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Montana Red
Genell Dellin


Haunted by heartache, cowboy Jake Hawthorne has taken a job catching wild horses in Montana. But his quest to bring in a magnificent thoroughbred pits him against an unusual rustler. Having escaped her vengeful ex-husband, Clea Mathison is trying to live life on her own terms. Then her beloved mare runs off, setting her on a journey far from the privileged world she knows ; and on the run from the law.Forced to depend on each other, Jake and Clea discover a strength together that they've never known alone. But when faced with an impossible choice, will Jake give up everything for the woman he's grown to love?







PRAISE FOR

GENELL DELLIN’S

“MONTANA” SERIES

“Dellin makes rodeo athletes come alive in this

modern-day western romance.”

—Booklist on Montana Gold

“Sure to please her innumerable fans.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews on Montana Blue

“Dellin gives her readers a real taste of the west.”

—Booklist on Montana Blue

“A fine contemporary tale…

Fans of Big Sky romances driven by the characters

will want to read Montana Blue.” —The Best Reviews


Also available by Genell Dellin

MONTANA GOLD

MONTANA BLUE




MONTANA

Red

GENELL DELLIN







www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk/)


For my sisters, Linda and Bonnie, who share

my loving memories of the two funniest and

best grandpas any girls ever knew.

Homer Grady Gill and Newton Theodore Smith




ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS


Thank you to all the activists, writers,

photographers, scientists, filmmakers, organisations

and individuals who have contributed to our

awareness, understanding and preservation

of America’s wild horses.


Dear Reader,

The most emotional environmental issue in America is wild horses. Since the late 1800s the question has been whether to love or hate them, slaughter or protect them, and that’s still true today. When, in researching this book, I found that two of my acquaintances, both lifelong horsemen and ranchers, consider them useless, it shouldn’t have shocked me. The prevailing attitude since the late 1800s has been that letting wild horses graze is a waste of grass that should be used for cattle who feed people.

But wild horses feed our spirits. The sight of a band of wild horses running against a sunset sky with manes and tails flying, or a lone stallion standing on top of a mountain cliff with head up to smell the wind, wary, proud and self-sufficient, stirs the blood. Knowing they survive by growing hard, hard hooves and eating snow for water and instinctively spreading their grazing pressure over what rough terrain they are permitted to keep and by huddling together for warmth and watching for danger together lifts the human heart. Connecting with their primal selves, shaped by the land itself, warms our souls.

The Plains Indians, when they first saw horses, called them “medicine dogs.” This is even more true of wild horses because their very wildness makes them our healers. I hope you find medicine in Montana Red.

All best,

Genell Dellin

IN WILDNESS IS THE PRESERVATION OF

THE WORLD.

—Henry David Thoreau




CHAPTER ONE


STEALING A HORSE scared her wildly, much more than she’d imagined it would—which must’ve been at least a hundred times just today.

Nothing was happening as she’d expected. Ariel didn’t nicker a greeting and the security lights weren’t shining much farther inside than the doorway and, even if they were, sweat was running into her eyes, stinging them so badly she couldn’t see. Clea squinted into the narrow cone of light emanating from the tiny flashlight she wore around her neck and then took another step.

She couldn’t breathe. And not just because the humidity was niney-nine percent. It was a bold, hard job, this horse-thieving business.

What had Brock been thinking, building a barn with no airconditioning? She couldn’t imagine that, either. People would be saying he was cutting corners, in financial trouble. Brock’s image was what drove him.

Clea wiped her eyes with her bare fingertips and moved deeper into the black of the aisle, straining to see the horses, flashing the torch from side to side to check each one as she passed. If only Ariel were a white! Or a palomino or a gray. Pray God she was still here.

If she wasn’t, Clea’d probably just break down and cry, after going through all this. She missed Ari like crazy.

More than that, she had to have her back. Somehow, being partners with Ariel was what had given her the guts to finally get the divorce she should’ve gotten three years ago.

Scared gave way to mad again, in the endless back-and-forth game of emotions playing with her. Suddenly, she wished Brock would catch her. Come on, Brockie. Look out the window and see my little light. Come on down here and tell me I can’t take my own horse. Let me practice my new self-defense skills. Hey, Brock!

Something metal fell, clanging like the bells of hell, to the concrete floor.

Clea hit the off switch on her light and slammed her back against a stall wall. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t even pray. She just wished to go right through the wall behind her to hide inside with whatever horse was in there. The one kicking the side of the stall. Twice, and then he quit, thank goodness, or he might have lamed himself and it’d have been her fault.

Not to mention that he might draw somebody’s attention.

Or they all would. The whole population of the barn was stirred up now.

Time—who knew how long?—passed until she heard only a few mutterings and rustlings and a couple of thumping buckets from horses hoping that the excitement meant breakfast. The ringing noise must’ve come from the narrow feed room she’d passed on the way in. Maybe a scoop or a lid. Maybe a rat or a mouse. Or a cat.

Her breathing slowed and she used every intuition she had but she didn’t sense another person’s presence. Evidently, neither did the horses.

Oddly enough, the scare sort of calmed her down. In a weird, insane way it was as if the worst were over now.

She flashed her little light from stall to stall, found the crooked white star in the black face. Finally.

“Thank God.” Clea barely breathed the words but the mare heard and nickered to her. Quietly, as if she knew this had to be a clandestine operation. Clea crossed the aisle in three long steps, reached for the halter hanging from the wire mesh wall with one hand and slipped the door latch free with the other. Inside, quick as thought, she cupped her hand over the mare’s muzzle, stroking it for a second, whispering in her ear. Ariel had to be…her one true friend.

The pumping adrenaline was making Clea’s arms shake but her icy fingers managed to get the halter on and the strap pulled through the buckle. Once she’d led her out—Ari quiet and cooperating as if they’d planned this escape together—Clea took the time to close and fasten the stall door so that, at first glance in the morning, everything would look normal. Every minute she could buy herself was another mile down the road.

Although, now that she had her mare on a lead in her hand, she could kill anybody who tried to take her away. She had another flash of a fleeting fantasy that that somebody might be Brock and…

Enough foolishness. Get out of here.

The other horses were mostly quiet as she and Ari paraded past them, the mare’s shoes clinking on the concrete. The smell of fly spray from the automated system burned her lungs and made her want to cough, but she resisted.

Ari switched her tail and knocked a halter against the wire of the last stall they passed, hard enough to make the buckle clink but that was all. No alarms sounded and no voices yelled and no lights went on anywhere.

Once outside, the sultry Texas night slapped Clea in the face. The noises of buzzing locusts, croaking frogs and, farther away, Interstate 20 announced that the wider world was waiting. It wouldn’t be long now.

Clea kept to the shadows until they were through the gate to the pasture, then she tied the lead rope into a makeshift rein, led the mare over to the fancy new polyurethane fence, stepped up on it and mounted. Laughter—bitter, terrible, sad, hard laughter—bubbled up in her at the vision of Brock’s face, if he could see her now.

But she no longer wanted him to see her. It’d just be a big mess, and if he called in law enforcement, she would lose Ari for good.

Wait. Wait till you cross Red River. In Oklahoma you can celebrate.

One smooch and they were going, heading diagonally across the big pasture, taking approximately the same path through the tall grass Clea had come in on. Her legs and seat melted against the warm horseflesh and she felt the first glimmer of peace flow through her. She wanted so much to squeeze Ariel into a lope and fly away with her, but she took a deep breath and made herself fall into the rhythm of the mare’s long, reaching walk instead.

It was hot. So hot that even Ariel didn’t have it in her to be frisky. Good thing, because Clea didn’t dare use the flashlight now, out in the open. Even if she did, the grass made it impossible to see the ground beneath, so she wouldn’t—would not—jog or lope, no matter how much her nerves screamed that they wanted to. This was enough. Just to be together again.

Tears sprang to her eyes and she leaned forward on the sleek black neck so she could lay her cheek against it.

“You’re my gorgeous girl,” she said. “Don’t get in a hurry and step in a hole now. Nobody’ll see us.”

She hoped. She tugged at the black do-rag to make sure it covered all of her pale hair.

A mosquito rose from the grass and dived at her, hanging in the air at her cheek, singing in her ear. Clea hunched her shoulder to rub it off so she could keep her hand on the horse. The feel of Ari’s warm flesh against her palm comforted her. She wasn’t alone anymore.

And Ariel was safe.

I’ll sell your precious damned mare down the road, Clea, and I won’t be too particular about who buys her. You can bet your selfish little life on that. If you’re gone, then so is she. Maybe to the killers.

Brock’s voice was in her head, so real she thought she felt his breath on her neck. She shivered.

Her only comfort while she plotted and planned and waited to get Ariel back into her possession had been knowing that he was too greedy to sell a high-dollar horse for a killer price.

Maybe. His need to control consumed him. She’d been living in fear that it might trump greed in the face of all the inconvenience and money Clea was costing him.

The sudden glow of headlights coming around the curve on the county road she was heading for, jerked her back into the present moment and froze her in place on the horse. She could tell by the moonlit silhouette that it was a big pickup truck with lights across the top and along the running boards.

Would the driver see her rig? And then think thieves and stop to investigate? Or call the sheriff? Take her tag number?

She’d done the best she could, but her brand-new truck and trailer pulled up into a ragged bunch of mesquite by the side of the road at three in the morning were not hard to spot. This whole area was slipping fast into urban-sprawl development land and the people who lived in the new McMansions and worked in Dallas usually didn’t drive pickup trucks. It must be one of the few farmers or ranchers or horse trainers still holding on in that area. And they were the ones who might get suspicious.

For a minute she wished she hadn’t been too worried about scratching the paint on her new vehicles to drive deeper into the brush. But then the truck rolled right on by her hiding place without slowing down; she was safe again.

As safe as she could be while in illegal possession of one of the best hunter-jumpers in the country.

But it wouldn’t be long until she was out there on I-20, blended in among the eighteen-wheelers and the RVs, flying north with her darling tucked safely away out of sight—calmly, she hoped—munching hay. Just a few more minutes. They were more than halfway to the road.

Clea turned around to look behind her at the looming white house in the distance and the gabled barn behind it. The sight urged her to lope the rest of the way. She fought it down. She’d come too far to mess up now.

After what seemed a whole night’s worth of time, they reached the fence that ran along the road.

Clea slid off, untied the lead and reclipped it under Ari’s chin, murmuring nonsense to the mare, keeping the trees between them and the road as long as she could. She gave thanks again that along this side of the property was still an old barbed-wire fence with a section held up by a loop of baling wire to make a gate. No lock.

She opened it and the black mare walked right through the gap, waited for the trailer door to swing back and loaded without a bit of trouble.

“If you’ll just haul the same way you loaded, we’ll do great,” Clea said.

She let herself take a second to hug Ariel’s neck before she tied her in the slot prepared with the full hay feeder.

“You be good,” she said as she fastened the divider securely around Ariel. “Don’t give me any trouble and we’ll get to our new home a whole lot faster. You’ll love it there. It’s nice and cool.”

Ari grabbed a mouthful of hay and started chomping. Clea closed up the trailer and then went to put the gate back in place.

Excitement was starting to build deep inside her, pushing away fear and anger, coming up hot through the pool of cold sadness. She ran to the driver’s door, unlocked it, climbed in, fastened her seat belt and turned the key. She backed out into the blissfully empty road to head for the interstate. Straight south from here, all the way to the access road, then a right turn and it wasn’t half a mile to the on-ramp. The northbound on-ramp.

That was the plan.

But to follow the plan she had to drive past the main entrance to Brock’s development, Falcon Ridge. Yes, Falcon Ridge, when there wasn’t a falcon or a ridge anywhere in sight and hadn’t been for a hundred years, if ever.

It might have been the very first or just one of the first, but soon there were bound to be more of these stupid monstrosities springing up like weeds all over the farm- and ranchland of north Texas. She hated them.

And here it was now, looming ahead on her right, somehow reminding her of an enormous medieval castle and its keep somewhere out on a moor in the middle of nowhere. But no, it was a shining new, self-sufficient small town with its own specialty food shops and spa and convenience store selling gasoline. With its very own gym, coffee shop and guarded gate.

With its fake variety of townhouses, one-story houses, two-story houses, houses with yards and houses without. Fake community. Fake closeness. Well, what could be more natural for Brock to build?

The reckless need to defy her ex-husband drove her. Her arms turned the wheel with no direction whatsoever from her brain and she drove in past the gatehouse where the guard sat fast asleep. He didn’t even hear the loud purr of her diesel motor.

She followed her instincts on the streets that wound around for no reason and finally found the last one on the north side, where one of the houses backed up on the acreage she’d just crossed and the barn she’d just burgled. A bitter chuckle rang out, loud in the truck. It didn’t sound like hers but it must have been.

Her hand ached to hit the horn and summon Brock-the-Builder and his new wife, both of whom belonged here so un-equivocably—he with his fake hair and she with her fake breasts—into the yard or at least to the window so she could wave at them while she drove past. Then, in the morning, when the guys went to feed and discovered Ari was missing, Brock would know who took her.

He would never, ever, in a million years think Clea had done it herself. He might suspect she’d hired someone, but she wanted him to know she hadn’t needed to hire to get it done.

She wanted him to know her real spirit was coming back to life. She was stronger now, strong enough to confront him.

But not strong enough to let go of Ariel, now that I just got her. Better be careful.

She slowed more and idled in front of the house—ugly fake Southern mansion, with even the proportions of the pillars all wrong. Just as she’d expected. He had a new wife with fake breasts and bad taste.

Clea’s foot tapped the accelerator to make the motor growl, a noise she liked to think of as threatening.

Take that, Brock. You’d better not come after my mare.

He would, though. She knew him too well—as opposed to her realization, when she’d finally gathered the courage to leave him, that he had never known her at all.

Well, honestly, how could he? She hadn’t known herself. She’d been afraid to face her real feelings and afraid to assert her own will—when it went up against Daddy’s or Brock’s. Well, no more.

Get out. You have miles and miles and hours and hours to think about this.

