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This Perfect Stranger
Barbara Ankrum


Was a husband a requirement up here in this wild country? For Maggie Cortland, a widow struggling to keep her husband's ranch - her beloved land - the answer was crystal clear. She needed a man, preferably one who was big and strong, and not afraid to take risks. And then, out of the rainy Montana sky, this perfect stranger rode up on his Harley, looking for work….Cain MacCallister hadn't belonged anywhere in so long, he'd forgotten what it felt like. In the four months since his conviction was overturned, he'd drifted. And now this fragile-looking beauty with sadness in her eyes was asking him to be her temporary husband. Could he ever go down that road again?












“Cain?” she said in a voice usually reserved for pleas to the executioner. “Will you marry me?”


Following a moment of protracted silence, he laughed out loud. “Man, for a minute there, I thought you asked me to marry you.”

Maggie’s face had gone two shades of red. “I did.”

The smile slipped disbelievingly from his expression. Cain stared at her, dumbfounded. Standing up to his ankles in the horse dung and straw he’d swept out of the stables, he nearly sat down where he was.

“Not a real marriage, of course. Don’t look at me that way. I know how this sounds.”

Cain snorted, thinking he’d been transported to some weird alternative universe while he wasn’t looking. “You do?”

“I—I said it all wrong. Actually, there is no right way to ask a complete stranger to marry you.”


Dear Reader,

There’s so much great reading in store for you this month that it’s hard to know where to begin, but I’ll start with bestselling author and reader favorite Fiona Brand. She’s back with another of her irresistible Alpha heroes in Marrying McCabe. There’s something about those Aussie men that a reader just can’t resist—and heroine Roma Lombard is in the same boat when she meets Ben McCabe. He’s got trouble—and passion—written all over him.

Our FIRSTBORN SONS continuity continues with Born To Protect, by Virginia Kantra. Follow ex-Navy SEAL Jack Dalton to Montana, where his princess (and I mean that literally) awaits. A new book by Ingrid Weaver is always a treat, so save some reading time for Fugitive Hearts, a perfect mix of suspense and romance. Round out the month with new novels by Linda Castillo, who offers A Hero To Hold (and trust me, you’ll definitely want to hold this guy!); Barbara Ankrum, who proves the truth of her title, This Perfect Stranger; and Vickie Taylor, with The Renegade Steals a Lady (and also, I promise, your heart).

And if that weren’t enough excitement for one month, don’t forget to enter our Silhouette Makes You a Star contest. Details are in every book.

Enjoy!






Leslie J. Wainger

Executive Senior Editor




This Perfect Stranger

Barbara Ankrum








To Babs For throwing me your reserve chute on this one and for reminding me daily why we do this very difficult thing.

Thanks.




BARBARA ANKRUM


says she’s always been an incurable romantic, with a passion for books and stories about the healing power of love. It never occurred to her to write seriously until her husband, David, discovered a box full of her unfinished stories and insisted that she pursue her dream. Need she say more about why she believes in love?

With a successful career as a commercial actress behind her, Barbara decided she had plenty of eccentric characters to people the stories that inhabit her imagination. She wrote her first novel in between auditions, and she’s never looked back. Her historicals have won the prestigious Reviewers’ Choice and K.I.S.S. Awards from Romantic Times Magazine, and she’s been nominated for a RITA Award from Romance Writers of America. Barbara lives in Southern California with her actor/writer/hero-husband and their two perfect children.




Contents


Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16




Chapter 1


The idling Harley-Davidson rumbled beneath him with an impatient growl. All power and muscle and ragged edges, the machine—like its rider—waited for some sign that the town that lay at the foot of the pass whose crest they straddled was better or worse than any other.

Dawn was just beginning to ease the darkness from the sky. Lights winked from the small constellations of buildings scattered across the valley below. Cain MacCallister had seen a hundred towns just like it in the past few weeks. Even stopped in a few. But destinations, like dreams, were temporary things, and a man like him didn’t stay long in either one. Still, his dark gaze prowled the compilation of roads and ranches crisscrossing the picturesque landscape below the way a hawk’s did a potential landing spot. And for a moment, Cain dared to imagine himself belonging there. It was foolish, he knew, because he hadn’t belonged anywhere in so long, he’d forgotten what it felt like.

Tightening his fist around the throttle, he glanced to the west. The road forked here toward Missoula. If he wanted to, he could take it. Ride another hundred miles. Not much farther than that. He’d poured the last of his money into the gas tank of his bike just outside of Butte. He might find a job in Missoula, lose himself in a city of that size for a while. A man with choices would do that. But it had been two days since he’d eaten, and hunger gnawed at his insides. He needed food and sleep and most of all, he needed a place to be. At least for a while.

A cool night wind swept down off what some called The High Lonesome, tugging at his thick, dark hair and stirring the restlessness in him. He understood loneliness the way only a man who’d been behind bars could. Most of the time it suited him. But today he felt it in his bones with a deep and abiding ache.

His skin went hot as memories of holding Annie skittered across his mind. They tended to catch him off guard at moments like this, but he tamped those memories down. No use thinking about her. That chapter of his life was over. Whatever needs still eddied inside him, he could assuage with an anonymous roll in the hay. And even as that urge crystalized low in his loins, he realized his decision was made.

He gunned the throttle with a brutal twist of his big hand. The engine answered him with a roar that echoed through the pass and drifted down toward the rushing Musselshell River like the call of some wild thing. Somewhere in the distance, an animal howled in reply.



“So, that’s it then.” Maggie Cortland stared disbelievingly at the bank manager, Ernie Solefield, who was studiously avoiding eye contact with her. For that, she was almost grateful, because she didn’t trust herself not to start blubbering like a baby.

“I’m afraid so, Maggie,” he said curtly, shuffling papers on his perfectly ordered desk. “I wish it could have gone the other way.”

She stared blankly at the shiny bald spot at the top of his head. The smell of money permeated this place, but it dangled, as usual, just out of her reach. “Ernie, you’ve known me for seven years. You know my land—what it’s worth. You knew Ben. We had you and Sarah to our house.”

He shook his head regretfully. “I’m sorry, Maggie. You know I did everything I could.”

“Everything within the prescribed limits, you mean.”

His head came up with a snap. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

The expression on his face, somewhere between anger and guilt, told her she was right. Somehow, that comforted her. After all, she knew the drill. She’d been through it at every bank in town. Lead Maggie Cortland by the nose. Let her think there’s a chance, then pull the rug out from under her. She just hadn’t expected it from him.

She glanced around at the people milling in the teller line, at the bank officers handing out forms to perspective clients. People she knew and once trusted. Her throat felt like it was closing up.

Maggie got to her feet, gathering up her purse and paperwork from the desk that stood between them. “I think you know exactly what I mean, Ernie. Thanks for your time, but you know what? I don’t need your money. I’ll find a way, with you or without you. If you think I’m going to fold just because Laird Donnelly has every man in this town by the short hairs—”

“This has nothing to do with Laird Donnelly,” Ernie sputtered, shoving to his feet as Dorothy LaBecque, the pretty, thirty-two-year-old blonde watching them from the express window, ducked her head and pretended to be counting her drawer. “Our decision was based solely on your ability to—”

“Play my part? Is that what you were going to say?”

“No, of course not.” Flustered, he glanced around at the stares they were beginning to draw, then, in a lower voice, stammered, “Based on—on your, uh, potential to show a profit.” He hesitated and leaned closer, as if what he had to say embarrassed him. “You’re all alone out there, Maggie. The bank…they don’t put a lot of stock in a single woman’s ability to…” He shook his head. “If you were uh, still married…” He let the rest drift off.

The laugh that escaped her made him flinch. “Still married? Since when is that a requirement for loans these days? Isn’t there something in American jurisprudence about discrimination in regards to single—”

“This isn’t about discrimination and you know it. It’s a hard life up here. Hard enough for men, let alone women. Now…you need to calm down, Maggie. I think you’re overwrought.”

Overwrought? With slow deliberation, she placed one palm flat on his desk, leaned closer to him. “It’s Mrs. Cortland to you. And you can tell Laird Donnelly for me that I will never roll over for a man like him, no matter how many people he’s got on his payroll.” She glanced meaningfully at the tall blonde behind the express window, then back at Ernie.

Ernie absorbed the blow, then leaned one smooth hand on the desk himself, coming inches from her face. “Watch yourself, Maggie. You don’t know what you’re playing with here.”

“If I were a man, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. But this isn’t the nineteenth century and Donnelly’s not the only one making up the rules.”

Ernie slid his gaze to the bank’s only window, where clouds were crowding the morning sky. “Ben would’ve wanted you to sell.”

His words hit her like a ringing slap, and the sting of them made the room go blurry for a moment. When she’d gathered her control again, she pinned Ernie with a look that had all the color rushing out of his florid cheeks. “That,” she said quietly, “was beneath even you, Ernie.”

Ernie lowered his eyes, searching for somewhere safe to land his gaze as Maggie turned and headed out of the bank. In the glass reflection of the door just before she pushed past it, she could see Dorothy hurrying over to Ernie’s desk.

Outside, the air was crisp, even for May, and the dark clouds that scudded along the shanks of the Bitterroots carried the promise of weather. She wished she had foregone the dark business suit today and worn her usual work clothes. It was cold and no one gave a damn about her experience running a business anyway. No one gave a damn, period.

There were a million things to do this morning, but at the moment, she couldn’t think of a single one that sounded more important than drowning her sorrows in a steaming cup of coffee at Moody’s. Not that she wanted to talk. She didn’t. She simply couldn’t face heading back alone just yet.

Her hands were shaking as she pushed the door to Moody’s open. The rich aroma of coffee hit her the moment she entered the shop and settled over her like a balm.

“Hey, Maggie,” the attractive, middle-aged woman called out to her from behind the counter where she held court with her coffeepot. A half-dozen men of various ages gathered around her on the vinyl-covered counter stools like a bunch of hungry old roosters, pecking for crumbs. They turned to look as Maggie walked in the door.

