“He’s a party animal,” Eli said dryly, setting the bulky bags he carried on the end of the counter and closing it behind him with a motion of one foot.

“Hysterical,” Sara remarked, though she got up, went to Eli and kissed him smartly on the cheek.

Brynne was staring at him, and he was staring back.

Brynne swallowed. “Hello, Eli,” she said.

His voice was husky. “Hello,” he replied.

“Now that,” Sara interjected with a laugh, “was some snappy repartee. Remind me not to use it in any of my books.”

Eli shrugged out of his uniform jacket, found a place for it on the crowded row of pegs where other coats hung. To Brynne, he looked exhausted, and that pressed a bruise into the center of her heart, the size of a thumbprint.

“I was just trying to convince Brynne that she ought to learn to handle a gun,” Sara announced lightly, reaching for her wineglass.

“You’re already drunk?” Eli teased good-naturedly. “At this hour?”

“I’m serious,” Sara said.

“So am I,” Eli replied. “It’s a lousy idea.”

“You could teach her,” Sara pressed, opening the oven for another peek at the roast. “Or Zeke could give her lessons. He’s my instructor, and he is one handsome hunk of Montana man.”

Eli sighed, though there was a glimmer of amusement in his tired eyes. “Zeke is a good-looking guy. He’s also gay.”

“No!” Sara cried. “Really?”

“Disappointed, Luke?” Eli chided.

For once, Sara had nothing to say.

For Brynne’s part, she was enjoying the brother-and-sister exchange, wishing, not for the first time in her life by any means, that she had a sibling, someone to joke with, bicker with, love unconditionally and be loved the same way in return.

Of course, Sara and Eli’s relationship was probably unusual.

Even rare.

Why? Because everything about Eli was rare. He was no ordinary man.

And Sara was no ordinary woman.

Brynne felt rather shallow by comparison to either one of them.

Eli moved to stand briefly beside Brynne’s chair, and his hand brushed across the back of her left shoulder, light as a spring breeze. “Don’t listen to my sister,” he said. “She thinks she’s that cowboy detective she writes about.”

With that, he left the room.

Brynne heard Hayley greeting him in the living room with a gleeful, “Hey!”

“Hey, yourself,” he replied audibly.

Brynne sat very still in her chair, still recovering from the jolt that had raced through her at his touch. Her feet seemed bolted to the floor.

“Guess you’re finally over Clay Nicholls, that scumbag,” Sara said gently, with a smile in her voice.

To her own surprise, if not Sara’s, Brynne suddenly began to cry, though silently. Her shoulders shook and her nose ran and when Sara produced a box of tissues, she snatched up a handful and buried her face in them.