Free Once a Cowboy by Linda Warren

the spa on the Cryder woman. She’s a fine piece of work.”
    Was that praise? She could hardly believe her ears. She flexed her fingers. “It’s amazing the information you can get while getting your nails done.”
    “I’m going to put a steak on the grill tonight. You going to be home?”
    “Yeah,” she replied, surprised at this offer. They usually did their own thing.
    “I’ll put another steak on. See you at home.”
    She wondered if the heat was getting to him. He didn’t seem like Buck at all.
    Later, at home, she made a salad to go with the steakand baked potatoes. Buck wouldn’t touch the salad, but she liked it.
    Cutting into her steak, she asked, “What do you think makes women like Mrs. Cryder commit such a heinous crime?”
    “Greed.” He dumped Tabasco sauce on his meat. He put it on everything, even his eggs. “She found a rich man and decided to get rid of her family. If the police had believed it was a robbery gone bad, she would have gotten away with it.”
    “People do strange things sometimes in the name of love.”
    “It’s greed and selfishness, not love.”
    She wouldn’t debate that. She was just glad they were talking. On a whim she decided to share the Braxton case with him.
    “You remember the missing baby case I was working?”
    “Sure. A waste of time,” he replied around a mouthful of food.
    “No, it wasn’t. The man Mrs. Braxton believed was her son really is her biological son.”
    He stopped chewing. “You got to be kidding.”
    “No.”
    Buck took a swallow of his beer. “How old is this man?”
    “He’ll be forty in October.”
    “Why in the hell does the Braxton woman want to tear apart his life now?”
    Alex was taken aback by this reaction. “Because someone stole her baby and she has to know that he’s alive and well.”
    “Doesn’t she realize what she’s doing to his life?”
    “Buck,” she said, trying to reason with him, “losing a baby is a traumatic thing, something a woman never gets over. Even though Mrs. Braxton was able to go on with her life, her missing son was always at the back of her mind. That’s why Brodie Hayes’s photo in the paper triggered her hope again. She’s lost two other sons. Brodie is her only living boy. The need to see him is never going away.”
    “You women have all these emotions that us men just aren’t equipped with. We look at the facts. Once you get the emotions involved everything goes to hell.”
    “I get involved. I admit that. I’m more sensitive than I should be for a cop or a private investigator.”
    He pointed his knife at her. “You get that from your mother.”
    They never talked about Joan and she welcomed this opportunity. “My mother was sensitive and caring?”
    “Damn right. Waterworks was a regular display and when it was that time of the month, hell, I stayed out of the house.”
    “Did you ever hold her and tell her you understood?”
    His eyebrows knotted together like a rope. “Hell, no, ’cause I didn’t understand why every little thing made her cry.”
    “What did she cry about?” She might be pressing her luck, but she wanted to hear more.
    “When I didn’t call and tell her I was going to be late. I was a cop and couldn’t call her every few minutes. She cried when I forgot her birthday, and the waterworks lasted a week when I forgot our anniversary.”
    “She had reasons to cry. That’s just plain insensitive.”
    “But that’s me, girl, and you know it. Your mother knew it, too, when she married me. Don’t know why she wanted me to be someone I wasn’t. Don’t know what she saw in me in the first place, but I was so crazy about her that it didn’t matter. She was different than I was. Maybe that’s why I fell for her. She was this gentle, soft-spoken woman who never saw the bad in anyone.”
    “Maybe she saw some good in you.”
    “Could be, but she had to look hard for it.”
    Her heart filled with joy at this wonderful glimpse of her mother. Alex had heard