A Stetson On Her Pillow. Molly Liholm

O’Conner retired next year and Clint was offered the job, he wanted everyone in town to say that he was the best man for it. If he succeeded with this case—made some kind of breakthrough that the SFI had not—if he joined the homicide squad, then no one in Two Horse Junction could doubt that a full-fledged Chicago detective hadn’t earned the position of sheriff.

      Lesky grinned even wider, showing off his big shiny white teeth. The man could be found in the men’s room flossing several times a day and recently he’d even bleached his teeth. “Carter is a fine piece of woman.”

      “More like an iceberg.”

      “Sometimes melting an iceberg can be appealing. All that fresh, untapped water.” He wiggled his eyebrows.

      “You’re forgetting what happened to the Titanic. I, however, remember my history. My only interest in Laura Carter is whether or not she’s a good cop.”

      “I’ll bet she’s good all right—at least that’s what her old captain believed.”

      “That’s a rumor,” Clint replied, feeling a twinge of guilt at his own hypocrisy. “We’re cops and are supposed to follow the facts, not gossip.”

      Lesky grabbed a chair and straddled it. “Fact number one, Laura Carter is a very beautiful woman. Fact number two, she moved up the chain of command faster than usual—faster than either you or me. Fact number three, she had a very close relationship with her captain in Boston.”

      Clint put his phone messages into his desk drawer. Lesky was tiresome. “That’s pure speculation. The captain may simply have been her mentor.”

      “You’ll be the one to judge how good she is…at police work.” Lesky loved the sound of his own voice, and a small crowd was gathering around Clint’s desk. The only way to stop Lesky was to let him finish.

      Lesky looked around at his fellow officers. “Back to the facts. Fact number four, most of her unit believed she was having an affair with the captain, apparently including his wife. Fact number five, his wife began divorce proceedings and fact number six, because of Laura’s family connections, she was transferred to us. How long did it take the paperwork to get you from Dallas to here?”

      “A year.”

      “It took Laura two weeks.”

      Lesky had a valid argument but Clint never believed all the stories told about a person. Stories could be vicious and mean, even when they were based on truth.

      He knew all about living with a reputation. “The facts could also indicate that she was—is—a damn fine cop.”

      “But that body. She’s got great legs and—” he cupped a pair of imaginary breasts. “I’d love to lose myself in her body for a few hours.”

      “That’s where we’re different. I don’t believe every rumor.” Clint stood. “And trust me, the last thing I want to do is get my hands on Ms. Carter’s body. Us Texas boys don’t like frostbite.” He pretended to shiver but saw that Lewsky wasn’t smiling. He took a deep breath and turned around.

      Clint reminded himself that his mama had taught him better. If you spoke your mind you had to accept the consequences. Laura stood in front of him, looking like she always did.

      Her face wasn’t flushed with anger, she didn’t sweep her gaze disdainfully over him or even turn on her heel and stalk out.

      Instead she looked cool and imperial. When she opened her mouth he braced himself for her cutting remarks. “What time do you want to pick me up tomorrow? It will make our cover story more believable if we arrive in one car.”

      He thought about apologizing, but she didn’t look like she cared about what her colleagues thought of her. “Does noon work?” he asked instead.

      “Can you make it a little later, say one-thirty? I have to organize a lot of clothes to play my part.”

      “Sure, that’s okay.” He opened his mouth and then closed it again.

      She took a pen and piece of paper from his desk and wrote something on it. “My address. I’ll be in the lobby at one-thirty.” She handed the paper over to him and their fingers brushed. For a moment she eyed Lesky, then walked away.

      This time Clint wanted to shiver for real. Laura Carter was even colder than he’d imagined.

      No matter what the next few days held at the society wedding, it would be no honeymoon.

      2

      AT EXACTLY 1:25 p.m. of what she was sure was about to be the first of the worst four days of her life, Laura placed her two suitcases on the floor of the lobby of her building and looked out the front window. No cowboy on a white stallion.

      She let out a pent-up breath, angry at herself. “You are a complete idiot and a juvenile one at that. You weren’t even this bad when you had a crush on Kevin Beckins in seventh grade!” If she’d thought talking to herself would fix her unreasonable and unwanted crush on Clint Marshall, it didn’t work. She’d never been so humiliated in her entire life. She had a crush on the cowboy. A crush!

      Deliberately she replayed his words in her mind: Trust me, the last thing I want to do is get my hands on Ms. Carter’s body. Us Texas boys don’t like frostbite.

      He hadn’t even used her first name. He probably thought his tongue would freeze if he said her name out loud. He clearly considered her a stiff, prissy socialite.

      She softly kicked one of her expensive suitcases with her even more expensive shoes. Sweetums whimpered in disagreement. “Baby, did I scare you? I’m sorry. Mummy was thinking about that nasty man we’re being forced to spend a very long weekend with and I was trying to work out my frustration.” She scooped the bundle of white fluff into her arms and adjusted the blue bow tied to the tiny dog’s collar. “How’s my little Sweetums?”

      The dog squinted at her from under her long blond bangs and blinked. Laura kissed the top of the dog’s head, amazed she’d come to care as much as she did for the ridiculous dog. She scratched Sweetums behind her ears and continued her running monologue. Sweetums liked to hear the sound of human voices. “If you were a real dog you’d bark. Or growl, or make some kind of loud noise—anything more than those little whiny noises you make when you sleep. Try barking for Mummy. Bark,” Laura coaxed and then demonstrated by making a loud woofing sound. Sweetums looked at Laura curiously, opened her mouth and licked Laura’s face.

      “Well at least somebody likes me,” she said ruefully and wished the cowboy’s words hadn’t hurt so much. Normally she liked her ice-princess routine. After all, she had spent years refining the image. She was very good at it. Because of it most men stayed far away.

      Romantic involvements only confused most women’s lives. At present count her mother had been married five times and each husband had had his own horrible qualities. Her mother continued to sail blithely across extremely dangerous seas from man to man, never noticing how much of her fortune each husband cost her or even more importantly how they destroyed her emotionally.

      But Laura had noticed. And when she caught herself repeating her mother’s pattern—completely changing herself to fit into her ex-fiancé’s life—she’d stopped. Brian Simpson had almost been the biggest mistake of her life, but she’d gotten smart. Like her mother, men were her weakness so she’d stopped dating. Joined the police force. Concentrated on her career. Exclusively.

      She liked being a cop and she was good at it. She loved the challenge of figuring out a case: following obscure leads, interviewing witnesses until something clicked and she knew who had broken the law. She sympathized with Garrow’s frustration; he knew that Monroe Investments laundered Russian Mafia money but he didn’t have the evidence he needed to arrest Peter Monroe. When she’d first made detective, she and her partner had kept a case open for three years, working on it whenever they could squeeze in the time, until they’d finally made an arrest.

      Once