“Hey, Moody,” she said, ignoring their stares. “Can I get a cup of coffee?”

“Comin’ right up.”

The café was warm and cozy with gingham-checked curtains and a different Victorian lamp hanging down over each table. Old books covered the shelves that rode above the windows and antiques and greenery dotted the wall space that wasn’t taken up by windows. Moody had done more than convert this old diner into something special. She’d created an ambiance that made Maggie feel at home here. She suspected that half of Fishhook felt the same.

Her name, of course, wasn’t really Moody. But anyone who still remembered her real one lived under penalty of death if they divulged it. No, Moody Rivers was as much a fixture here in the valley as the river that had earned her her nickname. A free spirit, who, at fifty, answered to no one but was adored by all.

She set a steaming cup of coffee and a pitcher of cream down on the booth table, tilting a sideways look at Maggie. “Wanna talk about it, hon?”

Maggie thought she couldn’t stand kindness right now. Her eyes glistened as she shook her head.

The older woman smiled. “Well, then, I know just the thing.” A minute later, a plate appeared under Maggie’s nose filled with a “Moody’s Dutch Double-Fudge Brownie,” last year’s county fair grand prize winner.

“Chocolate,” Moody sighed. “The elixir of life. It’s on me. Talk’s free, too, if you want it.”

She wanted to wail, but prudence prevailed. She thanked Moody and stirred cream into her cup, watching the white slowly spiral into the black. A gaff like public crying would instantly be fodder for the wags of Fishhook and a mere two degrees of separation from good ol’ Laird Donnelly—a man who regularly ate the young for breakfast and was already licking his chops at the prospect of her next falter. No, she couldn’t show weakness. Not for a moment. She took a sip of coffee and sank back against her seat. Exhaustion pulled at her, even though the day had barely begun.

Peripherally, she heard the little bell above the café door jangle, felt the men at the counter turn to take in the newest arrival with a collective, male bristling. To her left, Moody looked up too. The perpetually easygoing woman fumbled a coffee cup against its saucer, then juggled it still again, seeming to attempt the same thing with her expression.

Cool air from outside slithered against Maggie’s face as curiosity tugged her gaze in the direction of the lace-covered door that still blocked the newcomer from her view.

“C’mon in,” Moody invited, still a bit wide-eyed. “Find yourself a seat. I’ll bring ya a menu.”

“Just coffee,” he said in a deep, baritone voice as he cleared the door, tugging off his black leather gloves one finger at a time.

The coffee cup poised at Maggie’s lips froze where it was. For a moment, she actually forgot to breathe. Big, was the first adjective that leapt to mind. No less than six foot-three and used to ducking door frames. Drop-dead handsome was the second. No, that was three adjectives, she amended stupidly, unable to tear her gaze from him. Square-jawed, with shockingly blue eyes hooded by thick brows, the dark-haired stranger took in the small café with a quick turn of his head. His gaze locked with hers for an assessing moment before it swept away again. And like a blow to the solar plexus, it left her heart inexplicably racing in her chest.

He moved with the graceful efficiency of a caged cat, prowling to a table in the corner of the room and sitting with his back to the wall. If this had been the Old West, she would have guessed him a gunslinger, but she supposed he was just another loner on his way to somewhere else.

Here, machismo was as much a part of the landscape as cattle, but there was no pretense about the pure, unadulterated maleness that lurked beneath the black clothing this man wore from head to foot. His self-contained intensity made every head turn his way as he walked in the room. And her response to it was as obvious and as primal as that of everyone else in the room. Unbidden images tumbled through her—of sweaty sheets and his big hands on her skin.

She managed to get her coffee cup to her lips, trying to comprehend her completely carnal reaction to the man. It had been years since a man—any man—had made her think of…sex. But this stranger had managed it in the space of ten seconds. And he hadn’t said more than two words.

Lust at first sight, she thought. It was more than shocking. Ernie was right. She was overwrought. She forced herself to stare at the brownie on the plate in front of her, realizing that she’d lost all interest in it.

Moody crossed the room in the unhurried way she had and set a cup of coffee down in front of him. “Take cream?” she asked.

“Just black,” he replied.

“We’ve got the best hash browns this side of the Rockies and omelettes that’ll make you think you died and went to heaven. How ’bout it?”

Maggie could’ve sworn the man’s gaze slid longingly at the plates of food being cradled by the old roosters at the counter, before returning to his coffee.

“This’ll do,” he said, and pulled a long sip as Moody watched.

“Suit yerself, darlin’. Enjoy.” She breezed by Maggie’s table with a little grin and a wink as she passed. Maggie, who was concentrating on swallowing a bite of brownie, nearly choked.

“Reckon we ain’t seen the last o’ winter by the smell o’ that air,” old Bill Miller announced to no one in particular from his spot at the counter. “Storm’s rollin’ in.”

“Ah,” Bob Tacumsa replied with a shake of his gray head, “Just the leftovers. T’won’t be much.”

“Yeah,” Wit Stacey replied, glancing pointedly at the stranger. “Them Northers blow in all sorts o’ riff raff this time a year.”

Maggie watched the stranger tap his finger against the rim of his cup, trying to ignore them.

Moody slapped at the counter with her damp towel perilously near to Wit’s plate of eggs. “And it mostly accumulates at my counter,” she said sharply. “Mind yer tongue, Wit, or you’ll find yourself wearin’ my best breakfast plate.”

Wit ducked his head and forked in a mouthful of eggs.

Score one for Moody.

Maggie glanced back at the stranger. To her dismay, he was staring right back at her through a sweep of dark lashes. She flashed him an automatic smile, then looked away, tamping down a racing heartbeat.

What was wrong with her anyway? Tightening her hand around her coffee mug, she wished she’d gone straight home from the bank. Instead, she was sitting here fantasizing about a man she didn’t even know, wondering what his smile would feel like against her mouth.

Lord.

The bell above the door jangled again. This time she knew who was coming through the door before she saw him because she heard his voice. The sound of it sent a shiver through her.

Laird Donnelly and two of his men brought the cold air in with them as they swept into the café like they owned the place. Barrel-chested and just as big as the stranger sitting across the room, Laird looked every inch the cattle baron he was. At thirty-five, he owned the biggest operation in northern Montana, not to mention half the men in this town. Maggie slid her eyes shut, wishing she could gracefully slide under the table and disappear.

“Well, well, if it isn’t Maggie Cortland,” Laird said, strolling her way, slipping off his gray felt Stetson. “How ya been, Maggie?”

“Laird.” She sipped her coffee and stared out the window.

“Been keepin’ to yourself a lot lately. Why, we were just talkin’ about you, weren’t we boys?”

The “boys” nodded like good little soldiers.

“That’s right. We were wonderin’ why you hadn’t fixed that fence up on the north pasture yet. A couple of your mares wandered onto my land yesterday.”

Damn him! She’d fixed that fence twice in the last two weeks. Someone had been cutting it, and it didn’t take an rocket scientist to figure out who. “Where are they now?”

Laird smiled magnanimously. “Your mares? Oh, I imagine right about now, they’re happily grazin’ with my best heifers. I planned on bringin’ ’em on by later today.”

Her knee hit the table with a thwack and the old roosters jumped as a single entity. “No!” she said too loudly. “Don’t bother. I’ll come get them later.”

“No hurry,” Laird told her, draping his muscular arm across the high back of her booth. “’Cause from what I hear this hasn’t really been your day.”

“I suppose I have you to thank for that,” she said without a glimmer of a smile.

He did though—a wry, foxlike grin that set her teeth on edge. “Me? Hell, I can take credit for lots of things, but makin’ your day bad isn’t one I’d care to claim.”

Maggie couldn’t actually remember hating anyone the way she did Laird Donnelly. He made her skin crawl. Crowding her the way he was now was something he did for fun. He loved to see the terror leap into her eyes. But she swore she wouldn’t let him do it to her. Not here. Not now.

Thankfully, Moody interceded, nudging Laird out of the way so she could refill Maggie’s coffee cup. “Why don’t you and your boys have a seat, Laird?” she said pointedly. “Maggie’s not in the mood for talkin’.”

“Another time then,” he promised with a wink that sent a shiver through Maggie.

It wasn’t until Laird moved out of the way that she noticed the stranger watching her. Rather, watching Laird watching her. The muscle in his jaw worked rhythmically as his gaze collided with hers, then he looked back at his coffee.

She dragged her purse up from the seat and began rifling through it for money. Moody intercepted her again, setting the coffeepot down on the table. “I told you. It’s on me today. You go on home, honey. Put your feet up. You’re pale as a ghost. You could use a rest.”

Maggie slid an anxious look at Laird and his bunch before sending Moody what she hoped was a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry about me. Okay? I’m just a little tired is all. I’ll be fine.”

“You sure? When you gonna get some help out on your place? Lord knows, you shouldn’t be handling all that on your own.”

“Soon,” Maggie lied. “Thanks, Moody. For everything.”

The older woman just smiled. She was nosy, Maggie thought, but she wasn’t dense. She always knew how far to push, and Maggie had just drawn the line. Gathering up her purse she headed toward the door, deliberately avoiding eye contact with the stranger. He’d disappear in a few hours like the cold wind off the Bitterroots.

And she’d still be spitting into it.

Cain MacCallister made no pretense of ignoring the fragile-looking beauty named Maggie as she unfolded those long legs of hers from the booth and walked by him without a second glance. More to the point, he couldn’t take his eyes off her. Perhaps, he reasoned, it was her resemblance to Annie that had caught him like a sucker punch to the gut. Slender and pale, with that blond, pinned-up hair and swanlike neck of hers, she could’ve been a dancer. Maybe it was the elegant way she held herself as that cow-chaser hassled her.

Maybe it was the way she smiled—the little flicker of that wide mouth of hers that had nearly stalled his heart. All of which had forced him to reassess the “fragile” description he’d pinned on her. Oh, she was delicate all right. Delicate the way centuries-old bone china was delicate, with a tempered core that belied the translucence.