She stepped on the accelerator, laid the gas to her truck and roared her way along the empty street toward the exit of the pretend-town and the still-sleeping man in the guardhouse. A frisson of new excitement mixed with relief zigzagged its way down her spine where the sweat was drying. It carried her to I-20 and kept her wits and her reflexes sharp as she merged into the traffic. She forgot about everything except reminding herself to allow for the length of her new trailer when she changed lanes and keeping her foot light on the accelerator so she could stay within the speed limit.

Of course, that was probably the best way to get noticed by a highway patrolman. She seemed to be the only person on the road traveling at a speed less than ninety miles an hour; the huge trucks whipping past made her dizzy. She’d have to get tough—only 1,499 more miles to go, or something like that. Maybe more.

Clea still couldn’t believe that she was here, in the driver’s seat, for the long haul all the way to Montana. Just like the old cattle drives—Texas to Montana. Well, Charles Goodnight had been one of her ancestors so surely she could do this.

She’d hauled her own horse a few times before on short trips to ride with friends. Also, she’d taken turns driving during the thousands of miles she’d traveled during the serious horse-showing days of her high school and college years, but it was her trainer or his assistant who did most of it. Many times she’d flown while they drove.

However, for this job she couldn’t exactly pay her trainer or hire a horse-transport company, could she?

No, she could not. For the first time ever she was on her own.

She gave herself a tight little smile in the rear-view mirror as she checked her surroundings and settled firmly into the slow lane at a solid seventy miles per hour, which she pretty much had to maintain or get hit from behind. The look of that smile lingered in her mind. She’d meant it to be a show of courage and not the scared grimace she’d glimpsed.

Clea lifted her chin and smiled again. This one was better. Scared or not, she wasn’t giving up or giving in or giving back. No way.

Free at last. Freedom. Free. I’m free. Free.

“Free.” She said it out loud. After a lifetime of being Daddy’s girl and Brock’s girl. Wife hadn’t applied to her because she’d had no more decision-making power married to Brock than she’d had with Daddy. Well, she was growing up now. She would show them she could take care of herself.

The most exciting thing about freedom was that she could do whatever she wanted. She could train Ariel herself and she could buy a trail horse or two to keep Ari company and she could go exploring. She could please herself and not worry about pleasing any man.

She could take all the pictures she wanted and work around the clock at becoming a professional photographer instead of a hobbyist, if that was what felt like the right thing to do. She could do anything, just as long as she had enough money to pay for her keep and Ari’s.

And maybe in the process she’d find whatever she was meant to do in her life.

But for now, she wouldn’t think that far ahead. She had secretly scrimped and saved for months. Selling possessions, lying about some uses of her horse money, writing checks forty dollars over the total for groceries and taking photos at horse shows for cash. Now she had enough money hidden to get her through a year at the place she’d leased and some things she could sell if necessary.

In two years, when she turned thirty, she’d have access to the trust fund from her mother. Until then, she could get a job of some kind. In the long run, if she couldn’t break into photography, which was a tough, tough field to make it in, she’d go into interior design or something that would give her a decent lifestyle. For one thing, she was determined to prove to Brock and Daddy that she could take care of herself.

Not in the style to which she was accustomed, that was for sure. She’d be living a lot differently this next year. Her new life would be stark in comparison to the old one. However, being able to breathe free and become her own real self would be worth any sacrifice.

But right now, her really most challenging goal was to hide this horse from Brock. He would be livid when he found out she had taken Ari. She closed her eyes for a split second and then concentrated on the traffic to banish him from her mind. She couldn’t bear to think about him anymore.

Revenge wouldn’t be her biggest satisfaction from this theft. Companionship would be, along with the relief of rescuing the mare. She and Ariel had a five-year history—the same amount of time as she and Brock—and she’d always been much closer to the mare than to her husband, now that she thought about it.

She and Ariel understood each other. Clea needed this mare. She loved her more than any horse she’d ever owned, even though she was by far the most ornery, four-legged creature alive—when she wanted to be. Well, maybe not more than Prince-the-Pony, but Clea had been a child then and children loved with a purity adults couldn’t match.

Relief flooded Clea then with such a sudden intensity it made her shiver and clutch harder onto the wheel. As if she’d saved her own life along with Ariel’s.

On one level, that was true. Right now, clinging to the courage to defy both Daddy and Brock and to try to make a new life alone took every ounce of strength she had.

This wasn’t a theft. This was refusing to be robbed a second time. But thinking about the past would do nothing but bring her down. She moved her mind to the future and tried to imagine herself and Ariel in their new surroundings.

The realtor who also managed the rentals at the ranch had described a rustic place with several far-flung cabins, each with its own small barn. The rent included the use of a heated indoor arena—a necessity for anyone who wanted to work with horses in the winter—and a stall in that same building during the winter months. Hundreds of miles of trails. Privacy. Great views, gorgeous natural beauty. Help from him when needed, solitude when she desired.

That man had better have been telling her the truth. Clea needed to be alone so she could sort out her mind. She was planning to do everything online except buy her groceries. Logging on as a guest on her best friend Sherilyn’s account, of course, so the people Brock would hire to find her couldn’t do it that way.

She’d be at her cabin alone all winter. What would it be like to be snowed in? She’d have to prepare by bringing in supplies of food and books and camera batteries and photo printer paper and plenty of wood to burn in case she lost electricity. Maybe she should get some snowshoes. She already had skis, which she’d shipped ahead with quite a lot of her other stuff. Maybe just surviving would keep her busy.

Clea would have to do her own barn chores for Ari and whatever inexpensive horse or horses she could find to keep Ari company. Most of her barn chores in the past had been done by other people, true, but she knew how. She could do it. She’d helped out at a million horse shows, hadn’t she?

Being the wife and hostess of a successful man had given her some skills, but how many paying jobs existed for a woman who could pretend to be fascinated when she was bored stiff—both in and out of bed? She raised her eyebrows to her reflection in the mirror. Well, it would be an asset in the oldest profession, which, if she hadn’t truly loved Brock—or thought she did at first—she would compare to her position as his wife.

No more. Never again would she give a man that power. Her days of catering to and obeying a man were gone.

Firmly, Clea looked at the road and the traffic. She blocked the past out of her mind one more time. That was another skill of hers—compartmentalizing—and she needed to use it now. No memories. No more. Just adventure ahead.

She concentrated on the sound of the tires on the road and tried to imagine details of her new life while the miles rolled by. A trip to Jackson with Brock to meet some business associates and another to ski at a private lodge near Kalispell were the only times she’d been to Wyoming or Montana. She’d never seen this place she’d leased. There wasn’t even a picture of it on the Internet.

She tried to imagine the first day, which she intended to sleep away. After so many miles and trying to sleep in the trailer—pray God she could find a fairgrounds or two where she could get Ariel out for some exercise and maybe even park close enough that she could leave her in a stall overnight—she’d sleep for a week.

Oh, no, she couldn’t! Not even for one day and night. She’d have nobody else to do the chores twice a day.

Get it down, C. Real life ahead.

She merged smoothly onto I-35E and, proud of the way she’d handled a crowded tangle of traffic, sped north, headed for Oklahoma. And then Kansas. Then Nebraska. And then Wyoming. All the way, well no, more like halfway west into it and finally north to Montana. Maybe her new home state forever—if she found out that she liked lots of winter.

Clea had intended to stop at the first convenience store she saw after she crossed Red River to buy a cup of coffee to celebrate but instead she just kept on going. Stopping would break her momentum and she felt compelled to continue moving away.

Just past Ardmore, though, the trailer started rocking. It shocked her at first and then she hoped she’d imagined it. But no. Ari was weaving and rocking it. Definitely. Clea could feel it swaying behind the truck, pulling the whole rig to one side, then the other.

Damn. She should’ve known Miss Ari wouldn’t be too good for too long.

Well, who could blame her? She wasn’t exactly used to being kidnapped from her stall in the middle of the night or to being without other horses for company.

But that wasn’t the reason. Diva that she was, center of the universe as she felt she was, Ariel felt compelled to try to get any bit of control over this whole operation that she could.

Finally, after a mile or two of intermittent rocking and swaying, Clea saw a rest area up ahead and pulled off the road. She turned off her lights because this was still the horse country of southern Oklahoma and north Texas where everybody knew everybody in the industry and someone might stop to see who she was and if she needed help.

Clea got out, walked back the length of the trailer, switched on her little flashlight and turned off the interior lights before she opened the door. She felt like a spy in a movie as she stepped in and shined the light over Ariel, who was still swaying rhythmically.

When the light reached her head, Ariel turned toward Clea with her eyes flashing, lifted a front hoof and pawed, hard.

Before Clea could open her mouth to make soothing sounds, Ari did it again and then started to rear, fighting the rope to try to get her head up, tearing at it with a vicious strength.

A terrible chill bloomed in Clea’s gut as she started moving toward the horse, making soothing noises, trying to get her mind together enough to make words. What if she’d brought Ari out here only to have her break a leg and die?

She hadn’t tied her tight enough. She’d been too happy to have her—too excited, too scared, too eager for Ariel to eat hay, too much in a hurry and too careless to make sure the tie was short enough.

Clea looked at it again. No. It wasn’t all that long.

She started stroking the mare’s muscled rump, over and over, as she started a soothing line of patter and moved toward Ari’s head.

“It’s just you, isn’t it, Ari? You’re not happy. You’re a problem child, but hey, you’ve made your point. I should’ve asked you first if you wanted to go for a long drive. Next time I’ll consult you. Okay, baby. It’s okay. Calm down now.”

The real problem was that this mare loved to be difficult and was under the illusion that she was David Copperfield. She planted her rear feet on the rubber matting and rose even higher on the front end.

Clea wanted to grab the rope and try to pull Ari down but she didn’t want to make the contrariness worse. She could hardly bear to watch. Almost.

The left hoof almost caught in the feeder.

A broken leg and it would be all over.

Wild thoughts raced each other through her head while she froze in horror. What would she do? She couldn’t shoot her own horse. She couldn’t pay for a surgery and a long recovery….

Come on, Clea. Stop it.

She set her jaw. She hadn’t gone through all this fear and effort to let it all end now, before the mare ever even saw Montana.

Ari came down and stood, trembling. Clea stepped up to the mare’s head and took hold of the rope.

“You’re working yourself into a fit,” she said in her most authoritative tone. “Ariel, settle down.”

She stroked Ari’s nose and talked to her. She patted her neck and talked to her. Ari snorted, then pricked her ears and listened.

“That’s my girl,” Clea murmured. “Now listen, sweetie…”

Sweetie threw her weight as hard as she could from side to side, then kicked out behind and swayed again, harder still. She pinned her ears, jerked her head free and tried to rear again, reaching for the wall.

No choice. No doubt. Clea would have to tranquilize the horse so they could get on down the road. They weren’t even started on this trip yet and Clea hadn’t gone through all her fear and trauma to let it all fall apart now.

Now Ari’s eyes were rolling. She made little choking sounds.

Break a leg or strangle. Great choices.

Without wasting any more breath, Clea turned and moved toward the door.

She jumped to the ground and fighting the urge to hurry—hurry that was beating harder in her veins with every sound that came from Ari—she punched in the numbers to open the door to the dressing room, letting its light come on automatically because it was on the side away from the road. She stepped up into it, closed the door almost all the way and took down the first-aid box.

Stay calm. Be deliberate. Ari was excited enough without sensing more fear from Clea.

She found the Ace tranquilizer and filled a syringe, despite her hands shaking a little. She forced herself to think positively.

Thank God, she’d had sense enough to prepare for this. She’d worried about this very thing because Ari had been hard to haul at times, so she’d asked Sherilyn’s boyfriend, a veterinarian who didn’t know Brock, to sell her the medicine and teach her how to administer it.

Sherilyn was Clea’s hairdresser and best human friend, the only person in whom Clea ever confided. The only person she trusted enough to tell about her plans for a new life, that was for sure.

With the needle and an alcohol wipe in one hand and the flashlight in the other, Clea pushed the door open with the toe of her sneaker, stepped down to the ground, went around back and shouldered the rear door aside. The trailer was still rocking.

“You have to settle down, Ari darlin’,” she said in as soothing a tone as she could muster. “Maybe take a little nap. We’ve gotta get on up the road.”

She kept on and on with the calm, slow words, trying to calm herself as much as the mare and Ariel did actually stand a bit more still when Clea reached her. Part of Clea screamed to hurry before the mare started pulling against the rope again; another part cautioned her to go slowly and do this right. That tension made her bite down on the little flashlight until she thought her teeth might break.

She found what she hoped was a good spot in a muscle—no way did she have the nerve to try for a vein—and tightened her lips around the torch in her mouth while she wiped her target clean. Through her nose she took in a long, deep breath to steady herself and slid the needle in with hands that felt stiff as wood.

Ariel squatted and pulled back but the needle was in. Clea hit the plunger and pushed it all the way.

She pulled the needle out and with a last pat on the butt, left the mare, closed up the back door, went to the dressing room and put things away. Deliberately. Efficiently. Quickly.

Heart hammering—she’d successfully managed her first emergency of the journey!—she jumped out, locked up and headed around the trailer to the truck. Ariel was looking at her through the bars on the window.

Clea felt a broad smile come over her face—victory and relief all mixed up together. She stopped in her tracks and looked at the mare, who was standing still at last. “You just hang on, my girl, and you’ll be a Montana horse before you know it.”

She couldn’t tell whether Ari’s reply expressed excitement or dismay. Whichever, it was a full-hearted whinny that reverberated thrillingly against the rocky walls of the Arbuckle Mountains and echoed up the road.




CHAPTER TWO


THE WIND whipped the stallion’s whinny of alarm up from the valley, a sound so wild and shrill that it rang Jake’s bones. The harem band fled ahead of the red stud snaking them away from the scent of the wildcat and Jake’s own horse danced beneath him. It spoiled his aim.

He used his legs to hold the gelding together and his voice to steady him while he lined up the sight again.

“Stand,” he said, surprised his voice could come out this calm with his chest so tight. “Whoa now.”

