Читать книгу A Holiday to Remember - Helen R. Myers - Страница 9

Chapter One

“Do you think he’s a jumper?”

The excited voice on the other end of her police radio had Officer Alana Anders groaning inwardly. All she’d reported was that she’d spotted someone loitering along Oak Grove, Texas’s, flooding Miller Creek. How that constituted a 911 crisis was all in dispatcher Barbara Jayne “Bunny” Dodd’s vivid imagination.

“Bunny, he’s sitting on a tree stump that’s no higher than a park bench would be if this town wasn’t too cheap to put any in,” Alana told the information-addicted woman. “Unless he has a rocket strapped to a part of his anatomy that I can’t see, he’d need to be an Olympic long jumper, not a diver, to make the fifteen-to-twenty feet it is to the edge of the water.”

It was unusual to see the creek in this condition—especially since there was no hurricane blowing up from the Gulf of Mexico. But there was a change in weather patterns going on. It was flooding in Oklahoma and Arkansas; as a result, while East Texas was seeing little in the way of precipitation, the northern counties’ tributaries were inheriting a splendid overflow.

“But it’s a blue moon,” her coworker declared, the announcement coming out of nowhere.

An aspiring writer in her free time, the divorcée was chock-full of trivia that most people forgot minutes after hearing it. While Alana sometimes found her prattling a help to stay awake during many an uneventful shift, others avoided the woman exactly because of her wandering focuses of interest as much as her relentless chattiness. She’d certainly knocked one out of the park this time with that blue-moon reference.

“Excuse me?” Alana peered out of her windshield to check the sky in case she was really missing something of astronomical significance.

“They’re rare because it takes two to three years to build up on the yearly extra days to have a second full moon in a month. It’s said that this August one is among the rarest. That has to mean something.”

“Not according to CNN this morning,” Alana replied. “They said the scientific world has taken all the mystery out of the event. Supposedly a volcano eruption caused the appearance of a blue moon—and some green sunsets. Krakatoa back in...1883, I think they said. So the other references that go back another couple of hundred years could well have been due to equally logical coincidences. But, hey, if it will make you happy, I’ll gladly ask our fellow insomniac if he’s a galactic visitor here to correct the last half-dozen mathematical errors in calculating the end of the world. That’s our job, right? Leave no question unanswered.”

Bunny sighed. “Oh, Ally, you don’t usually make fun of me the way the others do. And where’s your sense of romance? You like music. You know musicians were referencing the blue moon in song forever.”

“And you know that I don’t listen to Elvis,” Alana replied, feeling the pinch of a tension headache coming on. “Who, by the way, also offered his services to Nixon—or was it J. Edgar—to be an agent for the U.S. Give me a break, Bunny.”

“Not just Elvis,” Bunny replied in her most little-girl voice. “Mr. Richard Rogers. You like Broadway.”

“I like beer and bourbon, too. Unfortunately, I’m on duty.” At Bunny’s prolonged silence—obviously due to wounded feelings—Alana lifted her gaze to the heavens again. “Okay, okay, I’m going to make an effort...after all, it has been a while since I’ve had the cheap thrill of frisking a total stranger.”

“Now, you stop,” the dispatcher demanded. “For all you know, he could be suffering from a broken heart. Maybe he’s been somehow led here to be your guy.”

Alana had heard enough. “Listen, Sherlock—”

“What does he look like?”

“Bunny,” Alana said, tone pleading, “I’m too far away from him to tell, and you know the lighting isn’t great over here.”

“Well, go find out before he goes and does something you might both regret for the rest of your lives.”

Alana decided the only thing that she was regretting at the moment was reporting the situation when she did. To heck with procedure, she should have just gone and checked things out, then radioed her findings afterward. “Consider me gone. You hold off drafting an engagement announcement for the newspaper until I at least introduce myself, okay?”

“What I am going to do is notify Ed for backup. It’s been a while since we’ve had a stranger come through town.”

