Praise for Diana Palmer

‘Nobody does it better.̓

—New York Times bestselling author Linda Howard

‘Ms Palmer masterfully weaves a tale that entices on many levels, blending adventure and strong human emotion into a great read.’

—RT Book Reviews

‘Nobody tops Diana Palmer when it comes to delivering pure, undiluted romance. I love her stories.’

—New York Times bestselling author Jayne Ann Krentz

‘Palmer knows how to make the sparks fly… heartwarming.̓

—Publishers Weekly on Renegade

‘A compelling tale…[that packs] an emotional wallop’

—Publishers Weekly on Renegade

‘This story is a thrill a minute—one of Palmer’s best.’

—Rendezvous on Lord of the Desert

About the Author

DIANA PALMER has a gift for telling the most sensual tales with charm and humour. With over forty million copies of her books in print, Diana Palmer is one of North America’s most beloved authors and is considered one of the top ten romance authors in the US.

Diana’s hobbies include gardening, archaeology, anthropology, iguanas, astronomy and music. She has been married to James Kyle for over twenty-five years and they have one son.

For news about Diana Palmer’s latest releases, please visit: www.dianapalmer.com or www.millsandboon.co.uk

Novels by Diana Palmer

DESPERADO

LAWLESS

AFTER MIDNIGHT

ONCE IN PARIS

DANGEROUS

PAPER ROSE

MIDNIGHT RIDER

NIGHT FEVER

ONE NIGHT IN NEW YORK

BEFORE SUNRISE

OUTSIDER

LAWMAN

HARD TO HANDLE

FEARLESS

DIAMOND SPUR

TRUE COLOURS

HEARTLESS

MERCILESS

COURAGEOUS

ROUGH DIAMONDS

Coming soon:

CHRISTMAS WITH THE RANCHER

WYOMING FIERCE

PROTECTOR

WYOMING BOLD

Rough Diamonds
Wyoming Tough
Diamond in the Rough
Diana Palmer

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Wyoming Tough

CHAPTER ONE

EDITH DANIELLE MORENA BRANNT was not impressed with her new boss. The head honcho of the Rancho Real, or Royal Ranch in Spanish, near Catelow, Wyoming, was big and domineering and had a formidable bad attitude that he shared with all his hired hands.

Morie, as she was known to her friends, had a hard time holding back her fiery temper when Mallory Dawson Kirk raised his voice. He was impatient and hot-tempered and opinionated. Just like Morie’s father, who’d opposed her decision to become a working cowgirl. Her dad opposed everything. She’d just told him she was going to find a job, packed her bags and left. She was twenty-three. He couldn’t really stop her legally. Her mother, Shelby, had tried gentle reason. Her brother, Cort, had tried, too, with even less luck. She loved her family, but she was tired of being chased for who she was related to instead of who she was inside. Being a stranger on somebody else’s property was an enchanting proposition. Even with Mallory’s temper, she was happy being accepted for a poor, struggling female on her own in the harsh world. Besides that, she wanted to learn ranch work and her father refused to let her so much as lift a rope on his ranch. He didn’t want her near his cattle.

“And another thing,” Mallory said harshly, turning to Morie with a cold glare, “there’s a place to hang keys when you’re through with them. You never take a key out of the stable and leave it in your pocket. Is that clear?”

Morie, who’d actually transported the key to the main tack room off the property in her pocket at a time it was desperately needed, flushed. “Sorry, sir,” she said stiffly. “Won’t happen again.”

“It won’t if you expect to keep working here,” he assured her.

“My fault,” the foreman, old Darby Hanes, chimed in, smiling. “I forgot to tell her.”

Mallory considered that and nodded finally. “That’s what I always liked most about you, Darb, you’re honest.” He turned to Morie. “An example I’ll expect you to follow, as our newest hire, by the way.”

Her face reddened. “Sir, I’ve never taken anything that didn’t belong to me.”

He looked at her cheap clothes, the ragged hem of her jeans, her worn boots. But he didn’t judge. He just nodded.

He had thick black hair, parted on one side and a little shaggy around the ears. He had big ears and a big nose, deep-set brown eyes under a jutting brow, thick eyebrows and a mouth so sensuous that Morie hadn’t been able to take her eyes off it at first. That mouth made up for his lack of conventional good looks. He had big, well-manicured hands and a voice like deep velvet, as well as big feet, in old, rugged, dirt-caked boots. He was the boss, and nobody ever forgot it, but he got down in the mud and blood with his men and worked as if he was just an employee himself.

In fact, all three Kirk brothers were like that. Mallory was the oldest, at thirty-six. The second brother, Cane—a coincidence if there ever was one, considering Morie’s mother’s maiden name, even if hers was spelled with a K—was thirtyfour, a veteran of the Second Gulf War, and he was missing an arm from being in the front lines in combat. He was confronting a drinking problem and undergoing therapy, which his brothers were trying to address.

The youngest brother, at thirty-one, was Dalton. He was a former border agent with the department of immigration, and his nickname was, for some odd reason, Tank. He’d been confronted by a gang of narco-smugglers on the Arizona border, all alone. He was shot to pieces and hospitalized for weeks, during which most of the physicians had given him up for dead because of the extent of his injuries. He confounded them all by living. Nevertheless, he quit the job and came home to the family ranch in Wyoming. He never spoke of the experience. But once Morie had seen him react to the backfire of an old ranch truck by diving to the ground. She’d laughed, but old Darby Hanes had silenced her and told her about Dalton’s past as a border agent. She’d never laughed at his odd behaviors again. She supposed that both he and Cane had mental and emotional scars, as well as physical ones, from their past experiences. She’d never been shot at, or had anything happen to her. She’d been as sheltered as a hothouse orchid, both by her parents and her brother. This was her first taste of real life. She wasn’t certain yet if she was going to like it.

She’d lived on her father’s enormous ranch all her life. She could ride anything—her father had taught her himself. But she wasn’t accustomed to the backbreaking work that daily ranch chores required, because she hadn’t been permitted to do them at home, and she’d been slow her first couple of days.

Darby Hanes had taken her in hand and shown her how to manage the big bales of hay that the brothers still packed into the barn—refusing the more modern rolled bales as being inefficient and wasteful—so that she didn’t hurt herself when she lifted them. He’d taught her how to shoe horses, even though the ranch had a farrier, and how to doctor sick calves. In less than two weeks, she’d learned things that nothing in her college education had addressed.

“You’ve never done this work before,” Darby accused, but he was smiling.

She grimaced. “No. But I needed a job, badly,” she said, and it was almost the truth. “You’ve been great, Mr. Hanes. I owe you a lot for not giving me away. For teaching me what I needed to know here.” And what a good thing it was, she thought privately, that her father didn’t know. He’d have skinned Hanes alive for letting his sheltered little girl shoe a horse.

He waved a hand dismissively. “Not a problem. You make sure you wear those gloves,” he added, nodding toward her back pocket. “You have beautiful hands. Like my wife used to,” he added with a faraway look in his eyes and a faint smile. “She played the piano in a restaurant when I met her. We went on two dates and got married. Never had kids. She passed two years ago, from cancer.” He stopped for a minute and took a long breath. “Still miss her,” he added stiffly.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“I’ll see her again,” he replied. “Won’t be too many years, either. It’s part of the cycle, you see. Life and death. We all go through it. Nobody escapes.”

That was true. How odd to be in a philosophical discussion on a ranch.

He lifted an eyebrow. “You think ranch hands are high-school dropouts, do you?” he mused. “I have a degree from MIT. I was their most promising student in theoretical physics, but my wife had a lung condition and they wanted her to come west to a drier climate. Her dad had a ranch… .” He stopped, chuckling. “Sorry. I tend to run on. Anyway, I worked on the ranch and preferred it to a lab. After she died, I came here to work. So here I am. But I’m not the only degreed geek around here. We have three part-timers who are going to college on scholarships the Kirk brothers set up for them.”

“What a nice bunch of guys!” she exclaimed.

“They really are. All of them seem tough as nails, and they mostly are, but they’ll help anyone in need.” He shifted. “Paid my wife’s hospital bill after the insurance lapsed. A small fortune, and they didn’t even blink.”

Her throat got tight. What a generous thing to do. Her family had done the same for people, but she didn’t dare mention that. “That was good of them,” she said with genuine feeling.

“Yes. I’ll work here until I die, if they’ll keep me. They’re great people.”

They heard a noise and turned around. The boss was standing behind them.

“Thanks for the testimonial, but I believe there are cattle waiting to be dipped in the south pasture… .” Mallory commented with pursed lips and twinkling dark eyes.

Darby chuckled. “Yes, there are. Sorry, boss, I was just lauding you to the young lady. She was surprised to find out that I studied philosophy.”

“Not to mention theoretical physics,” the boss added drily.

“Yes, well, I won’t mention your degree in biochemistry if you like,” Darby said outrageously.

Mallory quirked an eyebrow. “Thanks.”

Darby winked at Morie and left them alone.

Mallory towered over the slight brunette. “Your name is unusual. Morie…?”

She laughed. “My full name is Edith Danielle Morena Brannt,” she replied. “My mother knew I’d be a brunette, because both my parents are, so they added morena, which means brunette in Spanish. I had, uh, Spanish great-grandparents,” she stuttered, having almost given away the fact that they were titled Spanish royalty. That would never do. She wanted to be perceived as a poor, but honest, cowgirl. Her last name wasn’t uncommon in South Texas, and Mallory wasn’t likely to connect it with King Brannt, who was a true cattle baron.

He cocked his head. “Morie,” he said. “Nice.”

“I’m really sorry, about the key,” she said.

He shrugged. “I did the same thing last month, but I’m the boss,” he added firmly. “I don’t make mistakes. You remember that.”

She gave him an open smile. “Yes, sir.”

He studied her curiously. She was small and nicely rounded, with black hair that was obviously long and pulled into a bun atop her head. She wasn’t beautiful, but she was pleasant to look at, with those big brown eyes and that pretty mouth and perfect skin. She didn’t seem the sort to do physical labor on a ranch.

“Sir?” she asked, uncomfortable from the scrutiny.

“Sorry. I was just thinking that you don’t look like the usual sort we hire for ranch hands.”

“I do have a college degree,” she defended herself.

“You do? What was your major?”

“History,” she said, and looked defensive. “Yes, it’s dates. Yes, it’s about the past. Yes, some of it can be boring. But I love it.”

He looked at her thoughtfully. “You should talk to Cane. His degree is in anthropology. Pity it wasn’t paleontology, because we’re close to Fossil Lake. That’s part of the Green River Formation, and there are all sorts of fossils there. Cane loved to dig.” His face hardened. “He won’t talk about going back to it.”

“Because of his arm?” she asked bluntly. “That wouldn’t stop him. He could do administrative work on a dig.” She flushed. “I minored in anthropology,” she confessed.

He burst out laughing. “No wonder you like ranch work. Did you go on digs?” He knew, as some people didn’t, that archaeology was one of four subfields of anthropology.

“I did. Drove my mother mad. My clothes were always full of mud and I looked like a street child most of the time.” She didn’t dare tell him that she’d come to dinner in her dig clothing when a famous visiting politician from Europe was at the table, along with some members of a royal family. Her father had been eloquent. “There were some incidents when I came home muddy,” she added with a chuckle.

“I can imagine.” He sighed. “Cane hasn’t adjusted to the physical changes. He’s stopped going to therapy and he won’t join in any family outings. He stays in his room playing online video games.” He stopped. “Good Lord, I can’t believe I’m telling you these things.”

“I’m as quiet as a clam,” she pointed out. “I never tell anything I know.”

“You’re a good listener. Most people aren’t.”

She smiled. “You are.”

He chuckled. “I’m the boss. I have to listen to people.”

“Good point.”

“I’ll just finish getting those bales of hay stacked,” she said. She stopped and glanced up at him. “You know, most ranchers these days use the big bales… .”

“Stop right there,” he said curtly. “I don’t like a lot of the so-called improvements. I run this ranch the way my dad did, and his dad before him. We rotate crops, and cattle, avoid unnecessary supplements, and maintain organic crops and grass strains. And we don’t allow oil extraction anywhere on this ranch. Lots of fracking farther south in Wyoming to extract oil from shale deposits, but we won’t sell land for that, or lease it.”

She knew they were environmentally sensitive. The family had been featured in a small northwestern cattlemen’s newspaper that she’d seen lying on a table in the bunkhouse.

“What’s fracking?” she asked curiously.

“They inject liquids at high speed into shale rock to fracture it and allow access to oil and gas deposits. It can contaminate the water table if it isn’t done right, and some people say it causes earthquakes.” His dark eyes were serious. “I’m not taking any chances with our water. It’s precious.”

“Yes, sir,” she replied.

He shrugged. “No offense. I’ve had the lectures on the joys of using genetically modified crops and cloning.” He leaned down. “Over my dead body.”

She laughed in spite of herself. Her elfin face radiated joy. Her dark eyes twinkled with it. He looked at her for a long moment, smiling quizzically. She was pretty. Not only pretty, she had a sense of humor. She was unlike his current girlfriend, a suave eastern sophisticate named Gelly Bruner, whose family had moved to Wyoming a few years previously and bought a small ranch near the Kirks. They met at a cocktail party in Denver, where her father was a speaker at a conference Mallory had attended. He and Gelly went around together, but he had no real interest in a passionate relationship. Not at the moment anyway. He’d had a bad experience in the past that had soured him on relationships. He knew instinctively that Gelly would only be around as long as he had money to spend on her. He had no illusions about his lack of good looks. He got women because he was rich. Period.

“Deep thoughts, sir?” she teased.

He laughed curtly. “Too deep to share. Get to work, kid. If you need anything, Darby’s nearby.”

“Yes, sir,” she replied, and wondered for a moment if she was somehow in the military. It seemed right to give him that form of address. She’d heard cowboys use it with her father since she was a child. Some men radiated authority and resolve. Her father was one. So was this man.

“Now you’re doing the deep-thinking thing,” he challenged.

She laughed. “Just stray thoughts. Nothing interesting.”

His dark eyes narrowed. “What was your favorite period? In history,” he added.

“Oh! Well, actually, it was the Tudor period.”

Both thick, dark eyebrows went up. “Really. And which Tudor was your favorite?”

“Mary.”

His eyebrows levered up a fraction. “Bloody Mary?”

She glared at him. “All the Tudor monarchs burned people. Is it less offensive to burn just a few rather than a few hundred? Elizabeth burned people, and so did her father and her brother. They were all tarred with the same brush, but Elizabeth lived longer and had better PR than the rest of her family.”

He burst out laughing.

