New York Times bestselling author RaeAnne Thayne brings us two fan-favorite stories from her Outlaw Hartes series. These couples may not be looking for love, but they are about to find it!

The Valentine Two-Step

He had been bamboozled by women before, but for rancher and single father Matt Harte, this is the last straw! Because of his daughter’s shenanigans, he’s been roped into planning the annual Valentine’s Day dance. And who’s his partner on the committee? Beautiful big-city vet and recent Salt River transplant Ellie Webster, the woman he can’t take his eyes off—though not for lack of trying!

Cassidy Harte and The Comeback Kid

Ten years ago, Cassidy Harte stood at the altar waiting for Zach Slater, but he never showed. So she did the only thing she could—held her head up high and swore off men. Now suddenly Zach’s back with an “I’m sorry” on his lips, an explanation she refuses to hear and the vow to make her his once again. And it seems this is one vow he’s determined to keep…

Praise for New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author RaeAnne Thayne

“Thayne, once again, delivers a heartfelt story of a caring community and a caring romance between adults who have triumphed over tragedies.”

—Booklist on Woodrose Mountain

“A sometimes heartbreaking tale of love and relationships in a small Colorado town….Poignant and sweet, this tale of second chances will appeal to fans of military-flavored sweet romance.”

—Publishers Weeklyon Christmas in Snowflake Canyon

“Once again, Thayne proves she has a knack for capturing those emotions that come from the heart….Crisp storytelling and many amusing moments make for a delightful read.”

—RT Book Reviews on Willowleaf Lane

“Thayne pens another winner by combining her huge, boisterous cast of familiar, lovable characters with a beautiful setting and a wonderful story. Her main characters are strong and three-dimensional, with enough heat between them to burn the pages.”

—RT Book Reviews on Currant Creek Valley

“Thayne’s series starter introduces the Colorado town of Hope’s Crossing in what can be described as a cozy romance… [A] gentle, easy read.”

—Publishers Weekly on Blackberry Summer

“Thayne’s depiction of a small Colorado mountain town is subtle but evocative. Readers who love romance but not explicit sexual details will delight in this heartfelt tale of healing and hope.”

—Booklist on Blackberry Summer

Outlaw Hartes

The Valentine Two-Step

Cassidy Harte and the Comeback Kid

RaeAnne Thayne

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

THE VALENTINE TWO-STEP

CASSIDY HARTE AND THE COMEBACK KID

The Valentine Two-Step

RaeAnne Thayne

To Lyndsey Thomas, for saving my life

and my sanity more times than I can count!

Special thanks to Dr. Ronald Hamm, DVM, animal healer extraordinaire,

for sharing so generously of his expertise.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Prologue

“It’s absolutely perfect.” Dylan Webster held her hands out imploringly to her best friend, Lucy Harte. “Don’t you see? It’s the only way!”

Lucy frowned in that serious way of hers, her gray eyes troubled. In the dim, dusty light inside their secret place—a hollowed-out hideaway behind the stacked hay bales of the Diamond Harte barn loft—her forehead looked all wrinkly. Kind of like a shar-pei puppy Dylan had seen once at her mom’s office back in California.

“I don’t know…” she began.

“Come on, Luce. You said it yourself. We should have been sisters, not just best friends. We were born on exactly the same day, we both love horses and despise long division and we both want to be vets like my mom when we grow up, right?”

“Well, yes, but…”

“If my mom married your dad, we really would be sisters. It would be like having a sleepover all the time. I could ride the school bus with you and everything, and I just know my mom would let me have my own horse if we lived out here on the ranch.”

Lucy nibbled her lip. “But, Dylan…”

“You want a mom of your own as much as I want a dad, don’t you? Even though you have your aunt Cassie to look after you, it’s not the same. You know it’s not.”

It was exactly the right button to push, and she knew it. Before her very eyes, Lucy sighed, and her expression went all dreamy. Dylan felt a little pinch of guilt at using her best friend’s most cherished dream to her own advantage, but she worked hard to ignore it.

Her plan would never work if she couldn’t convince Lucy how brilliant it was. Both of them had to be one-hundred-percent behind it. “We’d be sisters, Luce,” she said. “Sisters for real. Wouldn’t it be awesome?”

“Sisters.” Lucy burrowed deeper into the hay, her gray eyes closed as if, like Dylan, she was imagining family vacations and noisy Christmas mornings and never again having to miss a daddy-daughter party at school. Or in Lucy’s case, a mother-daughter party.

“It would be awesome.” That shar-pei look suddenly came back to her forehead, and she sat up. “But Dylan, why would they ever get married? I don’t think they even like each other very much.”

“Who?”

“My dad and your mom.”

Doubt came galloping back like one of Lucy’s dad’s horses after a stray dogie. Lucy was absolutely right. They didn’t like each other much. Just the other day, she heard her mom tell SueAnn that Matt Harte was a stubborn old man in a younger man’s body.

“But what a body it is,” her mom’s assistant at the clinic had replied, with a rumbly laugh like grown-ups make when they’re talking about sexy stuff. “Matt Harte and his brother have always been the most gorgeous men in town.”

Her mom had laughed, too, and she’d even turned a little bit pink, like a strawberry shake. “Shame on you. You’re a happily married woman, Sue.”

“Married doesn’t mean dead. Or crazy, for that matter.”

Her mom had scrunched up her face. “Even if he is…attractive…in a macho kind of way, a great body doesn’t make up for having the personality of an ornery bull.”

Dylan winced, remembering. Okay, so Lucy’s dad and her mom hadn’t exactly gotten along since the Websters moved to Star Valley. Still, her mom thought he was good-looking and had a great body. That had to count for something.

Dylan gave Lucy what she hoped was a reassuring smile. “They just haven’t had a chance to get to know each other.”

Lucy looked doubtful. “My dad told Aunt Cassie just last week he wouldn’t let that city quack near any of his livestock. I think he meant your mom.”

Dylan narrowed her eyes. “My mom’s not a quack.”

“I know she’s not. I think your mom’s just about the greatest vet around. I’m only telling you what he said.”

“We just have to change his mind. We have to figure out some way to push them together. Once they get to know each other, they’ll have to see that they belong together.”

“I’m not so sure.”

Dylan blew out a breath that made her auburn bangs flutter. Lucy was the best friend anybody could ask for—the best friend she’d ever had. These last three months since they’d moved here had been so great. Staying overnight at the ranch, riding Lucy’s horses, trading secrets and dreams here behind the hay bales.

They were beyond best, best, best friends, and Dylan loved her to death, but sometimes Lucy worried too much. Like about spelling tests and missing the bus and letting her desk get too messy.

She just had to convince her the idea would work. It would be so totally cool if they could pull this off. She wanted a dad in the worst way, and she figured Matt Harte—with his big hands and slow smile and kind eyes—would be absolutely perfect. Having Lucy for a sister would be like the biggest bonus she could think of.

Dylan would just have to try harder.

“It’s going to work. Trust me. I know it’s going to work.” She grabbed Lucy’s hand and squeezed it tightly. “Before you know it, we’ll be walking down the aisle wearing flowers in our hair and me and my mom will be living here all the time. See, I have this plan….”

Chapter 1

“They did what?”

Ellie Webster and the big, gruff rancher seated beside her spoke in unison. She spared a glance at Matt Harte and saw he looked like he’d just been smacked upside the head with a two-by-four.

“Oh, dear. I was afraid of this.” Sarah McKenzie gave a tiny, apologetic smile to both of them.

With her long blond hair and soft, wary brown eyes, her daughter’s teacher always made Ellie think of a skittish palomino colt, ready to lunge away at the first provocation. Now, though, she was effectively hobbled into place behind her big wooden schoolteacher’s desk. “You’re telling me you both didn’t agree to serve on the committee for the Valentine’s Day carnival?”

“Hell no.” Matt Harte looked completely horrified by the very idea of volunteering for a Valentine’s Day carnival committee—as astonished as Ellie imagined he’d be if Ms. McKenzie had just asked him to stick one of her perfectly sharpened number-two pencils in his eye.

“I’ve never even heard of the Valentine’s Day carnival until just now,” Ellie offered.

“Well, this does present a problem.” Ms. McKenzie folded her hands together on top of what looked like a grade book, slim and black and ominous.

Ellie had always hated those grade books.

Despite the fact that she couldn’t imagine any two people being more different, Ellie had a brief, unpleasant image of her own fourth-grade teacher. Prissy mouth, hair scraped back into a tight bun. Complete intolerance for a scared little girl who hid her bewildered loneliness behind defiant anger.

She pushed the unwelcome image aside.

“The girls told me you both would cochair the committee,” the teacher said. “They were most insistent that you wanted to do it.”

“You’ve got to be joking. They said we wanted to do it? I don’t know where the he—heck Lucy could have come up with such a harebrained idea.” Matt Harte sent one brief, disparaging glare in Ellie’s direction, and she stiffened. She could just imagine what he was thinking. If my perfect little Lucy has a harebrained idea in her perfect little head, it must have come from you and your flighty daughter, with your wacky California ways.

He had made it perfectly clear he couldn’t understand the instant bond their two daughters had formed when she and Dylan moved here at the beginning of the school year three months earlier. He had also made no secret of the fact that he didn’t trust her or her veterinary methods anywhere near his stock.

The really depressing thing was, Harte’s attitude seemed to be the rule, not the exception, among the local ranching community. After three months, she was no closer to breaking into their tight circle than she’d been that very first day.

“It does seem odd,” Ms. McKenzie said, and Ellie chided herself for letting her mind wander.

Right now she needed to concentrate on Dylan and this latest scrape her daughter had found herself in. Not on the past or on the big, ugly pile of bills that needed to be paid, regardless of whether or not she had any patients.

“I thought it was rather out of character for both of you,” the quiet, pretty teacher went on. “That’s why I called you both and asked you to come in this evening, so we all could try to get to the bottom of this.”

“Why would they lie about it?” Ellie asked. “I don’t understand why on earth the girls would say we volunteered for something I’ve never even heard of before now.”

The teacher shifted toward her and shrugged her shoulders inside her lacy white blouse. She made the motion look so delicate and airy that Ellie felt about as feminine as a teamster in her work jeans and flannel shirt.

“I have no idea,” she said. “I was hoping you could shed some light on it.”

“You sure it was our girls who signed up?”

Ms. McKenzie turned to the rancher with a small smile. “Absolutely positive. I don’t think I could possibly mix that pair up with any of my other students.”

“Well, there’s obviously been a mistake,” Matt said gruffly.

Ms. McKenzie was silent for a few moments, then she sighed. “That’s what I was afraid you would say. Still, the fact remains that I need two parents to cochair the committee, and your daughters obviously want you to do it. Would the two of you at least consider it?”

The rancher snorted. “You’ve got the wrong guy.”

“I don’t think so,” the teacher answered gently, as if chiding a wayward student, and Ellie wondered how she could appear to be so completely immune to the potent impact of Matt Harte.

Even with that aggravated frown over this latest scheme their daughters had cooked up, he radiated raw male appeal, with rugged, hard-hewn features, piercing blue eyes and broad shoulders. Ellie couldn’t even sit next to him without feeling the power in those leashed muscles.

But Sarah McKenzie appeared oblivious to it. She treated him with the same patience and kindness she showed the fourth graders in her class.

“I think you’d both do a wonderful job,” the teacher continued. “Since this is my first year at the school, I haven’t been to the carnival myself but I understand attendance has substantially dropped off the last two years. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what a problem this is.”

“No,” the rancher said solemnly, and Ellie fought the urge to raise her hand and ask somebody to explain the gravity of the situation to her. It certainly didn’t seem like a big deal to her that some of the good people of Salt River decided to celebrate Valentine’s Day somewhere other than the elementary school gymnasium. Come to think of it, so far most of the people she’d met in Salt River didn’t seem the types to celebrate Valentine’s Day at all.

“This is a really important fund-raiser,” Ms. McKenzie said. “All the money goes to the school library, which is desperately in need of new books. We need to do something to generate more interest in the carnival, infuse it with fresh ideas. New blood, if you will. I think the two of you are just the ones to do that.”

There was silence for a moment, then the rancher sat forward, that frown still marring his handsome features. “I’m sorry, Miz McKenzie. I’d like to help you out, honest. I’m all in favor of getting more books for the library and I’d be happy to give you a sizable donation if that will help at all. But I’m way out of my league here. I wouldn’t know the first thing about putting together something like that.”

“I’m afraid this sort of thing isn’t exactly my strong point, either,” Ellie admitted, which was a bit like saying the nearby Teton Mountain Range had a couple of pretty little hills.

“Whatever their reasons, it seemed very important to your daughters that you help.” She shifted toward Matt again. “Mr. Harte, has Lucy ever asked you to volunteer for anything in school before? Reading time, lunch duty, anything?”

The rancher’s frown deepened. “No,” he finally answered the teacher. “Not that I can think of.”

“All of her previous teachers describe Lucy as a shy mouse of a girl who spoke in whispers and broke into tears if they called on her. I have to tell you, that is not the same girl I’ve come to know this year.”

“No?”

“Since Dylan’s arrival, Lucy participates much more in class. She is a sweet little girl with a wonderfully creative mind.”

“That’s good, right?”

“Very good. But despite the improvements, Lucy still seems to prefer staying in the background. She rarely ventures an opinion of her own. I think it would be wonderful for her to help plan the carnival under your supervision. It might even provide her with some of the confidence she still seems to be lacking.”

“I’m a very busy man, Miz McKenzie—”

“I understand that. And I know Dr. Webster is also very busy trying to establish her practice here in Star Valley.”

You don’t know the half of it, Ellie thought grimly.

“But I think it would help both girls. Dylan, as well,” the teacher said, shifting toward her. “I’ve spoken with you before with some of my concerns about your daughter. She’s a very bright girl and a natural leader among the other children, but she hasn’t shown much enthusiasm for anything in the classroom until now.”

The teacher paused, her hands still folded serenely on her desk, and gave them both a steady look that had Ellie squirming just like she’d been caught chewing gum in class. “It’s obvious neither of you wants to do this. I certainly understand your sentiments. But I have to tell you, I would recommend you would put your own misgivings aside and think instead about your daughters and what they want.”

Oh, she was good. Pour on the parental guilt, sister. Gets ’em every time.

Out of the corner of her gaze Ellie could see Harte fighting through the same internal struggle.

How could she possibly do this? The last thing on earth she wanted was to be saddled with the responsibility for planning a Valentine’s Day carnival. Valentine’s Day, for heaven’s sake. A time for sweethearts and romance, hearts and flowers. Things she had absolutely no experience with.

Beyond that, right now she was so busy trying to salvage her floundering practice that she had no time for anything but falling into her bed at the end of the day.

Still, Dylan wanted her to do this. For whatever reasons, this was important to her daughter. Ellie had already uprooted her from the only life she’d known to bring her here, to an alien world of wide-open spaces and steep, imposing mountains.

If being involved in this stupid carnival would make Dylan happy, didn’t she owe it to her to try?

And maybe, just maybe, a selfish little voice whispered, this might just be the ticket to help you pile drive your way into the closed circle that is the Star Valley community.

If she could show the other parents she was willing to volunteer to help out the school, they might begin to accept her into their ranks. Lord knows, she had to do something or she would end up being the proud owner of the only veterinary practice in Wyoming without a single patient to its name.

“I suppose I’m game,” she said, before she could talk herself out of it. “What about you, Harte?”

“It’s a Valentine’s Day carnival. What the hell do I know about Valentine’s Day?”

She snickered at his baffled tone. She couldn’t help herself. The man just rubbed her wrong. He had gone out of his way to antagonize her since she arrived in town. Not only had he taken his own business elsewhere, but she knew he’d convinced several other ranchers to do the same. It hurt her pride both professionally and personally that he made no secret of his disdain for some of her more unconventional methods.

“You mean nobody’s sent you one of those cute little pink cards lately? With that sweet disposition of yours, I’d have thought you would have women crawling out of the woodwork to send you valentines.”

She regretted the snippy comment as soon as she said it. Whatever her views about him, she should at least try to be civil.

Still, she felt herself bristle when he glowered at her, which seemed to be his favorite expression. It was a shame, really. The man could be drop-dead gorgeous when he wasn’t looking like he just planted his butt on a cactus. How such a sweet little girl like Lucy could have such a sour apple of a father was beyond her.

Before he could answer in kind, the schoolteacher stepped in to keep the peace with the same quiet diplomacy she probably used to break up schoolyard brawls. “There’s no reason you have to make a decision today. It’s only mid-November, so we still have plenty of time before Valentine’s Day. Why don’t both of you take a few days to think it over, and I’ll talk to you about it next week.”

Ms. McKenzie rose from behind her desk. “Thank you both for coming in at such short notice,” she said, in clear dismissal. “I’ll be in touch with you next week.”

Left with no alternative, Ellie rose, as well, and shrugged into her coat. Beside her, Lucy’s father did the same.

“Sorry about the mix-up,” he said, reaching out to shake hands with Ms. McKenzie. Ellie observed with curiosity that for the first time the other woman looked uncomfortable, even nervous. Again she thought of that skittish colt ready to bolt. There was an awkward pause while he stood there with his hand out, then with a quick, jerky movement, the teacher gripped his hand before abruptly dropping it.

“I’ll be in touch,” she said again.

* * *

What was that all about? Matt wondered as he followed the city vet out of the brightly decorated classroom into the hall. Why did Miz McKenzie act like he’d up and slapped her when all he wanted to do was shake her hand? Come to think of it, she’d behaved the same way when he came in a month earlier for parent-teacher conferences.

She and Ellie Webster ought to just form a club, since it was obvious the lady vet wasn’t crazy about him, either. Matt Harte Haters of America.

He didn’t have time to dwell on it before they reached the outside door of the school. The vet gave him a funny look when he opened the door for her, but she said nothing, just moved past him. Before he could stop himself, he caught a whiff of her hair as her coat brushed his arm. It smelled clean and fresh, kind of like that heavenly lemon cream pie they served over at the diner.

He had absolutely no business sniffing the city vet’s hair, Matt reminded himself harshly. Or noticing the way those freckles trailed across that little nose of hers like the Big Dipper or how the fluorescent lights inside the school had turned that sweet-smelling hair a fiery red, like an August sunset after an afternoon of thunderstorms.

