THE WITNESS

When a terrified Dr. Maggie Rawlings saw her ex-husband killed, she feared her little boy might be next. They started running, with every man a potential threat—even if her son was constantly in search of a daddy. And a cowboy. And he found both in Colt McKendrick…

FBI agent-disguised-as-rodeo-cowboy Colt knew the drill: protect Maggie and her son, and then, when the danger passed, move on. But with each trusting look from the adorable little boy—not to mention each sizzling moment spent with Maggie—Colt was finding a hands-off policy harder and harder to live by…

Previously published.

“My feelings for you are not in the least brotherly, Maggie.

“I would have thought that kiss in your trailer earlier proved that.”

At that reminder, the air seemed to vibrate suddenly with charged tension. Maggie cleared her throat. “I, ah, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that.”

“What about it?” Colt asked.

“Well, obviously, it was a—mistake.”

“A mistake?”

“Of course,” Maggie answered. “It was a chemical reaction...stimulated by the fact that we were in such close proximity, alone there in the trailer.”

“Well, Doc, I hate to point this out, but we’re in even closer proximity right now. And we’re alone. Feeling any chemical reactions?”

“No,” Maggie answered, as primly as a schoolmarm. “It must have been a...one-time occurrence, and now it’s completely out of our systems.”

This time Colt laughed. “A chemical reaction. Right. You keep telling yourself that, Doc. Maybe sooner or later you’ll even believe it.”

The Wrangler and the Runaway Mom

RaeAnne Thayne

www.millsandboon.co.uk

RAEANNE THAYNE

lives in a crumbling old Victorian in northern Utah with her husband and two young children. She loves being able to write where she is surrounded by rugged mountains and real cowboys.

For Kjersten Thayne,

the best daughter a mother could ask for,

and for Avery Thayne, who deserves coauthor status,

since he insisted on sitting on his mother’s lap

through nearly every page.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

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

Chapter 18

Copyright

Prologue

Margaret Prescott choked back a scream and watched her husband topple to the thick carpet of his office like a marionette whose strings had been severed. Only the blood seeping from the neat round hole in the middle of his forehead shattered the illusion.

The two figures standing over the crumpled form of the man she’d once thought she loved didn’t even turn in her direction. Michael’s heavy oak washroom door, ajar just enough to allow her a distorted view into the room, must have muffled the tiny cry that rasped from her throat.

“What the hell you do that for, Carlo?” The tall one with the droopy eyes and beak of a nose that gave him a morose expression stared at the other man.

Carlo, thin and wiry, with short-cropped hair so blond it was nearly white, lifted a shoulder negligently and slid the sleek chrome revolver inside his tailored suit coat. “I lost my temper. He should never have baited me like that.”

His blue eyes were dead, Maggie thought, fighting to hold on to lucidity through the panic that clawed through her. Cold and flat and dead, like a cobra’s.

“How we supposed to find the merchandise now?” Droopy Man snarled. “What’s DeMarranville gonna say?”

“I imagine he’ll say good riddance.”

“Only problem is, you killed the stupid bastard before he could tell us where he hid the stuff.”

“Ah, but he did tell us.”

“You mean that bit about his wife carrying the secret or whatever the hell he said? That was just bull, to get us off his back.”

“You think so?” Carlo looked impassively at Michael’s body—at the blood that had begun to pool under his head, at the sprawl of lifeless limbs—then back at the other man. “I believe you’re wrong. I think the good lady doctor knows exactly where our merchandise is. I have no doubt she’ll be more than happy to lead us right to it.”

“You’re screwed in the head. Why would she do that?”

“You don’t give me nearly enough credit, Franky.” Carlo’s mouth twisted into a small smile that sent chills rippling down Maggie’s spine. “I’ve been told my powers of persuasion are quite extraordinary.”

Without a backward look at the man whose life he’d just taken, he turned and walked out of Michael’s office.

When the other man followed him, Maggie swayed in the washroom, her breathing coming shallow and fast. Several moments passed before she worked up the courage to push the door open.

Michael’s vacant eyes stared at her from the floor in familiar accusation. As if it were her fault, all of it. If only she had been able to call for help somehow when she had heard them all come into the office. If only she’d been able to provide a distraction by coming out instead of choosing to remain in the washroom when she heard their raised voices and accusations against Michael.

If only she had been smarter or faster or stronger.

No. She jerked her head up. Unlike her failure of a marriage, she had nothing to do with any of this. It was just another one of Michael’s dirty little secrets.

