“You come down early for Daniel’s wedding?” Quinn asked, setting down two bottles of beer on the table and swinging one of the chairs around to straddle it as he faced his brother, crossing his arms on the back of the chair.
“Yeah. I sent off my proposal for my next book, and I figured I would take a few days’ rest. A week after the wedding I have to go on tour, so I thought a reward in advance was in order.”
“Your new book’s out?”
“Next week.” He grimaced. “It’d be great if it weren’t for two weeks of living in hotels and flying so many places I hardly know where I am.”
“Shall I get out the violin?” Quinn joked.
“I know. I know. I’m an ungrateful jerk. I should be glad people want to meet me and buy my book. And I am. I just hate all those airports.”
“I wouldn’t know about that, being a country boy myself.” Quinn took a swig from the bottle. “Where’s Cory? Did he come down with you?”
Cory was another brother, the youngest child in the family, now in his senior year at the University of Texas at Austin. He lived in a garage apartment behind Cater’s turn-of-the-century house.
“Nah. He’s coming down Friday. He’s doing his student teaching this semester, thinks the school would crumble if he missed a day or two.”
Quinn shook his head. “Who’d a thought that boy would decide to be a schoolteacher? After all the trouble he used to cause.”
Cater snorted. “Look who’s talking. You are, if I remember correctly, the one who set fires in the trashcans behind the high school.”
“Now, that was all a mistake,” Quinn protested.
“Sheriff didn’t seem to think so.”
Quinn groaned. “I thought Dad was going to bust a blood vessel that time.”
“It was your getting in trouble with Sheriff Woods,” Cater said. “He didn’t want to have to be beholden to the man.”
“Yeah, I know. Woods was a dangerous guy, whether he was a friend or an enemy.”
“What do you know about him?” Cater asked casually.
“Not much. Mostly what everybody else knew, I guess. You didn’t cross the man, not in this county. Other than that…well, he was a political power, the kind that swung elections, even if he had to vote all the residents of the cemetery to do it. It would be my guess that there were a few skeletons in his closet.”
“You know anything about his death?”
Quinn shook his head. “No. Nothing but the facts of it. I was in college when it happened. Long time, probably ten years, before I came back here. Why?”
“I’m looking into it a little. I’ve been thinking about writing a book about it.”
“Oh, great!” Quinn groaned. “As if I didn’t have enough problems…. First I got some crime ring operating here, only I can’t figure out what the hell is going on or who’s behind it—all I know is that a suspicious number of young men are going in and out of old man Rodriquez’s house at all hours, some of them complete strangers to this town. Lots of different cars parked there, some of them nice. Then I have to be insanely attracted to this defense attorney who’s threatened to sue me, and now my own brother is going to stir up some ancient scandal in the sheriff’s office!”
“Don’t worry about it. I’m not even certain about doing it yet. I have another book to write first. I’m only toying with the idea. Murdered sheriff…scandal…pretty intriguing stuff. But it’ll be fiction. I’ve never written true crime. I’ll use it as a starting place.”
“That’s faint comfort,” Quinn retorted. “Everybody will know it was a true story, so they’ll believe whatever you write is true, even the stuff you make up.” He pointed his index finger at his brother warningly. “Just don’t involve the guy who becomes sheriff a decade later.” He paused, then added with a grin, “’Course, I guess if you wanted to make him the hero who solves everything, you could.”
Cater’s snort promised little hope of that happening. “Yeah, right. But what I want to know is—what’s this about a defense lawyer? Male or female?”
“Female, you idiot. Her name’s Lisa Mendoza, and she’s about as pretty as they come. And she thinks I’m a redneck good ol’ boy who’s harassing her client and miscarrying justice whenever I get the opportunity.”
“I see. Doesn’t sound too hopeful.”
Quinn grinned in his familiar cocky way. “Don’t worry. I’ll bring her around.”
Cater couldn’t resist smiling at his brother’s attitude, but he shook his head. “One day, brother, you are going to take a hard fall at the hands of some woman, and then you’ll find out what it’s like.”
Quinn offered him a faint smile, saying, “Who knows? Maybe I already have.”
Lisa blasted down the farm-to-market road toward Hammond, scarcely noticing anything she passed. Afterward, she was grateful for the rural lack of traffic on the road, as well as the absence of police. Her mind was not on her driving.
She had never experienced a kiss like that before. It was like something out of a book, a movie. She had enjoyed the kisses she had shared with other men, had felt passion and desire. But this! This was different. Never before had she felt as if every nerve in her body was standing on end, or as if she burned from the inside out. When Quinn had kissed her, she had melted. Electricity had shot through her. Every romantic cliché she could think of had happened to her—only it had not been clichéd at all, but real and thrilling.
It was crazy, she thought. Wonderful, too, but definitely crazy. She did not even like the man. He was arrogant, cocky, and bullheaded. He obviously didn’t care about following the dictates of the law, only about getting what he wanted, and it was clear from that grin that he was used to getting what he wanted from women, as well. He was precisely the sort of man whom she most disliked.
So how could a kiss from that man have affected her like that? How could he have made her feel as if she were about to fall into an old-fashioned swoon?
Lisa had always been someone in control of herself and her life. Even her teenage years had contained only a minimum number of tantrums and crushes. Mostly she had maintained an even keel: dating, studying, working—keeping everything in proportion. She was an intelligent girl, accustomed to being ruled by her head, and she had always hated the classic stereotype of the tempestuous, passionate Latina.
Somehow Quinn Sutton had shattered all that with one kiss.
She turned into the parking lot of her apartment, faintly surprised to find that she had already made it home. She parked and turned off the engine, then sat for a moment, her hands still gripping the steering wheel. Her head dropped to her hands.
It was vital that she get a grip on this, she told herself. She was not about to start letting her passions rule her life at this late date. What had really happened this afternoon, anyway? It was not as if she had fallen in love with the man or fallen into bed with him, she pointed out reasonably. They had shared a kiss, that was all, and Quinn Sutton had proved to be a superior kisser to anyone she had ever met. That was all.
It was what she made of it that was important, and the worst thing would be to attach a significance to the moment that it did not have. The thing for her to do, she knew, was to get on with her life. The things that were important to her were her work and her family; Quinn Sutton did not matter to either of those things, except as a possible adversary. The odds were that she would not even see him again.
Firmly