Authors: Rachel Lee
Now he was glad he hadn't called the McCays for several reasons, not the least of which was that he knew Peg Merrill, had known her all his life. If she and Holly were friends, then Holly
couldn't
be the woman the McCays had made her out to be. Peg had an unerring BS meterâshe'd nailed Chris on a few things over the yearsâwhich meant Holly couldn't have fooled Peg about the kind of woman she was. To top it off, Peg reigned supreme in one area in particularâmotherhood. The worst insult in her book was to call someone a bad mother. No way would she be friends with a woman who was a bad mother.
Besides, Peg was his sister-in-law. Former sister-in-law, really, since Laura was dead. But he wasn't going there. Not now. Sister-in-law or not, Chris didn't want to be on Peg's bad side. Especially not on a pro bono case he'd already been having second thoughts about.
* * *
Chris waited until Holly McCay strapped her twins into their car seats and drove away before he got out of his truck. He shrugged on his blazer to hide his shoulder holster, then settled his black Stetson on his head and ambled toward Peg's house, determined to find out whatever he could about Holly McCay from Peg.
“Chris!” Peg exclaimed when she opened the door. “This is a surprise. Come on in.”
“Unca Chris!” Peg's two-year-old daughter, Susan, made a beeline for Chris when he stepped inside, and he bent over to swing her up into his arms. A cacophony of barking from three dogsâone of which had been Chris's gift to Laura not long before she diedâprevented anyone from being heard for a couple of minutes, but eventually Peg's two dogs subsided back to their rug in front of the fireplace in the family room.
Chris settled into one of the oversize recliners, still cuddling Susan against his shoulder while his other hand ruffled Wally's fur. “Hey, boy,” he murmured, gazing down at the golden retriever Laura had adored. If his heart hadn't already been broken when Laura died, it would have broken at losing Wally, too. Chris had given Laura the puppy thinking they'd soon be moving from their apartment into a house with a large fenced yard. But that dream house sat vacant nowâChris couldn't bear to live there without Laura. And an apartment was no place for a growing dog, especially since Chris was rarely home. So when Peg and her husband, Joe, volunteered to adopt Wally, Chris had reluctantly accepted their offer. At least he'd still get to see Wally, he'd reasoned at the timeâhe was always welcome at the Merrill house.
Chris and Peg chatted about nothing much for a few minutes. About Bobby, Peg's napping one-year-old son, who was already starting to walk. About Joe's thriving gardening center in Granite Gulch, the Green and Grow. About Chris's highly successful private investigation businessâwhich he'd thrown himself into even more thoroughly after Laura's deathâand the fourth office he'd nearly decided to add in Arlington.
When Susan's eyelids began fluttering, Peg reached to take her daughter from Chris, but he forestalled her. “I'll put her down for her nap,” he told Peg, doing just that. When he came back, Peg handed him a frosty glass of iced tea prepared the way he preferred it, with two lemon wedges, not just one.
They'd just settled back into their spots in the family room, Wally at Chris's feet, when Peg put her own glass of iced tea down on a coaster on the end table and said, “So what's wrong?” She didn't give Chris a chance to answer before she continued, “I didn't want to say anything in front of Susanâyou would
not
believe how much she understands already. I told Joe he needed to watch his language now that Susan is so awareâand she mimics everything he says...
especially
the bad words.” Chris laughed, and Peg said, “But something's up. You wouldn't be here in the middle of the week, in the middle of the afternoon, if something wasn't wrong.”
Chris shook his head and smiled wryly. “You must have second sight or something.” He hesitated, considering and then discarding his original idea of pumping Peg for info about Holly McCay on the sly. “The woman who was here a little while agoâ”
“Holly?” Peg's surprise was obvious.
“Yeah. Holly McCay. I've been hired by her in-laws to find her.”
Copyright © 2016 by Harlequin Books S.A.
ISBN-13: 9781488004964
Conard County Spy
Copyright © 2016 by Susan Civil Brown
All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical,
now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
® and ⢠are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office and in other countries.