Wyoming Cowboy Justice Read online

  But one thing he did know and always had known—no matter how fragile Laurel Delaney could look on the outside, she was as tough as nails when it came down to it.

  “I’ve had my nose broken before,” she retorted. “I know what it feels like.”

  “You?”

  “Yes, me.” She glared at him, all piss and vinegar and a special brand of spitfire unique to her. “Meth-head head-butted me once.”

  “A meth-head head-butted you and your father let you stay in police work?”

  “You don’t know what I did to the meth-head in return.”

  Hell. Bloodthirsty was such a turn-on, even on a Delaney. Maybe especially on one. “Come inside so we can wash you up before you slink back to wherever you hid your car.”

  “I did not hide my car.”

  Grady raised an eyebrow at her and she returned his look with an arch one of her own.

  “I parked it down the hill so I could have a nice, head-clearing walk.” She smiled sweetly.

  “Sure.” Grady pushed the front door open and led her into the kitchen. “Sit.” He pointed to a barstool situated under the kitchen counter.

  He grabbed a washcloth and ran it under some warm water before walking around to her.

  “I can clean it myself,” she said, holding her hand out for the cloth.

  Instead he did what he knew would piss her off. He gripped her chin and held her head still as he used the washcloth to wipe away the blood.

  She sat there regally, not sniping at him or pushing him away, and he had to fight back a smile over the fact she had changed tactics with him.

  He wiped the blood from her nose and where it had dripped down her chin. She was fair-skinned and her nose was faintly freckled. While most Delaneys reveled in the finer things, the more genteel side of life, and her elegant face sure fit all that, Laurel had never been one for elegance and pretty things.

  “You sure it’s not broken?” he asked, and he was close enough that the hair hanging around her face stirred.

  “I’m sure.” She stared at him with those golden-brown eyes and there wasn’t an ounce of animosity hiding there. He couldn’t help that his gaze dropped to her unpainted mouth.

  Laurel had always been easy to resist, not because he’d never found her attractive, but because it only ever took him opening his mouth to rile her up enough to have her walk away. But she wasn’t bristling like she usually did, and he figured that was all kinds of dangerous.

  “I’m not out to get you,” she said as sincerely as she’d ever said anything to him.

  Her sincerity was good enough to break this particular spell. “You’ll have to pardon my lack of belief, considering how many times your father has tried to get Rightful Claim shut down.” He stepped away and tossed the cloth in the sink. He crossed his arms across his chest and frowned intimidatingly down at her.

  “That doesn’t have anything to do with me. Should I blame you for everything your father’s ever done? Because I hear it’s quite a list.”

  He wouldn’t admit she had a fair point.

  “Work with me, Grady,” she implored, speaking to him for once like he was a person instead of a Carson. “For your brother’s sake. For Bent’s sake. Put everything that came before behind us for the sake of this case and this case alone. If Clint is innocent, I don’t want to be the one who puts him away for murder. I don’t want a real murderer to get away with something because of feud crap.”

  “Haven’t you ever heard the old saying that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it?”

  “Well, I don’t think there’s any chance of me falling in love with you and dying in some army-led Native American massacre, or you and all the Carsons going off to war and eradicating an entire generation. So we might just make it. Did I cover all the idiotic Delaney-Carson fairy tales?”

  His mouth curved. “I don’t know, the illegitimate Carson who married a Delaney as payback always struck my fancy.”

  “That poor woman died in childbirth.”

  “And thus the waters between Carson and Delaney never commingled.”

  “You’re terrible.”

  “Don’t you forget it, princess.”

  The door squeaked open and Noah entered, slapping his cowboy hat against his thigh so that dust puffed up. “Must have had some help. That boy isn’t anywhere out there.”

  “I need a list of friends, places he might have gone, that sort of thing,” Laurel said in her demanding cop way that got Grady’s back up like few other things.

