Table of Contents

Cover Page

Excerpt

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Epilogue

Copyright

“‘Because It Feels Good’
Isn’t The Best Reason For
Doing Something,”

Abbie murmured.

“No? I happen to think it’s a wonderful reason for doing something. One of the very best” As Dylan spoke, he reached out to sketch a brief line from the corner of her mouth to the underside of her jaw.

His work-roughened finger created havoc within Abigail. But the instant she realized she’d actually closed her eyes with pleasure, she snapped out of her Dylan-induced trance.

Stepping away from temptation, she said, “Trying to practice some Gypsy magic on me, too? If so, you can forget it,” she added crossly. “Understand?”

“Cathie Linz’s fun and lively romances are guaranteed to win readers’ hearts! A shining star of the romance genre!”

—Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Dear Reader,

The holidays are always a busy time of year, and this year is no exception! Our “banquet table” is chock-full of delectable stories by some of your favorite authors.

November is a time to come home again—and come back to the miniseries you love. Dixie Browning continues her TALL, DARK AND HANDSOME series with Stryker’s Wife, which is Dixie’s 60th book! This MAN OF THE MONTH is a reluctant bachelor you won’t be able to resist! Fall in love with a footloose cowboy in Cowboy Pride, book five of Anne McAllister’s CODE OF THE WEST series. Be enthralled by Abbie and the Cowboy—the conclusion to the THREE WEDDINGS AND A GIFT miniseries by Cathie Linz.

And what would the season be without HOLIDAY HONEYMOONS? You won’t want to miss the second book in this cross-line continuity series by reader favorites Merline Lovelace and Carole Buck. This month, it’s a delightful wedding mix-up with Wrong Bride, Right Groom by Merline Lovelace.

And that’s not all! In Roared Flint is a secret baby tale by RITA Award winner Jan Hudson. And Pamela Ingrahm has created an adorable opposites-attract story in The Bride Wore Tie-Dye.

So, grab a book and give yourself a treat in the middle of all the holiday rushing. You’ll be glad you did.

Happy reading!

Senior Editor

and the editors of Silhouette Desire

Please address questions and book requests to:

Silhouette Reader Service

U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

Abbie and the Cowboy
Cathie Linz

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CATHIE LINZ

left her career in a university law library to become a USA Today bestselling author of contemporary romances. She is the recipient of the highly coveted Storyteller of the Year Award given by Romantic Times, and was recently nominated for a Love and Laughter Career Achievement Award for the delightful humor in her books.

While Cathie often uses comic mishaps from her own trips as inspiration for her stories, she found the idea for this trilogy in her very own home—from an heir-loom that has been in her family for generations. After traveling, Cathie is always glad to get back home to her family, her two cats, her trusty word processor and her hidden cache of Oreo cookies!

For everyone who still believes in magic!

With special thanks to my buddies,

especially Jean Newlin,

who helped me survive

The Summer of ’95!

One

“Whoa!” Abigail Turner shouted, yanking on Wild Thing’s reins as she tried to stop the bay mare from racing into the woods two hundred yards in front of them.

The horse kept going. And the woods kept getting closer and closer, each tree trunk looking like the dangerous barrier it would become if she were to collide with it. The branches were thick and full, creating an impenetrable fortress. There was no marked trail in that stand of trees; Abigail knew that much.

She also knew there was an extended family of prairie dogs located just before the woods, with the accompanying string of holes they burrowed into the ground—holes that could snap an unsuspecting horse’s leg in two. If Abigail didn’t get her runaway horse to swerve soon, she and Wild Thing might both be goners!

“Whoa!” The wind stung Abigail’s eyes as she crouched low on Wild Thing’s back to urgently repeat her command closer to the horse’s ear. No luck.

Desperate now, Abigail tugged sharply on Wild Thing’s reins, directing the horse to turn right. That didn’t work, either. A good horsewoman, Abigail was bracing herself to stand in the stirrups and put all her body strength into halting the horse when she became aware of a thundering noise above the pounding of her heart and her own horse’s hooves on the ground.

Out of the corner of her watering eyes, she saw a man riding hell-for-leather on a monstrous Appaloosa with spots as dark as the black Stetson the cowboy was wearing. “Let go of the reins!” he yelled at her. “And kick loose of the stirrups.”

There was no time to argue. She did as she was told. A second later, the stranger had looped his arm around her and scooped her from her saddle to his, while both horses galloped side by side. The saddle horn banged against her thigh as he sat her across his lap, keeping her clamped against him with one hand while deftly handling his horse with the other. Wrapping her arms around his waist, she hung on for dear life.

In the transfer from her horse to his, the bandanna holding her hair in place had fallen off, loosening her long curly hair so that it blew into her face…and her unknown rescuer’s face, as well. She couldn’t see anything, and she didn’t have a free hand to get her damn hair out of her eyes.

She felt him shifting, transferring the reins into the hand that had been pressed against her side. Seconds later, his horse, responding to the movement of his heels, veered right toward the open meadow.

It wasn’t until they slowed down that Abigail got a view of Wild Thing, her reins in the man’s capable suntanned hand as he led her. Abigail went limp with relief.

“Don’t pass out on me now!” he growled in her ear.

She immediately stiffened again, on the defensive against the irritation she heard in his voice. Besides, now that the imminent danger was past, she was becoming all too aware of the way her denim-clad bottom was in such close proximity to a certain intimate part of his anatomy. She could feel every flex of the powerful muscles in his thighs as he urged his horse to a stop.

He kept Wild Thing’s reins in his hand as the horse stood at a standstill behind them, her flanks heaving from exertion, her withers flecked with lather, but seemingly unhurt.

Tipping back his black Stetson with his right thumb, Abigail’s unknown rescuer looked down at her. Shoving her hair out of her face, she tried to get her first good look at him. But his hat, although slightly angled, still created enough shadow that she couldn’t tell much, except that he had devil-dark eyes.

“Mind telling me why you were riding like a maniac that way?” he inquired in a soft drawl that spoke of Western outlaws and desperados. It was gruff and dusty, silky and sexy all at once. Men didn’t learn how to speak that way; they were born with the skill. She ought to know, since she was a successful Western-romance writer. Such men were her specialty—in fiction and in real life, she’d always had a weakness for cowboys.

But after three unsuccessful relationships, she’d recently sworn off getting involved with any more cowboys, vowing instead to keep them within the confines of her popular books. Things worked out better that way.

“I was not riding like a maniac,” she belatedly denied. “My horse suddenly took off—”

“Listen, lady, maybe you better stay on a gentle mare until you have more riding experience—”

“I’m a good rider!”

“In an empty barn or horse stable maybe,” he countered, “but not out here. It’s just lucky for you that I came along when I did.”