Damn, he thought, sipping his cooling coffee. What the hell was wrong with him? He had no business thinking about a woman like her. She was probably married with three kids, a picket fence and a dog. He was in the market for something considerably less permanent.

But that didn’t stop him from watching her pull away in her beat-up old pickup truck, or from wondering who’d put the sadness he’d glimpsed in her eyes.

Swivelling a look at the trio of men seated a few tables away, Cain tightened his fist. He’d known plenty of men like them. In lockup, a man got familiar with the lowest common denominator quickly. In the real world, men like Laird got off on using intimidation. Especially on women.

Cain smiled grimly. He’d give that bastard five minutes behind bars before men much better versed in arm-twisting put him in a place he’d wish he’d never seen. But men like Laird—men with money—rarely found themselves in the black hole. Even if they’d earned a spot there.

Cain reached into his pocket for the last of his change and tossed it on the table. The waitress who’d filled his cup smiled as she cruised by him again. “Finished? Sure I can’t get you something else?”

The smell of cinnamon buns had been making him almost sick with hunger for the past ten minutes and if he didn’t get out of here soon, he might just have to ask her for a job as a dishwasher to earn one.

“Thanks,” he said, managing a smile of his own as he shrugged into his denim jacket. “This is it. Unless you can tell me who might be hiring around here.”

“You’re looking for work?” she asked with a surprised lift of her brows.

He nodded curtly. “I’ve got some experience with ranch work. Horses, mostly.”

Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully, looking him up and down for a moment. “Funny, I didn’t take you for a ranch hand.”

He slid his gloves back on.

“Horses, huh?” She glanced at Laird. “The Bar ZX is always hiring at this time of year.”

Laughter erupted from the men’s table as they shared a joke. Cain glanced out the window. “Anywhere else?”

The woman smiled slowly, then gestured to Cain with a tip of her chin to follow her. “As a matter of fact,” she said softly, walking him to the door, “I just might know of something.”




Chapter 2


The sleeting rain started after lunch, but by one-fifteen it had turned into hail—a sharp, biting deluge that rattled against the tin roof of Maggie’s barn. It had scattered the horses in the paddock in a blind panic. Marble-sized balls of ice pummeled the mares, reducing them to quivering masses huddling against the barn.

One by one, she managed to catch them and lead them into the barn, out of the weather. But Geronimo, a green-broke three-year old gelding, was too frightened to be caught. She’d already missed him three times with her rope as he skidded around the paddock, eyes white with terror.

The gelding was the most unpredictable of her new horses. With the temperament of a scared bulldog, he’d resisted her every attempt at training. But Maggie knew he’d been mishandled as a young horse and she believed he had real potential as a cutter.

The heels of her boots slipped in the mud as Maggie threw the lariat. She missed, going down painfully on one knee. Geronimo crashed into the split-rail fencing and shrieked. Struggling to her feet, Maggie hauled back the spooled out rope, cursing the weather and imagining the bruises she’d have on her before she was done.

Thunder rumbled, shaking the ground and blurring the roar of the hail against the barn. Frigid rain dripped off the brim of her hat and slid down her neck. The stinging hail beat against her slicker-covered back. Instinct warned that she should leave the damned horse where he was. But she knew she didn’t have the heart to do that either. Geronimo had been through enough in his short life to fill a book. She wasn’t about to compound his misery by abandoning him when things got tough. In his state, he could break his neck trying to break out of the paddock.

“Shh—Geronimo—” she called, approaching him again as he pranced madly back and forth on the north end of the enclosure. She knew he hated the rope, but she couldn’t get close enough to him to grab his halter. “Whoa, boy. Settle down, now. Here we go. That’s it. Let’s just get you outta this weather.”

Geronimo rolled his eyes in terror as she tossed the loop one more time, this time, miraculously, dropping it over the gelding’s head. Maggie hauled back on the rope feeling the resistance before she’d even gotten it tight.

The big gelding shuddered for a moment, legs splayed, before he exploded with a high-pitched squeal. Nine-hundred pounds of fury, bone and muscle bore down on her like a shrieking banshee.

There was no time to react. Nowhere to go. She heard a scream and knew it had come from her.

Too late, she lunged sideways, diving toward the fence rails, but Geronimo slammed into her with the force of an oncoming locomotive. The impact sent her careening against the railing and slammed the breath from her lungs. Lights exploded in her skull, and the rain and the sky and even the mud beneath her cheek winked in and out like a flickering lightbulb.

She felt, more than heard, the thunderous pounding of Geronimo’s hooves against the ground nearby. She gasped and coughed. Her lungs burned. The world, as she opened her eyes, was spinning. The only thing that was holding still was the post she was curled around.

Get up!

The voice was hers. Wasn’t it? She willed herself to try. Her fingernails sank into the mud in her pathetic effort to drag herself toward the nearby rail, but found no purchase around the cold chunks of ice that littered the ground. She could hear the frantic barking of her dog, Jigger, coming from inside the house and she suddenly wished she hadn’t left him there, safe from the storm.

Dimly, it occurred to her that this was a sloppy way to die. Slogged in mud, trampled in her own paddock by a dumb animal who depended on her for its very survival.

Embarrassing, really—

Before she could finish the thought, someone was tugging on her wrists. Pulling her effortlessly away from the sound of oncoming hooves. She felt the heavy, pounding closeness of them as they barely missed her legs. Somewhere in the distance, thunder rumbled with a fierce howl.

And then she was sprawled outside the paddock with someone leaning urgently over her, shielding her from the hail. Touching her face.

“Can you hear me?”

It was a man’s voice. That realization only dimly registered. The sky above her was still doing a slow rotation. “I—” she croaked, licking the rain off her lips. “Ben—?”

The shadow above her shook his head. “Don’t move. You might’ve broken something.”

Not Ben, she thought. Of course, not Ben. Someone else. She tried to sit up. “Who—?”

“Lie still,” he commanded, pressing her back down. “I’m not gonna hurt you.”

He didn’t have to. Everything ached. Maggie squinted up at him past the rain as he ran his hands down the sides of her ribs. Big was the first word that came to mind.

And just like that, her head cleared.

Oh, no.

Pushing his hands off her, she tried to sit up again. “Don’t—”

He swore under his breath, but let her sit.

She couldn’t think. Not coherently anyway. And not while he was touching her. “I’m all right,” she told him. “I just…just had the wind knocked out of me, that’s all.”

Her shaking hands were muddy, but she fingered her aching cheek, taking in the beat up old motorcyle parked twenty feet away.

“You—you were…at Moody’s.”

“That’s right.”

“What—” she shook her head “—what’re…you doing here?”

“Saving your pretty little behind apparently.” The hail was still pelting them, but he scanned her empty yard with a look close to anger. “Where the hell is everybody?”

Everybody? Maggie tried to get to her feet and failed, bracing a hand against the post. A soft curse spilled from her lips.

In one effortless movement, he scooped her up in his arms as if she weighed nothing at all and headed toward the house.

She gasped. “No, wait! I’m perfectly capable of—”

“The hell you are.” Unmoved, he trudged through the mud toward her front door. His arms were strong and thick and she felt unreasonably small in them.

She swung a look back at the paddock and the gelding still racing around in a froth of panic. “But Geronimo—”

A humorless laugh escaped him. “You mean that loco horse that just tried to trample you to death?”

Her head ached. “He’s afraid of ropes. He wasn’t trying to hurt me.”

“And if you had the sense God gave a flea, you’ll call the knacker’s truck for him tomorrow.”

The knacker! She would’ve argued if she had the where-withal, but she couldn’t seem to muster it.

They reached the door then, and he yanked open the screen and gave the handle a twist, shoving it open the rest of the way with his foot. A low growl froze him in his tracks. It was Jigger, who’d planted himself just inside the doorway, poised to do battle with this stranger. But at the sight of Maggie in the man’s arms, the dog whined happily and jumped up to lick her hand.

“It’s okay, Jigger,” Maggie told him. “He’s a friend.” She looked up at Cain, whose expression was considerably more guarded. “Don’t worry. He only bites when I tell him to.”

“That’s reassuring,” he said, carrying her into the warm room and setting her down gently on the corner of the pine-planked kitchen table.

Maggie braced a hand behind her, surprisingly unsteady. She had every intention of getting immediately to her feet, but her knees had the tensile strength of water.

Wordlessly, he tugged off his gloves, reached for her mud-covered right boot and began pulling it off.

“I can do that,” she argued, even though she wasn’t precisely sure that was true. Her head felt like a fractured egg and her hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

“Moody was right about you,” he said, as the boot released her foot with a watery pop.

She frowned. “Moody?”

“She said you were stubborn as mud.”

“She actually said that?”

“Which I see now is true.”

She stared down at the top of his head as he worked on her other boot, at his dark hair, slicked with rain and hanging in dripping hanks against his forehead. His shoulders were thick and wide with a man’s strength. “What else did she say?”

He cupped his palm against her calf and tugged at the heel of her boot. “That you need help.” That boot came off with a pop and his hands followed her muddy sock up her calf and pulled it down.

Help. Yes, she needed help right now, she thought, inhaling sharply at the touch of his hands on her skin. Lord, what was she doing letting this stranger undress her?

As if he’d heard her thought, his gaze lifted to hers, his cool palm still cradling her leg. The penetrating blue heat of his eyes seared her and she tried to remember ever feeling more off balance than she did right now.

“I…don’t even know your name,” she said, reclaiming her leg and scooting backward on the table.

“Cain,” he said. “Cain MacCallister.”

Biblical references of the dark kind flitted through her mind. Cain. As in the second original sin. She watched him pull a hand towel off a towel rack and run it under the kitchen faucet until the water got hot. Jigger was watching him, too, with a proprietary sweep of his tail across the floor.

“Listen, Mr. MacCallister—” she began.

“It’s just Cain.”