“Well, it’s true,” she persisted. “She was elevated to mystic status by her supporters.”

“Indeed she was.” He grimaced. “I hated history.”

“Shame.”

He laughed again. “I suppose so. I’ll have to read up on the Tudors so that we can have discussions about their virtues and flaws.”

“I’d enjoy that. I like debate.”

“So do I, as long as I win.”

She gave him a wicked grin and turned back to her work.

The bunkhouse was quiet at night. She had a small room of her own, which was maintained for female hires. It was rough and sparsely accommodated, but she loved it. She’d brought her iPad along, and she surfed the internet on the ranch’s wireless network and watched films and television shows on it. She also read a lot. She hadn’t been joking about her passion for history. She still indulged it, out of college, by seeking out transcripts of Spanish manuscripts that pertained to Mary Tudor and her five-year reign in England. She found the writings in all sorts of odd places. It was fascinating to her to walk around virtual libraries and sample the history that had been painstakingly translated into digital images. What a dedicated group librarians must be, she marveled, to offer so much knowledge to the public at such a cost of time and skill. And what incredible scholarship that gave someone the skills to read Latin and Greek and translate it into modern English, for the benefit of historians who couldn’t read the ancient languages.

She marveled at the tech that was so new and so powerful. She fell asleep imagining what the future of electronics might hold. It was entrancing.

JUST AT DAWN, HER CELL PHONE rang. She answered it in a sleepy tone.

“Sleepyhead” came a soft, teasing voice.

She rolled over onto her back and smiled. “Hi, Mom. How’s it going at home?”

“I miss you,” Shelby said with a sigh. “Your father is so bad-tempered that even the old hands are hiding from him. He wants to know where you are.”

“Don’t you dare tell him,” Morie replied.

She sighed again. “I won’t. But he’s threatening to hire a private detective to sniff you out.” She laughed. “He can’t believe his little girl went off to work for wages.”

“He’s just mad that he hasn’t got me to advise him on his breeding program and work out the kinks in his spreadsheets.” She laughed. “I’ll come home soon enough.”

“In time for the production sale, I hope,” Shelby added. The event was three weeks down the road, but King Brannt had already made arrangements for a gala event on the ranch during the showing of his prize Santa Gertrudis cattle on Skylance, the family ranch near San Antonio. It would be a party of epic proportions, with a guest list that included famous entertainers, sports figures, politicians and even royalty, and he’d want his whole family there. Especially Morie, who was essential to the hostessing. It would be too much for Shelby alone.

“I’ll come back even if it’s just for the night,” Morie promised. “Tell Dad, so he doesn’t selfdestruct.” She laughed.

“I’ll tell him. You’re like him, you know,” she added.

“Cort’s a lot more like him. What a temper!”

“Cort will calm right down when he finally finds a woman who can put up with him.”

“Well, Dad found you,” Morie noted. “So there’s hope for Cort.”

“You think so? He won’t even go on dates anymore after that entertainment rep tried to seduce him in a movie theater. He was shocked to the back teeth when she said she’d done it in all sorts of fancy theaters back home.” She laughed. “Your brother doesn’t live in the real world. He thinks women are delicate treasures that need nourishing and protecting.” She paused for a moment, then continued. “He really needs to stop watching old movies.”

“Have him watch some old Bette Davis movies,” Morie advised. “She’s the most modern actress I ever saw, for all that her heyday was in the 1940s!”

“I loved those movies,” Shelby said.

“Me, too.” Morie hesitated. “I like Grandma’s old movies.”

Maria Kane had been a famous movie star, but she and Shelby had never been close and theirs had been a turbulent and sad relationship. It was still a painful topic for Shelby.

“I like them, too,” Shelby said, surprisingly. “I never really knew my mother. I was farmed out to housekeepers at first and then to my aunt. My mother never grew up,” she added, remembering something Maria’s last husband, Brad, had said during the funeral preparations in Hollywood.

Morie heard that sad note in her mother’s voice and changed the subject. “I miss your baked fish.”

Shelby laughed. “What a thing to say.”

“Well, nobody makes it like you do, Mom. And they’re not keen on fish around here, so we don’t have it much. I dream of cod fillets, gently baked with fresh herbs and fresh butter…Darn, I have to stop drooling on my pillow!”

“When you come home, I’ll make you some. You really need to learn to make them yourself. If you do move out and live apart from us, you have to be able to cook.”

“I can always order out.”

“Yes, but fresh food is so much nicer.”

“Yours certainly is.” She glanced at her watch. “Got to go, Mom. We’re dipping cattle today. Nasty business.”

“You should know. You were always in the thick of it here during the spring.”

“I miss you.”

“I miss you, too, sweetheart.”

“Love you.”

“Love you, too. Bye.”

She hung up, then got out of bed and dressed. Her mother was one in a million, beautiful and talented, but equally able to whip up exotic meals or hostess a dinner party for royalty. Morie admired her tremendously.

She admired her dad, too, but she was heartily sick of men who took her out only with one end in mind—a marriage that would secure their financial futures. It was surprising how many of them saw her as a ticket to independent wealth. The last one had been disconcertingly frank about how his father advised him to marry an heiress, and that Morie was at least more pleasant to look at than some of the other rich men’s daughters he’d escorted.

She was cursing him in three languages when her father came in, listened to her accusations and promptly escorted the young man off the property.

Morie had been crushed. She’d really liked the young man, an accountant named Bart Harrison, who’d come to town to audit a local business for his firm. It hadn’t occurred to her at first that he’d searched her out deliberately at a local fiesta. He’d known who she was and who her family was, and he’d pursued her coldly, but with exquisite manners, made her feel beautiful, made her hungry for the small attentions he gave with such flair.

She’d been very attracted to him. But when he started talking about money, she backed away and ran. She wanted something more than to be the daughter of one of the richest Texas ranchers. She wanted a man who loved her for who she really was.

Now, helping to work cattle through the smelliest, nastiest pool of dip that she’d ever experienced in her life, she wondered if she’d gone mad to come here. May had arrived. Calving was in full swing, and so was the dipping process necessary to keep cattle pest-free.

“It smells like some of that fancy perfume, don’t it?” Red Davis asked with a chuckle. He was in his late thirties, with red hair and freckles, blue eyes and a mischievous personality. He’d worked ranches most of his life, but he never stayed in one place too long. Morie vaguely remembered hearing her father say that Red had worked for a former mercenary named Cord Romero up near Houston.

She gave him a speaking look. “I’ll never get the smell out of my clothes,” she wailed.

“Why, sure you can,” the lean, redheaded cowboy assured her, grinning in the shade of his wide-brimmed straw hat. “Here’s what you do, Miss Morie. You go out in the woods late at night and wait till you see a skunk. Then you go jump at him. That’s when he’ll start stamping his front paws to warn you before he turns around and lifts his tail… .”

“Red!” she groaned.

“Wait, wait, listen,” he said earnestly. “After he sprays you and you have to bury your clothes and bathe in tomato juice, you’ll forget all about how this old dipping-pool smells. See? It would solve your problem!”

“I’ll show you a problem,” she threatened.

He laughed. “You have to have a sense of humor to work around cattle,” he told her.

“I totally agree, but there is nothing at all funny about a pond full of…Aaahhhhh!”

As she spoke, a calf bumped into her and knocked her over. She landed on her breasts in the pool of dip, getting it in her mouth and her eyes and her hair. She got to her knees and brought her hands down on the surface of the liquid in an eloquent display of furious anger. Which only made the situation worse, and gave Red the opportunity to display his sense of humor to its true depth.

“Will you stop laughing?” she wailed.

“Good God, are we dipping people now?” Mal-lory wanted to know.

Morie didn’t think about what she was doing; she was too mad. She hit the liquid with her hand and sent a spray of it right at Mallory. It landed on his spotless white shirt and splattered up into his face.

She sat frozen as she realized what she’d just done. She’d thrown pest dip on her boss. He’d fire her for sure. She was now history. She’d have to go home in disgrace…!

Mallory wiped his face with a handkerchief and gave her a long, speaking look. “Now that’s why I never wear white shirts around this place,” he commented with a dry look at Red, who was still doubled over laughing. “God knows what Mavie will say when she has to deal with this, and it’s your fault,” he added, pointing his finger at Morie. “You can explain it to her while you duck plates, bowls, knives or whatever else she can get to hand to throw at you!”

Mavie was the housekeeper and she had a red temper. Everybody was terrified of her.

“You aren’t going to fire me?” Morie asked with unusual timidity.

He pursed his sensuous lips and his dark eyes twinkled. “Not a lot of modern people want to run cattle through foul-smelling pest-control substances,” he mused. “It’s easier to take a bath than to find somebody to replace you.”

She swallowed hard. The awful-smelling stuff was in her nostrils. She wiped at it with the handkerchief. “At least I won’t attract mosquitoes now.” She sighed.

“Want to bet?” Red asked. “They love this stuff! If you rub it on your arms, they’ll attack you in droves… . Where are you going, boss?”

Mallory just chuckled as he walked away. He didn’t even answer Red.

Morie let out a sigh of relief as she wiped harder at her face. She shook her head and gave Red a rueful wince. “Well, that was a surprise,” she murmured drily. “Thought I was going to be an ex-employee for sure.”

“Naw,” Red replied. “The boss is a good sport. Cane got into it with him one time over a woman who kept calling and harassing him. Boss put her through, just for fun. Cane tossed him headfirst into one of the watering troughs.”

She laughed with surprise. “Good grief!”

“Shocked the boss. It was the first time Cane did anything really physical since he got out of the military. He thinks having one arm slows him down, limits him. But he’s already adjusting to it. The boss ain’t no lightweight,” he added. “Cane picked him up over one shoulder and threw him.”

“Wow.”

He sobered. “You know, they’ve all got problems of one sort or another. But they’re decent, honest, hardworking men. We’d do anything for them. They take care of us, and they’re not judgmental.” Red grimaced at some bad memory. “If they were, I’d sure be out on my ear.”

“Slipped up, did you?” She gave him a quizzical look. “You, uh, didn’t throw pesticide on the boss?”

He shook his head. “Something much worse, I’m afraid. All I got was a little jail time and a lecture from the boss.” He smiled. “Closest call I’ve had in recent years.”

“Most people mess up once in a while,” she said kindly.

“That’s true. The only thing that will get you fired here is stealing,” he added. “I don’t know why it’s such an issue with the boss, but he let a guy go last year for taking an expensive drill that didn’t belong to him. He said he wouldn’t abide a thief on the place. Cane, now, almost jumped the guy.” He shook his head. “Odd, odd people in some respects.”

“I suppose there’s something that happened to them in the past,” she conjectured.

“Could be.” He made a face. “That girl, Gelly, that the boss goes around with has a shifty look,” he added in a lowered tone. “There was some talk about her when she and her dad first moved here, about how they got the old Barnes property they’re living on.” He grimaced. “She’s a looker, I’ll give her that, but I think the boss is out of his noggin for letting her hang around. Funny thing about that drill going missing,” he added with narrowed, thoughtful eyes. “She didn’t like the cowboy because he mouthed off to her. She was in the bunkhouse just before the boss found the missing drill in the guy’s satchel, and the cowboy cussed a blue streak about being innocent. It didn’t do any good. He was let go on the spot.”

She felt cold chills down her spine. She’d only seen the boss’s current love interest once, and it had been quite enough to convince her that the woman was putting on airs and pretending a sophistication she didn’t really have. Most men weren’t up on current fashions in high social circles, but Morie was, and she knew at first glance that Gelly Bruner was wearing last year’s colors and fads. Morie had been to Fashion Week and subscribed, at home, to several magazines featuring the best in couture, both in English and French. Her wardrobe reflected the newer innovations. Her mother, Shelby, had been a top model in her younger days, and she knew many famous designers who were happy to outfit her daughter.

She didn’t dare mention her fashion sense here, of course. It would take away her one chance to live like a normal, young single woman.

“You went to college recently, didn’t you?” Red asked. He grinned at her surprise. “There’s no secrets on a ranch. It’s like a big family…we know everything.”

“Yes, I did,” she agreed, not taking offense.

“You live in them coed dorms, with men and women living together?” he asked, and seemed interested in her answer.

“No, I didn’t,” she said curtly. “My parents raised me very strictly. I guess I have old attitudes because of it, but I wasn’t living in a dorm with single men.” She shrugged. “I lived off campus with a girlfriend.”

He raised both eyebrows. “Well, aren’t you a dinosaur!” he exclaimed, but with twinkling eyes and obvious approval.

“That’s right—I should live in a zoo.” She made a wry face. “I don’t fit in with modern society. That’s why I’m out here,” she added.

He nodded. “That’s why most of us are out here. We’re insulated from what people call civilization.” He leaned down. “I love it here.”

“So do I, Red,” she agreed.

He glanced at the cattle and grimaced. “We’d better get this finished,” he said, looking up at the sky. “They’re predicting rain again. On top of all that snowmelt, we’ll be lucky if we don’t get some more bad flooding this year.”

“Or more snow,” she said, tongue-in-cheek. Wyoming weather was unpredictable; she’d already learned that. Some of the local ranchers had been forced to live in town when the snow piled up so that they couldn’t even get to the cattle. Government agencies had come in to airlift food to starving animals.

Now the snowmelt was a problem. But so were mosquitoes in the unnaturally warm weather. People didn’t think mosquitoes lived in places like Wyoming and Montana, but they thrived everywhere, it seemed. Along with other pests that could damage the health of cattle.

“You come from down south of here, don’t you?” Red asked. “Where?”

She pursed her lips. “One of the other states,” she said. “I’m not telling which one.”

“Texas.”

Her eyebrows shot up. He laughed. “Boss had a copy of your driver’s license for the files. I just happened to notice it when I hacked into his personnel files.”

“Red!”

“Hey, at least I stopped hacking CIA files,” he protested. “And darn, I was enjoying that until they caught me.”

She was shocked.

He shrugged. “Most men have a hobby of some sort. At least they didn’t keep me locked up for long. Even offered me a job in their cybercrime unit.” He laughed. “I may take them up on it one day. But for now, I’m happy being a ranch hand.”

“You are full of surprises,” she exclaimed.

“You ain’t seen nothing yet,” he teased. “Let’s get back to work.”

CHAPTER TWO

THE SMALL TOWN NEAR THE RANCH was called Catelow, named after a settler who came out west for his health in the early 1800s. He and his family, and some friends who were merchants, petitioned for and got a railhead established so that he could ship cattle east from his ranch property. A few of his descendants still lived locally, but more and more of the younger citizens went out of state to big cities for high-tech jobs that paid better wages.