His jaw clamped down. He had one shot to save the foal. It had better be now.

The rhythm of the band’s drumming hooves matched the thunder of the blood in his arms. He steadied the rifle, drew his breath, made sure his crosshairs rested on the spot in the middle of the tawny shoulders that were folding into a crouch on the rocky ledge below and ahead of his horse.

For one split second, endless in time, he let the air out of his lungs and slowly squeezed the trigger. The back-and-forth threatening motion of the cougar’s long, black-tipped tail kept going. And going.

The shot went off at the start of the cat’s leap. At first he thought he’d missed, but its body crumpled in midair and dropped out of sight.

Jake dismounted and walked far enough to look over and down. The cougar lay within twenty yards of the foal, but neither its scent nor the sound of the shot had made the little orphan move more than a few inches away from the mare, who lay as dead as the mountain lion.

He guessed the foal at two or three weeks old. It was red like the stud, although the mare was a pale palomino. The mare must not have been dead too long or it wouldn’t still be alive to stand this dogged vigil. Its head was hanging. It wouldn’t last much longer.

What had he done?

The lion’s body would keep away any stallion that might snap the foal’s neck to put it out of its misery. Odds were slim that another mountain lion would come along. Therefore, it would have a slow death unless Jake did something.

If you have a grain of sense in your head, Hawthorne, you’ll jack in one more round and send the pathetic little bag of bones to the great grassy pasture in the sky. You’d be cruel not to do it.

True, but he’d already made the decision. He’d sacrificed the mountain lion’s beauty and wildness for the foal, so now he’d have to step up and take care of it, no matter how slim its chances. “Well, shit.”

He scanned both ways along the steep hillside for any sign of a trail that would take him down. “Come on, Stoney, my man. We’re in the nursery business now.”

He thought he could see a faint trail that the wild horses made to get down from this ridge, going to water at the small runoff lake at the bottom of the hill. He started down, leading his horse. A rock rolled out from under his feet and Stoney’s hind feet scrabbled in the gravel for purchase on the slope.

They’d have to find another way back to the road—that was for damn sure. This steep grade would be way too hard to negotiate while carrying the foal.

They finally got to the bottom and the baby turned its head to look at Jake. Weakly, it stumbled closer to the mare’s body, instinctively knowing that of the four enemies existing for wild horses—man, fire, drought and mountain lions—man was the most dangerous.

It was a filly, huddled here in a little brushy cove protected by the mountains surrounding it on three sides, where the mare had come with her. Maybe she was one of those wild mares that liked to change stallion bands every once in awhile. She’d been killed by a falling rock that rolled about a yard away after crushing half her head.

The foal’s knees buckled and she collapsed in a heap. Her spirit was what was strong about her; it showed in her eyes. But her body was dehydrated and weak. She might not even live until they got home.

Jake went back to Stoney and led him over to the baby, picked her up, and laid her, belly-down, over the big gray’s withers, feet hanging off on either side. He steadied her with his rein hand as he caught the horn with the other and the stirrup with his toe to swing up into the saddle.

Then he smooched to the gelding and started looking for a way out.

CLEA DROVE with both hands on the steering wheel as if that could make up for not keeping her eyes strictly on the two-lane road. The enormous land and sky overwhelmed her, just as they had that day during the ski trip when Brock had immersed himself in business as usual and she’d driven miles and miles alone in a rental car, exploring Montana.

Looking for something; she didn’t know what.

That day had been the beginning of the end.

She’d waked to hear Brock in the other room, dressing down somebody over the phone, cursing and demanding and then changing calls and becoming charming as he tried to make a deal. She lay there and listened to him. From what he said she knew that he’d be at it all day. The last day of the romantic vacation trip he’d given her for Valentine’s Day.

Which was the first romantic gesture he’d bothered to make in ages. Which was just as well because she could hardly stand him anymore.

She ran from the sound of his voice—into the shower, then into the dressing room where she tried to distract herself by choosing exactly the right items from her extensive new ski wardrobe. Her ski lessons were going well. She liked being out on the slopes in the crisp air and forgetting about everything except learning this new sport.

But as she slid the hangers along the rod, opened drawers and started putting pieces together, the hollow in the center of her body began to grow, inching its way into her veins, pushing her blood aside to make room for the empty tentacles stretching toward her heart with a cold efficiency that promised loneliness would soon own her. She dropped the ski clothes into a bright-colored heap on the floor, dressed in jeans and hiking boots instead, called the desk for a vehicle and walked into the living room of the suite.

Sunlight coming in through the windows lay in stripes on the floor. In the air, dust motes danced in them, held up, probably, by the raw electricity running through every nerve in her body. Brock liked to be in control and he didn’t like surprises.

She was past caring what Brock liked. That was new. She hadn’t known that before.

“I’ll be busy all day,” he said without looking up from his Blackberry phone.

“No problem,” she said. “I’ll be gone.”

He glanced at her. Just long enough to see what she was wearing. “You’re not skiing?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I want to go driving.”

This unusual stroke of independence made him actually look at her this time. He narrowed his eyes as if this was the most irritating thing she could possibly have said to him.

“I should’ve had enough sense not to bring you to a resort with no town,” he said in the tone he liked to use with her. The tone that implied You idiot child. “Gotta be spending my money or you don’t know what to do with yourself.”

She ignored that and walked past him to find her parka and bag.

“Hold on ‘til I talk to a couple of people and then I’ll call Jim to fly you down to Jackson Hole. You can shop all day.”

“Jackson is the town,” she said. “Jackson Hole is the valley.”

She slid her arms into the sleeves of the parka.

He actually dropped the phone and stood up.

“What th’ hell is the matter with you? You can’t go running around by yourself in a place you’ve never been. That’s some wild country out there. This is insane. This isn’t like you, Clea.”

It sure as hell isn’t. But maybe I’m changing.

She didn’t have the guts to go quite as far as to say that out loud, but she’d already gotten his attention. He was staring, no, glaring, at her. All she wanted was to be away from him.

“I don’t have time for this,” he snapped. “Have you lost your mind?”

She’d love to blurt out the truth of her feelings right then but even as she thought about it she knew she didn’t have the nerve. He would go ballistic.

And actually, until she had a chance to think, she didn’t know exactly what she did feel or want. So as usual, she took the easy way.

“Look,” she lied, “I saw an ad. I just want to go look at a horse.” Brock relaxed. This was something familiar. This was something he could control.

“Well, why didn’t you say so? When have I ever denied you a horse?” He sat down and began dialing the phone again. “Just remember not to use your whole fifteen K for the down payment or the rest of your nags won’t eat. I’m not putting another red cent in that account until next month.”

Halfway to the elevator, she knew she couldn’t—wouldn’t—tell lies forever to preserve the accustomed parameters of their so-called marriage. It was a bargained deal that she’d let her daddy make for her.

She’d thought she loved Brock, though. Or maybe she’d just told herself that because she wanted to please Daddy.

She was nothing but Brock’s arm ornament and his ticket into some social circles, plus his business alliances with her father. He disdained her really or he wouldn’t use that tone with her.

And why shouldn’t he? She kept her mouth shut and did as she was told and in return he bought her anything she wanted and gave her plenty of money to support her horse habit. To him, she was only as good as her manicure.

Only as good as her last social performance. Like a rodeo cowboy who was only as good as his last ride.

Clea was barely out of sight of the resort when she began to really see. The mountains and the sky, cobalt and white meeting in sharp, clean edges. Gray gravel coming through the dirty scraped snow in front of the car. One tan deer bounding across the road into green trees that were as deep as a vertical dream. Yellow sun so bright it made her smile.

This world so huge and wild it filled her heart.

She smiled to herself. Right now, that day with Brock seemed a hundred years ago. Now here she was in Montana again and she was in the middle of the end. It wouldn’t be the end of the end with Brock until somehow he accepted the fact that Ariel belonged to her. Rightfully. Morally.

But when had Brock ever cared about right and wrong?

She took a deep breath and pushed the past and future from her mind. She let the land and the sky take her again. Then she realized she was getting close to her destination. She should begin to look for the sign where she would turn in on her road. There was one, wasn’t there? According to the realtor, there was.

Holding the wheel with one hand, she fished deep into her new chocolate-brown Gucci bag to find the map the man had faxed to her, then slowed while she looked at it. Yes. The sign would be on her right and it read Firecreek Mountain Road.

After two nights, each with no more than four or five hours of nervous dozing in the living quarters of the trailer—which she could never have done without the alarm system and the gun she’d bought when she took the course in home protec-tion—she’d gone right on through exhaustion and come out the other side. A sharp edge of excitement—and quite a bit of fear also, to be totally honest—had wound her up tight.

This was her new world, the one where she would become another person. She could only pray she was strong enough to do that.

These snow-topped mountains, this endless sky, that narrow road that wound up and up, following Fire Creek to its source, as the man had described it, they all were hers now. And she’d be theirs. She’d belong to them and to the log cabin and barn he’d told her were at the top of the first high ridge.

She would not belong to any people.

She drove more and more slowly, looking for the sign, determined not to miss it because if she passed it she’d be forced to find a good place to turn the trailer around. Just the thought of having to drive even one unnecessary mile was more than she could bear. Ariel needed to get out of the trailer. She’d been exercised at both nights’ roadside rest stops, but that wasn’t nearly enough.

A bed would be wonderful, but later. Right now, a shower and something homemade to eat, even if it was only a scrambled egg and toast.

If the realtor had brought in the food and supplies that she’d ordered.

Come to think of it, she hadn’t even checked on the cost for that service. She shouldn’t have asked for it at all. If she wanted to live for at least a year on the money she had, she had to learn to think differently. From now on she had to do everything for herself, including clean her own house. She had to make every penny count.

And every brain cell. Brock would be beside himself by now and he’d be looking for her. That was a given. She’d slept in the trailer to keep from leaving a trail at horse hotels or horse people’s places, so she had to make that sacrifice count, too. She’d ordered a new cell phone no one knew about. She’d brought hair dye—Sassy Black—to cover Ari’s white markings. Perhaps she should use it before anybody here saw the mare.

There it was. The sign, Firecreek Mountain Road.

And another one, fancier, that read, Wild Horses.

Right. The realtor was all excited about the wild horse sanctuary. He said that sometimes tourists could see bands of them and sometimes they couldn’t, but they could always buy T-shirts and mugs and photographs with photos of wild horses on them and spend the night at the local motels and eat at the cafés in the little town of Pine Lodge.

She only hoped she could get close enough to shoot some pictures of the wild horses for herself. But if they wouldn’t cooperate, she could understand—at the moment, she needed her own space with a longing that went to the bone.

However, it’d be something fun to try, a challenge. Taking pictures was her other comfort, besides horses. It soothed her somehow. After her mother died, it had made her feel secure, as if whatever subject she captured would be hers to hold in her hand forever.

Which made no sense at all, since during that time she’d clung to every picture of her mother she could find, yet her mother was irrevocably gone.

That was before she’d learned that nothing is forever.

She should’ve already known.

She took the turn carefully, mindful of the way the trailer was tracking because the gravel road wasn’t very wide and the last thing she needed right now was to hang a wheel off the end of the tin horn. Once she’d straightened out the rig and headed up the first rise on the winding road into the hills, Clea let herself believe it. She was here.

And Ariel was here.

Feeling even more efficient, Clea looked at her odometer so she could measure the last leg of the journey and turn in at the correct driveway.

Then she rolled down her window so she could smell this place. Sage, she knew that smell, and a hint of pine but the dry air carried other scents, too. It was such dry air and thinner than she was used to. A whole new world from the ground up.

A chuckle began deep inside, rolled up into her throat and came out as a short but sincere belly laugh.

“Hey, Brock,” she said into the enormous space that surrounded her. “Catch me if you can.”

She’d told him once or twice that she would love to live—which was true—in northern New Mexico. Live in an artists’ colony and do nothing but take pictures in that fabulous light, she had said. He might look for her there.

Or not. Half the time, he didn’t listen to a word she said.

She glanced to her left, down into the valley along the river that flashed in and out behind some trees. There was a small ranch house and barn and some other outbuildings. Who lived there? Would she ever meet them?

How far was it on up to her place? She looked at the faxed map again and checked her mileage one more time. Not far.

Here was another hill, another ridge that led on up toward the big mountains with their striped bluffs and trees with snow still on their tops. The first high ridge. That had to be it.

Clea was going into the next switchback when she saw him. She’d turned away from the glare of sunlight off the rearview mirror and there he was, an arm’s length inside the fence, riding down the slope on the right-hand side of the road.

Coming out of the trees like a cowboy in a Russell painting, his blue shirt like sky against the green. Exactly like that.

Her heart lurched. Exactly like that, with a name like Saving the Baby or Mama’s Gone. He carried a small bright sorrel foal in front of his saddle; its long legs dangled off the sides of the big gray horse.

She couldn’t take her eyes off him—something about the sure way he sat the horse, something about the easy way his left hand held the reins and his right one rested on the baby he was rescuing. He had a presence.

Without taking her eyes from him, she slowed the rig still more and grabbed her camera from the slot in the console where she always carried it. Slipping it from the case, she raised it to her eye as she slowed even more.

The rider was looking at the foal. His hat was tilted down, but just as she passed him by he lifted his head and swept his gaze across her rig. She took the shot. Broad shoulders, a lock of black hair on his forehead, a blaze of green eyes imprinted on her mind’s eye. Then she was moving again, on around the curve.

It was one of the best photos she’d ever taken. She knew it in her gut. She knew it because she could feel that a huge smile was splitting her face and she was bubbling deep inside. What a moment! What a shot! And she’d been ready!

This had to be a good omen for her new life.

She would name it Montana Cowboy.

The sight of him haunted her as she finished the short drive to the ranch entrance that matched the X on her map. Even as she turned in under the swinging hand-carved wooden sign that read Elkhorn Ranch and started looking for her cabin, she could still see the whole gorgeous scene of the cowboy and the bright foal.