Now she remembered why they cut her a check every two weeks? “Barbara Jayne Dodd—cease and desist.” The woman’s mindset could go from softhearted romance writer to police-procedural novelist faster than a career perp could blame someone else for his problems. No wonder she wasn’t published yet; she was all over the map with her feelings and focus. A person would have to be schizophrenic to keep up with her.

But Alana did sympathize to a degree. Oak Grove, population 3,900, was a challenge to her, too. The town hierarchy claimed it could barely justify the police force they had—especially around raise time—and yet protected the top tier that officiated over criminal behavior, so that things like drug trafficking and subsequent related crimes couldn’t be crushed, only minimally controlled. As a result, Alana was often accused of being an adrenaline junkie herself and just “looking for trouble.” That said, she wasn’t about to let what was probably a simple 11-94, Pedestrian Stop, get turned into something that could cost the chief another prescription for his ulcer.

“Will you please let Ed have his donut break?” she told Bunny. “With Sue Ann out of town visiting their daughter and new grandbaby, this is the only time he doesn’t get his clothes checked for sugar-glaze crumbs. If I think there’s a need to bring him in on this, you’ll be the first to know.”

Signing off, she exited her white patrol car with the bold red-and-blue writing on the side, and angled south beyond the vehicle a few yards in order not to approach the man from the rear and startle him. As much as she wanted to rein in their dispatcher’s imagination, she wasn’t about to drop her guard. Aided by the very moon that had Bunny sounding as though a serial Lothario might be on the loose, Alana saw that the man continued to sit quietly, leaning forward to rest his forearms on his knees, staring unblinkingly at the fast-flowing creek. Unless he was deaf, drugged or otherwise hearing impaired, he had to have heard her pull up behind him, and could still hear the patrol car’s engine continue to idle.

Usually no more than a dozen feet wide, the creek was now at least twice that. Nevertheless, as she’d attested to Bunny, the stranger was not in harm’s way yet; Alana could confirm that from her new vantage point. Also, so far, she didn’t think she knew him. He was wearing a dark-colored T-shirt—she was now guessing it was olive-green due to the duffel bag between his feet—jeans and athletic shoes. If he was a drifter, there was nothing shabby about him, and given his buzzed haircut and lean but toned build, her first guess was that he was military, or at least recently discharged. A veteran on his way home? He sure didn’t seem in any hurry. With that in mind, she also had to consider the spike in suicide rates due to veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress. Then there was the AWOL possibility, another reason for sticking to back roads and night travel to keep out of sight.

In the mysterious blue-white light of Bunny’s moon, his hair color was difficult to define, and the close haircut didn’t help. It looked at once ashy, then brown, but not as dark as her own. One thing was for certain: with each step, the closer view of his profile discounted Latino, Native American or Middle Eastern ethnicity. In fact, he could be Kevin Bacon’s kid brother.

“Sir? Everything okay here?”

At first the man acted as though he hadn’t heard her, but after another few seconds, he rolled his head, chin leading, to inspect the intrusion on his privacy. Was that sweeping glance and subtle shake of his head for a woman being in uniform, for the fact that she’d had the audacity to approach him by herself, or what? Whatever his thinking, he returned his attention to the water.

“Am I breaking some ordinance, Officer?”

“Technically, not at all,” Alana replied, allowing a touch of humor to enter her voice. “But at this hour, our four-legged scavengers tend to assume that this trail is their territory. If one happens to confront you, I’d strongly advise you to voluntarily surrender any food you’re in possession of—especially if it’s pizza or hot dogs from the convenience store down the block.”

She followed that comment by a nod toward the brightest lights in town. It earned her an “are you for real?” look.

“Here’s the thing,” Alana said in response to that. She was now confident that she had his full attention and that he wasn’t high on something. “It’s after one in the morning and it’s obvious that you’re not here to fish, or throw change into the creek and make a wish. If by chance you have another plan less pleasant, it’s my responsibility to convince you to reconsider.”

