A soldier’s memories are more dangerous than anything he’s encountered in the line of duty

“Killed in action” a year ago, US Army captain Ian Rayford shocks everyone when he stumbles half-dead onto his family’s Texas ranch. Suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, Ian can barely remember his relatives. His former fiancée, a psychologist specializing in PTSD, arrives to help Ian recover. But not everyone wants her to unearth the dangerous secrets he’s carrying.

Now engaged to another man, Dr. Andrea Warrington fights her feelings for Ian even as she helps him remember how much they once loved each other. Yet the closer Ian gets to his past, the more someone else has to ensure the treacherous truth stays buried.

“You really think you’re up to riding fences with me all day?” Ian asked.

Andrea nodded. “I want to try.”

“Well, maybe I don’t want to play nursemaid to some greenhorn.” The moment the words were out of his mouth, he felt a stab of regret. He was being a jerk, he realized, punishing her for…

Had she broken up with him, or was he the one who’d left her? When he reached back for the memory, he found only a black fog of loss and pain—that, and the nameless anxiety that stalked him day and night.

There’s something important you’re forgetting. Something so big the weight of it will crush you flat when it finally comes.

“You don’t know what you want, Ian. That’s the problem. But I might be able to help you with that.”

“I want to be left to my work, alone.”

“I’m coming with you,” she insisted. Emotion rippled through her words, real emotion as the mask of compassionate professionalism slipped a little. “I’ve really missed the man I knew.”

“That man’s gone forever.”

Dear Reader,

I’ve always loved stories of second chances, of lovers or siblings or parents and lost children reunited long after hope was lost of a successful reunion. There is something about severed bonds that the mind keeps turning back to in quiet moments, probing the wound the way one might check an empty socket for a missing tooth.

Maybe because we’ve all pondered impossible reunions I was drawn to this story of a “lost soldier,” Ian Rayford, who, long after having been presumed dead, miraculously finds his way home, his journey made possible by the memory of the woman he loves. But so many other memories are missing, from those of what really happened during a torturous period of confinement to an earlier breakup with his love and the estrangement with his proud but troubled ranching family.

Finding his way back home from hell required one miracle. But finding his way back to his grieving family and especially to Andrea, who believes she has moved on with her life since Ian’s death was initially reported, may take the greatest miracle of all…especially when it’s clear that someone—perhaps the government itself—is willing to go to almost any lengths to stop Ian from remembering the secrets still locked up inside him.

I hope you’ll enjoy this story of a true Lone Star survivor and take a moment to appreciate the sacrifices of so many still struggling to find their own way home.

Colleen Thompson

Lone Star Survivor

Colleen Thompson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Colleen Thompson

After beginning her career writing historical romance novels, in 2004 Colleen turned to writing the contemporary romantic suspense she loves. Since then, her work has been honored with a Texas Gold Award, along with nominations for a RITA® Award, a Daphne du Maurier Award and multiple reviewers’ choice honors. She has also received starred reviews from RT Book Reviews and Publishers Weekly. A former teacher living with her family in the Houston area, Colleen has a passion for reading, hiking and dog rescue. Visit her online at colleen-thompson.com.

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To the father who first taught me that a true hero is not the man who talks about it but the man who quietly, steadfastly loves and supports throughout the years.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

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 17

Chapter 18

Extract

Copyright

Chapter 1

Waves of searing heat shimmered above the empty road, the endless road he had been walking for hours or days or all his life. How long didn’t matter, only that blurred spot in the distance, beyond the sea of dry, gold stalks, where the blazing sun reflected off what had to be a lake. The sight of it made his parched mouth ache with the memory of water, cool and fresh and unimaginably luxurious as his body slipped through it, graceful as a seal’s.

While his blistered feet stumbled forward, the walker’s mind returned to a jewel-bright pool of turquoise. As he sat along its edge, lush green fronds waved in the sultry breeze and giant coral blossoms spilled their honeyed fragrance. A woman in big sunglasses swayed toward him, a floral sarong molding to the sweet curve of her hips and a deep blue bikini top holding her firm, round breasts in place. But it was her smile that sent lust spearing straight to his groin, that dazzling smile so white against her summer tan.

“Ready for another?” she invited, offering him some creamy, icy beverage in a clear plastic cup. A chunk of juicy pineapple balanced on its rim, so vivid in his memory that he could almost taste it. He could almost taste her on his lips, too, just as he could feel the dark river of her long hair running through his fingers, gleaming strands of chocolate he’d watched her brush so many times.

He smiled, reaching for her. And felt the pain of his chapped lips splitting, tasted the thick, salt tang of blood instead of the hallucination’s sweetness. The mirage teased in the distance, a lie woven from refracted heat waves. You’ll never make it back to her, not even if you walk to the earth’s ends.

But he didn’t stop. He couldn’t, not while every step carried him closer to the oasis he dreamed of. Toward it and toward a woman, her name as lost to him as his own.

He knew one thing, though. He’d loved her. Loved her even if... The rest shimmered in the heat and vanished, an absence permeated with the bitterness of loss. There was fear as well, the anxiety that he’d done something unspeakable to poison what they’d had. That he’d been someone who deserved the scorched red skin, the knotted beard and the half-healed scars he’d glimpsed in the window of the pickup that had pulled over to offer him a ride an hour earlier. Or maybe it had been yesterday. Impossible to know, since time had grown as slippery as a live fish squirming in his grasp.

A single, splintered second pierced through his confusion: the moment when he’d met the driver’s eyes. Dark eyes, shaded by a broad-brimmed hat. A cowboy hat, like the ones they wore back in Texas. Like the ones he’d used to...

Before he’d been able to wrap his parched brain around the thought, those dark eyes had flared wide. The driver had hit the gas too hard, the back end of his pickup sliding around to spray the walker with pebbles. An instant later, the truck sped away in a plume of dust that he could still see hovering above the oasis.

The walker stopped and rubbed his eyes in an attempt to clear them. Because that growing smudge on the horizon—that was from now, not before. For a moment, he wondered if it could be the same truck whose driver he’d frightened away before with his appearance. Some buried instinct warned him the man might be returning to mow him down or shoot him, leaving his body to the blistering sun and the scavengers that he’d sensed watching, following his movements with hopeful, hungry eyes.

At the thought of dying here, of finally stopping, he felt an odd blend of disappointment and relief. Resignation, too, since there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it, with nothing but flat, oddly familiar rangeland on either side and no strength left to flee. So instead, the walker kept putting one foot before the other, figuring that if he died, it might as well be one step closer to the mirage on the horizon...and his memory of the poolside beauty who’d meant everything to him before he’d somehow, he felt certain, driven her away.

It was a blue-eyed man who pulled up beside him minutes later in a newer-model truck, a dark-haired man who reminded him of someone. Maybe of himself, or at least the version of himself who’d swum through cool blue waters.

Taking off his straw cowboy hat, the driver jumped down from the cab. Tall and muscular, he wore a rolled-sleeved cotton shirt, worn jeans and a single bead of perspiration, running from his temple to his jawline. Color draining from his tan face, he stared directly at the walker, searched his eyes with an intensity that made his heart hammer.

The walker took a step backward, glancing over his shoulder, his muscles coiling as he looked for an escape route.

“I told that fool pup of a cowhand to quit talking crazy,” said the driver, unblinking as he stared, “telling me he’d seen a man who looked like—looked like my dead brother out here on our land. Then I cursed him for leaving some poor, lost stranger way out here on his own in this heat, without even offering a drink of water.”

“You—have w-water?” The idea of it, the possibility spun from his dreams, was so powerful that he stumbled closer, forgetting his fear as trembling overtook him.

“Yeah, sure. Here you go, man.” The driver reached back inside the truck and pulled out a plastic bottle beaded with condensation. He cracked open the sealed lid and handed it over.

The walker was so overwhelmed by the cold moisture in his hand that he barely noticed the uncertainty darting through the other man’s eyes or the moisture gleaming in them.

“Ian, is it really you?” he asked, letting the question hang as the walker chugged down half the bottle.

When he started choking, the driver warned him, “Slow down. Slow down and take it easy. There’s plenty more where that came from. Food and clean clothes back at the house, too.”

