.

you just said you wanted to be alone, and when I found you, he was in your face—”

      Susan was quick to interrupt him. Linc had a tendency to get carried away. “He wasn’t in my face, Linc. He hardly said a whole sentence.”

      Linc’s expression told her that it hadn’t looked that way from where he was standing. “Then he was just staring at you?”

      Susan didn’t like the tone that Linc was taking with her. He was invading her private space, going where he had no business venturing. He was her friend, not her father or her husband. And even then he wouldn’t have the right to act this way.

      “In part,” she finally said. “Look, he saw I was crying and he gave me his handkerchief. No questions, nothing, just his handkerchief.”

      Linc snorted. “Lucky for you he didn’t try strangling you with it.”

      It was a blatant reference to one of the theories surrounding Mark Walsh’s death. The county coroner had said that it appeared Mark Walsh had been strangled, among other things, before his face was bashed in, the latter being the final blow that had ushered death in.

      Susan just wanted to get away, to mourn her best friend’s passing in peace, not be subjected to this cross-examination that Linc seemed determined to conduct. She lifted her chin stubbornly. “Duke’s not Damien,” she pointed out.

      The look on Linc’s face was contemptuous, both of her statement and of the man it concerned.

      “I dunno about that. They say that twins have an unnatural connection. Maybe he’s just like his brother.” Linc drew himself up, squaring his shoulders before issuing a warning. “I don’t want you talking to Duke Colton or having anything to do with him.”

      For a second, even with the emotional pain she was trying to deal with, Susan could feel her temper really flaring. Linc was making noises like a possessive boyfriend, and that was the last thing on earth she needed or wanted right now. “Linc, it’s not your place to tell me what to do or not do.”

      Realizing the tactical error he’d just committed, Linc tried to backtrack as quickly as he could and still save face.

      “Sure it is,” he insisted. “I care about you, Susan. I care about what happens to you. We don’t know what these Coltons are really capable of,” he warned. “And I’d never forgive myself if anything happened to you because I didn’t say something.”

      Did Linc really think she was so clueless that she needed guidance? That she was so naive that she was incapable of taking charge of her own life? From out of nowhere a wave of resentment surged within her. She struggled to tamp it down.

      She was just upset, Susan told herself. And Linc did mean well, even if he could come across as overbearing at times.

      It took effort, but she managed to force a smile to her lips. “I’ll be all right, Linc. Don’t worry so much. And I’m still driving myself home,” she added in case he thought he’d talked her out of that.

      She could see that Linc didn’t like her refusing his help, but he made no protest and merely nodded his head. She was about to breathe a sigh of relief when Linc unexpectedly added, “All right, I’ll follow you.”

      Susan opened her mouth to tell him that he really didn’t have to put himself out like that, but she had a feeling that she’d just be wasting her breath, and she was in no mood to argue.

      Maybe she was being unfair. Another woman would have been thrilled to have someone voluntarily offer to all but wrap her in cotton and watch over her like this. There was a part of her that thought she’d be thrilled, as well. But now, coming face to face with it, she found it almost suffocating. All she wanted to do was run away.

      Maybe she was overreacting, making too much of what was, at bottom, an act of kindness. But if she was overreacting, she did have a really good excuse. Someone she loved dearly had just died and blown a hole in her world, and it was going to take a while to come to terms with that.

      Rather than prolong this no-win debate, Susan nodded. “All right, I’ll see you at the house.” With that, she turned and walked quickly over to where she’d parked her vehicle.

      Duke watched the tall, slim, attractive young blonde make her way through the parking lot. More to the point, she was walking away from that annoying prissy little friend of hers.

      Lincoln Hayes.

      Now, there was a stalker in the making if he ever saw one, Duke judged. He wondered if Susan was aware of that, of what that Linc character was capable of.

      Not his affair, Duke told himself in the next moment. The perky little girl with the swollen eyes was her own person. There was no reason for him to be hovering in the background like some wayward dark cloud on the horizon, watching over her. She might look like the naive girl next door, but he had a feeling that when push came to shove, Susan Kelley was a lot stronger, character-wise, than she appeared.

      A fact, he had a feeling, that wouldn’t exactly please Lincoln Hayes.

      And even if she could be pushed around by the likes of Hayes, what was that to him? Why did he feel this need to make sure she was all right? The girl had his handkerchief and he wanted it back. Eventually. There was absolutely no other reason to pay attention to her, to her comings and goings and to whether that spineless jellyfish, Hayes, actually turned out to be a stalker.

      Annoyed with himself, with the fact that he wasn’t leaving, Duke watched as Susan crossed to the extreme right side of the lot and got into her car, a neat little sedan that would have been all but useless on his own ranch. It wouldn’t have been able to haul much, other than Susan and some of her skinny friends.

      Her sedan came to life. Another minute and she was driving off the lot.

      Rubbing his hands on the back of his jeans, Duke got into the cab of his beat-up dark-blue pickup and drove away.

      “Have you been crying? “

      Bonnie Gene Kelley fired the question, fueled by concern, the moment her daughter walked into the rear of Kelley’s Cookhouse, the restaurant that she and her husband Donald ran and had turned into a nation-wide chain.

      Seeing for herself that the answer to her question was yes, Bonnie Gene quickly crossed to her youngest child and immediately immersed herself in Susan’s life. “Did you and that boy get into an argument?” she wanted to know.

      Ever eager for one of her children to finally make her a grandmother, the way all her friends’ children had, Bonnie Gene fanned every fire that potentially had an iron in it. In Susan’s case, that iron had a name: Lincoln Hayes.

      Lincoln wouldn’t have been her first choice, or even her second one. Bonnie Gene liked her men more manly, the way her Donald was—or had been before the good life had managed to fatten him up. But Linc was here and he was crazy about Susan. Her daughter could do a lot worse than marry the boy, she supposed.

      But if he made Susan cry, then all bets were off. She absolutely wouldn’t stand for someone who could wound her youngest born to the extent of making her cry. Sophisticated and worldly—as worldly as anyone could be, given that they were living in a place like Honey Creek, Montana—her maternal claws would immediately emerge, razor-sharp and ready, whenever one of her children was hurt, physically or emotionally.

      “No, Mother,” Susan replied evenly, wishing she’d waited before walking into work, “we didn’t get into an argument.”

      Part of her just wanted to dash up to her room and shut the door, the other part wanted to be enfolded in her mother’s arms and be told that everything was still all right. That the sun still rose in the east and set in the west and everything in between was just fine.

      Except that it wasn’t. And she needed to grow up and face that.

      “Is Miranda worse?” her father asked sympathetically, coming out of the large storage room where they kept the supplies and foodstuffs that were being used that day.