Embezzlement, they’d said. The boss frowns on his people stealing from him. But turn over the stuff and he’ll go easy on you.

They’d lied. She stared at Michael’s body and felt the panic bubble up inside her again. She couldn’t have stopped this. If she had somehow made her presence known tonight, she had no doubts she would be just as dead as Michael. And then where would Nicky be?

Nicky! She had to get to Nicky before they did. Somehow she had no doubt Carlo-of-the-dead-eyes would have no compunction about hurting her child to force her cooperation, to compel her to lead them to these mysterious books.

What irony, that she’d come to Michael’s office concerned for her son’s emotional well-being only to find his physical safety now jeopardized. She had planned to plead with him to call off his lawyer, the nasty little man who had informed her this afternoon that Michael planned to seek custody of Nicky in the divorce.

Michael didn’t want Nicky. Hadn’t wanted Nicky, she corrected herself, on the verge of hysteria. He barely acknowledged his son’s existence unless it was to snap at him for some infraction. He only wanted custody to hurt her for leaving him—for finally seeing the gaping cracks in their facade of a marriage, the lies and the infidelities—by taking away the one thing that mattered to her.

And now it looked like he was reaching out even after death to destroy the life she had begun to rebuild so carefully.

She wouldn’t let him! She could run away, take Nicky somewhere safe, where the ugliness of his father’s life couldn’t hurt him.

She fumbled with the door handle and rushed out into the hall, then punched the elevator button.

Nicky loved the two elevators up to his father’s eighthfloor office in one of San Francisco’s graceful older buildings. When they used to visit Michael here, back when she was still pretending they could salvage their marriage, Nicky would beg to ride them again and again until he was dizzy with it.

Now, as she waited, the creaky elevators seemed to move with excruciating slowness. She felt as if each moment lasted aeons until finally one jolted open and she stumbled inside.

The other elevator suddenly pinged before the ponderous doors could creep shut, and her pulse scrambled frantically. Had they somehow discovered she was here? Were they returning to finish off any witnesses? Maggie shrank into the corner near the buttons and willed the doors to close.

She held her breath, waiting for them to spot her, for the gunfire that would end her life. The only sound, though, was heavy footsteps as two unfamiliar men in dark suits hurried toward Michael’s office.

“I know she’s in here somewhere. I saw her go in,” she heard one of them say. “She can’t have gone far.”

“Dammit. We have to find her,” the older one said, an angry frown slashing across his distinguished face. “We can’t have her running around loose with what she knows. She’s a loose end, Dunbar, and you know how much I hate loose ends.”

The rest of what he said was lost as the doors finally slid shut with a quiet whoosh. The car lurched into motion, carrying her away from the immediate danger.

Suddenly exhausted, wrung out from the aftermath of the adrenaline overload, she rested her forehead against the metal of the elevator door. It was as cold as death against her skin, and Maggie wondered if she would ever feel warm again.

Chapter 1

“Go to hell, Beckstead,” Colt McKendrick growled into the phone. “I’m on vacation. I have six weeks coming to me and I’m not about to let you screw me out of it this time. Joe, hand me that hoof pick, will you?”

His foreman—and closest friend—obeyed with a knowing smirk. “When are you leaving this time?” Joe Redhawk asked. Colt glared and chose to ignore him.

“Sane people don’t take vacations wading around in cow manure and playing around with hoof picks, whatever those nasty-sounding things might be,” Special Agent in Charge Lane Beckstead responded on the phone.

Cradling the cellular phone in the crook of his shoulder, he worked the pick to pry a rock out of Scout’s front left shoe. He grunted in frustration as his bandaged hand slipped on the hoof pick. It had been two weeks since he was injured during an arrest, and still the damn thing was about as useful as teats on a bull.

“If I were sane,” he muttered, tightening his grip despite the pain, “I wouldn’t be working for the Bureau in the first place—”

“Amen,” Joe piped up.

Again Colt ignored him. “—which means we wouldn’t be having this conversation and I wouldn’t be taking the first vacation I’ve had in eight years. Besides, maybe I like wading through cow manure.”

“Exactly my point. You’re the only person I know who would choose to spend your vacation on a cattle ranch in Montana. What’s the difference between whatever you’re doing there and taking up this little job for me on the rodeo circuit?”

“The difference is, I deserve this vacation. I’ve been on the Spider Militia case for nearly a year. I’m tired, Lane, and the last time I spent longer than a weekend at my ranch was two directors ago.”

