by Diana Palmer
“Uh-oh,” Winnie whispered, going pale.
“Who is that?” Clark asked.
Winnie took a breath. “Kilraven,” she said heavily.
Chapter Four
Winnie looked like a professional mourner. Her long, wavy blond hair was ruffled by the wind and her dark eyes were red from crying.
“It’s all right,” she said, trying to deflect trouble as Kilraven came to a stop, towering over her. “You didn’t need to come all the way out here to tell me I’m fired. I’m going to put in my resignation first thing tomorrow morning.”
He propped his hand on his holstered gun and stared down at her with glittering silver eyes. “Who asked you to quit?”
“You said I should,” she accused, and dabbed at new tears. “You said I needed to leave law enforcement to people who were qualified to work in it.”
The tall man grimaced. The tears were real. He’d been browbeaten into coming out here by his boss, Jacobsville Police Chief Cash Grier, protesting all the way because he thought Winnie was putting on an act for sympathy. But this was no act. His rage dissolved like tears on hot pavement.
“I could have gotten you killed,” Winnie told him, red-eyed, and started crying all over again. “That man held a pistol to your head!”
Kilraven’s perfect teeth clenched. “It wasn’t loaded.”
Winnie stared at him through a mist. “What?”
“It wasn’t loaded,” Kilraven repeated. “He was too drunk to realize the clip was missing.”
“Wouldn’t there still be one bullet chambered?” Winnie asked.
Kilraven shrugged. “Didn’t matter.”
Winnie frowned. “It didn’t matter? Why?”
He drew in a long breath. “He couldn’t remember how to get the safety off.”
Winnie was just looking at him now, not saying anything.
“But it could have ended in tragedy,” Kilraven continued quietly. “I mean, if he’d managed to actually fire the damned thing…” He left the rest unsaid.
Winnie blew her nose and wiped her eyes again. “I know.”
“They stuck you in that dispatch job with no real training,” he muttered. “Any big city 911 staff goes through a training program. Well, Jacobs County has one, too,” he conceded. “But the director thought you were just playing around, that you weren’t really serious about working in the 911 center since you worked full-time for us in the police department. So he just stuck you in as an assistant to one of the regulars and let you get on with it. He thought you’d fold after a few days, that you only took the job because you were bored with being at home, and that you thought working for the police and emergency dispatch was entertainment. I had a long talk with the director before I came here.”
“You did?” Winnie was fascinated. She hesitated. “You didn’t…hit him or anything?”
“I do not hit people,” the tall officer replied haughtily.
“That’s not what Harley Fowler says,” Keely murmured under her breath.
Kilraven glared at her. “That guy pulled a knife on me and threatened to cut off my…well, never mind what he threatened, he was lunging at me with it. It was hit him or shoot him.”
“How many pins did they have to put in his jaw?” Keely wondered aloud.
“It was better than having to have a bullet dug out,” Kilraven protested. “And I should know. I’ve had three bullets dug out, over the years, along with various bits of shrapnel, and I’m wearing two steel pins, as well. The pins hurt less.”
Winnie was studying him curiously.
“I’m not telling you where they are,” Kilraven said. “And shame on you for what you’re thinking!”
Winnie flushed. “You don’t know!”
“The hell I don’t,” he huffed. “My great-grandfather was a full fledged shaman who could read minds.”
“That’s not what Harley Fowler says he was,” Keely interrupted.
He gave her an exasperated glance. “What does Harley Fowler know about me? I’ve never even met the man!”
“He doesn’t know you, but he plays poker with Garon Grier, who works with Jon Blackhawk, who’s your half brother,” Keely explained.
“Damn the FBI!” Kilraven cursed.
“Harley doesn’t belong to the FBI,” Winnie pointed out.
“Garon and my brother do,” Kilraven said. “And they can stop telling people lies about me and my family.”
“Jon is your family,” Winnie replied. “And Harley didn’t tell lies, he said your great-grandfather got mad at a local sheriff and smeared him with fresh meat and shoved him headfirst into a wolf den.”