That won her another disbelieving glance.

“Oh, yes, sir, I’m serious,” she said, although her tone remained amiable. “And look at that current, the dirty foam against the bank, and the litter accumulating in the tall weeds. No telling what else is in that water. Do you really want to deal with an angry woman having to face an admittedly overdue tetanus shot, not to mention getting her hair messed up?”

While his expression said, You and what crane? he replied, “I’m not planning anything. I was just taking a break. Thinking. Have politicians figured out a way to put restrictions on that, too?”

“Rumor has it something is tucked away in an upcoming city council bill.” But Alana was relieved that the man could form such a coherent sentence. “I don’t recognize you as a local.”

“I’m not. Well, once. Not anymore.”

“So you’re passing through to touch bases with someone before heading elsewhere?”

“Probably.”

Alana could visualize Bunny scribbling down this dialogue for some work in progress, but she was finding it as enjoyable as scraping lint out of a dryer vent. “What might change your mind?” When he didn’t seem to want to answer, Alana tried a different angle. “My institutionally disrespected female intuition is telling me that you’re military. Reassure me that you’re not AWOL.”

“Officer,” he enunciated, “I’m retired and the least of anyone’s worries.”

Ordinarily, that would suffice for her—except for the defeated and world-weary tone in his voice. “I appreciate that, sir. I’m Officer Alana Anders, Oak Grove P.D. And you are?”

It took him a good while, but finally he offered, “Mack.”

Alana could start to feel the roots of her hair follicles aching as she mentally visualized pulling them out of her head. “You’ll have to do a little better than that.”

“Graves.”

She had to lock her knees to keep from taking a step back. “Mack Graves.” Her heart went into such chaos, she couldn’t help but take several deep breaths for the skidding and colliding going on behind her ribs. Especially when she started to see something familiar about his face. “Fred’s Mackenzie?”

“Just Mack. Mackenzie is my mother’s maiden name and it was hell getting through school with it, let alone dealing with the ridicule in boot camp.” The look he added suggested that if she remembered nothing else, she shouldn’t forget to avoid calling him that again. “But, yeah, Fred is my father. I angled down this way to see if he wanted to try again in the relationship department. I suspect if you know Fred, you know warm and fuzzy aren’t the first descriptions that come to mind.”

Despite her training, Alana momentarily struggled with deeper emotions, and not only because Mack Graves had used the wrong tense. To her, Fred had been those things—although, she would allow, not to everyone.

“You have been away for some time.” She wished she could delay telling him the bad news, but she couldn’t. “We were trying to find you. I’m sorry to say—so sorry to tell you—that your father passed away last month.”

After another long look, the unusually self-contained man nodded once, twice, then simply hung his head and stared at the duffel bag between his feet.

Alana had no problem picking up on the shock and turmoil going on inside him. She knew all about such emotions...and much more.

So the prodigal son had returned. Fred’s ex-wife, Dina, had left him years ago—and had taken their eight-year-old boy with her. She had hated small-town living and Fred’s iron grip on their finances. Word had it that the boy had returned once, as a teenager during a summer break, but had left soon afterward, never to return. The gossip mill concluded that Fred had been abusive at the worst, and a cold miser at best. At the time, Alana had only started grade school and was preoccupied with horses and flying, the latter a passion her older brother had infected her with, so she had remained blissfully oblivious to all of that. It was only later that she’d come to learn how inaccurate the gossips were. That wasn’t to say that Fred hadn’t been a disciplinarian, and frugal, but what had he been dealing with in a boy who no longer remembered, let alone respected, him?

“I’m sorry for your loss,” she said, hoping he didn’t catch the hitch in her voice that had gone husky. He didn’t need to know that the loss of Fred was hard on her, too. “Although I can see the resemblance to your father, I’d appreciate seeing some ID. Then you can come with me to the station. There are papers you need to sign before we hand things over to you.”

