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“Probably. What difference does it make? I was dropping him off at the bunkhouse.”
“When you’re involved in a murder case, you have to backtrack and look at every single detail. For instance, the person who saw you two drive away from the hangar together could have thought that you were bringing him here. He could have assumed you two were lovers, and if the sheriff heard that, he could have decided you two had a lovers’ quarrel and you killed him in a fit of rage. It happens a lot.”
“But it didn’t happen in this case.”
“Had you slept with him, Kit?”
“No.”
The relief he felt was out of all proportion to what it should have been. “When you’re involved in a murder case,” he said quietly, “you have to look at everything.”
“But I’m not involved.” She started to pace again, her long legs eating up the ground behind the big sofa, her hair gleaming in the light.
“You’re involved, Kit. You were the last person to see Inman alive, and you admitted having an argument with him. You admitted to a physical fight with him. Lord…” He wearily ran his hand through his hair. “You’re a smart woman, Kit. You’ve run this entire ranching empire by yourself for nine years. So why can’t you see that you’re in trouble?”
“And why can’t you leave me alone?”
She grimaced, as if she didn’t like what she had just said. He didn’t like it, either. As a matter of fact, he hated it, because he didn’t have an answer. He tried to find one that made sense. “Because, Kit, you need advice of counsel. You don’t realize how serious this is.”
She halted and directed a level gaze at him. “Contrary to what you may think, I do see this as serious. Someone, while in my employ, has been killed on the Double B, which is my land. I take that very personally and will help however I can. But the sheriff needs to get his focus off me and look somewhere else.”
“That’s just it. He doesn’t have to look somewhere else. Not if his mind is made up. And think about something else. Wouldn’t it be a coup if he were to arrest the well-known Kit Baron and make it stick? The local district attorney would be drooling. The publicity would shoot them both into national prominence. There would be the possibility of book deals and interviews and maybe made-for-TV movies. It’s happened before.”
“But I didn’t do it.”
He waved dismissively. “I know you didn’t.”
She blinked. “You do?”
“Kit, you’re incapable of intentional cruelty or a cold-blooded killing.” She was so beautiful, so stubborn. He felt an aching near his heart. He was in serious trouble. How was he going to help her when it was all he could do just to contend with the new feelings for her he had just discovered?
“Worst-case scenario,” he said absently, trying to figure out answers to the questions he was asking himself, “we could plead self-defense.”
She picked up a vase and threw it at him as hard as she could. He ducked as it whizzed by his head and crashed against the wall behind him. “Damn you, Des Baron!”
A deafening silence descended between them, and it grew in intensity and volume until Des wanted to put his hands over his ears to drown it out. Instead, he fought to regain his composure.
“You know,” he said calmly, “if anyone but me had seen you throw that vase, they might just believe you could lose your temper at a man who made you angry, maybe even do him bodily injury. Maybe even kill him.”
He saw her shudder as if a cold chill had slid down her spine. At last one of his points had hit home.
“Get out,” she said softly.
“I’ll leave. For now.”
Three
Des.
Kit groaned softly. For the last ten minutes she had been rereading a paragraph in a romantic suspense book she had started earlier in the week, and she still didn’t have a clue what it was about.
She thrust it aside. It was useless to try to concentrate on anything tonight. Des was the only thing on her mind, and she couldn’t get him off.
All her instincts were shouting at her that earlier this morning, with very little effort, her encounter with Des could have turned from anger to passion. And if it had…
The potential for instant passion between them had always been the thing that, deep down, she had feared. Yet for some odd reason, the charged sexual tension between them had taken her totally by surprise.
It had seemed to take Des by surprise, too, though she couldn’t really be sure. She couldn’t begin to guess. His father had understood him, but since Uncle William’s death, she doubted anyone did. He was a brilliant enigma.
She pushed herself up from the couch and walked to a window. Outside, sleet had begun to fall, but inside her home, it was warm and cozy, just as she liked. But tonight, even the surroundings she had worked so hard to achieve couldn’t soothe her.
So much had happened today that was awful and bewildering. Someone had killed Cody, and the sheriff was looking closely at her as the person who had done it. If it wasn’t such a bizarre tragedy, she might have laughed. Even funnier, stranger, was the fact that Des, whom she had avoided for years, had declared himself her lawyer, her defender.
She could cope with the sheriff, but Des was a different matter. She could well understand why for years women had made fools of themselves over him. At seventeen, she would have made a complete fool out of herself if he hadn’t stopped their kiss. She groaned at her thoughts.
She had wrapped up business earlier this evening and treated herself to a long soak in a bath. Then she had slipped on a pair of big socks, a pair of silk pajamas and her cashmere robe. It would have been a perfect night to relax, perhaps even finish the novel she was reading, except she couldn’t get her mind off the murder. And Des.
Des.
If he had kissed her this morning, she would have responded. She knew it in her bones. She wouldn’t have been able to control herself. Worse, her response would have been so easy, so automatic, so natural. And what if it had gone even farther?
If nothing else, her musings on what, in reality, was nothing more than a kiss that hadn’t happened told her she had been absolutely right to avoid Des for all these years.
The doorbell chimed, startling her and breaking into her thoughts. For a moment she simply gazed toward the sound. No matter who it was, she was in no mood to see anyone. She would love to simply ignore whoever was there, along with whatever problem they were bringing with them. Unfortunately, it wasn’t in her to shirk any kind of responsibility.
Reluctantly, she went to answer it and found Des standing under the light on her porch. Her heart leapt, and her hand flew to the neck of her robe, pulling it tight in a protective gesture.
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