Tired? That was an understatement if he ever heard one. Burned out, more like. Sick of the lying and the intrigues and the bureaucracy. Eleven months of working to infiltrate a hate group in the Northwest had left him exhausted, disillusioned about whatever shreds of humanity might be left in the world.

He needed the peace he found only here at the ranch where he had been raised, where he had the clean, pure scent of pine surrounding him instead of the stink of hatred and violence, and only a few ghosts to disturb his sleep instead of the legion that haunted him in the field.

“Twenty bucks says you’re not going to be getting your vacation,” Joe murmured.

“McKendrick,” Beckstead replied, “you’re the only agent in the Bureau who knows the business end of a cow from a rump roast. We need you on this case. Now we’ve traced our witness, a Dr. Margaret Prescott, to a rodeo in Durango last week. She’s using the alias Maggie Rawlings and has taken a job providing medical care to injured performers on the rodeo circuit. We know where she is and where she’s going but we don’t have any way to get an agent close to her.”

The “royal we” the FBI was so fond of grated on his nerves, as it always did. Damn, he was tired of it all. Colt let Scout’s foreleg drop to the ground and gave him a slap that sent the gelding cantering off through the corral, his newly cleaned hooves kicking up little clouds of dust.

He pinched at the headache beginning to brew between his eyes. “And you think I could manage to get close to this Maggie Rawlings?”

“You have to admit, you’re the logical choice. Besides the fact that you’re a damn good agent, you’re the only cowboy we’ve got. The lone ranger, so to speak. You have any idea how hard it is to find another special agent who’s ever even seen a rodeo, much less competed in one?”

Colt snorted. “I rodeoed in college. I was twenty-two years old last time I was stupid enough to ride into the ring. Twenty-two and a hell of a lot more reckless.”

“This is a big case, McKendrick. Huge. Michael Prescott embezzled millions from at least two dozen clients over the years. He gambled most of it away but some is still hidden away somewhere, and we owe it to those clients to try to find it, to those people who trusted him to invest their life savings.” He paused, then poured it on. “To those little old ladies who lost everything.”

“Like the little old ladies who whacked him?” Colt said dryly.

Beckstead gave up the motherhood and apple pie routine. “Okay, so he ran with a bad crowd, too. Look Colt, I won’t lie to you We’re after somebody bigger than our dirty accountant ever dreamed about being. For at least one of his clients, Prescott offered a nice extra service. He prepared a set of phony books for somebody we’ve been after for a long time. Lucky for us, though, we discovered the accountant kept a copy of the real records. Insurance, maybe, or extortion. Who knows. We think it’s on a computer disk in the same place he hid the money. We figure if we can find it, we can nail his client.”

Colt didn’t want to be curious. If not for this damned inquisitiveness, he never would have joined the Bureau in the first place, after his stint as an MP in the Marines, back when he had nowhere else to go.

“How big?” he finally said. “Who was Prescott in with?”

“Big. Damian DeMarranville.”

The string of epithets Colt bit out at the name didn’t seem to surprise his boss. “Yeah, that’s what I figured you’d say,” Beckstead drawled. “You and DeMarranville go way back, don’t you?”

“Far enough.” Colt thought of lost innocence and broken trust. The face of his former partner formed in his mind, and he frowned. The decent, decorated agent who had trained him had just been a front; he’d been hiding insides as rotten and worm eaten as a whole tree full of bad apples.

“Prescott was dumb enough to think he could steal from the big dog himself and get away with it,” Beckstead went on. “Skim a little off the top and think nobody will notice.”

He jerked his mind from the past. “Stupid and slimy. A bad combination.”

“A deadly combination.”

Colt leaned on the split-rail fence and stared at the hard blue of the Montana sky, at a pair of magpies darting across the air, at the mountains bursting with color. He wanted to stay right here, dammit. Just for a little while, until the ghosts became too loud.

But he wanted DeMarranville more.

“How does the wife fit in?” he finally asked.

“We’re not sure, other than that she witnessed the hit by two of DeMarranville’s associates. Carlo Santori and Franky Kostas. You know either of them?”

“Yeah. Not the nicest crowd. Is she clean?”

“We don’t know. I doubt anybody could be married to Prescott for six years and keep out of his business, but you never know. That’s what we want you to figure out.”

Nobody was innocent. If he’d learned one indisputable lesson in the last ten years, it was that.