He pushed the unwanted thoughts away and followed Ellie Webster out into the frigid night. An icy wind slapped at them, and he hunched his shoulders inside his lined denim coat.

It was much colder than normal for mid-November. The sky hung heavy and ugly overhead, and the twilight had that expectant hush it took on right before a big storm. Looked like they were in for a nasty one. He dug already cold fingers into his pockets.

When he drove into town earlier, the weatherman on the radio had said to expect at least a foot of snow. Just what he needed. With that Arctic Express chugging down out of Canada, they were sure to have below-zero temperatures tonight. Add to that the windchill and he’d be up the whole damn night just trying to keep his cattle alive.

The city vet seemed to read his mind. “By the looks of that storm, I imagine we’ll both have a busy night.”

“You, too?”

“I do still have a few patients.”

He’d never paid much mind to what a vet did when the weather was nasty. Or what a vet did any other time, for that matter. They showed up at his place, did what he needed them to do, then moved on to their next appointment.

He tried to imagine her muscling an ornery cow into a pen and came up completely blank. Hell, she looked hardly big enough to wrestle a day-old calf. He’d had the same thought the first day he met her, back in August when she rode into town with her little girl and all that attitude.

She barely came up to his chin, and her wrists were delicate and bony, like a kitten that had been too long without food. Why would a scrawny city girl from California want to come out to the wilds of Wyoming and wrestle cattle? He couldn’t even begin to guess.

There were only two vehicles in the school parking lot, the brand spankin’ new dually crew cab he drove off the lot last week and her battered old Ford truck. He knew it was hers by the magnetized sign on the side reading Salt River Veterinary Clinic.

Miz McKenzie must have walked, since the little house she rented from Bob Jimenez was just a couple blocks from the school. Maybe he ought to offer her a ride home. It was too damn cold to be walking very far tonight.

Before he could turn around and go back into the school to make the offer, he saw Ellie Webster pull her keys out of her pocket and fight to open her truck door for several seconds without success.

“Can I help you there, ma’am?” he finally asked.

She grunted as she worked the key. “The lock seems to be stuck….”

Wasn’t that just like a city girl to go to all the trouble to lock the door of a rusty old pickup nobody would want to steal anyway? “You know, most of us around here don’t lock our vehicles. Not much need.”

She gave him a scorcher of a look. “And most of you think karaoke is a girl you went to high school with.”

His mouth twitched, but he refused to let himself smile. Instead, he yanked off a glove and stuck his bare thumb over the lock.

In the pale lavender twilight, she watched him with a confused frown. “What are you doing?”

“Just trying to warm up your lock. I imagine it’s frozen and that’s why you can’t get the key to turn. I guess you don’t have much trouble with that kind of thing in California, do you?”

“Not much, no. I guess it’s another exciting feature unique to Wyoming. Like jackalopes and perpetual road construction.”

“When we’ve had a cold wet rain like we did this afternoon, moisture can get down in the lock. After the sun goes down, it doesn’t take long to freeze.”

“I’ll remember that.”

“There. That ought to do it.” He pulled his hand away and took the key from her, then shoved it into the lock. The mechanism slid apart now like a knife through soft wax, and he couldn’t resist pulling the door open for her with an exaggerated flourish.

She gave him a disgruntled look then climbed into her pickup. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He shoved his hand into his lined pocket, grateful for the cozy warmth. “Next time you might want to think twice before you lock your door so it doesn’t happen again. Nobody’s going to steal anything around here.”

She didn’t look like she appreciated his advice. “You do things your way, I’ll do things mine, Harte.”

She turned the key, and the truck started with a smooth purr that defied its dilapidated exterior. “If you decide you’re man enough to help me with this stupid carnival, I suppose we’ll have to start organizing it soon.”

His attention snagged on the first part of her sentence. “If I’m man enough?” he growled.

She grinned at him, her silvery-green eyes sparkling, and he fought hard to ignore the kick of awareness in his stomach. “Do you think you’ve got the guts to go through with this?”

“It’s not a matter of guts,” he snapped. “It’s a matter of having the time to waste putting together some silly carnival.”

“If you say so.”

“I’m a very busy man, Dr. Webster.”

It was apparently exactly the wrong thing to say. Her grin slid away, and she stiffened like a coil of frozen rope, slicing him to pieces with a glare. “And I have nothing better to do than sit around cutting out pink and white hearts to decorate the school gymnasium with, right? That’s what you think, isn’t it? Lord knows, I don’t have much of a practice thanks to you and all the other stubborn old men around here.”

He set his jaw. He wasn’t going to get into this with her standing out here in the school parking lot while the windchill dipped down into single digits. “That’s not what I meant,” he muttered.

“I know exactly what you meant. I know just what you think of me, Mr. Harte.”

He sincerely doubted it. Did she know he thought about her a lot more than he damn well knew he ought to and that he couldn’t get her green eyes or her sassy little mouth out of his mind?

“Our daughters want us to do this,” she said. “I don’t know what little scheme they’re cooking up—and to tell you the truth, I’m not sure I want to know—but it seems to be important to Dylan, and that’s enough for me. Let me know what you decide.”

She closed the door, barely missing his fingers, then shoved the truck into gear and spun out of the parking lot, leaving him in a cloud of exhaust.

Chapter 2

Matt drove his pickup under the arch proclaiming Diamond Harte Ranch—Choice Simmentals and Quarter Horses with a carved version of the brand that had belonged to the Harte family for four generations.

He paused for just a moment like he always did to savor the view before him. The rolling, sage-covered hills, the neat row of fence line stretching out as far as the eye could see, the barns and outbuildings with their vivid red paint contrasting so boldly with the snow.

And standing guard over it all at the end of the long gravel drive was the weathered log and stone house his grandfather had built—with the sprawling addition he had helped his father construct the year he turned twelve.

Home.

He loved it fiercely, from the birthing sheds to the maze of pens to the row of Douglas fir lining the drive.

He knew every single inch of its twenty thousand acres, as well as the names and bloodlines of each of the three dozen cutting horses on the ranch and the medical history of all six hundred of the ranch’s cattle.

Maybe he loved it too much. Reverend Whitaker’s sermon last week had been a fiery diatribe on the sin of excess pride, the warning in Proverbs about how pride goeth before destruction.

Matt had squirmed in the hard pew for a minute, then decided the Lord would forgive him for it, especially if He could look down through the clouds and see the Diamond Harte like Matt saw it. As close to heaven as any place else on earth.

Besides, didn’t the Bible also say the sleep of a laboring man was sweet? His father’s favorite scripture had been in Genesis, something about how a man should eat bread only by the sweat of his face.

Well, he’d worked plenty hard for the Diamond Harte. He’d poured every last ounce of his sweat into the ranch since he was twenty-two years old, into taking the legacy his parents had left their three children so suddenly and prematurely and building it into the powerful ranch it had become.

He had given up everything for the ranch. All his time and energy. The college degree in ag economy he was sixteen credits away from earning when his parents had died in that rollover accident. Even his wife, who had hated the ranch with a passion and had begged him to leave every day of their miserable marriage.

Melanie. The woman he had loved with a quicksilver passion that had turned just as quickly to bitter, ferocious hate. His wife, who had cheated on him and lied to him and eventually left him when Lucy wasn’t even three months old.

She’d been a city girl, too, fascinated by silly, romantic dreams of the West. The reality of living on a ranch wasn’t romantic at all, as Melanie had discovered all too soon. It was hard work and merciless weather. Cattle that didn’t always smell so great, a cash flow that was never dependable. Flies in the summer and snowstorms in the winter that could trap you for days.

Melanie had never even made an effort to belong. She had been lost. He could see that now. Bitterly unhappy and desperate for something she could never find.

She thought he should have sold the ranch, pocketed the five or six million it was probably worth and taken her somewhere a whole lot more glitzy than Salt River, Wyoming. And when he refused to give in to her constant pleading, she had made his life hell.

What was this thing he had for women who didn’t belong out here? He thought of his fascination with the California vet. It wasn’t attraction. He refused to call it attraction. She was just different from what he was used to, that’s all. Annoying, opinionated, argumentative. That’s the only reason his pulse rate jumped whenever she was around.

A particularly strong gust of wind blew out of the canyon suddenly, rattling the pickup. He sent a quick look at the digital clock on the sleek dashboard, grateful for the distraction from thoughts of a woman he had no business thinking about.

Almost six. Cassie would have dinner on soon, and then he would get to spend the rest of the night trying to keep his stock warm. He eased his foot off the brake and quickly drove the rest of the way to the house, parking in his usual spot next to his sister’s Cherokee.

Inside, the big house was toasty, welcoming. His stomach growled and his mouth watered at the delectable smells coming from the kitchen—mashed potatoes and Cassie’s amazing meat loaf, if he wasn’t mistaken. He hung his hat on the row of pegs by the door, then made his way to the kitchen. He found his baby sister stirring gravy in a pan on the wide professional stove she’d insisted he install last year.

She looked up at his entrance and gave him a quick smile. “Dinner’s almost ready.”

“Smells good.” He stood watching her for a moment, familiar guilt curling in his gut. She ought to be in her own house, making dinner for her own husband and a whole kitchen full of rug rats, instead of wasting her life away taking care of him and Lucy.

If it hadn’t been for the disastrous choices he made with Melanie, that’s exactly where she would have been.

It wasn’t a new thought. He’d had plenty of chances in the last ten years to wish things could be different, to regret that he had become so blasted dependent on everything Cassie did for them after Melanie ran off.

She ought to go to college—or at least to cooking school somewhere, since she loved it so much. But every time they talked about it, about her plans for the future, she insisted she was exactly where she wanted to be, doing exactly what she wanted to be doing.

How could he convince her otherwise when he still wasn’t completely sure he could handle things on his own? He didn’t know how he could do a proper job of raising Lucy by himself and handle the demands of the ranch at the same time.

Maybe if Jesse was around more, things might be different. He could have given his younger brother some of the responsibilities of the ranch, leaving more time to take care of things on the home front. But Jess had never been content on the Diamond Harte. He had other dreams, of catching the bad guys and saving the world, and Matt couldn’t begrudge him those.

“Where’s Lucy?” he asked.

“Up in her room fretting, I imagine. She’s been a basket case waiting for you to get back from the school. She broke two glasses while she was setting the table, and spent more time looking out the window for your truck than she did on her math homework.”

“She ought to be nervous,” he growled, grateful for the renewed aggravation that was strong enough to push the guilt aside.

Cassie glanced up at his tone. “Uh-oh. That bad? What did she do?”

“You wouldn’t believe it if I told you,” he muttered and headed toward the stairs. “Give me five minutes to talk to her, and then we’ll be down.”

He knocked swiftly on her door and heard a muffled, “Come in.” Inside, he found his daughter sitting on her bed, gnawing her bottom lip so hard it looked like she had chewed away every last drop of blood.

Through that curtain of long, dark hair, he saw that her eyes were wide and nervous. As they damn well ought to be after the little stunt she pulled. He let her stew in it for a minute.

“Hey, squirt.”

“Hi,” she whispered. With hands that trembled just a little, she picked up Sigmund, the chubby calico cat she’d raised from a kitten, and plopped him in her lap.

“So I just got back from talking with Miz McKenzie.”

Lucy peered at him between the cat’s ears. She cleared her throat. “Um, what did she say?”

“I think you know exactly what she said, don’t you?”

She nodded, the big gray eyes she’d inherited from her mother wide with apprehension. As usual, he hoped to heaven that was the only thing Melanie had passed on to their daughter.

“You want to tell me what this is all about?”

She appeared to think it over, then shook her head swiftly. He bit his cheek to keep a rueful grin from creeping out at that particular piece of honesty. “Tough. Tell me anyway.”

“I don’t know.”

“Come on, Luce. What were you thinking, to sign me up for this Valentine’s carnival without at least talking to me first?”

“It was Dylan’s idea,” Lucy mumbled.

Big surprise there. Dylan Webster was a miniature version of her wacky mother. “Why?”

“She thought you’d be good at it, since you’re so important around here and can get people to do whatever you want. At least that’s what her mom says.”

He could picture Ellie Webster saying exactly that, with her pert little nose turned up in the air.

“And,” Lucy added, the tension easing from her shoulders a little as she stroked the purring cat, “we both thought it would be fun. You know, planning the carnival and stuff. You and me and Dylan and her mom, doing it all together. A bonding thing.”

A bonding thing? The last thing he needed to do was bond with Ellie Webster, under any circumstances.

“What do you know about bonding? Don’t tell me that’s something they teach you in school.”

Lucy shrugged. “Dylan says we’re in our formative preteen years and need positive parental influence now more than ever. She thought this would be a good opportunity for us to develop some leadership skills.”

Great. Now Ellie Webster’s kid had his daughter spouting psychobabble. He blew out a breath. “What about you?”

She blinked at him. “Me?”

“You’re pretty knowledgeable about Dylan’s views, but what about your own? Why did you go along with it?”

Lucy suddenly seemed extremely interested in a little spot on the cat’s fur. “I don’t know,” she mumbled.

“Come on. You can do better than that.”

She chewed her lip again, then looked at the cat. “We never do anything together.”

He rocked back on his heels, baffled by her. “What are you talking about? We do plenty of things together. Just last Saturday you spent the whole day with me in Idaho Falls.”

She rolled her eyes. “Shopping for a new truck. Big whoop. I thought it would be fun to do something completely different together. Something that doesn’t have to do with the ranch or with cattle or horses.” She paused, then added in a quiet voice, “Something just for me.”

Ah, more guilt. Just what he needed. The kid wasn’t even ten years old and she was already an expert at it. He sighed. Did females come out of the box with some built-in guilt mechanism they could turn off and on at will?

The hell of it was, she was absolutely right, and he knew it. He didn’t spend nearly enough time with her. He tried, he really did, but between the horses and the cattle, his time seemed to be in as short supply as sunshine in January.

His baby girl was growing up. He could see it every day. Used to be a day spent with him would be enough for her no matter what they did together. Even if it was only shopping for a new truck. Now she wanted more, and he wasn’t sure he knew how to provide it.

“Wouldn’t it have been easier to tell me all this before you signed me up? Then we could have at least talked it over without me getting such a shock like this.”

She fidgeted with Sigmund, who finally must have grown tired of being messed with. He let out an offended mewl of protest and rolled away from her, then leaped from the bed gracefully and stalked out the door.

Lucy watched until his tail disappeared down the end of the hall before she answered him in that same low, ashamed voice. “Dylan said you’d both say no if we asked. We thought it might be harder for you to back out if Ms. McKenzie thought you’d already agreed to it.”

“That wasn’t very fair, to me or to Dr. Webster, was it?” He tried to come up with an analogy that might make sense to her. “How would you like it if I signed you up to show one of the horses in the 4-H competition without talking to you first?”

She shuddered, as he knew she would. Her shyness made her uncomfortable being the center of attention, so she had always avoided the limelight, even when she was little. In that respect, Miz McKenzie was right—Dylan Webster had been good for her and had brought her out of her shell, at least a little.

“I wouldn’t like it at all.”

“And I don’t like what you did any better. I ought to just back out of this whole crazy thing right now.”

“Oh, Dad, you can’t!” she wailed. “You’ll ruin everything.”

He studied her distress for several seconds, then sighed. He loved his daughter fiercely. She was the biggest joy in his life, more important than a hundred ranches. If she felt like she came in second to the Diamond Harte, he obviously wasn’t trying hard enough.

Lucy finally broke the silence. “Are you really, really, really mad at me?” she asked in a small voice.

“Maybe just one really.” He gave her a lopsided smile. “But don’t worry. I’ll get you back. You’ll be sorry you ever heard of this carnival by the time I get through with you.”

Her eyes went wide again, this time with excitement. “Does that mean you’ll do it?”

“I guess. I think we’re both going to be sorry.”

But he couldn’t have too many regrets, at least not right now. Not when his daughter jumped from her bed with a squeal and threw her arms tightly around his waist.

“Oh, thank you, Daddy. Thank you, thank you, thank you. You’re the best.”

For that moment, at least, he felt like it.

* * *

“No way is Matthew Harte going to go through with it. Mark my words, if you agree to do this, you’re going to be stuck planning the whole carnival by yourself.”

In the middle of sorting through the day’s allotment of depressing mail, Ellie grimaced at SueAnn Clayton, her assistant. She had really come to hate that phrase. Mark my words, you’re not cut out to be a large animal vet. Mark my words, you’re going to regret leaving California. Mark my words, you won’t last six months in Wyoming.

Just once, she wished everybody would keep their words—and unsolicited advice—to themselves.

In this case, though, she was very much afraid SueAnn was right. There was about as much likelihood of Matt Harte helping her plan the carnival as there was that he’d be the next one walking through the door with a couple of his prize cutting horses for her to treat.

She sighed and set the stack of bills on SueAnn’s desk. “If he chickens out, I’ll find somebody else to help me.” She grinned at her friend. “You, for instance.”

SueAnn made a rude noise. “Forget it. I chaired the Halloween Howl committee three years in a row and was PTA president twice. I’ve more than done my share for Salt River Elementary.”

“Come on, SueAnn,” she teased. “Are you forgetting who pays your salary?”

The other woman rolled her eyes. “You pay me to take your phone calls, to send out your bill reminders and to hold down the occasional unlucky animal while you give him a shot. Last I checked, planning a Valentine’s Day carnival is nowhere in my job description.”

“We could always change your job description. How about while we’re at it, we’ll include mucking out the stalls?”

“You’re not going to blackmail me. That’s what you pay Dylan the big bucks for. Speaking of the little rascal, how did you punish her, anyway? Ground her to her room for the rest of the month?”

That’s what she should have done. It was no less than Dylan deserved for lying to her teacher. But she’d chosen a more fitting punishment. “She’s grounded from playing with Lucy after school for the rest of the week and she has to finish reading all of Little Women and I’m going to make sure she does a lot of the work of this carnival, since it was her great idea.”

“The carnival she ought to be okay with, but which is she going to hate more, reading the book or not playing with her other half?”

