Free Adrienne deWolfe by Texas Lover Page A

evidence to clear her name.
    Wes had always been careful to keep his sights off the marrying kind. A man could do a lot worse than a bawdily affectionate calico queen, and besides, Wes could always count on a whore not to complicate his life with expectations. Not that getting hitched was bad, he mused. He'd seen the good it had done Cord.
    But Cord had married Fancy, and Fancy was one in a million. There wasn't a woman alive who could compare with her, although there were times when he rode up to a new cathouse filled with anticipation, hoping that this was the place where he'd find her: that courageous, passionate, darkly sweet angel who'd steal his heart from Fancy.
    He smiled mockingly at himself. Of course, that never happened.
    Maybe it was just as well. He didn't believe in dumping a new bride on his doorstep so he could ride off to collar renegades. When the time came for him to put down roots—and that was still a long spell off—he would be plenty sure he could give up outlaw-busting without regrets. No wife of his was going to walk the floor, worrying he was dead. He'd learned the hard way how much pain a man's absence could cause when he'd watched Fancy stare after Cord's traildust.
    The old anguish threatened, and Wes clenched his teeth. Deliberately, and with a good deal of practice, he shoved the feelings back down.
    He loved his brother. The man could be overbearing and stubborn at times, but that wasn't the problem. The real problem was that Wes had let his feelings for Fancy get the better of him. And he'd hurt Cord. Never, ever could he go home and face his brother again.
    Wes drew a shuddering breath. It was better not to think about home. It was better to get on with his investigation.
    Since Shae had dragged him off the previous evening to fell an oak for lumber, Wes had missed the family dinner. With Ginevee scrubbing pans at one end of the house, and Aurora tutoring Topher at the other, Wes had also missed an opportunity to snoop through drawers and cabinets.
    But today was a new day. The sun, which had climbed to its zenith, was hotter than the devil's branding iron. Rorie had ended class early so the children could go to the fishing hole at Ramble Creek. Only Merrilee remained behind, apparently content to pick wildflowers, one of which she'd shyly presented to him.
    Since Rorie and Ginevee were busy with laundry, and Shae was fixing a dining room chair in the toolshed, Wes figured he'd have a good ten minutes to prowl the house undisturbed.
    Whistling with practiced nonchalance as he climbed down from the barn roof, he strolled toward the privy, let the door bang loudly, then circled back through the trees to slink inside the kitchen door. All this subterfuge was child's play to a man who delighted in tracking and stalking.
    Since he'd come looking for clues, preferably written ones that might indicate discord between Gator, Shae, and Rorie, Wes stopped first in the stretch of floor space that served as sitting room, dining room, and schoolhouse. He could tell Rorie conducted her lessons there because of the slates stacked neatly on a pinewood sideboard.
    A small desk stood wedged in one corner, and he started his search there, hoping to find a ledger that might indicate Gator's worth and thereby point toward a motive for Shae and Rorie to kill him. Pulling open drawers, Wes rummaged among polished river stones, broken chess pieces, a bag of marbles, a limbless doll, and a variety of other junk that Rorie must have confiscated from inattentive students.
    He couldn't help but be tickled when he found several marked playing cards and a piece of butcher paper on which Topher had scrawled, "cheating is wrong," about twenty times above his signature.
    Opening the next drawer, Wes leafed through the paper cutouts, valentines, and dried flowers that had been carefully preserved between the tattered pages of an old reader. He suspected these items were Rorie's treasures, gifts that she had received from