Free Always Time To Die by Elizabeth Lowell

frontier where men carried guns because there was no other law.” He pulled out a sheet, replaced it. “Outside of Santa Fe and Albuquerque, the people of New Mexico live a lot closer to the bone than most Americans do. Closer to the wild lands. Culturally separate from our neighbors.”
    “I thought this was the great state of cultural mixing.”
    He straightened and faced her again. Deliberately he interlocked the fingers of his hands. “If you call this mixing, then we’re mixed.”
    “So we’re talking salad rather than melting pot?”
    “Other than cuisine and art, the Indians, the hispanos, and the Anglos lead pretty separate lives. Side by side, but not together.”
    She frowned. “Is that good or bad?”
    “It just is, Carolina May. It just is.”
    The sound of her name spoken in his husky, matter-of-fact voice raised gooseflesh on her arms.
    Uh-oh. Not good.
    She rubbed her skin briskly and told herself she was sitting in a draft.
    But she knew she wasn’t.

QUINTRELL RANCH
EARLY MONDAY AFTERNOON
10
    “THANK YOU , MISSY ,” JOSH SAID , REACHING FOR THE SANDWICH MELISSA MOORE had put in front of him. “I didn’t realize how late it was.”
    “Thanks, honey,” Pete said as his wife put another plate in front of him. “I was getting hungry enough to start in on the leather-bound ledgers.”
    Melissa smiled at both men. “Beer, tea, coffee, soda, wine, whiskey, water?”
    “Coffee,” both men said instantly.
    “Coming up.”
    Pete watched his trim, jeans-clad wife walk out of Josh’s home office. Light gleamed in her fair hair and glanced off the colorful cowboy boots she wore. The Indian turquoise necklace shifted against her silk blouse and the full breasts beneath. The breasts, the tight butt, and the huge dark eyes were the legacy of her mother.
    “Sometimes she’s the image of Betty,” Pete said.
    Josh looked up from the ranch report, followed Pete’s glance, and said, “Thank the Lord she didn’t inherit Betty’s taste for booze and pills.”
    Pete’s smile flashed against his narrow, almost ascetic face. “Not my Melissa. She’s as smart as they come and twice as gutsy.”
    “If it weren’t for her keeping a lid on stuff here, I’d have talked the Senator into selling the ranch and living full-time in Santa Fe long ago.”
    “Never happen. Quintrells have lived here for six generations.”
    Josh shook his head. “This place is a money sink and a pain in the ass. I love Santa Fe and Washington, D.C.”
    “But you look so fine on horseback or walking over the fields with your hunting dogs and shotgun. Not to mention the ranch’s yearly Founders Barbecue with all the cultural mixing and fireworks, costumes and deal-making. The photographers go nuts and the voters can’t get enough of it.”
    The governor gave a bark of laughter. “Maybe I should make you my campaign manager instead of Mark Rubin.”
    “No thanks,” Pete said quickly. “I’m a small-town guy at heart. So is Melissa.”
    “Good thing, or she’d be running for my office. That is one organized female you married.”
    Pete grinned. “A real terror.”
    Melissa returned with coffee cups and pot on a tray. She fixed each man’s coffee the way he liked it, set the cup in front of him, and asked, “What else do you need?”
    “More feed from less land, more rain on all the land, and peace on earth while you’re at it,” Josh said.
    “Try church,” she said.
    “I do every Sunday.”
    “God has a lot to watch over.” She pushed her long hair away from her cheek. “Maybe you should go twice a week.”
    Josh snorted. “You and Father Roybal.”
    Her eyes narrowed for an instant, then she smiled again. “He’s not my Father Roybal. I’m a Methodist.”
    “Methodist, Catholic, New Age, they’re all the same in one way,” Josh said.
    “Spiritual?” Pete suggested.
    “No.” Josh tapped a computer printout. “They all want my money.”
    Pete looked at the list of charities Josh had told him to