He wanted to look down at the ground, to escape that gaze of hers that made every part of him charge to life. “Yes. I’m so very sorry for your loss.”
Carla stared at him and blinked, the action slow and deliberate. “No.”
Gwen’s hand slid down the door with a loud squeak, like nails on a chalkboard...but he knew what the sound really was—it was the sound of a heart breaking.
She collapsed on the floor, her head hitting the wood with a thump so loud he rushed to her side to make sure she was still conscious.
“Gwen...Gwen, are you okay?” He touched her face and looked into her eyes. They were filled with tears, tears that wet his hand as they dripped over his skin and fell to the floor. There wasn’t blood or a bruise where her head had hit the ground, but she wasn’t okay. She wasn’t going to be okay for a long time.
He stroked away her tears as she lay on the floor and cried. Her body was riddled with sobs, hard and heavy.
He wanted to tell her everything was going to be all right. That she would get through this. Yet he couldn’t bring himself to lie.
Some people held the belief that time healed all pain, but he knew all too well it wasn’t true. All time did was push it further from the mind, but just like a deep flesh wound, any time he brushed the area the pain was just as all-consuming and powerful as when the blow first struck. That cliché about the healing power of time was for the weak—for the ones who couldn’t face the reality of a future filled with wounds that wouldn’t heal.
Regardless of the state Gwen was in, he knew how strong she was. How much it took to bring her to this point. And he’d been the one to break her.
He hated himself.
“Shh...” he said, trying to calm her and help her in the only way he knew how.
Carla opened the door wider and stepped by him and out into the crisp morning air. “Not again...”
Gwen looked at her mother and, moving his hand aside, she rubbed the tears from her face and took a series of long breaths. “I’m fine... I’m fine...” she said, as though she was trying to convince herself. She sat up and smoothed back her hair.
Wyatt stepped out of her way and tried to ignore his feelings of rejection at her pushing him away. “Currently, Bianca’s body is at the crime lab. As her death was unattended, she will need to undergo an autopsy in order for us to generate a full report.”
Carla hugged herself as she rocked back and forth. Gwen stood up, and, brushing off her red plaid nightgown, she stepped to her mother’s side and wrapped her arm around Carla’s shoulders. “It’s okay, Mom. It’ll be okay.”
At least one of them had the strength to feed Carla the lines she needed to hear.
Gwen looked at him, her eyes red and thick with restrained tears. “A full report? What does that mean? You don’t know how she died?”
He shook his head. “The coroner was unable to make a determination as to the cause of death. It will need to be fully investigated by the medical examiner.”
She frowned and her gaze flicked to the right as though she was remembering something. She opened her mouth to speak, but stopped, and then after a moment started again. “Where did you find her?”
The discomfort he had been feeling amplified. “She was found in the stables of the Dunrovin Ranch.”
“Your family’s place? Again?” Gwen asked, like she was calling him out for somehow being party to her sister’s death.
He nodded, guilt rising in him as her poorly veiled accusation struck. “One of my mother’s mares had come up lame. Last night, Bianca came to assess the animal and determine a course of treatment. We found Bianca’s body at about 1:00 a.m. From our estimates she had been dead for at least an hour.”
“No one found her until then?” Gwen’s voice rang with disgust. “How is that possible? You have more hands and staff than most working ranches. Someone had to have found her before then.”
He heard the slam at the fact that his family’s place was merely a guest ranch and not a working cattle ranch like theirs. Her words were flecked with pain, anger and denial—whatever she said now couldn’t be held against her.
“I don’t know the ranch’s current schedule. I’ve been out of that world, or at least a casual bystander, ever since I went to work for the department.” He realized he was answering her and defending himself against her allegations when all he should have been doing was being compassionate and taking the verbal hits she chose to let fly.
“You’re a bastard,” Carla spat out. “You and your dang family. You’re a scourge on the valley. You are the reason...you’re the reason my daughter’s gone. And now you tell me you don’t know how she died. You’re about as good at police work as your family is at ranching.”
Gwen sucked in an audible breath at the sting of her mother’s lashes. “Mother, stop.” She let go of her mother’s shoulders, repulsed.
Carla pointed at him with an unsteady finger. “You can’t tell me I’m wrong. He is doing a piss-poor job. How dare he come here without answers. If he was a real cop, he’d be able to tell us what we need to know. He’d be able to tell us about Bianca.”
It was as though her mother’s words had pulled Gwen back from the platform of anger she’d been standing on a moment before, a platform that had been targeted at him.
She looked at him with a mix of pity and pain. “Don’t say that, Mom. Just go inside. Go to bed and sleep off the booze.”
Carla shook her head, but staggered inside and toward her bedroom at the back of the house.
Gwen leaned against the porch’s white railing. “Did she commit suicide?” she asked, the question coming out of nowhere...almost as though she knew something he didn’t.
“Right now we believe that may be so, but we are unsure as to the cause of death—we’ll have to wait on the results of her autopsy. But may I ask if you believe Bianca had motive to kill herself?” he asked, wondering if Gwen knew something that would help him make sense of Bianca’s death.