“Well, the wolf den was empty at the time,” Kilraven defended his ancestor.
“Yes, but your great-grandfather didn’t know that.” Keely laughed.
Kilraven made a face at her. “You didn’t get that from Harley Fowler, you got it from Bentley Rydel.”
Keely blushed.
Kilraven threw up his hands. “You take your dog to a vet and expect him to stick to medicine, instead of which he pumps you for personal information and then tells the whole community!”
“You don’t get to join the family unless we know everything about you,” Clark pointed out.
Kilraven scowled. “What family?” he asked suspiciously, and glanced at Winnie, who blushed as warmly as Keely had.
“The Jacobsville family,” Clark returned. “We’re not a town. We’re a big extended family.”
“You don’t live in Jacobsville, you live in Comanche Wells,” Kilraven retorted.
“It’s an extension of Jacobsville, and you’re avoiding the issue,” Clark said with a grin.
Kilraven’s wide, sexy mouth pulled up into a faint snarl. “I’m leaving. I don’t want to be part of a family.”
“With that attitude, I wouldn’t worry about it,” Winnie said under her breath.
He paused to look down at her. “Your director will talk to you in the morning about some more training. He’s going to do it personally. I don’t want you fired. Neither do any of the other law enforcement and rescue personnel. You’ve got a real knack for the job.”
Kilraven turned on his heel and stalked off back to his patrol car. He got in under the wheel, coaxed the engine into a roar and shot out of the driveway without a glance, a wave or anything else.
“Well, he’s sort of nice,” Clark had to admit.
“He’s sort of scary, too,” Keely said, watching Winnie.
Winnie was smiling through her tears. “Maybe I’m not a lost cause, after all.”
Keely hugged her. “Definitely not a lost cause,” she laughed.
“Well, I guess I’ll go inside and find something to eat…” She stopped, her gaze moving from Clark to Keely. “What are you two doing together?”
“Driving Boone mad,” Clark said, and he grinned.
“Would you like to explain how?” his sister asked.
“I invited Keely over to ride horses with me, and Boone was in the barn when we drove up together.”
“So that’s why,” Winnie began thoughtfully.
“Why, what?” Keely wanted to know.
“Why my brother was sitting on the shoulder of the road in his car with a Texas Department of Public Safety car flashing its lights behind him, with a trooper sitting inside running wants and warrants.”
“How do you know what he was doing?” Keely asked.
“Because I run tags all the time at work for the troopers and the local police,” she replied.
“What was Boone doing?” Clark asked hesitantly.
Winnie chuckled. “Teaching the trooper new words, from the look of it. I didn’t dare stop to ask.”
“Oh, dear,” Keely said, glancing at Clark.
“Stop that,” Clark said firmly. “It’s none of Boone’s business if I want to ask you over here to go riding with me.”
“It shouldn’t be,” Winnie told her brother. “But he’ll make it his business. He thinks Keely’s too young to go o
ut with men. Any men.”
Clark’s eyes popped. “She’s almost twenty years old!”
“Well, of course she is,” Winnie said gently. “But not to Boone. To him, she’s still in pigtails trying to teach her dog how to fetch newspapers.”
“Don’t dig that up,” Keely moaned.
“That was when your folks rented that place down the road while your house was being remodeled. You’d have been about eleven. That dog was very good at fetching newspapers,” Winnie replied. “It was just that it was easier for him to bring you Boone’s paper from our front porch than it was to fetch yours out of the paper box at the end of your driveway.”
“Boone yelled at me,” Keely recalled with a shudder.
“Boone yells at everybody,” Winnie reminded her.
“Almost everybody,” Clark qualified.
Keely’s eyebrows arched. “Almost?”
“It didn’t work when he yelled at Bentley Rydel, did it?” He chuckled. “Winnie told me,” he added when Keely looked puzzled.
