Unless her eyes were playing tricks on her, that was what was on the box, but what the heck did it mean? Judging from Gabriel’s puzzled, suddenly riled expression, he didn’t know, either.
“Come on,” Gabriel said to her. “I need to go see my great-aunt Carmen right now.”
CHAPTER TWO
WHENGABRIELHADaccepted the job as a deputy in his hometown of Last Ride, he hadn’t expected to be dealing with a missing body his first week. Then again, he hadn’t expected to have Rosalie doing a ride-along with him, either.
Rosalie, who looked every bit as good as she had back in high school when he hadn’t been able to keep his hands and mouth off her. She was still curvy, and with her blond hair and blue eyes, she’d always reminded him of a young Marilyn Monroe. A brainy one without the breathy baby-doll voice.
A body, brain and a smooth, smoky voice that still got to him.
Yeah, he hadn’t expected that, either. Or for her to be so close to him when he hadn’t had the time to put up a mental barrier or two to make sure he didn’t have the very reaction to her that he was having right now.
Of course, he’d known he would run into her sooner or later. He’d hoped for later. Had also hoped this blasted heat between them had cooled to bearable temps, butsoonerhad beat out thelateras for his running into her, and the heat was still there. Heat that Gabriel figured shouldn’t even be on his radar.
Not after what’d happened between them.
But that didn’t seem to matter. He could feel the fire on his part. On hers as well. Strange, considering that at least one of them should be wary of having their hearts stomped on again. Strange, too, because she believed he’d done the stomping, and for a long time, he’d believed the fault had been all hers.
Should he clear that up for her? Should he tell her what he suspected?
He was considering it. Not that it would likely do any good to set a record straight after all these years. Also, if he played out the notion of the record straightening, where would it lead, anyway? Would Rosalie be relieved, pissed off or somewhere in between? Gabriel just didn’t know, but in this case, he was pretty sure the truth wasn’t going to set anybody free. It would just dredge up the past and wouldn’t undo anything that’d happened.
He was mulling that over as he made the drive to his great-aunt Carmen’s ranch. Rosalie and he hadn’t discussed what they’d seen engraved on the silver box that had been in Hamish’s grave. Probably because there wasn’t a whole lot to say. The box and inscription gave them no answers and created a whole lot of questions. Well, one question in particular. Why had Hamish left such a message?
Ha Ha, Carmen. I got the last laugh.
Not exactly a traditional epitaph engraved on the little silver box. Then again, this hadn’t been left on the tombstone or even the top of the grave, where Carmen could have seen it. It’d been buried in a grave that’d been meant for Hamish.
Yeah, a whole lot of questions.
Since his boss would likely have those same questions, too, Gabriel used the handsfree to send a text to Sheriff Matt Corbin. Of course, Deputy Azzie Parkman would fill him in on what was going on with Hamish’s grave, but Gabriel wanted to make sure the “filling in” was correct. Well, as correct as he knew it, anyway. Right now, all he knew was that Rosalie and he were headed to his great-aunt’s Silver Springs Ranch to try to clear all of this up, and he’d keep Matt posted.
“How long has it been since you’ve seen Carmen?” Gabriel asked her after he’d sent the text.
Rosalie’s forehead bunched up. “A while. She doesn’t come to the Last Ride Society meetings very often, but she was there about two years ago.”
Gabriel wasn’t surprised by Carmen’s occasional attendance at the quarterly meetings. Carmen was a Parkman, which made her a distant cousin of Rosalie’s, and like Rosalie, she’d been born into money.
Lots and lots of money.
But Carmen hadn’t had her family’s blessing to go along with that money. Her relatives, both close and distant ones, had vehemently objected when she’d married Hamish, someone they had deemed unsuitable, and it hadn’t helped that Carmen had used the bulk of her trust fund to buy the ranch that they later dubbed Hamish’s miserable failure.
Carmen probably hadn’t felt the need to mingle much with her family after that, and there would have been plenty of family mingling at those meetings.
When he pulled into the driveway of his great-aunt’s Silver Springs Ranch, he spotted her on the porch. Carmen was in her eighties now, but she still looked healthy and strong. The woman definitely defied the image of a traditional little old lady. She was nearly six feet tall, lean, with thick gray hair scooped up in a sloppy bun.
The ranch wasn’t sloppy, though, and looked a whole lot better than it had when Hamish had been trying to manage the place. The two-story pale yellow Victorian house had a fresh coat of paint. Ditto for the red barn and the white fences that surrounded the couple of acres that Carmen hadn’t leased out. There were two horses grazing in a pasture dotted with wildflowers. It looked like a scene from a “wish you were here” postcard.
His great-aunt was beneath the overhang of the roof, sitting on the porch steps, where she sipped a beer and waited forthem. Waited, because she’d obviously prepared for their visit. Gabriel saw the tray with the other two glasses, already filled with what appeared to be iced lemonade. Next to the glasses were two beers, no doubt to give them an option of beverages.
“Gabe, Rosalie,” Carmen greeted them when they got out and approached the porch. Smiling, she stood and gathered them into her arms for a hug. “It’s so good to see both of you.”
“Who called you and told you we were coming?” Gabriel asked after he’d pulled back from the hug.
“Who didn’t call me,” she said with a chuckle. “Word is already all over. Sit, have a beer,” she invited just as her phone dinged with a text. “Or lemonade if you’re on duty.”
Rosalie helped herself to a beer, adding a thank-you. Because he was indeed on duty, Gabriel had to settle for the lemonade and was about to launch into his questions, but Carmen spoke first.