His coughing over, the walker glugged down the rest of the bottle. When he was finished, he peered suspiciously into the blue eyes. “Why?” he asked, searching the stranger for some agenda. “Why would you do all that for me?”

“Could be one of two good reasons. Either because I don’t cotton to the idea of a stranger dying on my land. Or because you’re a walking, talking miracle—my only brother, Captain Ian Rayford, come back from the dead.”

* * *

Andrea Warrington stared down at the file her boss, retired army colonel Julian Ross, had handed her, her throat tightening the moment she read the name Captain Ian Rayford.

What she had to tell the man sitting behind the battered desk, his shirtsleeves rolled up and his tie loosened against the late summer heat, would be awkward enough under any circumstances. But despite the fifteen-year difference in their ages, Andrea had recently accepted the handsome forty-six-year-old’s proposal, so bat-sized butterflies attempted to flap their way free of her stomach.

Telling herself that putting it off was no longer an option, she drew a deep breath and squared her shoulders, just as she would have advised the wounded vets she counseled here at the Marston unit of the Warriors-4-Life Rehabilitation Center. “I—I’m afraid I can’t take this assignment, Julian. There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you about myself and Captain Rayford.”

“Sit down, Andrea, please.” He gestured toward one of the mismatched folding chairs in front of his desk, the rich bass of his voice warmed by a gentlemanly Southern accent. Six months after the ribbon cutting that had opened this donation-supported unit, they were still getting by with whatever castoffs they could scrounge, mainly because Julian, who had been named director shortly before the center’s opening, insisted on using every penny of the funds raised to provide services for their growing roster of military veterans. Though many bore physical reminders of the ordeals they had endured, the majority had come to Warriors-4-Life to deal with the fallout of combat-related brain injuries or post-traumatic stress disorder. The workload kept Andrea, the center’s one practicing psychologist, along with two counselors and a psychiatric nurse-practitioner who worked under her direction, hopping, but she didn’t mind her packed days—not when she knew for a certainty that she was saving lives.

Besides, the crazy hours and emotional challenges had drawn her closer to the handsome older man who had started out as her boss before evolving into much more. She admired him; she respected him, but it was love that was making the words knot in her throat.

She claimed a seat where a rattletrap oscillating fan on the desk could swivel back and forth between them. “I think I mentioned to you I was engaged before,” she admitted, the breeze blowing a strand of long, dark brown hair—an escapee from her clip—into her face. “It was one of those whirlwind affairs, everything moving at light speed.”

She flushed, remembering the heat of it, the passion, how exciting it had felt to be caught up in something so out of her control. But thrilling as they might seem, whirlwinds had the potential to cause a lot of damage. The kind of heartbreak she’d sworn she would never risk again.

“It didn’t take long for me to realize he was lying about his deployments. There were other disappearances as well, with no warning and no explanation. I couldn’t deal with the uncertainty, so I broke it off.”

A smile touched Julian’s brown eyes like a warm breeze from his Savannah boyhood. He’d promised he would take her one day, to see the historic Victorian home where he’d grown up before it had passed out of the family. “Everyone has a past, Andrea. I didn’t imagine you’d lived underneath a bell jar for thirty-one years before you’d met me.”

“Yes, but bizarre as it might seem, it was this man, Ian. Captain Rayford. He was still just a lieutenant then, and I was working on my doctorate. I—I should’ve told you, I know, after the news broke that he was found alive.”

For weeks following his return, the “Texas miracle” was all anyone could talk about on the morning shows and social media. While Ian himself refused all interviews, the army had been left scrambling to explain how one set of charred remains could have been mistaken for another after some overworked soldier in the military’s mortuary center had failed to follow proper DNA procedures to identify the body.

“So why didn’t you say something?” he asked. “Surely, you can’t imagine I’d hold you accountable for any of the suspicions brought up about his escape from the terrorists holding him?”

“No, of course not. It’s just...” Though she couldn’t put an answer into words, she felt it in the warm flush that rose to her face, the aching heaviness in her chest.

“You still have feelings for him,” Julian suggested, though his sharp, brown gaze seemed more curious than judgmental. “Is that what you’re saying?”

“No, it’s not that.” She raised her hands, not wanting to hurt this good man’s feelings. “It’s only—when he was reported killed in action, it brought back a lot of memories. The good, along with the bad.”

Her gaze dropped, avoiding his, but because she’d learned the hard way that lies of omission could be the worst of all, she forced herself to look up. “I cried a lot at night. For months, I cried for him.” Even after she’d met Julian, she’d come to work some mornings with her eyes red and swollen. His unfailing kindness, his steadiness had planted the first seeds of healing in her.

“I’m sorry for your grief,” he told her. “But I assure you that I understand it. Possibly better than you can imagine. You see, the army personnel who debriefed the captain passed on his full dossier with the referral. I saw your name listed on his contact list, to be notified in case he was killed in action.”

The burning in her face intensified. “He must have added me two years ago, when we were still together.” She still remembered the horrendous shock that had followed the knock at the front door of her apartment back in San Diego.

“That’s not my point, Andrea. My point is, I feel certain—and the army psychologist I consulted is in full agreement on this—that your past connection to Ian Rayford could be the key to recovering his missing memories.”

She shook her head. “You mean he’s still suffering amnesia? Was he found to have a brain injury?”

“If you’ll take a look at the file—” the fan swung around to ruffle Julian’s short, bronze-colored hair, a crop of silver threaded through it “—you’ll see that’s not the case, though he does have some residual scarring. From the torture, they believe, in attempts to extract intelligence on US targets.”

“But he was cleared of those suspicions,” she was quick to say. “And anyway, after a soldier’s captured, codes are changed, right? Sensitive locations scrambled?” She was aware American civilians working in a war zone office had died or disappeared soon after Ian’s capture, but few details had been reported, and surely, the bombing of their building could not be laid at the feet of a man who had suffered heaven only knew what torments.

Julian nodded, but his brown eyes looked troubled. “Officially, he was absolved of any responsibility in the bombing and given a medical discharge. Considering the hero’s welcome drummed up by that Rayford woman’s story—”

“Jessie Layton is his brother Zach’s wife, isn’t she? The journalist?” Andrea narrowed her eyes, trying to get it straight in her mind, since she’d never met Ian’s family. They’d been estranged for years, he’d told her, though he’d avoided going into details—something that should have raised another red flag. But then, Andrea had her family secrets, too, issues so painful they’d sent her into counseling when she was in her teens. The relief she’d gotten, the insight into the dynamics that had destroyed her family, had led her to pursue the study of psychology.

Julian nodded in answer to her question. “Cutting Captain Rayford loose, giving him the benefit of the doubt, was the only thing the military could do, especially since he was diagnosed as having dissociative amnesia as a result of torture.”

Andrea lifted a brow. “Not to mention all the suffering the screwup over the body caused both his family and the other soldier’s. What a PR nightmare that boondoggle’s been.”

“So I’m told,” said Julian, “which brings us back to you.”

Apprehension crawled over her skin like live ants. “Let Michael take him. Or Connor. He’s a real pro, and the guys love that he’s ex-military himself.”

“Neither of the counselors will do, or Cassidy, either, for this case,” Julian said, though as a psychiatric nurse-practitioner, Cassidy had both the experience and the ability to dispense any necessary medications. “You see, Captain Rayford has refused to come here. Refused to leave the family’s ranch at all. Says he’s had enough of shrinks poking through his head—”

“So you want to send me, a psychologist?”

“The man doesn’t need or want a psychologist right now, but a friend, he might accept. And a trained friend, someone with your sensitivity, might find a way to break through. A way to help a man whose plight has drawn so much attention—and a way to help us, too, at Warriors-4-Life.”

She folded her arms beneath her chest. “Really, Julian? That’s what this is all about? The money?”

He sighed. “Come on, Andrea. You know I’m 100 percent focused on these soldiers. But as director, fund-raising is a big part of my job description, and if we don’t get donations up before next quarter, we’re going to have way bigger problems than a broken AC system.”

Worry fluttered in her stomach. “I know we’re working on a shoestring out here, but what do you mean, way bigger problems? We’re not—tell me we’re not in danger of shutting down already. We’ve barely gotten up and running, and more and more returning soldiers are applying for our help every day. They need us, desperately. Where else can they go, if they don’t have places like this when their lives come crashing down around them? Who else will prepare them to reintegrate into their families and meaningful employment?”