“Thank you,” she said stiffly, in a starchy voice that her co-workers back at the Great Falls Public Library would have recognized as the one she reserved for troublesome patrons who wanted a book banned from the library. “You can let me go now.”

“Not so fast,” he replied, leaning back in the saddle to get a better look at her. “What are you doing out here all by yourself?”

“I could ask the same thing of you,” she retorted. “This is private property.” Seeing the direction of his wandering gaze, she put her hand to the open neckline of her shirt, wondering if he’d been able to see down the open V.

“Private property, huh?” he noted with a wicked grin that flashed across his face like summer lightning. “Meaning no trespassing?” he inquired, trailing one finger down her cheek to the curve of her jaw.

“Meaning that exactly,” she haughtily returned.

“So what’s your name?”

“What’s yours?” she shot back.

“Dylan Janos, at your service, ma’am,” he replied with another slight tip of his hat.

“Well, Mr. Janos, you can release me now. I want to see how my horse is doing. Something caused her to take off like a bat out of Hades…”

“Maybe she saw a snake or something.”

“Wild Thing is too well trained to be spooked by a snake unless she was right on top of it, and she wasn’t.”

“Wild Thing?” Dylan repeated. “Whatever possessed you to ride a horse named Wild Thing? You’d do better on a nice nag named Muffin.”

“She’s my horse, and I named her Wild Thing,” Abigail stated.

“You still haven’t told me your name,” he reminded her.

“That’s right. And I don’t intend to.”

“Doesn’t sound like you’re being very friendly.”

“Bingo,” she retorted.

“You know, Gypsy legend has it that if you save a person’s life, they owe you big-time. In fact, their very life belongs to you.”

“Is that so? Well, Western legend has it that if you trespass on someone else’s land, they have the right to…”

“Shoot me?” Dylan inquired dryly. “I do believe that’s reserved for horse thieves, not trespassers.”

She ignored his observation. “Western legend also dictates that a cowboy doesn’t take advantage of a woman…”

“I haven’t taken advantage of a thing. Not yet,” he added, his flashing grin downright roguish this time.

“A gentleman would have let me go five minutes ago.”

“I never claimed to be a gentleman.”

“I can tell!” she declared, twisting suddenly to efficiently slide from his grasp and his saddle, landing on the ground on both feet with enough force to jar her back teeth.

Dylan dismounted a moment later. As he did so, she noticed the stiffness of his movement and the way he was rubbing his right thigh. She also noticed the way the denim of his jeans lovingly molded those masculine thighs before dismissing such things from her mind. Or trying to, anyway.

It was difficult, though. The man was six feet of rugged masculinity. At five foot eight, she was no shrimp herself. It wasn’t until he moved closer that she realized he was limping slightly.

“Did you hurt yourself?” she asked in concern.

“You might say that,” he replied darkly, his thoughts on the rodeo injury that had laid him up and forced him to retire from the rodeo circuit. The doctors had told him he’d been lucky to retain as much use of the leg as he had, lucky that he’d still been able to ride at all. But he’d never ride as he had before. The championship belt buckle he wore attested to his skill in the arena. A skill that had shattered along with the bones in his right leg. No, he wasn’t feeling real lucky at the moment.

“Is there anything I can do?” Abigail asked.

“Yeah, you can tell me your name. And tell me what you’re doing way out here. This is Pete Turner’s ranch.”

“That’s right.”

“And since I know Pete doesn’t welcome visitors, I’d say you’re the one trespassing, not me.”

“How do you figure that?”

“Like I said, Pete doesn’t care for visitors. He and I go way back.”

“Really? Have you talked to him lately?”

“A few months ago. March, I think. February, maybe.”

She knew all about cowboys and time. They lost track of it, the same way they lost track of money and women. It was now July.

Still, if Dylan had been a friend of her uncle’s, she wanted to break the news of his death as gently as she could. While she struggled to find the proper words, he impatiently demanded, “Who are you?”

“I’m Pete’s niece.”

“No way! His niece is a starchy librarian in the big city.”

Gritting her teeth, Abigail strove to ignore the starchy part of his description as she silently reflected on the ironic fact that both her chosen professions were rife with misconceptions. “I’m a librarian. Or at least I was until a few weeks ago.”

Dylan eyed her from head to toe as if suspecting her of lying. “You don’t look like any librarian I’ve ever seen,” he replied.

“Really? And when was the last time you were inside a library?” she countered sweetly.

Dylan had visited the hospital library plenty while laid up, although he wasn’t about to tell her that. He preferred to think about her, wondering what kind a librarian rode a horse called Wild Thing. One he wanted to get to know better, Dylan decided. She was all long legs and sleek curves. And her hair reminded him of curly ribbons of silk. It had caressed his face like a slender, seductive rope trying to lasso him and capture his heart—clinging to his rough skin with gentle abandon, rich with the scent of lily of the valley, his favorite flower.

Realizing that he was staring at her mouth without hearing a word she’d said, Dylan murmured, “What?”

“Never mind.” Ignoring him, she ran her hands over Wild Thing’s chest and withers, then her legs and hooves, even inside the horse’s mouth, checking her for anything suspicious. Abigail’s first search turned up nothing; the bay mare wasn’t injured, thank heavens. The horse was still quivering slightly, but her limbs weren’t swollen or cut. A more thorough search, after removing the saddle, provided the answer Abigail had been looking for. “I knew it!” she exclaimed. “I was set up!”

Two

“What are you talking about?” Dylan demanded.

“I knew Wild Thing wouldn’t take off like that for no reason. Look at this!” She showed him the burrs attached to the saddle blanket. Sure enough, there were matching marks on the horse’s flank, although her mahogany color made them difficult to see at first. “You poor baby,” Abigail crooned, making Dylan wish she’d talk that way to him instead of her horse.

“Didn’t you check your rig when you saddled her?” he asked.

“Of course I did. Those burrs weren’t on that blanket then. It may have taken a while for them to work far enough under to really irritate her, but when they did, she bolted. And there’s no way I could have picked up burrs in that location on the saddle blanket unless someone deliberately put it there.”

“Did you leave the horse unattended after she was saddled?”

“Just for a minute. I got a phone call on my cellular phone…”

Dylan rolled his eyes.

“It was my editor from New York,” she continued. “But I only stepped away for a few minutes, no longer than five.”

“Long enough for someone to mess with this blanket,” he said, reaching out to rub the mare’s nose.

“Wild Thing doesn’t like total strangers touching her,” Abigail warned him.

“Like her owner that way, is she?” Dylan countered, soothing the skittish horse with his large hands, calmly reassuring her. The mare, darn her traitorous soul, ate up the extra attention.

Remembering the feel of that hand on her cheek, Abigail shivered. Dylan’s fingertips had been work roughened. She didn’t have to look at the palms of his hands to know they’d be callused and nicked. This was no city cowboy. He was the real thing.