Still, the town had all the necessary amenities. Catelow had a good police force, a fire department, a shopping mall, numerous ethnic restaurants, a scattering of Protestant churches and a Catholic one, a city manager from California who was a whiz at making a sickly city government thrive, and a big feed store next to an even bigger hardware store.

There was also a tractor dealership. From her childhood, following her father around various vendors, she’d been fascinated with heavy machinery. Once, while she was in college, for her birthday present King Brannt had actually rented a Caterpillar earthmover and had the driver teach her how to operate it. She’d had her brother, Cort, do home movies of the event. The rat wouldn’t edit out the part where she drove the machine into a ditch and got it stuck in the mud, however. Cort had a wicked sense of humor, like King’s younger brother, Danny, who was now a superior court judge, happily married to his former secretary, redheaded Edie Jackson. They had two sons.

She walked down the rows of tractors, sighing over a big green one that could probably have done everything short of cook a meal. It even had a cab to keep the sun off the driver.

“This is how you spend your day off, looking at tractors?” a sarcastic feminine voice asked from behind her.

Startled, she turned to find Mallory with Gelly Bruner clinging to his arm.

“I like tractors,” Morie said simply. She glared at the other woman, whose obviously tinted blond hair was worn loose, with gem clips holding it back. She was dressed in a clinging silk dress with high, spiky heels and a sweater. It was barely May, and some days were still chilly. “Something wrong with that?”

“It’s not very womanly, is it?” Gelly sighed. She shifted in a deliberate way that emphasized her slender curves. She moved closer to Mallory and beamed up at him. “I’d much rather browse in a Victoria’s Secret shop,” she purred.

“Oh, yes, I can certainly see myself dipping cattle wearing one of those camisole sets,” Morie replied with a rueful grin.

“I can’t see you wearing anything…feminine, myself,” Gelly returned. Her smile had an ugly edge to it. “You aren’t really a girlie girl, are you?”

Morie, remembering how she’d turned heads in a particularly exquisite oyster-colored gown from a famous French designer, only stared at Gelly without speaking. The look was unanswerable, and it made the other woman furious.

“I hate tractors, and it’s chilly out here,” Gelly told Mallory, tugging at his arm. “Can’t we get a cappuccino in that new shop next to the florist?”

Mallory shrugged. “Suits me.” He glanced at Morie. “Want to come?” he asked.

Morie was shocked and pleased by the request. The boss, taking the hired help out for coffee? She pondered doing it, just to make the other woman even madder. Gelly was flushed with anger by now.

“Thanks,” she said. “But I’m having fun looking at the equipment.”

Gelly relaxed and Mallory seemed perplexed.

“I’m buying,” he added.

Which indicated that he thought Morie couldn’t afford the expensive coffee and was declining for that reason. She felt vaguely offended. Of course, he knew nothing about her background. Her last name might be unusual, but she’d seen it in other states, even in other countries. He wasn’t likely to connect a poor working girl with a famous cattleman, even if he might have met her father at some point. He ran Santa Gertrudis cattle, and her father’s Santa Gertrudis seed bulls were famous, and much sought after at very high prices, for their bloodlines.

She cleared her throat. “Yes, well, thanks, but not today.”

Mallory smiled oddly. “Okay. Have fun.”

“Thanks.”

They moved away, but not quickly enough for her to miss Gelly’s muttered, “Very egalitarian of you to offer cappuccino to the hired help,” she said in a tone that stung. “I bet she doesn’t even know what it is.”

Morie gritted her teeth. One day, lady, she thought, you’re going to get yours.

She turned back to the tractors with a sigh.

A red, older-model sports car roared up at the office building and stopped in a near skid. The door opened and closed. A minute later, a pleasant tall man with light brown hair and dark eyes came up to her. He was wearing a suit, unusual in a rural town, except for bankers.

He glanced at her with a smile. “Looking to buy something?”

“Me? Oh, no, I work on a ranch. I just like heavy equipment.”

His eyebrows arched. “You do?”

She laughed. “I guess it sounds odd.”

“Not really,” he replied. “My mom always said she married my dad because he surrounded himself with backhoes and earthmovers. She likes to drive them.”

“Really!”

“My dad owns this.” He waved his hand at the tractors. “I’m sales and marketing,” he added with a grimace. “I’d rather work in advertising, but Dad doesn’t have anybody else. I’m an only child.”

“Still, it’s not a bad job, is it?” she asked pleasantly.

He chuckled. “Not bad at all, on some days.” He extended a well-manicured hand. “Clark Edmondson,” he introduced himself.

She shook it. “Morie Brannt.”

“Very nice to meet you, Miss…Ms. …Mrs. …?” he fished.

“Ms.,” she said, laughing. “But I’m single.”

“What a coincidence. So am I!”

“Imagine that.”

“Are you really just looking, or scouting out a good deal for your boss?”

“I’m sure my boss can do his own deals,” she replied. “I work for Mallory Kirk at the Rancho Real,” she added.

“Oh. Him.” He didn’t look impressed.

“You know him.”

“I know him, all right. We’ve had words a time or two on equipment repairs. He used to buy from us. Now he buys from a dealer in Casper.” He shrugged. “Well, that’s old news. A lot of locals work for him, and he doesn’t have a large turnover. So I guess he’s good to his employees even if he’s a pain in the neck to vendors.”

She laughed. “I suppose.”

He cocked his head and looked down at her with both hands in his pockets. “You date?”

She laughed, surprised. “Well, sort of. I mean, I haven’t recently.”

“Like movies?”

“What sort?”

“Horror,” he said.

“I like the vampire trilogy that’s been popular.”

He made a face.

“I like all the new cartoon movies, the Harry Potter ones, the Narnia films and anything to do with Star Trek or Star Wars,” she told him.

“Well!”

“How about you?”

“I’m not keen on science fiction, but I haven’t seen that new werewolf movie.” He pursed his lips. “Want to go see it with me? There’s a community theater. It doesn’t have a lot of the stuff the big complexes do, but it’s not bad. There’s a Chinese restaurant right next door that stays open late.”

She hesitated. She wasn’t sure this was a good idea. He looked like a nice man. But her new boss seemed to be a fair judge of character and he wouldn’t do business here. It was a red flag.

“I’m mostly harmless,” he replied. “I have good teeth, I only swear when really provoked, I wear size-eleven shoes and I’ve only had five speeding tickets. Oh, and I can speak Norwegian.”

She stared at him, speechless. “I’ve never known anyone who could speak Norwegian.”

“It will come in handy if I ever go to Norway,” he replied with a chuckle. “God knows why I studied it. Spanish or French or even German would have made more sense.”

“I think you should learn what you want to learn.”

“So. How about the movie?”

She glanced at her watch. “I have to help with calving, so I’m mostly on call for the rest of the weekend. It’s already past time I was back at work. I only have a half day on Saturdays.”

“Darn. Well, how about next Friday night? If calving permits?”

“I’ll ask the boss,” she said.

He raised an eyebrow.

“I have to,” she replied. “I’m a new hire. I don’t want to risk losing my job for being AWOL.”

“Sounds like the military,” he suggested.

“I guess so. It sort of feels like it, on the ranch, too.”

“All three of the brothers fought overseas,” he said. “Two of them didn’t fare so well. Mallory, though, he’s hard to dent.”

“I noticed.” She hadn’t known that Mallory had been in the military, but it made sense, considering his air of authority. He was probably an officer, as well, when he’d been on active duty.

She saw him staring, waiting. She grimaced. “If I can get the time off, I’d like to see the film.”

He beamed. “Great!”

She sighed. “I’ve forgotten how to go on a date. I’ll have to go in jeans and a shirt. I didn’t bring a dress or even a skirt to the ranch when I hired on. All my stuff is back home with my folks.”

“You’re noticing the suit. I wear it to impress potential customers,” he said with a grin. “Around town, I mostly wear slacks and sport shirts, so jeans will be fine. We aren’t exactly going to a ball, Cinderella,” he added with twinkling eyes. “And I’m no prince.”

“I think they’re rewriting that fairy tale so that Cinderella is CEO of a corporation and she rescues a poor dockworker from his evil stepbrothers,” she said, tongue-in-cheek.

“God forbid!” he exclaimed. “Don’t women want to be women anymore?”

“Apparently not, if you watch television or films much.” She sighed. She looked down at her own clothing. “Modern life requires us to work for a living, and there are only so many jobs available. Not much economically viable stuff for girls who lounge around in eyelet and lace and drink tea in parlors.” Her dark eyes smiled.

“Did I sound sarcastic? I didn’t mean to. I like feminine women, but I think lady wrestlers are exciting when they do it in mud.”

She laughed explosively. “Sexist!”

“Hey, I’d watch two men wrestle in mud, too. I like mud.”

She remembered being covered in that, and pesticide, on the ranch and winced. “You wouldn’t if you had to dip cattle around it,” she promised him.

“Good thing I don’t know anything about the cattle business, then,” he said lightly. “So ask your boss if you can have three hours off next Friday and we’ll see the werewolf movie.”

She hesitated. “Won’t it be kind of gory?”

He sighed. “There’s always that cartoon movie that Johnny Depp does the voice-over for, the chameleon Western.”

She laughed. He was pleasant, nice to look at and had a sense of humor. And she hadn’t been on a date in months. It just might be fun.

“Okay, then,” she told him. “I like Johnny Depp in anything, even if it’s only his voice. That’s a date.”

He smiled back. “That’s a date,” he agreed.

THERE WAS A LOT TO DO around a ranch during calving season, and most of the cowboys—and cowgirl—didn’t plan on getting much sleep.

Heifers who were calving for the first time were watched carefully. There was also an old mama cow who was known for wandering off and hiding in thickets to calve. Nobody knew why; she just did it. Morie named her Bessy and devoted herself to keeping a careful eye on the old girl.

“Now don’t go following that old cow around and forget to watch the others,” Darby cautioned. “She can’t hide where we won’t be able to find her.”

“I know that, but she’s getting some age on her and there’s snow being forecast again,” she said worriedly. “What if she got stuck in a drift? If we had a repeat of the last storm, we might not even be able to hunt for her. Hard to ride a horse through snow that’s over his head,” she added, with a straight face.

He laughed. “I see your point. But you have to consider that this is a big spread, and we’ve got dozens of mama cows around here. Not to mention, we’ve got a lot of replacement heifers who are dropping calves for the first time. That’s a lot of profit in a recession. Can’t afford to lose many.”

“I know.” Her father had cut his cattle herd because of the rising prices of grain, she recalled, and he was concentrating on a higher-quality bull herd rather than expanding into a cow-calf operation like the one his father, the late Jim Brannt, had built up.

“Dang, it’s cold today,” Darby said as he finished doctoring one of the seed bulls.

“I noticed.” Morie chuckled, pulling her denim coat tighter and buttoning it. She had really good clothes back home, but she’d brought the oldest ones with her, so that she didn’t raise any suspicions about her status.

“Better get back to riding that fence line,” he added.

“I’m on my way. Just had to pick up my iPod,” she said, displaying it in its case. “I can’t live without my tunes.”

He pursed his lips. “What sort of music do you like?”

“Let’s see, country and western, classical, soundtracks, blues…”

“All of it, in other words.”

She nodded. “I like world music, too. It’s fun to listen to foreign artists, even if I mostly can’t understand anything they sing.”

He shook his head. “I’m just a straight John Denver man.”

She lifted both eyebrows.

“He was a folk singer in the sixties,” he told her. “Did this one song, ‘Calypso,’ about that ship that Jacques Cousteau used to drive around the world when he was diving.” He smiled with nostalgia. “Dang, I must have spent a small fortune playing that one on jukeboxes.” He looked at her. “Don’t know what a jukebox is, I’ll bet.”

“I do so. My mom told me all about them.”

He shook his head. “How the world has changed since I was a boy.” He sighed. “Some changes are good. Most—” he glowered “—are not.”

She laughed. “Well, I like my iPod, because it’s portable music.” She attached her earphones to the device, with which she could surf the internet, listen to music, even watch movies as long as she was within reach of the Wi-Fi system on the ranch. “I’ll see you later.”

“Got a gun?” he asked suddenly.

She gaped at him. “What am I going to do, shoot wolves? That’s against the law.”

“Everything’s against the law where ranchers are concerned. No, I wasn’t thinking about four-legged varmints. There’s an escaped convict, a murderer. They think he’s in the area.”

She caught her breath. “Could he get onto the ranch?”

“No fence can keep out a determined man. He’ll just go right over it,” he told her. He went back into the bunkhouse and returned with a small handgun in a leather holster. “It’s a .32 Smith & Wesson,” he said, handing it up. He made a face when she hesitated. “You don’t have to kill a man to scare him. Just shoot near him and run.” He frowned. “Can you shoot a gun?”

“Oh, yes, my dad made sure of it,” she told him. “He taught me and my brother to use anything from a peashooter to all four gauges of shotguns.”

He nodded. “Then take it. Put it in your saddlebag. I’ll feel better.”

She smiled at him. “You’re nice, Darby.”

“You bet I am,” he replied. “Can’t afford to lose someone who works as hard as you do.”

She made a face at him. She mounted her horse, a chestnut gelding, and rode off.

The open country was so beautiful. In the distance she could see the Teton Mountains, rising like white spires against the gray, overcast sky. The fir trees were still a deep green, even in the last frantic clutches of fading winter. It was too soon for much tender vegetation to start pushing up out of the ground, but spring was close at hand.

Most ranchers bred their cattle to drop calves in early spring, just as the grass came out of hibernation and grain crops began growing. Lush, fresh grass would be nutritious to feed the cows while they nursed their offspring. By the time the calves were weaned, the grass would still be lush and green and tasty for them, if the rain cooperated.

She liked the way the Kirk boys worked at ecology, at natural systems. They had windmills everywhere to pump water into containers for the cattle. They grew natural grasses and were careful not to strain the delicate topsoil by overplanting. They used crop rotation to keep the soil fresh and productive, and they used natural fertilizer. They maintained ponds of cattle waste, which was used to produce methane that powered electricity for the calving barn and the other outbuildings. It was a high-tech, fascinating sort of place. Especially for a bunch of cattlemen who’d taken a dying ranch and made it grow and thrive. They weren’t rich yet, but they were well-to-do and canny about the markets. Besides that, Mallory was something of a financial genius. The ranch was starting to make money. Big money.

Cane went to the cattle shows with their prize bulls, Darby had told her, when Cane stayed sober for a long-enough stretch. He was sort of intimidating to Morie, but he had a live-wire personality and he could charm buyers.

