Royal Protector

“She stayed here at the house?”

“I insisted on it!” Mo informed him. “She said she’d be fine in her cabin, but I wouldn’t hear of it, not with that maniac still on the loose! You haven’t caught him, have you?”

Lucas shook his head.

“Hmm. Well, then I’m glad I made her stay here. Although I don’t think she slept much. I got up to check on Pop around two this morning and noticed the light in her room was still on.”

Mo offered to warm up his coffee, but Lucas refused. “You could at least sit down and have a cinnamon roll while you’re waiting for her.”

Mo’s cinnamon rolls were legendary, but this morning Lucas wasn’t even tempted. It was all he could do to keep from charging up the stairs and dragging Lexie Dale out of bed. “Thanks, but I’ll grab something later in town.”

“I’ll have some of those cinnamon rolls,” Tucker volunteered.

“There’s another big surprise,” Mo said as she placed the pan in the middle of the long, pine table. “I’m surprised you manage to survive on what passes for food down at The Timbers. Why, sometimes I swear I can taste the grease just walking past the front door of that place.”

Cal walked into the kitchen and nodded a greeting toward Lucas and Tucker. “What’s wrong with The Timbers?” he asked as he reached for a mug and filled it with coffee.

“Yeah,” Tucker said as he swallowed a bite of cinnamon roll. “I’m healthy enough, and I eat most all my meals there.”

Mo snorted. “Well, I suppose the food at The Timbers is good enough for a man with beef jerky for taste buds and a brain the size of a pinto bean.”

“I’d be happy to make some other arrangement,” Tucker offered. “You know, Mo, I’ve always said you were the best cook in Bluff County.”

“Not in your wildest dreams.” She slammed a cast-iron skillet onto the stovetop and began cracking eggs into it. “You’re doggone lucky there’s a place like The Timbers for the likes of you. No woman in her right mind would agree to sign on to cook and clean up after you, old man.”

Tucker might have responded with a barb of his own, but his mouth was full. He polished off one cinnamon roll and reached for another.

“But it’s different for you, Lucas.” Mo seized a spatula and attacked the eggs with short quick movements that were almost vicious. “At thirty-two years old, in the prime of your life, you ought to be eating breakfast at home, at your own table, with your wife and kids around you. At your age, most men—”

“And speaking of breakfast,” Cal cut in. “I’m half starved.”

Mo muttered something unintelligible under her breath and turned back to her cooking.

Lucas drank his coffee and congratulated himself for resisting the urge to remind his sister that she, herself, had never seen fit to marry. More than a dozen years ago, she’d been engaged to the much-maligned Tucker Oates, but it turned out that they were better as bickering companions than as husband and wife. Theirs was a pure love-hate relationship. Below the surface, Mo and Tucker cared deeply for each other, always had, but they couldn’t be in the same room for more than five minutes before the verbal dueling began.

That wasn’t the kind of relationship Lucas wanted. He knew some might consider him too picky, but he still hadn’t met that special someone to whom he wanted to make a lifetime commitment. It wasn’t that he had anything against commitment, or marriage, for that matter. On the contrary. If anything, his estimation of the institution was probably unrealistically high. But that was to be expected, he supposed, having been raised by parents who shared the kind of relationship about which love songs were written.

“Well?” Tucker said. “Aren’t you going to interrogate me?”

Lucas had already heard Mo’s version, and he didn’t expect that Tucker had anything new to add. Still, it never hurt to be thorough. “All right. Tell me about yesterday afternoon, Tucker.”

“Mo’s new pup had run off, and she needed an extra pair of eyes to look for him. So, I volunteered for the job on account of I’m pretty good at finding things. We were driving up on Summit Trail when…”

He droned on. If there was one thing Tucker liked more than Mo’s cooking, it was telling a story. No one could spin a yarn like Tucker, with just the right twists and turns. The problem was figuring out where the truth stopped and Tucker’s embellishments started.

Half-heartedly, Lucas listened to the complicated tale of how Mo and Tucker found the body of Hugh Miller and rescued Lexie.

