MEAGAN MCKINNEY

      is the author of over a dozen hardcover and paperback historical and contemporary women’s fiction novels. In addition to romance, she likes to inject mystery and thriller elements into her work. Currently she lives in the Garden District of New Orleans with her two young sons, two very self-entitled cats and a crazy red mutt. Her favorite hobbies are traveling to the Arctic and, of course, reading!

      Contents

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

      Chapter Thirteen

      One

      “Get over here and give this old cowgirl a hug!”

      Melynda Clay laughed at the greeting. She heard the familiar voice before she could even glance across the small airport terminal of Mystery, Montana.

      “Hazel!”

      Tugging her wheeled luggage behind her, Lyndie headed toward the petite older woman with the elegant silver-chignoned hair. Her great-aunt was the same old contradiction in terms Lyndie remembered. The handsome cattle baroness also wore faded jeans tucked into dusty cowboy boots and a smart alligator-band Western hat.

      “So how is my notorious great-aunt?” Lyndie asked with laughter and a hug.

      “Right as rain on a wood duck! Never better!”

      Lyndie had to agree. Hazel McCallum didn’t look a day over sixty but the matriarch was well into the next decade.

      All that clean-living and fresh mountain air, Lyndie mused. Certainly it was the opposite of the life she’d been living recently, bent over accounting books, worrying and biting her nails in the back of her little French Quarter shop in New Orleans.

      “Lands, let me look at you!” Hazel exclaimed, holding Lyndie out at arm’s length. “Hon, I love what you’ve done with your hair. Last time I saw you, you were just graduating college and you practically had a buzz cut, remember?”

      “Remember? Are you kidding? You kept asking me if I’d joined the Marines!”

      “Well, the shoulder length and the blond streaks are perfect for your McCallum good looks,” Hazel said approvingly, still admiring her. “You’ve got my daddy’s sapphire-blue eyes. My gosh, you’re a regular traffic hazard.”

      Hazel narrowed her own Prussian-blue eyes as if seeing more than Lyndie wanted her to. Lyndie wondered if her great-aunt was taking note of the signs of chronic strain and worry molding her features these days, especially the dark circles under those “sapphire-blue eyes.” The smudges betrayed the days of endless fretting and the sleepless nights.

      “Well, c’mon, city slicker,” Hazel said, taking Lyndie’s free hand and pulling her toward the parking lot. “I’m parked right out front. You’ll find no chauffeur-driven Jaguars around here. Just my dusty old Caddy with tumbleweeds stuck in the grill and longhorns for a hood ornament.”

      “Chauffeur-driven Jaguars?” Lyndie repeated, gasping. “Aunt Hazel, I’m not doing that well.”

      “Oh, cowplop! Your mom tells me you’re getting ready to open your second store. That lingerie empire of yours is practically now a conglomerate. I’m proud of you, sweetie. I guess there’s two sharp business tycoons in this family. So don’t you let those cowhands of mine tease you mercilessly about those underwear shops.”

      “‘All for Milady,’” Lyndie replied, hamming it up for her favorite relative and quoting from the advertising copy Lyndie had written herself, “‘offers a complete line of women’s intimate apparel, the latest in fit and luxury for the discriminating woman.’”

      Hazel rolled her eyes. “Oh, brother! Intimate apparel? All my cowboys know about a ‘teddy’ is that he was once the president.”

      They emerged into the sun-drenched late afternoon, a gorgeous June day. Lyndie was amazed that Hazel had meant it literally when she said she was parked right out front. Her cinnamon-and-black Fleetwood sat only about ten feet from the front doors. The small parking lot was almost empty.

      “The only reason they call this paved pasture an airport,” Hazel informed her niece as they stored her luggage in the trunk, “is that