  But she’d implored him to help, and while helping a Delaney was the first and biggest thing on his Don’t Ever Do list, this was about Clint. It was about Bent. Much as he might enjoy the feud tales and riling up the Delaneys, he didn’t actually want any trouble in town. Trouble wasn’t good for business, and as much as he would never admit to anyone, a little too hard on his heart.

  He loved the town like he loved his brother. He loved his saloon like he loved the graves of every Carson before him. He might not have sworn to protect this place like Laurel had, but he had the sneaking suspicion they both wanted the same thing.

  Damn it all.

  “Your best bets are Pauline Hugh or Fred Gaskill,” Grady offered.

  Laurel hopped off the barstool. “Hugh, Gaskill. Got it. And if he comes back here, call me. Or bring him to me. I only need to question him. The longer he runs, the worse this looks. Please let him know that.”

  Grady nodded and Noah did, too, and then Laurel was striding out of the house.

  “So, we’re working with a Delaney,” Noah said as if he didn’t quite believe it.

  “That Delaney and that Delaney only. And only until we get a handle on what Clint’s involvement is and how much we need to protect him.”

  Noah made one of his many noncommittal sounds that Grady usually found funny, but he wasn’t much in a mood to find anything funny today. “What’s that grunt supposed to mean?”

  “Oh, nothing. You just seemed awfully cozy with Deputy Delaney there.”

  “At least I wasn’t blushing in front of her.”

  Noah bristled. “I was not blushing.”

  “Just don’t get any hooking up ideas of your own.” Which was the wrong thing to say. It was beyond irritating, since he always knew the right thing to say, or when to keep his mouth shut. Grady never gave too much away.

  Noah’s rare smile spread across his face. “You staking a claim, cousin?”

  “No, I am not. We just have to be careful how we play this. I’m going to work now. Go shovel some manure or something.”

  “Oh, there’s plenty right here to shovel up,” Noah replied.

  Grady flipped him off and headed out of the house. He took a second to stand on the porch and look at the blazing sun in the distance, the rolling red hills, the rocky outcroppings of this beautiful Wyoming world.

  He definitely wasn’t watching Laurel Delaney stride down the long gravel driveway, a woman on a mission.

  A mission he was more than a little irritated to find he shared.

  Chapter Three

  Laurel fumbled with her phone to turn off the beeping alarm. She wanted desperately to hit Snooze, but there was too much to do.

  She hadn’t gotten home until well after midnight, after tracking down all the names the Carsons had given her yesterday. She’d questioned both teens, but neither one had been able to give her the faintest hint on Clint’s whereabouts.

  She yawned and stretched out in bed. Oh, she didn’t believe any of the shifty teenagers, but she couldn’t force them to tell her anything. Which meant today would be another long day of investigating. Even if she got ahold of Clint to question him, she wasn’t hopeful she’d get anything out of him.

  She didn’t have time to find Clint and investigate a murder that would be common knowledge in Bent an
d the surrounding areas by now.

  Murder. Who had murdered Jason Delaney?

  She forced herself out of bed and walked from her small room to the tiny kitchen. It was a cold morning, but it would have to be a quick one. Coffee, shower, get on the road. No time to build a fire and enjoy the cozy fall silence.

  She frowned at the odd sound interrupting said silence as she clicked her coffee maker on. Something like a rumble.

  Or a motorcycle.

  “Hell,” she muttered. She could not argue with Grady before she had coffee. Before she even had time to get dressed. She looked down at the flannel pajamas. It could be worse—she could be wearing the ones with bacon and eggs on them, or more revealing ones.

  But she wasn’t wearing a bra and she very nearly blushed at the idea of being bra-less in the same room as Grady.

  She jumped at the pounding on her door, which was silly when she knew it had been coming. But she hadn’t expected it to all but shake her little cabin.

  Well, no time to fix the pajama situation. Worse, no time to fix the no-coffee situation. So she put her best frown in place and opened the door. “What do you—” But she stopped talking because it wasn’t just Grady.

