single ladies present!”
“Good luck with that, McAllister.” Bart grinned. “You’d do better to pin fifty-dollar bills to your shirt and go date-fishing at a mall. You are a disaster when it comes to women.”
“I noticed,” the cowboy sighed. “But then, miracles happen every day they say. I’m waiting for mine with both hands outstretched!”
“Uncomfortable posture,” Bart returned.
“What’s a little discomfort in pursuit of love?” the cowboy said with a laugh.
“When is this mythical party?” Bart asked.
“Saturday night.”
“I’ll bring my cousin,” Bart told him, indicating Cort. “A night out will do him good.”
“It won’t do me any good,” McAllister said in a sad tone. “He’s prettier than all the rest of us combined. I reckon the pretty ladies will trample us to get to him.” He pointed at Cort, who laughed uproariously.
* * *
MINA MICHAELS, MEANWHILE, wasn’t laughing. She was dreading an upcoming party that she was being forced to go to. A lot of people wouldn’t even recognize her as an author, because she wrote under the pen name of Willow Shane. The hosts, the Simpsons, were kind people who read her books, so she felt obligated to go. Besides, many of the local citizens who’d been so kind to her would be present. Her life had been a hard one. It was better now that she lived alone at the ranch that her father had owned. He’d left her mother when she was nine, and her mother had a rich boyfriend who kept things going at the ranch afterward.
The rich boyfriend, however, eventually got tired of Anthea Michaels. She found a married man and seduced and then blackmailed him into keeping her up. Men came and went in the house all the time Mina was growing up. She saw things that turned her stomach. Her mother thought it was hilarious that she was shocked. She chided Mina about her stupid morals and her infrequent trips to church whenever Mina could get a ride.
Despite the boyfriend who paid the bills, her mother had slept with a lot of other men, including a boy Mina had a painfully fervent crush on. She’d cried for days. The boy was too ashamed afterward to even speak to Mina, and of course, all the kids at school knew what her mother had done. Her mother chided her about it long afterward. It amused her that she’d taken away Mina’s one chance at puppy love.
Cousin Rogan Michaels had taken on the responsibility for the ranch soon after Mina’s father left. He hired and fired cowboys and kept the livestock healthy. But he wouldn’t give Anthea one penny for her lifestyle. He did give her money to spend on Mina. Of course, Mina never saw a penny of it, or even knew about it, until after Anthea was dead and gone.
Anthea’s married boyfriend’s wife finally found out about the affair and threatened to leave him. It seemed that she had the money, and her husband was taking it out of their savings account to give to Anthea. So that was the end of that gravy train.
But soon afterward, her mother had brought home a man who promised to help pay the bills. He turned out to be not only a liar, but a raging alcoholic. Her mother seemed obsessed with him. Mina hated him on sight. He spent weekends getting drunk on whiskey and pills. He went from weekends to every day, and her mother tried to sell off the livestock—until Cousin Rogan found out and threatened litigation and charges of attempted theft. So Anthea quickly decided not to pursue that plan.
She started drinking heavily, too, and locking herself in the bedroom with their new houseguest most nights and sometimes all weekend. She was crazy about the drunk, whose name was Henry. He didn’t work, but he made a good job of turning Mina’s life to hell. She’d complained about him, just once, to her mother. Henry had beaten the hell out of her and dared her to go to the law about it.
Mina, bruised all over and hurting, took the dare, feeling that her life couldn’t be any worse than it already was. She was sixteen and sick and scared to death of Henry. So a sheriff’s deputy, a newcomer to the community, had come out to the house to answer Mina’s call.
Mina’s mother got to him first. She swore that Mina had fallen down the steps and blamed it on poor Henry. Her teenage daughter didn’t like her mother’s boyfriend, she said. Mina called