“Have you heard anything around town about me? Rumors or whatnot?”

Jenna pulled her bottom lip into her mouth with her teeth. “I’ve heard all sorts of stuff these past few days. What do you want to know?”

Rachel took a deep breath and surveyed the walls. This kind of conversation was uncomfortable enough without it happening in the close confines of a tiny room. Oh, well. Time to face the music. She pushed up from the sofa and walked to the window, bracing her hands on the sill to look outside. Even though she’d never said his first name aloud to either of her sisters in her lifetime, she said, “About me and Vaughn Cooper.”

Saying the words made her dizzy. She clutched the windowsill and focused on a scrub tree in the distance.

“Yes, I have.” Jenna paused and let the revelation hover in the air.

Rachel hunched into her arms as her gut lurched. “Go on. Don’t make me pull it out of you. Tell me what people are saying.”

She heard Jenna’s chair creak, but kept her eyes locked on the window.

“People are saying that you and Vaughn are having a hot and heavy secret affair.”

All the desperate hope she’d felt that Kate Parrish was exaggerating about the gossip deflated. She squinted until all she could see was the scrub tree. “Why didn’t you warn me that people were talking?” Her voice sounded distant, calm like the eye of a tornado was calm.

Footsteps grew louder, until Jenna materialized next to her, leaning her shoulder on the wall. “I didn’t want to spook you.”

She cranked her head to the side and drilled Jenna with an exasperated glare. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Rach, what I heard in town this week is the first time I’ve ever caught even a whiff about you having a love life. I figured you and Vaughn were happy thinking no one was noticing what you two were up to. Seeing as how this was probably your first time, I was afraid you’d stop if you knew people were talking.”

Rachel blinked. That was some effed-up logic. She was afraid to ask the next question that came to mind, but she did anyway. “My first time doing what?”

“First time doing IT. Duh. You lost your virginity to Vaughn, am I right?”

Rachel turned to face her sister head-on. Still, she had to open and close her mouth several times before any words would come out. “What you said is so wrong in so many ways, I don’t know where to start.”

“Are you saying you and Vaughn Cooper aren’t having a not-so-secret affair?”

Rachel folded her arms over her chest. “I’m not telling you anything until you tell me where you got your information.”

Jenna took a deep breath. “When I was at the Diamond Diva Salon getting a manicure, Linda Klauss was there, and I overheard her dishing with Nancy Tobarro while they got their hair done.”

She paused and looked at Rachel like she’d just provided irrefutable evidence to a trial jury on one of those courthouse television shows.

“Keep going,” Rachel prompted with a sweeping wave of her hand.

“Linda Klauss was one of the nurses who admitted you to the emergency room after the shooting, and she said Vaughn carried you in.”

Rachel thought back to the haze of that morning. She remembered him carrying her, but couldn’t collect enough details from her memory to know if it happened in the Parillas Valley or the hospital, or both. “Maybe. But I was injured, and woozy from shock. What’s the big deal? Linda’s reading an awful lot into things if something that inconsequential got her tongue wagging.”

Jenna’s expression turned solemn. “She said he fretted over you like a scared husband. She said he didn’t let go of your hand for more than an hour.”

Her mouth went dry. He did that for me?

Pushing away the wild elation stirring inside her, she shrugged. “I don’t remember any of that. Everything about that day is pretty foggy. I had no control over what Vaughn did or didn’t do. That’s his business anyhow, not mine.”

Jenna pressed her lips together like she did when Tommy was feeding her a line. “Mm-hmm. Except that, as it turned out, that day in the hospital wasn’t the only time folks had spotted you two together around town.”

“We weren’t together around town, like on a date or something. I got shot. I was in the hospital. He was investigating. Sounds to me like folks are working awfully hard to squeeze water out of a rock.”

Jenna ignored her valid point. “So after Linda told her story, Nancy piped up. She saw you get in Vaughn’s truck a couple months ago out back of John Justin’s. Late at night.”

Shit.

“And then Marti, while she was doing my nails, she was listening too. She saw you and Vaughn leave Smithy’s Bar together last month.”

Ha! She had this one covered. “I never left Smithy’s with him.” That was the honest truth. Even if they did have the occasional well-timed exit.

