Dangerous

“Not our business,” Boone said. He picked up a brooch with a tiny painting of a beautiful little Spanish girl, in her middle to late teens by the look of her, dressed all in black with a mantilla. Her red lipstick and a red rose in her hair under the black lace mantilla were the only bright things in the miniature. Her hair was long, black and shiny. She had a tiny, strange little smile on her lips. Mysterious. He smiled, just looking at it. “I wonder who she was?” he mused aloud.

“Turn it over. Maybe there’s initials or something,” she suggested, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief.

He did. He frowned. “It’s labeled with a piece of tape. Señorita Rosa Carrera y Sinclair.” He whistled. “This was our great-grandmother, when she was first married! I should have known, but the portrait of her upstairs was painted when she was older.”

Winnie looked at it, took it from his hands and studied the lovely face. “She was very beautiful.” She laughed. “And she fought bulls with a mantilla! She must have been brave.”

“If what I remember hearing from Dad about our great-grandfather is accurate, she had to be brave.”

“Truly.” She put the brooch down and looked at the other treasures. “So many rubies,” she mused. “She must have loved them.”

“You should pick out some of those to wear,” he suggested.

She laughed. “And where would I wear expensive jewelry like this?” she chided. “I work for Jacobs County dispatch. Wouldn’t the girls have a hoot seeing me decked out in these? Shirley would fall out of her chair laughing.”

“You should get out more,” he said somberly.

She gave him a long, sad look. “I’ll never get out, now. Kilraven is leaving after Christmas,” she said. Her face fell. “I gave him the raven painting at the party. He glared at me as if I’d committed murder under his nose and stormed out without even speaking to me.” She flushed. “Nothing that ever happened to me hurt so much.”

“I thought the presents were anonymous.”

“They were. I don’t know how he knew it was me. I’ve never told him that I paint.”

“He’s a strange bird,” Boone commented. “He has feelings. Sort of like you do,” he added with a grin. “Sending backup when you thought he was going to a routine domestic fight with no weapons involved.”

She nodded. “He was furious about that, too. But it saved his life.”

“You really ought to see Cash Grier’s wife, Tippy. She has those intuitions, too.”

“She knows things,” Winnie replied. “Whatever sort of mental gift this is, I don’t have her accuracy. I just feel uncomfortable before something bad pops up. Like today,” she said quietly. “I felt sick all day. Now I know why.”

“You do look like her.” He was going to add that their mother used to have odd feelings about things that later happened, but he didn’t.

“Yes,” she said curtly. She looked at the jewelry. “I shouldn’t have been so mean. She did a good thing. But it will never make up for leaving us.”

“She knows that. She said she didn’t come for forgiveness.”

She frowned. “Why did she come?”

“She’s meeting someone.”

“A boyfriend here in Jacobs County?” she asked curtly.

“No, she said it was business.” He frowned, too. “You know, she seems to know a lot about that recent murder here.”

“Why would she?”

Boone grimaced. “I wasn’t going to tell you, but it seems our uncle may have had ties to the case.”

She let out a breath. “Oh, that’s great. Now he’s not just the man who stole our mother, he’s a murderer!”

“No, not that sort of involvement,” he replied. “I think he might have had some connection to the people involved. From what she said, he was a heavy drug user.”

“Not surprising. I never liked him,” she confessed. “He was always picking on Dad, trying to compete with him in everything. It was sort of sad to me at the time because anybody could see he wasn’t the equal of our father at business or ranching or anything else.”

“Our father had some good qualities. Hitting you like that wasn’t one of them,” he added coldly, “and if I’d known about it, I’d have knocked him through a wall!”

“I know that. It was only the one time,” she said quietly, “and he’d been drinking. It was just after he and our mother met that time, when he thought she wanted to come back. It wasn’t long after she’d gone away with our uncle. He came back home all quiet and furious, and he drank like a fish for about two months. That was when he hit me. He was sorry afterward, and he promised never to do it again. But he hated me, just the same, because I looked like her.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Me, too,” she said with a sigh. “It sort of turned me against men, at least where marriage was concerned.”

“Except with Kilraven.”

She flushed and glared at him. “He’ll probably never speak to me again, after what happened at the party. I don’t understand why he was so angry.” She sighed. “Of course, I don’t understand why I painted a raven for him, either. It’s not one of my usual subjects. I like to do flowers. Or portraits.”

“You’re very good at portraits.”

“Thanks.”

“You could have made a name for yourself as a portrait artist, even an illustrator.”

“I never had the dedication,” she replied. “I really do love my job,” she added.

“So does Keely,” he replied with an indulgent smile. “It’s not a bad thing, working when you don’t have to.”

“You’d know,” she accused, laughing. “You work harder on the ranch than your men do. That reporter for Modern Ranching World had to learn to ride a horse just to interview you about your new green technology because he could never find you unless he went out on the ranch.”

“They’re putting me on the cover,” he muttered. “I didn’t mind doing the article—I think it helps ranching’s public image. But I don’t like the idea of seeing myself looking back at me from a magazine rack.”

“You’re very good-looking,” she said. “And it is good PR. Not that you’ll ever sell the idea of humane beef cultivation to vegetarians,” she added with a chuckle.

He shrugged. “As long as people want a nice, juicy steak at a restaurant, there’s not much chance that ranchers are going to turn to raising house cattle.”

“Excuse me?”

“Well, you could put a diaper on a calf and bring him inside …”

She hit him. “I’m going to bed,” she said. “And when I get upstairs, I’m going to tell Keely what you just said.”

“No!” he wailed. “I was only kidding about it. She’d actually do it!”

She laughed. “There wouldn’t be room. Bailey’s as big as a calf.”

The old German Shepherd looked up from his comfortable doggy bed by the fireplace and wagged his tail.

“See?” she asked. “He knows he’s a calf.”