A Texan for Hire. Amanda Renee

absolutely jonesing for some Chinese, if that’s okay with you. It’s my favorite.”

      Amused by her expression, Clay didn’t think the phrase “jonesing” came from South Carolina. Must be a part of her northeastern upbringing. “Chinese it is. Six o’clock all right? I’ll pick you up at the Bed and Biscuit.”

      “Sounds wonderful.”

      “I’ll see you then.” Clay hung up the phone and banged his head repeatedly against the kitchen cabinet. “Why did I do that? I had no business calling her. This is a job, she’s a client and I’m an idiot.”

      Yet he hadn’t been able to get Abby out of his head since meeting her yesterday. The woman had gotten under his skin and he hadn’t allowed that to happen since Ana Rosa. His fiancée’s face had begun to fade from his dreams lately, and though he tried to hang on to every memory of her, some days they began to blur. The thought of losing her memory terrified him. If only he’d done things differently and told her the truth. There were no second chances, though. Both Ana Rosa and her son were dead. And it was his fault.

      Clay grabbed a beer from the fridge and glanced around his old farmhouse. Shane was right, it hadn’t changed much since the day he bought the place. Well, maybe he had opened a box or two when he’d been searching for a particular item. It had been so long since he’d looked inside any of the boxes, he had trouble remembering what he owned.

      Clay had entertained thoughts of donating everything to the local thrift shop. And why not? After surviving this many years without the boxes’ contents, he obviously didn’t need whatever was inside. But he knew one of those boxes contained their photos. Reminders of the days they’d spent together, promises he’d made to them of a future and a life free of fear. All of them broken—every single promise—irretrievably broken.

      “Dammit!” Clay kicked at the screen door and stormed down the back porch stairs. Heading for the barn, he passed all his clients’ payments, including his newly acquired five-year-old Welsh pony, Olivia. Originally, he had planned to give the mare away, but when his gelding Dream Catcher had met Olivia, it was love at first sight.

      At a little under thirteen hands, she was much smaller than his Morgan horse, but their silver-dappled coloring was almost identical. Clay figured the two were meant to be together. Once again, Abby came to mind—she was much shorter than he was.

      “Get a grip, Clay.” He led both horses from the corral into the barn. “Abby’s not a pony and I’m sure as hell no gelding.”

      Frustrated that he had let the slightest bit of Abby seep into his thoughts, he placed Dream Catcher in his stall. When he returned from feeding the goats, the horse stood in the middle of the barn, ears twitching and tail swishing as if he were about to bolt.

      He’d forgotten to latch the door. Allowing Abby to cloud his vision had already complicated his life. His horse could be in danger if Clay couldn’t corral him back into the stall. The last thing he needed was to chase Dream Catcher down the two-lane road that was only a stone’s throw from the barn.

      “Are you seriously going to do this to me today?” Clay held his arms wide attempting to make himself appear larger. He was afraid to close the barn doors behind him for fear the horse would turn and run out the other side of the building. If Dream Catcher ran straight for him, Clay at least had a better chance of catching the animal. “Come on, pal. You don’t want to leave your girlfriend here all alone, do you?”

      Slowly, Clay inched forward. Dream Catcher lowered his head slightly and for a second, Clay wondered if the gelding was about to charge. Reaching for the lariat hanging on the barn wall, Clay hoped he had enough clearance to throw it before the horse turned and bolted.

      Dream Catcher snorted and stomped his hoof, then nonchalantly walked into his stall.

      “Are you kidding me?” Clay quickly latched the door. “What was that—a test? I’ve had enough of those today, thank you.”

      Tests he was apparently failing. Why had he opened his big mouth and asked the pint-size blonde out to dinner?

      Because he lacked enough good sense to keep his distance.

      He lived a quiet, uncomplicated life, and that’s how he wanted to keep it. The last thing he needed was Abby Winchester and her problems...only the fact that no one else knew of a sister didn’t sit right with him. Locate cases rarely resulted in a neatly wrapped gift box full of answers. Instead, they had a tendency to take on a life of their own with the subject of the search usually secreted for a reason. Clay’s gut told him Abby’s life was about to unravel. And that bothered him much more than it should have.

      * * *

      ABBY HAD PASSED New China earlier in the day and knew the dress she had bought at Margarita’s Ragpatch would be overkill for the tiny, ultracasual restaurant. It was definitely a low-key type of place. She slipped into her favorite curve-hugging distressed jeans and topped them off with a cotton and lace empire-waist sleeveless shirt under a soft peach linen cropped jacket. As she rolled up her sleeves and slid some wooden bangles onto her wrists, she decided on a pair of platform chocolate-leather ankle booties.

      Her mother’s words whenever they went shopping echoed through Abby’s head. Neutral pieces will carry you everywhere. You can always accessorize. Her mother, queen of the cruise lines, knew how to dress to impress. Her parents were perpetually off to some exciting locale. They were on second honeymoon number one thousand at this point. Wyatt and Abby never joined them, not even when they had been kids. Their grandparents had taken care of them while Maeve and Steve sailed off into the sunset.

      Abby admired their relationship. They were one of those perfectly in sync couples who finished each other’s sentences, and she was willing to bet they were as much in love today as they were when they met. Maybe more. Abby dreamed of the day she’d find her soul mate. She’d been planning her wedding ever since she was a little girl. But a wedding would never happen unless she cleared her schedule a bit and actually took the time to meet someone.

      Downstairs, she told Mazie she was going out for the evening. Mazie said she’d look in on Duffy and take him for a walk if Abby was gone for more than a few hours. Mazie’s devotion to her pet guests more than justified the higher cost of staying at the Bed & Biscuit, in Abby’s opinion. Many hotels didn’t take pets and fewer offered dog-walking services.

      Abby decided to wait for Clay on the Victorian’s expansive wraparound porch. White antique rocking chairs invited guests to relax among the fall flowers in various sized pots and hanging baskets decorating the porch’s perimeter. Serenity and intoxicating florals welcomed you to the Hill Country region of Texas the second you stepped out the door.

      “You look very pretty, dear.”

      Abby jumped at the sound of a woman’s voice. “You scared me.” Abby hadn’t noticed Janie Anderson, one of the inn’s employees, standing in the corner of the porch with a watering can in her hand. “And thank you.”

      “I’m sorry.” The older woman continued to water the plants while she spoke. “You can get lost in Mazie’s jungle of flowers out here. I hear you have a date with our Mr. Tanner this evening.”

      Well that didn’t take long to spread around. “I wouldn’t call it a date. We’re meeting over dinner to discuss my mysterious sister.”

      “Yes, I’ve heard. Sounds exciting. I’m sorry I don’t remember your parents from back then. I even looked through some of my old photos last night. My husband, Alfred, is an avid hobby photographer and I swear we have stacks of photos from every parade and festival Ramblewood’s ever seen. Of course, I don’t know what I’m looking for, either, but you are more than welcome to look through whatever we have.”

      “Really?” Maybe she’d find a photo of her parents, or one of her father and another child. “That’s very generous of you.”

      “Any time you want to come over, you let me know. I can’t say my Alfred is the most organized man, but the photos are in some semblance of order.”