“He was cremated?”

“Yes, but...” Alana hesitated in telling him everything yet, so she pointed across the street to the city cemetery. “We ended up placing the urn over there. Under the big oak at the northwest corner between his parents, your grandparents. I was talking about the keys to the ranch—house, truck, barn, things like that. You’re his sole beneficiary. That’s the other reason that we’ve been trying to locate you.”

“I see.”

After the slow, enigmatic response, Mack pulled out his billfold and took out his driver’s license. Despite her certainty that he was who he claimed to be, Alana still accepted it with her usual caution when dealing with strangers, then used her LED penlight to see that it was a current one from Virginia. The address was an apartment and she would bet anything he no longer considered it home. She also noted that he was born in mid-February, thirty-eight years ago. The photo was clearly the man before her, maybe ten pounds heavier, with fewer signs of life and its stresses. Returning the flashlight to her pocket, she tucked away the ID, as well.

“Okay, I’ll hang on to this to make a copy at the station. Grab your bag and let’s go. Afterward, I’ll drive you out to the ranch.”

“You don’t have to do that. I guess I remember enough to find it myself.”

While he hadn’t been out of the service long enough to go soft, on foot a relatively healthy person might make Fred’s ranch by the first hint of daylight. Such a trek was neither safe at this hour, nor would it be considerate. “Fred was more than a neighbor and friend,” she said, by way of explanation. “He was like family to me. It’s the least I can do.”

As Mack Graves put his duffel bag in the backseat of the patrol car and eased into the passenger side, Alana settled in the driver’s seat. “Which branch were you in?”

“Marines.”

Then he could definitely make the hike faster than most people, but she still wasn’t going to allow that. “Were you in Iraq or Afghanistan?”

“Both.”

Whoa, Alana thought. “Glad you made it back—and in one piece.”

He turned away to look out the passenger window, but she took no offense; after all, she had just given him some life-altering news. What’s more, not everyone appreciated the “thank you for your service” attitude. She’d concluded more that some just wanted to fulfill their obligation and get on with their lives. On the other hand, a simple “Thanks” in return wouldn’t rupture his spleen.

“I’m not trying to be chatty.”

“I’m glad to hear that.”

Lifting her eyebrows at the borderline-rude response, Alana knew there was no way she was going to be quiet and circumspect now. “Ah. You’re the strong, silent type. Then you’d better prepare yourself for Bunny. She’s our night-shift dispatcher. I’m quite shy, in comparison. In fact, I became a cop to force myself to be more outgoing.”

She felt his sidelong look, but kept her eyes on the road. None of what she’d said was accurate, but she didn’t care. He’d made up his mind about her from the moment she approached him, and it irked that the news about Fred hadn’t softened his edges one bit.

“Doesn’t your family worry when you go out playing commando after dark?”

There it was, Alana thought with a wry twist of her lips. The derision she’d felt from him at first glance. But if he thought he was going to make her cower, he’d misjudged her more than he could imagine.

“I don’t see any part of being a cop as playing,” she replied, maintaining her pleasant tone. “Security checks on strangers in the park included. And as far as family is concerned, Uncle Duke is it, all two-hundred-fifty pounds, six feet four of him. Since he’s the chief of police, and before that was a state trooper, and before that a marine himself, if he didn’t feel that I’d been fully trained to do my job, I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you right now.”

Mack’s soft groan and the way he dropped his head against the headrest had her lips curling into a satisfied smile.

What she failed to add to all that was that Duke hated that she’d become a police officer and had been doing his best to marry her off or otherwise get her off the force from her first day on the job. The only thing that helped keep him semiquiet about it was the knowledge that if he didn’t allow her to be a member of their hometown department, she would go elsewhere...or take on a career that was even more demanding and dangerous.