The epitome of cowboy gallantry—rescuing a creature weaker than himself. Sacrificing his time and effort to make sure that this baby would be all right instead of rounding up cattle or fixing fences or breaking colts or whatever other jobs he had to do.

She spotted the cabin sitting up a long driveway in a little meadow with blazing yellow and red leaves on the trees at its back. Fall was a fantastic time of year and one that at home often was either way too short or non-existent. She was going to enjoy this one to the fullest. She was going to love it here.

Clea parked and got out, then reached into the backseat for her jean jacket. The fall wind in Montana carried a bite of coolness that would be months yet reaching Texas.

She checked on Ariel, then left her standing in the trailer while she ran through the grass to check out the barn and the pen around it. Her lungs grabbed for more of the thin, dry air that roused her blood. This was exciting. She didn’t want to sleep after all.

The barn door stood open.

Inside, she stopped short and breathed in the smell—like that of any barn but with an overlay of age and seasoned wood. Cedar. Her eyes tried to take it all in at once. It had been built of cedar logs a long, long time ago and it had been well used. It was clean; a little neglected but not bad. The realtor had assured her everything was clean.

She smiled. Talk about different! This barn was as different from any she’d ever used as Ariel was from the horses Clea imagined had lived here before. She loved its atmo-sphere—all rustic and rough and built to be serviceable. Everything useful; nothing fancy just for show.

Somebody had left some grooming brushes and buckets in the little feed room, but she had her own, of course. Same with the feed in the barrel and the hay. They looked and smelled pretty fresh, so the former tenant must’ve just moved out.

The water tank in the pen was nearly full, too. She unloaded the mare and led her around the perimeters to let her get acclimated, then left her delirious with freedom to run around inside the pen. Clea went to the back door of the house and to her shock found it unlocked. It swung open into a kitchen with the same look as the barn: functional, rustic and actually—no doubt unintentionally—charming. The furniture was the really rough kind made of logs but there was an old blanket-covered couch in the living room that looked soft and comfortable. She loved that there was a fireplace in the wall that opened to both rooms.

The basic pots, pans and dishes were in the kitchen as promised, but the supplies weren’t at all what Clea had ordered. Right then, she didn’t even care. She’d go to town tomorrow. And she’d be sure to pay only for what she got and not what she ordered when she went by the realtor’s office.

Also, she would point out to him that neither the cabin nor the barn was exactly what he’d described to her. Try to keep him honest.

And maybe talk him down on the rent? What a good idea! She’d insist on it. She had to save money where she could.

Hurriedly, she went through the rest of the house, which turned out to be two bedrooms and a bath. The view from one bedroom was better than in the other, so it would be hers. She smiled. Or if she wanted, she could make the living room do double duty because it’d be great to have a fireplace in her bedroom.

Wood. There was quite a bit stacked neatly on the back porch and more in the yard, but she’d need a lot for a whole winter. Another thing to put on her list of questions for the realtor.

Clea pulled her rig up closer to the front door and started bringing things in. There were sheets on the bed in the room she decided she’d use for the bedroom but she wanted her own, of course. And judging by the breeze, she’d need her comforter tonight. She had to check out the thermostat and maybe get the heat going now before the house got too cool. That would save money on the electric bill, wouldn’t it? She was learning to think like a woman who couldn’t afford to be wasteful anymore.

Happily, she worked at making the house hers and brought in most of what she had in the truck and trailer. She was tired, but moving around and using her muscles was energizing her. It was so much fun to create a new nest and watch it come to life, that she couldn’t quit until she was done.

The things she’d shipped should be at the freight place by now. When she went to town she’d arrange to have them delivered.

Finally, as the sun started to slide down, exhaustion dragged at her.

All she wanted was something hot in her stomach and to lay her body down. The bed was already made with her colorful serape-striped sheets. The perfect ambience for a new life in the West.

There were eggs in the refrigerator.

She could take a hot shower and….

No! It hit her like a slap. She still had chores to do. There was no one else to take care of her mare. No sense reaching for the cell phone because nobody was close enough to do her bidding.

Clea dropped down onto the couch and let her head fall into her hands. This was it. She was on her own. It didn’t matter one bit how tired she was or what she’d rather do. Poor Ariel had nobody else to depend on.

Her eyes closed. Her body, aching for sleep now that she’d thought about it, longed to turn, lift her legs onto the sofa and stretch out. Just to reach for the blanket over the back of it and cover up….

Clea ripped herself off the couch and onto her feet. “Cowgirl up,” she muttered, made a face at herself and headed for the barn.

It took an unbelievable hour for her to orient herself, decide on a stall, bring in the feed, hay and bedding that she’d brought with her, bed the stall, set up the water bucket and fill it, catch the ornery Ariel, check her over, brush her down and put her in with her feed. When the mare was happily crunching away, Clea heaved a huge sigh of relief and trudged to the house. She didn’t feel like running anymore.

In fact, she didn’t feel like anything but a shower and sleep.

Still, there were more chores. She locked up the house and dragged a chair in front of each door. This was out in the middle of nowhere. She would have to get a dog.

Then she took her shotgun into the bedroom and slid it under the edge of the bed; thoughts of outlaws and bears and cougars drifted through her head. At that moment, as she had been those nights on the road, she was very glad she’d learned to protect herself.

Turned out the water was hot, thank goodness, and she stood under it until it ran cold. Drying off with one of the delicious, fluffy towels that matched her sheets, she could barely make her arms move. Her muscles ached. But she took an extra moment or two just to enjoy the luxurious feel of the cotton against her skin.

She wouldn’t be able to buy towels like this again for a long, long time.

Finally, she finished up, dried her hair until it was only barely damp, climbed into her new cowgirl retro-print flannel pajamas and fell into bed. Just before her eyes fell closed, she saw by the moonlight streaming in at the window that the open closet—which, like the barn, seemed to have some stuff left in it—was tiny. Really, really tiny. Far too small to even be called a closet.

That realtor was definitely going to come down on the rent.




CHAPTER THREE


SOMETIMES JAKE felt like a man he didn’t know, in some place he’d never expected to be. Like now, driving down the road in a rig so new and fancy that it had a closed-circuit TV system between the truck and trailer, meant for show horses but used for wild ones. How crazy was that? If wild horses could survive on the rough, barren ranges where they’d been confined for generations, they could survive a trip down the highway without a babysitter.

But his employer, Natural Bands, was a horse-rescue organization—from California, which said it all. They aimed to keep the horses in their natural wild state and babysit them at the same time. And here he was, working for them. He had even gone so far as to sign a contract—and for a year, no less. Usually he insisted on the handshake approach to all agreements. Why do business with someone whose word is no good?

He’d made an exception for Natural Bands, though, because they had such deep pockets. Therefore, he felt like a stranger to himself. Every other job he’d ever had was one he’d taken because it offered him some adventure, or a chance to see some new country, or a big challenge, or excitement. Or because it would give him a chance to learn something.

Which, in his opinion, was the only true way to live.

Maybe so, but it’s not the best way you’ve ever tried, Hoss.

His gut tightened. True. The best way was living with Victoria and her two boys, loving all of them and feeling their love in return. But he’d never live that way again because it depended on other people, and that was a risk. A big one.

A woman might love a man temporarily. She might go back to an ex-husband because of money. Money was a poison.

Yet here he was, where he never would’ve thought he’d be, tied down for at least a year bustin’ his butt every day for Natural Bands and riding other people’s colts half the night. For what reason? Money.

Wanting something that cost a lot of money changed a man.

“Listen here, Jake. Don’t tell that woman boss of yours we’ve got that orphan filly. I aim to make a helluva usin’ horse outta her.”

Jake turned in time to see the conspiratorial wink from his uncle Buck, sitting over there in the passenger seat, scheming his schemes.

Buck’s buddy, Teddy, spoke up from the backseat. “Funny thing to me, this our orphan business,” he said loftily. “I might have some claim to that little mustang but, Buck, you shore don’t.”

“How you figger that?”

“I’m the one raisin’ her. I took the night shift last night. So far, you ain’t done nothin’ but try to boss me and Jake.”

“We ain’t had her a week yet,” Buck said. “She’ll still need her milk fer a few more days. I still got time to do more chores than you do.”

“Quit lyin’. You won’t do a damn thing. You never do. You couldn’t make my silly aunt Polly believe that.”

Here was something else as incredible as working on a contract: Jake Hawthorne hanging out all the time with two old men who talked too much and kept nosing into his business. Living with them, in fact—but only for a couple of weeks—so he’d have help feeding the little filly he had so foolishly saved. Every four hours. He’d never get anything else done if he had to do all the feeding himself.

So, for that reason it was good that he had let them stay when they appeared in his yard a couple of months ago to announce that they’d come to help him with his new job. “Seeing as how we know all about wild horses and you don’t know squat,” they’d said.

He still couldn’t believe that he’d let them attach themselves to him like that. He was a natural loner and he couldn’t tolerate constant company. Even if Tori had stayed with him, he would’ve gotten tired of her and the boys. And from the minute they’d gone, with tears pouring down their little faces, he’d sworn he would never again take responsibility for the health and happiness of any creature except himself—and Stoney, of course.

Yet here he was with a helpless foal and these two old men on his hands.

Right this minute he was wishing like crazy that he’d sent them packing the minute they showed up. He hated being cooped up in a truck with them when they argued. Which was what they did for fun.

“That orphan baby is Jake’s,” Teddy declared. “He’s the one who found her.”

Jake spoke up to try to put an end to this new foolishness.

“When she gets a little older I’ll probably take her up to the Great Divide for Elle to raise her. Little sister’s always been good with young animals. She’s the rescuer of the family.”

They ignored him.

“She’s Jake’s all right, but I aim t’ trade for her,” Buck said.

“Trade what? You ain’t got no horses but Topper and you need him.”

“I seen Jake throw a jealous glance or two at my old pickup.”

Teddy chuckled and said, “You’ll play hell gittin’ that trade done. And even if you did, then you wouldn’t have no way to git around.”

“You don’t understand me, Ted,” Buck said. “I’m only tradin’ him the right to drive my truck some.”

That made them laugh. Jake, too.

Sometimes it wasn’t so bad having the old guys around all the time.

“Forget Celeste,” Jake said. “She knows the filly can’t keep up with the wild bands. Even if she could, there’d be no wet mares to feed her—if they would. This is a freak deal, that mare foaling so late in the year.”

“Yeah, but remember it’s Montana Red that’s the sire,” Teddy said wisely. “That old devil breeds as he pleases. He probably stole that mare and bred her at the wrong time just so’s she’d lose the other stud’s baby.”

“Surprises me Celeste knows that much,” Buck said, ignoring Teddy entirely. “Reckon she knows that white devil we just now hauled to her Cal-i-forn-y man will drive them young bachelor studs outta his band pretty soon and the family won’t all be together anymore?”

He and Teddy chuckled over that and shook their heads.

“Them old-time mustangers would laugh their heads off at this whole deal,” Buck said. “Whoever heard of tryin’ to keep wild-horse families together? Can’t even do that for people.”

Teddy nodded. “Plus out there on the range, sometimes the mares switch bands. Them old-timers could tell Celeste that, too.”

Jake smiled to himself. Teddy and Buck themselves were old-time mustangers.

“I don’t care if they put ‘em in houses and buy ‘em a bed,” Buck said. “Long as they keep on payin’ us the big money.”

That’s where you made your mistake, Jake. You shouldn’t have started paying them so much. If they were making less, maybe they’d go away.

No, they wouldn’t. They didn’t care any more about money than he used to. They were helping him for the adventure of it. If he cut off their wages right now, they’d still hang around and help him for nothing until the work was all done. They would finish what they’d started because that was one of the rules of the code they’d lived by for fifty years or more.

“There,” Teddy said. “There’s our turn up ahead, Jake.”

The backseat driving got on Jake’s nerves as much or more than anything else about being with the old boys all day.

“Comin’ right up, too,” Teddy said. “Jake. You just as well to start to shuttin’ ‘er down.”

Sometimes it was so bad having the old guys around all the time.

“I’ve got a handle on it, Ted,” he said.

“Cain’t tell it from how fast you’re drivin’. You gotta slow down now. Ain’t that right, Buck?”

Jake clamped his jaw shut. Complaining had never shut Teddy up, so he might as well save his breath and the hurt feelings that were bound to result if he said what he wanted to say.

“Put a lid on it, Ted,” Buck said. “You talk too much anyhow.”

“You’re runnin’ your mouth right now,” Ted snapped back.

Jake slowed the truck and turned up Firecreek Mountain Road.

“What was I thinking when I let you two hook up with me?” he asked, just to break the cycle of petty sniping. “You sound like a couple of magpies.”

“You mean to say ‘what was you thinking when you killed that cat that was only doing what comes naturally so’s you could pick up that little broomtail scrub for me to raise?’” Theodore’s tone sounded so dignified and righteously offended that Jake and Buck laughed again.

“Just hang in there, Ted,” Jake said. “It won’t be long ‘til she’ll be on grain and grass. Besides, Buck just told you—broomtail or not—she’s gonna make a helluva usin’ horse.”

He made the turn and pulled the full length of the trailer onto the graveled road before he stepped on the accelerator again and started up the hill.

“I’m gonna stop at my house to pick up some more clean clothes,” he said. “Might as well take some of that food in the fridge, too, so it won’t go to waste.”

“Well, don’t think you can stay at yore house,” Teddy said. “You’re gonna take your turn on them foal feedings just like the rest of us.”

“Jake’s got colts to ride,” Buck said.

“And they’re over at the big barn, too, ain’t they?” Teddy said. “You jist as well get all your gear, Jake, and move in with us because you already brought us all your responsibilities.”

Jake tuned them out and looked at the mountains as the rig pulled the grade and wound its way up the hill. This was a pretty area all right, but to his eye not as beautiful as it was up in the Garnet Range where he was buying his place. If….

No. Not if. When. He was in this now and he had the land half paid for. He could finish paying it off in a couple more years if he stayed hitched and worked as hard as he’d been working. He wanted that place like he’d never wanted anything. Well…anything that could be bought with money.

