Chapter One
Honor’s Edge Investigations Office
Spring was ahint of sunlight that kept the air from digging its icy winter daggers into the lungs.Fickle, that warmth.Just when you were about to count on it, winter clawed its way back, settling in with a dumping of snow.
But Samantha Price had been dealing with the twist and turns of Montana seasons her whole life.She knew how different a spring snow felt from a winter one.
This one wouldn’t stick around.A day or two, maybe.
Something she kept to herself when Nate walked into the office, stomping his boots against the mat in the entry of the office.She could tell he was grumpy.Because of the snow or the case he’d been out working on this morning remained to be seen.
Nate Bennet had been back in her life not quite a full year, and Sam hadn’t figured out how she felt about the way he’d upended the path she’d been going down.Which she supposed was fair since she’d been the one who’d dragged him back to Montana last spring.
He put a wrapped sandwich on her desk, and she lifted her face for the casual brush of lips that had just becomeroutine.Sometimes, she thought nothing of it.Sometimes, it struck her as just plainweird.The ways her life had opened up, braided with other people’s, after being pretty much on her own for a whole lot of it.
But if she let her mind dwell on the weird, she started to question the happy that went along with it, and nothing good lay down that road.So she set it aside.
Happy was a blessing, and if she didn’t enjoy it while it was within reach, she’d never enjoy anything.
“I take it the meeting didn’t go well this morning?”
Nate dropped into the chair at his desk, unwrapped the sandwich he’d bought for himself.“She wants pictures, but there’s a catch.She wants to be there when I take them.”
Samantha frowned.“That’s a disaster waiting to happen.”Not that she needed to tell him.Nate had developed into a hell of a private investigator since he’d gotten his license.
“Which I told her.Repeatedly.But she’s adamant.”He shook his head.“I finally told her I’d have to come back and discuss policy with you before we made any decisions.The answer is no, obviously, but there was no getting through to her.I’ve run out of ways to explain it to her.”
“And you’re wanting me to take over?”
He grinned at her—something he did more and more as time wore on.As he settled back into life in Marietta.Ashappyseemed to become more commonplace for the both of them.
“You’re meaner,” he said.
She didn’t want to grin back, but it was a hard-won thing.“Ha.”
“And I can take Glenda from your plate.Maybe a fresh eye will yield results.”
Sam sighed.She had spent the past month trying to get to the bottom of one of the enduring mysteries of this town and surrounding ranches.
Glenda Harrington.
In what couldn’t be a surprise at all, Sam had come up empty.Oh sure, she’d unearthed a few interesting details she hadn’t already known about the Harringtons as a whole.Like the fact that everyone thought Glenda had gone mute at a different time, that her husband had died long after most people had thought—aftershe’d sold off much of her ranch to the Bennets.But these things still weren’tanswers.If anything, they were just more confusions and questions to add on an ever-growing list.
Whatever kept Glenda stubbornly mute, for the most part, was hidden in time.
On more than one occasion Sam had suggested to Jill—the granddaughter who’d hired her to get to the bottom of things—that Jill should just go up to the woman anddemandanswers.Confront her grandmother and deal with the fallout.
But Glenda Harrington was taciturn ranch stock.No demands got through.
In any other circumstances, Sam probably wouldn’t have minded switching cases with Nate, seeing if they could each shake something loose with those fresh eyes and different levels ofmeanness, but… this was complicated.
Harringtons.Bennets.It wasallcomplicated.
“Jill asked me.I’m not sure she’d be all that comfortable with me handing it off.Besides, you’ve got such a way with the furious soon-to-be ex-wives of almost-caught-cheating husbands.”
Nate grunted and took a big bite of his sandwich, chewing irritably.“It’d be pretty damn open and shut if she’d just let me do the job,” he grumbled.“I take it you ran into the same number of closed doors I did today.”
She couldn’t deny it, but she couldn’t let herself get mired in the disappointments.That wasn’t the way a good PI got through a challenging case.“I’m broadening my focus.I’ve looked into Glenda and her entire family’s history, but maybe it’s time to look into her husband’s life.”She shrugged restlessly, not voicing her real theory.
