Diana Palmer - The Maverick / Magnate's Make-Believe Mistress

He was breathless by this time. He stared at her intently.

“It’s true,” she added when he didn’t comment. She scowled. “Well, I don’t like diseases and you can’t look at a man and tell if he has one.” She hesitated. Frowned worriedly. “You don’t have any…?”

“No, I don’t have any diseases,” he said shortly. “I’m fastidious about women.”

“What a relief!” she said with a huge sigh. “Well, that covers all the basics.” Her blue eyes smiled up at him and she batted her long black eyelashes. “So when do we see the justice of the peace?”

“Not today,” he replied. “I’m washing Bob.”

“Bob?”

He pointed toward the cattle dog, who was still sitting at the pasture gate. He whistled. Bob came running up to him, wagging her long, silky tail and hassling. She looked as if she was always smiling.

“Hi, Bob,” Alice said softly, and bent to offer a hand, which Bob smelled. Then Alice stroked the silky head. “Nice boy.”

“Girl,” he corrected. “Bob’s a girl.”

She blinked at him.

“Mr. Parks said if Johnny Cash could have a boy named Sue, he could have a girl dog named Bob.”

“He’s got a point,” she agreed. She ruffled Bob’s fur affectionately. “You’re a beaut, Bob,” she told the dog.

“She really is. Best cattle dog in the business, and she can get into places in the brush that we can’t, on horseback, to flush out strays.”

“Do you come from a ranching family?” she asked absently as she stroked the dog.

“Actually I didn’t know much about cattle when I went to work for Mr. Parks. He had one of his men train me.”

“Wow. Nice guy.”

“He is. Dangerous, but nice.”

She lifted her head at the use of the word and frowned slightly. “Dangerous?”

“Do you know anything about Eb Scott and his outfit?”

“The mercenary.” She nodded. “We all know about his training camp down here. A couple of our officers use his firing range. He made it available to everyone in law enforcement. He’s got friends in our department.”

“Well, he and Mr. Parks and Dr. Micah Steele were part of a group who used to make their living as mercenaries.”

“I remember now,” she exclaimed. “There was a shoot-out with some of that drug lord Lopez’s men a few years ago!”

“Yes. I was in it.”

She let out a breath. “Brave man, to go up against those bozos. They carry automatic weapons.”

“I noticed.” That was said with a droll expression worth a hundred words.

She searched his eyes with quiet respect. “Now, I really want to see the justice of the peace. I’d be safe anywhere.”

He laughed. “I’m not that easy. You haven’t even brought me flowers, or asked me out to a nice restaurant.”

“Oh, dear.”

“What?”

“I don’t get paid until Friday, and I’m broke,” she said sorrowfully. She made a face. “Well, maybe next week? Or we could go dutch…”

He chuckled with pure delight. “I’m broke, too.”

“So, next week?”

“We’ll talk about it.”

She grinned. “Okay.”

“Better get your van going,” he said, holding out a palm-up hand and looking up. “We’re going to get a rain shower. You could be stuck in that soft sand when it gets wet.”

“I could. See you.”

“See you.”

She took off running for the van. Life was looking up, she thought happily.

Harley went back to the ranch house with Bob racing beside his horse. He felt exhilarated for the first time in years. Usually he got emotionally involved with girls who were already crazy about some other man. He was the comforting shoulder, the listening ear. But Alice Jones seemed to really like him.

Of course, there was her profession. He felt cold when he thought about her hands working on dead tissue. That was a barrier he’d have to find some way to get past. Maybe by concentrating on what a cute woman she was.

Cy Parks was outside, looking over a bunch of young bulls in the corral. He looked up when Harley dismounted.

“What do you think, Harley?” he asked, nodding toward several very trim young Santa Gertrudis bulls.

“Nice,” he said. “These the ones you bought at the auction we went to back in October? Gosh, they’ve grown!”

He nodded. “They are. I brought them in to show to J. D. Langley. He’s looking for some young bulls for his own herd. I thought I’d sell him a couple of these. Good thing I didn’t have to send them back.”

Harley chuckled. “Good thing, for the seller. I remember the lot we sent back last year. I had to help you deliver them.”

“Yes, I remember,” Cy replied. “He slugged you and I slugged him.”

Harley resisted a flush. It made him feel good, that Mr. Parks liked him enough to defend him. He could hardly recall his father. It had been years since they’d had any contact at all. He felt a little funny recalling how he’d lied to his boss about his family, claiming that his mother could help brand cattle and his father was a mechanic. He’d gone to live with an older couple he knew after a fight with his real folks. It was a small ranch they owned, but only the wife lived on it. Harley had stayed in town with the husband at his mechanic’s shop most of the time. He hadn’t been interested in cattle at the time. Now, they were his life and Mr. Parks had taken the place of his father, although Harley had never put it into words. Someday, he guessed, he was going to have to tell his boss the truth about himself. But not today.

“Have any trouble settling the steers in their new pasture?” Cy asked.

“None at all. The forensic lady was out at the river.”

“Alice Jones?”

“Yes. She said sometimes she likes to look around crime scenes alone. She gets impressions.” He smiled. “I helped her with an idea about how the murder was committed.”

Parks looked at him and smiled. “You’ve got a good brain, Harley.”

He grinned. “Thanks.”

“So what was your idea?”

“Maybe the victim was here to see somebody and got ambushed.”

Parks’s expression became solemn. “That’s an interesting theory. If she doesn’t share it with Hayes Carson, you should. There may be somebody local involved in all this.”

“That’s not a comforting thought.”

“I know.” He frowned as he noted the gun and holster Harley was wearing. “Did we have a gunfight and I wasn’t invited?”

“This?” Harley fingered the butt of the gun. “Oh. No! There were some local boys trying to harass Alice. I strapped it on for effect and went to help her, but she’d already sent them running.”

“Threatened to call the cops, huh?” he asked pleasantly.

“She invited them to her van to look at bodies,” he said, chuckling. “They left tread marks on the highway.”

He grinned back. “Well! Sounds like she has a handle on taking care of herself.”

“Yes. But we all need a little backup, from time to time,” Harley said.

Cy put a hand on Harley’s shoulder. “You were mine, that night we had the shoot-out with the drug dealers. You’re a good man under fire.”

“Thanks,” Harley said, flushing a little with the praise. “You’ll never know how I felt, when you said that, after we got home.”

“Maybe I do. See about that cattle truck, will you? I think it’s misfiring again, and you’re the best mechanic we’ve got.”

“I’ll do it. Just don’t tell Buddy you meant it,” he pleaded. “He’s supposed to be the mechanic.”

“Supposed to be is right,” Cy huffed. “But I guess you’ve got a point. Try to tell him, in a nice way, that he needs to check the spark plugs.”