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mansion,
was famous around the county as a man of few words and mighty intimidation, and
as someone who could look cool as a cucumber in a full suit, fedora and signet
ring even on the hottest of days.
    Some said money gave him power; others said vice versa.
Valerie figured it was just another chicken-and-egg thing to ponder.
    “Not that I care,” the girl quickly tacked on, “because I
don’t. Just wondering.”
    Valerie maneuvered the Chrysler into the wide brick
driveway beside her quad-cab truck and hadn’t even braked to a complete stop
before Lucy swept up her belongings and shot out of the car toward the mudroom
entrance at the side of the house.
    “The only way we can get through this mess is together,”
she whispered as she exited the car, but Lucy was already gone.
    She paused to deeply inhale the smell of flowers and rain
and hay. A horn beeped and she waved as Cordelia’s Audi V8 pulled up on the
other side of the truck. Cordelia called the silver sedan her first impulse buy
since the Chinese yin-yang tattoo she’d gotten in college, but Valerie knew her
cousin and her husband had spent years saving up for a set of luxury wheels.
    “Are you trying to
get soaked to the bones out here?” Cordelia dared a glance at the thick
overcast as she linked arms with Valerie and started jogging in the direction
Lucy had gone.
    “Just needed a moment, you know?”
    “Understood.” In the mudroom Cordelia made quick work of
shedding her wide-brimmed hat and knee-high leather boots. “So …” she craned
her neck as if checking for eavesdroppers, which could have been only Lucy
since Cordelia’s mother, Dinah, was visiting friends in Montana and wouldn’t be
back until the following morning “… why the cloak-and-dagger? Usually getting
you to let Luce spend the night away even for a soccer tournament takes a lot
of arm-twisting.”
    Valerie crouched to organize the rain-dampened boots,
scarf and umbrella her daughter had left in a heap near the door. Then she
picked up a throw pillow from the wooden bench just to have something warm, dry
and comforting to hold. “Lucy’s father is here.”
    “Are—are you kidding me?”
    She wished she could kid about something like this. “He’s coming to the ranch in a couple of
hours. Lucy doesn’t want to see him, but he and I obviously need to talk, so ….”
    “No, I get it.” Cordelia studied her closely, concern
swimming in her green eyes. They’d first met during the reading of Uncle Rhys’s
will ten years ago, when Valerie had learned he’d left his entire ranch to
her—no doubt out of spite toward his estranged wife and children. How they’d
wound up becoming Valerie’s friends when they had an arsenal of reasons to
resent her still baffled her from time to time. “Val, are you holding up okay?”
    “I have to,” was the most honest answer. She set the
pillow down and led the way to the kitchen. While Valerie rubbed her hair with
a dish towel, Cordelia hunted up a wineglass and selected a bottle of wine from
the built-in cabinet in the marble-topped island. “Aren’t you more of an
ice-cold beer person, Cordelia?”
    “Yes. This is for you.”
    “No, thanks. I should probably keep a clear head
tonight.” She eased onto a stool and gazed at the bowl of cherry tomatoes in
front of her while her cousin put away the glass and wine. “He’s Peyton, but
he’s different. ”
    “Older, you mean.” Cordelia hopped onto the island and
crossed one leg over the other. In skinny jeans, a white tank and a
hunter-green sweater with too-long sleeves, and with her dark hair hanging
loose, she seemed more like a teenager than a ranch hand with her fortieth
birthday creeping around the corner. Time often changed a person’s looks—and
Peyton was no different, with harder lines to his face and more muscle to his
body—but there was something unfamiliar and altered about him that probably had
nothing to do with aging.
    “Of course older. But something