Just Let Go… Read Free Page B

for their own reputation within the community. As a card-carrying member of the Broken Hearts Club herself, Gillian had never been tempted to spray-paint a human being, nor set fire to items of clothing. Or at least, not in a really long time.
    Usually Gillian avoided dwelling on past unpleasantries, or those fleeting moments when she had wanted to dig out a fellow human being’s heart with a dull nail file, but this morning was different. First she’d stopped at Harley’s Five & Dime to sneak a glance at the Austin newspaper, just as she did every day. While checking Thursday’s style section, she’d seen the watchful worry in Harley’s eyes. Like he expected Gillian to bust out into great heartbroken sobs. Ha. Maybe when she’d been a gauche seventeen, but now? At twenty-seven? Ha. Ha.
    Two doors down, at Dot’s Good Eats, Dot had been extra nice, giving her a sausage biscuit for free. Free sausage was a soft-hearted act of pity by even the most liberal definition of the word. As if Gillian was someone people felt sorry for. Sorry! She had been crowned Miss Tin Cup four times running. She had been All-State in softball, with a fastball that could kill a man if he wasn’t paying attention. Gillian Wanamaker of the San Angelo Wanamakers was a force to be reckoned with, not a pity case. She was an icon, a role model. She was a goddamned institution, much like Lady Bird Johnson, Jackie O, Lady Di and Barbie.
    Needing to escape all the sympathetic stares, but without looking as if she needed to, Gillian left the restaurant and headed for the sanctity of the courthouse, where she could cower in peace. Nearly two hundred years ago, they were driving cattle down this street, instead of pick-ups. There was a permanence in Tin Cup, a consistency that Gillian appreciated more than most. As she passed the red-bricked storefronts on Main Street, they were just opening the doors, some of the old-timers shopping before the heat of the day set in. In Texas, if you weren’t practical, you didn’t survive.
    She could see Rita Talleyrand approaching with that “Let’s chat” gleam in her eye, so Gillian took the last hundred feet at a fast sprint, cutting across the well-tended lawn, ticking off the landscapers in the process. She waved an apology then darted inside the courthouse, and up the marble steps. The sheriff’s office was located on the second floor, and it wasn’t fancy or frilly, but it was more than enough. The old wooden desk had served the Tin Cup sheriff since the first world war. The chair creaked when you moved, and had a drunken tilt to the right, but there was a history here, and Gillian was now a part of it. The walls were lined with photos of the dignitaries who had passed through Tin Cup—but never stayed.
    Soon all that was going to change with the upcoming Trans-Texas Light Rail line, a four-hour direct route from Austin to Midland via, yes, you heard it here first— Tin Cup.
    There were plans for the new station, along with a few extra improvements. A nip and tuck to make Tin Cup, Texas, a travel destination all its own.
    After one extra cup of coffee, Gillian settled in her chair, but the mindless paperwork only gave her more time to stew. As she hammered away on the old computer keyboard, she reminded herself that her days were too busy to be filled with ideas of revenge, or physical assault. The Enter key stuck, and she pounded it twice, accidentally cancelling the state’s processing form for last month, and she damned every vile participant in this technological conspiracy, along with one non-participant: Austen Hart.
    Austen was lumped in merely because he was still living, breathing and now his personal space was a little closer to Tin Cup and already she could see the tiny prickles breaking out along her skin. Hives, she told herself. Nothing more. Not excitement. No siree, bob.
    Gillian leaned back in her chair and inhaled deeply, mainlining oxygen, trying to find her happy place.
    She had