Smokin' Six-Shooter. B.J. Daniels

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      Renada had joked that she needed to buy herself a pair of cowboy boots. She had worn designer jeans, a blouse and a pair of black dress boots with heels. As one of her heels sank into the soft dirt, she wished she’d taken Renada’s advice.

      The gate, she found, had an odd contraption at one end, with a wire from the fence post that looped over the gatepost. Apparently all she had to do to open the gate was slip the wire loop off that post.

      The gate, though, hadn’t been opened in a while, judging from how deep the wire had sunk into the old wood. The wire dug into her fingers as she tried to slide it upward.

      “You have to hug it,” the cowboy said, brushing against her as he leaned over her to wrap one arm around the gatepost and the other around the fence post and squeezed. As the two posts came together, he easily slid the wire loop up and off.

      “Thank you,” she said as she ducked out from under his arms and stood back to watch him drag the gate out of the way. He wasn’t just tall, she realized. His shoulder muscles bunched as he opened the gate, stretching the fabric of his Western shirt across his broad shoulders, and she’d gotten a good look at his backside.

      The only cowboys she’d seen in Chicago were the urban types. None of them had this man’s rough-and-tough appearance. Nor had their jeans fit them quite like this cowboy’s did, she couldn’t help noticing.

      “I’d be watching out for rattlesnakes if I were you,” he called after her as she turned to head for her car.

      He’s just trying to scare me, she told herself but made a point of walking slowly back to her rental car and hurriedly getting inside—much to his amusement.

      She revved the engine and pulled into the yard of her property, glad when she would be seeing the last of him. As she did, something moved behind a missing shutter at an upstairs window.

      “Just leave the gate,” Dulcie said, cutting the engine and getting out of the car. “I might as well have a look around while I’m here.”

      He leaned against the gatepost studying her. “Excuse me for saying so, but I don’t think that’s a good idea. I wasn’t joking about the rattlers, especially around an old place like this. Not to mention the fact that you’re trespassing and people around here don’t take kindly to that. You could get yourself shot.”

      This last part she really doubted. “I’ll take my chances.”

      He shrugged. “I hadn’t taken you for one of them.”

      “I beg your pardon?”

      “The morbidly curious.”

      Dulcie felt something in her tense. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

      “A woman was murdered in that house.”

      She shook her head, not trusting her voice.

      “Change your mind about hanging out here?”

      “No.” The word came out weakly.

      He tried to hide a grin. “Then I should probably warn you that if you get into trouble that cell phone you’ve been clutching won’t be of any use. There’s no coverage out here.”

      She lifted an eyebrow. She’d never had trouble getting coverage with her cell phone carrier. The man didn’t know what he was talking about. She snapped open her phone. Damn, he was right.

      When she looked up he was walking back toward his combine, shaking his head with each long stride. She could hear him muttering under his breath. “Got better things to do than stand around in this heat arguing with some fool city girl who doesn’t have the sense God gave her.”

      “So much for Western hospitality,” she muttered under her own breath, then turned toward the house and felt herself shiver despite the heat.

      JOLENE STEVENS GLANCED at the clock on the school-house wall. The hot air coming through the open windows and the sound of the birds and crickets chirping in the grass had all five students looking wistfully toward the cloudless blue sky and the summerlike day outside.

      “Hand in your writing assignments and you may go home a few minutes early,” she said, giving up the fight to keep their attention. “Don’t forget you have another part of your story to write tonight. Tomorrow we will talk about writing the middle of your story.”

      The air was close inside the schoolhouse, the breeze coming through the open window as hot as dragon’s breath against the back of her neck.

      Jolene lifted her hair as she waited for her sixth-grader, Codi Fox, to collect all the assignments. She tried not to let any of her students see how anxious she was, not that they were paying attention. As Codi put the stack of short stories on the corner of her desk, Jolene made a point of not looking at them.

      Instead she watched as her students pulled on their backpacks, answered questions and wished everyone a nice evening. None of them seemed in the least bit interested in the short-story assignments they’d just turned in.

      If one of the students was bringing her the extra story, wouldn’t he or she have been anxious to see Jolene’s reaction? Apparently not.

      After they’d all left, she straightened chairs, turned out lights, picked up around the schoolroom. The small, snub-nosed school bus came and went, taking three of her students with it. She waved to the elderly woman driver, then stood in the shade of the doorway as the parents of her last two students pulled up.

      As soon as the dust settled, Jolene went back inside the classroom to her desk. Her hands were actually trembling as she picked up the short-story assignments, afraid the next installment of the murder story would be among the pile—and afraid it wouldn’t.

      She quickly counted the individual stories. Six.

      With a sigh of relief and an air of apprehension, she sorted through until she found it.

       IT HAD BEEN ONE THOSE hot, dry springs when all the churchgoers in Whitehorse County were praying for rain. The small farming community depended on spring rains and when they didn’t come, you could feel the anxiety growing like a low-frequency electrical pulse that raced through the county and left everyone on edge.

       Everyone, that is, but her. She wasn’t worried that day about the weather as she hung her wet sheets on the line behind the old farmhouse and waited—not for rain but for the sound of his truck coming up the deadend road.

      JOLENE SWALLOWED AND looked up, afraid someone would come through the school’s door at any minute and catch her. Reading this felt like a guilty pleasure. Gathering up her work, she stuffed everything into her backpack and biked home.

      Once there, she poured herself a glass of lemonade and, unable to postpone it any longer, picked up the story again.

       THE SWELTERING HEAT ON the wind wrapped her long skirt around her slim legs, and lifted her mane of dark hair off her damp neck as she stared past the clothesline to the dirt road, anticipating her lover’s arrival.

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