But the thought of settling down in one place scared the hell out of him, too. What else would he do? He’d lost his yearning to roam.

Tori was gone for good and he was not making a landowner out of himself to acquire “something to offer her and her boys.”

He didn’t want her back anyhow, unless he could turn back time to the way things were when she and the boys first moved in with him. He could never take her back now, even if she wanted to come back, because he’d never be able to trust her again. She’d chosen a remarriage with no passion and no love—she’d gone back to the very opposite of Jake—for the sake of security. “He has something to offer me and my boys” was what she’d said when she broke the news.

No, he was not buying his own place so that next time he’d have something to offer a woman. There wasn’t going to be a next time. He would never live with a woman again. The remote, beautiful land he’d bought was going to be a place for himself, a place where he could live alone and raise some horses that would support him so he wouldn’t have to drive all over creation shut up in a truck with two garrulous, bossy old men.

He began slowing for the turn as Teddy was still urging him to do, clamping his jaw shut as he took the road into the ranch and then, soon after, the driveway that led to the little cabin he’d added to the rental deal after the old guys had showed up and moved into the big one with him. He’d had to have a private hideout or lose his mind. He just wasn’t made to live with other people.

His eyes widened as they neared the house. “Hey, what’s this? Looks like I got company.”

“Company pullin’ a trailer,” Buck said. “Reckon it’s thieves? Good thing your horses ain’t here.”

“I’ll block ‘em in, just in case,” Jake said, and pulled up to park so his trailer would be across the driveway.

The front door flew open and a beautiful woman with a shotgun in her hands strode out onto the porch. The surprise of it made all three men draw in an involuntary breath.

Teddy said, “Looks like they’re makin’ thieves a lot prettier these days.” Jake and Buck both started opening their doors. The woman raised the gun.

“Don’t get out,” she yelled.

“If she’s a thief, she’s a damn-sure successful one,” Jake muttered. “That vest she’s got on is real fox fur.”

That and everything else about her screamed money. She was polished and burnished and shiny all over, from the pale hair swinging around her face to the little thread of gold in her turtleneck sweater to the tips of her pointed-toe shoes. Her legs, slim and as long as forever, were wrapped tight in bootcut jeans with flowers embroidered up the side. The shoes were those killer ones with high, skinny heels that would stab desire into a man’s heart with every step they took toward him—and despair with every step away.

He wished she’d take off the fancy sunglasses so he could see her eyes.

Jake hit the button to roll down Buck’s window and leaned across him to talk to her. “This is my…”

“You heard me,” she shouted. “Stay in the truck.”

Then she whirled on one heel and pointed the gun at the ground. Tried to aim it.

Both doors on the passenger side opened and Buck and Teddy stepped down off the running board at the same time as if they were doing some kind of coordinated dance, Buck with his rope, Teddy with a quirt in his hand.

“What the hell?” Jake hollered. “You aim to rope a woman with a shotgun?”

“Snake!” she screamed. “Get away from it.”

Now it was the muzzle of her gun that was dancing, swinging around to point everywhere at once. Holy hell. She could blow them all away.

She took a step forward on the porch, braced her legs apart in a high-heeled fighter’s stance, set the gun into her shoulder and—God help them all—propped her right elbow against her ribs to try to steady her aim. She was a right-handed shooter.

The muzzle passed right over Jake. Unless there was a snake in the truck here with him, it was as safe as a church.

He ducked but after a second he couldn’t not look and when he did, the wavering shotgun had left him to hover around and above and below his uncle. Buck held his doubled-up rope ready in the air and Teddy did the same with the quirt, both trying to gauge the striking distance of the good-size rattler coiled on the ground between them. They ignored the woman and the gun completely.

“Get out of the way! I’ll take care of it,” she yelled and then her voice began to shake. “I don’t want to hit y’all…”

Well, that told him she wasn’t from around here. And everything else about her told him she wasn’t the marksman of the year. The barrel of the gun made a big circle and swung back toward the truck again.

Jake threw his door open and hit the ground. He crouched behind the front wheel and yelled, “They’ve killed snakes before, ma’am. Don’t worry about them. Now, put the gun down…”

He could see Buck’s feet and he saw the rope slice down to hit the snake right behind its weaving head. The gun roared anyway.

The whole front of the truck exploded with a crash, rattled and broke into a million pieces. For a second, Jake thought he was dead. He wasn’t even hit.

The truck gave one last gasp and died. Antifreeze poured out of the radiator, red rivulets ran from the power steering, and bits of metal twinkled on the ground. Everywhere.

He yelled, “You boys okay?”

For a minute nobody answered. The sudden silence was deafening. Then, faintly from Buck, “Depends on what you mean by that.”

Jake yelled again, trying to put a persuasive tone in his voice, “You done shooting, ma’am?”

She didn’t answer, or if she did he couldn’t hear her.

“Hold your fire,” he said, trying for authority instead. “I’m gonna stand up now. Put the gun down.” The recoil had probably knocked her down.

He got up and stood behind the truck. Even in the state she was in, which basically was one of a terrible need to let go and crumple to the floor until her legs could regain their strength, Clea knew him. Her Montana Cowboy.

Well, not hers.

He looked her over as if to judge whether she’d take another shot, then he strode around the front of the truck and came up the steps of the porch like a man here to take charge. Who was he really? But if he’d been carrying a foal around on his saddle, he couldn’t be a bad guy. Could he?

All she could do was lean against the wall where the recoil had thrown her. She still held the gun frozen in both hands but she couldn’t lift it. Her shoulder felt as if she’d been hit by a truck. The instructor had warned the class to hold the stock really tight but she mustn’t have held it tight enough.

The cowboy walked straight up to her and took hold of the gun as if he’d decided that she would shoot again. Up close, he was even more rugged and handsome than she’d thought when she saw him from the road.

However, he certainly wasn’t behaving like the mythical cowboy he’d looked to be.

“Let go,” she said, pulling back on her weapon as hard as she could.

“You’re liable to blast a hole in the floor,” he said. “Turn loose. All I’m gonna do is take this gun and stand it up against the wall.”

Whatever happened to a slow, drawling, gallant “Can I help you, ma’am?”

“Don’t talk down to me,” she snapped. “I took lessons.”

A spark of humor flashed in his eyes but his voice stayed grim. “My advice? Ask for your money back.”

It might’ve made her smile if she hadn’t felt so…not scared exactly, but yes, scared. And inadequate. The way Brock had made her feel sometimes. She continued to cling to the gun with both hands. He didn’t take it away but his grip was so strong she could tell she couldn’t stop him if he tried.

So much for self-protection. This was why her instructor always said never let a bad guy get close enough to take your gun away from you. There were scarier things in the world than stealing a horse.

For the first time in her whole life, there was no one in the house she could call on for help.

Could Brock have hired these men to take Ariel away from her? No. He couldn’t possibly know where she was. Not yet.

She took a deep breath and took the offensive. “Who are you? You have a nerve, all of you, coming in here as if you own the place. You’re trespassing. I warned y’all to stay in your truck.”

“I’m Jake Hawthorne,” he said. “I live here.”

It took her a second. “In your dreams. We may be out in the middle of nowhere and you may have your snake-killing buddies with you but no way are you moving in here.”

“I already did.”

That flat sincerity startled her into taking one hand off the gun to remove her sunglasses so she could look into his eyes with no barrier.

“Didn’t you see my boots and jeans in the closet? My groceries in the kitchen? My feed and hay in the barn? My shorts in the underwear drawer?”

It all became clear.

“I…I’m in the wrong house?” She hated that her voice revealed just how deep her embarrassment went.

He smiled. Sort of. With just the slightest lift at the corners of his mouth. At least he wasn’t rude enough to really laugh at her.

“I…I leased a house with a barn for a year…”

He nodded. “But not this one.”

He was remarkably calm about her mistake, standing here in the middle of this mess of ruined trucks and dead rattlesnakes, so unlike the yelling, hysterical idiot that Brock would have been if his new truck had just been shot to pieces. In fact, she didn’t know any other man who’d act like this in such a situation.

But who cared what kind of man he was? He might be calm but there was still an undercurrent of steel resolve in him that didn’t bode well for anybody’s opposing will.

Especially a woman’s. Like most men, he saw her as a sex object. His gaze had drifted to her mouth.

She stared at him until he met her eyes.

“I am going to get a refund,” she said. “I had ten lessons and the best score in the class.”

“That’s the devil of it,” he said. “Most times, lessons can’t put a patch on real life.”

Real life. The words hit her like a blow across the back of the knees.

Clearly, this Jake Hawthorne could handle whatever real life threw at him. While she on the other hand had just proved she had a long way to go to even get started on a real life. She’d shot up his truck, misunderstood his remark about living there, moved into the wrong house. If this was the best she could do, how could she survive out here? This was a place filled with tough men.

Get tough yourself, Clea. Say what you think. Say what you want. Sound like you intend to get it.

“Is this what you do? Pin a person up against the wall where they can’t even move—after you tell them to get out of your house?”

“First experience,” he said.

He took the gun and stepped away to lean it against the wall.

“I declare, miss,” one of the old guys said. “You nearly blowed me and Teddy right out of our boots. How come you’re tryin’ to shoot your own snakes, anyhow?”

It was the one who’d killed the snake who was stomping up the steps. He had keen, very keen blue eyes that seemed to see everything. His buddy was right behind him.

Both of them were grinning at her but she was in no mood to smile back. She felt shaken now that Jake Hawthorne had finally let her go.

“Because I’m not really fond of snakes,” she said. “I thought it might get into the house. I thought it might bite me or my horse. I thought this place wasn’t big enough for both of us.”

Completely immune to her sarcasm, the old guys headed straight for her. She moved away from the wall.

“Well, o’ course that’s right,” the blue-eyed one said. “Ma’am, I’m Buck and this here’s my pardner, Teddy.”

They both tipped their hats to her.

“What I was askin’ by my question was, where is your man? Are you here by your lonesome, Miss…uh, Miss…?”

“I’m Clea.” That was all she intended to tell them.

Teddy spoke to her as if he’d known her all her life. “Well, don’t you worry none, Miss Clea. We done kilt that rattler fer you deader than a rock.” His faded brown eyes were as calm and steady as Buck’s were lively.

“You want us to get Jake out’n’ yore hair, ma’am? He can be a real bother sometimes. Won’t listen to a word nobody says. Cain’t tell him nothin’, you might say.”

Jake snorted derisively.

“This here’s quite a party you’ve throwed, Miss Clea,” Buck said. “I ain’t had me such a rousin’ good time since the Miles City Bucking Horse Contest the last year I rode.”

His twinkle and Teddy’s nod of agreement made her smile in spite of all the aggravation of her insecurities. “Usually I entertain at my own house,” she said wryly.

They laughed, then Buck drawled, “Wal, this can be your house if you want. Jake can live with us. You oughtta stay here so you’ll have a nice mantel board where we can tack up this hide.”

He lifted the dead snake. Clea screamed. She hadn’t even noticed he was carrying it by his side. Held up in the air at the old man’s shoulder, its tail brushed the floor. Its mouth was open with the fangs hanging out. It was a horrible sight.

“He’s a beauty, ain’t he?” Teddy said. “Might be near as long as Buck is tall.”

“Don’t worry none,” Buck said. “I’ll skin him out for you.”

The vision of that activity made her whirl on her heel and run into the house. Her stomach clutched. Partly because the snake repelled her so and partly because it had just occurred to her that she might never want to carry her beautiful snakeskin bag ever again.

She got as far as the worn old sofa and collapsed onto it. “Please go,” she called, through the open doorway. “And take the snake away.”

Nobody answered. Clea let her head fall back onto the top of the cushion. Even with her eyes closed, she saw the snake on the backs of her eyelids. Saw it coiled on the ground beside her truck, waiting for her when she went for the door.

Saw it dead, fangs reaching, hanging from Buck’s hand.

What if it had been a mountain lion…or a bear? At least she could stay away from a snake if she saw it soon enough. It hadn’t chased her when she went to get the gun.

Voices murmured out on the porch.

Here was another example of her mishandling real life. No, two examples. Screaming and running away.

Weariness flooded her jangled nerves. This was the wilds of Montana. She was here for a year. She felt completely exhausted and she hadn’t even found her own house yet.

The scuff of boots against the floor and the squeak of the screened door took the place of the voices. She sat up.

Buck stepped through the door. Holding both hands out to show he was without the snake. “I’m sorry, Miss Clea,” he said. “I never thought you might be scairt of a dead snake. Can I get you a cool drink of water?”

It made her feel like a character in an historical novel, a delicate lady who needed a dose of smelling salts. She opened her mouth to say no, but Buck went on to the kitchen.

When he came back with a tin cup of water he called, “Come on in, boys.”

To her, he said, “We ain’t throwin’ you outta this house ‘til you git over this little upset. Mebbe not ever. Jake can take the house over there by the lake that you’re s’posed to have.” He grinned. “Or he can move in with me and Ted, ‘cause…”

Jake interrupted, “I’m not goin’ anywhere, Buck.” He was headed for the bedroom but he glanced at Clea over his shoulder. “You can move tomorrow.”

“I’m moving today,” she said, shooting the words back at him as briskly as he’d spoken to her.

“Don’t rush her,” Buck called after him.

Teddy said, “No, don’t. But Miss Clea does need to get settled into the right place so’s she can get started on her—”

He interrupted himself to come closer to Clea, his kindly brown eyes questioning her as he finished, “Well, doing whatever you come to Montana to do, ma’am.”

“Whatever it is,” Buck added helpfully.

Hopefully. They both looked at her expectantly and fell silent, giving her a chance to tell them what she was doing here. In Jake’s house. With her bright orange cashmere afghan thrown over the arm of the couch and her burled wood bowl with its meandering turquoise inlay sitting on the mantel.

Not to mention her sheets on his bed.

She couldn’t help but like the two old-timers who were so lively and curious but no way was she going to get into her story with them.

“Runnin’ from the law, more ‘n’ likely,” Buck said with a grin and a wink.

Clea jumped and spilled water on her jeans.

