer had been made, she reminded herself dutifully, as she waited at the counter to place her take-out order. And a deal was only a deal, at least in the real estate business, when the escrow check cleared the bank.
Thus focused on her internal dialogue, Kendra didn’t notice Deputy McQuillan right away. When she did, she saw that he sat nearby at the long counter with open spaces on both sides of him, crowded as the Butter Biscuit always was during the breakfast rush, his nose not only bandaged, but splinted and both his eyes blackened.
“I’m pressing charges,” he said to everyone in general, his tone as stiff as a wire brush. He had the air of a man just winding up a long and volatile oration.
The café patrons politely ignored him.
“Don’t mind Treat,” the aging waitress whispered to Kendra when she reached the counter, order pad in hand. “He’s just running off at the mouth because he made a move on Brylee Parrish last night, over at the Boot Scoot Tavern, and Walker let him have it, right in the teeth.”
Kendra winced at the violent image. “Ouch,” she said, keeping her voice down.
“Broke his nose for him,” the waitress added unnecessarily and with a note of satisfaction.
McQuillan must have overheard because his gaze swung in their direction, and Kendra felt scalded by it, as though he’d splashed her with acid.
“Go ahead, Millie,” he growled at the still recalcitrant waitress. “Tell the whole world Walker’s side of the story.”
“It’s everybody’s side of the story,” Millie said, undaunted. “You made a damn fool of yourself at the Boot Scoot and that’s a fact. Ask me, you’re just lucky Walker got to you before Hutch Carmody did.”
Hutch’s name, at least in connection with an apparent bar brawl over one Brylee Parrish, caught in Kendra’s throat like rusty barbed wire snagging in flesh.
McQuillan’s face flamed, and his full attention shifted, for whatever reason, to Kendra. “You’d do well to think twice before you take up with Carmody again,” he informed her. “He’s no good.”
Kendra couldn’t speak, she was so galled by McQuillan’s presumption. Who the hell did the man think he was, talking to her like that?
“Shut up, Treat,” Millie said dismissively. “All these good people are trying to enjoy their morning coffee or catch a quick breakfast. Why don’t you let them?”
A terrible tension stretched taut across the whole café, like massive rubber bands. The snap-back, if it happened, would be terrible.
Chair legs scraped against the floor as men in various parts of the room pushed back from tables, ready to intercede if the situation went any further south.
“All I wanted to do,” McQuillan went on, as an ominous, anticipatory
