The Lawman Meets His Bride by Meagan McKinney Page B

stop by her parents’ place before she went shopping at the supermarket. Five minutes later, she parked alongside the curb in front of their big white frame house on Silver Street.
    The moment she opened the kitchen door, she realized she had guessed right. Dorothy Adams turned from the stove and sent her oldest child a familiarglance that mixed one part relief with two parts reproof.
    “Constance Adams, if you weren’t so big I’d fan your britches right now! What’s the big idea of not returning my calls?”
    Calls. Plural. She felt more guilt lance through her. Constance crossed the big, cheery room and gave her mom a hug, feeling kitchen-warmed skin through her mother’s print dress.
    “Beth Ann called last night, and I told her I was okay,” she replied. “Didn’t she tell you?”
    “She grunted something about you still being alive, yes. But I wanted to talk to you myself.”
    Constance watched her mother drop homemade dumplings into a pot of simmering chicken broth. “Your dad’s still at church,” she added. “He’s refereeing the dartball tournament against Mount Zion.”
    Seven-year-old Mickey, the youngest, ran into the kitchen making fire-truck noises. He circled his big sister twice, then abruptly halted with an ear-piercing squeal meant to sound like brakes.
    “Lookit my new shirt, Connie! Aunt Janet gived it to me.”
    “Gave, honey, not gived.” Constance read the T-shirt message out loud: “Bee it ever so bumble, there’s no place like comb.”
    She laughed. “That’s cute, sweetie.”
    “ Girls are sweeties,” he corrected her. “I’m a fireman!”
    Mickey zoomed off to put out fires elsewhere in the house. Constance could hear Beth Ann and Pattie bickering in the next room. Beth Ann poked her head into the kitchen just long enough to taunt smugly,“See, Connie? Didn’t I tell you? ‘Beware the eighth house!’”
    She was gone again before Constance could answer.
    “It does give the heart a jupe,” her mom agreed, turning from the stove and wiping her hands on her apron. “My goodness, Connie, what if you and your client had been up there when that…that man was there?”
    Constance had debated telling her mother more about what happened. However, the worry in her eyes scotched that idea.
    But something else occurred to her. Beth Ann, too, must have assumed the client was not Quinn Loudon. She had no reason to assume otherwise.
    Why had she, Constance, been left out of the details relayed to the media? After all, she gave the Montana State Troopers a complete account of events.
    She was grateful, of course, to have been spared the unwanted publicity. But it hardly seemed likely anyone would have deliberately spared her for benevolent reasons.
    Unless, that inner voice whispered, somebody doesn’t want any attention on you. Because public attention is, after all, a form of protection….
    She lost the thought as the argument between Beth Ann and Pattie escalated in volume.
    “Spackoid!”
    “Gumbah!”
    “Zorch!”
    “Boffo!”
    “You two knock it off in there!” Dorothy called out. She sent Constance a puzzle-headed glance. “Did you understand any of that?”

    Constance rolled her eyes. “Boffo vaguely rings a bell. I think it’s theater slang. But don’t ask me, I grew up in the geeks-and-nerds generation.”
    “Neither one of those girls,” Dorothy lamented, “can get a decent grade in a foreign-language class. But they sure sound fluent in some thing besides English.”
    “I just stopped to see if you need anything from the supermarket.”
    Dorothy shook her head. She had never quite accepted the notion of such a huge store within the town limits. “I just went yesterday. Their meat is cheap, but none of these chain places has ever heard of a decent tomato. It’s all this genetically engineered stuff now. Thanks for asking though, hon.”
    Constance was heading out the door when her mother called behind her. “Connie? You be careful, hear? That Quinn