“Don’t worry, gyrene,” she drawled, using the marines’ favorite expression for themselves. Uncle Duke had told her about how it had evolved back in World War II. The hard-fighting U.S. soldiers had been dubbed GIs, but marines considered themselves tougher yet, and wanted to be called marines. So the term GI and marine became gyrene. “You’re not in trouble with him...or me, for that matter. Attitudes like yours are as common as scales on a fish.”

She pulled into the station located on the other side of the cemetery—barely a half mile from the park. Parking by the front sidewalk in the otherwise-empty lot, she invited Mack to keep his duffel bag where it was, then she escorted him inside.

“Ally—darn it!” Bunny declared the second they came through the door. “You turned off your radio, didn’t you? And you didn’t radio back. I was about to call Ed even though you said not to.”

The strawberry-blonde with the corkscrew curls and baby voice leaped to her feet exposing more of a zaftig body stuffed in a half-size-too-small blue shirt and jeans. It was a good try at claiming indignation, but Alana knew the divorcée, who served as a civilian clerk and dispatcher, had already spotted Mack and was really showing off her five-foot-two frame in case he wasn’t into “brunette amazons,” as she’d dubbed her.

“Buns, the door was unlocked” was all Alana said to the woman who was six years her senior. But the look she sent her reminded her of department policy when no “badges” were on the premises.

“Ally.” Bunny shot her a look that went from withering to pleading before offering Mack a dimpled smile. “Is everything okay?”

“Everything is fine,” Alana intoned. Then she added evenly, “This is Mack Graves, Fred’s son.”

“Oh! Aw.” Bunny’s big, brown calf eyes went soft with sympathy. “Condolences for your loss.”

“Our dispatcher, Barbara Jayne Dodd,” Alana told Mack with a wave. To Bunny, she continued, “We’re going to take care of some paperwork. Then I’m taking him up to the ranch. Now you can call Ed. Tell him that I expect to be back in about a half hour. Only Ed,” Alana added. “Let’s assure Mr. Graves at least one night of peace before the press and the gossip hounds start salivating.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Fluorescent lighting wasn’t complimentary to anyone, but when Alana led Mack to her desk at the far corner of the room and finally faced him, she saw how gaunt he looked, and wondered if he wasn’t dehydrated, as well as in need of food. “Can I offer you a soda? Water? Coffee? When did you last eat?”

“I’m fine.”

“I appreciate that you’d like to get out of here, pronto, and be alone again, but while the refrigerator at your house is running, the contents are wanting—unless you’re into condiments. I should add that the supermarket doesn’t reopen until six o’clock. We can stop at the twenty-four-hour convenience store, even if the selection is iffy and ridiculously expensive, or we can stop at our place, which is actually next door to Last Call. If you like, I can fix you up with a few essentials to get you through the next day or two.”

“I take it that’s where your uncle—the chief—is?” At her nod, Mack shook his head. “Far be it from me to disrupt his sleep.”

“Smart decision,” she replied with a cheeky grin. “But that means you’re getting either a cola with all the sugar, or coffee with creamer and sweetener. Pick your poison.”

“Coffee.”

“Good choice. It’s my machine and great stuff. No blending nonsense, powdered milk or artificial sweeteners. Sit tight.” With a smart turn on her heel that sent her ponytail swinging, she went to get it. She was acutely aware of his narrow-eyed stare all the while she worked, and when she returned, she set the big mug before him, then took a power bar from her center desk drawer, and slid it at him. “Here, that will help, too.”

“Are you always this bossy?”

“You’ll have to try harder than that to get under this skin, gyrene,” she countered, all pleasantness. “The truth is that I’m nowhere near the sweetheart Bunny is, but kids and stray animals do tend to cling to me like Velcro. Go figure.”

Mack Graves glanced up from stirring his coffee to eye her from beneath dense lashes a shade darker than his hair. In the bright light, Alana finally saw that his eyes were an odd green-gray, the shade of Southern moss. She’d never seen anyone with that coloring before and quickly reached for the rubber-banded bulky envelope in the bottom drawer of her desk.