“I’d lay money on it,” Teddy said. “Don’t she look jist like a hoss thief to you?”

She felt her eyes go wide and the blood rush to her cheeks. “I can’t believe you saw through my disguise,” she said.

They laughed, loving that she played along with their joke.

“We mind our own business,” Teddy said. “So we ain’t turnin’ you in, Miss Clea, not unless you try to throw your long rope on some of our hosses.”

“Yore disguise ain’t so bad, though,” Buck said. “Ain’t seen many thieves wear them high-heeled shoes like you got on.”

She laughed, too, even if it sounded a little forced, then she finished the water fast and stood up. She didn’t want to get involved. She had to be alone to get her head straight and her confidence back.

“All I need is directions to my cabin and I’m outta here,” she said.

The old guys nodded. “We’ll show you where it’s at and then we’ll help you with your move,” Buck said. “If you do move.”

Damn, he was stubborn.

Jake thought so, too, judging by his irritated tone. He yelled from the bedroom, “She is moving. And remember, Buck, we’ve got work to do.”

Gallant enough to carry a foal around but not to carry boxes for her.

Face it, girl. The real cowboys have been gone for a hundred years. “I don’t need any help,” Clea yelled back at him. “I won’t accept any help. I moved myself in here and I’ll move myself out.”

Jake came out of the bedroom carrying a paper sack with a shirt peeking out of the top and a pair of boots in his other hand.

Clea said, “What’re you doing? I just told you I’ll move.”

“This’s only for a few more nights.”

“So’s he can take his turn feedin’ the baby,” Teddy said. “He brought in a orphan foal that we’re helpin’ him with.”

She turned to Buck. “Maybe they could go feed the foal and you could ride with me and show me where I’m supposed to be,” she said. “Then I’ll drop you at your place.”

All three of them just stood and looked at her.

“What?” she said.

“Reckon we’ll all have to hitch a ride with you,” Teddy said, “or walk. Our truck ain’t runnin’ right now.”

Clea’s face went hot. She slapped a hand to her forehead. How could she have forgotten?

How could she survive—anywhere—when she’d lost her memory and most of her good sense?

She found her keys and led the way out across the porch, down the steps and past the ruins of the pickup with Natural Bands, whatever that was, written on the door. It was truly a wreck. Also new and top-of-the-line. How much was that going to cost her?

She’d never had to clean up her own messes before. She couldn’t call Brock to take care of it and she couldn’t call Daddy. There was no one she could call.

Not even an insurance agent. Nobody sold policies to protect shooters against their own bad marksmanship.

“First experience,” Jake had said. No kidding.




CHAPTER FOUR


CLEA KEPT going, using her longest, most confident strides to make herself feel stronger. She was almost to her truck when she realized no one was behind her anymore. She turned to look and then she leaned against the truck and let her shoulders sag.

Of course. Once again, she’d failed to use her common sense. She’d forgotten that she couldn’t get her truck out with the wrecked one blocking her driveway.

Jake was unhooking it from the trailer. Buck was sitting in the driver’s seat with the door open.

“Put ‘er in neutral,” Teddy yelled at him. “I’ll give you the heads-up when we’re ready to push.”

The only answer he got was a light nicker from Ariel.

Clea whirled on her heel to see the mare standing at the fence watching the entire proceedings with ears pricked. Her stomach clutched. She’d prefer that no one ever see Ari, even though she’d dyed her white markings after she fed her this morning.

That was a useless hope, of course. And the disguise was paper thin. She doubted that there were very few horses around this part of Montana at least who were part-thoroughbred and stood nearly seventeen hands, much less horses who moved the way Ariel did.

But no sense in worrying. She didn’t even know whether these guys would pay any attention to or remember the mare. Anybody could go around pulling a horse trailer. That didn’t mean they’d know a warmblood from a quarter horse.

Ignoring Ari in the hope that the mare would wander off, preferably somewhere out-of-sight behind the barn, Clea turned back to the truck and started clearing spaces for passengers in the backseat. She gathered up her barn coat and clogs, piled them on top of the metal train case that held most of her cosmetics and balanced all that on the hump in the middle of the floor. She pushed the sack of snacks and carton of soft drinks left over from the trip to the middle of the seat. The old-timers weren’t very big. They could fit in here just fine.

She climbed into the driver’s seat and looked in the rear-view mirror at the long piece of driveway stretching from the house to the road and the nose of the Natural Bands trailer hanging over it. Backing out, she’d have to swerve her own trailer and then get it back on track so as not to go off into the ditch when she reached the road.

Maybe she should unhook it.

She shook her head at herself in the mirror. No, she had to be able to handle all kinds of situations and she’d backed the trailer before. She needed the practice. And she didn’t need the extra work of unhooking and hooking it up again to move Ariel this afternoon.

Jake finished unhooking his own trailer and went to help Teddy push the truck. As soon as he got behind it, the truck moved smoothly out into her—no, his yard.

Buck steered, holding the door open with his foot. Debris scattered everywhere and a large piece of shiny metal fell and bounced away into the grass when Buck put on the brake.

Dear God. This was going to take every penny she had saved. She might as well drive into Pine Lodge tomorrow and apply for a job at a McDonald’s restaurant. If they even had a McDonald’s. There must a café or two, at least. Could she learn to carry a heavy tray above her head on one hand?

Buck got out, closed the door and started up the little slope toward her. Jake went back to the trailer, picked up his paper sack of belongings from the ground, and he and Teddy followed Buck. Jake’s face, what she could see of it from under the brim of his hat, struck her as incredible. Heart-stopping.

Would he let her get some more pictures of him? No. She didn’t know him, but she could not imagine him willingly posing for a photographer.

She reached down, turned the key and looked at the protruding gooseneck of his trailer again. She’d better keep her mind on her business.

She looked for Ariel. Thank goodness, now she was nowhere to be seen.

Clea made herself draw in a deep, calming breath. Her insides were still a little shaky from all the havoc of the morning but now that was over. It had just been a terrible shock when she’d seen the snake and then three men rolling up into her yard with a trailer. Men who could easily have been sent by Brock to take Ariel back.

They hadn’t come for that at all. Brock still didn’t know where she was. She’d take these men to their cabin, find out where hers was, then come back and load up. She’d be settled again by tonight. Everything would work out all right.

Buck opened the door behind her. “All right, Miss Clea,” he said. “Yore way is clear. Let’s you and me run off and leave them two sorry so-and-so’s.”

He kept chattering away as he climbed in, as if they’d known each other for years. Clea had the sudden thought that she might’ve wrecked the only vehicle they had. What if she had to drive them everywhere they wanted to go until their truck was fixed?

Montana was turning out not to be quite as solitary as she’d expected.

Jake glanced back at his trailer as he walked up to Clea’s truck. It wouldn’t be easy to get past it without messing up one or the other or both, and one wrecked new vehicle was enough for one day. What a waste!

Natural Bands might have deep pockets and probably had good insurance but he wasn’t going to enjoy trying to explain to Celeste how this had happened.

He opened the passenger door as Teddy got in the back.

“I’ll drive,” Jake said.

Clea gave him a disdainful look. “Why should you?”

“In case you can’t drive any better than you can shoot.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Get in.”

“That trailer’s the only one we’ve got,” he said. “And you panicked.”

She sat up straighter and glared. “If you want a ride, get in. If not, shut the door.”

He held the stare, trying to intimidate her, but she wouldn’t give in or look away. Her eyes were blue, instead of brown like Victoria’s, but they were just as sure and hard as Tori’s had been when he tried to talk her out of leaving him.

Yep, here was another woman too stubborn for her own good. Too stubborn to have good sense. Why was that the only kind of woman who ever crossed his path?

He couldn’t by rights throw her bodily out of the seat, therefore he ought to stay on the ground to direct her, at least until she got around the trailer.

But that’d be a good way to get killed, judging by the way she was looking at him now. So, damn it, let her prove what she could do if she thought she was such a hand.

He moved her fancy piece of luggage—one of those with letters and little French symbols printed all over it—to the floor, set his paper sack on top of it and got in.

Clea put the truck in Reverse and her eyes on the mirror, released the brake and started rolling back the rig.

“You can do it,” Teddy said from his seat behind Jake. “Just take ‘er slow and steady.”

“You bet,” Buck said. “We’ll spot you. You git around that gooseneck, you got’er made.”

“You’re all right,” Teddy said, looking out the back window. “Jist do what we tell you now.”

Clea didn’t take her eyes off the mirror but she pulled in a deep breath and lifted her chin. The way her hair moved when she did that—so smooth and sleek and shiny, falling back from her perfect face—reminded him of Victoria again, although Tori’s hair was dark. Maybe that was why Clea’d irritated him from the get-go—besides shooting the hell out of his truck, she was a spoiled rich girl.

Jake stared out the window and tried to ignore her. The old guys would direct her. He’d just sit here and be ready to grab the wheel if she got in a jam.

“You’re all right,” Teddy said. “Just keep on comin’.”

She was moving at about an inch per hour.

“Cowgirl up,” Buck said. “Don’t let nothin’ git you down on the day you killed your first truck.”

She jerked the wheel. The trailer jerked, too. She got it back.

“Thanks a lot, Buck,” she said through clenched teeth.

The old guys laughed. Jake shook his head. They’d probably rattle on until they unnerved her completely.

Then she pressed the accelerator and backed a little faster. Another second or two and she could crash into the gooseneck.

“Want me to unhook you?” Jake asked.

“I’ve backed a trailer before,” she snapped.

“Once,” he muttered, under his breath.

Spoiled rotten, determined to do whatever she wanted whether she knew how or not. Wouldn’t listen to reason. He hated that.

She sped up a little more but she was still just creeping. In spite of that caution, her trailer seemed to be going in a more and more crooked path.

“There you go,” Buck said. “You’re nearly to the hard part. Come on, now.”

Clea clenched her jaw even harder and pressed down on the gas a little more. Jake kept his eyes on the outside rear-view mirror.

Buck muttered, “Go for it.”

“Watch it,” Teddy said. “Crank ‘er to the right, just a hair.”

“No, she’s okay that way,” Buck said. “Send ‘er toward the house, Clea, and then hold ‘er there. Straight back.”

“You cain’t even see straight, Buck. You shut up and let me do this. You’re…”

A sudden loud whinny cut through the air and a big black mare ran to the fence. Clea sucked in her breath and stepped on the gas a little more.

“Now, you all watch for that trailer,” she said, and kept her eyes on the mirror. The whinny rang out again.

“Whoo-ee, and not a white hair on her,” Teddy said. “Black as the ace of spades and, what is she? At least near seventeen hands.”

“You’ve got a mighty fancy mare there, Clea,” Buck said.

Clea didn’t say thanks for the compliment. She didn’t say a word.

“What d’you use her fer?” Buck asked.

Finally, she said, “I show her some.”

“She one o’ them jumpers?”

“Yeah.”

“Never could stay in one o’ them little postage-stamp saddles,” Teddy said. “But I never did try it but the one time.”

“Then don’t say never,” Buck said. “One time won’t do it. Maybe Clea’d let you try jumping her mare…”

“Which way is it to your place?” Clea interrupted.

“East,” Buck said.

She glanced at him in the mirror to find out which way that was. Jake shook his head. Couldn’t shoot, couldn’t drive and didn’t know east from west.

“Naw, now watch it—you’re gonna hit the nose of our gooseneck,” Teddy shouted, having suddenly looked back instead of at the horse. “Give it some room. Watch it there, Clea.”

She sent the trailer the wrong way again, toward theirs, but brought it back. Almost too quickly. Then she had it off the driveway on the right, the way it had to be, and they were moving past the Natural Bands trailer.

She gave a huge sigh when it was done. Actually, they all did. No crash, no scrapes, no trouble. She maneuvered the trailer back onto the driveway, going for the road.

“You’re good now. Give ‘er some gas,” Buck said.

But she stepped on the brake.

“Hey,” Jake said. Damn. Was this torture gonna last all night?

“I’ve got to get out of this vest,” she said and Jake saw that her upper lip was filmed with sweat.

She slipped her arms free and handed the fur to Jake, who laid it across his paper sack. It wafted her perfume to his nostrils, a light, citrusy scent that smelled as expensive as that luggage of hers had to be.

The mare whinnied again, then took off and began to canter down the rail with a beautiful smooth gait that made her look to be floating just above the ground.

“Look at the way that mare goes, boys,” Buck said. “She’ll reach and get it, won’t she?”

Clea shifted in the seat and sat up straighter, then hit the gas and stayed on it until the trailer rolled straight down the drive and across the tin horn into the road. At the critical moment, she almost turned the wheel the wrong way, but she caught herself in time to make it swivel to the west so they could head east.

Applause from the backseat.

“You got ‘er done,” Buck said.

“Good job,” Teddy said.

Jake said nothing. She threw a triumphant glance at him.

“What’s wrong, Mr. Hawthorne?” she said. “Did I scare you with my reckless speed?”

“No,” he drawled, “I’m scared I’ll be too old to get outta the truck by myself by the time I get home.”

Laughter erupted in the back and Clea realized the old guys had been pulling for her success. Jake should’ve been, too. After all, that was his trailer she’d managed not to hit.

He didn’t like her much. But he didn’t have to show it every second, did he? She stepped down on the accelerator and they roared off down the road with the old guys laughing and whooping and Jake staring out the window again.

Sullen, too. Well, whatever. What did she care?

Buck and Teddy showed her the turnoff to the cabin that was meant to be hers, which was about two miles into what they said was a five-mile distance to their place. She kept thinking about the ordeal she’d just gone through, about all the challenging ordeals that had made up this day so far. Living in Montana couldn’t be quite this rough all the time.

As soon as she dropped these guys off, she’d go back by her new place and check it out. Once she got Ariel hauled over there and her stuff all moved in, surely she’d have some peace so she could get herself organized.

Finally, Buck said, “Next road. There. On your right.”

Their cabin looked to be a little bigger than Jake’s. It had pens and a small barn immediately behind it and beyond that, just a little higher up at the foot of the hill, a large indoor arena. With real metal walls, not the black curtains like in Texas.

