shyly.
“She was distantly related to some man who was knighted in England,” came the sarcastic reply. “Anyway, she ran out on Boone and he was bitter for a long time. So three weeks ago the phone rings and he gets a call from her. She’s been living with her father, who owns a private detective agency in SanAntonio. She told Boone she’d made a terrible mistake and wanted to make up.”
Keely’s heart fell. A rival who had a history with Boone. It made her miserable just to think about it, despite the fact that she would never get close enough to Boone to give the other woman any competition. “Boone doesn’t forgive people,” she said, thinking aloud.
“That’s right,” Winnie replied, smiling. “But he’s mellowed a bit. He takes her out on dates occasionally now. In fact, they’re going to a Desperado concert next week.”
Keely frowned. “He likes hard rock?” she asked, surprised. He looked so staid and dignified that she couldn’t picture him at a rock concert. She said so.
Winnie laughed. “I can,” she said. “He’s not the conservative, quiet man he seems to be. Especially when he loses his temper or gets in an argument.”
“Boone doesn’t argue,” Keely mused aloud.
He didn’t. If he was angry enough, he punched. Never women, of course, but his men knew not to push him, especially if he was broody. One horse handler had found out the hard way that nobody made jokes at the boss’s expense. Boone had been kicked by a horse, which the handler thought was hilarious. Boone roped the man, tied him to a post and anointed him with a bucket of recycled hay. All without saying a word.
Keely laughed out loud.
“What?” Winnie asked.
“I was remembering that horse wrangler….”
Winnie laughed, too. “He couldn’t believe it, he said, even when it was happening. Boone really does look so straitlaced, as if he’d never stoop to dirty his hands. His cowboys used to underestimate him. Not anymore.”
“The rattlesnake episode is noteworthy, as well,” came the amused reply.
“That cook was so shocked!” Winnie blurted out. “He was a really rotten cook, but he threatened to sue Boone if he fired him, so it looked as if we were stuck with him. He’d threatened to cook Boone a rattler if he made any more remarks about the food. He added a few spicy comments about why Boone’s fiancée took a powder. Then one morning he looks in his Dutch oven to see if it’s clean enough to cook in, and a rattlesnake jumps up right into his face!”
“Lucky for the cook it didn’t have any fangs.”
“The cook didn’t know that!” Winnie laughed. “He didn’t know who did it, either. He resigned on the spot. The men actually cheered as he drove off. The next cook was talented, and the soul of politeness to my brother.”
“I am not surprised.”
She shook her head. “Boone does have these little quirks,” his sister murmured. “Like never turning on the heat in his bedroom, even in icy weather, and always going around with his shirts buttoned to the neck.”
“I’ve never seen him with his shirt off,” Keely remarked. It was unusual, because most of the cowboys worked topless in summer heat when they were branding or doctoring cattle. But Boone never did.
“He used to be less prudish,” Winnie said.
“Boone, prudish?” Keely sounded shocked.
Winnie glanced at her and chuckled. “Well, I guess that really doesn’t fit at all.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
Winnie pursed her lips. “Come to think of it, he’s not the only prude around here. I’ve never even seen you in a T-shirt, Keely. You always wear long sleeves and high necklines.”
Keely had a good reason for that, one she’d never shared with anyone. It was the reason she didn’t date. It was a terrible secret. She would have died rather than tell Winnie, who might tell Boone….
“I was raised very strictly,” Keely said quietly. And she had been; for all their odd tendencies, both her parents had insisted that Keely go to Sunday School and church every single Sunday. “My father didn’t approve of clothing that was too flashy or revealing.”
Probably because Keely’s mother propositioned any man she fancied when she drank. She’d even tried to seduce Boone. Keely didn’t know that, and Winnie didn’t know how to tell her. It was one reason for Boone’s antagonism toward Keely.
Things would have been better if Keely knew where her father was. She’d told people she thought he was dead, because it was easier than admitting that he was an alcoholic, just like her mother, and linked up with a bunch of dangerous men. She’d missed her father at first. But she’d have been in more danger if she’d stayed with him.
She still loved him, in her way, despite what had happened to her.
“Come to think of it, Keely, you don’t even date.”
Keely shrugged. “I’m a vet tech. I have a busy life. I work on call, you know. If there’s an emergency at midnight on a weekend, I still go to the office.”
“That’s a lot of hogwash,” Winnie said gently as they paused to let the horses drink from one of the crystal-clear streams on the wooded property where they were riding. “I’ve even tried to set you up with nice men I know from work. You freeze when a man comes near you.”
“That’s because you work with the police, Winnie, and you bring cops home as prospective dates for me,” Keely said mischievously. It was true. Winnie worked as a clerk in the Jacobsville Police Department’s office during the day, and now she was doing a stint two nights a week as a dispatcher for the 911 center. In fact, she was hoping that job would work into something permanent, because being around Officer Kilraven all day when he was on the day shift was killing her.
“Policemen make me nervous,” Keely was saying. “For all you know, I might have a criminal past.”
Winnie wasn’t smiling. She shook her head. “You’re hiding something.”
“Nothing major. Honest.” What she suspected about her father, if true, would have shamed her. If Boone ever found out, she’d really die of shame. But she hadn’t heard from her father since she was thirteen, so it wasn’t likely that he’d just turn up someday with his new outlaw friends. She prayed that he wouldn’t. Her mother’s behavior was hard enough to live down as it was.
“There’s this really handsome policeman who’s been working with us for a few weeks. He’s just your type.”
“Kilraven,” Keely guessed.
“Yes! How did you know?”
“Because you talk about him all the time,” Keely returned. She pursed her lips. “Are you sure you aren’t interested in him? I mean, you’re single and eligible yourself.”
Winnie flushed. “He’s not my type.”
“Why not?”
Winnie