He held up a hand to stop her. “You’re preaching to the choir. There’s no need to sell me on what we do. I never would’ve come aboard if I weren’t 100 percent behind it.”

“I know that. I do.” Like everyone else who worked at Warriors-4-Life, Julian had accepted little more than the use of one of the center’s Spartan housing units and a nominal salary in exchange for his sixty-to eighty-hour workweeks. He even donated a portion of his military retirement pay to the cause, saying he couldn’t encourage others to do something he wasn’t doing on his own. Inspired by his generosity, Andrea gave whenever she could, as well, despite the mountain of student loans she would probably still be paying into her dotage.

“Then don’t look so shocked that I’m thinking practically. I have to. Otherwise, we’ll have no choice but to scale back the number of young men and women we can assist—and reduce our staff levels, as well.”

She gritted her teeth, thinking of how overworked all of them were already, how many sacrifices they had made. And the look in his eyes told her that if the cutbacks didn’t solve the issue, the doors they’d fought so hard to open might be forever shuttered. What would happen to their clients, then, people like twenty-year-old Ty Dawson, who’d gone missing for hours just yesterday after a lawn mower had kicked up a stone and cracked a window. He was found shaking and hiding in the darkened corner of a storage closet.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll rearrange tomorrow morning’s schedule and try to get back by—”

“Your schedule’s cleared, for the time being. Michael, Cassidy, Connor and I will all pitch in while you’re away.”

“Away? What do you mean? It’s, what, an hour or so from here to Rusted Spur? If I leave early, I’m sure I can be back by lunchtime to help cover the afternoon group sessions.”

Julian shook his head. “For the next two weeks, you’ll be staying at the ranch.”

“Staying at the ranch? With my ex-fiancé? Are you serious? You won’t— This won’t worry you at all?”

She studied his face and caught the flicker of discomfort. But he quickly squared his shoulders and reclaimed his usual composure. The composure that had made her feel so safe.

“I’ll admit I was hesitant at first. You know about my ex-wife, about what happened between us?”

Andrea nodded, remembering what he’d told her about a marriage in his twenties—and a wife who’d eased her loneliness with multiple affairs during his deployments. He’d spoken of it matter-of-factly, but she had seen the hurt, the vulnerability lurking behind his solemn brown eyes. And she’d sworn to herself she would be the wife that he deserved.

He reached across the desk and found her hand, then squeezed it. “I refuse to let it change me, let that pain turn me jealous and suspicious when you’ve done nothing to deserve it. When I could never imagine a consummate professional like yourself—a generous, decent woman—betraying what we have.”

“Of course, I wouldn’t.” She’d learned her lessons young; she would never be her father. “Especially not for a man who broke my heart. But I will do my best to help him, just the way I’d help any other client who was hurting.”

“Then it’s settled,” he answered with a nod. “I’ll need you to log in and update your contact records daily, but I’m told there’s wireless available.”

“When have I ever forgotten my logs?” It was a protocol she frequently reminded the counselors to follow, since the portion of their funding received from government grants depended on the number of recorded contact hours. The case notes themselves, however, remained password protected, covered by patient confidentiality.

“Also,” Julian said, “I thought you’d like to know that when Captain Rayford’s family extended the invitation for you to come, they mentioned they’d set up a suite of rooms for your use.”

“A suite of rooms, just for me?” It sounded like paradise, since her own quarters consisted of a single bedroom in the women’s dormitory, where female staff and clients alike shared a communal bath and kitchen.

“Play your cards right, and I’ll throw in some bubble bath.” From across the desk, he winked at her, a gesture so at odds with his usual demeanor that it made her laugh with delight.

“Ooh la la.” She waggled her brows at the man who’d asked her to keep their engagement under wraps for the time being, to avoid causing any suspicions of favoritism among the staff. And given that there was no way either of them could visit the other’s room without drawing speculation, the physical side of their relationship had been largely confined to their imaginations—a situation that was growing more frustrating by the day. “But it’d be ever better if you could join me in that bathtub.”

He smiled. “With or without strategically placed bubbles?”

“Up to you, Colonel,” she teased, standing when he left his chair and came around the desk.

He pulled her into a warm embrace. “I promise you, my darling, by the time you come back to me, I’ll have figured out a way to break the news to the others. And after that, no more sneaking around like a couple of teenagers.”

“In that case—” she smiled up into his brown eyes “—I promise you, I’ll do everything I can think of to get Captain Rayford’s memory back in record time.”

Chapter 2

Funny what it was his mind chose to remember, Ian thought as he curried the palomino, a sturdy gelding known as Sundance. Though Ian had been told that he hadn’t set foot on the ranch since the day of his high school graduation, he remembered the order of operations he’d been taught to the last detail: currycomb, then dandy brush, followed by the mane and tail brush and the hoof pick. He remembered to lay the saddle pad over the withers and slide it back so the golden hair would lie comfortably and to walk the horse a few steps before cinching up the saddle so it would be tight enough. He knew to mount from the left side, too, just as he could still not only ride but rope a calf or cut a heifer from the herd with ease.

Procedural, semantic and short-term memory intact, one of the army shrinks had written on his report, which meant that Ian also remembered the meaning of words and could acquire new information. But it had been the next part that disturbed him, the notation: Retrograde biographical memory continues impaired—psychogenic origin likely due to emotional trauma.

In other damned words, they figured him for some kind of nut job. Not a veteran who’d lost his memory due to the injuries he’d clearly suffered, judging from the scarring on his back, his arms and legs, but a head case too soft to handle the stress of the ambush that he’d been told had killed a fellow soldier, along with the captivity that followed. Insulted by their insinuations and sick of being poked and prodded, he had gone back to the ranch and vowed to stay there, with the people he was learning to accept as his family...slowly.

He led the horse out of the barn and into the bright September morning, happy that last night’s shower had knocked down the dust and cooled the temperature. Zach kept telling Ian he didn’t have to work like a hired hand to tackle any of the never-ending chores that kept the cattle ranch’s wheels turning, but he found it far easier than staying in the house to be watched, fussed over and treated like a ticking time bomb by his mother or stuffed full of pastries by their cook, Althea, who apparently took it as her God-given duty to help him put back on the forty pounds his ordeal had cost him.

His older brother was easier to deal with, maybe because he’d served as a marine corps fighter pilot before his return to run the ranch following the false reports of Ian’s death. Ian had found Zach steady, supportive and respectful of his privacy, but always there if he wanted to talk or ask questions. Along with Zach’s journalist wife, Jessie, he did his best to keep their little girl, Eden, out of Ian’s hair, though the rambunctious five-year-old was forever finding ways to corner him and wear him out with innocently awkward questions. Questions that he couldn’t answer, for the most part, no matter how damned cute she and the pair of young Australian shepherds who followed her everywhere were about their interrogation.

Mounting up, he looked beyond the ranch’s outbuildings and toward the open rangeland, where a herd of red-and-white cattle grazed off in the distance. Farther afield, he’d been told one could find the fresh drilling that marked the promising new natural gas find that had recently sent the family’s fortunes soaring. But Ian left the worries about the operation and the money to Zach while he focused on the hard manual labor that was not only helping him recover his physical strength but would leave him exhausted by the day’s end. Too exhausted, he hoped, for the disjointed nightmares that had been waking him several times a night. Like his past, their content was largely forgotten the moment he returned to himself. But that didn’t keep him from racking his brain for hours, no matter how frustrating the attempts.

He nudged the palomino into an easy lope, eager for the freedom, the peace that he found only with the prospect of a day alone in the saddle. But it had barely lasted for an hour before he spotted a lone rider making his way toward him: Zach, aboard his big bay, Ace, irritation casting more shade on his expression than the wide brim of his hat.

As his brother’s mount clattered to a stop, Ian sucked a breath through his clenched teeth and raised a palm to hold off the complaint he knew was coming. “Sorry, man. I’m sorry. I did it again, didn’t I?”

