“She knows. Shane just let me know. He said she took the news fine. Sounds as if she’s accepting that part of it at least.”

Dulcie shook her head. “I don’t like Jolene out there alone. I wanted to stay with her. I even offered to put her up at the same motel where I’m staying. I’m worried about her.”

“I’m worried about you.” He met her gaze. All he wanted was to take her in his arms and comfort her. They hadn’t made love since that one and only time at the old farmhouse and that hadn’t been his idea of making love.

He wanted to get this woman in a proper bed and make love to her the way she deserved. He leaned toward her and said as much.

She gave him a broad smile, light shining in her dark eyes, along with a challenge. “So what’s stopping you?”

“I want your undivided attention.” He wanted more than that, but he was smart enough not to voice it. He got the impression she wanted this to be casual. He didn’t do casual.

She sobered and looked toward the bank of dark windows. “I can’t give you what you want right now.”

“I know,” he said. “So what now?”

“We wait and see if the killer finishes the murder story,” Dulcie said. “Or did you mean with me and you?”

After Dulcie left Russell in the parking lot by the restaurant with little more than a brief kiss, she felt restless. She’d hoped he would change his mind and come back with her to the motel.

But she understood how he felt. He was the kind of man who fell hard when he fell for a woman. He was afraid of falling for her and with good reason.

She knew she wasn’t going to be able to sleep. Just as she knew that she’d purposely let herself be distracted with Laura Beaumont’s murder. She didn’t want to think about what her grandparents had done.

Nor did she want to examine too closely how she felt about Russell Corbett.

Back at her motel, she thought about the farmhouse because it was easier than thinking about the rest of it right now. The house hadn’t been broken into, which meant someone had a key.

Laura Beaumont had given someone a key to her place? The man she’d fallen in love with, Dulcie thought with a start.

It made perfect sense if what the writer of the murder story and Midge had told them was true. Laura had fallen in love. She’d broken it off with the other men, which explained that scene in the murder story where one of the men was arguing with Laura in the bathroom. John Atkinson? Ben Carpenter? The rainmaker? Or had there been others that even the storyteller hadn’t known about?