“She said she saw you two making eyes at each other across the room, before getting up and leaving one right after the other.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

She plowed ahead. “Maybe it wouldn’t have, except that Gloria, the bartender at Smithy’s, is friends with Marti and she said the sheriff paid your tab. Marti had asked her about it because the night it happened, when she went out front of the bar for a smoke, she recognized Vaughn’s truck in the parking lot, but you were both gone.”

She’d never been the subject of gossip before, and it felt like she’d been dropped in the middle of a rodeo arena full of bulls. “Well, goddamn, if no one in this town has anything better to do than gossip. No wonder the New Mexico economy’s suffering.”

“You want to hear the rest of it?”

She smacked her forehead with the palm of her hand. “There’s more?”

“Charlene Delgado lives down the street from Vaughn, and she can count at least a half dozen times over the past two years that—”

“Stop. Enough. I can’t listen to this anymore.” She stormed through the living room and pushed out the door, worming her hand into her jeans pocket for the fresh roll of antacids she’d snagged that morning.

Behind her, the screen squeaked as it opened. She stole a glance over her shoulder to see Jenna hot on her heels. Knowing Jenna would never let the conversation go now that the dam had broken, she flopped onto a rock to give in to the inevitable.

“Well?” Jenna prompted, standing over Rachel with her hands on her hips.

She picked open the paper wrapper of the antacids and popped one in her mouth. “What do you want me to say?”

“I’m right, aren’t I? You lost your virginity to Vaughn.”

She pushed the antacid between her teeth and cheek. “Jenna, I haven’t been a virgin since I was seventeen.”

Jenna dropped onto the rock next to her. “What? Who? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because when I was seventeen, you were eight. Plus, it’s none of your business.”

“And . . . and . . . there’ve been men in your life since then? Boyfriends and such?”

Rachel shrugged. “I’ve been on plenty of dates, but not with anyone I ever cared to call my boyfriend, not even many I’d consider my, uh, lover.” Good grief, that was a clunky word. Tripped off her tongue as smooth as a lump of peanut butter. “I’m no prude, as you and Amy have so much fun believing.”

“Why am I only now hearing about this?”

“I didn’t realize I was supposed to clear my every romantic relationship with you.”

“Who are these guys? Certainly no one around town or someone would’ve heard tell. And where do you find them? You never leave the farm.”

Rachel yanked a blade of wild alfalfa from a clump growing at the base of the rock and twisted it around her finger. “I leave the farm all the time. I go to a lot of livestock auctions and supply stores, and I used to deliver alfalfa to ranches all over the county. I’ve been surrounded by men every day of my life.” She paused, shaking her head. “Why am I telling you this?”

“I’m not sure, but I’m spellbound. Tell me more. I want details. Lots of details.”

Good grief. “I think you and I are better off never confessing our sexual histories to each other, Jen. I don’t want to know who and what you’ve done, and I’m sure as hell not going to give you details about who and what I’ve done.” She unwound the grass from her finger and snapped it in half, wincing as a new possibility hit her. “Did you share any of the rumors about me with anyone, like Amy?”

Jenna huffed. “Nah. You’re my sister. I’d never gossip about you to anyone except Amy, and right now she’s too busy with the restaurant and her wedding plans to think of anything but her own happiness.”

Thank God for small favors.

“Vaughn’s totally hot, by the way,” Jenna added. “I’m not into the whole cowboy lawman vibe he’s got going on, but he’s still drool worthy.”

A smile tugged at Rachel’s lips. “Yes, he is.”

Jenna picked her own blade of wild alfalfa and tied it in a knot. “After Dad died, there were a few times when I stopped by the main house and Vaughn’s patrol car was parked out front, but neither he nor you could be found. With so much going on at the time, I forgot about it until I heard Linda and Nancy gabbing at the salon. Is that when it started, this thing between you two?”

“He and I had been circling each other for a while, but after Dad died is when it finally happened.”

“He was at the hospital when Mom died.”

Rachel knew where this railroad track led, knew she no longer had the luxury to hide behind her cowardliness. Admitting her affair with Vaughn meant confessing to her deepest, most painful sin. She pulled another blade of alfalfa from the ground and cinched it around her finger until the pool of blood in her fingertip throbbed.