“So why do you think someone would want you thrown from your horse?” Dylan turned to ask her.

“I don’t know. Maybe because I refused to sell out to Hoss Redkins, the local bigwig bully.”

“Sell out?” Dylan repeated with a frown. “You may be his niece, but this is still Pete’s ranch and there’s no way in God’s green earth he’d sell to an overblown buffoon like Redkins.”

Abigail bit her lip, realizing she still hadn’t told him about her uncle’s death. “My uncle passed away two months ago,” she said quietly. “His attorney called me and told me he’d left the ranch to me.”

“I thought he disowned his family when they sold out to Hoss.”

“He did. Over the years, I tried to stay in touch.”

“Yeah, I’m sure you did,” Dylan retorted. “You’d want to stay in the good old guy’s graces, after all.”

“Meaning what?”

“Nothing,” Dylan said wearily, taking off his hat and shoving his hand through his hair before setting the Stetson back on his head again. It shook him to realize that Pete was dead. Dylan had met him at a local rodeo where Pete had supplied some of the horses. The old man might have been about as friendly as a grizzly caught in a bear trap, but Dylan had enjoyed his company over the past ten years—since he’d moved west, in fact. Pete had taught him a lot. It pained him to think that Pete wouldn’t be sharing any more tall tales of the “good old days” with him over a steaming cup of coffee generously laced with whiskey.

“So what are you going to do with the ranch now?” Dylan asked.

“Why, keep it, of course.”

“Keep it? Like some kind of science project? Do you have any idea how much work it takes, not to mention money, to run a ranch, even one as small as this one?”

“I have a good idea, yes. I did a lot of research before I came up here.”

“At the library down in Great Falls, no doubt,” he said mockingly.

“That’s right. And don’t forget that I grew up on the ranch next door.”

“Decades ago.”

Stung, she said, “It wasn’t that long ago!”

“Yeah? How old are you?”

“How old are you?” she retorted.

“Twenty-eight.”

My God, he was just a baby! Well, maybe not, she amended, noting the fit of his jeans. He was definitely all grown-up. But he was a good four years younger than she was.

Thirty-two had never felt so old to her before, but then she’d never been attracted to a younger man before. She was also vastly irritated by him, she reminded herself, lest her hormones incite a temporary memory loss.

“Let me guess, a gentleman never asks a lady her age, right?” Dylan said. “So, Ms. Librarian, are you and your horse going to come along quietlike, or am I gonna have to lasso you?” Seeing her startled look, he continued, “I’ve got a double horse trailer parked a short ways away. It’s attached to my pickup, and I can give you both a lift back to the ranch house.”

“If you think I’m going to hitch a lift with a stranger-”

“I’m not the stranger, you are. You know my name. I still don’t know yours.”

“It’s Abigail,” she replied, staring him right in the eye, the tilt of her chin a challenge and a dare. “Abigail Turner.”

“See, that wasn’t so hard, now, was it?” he teased her, but she was no longer paying attention.

It suddenly occurred to her that maybe she was looking a gift horse, or in this case a gift cowboy, in the eye here. “Now that I think about it, you might be just what I’m looking for,” she murmured.

“Really?” he murmured right back with a lift of one devilish eyebrow. “And how do you figure that?”

“Are you looking for a job?” she asked.

“Why? Are you aimin’ on hiring me for something?”

“Maybe. I know you’re experienced…with horses, I mean,” Abigail added in a rush. She felt like an idiot. “I write better dialogue than this,” she muttered.

“You do?” Dylan replied. “That mean you’re a writer?”

“That’s right.” She lifted her chin, waiting for the inevitable question—What do you write?

Instead, he cautiously said, “What kind of job are we talking about here?”

“I don’t suppose you take dictation, do you?” she couldn’t resist inquiring with the slightest of smiles.

“You’d suppose right.”

“How about typing?”

“Nope.”

“Is that championship belt buckle you’re wearing really yours?”

His dark eyes gleamed in the sunlight. “Want to check out the initials yourself?” he inquired wickedly, propping his two thumbs behind the wide silver buckle in a gesture that was downright inviting and very, very sexy.

For a moment, Abigail wondered what he’d do if she called his bluff. Then she decided she’d better not find out. At least, not right now. “I’m looking for a temporary ranch foreman,” she said briskly. “During the past few years, my uncle wasn’t able to keep up with things, and the property and fences show it. There’s also livestock to be taken care of. I need someone willing to work hard. Hoss has put out the word, so none of the men around here will apply for the job. I should warn you that if Hoss scares you, then this isn’t the job for you.”

“Hoss doesn’t scare me.” You do, Dylan almost added. The blond librarian might be old Pete’s niece, but she looked city bred and very high maintenance. Her jeans weren’t anything fancy, nor was her denim shirt, but she had a way of carrying herself that was downright feminine. Yet she’d been quietly confident when she’d checked her horse, moving with quick capability. The woman was a study in contrasts. And she smelled like lily of the valley. Damn.

Her problems weren’t his, he reminded himself. If he had a lick of sense, he’d remount and head on out. But cowboy chivalry demanded otherwise, just as it had decreed that he rescue her when he’d seen her wildly racing off across the meadow. Dylan wasn’t the kind of man who went looking for trouble, but somehow trouble always seemed to find him anyway, despite the fact that he liked to keep moving.

His roving life-style suited him just fine; he wasn’t looking to settle down. His older brother might have gotten married and his sister might have eloped, but Dylan wasn’t ready to be put out to pasture just yet. Not by a long shot.

Still, Dylan never could resist a challenge, be it from a horse that they said couldn’t be ridden or a woman as bristly as a porcupine. There was something about both that made his Gypsy blood run hot.

Wild Thing snorted and impatiently stamped her foot, as if publicly declaring her irritation with being ignored.

“I think I will take you up on that offer for a lift,” Abigail decided. “Then we can talk some more about the foreman’s job when we get to the ranch house.”

Once the horses were safely ensconced in the double horse trailer and Abigail had climbed aboard the front bench seat of his pickup, she had the distinct feeling that she’d just taken the first step in an entirely new direction for her life. Only problem was that she wasn’t sure this was the right direction.

Dylan wouldn’t stay long; cowboys rarely did. But maybe he’d stay long enough for her to get someone more permanent for the job. Someone older and preferably married. Someone settled down.

Not that the words settled and cowboy often went together. They never had in her experience. Her third and final relationship with a cowboy had ended two months ago with him heading for Arizona and her nursing a broken heart. She’d be the first to admit that it was rather ironic that a successful writer of Western romances like herself could write a best-seller of a happy ending, but couldn’t seem to find one for herself. At the moment, she was more concerned with finding out exactly who’d sabotaged her horse—putting both her and Wild Thing’s safety, if not their very lives, in jeopardy.

