Shadow in Serenity Read Free

hair before that peroxide eats through her scalp.”
    The door clanged shut behind her, and Lahoma slapped her red hands on her face. “Oh, my word, I forgot!” She ran to where Mildred sat with dye dripping down her forehead, hastily pushed the red head back into the sink, and turned the water on.
    Logan grinned and watched out the window as the blonde woman ambled up the sidewalk. “I don’t think she likes me.”
    “Sure she does,” Lahoma said. “Carny gets along with everybody. You just have to get used to her. She’s been a breath of fresh air to this town.”
    “Carny?” he asked. “What kind of name is that?”
    “She was brought up in a carnival,” Lahoma replied.
    So that was it. She had street smarts. That might get in his way.
    Mildred’s eyes rolled back in her head as Lahoma scrubbed her scalp, and in a voice just short of a groan, shesaid, “Carny Sullivan. She moved here when she married Bev’s boy, Abe.”
    “Then she isn’t a native of Serenity?”
    “Carny?” Lahoma chuckled. “Heavens, no. But she’s sure brought life to it. Abe was no good, though. He lit out a year after he brought her here. Wound up dead in Amarillo. Barroom brawl, they said.”
    “And she stayed?”
    “Of course she did. She’s one of us now. We love her, even if she does do her own hair.”
    Laughing, Logan offered his goodbyes to the ladies and went back outside. Carny and her son sat on the bench outside the barbershop, a block down. He strolled toward them as if in no particular hurry.
    She was probably in her late twenties. That savvy edge she had, that mature expression on her face, that lack of innocence only made her more attractive to him.
    Stay away
,
Logan
, he warned himself. That had been Montague’s first rule. Never let a woman get under your skin — especially one who had the goods on you. It could be the kiss of death. Yet he liked a challenge, and he couldn’t resist confronting her again … just one more time.
    She gave him a smug look as he approached. “Bet you didn’t pay for those fliers.”
    “Of course I did,” he said, surprised.
    She laughed and pulled her foot up to the edge of the bench. “No, you didn’t. You conned her into giving you credit, didn’t you? And you probably haven’t let go of a cent at the Welcome Inn yet.”
    He set the box on the end of the bench, trying to look unruffled. “How did you know where I’m staying?”
    She smiled. “I’m a genius. That, and the fact that it’s the only motel in town. So how are you planning to hoodwinkthe men in the barbershop? Can’t flirt with them like you did the ladies. But you can still flatter them, can’t you? Touch on their misfortune. Plant ideas in their minds. You’ve probably learned enough about the people here in two weeks to know all their Achilles’ heels.”
    His smile faded. Setting his mud-splattered foot on the edge of the bench, he leaned toward her. “I don’t know yours.”
    She met his eyes boldly. “That’s because I don’t have one.”
    Why did her comeback delight him so? Was it that she stared back at him, undaunted and unflattered by his close scrutiny? Or that she had his number, or thought she did, and wasn’t going to let him get away with a thing?
    She glanced away when she heard Jason’s name being called from inside, and nodded for the boy to go in. “Tell him to cut it shorter around the ears. And I want to be able to see your eyebrows.”
    “Aw, Mom!”
    “Go,” she said, shooing him away.
    When he was gone, she brought her gaze back to Logan and stared at him as if waiting for him to explain why he was standing there with his foot on her bench.
    “Look, I don’t know why you’re out to get me,” he said. “I haven’t done anything to you. I’m just here trying to do these people a favor.”
    “A favor?” She laughed. “That’s rich. You came here because you heard there was money here. That the local oil boom a few decades ago left these people sitting