Cowboy Secrets

“You seriously need to work on creating secure passwords,” she said with a smile. “However, work can wait until tomorrow, too,” she said, but kind of knew she’d get started on it before she fell asleep.

“This can’t wait,” Pike said and stepped close to her. Staring down into her eyes, he touched her cheek, tilted her chin up, leaned down and kissed her. His lips were vibrant and fabulous and the kiss way more impactful than she would have guessed. It took all her willpower not to pull him back when he moved a few inches away.

“Been wanting to do that since the first moment I saw you,” he said, his voice as warm as a caress.

“Me, too,” she admitted.

He kissed her briefly again. “Good night, Sierra. Sleep well.”

Sierra stripped down to her underwear and hurried under the blankets. The barn was chilly. She’d retrieved her laptop, turned it on and waited for it to boot. The bed was soft and comfortable and the pillow felt like a little cloud. The memory of Pike’s tender and unexpected kiss spread contented tendrils throughout her body. Consciousness lasted about ten more seconds before she fell asleep in the glow of the computer screen.

Chapter Four (#ulink_5da1f8d6-789b-5ed5-bfa0-6dd084b2c2c5)

Sierra woke up early to find the black cat staring at her from his perch on the nightstand. She sucked in a surprised gasp of cold air that startled the creature. He jumped to the floor and disappeared out the door and she showered and dressed quickly.

She felt rested but a little at odds. She’d been dreaming, she realized, and though she couldn’t recall the content, she did know it hadn’t been pleasant.

Her first thought was of Tess and she picked up her phone and opened her bedroom door. Then she saw the time and decided not to call yet. Instead she wandered over to the painting she’d seen the night before, the one of Pike wearing his glasses.

Kinsey had caught the intelligent glint in his eyes and the angular shape of his face. Sierra had seen each of the brothers and they were all handsome, virile men, but they were all different, too. In the past, she might have been attracted to Chance or Frankie, who each exuded a hint of wild spirit close to the surface. Pike was not usually the kind of man toward whom she gravitated. He was a serious guy with a quiet, strong core; too intense for her, or so she might once have thought. But now he occupied all the spare nooks in her mind.

She used her phone to take a picture of the painting, and then she shot another of a framed map of the Hastings ranch. The place was huge, but at last she saw where the houses were in relation to one another, where the so-called hanging tree ruled a portion of a plateau and the location of the ghost town. She was turning away when a small bronze statue of a man standing beside a horse caught her attention and she snapped a photo of that, too.

A clicking sound announced the arrival of Pike’s dog, Daisy, who seemed to be smiling as she wagged her tail. “You look like you’re going to pop pretty soon,” Sierra told the dog. Was that the first animal she’d ever addressed as though she could understand the words? Maybe.

Eventually, she started a pot of coffee and settled down on the sofa to read emails and to study the photos she’d taken at the bar.

* * *

“OUR PLANE LEAVES at six o’clock tonight,” Pike announced when he found Sierra sitting on the couch fooling with her laptop. “Do I smell coffee?”

“I put on a pot, hope you don’t mind,” she said. “Come look at something.”

He joined her on the sofa. Whatever soap she’d lathered with hadn’t been found in his shower, he was sure of that. Nothing he owned smelled quite like flowers mixed with sunshine. A pair of eyeglasses sat on the table in front of her. “I didn’t know you wore those,” Pike said.

“They’re clear glass. There’s a camera in the bridge piece.”

He smiled. “Very James Bond.”

“They work pretty good. My dad’s old cohort taught me to use them when I was a kid.”

“Was he a private eye?”

“Nope, he was Dad’s campaign advisor, Rolland Bean. Everyone called him Rollo.”

“Was your dad in politics?”

“He was on the city council. Then he ran for mayor of Dusty Lake, New Jersey, and lost in a landslide. Rollo and his creepy son, Anthony, kind of disappeared after that.”

He smiled at her and leaned in closer. There was a smile twitching her lips as she spoke and he wasn’t sure if it was because of old memories or the fact they were mere inches apart. “Why do you say his son was creepy? Creepy in what way?”

“Hmm. Well, his eyes were two different colors. One brown, one gray, which was kind of cool, but he was always lurking around, buttering up the adults, you know, then acting superior to the kids. And he was sneaky mean.” She fussed with the machine and brought up two photos on the screen. “Tell me what you see.”

“A man in two different places,” he said. One photo showed a guy standing at a counter, looking back over his shoulder. The other one showed the same guy sitting in low light. “Who is he?”

“The one ordering coffee is Spiro Papadakis. He’s the husband of the wealthy client I told you about.”

“The one who wants to protect her money in a divorce,” he said.

“That’s right. A day or two before, Savannah—she’s my client—hired me. Her girlfriend swore she saw Spiro at a New Jersey bar with the woman in this picture. It so happened the girlfriend knew the woman he was with because they’d worked together at a junior college a few years back. Savannah didn’t want me to follow Spiro because she was afraid he’d make my tail and use that against her, so I opted to follow the woman. The first night she went to a retro disco place in New York City, met a guy there and flirted like crazy. I finally left when they did. She went to his place and since he was twenty years too young to be Spiro, I went home. They were so hot and heavy with each other that I thought for sure the girlfriend had been mistaken, maybe not about Spiro but about Natalia. Anyway, the next night Natalia drove out to Dusty Lake, New Jersey, and went into Tony’s Tavern, which is the same place the girlfriend saw her at a few days before. Natalia waited there for the man who looked like Spiro to show up. It seemed I had everything I needed until I heard the guy speak. Spiro is Greek and by all accounts has a pretty distinct accent. The guy in the bar sounded like a longshoreman. I thought I struck out.”