CHAPTER FOUR

BART HAD SENT one of his part-timers into Catelow to pick up a bucket of chicken and biscuits. He could cook, but it had been a long day and he wanted something he didn’t have to produce. He and Cort sat at the table and ate it.

“What happened out in the pasture?” Bart asked as he sipped coffee.

Cort finished the last of his chicken and picked up his coffee cup. “She was inspecting the calf when its mother charged her. She didn’t hear it or see it. God, I never thought I’d get to her in time! I barely made it at all. I cut off the mother cow and yelled at her.” He grimaced. “I’ve never seen a woman react like that to a loud voice.”

“You don’t know about Mina’s past,” Bart said quietly. “Her mother loved men. Plural. She was a rich man’s mistress for a time. She blackmailed him, threatened to tell his wife. Well, his wife found out and she had all the money. So after that, Mina’s mother took up with any man who was willing to pay the bills. They came and went, and there were a lot of them.”

Cort sipped coffee, his face solemn. “I gather that one of them hit her.”

Bart nodded. “Yes. She doesn’t talk about it much, but I think more than one of them did. Another one wanted to do a threesome with her mother, and she hid in the woods all night.”

Cort winced. “My little mother was a saint,” he said softly. “I barely remember her, but Dad talked about her a lot. She loved him so much. There was never another man.”

“Mina’s mother wasn’t like that. The last man she lived with was Henry. He was an alcoholic and when he got drunk enough, he was violent. He beat Mina up, really badly. She called the sheriff, but when the deputy came, her mother lied and said Mina fell down the steps and blamed poor Henry, who’d never lifted a finger to her. The deputy went away without arresting him. Cody Banks, our cousin who’s the sheriff, didn’t believe her mother and he tried to catch Henry in the act. He never did. When Mina was eighteen, Henry and her mother were killed on their way to a bar, in a car wreck. She inherited the ranch, but the memories are pretty bad. She doesn’t date.”

“Now I understand why,” he said. “She’s afraid that a man she got involved with might turn out to be just like her mother’s drunk boyfriend.”

“That’s why.”

Cort was remembering the dream he’d had, of the shadowy woman crying, frightened, saying she’d never trust a man. How odd, he thought. It was almost as though he had some sort of mental link to a woman he didn’t even know.

“All of us around Catelow know about Mina. Her mother was notorious.” He glowered. “There was one boy, when Mina was sixteen. She was crazy about him. He liked her, too. He asked her out and went to the house to pick her up. Her mother was all over him. The next day, she lured the boy to her car after school and seduced him.”