“Okay. Cain. Thank you for helping me. I mean, I owe you, but if you don’t mind, I can certainly—”

He was back at her side then, lifting the hot, damp towel to her cheek. “Hold still.”

She blocked him with her hand. “Please—”

“You’re bleeding.”

“I am?” She raised a hand to her cheek and brought it back stained with red. Oh, God…

The heat stung and she winced, but he was gentle. Very gentle as he soothed the towel across her cheek, cleaning away the mess she’d made of it.

“How bad is it?” she asked. He was close enough that she could feel the heat of his nearness.

“It’s not too deep. I don’t think you need stitches. But you’re gonna have a nice shiner.”

She sank lower as he moved back to the sink to rinse the towel.

“You’re lucky,” he said. “It could’ve been worse. A lot worse.”

He was right, of course. She’d come close many times. But never as close as she’d come today. “So…do you mind telling me what you were you doing riding all the way out here on a motorcycle in the middle of a hailstorm?”

“It wasn’t hailing when I started out. But we can talk about that later.”

She grabbed his wrist as he lifted the towel to her face again. “I think we should talk about it now. I mean, it’s not every day I let a strange man carry me into my own house and—” she stared at the towel “—pull my boots off.”

A small grin softened the hard line of his mouth. Maggie felt her resolve slipping as he lifted the towel again and smoothed it across her jawline.

“I suppose it’s not every day you nearly get yourself trampled either,” he said. “Or are you in the habit of putting yourself in harm’s way?”

“Not in the habit, no. What about you?”

“Oh, it’s definitely one I’m trying to break.”

The low baritone of his voice vibrated through her. Outside, the hail still battered the window. “So…Moody sent you out here, you said?”

“That’s right. I’m looking for work.”

An unreasonable disappointment sluiced through her. “I wish I could’ve saved you the trouble. I’m not hiring.”

He lowered the towel. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but you’re out here all by yourself.”

Uncomfortable with his closeness, she slid off the table and stood, taking a moment to get her balance. “Mr. MacCallister—”

“Cain.”

“Cain. I don’t know what Moody told you, but—”

“That your husband left you alone with this place awhile back and that you’ve bitten off more than you can chew. She said you need help. It just so happens that I know a little something about horses and I’m in the market for a job.”

Maggie pressed her hands together. “You don’t understand. I can’t hire you. I can’t afford to hire anyone.”

Folding up the towel, he walked back to the sink and stared out the window. “I don’t need much. Three squares and a roof.”

She blinked at him. “Room and board?”

Slowly, he turned back to her, but she didn’t miss the way he’d balled his fist against his stomach as if trying to grind away an ache there.

“I noticed your fences in the south pasture need fixing.” He glanced up at her ceiling where water droplets swelled and dripped in a steady staccato into a dented metal bucket on her kitchen floor. “One more good storm like this one and you can probably kiss your roof goodbye. Not to mention your stock. You need help. I need a place to be for a while. It sounds like a fair trade.”

The tattoo of hail stopped abruptly on the window and silence invaded the room. Was it her imagination, or had he gone suddenly pale? She dismissed the thought as a trick of lighting. Besides, nobody who looked like he did worked for room and board. His grasp of the English language told her he was educated too, which put him miles beyond most of the itinerant hands that drifted through here. And then another thought occurred to her. “Are you in some kind of…trouble, Mr. MacCallister?”

Sweat beaded on his upper lip and he braced a hand on the counter behind him. A low curse escaped him.

“Mr. MacCallister?”

Without answering, he bolted out the kitchen door. Maggie stared after him for a heartbeat before following him. Jigger shadowed close on her heels.

She found him leaning over the boxwood bushes around the corner of her house, retching. Maggie watched helplessly, uncertain whether to stay or leave him alone. In the end she found she couldn’t simply walk away from him.

When he’d finished, he straightened slowly, his color not far off from the winter-pale green leaves beside him.

He wiped the back of one hand across his mouth. “Sorry about that.”

“You’re ill?”

He shook his head. “Moody’s coffee on an empty stomach. Not a good idea.”

She remembered the way he’d looked at those plates of food at the café. The way he’d hugged that cup of coffee as if it were gold. “How long since you’ve eaten? I mean something solid.”

His posture stiffened and he blinked as if he were considering lying. “I’m looking for a job,” he said, “not a handout.”

“That’s not exactly an answer, is it? How long?”

“A couple of days ago, I guess.”

“A couple of—?” Maggie blinked at him incredulously.

He stared first at his feet then off toward his bike. “I’m sorry to have troubled you, Mrs. Cortland. I’ll be on my way.”

“Troubled me? You saved my life, Mr. MacCallister. I…I owe you something for that.”

“You don’t owe me a thing.”

“I can’t offer you a job, but the least I can do is feed you a decent meal. In fact, I insist.”

His gaze traveled slowly down the length of her, then moved to his own mud-coated boots.

“Please,” she repeated softly. “Come inside.”

Reluctantly, he followed her back in the kitchen. Maggie pulled a glass down from the cupboard, filled it with milk and held it out to him.

“Mrs. Cortland, I—” he began.

“Drink this. It’ll settle your stomach.” She looked down at her mud-covered clothes. “Look, I’m…a mess. I need a shower and a change of clothes. And then I’ll come back down and fix you some lunch.” She pulled a chair out from the table for him. “Will you let me do that for you?”

Some of the steel went out of his spine as he took the glass she offered. He was proud. She could see that. But he was hungry, too. Too hungry, she decided, to refuse her.

“I’ll be outside.” Sliding his gloves back on, he left her standing with Jigger pressed protectively against her, and the screen door screeching shut in his wake.



It took her a ten minutes under a steaming shower to get the mud out of her hair and another ten to gingerly pull on her clothes, past the ache in her shoulder and left hip. And her cheek… Well, her cheek was another matter altogether.

She supposed the bruises she saw when she looked in the mirror were minor compared to the battering her confidence had taken today. She’d always believed she could do anything she put her mind to. Today, however, she’d failed. Failed not only to save her ranch from the fate to which her husband had consigned it, but failed at the simplest of tasks required in running it.

She leaned over the vanity, inspecting her battered cheek with a frown. She’d been lucky today. If it hadn’t been for that stranger downstairs, she might well be lying dead in the paddock right now instead of contemplating how a scar would add character to her face.

She closed her eyes against the dull ache throbbing at the back of her skull. Lord, what had she been thinking chasing Geronimo that way? She should have read him better. Anticipated what he’d been about to do. Sure, she was overtired, overworked, but who wasn’t? running a day-today operation like this one. Maybe Ernie and the bank and all of those men were who were waiting for her to fold were right. Maybe she couldn’t do it. Maybe Big Sky Country did belong to the men of the world.

Maybe a husband was a requirement up here in this wild country. And in the best of worlds, she’d have one. But Ben had taken that option right out of her hands six months ago. So what choice did she have? Husbands didn’t grow on trees. And except for the one man she’d never, ever consider, no one had offered. And even a ranch hand wouldn’t help her now, she realized, thinking of Cain’s offer. It was too late for that. She needed the loan. And they’d turned her down.

She’d failed. Utterly. It was only a matter of dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s. And after that, Laird Donnelly would finally get what he’d always wanted. At least, she amended, half of what he wanted.

Maggie moved to her bedroom window and looked down at the yard. She couldn’t explain the relief she felt when she saw Cain’s bike still parked there. Nor could she comprehend the almost palpable rush she got at the prospect of seeing him again.

Who was he and what strange twist of fate had brought him onto her ranch exactly when she’d needed him? More troubling, perhaps, was why that very coincidence didn’t alarm her? After all, she reasoned as she made her way downstairs, she didn’t know anything about him. What if he worked for Laird? What if Laird had sent him here to make trouble for her from the inside?

Unlikely, she decided, pulling a jacket from the clothes tree by the front door. He’d come into the diner off the highway. And there hadn’t been even an exchange of glances with Laird or his men that she could recall. No, he’d said Moody sent him and Moody would never knowingly send a dangerous man to her ranch.

But then, she reasoned, real monsters rarely have fangs.

Shrugging into her jacket, she headed outside to find him. She’d promised him food and she would feed him. And that, she told herself, would be the end of that.



“Whoa, son,” Cain soothed, rubbing a dry blanket over Geronimo’s soaked haunches as the gelding blew out a nervous breath and backed against the rear wall of the stall. Cain tightened his grip around Geronimo’s lead rope and brought the animal’s head down closer to him. “Nowhere to go now, is there? It’s just you an’ me here, pal. Nothin’ to be afraid of.”

Geronimo nuzzled Cain’s clothing for a scent and exhaled sharply.

Cain’s mouth twitched with a smile. “Yeah, I know. Life’s a bitch, isn’t it? But you could do a lot worse than to end up in Maggie Cortland’s barn. A helluva lot worse. You keep that in mind the next time she steps into a paddock with you, you hear?”

A sound from the doorway had Cain whirling around with an instinct honed over the last few years. It was an old habit and hard to break, and his shoulders relaxed fractionally when he saw it was only Maggie walking toward him with a curious expression on her face. Her hair was still damp from her shower and as she walked, she pulled her fingers through it unselfconsciously.

The sight of her did things to him. Made him remember how long it had been since he’d been with a woman. Any woman. Locking down the thought, he turned his attention to the wool blanket in his hand.

“I can’t tell you,” she said breezily, “what a relief it is to know I’m not the only one who talks to horses.”

“See?” he said, tossing the blanket over the stall half door. “I told you I could be useful.”

As Jigger prowled the hallway of the barn near her, Maggie nodded at the gelding. “How did you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Settle him down like that? He’s never let anyone but me touch him.”

Cain ran his palm down over Geronimo’s velvety nose and the horse quivered with pleasure. “We came to an understanding.”

“Ah,” she said, “you mean, he understands he’s not to trample you if you understand his heartfelt desire not to be sold to the nearest glue factory.”

“Something like that.” He grinned at her as he ran his hands down the animal’s flank and across the thick, well defined muscles of his chest. “He’s got decent lines. More than decent, actually. But he’s got a shaky history.”

