Page 50 of Deadly Evidence
“You’re lucky, you know that?” Mia’s voice sounded wistful.
Lacey hesitated at the door. The thought that anyone so beautiful could ever consider someoneelselucky was beyond belief. Shifting the weight in her arms, Lacy turned and narrowed her eyes. “Why?”
“You’ve got such a nice family.” Maybe it was just the light, but Mia’s eyes might have held a sheen of tears. “I’ll be gone in afew weeks, and I won’t be coming back. My grandfather doesn’t want me here.”
Lacey had been prepared for an arrogant put-down or a backhanded compliment delivered with a smirk. Now, guilt slithered through her midsection and made her feel small.
Memories flashed through her thoughts.
The times Vicente had helped her learn to rope calves and use an awl to repair leather equipment.
The times he’d hitched up a team to take her for sleigh rides when they’d had a rare snowfall.
He’d been like a second grandpa, yet Mia hadn’t grown up with any. Sad. “Maybe he’ll get used to you.”
Mia shook her head. “I wish I knew what to say to him. My mom said he was cruel to her, but I didn’t want to believe her. Now I do.”
Cruel?Vicente?Lacey’s mouth dropped open, then she snapped it shut. “Maybe he’ll soften up by the time you go home.”
“No he won’t.” Mia’s laugh was the saddest Lacey had ever heard. “There’s a better chance he’d dye his hair pink and do somersaults across the barnyard.”
CHAPTER NINE
On Thursday, Anna announced that she had to pick up some hay at the Rocking B and needed both Dante’s and Brady’s help.
On the way there, Dante drove with one wrist draped over the top of the steering wheel and a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.
Unlit, Brady noticed with amusement, because Anna gave the kid a dark, warning glance the moment he reached for the cigarette lighter in his front pocket.
Resting an elbow on the back of the front seat, she looked over her shoulder. “This won’t take long—maybe twenty minutes to load and another twenty to get away. Gil’s quite a talker. But if we’re lucky, he won’t be home.”
Brady nodded.
With an empty hay wagon bouncing over the rough road behind the crew cab truck and the roar of the engine—glass pack mufflers, probably—there wasn’t much possibility of conversation.
Given Anna’s preoccupation and the kid’s body language, there wouldn’t have been much anyway.
The buildings at the Rocking B were similar to those at the Triple R. The typical, sprawling adobe ranch house. Metal pole buildings. Corrals. Cattle bawling in the lots nearest the buildings.
But where the Triple R was utilitarian—clearly a working operation with its roots spreading back to the 1800s—this place had the quiet aura of success.
Professional landscaping set off the large home, and pristine white pipe fencing enclosed the arena and corrals. A couple of white pickups—with Rocking B emblazoned in gilt on the sidesand a dealer’s sticker still in the side window of one of them, were parked at the barn.
From somewhere up by the house came the fierce barking of what had to be a very large dog.
Dante honked the horn to announce their arrival as he drove past the barn.
He turned up a lane on the far side of the last pole building and pulled to a stop parallel to a towering stack of hay bales.
“We’re buying a hundred,” Anna said as she stepped out of the truck and pulled on a pair of old leather gloves. “Just enough to get by until my next semi load arrives. I’ll throw ’em down, and you boys can stack.”
Brady watched her climb to the top of the hay stack, each foothold a narrow space between the tightly packed bales.
There was nothing quite like a cowgirl—especially this one.
Strong, lean, and tanned, with a no-nonsense attitude and obvious belief that she could handle anything that came her way, she stood at the top of the stack and looked down, a sixty-pound bale already hoisted and ready. With long, slender legs and a trim waist like hers, most women couldn’t have lifted it.
“Heads up!”