Dalton, whom they called, for some reason, Tank, was the marketing specialist. He drew up brochures for the production sales, traveled to conferences and conventions, attended political-action committee meetings for the county and state and even national cattlemen’s associations, and devoted himself to publicizing the ranch’s prize cattle. He worked tirelessly. But he was a haunted man, and it showed.

Mallory was the boss. He made all the big decisions, although he was democratic enough to give his brothers a voice. They were all opinionated. Darby said it was genetic; their parents had been the same.

Morie understood that. Her dad was one of the most opinionated men she’d ever known. Her mother was gentle and sweet, although she had a temper. Life at home had always been interesting. It was just that Morie had become an entrée for any money-hungry bachelor looking for financial stability. Somewhere there must be a man who’d want her for what she was, not what she had.

She rode the fence line, looking for breaks. It was one of the important chores around the ranch. A fence that was down invited cattle to cross over onto public lands, or even onto the long two-lane state highway that ran beside the ranch. One cow in the road could cause an accident that would result in a crippling lawsuit for the brothers.

Darby had been vocal about the sue-everybody mentality that had taken over the country in recent years. He told Morie that in his day, attorneys were held to a higher standard of behavior and weren’t even allowed to advertise their services. Nobody had sued anybody that he knew of, when he was a boy. Now people sued over everything. He had little respect for the profession today. Morie had defended it. Her uncle was a superior court judge who’d been a practicing attorney for many years. He was honest to a fault and went out of his way to help people who’d been wronged and didn’t have money for an attorney. Darby had conceded that perhaps there were some good lawyers. But he added that frivolous lawsuits were going to end civilization as it stood. She just smiled and went on about her business. They could agree to disagree. After all, tolerance was what made life bearable.

She halted at the creek long enough to let her gelding have a drink. She adjusted her earphones so that she could listen to Mark Mancina’s exquisite soundtrack for the motion picture August Rush. There was an organ solo that sent chills of delight down her spine. She got the same feeling listening to Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor played on a pipe organ. Music was a big part of her life. She could play classical piano, but she was rusty. College had robbed her of practice time. She’d noticed a big grand piano in the Kirks’ living room. She wondered which of the brothers played. She’d never asked.

She stopped at a stretch of fence where the last snow-and-ice storm had brought a limb down. The ice was gone, but the limb was still resting on the fence, bending it down so that cattle could have walked over it. The limb was a big one, but she was strong. She dismounted, buttoned her coat pocket so that the iPod wouldn’t fall out and went at the limb.

She had to break pieces off before she could ease it onto the ground. In the process, one of the sharp branches cut her cheek. She muttered as she felt blood on her fingers when she touched it. Well, it would mend.

She pushed the limb onto the ground with a grimace, but she was glad to see that the fence wasn’t damaged, only a little bent from the collision. She wrangled it back into some sort of order and made a note on the iPod so that she could report its location to the brothers with the GPS device she always carried with her. They were pretty high-tech for a low-budget operation, she thought. They had laptops that they used during roundup to coordinate all the activity.

She paused as the crescendo built on the soundtrack, and closed her eyes to savor it. How wonderful it must be, she thought, to be a composer and be able to write scores that touched the very heart and soul of listeners. She was musical, but she had no such talent. She didn’t compose. She only interpreted the music of others when she played the piano or, less frequently, the guitar.

“Hurt yourself?” A deep, drawling voice came from behind.

She whirled, her heart racing, her eyes wide and shocked as she faced a stranger standing a few feet away. She looked like a doe in the sights of a hunter.

He was tall and lean, with dark eyes and hair under a wide-brimmed hat, wearing jeans and a weather-beaten black hat. He was smiling.

“Mr. Kirk,” she stammered, as she finally recognized Dalton Kirk. She hadn’t seen him often. He wasn’t as familiar to her as Mallory was. “Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention…”

He reached out and took one of the earphones, pursing his sensual lips as he listened. He handed it back. “August Rush,” he said.

Her eyebrows shot up. “You know the score?”

He smiled at her surprise. “Yes. It’s one of my own favorites, especially that pipe-organ solo.”

“That’s my favorite, too,” she agreed.

He glanced at the fence. “Make a note of the coordinates so we can replace that section of fence, will you?” he asked. “It will keep the cattle in for now, but not for long.”

“I already did,” she confirmed. She was still catching her breath.

“There’s an escaped convict out here somewhere,” he told her. “I don’t think he’s guilty, but he’s desperate. I love music as much as anybody, but there’s a time and place for listening to it, and this isn’t it. If I’d been that man, and desperate enough to shoot somebody or take a hostage, you’d be dead or taken away by now.”

She’d just realized that. She nodded.

“Now you see why it’s against the law to listen with earphones when you’re driving,” he said. “You couldn’t hear a siren with those on.” He indicated the earphones.

“Yes. I mean, yes, sir.”

He cocked his head. His dark eyes twinkled. “Call me Tank. Everybody does.”

“Why?” she blurted out.

“We were facing down an Iraqi tank during the invasion of Iraq,” he told her, “and we were taking substantial damage. We lost comms with the artillery unit that was covering us and we didn’t have an antitank weapon with us.” He shrugged. “I waded in with a grenade and the crew surrendered. Ever since, I’ve been Tank.”

She laughed. He wasn’t as intimidating as he’d once seemed.

“So keep those earphones in your pocket and listen to music when it’s a little safer, will you?”

“I will,” she promised, and put away the iPod.

He mounted the black gelding she hadn’t heard approaching and rode closer. “That thing isn’t a phone, is it?”

“No, sir.”

“Do you carry a cell phone?” he added, and his lean, strong face was solemn.

She pulled a little emergency one out of her pocket and showed it to him. “It’s just for 911 calls, but it would do the job.”

“It wouldn’t. We’ll get you one. It’s essential here. I’ll tell Darby—he’ll arrange it for you.”

“Thanks,” she said, surprised. She should have been using her own phone, but she thought it might give her away. It was one of the very expensive models. The one she was carrying looked much more like something a poor cowgirl would own.

“Oh, we’re nice,” he told her with a straight face. “We have sterling characters, we never curse or complain, we’re always easy to get along with… .” He stopped because she was muffling laughter.

“Just because Cane can turn the air blue, and Mallory throws things is no reason to think we’re not easygoing,” he instructed.

“Yes, sir. I’ll remember that.”

He laughed. “If you need anything, you call,” he said. “Keep your eyes open. The man who escaped was charged with killing a man in cold blood,” he added solemnly. “Joe Bascomb. He was with me in Iraq. But desperate men can do desperate things. He might hurt a stranger, even a woman, if he thought she might turn him in to the law. He’s sworn he’ll never go back to jail.” His eyes were sad. “I never thought he’d run. I’m sure he didn’t mean to kill the other man, if in fact he did. But they’re bound and determined to catch him, and he’s determined not to be caught. So you watch your back.”

“I’ll be more careful.”

“Please do. Good help is hard to find.” He tipped his hat, and rode away.

Morie breathed a sigh of relief and got back on her horse.

CHAPTER THREE

THERE WAS SOME BIG SHINDIG planned for the following Friday, Morie heard. The housekeeper, Mavie Taylor, was vocal about the food the brothers wanted prepared for it.

“I can’t make canapés,” she groaned, pushing back a graying strand of hair that had escaped its bun. She propped her hands on her thin hips and glowered. “How am I supposed to come up with things like that when all they ever want is steak and potatoes?”

“Listen, canapés are easy,” Morie said gently. “You can take a cocktail sausage and wrap it in bacon, secure it with a toothpick and bake it.” She gave the temperature setting and cooking time. “Then you can make little cucumber sandwiches cut into triangles, tea cakes, cheese straws…”

“Wait a minute.” She was writing frantically on a pad. “What else?”

Morie glowed. It was the first time the acid-tongued housekeeper had ever said anything halfway pleasant to her. She named several other small, easily prepared snacks that would be recognizable to any social animal as a canapé.

“How do you know all this?” the woman asked finally, and suspiciously.

“Last ranch I worked at, I had to help in the kitchen,” Morie said, and it was no lie. She often helped Shelby when company was coming.

“This is nice,” she replied. She tried to smile. It didn’t quite work. Those facial muscles didn’t get much exercise. “Thanks,” she added stiffly.

Morie grinned. “You’re welcome.”

Her small eyes narrowed. “Okay, what about table linen and stuff?”

“Do you have a selection of those?”

“I hope so.” The harassed woman sighed. “I only came to work here a couple of weeks before you did. I’ve never had to cook for a party and I don’t have a clue about place settings. I’m no high-society chef! I mean, look at me!” she exclaimed, indicating her sweatpants and T-shirt that read Give Chickens the Vote!

Morie tried not to giggle. She’d never credited the Kirks’ venomous housekeeper with a sense of humor. Perhaps she’d misjudged the woman.

“I cooked for a bunkhouse crew before this,” Mavie muttered. “The brothers knew it…I told them so. Now here they come wanting me to cook for visiting politicians from Washington and figure out how to put priceless china and delicate crystal and silver utensils in some sort of recognizable pattern on an antique linen tablecloth!”

“It’s all right,” Morie said. “I’ll help.”

She blinked. “You will? They won’t like it.” She nodded toward the distant living room.

“They won’t know,” she promised.

The housekeeper shifted nervously. “Okay. Thanks. That Bruner woman’s always in here complaining about how I cook,” she added sourly.

“That’s all right, she’s always complaining about how I dress.”

The other woman’s eyes actually twinkled. Nothing made friends like a common enemy. “She thinks I’m not capable of catering a party. She wants to hire one of her society friends and let Mallory pay her a fortune to do it.”

“We’ll show her,” Morie said.

There was a chuckle. “Okay. I’m game. What’s next?”

MORIE SPENT A VERY ENJOYABLE hour of her free time laying out a menu for Mavie and diagramming the placement of the silver and crystal on the tablecloth. She advised buying and using a transparent plastic cover over the antique tablecloth to preserve it from spills of red wine, which, the housekeeper groaned, the brothers preferred.

“They’ll never let me do that.” She sighed.

“Well, I suppose not,” Morie replied, trying to imagine her mother, that superhostess, putting plastic on her own priceless imported linen. “And I suppose we can find a dry cleaner who can get out stains if they’re fresh.”

“I don’t guess I can wear sweats to serve at table,” Mavie groaned.

“You could hire a caterer” came the suggestion.

“Nearest caterer I know of is in Jackson, ninety miles away,” the housekeeper said. “Think they’ll spring to fly him and his staff down here?”

Morie chuckled. No, not in the current economic environment. “Guess not.”

“Then we’ll have to manage.” She frowned. “I do have one passable dress. I guess it will still fit. And I can get a couple of the cowboys’ wives to come and help. But I don’t know how to serve anything.”

“I do,” Morie said gently. “I’ll coach you and the wives who help.”

Mavie cocked her head. Her blue eyes narrowed. “You’re not quite what you seem, are you?”

Morie tried to look innocent. “I just cooked for a big ranch,” she replied.

The housekeeper pursed her lips. “Okay. If you say so.”

Morie grinned. “I do. So, let’s talk about entrées!”

MALLORY CAME IN WHILE Morie was sipping a cup of coffee with Mavie after their preparations.

Morie looked up, disturbed, when Mallory stared at her pointedly.

“It’s my afternoon off,” she blurted.

His thick eyebrows lifted. “Did I say anything?”

“You were thinking it,” she shot back.

“Hard worker and reads minds.” Mallory nodded. “Nice combination.”

“She gave me some tips on canapés for that high-society party you’re making me cook for,” Mavie grumbled, glaring at him. “Never cooked for any darn politicians. I don’t like politicians.” She frowned. “I wonder what hemlock looks like…?”

“You stop that,” Mallory said at once. “We’re feeding them so we can push some agendas their way. We need a sympathetic ear in Washington for the cattlemen’s lobby.”

“They should keep buffalo in the park where they belong instead of letting them wander onto private land and infect cattle with brucellosis,” Morie muttered. “And people who don’t live here shouldn’t make policy for people who do. They’re trying to force out all the independent ranchers and farmers, it seems to me.”

Mallory pulled up a chair and sat down. “Exactly,” he said. “Mavie, can I have coffee, please?”

“Sure thing, boss.” She jumped up to make more.

“Another thing is this biofuel,” Mallory said. “Sure, it’s good tech. It will make the environment better. We’re already using wind and sun for power, even methane from animal waste. But we’re growing so much corn for fuel that we’re risking precious food stores. We’ve gone to natural, native grasses to feed our cattle because corn prices are killing our budget.”

“Grass fed is better,” Morie replied. “Especially for consumers who want lean cuts of beef.”

He glowered at her. “We don’t run beef cattle.”

“You run herd bulls,” she pointed out. “Same end result. You want a bull who breeds leaner beef calves.”

Mallory shifted uncomfortably. “We don’t raise veal.”

“Neither do—” She stopped abruptly. She was about to say “we,” because her father wouldn’t raise it, either. “Neither do a lot of ranchers. You must have a good model for your breeding program.”

“We do. I studied animal husbandry in school,” he said. “I learned how to tweak the genetics of cattle to breed for certain traits.”

“Like lower birth weight in calves and leaner conformation.”

“Yes. And enlarged…” He stopped in midsentence and seemed uncomfortable. “Well, for larger, uh, seed storage in herd bulls.”

She had to bite her tongue to keep from bursting out laughing. It was a common reference among cattlemen, but he was uncomfortable using the term with her. He was very old-world. She didn’t laugh. He was protecting her, in a sense. She shouldn’t like it. But she did.

He was studying her with open curiosity. “You know a lot about the cattle business.”

“I pick up a lot, working ranches,” she said. “I always listened when the boss talked about improving his herd.”

“Was he a good boss?”

“Oh, yes,” she said. Her dad had a very low turnover in his employees. He was fair to them, made sure they had insurance and every other benefit he could give them.

“Why did you leave, then?” he asked.

She shifted. Had to walk a careful line on this one, she thought. “I had a little trouble with an admirer,” she said finally. It was true. The man hadn’t been a ranch hand, but she insinuated that he was.

Mallory’s eyes narrowed. “That won’t ever happen here. You have problems with any of the cowboys, you just tell me. I’ll handle it.”

She beamed. “Thanks.”

“No problem. Thanks, Mavie,” he added when the housekeeper put a cup of black coffee with just a little cream at his hand. “You make the best coffee in Wyoming.”

“You’re only saying that because you want an apple pie for supper.”

His eyebrows shot up. “Hell, am I that obvious?”

“Absolutely,” she declared.

He shrugged. “I love apple pie.”

“I noticed. I suppose I can peel apples and listen while you two talk cattle,” she said, and got up to retrieve fresh apples from the counter along with a big bowl and a paring knife.