“Why don’t you just haul her in for questioning?”

Beckstead paused. “Frankly, she’s safer where she’s at.”

“If the Bureau can find her, DeMarranville sure as hell can. Seems to be the smartest thing would be to put her into protective custody.”

“It’s not that easy right now.”

The SAC was hedging. Colt had worked with him long enough to read the signs. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“We think Damian still has contacts on the inside. How else could he have escaped prosecution all these years?”

He’d often thought the same thing. DeMarranville seemed to know every move the Bureau planned against him long before they made it. It was one of the most frustrating things about him.

“You’d be working deep undercover so we can keep her whereabouts a secret,” Beckstead went on. “Only Dunbar and I would know you’re not just taking an extended vacation.”

“Who would be my contact?”

“Does that mean you’ll do it?” Beckstead didn’t bother to conceal his satisfaction. Like a fisherman who knew he’d just hooked his sucker, Colt thought. The analogy was an apt one. He couldn’t think of any other bait but DeMarranville enticing enough to make him give up the chance to spend time on his ranch in exchange for a summer wearing his rear out traveling to every two-bit town with a rodeo across the West.

He gave the mountains one more regretful look then pinched at the bridge of his nose again. “Looks like I don’t have much of a choice.”

He hung up the phone and glared at Joe Redhawk. “Don’t say a word. Not one damn word.”

“Who me?” the Shoshone’s mouth twisted into the closest he ever came to a grin. “Looks like you owe me twenty bucks, brother.”

* * *

“You got another one comin’ in. Busted-up shoulder.”

At the shout from the doorway, Maggie jumped at least a foot. The bandage roll in her hand flew across the little trailer, unraveling into a gauzy mess as it sailed into the corner behind the examination table.

“Sorry, hon.” Peg’s eyes shimmered with sympathy inside their fringe of thick black mascara. “I keep forgettin’ I’m not supposed to sneak up on you that way.”

Maggie fought to control her breathing, the panic that spurted out of nowhere these days at loud noises or sudden movements. Would she ever stop jumping at shadows or would the fear always be lurking there, just under her skin?

She forced a smile that quickly turned genuine as she caught sight of Peg’s ensemble for the evening—skintight hot pink jeans with a glittery western-cut shirt and matching pink tooled-leather cowboy boots. With her bleached hair and her smile as big as Texas, Peg looked like an older, lessfavorably endowed Dolly Parton.

“It’s not your fault. I’m just a little jumpy tonight.” She retrieved the now-contaminated bandage roll from the floor and tossed it in the garbage. “Too much caffeine on the road this afternoon, I think.”

“If you say so, darlin’.”

She looked away from Peg’s worried frown. She knew her father’s second wife—and widow—was brimming with curiosity about why she had abandoned her new apartment and her job at the clinic so soon after Michael’s death. But to her relief, Peg hadn’t pushed for an explanation, either when a desperate Maggie called her in the middle of the night three weeks earlier or in the intervening time they had traveled the rodeo circuit together.

Instead of answering the unspoken questions, Maggie busied herself gathering the supplies she would need to treat a cowboy with a bum shoulder.

“How’s Nicholas?”

“Last I checked, he was runnin’ Cheyenne ragged, and that granddaughter of mine was lovin’ every minute of it.”

“She’s the best baby-sitter that rascal has ever had. I don’t know what we would have done without the two of you.”

“You know I’d do anythin’ for you, darlin’. And not just for your daddy’s sake, either. God rest him.”

The two wives of Billy Joe Rawlings couldn’t have been more different, Maggie thought, not for the first time. Her mother had been pearls and imported lace. A cultured debutante, the worst possible choice of wife for a cowboy trying to be a rodeo star. Helen had run off with Billy Joe when she was seventeen, more to spite her parents than for any grand passion, and had spent the rest of her life bitterly regretting it.

It had been a disastrous marriage, and their divorce when Maggie was three had been a relief to everyone involved.

Peg, on the other hand, had been perfect for her father. Even though she seemed flighty, with her flamboyant wardrobe and her ever-changing hair colors and her gaudy jewelry, Peg was the most grounded person Maggie knew. She had turned Billy Joe’s dream of being a star into something more realistic, the creation of a world-class rodeo stock company that provided animals to events across the West

Peg was warmhearted and generous and had been more of a mother to Maggie in the six weeks each year she spent with her father than Helen had ever been.

Feeling guilty for the thought, she jerked her mind back to her job. “So where’s my patient?”