“What the hell is that?” Dylan demanded, staring in disbelief at a strange-looking structure perched alongside the gravel lane heading to the ranch house. The compact building looked as if it had sprung from the earth and, unless his eyes deceived him, it even had grass on the roof. He knew Pete had been getting a little eccentric in his later years, but he wouldn’t have built something this bizarre.

“That’s Ziggy’s place,” Abigail replied as Dylan pulled his pickup truck to a slow halt.

“Who the hell is Ziggy?”

“A friend of mine.”

“And you let him build that monstrosity on your land?”

“Ziggy is an artist.”

As if to accentuate that point, the sudden and unmistakable roar of a power saw filled the air, causing a jay sitting on a nearby cottonwood branch to go skittering across the sky in raucous disapproval.

The sound of horses’ hooves hitting the bottom of the horse trailer conveyed their nervous reaction to the unfamiliar loud noise.

“Get him to turn that damn thing off!” Dylan ordered her in a growl. “He’s upsetting the horses.”

“Wait a second, who’s the boss around here?” she demanded, but she was speaking to empty air since Dylan had hopped out of the pickup cab and gone around back. By the time she’d slid out of the truck, Dylan was already marching over to Ziggy’s place as if determined to shut him up himself.

Even though the day was sunny and warm, Ziggy was wearing his customary Swiss army cap. His shaggy white hair stuck out at wild angles from beneath it. Baggy overalls, a plaid lumberjack shirt and work boots completed his outfit. The middle-aged outdoorsman and wood-carver was described as unique by his friends, crazy by his enemies and talented by those who bought the sculptures he carved out of whole tree trunks. He was up to his ankles in sawdust and standing to one side of the weird dwelling he’d built.

Ziggy spoke English with an accent, but whenever he was upset he reverted to German and French curses mixed with a touch of Italian—a result of his Swiss heritage. When Dylan interrupted him, Ziggy glared and the international string of swear words filled the air instead of the sound of the power saw.

“How can I work when I am always interrupted?” Ziggy demanded of Abigail, his tone much aggrieved.

“Baaaaaaaah.”

“Now see what you are doing? You are upsetting Heidi und Gretel,” Ziggy stated.

“Who are they? Your kids?” Dylan asked.

“In a matter of speaking,” Abigail replied on Ziggy’s behalf. “Goat kids,” she added, pointing to the grass roof, where a trio of goats was munching on the grass.

To her surprise, the beginning of a rueful smile tugged at the corners of Dylan’s lips, making her realize what perfectly sculpted lips they were. As before, the brim from his hat shadowed much of his face from her view, but the sun shone full force on his mouth, accentuating the aesthetic curve of his upper lip and the sensual fullness of the lower one.

“Nice friends you’ve got here,” Dylan drawled.

“No kidding,” she replied with a grin of her own.

He groaned. “You didn’t say anything about bad puns being part of this job.”

“That bother you?” she inquired saucily.

“Do I look bothered?” he countered. Using the tip of his thumb, he angled his hat a little farther back on his head. The shape of the broad brim gave an added edge to his appearance. Aside from a red cardinal’s feather, there was nothing fancy about the rather dusty black Stetson, and there was nothing fancy about Dylan. She had a feeling that the L-shaped rip in the left leg of his jeans wasn’t a fashion statement, but was instead a sign of wear and tear.

Feeling her eyes on him, Dylan decided that turnabout was fair play. So he stared at her, his gaze appreciative and speculative, as he fantasized that he was touching her with more than just his eyes.

“Stop that, you two!” Ziggy commanded. “I can feel fire from here. All this emoting is too distracting for an artist like me.”

Dylan watched the pink blossom in Abigail’s cheeks and shook his head in amazement. “I thought blushing was a lost art,” he murmured.

“It’s sunburn,” she shot back. “We’re leaving now, Ziggy.”

“My name’s Dylan, by the way,” Dylan said, nodding at Ziggy by way of introduction. “You been working on this piece long?” he added, indicating the tree trunk Ziggy had been carving.

“Since early this morning,” Ziggy replied.

“Did you happen to see Abbie here go riding by while you were working?”

“My name is Abigail,” she inserted.

“I call you Abbie,” Ziggy commented.

“That’s because you’re my friend. Dylan is…”

“The new ranch foreman,” he said on his own behalf. “Temporarily.”

“You will be helping Abbie, then,” Ziggy noted with a wide smile. “That is good. She needs help. I can do some but not everything. I am good with horses, I was raised on a farm near the Jura Mountains. We had horses and many cows. Goats, too.”

“You’re good with horses?” Dylan asked.

Ziggy nodded but added, “I’m better artist than cowboy.”

“That’s okay, Dylan here is the cowboy,” Abigail said.

“Did you happen to visit the barn this morning?” Dylan asked Ziggy.

“I was here working on my sculpture all morning,” Ziggy stated.

“Yeah, well, horses don’t like loud noises, especially sudden ones. If you were raised on a farm, you should know that.”

“Swiss horses are much better behaved than American ones,” Ziggy maintained.

“Right. And I’m Buffalo Bill Cody,” Dylan scoffed. “Just watch out when you use the saw, make sure that you don’t make that racket when someone is riding nearby.”

“No one rides nearby here,” Ziggy declared. “They know I am working.”

“Dylan, I really do have to get back to the ranch house,” Abigail inserted, practically tapping her boot in impatience.

Once they were back on the road again and the sound of Ziggy’s power saw was a distant annoyance, Abigail began questioning Dylan. “Why were you interrogating Ziggy that way?”

“Just trying to get a lay for the land. Did you see Ziggy in the barn this morning when you were saddling your horse?”

“Of course not. He likes horses but he loves sculpting. It’s hard to drag him away from his work. Why the sudden curiosity?”

“Because someone put those burrs on your horse’s saddle blanket.”

“It wasn’t Ziggy.”

“What made you bring an eccentric like him up here?”

“He used to come into the library a lot. We’d talk about books and artists. Over the years, he became a friend. When I moved up here, I took pity on his neighbors in Great Falls, who were forever calling the authorities on him for using his saw at seven in the morning. I figured there would be enough space here on the ranch for him to be able to work in peace and quiet.”

“I have a feeling peace and quiet don’t go hand in hand with Ziggy.”

“How about you? Does peace and quiet go hand in hand with you?”

“Sometimes.”

“When you’re sleeping, right?”

The image of her curled up asleep filled his mind, stealing into his soul. Did she sleep on her side or her back? And what did she wear to bed—a slinky nightgown, a cotton sleep shirt or maybe nothing at all?

“I usually make it a point to avoid trouble,” Dylan said, as much as a reminder to himself as a reply to her.

“And how do you manage that?”

“By moving around a lot.”

It was the answer she expected but not the one she wanted.