“Uh, about men,” Morie said, looking for an opening.

He scowled. “You are having problems here!”

“No!” She swallowed. “No, I’m not. There’s this nice man in town who wants to go out with me. His father runs the local tractor store—”

“No!”

She gaped at him.

“Clark Edmondson has a bad reputation locally,” he continued curtly. “He took out one of Jack Corrie’s daughters and deserted her at a country bar when she wouldn’t make out with him in his car. He was pretty drunk at the time.”

“We’re not going to a bar,” she stammered uncharacteristically, “just to a movie in town.”

He cocked his head. “What movie?”

“That cartoon one, about the chameleon. The lizard Western.”

“Actually, that one’s pretty good. I would have thought he’d prefer the werewolf movie, though.”

She shifted in her chair. “That’s the first one he suggested. I don’t like gore. The reviewers said it had some in it, and it got bad reviews.”

“You believe reviewers know what they’re talking about?” he queried with a twinkle in his eyes. “They don’t buy books or movie tickets, you know. They’re just average people with average opinions. One opinion doesn’t make or break a sale in the entertainment business.”

“I never thought of it like that.”

“I don’t read reviews. I look at what a book is about, or a movie, and make up my own mind whether to read it or see it in a theater. In fact, the werewolf movie had exquisite cinematography and some of the best CGI I’ve seen in a long time. I liked it, especially that gorgeous blonde girl in that red, red cape in the white, snowy background,” he recalled. “Film reviewers. What do they know?” he scoffed.

“Opinionated, is what he is,” Mavie said from beside them, where she sat peeling apples. “And it was Bill Duvall who told you about the Corrie girl. He’s sweet on her and she doesn’t like Clark, so you take that into account when you hear the story.” She looked down at her hands working on an apple. “Nothing wrong with Clark, except he’s flighty. You don’t understand flighty, because all three of you are rock-solid sort of people, full of opinions and attitude.”

Mallory let out a short laugh as he sipped coffee. “I don’t have an attitude.”

“Oh, yes, you do,” the housekeeper shot back.

He shrugged. “Maybe I do.” He glanced at Morie and his eyes narrowed. “You take your cell phone with you, and if Clark gets out of hand, you call. Got that?”

“Oh…okay.” It was like being back at home. He sounded just like her dad did when she’d dated a boy he didn’t know in high school. “He wanted to take me to the movies on Saturday, but I’m supposed to be watching calving… .”

“I’ll get one of the part-timers to come in and cover for you. This time,” he added curtly. “Don’t expect concessions. We can’t afford them.”

She flushed. “Yes, sir. Thanks.”

“She’s over twenty-one, boss,” Mavie said drily.

“She works for me,” he replied. “I’m responsible for every hire I’ve got. Some more than others.” He looked pointedly at Morie, and he didn’t look away.

It was like being caught by a live wire when she met that searching stare. Her heart kicked into high gear. Her breath caught in her throat. She felt the intensity of the look right down to her toes. She’d never felt such a surge of pleasure in her whole life.

Mallory appeared to forcibly drag his eyes away. He sipped coffee. “Well, you can go, but you be careful. I still think he’s a risk. But it’s your life.”

“Yes, it is,” she replied. Her throat felt tight, and she was flushed. She got to her feet. “Thanks for the coffee,” she told the housekeeper. “It’s time for me to get to work.”

“Don’t fall in the dipping pool,” Mallory said with a straight face, but his dark eyes twinkled in a way that was new and exciting.

“Yes, sir, boss,” she replied. She smiled and turned to move quickly out of the room before she embarrassed herself by staring at him. She wondered how she was going to conceal the sudden new delight she got from looking at her boss.

SHE HAD A NICE PAIR OF SLACKS and a pink-and-lime embroidered sweater. She wore those for her date, and let her long hair down. She brushed it until it shone. It was thick and black and beautiful, like her mother’s. When she looked in the mirror, she saw many traces of her mother in her own face. She wasn’t beautiful, but she wasn’t plain, either. She had the same elfin features that had taken Shelby Kane Brannt to such fame in her modeling days. And Morie’s grandmother, Maria Kane, had been a motion-picture star, quite famous for her acting ability. Morie hadn’t inherited that trait. Her one taste of theater in college had convinced her that she was never meant for the stage.

She had a lightweight denim coat, and she wore that over her sweater, because it was cold outside. The weather was fluctuating madly. Typical Wyoming weather, she thought amusedly. The Texas climate was like that, too.

She heard a car drive up to the bunkhouse. She whipped her fanny pack into place and went out to meet Clark. He was sitting behind the wheel of the sports car, grinning.

She noted that he didn’t get out to open her door. He leaned across and threw it open for her.

She climbed in. “Hi.”

“Hi, back. Ready for a nice movie?”

“You bet.”

He put the car in gear and roared out down the driveway.

“Don’t do that,” she groaned. “We have heifers calving in the barn!”

“Oops, sorry, didn’t think,” he said, but he didn’t look concerned. “They’ll get over it. Nice night. They said it might snow, but I don’t believe the forecast. They’re mostly wrong.”

She was thinking about the nervous heifers being kept up because it was their first breeding season, and wondering how much flak she was going to get from her boss if anything happened because of Clark’s thoughtlessness.

“Stop worrying,” he teased. “It’s just cows, for heaven’s sake.”

Just cows. She loved to stop and pet them when she was in the barn. She loved their big eyes and big noses, and the soft fur between their eyes. They were so gentle. And these little heifers, even if they were animals, must be so scared. She’d always had a terror of childbirth, for reasons she could never quite understand. It was one of many reasons that she was hesitant to marry at all.

“Do you know that Elizabeth the First never married and never had a child?” she remarked.

He made a face. “History. I hate that. Let’s talk about who’s leading the pack in American Idol!”

She gaped at him. She didn’t watch television very much. “I watch the Weather Channel, the military channel and the science channels mostly,” she remarked. “I’ve never watched any of those audience-participation shows.”

“I can see that we’re never going to meet in the middle on issues,” he remarked. “Doesn’t matter. You’re cute and I like you. We can go from there.”

Could they? She wondered.

THE MOVIE WAS FUN. It was clever and funny and both of them came out of the theater smiling.

“Now let’s have some nice Chinese food,” he said. “You hungry?”

“Starved. But we’re going Dutch,” she added firmly. “I bought my own movie ticket…I’ll pay for my food, too.”

His eyebrows arched. “I wouldn’t expect you to owe me anything if I bought dinner.”

She smiled. “Just the same, I like everything on an equal footing.”

“You’re a strange girl,” he commented thoughtfully.

“Strange?” She shrugged. “I suppose I am.”

“Let’s eat.”

He led the way into the restaurant and they followed the waitress to a table in a corner.

“This is beautiful,” Morie remarked, loving the Asian decor, which featured nice copies of ancient statues and some wood carvings that were very expensive. Morie, who’d traveled Asia, appreciated the culture depicted. She’d loved the people she met in her travels.

“Junk,” he told her casually. “Nothing valuable in here.”

“I meant that it was pretty,” she clarified.

“Oh.” He glanced around. “I guess so. A little gaudy for my taste.”

She was about to respond when her eye caught movement at the door. There, at the counter, was her boss, Mallory Kirk, with Gelly Bruner. He spoke to the waitress and let her seat them nearby.

He smiled coolly and nodded at Morie and Clark. She was thinking that it was an odd coincidence, having him show up here. Certainly he wouldn’t have had any reason to be spying on her… .

“Do you believe this?” Clark asked, shocked. “Does he do this every time you go out with a man? I’ve heard of possessive employers, but this takes the cake.”

“He takes his date all over the place,” she replied, trying to sound casual. “This is the only really good restaurant in town.”

“I suppose so.”

“He wouldn’t have any reason to keep an eye on me,” she pointed out. “I’m just the hired help.”

He pursed his lips and studied her. “Sure.”

MALLORY WAS LOOKING AT HER, too, his dark eyes on the long wealth of thick black hair that hung straight and shiny down her back almost to her waist.

“Why are you staring at her?” Gelly asked coldly. “She’s just a common person. She works for you. And why are we here? You know I hate Chinese food!”

He didn’t hear her. He was thinking that he’d never seen anything as beautiful as that long black hair. It brought to mind a poem. She’d probably be familiar with it, too—Bess, the landlord’s black-eyed daughter, plaiting a dark red love knot into her long, black hair. “The Highwayman” by Alfred Noyes. It was a tragic poem, the heroine sacrificing herself for the hero. “‘I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way…’”

“What?” Gelly asked blankly.

He hadn’t realized that he’d spoken aloud. “Nothing. What would you like to order?” he added and forced himself to look at his date and not Morie.

MORIE WAS UNCOMFORTABLE. Clark wanted to talk about contestants on the television show, and she had no point of reference at all.

“That guy, you know, he really can’t sing, but he’s got a following and he’s getting most of the votes,” he muttered. “I like the girl. She’s classy, she’s got a great voice…Are you listening?”

She grimaced. “Sorry. I was thinking about the weather reports. They think we might have another snow, and we’ve got a lot of first-time mothers dropping calves.”

“Cows,” he groaned. “Morie, there’s more to life than four-legged steaks.”

Her eyes widened. “Mr. Kirk doesn’t have a cow-calf operation. It’s strictly a seed-bull ranch.”

He blinked. “Seed bull.”

“Yes. They produce industry-leading bulls for market.” She leaned forward. “They don’t eat them.”

He shook his head. “You are the oddest girl I ever met.”

She grinned. “Why, thank you!”

He picked up his wineglass and had a long sip. “Sure you don’t want any wine?” he asked. “This is the only restaurant in town where you can buy single drinks legally.”

“I can’t drink,” she said. “Bad stomach. I get very sick. Can’t drink carbonated beverages, either. Just coffee or iced tea. Or, in this case—” she lifted the little cup with steaming green tea “—hot tea.” She sipped it and closed her eyes. “Wonderful!”

He made a face. “You didn’t put sugar in it.”

“Oh, nobody puts sugar in it in Japan,” she blurted out and then bit her tongue. “At least, from what I’ve read,” she corrected quickly.

“I can’t drink it straight. It tastes awful.” He put the wineglass down. “They have good desserts here, sticky rice with mango or coconut ice cream.”

“The ice cream,” she said, laughing. “I love it.”

“Me, too.” He motioned to the waitress. “At least we both like one thing,” he mused.

WHEN THEY GOT READY to leave, Mallory Kirk watched them through narrowed eyes. He got up while Morie was paying the bill and motioned Clark to one side.

Clark gave him a nervous look. “Mr. Kirk,” he said pleasantly enough.

Mallory’s dark eyes narrowed. “She’s not young enough to be my daughter, but I’m responsible for her. If you do anything she doesn’t like,” he added with the coldest smile Clark had ever seen, “I’ll pay you a visit.”

“You can’t threaten people,” Clark began, flushed.

“Oh, it’s no threat, son,” Mallory said. His jaw tautened. “It’s an ironclad, gold-edged promise.”

He turned and walked off, pausing at his table to leave a tip and help Gelly to her feet.

Clark escorted an oblivious Morie out to his car. He was flushed from the wine and angry that one of the Kirk brothers had threatened him.

“I should call the police,” he muttered as he started the car and roared off out of the parking lot.

“What for?” Morie asked, curious.

“Your boss made a threat,” he said stiffly.

“My boss? What are you talking about?”

He started to tell her and then thought better of it. She was pretty and he liked her; he didn’t want her to think there was a reason for her boss to warn him off.

He shrugged. “He just said I’d better look after you,” he amended.

Her dark eyebrows arched. “Why in the world would he say something like that?” she asked, and tried not to look as flattered as she felt. No man interfered in a woman’s life unless he liked her.

“Beats me.” He glanced at her. “He’s not stuck on you, is he?”

She burst out laughing. “Oh, sure, he likes me because I’ve got millions in a trust fund and I know all the best people,” she said drily.

He laughed, too. He was out of his mind. She wasn’t the sort of woman a cattle baron would want to marry. The Kirks had fabulous parties with all sorts of famous people attending them to sell those cattle she talked about. They had some incredibly well-known friends, apparently. But Morie dressed in old clothes, even for a date. She was clueless. He was overreacting. Maybe Mal-lory really did feel responsible for her. Maybe he knew her folks. He might be afraid of a lawsuit. It wasn’t anything personal. Just good business.

“Well, I loved the movie,” she said. “Thanks.”

“Thank you. I don’t get out as much as I’d like to,” he added. “But we could see a movie once in a while and have dinner out, if you like.”

She smiled. “I’ll think about that.”

He’d planned to take her to an overlook that doubled as the local lover’s lane. But after Mal-lory’s blunt speech, he wasn’t keen to push the man. So instead, he drove her back to the ranch. He even turned off the engine and walked her to the door of the bunkhouse.

“You live in there with all those men?” he asked curiously.

“I have my own room,” she explained. “They’re nice men.”

“If you say so.”

“Well, thanks again,” she said, hesitating.

He smiled. He liked that little nervous laugh, the way her lips turned up at the corners, the faint dimple beside her mouth.

He bent and drew his lips gently against hers.

She tolerated the kiss. But she didn’t react to it. She felt nothing. Nothing at all.

He noticed that. They were too different to settle in together. But she was cute and he liked company on a night out.

“We’ll do it again soon,” he said.

She smiled. “Sure.”

She turned around and went into the bunkhouse. Darby was sitting by the door, his eyebrows arching as she walked in and closed the door behind her.

“Have fun?” he asked in a hushed tone, so he didn’t wake the cowboys down the hall.

“Yes. I guess.”

He tilted his head. “You guess?”

“Boss showed up at the restaurant,” she said, and looked puzzled. “I didn’t know he liked Chinese food.”

Darby’s eyes almost popped. “He hates it.”

She hesitated. “Well, he had Ms. Bruner with him. Maybe she likes it.”

“Maybe.”

“You sleep good, Darby.”

“You, too,” he said gently.

“The heifers doing okay?” she asked.

“Doing fine. We’ll just hope and pray that that the weatherman’s wrong on that snow forecast.”

“I’ll agree with that. Good night.”

“’Nite.”

She went into her room and closed the door. Darby had seemed shocked that the boss went to the restaurant where Morie was eating. She was shocked, too, but also pleased and flattered and thrilled to death.

She slept, finally. And her dreams were sweet.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE LAST THING MORIE EXPECTED the next day was to find a seething Gelly Bruner on her doorstep. Well, at the bunkhouse when she went in for lunch.

“I hate Chinese food,” Gelly said without a greeting.

“I’m sorry,” Morie said. “In that case, perhaps you should avoid Chinese restaurants.” She smiled.