“He should be comin’ anytime now. Wouldn’t let ’em bring him in on the stretcher. You’d have thought the damn thing was a coffin the way he carried on.”

She sighed. “There’s nothing like a stubborn cowboy.”

“Nothin’ like a gorgeous one, either, and I’m telling you, this one’s a Grade A prime cut. Haven’t seen him around before and, believe me, I never forget a good-lookin’ man. I’d let this one leave his boots under my bed anytime.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

At the slow drawl, Maggie turned to find a dusty, hatless man filling the doorway, his arm pressed across his stomach at an awkward angle. Peg hadn’t exaggerated about his looks. The contrast of black hair and eyes as blue as a mountain lake was arresting, as was the cowboy’s firm jaw and thick, cry-on-me shoulders.

If she were the sort of woman who went weak-kneed over the rugged Marlboro Man type, she would have collapsed into a boneless heap on the floor by now.

Lucky for her, she wasn’t that sort of woman.

Peg winked at the cowboy. “You ever get lonely,” she said on her way out of the trailer, “mine’s the green-andwhite rig with Rawlings Stock written on it in big pink letters.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” He managed a grin but Maggie recognized the lines of pain slashing the edges of the stranger’s mouth.

“If you’ll climb up here, I can take a look at that shoulder.” She gestured to the examination table.

“It’s just dislocated. You only need to pop it in and then I can be on my way.”

“Why don’t you let me make my own diagnosis?”

He shrugged and slid a Wrangler-covered hip to the table. “Whatever you say, Doc.”

She carefully unbuttoned his colorful cotton shirt then slid his arm out of the sleeve. “I’m afraid I haven’t been paying attention to the announcer. What event were you riding? It’s too early in the evening for the bull riders, which is where I get most of my business. Does that make you a bronc buster, then?”

He gave a gruff laugh. “Bronc buster? Do I look crazy to you?”

She glanced at him under her eyelashes, then instantly wished she hadn’t. He looked tough as hardened steel, with that tanned skin stretching taut over hard muscle.

She had patched up dozens of cowboys since she’d been hired. Broken wrists, pulled muscles, cuts and bruises mostly. None of the wounded glory boys had made her feel as odd as this one did—jittery, as if she really had overdosed on caffeine.

Nerves, she tried to tell herself. That’s all it was. She was on edge, anyway, and he was just so...big. She didn’t like big men. Never had. Was it any wonder he made her uncomfortable?

The completely inappropriate—and unwanted—tingle of awareness that slid over her out of nowhere made her speak more curtly than she normally would with a patient. “You’re here, aren’t you? I haven’t treated too many physicists on the rodeo circuit.”

He laughed again, then winced as the movement jarred his injury. “Well, I guess I’m no physicist, but at least I’m smart enough to stick with the little guys, the ones that don’t fight back. I’m a calf roper. Wrenched my shoulder with a bad throw.”

“Any rodeo event can be dangerous, Mr....” she stopped at the realization she’d just insulted a man whose name she didn’t even know.

“McKendrick. Colt McKendnck. Call me mister and I don’t figure I’ll answer.”

“McKendrick. As I was saying, any event can be dangerous. Even deadly, as I’m sure you know.”

“That’s what keeps the crowds coming back,” he replied. “What does the M stand for?”

The abrupt change of subject left her floundering. “Excuse me?”

He glanced pointedly at her chest and she felt heat soak her cheeks. It took her several beats to realize he was referring to the silver name tag emblazoned with M. Rawlings, M.D.

“Medical. As in medical doctor,” she replied, knowing perfectly well that wasn’t what he meant.

He rolled his eyes. “The other one.”

“Maggie,” she said shortly.

“Nice to meet you, Dr. Maggie Rawlings.”

She finished her examination in silence, aware of him watching her movements with interest. “You’re right,” she finally said. “It’s dislocated, Mr. McKendrick.”

“Colt.”

“Right. Colt.” She glanced at the shoulder. “I can readjust it, pop it back into the joint, but I’m afraid it’s going to be painful”

“I know,” he said glumly. “Go ahead.”

With true cowboy machismo, he barely winced when she stood to his side and extended his arm out. It took several attempts before the joint worked back into place but he didn’t complain.

When she was done, he immediately rotated the shoulder. “Much better.”

“It’s going to be inflamed and painful for a day or two. I’d advise you to take it easy.”

“Does that mean I can’t ride tomorrow?”