  Grady shoved Clint through the door before following, and for a few seconds Laurel could only stand there and stare. Grady had brought her the only potential witness and the main suspect all rolled up into one. He’d brought a Carson into Delaney territory.

  Grady scowled at—she assumed—the naked shock on her face. “The sooner you question him, the sooner you can clear him. You said you know he didn’t do it, after all.”

  “I didn’t say that,” Laurel returned, shaking herself out of her shock and going for a notebook and a pen.

  “What do you mean you didn’t say that? Never mind, Clint. Let’s go.”

  Laurel stepped in front of him, holding out a hand to stop him. Somehow that hand landed on his chest. Because even though it was something like thirty degrees outside considering the sun was just beginning to rise, he only had a leather jacket on, unzipped, so that her hand came into contact with the soft material of his T-shirt, covering the very not-soft expanse of his very broad chest.

  She jerked her hand away and focused on her notebook. “Calm down,” she said, hoping she sounded calm. “I said I don’t think he did it. I’m only out for the truth, and if the truth is Clint’s nose is clean, I’ll make sure my investigation reflects that.” She lifted her chin and met his blazing blue gaze.

  She’d never seen Grady this riled up before. He was more of the “annoy the crap out of people till they took a swing at him, then gleefully beat them to a pulp” type.

  Which was why it didn’t surprise her in the least when he relaxed his shoulders and his gaze swept down her chest. “Nice jammies.”

  She sidestepped him and gestured Clint to a seat at her small kitchen table. “Sit, Clint. I have a few simple questions for you. Now, right now, we don’t know what happened, so I need you to be honest and forthcoming, because the more we know, the quicker we can get to the bottom of this.”

  Clint sat in the chair, slumping in it, looking everywhere but at her or Grady. “Sure. Whatever,” he muttered.

  Laurel opened up to a clean page in her notebook and quickly jotted down Clint’s name, the date and time. She left out Grady’s presence, and she didn’t have time to wonder about why. “Now, Mr. Jennings said you came to his door around ten asking to make a phone call. Is that true?”

  Clint shrugged again, fidgeting and sighing heavily. “Guess so.”

  “And why did you go to Mr. Jennings’s door?”

  “Crap car broke down not far from that rancher’s house. I walked up, asked to use his phone since mine was dead, and then my girl came and picked me up.” He pulled at a thread on the cuff of his jacket. “I wasn’t anywhere near that field.”

  “How did you know the dead body was in the field?” Grady growled before Laurel could voice the same question.

  Clint opened his mouth, but no sound came out. Laurel had to close her eyes. The idiot kid couldn’t even lie? Hell, she’d come up with one if Grady’s furious blue gaze was on her like that.

  “You promised me you were telling the truth,” Grady said, leaning over the table and getting in Clint’s face. “So help me God, Clint, you do not lie to me and get away with it.”

  “Gentlemen,” Laurel said in her best peacemaking tone, smiling encouragingly at Clint and then Grady. “Let’s take a calming breath.”

  She was pretty sure Grady’s calming breath included picturing breaking her neck, but he stood stock-still, fury and frustration radiating off him.

  If she hadn’t grown up in this town, if she hadn’t fascinatedly watched against her will, her whole life, how the Carson clan worked, she might have been concerned.

  But where the Delaneys were all cold silences and sharp words, the Carsons exploded. They acted, and it was oftentimes too much and foolish, but Laurel had never doubted it came from the same place her family’s way of dealing came from.

  Love. Family.

  Grady was pissed and frustrated—not just because Clint was lying to him, but at the fact Clint was clearly in trouble and Grady couldn’t fix it.

  “Let’s start from the beginning, Clint,” Laurel said evenly and calmly. “With the truth this time.”

  “Why are you making me talk to a Delaney?” Clint demanded of Grady. “She’s going to railroad me no matter what I say.”

  Grady’s entire face looked hard as marble, and the way he had his impressive arms crossed over his chest, well, Laurel didn’t think she’d mess with him the way Clint seemed to be doing.

