Desert Fate (The Wolves of Twin Moon Ranch Book 3) by Anna Lowe Read Free Book Online Page A

wanting to jump to Kyle’s defense. But Tina was already leading her away with a gentle kind of insistence that didn’t broker a no.
    “Come with me. We’ll have a nice, quiet lunch in a nice, quiet place.”
    Stef glanced back and faltered. Kyle was so big, so sure, so…so unassailable, and yet there he was, looking as droopy and distraught as a chastised puppy. She wanted to rush back and tell him it was okay, everything was okay—just like she’d wanted to so many times in the past. But right now, those words—
it’s okay, everything is okay
—were coming from Tina, and Stef didn’t have a chance to pull away.

 
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER NINE
     
    Tina led Stefanie down a meandering path in the shade of the cottonwoods to a tidy adobe bungalow with a lush green lawn. The place screamed
structure
and
order
from every manicured flower bed to every white-trimmed window.
    “This is my place. Come on in.”
    The inside was as neat as the outside: a study in single female habitation. Every cushy throw pillow, every diamond-patterned rug was perfect, yet something about the place wept. Stef found herself studying Tina as she bustled around a kitchen decorated with needlepoint designs with yearning messages like
Home Sweet Home.
    “It’s very nice,” Stef said. “Have you seen Kyle’s place?”
    She didn’t mean it as a test, but it sure wouldn’t hurt to know how intimate Tina was with Kyle’s home.
    Then again, maybe it would hurt. Bad.
    But Tina just laughed, and the envy sloughed away. “No, but I can imagine it. Chaos.”
    “Chaos is close,” she smiled. “Oh, sorry. Can I help with lunch?”
    “I’ve got it. You relax.”
    Right, relax. The word was like a cue to let the tension roll back in. So Stef wandered a little, finding a thousand cryptic clues to her host’s existence in the room. The neatly stacked magazines, the self-help books. The refrigerator covered with photos and newspaper clippings.
    She leaned in for a closer look. The clippings all came out of the sports pages: a season schedule for the San Diego Padres, a report on spring training. She looked at Tina then back at the clippings. “You like baseball?”
    “No, not really,” Tina hummed absent-mindedly while washing lettuce at the sink.
    Stef squinted at the other clippings. One player was setting new batting records, while another had been injured, it seemed. No, wait, the same player. She glanced at Tina. What was that all about?
    But she had enough of her own mysteries to sort out, so she let her eyes wander over the photos instead. Her first reaction was relief: not one showed Tina in a tight embrace with Kyle. Actually, there wasn’t a single photo of Kyle. Most of the photos were of children. There was Cody, snuggling a pink-faced baby bundled in a pink blanket with a big black dog leaning over his shoulder for a peek. There was a striking, dark-haired man steadying a toddler with one massive hand. He looked all the world like Ty, except this version wore a soft expression and a fascinated smile. Farther along the same cluttered collage were shots of Tina holding the same youngsters in various poses, so close and so tight that Stef could feel the ache.
    “That’s my niece, Tana,” Tina said over her shoulder, and Stef nearly jumped. The woman moved with the stealth of a cat.
    “And my brother Cody’s daughters.” Her finger tapped the pictures.
    Blond, sunny Cody, related to this dark raven? “He’s your brother?”
    Tina laughed like it was an old joke. “Well, my half brother. Ty’s the oldest, and then me. Then Cody and Carly came along.”
    Tina must have sensed Stef scraping her memory for faces that might be a sister to Cody, because she shook her head. “Carly lives in California with her mother.”
    Tina tapped another picture, and another. Her finger wavered a moment over another image of the baseball player then skipped right over to the next one. “That’s my aunt Jean…”
    Stef held her