She braced her elbows over the half door and studied the horse. “You’re right. I’ve had him for less than a month. God knows what happened to him before I found him in that auction. But I’m not giving up on him just yet.”

“Horses like this are unpredictable at best, dangerous at worst, like today. He could kill you in a heartbeat if he took it into his thick head.”

Maggie reached up to scratch Geronimo under his chin. “He’s scared, not mean. I know the difference.”

“Dead’s dead. Nobody will care later what his intentions were.” Cain turned his back on her and finished rubbing the horse’s flanks with the blanket.

“You’re right, “she said evenly. “I’ll be more careful.”

He nodded without reply.

“So…you seem to know your way around horses.”

“Yup.”

Maggie braced her arms across the half door of the stall, resting her chin there. “Huh. A monosylabic résumé. That’s a unique approach.”

He relinquished a small smile. “I thought you weren’t looking for a résumé.”

“I’m not…exactly. Just curious, I guess. You don’t look like the sort of man who’d be drifting, that’s all.”

He gave Geronimo a final pat, then gave her damp hair and battered cheek a fresh perusal. “And sad-eyed beauties dressed in city clothes who sit alone in cafés don’t usually run ranches. So there you go.”

Color crawled up her neck as Cain drew near enough to smell the scent of soap on her. And for the briefest of moments, he had the crazy impulse to bury his face in her hair and simply breathe in the scent of her.

“You’re not the first person who thinks I don’t belong here.”

Cain narrowed his eyes. “I never said that.”

“Well, that puts you miles ahead of the competition.”

“Competition?”

“Never mind.”

She turned and he knew he’d said something wrong. Dammit.

“No, wait. Mrs. Cortland. I may be a little outta practice, but I think I just stepped on your toes. I’m…sorry.”

Maggie turned around, her expression thawing as she hugged herself with her arms. She exhaled slowly. “No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to— It’s been a bad day. You have nothing to do with that.”

“Look—” He stared down at a callus on his hand. “Maybe I should just go.”

“No, don’t. I mean…” She pressed her hands together and he had the oddest feeling that what he’d heard in her voice was desperation. “What I mean is, I still have to feed you. You did say you’d stay for lunch? Right?”

Her eyes had gone dark. Not desperation. Fear. Not of him, but of something. Like a child scared of being alone in the dark, afraid the boogyman would come out of her closet.

He shouldn’t care, he told himself.

No, make that, he didn’t care.

He couldn’t afford to get involved with this woman’s troubles. He had enough of his own. But something about her—maybe it was her stubborn pride—made him want to tell her that everything would be all right. Hold her against him until the worry melted from her eyes.

Hell.

As if he could. As if he had it in him to try. She was a means to an end. That’s all. She’d offered him food and he’d take it and go. Simple. Clean.

No fuss, no muss. That was his motto. And he’d damned well better stick with it if he was ever going to—

“Why don’t you come in and wash up,” she said, before he could finish his thought. Turning abruptly, she headed toward the house. “I hope you don’t mind chicken. I thought I’d fry it.”

Chicken? His mouth watered instantly at the very sound of the word and his empty belly growled.

No fuss, no muss, he thought, falling in behind her with all the self-restraint of a back-door dog.

Yeah, right.




Chapter 3


Four hours and a dozen chores later, Maggie stood in her doorway holding the glass of lemonade she’d poured for Cain, watching him wield an axe over the ancient limb of the oak that had fallen across her yard in the last storm. She hadn’t asked him to do it. He’d insisted. Something about paying her back for the chicken and biscuits she’d fixed him.

She allowed herself a smile, remembering how he’d devoured the meal she’d made him. She suspected that it had been more than a couple of days since his last full meal. It made her wonder about him. A drifter, but not like any drifter she’d ever known. What had brought him to this? Where had he been and what had happened to him?

It was none of her business, of course, and she settled for the fact that she had, in a small way, repaid the debt she owed him for saving her life. How odd, she thought, that it could give her such pleasure, such a simple, old-fashioned thing as watching a man sate his hunger with her cooking. It made her feel useful. Necessary.

But now, as the rhythmic sound of the axe echoed across the shadow-drawn yard, she realized that “necessary” didn’t adequately describe what she was feeling as she watched him. She felt her pulse skitter and told herself she shouldn’t stare. But with his back to her, she indulged herself.

Where Ben had been compact, Cain’s build was lean and powerful. The muscles in his back and arms bunched and flexed as he hefted the axe over his head and brought it down hard against the ancient wood. There was a controlled violence to the way he dismantled that limb. Piece by piece. Stroke by stroke. The only break in his rhythm had come when he’d paused to add the chopped wood into a neat and growing pile that stood now to his left.

He was thinner than he’d been once. She could see that in the way his jeans fit—loose and low on his hips—and in the definition of his ribs. But whatever muscle mass he’d lost to hunger was more than compensated for by the sleek, animal-like grace with which he moved.

It wasn’t so much an economy of motion, she decided, studying him, as it was a deliberateness. She wondered absently where a man like him learned that kind of self-containment. And what in his past that had taught him to always watch his back.

Almost as if he’d heard her thought, he stopped chopping, catching sight of her watching him. Jigger, who’d been lying in the shade watching Cain, too, lifted his big, dark head and thumped his tail happily against the damp soil in greeting.

“You’ve got quite a rapt audience,” she told Cain.

“He’s just keepin’ an eye on me.” Cain wiped the sweat from his face with the back of his wrist and reached for his black T-shirt. “That for me?” he asked, indicating the lemonade.

She pushed away from the door and started toward him. “I thought you might be thirsty.”

He tugged his T-shirt on, then took the glass from her and guzzled down the contents in four serious gulps. Maggie stared, unable to take her eyes off him, or off the stray rivulet of moisture trickling down his chin.

He gave a sigh of satisfaction and dragged a forearm slowly across his mouth, all the while watching her. “Thanks.”

She swallowed hard. Lord, what was wrong with her?

Taking the empty glass, she fixed her gaze on the stack of wood. “You must have been a Boy Scout once.”

“Nope. My old man never believed in team player mentality,” he said, stroking the old oak handle of the axe as though he was prepared to tolerate her interruption politely. “Whacked apart my share of tree limbs, though.”

“I’ll bet. Grow up on a farm?”

He tossed a look in her direction. “Ranch.”

Ah. “That must account for the laconic cowboy conversationalist you’ve become.”

He grinned, staring off at the sun as it settled between the peaks of the Bitterroots. “You wanna talk? Or you want me to chop up this limb?”

She hugged herself against the chill beginning to settle in the air. Maggie glanced at the sinking sun, too, remembering how many sunsets she’d watched alone lately. “It’ll be dark soon.”

His gaze slid to her. If another man had ever made her feel utterly naked with one look before, she couldn’t remember it. “You know,” she began, “I really…appreciate what you’ve done here, but you don’t have to finish.”

“I said I would.”

“I mean, it’s a big limb and when you volunteered you didn’t even know my chain saw was broken and now I really owe you so much more than a chicken dinner for all that you’ve done for—”

“Do you want me to go?”

She blinked up at him. “No, it’s just—”

“If you want me to leave, I’ll leave.” He leaned the axe handle against the wood pile and stepped back.

She did want him to go. Wanted him to stop making her brood about things she couldn’t have anymore. But she found herself shaking her head. “I—I don’t—”

“—know me.” He ran a hand across his stubbled chin as if realizing his appearance might have something to do with the look on her face right now. “I’m afraid I don’t have any references in my back pocket. It’s been a while since I held down a job.”

“I…told you I couldn’t afford to—”

“—hire me. I know.” He smiled ironically. “But you already paid me for this. See, it’s been a while since I’ve had more than truck-stop food either. Food, in any case. I figure that’s worth this whole damned tree limb. And I mean to finish it.”

“But it’s…getting dark.”

He glanced around, as if noticing for the first time that daylight had nearly disappeared. He slid his fingers along the smooth wood of the axe handle with a self-deprecating laugh. “Sorry. I’m a little slow on the uptake these days, too. I’ll just get my things together and be outta your hair.” He leaned the axe handle against the woodpile and reached for the jacket he’d left draped there.

It took Maggie a moment to react. “Cain. That’s not what I meant.”

“It’s okay, Mrs. Cortland,” he said, as if he were used to being dismissed.

“But where will you go?”

“That’s not your worry,” he said, shoving his arms into his jacket. “I’ll manage.”

“Do you have somewhere to stay?”

He started toward his bike parked across the yard. “I’ll manage,” he repeated.

“Wait. Cain.” Maggie crossed the distance between them stopping a few feet from him.

He stopped, but didn’t look at her.

“There’s a cot in the tack room. It’s not much, but it’s clean and dry and—”

He pivoted toward her, surprise clearly etched on his face. “You…want me to stay the night?”

Maggie bit the inside of her lip. “I’m…yes. If you want to. For the night. In the barn.”

His shoulders relaxed a fraction and he looked at the barn. “Whatever you’re afraid of, you should know I’d never hurt you. You don’t know me, but you should know that.”

A shiver ran through her. A dark inkling that this stranger had the potential to break her heart.

Ridiculous, she thought. Tomorrow, or maybe the next day, he’ll be gone. After everything she’d been through in the last year, her heart was every bit as bullet proof as Cain’s appeared to be.

She brightened and forced herself to smile. “Then it’s settled. I have a stew on the stove. Come in when you’re hungry.”

She could feel his eyes on her back as she turned and headed back to the house. Jigger trotted along beside her.

“Yes, ma’am,” he called to her back.

She turned, walking backward and tossed him another smile. “It’s Maggie. Just Maggie.”



The last of the sun had sunk behind the mountains limning Maggie’s valley by the time Cain finished with the fallen limb. He stacked the last split of wood on the pile beside him, then wiped the sweat off his face with the bandana he kept in his back pocket. The muscles in his arms and his back burned like hot embers and he could feel the blisters rising on his palms, but he walked toward the water spigot near the paddock feeling a sense of satisfaction. The physical labor made him feel alive—useful—something that had become almost foreign to him over the past four years.

