Susan Kearney - Out For Justice

Kelly shrugged. “Yeah. And he gave me a patronizing hug and told me he would look into my suspicions. Then I asked Paul Lambert what Andrew had been working on, and he just patted me on the head and told me the work was confidential. I don’t know how you investigate your stories. People don’t take me seriously.”

“That’s because you’re…”

Kelly raised a perfectly arched brow. “What?”

“Polite.”

“There’s nothing wrong with good manners.”

Except that six weeks after Andrew’s death, Kelly had no more answers than she’d had the morning she’d been told he’d died. But she was determined to find out exactly what had happened that night. She just wasn’t sure how to go about investigating.

However, Cara did know, and Kelly would eventually learn from her friend how to obtain the information she desired. Kelly might be polite but she knew how to get around Cara. “So you studied investigative journalism. Where should I start? What should I do? How should I act? What should I wear?”

Cara rubbed her forehead. “What if there’s nothing to find? Can you live with that?”

Kelly stood, appreciating her height that allowed her to look down on her shorter friend. Andrew might have called Kelly short-stuff because she was a good eight inches shorter than his six-foot-two, but now she looked down her nose and used her most charming grin on Cara. “I just want to find out the truth. You of all people should understand.”

“Of course I do, but… Look, Kelly. It’s like this. While I was working for the high school newspaper on that exposé of the football coach and the school secretary, you were the head cheerleader. And in college—”

“Hey, I studied damn hard.”

“I know you did, sweetie. Maybe you could investigate the society page or the travel section or—”

“Give advice to the rich and famous?”

“Exactly.”

Kelly fisted her hands on her hips, careful not to wrinkle her silk blouse. “So you think all I can investigate is fluff?”

“If the hat fits…”

“…I’d wear it only if it were in style. But so what if I like fashion and gossip. That doesn’t mean I didn’t love my brother enough to find out what happened to him. Are you going to help me or not?”

Cara nodded. “I just don’t want to see you hurt even more, but the last time I saw you this determined was the day you took your LSAT’s.” Cara looked her up and down, frowning at Kelly’s elegant blouse and frilly, ladylike skirt that ended at midcalf. “I’d say a trip to the mall is our first stop.”

“IF ANYTHING HAPPENS to me, look after short-stuff.” Andrew’s words reverberated in Wade Lansing’s mind as he walked down Main Street and spied Kelly McGovern.

Kelly looked different from the out-of-his-class woman that she always presented to the world. Instead of the feminine silk blouses and lacy skirts or designer dresses she favored, she was wearing jeans, boots and a tucked in blouse with a blazer. She’d done something to her standard shoulder-length blond hair, pulling it back softly with a clip that showed off her blue eyes and model cheekbones.

Wade wished he’d questioned Andrew more fully during the short phone conversation the night of his friend’s death, but the bar had been packed and he’d been shy two waitresses. Still, he’d taken the time to ask Andrew why he thought anything might happen to him, but Andrew had told him it was probably nothing.

Nothing, my ass.

Andrew wasn’t prone to panic or exaggeration. He’d stumbled onto something he shouldn’t have and it had gotten him killed. And as much as Wade had liked and respected Andrew, his friend had grown up protected from the harsher side of life. Andrew trusted people, whereas Wade did not. Andrew always gave people the benefit of the doubt. Wade expected the worst, so he didn’t need evidence to listen to his gut, which told him Andrew had been murdered. He’d been around trouble too many times not to trust his instincts.

As a kid, those instincts warned him to hide on Saturday nights so that his drunk father couldn’t find him until he sobered up. The few times he’d forgotten to hide had taught Wade to never let down his guard. He had few friends, but Andrew had been a good one, and Wade owed him more than one favor.

Besides, watching Kelly’s back and cute little bottom was certainly no hardship. With her long slender legs, she should wear jeans more often. She’d always been attractive in that don’t-touch-me-I’m-off-limits-to-the-likes-of-you kind of way, which he’d accepted out of respect for Andrew. But today she actually looked approachable—if he could discount her five-hundred-dollar boots and the designer bag she’d slung over her saucy shoulder.

The sight of Kelly’s new look not only reminded Wade of his promise to his friend but had his instincts screaming. He and Kelly didn’t patronize the same kinds of establishments or reside in the same part of town. Kelly probably hung out in Dallas’s or Fort Worth’s fanciest malls or perhaps at Mustang Valley’s finest steak house, but he’d rarely seen her on grounds he considered his turf. And why was she walking instead of driving her spiffy new Jag? What the hell was she up to?

His curiosity aroused, he followed her down Main Street past the post office and the pharmacy, keeping his distance and a few shoppers between them, considering possible destinations. Kelly didn’t date guys from this side of town. She picked proper and preppie college boys with impeccable credentials and a family history as tony as her own. She’d only visited his saloon once to pull Andrew home during a family emergency. He recalled how out-of-place she’d looked in her lacy skirt and soft, sophisticated blouse, and yet she hadn’t hesitated to enter his rowdy bar alone, shoulder past several inebriated cowboys to demand that her brother accompany her to the hospital. Her granddaddy had had a stroke. She’d looked sassy and sad then, letting neither Andrew’s drunken state nor his lost cause of the moment, who’d been clinging to her brother’s arm, deter Kelly from her task.

On the sidewalk in front of Wade, Kelly suddenly spun around and made a bee-line straight at him with that same determined pout of her lips that he so vividly remembered from years ago.

He braced for a confrontation. “Hey, short-stuff. What’s up?”

“Don’t call me that, please.”

Kelly was always ultrapolite, but with him she usually sounded so irritated that she couldn’t quite hide that annoyance. In return, he couldn’t help feeling gratified that he was getting under that Cosmo girl skin. Maybe it was a remnant from his teenage years, but he loved bringing out the spark that she kept so carefully controlled. Watching her suppress all those simmering passions, he cocked one hand on his hip and pulled off her sunglasses.

She maintained a cool, superior tone, but vexation and perhaps a gleam of fury shined in her vivid baby-blues. “What are you doing?”

“I’ve missed your gorgeous green eyes,” he teased.

“They’re blue.” She snatched back her sunglasses, her pretty polished pink nails shimmering in the sunlight. “Are you trying to distract me from the fact that you’re following me?”

Ah, she might look like a fairy princess, even in those hip-hugging jeans, but she had a brain almost as sharp as Andrew’s. Wade reminded himself not to get so caught up in the glisten of her lip gloss that he underestimated her. “You caught me in the act.”

She chuckled, her lips absolutely adorable and way-too-appealingly kissable. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

If she was trying to embarrass him with the memory of her walking up to the car her brother had lent him and her getting an eyeful of him and Mary Jo Lacy in the back seat, she wouldn’t succeed. Of the three of them, she’d been the embarrassed one. Funny, he could barely recall Mary Jo’s expression, but Kelly’s had been a sight to behold. Her blush had started at her shapely chest, risen up her delicate neck, flowered over her cheeks and forehead. Her teenage-innocent eyes had widened in surprise before her lips had parted into a big round O.