She knew a thing or two about that.
“I’m all right,” she insisted, not quite meeting Sara’s eyes, though she could feel her friend’s gaze probing, however kindly, into things she didn’t want to reveal. “It’s just, well, all the stress of getting the restaurant ready for last night—”
“Right,” Sara agreed, though she was only being polite, and Brynne knew it. “Relax, Brynne. Have another glass of wine, and then we’ll get dinner on the table. And I’ll be a model of tact from now on.” She paused to cross her heart. “I promise.”
Brynne laughed, in spite of herself.
“What?”
“You, a model of tact,” Brynne replied. “I can’t picture it.”
Sara laughed, too. Then she leaned forward and hugged Brynne.
Before either of them could say anything, a ruckus erupted in the general vicinity of the front door.
Both women left the kitchen, Sara untying her apron as she went.
Melba Summers had just arrived, wearing a soft, formfitting red dress and strappy high heels. Since she was rarely seen in anything but a uniform, she made quite an impression.
She was carrying a covered bowl in the curve of one arm, and she beamed at her daughters as they rushed her, shrieking in delight.
“What are you two doing here?” Melba asked, in genuine surprise. “You were supposed to be spending the night with your grandmother!”
“Dad made arrangements with Grandma and had one of his men pick us up at her place,” Jill said, bouncing happily on the balls of her feet. Like her sister, Carrie, Jill would grow up to be a stunner; they both resembled Melba. “We got to ride in a Hummer!”
Just then, Dan filled the doorway to the den, taking in his ex-wife’s wildly curly ebony hair and knockout figure and looking as though he’d just been poleaxed. Eli stepped around him, a slight grin curling one side of his mouth.
“Hello, Deputy,” he said. “Lookin’ good.”
She made a face at him, but her eyes were bright with mischief.
Melba searched the room for a safe place to land her gaze and found Sara. “I brought Waldorf salad,” she said, almost shyly, holding out the bowl she carried.
Sara hurried to take the bowl and make her guest comfortable. “I’m assuming my brother told you Dan would be here,” she said in a loud whisper, slanting a challenging glance at Eli.
Eli raised both hands, as if in surrender. “I told her,” he swore.
Dan looked flummoxed. “I just wanted us all to be together,” he said, addressing Melba directly. Brynne wasn’t sure he was aware, just then, that anyone else was in the room. “You know. Start the New Year out right.”
Something softened in Melba, a visible relaxation of small muscles and wary thoughts. “Dan Summers,” she said, “you know I don’t like it when you involve the girls in your business. Hummer or no Hummer, I don’t trust any of those people you hire from God knows where to look after our daughters.”
Dan puffed out his cheeks, collapsed them again by expelling a loud breath. “If we’re going to argue,” he said, “could we do it later? In private?”
Melba looked mildly chagrined. “Yes,” she replied quietly. “If the sheriff and I don’t get called out in the meantime, we can talk in private.”
“Take that and run with it, old buddy,” Eli advised his friend, laying one hand on Dan’s broad shoulder.
Summers was, Brynne thought, the biggest man she’d ever seen. He had to duck his head just to pass through doorways. He was also a man very much in love with his former wife; that was painfully obvious.
Was Melba still in love with him?
If Brynne had to hazard a guess, she’d say yes. The very atmosphere seemed to pulse around those two.
“Let’s get dinner on the table,” Sara said.
She turned to head back into the kitchen, and both Brynne and Melba followed quickly.
The moment Dan and Melba were in separate rooms, the house seemed to exhale.
* * *
THE FOOD WAS probably delicious, but Eli, seated directly across Sara’s dining room table from Brynne, was barely aware that he was eating. It was as though all his senses had melded into a single, laser-sharp focus, trained on her to the exclusion of their surroundings.
The insight was vivid and very strange, unlike anything he’d ever experienced before, a glimpse into the past, the present and the future, all at once. If it hadn’t been so real, and so beautiful, Eli would have been terrified by the sheer emotional power crackling between them.
He wasn’t a psychic, didn’t even believe in such things. He was a just-the-facts-ma’am kind of man, a cop with sharp professional instincts, honed by time and practice, and he believed in what he could see, touch, hear, smell and taste.
This was something new, something beyond the way he’d seen her as a girl back in high school.
In a flash, Eli saw the essence of Brynne Bailey, her goodness, her strength, her compassion, the very fabric of her finely woven soul. She was multifaceted, like a living gem, and he saw these facets clearly—Brynne as a human being, as a woman, as a wife and mother, even as an artist, the owner of a business. He saw her as a daughter, too; as an infant and as a very old lady.
He saw all that and much, much more, between one heartbeat and the next, and he knew he would need days, if not years, to sort these impressions.
Eli snapped out of his trance only because he dropped his knife and fork, sent them clattering onto his china plate.
Everyone at the table turned to look at him.
“You all right?” Dan asked. He sat beside Eli, one chair over, and yet the two of them might have been different planets, orbiting around separate suns.
No, Eli thought.
“Yes,” he said, literally tearing his gaze from Brynne, who had been watching him with some degree of alarm, like everyone else at the table. “I guess my mind went wandering there for a minute.”
“No wonder,” Melba commented, from her chair beside Brynne’s. “You’ve got a lot to deal with, between Jane Doe and—” She paused, swallowed a sip of water; like Eli, she wasn’t indulging in wine or whiskey today. “Sorry. No topic for the dinner table.”
Hayley, Jill and Carrie sat at the foot of the table, pretending not to listen and taking in every word, while Eric, squeezed in between Brynne and Melba, was, as they say, all ears.
“We know what’s going on, Mom,” Jill said. “There was a murder, out at the Painted Pony Motel. It’s all over the web.”