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to a reporter from your hometown paper?”
    Eyes flashing, she faced him. “Why I don’t care totalk to you is my business. The bottom line is that I won’t. Good night, Mr. Hamilton.”
    This time when she walked away, Ford let her go. He’d run across her type before. She wouldn’t be above using the media if it served her purposes, but the rest of the time she treated each and every journalist with disdain. He hadn’t expected to run across that kind of attitude in Winding River, but, of course, Emma Rogers lived in Denver now. Whatever bee she had in her bonnet about reporters came from a bad experience there. He’d bet his tape recorder on that.
    He should let it pass. What did it matter if she didn’t want to talk to him? He had other prospects for his story. But the competitive part of him that hated being beat out of any potential scoop rebelled. First thing in the morning, he’d go on the Internet and do a search of the archives of the Denver papers. If Emma Rogers was as high profile as everyone said, there were bound to be mentions. They would give him some insight into what made the woman tick.
    Once he knew that…well, it remained to be seen what he would do with the information.
     
    “Don’t tell me what I saw!” Donny Carter shouted, weaving in place in front of his wife. “You were flirting with Russell. The man’s hands were all over you.”
    The sound of Donny’s voice carried across the dance floor to where Emma sat with her friends. This was Donny’s second outburst of the evening, and their former classmate was threatening to get out of hand. He was clearly drunker now…and angrier.
    “I see Donny’s still getting sloshed at the slightest provocation,” Emma said to her friends. “I thought his beer-drinking days would be over by now.”
    “They’re not,” Karen said tersely.
    “And he’s still taking out his bad temper on Sue Ellen,” Cassie added. “They’ve been at it all weekend. Not that the Carters’ battles are anything new. My mother says their neighbors are constantly calling the sheriff over there to break up fights. And Sue Ellen’s been to the hospital twice in the past few months.”
    Emma felt her stomach clench. Donny and Sue Ellen had always had a volatile romance. She’d hoped that would change with maturity, but obviously it hadn’t. If anything, it was even worse than she’d suspected when she’d witnessed the earlier incident. She’d recognized all the signs of an abusive relationship, but she’d been praying it was mostly verbal. Cassie’s information suggested otherwise.
    “Why doesn’t she leave him?” Lauren asked, viewing the scene with indignation. “She shouldn’t have to take that kind of treatment from her own husband.”
    “She says she loves him, that it’s her fault for upsetting him,” Karen said, her worried gaze on the arguing couple. “I guarantee you, if you were to walk over there right now, she’d be apologizing all over the place for saying hello to Russell—which by the way, is all she did. I was standing right there with her earlier. But you’d never persuade her husband of the truth. Donny is jealous and possessive when he’s sober. Drunk, he’s even worse. He’s downright mean.”
    A few minutes later, as the argument escalated again, Emma saw the sheriff intervene, settling Donny down by escorting him outside for a chat. Donny went along with Ryan Taylor docilely enough. As they exited, Emma noticed that Ford Hamilton was observing the scene with interest.
    “I hope he doesn’t intend to report that little drama in next week’s paper,” she murmured, half to herself.
    “I don’t think Ford would do that,” Karen said.
    “He’s a journalist, isn’t he? It’s his job to muckrake whenever the opportunity arises,” Emma replied, leaving little doubt of the contempt in which she held Ford Hamilton’s profession.
    “Maybe in the city, but not here,” Cassie said. “Mom likes Ford. She met him when