Forbidden Ground Read Free Page A

front seat as if to see if Kate was still there. Gabe came around to open their doors for them.
    “Really handsome.”
    “Like I said, wait till you see its owner.”
    “Now, Tess,” Gabe scolded. “No matchmaking. Kate, I’m sorry your Ohio State professor friend couldn’t be here for all this, because he would have been welcome.”
    “Carson’s had it on his calendar to speak at the Smithsonian for over a year,” she explained as she got out of the backseat. “Very prestigious. It’s his topic, for sure—Early Indigenous Civilizations of the Americas—but I hope to get him here soon. He knows a lot about the mounds in this area. Maybe we can visit you two once you get back from the secret honeymoon site and get settled.”
    Gabe had sold his house. Tess’s place, their old family home Mom had left to Tess in her will, was next door to his old one on Valley View Road. It was still on the market. The soon-to-be McCord family had bought a place on the old-town edge of Cold Creek and were renovating it as well as adding a three-room addition for the day-care center Tess would open in September. Since the old Lockwood house had not sold yet, Kate was staying there with Tess. Gabe was overseeing the work at their new place, when he wasn’t busy trying to bust marijuana growers and, lately, a gang of timber thieves in the area. But he’d said that was like being on vacation after the search for a kidnapper and killer.
    Gabe rang the doorbell, and a tall man opened the door. Tess was sure right about Grant Mason, Kate thought. He looked dynamic and just plain solid. He smiled at her in a flash of white teeth against his tanned face as he extended his hand after Gabe’s introduction. And for once, it was great to see a clean-shaven man. She’d never liked the scruffy style of half beards so popular these days. Maybe Gabe was shaved close because of his job, but Grant had obviously done so by choice. She should not have been expecting a Paul Bunyan woodsman look just because Grant owned a lumber mill.
    His hand was big and warm—just like this house. He lightly touched the small of her back as they stepped in. She felt suddenly nervous but over the moon, as the Brits would say. Trying to get this man to let her explore the Adena mound on his property just went from business to pleasure.
    * * *
    Grant realized he’d been a moron to picture Tess’s older professor sister as some frowsy, mousy academic, pale with glasses perched on her nose, plain with no makeup. Kathryn Lockwood was very good-looking. He should have known she’d be pretty since Tess was. But while Tess was quite slender, Kate Lockwood bloomed in all the right places. Her shoulder-length, curly brown hair seemed dusted with auburn like when the sun set through the forest. Her eyes were hazel-hued, alight with amber flecks and fringed with thick lashes. Her mouth was lush, red and pouted right now as she surveyed him. She wore a royal-blue dress that wrapped around her curves. Suddenly, this wedding offered more than just the happiness of his best friend and his bride.
    “You have a lovely home,” Kate said, her voice warm and mellow. He thanked her but had to pull himself away to welcome others at the front door. He wondered who was keeping an eye on the area since Gabe’s only deputy, Jace Miller, and his wife were here. Victor Reingold, from the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, who had helped solve the town’s child-abduction cases, came in and shook his hand.
    Todd McCollum and his wife, Amber, soon showed up, too. Grant kidded him about how well he cleaned up. Todd was always overseeing the cutting floor of the mill, and his idea of downtime was uptime—climbing trees. In spite of the fact that Brad had seemed willing to take Todd’s job, it was tempting to get him down here to see everyone, but not in the state he was in.
    Their other childhood buddy, Paul Kettering, surprised everyone by showing up with one of his fantastically