“Doesn’t matter. She has to face the music.”

SueAnn laughed, and Ellie smiled back. What would she have done without the other woman to keep her grounded and sane these last few months? She shuddered just thinking about it.

She winced whenever she remembered how tempted she’d been to fire her that first week. SueAnn was competent enough—eerily so, sometimes—but she also didn’t have the first clue how to mind her own business. Ellie had really struggled with it at first. Coming from California where avoiding eye contact when at all possible could sometimes be a matter of survival, dealing with a terminal busybody for an assistant had been wearing.

She was thirty-two years old and wasn’t used to being mothered. Even when she’d had a mother, she hadn’t had much practice at it. And she had been completely baffled by how to handle SueAnn, who made it a point to have her favorite grind of coffee waiting very morning, who tried to set her up with every single guy in town between the ages of eighteen and sixty, and who brought in Tupperware containers several times a week brimming with homemade soups and casseroles and mouthwatering desserts.

Now that she’d had a little practice, she couldn’t believe she had been so fortunate to find not only the best assistant she could ask for but also a wonderful friend.

“What’s on the agenda this morning?” Ellie asked.

“You’re not going to believe this, but you actually have two patients waiting.”

“What, are we going for some kind of record?”

SueAnn snickered and held two charts out with a flourish. “In exam room one, we have Sasha, Mary Lou McGilvery’s husky.”

“What’s wrong with her?”

“Him. Sasha, oddly enough, is a him. He’s scratching like crazy, and Mary Lou is afraid he has fleas.”

“Highly doubtful around here, especially this time of year. It’s too cold.”

“That’s what I tried to tell her. She’s convinced that you need to take a look at him, though.”

Dogs weren’t exactly her specialty, since she was a large animal veterinarian, but she knew enough about them to deal with a skin condition. She nodded to SueAnn. “And patient number two?”

Her assistant cleared her throat ominously. “Cleo.”

“Cleo?”

“Jeb Thacker’s Nubian goat. She has a bit of a personality disorder.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, let’s put it this way. Ben used to say that if she’d been human, she’d have been sent to death row a long time ago.”

Ellie grinned, picturing the old codger who had sold her the practice saying exactly that. Ben Nichols was a real character. They had formed an instant friendship the first time they met at a conference several years ago. It was that same bond that had prompted him to make all her dreams come true by offering her his practice at a bargain basement price when he decided to retire, to her shock and delight. He and his wife were now thoroughly enjoying retirement in Arizona.

“What’s Cleo in for?”

“Jeb didn’t know, precisely. The poor man ’bout had a panic attack right there when I tried to get him to specify on the paperwork. Blushed brighter than one of his tomatoes and said he thought it was some kind of female trouble.”

A homicidal goat with female trouble. And here she thought she was in for another slow morning. “Where’s Jeb?”

“He had to go into Afton to the hardware store. Said he’d be back later to pick her up.”

“In that case, let’s take care of the dog first since Mary Lou’s waiting,” she decided. She could save the worst for last.

It only took a few moments for her to diagnose that Sasha had a bad case of psoriasis. She gave Mary Lou a bottle of medicated shampoo she thought would do the trick, ordered her to wash his bedding frequently and scheduled a checkup in six months.

That done, she put on her coat and braved the cold, walking to the pens behind the clinic to deal with the cantankerous goat. Cleo looked docile enough. The brown-and-white goat was standing in one of the smaller pens gnawing the top rail on the fence.

Ellie stood near the fence and spoke softly to her for a moment, trying to earn the animal’s trust. Cleo turned and gave her what Ellie could swear was a look of sheer disdain out of big, long-fringed brown eyes, then turned back to the rail.

Slowly, cautiously, she entered the pen and approached the goat, still crooning softly to her. When she was still several feet away, she stopped for a cursory look. Although she would need to do a physical exam to be certain, she thought she could see the problem—one of Cleo’s udders looked engorged and red. She probably had mastitis.

Since Cleo wasn’t paying her any mind, Ellie inched closer. “You’re a sweet girl, aren’t you?” she murmured. “Everybody’s wrong about you.” She reached a hand to touch the animal, but before her hand could connect, Cleo whirled like a bronco with a burr under her saddle. Ellie didn’t have time to move away before the goat butted her in the stomach with enough force to knock her on her rear end, right into a puddle of what she fervently hoped was water.

With a ma-aaa of amusement, the goat turned back to the fence rail.

“Didn’t anybody warn you about Cleo?” a deep male voice asked.

Just what she needed, a witness to her humiliation. From her ignominious position on the ground, she took a moment to force air into her lungs. When she could breathe again, she glanced toward the direction of the voice. Her gaze landed first on a pair of well-worn boots just outside the fence, then traveled up a mile-long length of blue jeans to a tooled silver buckle with the swirled insignia of the NCHA—National Cutting Horse Association.

She knew that buckle.

She’d seen it a day earlier on none other than the lean hips of her nemesis. Sure enough. Matt Harte stood there just on the other side of the pen—broad shoulders, blue eyes, wavy dark hair and all.

She closed her eyes tightly, wishing the mud would open up underneath her and suck her down. Of all the people in the world who might have been here to watch her get knocked to her butt, why did it have to be him?

Chapter 3

Matt let himself into the pen, careful to keep a safe distance between his own rear end and Jeb Thacker’s notoriously lousy-tempered goat, who had retreated to the other side of the pen.

“Here, let me help you.” He reached a hand down to the city vet, still sprawled in the mud.

“I can do it,” she muttered. Instead of taking his hand, she climbed gingerly to her feet by herself, then surreptitiously rubbed a hand against her seat.

Matt cleared his throat. “You okay?”

“I’ve had better mornings, but I’ll live.”

“You hit the ground pretty hard. You sure nothing’s busted?”

“I don’t think so. Just bruised. Especially my pride,” she said wryly. She paused for a minute, then smiled reluctantly. “I imagine it looked pretty funny watching me get tackled by a goat.”

She must not take herself too seriously if she could laugh about what had just happened. He found himself liking her for it. He gazed at her, at the way her red hair had slipped from its braid thingy and the little smudge of dirt on her cheek. Her eyes sparkled with laughter, and she was just about the prettiest thing he’d seen in a long time.

When he said nothing, a blush spread over her cheeks and she reached a hand to tuck her stray hair back. “Did you need something, Mr. Harte?”

He was staring at her, he realized, like some hayseed who’d never seen a pretty girl before. He flushed, astounded at himself, at this completely unexpected surge of attraction. “You might as well call me Matt, especially since it looks like we’ll be working on this stupid school thing together.”

Her big green eyes that always made him think of new aspen leaves just uncurling in springtime widened even more. “You’re going to do it?”

“I said so, didn’t I?” he muttered.

She grinned. “And you sound so enthusiastic about it.”

“You want enthusiasm, you’ll have to find somebody else to help you.”

“What made you change your mind?”

He didn’t know how to answer that, and besides, it wasn’t any of her business. He said he’d do it, didn’t he? What more did she need? But somehow the sharp retort he started to make changed into something else.

“Miz McKenzie’s right,” he finally said. “Lucy’s done better in school this year than she ever has. She never would have wanted to organize something like this last year. I don’t want to ruin the improvement she’s made. Besides, she usually doesn’t ask for much. It’s a small price to pay if it’s going to make her happy.”

Ellie Webster cocked her head and looked at him like she’d just encountered a kind of animal she’d never seen before.

“What?” he asked, annoyed at himself for feeling so defensive.

“Nothing. You’re just full of surprises, Mr. Harte.”

“Matt,” he muttered. “I said you should call me Matt.”

“Matt.” She smiled suddenly, the most genuine smile she’d ever given him. He stared at it, at her, feeling like he’d just spent a few hours out in the hard sun without his hat.

“Is that why you stopped?” she asked. “To tell me you decided to help with the carnival?”

He shrugged and ordered his heartbeat to behave itself. “I had to drop by the post office next door anyway. I thought maybe if you had a second this morning, we could get a cup of coffee over at the diner and come up with a game plan. At least figure out where to start.”

Again, she looked surprised, but she nodded. “That’s a good idea. But if you’re just looking for coffee, SueAnn makes the best cup this side of the Rockies. We can talk in my office.”

“That would be fine. I’ve already had breakfast. You, ah, need to get cleaned up or anything?”

She glanced down at her muddy jeans, then at the goat with a grimace. “Can you wait ten minutes? Since I’m already muddy, I might as well take a look at Cleo now.”

He thought of the million-and-one things he had to do at the ranch after he ran to the parts store in Idaho Falls—the buyers he had coming in later in the afternoon, the three horses waiting for the farrier, the inevitable paperwork always confronting him.

He should just take a rain check, but for some reason that completely baffled him, he nodded. “Sure, I can wait.” His next question surprised him even more. “Need me to give you a hand?”

She smiled again, that sweet, friendly smile. “That would be great. I’m afraid Cleo isn’t too crazy about her visit to the vet.”

The next fifteen minutes were a real education. With his help, Ellie miraculously finessed the ornery goat into holding still long enough for an exam. She murmured soft words—nonsense, really—while her hands moved gently and carefully over the now docile goat.

“Okay, you can let go now,” she finally said. He obeyed, and the goat ambled away from them.

“What’s the verdict?” he asked.

She looked up from scribbling some notes on a chart. “Just as I suspected. Mastitis. She has a plugged milk duct. I’ll run a culture to be sure, but I think a round of antibiotics ought to take care of her.”

“Just like a cow, huh?”

“Just like. Same plumbing involved.”

“Cleo’s a hell of a lot uglier than any of my ladies.”

She grinned at him again. “Beauty’s in the eye of the beholder, Harte. I imagine Jeb Thacker wouldn’t agree. Anyway, thanks for your help.”

She led the way inside the small building where she worked. While she went in the back to change her clothes, he shot the breeze with SueAnn, who went to high school with him and whose husband ran the local nursery in town.

In a surprisingly short time, Ellie returned wearing a pair of surgical scrubs. He figured she probably was supposed to look cool and professional in the scrubs, but instead they made her look not much older than one of Lucy’s friends on her way to a sleepover, especially with her auburn hair pulled back in that ponytail.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” she said, sounding a little out of breath.

“No problem.”

SueAnn hopped up and poured a cup of coffee for Ellie. “Here you go, sugar.”

“Thanks. We’ll be in my office if you need me.”

“Take your time.”

Matt didn’t miss the not-so-subtle wink SueAnn sent the vet or the quick frown Ellie volleyed back. Before he could analyze the currents going on here, she walked into a cluttered office with books and papers everywhere. Dominating one wall was a window framing a beautiful view of the Salt River mountain range that gave the town its name. On the other was a big print of a horse—a Tennessee walker, if he wasn’t mistaken—running across a field of wildflowers, all grace and power and beauty.

“Thanks again for helping me with Cleo,” Ellie said as soon as he was seated.

“No problem. It was interesting to see you working on her.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Interesting in what way?”

He shrugged. “I kept waiting for you to pull out the needles or whatever it is you use for that stuff you do.”

“That stuff I do?”

There were suddenly as many icicles in her voice as he had hanging from his barn. “You know, that acupuncture stuff. You don’t do that all the time, then?”

Whatever friendliness might have been in her expression faded away, and she became guarded once more. “Just when the situation calls for it.”

“And this one didn’t?”

Her smile was paper-thin. “See that diploma on the wall? I’m a board-certified vet with several years’ experience in traditional veterinary medicine. The acupuncture stuff, as you call it, was just extra training to supplement my regular skills. I only use it as an alternative when some of the more orthodox treatments have failed or aren’t appropriate.”

“And when would that be?”

“A lecture on veterinary acupuncture is not the reason you stopped by, Mr. Harte.”

“I’m curious about what you do.”

She hesitated for a moment before answering. “Animals I treat most often are horses with performance problems, like short stepping or mysterious lameness. I’ve treated moon blindness successfully and also older horses with degenerative conditions like arthritis or joint disease. You’d be surprised at how effective acupuncture can be.”

He didn’t doubt that. He didn’t want to sound too skeptical, not when they were going to have to work together for the next few months, but he thought the whole thing was a bunch of hooey. Her California crowd might buy all this New Age crap, but folks in Wyoming looked at things like this a little differently.

For a minute, he thought about keeping his mouth shut and changing the subject, but she and her kid had been good for his daughter. He didn’t want to see her practice go under, since Lucy would just about wither away if Dylan moved.

He cleared his throat. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Dr. Webster, but it seems to me you might be better off focusing on those more traditional things you were talking about and leave the rest of that, er, stuff back in California.”

She pursed her lips together tightly. “Thank you for the advice,” she said, in a tone that left him in no doubt of her real feelings. And they probably didn’t include gratitude.

He should have stopped right there, but something made him push the issue harder. “Look, it’s no secret around town that you’ve lost a lot of customers in the last few months to Steve Nichols, Ben’s nephew. Hell, I’ve been using him myself. A lot of people don’t understand why Ben sold his practice to you in the first place instead of to Steve. Anyway, I’m pretty sure you could lure some of those folks back if you didn’t focus so much on the acupuncture side of things in your ads and all.”

“I don’t tell you how to run your ranch,” she said quietly, folding her hands tightly on the desk. “So please don’t tell me how to operate my practice.”

He sat back in the chair, aware he sounded like an idiot. Bossy and arrogant, just like Cassie always accused him of being. “Sorry,” he muttered. “It’s none of my business what you do. Just thought you should know that out here we tend to prefer the things we know, the way we’ve always done things, the way they’ve been done for generations. Especially when it comes to our stock.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Sorry if I offended you.”

She shrugged. “You’re only saying to my face what I’m sure everyone else has been saying behind my back. I appreciate your frankness. Now can we talk about the carnival?”

“Uh, sure.” Who would have dreamed twenty-four hours ago that he would consider a Valentine’s Day carnival a safe topic of conversation?

“So I was thinking about calling it A Fair to Remember,” she said. “What do you think?”

He scratched his cheek, not quite sure where she was going with this.

“From the movie. You know, Deborah Kerr, Cary Grant. Empire State Building. The one Meg Ryan bawled about in Sleepless in Seattle.”

At his continued blank look, she shrugged. “Never mind. We can talk about it later. We have ten weeks to work out all the details.”

Ten weeks working closely with Ellie Webster, with her green eyes and her wisecracks and her shampoo that smelled like lemon pie. He knew damn well the idea shouldn’t appeal to him so much.

Chapter 4

“So we’re agreed then,” Ellie said fifteen minutes later. “Given our mutual lack of experience, we need to delegate as much as humanly possible. Our first step is to set up committees for booths, decorations, refreshments and publicity. Once we get some other willing victims, er, parents on board, we can go from there.”

Matt scratched the back of his neck. “I guess. You know as much about this as I do. I just hope we can pull this off without making complete fools of ourselves. Or having the whole thing go down in history as the worst carnival ever.”

He looked so completely uncomfortable at the task ahead of them that Ellie had to smile. He must love Lucy very much to be willing to put himself through it despite his obvious misgivings. Not many men she knew would be willing to take on such a project for their ten-year-old daughters, and she felt herself softening toward him even more.

“I can talk to Sarah this afternoon if you’d like and tell her we’ve both agreed to do it,” she said.

“I’d appreciate that. I’ve got to run over to Idaho Falls to pick up a part for the loader, and it might be late before I get back in.” He unkinked his considerable length from the low chair and rose, fingering his hat.

He was so tall she had to crane her neck to look into those startling blue eyes. Just how did the man manage to make her little office shrink to about the size of a rabbit hutch by his presence? The awareness simmering through her didn’t help matters one bit.

“Sure you’re not too busy to talk to Miz McKenzie?” he asked.

“I should be able to carve out a few moments,” she murmured dryly. Her appointment schedule for the rest of the day was woefully empty, as she was fairly certain he must realize.

Sure enough, he looked even more ill at ease. After a moment, he cleared his throat. “Think about what I said before, would you? About folks around here being more comfortable with what they know. Your business might pick up if you keep that in mind. You never know.”

Any soft feelings she might have been harboring toward him fluttered away like migrating birds. Before she could snap at him again to mind his own business, he shoved his hat on his head and walked out of her office with that long, ground-swallowing stride.

She might be annoyed with him, but that couldn’t keep her from wandering out of her office to the reception area to watch through the window as he climbed into a shiny new pickup that probably cost as much as her entire practice.

He drove out of the parking lot with deliberate care, as she was sure he did everything.

She had a sudden wild desire to know if he would kiss a woman that way. Thoroughly. Studiously. Carefully exploring every single inch of her lips with that hard mouth until he memorized each curve, each hollow. Until her knees turned to jelly and her body ached with need….

“Dreamy, isn’t he?”

Ellie whirled and found SueAnn watching her, mouth twitching with amusement. She swallowed hard and fought the urge to press a hand to her suddenly trembling stomach. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she lied.

SueAnn just laughed. “Right. Whatever you say. You want me to pick that tongue off the floor for you?”

She snapped said tongue firmly back into her mouth. “Don’t you have some work to do?”

“Oh, watching you go weak in the knees is much more fun.”

“Sorry to ruin your entertainment, but one of us does have some work waiting. If you need me, I’ll be in my office.”

“No problem. Looks like we’ll see plenty of Matt Harte between now and Valentine’s Day.”

That’s exactly what she was afraid of. She sighed and headed for her office. She had only been at her desk for a few moments when the cowbell on the door jangled suddenly. From her vantage point, she couldn’t see who came in, but she could watch SueAnn’s ready smile slide away and her expression chill by several degrees.

Curious as to who might have earned such a frosty glare from the woman who invented congeniality, Ellie rose and walked to the door of her office for a better look.

Steve Nichols, her main competition in town and the nephew of the vet who had sold her the practice, was just closing the door behind him.

She should have known. SueAnn had a good word to say about everybody in town except for Ben’s nephew. When it came to Steve, she was as intractable as Jeb Thacker’s goat.

Ellie couldn’t understand her animosity. From the day she arrived, Steve had gone out of his way to make her feel welcome in Salt River—treating her as a friend and respected colleague, not as a business rival who had bought his uncle’s practice out from under him.

“Steve.” She greeted him warmly to compensate for SueAnn’s noticeable lack of enthusiasm.

