a pro football player.” He made a face. “I hated football. I was a soccer freak. I still am. I never miss a game.”
“I like soccer, too,” she said.
“Who’s your team?” he asked.
She grinned. “Real Madrid.”
His eyebrows arched. “Not the US team?”
She flushed. “Well, I used to know a guy who played for Madrid. He was a friend of my dad’s.”
His eyebrows arched.
“He was much older than me,” she said. “I liked him because Dad did. He was married and had two kids, anyway,” she added with a pert smile.
He laughed. “I guess you don’t like older men.” He sighed.
“I like you,” she replied. “But you’re only older in your mind,” she said solemnly. “You don’t look as old as you feel. I’m muddling that . . .”
He drew in a breath and coaxed her back down against his chest. “War makes men old,” he said. “I’m still older than you, though, by a good bit.”
She smiled against his shirt. He smelled of soap and cologne, good smells. “Why do you think that matters?”
He stiffened for a minute. “Well . . . people talk, you know.”
“Butch,” she murmured, “like you care what people say.”
“I don’t. But it might get back to you.”
“Oh, I don’t care what people say, either. Friends won’t mind, and nobody else matters.”
He chuckled. “You’re a breath of spring.”
“Awww. You’re just saying that because I finally can make a biscuit that wouldn’t kill a man if it fell on him.”
He grinned. “You’re a natural born cook. I’m amazed that you don’t strike envy in the heart of the cook at the Gray Dove.”
“She likes me.”
“Everybody likes you,” he replied. “So do I. A lot.”
She sighed. “I like you, too.”
They sat like that for several minutes, during which Butch became a little uncomfortable. It had been a few years since his erstwhile fiancée had thrown him over, and Esther was beautiful. He didn’t want to make her feel unwelcome, but he did want to get up before she noticed anything she shouldn’t about the way his body was reacting to her.
“Men’s room,” he murmured. “Sorry.”
She laughed and got up. “No problem. We all function, at some time or the other,” she said with a pert glance.
He just stared at her and sighed and shook his head. “You gorgeous blonde. You’d shame a flower,” he mused prosaically.
Both eyebrows went up. “What have you been drinking?” she asked sharply.
He threw up his hands and turned toward the bathroom. “That’s what you get for trying to share poetic thoughts with peasants,” he called over his shoulder.
“I am not a peasant, and just for that, I’ll burn the coffee!”
He laughed as he closed the door behind him.
* * *
Esther had worried that Darrin might have tracked her to Benton. But as the days passed without any contact, she began to relax. Well, she began to relax a little. The memory of her mother’s death still haunted her. It wasn’t right, to let Darrin get away with it, but she’d burned her bridges. She hadn’t said anything about the murder. Wouldn’t that make her an accessory after the fact? Because she had knowledge of a crime after it was committed, and she didn’t report it to the authorities?
It was one more thing to worry her. She’d have talked about it to Butch, but she was still hiding her real background from him. He thought she came from just well-to-do parents; but her mother had been a multimillionaire, and all that wealth would one day come to Esther, whether she wanted it to or not. She couldn’t hide for the rest of her life.
She supposed that she needed to get a good attorney and start trying to make up for having been so cowardly. She’d run away, but in all honesty, it hadn’t been much of a choice. If she’d stayed, Darrin might have killed her as well, to get rid of the only eyewitness to his crime.
Butch had a computer, and she’d asked to use it to check her email. Instead, she’d pulled up a search engine and looked for any further indication of her mother’s death. There had been a big updated notice about it in the Aspen paper, only a fraction of which was available online without paying a fee to subscribe to the newspaper. It said that a well-known socialite had been found dead in her home by her boyfriend. It was thought that her daughter, now missing, might have pushed her to her death. There had been a violent