She shrugged. “Vets have high rates of suicide—more than a lot of other professions.” She said it like it was just another fact from a book she read and had nothing to do with her reality.
“Was she having some mental health issues? Issues you believe would have led to her taking her own life?”
Gwen sighed. “She’s been unhappy, and with the holidays coming up... But I don’t think she’d have the power to do something like that. She wouldn’t.” She shook her head, like she could shake the idea from her mind.
But now the cat was out of the bag and there was no going back. His investigation had just moved from what some had assumed was a natural death to something else entirely. Why would a woman like Bianca, who had a family who loved her and a mother who clearly needed her, be that unhappy—was it her mother’s drinking, or something more? What had been going on in her life?
His gut twisted with a nagging feeling that everything wasn’t as it seemed—and that his life, as well as Gwen’s, was about to get turned upside down.
Chapter Two
She couldn’t even look Wyatt in the eyes. Why did he have to be involved with the investigation of her sister’s death? There had to be at least a dozen other guys on the force who could have stepped in on this one—at least to notify Gwen and her mother of the death. Yet, there he stood...with his broad shoulders, honey-colored skin, scruffy jaw and those cheekbones, all of which often found their way into her dreams. It only made the news worse.
Regardless of what he said, there was no way Bianca could be dead. Gwen had just seen her yesterday at the dinner table. They’d had grilled steaks and Bianca had cooked the potatoes—if Gwen looked, she was sure the knife Bianca had touched was probably still sitting unwashed in the sink. How could it be possible that the woman she’d talked to, and shared a bottle of wine with, was gone this morning? No.
It was stupid, but as she cried, she couldn’t handle the thought that Wyatt had seen her turn into a blubbering mess. When he saw her after the last time, she was supposed to be at her best—maybe down a size or two, hair perfectly colored and flung in symmetrical curls over her shoulders like one of those models from the pages of Country Living. But no...he had to break her heart—though admittedly, the last time she’d seen him, she may have been the one doing the breaking.
Was that why he had agreed to take on the assignment of telling them about Bianca’s death? She wiped the rest of the wetness from her face and stomped down the steps of the porch and into the driveway.
She just needed fresh air—anything to pull her into a different reality, where none of this was really happening.
“Gwen?” Wyatt called after her.
She stopped but she didn’t turn around. She couldn’t look at him and his ridiculously sexy features. Not right now. Right now she’d like to look at anything but him...the oh-so-confusing him.
“What, Wyatt? What do you want? You gave me the news you came here to give. Now I’ve got to go to work. This ranch and the cows on it are all we have—if I don’t turn a profit this year, it’s over.” Her knees felt weak, but she refused to let herself to succumb to the feeling. She had to be strong. She had to fake it...at least until he was gone, and then she could turn into a big mess for as long as she needed.
If there was any silver lining to what was happening, it was that her mother had drunk enough whiskey to pass out for at least the rest of the day. The last thing she needed was to have to deal with that train wreck before she had everything figured out—she could only handle one major catastrophe at a time.
“Don’t run off, Gwen. I need to ask you a few more questions.” He rushed to walk by her side, so she sped up.
“Ask away, but you’re going to have to walk because I’ve got to feed the horses.” She motioned toward the red barn that sat in the distance.
“In your nightgown?” he asked, motioning toward the red plaid thing she’d forgotten she was wearing. “And you do know you’re wearing slippers, right?”
She stopped and spun to face him, but carefully pulled her nightgown over her moccasins. He was wearing a stupid, charming grin—a grin she wanted to slap right off his face. How dare he, at a time like this?
“What do you want to know?” As she thought about the things he’d want to ask—Bianca’s favorite restaurant, where she’d liked to spend her time, her love life—she choked up and had to take a long breath. She couldn’t cry again.
He reached up, so slowly that she watched his motion and thought about moving out of the radius of his touch, but she stayed put. He took her shoulder gently and stroked her arm with his thumb. It made her think of her favorite mare, Dancer. The mustang was fifteen, yet anytime she was stressed or acting out, all Gwen had to do to calm her was rub her hands down her flanks and make those same circles with her thumbs.
No matter how much Wyatt might have liked her to be, she wasn’t a damned horse that would turn soft under his touch and bend to his wants. He should have known better. It hadn’t worked in the two years they had dated in high school either. In fact, it only infuriated her.
She pulled away from his touch. The place his hand had been chilled and she covered it with her own hand, trapping some of the leftover heat.
“Gwen, it’s okay to be upset about this. If you want, I can take care of the livestock. Why don’t you go inside and lie down? I can come back and talk to you another time if you’d like.”
Some of her anger at the world slipped with the kindness in his voice. He wasn’t here to hurt her. He was here to do his job. And maybe, just maybe, he was here because he was still her friend and he could look past how she had treated him when they were younger—not that it had been unjustified, her anger toward him, but she should have been kinder. His heart had been just as much on the line as her own.
She ran her hand down her nightgown and started to move back toward the house. Maybe she should lie down, take a break, have a cup of coffee and collect her thoughts. She thought about sending him away, but it made her heart shift in her chest.