“Apologize to Mama, not me,” Zach told him. “Do you have any idea how panicky she gets when you take off without a word to anybody? Jessie thought she was going to have a stroke when she found your bed empty after you didn’t show for breakfast. Mama broke down, asking if you were really still dead, if she’d dreamed all that part about how you’d come back home.”

Ian screwed shut his eyes and blew out a long breath, hating himself for causing her more suffering. “But you knew where I was, right? You told her, didn’t you?”

“I told her you were sure to be around, yeah. But the fact is, Ian, I got lucky figuring out where you were because you didn’t tell me, either.”

“You could’ve called instead of riding all the way out...” But as he felt his pocket for the fancy new smartphone his brother had bought him, Ian’s mouth went dust dry. “Oh, shoot. The damned cell—”

“Works a lot better when you remember to take it with you, bonehead.”

Ian opened his eyes and faced his older brother’s disappointment. “I know I screwed up. But I swear, I’ll do better.”

“Yeah, you damned well will.” Zach’s glare faded, his blue eyes softening. “Listen, man. I know what it’s like, going from a place where you have only yourself to think of, yourself and your mission. But things are different now. You’re part of a family again, with people who care, who worry about you, who want to help you finally come home.”

“I am home,” Ian insisted, the edge in his voice making his mount shuffle and toss his mane. Clutching the reins tightly to keep Sundance in hand, he added, “Against all odds, I made it.”

The government’s investigators had tracked his northbound progress through Mexico and into Texas, where he’d hitchhiked, walked and at one point trailed “coyotes” smuggling their human cargo across the border during his months-long odyssey. There had been some speculation about how Ian might have gotten out of the Middle East and into Mexico, but he’d been unable to contribute anything beyond a fragmented memory of himself clinging to a coarse scrap of threadbare blanket in the dark hold of a cargo ship.

“You think you’ve made it, brother,” Zach said, “but I’m telling you, you’ve still got a ways to go. Which is why you’re coming back with me right now, to meet our visitor.”

Ian’s gut clenched. “I told you, no more shrinks. No counselors. None of Mama’s preachers, either, here to save my lost soul. This range, this work, is the only salvation I need.”

Zach gazed out over the undulating golden waves, over a land that looked flat to those who didn’t know the deep furrows that could lead a man to its hidden places. “I remember a time when you couldn’t wait to get the hell off this land.”

Old resentment squeezed in Ian’s chest. Because since returning, he had remembered enough fragments from their upbringing to resurrect some old grievances. “You should talk. You took off before I did. Left me here, with him.”

At the mention of their father, Zach’s shoulders fell and his gaze drifted. It served as a reminder that some of the memories Ian had recovered would be better off forgotten.

“I know, and I’m sorry, bro,” Zach said. “Sorry for leaving you and Mama both behind. I was just trying to survive those years without ending up in prison. Because I would’ve damned well killed the son of a bitch if I’d stayed one more day.”

Ian nodded, understanding the same desperation that had driven him away from their father’s brand of torture as soon as he’d been able. Like Zach, he’d left their mother here to face it, since she’d refused to admit to what her husband was, much less abandon the material comforts and social status she’d enjoyed as a Rayford. As sorry as he felt for the suffering she’d endured when he’d been believed dead, Ian still hadn’t entirely forgiven her for refusing to protect him and his brother back when it might have mattered.

But there was nothing to be gained by treading that old minefield, and he quickly changed the subject. “I’ll apologize for scaring Mama. I’ll remember my phone next time. But I won’t be coming back with you now, not unless you tell me who’s there waiting.”

“I’ll tell you this much. It’s a woman. A woman from your past.”

Ian frowned, wondering which past his brother meant: the one he couldn’t bear to think of, or the dark, erotic glimmers that invaded his dreams every night.

* * *

Andrea had known Ian grew up on a working cattle ranch in North Texas, but she’d had no idea that he’d come from money. Maybe she’d been projecting the hand-me-downs and frequent moves that had defined her own hardscrabble upbringing or maybe she’d judged Ian by his rare comments about living hand to mouth after going out on his own right out of high school, but the ranch itself, especially the opulent white mansion at its center, convinced her she’d had it wrong. As did the fact that a heavyset woman with her pinned-back gray hair and a starched uniform wheeled out a real, honest-to-goodness tea cart with a silver pot and baskets of delicate confections to the fussy formal living room where she waited while Ian’s mother, Nancy Rayford, did her best to pick Andrea’s brain.

“So, dear,” said the neatly dressed, silver-haired woman over the gold rim of her teacup, “you were saying, you met my son in California?”

Andrea didn’t answer, too distracted by the heat rising to her face as the maid offered her some cookies. “Th-thank you very much. These are lovely.” Andrea chose a chocolate-centered square to be polite, nearly choking on the thought of how her mother, who had waited on more than a few pampered rich ladies in her day, might have looked a lot like “Miss Althea” had she lived.

The maid nodded and excused herself, leaving Mrs. Rayford to repeat her question.

Andrea nodded. “Sorry. Yes, we met on a country road not far outside of San Diego. I was out riding when the chain came off my bike and sent me flying.” She shivered in the air-conditioning, remembering the moment she’d gone over the handlebars. “Fast as I was moving, it’s a wonder I didn’t split my skull along with my helmet.” As it was, she’d been a bloody mess, with the frame of a bike she’d scrimped and saved for for two years bent so badly it was never again race-worthy.

Mrs. Rayford frowned. “You don’t mean to tell me you were riding one of those noisy motorcycles, do you?”

Andrea nearly laughed aloud at the horror souring the woman’s prim face, as if a female on a motorcycle would have been the scandal of the century. “Not a motorcycle, no. A racing bike, for the triathlons I used to compete in before that crash. I tore up my knee pretty badly in the fall. If it hadn’t been for Ian pulling off the road to help me, I could’ve lain there for a long time before anyone else came along.”

She remembered the moment she’d first seen the tall, dark-haired man jumping out of his SUV and racing toward her, gorgeous as any guy she’d ever met in real life, but in a masculine, clean-cut way that left actors and male models in the dust. Hurting as she’d been, she’d still felt sucker punched by his blue eyes, the intensity and concern in them as real as anything she’d ever seen.

“He was always a bighearted boy,” his mother reminisced. “Always dragging home strays.”

Jolted by her words, Andrea wondered if she’d just joined their ranks in his mother’s eyes, if the woman somehow saw through the tan slacks and coral shell she wore with a light jacket, through the fake gold earrings and the thrift-store beige pumps and all the way back to the scabby-kneed, motherless girl she had once been. Telling herself that couldn’t be, that Nancy Rayford only knew her as Zach’s former fiancée, a psychologist who happened to work an hour away in Marston, Andrea said, “He didn’t exactly drag me home, but he did drive me to the ER.”

Behind her, the floor creaked, and she turned to face the man she’d met that long-ago day. Though his face was leaner and his tan deeper, she recognized those deep blue eyes and came to her feet at once. But his eyes were different, too, she realized, haunted by events he could not consciously remember.

“Ian,” she managed, pulse revving as she fought an instinct to run to the man she’d once loved and throw her arms around him. “I’m so glad to see you, so relieved that you’re...”

He stared into her face, his gaze as unreadable as it was disconcerting. Her stomach fluttered in response, and she felt an outbreak of tiny beads of perspiration.

“He won’t remember you, of course,” his mother announced. “He didn’t know any of us here at all, not for days and days—”

“Andrea?” he asked, taking two steps closer. Close enough that she saw his color deepen and recognized what looked like pure relief wash over him. “Andie, is it really you?”

Andie, he had called her, using the nickname no one else did...

Before she could react, his mother scolded, “You’ll need a shower before you come in on the good furniture. I can smell the horse on you from here.”

Paying her no mind, Ian took two more steps and claimed Andrea, pulling her into his arms and kissing her for all he was worth.

The connection arced through every nerve ending, raising each fine hair and jolting her with memories of how incredibly well their bodies worked together. The searing contact made her ache for more, forgetting all the ways they’d wounded one another.

Forgetting, at least for a few moments, the other woman who stood gaping at them and the man Andrea herself had so recently promised to marry, a man whose face she struggled to recall.

