In Shining Whatever (Three Magic Words Trilogy #2)

In Shining Whatever (Three Magic Words Trilogy #2)

Carolyn Brown



Being a smart detective didn't keep Kate from making the biggest mistake of her life. She wasn't fifteen anymore; she was thirty. She wasn't a high school sophomore in love with the quarterback of the football team. She was a detective, albeit only a relief policewoman in Breckenridge, Texas, at that time. There was no excuse for falling asleep next to Hart Ducaine-granted, that's all they'd done; but if anyone saw her leaving the motel, she'd have a devil of a time convincing them of that.

She knew where she was and what she'd done before she opened her eyes, but it didn't keep her from wishing it were a dream like all the others. His snores from the other side of the king-size bed in the Ridge Motel in Breckenridge told her it had been very real.

She gently rose up on one elbow.

It was Jethro Hart Ducaine, all right. Blond curls lay on his neck, a testimony that his father had no say-so anymore about Hart's haircuts. Soft tendrils fanned out across his cheeks, thick but by no means feminine. His face was a study in angles, with a scar running from below the left earlobe to just under the eye, a souvenir of a bull ride he didn't win. His jeans were tight, his shirttail untucked; his boots were sitting beside a chair with his hat hanging on the back of it. He slept on his side, with one hand up under the pillow and the other wrapped around the extra pillow.

She held her breath and eased off the bed. She hadn't meant to fall asleep in his room, hadn't even meant to go to his room; but he'd wanted to talk and she wasn't about to take him home. Her momma would have shot him.

The clock on the desk clicked: 5:10. She slipped her feet into the bright red high heels, picked up her fancy little red satin purse, and tiptoed across the floor. The door creaked slightly when she opened it, and a cold blast of winter air rushed in, but he slept on. She waited until she was outside to don her coat. In five minutes she'd started her truck and was pulling out of the Ridge Motel parking lot, headed east into town.

At least she'd gotten away clean. She wouldn't even tell Sophie and Fancy, her two best friends, about where she and Hart had gone after Fancy Lynn's wedding.

Hart awoke to the noise of someone beating on the motel door. He sat up and combed back his blond curls with his fingers, wished for a breath mint, and went to let Kate back inside. She'd probably gone to McDonald's for breakfast and didn't take the key.

He slung open the door. "What took you so-"

It wasn't Kate.

Two uniformed police officers each had a pistol pointed at him.

"Jethro Hart Ducaine?"

He nodded.

The younger of the two, a fresh-faced kid barely old enough to buy liquor, cleared his throat nervously and said, "Jethro Hart Ducaine, you are under arrest."

He tugged the sheet tighter around his body. "For what?"

"For the murder of Stephanie O'Malley. Hands behind your back"

"Can I put on my boots and get my hat?"

The older partner, balding with a gray rim over his ears, nodded. "With the door open and us standing here with guns. If you try to run, we will shoot. Makes no difference to us if you stand trial or not."

Hart hurriedly crammed his feet down into his boots. Stephanie was dead? How did that happen? He'd just seen her the night before, right before he went to Theron and Fancy's wedding. How did she get dead in that length of time? And, more important, who did it?

"Hands behind your back now," Fresh Face said.

"No funny stuff, either. You have the right to remain silent." Gray Rim read him his rights.

"I did not kill Stephanie," he said through gritted teeth.

"And I'm the Pope," Gray Rim chuckled.

Fifteen minutes later he was in an interrogation room at the police station. He laid his head on the table and tried to get his wits together. He'd seen Stephanie the evening before. He'd passed the lobby on his way out of her room and waved at the night desk attendant. Surely if he'd been there to murder his high school girlfriend, he would have been a little more discreet than that.

In a few minutes Gray Rim came into the room. "Where were you last night between midnight and one o'clock?"

"I want a lawyer. Call Allie Morton over at the courthouse. She takes care of my business," he said.

"Have it your way. Only the guilty lawyer up," Gray Rim said.

Hart didn't answer.

Kate showered and dressed in her Breckenridge police uniform, strapped on her Glock, tied her shoes, and drove to the police department. She yawned and looked forward to a long, boring day. She'd had enough excitement.

From kindergarten through her freshman year in Albany, twenty-four miles west of Breckenridge, she'd had two best friends. They'd all moved away and never thought they'd be back in central Texas again. But the fall before, Kate quit her job in Louisiana and moved back with her mother, Sophie's Aunt Maud needed help down in Baird and Sophie was going through a tough time with a divorce, and Fancy Lynn's grandma fell and broke her hip.

And they'd all come home. Fancy Lynn had gotten married the night before, and it had been a whirlwind week. Kate had been infatuated with Hart Ducaine that summer before she moved away, and there he was at the wedding. They had a history that made her so mad she could cuss, but she couldn't stay away from him.

He'd wanted to talk, and that's why they'd wound up in his motel room. Now she wondered why he'd rented a room when he lived just south of Breckenridge. Nothing Hart Ducaine had done since she left Breckenridge had escaped Kate's eyes. She knew when he graduated college, when he went on the rodeo rounds, when he won the prizes for bull riding, and when he'd moved back to Stephens County a few months before.