“Bentley isn’t afraid of anybody,” Keely agreed, smiling. “He’s been good to me.”
“I’d think he had a crush on you, except for his age,” Clark said. “He’s even older than Boone.”
“I guess he is, at that,” Keely said.
“Want some lunch?” Winnie asked them after a moment of silence. “We’ll have to get it ourselves, because our Mrs. Johnston is off today, but I can make a salad and Keely can make real bread.”
“I’d love homemade bread,” Clark sighed. “The lunchroom ladies used to make it at school when I was a kid.”
“Would you mind?” Winnie asked her best friend.
Keely smiled. “Not at all. I love to cook.”
It would also give her an excuse not to have to go home for a while. Her mother would be getting up pretty soon, hungover as usual and driving Keely nuts. With a little luck, maybe Carly would come over and take Ella out partying, since it was Saturday. It would give Keely a lovely quiet night at home alone if she didn’t get called out; something she rarely experienced.
The three of them worked in a companionable silence while they whipped together a light lunch. Keely took a little of the dough she was using for rolls and added real butter, pecans, cinnamon and sugar and made cinnamon buns for dessert.
Winnie’s pasta salad had time to chill while the dough sat rising. Within an hour, Keely had fresh bread on the table and cinnamon buns cooking in the oven while they ate their way through pasta and fresh fruit.
In the middle of the impromptu feast, Boone walked in. He stopped in the doorway, his nostrils flaring.
“I smell fresh bread,” he remarked, scowling. “Where the hell did you get fresh bread? Is there a bakery in town that I don’t know about?”
“Keely made it,” Clark mumbled, working his way through a third yeast roll liberally spread with butter. “Mmmm!” he added, closing his eyes and groaning at the delicious taste.
“Did you get a ticket?” Winnie asked, trying to divert him from the penetrating glance he was aiming at Keely, who squirmed in her chair.
“Ticket for what?” Boone asked, digging in the china cabinet for a plate.
“Speeding,” she replied.
He put his plate on the table and fetched silverware and a napkin. He poured himself a cup of coffee from the pot and sat down with the other three. Keely’s heart was already doing overtime, and she had to work at acting normal while Boone was so close.
“I got a warning,” he said tautly.
“My friend Nora is the county deputy clerk of court,” she reminded him. “If you get a speeding ticket, it will go through her office and she’ll tell me.”
His mouth twitched. “I got a small ticket.”
“There’s only one size,” she said.
He ignored her. He reached for a roll, buttered it and took a bite. He wore the same expression that was dominating Clark’s face. Fresh rolls were a treat. Their cook, Mrs. Johnston, couldn’t make bread, although she was a great cook otherwise.
“There’s some salad left,” Winnie commented, pushing the bowl toward him.
“Where did you learn to make rolls?” he asked Keely, and seemed really interested in her answer.
“When I lived with my father, he ran a big game park. One of his temporary workers had been in the military and traveled all over the world,” she recalled. “He was a gourmet chef. He taught me to make bread and French pastries when I was twelve years old.”
“What sort of animals did your father have?” Boone persisted.
“The usual ones,” she said, without meeting his eyes. “Giraffe, lions, monkeys and one elephant.”
“African lions?”
She nodded. “And one mountain lion,” she added. No one noticed that her fingers, holding her fork, went white.
“They have mean tempers,” Boone said. “One of my ranch hands had to track one down and kill it when he worked over in Arizona some years ago. It was bringing down cattle. He said it killed one of his tracking dogs before he could get a clear shot at it.”
“They tend to be vicious, like most wild animals,” she agreed. “They’re not malicious, you know. They’re just wild animals. They do what they do.”
“What was your job at a wild game park?” Boone murmured.
“I fed the animals and watered them and made sure the gates were locked at night so they couldn’t get out,” she said.
He finished his roll and followed it with sips of black coffee. “Not a smart job for a twelve-year-old kid,” he remarked.