Finally, she pulled away, a red-hot tide of embarrassment scorching her face. Shaking her head, she stammered, “I—I’m sorry. S-sorry, Ian, but what you’re remembering—that was two years ago. It’s been a long time since we—”

“I remember the trip we took together to Key West in Florida,” he said, the words coming in a rush as she took two steps back. “There was a little bed-and-breakfast, and you wore—there was this blue bikini. I’ve been dreaming of that trip, of all that color, of you for so long now.”

The professional in her noticed the way his eyes had dilated and the light that had come into them, extinguishing the pain she’d first glimpsed. As much as she hated dimming that excitement, she told herself that letting him go on believing would be crueler.

“You’re right,” she said. “What you remember really happened. But afterward, so did a lot of other things. We’re not—we’re not together anymore, not in that way. But that doesn’t mean I don’t care about what’s happened to you. It doesn’t mean that I can’t be your friend.”

“We’re not...we’re not together anymore?”

Confusion shifted through his handsome features, followed by a sorrow so profound it reminded her of the day she’d told him they were finished. Of course, she realized, because for him, it was happening again right now, the boom lowered only seconds after he’d consciously accessed the memory of one of the happiest times of their eight-month relationship, a time before she’d grown aware that it was all built on a raft of lies.

“I’m sorry,” she said, meaning it—and acutely aware of the disapproval emanating from his mother. She couldn’t say whether it was because he’d made the sexual side of their relationship so obvious or because Andrea had so clearly broken her son’s heart, but she knew one thing for certain: the woman didn’t like her.

Andrea shook it off, reminding herself her visit was about Ian’s well-being, his healing, not her comfort level. “We’ve been apart for two years,” she said. “I have a new fiancé.”

“So we’re engaged—or we were?” He shook his head, offering the wry smile she’d always found so irresistibly disarming. “I must’ve been an idiot, letting a woman like you go.”

She smiled back at him, pretending not to hear the fresh grief behind his words. “Your brother thought that we might visit for a while and talk. He thought that seeing me might help you remember.”

Ian snorted. “Well, at least you’re a damn sight better looking than any of those shrinks they keep pushing at me.”

She sighed but realized there was no way around what was sure to be another troubling disclosure. “Do you remember why we went to Key West? What we were celebrating?”

He shook his head.

“You surprised me with the trip after I completed my doctorate.”

“So you’re a doctor? Like an MD?” He winked at his mother. “I always did go for the smart girls, at least, the pretty ones.”

“I’m a psychologist,” Andrea admitted.

He laughed, his smile turning bitter. “So that explains why you’re here. One more shrink to poke around my skull. Tell me, are you working for the army these days, or the Department of Defense?”

“Neither, Ian. I’m here because I care about you. And your brother, Zach, really did speak to my boss at the center for—”

He waved it off. “I don’t give a damn who sent you.”

His mother looked up sharply over the gilded rim of her teacup. “Language, young man.”

“I just want you out of here, right now,” he finished, anger and betrayal competing in his voice.

“Please, Ian,” Andrea said. “I’ve come a long way to see you.”

“Not half as far as I’ve come to be left the hell alone.”

With that, he showed her his back as he stalked toward the stairway. A few steps up, he paused and turned to look down at his mother, his voice gentling. “Sorry for the language, and I’m sorry I upset you earlier. I’ll remember next time to let you know when I have plans.”

“It’s all right, Ian. It’s just—” she answered nervously “—I do worry so about you, with everything that’s happened.”

“I’m headed upstairs for that shower now. But while I’m gone, would you please show Dr. Warrington the door.”

On his way upstairs, he nearly ran into a strawberry-blonde woman close to Andrea’s and Ian’s own age as she was heading down, a purse over her shoulder and a set of keys in hand.

“Excuse me, Jessie,” he said, his voice tight with impatience as he angled his way past her and the muscular black-and-tan Rottweiler at her side.

“Sure thing, Ian.” Jessie raised a speculative brow as he charged upstairs. At the bottom of the steps, she paused, glancing back up toward the landing at the sound of a door slamming. “Is he mad that I sent Zach to find him?”

“I’m afraid he’s upset with me,” Andrea admitted as she walked up to the woman and offered her hand. “Andrea Warrington.”

“The psychologist, right, and ex—the old friend.” Jessie shook her hand in greeting, looking up to meet Andrea’s gaze. “Hi. I’m Jessie Layton.”

“Jessie Rayford now,” her mother-in-law corrected, that same disapproval in her tone.

“I thought we’d had this discussion. Several times, as I remember.” An undercurrent of annoyance rippled beneath an attempt at pleasantry. “Since I write under my maiden name—”

“But you’re not writing now, Jessie. This is a social situation, and as Zach’s wife and Eden’s mother, I’d expect you’d want to—” Nancy Rayford cut herself off as the Rottweiler interposed herself between the women, as if to ward off her harsh words. Scowling, she added, “Really. That animal.”

“Gretel, platz,” Jessie said, and at the command—which Andrea thought might be in German—the dog dropped into the down position. “Sorry, but whenever she perceives a threat—”

“So what happens if you have an argument with my son?”

Jessie smiled at the Rottweiler. “Big traitor usually takes his side.”

Eager to defuse the tension, Andrea cleared her throat. “I read the article you wrote on Ian’s return. It was incredibly well done, very moving.”

Jessie ducked a nod, the relief in her green eyes making it clear she appreciated the diversion. “Thanks, Andrea. It was important. To get the word out quickly, I mean. Ian might not remember why, but he’s pretty paranoid these days. When he first came, he worried that someone might come take him away in the dark of night if the public didn’t hear he’d come back. He’s pretty short-tempered these days, too. But I guess you’ve already found that out for yourself.”

“Please, Jessie,” Nancy Rayford said. “He’s been through so much. And you’re making him sound like some sort of madman.”

“I promise you, I’ll never think of him that way,” Andrea assured her. “I work with returning vets. A lot of them have anger issues, and it must be even more confusing when he doesn’t consciously recall the reason why.”

“It was those horrible terrorists,” Mrs. Rayford whispered, tears shining in her eyes. “Heaven only knows what they did to my poor boy for almost a year. When I think of how he’s suffered...”

“It must be hard for you, too.” Andrea looked from one woman to the other in an effort to remind them of their common ground. “Not knowing what might set him off, not knowing what will help him.”

Jessie gave her a look that seemed to weigh and judge her. “You’ll help him. I see that.”

“It’s a shame that Ian won’t allow it,” her mother-in-law said, talking right over her. “But you heard him a moment ago. You’ll have to leave, Miss Warrington.”

“But I just—” Andrea started, more concerned about the swift dismissal than she was the omission of the “Dr.” before her name.

“He’s been through enough. We mustn’t upset him.”

Jessie looked down at the small, frail woman, the impatience in her expression melting into compassion. “You want him to get better, don’t you?”

“I do, more than anything.”

“Then can’t you stick with the plan we made, you and Zach and me?”

The older woman hesitated. “I only want to be a better mother. I swear I do, but...she confuses him.” With this pronouncement, she pinned Andrea with an accusatory gaze. “He thinks she’s still his fiancée.”

This time, however, Andrea heard the fear behind the woman’s words, the terror of losing her son all over again. “He knows the truth now, and if he forgets it, I’ll remind him...gently, carefully. I promise you that. Believe me, I don’t want to hurt him any more than you do. But I also don’t want to leave him in pain the way he is.”

She knew the grim statistics too well, had seen up close in her work how many returning soldiers suffering untreated PTSD chose to end their lives. Or to obliterate their pain with drugs and alcohol, which often amounted to a slower form of suicide.

Ian’s mother hesitated, but for Jessie, this was apparently good enough.

“Let me show you to your room,” she said. “Then, if you want, you can ride along with me to pick up Eden from her playdate, and I’ll fill you in on everything you’ll need to know about this family.”

Andrea didn’t miss the panic that flashed through Nancy Rayford’s blue eyes. But for the moment, Andrea pretended not to see it as she took up Jessie on her offer and followed her to the wing that housed the mansion’s guest quarters.

Still, she couldn’t help but wonder, What is it Ian’s mother is so afraid I’ll find out about the Rayfords? And how can I enlist this frightened woman’s help to save her son?