He’d missed being able to walk outside when he wanted and feel the sun against his skin. He’d missed seeing the sunset and the sunrise. Four months since his release and he hadn’t missed a single one. He didn’t want to remember the man that place had made him. But neither could he leave him behind. He was the sum of his life and it had made him hard.

He gave the faucet handle a twist. The water spilled out in an icy cold rush, but he splashed it against his face and across the back of his neck, energized by the shock.

He glanced out over the pastures to the west, where the land rose to meet the mountains and Maggie’s herd of mares and foals grazed in the dusky light. The small herd of black Angus she used for training were finishing off the hay she’d laid out for them.

Once he’d dreamed of having a place like this of his own. With a string of horses and cattle and land as far as the eye could see. Not the Concho. That had never belonged to him. That had been Judd’s domain. And always would be. But somewhere, Cain’s dreams had fallen away to make room for plain old survival. For now, it was enough that he’d sleep tonight with a full belly and a roof over his head.

He glanced at the light spilling from the kitchen window and saw Maggie’s silhouette moving around near the stove. It was simple gratitude he should feel toward her for offering him the chance to get back on his feet. But some other, less well-defined feeling complicated the simplicity of that. It wasn’t as easy as sex. Sex was simple. Lust, even simpler. He couldn’t honestly deny feeling either one. But what man could? She was a natural beauty with vulnerability and loneliness written all over her. And he’d been too damned long without a woman to overlook what she had to offer.

He wasn’t, by choice, a curious man. He had no interest in getting to know anyone better than what he could learn from a handshake. But he was curious about her. Who was she? And what the hell was she doing out here all by herself in a country that devoured the strongest of men? What was that jackass of a husband of hers thinking, leaving a woman like her alone?

And, Cain wondered darkly, if he hadn’t ridden out here today in that storm, would she be in her kitchen now, puttering over the hot stove? Or would that damned horse have precluded any speculation on his part at all?

Which, he reminded himself, he shouldn’t be doing anyway. Tomorrow, he’d be moving on and Maggie Cortland and whatever problems she was facing would be miles behind him.

She was setting the table with dishes when he knocked quietly on the door. Jigger announced him and Maggie called for him to come on in. The door was open.

The aroma hit him first: savory beef and vegetables simmering on top of the stove. The warmth of the kitchen hit him next, followed immediately by the gut-punching view of Maggie’s backside as she leaned over the table with a handful of silverware. She’d changed out of her work clothes and into a slender pair of black slacks and a sweater the color of the sky in April.

“Hi,” she said brightly, turning toward him. “All finished?”

He cleared his throat. “Just about.” She smiled at him and he felt something stutter inside him. “Smells good.”

“It’s almost ready. I thought…maybe…you might like a hot shower before dinner.”

A hot shower? Cain blinked. He hadn’t even dreamed of that small luxury.

“Down the hall, second door on your right. Towels are in the cupboard. And a fresh razor if you want one.”

Cain swallowed hard and nodded. “That’s…that’s kind of you. I’ll just,” he said, backing out of the kitchen, “get something clean out of my gear.”

Maggie smiled and turned back to the cupboard, fishing out a pair of water goblets for the table.

Cain headed for his bike, praying that he had something clean to replace the clothes he had on his back.



When they’d finished eating the stew and biscuits Maggie had made for supper, she poured Cain a cup of coffee and they walked out onto the porch together. Evening had brought out the blanket of stars overhead and the chill in the air required Maggie to throw on a soft jacket over her sweater. She’d gotten used to being alone. It felt strange to have company, Maggie thought. Their meal had been awkward and full of long silences, and now he stood, staring out over the mountains, his look, a thousand miles away.

“Penny for your thoughts,” she said.

He looked up, then took a sip from his coffee. “They might be worth almost that.”

“The mountains are beautiful, aren’t they?” she said, taking a sip of her mug.

His gaze scanned the silvery trace of the mountaintops. “Yes.”

“Even in moonlight,” she said. “They never cease to steal my breath.”

“How long you been here?” he asked.

“Six years. Not long enough,” she replied. “Never long enough.”

“It’s an easy thing to fall in love with the land.”

Pulling her gaze from the darkness beyond, she swivelled a look at him. “Have you? I mean, ever fallen in love with a piece of land?”

He took a sip of coffee. “Ancient history.”

Maggie nodded. “I can’t imagine living anywhere else now. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep it.”

He filled his lungs with the scent of the snow off the mountaintops and the burgeoning green covering the hills. “It’s worth fighting for.”

She held her mug up to his for a toast to that sentiment. He smiled and returned the favor.

“To the good fight,” she said, and slugged a drink of the bittersweet coffee. He did the same and she had trouble taking her eyes off the way his muscular throat moved as he swallowed. The sight made her skin go suddenly tight.

Jigger nudged between them and Cain dropped his hand on the dog’s furry head for a scratch. The dog’s whole body quivered with pleasure.

“Can I ask you something?” he said as the silence stretched between them.

“Shoot.”

“Who was that guy in the coffee shop this morning?”

She tightened her hand around her cup. She knew instantly who he meant. “Guy?”

“Tall. Blowhard. Bent on ruining your day?”

Maggie smiled in spite of herself. “Oh, that guy.” She didn’t want to talk about Laird. “He was nobody. Just a rancher.”

“Not according to him.”

“True,” she agreed. “He’s under the misguided impression that he owns this valley.”

“Does he?”

“Not everything.” Maggie smoothed her right palm across the wood railing and a splinter slid neatly under her skin with a vicious prick. “Ow! Darn it!”

“Lemme see,” he said, grabbing her palm and inspecting it in the moonlight.

She tried to pull away, but his strong hand held hers firmly. “It’s nothing,” she complained, ignoring the sting. “Just a splinter.” But it felt like a ponderosa pine trunk had found its way under her skin.

“Hold still.” He bent over her hand, and turned it toward the kitchen light spilling through the open door. She didn’t mean to inhale the clean, soapy scent of him, or stare at the worn seams on his dark leather bomber jacket where his shoulders had strained it. And she couldn’t help herself from taking in the deep, dark brown of his hair or the way it curled over the edge of his shirt collar.

Lord, Maggie thought, giving herself a mental shake. You’ve been alone way too long.

It took less than ten seconds for him to get a grip on the splinter and pull it out. He lifted a smile up at her triumphantly, only then seeming to realize how close he was to her. His smile faded as he dropped her hand and stepped back. “Better put something on that.”

She rubbed at the spot gingerly with her thumb. “Thanks. I will.”

His large hand seemed to dwarf the railing as he brushed at the loose paint and splintery wood on the rail. “This could use some sandpaper and a fresh coat of paint.”

“Along with nearly every other surface on my property,” she said, shaking her head. “I’ll get right on that. In my spare time.”

“Sorry, it’s none of my business.”

“Don’t apologize. I’ve gotten way behind on things here. But painting railings isn’t exactly a priority when I’m barely managing to pay my bills. That’s why I was in town today,” she said with a sigh of resignation. “Getting turned down for a loan.”

He shook his head, “I always did have good timing.”

“Need I remind you that I probably wouldn’t be standing here now if you hadn’t ridden up on your bike when you did?”

He turned to look out over her darkened pastures again. “That was just lucky.”

“I used to believe in luck,” she said. “But now I don’t think there are any coincidences.”

“You mean you think I was supposed to ride up and drag you out from under that horse of yours?”

She laughed. “I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe you just needed a meal so you could get on to the next thing. Maybe that’s all this is.”

“Pretty deep for a horse rancher,” he said with a smile.

She returned it. “That’s what I get for spending too much time with the animal kingdom. I get philosophical.”

“And lonely?”

She smoothed her hand over her palm. “Sometimes. Mostly I’m too tired to be lonely.”

“That’s my cue,” he said. “I’d better turn in, too.”

For reasons she couldn’t explain, she wasn’t ready to let Cain go yet, but could think of nothing to stop him. “There’s fresh bedding in the trunk beside the cot. Blankets and… It get’s a little cold still at night, even for June.”

He reached a hand out to her and she took it. His fingers curled around her palm with gentle firmness. “Make sure you take care of that hand. I’ll be out of your hair first light. Thanks for everything.” He let her go and smiled. “Goodbye, Mrs. Cortland.”

She watched him head toward the barn. Before he could disappear into the shadows, she said, “It’s Maggie.”

He turned back to her.

“My name,” she explained. “And you don’t have to rush out first thing. I mean, I could probably find one or two other chores around the place if…you aren’t in too much of a hurry to get back on the road.”

He cast a restless look around her dark yard. “Are you askin’ me to stay?”

She pressed her hands together. “Asking? No. That wouldn’t be fair of me. I can’t really pay you. Not what you’re worth. But I still have to cook tomorrow and well…you’ll still be hungry. Right?”

He thought about it for a minute, rubbing a hand absently against his belly. “I’ll move that stack of wood closer to the house in the morning,” he said at last. “Maybe…sand down that railing of yours. Then, we’ll talk.”

Relief washed over her as he turned and melted into the darkness. She shook her head and wrapped her arms around herself against the chill. “Crazy,” she told herself. “You are definitely, unquestionably, nuts, Maggie.” But something told her that Cain MacCallister might just be her one last chance.



Cain lay with his hands propped under his head on the cot in the tack room, staring up at the blackness above him. The cot was comfortable, if a bit too short for his six-three frame, and the room smelled comfortingly of leather, horses and hay. It wasn’t the sound of the animals moving restlessly in their nearby stalls that kept him from finding sleep. Or the songs of coyotes far off yipping to each other.

It was Maggie. She was interfering with his dream.