“We were almost back to the ranch,” Tucker said, “when I realized I’d seen her before.”

“Who?” If anyone else had been talking, Lucas would have been all over them with questions, but Tucker’s imagination was nearly as big as his appetite. “Are you saying that you’ve met Lexie before?”

“Well, it isn’t that I’ve met her—not in person, you understand. But she looks so darned familiar. I’d swear I’ve seen that gal’s face before. Didn’t I say so, Mo? Right after we found her?”

“You know I don’t listen to half of what you babble on about,” Mo replied.

“I said ‘That young lady is pretty enough to be a movie star.”’ He tapped the front page of The Exposé where banner headlines screamed about some starlet’s latest hairstyle and aliens landing in Central Park. “You all make fun of me for keeping up with the world news, but I’m beginning to think that’s where I’ve seen her, right here in these pages. If I could only remember when…” He began to flip back to the front page.

Lucas shook his head. He wasn’t in the mood for this kind of nonsense when there was a murderer at large. “You want me to believe that a woman who’s staying in one of Mo’s rental cabins is some sort of celebrity?”

“I’d bet good money on it, Lucas,” he said, coming to his feet. “I know I’ve seen a picture of that little gal somewhere.”

“Sure,” Cal put in. “And maybe she brought a couple of those Central Park aliens with her to Colorado.”

Mo chuckled appreciatively. “Or maybe she’s one of those miraculous women who’s a hundred and fifty years old but doesn’t look a day over twenty-five.”

“Go ahead and laugh,” Tucker said as he grabbed another cinnamon roll and headed for the kitchen door. “But you know what they say, fact is stranger than fiction, my friends. Just take ol’ Tucker’s word on that.”

Lucas gave little credence to Tucker’s declaration, but he had to admit that the idea that a rich and famous woman choosing Destiny Canyon as a vacation spot made more than a little sense. True, there were few amenities, certainly not the hot and cold running servants that a celebrity might require, but the remote mountain location would afford privacy.

If Lexie Dale was famous—or even infamous—maybe that would explain why she’d gone so far out of her way to find this place. And it might also explain the motive behind the abduction attempt. So, who was she? And how had she learned about Destiny Canyon Ranch in the first place?

The need to question her nagged at him even harder. He took a last swig of coffee. “Well, I’d better go talk to our guest and find out for myself if there’s any truth to what Tucker said.”

“You’re not going to wake that girl, are you?” Mo asked, her disapproval ringing in every word.

“Only if she’s still asleep,” he said.

Before Mo could stop him, Lucas strode out the kitchen door and across the pine-paneled great room, toward the wide, hardwood staircase.

At the second-floor landing, he made a right and walked past the door to his father’s room to the guest room at the end of the hallway. He raised his hand to knock, when the door behind him opened slowly.

“Mo? Honey, is that you?”

Lucas turned around and walked back to where his father stood in the doorway. “Morning, Pop. How’re you feeling today?”

“Not too bad for the shape I’m in.”

The specialists had said Will wouldn’t make it through another Colorado winter, but Doc Rogers said he wouldn’t put it past Will Garrett to live a hundred years just to spite them. Lucas was less optimistic. Ever since his mother died five years ago, his father had been going downhill. Without the love of his life beside him, Will just didn’t seem to have the heart to go on.

“Lots of excitement around here yesterday,” Will said. “I suppose you’ve got your hands full with this homicide investigation.”

“Seems like,” Lucas confirmed. “But I don’t want you worrying about it, Pop. Everything’s going to be all right. I’m going to catch this guy before anyone else gets hurt.”

“I’m not worried,” Will said. “I know you’re going to do whatever it takes to bring him in. This county is lucky to have you on the case, son. I just hope that sweet little blonde is going to be all right.” He cocked his head in the direction of the guest room down the hall.

“Then, you’ve met Miss Dale?”

“Lexie?” Will smiled and for an instant, his eyes seemed less tired. “Oh yes. Last night, around midnight, I was coming back from the bathroom and stopped to rest a spell on the window seat. She asked if there was anything she could do to help me and I invited her to sit and chat a while.”