He heard the slam at the fact that his family’s place was merely a guest ranch and not a working cattle ranch like theirs. Her words were flecked with pain, anger and denial—whatever she said now couldn’t be held against her.
“I don’t know the ranch’s current schedule. I’ve been out of that world, or at least a casual bystander, ever since I went to work for the department.” He realized he was answering her and defending himself against her allegations when all he should have been doing was being compassionate and taking the verbal hits she chose to let fly.
“You’re a bastard,” Carla spat out. “You and your dang family. You’re a scourge on the valley. You are the reason...you’re the reason my daughter’s gone. And now you tell me you don’t know how she died. You’re about as good at police work as your family is at ranching.”
Gwen sucked in an audible breath at the sting of her mother’s lashes. “Mother, stop.” She let go of her mother’s shoulders, repulsed.
Carla pointed at him with an unsteady finger. “You can’t tell me I’m wrong. He is doing a piss-poor job. How dare he come here without answers. If he was a real cop, he’d be able to tell us what we need to know. He’d be able to tell us about Bianca.”
It was as though her mother’s words had pulled Gwen back from the platform of anger she’d been standing on a moment before, a platform that had been targeted at him.
She looked at him with a mix of pity and pain. “Don’t say that, Mom. Just go inside. Go to bed and sleep off the booze.”
Carla shook her head, but staggered inside and toward her bedroom at the back of the house.
Gwen leaned against the porch’s white railing. “Did she commit suicide?” she asked, the question coming out of nowhere...almost as though she knew something he didn’t.
“Right now we believe that may be so, but we are unsure as to the cause of death—we’ll have to wait on the results of her autopsy. But may I ask if you believe Bianca had motive to kill herself?” he asked, wondering if Gwen knew something that would help him make sense of Bianca’s death.
She shrugged. “Vets have high rates of suicide—more than a lot of other professions.” She said it like it was just another fact from a book she read and had nothing to do with her reality.
“Was she having some mental health issues? Issues you believe would have led to her taking her own life?”
Gwen sighed. “She’s been unhappy, and with the holidays coming up... But I don’t think she’d have the power to do something like that. She wouldn’t.” She shook her head, like she could shake the idea from her mind.
But now the cat was out of the bag and there was no going back. His investigation had just moved from what some had assumed was a natural death to something else entirely. Why would a woman like Bianca, who had a family who loved her and a mother who clearly needed her, be that unhappy—was it her mother’s drinking, or something more? What had been going on in her life?
His gut twisted with a nagging feeling that everything wasn’t as it seemed—and that his life, as well as Gwen’s, was about to get turned upside down.
She couldn’t even look Wyatt in the eyes. Why did he have to be involved with the investigation of her sister’s death? There had to be at least a dozen other guys on the force who could have stepped in on this one—at least to notify Gwen and her mother of the death. Yet, there he stood...with his broad shoulders, honey-colored skin, scruffy jaw and those cheekbones, all of which often found their way into her dreams. It only made the news worse.
Regardless of what he said, there was no way Bianca could be dead. Gwen had just seen her yesterday at the dinner table. They’d had grilled steaks and Bianca had cooked the potatoes—if Gwen looked, she was sure the knife Bianca had touched was probably still sitting unwashed in the sink. How could it be possible that the woman she’d talked to, and shared a bottle of wine with, was gone this morning? No.
She dabbed her eyes. It wasn’t real. A fresh tear twisted down her cheek.
It was stupid, but as she cried, she couldn’t handle the thought that Wyatt had seen her turn into a blubbering mess. When he saw her after the last time, she was supposed to be at her best—maybe down a size or two, hair perfectly colored and flung in symmetrical curls over her shoulders like one of those models from the pages of Country Living. But no...he had to break her heart—though admittedly, the last time she’d seen him, she may have been the one doing the breaking.
Was that why he had agreed to take on the assignment of telling them about Bianca’s death? She wiped the rest of the wetness from her face and stomped down the steps of the porch and into the driveway.
She just needed fresh air—anything to pull her into a different reality, where none of this was really happening.
“Gwen?” Wyatt called after her.
She stopped but she didn’t turn around. She couldn’t look at him and his ridiculously sexy features. Not right now. Right now she’d like to look at anything but him...the oh-so-confusing him.
“What, Wyatt? What do you want? You gave me the news you came here to give. Now I’ve got to go to work. This ranch and the cows on it are all we have—if I don’t turn a profit this year, it’s over.” Her knees felt weak, but she refused to let herself to succumb to the feeling. She had to be strong. She had to fake it...at least until he was gone, and then she could turn into a big mess for as long as she needed.
If there was any silver lining to what was happening, it was that her mother had drunk enough whiskey to pass out for at least the rest of the day. The last thing she needed was to have to deal with that train wreck before she had everything figured out—she could only handle one major catastrophe at a time.
“Don’t run off, Gwen. I need to ask you a few more questions.” He rushed to walk by her side, so she sped up.
“Ask away, but you’re going to have to walk because I’ve got to feed the horses.” She motioned toward the red barn that sat in the distance.
“In your nightgown?” he asked, motioning toward the red plaid thing she’d forgotten she was wearing. “And you do know you’re wearing slippers, right?”
She stopped and spun to face him, but carefully pulled her nightgown over her moccasins. He was wearing a stupid, charming grin—a grin she wanted to slap right off his face. How dare he, at a time like this?
“What do you want to know?” As she thought about the things he’d want to ask—Bianca’s favorite restaurant, where she’d liked to spend her time, her love life—she choked up and had to take a long breath. She couldn’t cry again.
He reached up, so slowly that she watched his motion and thought about moving out of the radius of his touch, but she stayed put. He took her shoulder gently and stroked her arm with his thumb. It made her think of her favorite mare, Dancer. The mustang was fifteen, yet anytime she was stressed or acting out, all Gwen had to do to calm her was rub her hands down her flanks and make those same circles with her thumbs.
No matter how much Wyatt might have liked her to be, she wasn’t a damned horse that would turn soft under his touch and bend to his wants. He should have known better. It hadn’t worked in the two years they had dated in high school either. In fact, it only infuriated her.
She pulled away from his touch. The place his hand had been chilled and she covered it with her own hand, trapping some of the leftover heat.
“Gwen, it’s okay to be upset about this. If you want, I can take care