Coming around the corner of the barn and seeing the ranch for the first time never failed to touch Abigail’s heart. Others might notice the weather-beaten smallness of the three-bedroom log house. They might see the work that needed to be done: the sagging gutters, the neglected yard, the slightly off kilter chimney. Even the porch swing hung unevenly and needed a new coat of paint.

But Abigail saw home. She had always loved the location of her uncle’s ranch, which had an even better view of the surrounding mountains than her parents’ ranch had had. A hillside rose directly behind it, with two tall fir trees standing sentinel atop it. In the evening, she’d climb the path up the hill and sit there, smelling the evergreen mixed with wood smoke from the cabin. Lower down, the aspens’ pale bark glowed in the sunshine. The hill protected the house from the fierce northern winds, while the front porch had a southern exposure.

She and Dylan had unsaddled their horses without any further comment. Dylan had been as familiar with the layout of the barn as she was. And she’d discovered that his horse, an Appaloosa gelding, was aptly named Traveler.

Her thoughts of Dylan and his traveling ways were interrupted by the realization that they had company. An oversize man sat on his much besieged horse, glaring at Abigail’s friend, Raj. The young woman was glaring right back.

“What are you doing here, Mr. Redkins?” Abigail inquired.

“Like I was telling your servant there—”

“Raj is my friend, not my servant,” Abigail declared.

“Whatever. I’m here to see if you’ve decided to accept my offer to take this place off your hands,” Hoss said, shifting in his saddle.

“And I told you that I’m not interested in selling,” Abigail stated.

“I thought you might have changed your mind.”

“Now, why would you think that?” Abigail demanded.

“Yeah, why would you think that?” Dylan drawled, speaking for the first time.

Instead of answering, Hoss said, “What are you doing here, boy? I heard you busted your leg in some rodeo down in Oklahoma. Come to loaf the summer off old man Turner, have you? Must have been a surprise to hear he’d kicked the bucket.”

“Still as charming as ever, I see, Redkins,” Dylan retorted.

“Is this man bothering you?” Hoss demanded of Abigail, his face florid as he glared at Dylan.

“No, but you are,” she muttered under her breath.

“What was that?” Hoss asked.

“I said that Dylan is not bothering me. He’s…”

“Come to help her,” Dylan inserted.

“Hah!” Hoss scoffed. “You’ve come to mooch off a helpless woman, more likely. Dylan here has a reputation where ladies are concerned,” Hoss informed Abigail. “He’s got a string of buckle bunnies from Oklahoma City to Calgary. ‘Course that was before he busted his leg.”

The feel of Abigail’s hand on Dylan’s arm stopped him from hauling Hoss off his horse and stuffing his head in the nearest pile of horse manure.

“Dylan is a friend of my uncle’s and he’s welcome here,” Abigail emphatically stated.

“I’ve just signed on as the ranch foreman,” Dylan added for Hoss’s benefit.

Hoss frowned at this news. “Why would you want to do that? I’ve never known you to stick around in one place very long. A job like this doesn’t sound like something you’d want to get involved with.”

It was one thing for Dylan not to want this job, but it was something else entirely for Hoss to try to tell him the job wasn’t for him. No one told Dylan how to live his life, and he didn’t tell others how to live theirs.

“What do you know about running a ranch?” Hoss was now demanding of Abigail. “Why, I heard you write them trashy romance novels—”

“You heard wrong,” Abigail angrily interrupted. “I write damn good historical romance novels! There’s nothing trashy about them! Unfortunately, I can’t say the same about my neighbors,” she said with a pointed look in Hoss’s direction.

Much affronted, Hoss declared, “I don’t write trashy romance novels!”

Abigail sighed. Her verbal insult had clearly sailed right over the man’s ten-gallon-size head.

“Why don’t you head on home, Redkins, now that you’ve dazzled Ms. Turner here with your charm and intellect.”

“Why don’t you mind your own damn business?” Hoss retorted. “What’s it to you how long I chat with the lady here?”

“The lady here has asked you to leave her property,” Dylan reminded Hoss, his eyes taking on a dangerous glitter.

“And what you gonna do if I don’t leave?” Hoss taunted him. “You gonna throw me off with that busted leg of yours?”

“Don’t tempt me,” Dylan replied, his voice all the more dangerous for its softness.

“You and what army?”

“That does it…” Dylan growled, shaking off Abigail’s arm and heading straight for Hoss with murder in his eyes.

Three

Fearing the worst, Abigail exclaimed, “Dylan, don’t!”

But it was already too late. She watched with disbelieving eyes as—seemingly at Dylan’s silent command— Hoss’s horse suddenly reared, dumping the portly rancher smack in the middle of the water-filled rain barrel.

The resultant splash of water should have doused Dylan. Instead, it somehow miraculously missed him by a few inches.

His florid face bobbing like a red apple, Hoss sputtered, “H-how’d you…do that?”

“Me? I didn’t do anything,” Dylan denied with a lift of his eyebrow.

“I heard stories about you and that cursed Gypsy magic you practice,” Hoss declared, eying him with equal parts of anger and suspicion.

“Hey, it’s not my fault if you can’t keep your seat, Redkins. You need any help getting out of that rain barrel?” he inquired with mocking courtesy.

“Keep away from me,” Hoss yelled, making his horse sidestep even farther away. Hauling himself upright, Hoss added, “You’re going to regret this, boy.”

“I doubt it.”

“Yeah, well, you just better watch your back,” Hoss said, plunking his hat on his head—only to dump a ten-gallon-hat’s worth of water on his head.

Abigail couldn’t help herself. She cracked up, the laughter slipping out as she joined Dylan, whose grin was downright devilish, in his enjoyment of the moment.

Wiping the water out of his eyes before glaring at them both, Hoss said, “You’re both going to regret this day.”

“I don’t think so,” Dylan replied as a dripping-wet Hoss remounted his still-skittish horse.

Abigail could practically see the poor animal groaning under the rotund rancher’s weight.

Watching the furious set of his thick shoulders as Hoss rode off, Abigail sobered as reality returned.

“That probably wasn’t the brightest thing to do,” she murmured.

“Who cares?” Dylan replied. “It felt damn good.”

“That’s no reason for doing something.”

“No? I happen to think it’s a wonderful reason for doing something. One of the very best.” As Dylan spoke, he reached out to sketch a brief line from the corner of her mouth to the underside of her jaw.

His work-roughened finger created havoc within Abigail. She, who was supposedly fluent in the language of love after having written about it for so many years, found herself unable to describe this suddenly shameless surge of emotion. Instead, all she could do was give in to it, surrendering to the moment, even if only for a second or two. But the instant she realized she’d actually closed her eyes with pleasure, she snapped out of her Dylan-induced trance.

Stepping away from temptation, she said, “Trying to practice some Gypsy magic on me, too? If so, you can forget it,” she added crossly. “Understand?”