“He went there because of you, didn’t he?” she demanded. “To make sure your date knew he was watching out for you.”

Morie looked innocent. “Why would he do that? He’s not my dad.”

Gelly frowned. “He’s not your boyfriend, either, and you’d better not make eyes at him,” she added coldly. “You won’t last long here if you do.”

“I work here,” Morie pointed out. “That’s all.”

“You see how they live and you like it,” the blonde said, giving Morie’s clothing an even colder look. “You’re poor and you’d like to have nice things and mingle with the right people.”

“I do mingle with the right people,” Morie said, offended.

“Cowboys” came the disparaging reply. “Smelly and stupid.”

“They’re neither.”

“If you do anything to make Mallory notice you, I’ll make sure it never happens again,” she added, lowering her voice. “You won’t be the first person I’ve helped off this ranch. It isn’t wise to make an enemy of me.”

“I work here,” Morie said, growing angry. She had her mother’s looks, but her father’s fiery temper. “And nobody threatens me.”

Gelly shifted. She wasn’t used to people who fought back. “My people are well-to-do,” she said stiffly. “And you won’t like how I get even.”

Morie raised an eyebrow. “Ditto.”

“Well, you just stay away from Mallory,” she said bluntly. “He’s mine and I don’t share!”

“Does he know?”

Gelly blinked. “Know what?”

“That he belongs to you? Perhaps I should ask him… .”

“You shut up!” The blonde woman’s fists balled at her sides and her face grew flushed with temper. “I’ll get you!”

“Wind and water,” Morie said philosophically. “Words.”

Gelly drew back her hand and started to slap the younger woman, but Morie threw up her forearm instinctively and blocked the move.

“I have a brown belt in Tae Kwon Do,” she told Gelly in a soft voice. Her dark eyes glittered. “Try that again, and you’ll wish you hadn’t.”

Gelly let out a furious sound. “I’ll tell Mallory!”

“Be my guest,” Morie offered. “I can teach him a few moves, too, in case you try that with him.”

Gelly stomped back off toward the house, muttering to herself.

Morie shook her head at the retreating figure.

“Unwise,” Darby said, joining her. He watched Gelly walk away. “She makes a bad enemy. We lost a hand because she accused him of stealing. Told you about that.”

“She’ll think she’s poked a hornet’s nest if she tries it with me. Nobody warns me off people and gets away with it,” she said curtly. “I don’t have any designs on the boss, for God’s sake! I don’t even know him. I just work here!”

Darby patted her on the shoulder paternally. “There, there, don’t let it get you down. Two nights’ sleep and you’ll forget why you argued with her. Come on in and eat. We’ve got chili and Mexican corn bread that Mavie made for us. She’s a wonderful cook.”

“Yes, she is,” Morie agreed. She grimaced. “Sorry. I don’t usually lose my temper, but she set me off. What a piece of work!”

“I do agree. But she’s the boss’s headache, not ours, thank God.”

“I suppose so.”

She followed him inside.

BUT THAT WASN’T THE END of it. Mallory called Morie up to the big house, and he wasn’t smiling as he motioned her into the living room and closed the door.

“Sit down, please.” He indicated a leather chair, not the cushy brocade-covered white sofa. Her jeans were stained with grass and mud from helping with calving. Probably he didn’t want a brown-spotted couch, she thought wickedly.

She sat. “Yes, sir?”

He paced. “Gelly said that you threatened her.”

“Did she?” She sounded amazed. “How odd.”

He turned and stared down at her with piercing dark eyes. “I’d like to hear your side of the story before I decide what to do.”

She cocked her head and studied him. “I’ll tell you, if you’re sure you want to know, boss. But I won’t sugarcoat it, even though I need this job.”

He seemed surprised. “Okay. That’s a deal. Shoot.”

“She warned me off you,” she said simply. “Then she threatened to have me fired. Finally, she tried to slap me and I blocked the move. She left and I went back to work.”

“In between, there’s some stuff missing,” he pointed out. “Like what you said that made her try to slap you.”

“She said that I was after you because you were rich and I was poor,” she added. The words did sting, despite Morie’s background. “She also said cowboys were smelly and stupid and that she could get me fired if she liked. I told her that I didn’t like threats and that perhaps I should ask you if you were her personal property. That’s when she tried to slap me.”

He just stared at her. He didn’t speak. God knew what Gelly had actually told him about the incident.

“I’ve never known her to get physical with anyone,” he returned. “She was crying.”

“Oh, gee, I’m sorry,” Morie said with cutting sarcasm. “Start a fight and lose it and then go crying to some big, strong man to make it all right. That how it goes?”

His jaw tautened. “I’m the boss.”

“Yes, you are, sir,” she agreed. “So if you want to fire me, go right ahead. There are a few ranches where I haven’t tried to get work yet. I’m willing to give them a try.”

He let out an angry sigh. “You might just admit that you were wrong and apologize to her,” he said curtly.

“Apologize when I was defending myself from an attack?” she asked. “How does that work, exactly?”

“She said you started it.”

“And I say that she did.”

He looked even angrier. “She’s a socialite. You’re a hired hand on my ranch. That’s what makes the difference.”

“I get it.” She nodded, trying to contain her temper. “It’s the class thing, right? She’s rich and I’m poor, so she’s right.”

“You work for me, damn it!” he shot back. “And you’re that close—” he held up his forefinger and thumb a fraction apart “—to not working for me!”

Her small hands balled up at her sides. “Nobody throws a punch at me and gets away with it. I don’t care who she is! If she’d landed that blow, I’d have had her prosecuted and I’d call every damned newspaper and television station in Wyoming to make sure everybody knew what she did!”

His eyes were glittering. “She said you told her that you wanted me and you were going to get me, and she’d be out in the cold!”

She rolled her eyes. “Good grief, you’re almost old enough to be my father,” she burst out. “What in the world was she thinking?”

He had been pacing while they talked, but as she spoke her last sentence, he’d stopped and stared at her. Then he moved like greased lightning toward her.

His mouth came down on hers with a pressure and skill that shocked her speechless. While she was trying to decide on a course of action, he backed her up against the wall between two landscape paintings, lifted her and braced his body against hers. The kiss was, at first, a medium of his anger. And then, quite suddenly, it was something entirely different.

She felt one big, warm hand high on her hip, his long leg insinuating itself between both of hers. He shifted, so that she felt him intimately. He was aroused and apparently not shy about sharing the fact with her. His mouth eased and became persuasive, teasing her lips apart while his hand positioned her slender hips so that he could get even closer.

She shivered. No man had ever made such a sudden, sensual pass at her, and she’d never felt such a surge of utter and absolute pleasure at physical contact.

But when the contact grew even more intimate, and she felt her body urging her to help him with that zipper he was trying to undo, she came to her senses.

She dragged her mouth out from under his with reluctance. “No!” she whispered. “No, don’t!”

She pushed at his chest weakly. If he insisted, she wasn’t sure that she could stop him. She didn’t want to stop him… .

He was out of his mind with the pleasure. He hadn’t felt it in years, certainly not with Gelly, who was something of a cold fish, despite her flirting. Morie had made a sharp remark about his age and it had hit him in a sore place. But this was insane. He was taking advantage of the hired help!

He dragged himself away from her and looked down. She was flushed and shaking. But it wasn’t from fear. he knew women. She was as aroused as he was. She hadn’t protested the kissing, but she wasn’t willing to go further. She behaved as if she’d never had a man. He frowned. Could there be a virgin left in the world? Sometimes he doubted it.

“I’m not an old man,” he said angrily.

She was still trying to get her breath. “Oh, no, you’re definitely not old,” she managed. She could taste him on her mouth, smell the woodsy cologne he wore on her clothing.

He averted his eyes. He didn’t lose control of himself, ever. This was embarrassing. “Sorry,” he said stiffly.

She swallowed. “It’s okay. But I should go back to work now.”

“Yes, you should.”

She moved away from the wall, hoping she wasn’t more disheveled than she felt, and that Mavie wouldn’t be around to see her when she left.

He didn’t say a word. He watched her go, stiff and uncomfortable, and pondered Gelly’s remark that Morie was a rounder who was looking for a rich sugar daddy. He knew that wasn’t true. She might be poor. She might even have designs on him for his wealth—it wouldn’t be the first time. But she was innocent. He’d have bet the ranch on it.

MORIE AVOIDED THE OTHER cowboys when she went riding fence lines. She hoped she didn’t look as disconcerted and unsettled as she felt. The boss had kissed her. No, she corrected, that hadn’t been a kiss. That had been something a lot more overt and sensual. She’d been saucy and deliberately provocative. She’d taunted the sleeping bear, but she hadn’t expected such a response.

Her mouth still tingled from the kiss. He might not be the handsomest man around, but he knew exactly what to do with a woman. She hadn’t wanted him to stop. That would have been a disaster. He might have wanted her side of the story, but it was obvious that he believed part of Gelly’s story. He wanted Morie to apologize to that blond shark, did he? Well, hell would freeze over first. She was the injured party. Gelly should apologize, not her.

But Gelly was the woman in his life. She was wealthy and pretty and cultured. Morie had the same background, but she didn’t dare admit it. She couldn’t keep her job if the boss knew who her family was.

Which brought to mind another small problem. The boss was having a gala party on Saturday. Morie had been helping Mavie with recipes and tips on serving and place settings and even decorations. Mavie wanted her to help make the canapés. She’d even asked the boss, so Morie was in something of a spot.

As long as she could hide in the kitchen during the festivities, it would be all right. But her family traveled in the same social circles that the Kirk brothers did. It was possible, even probable, that there would be someone at that party who would recognize her. She couldn’t let that happen. She’d gone to a lot of trouble to get this job, mainly because she wanted to prove to her parents and herself that she could make it in the world on her own, with no money and no influence. There was also the question of not being pursued for her wealth by some fortune-hunting male on the make.

She wasn’t going to lose her job. She just had to stay out of sight in the kitchen. If she refused to help Mavie, that would lead to questions she couldn’t answer. She agreed. But she was going to wear a kerchief over her hair and an overall and keep hidden. She only hoped none of the guests were comfortable enough to come in and speak to the cook. That wasn’t likely, though. Of course it wasn’t.

THE BIG HOUSE WAS ABLAZE with lights, inside and out. The weather was perfect. It was a beautiful spring night, the temperature was unusually comfortable and guests wandered around inside and out nibbling on canapés and drinking the best imported champagne.

Mavie was fascinated by the people she and her hired staff were feeding. “Did you see that movie star?” she exclaimed. “I just watched his last film, and now he’s got a series on one of the pay-perview channels. Isn’t he gorgeous?”

Morie peered out and chuckled. She knew the man, who was sweet and unaffected by his great fame. “He’s a doll,” she said.

“There’s that soccer star who’s paid millions a year,” Mavie continued. “And that’s the president of one of those desert countries overseas!”

“Philippe Sabon,” Morie blurted out without thinking. Her father knew the man, whose wife was from Texas.

Mavie glanced at her suspiciously.

“I read about him in the newspapers,” Morie covered quickly. “What a story! He’s even more handsome in person!”

Mavie gave an emphatic nod. “Yes, he sure is.”

“We’d better get back to work,” Morie groaned. “Look at how fast those trays are going down!”

“Good thing we’ve got plenty of raw material in here.” Mavie chuckled.

They worked steadily for the next hour, making and baking succulent treats for the guests. The band was playing some lazy blues tunes, and a few couples were dancing in the big family room by the patio door.

“You should be in there dancing and having fun,” Mavie said. “You’re young enough to enjoy these parties.”

Morie gaped at her. “I’m the hired help.”

“Baloney. The boss doesn’t think like that.”

“Want to bet?” Morie murmured under her breath. She’d already had an unforgettable taste of the boss’s attitude toward the lower classes. It had a sting.

Mavie glanced her way. “You want to watch that Gelly person. She was raging to the boss about how you talked to her like a dog and said she was a useless person.”

“I said no such thing!” Morie replied indignantly.

“Just telling you what she’s saying” came the soft reply. “I’ve seen women like her all my life. They purr when they’re around the man in charge and claw when they’re not. She isn’t as wealthy as she makes herself out to be. One of my friends works for her folks, and gets paid nothing, not even minimum. She says they put on airs and pretend to be rich, but they’re barely middle class. Gelly’s hoping for a rich husband to prop up the family finances. She’s got her eye on the boss.”

“If he’s nuts enough to marry her, he’ll get what he deserves,” Morie pointed out. “That woman has more sharp edges than a razor’s blade.”

She nodded in agreement. “I think she does, too.”

It was almost ten o’clock. The staff would leave soon, and so would most of the guests. Morie would be glad to see her bed. She’d been on her feet since daylight. She was half-starved, as well, because she hadn’t had a dinner break. Neither had Mavie.

“I’m so hungry.” Morie sighed.

“Me, too. We’ll save a few canapés for ourselves,” she said, laughing. “I’ll put some on a plate for you to take back to your room.”

“Thanks, Mavie.”

“No, thank you,” she replied. “You’re a wonderful little worker. I couldn’t have managed this alone.”

She grinned. “I like working in the kitchen.”

“Me, too. Call me old-fashioned, but I love to cook… .”

“WHERE’S THAT WONDERFUL cook?” came a familiar deep voice from the doorway. A minute later, Morie’s uncle Danny Brannt came through the doorway, laughing. He stopped dead when he spotted Morie.

She put her finger to her lips, when Mavie’s back was turned, and shook her head frantically.

“Who’s the cook?” he repeated, beaming at Mavie. “I just had to thank you for those delicious canapés. It’s been a long time since I’ve tasted anything that good.”

“It was me—” Mavie laughed “—but my helper here came up with most of the recipes.” She indicated Morie. “She’s Morie,” she added. “I’m Mavis, but everyone calls me Mavie.”

“I’m happy to meet you,” he said. “Both of you.” But when he looked at Morie his eyebrows lifted. “Like working here, do you?” he asked her.

“Oh, yes, very much,” she replied.

He pursed his lips. “Can I speak with you for a minute?” he added. “I want to ask you something about that little sausage canapé. For my housekeeper,” he said.

“Sure,” she replied.

He walked to the back door, held it open and let her go out before him. She worried that it might make Mavie suspicious, but she had to make him understand. She explained what she was doing.

“What the devil are you up to?” he asked seriously. “Your dad would have a fit if he knew you were working for wages on a ranch!”

“You can’t tell him,” she replied firmly. “I’m going to show him that I can make it on my own. He doesn’t have to like it. But if you tell him where I am, he’ll come up here and make trouble. He’ll be telling the boss what I can and can’t be expected to do and it will ruin everything. You know how he is.”