“Here we are,” she said, setting it on her blotter. “I have a number of keys, copies of his death certificate, and his will. As I said, you’re his sole beneficiary. One thing l need to remind you of—in case you’re not aware of it—is that in Texas there’s a ninety-day survivorship clause before you can probate his estate, so I hope you’re planning to stick around.”

“I wasn’t.”

His answer didn’t surprise Alana. Fred had spoken of his son enough to worry about ever finding him, let alone passing on all this responsibility. But she’d made promises. Slipping out a single sheet that declared he was accepting possession of the package, she marked an X where she wanted Mack to sign, then slid it over to him.

She placed the pen on top as a precursor to what she was about to say.

“I hope you’ll rethink that. Oak Grove may be a small town in the middle of dozens of small, even dying, towns, but Last Call is a wonderful place. On the other hand, if you want to sell it, I’m sure there are several people who would make you an offer soon enough. The property continues to be on a paved farm-to-market road. Fred was a fine fence builder, and the pastures are some of the best in the county. Our two properties share a creek, but more importantly, the darned place sits on an aquifer and there are three deep wells to keep ponds full regardless of the weather trends. Fred wasn’t as particular about the house, but what it lacks in style, it makes up for in sturdiness. As for the barn, it’s big enough to protect the machinery from the elements and to store feed. Behind it are the horse stables. There are only two horses these days—Fred’s mount, Rooster, who’s pretty old and is kept as a pet, and Eberardo’s horse, Blanco. The rest of the pens are used to tend to injured or orphaned stock.”

“Do you sell real estate during the day?”

Understanding what he was insinuating, Alana shrugged. “Yeah, I’m kind of attached to the place, as I am to my own home.” Remembering something, Alana glanced at her watch, which read nearly two in the morning—winced—and reached for her phone. “Eberardo Chavez is the hand who still lives on the property. You’ll see his trailer on the side of the barn and sheds. I’m going to call him to let him know not to worry if he sees me pull in and the house light up. More likely, Two Dog would announce our arrival as soon as the front gate opens.”

“Who the hell is that?”

“Eberardo’s dog. His second dog since working at Last Call. He’s a good man and hard worker, but he’s no cowboy poet.”

Moments later, she heard Eberardo’s groggy voice.

“Sí, Señorita Ally. ¿Es todo lo correcto?”

Aware that he had caller ID, Alana replied, “Lo siento. Sorry to disturb you, Eberardo. Everything is fine. I just wanted you to know that Two Dog may start barking shortly, and you might see lights at the house. I’m letting Mr. Fred’s son, Mack, in.”

“Ah, he has come. Mr. Fred would be much happy.”

“Pienso tan, también,” Ally replied, telling him that she thought so, too. “We’ll talk more tomorrow. Go back to sleep.”

“To happy dreams. We wait for this day, eh? Gracias, Señorita Ally.”

As Alana disconnected, hoping he was right, she saw Mack pick up the pen and scrawl his signature across the bottom of the paper. When finished, he pushed it and the pen back toward her. Finally, he took a tentative sip of coffee, followed by a more appreciative gulp.

“Anything else?” he asked.

“You can admit it’s good coffee,” she said, amusement and challenge in her gaze.

“Why waste my breath telling you what you already know?”

He was Fred’s son all right, Alana thought. Mule-headed, confident and all man with those penetrating eyes letting a woman know that no matter what, sex was always in the mindset. She shoved the paper into the top drawer of her desk and handed over the banded bundle. “You can take the coffee and protein bar with you. Consider the mug a housewarming gift.”

* * *

Minutes later, back at the patrol car, Mack gingerly took his seat. As he fastened his seat belt, he tried to ignore Alana’s open stare.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, why?”

“You’re moving like someone ten or fifteen years older than you are.”

“Hitching and hiking can do that to you.”

