No Getting Over A Cowboy. Delores Fossen

chair behind his desk. “Am I going to need to be concerned that Nicky’s come back to dole out some kind of payback to her parents?”

      Garrett had to answer no for a third time. “Her father’s dead, and her mother doesn’t live here so no payback. Could you please just check and see if her dad, Walt Henderson, had a police record? Since the guy’s dead, you wouldn’t be violating his privacy.”

      Of course, Clay would probably be violating other things like rules about sharing official information with someone whose argument was that Walt’s daughter had been crying. Still, Clay started typing on his computer keyboard.

      “Not all the files have been digitized,” Clay explained. “So, even if he had a record, it might not be...” He stopped, started reading something he’d pulled up on the screen. “It’s here. Drunk and disorderly.” He made some more key strokes. “DUI. Two of them,” he added. “He also had his driver’s license revoked.”

      This certainly wasn’t painting a pretty picture, but Nicky hadn’t mentioned anything to him about it. They’d only dated for a month, though, and while that had been enough time for sex, it apparently hadn’t been enough for her to share with him the junk going on in her life.

      “There’s more,” Clay continued a moment later. “He was brought in and questioned about a domestic violence situation after the cops were called to his house. That happened about seventeen years ago.”

      Even though Garrett had just taken a sip of hot coffee, he felt the chill go over him.

      “Nothing came of it,” Clay added, “because the person refused to file charges against him.”

      “Nicky’s mother,” Garrett mumbled.

      “No.” Clay looked up from the screen and met his gaze. “The person he assaulted was Nicky.”

       CHAPTER EIGHT

      GARRETT READ THROUGH the monthly financial report on the ranch that their bookkeeper had just emailed him. It was important because he needed to know if the changes he was making to the livestock inventory were causing the ranch to grow or if he was sending profits in the other direction. Normally, he scrutinized each line of the report, made notes, calculated adjustments that needed to be made.

      Not today, though.

      He’d read the report twice now, and the info just wasn’t sticking in his head. That’s because he had a distraction.

      Nicky.

      Not only because he was thinking about her and what he’d learned from Clay, but also because he could see her. She was sitting outside the loaner RV, working on her laptop while watching Kaylee play. It was something he’d watched her do for the past two days. What he hadn’t done was talk to her. That was because he felt like a dick.

      Hell, he was a dick.

      Here, she’d almost certainly come home to deal with a shitload of old baggage. Some newer baggage, too, since her husband had died and left her a single parent. Dealing with all of that wasn’t easy, and he’d made it hard on her.

      “Are you aware you’re mumbling?” Lawson asked.

      Garrett had known his cousin was there, of course, since he was using his laptop to read the same financial report that Garrett had been. It was something they did together every week, but Garrett figured he was usually more attentive and not prone to mumbling.

      “You said dick and hard,” Lawson went on. “Two words that usually work well together.” He turned, peering out the window that was in Garrett’s line of sight. “Especially when you’ve got a view like that. Nicky’s a looker.”

      Yeah, she was, but in this case hard and dick weren’t because that was his physical condition. It was because he owed her an apology. Or two. It turned his stomach to think that her father had assaulted her around the same time that Garrett and she had been dating. And he hadn’t had a clue.

      “Is Roman starting something up with Nicky?” Lawson asked.

      And it caused Garrett’s gaze to slash to him. “Why would you say that?”

      Lawson shrugged, but there was nothing casual about it. His mouth was twitching a little. “Roman only comes to the ranch for emergencies or when Sophie or you browbeat him into coming. Yet, he showed up here a couple days ago with that RV without so much as a prompt. When Roman gives a woman that kind of attention, it’s usually because he wants to fuck her.”

      Garrett had never objected to the F-word, but it suddenly seemed vulgar. And possibly true. Roman might be a single dad, but he was still a bad boy at heart, and that drew some women to him. Probably not Nicky, though.

      Probably.

      “I need to take care of something,” Garrett grumbled. “Let me know if there are any questions about the financial report.”

      “Will do, and say hello to Nicky for me.”

      Garrett considered punching that twitchy little smile off his cousin’s face. Strange, since violence wasn’t usually his go-to reaction. But it riled him that Lawson or anybody else for that matter thought that Nicky was ready for the taking. Anyone’s taking.

      He made his way across the yard, but before he reached Kaylee and Nicky, one of the widows walked past him.