Lone Star Lonely (4 page)

Kirsten wanted to know why Adam was coming
along to El Paso. But she didn’t ask. She didn’t see Lash Monroe
anywhere, so she assumed the deputy was unavailable and Adam was
filling in. But in that case, Adam should be back at the office,
manning the phones and holding down the fort, shouldn’t he?

Right. As if any calls were likely to come
in. In a town as small as Quinn, Garrett could probably work once a
week and keep up with the load. And the rest of the county was even
quieter. Most of the time.

No one spoke in the giant-sized pickup.
Garrett drove, his ten-gallon hat shading his eyes from the
brilliant sun. She’d been relegated to the center spot, and Adam
was wedged in beside her, his smaller, sexier Stetson hat shadowing
his face so she couldn’t see his eyes. Couldn’t tell what he might
be thinking or feeling. He was touching her. Not liking it, she
imagined, but touching her. His thigh pressed up against hers, and
she could feel the warmth seeping from the flesh under his black
trousers to the flesh under her white leggings.

She’d missed that kind of warmth for a long
time. Then she’d stopped missing it. It was something she’d learned
to do without. Which, she supposed, would come in real handy should
she wind up spending the rest of her life in some prison cell.

That wouldn’t happen, though. She would be
okay. Garrett had called Joseph’s lawyer, Madden Hawkins, and the
old man had agreed to meet them at the El Paso rangers’ station.
Nobody was going to arrest her, she thought. Not yet, anyway.
Because once they saw the will, they would realize she had no
motive.

None that they would know of. Kirsten did
have motive, though. Her husband had blackmailed her into marrying
him, had held her deepest secret, her most private nightmare, over
her head for all this time. She’d been more prisoner than wife. And
she’d wished Joseph Cowan dead a thousand times. But they wouldn’t
know that.

Not if she didn’t tell.

She glanced at Adam and swallowed her regret.
He’d lived without knowing the truth for this long. Maybe he didn’t
need to know. Maybe no one would ever need to know. It was a huge
relief to realize that the one person who could expose her for what
she’d done long ago was dead. And no one else knew. No one else
ever would.

Adam’s thigh moved slightly against hers.
Heat and friction. Desire slammed her in the belly so hard she lost
her breath.

No! Not now. Not anymore.
That part of
her was dead and buried. Especially where Adam was concerned.

She looked up at him. He was looking back at
her. Her lips were dry, her face hot.

“It’s gonna be okay,” he said, and damned if
he didn’t sound like the same sweet cowboy she’d been in love with
a hundred years ago, instead of the bitter, urban businessman he’d
become.

“I know it is.” Stupid reply. She should have
said, “I thought you hated my guts. Best keep right on hating them,
Adam.” But no. No Brand alive would treat a woman badly when she
was facing this kind of trouble. Not even when that woman was
her.

Hawkins was at the station when they arrived,
gray suit impeccable, white hair unruly. He had a quiet dignity
about him that Kirsten had always liked. A dignity that showed
through even here, in a dingy, cluttered office with papers and
files and empty foam cups strewn over every available inch of
space. Wastebaskets overflowed; a watercooler gurgled; coffee rings
marred manila folders and typed sheets. Uniformed men and women
bumped and brushed one another as they hurried back and forth. In
the midst of it all, Hawkins stood. Like a throwback to Mark Twain.
A sweet Southern gentleman, an aging cavalier. He sent her a gentle
smile that was condolence, affection and encouragement all at once,
even before he made his way amid crisscrossing bodies toward her.
She trusted him, even though he had been Joseph’s attorney since
the dawn of time, as far as she knew. She trusted him because he’d
been her father’s friend, even before all of that. And he still
visited her dad in that Dallas nursing home every chance he got.
That made him trustworthy in her book. Anyone who loved her
father….

“Hello, Kirsten,” he said, clasping her hands
in his powder-soft, wrinkled ones. “Are you all right?” His pale
blue eyes were dull. He smelled of camphor.

“I’ve been better, Madden.”