“I guess I do.” He frowned. “How did you get a job way up here?”

“A friend of a friend told me they were hiring. And what are you doing here?” she exclaimed.

“I met Cane during a trial. He was a friend of the plaintiff, a land case I heard in superior court in Texas. We had lunch and became friends. Good heavens, I had no idea I’d come to his party and find my niece cooking for it!”

She laughed. “Well, somebody had to. Mavie had no clue about canapés and Mom makes the best I ever tasted. So does Aunt Edie and your housekeeper.”

“If your dad ever finds out about this…”

“He won’t. And if he ever does, I’ll defend you,” she promised confidently.

He shook his head. “You always were a handful, even when you were little.”

“And you always loved me anyway, Uncle Danny.”

“Yes, I did.” He hugged her warmly. “Okay, I guess you know what you’re doing. I won’t tell Kingston. But there will be a dustup when the truth comes out. You’ll have to protect me,” he added with a grin.

“You know I will. Thanks.”

“What are you doing out here instead of working, Miss Brannt?” Gelly’s shrill, angry voice came from the doorway. “You are not to have private conversations with my guests, you little gold digger!”

Danny moved into the light. The woman’s attitude toward his niece pricked his temper. He’d already formed an opinion of Gelly Bruner, and it wasn’t a good one. “I’m not your guest,” he pointed out coldly. “I came to see the Kirks.”

She flushed and looked uncertain.

“Why don’t you go back to the party and stop trying to micromanage your boyfriend’s staff?” he drawled. “Perhaps I should have a word with him… .”

“Sorry,” Gelly said stiffly and managed a cool smile. “Excuse me, please.”

She almost ran off.

Morie was stifling laughter. Her uncle could be as intimidating as her father ever was, even if he was usually the easygoing one of the brothers.

Mavie had stepped over to the doorway after Gelly had raced away. She’d obviously heard every word of the exchange with Gelly. Now her eyes were dancing. “Want to stay? I’ll cook for you anytime,” she added.

He laughed. “Sorry. I have my own business to take care of. The canapés were really delicious. And thanks for the recipe,” he told Morie. “I hope I’ll see you again one day.”

“Same here,” she replied, smiling. “Thanks.”

He shrugged. “My pleasure.” He gave her a last wave before he went back into the family room.

“Who is he?” Mavie asked her.

“A superior court judge from Texas who’s a friend of Cane’s, apparently,” Morie replied innocently. “He wanted me to tell him how to make those sausages so he could get his housekeeper to make them for a party he’s having soon. Imagine that! I got to talk to a real judge!”

“He wasn’t bad-looking, either,” Mavie said with a grin. “Did you say something to Gelly?” she added worriedly.

“No, I didn’t say anything. But you heard what the judge said,” she added. “She came out to tell me to stop mingling with her guests and get to work. He said she needed to mind her own business.”

“Ha!”

Morie’s smile widened. “He’s such a nice man. I wish we could keep him.”

“Me, too.” Mavie looked uneasy. “You’ll be in trouble, though.”

“I’m always in trouble. Let’s clean up and then I want to go to bed.”

“I’ll just put some of those canapés on the plate for you.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re a great little worker,” Mavie returned. “I like having you around.”

“That’s the nicest thing anyone’s said to me in a long time,” Morie replied, touched.

Mavie just smiled.

MORIE SAT IN FRONT of her small television and watched an old black-and-white comedy while she ate her canapés. They’d turned out very well. What a surprise to have her uncle show up at the Kirks’ party. She wasn’t aware that he knew Cane. At least she’d been able to get him to keep her secret from her father. She shuddered to think what King would say to her boss.

She knew her mother hadn’t told King Brannt where his daughter was working, or what she was doing. Shelby had mentioned that she’d said Morie had a nice job at a department store but she hadn’t said where. What a joke. Morie couldn’t have sold heaters to people living in the Yukon.

It had been several days since Mallory had kissed the breath out of her. He’d been avoiding her ever since. Or she’d been avoiding him. It had been unexpected and shocking, but a delicious little interlude that played over and over in Morie’s mind. She’d loved it. But obviously the boss hadn’t. It seemed that he wanted to make sure she didn’t get any ideas about his interest. He’d made a point of being businesslike every time he spoke to her now. There was no more light teasing or pleasant conversation. It was strictly business.

She finished the last canapé and turned off the television. It was up at dawn for more calving and she was still achy and stiff from helping Darby pull two calves that simply weren’t anxious to be born. Their reward was the soft bawling sound the calves made when they were delivered and stood up, wobbling away to be licked clean by their mothers.

It was incredible to help deliver a calf. The process of birth was fascinating to anyone who worked around livestock. The cycle of life and death was a never-ending one on a ranch.

Morie loved working outdoors, away from the city, away from traffic and regimented life. Here, the time clock was the sun. They got up with it and went to bed with it. They learned how to identify birds by their songs. They learned the subtle weather signs that were lost in electronic prognostication. They were of the earth. It was the most wonderful job going, Morie thought, even if the pay wasn’t top scale and the work was mostly physical labor that came with mussed, stained clothing. She wouldn’t have traded it to model Paris gowns, and she’d once been offered that opportunity. It had amused and pleased her mother, who wasn’t surprised when Morie said she’d rather learn how to rope calves.

Her father would never teach her. Her brother, Cort, got the ranch training. Her primitive dad, who was living in the Stone Age, she often told him, wanted her to be a lady of leisure and do feminine things. She told him that she could work cattle every bit as well as her brother and she wanted to prove it. Her dad just laughed and walked off. Not on his ranch. Not ever.

So she found someone else’s ranch to prove it on. She’d gotten her college degree. Her dad should be happy that she’d accomplished at least one thing he’d insisted upon. Now she was going to please herself.

She threw on a nightshirt and a pair of pajama bottoms and climbed into bed. She was asleep in seconds.

THE NEXT MORNING, the boss came down to the barn, where she was feeding out a calf whose mother had been attacked by a pack of wolves. The mother had died and state agencies had been called in to trap the wolves and relocate them.

Mallory looked down at her, with the calf on her knees, and something cold inside him started to melt. She had a tender heart. He loved the picture she made, nursing that calf. But he pulled himself up taut. That couldn’t be allowed. He wasn’t having any more embarrassing interludes with the hired help that could come back to bite him.

She looked up and saw him watching her. She averted her eyes. “Morning, boss,” she said.

“Morning.”

His tone wasn’t reassuring. She sighed. “I’m in trouble again, I guess.”

“Gelly said you put a visitor up to insulting her when she told you to get back to work in the kitchen,” he said flatly.

Morie just sighed.

“Well?” he persisted.

“The guy was a superior court judge who wanted my canapé recipe for his housekeeper, so I went outside with him to give it to him,” she replied wearily. “Miss Bruner interrupted us, and he was angry at the way she spoke to me. I didn’t put him up to anything.”

He frowned. “A judge?”

“Well, he said he was,” she replied, flushing. She wasn’t supposed to know the occupations of his guests.

“I see.”

No, you don’t, she fumed silently. You don’t see anything. Gelly leads you around by your temper, and you let her.

He hesitated. “The canapés were very good.”

“Thanks. Mavie and I worked hard.”

“Yes.” His dark eyes narrowed. “How is it,” he continued suspiciously, “that you know so much about how to organize a high-society party? And just where did you learn it?”

CHAPTER FIVE

MORIE STARED UP AT HIM with wide eyes while she searched frantically for an answer that wouldn’t give her away.

“The, uh, the last place I worked,” she said. “The housekeeper knew all that stuff and the boss didn’t like to hire staff, so I had to learn how to do those things to help her out.”

“I see.”

“It’s just something I picked up, and, honestly, I’d rather feed calves than work in the kitchen,” she added. “Just in case you had in mind to ask me to work with Mavie instead of out here.”

“I didn’t have that in mind.”

She nodded. “Good.”

He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “You don’t like Gelly.”

“It’s not my place to like or dislike one of your friends, boss,” she replied in a subdued tone. “I’m just the newest hire…that’s all I am.”

“Gelly feels threatened by you, God knows why,” he added unconsciously. She might have been pretty if she did something to her hair and wore makeup and nice clothing. But she was scruffy and not very attractive most of the time. It still shook him that he’d kissed her and enjoyed it so much. He tried not to revisit that episode.

“Not my problem,” she murmured, and hoped she didn’t sound insolent.

“She said that the judge seemed to know you.”

“Can’t imagine why,” she said, looking up innocently. “I sure don’t travel in those circles. He might have seen me in the kitchen where I used to work, though.”

“Where was that?” he asked. “The place you used to work?”

She stared at him blankly. She’d made up the name of the place, although she’d given the phone number of a friend’s housekeeper who’d promised to sound convincing if anybody checked her out.

“Well?” he persisted.

She was flushed and the soy calf formula was leaking out of the oversize bottle she was using to feed him. Just when it seemed as if she was going to blow her own cover, a sudden loud noise came from outside the barn. It was followed by a barrage of range language that was even worse than what Morie had heard come out of her father during roundup.

Mallory rushed out. Morie, curious, put the calf back in his stall, set the empty bottle on a nearby shelf and followed.

Cane was throwing things. A saddle was lying on the ground. In the distance, a horse was galloping away.

“Mud-brained, unshod son of a…!” he raged, until he spotted Morie and bit down hard on the last word.

“What in the world is the matter with you?” Mallory asked.

Cane glared at him. His thick, short black hair was in disorder all over his head. His dark brown eyes, large and cold, were glittery with bad temper. His sensuous mouth was pulled tight against his teeth.

“I was trying to put a saddle on Old Bill,” he muttered. “I thought I could manage him. I haven’t been on a horse since I came home. The damned outlaw knocked me down on the saddle and ran off.”

The empty sleeve, pinned at the elbow where his arm had been amputated, was poignant. Cane was ultrasensitive about his injury. He never spoke of the circumstances under which he’d lost part of his arm, or about his military service. He drank, a lot, and kept to himself. He was avoided by most of the men, especially when he was turning the air blue, like now.

Morie sighed and went to the barn. She brought out one of the other older saddle horses they kept for visitors. This one was quite gentle, like the one that had run away. She heard Mallory telling one of the men to go after it.

She picked up Cane’s saddle, ignoring his outraged, indignant look. She turned the horse and draped the saddle over his back, pulling up the cinch and fastening it deftly.

“Don’t fuss,” she told Cane when she handed him the bridle. “Everybody needs a little help now and then. It’s not demeaning to let someone do you a favor. Even the hired help.”

He glared down at her for a few seconds, during which she thought he was probably going to storm away or dress her down for her insolence.

But finally he just shook his head. “Okay. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” She handed him the reins.

He was looking at the horse dubiously. It was obvious that he hadn’t tried to mount one since he was wounded.

“We have a friend back in Texas that we used to go riding with,” she said, without giving away much. “He lost an arm doing merc work overseas. He mounted offside so that he could use his good hand on the pommel to spring up into the saddle. Worked like a charm.”

His dark eyebrows went up under the wide brim of his hat. “You don’t let anybody intimidate you, do you?”

She smiled. “You’re not intimidating. You’re just a little scary sometimes.”

He shook his head again. “Okay, I’ll try it. But if I land on my face, you’re fired.”

“You can’t fire her,” Mallory pointed out. “Unless you hired her, and you didn’t. Get on that horse and let’s go search out straggling heifers. They really are right about snow this time.”

Cane looked at his brother. “I’ll give it a shot.”

He fumbled the first time and almost fell. But he tried again, and again, until he got the rhythm just right. He sprang up into the saddle with a heavy sigh and took the reins in his hand. He wheeled the horse around and looked down at Morie. “Thanks.”

She gave him an encouraging look. “You’re welcome.”

Mallory rode in between them. “Let’s go. Daylight’s burning.”

“I’m right behind you.”

Mallory glanced at Morie and he wasn’t smiling. He didn’t like Cane smiling at her. He didn’t know why, and that made him even angrier.

“Get back to work,” he told her. He rode off behind his brother without another word.

Morie glared after him. “I was going to,” she muttered. “What did you think, I had a date to go sailing on the Caribbean or something?”

“Talking to yourself,” Darby teased. “Better watch that. They’ll be sending men with nets after you.”

“If they do, I’ll tell them the boss drove me batty,” she assured him.

“Nice, what you did for Cane,” he said, sobering. “He hasn’t tried to get on a horse since he came back. I thought he’d give up after Old Bill ran off. None of us would have dared to do what you did. Saw him punch a cowboy once for even offering, a few months ago.”

“He’s just hurting,” she said. “He doesn’t know how to cope, how to interact with people, how to go on doing normal things. I heard that he won’t go to physical therapy or even talk to a psychologist. That’s hurting him, too. It must be horrible, for a man so active and vital, to lose an arm.”

“He was the rodeo champ,” he replied solemnly. “Killed him when he had to stop competing.”

“He’ll adjust,” she said softly. “It will take time, and help. Once he realizes that, and starts going back to the therapist, he’ll learn to live with it. Like our friend did.”

His eyes narrowed. “Odd friend. A mercenary.”

“We have friends of all sorts.” She laughed. “My dad likes renegades and odd people.”

“Well, I suppose it takes all kinds to run the world,” he replied. His eyes sparkled. “And we had better get back to work. Bad time to lose a job, in this economy.”

“Tell me about it!”

WHEN CANE AND THE BOSS came back, she was riding out to check the fence line.

“You keep that music box in your pocket and those earphones out of your ears while you’re out alone, got that?” Mallory ordered abruptly.

She knew without asking that Tank had told him how he found her moving the broken tree limb. She grimaced. “Okay, boss.”

“What sort of music do you like?” Cane asked conversationally.

“Every sort,” she said with a grin. “Right now my favorite is the soundtrack from August Rush.”

His eyebrows arched. “Nice. Tank loves it, too. He bought the score. He’s still trying to master it.”

“Dalton plays?” she blurted out. She flushed and laughed when Mallory stared at her. “I noticed the grand piano in the living room. I wondered who played it.”

“Tank’s good,” Cane said, smiling. He nodded toward Mallory. “He plays, too. Of course, he’s mostly tone-deaf, but that doesn’t stop him from trying.”

“I can play better than Tank,” Mallory said, insulted.

“Not to hear him tell it,” Cane observed.

“We got the fence fixed,” Mallory told her. His eyes narrowed. “You should never have tried to move that limb by yourself.” He was looking pointedly at the scratch on her cheek.

She touched it self-consciously. “It only grazed me. I heal quickly.”

“Even I would have called somebody to help me,” Mallory persisted.