Alana seemed to accept that and exited the parking lot. She turned onto Main Street for the turn north that would take them to the farm-to-market road and Last Call Ranch. In all honesty, that’s all Mack remembered of the directions to the place. But his back hurt so much from carrying the duffel bag—even though he changed shoulders frequently—that he mentally kissed her for insisting on driving him. At least none of his wounds had busted open. He’d fingered the spots when she’d gone to get him coffee.

The town was literally ghostlike with not another vehicle in sight, until he caught a glimpse of lights and spotted a patrol car in his side-view mirror as it left the convenience store and turned toward the station. No doubt the other night-shift cop, Ed, coming to catch up on the excitement with dispatcher Bunny.

Buns, he thought with a silent snort, remembering Alana’s personal nickname for her. The woman had certainly earned that one, too, although she seemed pretty harmless and sweet—and again, all wrong for a police station. And how the devil did females sit for hours in clothes that tight without losing consciousness? But at least she wasn’t in a uniform.

Mack had never cared for the idea of women in uniform, although he’d had his butt saved twice by female chopper pilots and had since adjusted his opinion to a degree. However, he wasn’t changing his mind about Alana Anders. Maybe she seemed to know what she was doing, but she was too feminine, too much woman for what she did for a living. That annoyed him as much as it did to realize that his gaze was drawn to her whenever he thought she wasn’t looking.

Face it, you don’t care if she’s noticing or not.

Fine, he amended, if things were different, he would be coming after her, staking his claim like the red-blooded male he was. He may have been shot twice, but as far as he could tell, all of his equipment still worked, and he was going to prove that as soon as he regained a little more strength. In the meantime, he was going to dream about Officer Anders’s long legs out of those uniform blues. He would bet a month’s pay that she had the legs of a swimsuit model and that her breasts weren’t filled with silicone. That face could be on a magazine cover, too, but the fools would want to airbrush away the small scar above her left eyebrow, and put too much greasy stuff on those succulent lips. He would like to taste them wet from a bite of strawberry or a lush peach, as he lost himself in those deceptively soft brown eyes.

Nuts, he thought.

Deceptive was the key word. There was a lot going on inside her and he wasn’t sure of a fraction of it. One minute she was all business, the next she was giving him a look so honest and bold, he felt as though he’d taken an electric shock to his groin, and the next he could swear her heart was fracturing. What the hell was going on with her?

At least it seemed that she’d been decent to the old man. Mack thought his father had been a lucky stiff if he’d checked out while gazing at Alana’s high-cheekboned face, especially if that luscious hair wasn’t tied back as it was now.

“How long have you been at this?” They were at least a mile outside town, and security lights were growing fewer and farther between, and Mack figured her mind was cranking away questions, too. He’d rather have her answering than asking them.

“You mean law enforcement? I went into the academy straight from college.”

“So you’re a rookie?” He suspected she was slightly older than that, but not by much.

“Hilarious. This is my seventh year. I just turned thirty.”

Mentally, he gave her another point for being honest. At thirty, some women started counting backward. “So this is really what you always wanted to do?”

“You didn’t hear me say that. I wanted to be a fighter pilot. I caught the flying bug from my older brother. He would be your age now.”

“Would be?”

“He was flying my parents to the Gulf to catch a cruise for their twentieth wedding anniversary, but there was mechanical trouble. They didn’t make it.”

“That’s rough.” She’d managed to keep her voice steady, but Mack didn’t miss how her hands worked the steering wheel and how tight her grip got.

“It was. Is. But coming back to the world, as you service people tend to say, has to be a challenge, too.” Alana’s voice grew huskier. “And then to have this news that you weren’t expecting...”

She didn’t really want to talk about the past any more than he did. That was another thing he couldn’t help but find appealing about her. He’d OD’d on drama queens years before finally freeing himself of his mother. “I am curious as to why my father didn’t hire an attorney to handle this,” he said, shifting the envelope between his hands.