“That there’s where your winter stall will be if you want it,” Teddy told her. “You can ride your mare in there when the snow’s ten-foot deep. All you have to do is figger out how to get yourself over here.”

He and Buck laughed at her horrified expression. Jake wasn’t listening.

“I like to ski,” she said dryly.

“Sometimes it’s that or snowshoe in,” Ted said. “There’s a guy hired to feed and clean stalls when you can’t make it, though. Included in the rent for all the cabins.”

Buck said, “Let me and Teddy out here at the house and we’ll mix up the feed fer the foal. You and Jake go on to the barn and see about her.”

Clea stepped on the brake. “I’m just dropping y’all off…”

“Jake oughtta come in and learn to mix the milk,” Teddy said. “If ‘n’ he’s really gonna take his turn at feedin’ tonight, I don’t want him wakin’ me up—”

Buck interrupted the diatribe. “Clea, you have to go down there by the barn anyhow to turn around. Let Jake show you our little wild orphan.”

He opened his door. “Come on, Ted,” he said, in a sardonic tone. “I’ll do the work and you kin put yore feet up.”

Insisting that he was not lazy, he just wanted things even, Teddy got out and he and Buck headed for the house. Jake was entirely silent as Clea drove on. He seemed to be deep in thought, a million miles away.

“I don’t know why Buck thinks I need a place to turn around,” she said, with self-deprecating sarcasm, “I could just back out to the road.”

It didn’t get a rise out of him. He was staring through the windshield at the mountains. Well, of course. Duh, Clea. He’s worried about his truck, no doubt.

She pulled up and stopped in front of the barn.

“Here you are, safe and sound in spite of all I could do,” she said. “I’m really sorry about your truck. Have your insurance people contact me about the damage and I’ll take care of it.”

She shifted into Park and reached to open the console.

“I’ll write down my cell number.”

He opened the door and stepped out as he waited for her to write the number down on an index card.

“They’ll need your last name,” he said.

“Of course,” she said, but that hadn’t occurred to her. Usually the people she dealt with knew who she was.

Above the number she wrote, Clea Mathison.

Clea Mathison, whom Jake Hawthorne saw as an incompetent idiot—a dumb blonde. Well, she might just let her hair grow out to its natural chestnut.

When she looked up to hand the card to him, she smiled and said, “Again, I’m sorry I shot your truck, Jake.”

He barely glanced at her, just took the card with a muttered thanks, closed the door and walked away.

She watched him go, the sunlight bright across the back of his shirt. He didn’t hesitate, didn’t look back. He no longer knew she was there.

Since she was a teenager, every man anywhere around her always knew she was there. Even Brock. He’d ignored her plenty of times but he’d always been aware of her and so had every other man.

Now, to Jake Hawthorne, she wasn’t even a sex object.

She didn’t want to be one. But to be perfectly honest, at that moment she didn’t know who she was, either. And she didn’t want to be alone.

When she ran away from home to another world, she’d had no clue how alien she would feel.

The old Clea would have driven away and let that feeling get stronger. Especially if that was what she was expected to do.

But the new Clea would do something positive. Whatever her heart wanted her to do.

She reached down and turned off the motor. “Wait up,” she called.

Jake, halfway to the barn, stopped in his tracks to look back.

“I want to see the foal,” she said.

He said nothing, just stood there and waited for her to catch up to him.

“I’ve gotta ride,” he said.

“Just point me in the right direction. I don’t expect you to give me a tour. I’ll see the baby and then I’ll check out the arena and the winter stalls.”

He looked as if he didn’t know what to think of her. He was wary. Like the shy, lonesome cowboy in an old movie who’d be less afraid of a gunslinger than of talking to the new schoolmarm. Except he’d plainly told her she couldn’t shoot and couldn’t drive.

Who was he, anyhow? He was going to be her neighbor. He was her neighbor. Solitude and self-sufficiency were fine but she’d seen just now that she might need her neighbors sometimes. And they’d have to have dealings about his truck repairs, so they might as well be on pleasant terms with each other. “Have you lived here on the Elkhorn for a long time?”

“No,” he said. As if that should put an end to the conversation.

She gave him a nice smile. “So. Where are you from?”

“Never lived anywhere more than a year or two.”

“By yourself?”

He gave her a slanted glance that said it was none of her business.

He turned toward the barn.

“Then we’re opposites,” she said, matching strides with him. “I’ve never lived anywhere new before. You’ll have to teach me about living free and on my own in a brand-new place. I need to enroll in How to Start Over 101.”

They walked across the graveled drive to the broad doors standing open at the end of the barn aisle. Without another word.

That didn’t matter. She didn’t care if he wanted to talk to her or not because this was all about her. She was still jangled over the snake and the truck damage. And the reminder that she wasn’t quite as able to protect herself as she’d thought.

But the main thing was aloneness. She just wasn’t ready yet to drive off and be by herself the rest of the day and all night, moving her stuff and her horse into yet another strange place that she’d try to make look like a home.

She didn’t know another soul for fifteen-hundred miles in any direction.

You don’t know this guy, either, Clea. Or the two old ones, friendly as they may seem. This is real life, remember?

Clea Mathison stayed right beside him like they were joined at the hip while they walked into the barn and down the hard-packed dirt aisle between the two rows of stalls. She strolled along in those three-inch—or more—heels as easily as if she wore boots or sneakers, with that air of hers as if she owned the place, adding a wisp of flowery-lemon scent and a dab of shine to the old barn.

And something in him kept his eyes on her in spite of himself. He could feel the tug of curiosity but there was something else underneath it. Probably just that she reminded him of Tori. Same kind of woman.

Which means you better run, not walk, the other way, Jake ol’ boy.

What was she doing? He damn sure hadn’t invited her in.

He hadn’t invited the old guys, either, and they were still here.

Get a grip, Hawthorne. This ain’t about you. She’s not moving in here, and she’s moving out of your house. She’s not staying all day. She just wants to see the baby. All women like babies.

“The foal’s in there,” he said, pointing out the stall.

“Great,” she said, turning to flash him a smile that nearly blinded him. “Thanks. I don’t want to hinder your work.”

He felt more like he’d been dismissed than like he made an escape as he headed for the tack room to get his saddle. This whole deal gave him a bad feeling. Clea Mathison seemed way too comfortable, whether she was in his house or in his barn. And that was Buck’s and Teddy’s fault, being so helpful offering to move her and all. Those two oughtta get a life.

He went to find the saddle for Sugar, a filly who was anything but sweet. She was one of a string of ten three-year-olds that belonged to a ranch over on the other side of the mountain, young horses he’d been hired to green break for ranch work. Getting some outside colts like that was adding a healthy amount of money to his Natural Bands salary and bringing him closer every month to paying off his place. His own place. He still couldn’t get used to the fact that he had one.

At first when he came out of the tack room, he felt a little shock because he thought she was gone. But then he saw that Clea was in the little orphan’s stall with the door closed behind her as if she knew what she was doing instead of standing outside and looking in, as he’d expected. How irritating could one woman be?

They’d already gone to a lot of trouble to save the foal’s life. It was high-strung at best and nervous from being closed up in a stall, although it was getting used to people. But the last thing he and the old guys needed was for Clea to get the filly all agitated right before feeding time.

“It’s not good to overhandle a motherless young one,” she said.

Like he’d asked her. Who did she think she was, anyhow?

“So what are you doing in there?”

She didn’t answer.

He walked up to the door and looked into the stall. The foal wasn’t running around all over, looking to jump over the wall the way she sometimes did or trying to hide in the corner. She was getting to trust people enough to be curious about them. First thing, Buck and Teddy had put a little halter with a sawed-off rope on it so they could catch her.

“I hope y’all are being as firm with her as her mama would be,” Clea said, holding out her hand to be sniffed as the foal approached her. “It’ll ruin her if you treat her like a puppy dog and let her be disrespectful. Even now. As little as she is.”

“What’re you talking about? Are you a veterinarian or something?”

Of course not. Her type of woman wasn’t tough enough to get through veterinary school.

The baby snuffed up Clea’s scent, then turned away. With the next breath, she slapped her ears flat against her head, whirled like a rocket and kicked out behind. Clea was quick but not quick enough and the filly hit her a glancing blow with both feet.

Clea squealed and lunged like a maniac for that little scrap of rope. She grabbed it in one hand and proceeded to hold the little thing while she spanked the tar out of her with the other hand.

The foal tried to get away but Clea wouldn’t let her. She spanked her all over the butt and sides.

“Hey, now, wait a minute here,” Jake said, diving for the door to stop the fight before blood flew. “What’s the matter with you? Good God, woman, this filly’s barely alive and—”

“And you’d better…get a companion…for her before she grows into a…little monster,” Clea said, between slaps.

Jake jerked the latch open and stepped in, reaching for the rope.

“You can leave now,” he said. “I’m sorry she kicked you. Are you hurt?”

Clea stopped spanking but she held on to the rope. The filly looked at her and Clea returned the look, both of them breathing hard.

“You’ve probably…been spending…too much time with her,” she said. “Handling her too much.”

“Well, then, we can thank our lucky stars that you’ve come to set us straight,” he said.

Sarcasm didn’t faze her.

“Have y’all been trying to pet her and play with her? She’s got to learn that people have to be the boss.”

Her calm, superior tone made his blood boil. “You some kind of expert?” he asked.

“You know all about orphan foals? Wild-horse orphan foals?”

“Horses are horses,” she said. “The wildness is in her bones and, if you think about it, it’s in the domesticated ones, too. They’re all born knowing that they’re prey, so we have to earn their trust.”

“And so you do it by slapping her around?”

“And their respect,” she said. “Her mother or any other horse would’ve been a lot rougher on her. She has to learn her manners.

“Come on,” Clea said and marched out of the stall, motioning for him to follow.

That surprised him. And irritated him even more. But he went, so the filly could think about her lesson.

And so he wouldn’t be trapped in there for Clea to stand in the hall blocking the door while she gave him more lectures on the nature of horses.

He walked past her and went into Sugar’s stall, which was next to the foal’s, and started saddling.

Clea said, “You were shocked at what I did, but you would’ve done the same to a bigger horse.”

“You said it yourself—a bigger horse,” he snapped. “I’m not one to beat up on something smaller than me.”

“Her mother would’ve bitten a chunk out of her. You all can halterbreak this baby, teach her to lead, maybe brush on her a little, but after that let her alone.”

This woman made him so mad he could hardly see straight.

“Get another foal in here for her to grow up with,” she said. “More than one if you can. It’ll make all the difference for her for the rest of her life, because then she’ll know how to fit in.”

He’d planned to ignore her until she gave up and went away. He’d decided not to argue with her. But he couldn’t keep his mouth shut.

“One orphan baby is all we can handle around here.”

“She needs to be with other horses so she can learn how the world works and how to find her place in the pecking order.”

“When she’s a little bigger I’ll put her out with the using horses.”

“She needs something her own size. So she can see when her companion’s getting ready to kick or bite. So she can learn the body language that she’ll need to read her whole life.”

He rolled his eyes. “Anything else, professor?”

“Yes. So she’ll be more athletic, quicker, more prepared to get out of danger or avoid it. Older, bigger horses tend to be too indulgent with a foal. Even stud horses.”

He started pulling up the latigo on his saddle.

“When you do put her out, don’t put her with a whole herd all at once. Just do it one horse at a time.”

“Sounds like you know everything there is to know about this deal,” he said dryly.

She shrugged. “You just have to let them learn to be real horses. They’re social animals.”

He could not talk to her. He would ignore her. As long as he talked to her, she’d stay here aggravating him.

But curiosity got the best of him. All this confidence and knowledge was such a contradiction to the way she looked and acted about everything else.

“How’d you come to know so much about orphans?”

“I’ve raised three of them since I was a kid,” she said, leaning back against the stall wall and crossing her arms beneath her gorgeous breasts as if settling in to tell him her life’s story. “The first one I did all wrong, but the other two turned out great.”

So maybe she wasn’t a total incompetent, after all.

But he didn’t want her getting all wrapped up in this foal and coming over here all the time to tell him what to do with it. Or asking him how to start her life over in new places. He did not need somebody else driving him crazy and sucking his energy.

Not when he was just getting over Victoria. This woman was probably divorced, too. Had to be, since she wasn’t used to being free and on her own.

He finished cinching the saddle and slipped the bridle on.

The old guys would be here in a minute with the feed and then Clea would be their problem. From now on he would be keeping to himself.

He buckled the bridle and led Sugar out into the aisle. He moved past Clea with a backward glance at her feet, which had shavings clinging to her high heels. “A barn’s no place for those shoes.”

She snapped back, “I happened to be on my way to town when I saw the snake. Which seems like a hundred years ago instead of an hour.”

He could tell by the sound of her voice that she was following him.

He threw an answer back over his shoulder. “Maybe that’s because we coulda gone to Canada in the time it took you to back out to the road.”

Silence. He led Sugar on out of the barn and stopped to get on her.

Clea walked out into the sunlight. It turned her hair into a halo.

“Why’d you let me do that?” she asked. “Any other man would’ve tried harder to make me get out of the driver’s seat. Why didn’t you?” He looped the reins into place in front of the saddle and stepped back to mount. But before he stuck his toe in the stirrup, he looked her in the eye.

Any other man. Yeah. She probably had a dozen of them after her all the time. Somehow that thought irritated him even more.

“It’s not up to me to let you do anything. Or to try to make you do anything. I’m not in charge of you. I’ve already got way more on my plate right now than I ever wanted, and I sure as hell don’t want to be responsible for one more living, breathing thing.”

Her blue eyes sparked with temper. “You really think a lot of yourself, don’t you, Jake Hawthorne? Well, you can rest easy. I’m not trying to attach myself to you—all I came in here for was to see the wild-horse baby. I can take care of myself.”

“No, you can’t. You’re a woman alone looking at wintering in Montana and you don’t have a clue how to survive.”

“What’s it to you?”

“I’m your closest neighbor under the age of seventy.”