His mouth twisted into a smile underneath his bushy blond mustache, then he gestured toward the parking lot. “Was that Matt Harte I just saw driving out of here?”

For no earthly reason she could figure out, she felt a blush soak her cheeks. “Er, yes.”

“Is there a problem with one of his animals? Anything I should know about?”

“Oh, no. Nothing like that.” She would have left it at that, but Steve continued to study her expectantly. Finally, she had to say something. “Our girls are in the same class and we’re working on a school project together,” she finally said. “We were just discussing some of the details.”

“Really? What kind of project?”

She didn’t understand this strange reluctance to divulge any information—maybe she was just embarrassed—but couldn’t bring herself to answer.

“They’re cochairs for the annual Valentine’s Day carnival.” SueAnn finally broke the silence, her voice clipped and her expression still cool.

His mouth sagged open, then a laugh gurgled out. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Matt Harte planning a school carnival? That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. Next thing I know, you’re going to tell me he’s opening up a beauty salon in town.”

Steve’s reaction matched her own when she had first heard about the carnival, so why did she feel so annoyed at him for it? And so protective of a bossy, arrogant rancher who couldn’t seem to keep his nose out of her business?

“He’s doing it for his daughter,” she said with a coolness to match SueAnn’s. “What’s so ridiculous about that?”

“It just doesn’t seem like his thing. Matt’s not exactly the PTA type, you know what I mean?”

She didn’t want to get into this with him, so she abruptly changed the subject. “Was there something you needed, Steve?”

He shrugged, letting the matter drop. “Do I need a reason to stop by and visit my favorite vet?”

Behind him, SueAnn made a rude noise that she quickly camouflaged behind a cough. Ellie didn’t need to phone a psychic hot line to read her mind. She was fairly sure SueAnn thought Steve’s favorite vet looked back at him in the mirror each morning.

The other woman opened her mouth to say something snide along those lines, Ellie imagined. She quickly gave her a warning glare. To her relief, after a moment SueAnn clamped her lips tightly shut.

“You don’t need a reason to visit, Steve. You know that.” Ellie spoke quickly to head off any more trouble. “You’re always welcome here. But surely you wouldn’t have dropped by during the middle of your busy time of day just to chat, right?”

He sent her that boyishly charming smile of his. “You caught me. Actually, I did have an ulterior motive for dropping by. I’m in a bit of a bind. I ran out of brucellosis vaccine this morning and I’m scheduled to inoculate the herd at Paul Blanchard’s ranch in an hour.”

Paul Blanchard! He was another of her regular clients, one of the few who had stayed with the clinic after she took over from Ben. Ellie’s heart sank. Another deserter. They were dropping like flies.

SueAnn sent her a speaking glance, but before she could answer, Steve went on. “I’ve ordered a rush job on more but it won’t be here until tomorrow. You wouldn’t happen to have a few doses to tide me over until the shipment arrives, would you?”

“You want me to loan you some of my brucellosis vaccine for Paul Blanchard’s stock?”

Steve seemed completely oblivious to the sheer audacity of asking a favor for an account he had just appropriated. He gave her a pleading smile. “If it’s not too much of a bother. You won’t need any before tomorrow, will you?”

She might have, if she had been the one treating Blanchard cattle. As it was, it looked as if she would have vaccine to spare. She ground her teeth in frustration. Her first instinct was to say no, absolutely not. He could find his own damn vaccine. But in her heart she knew it wasn’t really Steve’s fault her practice was struggling.

She also couldn’t blame him for setting up his own competing clinic after Ben unexpectedly sold this one to her. If their roles had been reversed and she’d been the one left out in the cold by a relative, she would have done exactly the same thing. And probably wouldn’t have treated the usurper with nearly the kindness Steve had shown her.

She forced a smile. “I’ll go check my supply.”

Trying hard not to mutter to herself, she pushed through the swinging doors that separated the front office and waiting room from the treatment area.

The refrigerator in the back was well-stocked, and she found a case immediately. For one moment, she debated telling him she couldn’t find any but she knew that was petty and small-minded so she picked it up and shouldered her way through the swinging doors again.

Steve wasn’t where she left him by the front desk, and she lifted a curious eyebrow at SueAnn, who scowled and jerked her head toward Ellie’s office. Steve was sitting behind her desk, browsing through her planner where she meticulously recorded appointments and scheduled treatments.

With great effort, she swallowed her irritation. “Here you go,” she said loudly. His gaze flew to hers, and he didn’t seem at all embarrassed to be caught nosing around in her office.

“Thanks, Ellie. I really appreciate this.” His mustache twitched again with his smile.

“Glad to help,” she lied, and was immediately ashamed of herself for the ugly knot of resentment curdling in her stomach. “Read anything interesting in there?” she asked pointedly.

“Sorry. Professional curiosity. You don’t mind, do you? I’m intrigued by the improvement you’ve noted here in that thoroughbred of Jack Martin’s. I thought nothing would cure her. She’s a beauty of a horse, and it would have been a real shame to have to put her down, but I thought she would always be lame.”

“She’s responded well to a combination of treatments. Jack and I are both pleased.”

“So are things picking up?”

Not with you stealing my clients one by one, she thought. “Actually, it’s been a pretty busy day.”

“Have you given any more thought to my offer?”

She blew out a breath. She absolutely did not want to go into this with him today. “I have. The answer is still no, Steve. Just like it’s been for the last month.”

He rose from the chair and walked around to the other side of the desk. “Come on, Ellie. Think about it. If we combined our practices, we could each save tens of thousands a year on overhead. And pooling our workload would ease the burden on each of us.”

What burden? She would kill for a little workload to complain about. Ellie sighed. His offer made common sense and, heaven knows, would help boost her meager income, but it also held about as much appeal to her as being knocked on her rear end by a hundred goats.

She didn’t want to be partners, not with Steve or with anyone else. She wanted to stand on her own, to make her own decisions and be responsible for the consequences.

She had spent her entire adult life working for others, from volunteering in clinics while she was still in high school to the last seven years working for an equine vet in Monterey.

She was tired of it, of having to play by others’ rules. Constantly having someone else tell her what animals she could treat and how she should treat them had been draining the life out of her, stealing all her satisfaction and joy in the career she loved.

It went deeper than that, though. If she were honest, her ferocious need for independence had probably been rooted in her childhood, watching her mother drink herself to an early grave because of a man and then being shuttled here and there in the foster care system.

She learned early she would never be able to please the endless parade of busybody social workers and foster parents who marched through her life. She couldn’t please them, and she couldn’t depend on them. Too often, the moment she began to care for a family, she was capriciously yanked out and sent to another one. Eventually, she learned not to care, to carefully construct a hard shell around her heart. The only one she could truly count on was herself.

This was her chance. Hers and Dylan’s. The opportunity to build the life she had dreamed of since those early days cleaning cages.

She wasn’t ready to give up that dream, patients or none.

Besides that, she had SueAnn to consider. With the animosity between the two, she and Steve would never be able to work together, and she didn’t want to lose her as a friend or as an assistant.

“I’m not going to change my mind, Steve,” she finally said. “It’s a good offer and I appreciate it, really I do, but I’m just not interested right now.”

If Dylan had given her that same look, Ellie would have called it a pout. After only a moment of sulking, Steve’s expression became amiable again. “I’ll keep working on you. Eventually I’ll wear you down, just watch.”

He picked up the case of vaccine and headed for the door. “Thanks again for the loan. I’ll drop my shipment off tomorrow, if that’s all right with you.”

“That would be fine,” she said.

At the door he paused and looked at her with a grin. “And have fun working with Matt Harte. The man can be tough as a sow’s snout, but he’s a damn hard worker. He’s single-handedly built the Diamond Harte into a force to be reckoned with around here. I’m not sure that will help when it comes to planning a school carnival, but it ought to make things interesting.”

Interesting. She had a feeling the word would be a vast understatement.

* * *

He was hiding out, no denying it.

Like a desperado trying frantically to stay two steps ahead of a hangin’ party and a noose with his name on it.

A week after visiting Ellie at her clinic, Matt sat trapped in his office at the ranch house, trying to concentrate on the whir and click of the computer in front of him instead of the soft murmur of women’s voices coming from the kitchen at the end of the hall.

As usual, he had a hundred and one better things to occupy his time than sit here gazing at a blasted screen, but he didn’t dare leave the sanctuary of his office.

She was out there.

Ellie Webster. The city vet who had sneaked her way into his dreams for a week, with that fiery hair and her silvery-green eyes and that determined little chin.

He thought she was only driving out to the Diamond Harte to drop her kid off for a sleepover with Lucy. She was supposed to be here ten minutes, tops, and wouldn’t even have to know he was in here.

Things didn’t go according to plan. He had a feeling they rarely would, where Ellie Webster was concerned. Instead of driving away like she should have done, she had apparently plopped down on one of the straight-backed kitchen chairs, and now he could hear her and Cassie talking and laughing like they’d been best friends for life.

They’d been at it for the last half hour, and he’d just about had enough.

He wasn’t getting a damn thing done. Every time he tried to focus on getting the hang of the new livestock-tracking software, her voice would creep under the door like a sultry, devious wisp of smoke, and his concentration would be shot all to hell and back.

Why did it bug him so much to have her invading his space with that low laugh of hers? He felt itchy and bothered having her here, like a mustang with a tail full of cockleburs.

It wasn’t right. He would have to get a handle on this awareness if he was going to be able to work on the school thing with her for the next few months. As to how, he didn’t have the first idea. It had been a long time since he’d been so tangled up over a woman.

Maybe he should ask her out.

The idea scared him worse than kicking a mountain lion. He wasn’t much of a lady’s man. Maybe he used to be when he was younger—he’d enjoyed his share of buckle bunnies when he rodeoed in college, he wouldn’t deny it—but things had changed after Melanie.

He had tried to date a few times after he was finally granted a divorce in absentia after her desertion, but every attempt left him feeling restless and awkward.

After a while he just quit trying, figuring it was better to wake up lonely in his own bed than in a stranger’s.

He wasn’t lonely, he corrected the thought quickly. He had Lucy and Jess and Cassidy and the ranch hands. He sure as hell didn’t need another woman messing things up.

He cleared his throat. The action made him realize how thirsty he was. Parched, like he’d been riding through a desert for days.

The kitchen had water. Plenty of it, cold, pure mountain spring water right out of the tap. He could walk right in there and pour himself a big glass and nobody could do a damn thing about it.

Except then he’d have to face her.

He heaved a sigh and turned to the computer until the next wisp of laughter curled under the door.

That was it. He was going in. He shoved back from the desk and headed toward the door. He lived here, dammit. A man ought to be able to walk into his own kitchen for a drink if it suited him. She had no right to come into his house and tangle him up like this.

No right whatsoever.

Chapter 5

As soon as he walked into the big, warm kitchen, he regretted it.

He felt like the big, bad wolf walking in on a coop full of chickens. All four of them—Ellie, Cass and both of the girls—looked up, their cutoff laughter hanging in the air along with the sweet, intoxicating smell of chocolate chip cookies baking in the oven.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to interrupt,” he muttered. “I, uh, just needed a drink of water and then I’ll get out of your way.”

“You didn’t interrupt,” Cassie said. “Sit down. The cookies will be done in a minute, and I know how much you love eating them right out of the oven.”

Information his baby sister didn’t need to be sharing with the whole damn world, thank you very much. Made him sound like a seven-year-old boy snitching goodies after school. “I’ve got things to do,” he muttered.

“They can wait five minutes, can’t they?”

His jaw worked as he tried to come up with a decent-sounding excuse to escape without seeming rude. How was a man supposed to think straight when he had four females watching him so expectantly?

Finally, he muttered a curse under his breath and pulled out a chair. “Just five minutes, though.”

Like a tractor with a couple bad cylinders, the conversation limped along for a moment, and he squirmed on the hard chair, wishing he were absolutely anywhere but here. He was just about to jump up and rush back to the relative safety of his office—excuse or none—when Lucy ambushed him.

She touched his arm with green-painted fingernails—now where did she get those? he wondered—and gazed at him out of those big gray eyes. “Daddy, Dylan and her mom aren’t going anywhere for Thanksgiving dinner since they don’t have any family around here. Isn’t that sad?”

Keeping his gaze firmly averted from Ellie’s, he made a noncommittal sound.

“Do you think they might be able to come here and share our family’s dinner?”

Despite his best efforts, his gaze slid toward Ellie just in time to catch her mouth drop and her eyes go wide—with what, he couldn’t say for sure, but it sure looked like she was as horrified as he was by the very idea.

“I don’t know, honey—” he began.

“That’s a great idea,” Cassie said at the same time. “There’s always room at the table for a few more, and plenty of food.”

“Oh, no. That’s okay,” Ellie said quickly. “We’ll be fine, won’t we, Dylan?”

Dylan put on a pleading expression. “Come on, Mom. It would be so cool. Lucy’s aunt Cassie is a great cook. I bet she never burns the stuffing like you do.”

Ellie made a face at her daughter, and Matt had to fight a chuckle. And he thought Cass and Lucy were bad at spilling family secrets.

“Be that as it may,” Ellie said, her cheeks tinged slightly pink, “I’m sure the Hartes have a lovely family dinner planned. They don’t need to be saddled with two more.”

“It’s no problem,” Cassie said. “We’d love to have you come. Wouldn’t we, Matt?”

He cleared his throat. Again, he couldn’t seem to make his brain work fast enough to come up with an excuse. “Uh, sure.”

* * *

Ellie raised an eyebrow at his less-than-enthusiastic response. He obviously didn’t want to invite her for Thanksgiving any more than she wanted to accept.

“Good. It’s settled,” Cassie said, oblivious to their objections. “It’s usually really casual. Just family—Matt, Lucy, our brother Jess and whichever of the ranch hands stick around for the holidays. We eat around two but you’re welcome to come out any time before then, especially if you’re into watching football with the guys.”

What she knew about football would fit into a saltshaker. Ellie sighed heavily. And what she knew about big rowdy Thanksgiving family dinners wouldn’t even fit on a grain of salt.

It looked like she was going to be stuck with both things. So much for her good intentions about having as little as possible to do with the man who somehow managed to jumble up her insides every time she was around him.

What choice did she have, though? She didn’t want to hurt his daughter or sister’s feelings by refusing the invitation. Lucy was a dear, sweet and quiet and polite. Exactly Dylan’s opposite! It was a wonder they were friends, but somehow the two of them meshed perfectly. They brought out the best in each other.

To her surprise, she and Cassie had also immediately hit it off. Unlike Matt, his sister was bubbly and friendly and went out of her way to make her feel welcomed.

She would sound churlish and rude if she refused to share their holiday simply because the alpha male in the family made her as edgy as a hen on a hot griddle and sent her hormones whirling around like a Texas dust storm.

“Can I bring something?” she finally asked, trying to accept the invitation as gracefully as she could manage.

“Do you have a specialty?” Cassie asked.

Did macaroni and cheese count as a specialty? She doubted it. “No. I’m afraid not.”

“Sure you do, Mom.” Dylan spoke up. “What about that pie you make sometimes?”

She made pecan pie exactly twice, but Dylan had never forgotten it. Hope apparently springs eternal in a nine-year-old’s heart that someday she would bake it again. “I don’t know if I’d call that a specialty.”

“Why don’t you bring it anyway?” Cassie suggested. “Or if you’d rather make something else, that would be fine.”

I’d rather just stay home and have our usual quiet dinner for two, she thought. But one look at Dylan revealed her daughter was ecstatic about the invitation. Her eyes shone, and her funny little face had the same kind of expectancy it usually wore just before walking downstairs on Christmas morning.

She looked so excited that Ellie instantly was awash in guilt for all the years they had done just that—stayed home alone with their precooked turkey and instant mashed potatoes instead of accepting other invitations from friends and colleagues.

Why had she never realized her daughter had been missing a big, noisy celebration? Dylan was usually so vocal about what she wanted and thought she needed. Why had she never said anything about this?

“Whatever you want to bring is fine,” Cassie assured her. “Really, though, you don’t have to bring anything but yourselves. Like I said, there’s always plenty of food.”

“I’ll bring the pecan pie,” she said, hoping her reluctance didn’t filter into her voice.

“Great. I usually make a pumpkin and maybe an apple so we’ll have several to choose from. Knowing my brothers, I doubt any of them will last long.”

She looked at Matt out of the corner of her eyes and found him watching her. What was he thinking? That she was an interloper who had suddenly barged her way in to yet another facet of his life when he had plainly made it clear she wasn’t welcome? She couldn’t tell by the unreadable expression in those startling blue eyes.

The timer suddenly went off on the oven.

“That would be the cookies.” Cassie jumped up and opened the oven door, releasing even more of the heavenly aroma.

A smell so evocative of hearth and home that Ellie’s heart broke a little for all the homemade cookies she never had time to bake for her daughter. She had shed her last tear a long time ago for all the missing cookies in her own childhood.

Cassie quickly transferred at least half a dozen of the warm, gooey treats onto a plate for Matt, then poured him a glass of milk from the industrial-size refrigerator.

She set both in front of him, and he quickly grabbed them and stood up. Ellie smiled a little at the blatant relief evident in every line of his big, rangy body.

“Thanks,” he mumbled to his sister. “I’ll let you ladies get back to whatever you were talking about before I interrupted you.”

The girls’ giggles at being called ladies trailed after him as Matt made his escape from the kitchen.

* * *

“Wow, Mom. You look really great,” Dylan said for about the fifth time as they made their way up the walk to the sprawling Diamond Harte ranch house.

Ellie fought her self-consciousness. Matt’s sister said Thanksgiving dinner would be casual, but she didn’t think her usual winter attire of jeans and denim work shirts was quite appropriate.

Instead, she had worn her slim wool skirt over soft black leather boots and a matching dove-gray sweater—one of her few dressy outfits that only saw the light of day when she went to professional meetings. Was she hideously overdressed? She hoped not. She was nervous enough about this as it was without adding unsuitable clothes to the mix.

She shouldn’t be this nervous. It was only dinner, nothing to twist her stomach into knots over or turn her mouth as dry as a riverbed in August.

