Page 3 of Killer on the Homestead (Bent County Protectors #2)

Rosalie Young stared at the outrageously handsome man standing in the lobby of Fool’s Gold Investigations and didn’t let any of the feelings rambling around inside of her show on her face.

His dark hair looked a little windswept, and longer than he kept it during the season.

He’d grown a beard, but she wondered if that was more because of the sling his arm was in rather than any choice in the matter.

His dark eyes were focused, intelligent, and a little amused.

His mouth… Well, his mouth was an interesting mix of all sorts of things that might have normally had her offering a flirtatious smile.

But this was Duncan Kirk. Hometown boy turned baseball superstar.

Even though she’d watched his career with interest—who wouldn’t cheer on the hometown kid?—she still had the mental picture of him as the grumpy little cuss who’d lived on the ranch next door.

Maybe grumpy wasn’t fair, she could admit, with years of growing up under her belt. She didn’t know much about professional sports, but she knew for anyone to get out of a ranch in the middle of nowhere Wyoming and become a professional athlete took a lot more than luck.

Maybe he hadn’t been so much grumpy as focused, she had amended a few years back.

Still, she preferred thinking about a grumpy teen as opposed to when she’d last seen him. On a TV screen. Along with a lot of people in Bent County, shoved into Rightful Claim, ordering beers and ready to cheer on the hometown kid.

Only to watch him all but collapse in pain after one pitch.

It was hard to be ticked that he’d called her Rosie when she remembered that, and all the subsequent stories about a man’s amazing career being cut short. Especially when he was wearing a sling, which was the same color as the T-shirt he was wearing, so it almost blended in.

But not quite.

“Duncan,” she offered. She looked at her boss, Quinn, who ran Fool’s Gold. Quinn shrugged like she didn’t know why he was here either. “Having some trouble you need investigated?”

“Actually…” Duncan looked back at Quinn. “Maybe. You got somewhere to talk in private?”

“Sure.” She moved past him, and ignored the little jolt to her system when, underneath the flowery smell of potpourri that Quinn’s sister put out in the lobby, she caught a hint of piney aftershave and afternoon rain.

Whatever. Rich guys should smell good. She didn’t tell him to follow her, or gesture him to, but he did all the same.

She led him into her office. Only she and Quinn were full-time employees right now, so they both had their own offices.

There were two other rooms with doors off the lobby that part-time investigators could use to talk to clients, interrogate witnesses, or whatever else was needed.

Maybe she should have taken him into one of those rooms, she thought as he moved into her space and started studying her array of desk pictures, but it was too late now.

He was already staring at the newest addition.

A picture from her second cousin’s wedding last month.

Vi looked pretty as a picture in her simple white dress, holding her one-year-old.

Thomas Hart, her husband, was handsome in his suit, the jacket hiding his own sling after he’d been shot trying to save Vi just a few weeks before the wedding.

Audra, Franny, and Rosalie fanned out next to them in their spring dresses, smiling at the camera, the Young Ranch and mountains spread out behind them.

It had been a good day. A healing day. Rosalie wanted to remember it always. But there was something about Duncan Kirk looking at that moment captured in the picture, knowing some of the players, but not all, that felt…weird.

She closed the door, took one quick second to settle herself, then turned to look at him. He’d stopped staring at her pictures and was studying her.

“We tend to lean toward helping women,” she began. Which wasn’t the kindest way to ask him what he was after.

“Well, in a way you would be, since it’s my mother who sent me.”

She raised an eyebrow as she moved behind her desk. “Your mother is not the kind of woman who sends someone else to do her dirty work.”

“No, she isn’t.”

He didn’t offer anything else. She sat and motioned for him to do the same on the other side of her desk.

He looked at the chair, the desk, the picture, then sighed and took a seat. She couldn’t quite read him. So she waited for him to explain.

She tried very hard not to fidget when it took a lot longer than she considered polite . “I don’t have all day, Duncan.”

“Right. There’s been some trouble at my parents’ ranch. Some missing cows. I don’t suppose you’ve heard anything about it?”

“I can’t say that I keep up with the ranch gossip. That’s Audra’s department.” Which still left Rosalie feeling guilty. She loved the ranch, but as an abstract. As a home. Not as a business to see to.

Which meant all the nuts and bolts of running that ranch fell on her older sister’s tough and capable, but way overworked, shoulders.

