Bannon Brothers by Janet Dailey

Hell-raisers.”
    â€œAnd you’re the angel.”
    â€œUm, no.” He grinned at her. “I’m the oldest. I showed Deke and Linc how to raise hell, put it that way.”
    Erin laughed and the sound warmed him all over. “Your parents?”
    â€œMy dad was a cop, like me. An outdoorsman. He liked to take us up to the family cabin and teach us woodsy lore and whatnot. He passed away a few years ago. Mom is still going strong. She hovers over us all.”
    â€œMrs. Meriweather mentioned that. And she said you’d been on departmental leave for a while. After that shooting.”
    â€œYeah,” Bannon said wryly. “I knew you knew everything about me as soon as you said those two reunited online.” He liked her even more for stopping where she had and not asking a whole bunch more questions. That quietness of hers was something like kindness.
    He pulled the coffee cup that the waitress set down toward him with the saucer and waited for Erin to be served.
    She was smiling at his reply. “Only a little. So what do your brothers do?”
    â€œLaw enforcement. But not police work.”
    Her dessert arrived and she seemed willing to let it go at that. “And you guys are close.”
    â€œYeah. Very.”
    â€œYou’re lucky.” The wistfulness in her voice struck him. Overall he got an impression of loneliness, even isolation, in her upbringing. But not why. Hell. There was time enough for that conversation, and if it didn’t happen today, he was fine with that.
    Bannon watched her spoon up the homemade berry sherbet with the same thoughtful care with which she seemed to do just about everything. The sight was erotic and oddly pure at the same time. He stuck with black coffee, stirring it to give himself something to do besides gawk at her, even though there wasn’t any sugar or cream in it.
    Â 
    They took both their cars to drive out to the Montgomery mansion. He followed her, taking note of the license plate under her hatchback just in case he might need it in the future. Getting her last name had taken long enough, he thought.
    He couldn’t shake the feeling that Erin was a very private person. He’d do well not to ask her too many questions at this point.
    She raised the arm that she’d crooked in the open window on her side, pointing ahead. Bannon snapped out of his abstracted mood and looked. There was the Montgomery mansion, looking even more grand than it had on the historical society’s website. Two full stories and a half story atop those. Columns. A double-height veranda. Nice details like carved swags of classical garlands under the eaves. Outside the tall, spiked iron fence that surrounded the house were towering old oaks, with a few smaller and much plainer structures well behind those. Probably had been the washhouse and sheds once upon a time. A neatly made, small shack undoubtedly covered a well.
    They parked under a porte cochere to one side that was wide enough to shelter a couple of four-horse carriages side by side. Erin rubbed her arms when she got out. “It’s chilly here.”
    Bannon looked around. They were in the shade of the huge house, that was one reason why. It had been built on a rising swell of land that caught the spring breeze from the valley below.
    She bent into her car and retrieved a sweater from the backseat, throwing it over her shoulders. Then she picked up a canvas bag with paint splatters on it and started hunting through the contents. “Mrs. Meriweather wrote down the keypad combination for me. Give me a sec to find the piece of paper. It’s okay to go on up the stairs. I’ll be right there.”
    Bannon nodded. “Okay.”
    The view from the lower veranda was spectacular, a sweeping vista of the valley. The house was well out in the country, away from the sprawl around Wainsville.
    â€œI’ll play tour guide,” she told him, coming up the stairs with her long