She cleared her throat, angry with herself, at the knowledge that only part of her edginess had to do with sharing a meal with Matt Harte and his blue eyes and powerful shoulders.

That might be the main reason, but the rest had more to do with the holiday itself. She had too many less-than-pleasant memories of other years, other holidays. Always being the outsider, the one who didn’t belong. Of spending the day trying to fit in during someone else’s family celebration in foster home after foster home.

This wasn’t the same. She had a family now—Dylan. All she could ever want or need. Her funny, imaginative, spunky little daughter who filled her heart with constant joy. She was now a confident, self-assured woman, content with life and her place in it.

So why did she feel like an awkward, gawky child again, standing here on the doorstep, hoping this time the people inside would like her?

Dylan, heedless of her mother’s nerves, rushed up the remaining steps and buzzed hard on the doorbell, and Ellie forced herself to focus on something other than her own angst.

She looked around her, admiring the view. In the lightly falling snow, the ranch was beautiful. Matt kept a clean, well-ordered operation, she could say that for him. The outbuildings all wore fresh paint, the fences were all in good repair, the animals looked well-cared for.

Some outfits looked as cluttered as garbage dumps, with great hulking piles of rusty machinery set about like other people displayed decorative plates or thimble collections. Here on the Diamond Harte, though, she couldn’t see so much as a spare part lying around.

It looked like a home, deeply loved and nurtured.

What must it have been like to grow up in such a place? To feel warm dirt and sharp blades of grass under your bare feet in the summertime and jump into big piles of raked leaves in the fall and sled down that gently sloping hill behind the barn in winter?

To know without question that you belonged just here, with people who loved you?

She pushed the thoughts away, angry at herself for dredging up things she had resolved long ago. It was only the holiday that brought everything back. That made her once more feel small and unwanted.

To her relief, the door opened before she could feel any sorrier for herself, sending out a blast of warmth and a jumble of delectable smells, as well as a small figure who launched herself at Dylan with a shriek of excitement.

“You’re here! Finally!”

“We’re early, aren’t we?” Ellie asked anxiously. “Didn’t your aunt say you were eating at two? It’s only half past one.”

“I don’t know what time it is. I’ve just been dying for you to get here. Dylan, you have got to come up to my room. Uncle Jess bought me the new ’N Sync CD and it’s so totally awesome.”

Before Ellie could say anything else, both girls rushed up the stairs, leaving her standing in the two-story entry alone, holding her pecan pie and feeling extremely foolish.

Okay. Now what did she do? She’d been in the huge, rambling ranch house a few times before to pick up Lucy or drop off Dylan for some activity or other, but she had always entered through the back door leading straight into the kitchen. She had no idea how to get there from the front door, and it seemed extremely rude to go wandering through a strange house on her own.

She could always go back and ring the doorbell again, she supposed. But that would probably lead to awkward questions about why her daughter was already upstairs while she lingered by the door as if ready to bolt any moment.

She was still standing there, paralyzed by indecision, when she heard loud male groans at something from a room down the hall, then the game shifted to a commercial—somebody hawking razor blades.

“You want another beer?” she heard Matt’s deep voice ask someone else—his brother, she presumed, or perhaps one of the ranch hands. The deep timbre of it sent those knots in her stomach unraveling to quiver like plucked fiddle strings.

Seconds later—before she could come up with a decent place to hide—he walked out in the hall wearing tan jeans and a forest-green fisherman’s sweater. She was still ordering her heart to start beating again when he turned and caught sight of her standing there like an idiot.

“Doc!” he exclaimed.

“Hi,” she mumbled.

“Why are you just standing out here? Come in.”

She thought about explaining how the girls had abandoned her for their favorite boy band, then decided she would sound even more ridiculous if she tried. She held up the pie instead. “Where’s the best place for this?”

“Probably in the kitchen. I was just heading there myself, I can show you the way. Here. Let me take your coat first.”

She tensed as he came up behind her and pulled her coat from her shoulders while she transferred the pie from hand to hand. Despite her best efforts, she was intensely aware of him, his heat and strength and the leathery smell of his aftershave.

After he hung her coat in a small closet off the entry, he took off down the hall. She followed him, trying fiercely not to notice the snug fit of his jeans or those impossibly broad shoulders under the weave of his sweater. Something was different about him today. It took her a moment to figure out what. He wasn’t wearing the black Stetson that seemed so much a part of him, nor was his hair flattened from it.

The dark waves looked soft and thick. They would probably be like silk under her fingers, she thought. The impulse to reach out and see for herself was so strong, she even lifted a hand a few inches from her side, then dropped it quickly in mortification.

It was much safer to look around her. This part of the house was one she hadn’t seen before, but it had the same warmth of the rest of the house, with family pictures grouped together on one wall and a huge log cabin quilt in dark greens and blues hanging on the other.

As they neared the kitchen, the smells of roasting turkey and vegetables grew stronger, and her stomach gave a loud, long rumble. She pressed a hand to it, hoping no one else could hear but her.

When she looked up, though, she found Matt giving her a lopsided grin, and she flushed.

“Oh, Ellie! You made it!” Matt’s sister looked pretty and flustered as she stirred something on the stove with one hand while she pulled a pan of golden dinner rolls out of the oven with the other. “When it started to snow, I was afraid you’d decide not to make the drive.”

“It’s not bad out there. A few flurries, that’s all. Just enough to make everything look like a magic fairyland.”

“Wait until you’ve lived here for a few years. You won’t describe the snow quite so romantically. Oh, is that your famous pie? Does it need to go in the refrigerator?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

“Good. I’m not sure I could find room for it.” Cassie blew out a breath and tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear just as the timers on the stove and microwave went off at the same time. The frazzled look in her eyes started to border on panic.

“Uh, anything I can do to help?” Matt asked suddenly.

His sister sent him a grateful look. “Actually, there is. Can you finish chopping the raw vegetables to go with that dip you like? Oh, rats,” she exclaimed suddenly. “I forgot to bring up the cranberry sauce from the store room. Ellie, would you mind stirring this gravy for me? I think most of the lumps are out of it—just make sure it doesn’t burn on the bottom.”

“Uh, sure.”

She set her pie on the only bare patch of countertop she could find and took the wooden spoon from Cassie, who rushed from the room, leaving her and Matt alone.

He immediately went to work on the vegetables. The cutting surface was on a work island in the middle of the kitchen with only a few feet separating it from the stove, forcing them to stand side by side but facing opposite directions.

Again she felt that sizzle of awareness but she sternly tried to suppress it. They lapsed into an awkward silence while they did their appointed jobs.

“Everything smells divine,” she finally said.

He seized on the topic. “Yeah, Cassidy’s a great cook. I’ve always thought she should have her own restaurant.”

“I didn’t know Cassie was short for Cassidy.” She paused, remembering something SueAnn had told her about the middle brother, the Salt River chief of police. “Let me get this straight, you have a brother named Jesse James and a sister named Cassidy?”

His low, rueful laugh sent the hairs on the back of her neck prickling. “Our dad was what I guess you’d call a history buff. One of his ancestors, Matt Warner, was a member of Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch, and Dad grew up hearing stories about him handed down throughout the years. Dad was always fascinated by outlaws and lawmen of the Old West. The romanticism and the adventure and the history of it, I guess.”

“So you’re named after this scofflaw of an ancestor?”

“Yeah.” His voice sounded rueful again. “Matthew Warner Harte. When the others came along, I guess he just decided to stick with the same theme.”

A Wild West outlaw. Why didn’t it surprise her that he had that blood churning through his veins? “And how did your mother handle having her own little wild bunch?”

His shrug brushed his shoulder into hers, and the subtle movement sent a shiver rippling down her spine. “My parents adored each other,” he answered. “Mom probably wouldn’t have complained even if Dad wanted to name us Larry, Moe and Curly.”

He sent her another lopsided grin, and she was helpless to prevent herself from returning it. They gazed at each other for a moment, side by side across shoulders, both smiling. Suddenly everything seemed louder, more intense—the slurp and burble of the gravy in the pan, the chink of the knife hitting the cutting board, the slow whir of the ceiling fan overhead.

His gaze dropped to her mouth for an instant, just enough for heat to flare there as if he’d touched her, then his eyes flashed to hers once more before he turned abruptly, guiltily, back to the vegetables.

Now that was interesting.

She was still trying to come up with something to say in the midst of the sudden tension—not to mention trying to remind her lungs what they were there for—when their daughters burst into the kitchen in mid-giggle.

They both stopped short in the doorway when they saw their parents working side-by-side. Ellie opened her mouth to greet them but shut it again when two pairs of eyes shifted rapidly between her and Matt, then widened.

The girls looked at each other with small, secretive smiles that sent the fear of God into her. They were definitely up to something. And she was very much afraid she was beginning to suspect what it might be.

Chapter 6

“So tell us what brings a pretty California beach girl like yourself to our desolate Wyoming wilderness.”

Matt sat forward so he could hear Ellie’s answer across the table. If he had asked that question, he grumped to himself, she probably would have snapped at him to mind his own business. But it didn’t seem to bother her at all that his brother wanted to nose around through her past.

Instead, she smiled at Jesse, seated to her left. “I’m afraid there weren’t too many beaches around Bakersfield.”

“Bakersfield? Is that where you’re from?” Cassie asked.

If he hadn’t been watching her so intently, Matt would have missed the way her smile slid away and the barest shadow of old pain flickered in her green eyes for just a moment before she shifted her gaze to the full plate in front of her. “Until I was seven. After that, I moved around a lot.”

What happened when she was seven? He wondered. And why did she phrase it that way? I moved around a lot, not My family moved around a lot?

Before he could ask, Jesse spoke. “Even if you’re not a beach girl, you’re still the best-looking thing to share our Thanksgiving dinner since I can remember.”

She laughed, rolling her eyes a little at the compliment, while Matt battled a powerful urge to casually reach over and shove his brother’s face into his mashed potatoes.

He didn’t want to admit it bugged the hell out of him the way Jesse flirted with her all through dinner, hanging on her every word and making sure her glass was always full.

Ellie didn’t seem to mind. She teased him right back, smiling and laughing at him like she’d never done with Matt.

Not that he cared. He was just worried about her getting a broken heart, that’s all. Maybe somebody ought to warn her about Jesse. His little brother wasn’t a bad sort. Not really. In fact, for being such a wild, out-of-control son of a gun after their parents died, Jess turned out pretty okay.

Matt would be the first one to admit the kid did a fine job protecting the good people of Salt River as the chief of police, a whole hell of a lot better than the last chief, who’d spent more time lining his own pockets than he did fighting crime.

But Jess still had a well-earned reputation with the ladies as a love ’em and leave ’em type. He rarely dated a woman longer than a few weeks, and when he did, she was usually the kind of girl their mother would have described as “faster than she ought to be.”

’Course, it was none of his business if Ellie Webster wanted to make a fool of herself over a charmer like Jesse James Harte, he reminded himself.

“So what brought you out here?” the charmer in question asked her again.

“My mom always wanted to move to the mountains and be a cowgirl,” Ellie’s daughter offered, helping herself to more candied yams.

A delicate pink tinged the doc’s cheeks. “Thanks for sharing that, sweetheart.”

“What?” Dylan asked, all innocence. “That’s what you said, isn’t it?”

She laughed ruefully. “You’re right. I did. The truth is, I’ve always wanted to live and work in the Rockies. I met Ben Nichols when I was giving a lecture a few years ago. Afterward, when he told me about Star Valley and his practice here, I told him how much I envied him and casually mentioned I had always dreamed of living out here. I never imagined he would offer to sell his practice to me when he retired.”

So that explained what brought her to Wyoming. What interested him was why a tiny little thing like her would choose such a physically demanding job as a large-animal vet in the first place. If she wanted to be a vet, she would have been better off with little things like dogs and cats instead of having to muscle a half-ton of steer into a chute.

He didn’t think she’d appreciate the question, so he asked another one. “Where were you working before?”

She shifted her gaze across the table to him as if she’d forgotten he was sitting there. “I worked at a clinic in the Monterey area. That’s on the central coast of California—so I guess you were right, Jesse. Technically I suppose you could call me a beach girl, although I rarely had a chance to see it.”

“I’ve heard that’s a beautiful area,” Cassie said.

“It is. Pebble Beach is just south of it, and Carmel-by-the-Sea.”

“How many cattle operations did you find in the middle of all those golf courses and tourist traps?” he asked abruptly, earning a curious look from Cassie.

“Not many, although there are a few farther inland. My clients were mostly horses—thoroughbreds and jumpers and pleasure horses.”

The conversation turned then to the physical differences between working horses and riding horses and then, with much prompting by Dylan, onto the best choice for a pleasure horse for a nine-year-old girl. Matt contented himself listening to the conversation and watching Ellie interact with his family.

Even after three years of marriage, Melanie had never fit in half as well. He felt vaguely guilty for the thought, but it was nothing less than the truth. She and Cassie had fought like cats and dogs from the beginning, and Jess had despised her.

So much for his grand plan to give his younger siblings more of a stable home environment by bringing home a wife.

He should have known from the first night he brought her home after their whirlwind courtship and marriage at the national stock show in Denver that he had made a disastrous mistake. She spent the entire evening bickering with Cassie and completely ignoring Jess.

But by then it was too late, they were already married. It took him three more years of the situation going from bad to worse for him to admit to himself how very stupid he had been.

He wouldn’t make that mistake again.

He hated thinking about it, about what a fool he had been, so he yanked his mind off the topic. “Everything tastes great, as usual,” he said instead to Cassie.

She grinned suddenly. “Remember that first year after Mom and Daddy died when you tried to cook Thanksgiving dinner?”

Jess turned his attention long enough from Ellie to shudder and add his own jab. “I remember it. My stomach still hasn’t forgiven me. The turkey was tougher than roasted armadillo.”

“And the yams could have been used to tar the barn roof.”

He rolled his eyes as the girls giggled. Jess and Cassie teased him mercilessly about that dinner. Usually it didn’t bother him—but then again, usually he didn’t have Ellie Webster sitting across from him listening to the conversation with that intrigued look in her green eyes.

“Give me a break,” he muttered. “I did my best. You’re lucky you got anything but cold cereal and frozen pizza.”

He’d been twenty-two when their parents died in a rollover on a slippery mountain road. That first year had been the toughest time of his life. Grieving for his parents and their sudden death, trying to comfort Cassie, who had been a lost and frightened thirteen-year-old, doing his damnedest to keep Jess out of juvenile detention.

Trying to keep the ranch and the family together when he didn’t know what the hell he was doing.

It had been a rough few years, but they had survived and were closer for it.

“At least we had to only go through Matt’s attempts to poison us for a while.” Jess grinned. “Then Cassie decided to save us all and learned to cook.”

“I had no choice,” she retorted. “It was a matter of survival. I figured one of us had to learn unless we wanted to die of food poisoning or starve to death. Matt was too busy with the ranch and you were too busy raising hell. That left me.”

Jesse immediately bristled, gearing up for a sharp retort, and Matt gave a resigned sigh. Cassie always knew how to punch his buttons. Jesse’s wild, hard-drinking days after their parents died were still a sore point with him, but that never stopped Cass from rubbing his nose in it.

Before he could step in to head trouble off, Ellie did it for him. “Well, you learned to cook very well,” she assured Cassie, with an anxious look toward Jess’s glare. “You’ll have to give me the recipe for your stuffing. I tend to over-cook it. Is that sausage I taste in there?”

She prattled on in a way that seemed completely unlike her, and it was only after she had successfully turned the conversation completely away from any trouble spots that he realized she had stepped in to play peacemaker as smoothly as if she’d been doing it all her life.

Had she done it on purpose? He wondered again about her background. She hadn’t mentioned brothers or sisters, but that didn’t mean she had none. What had happened when she was seven, the year after which she said she’d moved around so much?

He wanted badly to know, just as he was discovering he wanted to know everything about her.

* * *

“Come on, Ellie. It’s our turn to watch football.”

She looked at the dishes scattered across the table. “I can help clean up….”

“No way. The men get to do it—it’s tradition. That’s why I try to make the kitchen extra messy for them.” She smiled sweetly at her brothers. “I think I used just about every single dish in the house.”

Matt and Jesse groaned in unison. Unmoved, Cassie stood up. “Have fun, boys.”

With guilt tweaking her, Ellie let Matt’s sister drag her from the dining room, Dylan and Lucy following behind.

Cassie led her into a huge great room dominated by a towering river-rock fireplace. A big-screen TV and a pair of couches took up one corner, and a pool table and a couple of video games jostled for space in the other. As large as the room was, though, it was comfortable. Lived in, with warm-toned furniture and shelves full of books.

The girls immediately rushed to the pool table, and Cassidy plopped down on one of the plump, tweedy couches. “Boy, it feels good to sit down. I had to get up at four to put the turkey in, and I haven’t stopped since.”

“I’m sorry if I made extra work for you.”

“Are you kidding? I didn’t do anything I wouldn’t have done anyway, and it’s wonderful to have somebody else with a Y chromosome at the table besides Lucy!”

Cassie picked up the remote. “So which game do you want to watch? We have blue against red—” she flipped the channel “—or black against silver.”

“I’m not crazy about football,” she confessed.

The other woman sent her a conspiratorial grin. “Me, neither. I hate it, actually. When you spend your whole life around macho men, you don’t really need to waste your time watching them on TV. Let’s see if we can find something better until the boys come in and start growling at us to change it back.”

She flipped the remote, making funny comments about every station she passed until stumbling on an old Alfred Hitchcock film with Jimmy Stewart.

“Here we go. Rear Window. This is what I call real entertainment. Could Grace Kelly dress or what?”

Ellie settled on the couch, the seductive warmth from the fireplace combining with the turkey put her into a pleasant haze.

She couldn’t remember enjoying a meal more. The food had been delicious. And with the exception of the strange tension between her and Matt, the company had been great, too.

Their banter and teasing and memories of other holidays had been a revelation. This was what a family was all about, and if she closed her eyes, she could almost pretend she was a part of it.

One strange thing, though. For all their reminiscing, they hadn’t brought up Lucy’s mother one single time. It was almost as if the woman had never existed. Come to think of it, nobody had ever mentioned the mystery woman to Ellie.