“His longtime lawyer passed away last year and he didn’t like the other two in town. I tried to help him find someone else, but he kept putting it off until it was too late.”

“So his death wasn’t sudden?”

“No, there’s nothing fast about lung cancer.” Alana shook her head as though trying to shake off something. “He never could quit smoking. Heaven knows, we all tried to help.”

“He’d known you all of your life?”

“Fred and Duke went to school together. After Fred’s divorce and losing you, he became part of our family. I don’t remember a holiday get-together when he wasn’t there. Or funeral. After—after the accident, you could say he and Uncle Duke finished raising me. Fred taught me everything I know about horses and cattle, and the chief added most of what they didn’t teach me in the police academy.”

“Did Fred like anyone besides you and your uncle?” Mack asked the question for an excuse to continue studying her profile and admire the perfection of her skin in the surreal light. The answer was almost irrelevant.

“Of course. But he didn’t trust easily. That’s probably something you two would have found you had in common.” As they passed the entryway of a ranch with an electronic gate and pole fencing freshly painted green, she nodded. “That’s us. Pretty Pines.”

The visuals failed to trigger even the slightest memory in Mack. “Did we ever meet? I have to admit I remember less than I thought I did.”

“I’m guessing you and your mother left about the time that I was born. I may have been all of six when you last visited as a teenager. That would have made me invisible to you. And the pole fence wouldn’t have been there yet. We still used barbed and ranch wire back then. Here we are,” she added, turning into the next driveway.

As she parked before the simple gate with the metal letters Last Call Ranch bolted to it, Mack remembered his father’s irreverent humor in naming the place and his mother’s chastising him for making them the town trash. Her protests had seemed hypocritical even to a kid of eight who’d witnessed how much both of his parents drank—and the fights that followed. Now they struck him as doubly so, considering the line of work she’d ended up in.

“You have the keys.”

Pulled back to the present, Mack dug out two sets from the envelope. There were about a dozen keys on each ring. Alana pointed to the correct set and, once he handed it to her, deftly flipped to the sturdy stainless key.

“All of the house keys and the front-gate key are on this one. You’ll soon memorize them because I color coded them. The other ring is for the barn, truck and equipment.”

Accepting the handful, Mack went to open the gate, attempting to move as normally as possible. He would definitely look into getting an electronic gate system like the Anderses had, and not just because of the convenience. He had to shift to use the patrol car’s headlights to get the lock released, which would be more of a pain in bad weather than it already was. Besides, the fancier gizmo might help sell the place faster—not that he was planning to do that.

Oh, yes, you are.

Back in the car, he saw a front-door light and a security light by the barn. When they came to the ranch house, he saw it would take more than a fancy front gate to entice a buyer. The house was white brick with plain windows adorned with cheap miniblinds and a white metal roof. There were no shrubs around the place, and maybe the pastures were well tended, but the yard looked like it was nothing but weeds. He’d seen military barracks that looked more inviting.

“Home sweet home,” he muttered with a sinking feeling.

“It could be. It just needs a little TLC. Eberardo has had his hands full with the animals.” Alana put the vehicle in Park. “Do you want me to show you where the important things are?”

“I shouldn’t take up any more of your time.”

As he began to reach for the door handle again, Alana touched his arm. “Wait.”

Mack turned back in surprise. When he saw her pensive look, curiosity got the best of him.

“You need to know something, and I’d like you to hear it from me rather than just reading it cold and misunderstanding. In the will,” she said, nodding to the envelope in his grasp, “Fred was concerned that something might have happened to you before he actually passed—or that somehow the place would end up on the auction block, or worse.”

Mack raised an eyebrow. “What would he have considered worse?”

“Your mother sweeping in and taking possession.”

Mack grunted. That would have done it, he thought wryly. “So what did he do? Just spit it out,” he ordered, as she continued to hesitate.

“He adjusted his will so that if you died, or if you relinquish claim on the estate, it falls to me.”