Read Outlaw Mountain for Free Online Page B

was going on, even though she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. “Why are you worried about whether or not that was Butch?” she asked.
    Jenny shrugged and said nothing.
    “Come on,” Joanna urged. “Give.”
    “I just need to talk to him, that’s all.”
    “What about?”
    “I can’t tell you,” Jenny replied. “It’s a secret. Girl Scout’s honor.”
    The lack of an answer bothered Joanna, but she tried to let it go. “All right, then,” she said. “If it’s Scout’s honor, I won’t try to pry it out of you. But it’s getting late. You’d best scoot off to bed.”
    Jenny stood up. “Okay,” she said. “But when Butch gets here, have him come talk to me.”
    “Only if you’re still awake,” Joanna said. “If you’re already asleep, it’ll have to wait until morning.”
    “Sadie, Tigger, come on,” Jenny ordered. “Let’s go to bed.”
    Obediently, both dogs got up and padded after Jenny into her bedroom. Long after the bedroom door had closed, Joanna sat there thinking about what had been said.
    What kind of secret? she wondered. Everybody seemed to have secrets these days. The topper still had to be her mother, Eleanor Lathrop, hauling off and marrying Dr. George Winfield, Cochise County’s new medical examiner, without saying a word to her daughter in advance of the nuptials. Even though Joanna had come to see that Eleanor and George were blissfully happy, she still wasn’t over that initial sense of betrayal. Now she couldn’t help wondering what kind of conspiracy Jenny was cooking up with Butch Dixon and what emotional traps would be laid for Joanna in the process.
    She had gone just that far in her thinking when Butch’s new Subaru Outback drove into the yard. Rather than risk having the dogs start barking in Jenny’s room, Joanna opened the bedroom door to let Tigger and Sadie out. A quick check of Jenny proved she was already sound asleep.
    Pulling on her jacket against the November chill, Joanna hurried outside. With the dogs on her heels, she met Butch at the gate. Using one hand to fend off an ecstatic greeting from the two pooches, he drew Joanna into a quick embrace and gave her a glancing kiss on the cheek.
    “Nothing like a couple of dogs and a good woman to make a guy feel at home.”
    “Be quiet and come inside,” she said. “It’s too cold to stand around out here making jokes.”
    Butch followed Joanna into the kitchen. With his shaved head and stocky build, Butch looked far older than his chronological age of thirty-six. “Where’s Jenny?” he asked.
    “Asleep.”
    That announcement caused Butch to gather Joanna in his arms once more for a far more serious kiss. By mutual agreement, when Jenny was around, both Butch and Joanna consciously limited displays of affection. And since that one weekend in August when Jenny had been off in Oklahoma with her grandparents, Butch had never again stayed overnight in Joanna’s house.
    Dodging out of Butch’s arms, Joanna look leftover baked potato and meatloaf from the fridge and popped them into the microwave. Then she brought out the butter, sour cream, and chopped onions.
    “Jenny wanted to talk to you,” Joanna said, as she stood watching the readout on the microwave count off the passing seconds. “I told her if you got here too late to see her tonight that the conversation would have to wait until morning.”
    “Any idea what’s on her mind?” Butch asked.
    Joanna shook her head. “I asked her, but she wouldn’t tell me. Said it’s a secret. Do you know what it is?”
    Butch shrugged. “You’ve got me,” he said.
    Joanna set a place for Butch in the breakfast nook. When she put the plate of steaming food in front of him, she slipped onto the bench beside him.
    “How was it?” she asked.
    “The auction?”
    Joanna nodded.
    “Okay. We made some money on the deal. Of course, if we’d had to pay wages for all the work we did, we wouldn’t have made a dime. The good thing is that several of the