“What happened to Lucy’s mother?”

She didn’t realize she had asked the blunt question out loud until Cassidy’s relaxed smile froze, and she shot a quick glance at her niece. Ellie winced, appalled at herself. When would she ever learn to think before she opened her big mouth? At least neither of the girls was paying any attention to them, Ellie saw with relief.

“I’m so sorry,” she said quickly. “That was terribly rude of me. It just slipped out. It’s none of my business, really. You don’t have to answer.”

“No. It’s just a…a raw subject.” She looked at her niece again, and Ellie thought she saw guilt flicker in her blue eyes, then she flashed a bitter smile. She lowered her voice so the girls couldn’t hear. “Melanie ran off with my…with one of our ranch hands. Lucy wasn’t even three months old.”

Ellie’s jaw dropped. She tried to picture Matt in the role of abandoned husband and couldn’t. Her heart twisted with sympathy when she imagined him taking care of a newborn on his own—late-night feedings, teething and all.

What kind of woman could simply abandon her own child like that? She thought of those first few months after Dylan was born, when she had been on her own and so very frightened about what the future might hold for the two of them.

Despite her fear, she had been completely in awe of the precious gift she’d been handed. Some nights she would lie awake in that grimy two-room apartment, just staring at Dylan’s tiny, squishy features, listening to her breathe and wondering what she had done to deserve such a miracle.

She couldn’t even comprehend a woman who would walk away from something so amazing.

Or from a man like Matt Harte.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, knowing the words were terribly inadequate.

Cassidy shrugged and looked toward the girls. From the raw emotion exposed on her features like a winter-bare tree branch, Ellie had the odd suspicion there was more to the story than losing a sister-in-law.

“It was a long time ago,” Cassie said quietly. “Anyway, Matt’s much better off without her. He’d be the first to tell you that. Melanie hated it here. She hated the ranch, she hated Wyoming, she hated being a mother. I was amazed she stuck around as long as she did.”

Why on earth would he marry a woman who hated ranch life? Ellie wondered. For a man like Matt who so obviously belonged here—on this land he loved so much—it must have been a bitter rejection seeing it scorned by the woman he married.

She must have been very beautiful for him to marry her in the first place and bring her here. Ellie didn’t even want to think about why the thought depressed her so much.

Cassie quickly turned the conversation to the Hitchcock movie, but even after Ellie tried to shift her attention to the television, her mind refused to leave thoughts of Matt and the wife who had deserted him with a tiny daughter.

As much as she hated bringing up such an obviously painful topic, she had to admit she was grateful for the insight it provided into a man she was discovering she wanted to understand.

No wonder he sometimes seemed so gruff, so cold. Had he always been that way or had his wife’s desertion hardened him? Had he once been like Jesse, all charm and flirtatiousness? She couldn’t imagine it. Good grief, the man was devastating enough with his habitual scowl!

After a moment, Cassie turned the tables. “What about Dylan’s father?” she asked suddenly. “Is he still in the picture?”

“He was never in the picture. Not really,” Ellie answered calmly. After so many years the scab over her heart had completely healed. “Our relationship ended when Kurt saw that plus sign on the pregnancy test.”

He had been so furious at her for being stupid enough to get pregnant, as if it were entirely her fault the protection they used had failed. He could lose his job over this, he had hissed at her, that handsome, intelligent face dark with anger. Professors who impregnated their star students tended to be passed over when tenures were being tossed around. Didn’t she understand what this could do to him?

It had always been about him. Always. She had only come to understand that immutable fact through the filter of time and experience. In the midst of their relationship, she had been so amazed that someone of Kurt’s charisma—not to mention professional standing—would deign to take her under his wing, first as a mentor and adviser, then as a friend, then as a lover during her final year of undergraduate work.

She might have seen him more clearly had she not been seduced by the one thing she had needed so desperately those days—approbation. He had told her she had talent, that she would be a brilliant, dedicated doctor of veterinary medicine one day.

No one else had believed in her. She had fought so hard every step of the way, and he was the only one who seemed to think she could do it. She had lapped up his carefully doled-out praise like a puppy starving for attention.

She thought she had loved him passionately and had given him everything she had, while to him she had been one more in a long string of silly, awestruck students.

It was a hard lesson, but her hurt and betrayal had lasted only until Dylan was born. As she held her child in her arms—hers alone—she realized she didn’t care anymore what had led her to that moment; she was only amazed at the unconditional love she felt for her baby.

“So you raised Dylan completely on your own while you were finishing vet school?” Cassie asked.

She nodded. “I took her to class half the time because I couldn’t find a sitter, but somehow we did it.”

Cassie shook her head in sympathetic disgust. “Men are pigs, aren’t they?” she muttered, just as Jesse entered the great room.

He plopped next to Ellie on the couch, scowling at his sister. “Hey, I resent that. Especially since it just took two of us the better part of an hour to clean up the mess you made in the kitchen.”

“I meant that figuratively,” she retorted. “When it comes to knowing what a woman needs and wants out of a relationship, most of you have about as much sense as a bucket of spit.”

“Don’t listen to her, Doc. My baby sister has always been far too cynical for her own good.”

Jesse grabbed Ellie’s hand, and for one horrified second she thought he was going to bring it to his lips. To her vast relief, he just squeezed it, looking deep into her eyes. “Not all men are pigs. I, for one, always give a woman exactly what she wants. And what she needs.”

His knowing smile fell just a few inches short of a leer, and she felt hot color crawl across her cheekbones at finding herself on the receiving end of it, especially from a man as dangerously attractive as Jesse James Harte.

Before she could come up with a reply, his little sister gave an inelegant snort. “See? What did I tell you? A bucket of spit.”

Ellie smiled, charmed beyond words by both of them and their easy acceptance of her. Before she could answer, she felt the heat of someone’s gaze on her. She turned around and found Matt standing in the doorway, arms crossed and shoulder propped against the jamb as he watched his brother’s flirting with an unreadable look in those vivid blue eyes.

The heated blush Jesse had sparked spread even higher, until she thought her face must look as bright as the autumn leaves in his sister’s centerpiece.

What was it about that single look that sent her nerves lurching and tumbling to her stomach, that affected her a thousand times more intensely than Jesse’s teasing?

His daughter spotted him at almost the same time she did. “Daddy, come play with us,” she demanded from the pool table.

He shifted his gaze from Ellie to the girls, his mouth twisting into a soft smile that did funny, twirly things to her insides. “I will in a bit, Lucy Goose. I have to go out and check on Mystic first, okay?”

“Mystic?” Ellie’s question came out as a squeak that nobody but her seemed to notice.

“One of our mares,” Matt answered.

“Mystic Mountain Moon,” Lucy said. “That’s her full name.”

“She’s pregnant with her first foal and she’s tried to lose it a couple times,” Matt said.

“She’s a real beauty.” Cassie joined in. “Moon Ranger out of Mystic Diamond Lil. One heck of a great cutting horse. Matt tried her out in a few local rodeos last summer, and she blew everybody away.”

“Her foal’s going to be a winner, too,” Matt said. “If she can hang on to it for a few more months, anyway.”

He paused and looked at Ellie again. “You, uh, wouldn’t want to come out and check on her with me, would you?”

She stared at him, astonished at the awkward invitation, an offer she sensed surprised him as much as it had her. She opened her mouth to answer just as he shook his head. “I guess you’re not really dressed to go mucking around in the barn. Forget it.”

“No,” she said quickly. “These boots are sturdier than they look. I would love to.” She suddenly discovered she wanted fiercely to go with him, to see more of the Diamond Harte and his beauty of a mare.

“Let me just grab my coat.” She jumped up before he could rescind the invitation. Whatever impulse had prompted him to ask her to accompany him, she sensed he was offering her more than just a visit to his barn. He was inviting her into this part of his life, lowering at least some of the walls between them.

She wasn’t about to blow it.

“Okay then.” He cast his eyes around the room for a moment as if trying to figure out what to do next, then his gaze stopped on his daughter, pool cue in her hand.

“We shouldn’t be long,” he said. “I promise I’ll be back in just a little while to whup both of your behinds.”

The girls barely heard him, Ellie saw, too busy sharing another one of those conspiratorial looks that were really beginning to make her nervous. “You two take your time, Dad,” Lucy said in an exaggerated voice. “Really, we can use all the practice we can get.”

He looked vaguely startled by her insistence, then gave her another one of those soft smiles before turning to Ellie. “I’ll go get your coat.”

A few moments later, he returned wearing that black Stetson and a heavy ranch jacket and holding out her coat. He helped her into it and then led the way into the snow that still fluttered down halfheartedly.

Though it was still technically afternoon, she had discovered night came early this time of year in Wyoming. The sun had already begun to sink behind the Salt River mountains, and the dying light was the same color as lilac blossoms in the spring.

Her chest ached at the loveliness of it, at the play of light on the skiff of snow and the rosy glow of his outbuildings in the twilight. There was a quiet reverence here as night descended on the mountains. As if no one else existed but the two of them and the snow and the night.

He seemed as reluctant as she to break the hushed beauty of the scene. They walked in silence toward the huge red barn a few hundred yards from the house. When he finally spoke, it was in a low voice to match the magic of the evening. “Mystic likes to be outside, even as cold as it’s been. I’ll check to see if she’s still in the pasture before we go inside the barn. You can wait here if you want.”

“No. I’ll come with you,” she said in that same hushed voice.

They crunched through snow to the other side, with Matt just a few steps ahead of her. She was looking at her feet so she didn’t fall in the slick snow when he growled a harsh oath.

She jerked her gaze up. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

He pointed to the pasture. For a moment, she couldn’t figure out what had upset him, then her gaze sharpened and she saw it.

Bright red bloodstains speckled the snow in a vivid, ugly trail leading to the barn.

Chapter 7

Dread clutched at her stomach. “Do you think it was a coyote?”

“I doubt it,” he said tersely. “Not this close to the house and not in the middle of the day. They tend to stay away from the horses, anyway.”

“What, then?”

“Mystic, I’d guess. She’s probably lost the foal. Damn.”

If the mare was hemorrhaging already, it was probably too late to save the foal, and Matt obviously knew it as well as she did. He jumped the fence easily and followed the trail of blood. Without a moment’s hesitation, she hiked her skirt above her knees and climbed over the snow-slicked rails as well, then quickly caught up with him.

With that frown and his jaw set, he looked hard and dangerous, like the Wild West outlaw he was named after.

“I’m sorry,” she offered softly.

He blew out a breath. “It happens. Probably nothing we can do at this point. I had high hopes for Mystic’s foal, though. The sire is one hell of a cutter, just like—”

Before he could finish the sentence, they heard a high, distressed whinny from inside the barn, and both picked up their pace to a run. He beat her inside, but she followed just a few seconds later. She had a quick impression of a clean, well-lit stall, then her attention immediately shifted to the misty-gray quarter horse pacing restlessly in the small space.

A quick visual check told her the blood they saw in the snow was from a large cut on the horse’s belly, probably from kicking at herself in an attempt to rid her body of what she thought was bothering her—the foal.

It relieved her mind some, but not much. “She hasn’t lost it yet,” she said.

Matt looked distracted as he ran his hands over the horse. “She’s going to, though, isn’t she?”

“Probably. I’m sorry,” she said again. She had seen the signs before. The sweat soaking the withers, the distress, the bared teeth as pain racked the mare.

All her professional instincts screamed at her to do something, not just stand here helplessly. To soothe, to heal. But Mystic wasn’t hers to care for, and her owner didn’t trust Ellie or her methods.

Still, she had to try. “Will you let me examine her?”

She held her breath as he studied her from across the stall, praying he would consent. The reluctance in his eyes shouldn’t have hurt her. He had made no secret of his opinions. But she still had to dig her fingers into the wood rail at the deep, slicing pain.

He blew out a breath. “I don’t know….”

“I’m a good vet, Matt. Please. Just let me look at her. I won’t do anything against your wishes.”

His hard, masculine face tense and worried, he studied Ellie for several seconds until Mystic broke away from him with another long, frantic whinny.

“Okay,” Matt said finally. “Do what you can for her.”

“My bag’s in the pickup. It will just take me a minute to get it.”

Her heart pounding, she ran as fast as she dared out of the barn and across the snow toward the house, cursing the constricting skirt as she went. This was exactly why she preferred to stick to jeans and work shirts. Of course she had to choose today, of all days, to go outside her comfort zone just for vanity’s sake.

She slipped on a hidden patch of ice under the bare, spreading branches of a huge elm, and her legs almost went out from under her. At the last minute, she steadied herself on the trunk of the tree and paused for just an instant to catch her breath before hurrying on, anxious for the frightened little mare.

She hated seeing any animal in distress, always had. That was her first concern and the thought uppermost in her head. At the same time, on a smaller, purely selfish level that shamed her to admit it to herself, part of her wanted Matt to see firsthand that she knew what she was doing, that she would try anything in her power to save that foal.

At last she reached her truck, fumbled with the handle, then fought the urge to bang her head against it several times. Locked. Rats! And her keys were in her purse, inside the house.

With another oath at herself for not learning her lesson the night he had to thaw out her locks, she hurried up the porch steps and through the front door. She was rifling for her purse on the hall table, conscious that with every second of delay the foal’s chances grew ever more dim, when Cassie walked out of the family room.

Matt’s sister stopped short, frowning. “What is it? Is something wrong?”

“Mystic,” Ellie answered grimly. “She’s losing the foal. I’m just after my bag in the truck. Naturally, it’s locked.”

“Oh, no. What a relief that you’re here, though! Can you save it?”

As she usually did before treating an animal, Ellie felt the heavy weight of responsibility settle on her shoulders. “I don’t know. I’m going to try. Listen, we might be a while. Is Dylan okay in here without me?”

“Sure. She and Lucy have ganged up on Jess at the pool table. They haven’t even noticed you’ve been gone. Is there anything I can do to help?”

Pray your stubborn brother will let me do more than look. Ellie kept the thought to herself and shook her head. “Just don’t let Dylan eat too much pie.”

She rushed out the door and down the steps to her truck and quickly unlocked it. Her leather backpack was behind the seat and, on impulse, she also picked up the bag with her sensors and acupuncture needles, then ran to the horse barn.

Matt had taken off his hat and ranch coat, she saw when her eyes once more adjusted to the dim light inside the barn, and he was doing his best to soothe the increasingly frantic animal.

The worry shadowing his eyes warmed her, even in the midst of her own tension. Matt Harte obviously cared deeply for the horse—all of his horses, judging by the modern, clean facilities he stabled them in—and her opinion of him went up another notch.

“Sorry it took so long.” She immediately went to the sink to scrub. “Anything new happen while I was gone?”

“No. She’s just as upset as she was before.”

She snapped on a sterile pair of latex gloves and was pleased he had the sense to open the stall for her so she could keep them clean.

“What do you need me to do?” he asked, his voice pitched low to avoid upsetting the horse more than she already was.

“Can you hold her head for me?”

He nodded and obeyed, then scrutinized her closely as she approached the animal slowly, murmuring nonsense words as she went. Mystic, though still frantic at the tumult churning her insides, calmed enough to let Ellie examine her.

What she found heartened her. Although she could feel contractions rock the horse’s belly, the foal hadn’t begun to move through the birth canal. She pressed her stethoscope to the mare’s side and heard the foal’s heart beating loud and strong, if a little too fast.

“Can you tell what’s going on?” Matt asked in that same low, soothing voice he used for the mare.

She spared a quick glance toward him. “My best guess is maybe she got into some mold or something and it’s making her body try to flush itself of the fetus.”

He clamped his teeth together, resignation in his eyes. “Can you give her something to ease the pain, then? Just until she delivers?”

“I could.” She drew in a deep breath, her nerves kicking. “Or I can calm her down and try to save the foal.”

He frowned. “How? I’ve been around horses all my life, certainly long enough to know there’s not a damn thing you can do once a mare decides a foal has to go.”

“Not with traditional Western medicine, you’re right. But I’ve treated similar situations before, Matt. And saved several foals. I can’t make any guarantees but I’d like to try.”

His jaw tightened. “With your needles? No way.”

She wanted to smack him for his old-school stubbornness. “I took an oath as a veterinarian. That I’ll first do no harm, just like every other kind of medical doctor. I take it very seriously. It won’t hurt her, I promise. And it might help save the foal’s life where nothing else will.”

Objections swamped his throat like spring runoff. He liked Ellie well enough as a person—too much, if he were completely honest with himself about it—but he wasn’t too sure about her as a vet.

Her heart seemed to be in the right place, but the idea of her turning one of his horses into a pincushion didn’t appeal to him whatsoever.

“If she’s going to lose the foal anyway, what can it hurt to try?” she asked.

Across Mystic’s withers, he gazed at Ellie and realized for the first time that she still wore the soft, pretty skirt she’d had on at dinner and those fancy leather boots. The boots were covered in who-knew-what, and a six-inch-wide bloodstain slashed across her skirt where she must have brushed up against Mystic’s belly during the exam.

Ellie didn’t seem to care a bit about her clothes, though. All her attention was focused on his mare. She genuinely thought she could save the foal—he could see the conviction blazing out of those sparkly green eyes—and that was the only thing that mattered to her right now.

Her confidence had him wavering. Like she said, what could it hurt to let her try?

A week ago he wouldn’t have allowed it under any circumstances, would have still been convinced the whole acupuncture thing was a bunch of hooey. But he’d done a little reading up on the Internet lately and discovered the practice wasn’t nearly as weird as he thought. Even the American Veterinary Association considered acupuncture an accepted method of care.

Mystic suddenly jerked hard against the bit and threw her head back, eyes wild with pain.

“Please, Matt. Just let me try.”

What other choice did he have? The foal was going to die, and there was a chance Mystic would, too. He blew out a breath. “Be careful,” he said gruffly. “She’s a damn fine mare, and I don’t want her hurt.”

He watched carefully while she ran her hands over the animal one more time, then placed her finger at certain points, speaking quietly to both of them as she went.

“According to traditional Chinese veterinary acupuncture, each animal’s body—and yours, too—has a network of meridians, with acupoints along that meridian that communicate with a specific organ,” she said softly as she worked. “When a particular organ is out of balance, the related acupoints may become tender or show some other abnormality. That’s what I’m looking for.”

