"Think there was something too good about the whole dating process with Conrad?"

"You mean like it was too perfect?" Amanda asked.

"Exactly. Did you ever have an argument or a fight with him over anything, especially that first year?" Kate asked.

Jamie shook her head. "That is strange, isn't it? He always got his way, but then he was only home a week out of a month, and I didn't want to make that time unpleasant."

That should have raised a warning flag. No arguments. Making things so perfect for him so he'd be happy. God, what had turned her into a submissive little wife like that?

"Me, either," Amanda said.

"He was a master of manipulation," Kate said.

Oh, yes, he was, and so damned good that I didn't even see it until now.

"And not all that great in bed," Amanda agreed with a nod. "It had to be all about him, since I only got to be with him a few days. I won't fall for that crap again."

The heat started on Jamie's neck and moved around to her cheeks, darkening her light-brown skin to scarlet. "You, too, huh?"

"Oh, yeah," Kate and Amanda said at the same time.

Kate held up a palm. "But only for about six months for me and the same for Amanda. Mine was by choice and hers by death. You had to put up with him longer than either of us."

"That just makes me the bigger fool." Jamie sighed.

"You don't get to carry that burden alone," Amanda told her. "We'll share that one three ways. At least you were thinking divorce. I was looking forward to a vacation with him right here in this cabin. God, I was so stupid."

Jamie nudged Amanda with her shoulder. "And you don't need to carry that burden alone, either."

Gracie's squeals vibrated through the house before anyone could say another word. "She's here! Mama Rita is here!"

Jamie left her coffee and food and headed for the door in a semijog with Kate and Amanda right behind her. Gracie had bailed off the porch and thrown herself in Rita's arms and was attempting to tell her everything she knew in the seconds before Jamie joined them in a three-way hug.

"Did you see the stagecoach? Me and Lisa get to ride in it at the ranch on Monday and we get to have a picnic and"-she lowered her voice-"I'm going to ride one of them horses or maybe a four-wheeler if the horses are tired from pulling the stagecoach."

"I didn't see a stagecoach, but I did see a Ferris wheel." Mama Rita winked at Jamie.

"And funnel cakes? Did you smell them?" Gracie put her hand in Mama Rita's and led her to the house. "Come and see my room. I got balloons yesterday. I know that Kate and Waylon sent them, because Kate was smiling real big when they came. Did you have breakfast? We've got extra pancakes and bacon on the stove."

"I'm waiting for funnel cakes," Mama Rita answered. "You can give me a tour of the house and the deck while everyone gets ready."

Gracie skipped along beside her great-grandmother, chattering the whole time about the cabin.

"She does love it here," Mama Rita said to Jamie from the side of her mouth. "You made the right decision."

"Want to move with us?" Jamie asked, half in jest.

Rita chuckled. "Not this year, but I can see this as a lovely place to retire."

Jamie laughed. "Mama Rita, you are seventy-five years old. You've been retired for years."

For her to even say that she might move to Bootleg someday was huge. Jamie hugged herself, and all the doubts from that morning disappeared. Mama Rita agreed with her choice and that made everything right again.

"In my family, we don't really quit until we are eighty, and then we keep at something until at least ninety," she said as an aside to Kate before she gave Gracie her full attention. "Now what is this about a fishing dock, Gracie? Will we have time to go see it before we go to the festival? I'm going to be your cheerleader in the contest and we are going to win."

"I've been practicing with Hattie and I think I might win." Gracie pulled her great-grandmother into the house.

Kate smiled. "I reckon we'd better get dressed in a hurry, or we'll all be in trouble and have to stay home while Gracie and Mama Rita go to the festival."

Jamie laughed. "You are starting to sound like a country girl."

"Well, thank you," Kate said. "And I don't mean that with a smidgen of sarcasm, either."

CHAPTER TWENTY.

Old folks brought their lawn chairs and staked out a place to watch the parade that Saturday morning. The temperature was inching up toward three digits when the sirens from the Bootleg Volunteer Fire Department's big red truck sounded off. A few umbrellas popped up, providing shade, and Kate glanced around to see if any vendors were selling them so she could purchase one for Gracie and Lisa to share. But there were none.

Could it be that was her sign? Jamie's words continued to echo in her head. She should resign from the oil business and buy a vendor's wagon to travel around the state with all kinds of umbrellas. Every town had a festival, and everyone wanted a little shade in the hot summer. She smiled at the silly thought.

The Bootleg High School band, all wearing street clothing and crazy fishing hats instead of their usual uniforms, marched behind the fire truck. Twice the band stopped and performed a fancy two-step routine that garnered catcalls and applause from the crowd.