“The last thing I want is to be alone right now.” She was surprised by her blunt honesty. It was unlike her, but, then again, nothing about this morning was in the realm of normal. “If you don’t have anywhere else to be, maybe you can wait while I get dressed and then take care of the animals. Then we can head up to Bianca’s cabin.”
Wyatt frowned. “She had a cabin?”
Gwen sighed as she walked back into the house and motioned to her mother’s bedroom door as a loud snore escaped from under the door. “We each adopted one of the hands’ cabins at the edge of the property. Having a place of your own comes in handy when she gets a little too out of hand.”
“How often does that kind of thing happen?” His face twisted with concern but not judgment, and it softened some of the hard edges of her feelings toward him.
Most of the time, when people talked to her about her mother’s problem, it was with a mixture of pity and judgment. Then again, few people wanted to bring it up. It was like the worst-kept secret of Mystery, Montana, that her mother and her family were one hot mess. In fact, it would probably be only a matter of time before the news of her sister’s death would hit the airwaves. She would know as soon as it did because within the hour casseroles would start showing up on their doorstep.
She looked toward her mother’s bedroom. At least it was unlikely Carla would get up to answer the door in the condition she was in. Gwen glanced up at the clock. On days like this, when her mother had been drinking all night, Carla normally wouldn’t get up until it was time to go to the bar again. Tonight, she’d probably be in hog heaven—getting free drinks from the other lushes and lechers who frequented the bar, all in honor of her daughter’s death.
Hate reverberated through her—but the hate wasn’t just for her mother, or their situation, or even her sister’s death. It was hate for everything.
Her life was such a disaster. And there was nothing she could do about it. No way to control all the emotions that flooded through her. All she could do was feel. She glanced back at Wyatt, staring at him for a moment too long.
“Do you want me to get you something?” he asked, motioning toward her upstairs bedroom. “You can just sit down. I’ll grab your gear.” His face turned slightly red, as though he’d suddenly realized that “gear” may involve her panties.
She shook her head and walked to the stairs, his embarrassment pulling her back to reality. “I’ll be right back.”
When she reached her room, it took all her strength not to collapse onto the bed and bury her face into the pillows and scream—yell at the world, tell it of her hate, tell it of her pain, tell it about the injustices that filled her life.
* * *
BEING ALONE IN the Johansens’ house felt surreal, like somehow he was reliving moments of his past—moments he had fought hard to forget. He walked to the fireplace and looked at the collection of pictures that rested on the mantel. All were covered with a thick layer of dust, forgotten or perhaps intentionally ignored by the women of the house. He rubbed the dust off the closest one. The picture was of a man, whom he recognized as Mr. Johansen, wearing a Hypercolor shirt and drinking a Miller Lite beside a small, white, inflatable kiddie pool. A young blonde girl was splashing water and laughing. The man wasn’t smiling, rather he was looking off into the distance as a cigarette trembled on his lip, almost as if he were looking into a future where only tragedy waited.
Carla’s snoring sounded from the other room, reminding him of why he’d always hated coming into this house.
He glanced at all the other pictures. None were from any time within the last fifteen years. It wa
s like life had stopped the moment that Mr. Johansen died. He could only imagine what would happen to their lives now that Bianca was gone as well.
Wyatt had to get out. He couldn’t let himself get sucked back into this world. Not when it was clear that Gwen could barely tolerate him. He couldn’t carry her through this like he used to carry her through the nights her mother had left her alone when Gwen was younger. He couldn’t save her—he’d already tried.
He rushed outside to the barn. Horses he could understand. Women, on the other hand... Women were an entirely different issue.
One of the barn cats sauntered over to him as he made his way inside. It wrapped itself around his legs, rubbing against him. He picked it up and scratched under its chin as it purred and kneaded the front of his shirt. As he stood there stroking the long gray hair of the cat, he glanced up at the hayloft. They had spent so many hours up there, just him and Gwen. They had been able to talk for hours; it had always seemed like they would never run out of things to discuss. They’d had this wonderful bond with each other that, no matter how many women he’d dated since, he was never able to re-create. Maybe it was the one thing he missed most about her—their deep bond, so strong that he could feel it even when no words were spoken.
Putting the cat down, he moved over to the bales of hay. He pulled off flakes and dropped them into the stalls for each of the horses. Though it was cold, in an effort to keep the hay from digging into his uniform, he stripped off his uniform shirt and his ballistics vest, leaving only his tank top. It felt good, the chill of the winter air, the scratching of the hay against his arms and the smell of horses on his skin.
He wasn’t involved with the business of his family’s ranch enough anymore to really help in the everyday comings and goings, and sometimes, when he caught a whiff of fresh hay or the heady fragrance of sweet oats, he missed being more available.
There was a thin cough, and he turned around. Gwen stood in the barn’s doorway, looking at him in a way that made him wonder if it was attraction or revulsion. He moved to grab his shirt and vest, but she stopped him with a wave of the hand.
Ms. Calculation Page 2