* * *

When he couldn’t convince his brother, Jessie or even his pushover of a mother to send the shrink packing, Ian decided instead to ignore Andrea’s presence. It was a hell of a lot easier said than done, though, since his mind kept replaying the warmth of her curves when he had pulled her into his arms and the strength of the connection he’d felt coursing through him that moment their lips met. The only way he could manage, could keep his eyes from locking on to every move she made, was by avoiding her as much as possible.

Over the past two days she hadn’t made it any easier, “happening” upon him whenever he came inside and pretending to be no more than a concerned friend. But he’d brushed her off in a hurry and retreated to his room each time, not giving a damn about the look of disappointment on her gorgeous face.

What difference did it make anyway? Whether or not he ever spoke to her, she was sure to get paid for her efforts. He was a job to her, or at best some pet project, a screwed-up loser she’d dumped so she could ride off into the sunset with a guy whose brains weren’t scrambled eggs.

This morning, it was the sunrise that he planned to ride off into after leaving a note in the ranch office, a space more like a studio apartment, with its own seating area, kitchenette and a small bath where Zach could wash up after getting dirty with the livestock. His brother had taken the opportunity to expand the office, which had been built into a corner of the barn after an arsonist had burned down the entire structure last year. Ian knew his family had gone through a rough stretch, a time of grief compounded by intense fear and worry, but at least some good had come of it, if his brother’s relationship with Jessie was anywhere near as solid as it looked to Ian. Though yesterday he’d overheard them squabbling over Jessie’s “scaring the liver out of him,” as Zach had put it, with her refusal to share details of the new exposé she was working on, it was clear they loved each other deeply, and they had fun together, too.

Seeing how they worked as a team with Eden and how much joy the little girl, who’d started school just last week, brought them struck Ian with a sense of loss—and anger, sometimes, creeping up on him when he didn’t expect it—for the life he’d been missing out on, a life centered on a family he’d never even known he wanted. Or maybe that wasn’t true. He couldn’t say for certain these days. Along with his memory, he’d lost so much more, including a true sense of who he was.

He left a brief note on his brother’s desk, grateful that Zach would be running later than usual this morning since it was his turn to drive Eden into town for school. If he were here, Ian knew, there’d be another lecture and maybe an argument like yesterday’s, when Ian had told his brother what he could do with his advice to quit acting like a stubborn jerk and give Andrea a chance.

He did miss his brother’s coffee though, he thought as he eyed the fancy espresso machine longingly. But no way was he taking a chance on messing with Zach’s prize possession, which had enough buttons and levers to rival the fighter jets he’d once piloted.

Ian thought of heading back inside to cadge a quick mug of Althea’s simpler brew—and maybe a couple of his favorite raspberry thumbprint cookies—before he rode out, but that would bring the risk of running into Andrea since she’d been getting up earlier each day in an attempt to catch him alone. He felt idiotic sneaking around his own home—and more aggravated than ever with her for forcing him into it.

Which is why he swore under his breath when he saw her standing by the hitching post, next to his saddled palomino. She held two insulated travel mugs, one of which she offered with that gorgeous smile of hers, so white it competed with the glorious September dawn. Sleek and straight, her dark brown hair had been brushed back, with a clip keeping the front sections out of those long-lashed hazel eyes he’d always loved.

“Peace offering,” she said, looking more casual today in a pair of jeans that drew his eye to other favorite parts of her anatomy. Places he’d awakened hot and hard from dreams of touching, tasting and claiming as his own again.

When he reached for the mug, she didn’t let go, locking in on him with a take-no-prisoners gaze instead.

“Didn’t realize there’d be strings attached,” he said, looking at her almost straight on, since she wore a pair of riding boots that brought her to within a couple of inches of his own six-four.

“Life is a series of negotiations, Ian. The question is, what will you bring to the table?”

He lowered his hand and shook his head. “Thanks for bringing out the coffee, but I prefer mine black, not tarted up with a bunch of shrink talk. Or any talk at all, as far as that goes.”

“Then how ’bout if we ride instead? Just ride and see how that goes?”

He chuckled to himself, getting the point now of the boots and jeans. “You really think you’re up to riding fences with me all day?”

“I want to try.”

“Well, maybe I don’t want to play nursemaid to some greenhorn. Or ride back for a ladies’ room when we’re a couple hours out.” The moment the words were out of his mouth, he felt a stab of regret. He was being a jerk, he realized, punishing her for... Had she broken up with him, or was he the one who’d left her? When he reached back for the memory, he found only a black fog of loss and pain—that, and the nameless anxiety that stalked him day and night.

There’s something important you’re forgetting. Something so big, the weight of it will crush you flat when it finally comes.

“You don’t know what you want, Ian. That’s the problem. But I might be able to help you with that.”

“I want to be left to my work, alone. And that’s not gonna change, not even if you start staying up all night to try to catch me before I ride out.”

“I’m coming with you,” she insisted.

“Do you even know how to saddle a horse? Or where we keep the tack?”

She shifted uncomfortably. “Well, no. I was hoping you could help with that part.”

“But you’ve ridden before? I see you’ve got the boots for it.”

Her cheeks reddened. “Well, actually, Jessie was nice enough to lend me these. Turns out we wear the same shoe size. And she’s tied up doing some research for a story she’s been working on, so she told me I could take her horse, too. Um, Princess, I think her name is?”

He felt a tug at the corner of his mouth. “My five-year-old niece named her, which means she could’ve done a lot worse, considering that Eden calls the barn cat Fizzy Fuzzbutt.”

“So you do still smile,” Andrea said. “In a nice way, I mean. Haven’t seen that for a long while.” Emotion rippled through her words, real emotion as the mask of compassionate professionalism slipped a little. “I’ve really missed that, Ian. Missed the man I knew.”

“That man’s gone forever.”

She nodded, her eyes somber. “You’re right, I’m afraid. Experience changes people. Even experiences you’re not ready to remember.”

“I’m ready. More than ready. I just— It’s gone, no matter what I do. No matter how hard I try.” He shook his head, his sore fist curling—the same fist that had punched through the wall of his bedroom in frustration. “What the hell is wrong with me?”

“I don’t think anyone has all the answers. In a lot of ways the mind’s still the same uncharted wilderness it was in Freud’s day. But I may have a few insights for you...if you’d like to hear them.”

His knee-jerk reaction was to shut her down, to say hell, no. But something in the way she’d looked at him in that single, honest moment had touched off a yearning to see more of the real Andrea, the same woman who still lived in his dreams.

Besides that, he was getting sick of himself, of the way he had been acting. And if she knew something that might change that...would it really hurt so much to try?

He reached out for the coffee, their fingers brushing as he took it. Her skin felt so soft and tender beneath his calluses. So warm.

Taking a sip of the dark brew, he was relieved to find it black and bitter.

When he murmured his thanks, she shrugged. “I remembered how you took it.”

“As opposed to yours...right?” he asked, as an image of her pouring cream into a porcelain mug came out of nowhere. She’d been wearing a loose white robe, her hair a jumble around her shoulders. Her lips were puffy and her smile warm, her eyes misted with a contentment that told him they’d just made love that morning.

A sense of loss sent a pang through the hollow of his chest. Of all the people the government could have sent to see him—and he felt sure they were behind this, somehow—why did they have to torture him with her?

“You’re right,” she confirmed, smiling sheepishly. “Two sugars and real cream whenever I can get it. I still eat pretty healthy, but I’m hopeless on that front.”

“I’ll saddle your horse, Andie—”

“Please, call me Andrea. All right?”

Ignoring her, he finished. “If you’ll agree to wear a riding helmet. Horses can be dangerous enough when a person knows her way around ’em.”

“So if I agree, you’ll take me?”

“Only because I want to get my brother off my back about it. Well, that and to see how you walk tomorrow morning.” Ian smiled, figuring it would be no hardship to watch the sway of her hips under any circumstances.

She winced and said, “Oh, boy. I haven’t ridden very much, but I do remember that part.”

“It only lasts a few days. Then you’ll get used to it. Or die.”

“You are teasing about that last part. Aren’t you?”

He snorted. “Right. You’ll only feel like dying.”

He left her with a smile and went to retrieve Jessie’s mare.

