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couldn’t have dinner with her favorite author. And yet, as Cormac approached, she felt her legs turn to Jell-O.
    It was all she could do to stand up and start towards him, determined to intercept Cormac before he reached their table. “Hey.” She greeted him with a sunny smile. “Small world.”
    He hesitated a moment before kissing her cheek. “It is in this part of the country,” he said, glancing past her, gaze locked on Shane. “Is that Swan you’re with?”
    “Swan?” She repeated, brow creasing.
    He sighed. “Shane Swan.”
    “Oh, yes. We’re having dinner. He’s Sean Finley. Did you know that?”
    “Yeah.” But Cormac wouldn’t return her smile. “And I’m not a fan, either. He’s trouble, Jet. You shouldn’t be out with him.”
    “Why?”
    “I can’t go into it now, but trust me. He’s bad news.”
    “I’m not sure what he’s done to earn his bad reputation, but he’s been nothing but nice to me—”
    “Did he ask you out?”
    “Yes.”
    “Has he asked you about my family?”
    Her mouth opened, closed. “Not sure what that means.”
    Cormac folded his arms across his chest. “He’s using you. He’s trying to get close to the Sheenans—”
    “Don’t you think that’s a bit presumptuous?” she interrupted. “Can an attractive man not be interested in me, for me?”
    “Yes, but that’s not what’s going on with Swan. He has an agenda—”
    “And you don’t, Cormac?”
    “No. I don’t.” He frowned down at her. “Why would you say that? We’ve never had any problem…” His voice faded and he again looked past her, expression darkening. “What did Swan tell you?”
    “About what?” She was so frustrated she wanted to stamp her foot, and she wasn’t the type to stamp a foot. She couldn’t do that in her family. The Diekerhofs had a zero tolerance policy for drama and tantrums. “I have no idea what’s going on. No one has told me anything. There’s just lots of hush-hush-hush but nothing that I can make sense of, and I’m not going to be rude to someone who has been nothing but nice to me without a really good reason.”
    Cormac took her arm and drew her from the center of the restaurant to a corridor on the side. “And he really hasn’t asked you about the Sheenans?”
    He asked the question looking hard into her eyes and she gulped a breath, heart falling. There was no way she could lie to him. That would only alienate him completely. “We did talk about Harley, but that’s because I brought her up.”
    “And he said nothing about Brock? Or any of my brothers?”
    Her unease grew. “Brock came up, too, when he said he’d never met Brock. Or Trey. Just you, Troy, and Dillon.”
    “Did he mention McKenna?”
    “No. Why?”
    “Because he’s writing a book about McKenna’s family.”
    Jet gave her head a slight shake. “But why?”
    Cormac seemed perplexed by her question. “You know about McKenna’s family?”
    “No.”
    He hesitated so long that Jet knew it was bad, whatever it was.
    “There was a home invasion on the Douglas ranch when she was a little girl,” he said gruffly. “Five members of her family were killed, including her parents, and a baby sister. The crime was never solved.”
    “Actually, I did hear about a mass murder on a ranch in Paradise Valley a long time ago—one of my students mentioned it—but I didn’t realize that it was McKenna’s family.” She hesitated, perplexed. “And you’re sure Shane’s writing about it?”
    “Yes.”
    “How do you know?”
    “Back before Christmas I was in the house and saw the dining room at the house—my family home, the place I grew up in—and he’d turned it into his study. The walls were lined with bulletin boards covered with newspaper headlines.”
    She looked away and chewed on her lower lip. She didn’t know what to say anymore.
    “He’s interviewing people, too. Asking questions. It’s not good. It’s just stirring up a lot of bad memories.” Cormac gave his