  Clint sighed heavily, slouching even further in the chair. “Okay, yeah, I saw the body.”

  “You...” Grady was clearly working very, very hard not to come unglued.

  Laurel held up a hand, hoping it kept him quiet rather than riling him further. “And you didn’t call the police because?”

  “Because me plus a dead body was only going to make me a suspect. I’m not stupid. I know how you cops work. Maybe you got something on Grady or are getting naked with him, but you got nothing on me.”

  Laurel hated that a blush infused her cheeks. Naked with Grady? Ha. Ha ha ha. What a laugh. But somehow she couldn’t stop thinking about how she didn’t have a bra on under her pajamas.

  Laurel managed to clear her throat and look condescendingly at Clint. “Would you like me to arrest you? Because I can.”

  Clint began to bluster, but Laurel continued on in her even tone, because she would not be upset by a couple Carsons in her cabin. “Or you can truthfully answer my questions and allow me to investigate this. And, if you had nothing to do with it, this questioning will be all there is to it.”

  “I stood up for you with your mom, kid. You screw that up, you’re out of chances, and you know it.”

  Clint stared at the table, but clearly, whatever Grady was talking about got through to him. “The story’s all true. I just broke down on the other side of the ranch. I was walking up to the door to see if I could make a call when I heard a shot. I thought it was...” He shook his head. “Well, anyway, it was dark. I didn’t see anything. But I heard the shot, a thump like a guy fell over, and footsteps running away.”

  Laurel scribbled it all down, her heartbeat kicking up. This was something. A lead, no matter how tiny, and that was important. “That’s all you heard?”

  “Think so.”

  “Thinking isn’t good enough,” Grady sneered.

  “All right. That’s enough out of you.” Laurel stood and began pushing Grady into her bedroom. “You are officially uninvited to this questioning. You just stay in here until I’m done.”

  She pushed him and pushed him until he was far enough in her room she could close the door. Which she did. On his mutinous face.

  * * *
<
br />   GRADY STARED AT the rough-hewn wood of the door and tried very hard to resist the urge to punch it.

  What did Clint think he was doing? Noah had found Clint holed up in the stables early this morning and they’d all surrounded him and demanded to hear what he knew. To make a plan. To protect their kin.

  In that moment Clint had said he hadn’t seen anything, that he was the innocentest of bystanders. That was the only reason Grady had decided to throw Clint on his motorcycle and drive him to Laurel’s place.

  If Grady had known the kid had seen it? Witnessed the murder go down and walked away? He would have called any lawyer he could afford.

  Instead... Grady swore angrily, pacing Laurel’s tiny bedroom. His idiot brother had just made everything ten times worse and in the house of a Delaney. How the hell was Grady going to get Clint out of this one?

  He took a deep breath. He had to curb his temper, because getting angry wouldn’t help Clint. He needed a cool head and a plan.

  He took stock of the room around him. Neat. Tidy. The bed was unmade, but considering Laurel was still in her pajamas, maybe she hadn’t had a chance. Deputy Delaney did not seem like the type to leave a mess lying around.

  She had a tiny bed, all in all. Bigger than a twin, he supposed, but not by much. Which was when he knew the best way to find a sense of inner calm in order to formulate a plan. It was not to go out there and bang his head against a hardheaded moron teenager, but to irritate the hell out of Laurel Delaney while she beat her head against Clint’s teenage woe-is-me.

  Grady settled himself in the middle of Laurel’s bed. Comfortable, he’d give her that. The sheets were nice, and the pillows firm and plump and a lot better than the ones he had back at his apartment above the saloon or his bedroom at the ranch.

  He grinned to himself, imagining asking her about where she got her pillows. Her eyes would do the fire thing, and she’d probably fist her hands on those slim hips.

  Hips that had been settled in this bed this morning. In those ridiculous flannel pajamas. Except, he didn’t think she was wearing a bra under said pajamas, and he wouldn’t mind seeing what Laurel looked like a little unwrapped.