“I guess, one by one, cows have been disappearing from the ranch. Dad was worried he was just getting…forgetful. He talked to Sheriff Hudson in Sunrise, but he hadn’t heard of any found cows. I guess he doesn’t like some detective from Denver being at Bent County, so he doesn’t want to call there.”

“Yeah, Beckett ruffles some feathers, but he’s not all bad,” Rosalie responded.

She worked with a lot of the deputies and detectives in Bent County.

Or harassed them into giving her information.

Copeland Beckett wasn’t her favorite, but watching him work on her cousin’s case last month had softened her a bit in that department.

That and the fact that Vi’s husband worked with and trusted him.

Still, it read fishy to her that Mr. Kirk didn’t want to call the actual cops, who might be able to help him.

“My mom’s worried,” Duncan continued. “About him. About the missing cows. She just wants someone to look into it. See if it could be someone purposefully taking those cows.”

“Problem with that theory is a few months back, Audra found some of your dad’s cattle on our land. Looked like a fence had just been left open. Nothing nefarious. The cows were returned.”

“Maybe this is different.”

“Maybe.” But in her experience, cattle rustling wasn’t much of a money maker around these parts. One cow at a time didn’t exactly scream criminal plot. “Any ranch hands suspect?”

“Mom didn’t think so, but I don’t really know the players. Except my father.”

“And it’s not possible that it’s an honest mistake?”

Duncan’s mouth firmed. The slight flicker of anger and the ticking muscle in his jaw were far more attractive than they had a right to be.

Yeah, she had issues. She knew it.

“No,” he said firmly.

“Look, this isn’t the type of case I usually take on. I’ll do it for your mom. But I like my clients to know they might not like the answers they want me to find. That sometimes, the most obvious answer we don’t want is the answer.”

“My dad isn’t rustling his own cows, and he’s not careless.”

Rosalie shrugged. “It’ll be my job to determine that myself. You need to be prepared for it to be either of those things.”

“My father’s the most honest man I know.”

It left a pang in her heart. She would have said the same about her dad. But hero worship was a hell of a thing. It blinded a person to…everything. She pushed aside all that buried past.

“Look, I’m not saying I won’t take the case.”

He scowled. “For a price.”

She didn’t mind the hint of bitterness in his tone. She was too sure of herself and what she did to be hurt by someone else’s opinion of it. “It’s my job, Ace. And last I checked, you could afford it.”

“Yeah, when was the last time you checked?”

There were a lot of ways she could take that question. A lot of ways she could answer it. But in typical Rosalie fashion, she took the one that hurt. Besides, he had called her Rosie , and no doubt remembered that she hated that nickname. “Y’all had a heck of a postseason run.”

His expression became guarded. She’d somehow known it would. “Something like that.”

“You pitched a hell of a game one. Four wasn’t bad either.”

Now he scowled. “I know it.”

She didn’t mind putting that scowl there any more than she minded the pride, and maybe ego, that went into the I know it .

First, because she was a little perverse and found a pissed-off man hotter than she should.

Second, because she needed him to understand she wasn’t doing a favor, and this might not go the way he wanted.

She certainly wouldn’t be putty in his hands like he was no doubt used to.

“I’ll dig around a little, see if there’s anything fishy going on. You only have to pay me for my time. I won’t hose you, even if you can afford it.”

He huffed out a bit of a laugh. “I guess we’ll see.”

Rosalie currently had two cases going. One was simple enough.

A woman had hired her to prove her husband’s philandering ways.

The other one was a little bit more complicated, as it involved a very careful stalker who knew his victim had gone to the cops.

It was a pretty full plate, and she shouldn’t take on Duncan’s case, but…

Mrs. Kirk had been more than kind to Rosalie and her family. Especially after Dad died. Natalie Kirk had even tried to convince Mom to stay. Rosalie knew the Kirks helped Audra a lot on the ranch side of things and never made it seem like a big deal or an inconvenience.

Maybe the current facts pointed to Mr. Kirk, in Rosalie’s estimation, but she supposed if she found that out, the Kirks could deal with it. They’d have to.

She knew all about uncomfortable truths.

On her way home, she decided to stop by Bent and kill a few birds with one stone. She parked her truck in the Bent County Sheriff’s Department lot, locked her gun away, then went inside.