Chapter 3

The pinto was pretty enough to lead a parade, with bold black patches over brilliant white and a full and flowing mane and tail. But she seemed to have a mind of her own, a quality she demonstrated when Andrea tried to hold her back after she had mounted.

“You don’t need to haul on the reins like that,” Ian told Andrea, amusement written on his face. His own mount’s golden hide gleamed in the early-morning sunlight, the well-muscled animal as handsome as his rider. “Her mouth is sensitive.”

“Oh, am I hurting her? Should I— What do I do to keep her from running off with me?”

“Loosen your fingers, for starters, and grip her body with your knees, not your hands.”

Embarrassed to be caught holding on to the saddle horn, she gave the reins a few inches of slack. But inside, her muscles quivered, ready to bail if Princess took a notion to gallop away.

Instead, the pinto exhaled, sounding more relieved than about to race away, and Andrea found the courage to tuck an irksome stray lock back up beneath the riding helmet and out of her eyes.

“That’s a little better,” said Ian. “Now breathe deeply, from way down in the bottom of your belly. And ease up on the reins a little more. Like that, yes. Now move them both to one hand. All you’ll need to do is lay the reins on her neck, to the right to turn right, to the left for left, just like I’m doing here. See?”

She was grateful when he demonstrated, his amusement giving way to patience as he took her through the nudges, clicks and reining that he claimed would be enough to get her started.

As he expertly guided his mount and closed the paddock gate behind them, he eyed her critically. “We’ll still have to work on your seat.”

“I’ll bet you say that to all the girls.” Her breath caught as she reminded herself that the light teasing, the innuendo, was no longer appropriate between them.

When he laughed, though, she decided it was worth it. Worth easing her professional demeanor to help him relax around her.

“Hardly,” he answered as they headed for the range, riding side by side, “but mostly because the only girls I see around here are married, five years old or my mother.”

“What about Miss Althea? And there must be maids, I’m guessing?” Judging from the size of the house, it would take a team to clean it.

“Miss Althea’d crack me upside the head with a wooden spoon if she ever caught wind I was thinking about her or the maids’ seats. And you’re the first visitor we’ve had staying here since...” The spark in his blue eyes dimmed. “Since I...”

“Since you’ve been back?” she prompted.

She saw his throat work as he swallowed, caught his haunted look as he nodded in answer.

They rode in silence for a while, the creaking of the saddles and the clopping of the horses’ hooves the only conversation. She fought back her impatience to get started with her counseling, to finish this job and head back to Warriors-4-Life, where the lines between the past and present didn’t blur like hoofprints in the wind. But she reminded herself that Ian’s healing was what mattered and that pushing him too quickly would only shut him down again. So instead, she took a deep breath, forcing herself to enjoy the mildness of the morning sunshine and reminding herself that the ability to wait and to listen was worth twice as much as anything a mental health professional could ever say.

She was lost in thought when Ian told her, “We’ll pick up and catch the fence line I’ve been checking about a half mile up ahead.”

“How can you know where anything is? It’s like the surface of an ocean. I don’t see anything but grass.”

“That’s because you haven’t learned to really look yet, to see it like the horses or the deer or the coyotes. A lot of what’s out here lies beneath the surface. There are gullies and old streambeds, hidden groves of trees and cow paths.”

She looked around, still seeing nothing, then turned in the saddle and realized with a start that she’d lost track of the mansion and the ranch outbuildings, too. How was that even possible, if the land was as flat and featureless as her senses tried to tell her? “Guess you have to be born to this land. I’m so turned around, I have no idea of the way back.”

“I can teach you,” he assured her. “Show you, so you can always find your way back home again.”

“Like you did...” she said quietly, so quietly that she wasn’t certain he had heard her until she marked the way his shoulders stiffened.

“There,” he said, pointing to two tufts that were a brighter green than the mostly golden grasses. “Those are the upper limbs of cottonwoods we’re heading toward. They’re actually good-size trees—and you see the notch between them where the creek’s eroded a ravine?”

“So you go by the color of the treetops?”

He nodded. “And the time of year. Whenever you see that shade this late in the season, you know you’re close to flowing water—cottonwoods usually crowd the creek beds, and the cattle like to lie in the shade beneath them.”

“Sounds like an oasis.”

“Oasis...” he echoed, frowning over the word as if it had stirred some dark association. Before she could decide whether to follow up with a question, he added, “It can be until a storm rips through and sends a flash flood roaring though that ravine. Then it’s a damned death trap, those high walls hemming you in, heaven only knows who looking down on your location.”

Andrea’s stomach tensed as instinct warned her he was referring to a harsher territory. Did he himself even know what he was doing, or was she hearing from that part of him still wandering through foreign lands among those who meant to kill him, a part of him still desperate to get home?

“Thank goodness it doesn’t look like rain, then.” She gestured toward the thin silvery wisps painted over the blue sky, her need to reassure him stronger than her desire to draw him out. “And no one for miles around.”

“No one,” he repeated, his blue eyes unfocused until he shook off whatever reverie had gripped him. “Right. Of course, you’re right. Our nearest neighbor’s a half-day’s ride, and I always check the forecast. Every single day before I ride out.”

“You used to like surprises,” she said, remembering how she’d always been the one who’d wanted things locked down and certain. Remembering how she hadn’t been able to deal with it when he couldn’t give the security she craved.

“Not anymore, I don’t.”

Something in his tone had her feeling a little skittish as they rode single file down into the ravine. The narrow, crumbling walls seemed to close in on her, even after Ian stopped and pointed out a low rock outcrop behind them that marked the way back to the mansion.

Soon, however, Ian eased her worry, straightening in his saddle and leading the way with the natural air of confidence she had been drawn to from the first time she’d met him. Her faith in his leadership was soon rewarded when the ravine opened to a green and grassy hollow bisected by a swift but shallow creek splashing over rocks. The air cooled as they continued downhill, riding beneath the spreading arms of the cottonwoods and provoking a symphony of morning birdsong.

Mooing to protest the invasion, cattle rose from the hollow they’d claimed as a resting place and trotted along the barbed-wire fence line on the other side of the creek.

“It’s beautiful,” she said, marveling at the hidden world he’d shown her.

“Beautiful and a pain, too, sometimes. Cows are always using those fence posts to scratch whatever itches—if they’re not pushing ’em over, it’s some thunderstorm that’s washed them out. Look, there’s one now that needs attention.” Dismounting in one smooth motion, he used rock from the creek bottom to brace a tilted post.

“Want some help there?” she asked, though she wasn’t entirely sure she could get back on her horse without a mounting block.

“I’ve got it covered. Just relax and enjoy the view.”

She didn’t have to be told twice, her gaze seeking out one singer and then following the progress of a pair of bright red wings flitting among branches. She tracked the movement until she was distracted by what looked like the metallic glint of something moving above them on the hillside. Something that didn’t belong.

She stood in the stirrups and leaned to the right, trying to see it through the branches. “What’s that? I saw something move. There.” Though she’d lost sight of the movement, she pointed in the direction she’d last seen it.

He looked up from the strand of barbed wire he’d been tightening, a pair of pliers in hand. “What? You mean a bird?” he asked. “Or maybe a—”

She shook her head. “Something man-made, I think. A windshield, maybe, or something metal. Could someone be—”

He swore and rushed at her, his movement so abrupt the pinto shied away from his reach.

“Get down!” He closed in, grabbing at her leg. “Off the horse now. Gun!”

“No, Ian,” she said, recognizing the panic ripping through his voice, the glazed eyes seeing a time and place she knew was as real to him as this one. Clearly, he had tipped into a flashback, something she had witnessed so many times in clients. “It was only a reflection, I’ll bet, maybe some piece of trash blowing in the—”

“Gun, damn it!” This time when he lunged, he caught her belt from behind, and she screamed as he pulled her down. Her terror echoed with the horses’ whinnies as they bolted for the ravine’s entrance, the clatter of their hoofbeats followed by a shattering boom.

Lightning strike, she thought as Ian caught her in his strong arms and started dragging her toward the shaded hollow where the cattle had lain. She’d heard of bolts from the blue, even on the clearest days.

The second blast convinced her she was wrong, the loud plunk as the post Ian had been working on exploded. Someone was really shooting, firing on them here and now and not in Ian’s imagination. Had some out-of-season hunter mistaken them for game?

