Free Wedlocked?! by Pamela Toth Page A

hand. “Perhaps you’ve been working too hard,” she suggested with mischief in her eyes.
    â€œAnnie Jones isn’t my type,” he grumbled.
    â€œSince when?” she asked.
    Would she remember Annie’s name after all these years? “Since I’ve been working on an important case,” he reminded her, growing more uncomfortable.
    She looked at him with a thoughtful expression. “I guess I can’t complain about that.”
    â€œSeen Maria lately?” Cole asked to change the subject. The ruse worked almost too well. Her smile faded.
    â€œI’m worried about that girl,” she said.
    It was Cole’s turn to laugh, even if it was without humor. “What else is new?”
    Â 
    The only good thing that had come out of her trip to the ranch that morning had been Cole’s apology,Annie fumed as she drove back to San Antonio. When she talked to Flynn, he had seemed even more nervous than before. Maybe she was wasting her time looking for Lockhart—she’d sure as heck wasted a couple of hours today.
    Someone had been intimately involved with Sophia before her murder, though. Ryan’s divorce attorney, Parker, had told Annie that he suspected Sophia of being in contact with someone at the ranch who was passing on information about Ryan’s activities and his affair with Lily to help Sophia wring a bigger settlement from him.
    A family member? Parker hadn’t thought so, and neither did Annie. An embittered employee or one susceptible to a bribe was more likely, or one who liked sharing Sophia’s bed.
    The more Annie found out about the kind of person Ryan’s second wife had been, the more she suspected that Lily wasn’t the only one with a reason to kill her.
    The next day, after Annie got back from Austin where she’d been talking to hotel employees, she finally got a break.
    There was a message from Lily on her machine at home. Rosita had overheard one of the maids, who’d apparently been involved with and then dumped by Lockhart, mention that he’d gone to work at a dude ranch in the Hill Country. Before he’d left the Double Crown, he bragged about a ladyfriend who was in line for a big payoff of some kind. A divorce settlement?
    Elated, Annie flipped open the Yellow Pages and started making calls. On her third try, she got lucky. The front desk confirmed that Lockhart was employed at a small family guest ranch called the Circle A. Now all she had to do was devise a cover story and drive there to check him out.
    After she finished her second call to the ranch, disguising her voice, there was a knock on her door. She was in no mood for company; the information she had gotten about accommodations at the dude ranch only complicated the situation. She needed a whole new game plan.
    Reluctantly she opened the door to find Cole on her front step holding two white paper sacks. He looked tired, as if the case against his mother was beginning to extract a toll. In place of his usual suit and tie, he was wearing jeans and a blue plaid Western shirt with pearl snaps. On his feet were scuffed cowboy boots. The casual attire made him appear less intimidating and even more attractive than usual.
    â€œI brought Chinese this time,” he said, extending the sacks like a peace offering. Instead of his rented Lexus, a blue pickup with the Double Crown logo on the side was parked at the curb.
    Annie didn’t have the energy to argue. She opened the door wider and gestured for him to come in.
    â€œBeen out busting horses and roping dogies?” she teased as she shut the door, trying to ignore the elemental feminine response that sizzled along her nerve endings. What was it about a cowboy, even a pretend one, that made a woman’s heart beat faster?
    For a moment Cole looked puzzled by her comment. Then he glanced down at himself and his frown cleared. “I had to get some of Mom’s stuff out of storage to take to the ranch.