Her eyebrows arched. “Aren’t you the same man who tried to lift the front end of a parked car to move it when it was blocking the barn?” she asked with a bland smile.

He glared down at her. “I would usually have called somebody to help me. I’m the boss. You don’t question what I do…you just do what I say.”

“Oh, yes, sir,” she replied.

“And stop giggling,” he muttered.

Her eyebrows arched. “I wasn’t!”

“You were, inside, where you thought I couldn’t hear it. But I can hear it.”

She pursed her lips. “Okay.”

He shook his head. “Let’s go,” he told his brother.

But Cane didn’t follow. He was still looking at Morie with eyes that saw more than Mallory’s did. “You know, you look very familiar to me,” he said, frowning slightly. “I think I’ve seen you before, somewhere.”

She’d had that very same feeling when she first met Cane. But she didn’t remember him from any of her father’s gatherings. However, he might have been with one of the cattlemen’s groups that frequently toured Skylance to view King Brannt’s exquisite Santa Gerts. She wasn’t sure. It made her nervous. She didn’t want Cane to remember where he’d seen her, if he had.

“I just have that kind of face, I expect,” she said, assuming an innocent expression. “They say we all have a counterpart somewhere, someone who looks just like us.”

“That might be true.” He paused for a moment. “What you did—getting the horse saddled for me—that was kind. I’m sorry I was so harsh.”

“It was nothing. Besides, I’m used to harsh. I work for him.” She pointed toward Mallory.

“One more word and you’re a memory,” Mal-lory retorted, but his lips twitched upward at the corners.

She laughed and went back to work.

THAT NIGHT, THEY HAD A SERIES of old movies on one of the classic channels, starring Morie’s grandmother, Maria Kane. It was fascinating to watch her work, to see flashes of Shelby Kane and even herself in that beautiful, elfin face and exquisite posture.

“I wish I’d known you,” she whispered to the television screen. But Maria had died even before Shelby married Kingston Brannt. In fact, her funeral had been the catalyst that convinced King he couldn’t live without Shelby.

Morie had heard all about her parents’ romance. King and Shelby had been enemies from their earliest acquaintance. She and his brother, Danny, had been good friends who went out together on a strictly platonic basis. Then Danny had asked Shelby to pretend to be engaged to him, and he’d taken her home to Skylance. King had been eloquent in his antagonism to the match. It had provoked him into truly indefensible treatment of Shelby, for which he was later very sorry. Shelby, remembering, said that King had treated her like a princess from the day they married, trying to make up to her for all his former harsh treatment and rough words. He’d changed so much that Shelby often wondered if he was the same man she’d known in the beginning, she told her daughter.

“I can’t picture Dad being mean to you.” Morie had laughed. “He brings you flowers and chocolates all the time, buys you something every time he goes out of town, lavishes you with beautiful jewelry, takes you to Paris shopping… .”

“Yes, he’s the most wonderful husband any woman could ask for, now,” Shelby had replied, smiling. “But you didn’t know him before.” She shook her head. “It was a very difficult courtship. He was hurt by another relationship and he took it out on me.” She sighed, smiling at some secret memory. “I was showing a Western collection in New York during Fashion Week when he turned up in the audience. He picked me up and carried me out of the building. I was kicking and protesting, but he never missed a step.”

Morie burst out laughing. “I can imagine Dad doing something like that,” she remarked.

Shelby sighed, her eyes dreamy. “We had coffee and a misunderstanding. He took me back to my apartment, prepared to say goodbye for good.”

“Then what happened?” Morie asked, fascinated by the fact that her parents had once been young like her. It was hard to think of them as a dating couple.

“I asked him to kiss me goodbye,” she continued, and actually flushed. “We got engaged in the car and we were married three long days later.” She shook her head. “You never really know somebody until you live with them, Morie,” she added gently. “Your father always seemed to be the hardest, angriest, most untamable man on earth. But when we were alone…” She cleared her throat. The flush grew as she recalled their tempestuous, passionate wedding night and the unbelievable pleasure that had kept them in the hotel room for two days and nights with only bottled water and candy bars to sustain them through a marathon of lovemaking that had produced their first child, Cort. They were so hungry for each other that precautions had never entered their minds. But they’d both wanted children very much, so it hadn’t been a problem. The memory was so poignant that it could still turn her face red.

Morie laughed. “Mom, you’re blushing.”

Shelby chuckled self-consciously. “Yes, well, your father is a class of his own in some ways, and I won’t discuss it. It’s too personal. I just hope that you’re half as lucky as I’ve been in your choice of husbands.”

Morie grimaced. “If I don’t get out of here, I’ll never get married. Everybody wants me because I’ve got a rich father.”

“Some man will want you just for yourself. The traveling accountant was a bad choice. You were vulnerable and he was a predator,” Shelby said with a flash of anger. “He was very lucky that he got out of town before your father could get to him.”

“I’ll say.” She studied Shelby. “Why won’t Dad let me work on the ranch like Cort?”

“He and his father are very similar in some ways,” she replied. “Jim Brannt raised him to have a great respect for women and to understand that they are much too delicate for physical labor.” She shook her head. “I suppose some of that is my fault, too. You know, I lived with my aunt, and she was much the same. She didn’t want me to lift a finger because ladies didn’t do that. On the other hand, she hated my mother. She didn’t want me to turn out like her, either.”

“They play some of Grandmother’s movies on television,” she said. “She really was a wonderful actress. They said she married four men.”

Shelby nodded. “The last was the best…Brad. He died in a car crash just after I married King.”

“Did Grandmother commit suicide or was that just malicious gossip?” she wondered aloud.

“I never knew,” Shelby confided. “Brad said she overdosed because the studio fired her. But my aunt had often said she wasn’t the suicidal kind at all. Maybe she just accidentally took too many pills to help her sleep. I’d like to believe that’s the case.”

“Perhaps it was.”

Shelby had hugged her. “Anyway, you don’t want to go around covered in mud and calf poop, really, do you?” she teased. “Even if you were muddy from archaeology, at least it was clean dirt.”

Morie had burst out laughing.

Her father had come into the room during the conversation. He wore a satisfied expression as he bent to kiss Shelby and hug her close.

“I got tickets,” he told her.

“To The Firebird?” Shelby exclaimed excitedly. “But they were sold out!”

“Old Doc Caldwell was persuaded to part with his. I thought his wife was going to kiss me to death since she hates Stravinsky,” he said, and produced the tickets out of his shirt pocket. He handed them to Shelby.

“When are we going?” she asked.

“Tonight.” He glanced at Morie and patted her cheek affectionately. “Sorry, kid, I couldn’t get an extra ticket.”

“Not a problem, Dad,” she’d replied with a smile. “Debussy is more to my taste. Stravinsky is a little too experimental for my tastes.”

“Want a new dress to wear to it?” King asked Shelby. “We can fly up to Dallas to Neiman Marcus.”

“I have a wonderful new dress in the closet that I’ve been saving.” She pressed close to him and was enfolded hungrily in his arms. “Thanks, sweetheart.”

He kissed her hair. “Nothing’s too good for my best girl.”

Watching them, Morie was suddenly aware that their love for each other had only intensified since they’d been married. They were still like newlyweds, often lost in each other and unaware of anything around them. She’d hoped for that sort of romance in her own life, and she’d never found it. Cort, too, remarked that their parents were exceptionally suited to each other and that he envied that relationship.

Cort, of course, was sweet on the daughter of King’s neighbor and friend, Cole Everett, who had a son and a daughter and lived nearby on the Big Spur Ranch. They frequently traded seed bulls and went to conventions together. Odalie Everett was blonde and blue-eyed like her beautiful mother, and although she wasn’t really pretty, she had a voice that was soulful and clear as a bell. She sounded just like her mother, except that Heather had been a famous contemporary singer before she married her stepbrother, Cole, and Odalie was being groomed for an operatic career. Her parents were dead set against her forming any sort of relationship with a man because of her musical aspirations. It would be difficult for her to pursue such a demanding career and have a family. She had a voice that had been hailed by critics from California to New York and she was training at the Met already. Cort, unsurprisingly, had never made his feelings for her known. In fact, he pretended that he had none. He’d been Odalie’s enemy for years, for reasons that no one understood. Least of all poor Odalie, who adored him.

Morie snapped back to the present. She had her own worries. Her brother would have to find his way to love all by himself. She turned her attention back to the television as the commercial ended and her grandmother came back onto the screen, larger than life.

After the movie ended, Morie looked in the mirror and was surprised to see that she was almost the image of her grandmother. If she’d used makeup and had her hair styled properly, she could have been mistaken for Maria Kane. So it was just as well that she’d neglected her hair and packed away her cosmetics to work on the Rancho Real, she decided. It would never do for people who watched old classic movies to notice that resemblance and start asking questions.

DARBY PRESENTED HER with a cell phone the next morning. “Boss said to get that for you and make sure you carry it when you’re out alone. Still got that pistol I gave you in your saddlebags?”

“I do,” she replied. “Have they caught that escaped killer yet?”

He shook his head. “He’s a hunter. Knows these woods like the back of his hand, and is able to live off the land. It will take them a long time to hunt him down. He’s got kinfolk around here, too, and the sheriff thinks some of them may be helping him hide.”

“I don’t know that I’d help a killer escape the law,” she remarked.

“What if it was your brother or your father?” he asked simply.

She sighed. “That’s a harder choice.”

“Killer’s got a cousin that they think might help him. They’ve got his place staked out. They’re sure Bascomb is getting food and shelter somewhere.” He shook his head. “But the cousin’s place is miles from here. I don’t think Joe Bascomb would turn up on the ranch.”

“He doesn’t have anything against the Kirks, does he?” she asked a little worriedly.

“Not that I know of,” Darby told her. “In fact, Tank testified as a character witness for him during the trial. Tank still thinks he’s innocent.”

“What did he do?”

“Killed a man that he said was beating up his girlfriend. Said he didn’t mean to do it. He hit the man and he fell into a brick wall, hit his head and died. Would have probably been ruled accidental except the girlfriend suddenly testified that he banged the man’s head against the wall and killed him deliberately.”

“Why would she lie?” she asked.

“She was sweet on Bascomb, but he was in love with his late wife and didn’t want anything to do with this girl. Story was, she called him to come help her because she was scared of her new boyfriend. He was fond of her, so he went. The boyfriend had hit her once or twice and Joe Bas-comb intervened to save her.” He sighed. “Noble effort. He saved her and he said she got even with him because he wouldn’t get involved with her, although she denied it in court. It got him convicted. It’s a capital offense, too. He slipped away from the transport deputy, handcuffs and leg irons and all, and hid out in the woods. They found the cuffs and irons later.” He smiled. “Joe’s a blacksmith. Wasn’t hard for him to get free, I expect.”

“He sounds like a decent man.”

He nodded. “More than one decent man’s gone to prison on the word of a spiteful woman, however.” He checked his watch. “Best get going or you’ll be late back for lunch.”

“I’m on my way.”

She saddled her horse and rode off.

AT LEAST SHE DIDN’T HAVE TO worry about the escaped killer so much, now that she knew why he’d been convicted. Of course, he’d be desperate and she didn’t want to get in his way or threaten him. But she could understand his plight. Sadly, there didn’t seem to be any way to save him. He’d go to prison for life or die in the electric chair at a judge’s pleasure. It didn’t seem right.

She found no more breaks in the line. The weather was beautiful. The predicted snow didn’t materialize. Everything was getting green and lush, and she finally took off her jacket because it was getting hot.

She paused by a stream and closed her eyes to listen to it gurgle along. She felt herself relax. A twig snapped. She whirled and looked around her, her hand tight on the bridle of her mount. A good thing, because the gelding jumped at the sound. Horses were nervous creatures, she thought, and usually with good reason. She’d seen one tear loose from a hitching post and go careening over a fence just from a pan being dropped in the kitchen.

“What is it, boy?” she asked softly, looking around with some unease.

Nothing stirred. But she cut her losses. She mounted, turned the horse and urged him into a gallop toward the ranch.

LATER, SHE TOLD MALLORY about it when he came home. She found him in the kitchen drinking coffee with Mavie. He was concerned.

“It’s not unlikely that Joe might come here. Tank helped him in court and thinks he’s innocent,” Mallory said. “But the fact is that he’s an escaped, convicted killer. If you help him or Tank helps him, there will be consequences. You remember that.”

“I didn’t see anybody,” she protested. “I just heard a branch snap, like somebody stepped on it. I thought I should tell you, just the same. Could have been an animal, I expect.”

“Could have been. Or could have been Joe Bascomb,” he added. “You keep your eyes open. Darby give you that cell phone?”

She nodded and produced it.

His eyes narrowed as he looked at her. “Cane said he thought he’d seen you before. Now that he mentioned it, you do look familiar.”

“I told him…I just have that sort of face.” She laughed. She couldn’t react to the remark. “I might look like somebody you remember.”

He frowned. “Not really. Tank and I were watching this old movie on the classics channel. It starred that actress who killed herself—what was her name? Kane,” he said finally. “Maria Kane. That’s it. You remind me of her.”

“I do?” She smiled broadly to hide her discomfort. “Thanks! I think she was gorgeous! I watched that movie myself. I like the old black-and-white ones.”

He was diverted, as she’d meant him to be. “Me, too. I’m partial to Randolph Scott and Gary Cooper and John Wayne, myself.”

She raised her hand. “Bette Davis.”

He made a face. “Hard as nails. I like feminine women.”

She shifted uncomfortably. He was making a statement. Probably Gelly Bruner was his ideal. He’d already said he liked the pretty blonde actress in the werewolf movie. Gelly was blonde and blue-eyed, and pretty, also. Morie, with her dark hair and eyes and olive complexion, would never be to his taste. He might like kissing her, but he wasn’t looking at her as if he wanted anything more from her.

“Do you ever wear anything besides slacks and shirts with writing or pictures on them?” he asked suddenly.

She stared at him. “I’d have a real hard time pulling calves in a dress.” She said it with a straight face.

He gave a sudden laugh. “Damn!”

“Well, I would, boss,” she said reasonably.

He just sipped his coffee. “I guess you would.”

Piano music was coming from the living room. It was soft and pretty at first, then there were fumbles and then a crash. “Damn it!” Tank groaned.

They heard him get up and soon he came into the kitchen. He glanced at Morie. “I can’t get the rhythm of that coda. Do you have your iPod with you, with the soundtracks on it?”

“No,” she replied. She’d left it in the bunkhouse. “But I can show you.”

He frowned. “You can play a piano?”

She shifted as Mallory stared openly at her. “Sort of.”

“Sort of.” Tank caught her hand and pulled her along with him to the living room. He seated her at the grand piano. “Show me.”

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