“What’d she do? Bitch and moan about it the whole time.”

“Nope, not a word. She kept singing to Ace, keeping him calm, and doing everything that needed to be done. She must have brushed him from head to tail four, maybe five times.”

He eyed Jerry, seeing the admiration in his eyes. “So you like her?”

“What’s not to like? She’s beautiful, sings better than any person I’ve ever heard on the radio, and treated your stubborn horse like a precious baby. Why are you being so hard on her?”

Luke wanted to kick his own ass. “I don’t know.” Because she might have screwed over Sean.

Because she got under his skin and he wasn’t sure he could trust her.

Jerry shook his head in dismay. “Ask me, you should’ve been a little more hospitable to your guest, especially after she worked her ass off for you.”

He raised a brow at Jerry’s tone. “Is that so?”

“God’s truth. I never seen Doc work that hard on Ace, on any animal, or for you.”

The rebuke properly cowed him. “Shit. How am I going to make it up to Sarah?”

“Seems to me a thank-you would do. I think she’d appreciate a simple kindness. She showed enough of it.”

“I don’t know any woman who only wants a simple thank-you.”

“She’s not like other women.” Jerry gave him a you’re-an-idiot look, hooked a lead rope on Ace, and walked him back toward the stables, calling over his shoulder, “It’s not like you to run off a good-looking women. Ask me, that one was a keeper.”

Was she? Margaret didn’t think so. In fact, she blamed Sarah for Sean’s untimely death. She painted a very disturbing picture of Sarah’s past.

But was it true?

He pulled his cell from his back pocket and hit the speed dial despite the fact he didn’t want to go down this road. “Dean, it’s Luke. I have a job for you.”

“You haven’t taken a new client in a while,” his top investigator said.

Yeah, he’d been focused on the ranch. He needed time away from helping people who broke the law circumvent the system, outright get away with their crimes, or serve far less time than they deserved. He had some innocent clients, but most had earned the charges against them and paid him a ton of money to get them out of trouble.

He not only wanted to know, but needed to know which side of the legal line Sarah stood on.

“I’m helping out a friend who is having difficulty getting regular visitations with her grandchildren.” True. But also not exactly a clear picture of the situation. Sarah had brought the children as requested. “Anyway, I need you to dig up everything you can on Sarah Spencer. She runs Spencer Software. I’m particularly interested in an arrest for arson when she was a teen.”

“Those records are probably sealed, boss.”

Luke sighed. “I know you can get them.” Whatever Luke asked for, Dean produced. Dean had contacts everywhere.