He closed his eyes and sighed, trying to shove her out of his mind. He’d spent the last hour trying to call up Annie’s image in his memory. He almost had it once: the blond hair that framed that oval-shaped face of hers; her eyes, not quite blue, but not really green either, but always a pool he’d wanted to dive into. He was having trouble with her nose and her mouth. It was the mouth that bothered him most, because he could always remember her mouth. More specifically, her smile.

He kept confusing it with Maggie’s, the way her mouth turned up at the corners and that little dimple dented one cheek near her mouth.

Focus, man. Don’t get distracted.

But the little bruise above Maggie’s eye popped into his mind again…the soft feel of her hand in his…even the smell of her hair.

Damn. He squeezed his eyes shut. What the hell was wrong with him?

Annie’s voice. Remember it. Yeah. There it was. He could hear it now: “Be right back. Save me some popcorn. Be right back, save me some…be right…save me—”

Shoving off the blankets, he sat up, finding the cold floor with his bare feet. He felt dizzy and his chest, dammit, his chest was doing its usual timpani roll.

Seven little words that had changed his life.

Snapping on the lamp parked near the cot on the little wood table, Cain dragged in a few deep breaths. He re-oriented himself as he reached for his backpack. He shoved things aside, then threw them on the floor, one by one, until his hand closed around the thing it sought. Cool, smooth glass. It took shape in his hand.

The whiskey inside the bottle sloshed against the sides with a magical sound, calling to him. He cradled it in his hands, tempted by all reason to break the thin paper seal that stood between him and true destruction.

He craved it right now, something that he hadn’t done in a long time. Even when he’d gotten out, he’d managed to steer clear of bars where he knew he might be tempted. But he’d bought this bottle to remind himself what was back there in that dark place he’d visited in the months after Annie’s death. The ones that had nearly killed him.

He’d spent the last three years building his strength, finding the quiet place inside him that could silence the noise outside. The guilt and the pain. He could call it up when he needed it. Except tonight.

Tonight, he found himself tempted again, not just by the siren of oblivion, but by a woman he hardly knew who had already made him forget the curve of Annie’s lips.

Cain turned the bottle over in his hands, smoothing the cool glass with his fingers. It would be easy, he thought. One twist, one sip or two and the noise would stop.

But he wouldn’t stop at two or three, or even four. Not until he reached the bottom of the bottle and the darkness it promised. And slow suicide, as appealing as it had once been, wasn’t his style anymore. If it was going to end, it wouldn’t be slow and it wouldn’t come in a liquid form.

So with its paper honor code still intact, he slid the bottle back inside the leather knapsack and reached instead for his wallet, resting on the table beneath the lamp.

He pulled out the dog-eared photo, soft from years of handling. Annie smiled up at him from the picture and Cain stared at her hollowly. He rubbed his thumb over the image. How many times had he wished he’d gone that night instead of her? Maggie had said she didn’t believe in luck, good or bad. He figured a man was only born with so much of it and he’d used all his up when he’d met Annie and stolen those few short years with her. Their luck had run out simultaneously that night even though they’d been miles apart. And a man like him didn’t get second chances.

Minutes later, he didn’t know how many, Cain reached for the light switch and flicked it off. For a long time, he just sat there in the dark, counting the seconds ’til morning. If he could just make it to dawn, he’d be all right.

He wouldn’t think about luck, or about the woman sleeping a few hundred yards away, or anyone who reminded him what it was to be alive. Because he owed Annie that much.



Dawn had barely lightened the sky when the phone beside Maggie’s bed rang. Groggily, Maggie looked at the clock. 5:45 a.m. She frowned. Who would be calling her at this hour? And why, after a sleepless night, did they have to pick this particular morning to wake her up?

She dragged the receiver to her ear across the sleep-rumpled bedclothes. “Hello?”

There was only silence on the other end of the line.

“Hello?” she repeated, sitting up on one elbow. “Is anyone there?”

Nothing. Angry, she began to shove the receiver back in its cradle when she heard a voice, the words too indistinct to make out.

Pulling it back to her ear, Maggie listened. “Hello? Is someone there?” Nothing. “Okay, I’m hanging up now.”

“Don’t,” said a man’s voice.

A shiver went through her and her hand tightened on the receiver. “Who is this?”

“A friend.” The voice was cigarette hoarse and unfamiliar.

“I know my friends’ voices. And I don’t know yours.”

“Your husband…” the man continued, undeterred. “Ben?”

Her heart started to pound. “What about him?”

There was a long pause. “He didn’t fall on his own. He had help.”

“Wh—what are you talking about?”

“If you want to know more, find Remus Trimark.”

“Who?” Maggie scrambled into the bedside drawer for a pen and a scrap of paper. “Who’s Remus Trimark?”

There was another long pause before the caller said, “It’s not over,” and clicked off.

“Hello?” The dial tone buzzed in her ear. Maggie stared at it, feeling dizzy and off balance. Not over? What’s not over? She hung up the receiver and scribbled the name he’d mentioned down on the back of an old Hallmark anniversary card from Ben.

She remembered to breathe.

Remus Trimark? What kind of a name was that, and what did he have to do with Ben’s death? And why had the man on the phone waited six months to tell her about it?

She eased back down on the pillow, clutching the card between her shaking fingers. Her mind raced over those last days with Ben, trying to remember something, anything he’d said about a Remus Trimark—what an odd name—or anyone he’d mentioned for that matter. She came up blank. Completely blank.

It wasn’t as though she hadn’t already racked her brain for months on end, trying to piece together the how’s and why’s of his death. Trying to deconstruct those last weeks. The only conclusion she’d come to was that she and Ben had been so far apart by then it was as if they were strangers.

She turned the card over in her hands, running her fingers over the picture on the front of a yellow rose in a slender glass vase. He’d given her this card on their first anniversary. Inside, the sentimental Hallmark greeting had nothing to do with why she’d kept this particular card. It was the handwritten inscription there that had made her tuck the card away here years ago.

Happy Anniversary, sweetheart. When we’re old and gray, sitting around the fire on some cold winter night, remind me to thank you for taking a chance on me.

All my love,

Ben.

It seemed so far away now, those days when he’d loved her so completely. That fire had been banked long before he’d died. He’d gambled that away along with nearly everything else.

He had help.

The stranger’s words echoed in her ears. Help? What did he mean by that? And how was she going to find some man named Remus Trimark? In the phone book?

The sound of thunking came from outside Maggie’s window. Silently, she slid out of bed and padded barefoot to the window. The filmy drapes billowed as the cool night air slid through the one inch crack between window and sill. She wrapped her arms around her waist and searched the dusky yard for the source of the sound.

She spotted him half-hidden beneath the ash tree in her yard, shirtsleeves rolled halfway up his elbows, hacking away at what was left of that old tree limb.

Cain.

What was he doing up so early? Maybe he figured to finish the job and leave before she could get him to change his mind.

Maybe he hadn’t slept any better than she had.

She’d spent most of the night thinking about him, her situation, and the impossible scenarios she’d constructed around how she could save her home—everything from auctioning off the nonessential contents of her house to taking up striptease dancing at the local hangout. But none was as far-fetched as the one that had hit her sometime before she’d drifted into an uneasy sleep. It was too insane to even consider. Really. And Cain would probably call the men in the little white suits to come and take her away for even suggesting it.

Maggie chewed on her thumbnail, watching him bend over to scoop up an armload of wood. The muscles in his thighs bunched like liquid iron. He was strong. And if she didn’t miss her guess, a little reckless and maybe even a little desperate. Exactly the sort of man she needed.

It’s not over, the voice on the phone echoed in her mind.

Neither was she, she decided. Not while she still had a shred of hope.



With a grateful smile, Cain took the glass of lemonade from her hand and guzzled the cold liquid down. The afternoon heat had backed up in the barn where he was shoveling out stalls and he’d taken off his shirt again. He didn’t miss the way her gaze traveled across his bare chest, or the way that little bead of sweat had gathered above her lip.

“Where’s yours?” he asked.

She jerked her gaze upward with a flustered little flush of color. “What?”

“Your lemonade,” he said.

“Oh. Um.” She took the empty glass from him. “I…I’m not thirsty.”

He nodded, not believing her for a second. She’d been working her butt off in the pole corral with that demon seed, Geronimo, for the last two hours, getting nowhere. But she looked like she had more important things on her mind.

She’d been quiet at lunch, but he’d figured those dark circles under her eyes might explain that. She looked like she hadn’t slept any better than he had. But work, for him, was like a tonic. It made him feel useful. She looked plain worn down.

Or maybe she’d decided he’d worn out his welcome.

He braced a hand on his pitchfork and stabbed at the dirty straw near his feet. “I got that gate latch working again. It just needed a little grease, a couple of screws.”

“Gate latch?” she asked, lost.

“By the paddock.” When she still looked blank, he pointed. “By the north pasture?”

“Oh! The gate latch! Of course…the gate…latch. Thank you. Thanks…” She squeezed her palms together, as if she were looking to enhance her bustline. Something, as far as he was concerned, she didn’t need to do.

“Somethin’ wrong?” he asked.

“Wrong? No.” She smiled broadly. “Nothing’s wrong.”

Her teeth tugged nervously at her lower lip for the second time since she’d come in here, and she turned away from him, pacing to the other side of the barn hallway.

He couldn’t help but notice the way her jeans hugged those long legs of hers, curving against her backside. Nor did he miss the way that little sleeveless cotton blouse of hers outlined the slenderness of her waist and pulled against the fullness of her small breasts. Thoughts he had no business having pulsed through him with little jabs of awareness in regions he’d been ignoring for far too long. But, hell, no matter what his convictions, he was still a man. And she was a—

“I’m just going to say it,” she blurted out, whirling back toward him. “There’s no point beating around the bush. I have a proposition.”

His eyebrows went up. He liked the sound of this already.

“Cain?” she said in a voice usually reserved for pleas to the executioner. “Will you marry me?”




Chapter 4


Following a moment of protracted silence, he laughed out loud. “Man, for a minute there, I thought you asked me to marry you.”

Her face had gone two shades of red. “I did.”