He looked past her, nodded to Garrett, then
looked puzzled as he recognized Adam.

“Right in here, folks,” a ranger called, and
he held open a door. Beyond it she could see a dim room, a bare
table, a couple of hard-looking chairs.

She swallowed hard, took a step forward. Adam
moved up beside her and fell into step. And for a second it felt
incredibly reassuring to let herself think he would be in that
little interrogation room with her. Then she asked herself what the
hell she was doing.

A cop slapped a hand on Adam’s shoulder.
“Just the lady and her lawyer,
amigo
.”

Adam stopped, and for just a second, he met
her eyes. He drew his gaze away so quickly she almost couldn’t read
what was going on in his mind. And then it clicked into place, and
she blinked in surprise. It was a question she’d glimpsed in his
eyes just now. He wanted to know if he should insist on coming in
there with her. Fight his way in, if need be. And she knew he
would, if she so much as nodded an affirmation. He’d get in, too.
There were two Brand men in this station, not one alone. Garrett
would back his brother up, right or wrong, the way one Brand always
backed another one up no matter what. And against two determined
Brands, this station full of Texas Rangers wouldn’t stand a
chance.

She had no right to ask for their help or
their support. Not after what she’d done to them. And letting
herself get dependent on any Brand now—especially Adam—would be a
huge mistake.

She spoke to Adam, drawing his gaze back to
hers again. “I’ve been looking out for myself for a long time now,
Adam. I’ll be fine.” He didn’t look convinced. She could have
kicked herself for leaning on him, even a little bit. Hell, if she
started looking like a lady in distress, he would get the idea it
was time to mount up and come to the rescue. She knew him too well.
“Besides,” she added in as cool a tone as she could manage, “this
really isn’t your problem.”

“Or my business, right?” he asked,
interpreting her words just the way she’d wanted him to.

“You said it. I didn’t.”

Madden Hawkins took her elbow in a gentle
grip and escorted her into the room. She sat down at the empty
table and glanced toward the door just before it closed. Adam stood
there looking at her, his brows bent. But the frown wasn’t angry.
It was puzzled, curious, searching. And that was not good.

Adam paced. Garrett caught him on one of his
repetitive trips back and forth across the width of the station’s
makeshift waiting room—a cubicle with three plastic chairs and a
coffeepot—and stopped him by stepping into his path.

“So, this is…what? Your impression of a
fellow being completely over the woman who jilted him? The one he
claims he doesn’t even like?”

Adam stopped pacing and looked up at his
brother. “Being over her doesn’t mean I want to see her railroaded
if she’s innocent.”

“Hell, Adam, I don’t want to see that,
either. But I’m ‘not wanting’ it from a chair by the wall, instead
of wearing a path in the floor. You wanna join me, or would you
rather keep the boys in the other room guessing?”

Adam glanced through the glass. Several
rangers quickly looked away and made themselves busy, but it was
obvious they’d been watching him. Probably found it interesting
that the brother of a local sheriff was so wrought up about their
number-one suspect in a murder. A big murder. The murder of a Texas
millionaire.

“Do you think she did it?” Adam asked his
brother, ignoring the speculative eyes in the next room, carefully
avoiding Garrett’s question as well as his implication.

“Hell, no,” Garrett answered without missing
a beat. Then he frowned. “Do you?”

Adam didn’t think she’d done it, but he
wasn’t sure if that was because he knew her so well, and knew she
was incapable of murder, or because he was believing what he wanted
to believe. He didn’t quite trust his judgment where Kirsten was
concerned. After all, he’d been pretty damned wrong about her once
before.

About as wrong as a man could be.

“Do you?” Garrett persisted.

“Hell, I don’t know what to think.”

