Page 12 of Dark Side of the River

The cowboy was handsome—she’d give him that. He’d always pretended he didn’t notice the way women acted around him. The thought made her smile since she didn’t believe it for a moment. Cooper knew. It was one reason why she’d done her best to ignore him, pretending that she didn’t find anything about him tempting.

Even if he hadn’t been a McKenna, she would have kept her distance. He was a heartbreaker; any fool could see that. Tilly didn’t mind tempting danger, but not when it came to her heart. Also, there was that black cloud hanging over him after his last girlfriend had either killed herself or been murdered. While the case had been closed as a suicide, there were still those people in the county who maintained it had probably been murder. A lot of people thought both the McKennas and the Staffords would get away with murder because of their standing in the county.

Cooper got to his feet as she approached. “Thanks for coming.”

“You made it sound...important and secretive.” She motioned to where he’d suggested they meet and gave him a questioning look.

“I’m probably just being paranoid, but your sister was shot, and I got the impression she was running for her life when she came racing at breakneck speed out of the trees and onto the road.”

She thought about Oakley running for her life and now fighting for it in the hospital, and had to swallow.

He motioned for her to sit and lowered himself back to the bench. She watched him stretch out his long legs and lean back. He looked even better than when he’d left, his Western shirt stretched across what appeared to be rock-hard abs, the muscles in his shoulders bunching. He was tanned, some new lines at the corners of his eyes. His dark hair was longer, curling out from the edges of his hat.

Okay, she could kind of see some of the attraction, she thought as she sat on the edge of the seat a few feet away from him and looked out at the view, rather than at the cowboy. Miles of river bottom were intersected by groves of cottonwoods before the land climbed into rugged mountains dotted with cedar and, higher up, ponderosa pines and rocky cliffs. It looked Western to her, like the old cowboy movies her mother was fond of. Maybe that was the appeal. To Tilly, it had always been home on a ranch she planned to run someday.

“I know you thought it was odd that I asked you about the name of her horse,” Cooper said, and she felt his gaze on her. “You’re sure the horse she was riding wasn’t called Buttercup?”

“Buttercup?” Tilly shook her head. “Why would you think that?”

“Because when I got to her, she was clearly in pain and under duress. She said only one word,Buttercup. I told her that her horse was fine, since that’s what I thought she was worried about. Then she repeated the word as if I should know what that meant. It doesn’t mean anything to you?”

She frowned. Buttercup? “That’s all she said?” He nodded. “I have no idea.” He looked disappointed and embarrassed, as if all this secrecy had been for nothing. “That was it?”

“All that she said.”

Tilly heard the hesitation in his voice. “But not all that happened.”

He met her gaze, holding it for a long moment before he said, “It’s probably nothing, but I heard a small plane’s engine just before your sister and her horse shot out into the road and she fell.”

That did sound like nothing since there were often small planes around these parts, most usually crop dusters.

“As I was on the ground next to my pickup with Oakley, the plane flew over really low.” He shook his head. “Like I said, it was probably nothing.”

“Unless the pilot saw the person who shot my sister,” she said.

“If he had, then he hasn’t come forward, or we would have heard,” Cooper pointed out.

“What kind of plane?” she asked.

“A blue-and-white Piper Super Cub.”

“A two-seater, so it might not have just been the pilot in the plane when it flew over,” Tilly said as she got to her feet. “There can’t be that many blue-and-white Piper Super Cubs around, right? I want to talk to that pilot and whoever might have been sitting behind him.”

“HOLDON,”Cooper said as she started down the bleacher steps with him at her heels.

“If there is even a chance that he or his passenger saw something,” she said over her shoulder, “I plan to talk to them.”

“Wait—” He grabbed her shoulder as she reached the bottom and spun her around to face him. “Maybe the pilot or his passenger did see something. Or maybe...” He wasn’t sure how to say it, so he just spit it out. “...the passenger shot your sister.” Her eyes widened. She opened her mouth to speak, but he cut her off. “It’s illegal but not that unusual for a rancher to take someone up armed with a rifle to kill coyotes or other animals from the air.”

“Take someone up like you?”

He looked away, remembering a time when killing an animal he didn’t plan to eat hadn’t bothered him. That had been a very long time ago. “What I’m saying is that the shooting could have been an accident, but even so, the pilot isn’t going to want to talk to you. It might even be dangerous if his passenger had been armed and breaking the law.”

She planted her hands on her hips. “Which is even more reason to find this plane and the pilot.”

“I agree, but I would suggest not coming on like gangbusters.”

The look she gave him was so familiar that he almost laughed. For years, while growing up, Tilly had been his biggest competition at every rodeo and fair. Every contest he entered, he ended up going head-to-head with her. He’d seen that determination burning in those green eyes of hers too many times.

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