Desert Heat Read Online Free Page B

everything was going all right, seemed satisfied that it was, and handed her husband the phone.
    “Hi, sweetheart.” Ed Sinclair was a little taller than average, with salt-and-pepper hair and dark, square-framed glasses. Kind of scholarly looking, Patience had always thought, but then, he was a professor.
    “Hi, Dad. Just wanted to let you know I got here without any trouble.” She had gotten there just fine. The trouble had started once she arrived. “Shari’s really nice,” she continued, careful not to mention Jade Egan or Dallas Kingman. “I think we’re going to get along just fine.”
    “That’s good to hear. I’m glad you called. I was starting to worry.”
    “Dad, you promised.”
    “I know, I know. It’s just…well…Hope said you saw Tyler at the market and I was worried he might have followed you.”
    “I was careful. I actually changed taxis twice on my way to the airport. I’m sure I was probably being paranoid, but I figured better safe than sorry.”
    “I think that was wise.”
    “How’s Snickers?” she asked, not wanting to talk about Tyler Stanfield.
    “Snickers is fine.” Her father and stepmother were taking care of her black-and-white cat while she was away. “He’s in the living room with Tracy, watching TV.”
    The image made her smile. She loved the little cat. She had worried about her pet every day, afraid Tyler might hurt the cat to get back at her.
    The conversation was brief. It had been a long, stressful day and she needed to get some sleep. Tomorrow she would be turning in the flashy red convertible and signing the papers on the Chevy pickup and eighteen-foot travel trailer she had bought over the Internet with the money from a small inheritance she and her sisters each received when their grandfather had passed away.
    Unfortunately, even after taking out her contact lenses, indulging in a long hot shower, and putting on her cotton nightgown, once she climbed into bed, she was still running so high on adrenaline she couldn’t fall asleep. She didn’t doze off until after two in the morning. Since she was scheduled to pick up the truck at seven-thirty, then drive to Llano to rendezvous with Shari, she didn’t get much rest.
    She was tired when the alarm went off, slapping on the button and nearly knocking the clock on the floor, but she had too much to do to dwell on her fatigue. Aside from the thrill of traveling the rodeo circuit, by the end of summer—God willing—she would have the last of her research finished and her thesis completed.
    And there was the added bonus she had stumbled onto a little over a month ago. Last summer her sister Charity had started doing work on family genealogy, which she had continued to do even after her marriage and move to Seattle. Recently, Charity had discovered a little-known great grandmother, a relative on their mother’s side of the family, a woman named Adelaide Whitcomb.
    Adelaide, Charity discovered, had been an early rodeo performer—an interesting coincidence—though Charity didn’t believe Patience’s long-time interest in the West had anything to do with chance. More like a calling of the blood, her sister would say.
    Whatever the truth, as soon as the information surfaced, Patience began writing to distant relatives that Charity helped her track down, determined to learn as much as she could. Amazingly, several family members answered, including a cousin a jillion times removed who lived in Oklahoma City.
    “I’m the one who wound up with Aunt Addie’s fringed leather riding skirt and cuff guards,” her cousin said when they spoke on the phone. “My father told me she wore them in the rodeo when she was eighteen.”
    Another cousin in the same city claimed to have part of a set of journals that Patience’s great grandmother had written.
    “I’ll be happy to loan you what I’ve got,” the woman said. “Why don’t you stop by so all of us can meet? I didn’t even know I had a cousin in Boston.”
    The