“It was just Dad and me,” she said, “except for old Barney, and he was crippled. He’d hunted a lion who became a man-killer in Africa and it fought back. He lost an arm and a foot to it.”
“Did he keep the pelt when he killed it?” Boone asked.
She smiled faintly. “He made a rug out of it and slept on it every night. When he left us, he was still carrying it around.”
“The rolls were good,” Boone said unexpectedly.
“Thanks,” Keely replied shyly.
“You could get a job cooking,” he pointed out.
She frowned. “Why would I want to give up working for Bentley?”
His pleasant expression went into eclipse. “God knows.”
Winnie gave her brother a piercing look. He ignored it. He studied her face and frowned. “You’ve been crying,” he said abruptly. “Why?”
She paled. She didn’t want to talk about it.
“Why?” he persisted.
She knew it was useless to try to hide it from him. Someone would tell him, anyway.
“I almost got Kilraven killed,” she confessed, putting down her fork.
“How?”
“I got rattled and forgot to warn him that the man involved in a domestic dispute was armed,” she said quietly. “Luckily for Kilraven, the clip was missing and the man couldn’t figure out how to get the safety off.”
“Luckily for the man,” Clark elaborated dryly. “If he’d shot Kilraven, he’d be awaiting trial in the hospital.”
“That would depend on where he shot him,” Winnie replied.
“Kilraven’s steel right through,” Keely teased. “No bullet could get through that hard shell.”
“She’s right.” Clark chuckled. “They’d have to hit him with a bomb to make a dent in him.”
None of them noticed that Boone was sitting rigidly, with his eyes staring blindly into space. There was a look in them that any combat veteran would have recognized immediately. But nobody in his family had ever been in the military, except for himself.
Keely did notice. She knew that Boone had been in the war, that he’d been a front line, Special Forces soldier. She knew that he was reliving some terrible memory. Keely knew about those, because she had her own. Without saying a word, her eyes communicated that knowledge to the taciturn man across from her. He frowned and averted his eyes.
He finished his coffee and got to his feet. “I’ve got to ma
ke a few phone calls,” he murmured.
“Keely made cinnamon buns,” Winnie said. “Don’t you want one?”
He hesitated uncharacteristically. “Bring me one in the office, with a second cup of coffee, will you?” he asked.
“Sure,” Winnie said.
“No.” His dark eyes slid to Keely. “You bring it,” he said.
Before she could answer him, he strode out of the room.
“Well!” Clark said, surprised.
“He’s in a mood to bite somebody,” Winnie said solemnly. “Boone’s a horror when there’s no audience to slow him down. If he disapproves of you dating Clark, he’ll make your life hell. I’ll take his dessert to him.”
“No,” Clark said. He looked at Keely. “You have to stop being afraid of him and stand up to him,” he told her. “This is a good time to start.”
Keely became pale. She hesitated and looked to Winnie to save her.
But Winnie hesitated, too. She frowned. “Maybe Clark’s right,” she said after a minute. “You’re afraid of Boone. He knows it, and uses it against you.”
Keely bit her lower lip. “I suppose you’re right. I’m a wimp.”
“You’re not,” her best friend replied, smiling. “Here’s your chance to prove it.”
“With your shield or on it,” Clark intoned dramatically.
Keely glowered at him. “I am not a Spartan.”
“An Amazon, then,” Clark compromised, and grinned. “Go get him!”
“We’ll be right here,” Winnie promised. “You can yell for help and we’ll come running.”
Keely had her doubts about that. Winnie and Clark loved Boone, but neither of them had ever been a match for his temper. If she yelled for help, they’d assume that Boone was bristling and ready for a fight, and they’d be under heavy pieces of furniture trying not to get noticed. Still, they had a point. She was almost twenty years old. It was time she learned to fight back.
She poured a cup of black coffee from the pot and took the cinnamon buns out of the oven. She put two of them on a saucer and added a napkin to her burdens. She glanced at her audience.
Clark flapped his hand at her.