“No!” she shouted. “Don’t shoot at us! We’re down here!”

Ian clapped a hand over her mouth and ordered, “Quiet. Now,” through clenched teeth. One arm around her waist, he hauled her forward. Already knocked askew, her riding helmet fell as another shot echoed through the creek bottom. Grit spattered the back of her leg from where another bullet drilled the ground behind them, right where she’d been standing a half second earlier.

As her survival instincts kicked in, Andrea quit fighting Ian. Because whether or not this nightmare was rooted in his missing year inside the war zone, there was no denying it could kill them in the here and now.

* * *

His heart thundered in his chest, but Ian’s mind dropped into mission mode as he guided the civilian with him under branches and around rocks. Because the civilian was the mission, her safety paramount in his mind, no matter how confused he was to have Andrea here with him.

Hadn’t he left her behind in the peace and safety of Southern California? And hadn’t she left him, too, a memory slicing through the darkness like a shard of broken glass, saying that she wanted another kind of life, a life without his secrets? So it made no sense that he was half leading and half dragging her here across this shallow creek, in a place where he used to hide out when his old man got that dangerous look in his eyes. But with no time to stop and think it through, Ian accepted this bizarre tangle of the half-remembered like another of his convoluted nightmares.

He searched the deepest shadows, focused on finding the one spot where he knew Andrea would be safe. A few steps beyond the water, he pointed out a horizontal shelf of weathered rock that had been undercut by past flooding. Partly filled in by damp pebbles, it would be a tight squeeze on her hands and knees, but if she could wedge herself in that space, she would be well hidden from the person up top with what sounded like a rifle.

“Crawl under there, where he won’t see you.”

“Down there? In that hole, you mean?” Her eyes were huge with disbelief.

He nodded. “Back yourself in, and don’t come out, no matter what you hear or see.”

“What about you? There’s no room for both of—”

“Just do it, Andrea, and I’ll come back for you. I swear to you, I will.”

Their gazes locked, his blue with her hazel. And in that fraction of a second, some understanding passed between them. Face pale with terror, she blew out a shaky breath.

“You’d better,” she whispered, grabbing handfuls of his shirt, “because if you leave me out here all alone, I swear to you, Ian, I will... Hunt. You. Down.”

Dire as their situation was, he grinned at her bravado, then ducked his head to briefly touch his lips to hers.

Shock mingling with confusion on her beautiful face, she took two steps back and then crouched to do as he’d asked, crinkling her nose as she backed into the dank space. “There’d better not be spiders in here, especially those ones with the nasty, hairy legs.”

“You’ll be just fine,” he assured her, not wanting to mention that a scorpion encounter was a lot more likely.

Still able to see her eyes, he dragged a tree branch to disguise the opening and moved off without another word. Stooping to palm some stones, he hurled them farther downstream, setting off a clatter.

The sniper didn’t take the bait, probably wanting to get a visual before wasting another bullet. Or maybe he’d decided to cut his losses and get out, now that he had lost the element of surprise.

Whichever was the case, Ian zigzagged up the steep hillside, his progress as silent as the animals so often drawn here by the water. When he heard the deep thrum of an engine, he picked up his pace, not wanting to miss a glimpse at the SOB who’d tried to shoot them here, on his family’s spread.

Remembering his brother, Ian paused and pulled the phone out of his pocket—the phone that he had, thank God, at last remembered to both charge and bring along. But down in this damned ravine, it was showing zero bars—no service. He tried sending a quick text, but it just sat in the outbox.

Jamming the cell back in his pocket, he continued his climb. With every stop, he fought to hold on to his focus, but his mind kept slipping backward, toward a past that had the blue sky above him and the brush before him fading to the ink-stained silhouettes of buildings along a blackout-dark street, where he craned his neck to see a minaret against a star-strewn sky. The crescent-moon shape at its top marked it as a mosque. He breathed in the dense smells of a city, the cooking smoke tinged with exotic spices, the animal dung mixed with burning sandalwood. A reminder that life mingled with death here, death that waited to jump out of the shadows...

As the thrumming sound receded, he wondered, by returning here to Texas, had he brought death back with him? Were the gunmen who’d abducted him heading to the house to storm its walls?

He staggered to a stop, the realization ripping through him that he hadn’t lost his freedom in a remote desert ambush as he’d been told. Hadn’t been knocked unconscious and captured when an explosive device overturned his Hummer and killed one of his comrades. Hadn’t been in Iraq with his unit...because he hadn’t been a member of an army unit at all.

The knowledge doused him like ice water, the certainty that he’d never been what he’d told his family, friends and Andrea. So what the hell were you, if you weren’t really army? And how’d you get so screwed up you’d swallow your own cover story?

Not only that, but the army itself had backed the whole sham, sending officers to debrief him, military shrinks and doctors to poke around his head. Which had to mean they were operating under someone’s orders. Or more likely, some of them had really been CIA agents, trying to determine what he knew. And whether he was capable of accidentally spilling truths they preferred to remain hidden.

Was it possible they’d sent a team to guarantee his silence? Could one or more gunmen be waiting on the prairie above, knowing he must eventually emerge from cover?

Frozen to the marrow, he was blindsided by more fragments of the past, each more horrifying than the rest. A dark cell so cramped he couldn’t stand up, so rank that he could scarcely breathe. A pang of horror as the door clanked open and two pairs of rough hands dragged him out for yet another beating. A coil of loose chain in the filthy straw, dripping with his blood and buzzing with flies.

As he crouched among the bushes growing along the side of the ravine, he slowly became aware of the shifting of rock and the crunching of leaf litter, the thud of fast-approaching footsteps.

Footsteps of a new threat coming up behind him, the fate he’d let himself imagine he’d escaped.

* * *

Between Andrea’s cramped, uncomfortable position and the fear that at any moment, a killer would appear and shove a gun in her face, she was miserable enough without the ants that had found their way into her boots, crawling up her pant legs and stinging her for all they were worth. She shifted her position, trying to escape them, but pinch after pinch assured her that now that they had gotten past the protection of her boots and clothing, they meant to defend their home from her invasion—to the death, if necessary.

With no other choice, she crawled out of her hiding place and brushed at, swatted and stamped out every fire ant she could get to before she was hit with more venom. Shuddering with revulsion, she took a deep breath and assured herself that the stinging devils were gone and she would be fine, save for the itchy welts that would erupt.

As she pulled her boots back on, she nervously looked around, her stomach spasming with the fear that someone might have seen her wild “ant dance” or heard her muffled yips. But she spotted no one and heard nothing, no sign of the person who’d fired on them or Ian, either.

She tried to remember how long she’d waited, still and hidden, before the stings had become too much for her to bear. Five minutes? Ten? She couldn’t be certain, especially not with her heart thumping so wildly she wanted to crawl out of her skin.

She relocated to another patch of shade, where she crouched and fought to calm herself for the next few minutes. But no matter how many times she assured herself that an experienced soldier like Ian, who had survived so much, knew what he was doing, phantom worries stung every exposed inch of her heart.

Before he’d left, he’d seemed so sure of himself, so tough and so cocky, the way he’d smiled and ducked his head to surprise her with a stolen kiss. Her stomach fluttered with the memory, with the knowledge that she’d have to talk to him about it later. But other thoughts troubled her more as she recalled those moments when his blue eyes had drifted, his expression troubled as something she’d said left him grappling with memories. Memories his conscious mind remained too shell-shocked to face.

She’d seen flashbacks before, had read case reports of terrible things happening—accidents, assaults and even murders—in the wake of something as innocuous as a backfiring car, a slamming door or a loud scene during a movie. In a situation as reminiscent of wartime as this one, would Ian’s struggle with the buried ghosts of his past endanger him in the present?

As more time passed, she fought to hold back the rising tide of panic, telling herself it was a good sign that she’d heard no more shots. Reminding herself of how present and centered Ian had been when he had promised to return.

But eventually, her worry overwhelmed her, and there was nothing to be done except follow in the direction he had taken. As she walked, she prayed she would encounter Ian rather than the shooter.

She prayed even harder that when she did, he would still be the man she knew.

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