“So what?”

“I would never refuse to help a neighbor. Or a woman. Or anybody weaker than I am. But I’ve got a job. I don’t have time to take you to raise.”

“Nobody’s asking you to. Nobody will ever ask you to take care of me. You’re jumping to the conclusion that I’m helpless based on nothing except the fact that I’m not very good at backing a trailer. Is that stupid, or what?”

“And based on the fact that you’re used to having a man take care of you and buy you fox-fur vests and fully loaded trucks and trailers. Hired hands, too, to wash your dishes and build your fires and carry out your trash, and horse psychologists to teach you about your orphan foals.”

“You don’t know anything about me.”

“I knew that much the minute I saw you. A minute after that I knew you can’t shoot well enough to save yourself from a snake, much less a bear.”

“Bear?” Buck yelled from a stone’s throw away.

Jake looked up. He hadn’t even seen—or heard—the old guys coming.

“Somebody seen a bear? Least you could do would be to warn us ‘fore we come outside with a bucketful of milk.”

Buck and Teddy were laughing as they came, silly as kids.

“Are there really bears around here?” Clea asked.

“Well, we ain’t seen none right here,” Teddy said, pointing at the ground. “But yes, ma’am, there’s black bear and grizzly, too, all over this country.”

Jake thought her face lost a little of its color. Good. Maybe she’d go back home to Texas or Oklahoma or wherever it was she’d come from.




CHAPTER FIVE


BEARS? That was all Clea could think about as she drove away. Real life, with bears in it.

Evidently, pickup truckloads of eccentric—not to mention prickly and insulting—trespassers and wrong houses and hours of moving and packing and unpacking and constant barn chores and kicks in the thigh from orphan foals weren’t enough for her orientation into real life.

Bears. Her breath caught. She’d better put Ariel in the barn every night for sure. But what about daytime? And what about all those stories about bears tearing their way into cabins? Maybe she should go sleep in the barn with the shotgun if there was word of bears around. But how would she ever hear those rumors? Her neighbor, Jake, certainly wouldn’t want to be responsible for keeping her informed.

The old guys would come see about her, though. She would bet on it. She’d had a terrible time just convincing them to stay home and let her move by herself.

But she wouldn’t let them, not now. Now she had to prove to Jake—in addition to Daddy and Brock—that she could take care of herself.

They weren’t her major focus, though. Mainly she had to prove it to herself. This whole morning had been pretty unsettling.

But she would think positive. Dealing with the foal had grounded her some and reminded her that she wasn’t a complete incompetent.

She would keep herself positive and learn how to be self-sufficient instead of worrying. She had a million things to do before the snow flew. Practice shooting, for one. Right now, if she shot at a bear, she’d probably hit Ariel. At least a bear would be a bigger target than a snake but it was also a much bigger danger. She could get away from the snake when she saw it, but she’d read somewhere that no human being can outrun a bear.

Clea straightened in the seat, took a long, deep breath and hit her fist on the steering wheel. So be it. She wasn’t running anyhow. She was here and she would survive.

By the time she got back to Jake’s place—without going by to see her own house because she was going to move into it no matter what it was—she’d locked bears away in their own compartment in her mind. Tonight, after she was all settled in the place where she was supposed to be, after the physical work of moving had taken the edge off her nerves, then she would go on the Internet and find out where to get the best information possible about how to share the neighborhood with bears.

She parked at the end of the driveway where she wouldn’t have to drive past Jake’s trailer again, hurried past the wrecked truck in the front yard without really looking at it because it was just too painful and, once inside, changed her shoes and went to work. Too bad Jake wasn’t there to see that now she was wearing shoes appropriate for moving.

For a man who acted as if he were on another planet, he certainly had noticed a lot of details about her. Her shoes, her vest, her rig.

As she worked, their conversation cycled through her mind. What was the deal with him, anyhow? What were his “way too many responsibilities”? He appeared to be single—Buck and Teddy had mentioned him moving in with them and, after all, she was in his house this minute and there was no evidence of a woman’s presence, or that of children.

He had extremely few possessions, also. Maybe he was divorced, with three or four children to support. Instinctively, though, she didn’t think so.

Had he been talking about the foal? But the old guys were doing most of its care, as far as she could see. He’d probably just said that to make his point.

For a man who basically was the strong, silent type, he could certainly put a person in her place. Using only a very few words, of course.

Smiling grimly at her own joke, she focused on getting out of his house as fast as possible. She took it room by room, starting in the kitchen where she packed up her favorite insulated travel mug and coffee, then fastened a note to the refrigerator with his tractor-shaped, feedstore magnet: I take responsibility for the food I ate. I’ll replace it.

In the bedroom, she stripped her sheets off the bed and put his back on it, slapping away random thoughts of how he might look lying in them and what he might or might not be wearing at the time. She was thinking as a photographer, that was all, but she no longer cared whether he’d pose for her or not. She didn’t want to spend that much time with him.

When she drove up to her new place, her spirits lifted. It was what the realtor had described to her of course and although it was newer and didn’t have the atmosphere that Jake’s old cabin had, it definitely had a glass-and-wood A-frame charm of its own. The four-stall barn was even newer than the house. It sat at the edge of an acre-or-so that was fenced with peeled logs, which would be a fine turn-out pen. She could use it to ride in, too, when she wanted to practice her jumps and flat work.

The tiny kitchen was stocked with the supplies she had ordered. The view was wonderful in every direction and the loft bedroom with its own balcony made her feel like an eagle in its aerie. It even had an almost-decent-size closet.

Clea skipped lunch to start her Montana life all over again. She kept her thoughts positive as she looked out at the vast space that lay between her and any other human being and wondered idly whether Buck or Teddy carried a cell phone. Or whether there were game rangers in the area who she could call, just in case.

Staying busy had always been her antidote to worry, so she worked from just after noon until nearly sundown unloading everything, taking her time arranging and rearranging the few personal decorative things she’d brought. The furniture wasn’t great but it wasn’t awful either, with a few old and battered mission-style pieces she really liked. Her burled wood bowl was perfect on the coffee table.

She spent most of her effort on the living room, which was basically the only room. It and the kitchen were all one great room, the loft was open to them, except for its tiny bathroom and the small room that held the washer and dryer in the back of the cabin.

It was by far the smallest house she’d ever lived in. It gave her the same cozy feeling she’d had in the dollhouse Daddy had paid the gardener to build for her when she was a little girl. Cozy and safely in charge of her world. It was the only place she’d ever felt that way.

Long after she outgrew the dollhouse, she remembered that feeling, and as a new bride moving into the McMansion that Brock had had custom built on the acreage he had bought for its resale value, she had longed to feel that way again. Maybe she would have if she’d married anyone else but Brock.

That really had been her very first lesson in real life.

She’d been in Frisco, shopping for hours on end as she did sometimes when Brock was out of town. Early on in the marriage, when she still thought she loved him and when she missed him terribly.

When he’d still treated her with the deference her daddy’s daughter deserved and pretended that he loved her, too.

The window of a new interior-design shop caught her attention because the eclectic blend of styles was such a homey-but-sophisticated, interesting-but-soothing creation that it pulled her to the window and held her there until the young fledgling designer came to the door and spoke to her. An hour later, Clea had hired the woman.

The two of them worked together for the ten days Brock was in Houston and she had had the den finished when he got home. For fifteen or twenty minutes, everything was wonderful.

She opened the door. He stepped inside, dropped his briefcase, swept her up in his arms and kissed her senseless. When he let her go, he still kept his arm around her waist to hold her against him.

But it fell away in a hurry when she led him into the den to show him his big surprise.

“You can’t be serious.” His voice held an edge that sliced away her happiness in a heartbeat. “This looks like crap, Clea. What the hell were you thinking?”

Her lips parted but no sound came out.

Which was fine. She didn’t need to say a word, and it wouldn’t have mattered if she did because Brock wouldn’t have heard it.

He kept talking as he walked around the room. He flicked a finger derisively against a lampshade, then picked up a hundred-year-old Navajo basket and sent it spinning across the room to land on the floor in front of the door.

“Don’t tell me you paid good money for this. Did you hire somebody to buy all this trash or did you pick it out? Either way, it stinks.”

“I like it.”

“You didn’t even ask me,” he said. “I thought you knew better, Clea. You’ve gotta run anything that costs more than…well, let’s say a couple thousand…by me. Don’t make that mistake again.”

That night had been the real end of her marriage. She’d wasted another four years of her life on it because she didn’t want to admit it was dead.

Because then what would she do? What could she do?

It had taken her four years to work up the courage to get the hell out.

Clea noticed she was breathing hard and getting a headache, so she pushed the memories away and headed for the barn. She had more than enough reason to keep her mind in the present and she was strong-minded enough to do that.

Brock was behind her, and by the time he found her again she’d be stronger still. By then, she’d know what to do.

When she had Ariel all settled in, she finally called it a day.

Starving and weary to the bone, she showered, dressed in sweats and went downstairs to make an omelet. Pretty soon she had to cook something besides eggs, but she really didn’t know how to make very many other dishes. That’d be another thing she could do if she were snowed in—she could learn to cook.

She grabbed a notepad to begin a list for her first trip to town, wrote cookbook, then crossed it out. There were, no doubt, a million recipes with directions on the Internet, free.

Think before you spend. Save the money. Pay for the damage to Jake’s truck. You can’t be free if you owe somebody.

Then she chopped tomato and onion, sliced ham and shredded cheese. She toasted bread in hot butter in another skillet while the eggs were cooking.

Feeling like a pioneer cowgirl who’d never heard the word calories, she put it all on a speckled tin plate and carried it with a mug of hot coffee out to the deck to watch the sunset. There was no table, no outdoor furniture at all, so she sat on the steps and leaned back against the banister post.

The air had begun to chill. It felt cool and crisp in her lungs and it smelled like pine and sage and many, many other scents she couldn’t name. As she ate, the sky burst into flame. The clouds burned. The mountains reflected the fire and threw purple mist into it while they drew it down, little by little, to extinguish it at last in the dark, mysterious shapes of the valleys.

Only when the sun had dropped completely out of sight and the light it left behind dwindled to one thin streak of the palest salmon color, did Clea come to herself. Her plate and cup sat empty on the floor of the deck and her arms and legs were covered with goose bumps underneath her sweats.

She pulled up her knees and wrapped her arms around them. Tears hovered behind her eyes but she wouldn’t let them fall. She wasn’t a crier. If she ever started, she might never stop. Besides, this truth went too deep for tears.

She couldn’t go back.

Forget that she wouldn’t go back to Texas because she wanted—needed—freedom and a new life. The operative word was couldn’t.

She had burned her bridges when she took Ariel. Not just with Brock, but with Daddy, too. No, she’d done it even earlier. When she’d “had the unmitigated gall and ingratitude” as Daddy had put it, to leave Brock and “rock the boat.”

And she’d put the cherry on top when she’d told Daddy she wasn’t going to let him take over her life again where Brock had left off.

She could not go back.

This truth wasn’t new, yet it was. She’d known it. She had known this since the minute the word divorce had left her mouth, but she hadn’t known it in the visceral way she knew it now.

Maybe Jake had been right. Maybe she’d followed him into the barn, not to see the foal but in an attempt to attach herself to him somehow. As a protector or something.

It didn’t matter. She would learn to protect herself.

She would learn to do everything for herself. Including think.

That silly stunt she’d pulled this morning would have to be her last. She could’ve wrecked both trailers for no reason except trying to one-up a man she should’ve listened to. She could have thrown away all the money she had instead of half—or whatever it would cost her to fix the truck. That had been nothing but selfish, petty behavior.

Which was a kind of luxury. One she could no longer afford any more than she could afford more fluffy bath towels or new shoes like the ones that had bothered Jake so much today.

She would learn to protect herself and to think and to survive. Because the other truth she’d seen written in flames on the Montana sky told her that she didn’t want to go back.

Her true heart was here. All she had to do was find it.

JAKE RODE up into Clea’s yard yelling, “Hello, the house! Clea, it’s Jake.”

The young horse he was on didn’t like yelling, so began gathering himself to buck.

Jake pulled his head up and started him going in a circle.

“Clea! It’s Jake Hawthorne!”

Still no answer. Damn. She was probably in there right now loading her shotgun.

He got the colt straightened out and went around to the back of the house. Maybe she was out on the deck.

As he rounded the corner, he heard a horse. Hooves thundering.

The big black mare. Coming around the far corner of the barn lot at a hard lope with Clea on her back. Then he saw the jumps set up—homemade ones made out of hay bales and barrels and some rickety-looking sawhorses with a pole set across them.

Clea was up on the balls of her feet in the stirrups, her neat butt a little bit off the saddle, leaning forward at the hip, getting ready for the first jump. Her face was what held his eye, though; she looked even farther gone in her concentration than she had been with the wild foal.

She had her head up, looking ahead, her whole body focused on what she was doing. The next instant she and the mare were rising into the air and flowing over the stack of bales like one huge bird. Beautiful. More than beautiful. His heart lifted with them. They landed, headed for the next jump.

The mare tried to veer then, her ears back, wanting to go off to one side, and Jake’s breath caught. Too late. They were already committed, going too fast to stop.

He couldn’t tell or even look to see what Clea did, but she held the mare to the course and leaned forward, ready for the jump. If the mare refused it, no way could Clea stay on and they were nearly there, nearly there and then they flowed upward again, over the barrels.

One more to go and the instant message in the air was that Clea was determined to jump it and the mare was not. She pinned her ears hard and switched her tail but Clea didn’t give her an inch of room. Straight, straight to the pole across the sawhorses and then up and over it.

Jake let out the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. He rode on up to the fence. Clea passed him without giving any indication she knew he was there, rode around the jumps in one huge circle, headed for the first one and then put her horse over all of them again.

Pretty damned impressive. He would never have thought Clea had it in her.

This time, her blue eyes took him in as she loped—can-tered, he supposed—the mare around the pen once more. Then she trotted up to him, pulling off the helmet she wore, patting her horse’s neck while she smiled at Jake.




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