The smile slipped disbelievingly from his expression. Cain stared at her, dumbfounded. Standing up to his ankles in the horse dung and straw he’d swept out of the stables, he nearly sat down where he was.

“Not a real marriage, of course. Don’t look at me that way. I know how this sounds.”

Cain snorted, thinking it sounded like he’d been transported into some weird alternative universe while he wasn’t looking. “You do?”

“I-I said it all wrong. Actually,” she said, wrinkling her brow, “there is no right way to ask a complete stranger to marry you.”

He let the pitchfork’s handle thunk against the silvery old wood of the stall door. “Stranger being the operative word.”

“I know.” Maggie turned and paced to the other side of the barn’s main hallway. “I know. Don’t you think this sounds crazy to me, too?”

He shook his head, still not comprehending. “Then why—?”

“Because I need a husband, Cain. Technically. I need a husband or I’m going to lose this place.”

The gears began to lock in place in his brain. “Look,” he began, “I’m sorry to hear that. But I don’t see what that has to do with me.”

“Believe me,” she said, pacing from one side of the hallway to the other, “no one is more surprised by what I’m suggesting than I am.”

“Really.” Cain tore off one work glove and slapped it against his knee. Fragrant bits of straw dust swirled in the air between them. “I don’t think I want to know…but what exactly are you suggesting?”

She stopped pacing. “An arrangement.”

“Arrangement.” Even his voice sounded odd. And was it suddenly hotter in here?

“Yes. It would be strictly a business arrangement. With a contract. Guidelines. That sort of thing.”

“Guidelines.”

“You’re horrified.”

Cain rubbed his temple. “Horrified isn’t exactly—”

“Because I’d be horrified if I were you. I mean, after all, all you did was ride onto my place and innocently ask for a job and here I am—”

“Speechless is more the word I’d go for.”

“Right. I understand. But this could benefit us both.”

This he had to hear. “How?”

“Well, first of all, there’s the obvious. I need a husband to qualify for the loan I need to save this place. You seem to need a place to be. I just thought, since you weren’t heading anywhere in particular—”

“Did I say that?”

Her lips parted in surprise and he cursed himself for snapping at her.

“I…I—” she stammered, “maybe not.”

“I never said that.”

She nodded. “All right. At any rate, I wouldn’t ask you to do me this favor without compensation. I’m prepared to offer you—“she swallowed hard “—five hundred acres of my land in exchange for posing as my husband.”

Five hundred—! Cain nearly choked.

“To be delivered after our arrangement is terminated.”

Cain was still stuck on the five hundred acres of prime cattle country she’d offered. Something old and rusty lurched back to life inside him. A dream he’d thought long dead. Land.

Land that he could call his own. Maybe the old dream wasn’t as dead as he’d thought it was.

“Cain? Did you hear me?”

He dragged himself back. “What?”

“I said, you’d have to promise to stay—play my husband that whole time. If you broke your end of the bargain, or if we fail to make this place work…I’ll lose the ranch. And your part with it.”

She was right. It was a gamble. If she lost, he’d be out six months and the prospect of a place to start over. If she won, though…what? He’d settle down? Build a house and a picket fence and pretend he could ever have go back to the life he’d walked away from?

He reached for the pitchfork again, and just for the hell of it, asked, “How far do you mean to take this little fantasy of yours?”

“What do you mean?”

He turned back to her. “You and me. How far do you intend to take this marriage charade?”

“I told you. It’s a business arrangement. You will, of course, sleep in the tack room.”

“The tack room. You want me to play your husband from the tack room.”

She cleared her throat. “Yes. No one needs to know.”

Images of another wedding and another time clicked through his brain. Pictures that turned like a Rolodex in his mind whenever the hell they wanted to. He turned away from Maggie. Hell, what was he thinking? That he could ever start over? Be that man he’d been once? That anyone would ever let him forget where he’d been?

“No,” he said, shoving the pitchfork into the last of the soiled bedding in the stall.

Maggie let her arms drop to her sides. “No…as in you won’t sleep in the barn? Or—”

“No…as in I won’t marry you.” He dumped the load of dirty straw at Maggie’s feet and turned back to toss the fresh flake of straw around the clean floor.

Behind him, Maggie was silent for the space of ten heartbeats. But that didn’t last.

“You could…think about it.” Her voice was small and sounded thin. “We could…discuss—”

“I don’t need to think about it. I’m not in the market. I told you. I’m just passin’ through.”

“I could even pay you a small salary when I get the loan. Enough to get you started—”

“Not interested.”

Maggie studied one of her palms. “Right. Okay.”

Cain leaned against the pitchfork, staring at the dirt floor. He should’ve left this morning. Early. He didn’t want to hear the need in her voice or ponder what it meant to leave her alone here on this place when she was begging him to stay. The flash of anger her offer had set off in him subsided. He wasn’t sure where it had even come from. All he knew was that it was time to get out of here.

He combed a hand through his hair. “It’s probably best if I go now. I’ve stayed too long already.”

Straightening her shoulders, she started backing out of the barn. “Right. You have to do what you have to do. I’d, uh, better get back to the horses. Please, say goodbye before you go.” She turned on her heel and walked out of the barn like a queen. Untouchable. Surrounded by glass.

But he suspected that underneath all that glass was a real woman whose passions ran deep. A woman who, in some other time or place, he would have wanted to get to know.

Did that make him a heel for turning her down? For not wanting to get involved in her troubles? Hell, he’d had enough troubles of his own for more years than he cared to remember. He didn’t need anyone else’s.

He ground the tines of the pitchfork into the dirt, and headed into the tack room to gather up the few things he’d unpacked there and shove them back in his knapsack.

He’d get on his bike and ride to the next place. And after that, he’d ride some more. Because he had places to go and things to forget.



Maggie managed to reach the pole corral at the far side of the yard before she allowed herself to crumble inside. Grabbing hold of the bark-covered lodgepole fence rail, she climbed up it and wrapped her arms around the top rail. Inside the corral, Geronimo was doing his imitation of a caged cat in the afternoon sun. She knew just how he felt.

Dammit all!

She’d had her share of humiliating moments in this lifetime, but this one just might be the topper.

What had she been thinking? That he’d say yes? That he’d bite on the bribe she’d dangled in front of him in exchange for yoking him with a marriage he didn’t want? God. What idiot would want to burden himself with a woman he didn’t even know? One that was sinking up to her neck in troubles? Certainly not Cain MacCallister. Nor could she blame him.

Fine, she thought. Let him go. Let him ride off into the sunset. She’d find a way. With him or without him! She wouldn’t fail. She simply couldn’t. This was the first real home she’d ever had. The ranch meant everything to her and they’d have to physically drag her off, kicking and screaming, before she’d allow them to take it from her.

Geronimo cruised by her, his tail set high, his ears pitched forward at full attention. A shrill sound came from his throat, like the sound wild stallions make when they’re gathering their remuda of mares together. He was beautiful, with the conformation of the champions that ran in his bloodline. He wasn’t meant to be put behind fences or separated from his kind. Headstrong and a more than a little wild, he had a good heart. A strong heart. She recognized the same qualities in Cain, too. But he was meant for the road, too. A man like him didn’t operate under contracts or guidelines. The man was like the horse. Probably untamable and most definitely dangerous to her.

The sight of a truck and a horse trailer coming down her road made Maggie hop down from the fence rail and brush away the moisture that had dampened her cheeks. She cursed under her breath.

Donnelly.

Her heart began to race and she backed toward the house, trying not to panic. She’d left Jigger sleeping inside, dreaming about chasing rabbits. She hadn’t had the heart to wake him. But now he was barking worriedly inside the house.

The truck pulled into the yard, spitting gravel and crunching it beneath its tires. Laird was behind the wheel. The passenger seat was empty.

She actually pictured Ben’s rifle, tucked safely away in the closet of her bedroom. Too far to help her now. And it was probably just as well because in the mood she was in, she might be tempted to use it on him for simply getting out of his truck.

Laird pulled to a stop not five feet from her. “Told you I’d come by with your mares.”

“Don’t bother to get out, Laird,” she told him. “I’ll unload them.”

He opened the door anyway and unfolded himself from the truck. “That wouldn’t be very gentlemanly of me, would it? After all, I brought the ladies all the way back here…”

“I mean it. Don’t come near me.”

“I came to pay a simple, friendly visit, Maggie.”

“Nothing you do is either simple or friendly.” She moved toward the back of the loaded horse van. She lifted the slide bolt and whacked it open with the heel of her hand. But as she swung the door open, Laird appeared beside her.

“Anybody ever tell you you’ve got a touch of paranoia, Maggie Mae?”

She shot an ugly look at him before climbing up into the trailer. “Don’t call me that.”

He followed her, crowding her in the dark, narrow space as she moved to unhook the first mare’s halter from the stabilizing tether. She fumbled with the metal latch several times before she got it.

Laird moved to unhook a second mare, all the while watching her. “What?” he drawled. “I get no thank-you for goin’ to all this trouble? It’s not like I didn’t have better things to do with my afternoon.”

“You could have sent one of your men. God knows, you have enough to spare.”

“True. But to tell you the truth, I was curious to see how you were holdin’ up on your own out here. Without Ben.”

Maggie ignored him and backed the mare down the ramp, clucking at her as she went. “Atta girl. There you go,” she crooned.

Laird followed with the other mare, but he wasn’t paying much attention to the horse. “He was a fool, your husband. Abandoning you the way he did.”

“Go home, Laird. I mean it,” she said, leading the mare to the paddock where she tied it up to the fence rail. Laird did the same with his horse but cornered her there against the fence before she could move.

Maggie swallowed hard. “Get out of my way.”

“There’s nobody else here, Maggie. Just us.”

He was close enough that she could smell the stink of cattle on him, and whiskey if she wasn’t mistaken. He’d been drinking. And cigars. He reeked of cigar smoke.

Her throat felt like it was closing up with each thudding beat of her pulse. “Don’t.”




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