She took a picture of the band with her phone and then took several up-close snapshots of Gracie. Maybe she'd scatter pictures of Gracie throughout her new home, wherever it turned out to be.

Maybe that was her sign. She could travel around to the festivals taking pictures like they did on cruise ships and selling them to the people. The possibilities were endless. Lovers, married folks, old people, little kids-she turned her camera up and shot another picture of Gracie and Lisa with their heads together as they watched the band. Then she took one of Paul and Jamie standing about a foot apart as they minded the children.

There was a float from the church with the preacher and his wife riding on the back and throwing candy out to the crowd. One from the elementary school with all the teachers on it. Next year Jamie would ride on that one, and Waylon was right-Kate would need to be there to watch Gracie.

No, you won't. Her Mama Rita will always be here to do that job, her conscience said above the loud band music.

Kate didn't even argue. She'd be there anyway to take pictures of Gracie through the years, recording her growth by the festival pictures.

People dressed in all kinds of fishing costumes dashed between the next several floats, making the onlookers laugh with their antics as they gave out rubber worms and inexpensive lures to the crowd on the sidelines.

The whole thing had a Mardi Gras feel to it. She'd been to New Orleans once on a business trip and watched a parade from her hotel balcony, but it hadn't been as much fun as this one.

Finally, the stagecoach appeared at the end with Victor driving and Hattie waving a lace hankie from inside with several other folks. Gracie and Lisa hopped up and down and blew kisses at her. When she yelled their names, they hugged each other and beamed.

And then it was over. People picked up their chairs and headed toward the school, where two blocks had been roped off for vendors and the carnival had been set up in the parking lot. Kate tagged along behind the rest of her group for a few minutes, but then she saw a vendor selling cute hair bows and stopped to buy a couple with tiny pictures of Cinderella on the ribbons.

A booth offering an array of brightly colored scarves and shawls caught her eye, too. The one that stood out was a splash of bright colors swirled around on a background of blue. It reminded her of a sunset over the lake, but she had absolutely nothing that it would match.

Amanda has a cute little maternity dress that it would go with, though.

She was about to buy it when someone touched her hand.

"What do you think of our festival?" Victor asked at her elbow. "Seen Hattie around? I had to get the horses unhitched and I lost her."

Kate hung the scarf back on the display. "I love it! The parade was amazing, and I loved seeing you up there driving that stagecoach. Are you going to be our driver on Monday?"

"Oh, no, honey! Waylon gets to drive that day and Paul will ride shotgun. I'll be in the stagecoach to protect all the girls." He winked.

"How many of these festivals have you attended?" Kate asked.

"I haven't missed a festival since I was born back in Prohibition. Did anyone ever tell you how Bootleg got its name?"

Kate glanced over his shoulder, scanning the crowd for Waylon. "No, sir, they didn't."

"Well, let's me and you go that way." He pointed toward the left. "I saw the funnel cake vendor over there. We can have a midmorning snack and talk," he said. "Hattie will find me a lot quicker if I'm sittin' down. She and I have got to ride the Ferris wheel together. It's been our tradition since we was six years old. I was scared to death to ride it, but I wanted to so bad she rode with me. Helped me out-I couldn't be afraid in front of a girl."

Kate followed him to the funnel cake wagon, where he marched right up to the window, laid his money on the shelf, and said, "Give me the biggest that you got. Me and that good-lookin' blonde are goin' to share it."

The smell of the hot grease and sweet frying bread brought back a memory that she hadn't thought of in years. Her father had taken her to a medieval fair somewhere close to Dallas, and they'd eaten funnel cakes. It had been a fun day, and she'd fallen asleep on the way home that evening. When she awoke the next morning, her fingers were still sticky. She'd licked the sweet sugar from them and hoped that they could go to the fair again that day. Her mother and father had both gone to work before she went down to the kitchen for breakfast and the nanny fussed about her sleeping in dirty clothing. The memory put a smile on her face and filled her with happiness.

Victor carried the paper plate carefully to the table where Kate had sat down. He placed the plate in the middle of the small table and pulled out a chair across from her.

"You can have the first bite," he said.

Kate quickly pinched off a bite, popped it into her mouth, and then pulled a couple of napkins from the metal holder in the middle of the table. "You were going to tell me about Bootleg?"

"The lake came about in 1924, back before I was even born. Until then it was just a part of the Wichita River. Down in this area, it was far enough from prying eyes that folks who had a notion to make moonshine could use the banks of the river to do so. Didn't want to put a still too close to the house. If you got caught, you could lose your property." Victor told the story between bites.

When they finished the last strip of cake, he pulled a roll of bills from his shirt pocket and peeled off a five. "Go get us another one, but don't tell Hattie. She's going to want to share one with me later, and I sure don't want her to know that I've already had two."