Mystic had a dozen or so needles in various places when Ellie inserted one more and gave it a little twist. Mystic jumped and shuddered.

He was just about to call the whole blasted thing off and tell Ellie to get away from his horse when the mare’s straining, panting sides suddenly went completely still.

After a moment, the horse blew out a snorting breath then pulled away from him. With the needles in her flesh still quivering like porcupine quills, she calmly ambled to her water trough and indulged in a long drink of water.

He stared after her, dumbfounded at how quickly she transformed from panic-stricken to tranquil. What the hell just happened here?

Ellie didn’t seem nearly as astonished. She followed the horse and began removing the needles one by one, discarding them in a special plastic container she pulled out of her bag. When they were all collected, she cleaned and dressed the self-inflicted wounds on Mystic’s belly, then ran her hands over the horse one last time before joining Matt on the other side of the stall.

“Is that it?” he asked, unable to keep the shock out of his voice.

Her mouth twisted into a smile. “What did you expect?”

“I don’t know.” He shook his head in amazement. “I’ve got to tell you, Doc, that was just about the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Despite the circumstances, her low laugh sent heat flashing to his gut. “I had the same reaction the first time I saw an animal treated with acupuncture. Some animals respond so instantly it seems nothing short of a miracle. Not all do, but the first horse I saw responded exactly like Mystic just did.”

“Was she another pregnant mare?”

“No. It was a racehorse that had suddenly gone lame. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. I tried everything I could think of to help him and nothing worked. He just got worse and worse. Finally, as a last-ditch effort before putting him down, the owners decided against my advice to call in another vet who practiced acupuncture.

“I thought they were completely nuts, but I decided to watch. One minute the vet was sticking in the needles, the next he opened the door and Galaxy took off into the pasture like a yearling, with no sign whatsoever of the lameness that had nearly ended his life. I called up and registered for the training course the next day.”

Her face glowed when she talked about her work. Somehow it seemed to light up from the inside. She looked so pretty and passionate it was all he could do to keep from reaching across the few feet that separated them and drawing her into his arms.

“How does it work?” he asked, trying to distract himself from that soft smile and those sparkling eyes and the need suddenly pulsing through him.

“The Chinese believe health and energy are like a stream flowing downhill—if something blocks that flow, upsetting the body’s natural balance, energy can dam up behind the blockage, causing illness and pain. The needles help guide the energy a different way, restoring the balance and allowing healing to begin.”

“And you buy all that?”

She sent him a sidelong look, smiling a little at his skeptical voice. “It worked for Mystic, didn’t it?”

He couldn’t argue with that. The mare was happily munching grain from her feed bag.

“I’m not a zealot, Matt. I don’t use acupuncture as a treatment in every situation. Sometimes traditional Western medicine without question is the best course of action. But sometimes a situation calls for something different. Something more.”

“But doesn’t it conflict with what you know of regular medicine? All that talk about energy and flow?”

“Sometimes. It was hard at first for me to reconcile the two. But I’ve since learned it’s a balance. Like life.”

She smiled again. “I can’t explain it. I just know acupuncture has been practiced for six thousand years—on people as well as animals—and sometimes it works beautifully. One of my instructors used to say that if the only tool in your toolbox is a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail. I want to have as many tools in my toolbox as I possibly can.”

“You love being a vet, don’t you?”

She nodded. “It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

“Why?” He was surprised to find he genuinely wanted to know. “What made you become one?”

She said nothing for several moments, her face pensive as she worked out an answer. He didn’t mind, strangely content just watching her and listening to the low, soothing sounds of the barn.

Finally she broke the comfortable silence between them. “I wanted to help animals and I discovered I was good at it. Animals are uncomplicated. They give their love freely and without conditions. I was drawn to that.”

Who in her life had put conditions on loving her? Dylan’s father? He longed to ask but reminded himself it was none of his business.

“Did you overrun your house with pets when you were a kid?” he asked instead.

Her laugh sounded oddly hollow. “No. My mother never wanted the bother or the mess.”

She was quiet for a moment, gazing at Mystic, who was resting quietly in the stall. He had the feeling Ellie was miles away, somewhere he couldn’t even guess at.

“I take that back,” she said slowly. “I had a dog once when I was ten. Sparky. A mongrel. Well, he wasn’t really mine, he belonged to a kid at one of the…”

She looked at him suddenly, as if she’d forgotten he was there.

“At one of the foster homes I lived in,” she continued stubbornly, her cheeks tinted a dusky rose. “But that didn’t stop me from pretending he was mine.”

Her defiant declaration broke his heart and helped a lot of things about her finally make sense. “You lived in many foster homes?”

“One is too many. And yeah, I did.”

She was quiet again, and he thought for a moment she was done with the subject. And then she spoke in a quiet, unemotional voice that somehow affected him far more than tears or regrets would have.

“My dad was a long-haul trucker who took a load of artichokes to Florida when I was five and decided to stay. Without bothering to leave a forwarding address, of course. My mother was devastated. She couldn’t even make a decision about what shampoo to use without a man in her life, so she climbed into a bottle and never climbed back out. I stayed with her for about a year and then child-protective services stepped in.” She paused. “And you can stop looking at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re feeling sorry for the poor little foster girl playing make-believe with some other kid’s dog.” She lifted her chin. “I did just fine.”

He didn’t like this fragile tenderness twisting around inside him like a morning glory vine making itself at home where it wasn’t wanted. Did not like it one single bit.

“I never said otherwise,” he said gruffly.

“You didn’t have to say a word. I can see what you’re thinking clear as day in those big baby blues of yours. I’ve seen pity plenty of times—that’s why I generally keep my mouth shut about my childhood. But I did just fine,” she said again, more vehemently this time. “I’ve got a beautiful daughter, a job I love fiercely and now I get to live in one of the most beautiful places on earth. Not bad for a white-trash foster kid. I turned out okay.”

“Which one of us are you trying to convince?”

Her glare would have melted plastic. “Neither. I know exactly where I’ve been and where I’m going. I’m very happy with my life and I really don’t care what you think about me, Harte.”

“Good. Then it won’t bother you when I tell you I think about you all the time. Or that I’m overwhelmed that you’d be willing to wade through blood and muck in your best clothes to save one of my horses. Or—” he finished quietly “—when I tell you that I think you’re just about the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen standing in my barn.”

Somewhere in the middle of his speech her jaw sagged open and she stared at him, wide-eyed.

“Close your mouth, Doc,” he murmured wryly.

She snapped it shut with a pop that echoed in the barn, and he gave a resigned sigh, knowing exactly what he was going to do.

He had a minute to think that this was about the stupidest thing he’d ever done, then his lips found hers and he stopped thinking, lost in the slick, warm welcome of her mouth.

For a moment after his mouth captured hers, Ellie could only stand motionless and stare at him, his face a breath away and those long, thick eyelashes shielding his glittering eyes from her view.

Matt Harte was kissing her! She wouldn’t have been more shocked if all the horses in the stable had suddenly reared up and started singing Broadway show tunes as one.

And what a kiss it was. His mouth was hot and spicy, flavored with cinnamon and nutmeg. Pumpkin-pie sweet. He must have snuck a taste in the kitchen when he was cleaning up.

That was the last coherent thought she had before he slowly slid his mouth over hers, carefully, thoroughly, as if he didn’t want to miss a single square inch.

Ellie completely forgot how to breathe. Liquid heat surged to her stomach, pooled there, then rushed through the rest of her body on a raging, storm-swollen river of desire.

Completely focused on his mouth and the incredible things the man knew what to do with it, she wasn’t aware of her hands sliding to his chest until her fingers curled into the soft fabric of his sweater. Through the thick cotton, steel-hard muscles rippled and bunched beneath her hands, and she splayed them, fascinated by the leashed power there.

He groaned and pulled her more tightly against him, and his mouth shifted from leisurely exploring hers to conquering it, to searing his taste and touch on her senses.

His tongue dipped inside, and she welcomed it as his lean, muscular body pressed her against the stall. His heat warmed her, wrapped around and through her from the outside in, and she leaned against him.

How long had it been since she’d been held by a man like this, had hard male arms wrapped around her, snugging her against a broad male chest? Since she’d been made to feel small and feminine and wanted?

It shocked her that she couldn’t remember, that every other kiss seemed to have faded into some distant corner of her mind, leaving only Matt Harte and his mouth and his hands.

Even if she had been able to recall any other kisses, she had a feeling they would pale into nothingness anyway compared to this. She certainly would have remembered something that made her feel as if she were riding a horse on a steep mountain trail with only air between her and heaven, as if the slightest false step would send her tumbling over the edge.

She’d been right.

The thought whispered through her dazed and jumbled mind, and she sighed. She had wondered that day in her office how Matt would go about kissing a woman and now she knew—slowly, carefully, completely absorbed in what he was doing, as if the fate of the entire world hinged on him kissing her exactly right.

Until she didn’t have a thought left in her head except more.

She had no idea how long they stood there locked together. Time slowed to a crawl, then speeded up again in a whirling, mad rush.

She would have stayed there all night, lost in the amazing wonder of his mouth and his hands and his strength amid the rustle of hay and the low murmuring of horses—if she had her way, they would have stayed there until Christmas.

But just as she twisted her arms around the strong, tanned column of his neck to pull him even closer, her subconscious registered a sound that didn’t belong. Girls’ voices and high-pitched laughter outside the barn, then the rusty-hinged squeak of a door opening.

For one second they froze, still tightly entwined together, then Matt jerked away from her, his breathing ragged and harsh, just as both of their daughters rounded the corner of a stall bundled up like Eskimos against the cold.

“Hi.” The girls chirped the word together.

Ellie thought she must have made some sound but she was too busy trying to grab hold of her wildly scrambled thoughts to know what it might have been.

“We came out to see if you might need any help,” Lucy said.

Ellie darted a quick look at Matt and saw that he looked every bit as stunned as she felt, as if he’d just run smack up against one of those wood supports holding the roof in place.

“Is something wrong?” Dylan’s brows furrowed as she studied them closely. “Did…did something happen to the foal?”

She’d forgotten all about Mystic. What kind of a veterinarian was she to completely abandon her duties while she tangled mouths with a man like Matt Harte? She jerked her gaze to the stall and was relieved to find the pregnant mare sleeping, her sides moving slowly and steadily with each breath. In a quick visual check, Ellie could see no outward sign of her earlier distress.

She rubbed her hands down her skirt—filthy beyond redemption, she feared—and forced a smile through the clutter of emotions tumbling through her. “I think she’s going to be okay.”

“And her foal, too?” Lucy asked, features creased with worry.

“And her foal, too.”

Matt cleared his throat, looking at the girls and not at her. “Yeah, the crisis seems to be over, thanks to Doc Webster here.”

“She’s amazing, isn’t she, Dad?” Lucy said. Awe that Ellie knew perfectly well she didn’t deserve in his daughter’s voice and shining in her soft powder-gray eyes.

Finally Matt met her gaze, and Ellie would have given a week’s salary to know what he was thinking. The blasted man could hide his emotions better than a dog burying a soup bone. His features looked carved in granite, all blunt angles and rough planes.

After a few moments of that unnerving scrutiny, he turned to his daughter. “I’m beginning to think so,” he murmured.

Nonplussed by the undercurrents of meaning in his voice, Ellie couldn’t come up with an answer. She flashed him a quick look, and he returned it impassively.

“Are you sure you don’t need our help?” Dylan asked.

She wavered for a moment, suddenly desperate for the buffer they provided between her and Matt. But it was cowardly to use them that way, and she knew it.

“No,” she murmured. “I’d just like to stick around a little longer out here and make sure everything’s all right. Both of you should go on back to the house where you can stay warm.”

“Save us a piece of pie,” Matt commanded.

Lucy grinned at her father. “Which kind? I think there are about ten different pies in there.”

He appeared to give the matter serious thought, then smiled at her. “How about one of each?”

“Sure.” She snickered. “And then I’ll bring in a wheelbarrow to cart you around in since you’ll be too full to move.”

“Deal. Go on, then. It’s chilly out here.”

Dylan sent her mother another long, searching look, and Ellie pasted on what she hoped was a reassuring smile for her daughter. “It was sweet of you both to come out and check on Mystic, but what she really needs now is quiet and rest.”

“Okay.”

“But—” Lucy began, then her voice faltered as Dylan sent her a meaningful look.

“Come on. Let’s go back inside,” she said, in that funny voice she’d been using lately. She grabbed Lucy’s arm and urged her toward the door, leaving Ellie alone with Matt and the memory of the kiss that had left her feeling as if the whole world had just gone crazy.

* * *

Dylan clutched her glee to her chest only until they were outside the barn and she had carefully shut the door behind them, then she grabbed Lucy’s coat, nearly toppling her into the snow. She pulled her into a tight hug and hopped them both around in wild circles. “Did you see that? Did you see it?”

“What? Mystic? She looked fine, like nothing had happened. Your mom is really something.”

She gave Lucy a little shake. “No, silly! Didn’t you see them? My mom and your dad?”

“Well, yeah. We just talked to them two seconds ago.” Lucy looked at her as if her brain had slid out.

“Don’t you get it, Lucy? This is huge. It’s working! I know it’s working! I think he kissed her!”

“Eww.” Lucy’s mouth twisted in disgust like Dylan had just made her eat an earwig.

“Come on, Luce. Grow up. They have to get mushy! It’s part of the plan.”

Her mouth dropped open like she’d never even considered the possibility. For a moment she stared at Dylan, then snapped her jaws shut. “How do you know? What makes you think they were kissing? They seemed just like normal.”

Dylan thought of her mother’s pink cheeks and the way Lucy’s dad kept sneaking looks at Ellie when he didn’t think any of them were watching him. “I don’t know. I just think they were.”

She wanted to yell and jump up and down and twirl around in circles with her arms wide until she got too dizzy and had to stop. A funny, sparkling excitement filled her chest, and she almost couldn’t breathe around it. She was going to have a father, just like everybody else!

“I can’t believe it. Our brilliant plan is working! Your dad likes her. I told you he would. He just needed the chance to get to know her.”

She pulled Lucy toward her for another hug. “If your dad likes my mom enough to kiss her, it won’t be long before he likes her enough to marry her. We’re going to be sisters, Luce. I just know we are.”

Lucy still couldn’t seem to get over the kissing. Her face still looked all squishy and funny. “Now what?”

“I guess we keep doing what we’re doing. Trying everything we can think of to push them together. Why mess with it when everything seems to be working out just like we planned?”

* * *

As soon as the girls left the barn, Ellie wished fiercely that she could slither out behind them. Or hide away among the hay bales. Or crawl into the nearest stall and bury her head in her hands.

Anything so she wouldn’t have to face the tight-lipped man in front of her. Or so she wouldn’t have to face herself and the weakness for soft-spoken, hard-eyed cowboys that had apparently been lurking inside her all this time without her knowledge.

And why was he glowering, anyway, like the whole bloody thing was her fault? He was the one who kissed her. She was an innocent victim, just standing here minding her own business.

And lusting over him, like she’d been doing for weeks.

The thought made her cringe inwardly. So she was attracted to him. So what? Who wouldn’t be? The man was gorgeous. Big and masculine and gorgeous.

Anyway, it wasn’t like she had begged him to kiss her. No, he’d done that all on his own. One minute they had been talking, the next thing she knew he pulled her into his arms without any advance warning and covered her mouth with his.

She shivered, remembering. The man kissed like he meant it. Her knees started to feel all wobbly again, but she sternly ordered them to behave. She had better things to do then go weak-kneed over a gruff, distrustful rancher who seemed content to remain mired in a rut of tradition.

Still, he had unbent enough to let her treat Mystic, despite his obvious misgivings. He deserved points for that, at least. Of course, then he had completely distracted her with a fiery kiss that washed all thoughts of her patient out of her head.

But no more. She took a deep breath. She had a job to do here. The mare wasn’t out of the woods yet, and she needed to make sure Mystic didn’t lose her foal. To do it, she needed to focus only on the horse and not on her owner.

“I’d better take another look at Mystic to make sure the contractions have completely stopped.”

“You think she still might be in danger?”

“Like I told the girls, it’s too early to say. We’ll have to wait and see.”

With a great deal of effort, she turned her back on him and focused on the horse again. Somehow she managed to put thoughts of that kiss out of her head enough to concentrate on what she was doing.

She was working so hard at it, centering all her energy on the horse, that she didn’t hear Matt come up behind her until she turned to pick her stethoscope out of her bag and bumped into hard, immovable man.

She backed up until she butted against the horse and clutched her chest. “Oh. You startled me.”

A muscle worked in his jaw. “Look, Doc. I owe you an apology. I had no business doing that.”

She deliberately misconstrued his meaning. “Startling me? Don’t worry about it. Just make a little more noise next time.”

“No,” he snapped impatiently. “You know that’s not what I mean. I’m talking about before. About what happened before the girls came in.”

Heat soaked her cheekbones. “You don’t have to worry about that, either.”

He pressed doggedly forward. “I shouldn’t have kissed you. It was crazy. Completely crazy. I, uh, don’t know what came over me.”

Uncontrollable lust? She seriously doubted it. Still, it wasn’t very flattering for him to look as astounded at his own actions as a pup did when he found out his new best friend was a porcupine.

“You shouldn’t have,” she said as curtly, hoping he would let the whole thing drop.

Out of the corner of her gaze, she watched that muscle twitch along his jaw again, but the blasted man plodded forward stubbornly. “I apologize,” he repeated. “It won’t happen again.”

“Good. Then let’s get back to business.”

“I just don’t want what happened here to affect our working relationship.”

“We don’t have a working relationship, Matt. Not really. We’re running a school carnival together, but that will be over in a few months. Then we can go back to ignoring each other.”

“I’d like us to. Have a working relationship, I mean. And not just with the stupid Valentine’s carnival, either.” He paused. “The thing is, I was impressed by what you did for Mystic. Hell, who wouldn’t have been impressed? It was amazing.”

Okay, she could forgive him for calling their kiss crazy, she decided, as warmth rushed through her at the praise.

