Nicole Helm - Wyoming Cowboy Justice

Laurel Delaney would not be up for anything.

Yeah, couldn’t let himself go down that particular road. At least, not unless he was making her blush while he did it.

The door opened. Laurel stood with her notebook and pen in hand, her mouth opening to say something that was no doubt important.

Then she saw him and fury flickered across her features like a thunderstorm sweeping through the valley. “Get out of my bed, Grady.”

“You know, a woman has never ordered me out of her bed before,” he returned conversationally, crossing his ankles.

“There’s a first time for everything. Your brother’s answers are sufficient for now, but he needs to stay in town in case I have more questions, and it’s very possible he’ll still be considered a suspect if I can’t find something more concrete. But I don’t have enough on him to apply for warrants, so I suggest you do your darnedest to get through to him.”

“Will do, Deputy.”

“Now, if you aren’t out of my bed and my room in ten seconds, so I can get dressed, I will get my weapon and shoot.”

Grady folded his arms behind his head and flashed a grin at her. “Go ahead and get dressed. I don’t mind.”

She made a squeal of outrage, or maybe she was actually having an aneurysm. “You have got to be the most infuriating man alive.”

“Part of my charm.”

“I’ll claim immunity.”

“Oh, don’t tempt me to test that when I’m in your bed, princess.”

“Ten, nine, eight...” She began to count, looking at the ceiling, which he’d count as a bit of a victory, because if she wasn’t glaring at him maybe she was at least having a few inappropriate thoughts about him in her bed.

He would have been more than happy to let that countdown run out, see what she did. Would she really pull her gun on him? He doubted it. But whatever fun he was about to have was completely ruined when he heard his motorcycle engine start.

Without him anywhere near it.

Grady swore and hopped off the bed so fast the bed screeched against the hard floorboards. He ran past Laurel and out the door of her pretty little cabin and yelled after Clint’s retreating form.

“That little punk will rue the day he touched my bike.”

“Rue the day, huh?”

Grady whipped around to glare at Laurel, who was leaning against her open doorway, looking more than a little smug.

“No one, and I mean no one, touches my bike.”

“It appears he already did.”

Clint had indeed, and he would soon find out what it meant to cross Grady Carson, half brother or no half brother.

“I’ll get dressed and drive you into town. Just wait for a few minutes,” Laurel said, pushing off the doorway and stepping inside. Grady took a few steps toward the doorway, but Laurel lifted an eyebrow.

“Out here,” she added. And for the second time this morning, she slammed a door in his face.

Chapter Four

Laurel hummed to herself as she poured her coffee into her thermos. Turned out watching Grady get the crap end of the annoyance stick was quite the morning pick-me-up.

Plus, now she had a lead. It wasn’t much of one, all in all, but Clint hadn’t heard any yelling. Just murmured voices, which Laurel could safely assume meant Jason knew his murderer. Knew him and agreed to meet him in a field in the middle of nowhere.

Which meant Jason had been more than likely into something shady. So, her investigation needed to start focusing on her deceased distant relative.

It was a relief, in some ways, that it might be personal or even professional rather than random. Random was harder to solve. Random was more dangerous.

But Jason had known who killed him, there was a trail to follow, and she’d do her job to follow it.

With renewed purpose, and the image of Grady nearly losing his crap firmly in mind, Laurel slipped on her coat, hefted her bag and grabbed her thermos before heading outside.

She frowned a little when Grady was nowhere to be seen. Had he decided to walk back into town? No skin off her nose and all that, but quite the long walk in the cold when he didn’t have to.

She walked to her car parked on the side of the cabin, and that was when she saw him.

He stood with his back to her, clearly surveying the sprawl of Delaney buildings—houses, barns, stables. Shiny, glossy testaments to the wealth and success of the Delaney clan.

It shouldn’t make her uncomfortable. Her family had worked long and hard for their success, and they’d always upheld the law while they did it. She was born of sheriffs and bankers and good, upstanding people. She knew that.

But no matter how traitorous the thought, she’d always been a little jealous of the Carsons. Not their wildness by any means, but the way they treated their history. They didn’t just know the dates and the people, they lived it. Embodied it. A Carson today was not much different than a Carson one hundred years ago, she was sure.

Laurel had always felt a little disconnect at her father’s edicts of bigger, better and more when they had so much to be proud of just in who they were.

“Tell me something, princess,” Grady said, his voice something like soft. Which might have bothered her, or affected her, if she thought it was sincere. As it was, she figured he was just trying to lower her guard.

“What’s that?”

He turned slowly, those blue eyes of his direct. Sometimes she wondered if she couldn’t just see the past through them.

Get a hold of yourself, idiot .

“You don’t believe in the feud,” he said in that rusty scrape of a voice that might have made women weaker than her shiver. “So, what do you believe in?”

She didn’t need to think about it, or even look away. “Bent.”

He sighed heavily, his gaze traveling to the mountains in the distance. “I was afraid that’s what you’d say,” he muttered. “I suppose we don’t agree about the way people go about it, but I feel the same. As long as Clint’s a suspect, Bent’s at risk.”

“I agree.”

“So, I’m going to help you.”

Laurel frowned. “I don’t need your help, Grady. This is my job.”

“And if everything Clint says is true, that relative of yours was in some shady business that got him killed.”

Laurel’s frown deepened. She hated that he’d put that together, even if it was easy enough. Grady had good instincts, and she didn’t want to have to compliment him on them. Or anything.

“And, baby, you don’t know a thing about shady. But I do.”

“What are you going to do? Eavesdrop at the bar? Beat a few answers out of people? This is a police investigation.”

“I can be subtle.”

She barked out a laugh. “You’re as subtle as a Mack truck. One that nearly broke my nose.”

Grady quirked one of those smiles that, if she wasn’t careful, could make her believe there was some softness in this man. But that was utter insanity. Grady was and always had been the opposite of subtle or soft.

“I can listen. I can put out a few feelers. I can do it all without anyone raising an eyebrow. It’s the beauty of owning a saloon.”

“Bar,” Laurel muttered. But she didn’t get the rise out of Grady she expected.

“This is my brother we’re talking about, Laurel.”

Her first name. Not princess , not Delaney. Just her first name.

“Okay,” she said carefully, because even though she knew she shouldn’t let it get to her, it did. If the positions were reversed, if one of her siblings were in trouble... Well, she’d probably break a few laws. Who was she to think Grady couldn’t uphold a few to save his brother? And Bent. “But you’d have to promise me, really, honestly promise, that we do this my way. If there’s a murderer out there, I have to be able to build a case on him. One with evidence, and no questions as to the validity of that evidence. Or a murderer gets away.” She refused to entertain that thought, but Grady had to.