Page 70 of Cowboy Heat

His hand touches the small of my back during the process.

It would be remiss of me to pretend I didn’t enjoy the contact, if only a little.

Beau says all the nice,right things during his meal, and to my surprise, Mimi and Wyatt keep to the nice, right things to say too. If June were here, she’d be going for the intimate talk with questions that would make him squirm. I think it’s a nicety Mimi and Wyatt are extending the man, considering he saved me.

They even agree to let him leave when the food’s gone and Beau asks to talk to me in private out on the front porch.

I realize then that I hadn’t told him my new status of being through with not having any answers to whatever mystery we’ve been thrown into.

At least I don’t need a segue after he starts.

“I talked to Alice Dean at Guidry’s,” he says, one foot on the bottom step of the porch, the other bent on the top near mine. “She says the last thing she remembers the day of the shooting was eating breakfast at her place and doing the crossword. She also is going to stay with Micah for the day. Oh, and she wanted me to tell you she’s thinking about you.”

I’m feeling a might guilty at all of that.

I haven’t checked on Alice since the hospital.

“Jon is close to Guidry, and Alice is a housewife who likes to watch Micah from time to time. Her words, not mine,” I say. “I feel lousy that I haven’t reached out to her since that day.”

Beau shrugs. “You’ve had a lot on your plate too,” he reasons.

I think he’s nice again for that. “So I’m guessing that Guidry wasn’t there?”

One can hope.

He shakes his head and thrusts his hands into his pockets. I can’t help but note how good his jeans fit on him.

“He wasn’t, and neither was anything interesting.” He recaps what he saw in Guidry’s room and little office. I feel a different wave of guilt at realizing I’m the one who sanctioned the clue-finding mission. Seeing the sheriff and him asking me to leave with him got me all antsy and angry earlier, and I just started going on impulse.

Telling Beau to find something on Guidry.

Kissing Beau.

The last one I can’t really apologize for right now without sidetracking us, so I go with the obvious. “I’m sorry I asked you to snoop,” I say when he’s done. “It was wrong of me to put you in that position in the first place.”

“I might accept your apology if you’d asked me to do anything, but if you remember, you didn’t. I did the looking all by myself. You just told me about a floor plan.” He pulls out his cell phone. “Speaking of, Guidry doesn’t live like I thought he would.”

“How do you mean?”

He holds out his phone to me; there’s a picture on its screen. “This was the only thing of character in his rooms. No other pictures. No knickknacks. No socks or underwear on the floor next to the hamper. No food wrappers, no hidden porn—’scuse my saying. Just a clean, bland place. Even Micah’s room barely looked lived-in.”

He pulls the phone back.

“I thought a man who builds a palace at the head of his kingdom would have…more.”

The picture is gone, but I’m still thinking about it. “I haven’t seen inside his room in years,” I want to clarify. “Probably not since it was built. Before that, he was still out at his grandfather’s.Thatplace was a mess and a half. I mean, not unlivable or anything, but I think his grandfather had a touch of hoarding about him.”

“Where was that? And when exactly didLa Lumierespring up? How did Guidry become its leader?” Beau leans back against the front porch post. He looks really concentrated. Sometimes, I forget he doesn’t know everything about Robin’s Tree. I fluster a little at my oversight.

“His grandpa had a double-wide out near Winn 22 not too far from whereLa Lumiereis now. It used to be a camping ground for RVs, but there was some big dispute over where to put the septic tank for it, so it became a place where people just camped in tents and pop-ups for a spell before it shut down completely. His grandfather was the custodial worker for the area until then and was able to move into the manager’s place after he left. As forLa Lumiere,the last of the trailers were cleared about three years after the flooding and—”

“Wait,” he interrupts, pushing off the post. “La Lumiereused to be a trailer park?Thetrailer park where your parents and Micah’s mom passed?”

I feel the heat of my flustering turn up.

I nod. “Six people in total died that night, but no trailer in the area survived the water and debris damage. The ones that hadn’t been cleared away were finally hauled off a few years later, and then the lots started going up for sale.”

“And Guidry was the first to buy in?”