âWere you afraid tonight?â he asked.
She flashed him one of her rare smiles. âTerrified, especially when you left me. I never knew I had so much adrenaline in my body.â
He returned her smile and stood. âIâll just get out of here so you can sleep off some of that adrenaline.â
âOkay.â She walked with him to the door.
He turned to tell her good-night and she stood too close to him. Her heady scent surrounded him as he remembered holding her in his arms when theyâd danced.
He wasnât sure if he spoke her name or not, but suddenly she was in his arms and his mouth was on hers. He hadnât asked permission. He hadnât even consciously made the decision to kiss her. It had just happened.
Someplace in the back of his mind he knew it was a foolish thought, and with regret he halted the kiss and pulled back from her.
âSorry,â he said. âJust chalk it up to lingering adrenaline.â Without giving her an opportunity to reply he hurried toward his Jeep.
***
Be sure to check out the next books in this exciting miniseries:
Cowboys of Holiday Ranchâ Where sun, earth and hard work turn men into rugged cowboys ⦠and irresistible heroes!
Chapter 1
Nick Coleman needed to get drunk. Not buzzed, not loopy, but brain-dead, blackout drunk. It was the only respite he might find from the vision burned into his head of seeing Wendy Baileyâs dead body stuffed under the floorboards of an old shed on the ranch where Nick worked.
Heâd been responsible in his plan to drink himself into oblivion. Heâd contacted his good friend Chad Bene from a neighboring ranch to pick him up, bring him here to the Watering Hole and then make sure Nick got back to his bunkhouse on the Holiday Ranch safe and sound.
Chad nursed a soda while Nick motioned to the waitress for a second beer. âYou know, getting stupid drunk isnât going to change things, except that tomorrow youâre going to wake up and feel as though youâve wrestled with the biggest, meanest bull in the entire county,â Chad observed.
âBut at least maybe tonight Iâll sleep without nightmares,â Nick replied. It had been three days since Wendyâs body had been found, along with six older skeletal remains. It had been three long nights of sleep haunted by the visions of the vivacious black-haired, blue-eyed twenty-three-year-old who had blown into town two months before and instantly attached herself to Nick like an affectionate little sister.
And now she was gone...dead. According to the coroner, she had been stabbed twice in the chest. She had been murdered. If that wasnât horrific enough, Nick knew he was the prime suspect in her murder.
Janis Little, the waitress serving their small two-top table, brought Nick a fresh cold bottle of beer and gave him a quick, sympathetic pat on his shoulder before going back behind the bar to serve other awaiting customers.
At least Janis apparently didnât see him as a murderer, he thought, but that didnât take away any of the heartache and horror heâd lived with for the past couple of days. He couldnât believe that Wendy was dead. Sheâd had a light too bright to be snuffed out. He couldnât believe that anyone would have wanted to take her life.
âDillon has the whole ranch basically shut down as a crime scene area,â Nick said. He opened the beer, took a deep swallow and then continued. âHeâs actively working Wendyâs case but has called in a forensic anthropologist from Oklahoma City to help with the investigation into the seven skeletal remains. Sheâs supposed to arrive sometime next week.â
Chad shook his head. âI still canât believe all those bodies were hidden under the shed. If theyâre just skeletons, then their murders had to have happened some time ago. I wonder if Cass knew anything about them.â
âWeâll never know, since Cass is dead.â Nick took another drink, and for a few minutes the only sound was the raucous noise of the popular bar on a Friday night.
Thinking about Wendy was almost as painful as thinking about Cass Holiday. Nick had been a sixteen-year-old runaway when heâd been brought by a social worker to Cass Holidayâs sprawling ranch to work.
Over the past fourteen years, Cass had been his surrogate mother, his mentor and the best thing that had ever happened to him. Then, a little over two months ago, sheâd been killed in a tornado that had ravaged the Oklahoma countryside.