“Shoot, Adam, you know damn well Kirsten
would never kill anybody.” Garrett sounded as if he was heading
into his big-brother mode. A lecture might follow any minute now.
He’d taken on the role of father figure pretty seriously all those
years ago. On that day that still haunted Adam the way it haunted
them all. The day seventeen-year-old Garrett Brand had to tell his
kid brothers and his baby sister that their mama and daddy wouldn’t
be coming home anymore. He’d done a hell of a job, keeping them
together. Raising them. Running the ranch. A hell of a job. And if
he still saw himself as the Brand patriarch, even now that his
siblings were all grown up, that was fine by Adam.

But he could do without one of Garrett’s
lectures just now. “Do you think they’ll arrest her?” He asked the
question partly because he knew it would distract his brother.
Mostly, though, he wanted to know. The thought of Kirsten behind
bars bothered him more than it ought to. A lot more.

“Not yet. They’ll run the bullet through
ballistics first, check out Cowan’s will, question the household
staff. They’ll want to be sure they have a solid case before they
charge her with anything. Hell, she might just be the richest woman
in the seven counties before too long. They won’t want to make any
mistakes on this one.”

“Unless she was telling the truth about the
will,” Adam said. Garrett led him toward the row of chairs, and he
reluctantly sat down. “Why would he write his own wi—” Adam choked
on the word, drew a breath, started over. “Why would he write her
out of his will, Garrett?”

“I don’t have a clue.” Garrett looked him
straight in the eye. “And I don’t think you’re doin’ yourself any
good by speculating on that. Or even by being here, for that
matter. Why don’t you go on home, Adam?”

It was a damned good question. Adam just
shook his head. “I can’t.”

“Do I want to know why?”

“Hell, Garrett,
I
don’t know why.”

Garrett sighed in a way only a worried older
brother could manage. “I just hope you know what the hell you’re
doing.”

“I always know what I’m doing, don’t I?”
Right. He never acted without a plan. Without a reason. Without a
clear goal in mind, and a set plan to go about achieving it. He’d
wanted a wife, a life in Texas and enough capital to buy a ranch of
his own and convert it into the dude ranch he and Kirsten used to
dream of. He’d used his gift with numbers to get a degree, used the
degree to get decent-paying jobs at local banks, and used the jobs
to put aside the money for the ranch. He’d wooed and won the girl
of his dreams, set the wedding date and they’d been well on their
way.

Kirsten had tossed an unforeseen curveball at
him by not showing up for the wedding. It had thrown him for a
loop, but he’d recovered. His goals had changed, though. He’d
decided he didn’t want a wife or a dude ranch anymore. He wanted to
get as far from Texas as possible, and he wanted to make a lot of
money. And he set about doing both those things.

But the money hadn’t made him feel any better
about being jilted for a rich old man. And being in New York had
served only to disconnect him from his family—his lifeline. So, a
few minor adjustments and he was home again. And his goals were
again altered. He was going to stay in Quinn and start his own
business. Not a dude ranch, because that had been foolish from the
start. A nice safe business, financial planning. He would be a
consultant. He would continue making large sums of money, but he
would do it right here in Kirsten’s face. Not that her proximity
had any bearing on it. And while he was at it, he would prove to
his family—to this entire town—that he was over her.

And maybe he would prove it to himself while
he was at it.

He didn’t suppose being here with her right
now was doing a hell of a lot to further either of those last two
goals, was it?

His brother’s hand landed heavily on his
shoulder. “You want some more coffee?”

Adam glanced at the crushed foam cup in his
clenched fist. “I think I’ve had a gallon already. And the stuff is
like battery acid.” Sighing, he glanced at the door. “How much
longer can they possibly keep her in there?’’

The door opened, as if in answer to his
question. Adam met Kirsten’s eyes and felt that mule kick him in
the gut once again. She looked all in. Her face was damp, and her
sweat had thinned the makeup out so he could see through it now, to
the paleness of her skin. A few tendrils of her doe-brown hair
stuck to her forehead, and there was a wide, scared sort of look
about her eyes. The cool, collected rich-bitch routine had vanished
like a dandelion seed in a stray breeze. He glanced down at her
hands automatically. Limp at her sides. Lifeless. At least they
weren’t sporting a pair of steel cuffs.