He rubbed a hand along Mystic’s withers, avoiding her gaze. “If you’re interested, I’d like to contract with you to treat the rest of my horses.”

She stared at him, stunned by the offer. “All of them?”

“Yeah. We generally have anywhere from twenty to thirty, depending on the time of the year. The ranch hands usually have at least a couple each in their remudas, and I usually pay for their care, too.”

She was flabbergasted and couldn’t seem to think straight. How could the man kiss her one minute, then calmly talk business the next while her hormones still lurched and bucked? It wasn’t fair. She could barely keep a thought in her head, even ten minutes later. How was she supposed to have a coherent conversation about this?

“What about Steve?” she finally asked.

“Nichols is a competent vet.” He paused, as if trying to figure out just the right words. “He’s competent, but not passionate. Not like Ben. Or like you.

“Don’t get me wrong,” he added. “Steve does a good job with the cattle. But to be honest, I’m looking for a little more when it comes to my horses. I can’t expect somebody to spend thirty thousand and up for a competition-quality cutter that’s not completely healthy.”

He smiled suddenly, and she felt as if she’d just been thrown off one of those champion cutters of his. “I’d like to have a veterinarian on staff who’s not content with only one tool in her toolbox. What do you think?”

She blew out a breath, trying to process the twists and turns the day had taken. The chance to be the Diamond Harte’s veterinarian was an opportunity she’d never even dared dream about. She couldn’t pass it up, even if it meant working even more closely with Matt.

“Only your horses?” she asked warily. “Not the cattle?”

He shrugged. “Like I said, Steve seems to be handling that end of things all right.”

Steve. She gave an inward wince. What would he think when she took the lucrative Diamond Harte contract from him? It would probably sting his pride, at the very least.

On the other hand, he had no qualms about doing the same thing to her countless times since she arrived in Star Valley. If she was going to run her own practice, she needed to start thinking like a businesswoman. They were friends but they were also competitors.

“Do we have a deal?” Matt asked.

How could she pass it up? This is what she wanted to do, why she’d traveled fifteen hundred miles and uprooted her daughter and risked everything she had. For chances like this. She nodded. “Sure. Sounds great. When do you want me to start?”

“Maybe you could come out sometime after the holiday weekend and get acquainted with the herd and their medical histories.”

“Okay. Monday would work for me.”

“We can work out the details then.” He paused for a moment, then cleared his throat. “And, uh, if you’re at all concerned about what happened here today, I swear it won’t happen again. I was completely out of line—a line I won’t be crossing again. You have my word on that.”

She nodded and turned to Mystic, not wanting to dwell on all the reasons his declaration made her feel this pang of loss in her stomach.

Chapter 8

Hours later, Matt sat in his favorite leather wing chair in the darkened great room of the Diamond Harte, listening to the tired creaking of the old log walls and the crackle and hiss of the fire while he watched fat snowflakes drift lazily down outside the wide, uncurtained windows.

He loved this time of the night, when the house was quiet and he could finally have a moment to himself to think, without the phone ringing or Lucy asking for help with her math homework or Cassie hounding him about something or other.

Ellie Webster would probably call what he was doing something crazy and far-out, like meditating. He wouldn’t go that far. His brain just seemed to work better when he didn’t have a thousand things begging for attention.

When the weather was warm, he liked to sit on the wide front porch, breathing the evening air and watching the stars come out one by one—either that or take one of the horses for a late-night ride along the trails that wound through the thousands of acres of Forest Service land above the ranch.

Most of his problems—both with the ranch and in his personal life—had been solved on the porch, on the back of a horse or in this very chair by the fire.

And he had plenty of problems to occupy his mind tonight.

Ellie and her daughter had gone home hours ago, but he swore if he breathed deeply enough he could still smell that sweet, citrusy scent of her—like lemons and sunshine—clinging subtly to his skin.

She had tasted the same way. Like a summer morning, all fresh and sweet and intoxicating. He thought of how she had felt in his arms, of the way her mouth had softened under his and the way her body melted into him like sherbet spilled on a hot sidewalk.

He only meant to kiss her for an instant. Just a brief experiment to satisfy his curiosity, to determine if the reality of kissing her could come anywhere close to his subconscious yearnings.

So much for good intentions.

He might have been content with only a taste—as tantalizing as it had been—but then she murmured his name when he kissed her.

He didn’t think she was even aware of it, but he had heard it clearly. Just that hushed whisper against his mouth had sent need exploding through his system like a match set to a keg of gunpowder, and he had been lost.

What the hell had he been thinking? He wasn’t the kind of guy to go around stealing kisses from women, especially prickly city vets who made it abundantly clear they weren’t interested.

He’d been just as shocked as she was when he pulled her into his arms. And even more shocked when she responded to him, when she’d kissed him back and leaned into him for more.

He sipped at his drink and gazed out the window again. What was it about Ellie Webster that turned him inside out? She was beautiful, sure, with that fiery hair and those startling green eyes rimmed with silver.

It was more than that, though. He thought of the way she had talked so calmly and without emotion about her childhood, about being abandoned by both her parents and then spending the rest of her youth in foster homes.

She was a survivor.

He thought of his own childhood, of his dad teaching him to rope and his mom welcoming him home with a kiss on his cheek after school every day and bickering with Jess and Cassie over who got the biggest cookie.

Ellie had missed all that, and his chest ached when he thought of it and when he realized how she’d still managed to make a comfortable, happy life for her and her daughter.

Despite his earlier misconceptions, he was discovering that he actually liked her.

It had been a long time since he had genuinely liked a woman who wasn’t related to him. Ellie was different, and that scared the hell out of him.

But any way he looked at it, kissing her had still been a damn fool thing to do.

He must be temporarily insane. A rational man would have run like the devil himself was riding his heels after being twisted into knots like that by a woman he shouldn’t want and couldn’t have.

But what did he do instead? Contract with her to take care of his horses, guaranteeing he’d see plenty of her in the coming weeks, even if it hadn’t been for the stupid Valentine’s carnival their girls had roped them into.

It was bound to be awkward. Wondering if she was thinking about their kiss, trying to put the blasted thing out of his own mind. He was a grown man, though, wasn’t he? He could handle a little awkwardness, especially if it would benefit his horses.

And it would definitely do that. He’d meant it when he told her he’d never seen anything like what she’d done to Mystic. He never would have believed it if he hadn’t seen it for himself. Something had happened in that barn while she was working on the horse. He wasn’t the sort of man who believed in magic—in his own humble opinion, magic came from sweat and hard work—but what she had done with Mystic had been nothing short of miraculous.

Maybe that was one of the reasons for this confounded attraction he had for her—her wholehearted dedication to her job, to the animals she worked with. He respected it. If not for that, he probably wouldn’t have decided to go with his gut and offer her the contract to care for all of his horses.

He had given up plenty of things for the good of the ranch in the years since his folks died. It shouldn’t be that hard to put aside this strange attraction for a smart-mouthed little redhead with big green eyes and a stubborn streak a mile wide.

Especially since he knew nothing could ever come of it anyway.

The room suddenly seemed colder, somehow. Darker.

Lonely.

Just the fire burning itself out, he told himself. He jumped up to throw another log onto it, then stood for a moment to watch the flames curl and seethe around it. It was an intoxicating thing, a fire on a snowy night. Almost as intoxicating as Ellie Webster’s mouth.

Disgusted with himself for harping on a subject better left behind, he sighed heavily.

“Uh-oh. That sounded ominous.”

He turned toward his sister’s voice. She stood in the doorway, still dressed in her jeans and sweater. “You’re up late,” she said.

He shrugged. “Just enjoying the night. What about you? I thought you turned in hours ago.”

“Forgot I left a load of towels in the washing machine this morning. I just came down to throw them in the dryer.”

“I can do that for you. Go on to bed.”

“I already did it. I was just on my way back upstairs.”

She stood half in, half out of the room, her fingers drumming softly on the door frame. He sensed an odd restlessness in her tonight. Like a mare sniffing out greener pastures somewhere in the big wide world.

In another woman he might have called it melancholy, but Cassie had always been the calm one. The levelheaded one. The soft April rain to Jesse’s wild, raging thunderstorm.

Tonight she practically radiated nervous energy, and it made him uneasy—made him want to stay out of her way until she worked out whatever was bothering her.

He couldn’t do that, though. He loved her too much, owed her too much. If something was bugging her, he had an obligation to ferret it out then try to fix it.

“Why don’t you come in and keep me company?” he invited.

“I don’t want to bother you.”

“No bother. Seems like we’re always so busy I hardly ever get a chance to talk to you anymore.”

She studied him for a moment, then moved into the room and took a seat on the couch, curling her long legs under her. “What were you thinking about when I came in that put that cranky look on your face?”

It wasn’t tough for him to remember, since that stolen kiss in the barn with Ellie Webster had taken center stage in his brain for the last six hours. For one crazy moment, he debated telling Cassie about it. But he couldn’t quite picture himself chatting about his love life—or lack thereof—with his little sister.

“Nothing important,” he lied, and forced his features into a smile. Knowing how bullheaded she could be about some things—a lot like a certain redhead he didn’t want to think about—he decided he’d better distract her. “What did Wade Lowry want when he called earlier?”

Cassie picked at the nubby fabric of the couch. “He wanted me to go cross-country skiing with him tomorrow into Yellowstone.”

Could that be what had her so edgy? “Sounds like fun. What time are you leaving?”

He didn’t miss the way her mouth pressed into a tight line or the way she avoided his gaze. “I’m not. I told him we had family plans tomorrow.”

He frowned. “What plans? I don’t know of any plans.”

In the flickering light of the fire, he watched heat crawl up her cheekbones. “I thought I’d help you work with Gypsy Rose tomorrow,” she mumbled. “Didn’t you say you were going to start training her in the morning? You’ll need another pair of hands.”

And he could have used any one of the ranch hands, like he usually did. No, there was more to this than a desire to help him out with the horses.

“What’s wrong with Lowry? He’s not a bad guy. Goes to church, serves on the library board, is good with kids. The other ladies seem to like him well enough. And he seems to make a pretty good living with that guest ranch of his. He charges an arm and leg to the tourists who come to stay there, anyway. You could do a whole lot worse.”

She made a face, like she used to do when Jess yanked on her hair. “Nothing’s wrong with him. I just didn’t feel like going with him tomorrow. Since when was it a crime to want to help your family?”

“It’s not. But it’s also not a crime to get out and do something fun for a change.”

“I do plenty of fun things.”

“Like what?”

“Cooking dinner today. That was fun. And going out on roundup with you. I love that. And taking care of Lucy. What greater joy could I find? My whole life is fun.”

Every one of the things she mentioned had been for someone else. His hands curved around his glass as tension and guilt curled through him, just like they always did when it came to his baby sister and the sacrifices he had let her make. She needed more than cooking and cleaning for him and for Lucy.

“You can’t give everything to us, Cass,” he said quietly. “Save some part for yourself.”

She sniffed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She did, and they both knew it. They’d had this very conversation many times before. Just like always, he was left frustrated, knowing nothing he said would make her budge.

He opted for silence instead, and they sat quietly, listening to the fire and the night and the echo of words unsaid.

She was the first to break the silence. “Do you ever wonder if they’re still together?” she said after several moments.

He peered at her over the rim of his glass. “If who are together?”

She made a frustrated sound. “Who do you think? Melanie and Slater.”

His wife and her fiancé, who had run off together the week before Cassie’s wedding. A whole host of emotions knifed through him. Betrayal. Guilt. Most of all sharp heartache for the sweet, deliriously happy girl his little sister had been before Melanie and that bastard Slater had shattered her life.

They rarely talked about that summer. About how they had both been shell-shocked for months, just going about the constant, grinding struggle to take care of the ranch and a tiny, helpless Lucy.

About how that love-struck young woman on the edge of a whole world full of possibilities had withdrawn from life, burying herself on the ranch to take care of her family.

“I don’t waste energy thinking about it,” he lied. “You shouldn’t, either.”

He didn’t mean to make it sound like an order, but it must have. Cassie flashed him an angry glare. “You can’t control everything, big brother, as much as you might like to. I’ll think about them if I want to think about them, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.”

“Aw, Cass. Why torture yourself? It’ll be ten years this summer.”

She stared stonily ahead. “Get over it. Is that what you mean?”

Was it? Had he gotten over Melanie? Whatever love he might have once thought he felt for her had shriveled into something bitter and ugly long before she left him. But he wasn’t sure he could honestly say her desertion hadn’t affected him, hadn’t destroyed something vital and profound inside of him.

Maybe that was why he was so appalled to find himself kissing a city girl like Ellie Webster and for craving the taste of her mouth again so powerfully he couldn’t think around it.

He looked at his sister, at her pretty blue eyes and the brown hair she kept ruthlessly short now and the hands that were always busy cooking and cleaning in her brother’s house. He wanted so much more for her.

“You’ve got to let go, Cassie. You can’t spend the rest of your life poking and prodding at the part of you that son of a bitch hurt. If you keep messing at it, it will never be able to heal. Not completely.”

“I don’t poke and prod,” she snapped. “I hardly even think about Slater anymore. But I’m not like you, Matt. I’m sorry, but I can’t just shove away my feelings and act like they never existed.”

He drew in a breath at the sharp jab, and Cassie immediately lifted a hand to her mouth, her eyes horrified. “Oh, Matt. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I should never have brought them up. Let’s just drop it, okay?”

“Which brings us back to Wade Lowry. You need to go out more, Cass, meet more people. Give some other lucky guy a chance to steal you away from us.”

She snorted. “Oh, you’re a fine one to talk. When was the last time you went out on a date?”

She had him there. What would his sister say if she knew he’d stolen a kiss from the vet earlier in the barn? And that his body still churned and ached with need for her hours later? He took a sip of his drink, willing Ellie out of his mind once more.

Cassie suddenly sent him a sly look. “You know who would be really great for you? Ellie Webster.”

He sputtered and coughed on his drink. “What?”

“Seriously. She’s pretty, she’s smart, she’s funny. I really like her.”

So did he, entirely too much.

“I think the two of you would be perfect together,” Cassie said.

He refused to let his baser self think about exactly how perfect they might be together at least in one area of a relationship, judging by the way she had melted into his arms.

“Thanks for the romantic advice,” he said gruffly, “but I think I’ll stick to what I know. The ranch and the stock and Lucy. I don’t have time for anything else.”

She was quiet for a moment, then she grabbed his hand. “We’re a sorry pair, aren’t we? You’re the one who told me not to put my life on hold. If I go skiing with Wade Lowry tomorrow, will you at least think about taking Ellie out somewhere? Maybe to dinner in Jackson or something?”

“Sure,” he answered. “If you’ll go skiing with Wade and promise to have a good time, I’ll think about taking Doc Webster to dinner.”

But thinking about it was absolutely the only thing he would do about it.

* * *

“So I’m off. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Ellie glanced up from her computer and found SueAnn in the doorway bundled into her coat and hat with that big, slouchy bag that was roomy enough to hide a heifer slung over her shoulder.

She blinked, trying to force her eyes to focus. “Is it six already?”

“Quarter past. Aren’t you supposed to be heading out to the Diamond Harte pretty soon?”

“The carnival committee meeting doesn’t start until seven. I should still have a little more time before I have to leave. I’m taking advantage of the quiet without Dylan to try to finish as much as I can of this journal article.”

“She’s with Lucy again?”

“Where else?”

Dylan had begged to ride the school bus home with her friend again. And since Ellie knew she would be able to pick her up when she went out to the ranch later in the evening, she gave in.

“I’ve got to turn this in by the end of the week if I want to have it considered for the next issue, and I’m way behind.”

“I imagine you haven’t had much time these last few weeks for much of anything but your patients, have you?”

Ellie knew her grin could have lit up the whole town of Salt River. “Isn’t it something?”

“Amazing. We haven’t had a spare second around here since Thanksgiving.”

Christmas was only a few weeks away. The towns scattered throughout Star Valley gleamed and glittered. Everybody seemed to get into the spirit of the holiday—just about every ranch had some kind of decorations, from stars of Bethlehem on barn roofs to crèches in hay sheds to fir wreaths gracing barbed-wire fences. The other night she had even seen a tractor decorated with flashing lights.

With her heavy workload, Ellie hadn’t had much time to enjoy it. She hadn’t even gone Christmas shopping for Dylan. If she didn’t hurry, there would be nothing left in any of the stores.

Still, she couldn’t regret the last-minute rush. For the first time since she and Dylan had moved to Wyoming, she was beginning to feel like she had a chance at succeeding here, at making a life for the two of them.

Word had spread quickly after Thanksgiving about how she had saved Mystic’s unborn foal and how Matt Harte had hired her to treat the rest of his champion horses.

She wasn’t exactly sure how everyone had learned about it. She hadn’t said a word to anyone, and Matt certainly didn’t seem the type to blab his business all over town. But somehow the news had leaked out.

The Monday after the holiday, she’d barely been in the office ten minutes before her phone started ringing with other horse owners interested in knowing more about her methods and scheduling appointments for their animals.

She couldn’t exactly say business was booming, but she was more busy than she ever expected to be a month ago. Ellie couldn’t believe how rewarding she was finding it. It was everything she had always dreamed of—doing exactly what she loved.

“So how are the carnival plans going?”

She jerked her attention to SueAnn. “Good. We’ve got a really great crew working with us now. Barb Smith, Sandy Nielson, Terry McKay and Marni Clawson.”

“That is a good committee. They’ll take care of all the dirty work for you. And how’s our favorite sexy rancher?”

She frowned at SueAnn’s sly grin. “If you’re talking about Matt Harte, I wouldn’t know,” she said brusquely. “I haven’t seen much of him.”

She wasn’t disappointed, she told herself. Honestly, she wasn’t. “He missed the last meeting, and every time I’ve gone out to treat his horses, he’s had one of his ranch hands help me.”

She’d only caught fleeting glimpses of him out at the Diamond Harte. If she didn’t know better, she’d think he was avoiding her after their heated kiss in the barn. But he didn’t strike her as the kind of man to run away from a little awkwardness.

“Well, you’ll see him tonight. He can’t very well miss a meeting when it’s at his own house.”

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