Callie's Cowboy by Karen Leabo

Author:Karen Leabo [Leabo, Karen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-345-53459-0
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2012-08-16T04:00:00+00:00

Callie thought she had plenty to keep her busy. First she called home and checked her answering machine. Nothing.

Next she called Sloan. She felt guilty for walking away from the mystery of Johnny Sanger’s death and leaving Sloan to his own devices. She’d promised to help, and now she’d bugged out. She wanted to let him know that she was still keeping her eyes and ears open, even up here in Nevada. And she was still thinking.

“Have you questioned Nicole Johnson?” she asked Sloan at the first opportunity. Not that he owed her any explanations.

“Danny Fowler did. I sat in. Uh, I don’t think she did it, Callie.”

“Oh, I don’t either,” Callie said quickly. “Her grief was too genuine. But that doesn’t mean she isn’t involved somehow. If she was … spending time with Johnny, he might have confided in her.”

“Exactly. And she is hiding something. I just don’t know what.” He sighed. “Nicole isn’t a bad person. I’ve known her for years. And, for your information, I don’t believe she and Johnny were physically involved. I think they were friends, just like she claims.”

Callie didn’t say anything. She was unutterably relieved to hear someone echo her own thoughts.

“Pretty naive of me, huh?” Sloan said.

“No. Not at all. Did Johnny actually leave her anything in his will? She seemed to believe he would.”

“Maybe he would have, if he’d known he was going to die. We’ll never know.”

Callie ended the conversation by promising Sloan that she’d let him know if either Sam or Beverly told her anything useful, tamping down the twinge of guilt she felt over “spying” on her friends.

Putting Johnny’s death out of her mind once more, Callie sent out her daily round of résumés. The quarter-mile walk down to the mailbox allowed her her first good look at Roundrock. It was picture-postcard impressive. The view went on for miles, and she wondered how much of what she could see was Sanger land.

She stood and looked at the view, with its subtle colors of green-and-purple sagebrush across the valley the ranch was nestled in. A thin mist shrouded mountain slopes in the distance. The scene’s subtle paint-box hues wavered and changed as the sun played hide-and-seek behind wispy clouds. She hadn’t imagined that Nevada would be so colorful. The air was crisp and cold too. Frost still clung to the tan grass in shady areas. But it was a dry, invigorating chill that made Callie want to run laps—or maybe even ride a horse.

When she returned to the house, she wandered into the kitchen, where Rena was baking.

Rena gruffly refused Callie’s offer of help. So Callie poured herself another cup of coffee, as if she weren’t wired enough already, and sat down at the table where Rena was rolling out dough.

“Are you making pie?” Callie asked.

“Mm-hmm.”

“What kind?”

“Blueberry.”

Callie’s mouth watered. “You’ve been with Sam’s family a long time, I guess. I remember Sam talking about you when he was just a kid.”

“Mm-hmm.”

Her answers didn’t invite further questions, so Callie quieted down for a while.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.