Lone Star Diary. Darlene Graham

park bench—one of Robbie’s finds—while Driscoll took a nearby lawn chair that Zack had left behind.

      Frankie sipped the coffee, then said, “What can I do for you?”

      Again, the corners of Driscoll’s mouth turned down in that grudging way. It wasn’t an unpleasant expression. It was actually kind of sexy. Frankie almost rolled her eyes at her own errant thoughts. Behave, she told herself, the man is probably married. And so, incidentally, was she. Though not for much longer.

      “You need help with the girl?” Frankie adopted a kindly mien, as if she were some social worker handling a case. She also surreptitiously checked out the third finger on Luke Driscoll’s left hand. A gold band.

      When she looked up, their eyes met and the collision sent another tremor to her core. Luke held her gaze only a millisecond before he spoke in a flat monotone. “No, Mrs. Hostler. I was wondering—”

      “Call me Frankie.” Please. Anything but the name of that little prick I married.

      “Okay. Frankie. I wondered if you could show me the way back to those caves we saw the day we met. On your parents’ land?”

      “We were actually on my sister’s land that day. The farms are adjoining. Well, it’s not my sister’s land anymore, or at least it isn’t hers until she gets married again. It belongs to a man named Zack Trueblood now. The man she’s going to marry this spring. She’s a widow, you know.”

      “I know.” Luke’s tone was long-suffering. “I met Trueblood, and your sister.” Then he frowned. “So, would you prefer that I contact Trueblood about the caves?”

      “No,” Frankie said a little too quickly. “I’d be happy to take you out there myself. I’m sure Zack wouldn’t mind.” She already knew she wouldn’t mind spending time with this man. “When do you want to go?”

      “Now, if possible. We could drop Yolonda on the way.”

      “We can call Justin and my sister once we’re on the road.” Frankie jumped up, ditched the coffee, and marched into the main store, feeling Luke Driscoll and his charge close behind. Why was she doing this?

      When Luke came up alongside her and she smelled his aftershave, she knew why. “I hope her cell phone works. It’s so remote out there. The Kilgore spread doesn’t even have electricity in places, you know. Over eighty thousand acres. Parts of it only accessible on horseback.”

      One of Luke Driscoll’s dark eyebrows had arched up when Frankie mentioned the size of the ranch, but he had said nothing, which had the effect of making Frankie all the more nervous. Why was she babbling? Why was she running to fetch her purse, gathering up her coat? Why? Because she was ripe for adventure, for any distraction? Especially a good-looking one in boots and a Stetson? What about the wallpapering?

      Oh, to hell with it, Frankie thought as she snatched her purse and leather jacket off the coat tree and jammed her arms into the sleeves. She’d figure all of that out and call Robbie on the way, as well.

      Outside on the sidewalk, Ardella was dragging some large pots out for display. She smiled and gave the trio a little nod, and Frankie thought, She’ll report to mother that she saw me leaving the shop with a poorly dressed Mexican girl and a tall man in a cowboy hat.

      But again, Frankie didn’t care. When had she stopped vying for the whole world’s approval? The sun hit her eyes and she rummaged in her purse for sunglasses.

      A bright, beckoning January day waited out there in the remote, mystical Texas Hill Country. And Frankie McBride—strike the Hostler part, strike it for good—was going to go out into those hills with this compelling man. For once in her anal-retentive, play-it-safe, carefully measured, hideously sterile life, she was going to take her chances and just go with her gut.

      Or…would that be her heart?

      YOLONDA REYES pleaded with her wide obsidian eyes and whined something in Spanish. Something about not going to La Luz, the name the illegals used for the Light at Five Points.

      But Luke Driscoll’s response, also in Spanish, sounded firm. Frankie caught the last words: y no más problemas—and no more trouble.

      “Yolonda here,” Luke explained to Frankie, “tried twice to escape back to Mexico. Because I didn’t let her, she’s plenty upset. But this girl is the lone witness I have.”

      “A witness? To what?”

      “Murder.”

      Frankie gasped, but Luke cut off her next question. “She doesn’t need to relive it now, even in English.”

      The girl sat hunched in the small back seat of Driscoll’s crew cab on the long drive from town to the Kilgore ranch, her face growing as sullen as a storm cloud.

      “Why do you need to see those caves?” Frankie broke the tense silence.

      He answered her question with a question. “What do you know about Congressman Kurt Kilgore?”

      That name surprised Frankie. “Nothing except for what I read in the paper, what I see on the news. Why?”

      “He’s your youngest sister’s father-in-law now, correct?”

      “Yes, but Markie and Justin don’t have much of anything to do with him. Justin and his father are…estranged. They had a run-in. He didn’t even come to their wedding.”

      “Yeah. They recently got married, too—when was it now?”

      “Last fall, right before my niece was born. Zack deliv—”

      “Yes. How is Mrs. Tellchick doing these days?”

      Frankie wanted to say that he had a habit of interrupting, but she thought better of it. She didn’t know him well enough to point out his shortcomings yet. Yet? Was she planning to get to know this man better?

      She moved a little closer to the passenger door of his pickup to mull that one over. His…aura felt overwhelming in the confined space of the cab. An XM country station played softly on a high-quality sound system. The lyrics made her nervous. “Islands in the Stream” by Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers. No one in between, the duet sang. Islands in the stream.

      The immaculate interior, glowing with hot-red dash lights, smelled like leather and aftershave, rich and masculine. The scent seemed to permeate everything. The cologne was one she was sure she had sniffed in some high-end department store. One that Kyle would never wear.

      “I started to say that Zack delivered Robbie’s baby.” She strove to resume the conversation as the singers wailed, Sail away with me, and she felt something shifting, some emotion taking wing inside her.

      “He and Robbie knew each other in high school. Actually, Markie and Justin knew each other before, too.” She was jabbering again. “High school sweethearts. Well, Markie was in high school. Justin was already in college.”

      “What about you and your husband? You guys go way back, too?”

      Frankie felt her color flare up again. She was going to blush herself to death around this man. “No. We…actually, I’d rather not talk about him. I’m in the process of getting a divorce.”

      His eyebrow slashed up again. Frankie wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. This man might take a little getting used to. Why was she thinking about things like knowing him better and getting used to him? But as they hurtled down the highway, she had to admit that she was already thinking about where this would lead, this hopping in a pickup and taking off into the Hill Country. She studied his profile, his expression inscrutable behind the shades. He was handsome as hell.

      It would be several more miles over a winding highway before they would reach the McBride farm where Frankie had grown up. That farm and the Tellchick-Trueblood farm sat tucked into a bend of the Blue River, surrounded by Kilgore land. As they approached the turnoff, Frankie worried about explaining herself if one of her parents passed on the road. Unlikely, since P.J. seldom left the farm, and Marynell