“Sure do,” he said in a clipped voice, anger tightening the skin on his lean cheeks and compressing his lips into a grim line. “I’m the hired help, and that’s all. Since I don’t exactly have folks lining up to hire me, I’d better be on my best behavior because, after all, there’s not much need for busted-up Gypsy rodeo riders, right?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Not in so many words maybe.” His jaw clenched as he continued in the same hard inflection, “Listen, lady, there are plenty of other ranches I could be working at.”

“I realize that.”

“I don’t need to go looking for trouble.”

“If you want to leave, just say the word.”

“Right,” he scoffed. “And have you run Pete’s ranch into the ground so that Redkins can get his greedy hands on the place after all? No way! I owe it to Pete to protect this place.”

Dylan and Abigail were almost nose to nose, her blue eyes glaring into his dark ones, when the sound of Raj’s voice interrupted them.

“Hey, I hate to interrupt such a friendly discussion and all, but I just wanted to know…is he staying for dinner?” Raj inquired. Her midnight black hair swung into a short page-boy cut just above her jawline, and her chestnut eyes gleamed with interest.

“Yes,” Abigail said, taking a step back from the fire in Dylan’s dark eyes.

“I’ll add another place for dinner, then. By the way, my name is Raj Patel,” she told Dylan.

“Pleased to meet you,” he said with a polite nod of his head.

“And would you be Dylan Janos, by any chance?” she asked.

“That’s right.”

“How did you know his last name?” Abigail asked Raj.

“Because he’s famous. Everyone knows who Dylan is.”

Who I was, Dylan thought to himself, rubbing his thigh.

“Why, he was the best saddle-bronc rider in the NFR— National Finals Rodeo—championships in Las Vegas last year!” Dismissing Abigail’s blank look, Raj explained to Dylan, “Abbie never reads the ProRodeo Sports News. I’m sorry she doesn’t know how impressive your credentials are. Only the top fifteen cowboys in each event make it to the NFR,” Raj told Abigail before frowning. “Dylan, I heard you’d been badly hurt…four months ago, was it?”

“Something like that.” His voice was completely devoid of expression.

While his face was equally impassive, Abigail saw the briefest flash of something, an inner torment that compelled her to intervene. “I don’t think Dylan wants to talk about it, Raj.”

“I’m sorry,” she said contritely. “Sometimes my enthusiasm gets ahead of me. Come on in and take a load off.”

“I’d like to get settled in and clean up first,” Dylan said. “If you’ll just tell me where my quarters are.”

“I’ll show you,” Abigail stated.

Once Dylan set his belongings down inside the small cabin set aside for the foreman’s use, Abigail realized how little he had with him. She knew cowboys traveled light, and Dylan was no exception. She was willing to bet that most of the stuff in his gear bag was rigging related to riding.

He dwarfed the one-room cabin. He didn’t have the muscle-bound looks of some of the men who graced the covers of her books. Instead, he was very lean and whipcord strong. She still remembered the powerful feel of his arms whisking her off her runaway horse a few hours earlier. She’d felt perfectly safe in his arms, yet she’d also felt a wild excitement that was at definite odds with the first emotion.

Clearing her throat, Abigail said, “Um, the bathroom is in the corner, and over here by the sink is a hot plate. It’s not real fancy.”

“I’ve stayed in worse.”

“Yes, well…” Abigail paused to lean over and nervously smooth the quilt covering the bed. “You haven’t tried the mattress from hell yet. Although I’ve never slept on it, when I aired the mattress I could see the lumps never mind feel them.” She was babbling, but having Dylan and a bed in the same room definitely made her breathless. “Come on over to the house whenever you’re ready. Supper is at six,” she gulped before making her escape.

“Where’s the fire?” Raj asked as Abigail came rushing into the kitchen.

“No fire. I just came to see if you needed some help,” Abigail maintained.

“You mean you’re not out of breath because of Dylan Janos? Now, that’s hero material,” Raj dreamily declared, tilting her head in the direction of the foreman’s cabin.

Abigail shrugged nonchalantly. “He’s just a guy.”

“A darn good-looking one.”

“His hair is too long.”

“Hah!” Raj said triumphantly. “You’re tempted.”

“I am not!” Abigail denied.

Raj gave her a look that said she knew better.

“Okay, I might have been tempted at first,” Abigail allowed. “In the very beginning, when he saved me. For a minute or two.”

“Wait a second!” Raj squealed. “This is the first I’ve heard about him saving you. From what?”

“Boredom,” Abigail retorted.

“Yeah, right. You’ve never been bored a minute in your entire life. Now, come on, tell me everything!”

“You know I took Wild Thing for a run this morning? Well, we hadn’t been out long when she suddenly took off, and I couldn’t stop her. She was heading right for that stand of woods in the north pasture, the one with the prairie-dog holes. Anyway, Dylan showed up out of no place and helped out.”

“Helped out how?” Raj asked. “Anything that required you to end up in his arms?” Seeing the blush on Abigail’s face, she crowed, “Aha! I knew it.”

“I told you, I might have been tempted, but I got over it. Real fast. He’s a cowboy.”

“Yeah, I noticed,” Raj said dreamily.

“Cut that out. He’s working here. I’m his employer. And I am not about to repeat my past mistakes. You know my rule—no more cowboys. I’ve sworn off of them for good.”

“You know what Katharine Hepburn said—‘If you obey all the rules…you miss all the fun.’”

“I have all the fun I can manage at the moment, thank you very much,” Abigail retorted tartly. “Besides, you’re hardly an objective observer in all this. You’re practically as bad about cowboys as I am.”

“Nonsense. I am merely a fan of Western US. social life and customs.”

“Yeah, right. That’s putting it mildly. You think John Wayne walked on water and you got your master’s degree in Western culture by writing a thesis on the cowboy as mythical hero.”

“Not the most practical thing I’ve ever done,” Raj admitted. “But then I’m not one to conform to expectations.”

Raj had left her native India at the tender age of fifteen, to visit a third cousin who owned a restaurant in New York City. That had been twenty years ago, and she’d often told Abigail that she’d never looked back. By the time Abigail had met her in Great Falls, Raj was working as a waitress by night and taking college courses by day.

The first time Abigail had visited Raj’s tiny studio apartment, she’d been overwhelmed by the Western memorabilia—classic posters of John Wayne and Barbara Stanwyck Westerns covered the cracked plaster walls, while their movies on video filled the bookcases and overflowed onto the floor.

It was a love that Abigail shared. She was lucky to have been able to combine her two loves—books and Western life—into her second career as a Western-romance writer.

“Yes, well, a lot would say that I wasn’t practical leaving my job at the library in Great Falls to come up here and live on this ranch. My parents especially,” Abigail noted wryly. “They think I’m crazy, that this is some passing phase I’m going through, and they’re praying that I’ll ‘come to my senses’ is the way my father put it, and sell the place.”

