Nothing To Lose. RaeAnne Thayne

about that. I’m afraid Belle is a cheap hussy for any man who gives her a little attention,” she said. “Most women she can take or leave, but whenever a man comes to the house, she is practically giddy. She misses Hunter, I think.”

      “She was his?”

      Taylor nodded. “He raised her from a puppy. Actually, he rescued her from a crime scene. Belle’s mother was shot trying to protect her owner from the woman’s abusive boyfriend. Neither the dog nor the woman survived. There were three others in the litter, and Hunter and John Randall, his partner, made it their mission in life to find homes for all of them. He fell hard for Belle and couldn’t give her up.”

      He tried—and failed—to imagine the tough man he met in prison rescuing a litter of orphaned puppies. With that hard, steely gaze of his, Wyatt had a difficult time imagining Hunter had a soft spot for much. Except maybe his sister.

      “I guess you inherited her after his arrest.”

      “I’m just watching her until Hunter gets out,” she said, her chin lifted defiantly as if daring him to contradict her.

      Wyatt wasn’t sure what to say to that, and they stood awkwardly in her small foyer for a few moments until she seemed to collect herself.

      “I’m sorry, let me take your jacket.”

      He shrugged out of it and handed it to her. “Have you eaten?” she asked after she hung it in the closet off the entryway.

      “No. I was going to ask if you wanted to grab something after we were done,” he said. He didn’t want to admit, even to himself, how much he had wanted her to agree.

      “Do you like Italian?” she asked. “I picked up some takeout on the way home.”

      “Italian’s great. If my mother were here, she’d tell you I never met a pasta dish I didn’t like.”

      She looked vaguely surprised at his mention of his mother, as if she’d never given the matter of his parentage much thought. “Does your family live in Salt Lake?” she asked as she led the way through the small house toward the kitchen.

      “We’re all over. My parents split up when I was a kid. Mom lives in Liberty near my ranch—she’s an elementary school principal—and my dad has a carpentry shop in Las Vegas. I have an older brother who has lived all over the West but currently hangs his hat in Park City. He’s with the FBI.”

      “FBI? Really? So I guess you both work closely with criminals.”

      He sent her an amused look. “Something like that.”

      The kitchen reminded him of a Tuscan farmhouse, with warm yellow stuccoed walls and pots hanging from a center island. It looked comfortable and well-used. He leaned a hip against the counter as he watched her transfer a pan from the oven to a dining table set in a small alcove overlooking her backyard.

      “So your parents had just two boys?” she asked, her hands too busy with setting out food to notice the reaction he knew he wouldn’t be able to hide at her innocent question.

      He thought of Charlotte—little Charley—with her blond curls and her sweet smile. Guilt socked him in the gut, as it always did. “We had a little sister but we lost her when she was three.”

      It was his easy, glib answer, the one he used when he didn’t want to get into the whole story. He knew she would assume Charlotte died. Most people did. It was often easier to let them think that than going into all the grim details of the kidnapping, which would inevitably dominate the conversation for some time.

      “Oh. I’m so sorry.” Compassion turned her eyes a dewy midnight blue and filled him with guilt at his lie of omission.

      He chose to deal with it by changing the subject quickly. “Everything looks delicious. This is great. You didn’t have to go to so much trouble.”

      “I didn’t do anything but pick up the lasagna from a restaurant. I wish I could say I made it, but Kate—my roommate—is the expert in the kitchen. I’m learning from her but I still am an amateur. I thought she would be here to join us but her shift was changed at the hospital. You just missed her.”

      Did she tell him that to subtly remind him this wasn’t a date? he wondered. That even though they were two adults enjoying a delicious meal alone together, he shouldn’t make any kind of leap in logic about it?

      Too bad the roommate wasn’t here. There was an intimacy to being alone together here that he would have preferred to avoid, given his attraction to her.

      Objectivity, he reminded himself as he poured wine for both of them. This was just another interview, just like dozens of others he’d done for this book.

      This wasn’t so bad, Taylor thought a few moments later as she took another bit of rich, spicy lasagna.

      All her nervousness had been for nothing. Wyatt seemed to find nothing odd about sharing a meal before they got down to the gritty business of going over the facts in Hunter’s case. As they enjoyed the delectable pasta and crusty Italian bread, they talked of mundane matters—her classes, his ranch, how long she’d lived in the house.

      “I bought it after my father died four years ago.”

      “Your mother died when you were just a little girl. Six, isn’t that right?”

      The question was a blunt reminder of the unpalatable fact that he knew far more about her than she did about him. She couldn’t help feeling a little exposed that so many private details of her life had become public knowledge after Hunter’s arrest. Her sense of invasion made her reply sharper than she had intended.

      “And I guess that’s the explanation you’re going to use for everything that supposedly went wrong with Hunter.”

      He looked surprised by the sudden attack, then thoughtful. “No. I was just thinking how tough that must have been on you, losing a mother at such an early age.”

      The age hadn’t been as difficult as the circumstances of her mother’s death. “My mother was…ill for a long time before she died. I don’t remember her any other way.”

      She didn’t add that Angela Bradshaw had suffered from a grab bag of mental health issues or that few of the snippets of memory she had of her mother were pleasant.

      “What was Hunter like as a big brother?”

      She gave him a cool look over the lip of her wineglass. “Is this on the record?”

      “Up to you.”

      She debated exactly what to tell him as the spectres of those dark family secrets loomed. For so much of her life, she had tried to pretend those first six years didn’t exist, that they were just some murky nightmare.

      She didn’t like remembering how bad things had been as Angela’s condition deteriorated. She didn’t talk about it with anyone—choosing to break her silence to someone writing a book didn’t seem the greatest idea.

      On the other hand, her ultimate goal was to convince Wyatt that Hunter wasn’t capable of murdering anyone. To do that, she would have to tell him at least something of their childhood.

      “He was older than me by five years. I guess you know that.”

      “So that makes you twenty-six.”

      “Right. Five years doesn’t seem like much when you’re thirty-one and twenty-six, but take away a few decades and it’s a huge chasm at eleven and six. I think most boys that age would rather be caught in their Underoos on the school playground than be seen hanging around with their little sisters, but Hunter never seemed to mind me tagging after him. He was a great brother and never treated me with anything but love and kindness. I don’t remember him ever yelling at me or teasing me. He looked out for me. Protected me.”

      He frowned at this. “Against what?”

      She should tell him now. This was the perfect opportunity. The words hovered