Pirates (43 page)

“I know a lawyer,” Sonterra said, and managed a semblance of a grin. He rarely mentioned my hardwon career, at least in a positive way. He busted the perps, and as a defense attorney, I did my best to get them off. This did not make for domestic tranquility.

We got out of the rig, and he locked it up again. Inside the restaurant, I made my way through the gift shop, heading for the restroom, while Sonterra approached the hostess for a table. He was on his cell again when I came out, and he cut the call suspiciously short.

My antennae twitched.

“Your dad again?” I asked mildly, when he didn’t volunteer anything. It was that cop-lawyer, adversarial thing again. Sonterra and I could blister a mattress, but when it came to just about anything else, we were both pretty careful about showing our cards.

Before he gave up an answer, we were seated, with menus in hand.

“No,” Sonterra said. Pulling teeth. That was what it was like, getting information out of him.

A waitress strolled over, ogling Sonterra the way waitresses almost always did. I ordered a BLT with extra mayo, clam chowder, and a side of sweet potatoes, and Sonterra asked for a burger and fries.

“I don’t know how you can eat like that,” he observed, reaching for the little Peg-Board game the Cracker Barrel provided to keep hungry customers occupied while the cooks worked their magic behind the scenes.

“I’m pregnant,” I reminded him, in a righteous and moderately affronted tone.

“Yeah,” he said, with another sparing grin. “I was there when it went down.” He paused, raised his eyebrows. “So to speak.”

Heat flashed through my body. “You were the perpetrator.”

He stabbed a green peg into a hole in the gameboard. “I’m taking the task force job, Clare,” he said.

My spine straightened like a dancing cobra rising out of a basket. As usual, Sonterra was piping the tune. “That means—”

“It means a leave of absence from Scottsdale PD,” he interrupted, looking directly into my eyes for the first time since we’d left the morgue. “It means cleaning out a den of coyotes.”

“Noble, but it won’t bring Jimmy back,” I insisted, thinking of my niece, Emma, my best friends, Loretta Matthews and Mrs. Kravinsky, and my practice. If Sonterra moved to Dry Creek, a polyp forty miles up the intestines of Creation, I would have to make a drastic choice. Go with him, or stay.

“No,” Sonterra agreed, and waited out the foodservice professional when she returned with our ice teas, lingered a little too long, and finally left. “Jimmy’s gone. But I might be able to keep this from happening to somebody else.”

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Linda Lael Miller is the
New York Times
bestselling author of more than fifty novels, including
Secondhand Bride, Shotgun Bride, High Country Bride, The Last Chance Café, Springwater Wedding, Courting Susannah
, and
One Wish
. Most recently, she has won critical acclaim for her foray into bestselling romantic suspense with her novels
Don’t Look Now
and
Never Look Back
. She is also the author of the medieval romances
My Lady Beloved
and
My Lady Wayward;
and tales of love and life in the fictional towns of Springwater, Montana, and Primrose Creek, Nevada. There are more than 14 million copies of her books in print. Ms. Miller resides in the Scottsdale, Arizona, area.

Visit her website at
www.lindalaelmiller.com
.