“To that idiot who was here earlier?”

Abigail nodded. “My parents just don’t understand, and I don’t know how to explain it to them. The thing is that I feel such a sense of peace here, a sense of belonging. When I look at those mountains out there—” she swept her hand toward the large window facing east “—it just feels right in here.” She pressed her clenched hand against her chest.

“Then you did right coming here.”

“Have I told you how much I appreciate you coming up here and spending the summer with me?” Abigail said.

“Oh, yeah,” Raj mockingly retorted, “it was a real hardship for me to leave my cubbyhole apartment in Great Falls and spend two months in these gorgeous surroundings.”

“At least in Great Falls you didn’t have to deal with moose on your doorstep.”

“That made our first morning here exciting, didn’t it?” Raj recalled with a grin. “And I have a feeling that Dylan’s presence is going to make the rest of our summer rather exciting, as well.”

“He’s a little less homely than that moose was,” Abigail replied with a saucy grin. “But I’d be surprised if he stays the entire summer. His kind doesn’t tend to stay in one place very long.”

“He might surprise you.”

“You can count on it,” Dylan stated from the doorway.

Abigail swung around, her face turning red as she wondered how much of their conversation he’d overheard.

She found out when he mockingly added, “And I’m deeply honored that you think I’m less homely than a moose.”

To her relief, Abigail was saved from having to make a reply by the noisy entrance of Shem Buskirk and his two grown sons, Hondo and Randy. Shem had worked on her father’s ranch a few summers when she’d been a child. He’d been the only applicant Abigail had gotten in reply to an ad for help at the ranch. Considering the fact that Hoss owned the newspaper in the nearest town, Big Rock, she supposed she was lucky to have gotten her ad run at all. Hoss had told her that no one would answer it. He’d been wrong.

Not that Hoss considered Shem much of a threat. No one knew how old Shem actually was, but he told stories about his mining days in the Crazy Mountains in the early 1930s. He had a shock of white hair almost as wild as Ziggy’s, while his face had more lines on it than a Manhattan road map. He’d turned down her offer of ranch foreman, claiming responsibility like that wasn’t his strong suit, but had agreed to work for her.

His two sons—Hondo and Randy, as ageless as Shem—had just shown up with him. They were willing to work for room and board. The bunkhouse was empty anyway, so Abigail let them stay on. Neither one of them had what it took to be foreman.

The two “offspring,” as Shem called his sons, reminded her of Mutt and Jeff, with Randy as tall and skinny as a rail while Hondo was much shorter and heavyset. Neither one was real bright, but they were adequate workers, although they didn’t do anything without being told first. However, at this point, Abigail couldn’t afford to be real choosy. Her uncle had let things go for the past few years, and there was plenty of work to be done.

Under cover of the noise Shem and his sons made whenever entering a room, Raj sidled up to Abigail to whisper, “I’m not sure how practical it was to hire Dylan when you’ve sworn off cowboys. It’s kind of like putting a box of imported Belgian chocolates in front of a chocoholic who has just gone on a diet.”

As always, Raj was right. It was one of her less endearing traits.

“Where’s your yodeling friend tonight?” Hondo asked Abigail around a mouthful of mashed potatoes a few minutes later.

“Ziggy is working. Sometimes he comes over and takes over cooking duties from Raj,” Abigail explained for Dylan’s benefit. “You haven’t lived until you’ve tasted his fondue.”

The men all wore similar expressions of horror.

Abigail had to laugh. “Don’t worry,” she said mockingly. “I won’t try and force you big, strong men to eat sissy food like fondue. Who knows what it might do to you?”

“You’ve got that right,” Randy declared. “Food like that can affect a man’s performance. Might make him—” he lowered his voice “—you know…competent.”

“There’s little chance of you ever being competent,” Raj assured Randy.

“The word is impotent,” Shem told his son. “You’d know that if you read the dictionary the way I do.”

“I’ve got better things to do with my time than read a book that’s better used as a doorstop,” Randy retorted.

“Indubitably,” Shem replied.

“Hey, are you calling me a name or something?”

“Look it up in your Funk and Wagnalls,” Shem retorted.

“My what?”

“Never mind.”

“Nice crew you’ve got here,” Dylan mockingly murmured from her side. Trust Raj to seat him right next to Abigail.

Seen through his eyes, she didn’t imagine Shem and his sons looked all that promising. Abigail was well aware that Dylan was only sticking around because he didn’t think she was capable of hanging on to the ranch without his help. The damn thing was, he was right. Not because she wasn’t capable enough, but because she did need help. His help. But she didn’t have to be happy about it.

“Here, have some more peas,” she said in a grumbly tone of voice, grabbing the bowl and shoving it in Dylan’s direction.

She also wasn’t happy about this jolt of sexual awareness from something as simple as his fingers brushing hers as he took the bowl from her. But she was a big girl, and she wasn’t about to let something like chemistry control her. She was the one in control now.

Hondo wasn’t as lucky, wrestling as he was with the yellow plastic container of mustard, turning it upside down and squeezing it as if trying to wring the last gasp of life from it. Hondo was the only person Abigail had ever met who put mustard on everything—including tonight’s meal of meat loaf, mashed potatoes and peas.

“Works more expeditiously if you tilt it at an angle,” Shem informed his son.

“Say what?”

“Better,” Raj translated.

Hondo did as his father suggested, and sure enough the mustard finally came spurting out, along with the lid, spattering the tablecloth and poor Shem, who was sitting directly across from Hondo.

Aside from one pricelessly startled look, Shem’s way of handling the situation was to simply keep on eating, as if he didn’t have mustard dripping from his forehead and the bridge of his nose.

For the second time that day, Abigail lost control, laughing so hard tears came to her eyes and Dylan had to pat her on the back.

“I know the Himlicking maneuver if you’re choking,” Randy informed Abigail, which set her off again.

“What’d I say?” Randy asked in bewilderment.

“I need some air,” Abigail gasped in between the tears of mirth.

“Right-oh,” Randy said with a crack of his knuckles. “Step aside there, Dylan, and I’ll give her the Himlicking.”

“No, don’t do that,” Dylan said, somehow managing to keep a straight face. “I’ll take her outside so she can get some air.”

Once they were both outside, the cool night air and the closeness of Dylan by her side brought Abigail to her senses quickly enough.

Although it was nearly seven, the sun was still fairly high in the sky, nowhere near ready to set yet. This far north, sunset didn’t come until after ten in June. Now it was July, and the days continued to be long and lovely. Abigail had always considered it Mother Nature’s way of making up for the often brutal winters.

There was something about this time of year that had always given her a sense of peace, of hope. But that was before Dylan had ridden into her life. Now she felt restless and curious.

So she said, “When you helped me with Wild Thing earlier today, you said something about Gypsy legend-”

“When I saved your life, you mean?” Dylan interrupted her to say.

