Perfect Touch by Elizabeth Lowell Page A

his expression, didn’t change.
    â€œIf you wanted it private,” he said, “you shouldn’t have been giving interviews to local news outlets and talking all about how you were finally going to get justice today. Which, according to the judge, you did. Sorry you don’t care for the taste of it.”
    As Sara sat down on the leather couch, she watched Liza change tactics. A gleam of water softened the older woman’s eyes, if not her mouth.
    â€œJD wouldn’t want family matters discussed in front of strangers,” Liza said. “Send your little friend out and we can get down to family business.”
    â€œIf you want to pretend to be family again,” Jay said, settling next to Sara on the old leather couch, “sit down and be civil. I’m not JD. I don’t argue for the sheer ornery hell of it.”
    â€œThat woman isn’t family,” Liza said through her teeth, glaring at Sara.
    â€œLegally, neither are you,” Jay said, his voice calm and his eyes hard. “Sara is here to lend her expertise on the subject of Custer’s paintings.”
    â€œSure she is,” Barton said with a wink and a pumping gesture of his hand.
    â€œDo you need a time-out, Barty?” Jay asked.
    If Sara had ever wondered if the two men were really brothers, she knew now. Only siblings could know all the hot buttons to push.
    â€œDon’t fight with your brother,” Liza said to Jay.
    â€œHalf brother,” Barton corrected, his voice tight.
    â€œIf he acts like a kid, he’ll get treated like one,” Jay said, letting his impatience show. “Sara is a guest of Vermilion Ranch. If you’re rude to her, you’re rude to me.”
    Barton grimaced. “Fine. Whatever.”
    He flopped into a Stickley chair so old that the original fabric had been replaced by cowhide, which in turn had been worn down to bare leather at the arms and seat.
    Liza took a matching chair and sat like a queen giving audience to peasants.
    Silence.
    Sara wished that she was free to roam and admire her surroundings. The main room of the ranch house was framed in timbers that looked strong enough to hold up the sky. There was safety and comfort in the wood-paneled walls, traceries and patterns in the grain that made the place feel warm. Nothing had been cut with machine precision, but instead was shaped by human hands. Any irregularities in the grain were clear in the light reflecting on the varnish. The house was real rather than architecturally perfect.
    There is history here. So far from the glass and steel of my office, newly built on the rubble of old houses. And yet, both wood and steel architecture have their beauty—each in its own place, appropriate for the environment it was in.
    Her eyes moved from the walls to what was on them. Her heart stuttered for a second when she realized what she was looking at.
    Those are Custers on the walls! she thought.
    The impulse to go to them, to study them, was so great that she had to fight to stay seated.
    Henry stepped out of a darkened doorway that led to the back of the house. He nodded to Liza, ignored Barton, and focused on Jay.
    â€œI sent Billy out to see to the stock in the northeast pasture,” he said. “We’re gonna have to move them up to summer pasture or start feeding hay.”
    â€œI’ll move them tomorrow. How are the two new hands doing?”
    â€œTold them not to drink Penny’s homebrew,” Henry said. “They’re both puking their guts out in the bunkhouse. Can’t pull wire for fences, much less ride herd on King Kobe all the way to Fish Camp. Oh, and the Stinson kids can’t meet you partway to take the herd to summer pasture, either.”
    â€œI’ll take care of it,” Jay said. “Beats pulling wire.”
    â€œThe summer pasture will be easy, but you can’t wrangle those Angus up to the lake alone. Soon as you get to cougar country, they’ll