Free The Trouble With Cowboys by Melissa Cutler Page B

follow his friend’s lead. If Vaughn couldn’t give voice to whatever was bothering him, then the least Kellan could do was play along with the topic change. “Nice try, but you know good and well no one touches that beef except me. I hand-picked the steer from my herd to butcher, then dry-aged the T-bones to perfection.”
    He marched to the kitchen to grab his grilling tools and the steaks resting on the counter. Something on top of the fridge caught his eye. The manila envelope. Chewing the inside of his cheek, he glanced over his shoulder. Everyone’s eyes were glued to the half-time report on the television screen.
    “A quick peek,” he whispered, grabbing it. “Who’s the unlucky bastard this time?”
    He tipped the contents onto the counter. Several photographs fluttered to the floor. Kellan bent to retrieve them, but stayed doubled over, the wind knocked clean out of him as he looked on the whiskey brown eyes and full lips of the woman who’d been on his mind all weekend.
    Amy Sorentino.

    Amy’s hands moved unflinchingly as she piped filling over long strips of raw pasta she’d rolled out on the counter. Pumpkin puree seasoned with cloves, coriander, cinnamon, and pancetta tempted her nose and she hummed with delight. After folding the pasta over the filling, she pressed the edges, then rummaged in a drawer for a pasta cutter.
    Jenna’s fingers paused over the laptop’s keyboard. “That smells amazing, sweetie. Which recipe are you working on today?”
    “A dish I developed at Terra Bistro. Pumpkin ravioli with a sage cream sauce. Give me about twenty minutes and I’ll plate a sample for you.”
    “Good deal. I’ll be ready for a break by then, anyway.” She resumed typing. “The oil litigation attorney I’m contacting this week will want copies of our financial statements and the Amarex contract. I haven’t found the contract yet, but I’ve got a few more places to look on the computer and in the attic.”
    “How’s your progress with Dad’s financial records going?”
    “How do you think?”
    “That bad, huh?”
    Jenna chortled. “He didn’t leave any sort of trail for us to follow to figure out what he did with the money. The money he got from the second mortgage he took out, his and Mom’s IRAs, their savings accounts—it’s all gone. He leveraged everything he and Mom owned. You’d think if he’d gambled it away or had an addiction, we would’ve found some evidence. But I haven’t found anything.”
    Amy rolled the pasta cutter between the bumps of filling. “All I know is Dad left Mom high and dry when he died. It’s no wonder she had a nervous breakdown.”
    “I wish she would’ve opened up to Rachel and me about the money problems. She didn’t need to shoulder that burden alone. We could’ve helped her.”
    Amy peeked into the pot on the stove to see how close to boiling the water was, then plunked onto a chair. “If there’s one thing we’ve learned, Jen, with Dad dying and Mom’s depression, it’s that we can’t let the what ifs get the best of us. Even when it’s the toughest thing in the world, we have to keep moving forward.”
    “You’re right, but it’s so hard. Especially with the lawyer requiring us to dig up the past. That was brutal, talking to a complete stranger about Mom’s condition. I understand his need to know everything to prove in court she needs a permanent guardian, but sitting there yesterday, describing the morning we found her . . .” She scrubbed a hand over her cheek, her eyes turned glassy with moisture. “That was rough.”
    A stab of guilt pierced Amy’s gut as she hugged Jenna. She hadn’t been home when her sisters discovered their mother unconscious in a pasture next to empty bottles of pills and vodka. Rachel had been the one to call 9-1-1 while Jenna administered CPR. Amy had spent the morning peeling and slicing Yukon Golds for a potato challenge on Chef Showdown. She’d flown to the hospital in Albuquerque that