“Was that just a line?” she asked.

“About saving your life?”

“No, I meant about your having a Gypsy heritage.”

His jaw tightened. “Does that matter?”

She sensed a certain defensiveness in his attitude. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to be nosy…”

“Sure you were.”

“Okay, so I was,” she amiably agreed. With a shrug, she added, “I’m a writer. I’m interested in people and their roots. Or aren’t rolling stones like you allowed to have roots?”

“I’ve got roots. Back in Chicago with my family.”

“You’re from Chicago?”

Dylan grinned at the way she said the city’s name, with the same sort of disdain used by most westerners to any city east of Denver. “I left home a long time ago. I’m the wanderer in my family. My dad says it’s due to my Rom blood, Gypsy blood, which I got from him. Both my parents came over from Hungary in the early sixties, before I was born. My dad is Rom, my mom isn’t.”

“Are you an only child?”

“Nope, I’ve got an older brother and sister—Michael and Gaylynn.”

“So you’re the baby in the family. That figures,” she murmured half under her breath.

“What figures?”

“The baby in the family is often spoiled with too much attention.”

“You read that in some book? Or are you speaking from personal experience?”

“I’m an only child.”

“Which means you were definitely spoiled.”

“How do you figure that?”

“Maybe it’s the way you walk around with your nose in the air.”

“I do not!”

“Not that it’s not a cute nose, mind. Just a mite haughty.”

“If this is your awkward attempt to endear yourself to me…”

“Why would I want to do that?”

“It seems to go with the territory,” she muttered darkly.

“And what territory might that be?”

“Cowboy territory.”

“And I suppose you know all about cowboys?”

“I could write the book on them. In fact, I have written several of them. So trust me, I know all about cowboys with itchy feet,” she loftily informed him.

“My feet aren’t what’s itching at the moment,” Dylan lazily assured her. “It’s something much higher up on my…anatomy.”

“I have no wish to discuss your anatomy.”

“You’d rather just look at it.”

“That’s right. I mean, of course not!”

“So you would rather talk about it.”

“I’d rather ignore it.”

“So would I. But that’s hard to do, no pun intended, when I have this fierce ache…”

“I don’t want to hear about it!”

“Right here…” His hand hovered suggestively before landing on his thigh.

“Maybe you should put some horse liniment on it,” she suggested tartly. “I hear it works real well on stubborn mules, as well.”

With that, she turned on her heel and marched back inside, leaving Dylan staring after her.

“First I’m cuter than a moose and now I’m a stubborn mule. I think she likes me,” Dylan informed the orange barn cat curled up on the crooked front-porch swing. “I think she likes me a lot!”

Dylan’s first week at the ranch flew by. Working from dawn until dusk when daylight lasted for over fifteen hours would do that to a man, make time fly by. But working for a woman like Abigail Turner did other things to a man, like turning his head. She’d done that, all right—with her wild curls that she constantly battled to keep out of her eyes, eyes as blue as the big Montana sky.

While standing under a spray of cold water from the shower, Dylan sang the opening lines of a George Strait classic. Cold showers had become a daily ritual for him since meeting up with Abbie. After getting dressed, Dylan grabbed a bottle of juice out of the tiny fridge and drank it straight from the bottle, all the white wondering what Abbie was doing this morning.

Dylan always thought of her as Abbie, even during those times when she stuck her adorable nose in the air and went all haughty on him. He’d never really had to chase after a woman before; usually they seemed to swarm around like bees to honey. Dylan was cynical enough to suspect that the buckle bunnies who followed the rodeo trail had found his championship buckle as appealing as he was. He’d noticed there sure as hell hadn’t been any groupies hanging around the hospital when he’d been released.

Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he replaced the juice bottle and cooked up a mean Mexican omelet.

Dylan had just finished eating when he heard someone banging on his front door. It was Shem.

“Did you hear that strange noise?” the older man demanded. “It’s stopped now, but it sounded kinda like a cross between a hyena and the howl of a mad dog. Randy claims he heard something that sounded like George Strait lyrics, but I told him no human being could sound like that.”

Dylan wasn’t about to admit that he was the culprit. It wasn’t the first time he’d had this kind of reaction to his singing. Grown men had been known to crumple and beg for mercy when he let loose. Instead, he muttered, “I didn’t hear a thing. Was that why you stopped by?”

“That and mail call. Got a package here for you. Thought I’d drop it off before heading on out.” Without further ado, Shem shoved the package at him and took off.

The cardboard was dented and dinged, as if it had been shunted from pillar to post. Looking at the address label, he realized that indeed the package had made the rounds—starting with down in Arizona and following him three states north at his various forwarding addresses until reaching him here. The return address was almost illegible after all the official-looking postal stamps marked on it, but further study told him that it was from his sister, Gaylynn. The postmark was late May, nearly two months ago, and was listed as Lonesome Gap, North Carolina.

When he’d phoned his mother for her birthday a few weeks back, she’d told him that Gaylynn had gone and married Hunter Davis down in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The last time Dylan had seen Gaylynn had been April, at their older brother Michael’s wedding to Brett. And now Gaylynn was married, too.

Dylan shook his head, hoping this matrimony bug wasn’t contagious somehow. Not that marriage had been in his short-term plans before the accident, but now it was even further off. First he had to see how his recovery went this summer. He had orders to return to the doctor in Arizona come September for another evaluation. If the truth be known, Dylan still had this fantasy that he’d be able to return to the rodeo circuit. Reality dictated otherwise, but it was just so damn hard for him to accept that he’d never return to the life he’d loved for more years than he could remember.

Returning his attention to the package, he opened it up, thinking that he really should send Gaylynn and Hunter a wedding gift, even if they had eloped. His sister had looked and acted pretty skittish the last time he’d seen her, unusual for her since she was the fearless one in the family. But maybe that was because he’d seen her at Michael’s wedding and reception, neither one of which had been a quiet affair—not with dozens and dozens of Janos cousins attending. His family was not known for their subdued natures.

Which was why Dylan hadn’t told them about him being in the hospital. They would only have gotten hysterical and flown down to Arizona on the next plane. He’d had enough to cope with.

Despite the battering the package had taken en route, Gaylynn had packed the contents well, with plenty of those irritating plastic peanuts that stuck to your fingers like glue.

He found the note first.

Dear Baby Brother,

Hope this reaches you in good shape. I’ve enclosed the paperwork on this surprise for you, from the original note from our great-aunt Magda in Hungary, to the Post-it note Michael wrote me. I hope the box serves you as well as it has Michael and me. And listen, I think there’s a side effect of this whole thing—I don’t know how to explain it other than saying a new skill is bestowed upon the owner. For me, it was drawing—remember how I could never even draw a straight line before? I’ll have you know that I’ve even sold several of my sketches now! Who’d have thunk it, huh?

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

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