Kate didn't have to stand in line, so she was only gone a few minutes. "Tell me more about Bootleg and how it got its name."

Victor pulled off a chunk of cake. "My grandpa was one of those bootleggers. Times got tough those days, and he found a spot on the river and started up a business. It's what saved our home place here in Bootleg."

Hattie sat down beside Kate, picked off a piece of the cake, and took up the story. "History has it when the community sprang up near the lake, they tried to name it Lincoln, after the past president, and then Lakeside, but nothing stuck. Everyone had called the place Bootleg for so long they all finally gave up on naming it anything else.

"Hey." Hattie looked across the table at Victor. "You old fart. I bet you wasn't going to own up to eating one of these before you shared one with me, was you?"

Victor held up his hands and grinned. "Busted!"

"Don't tell me you rode the Ferris wheel without me, too." Hattie's hands went to her hips and her mouth set in a firm line.

"Don't get your underpants all twisted up. I wouldn't do that. We got to ride it together or you get scared," he teased.

"Not me. I love the Ferris wheel."

Waylon sat down in the fourth chair and reached for a bite of the cake. "Good mornin', all y'all. I hear the picnic for Monday has been approved. What do I need to do or cook, Hattie?"

"You have the stagecoach ready, and me and Victor will bring the rest of it," Hattie answered. "Right now, we're going to go ride that Ferris wheel, aren't we, Victor?"

"Yes, ma'am, we are." He grinned. "And I won't eat another bite of this cake, so I'll have plenty of room to share one with you when we get done."

Kate loved these two old folks and would gladly adopt them. She'd send presents on their birthdays, for Christmas, and even Grandparents Day if they'd let her call them her own.

She waited until they were out of hearing distance before she said, "We should turn the tables on those two and get them together in their golden years."

"They are together," Waylon said.

"I mean in one house and married."

"Whole town has been trying to do that since before my mother died. They are happy, but they will never get married. They're too set in their ways. Are you going to ride the Ferris wheel with me?"

"What does riding the Ferris wheel mean? That we are friends for life?" She was flirting and knew it, but right then she felt as free and as excited about the day as Gracie.

He picked up the last of the funnel cake, tore it in two pieces, and fed half to her. His fingertips grazing her lips ignited sparks that flitted around the air like fireflies. Turnabout was fair play. She quickly picked up what was left and fed it to him, deliberately brushing the back of her hand across his freshly shaven cheek.

His sudden intake of breath and the way his eyes went all dreamy gave testimony that she'd had the same effect on him that he'd had on her.

"So?" she asked.

"So what? More funnel cake?"

"No. If I ride the Ferris wheel with you, does that make us friends for life like Hattie and Victor?" She hoped he said no-suddenly she wanted to be more than friends. It wasn't possible, but then, it wasn't a sin to want something even if there wasn't a chance in hell of ever getting it.

"Of course. And before I forget, here's my part of that flower and balloon order." He slipped a bill into her shirt pocket. The touch of his fingertips brushing across her breast sent another shock wave through her body.

She quickly jerked the money out and handed it back to him. "I didn't sign either of our names, and it's already taken care of."

"But they know I was in on it." He dropped the money into her purse. "Gracie hugged me and thanked me a dozen times for her balloons. And I pay my bills, so don't argue with me about this, Kate."

"Don't tell me what to do, Detective Kramer." She dragged out his name.

Damn! Damn! Damn! Now he'd gone and spoiled the whole feeling.

He crossed his arms over his chest. "I'm not Conrad. I'm not going to take your money or stomp on your heart. Don't compare me to him."

She gritted her teeth until her jaws ached. "Don't accuse me of things I didn't do. And don't bring up his name to me. And another thing-if you put cuffs on me and drag me to jail for something I didn't do, that classifies as stomping on my heart. And the final thing-I'm not going to ride the Ferris wheel with you. What if a columnist or reporter or even blogger is roaming around among all these people and they see us snuggled up together on a Ferris wheel?"

He stood to his feet. "You are right about the ride, but when you come back to Bootleg next year to enjoy the festival with Gracie, this will all be done. Save me a spot next to you."

"Who says I'll come back?"

She picked up her purse and was about to leave when Gracie yelled from across the street, "There's the funnel cake wagon and there's Kate. Hey, Kate, wait for us!"

"You could ride with Gracie and I could ride with Lisa and we'd be together, but not side by side," Waylon drawled.

"And I bet if we were really good at matchmaking we could get Jamie and Paul to ride together," Kate said.

"Hattie would be so proud of you in this moment." Waylon chuckled and then grew serious. "Trust me, Kate. I'm doing everything I can possibly do to clear your name."