“I’m afraid not.”

He didn’t appear devastated by the news as he shrugged into his shirt and began to work the buttons one-handed. “Well, thanks, Doc. What do I owe you?”

“Nothing. Sponsors and the rodeo association take care of my salary. It pays to keep the cowboys healthy.”

“Makes sense to—”

Before he could complete the sentence, the door crashed open and bounced against the wall with a bang as loud as a shotgun blast. Maggie had barely yanked her heart from her throat when a voice boomed through the trailer. “This is a stick-up, lady. Put your hands where I can see ’em and nobody gets hurt.”

Instead of obeying, she took a deep, calming breath and frowned at the little dynamo standing in the doorway in sheepskin chaps, a denim vest and a cowboy hat two sizes too big for his blond head. Her big, bad hombre of a five-year-old had a wooden pistol aimed right at her stomach.

“Nicholas. You know you’re not supposed to come in here when I’m working.”

“I’m Nicky the Kid, the meanest bandito in the land.”

“Where’s Cheyenne? And where did you get that gun?”

He grinned, showing off the tooth he’d lost just the day before. “Grandma Peg gave it to me. She says a bandito ain’t no good to nobody unless he’s packin’ heat.”

“Isn’t any good.” How had his grammar managed to completely degenerate in the three weeks since they had been on the circuit? He was picking up all sorts of bad habits. The next thing she knew, he’d start chewing tobacco.

“Where’s Cheyenne?” she repeated.

“Right here.” Peg’s fifteen-year-old granddaughter poked her head through the doorway. “Sorry, Maggie. He got away from me.”

“I’m sure it’s not your fault. Nicky, stick with Cheyenne. No more running off. I mean it, young man.”

“Okeydokey, Mom.” He planted a sloppy kiss on her cheek, then hopped out the door. With another apologetic smile, Cheyenne set off in hot pursuit.

“My son,” Maggie said, when the dust cleared.

The injured cowboy grinned. “So the doctor has a criminal hiding out on the family tree.”

She stiffened and thought of Michael embezzling millions from his criminal clients. The cowboy was more right than he knew. After a few uncomfortable beats, she forced a smile. “That’s right. So watch your step.”

“I’ll be sure to do that,” he said.

Only after he had left and she was alone once again did she realize that for the first time in nearly a month she had forgotten to be afraid.

Chapter 2

The sunrise edged the mountains east of Cody, Wyoming, with lavender and pale coral and just a sliver of gold. From his perch on the top step of the broken-down camper the Bureau had somehow managed to round up for him, Colt sipped at his coffee and savored the cool, clean morning air as the gold began to swallow the other colors.

Maybe this whole rodeo thing wouldn’t be such a bad gig after all. There was definitely something to be said for enjoying the morning, content with the knowledge that he would be catching the sunrise from a different place in just a few days.

He hadn’t even minded competing the night before, right up until the moment he dislocated his shoulder.

Last time he had been inside a rodeo arena, he’d been twenty-two years old, cocky as hell, and sure he could rope and ride anything that moved. In the intervening fourteen years, he had forgotten that hefty jolt of adrenaline that always hit right before the gate opened. He’d forgotten everything—the confusion in the chutes, the smells of leather and manure thick in the air, the heady cheers of the crowd.

He grimaced. The crowd hadn’t cheered too long after he’d wrenched his shoulder, although he doubted anybody else but him could tell it had been deliberate.

He had discovered that particular ability—to dislocate his shoulder on demand—when he’d been a kid. He’d used it a few times to get out of work on the Broken Spur, until he wised up and discovered it was less painful just doing the work.

In this case the results had been worth every second of pain. He had found the perfect chance to meet Dr. Maggie Rawlings, of the sexy voice and the cool, competent hands, to begin the process of gaining her trust.

After meeting her, he had no doubt he faced a chore as tough as roping the wind.

Colt’s gaze darted to the trailer he had purposely parked beside the night before, in the little campground adjacent to the rodeo grounds. She probably had no idea the scruffy cowboy she had just fixed up had slept only a few feet away from her.

If you could call it sleep. He rubbed his bum shoulder. The narrow bed—with its mattress that felt about as thick as a paper towel—had combined with his aching muscles to keep him tossing and turning most of the night.

He’d still been awake long after the rodeo announcer called the last event, when she finally came in with her kid’s blond head snuggled in the curve of her shoulder as he slept.

Colt had watched as she carried the boy inside her trailer, hooked to a rickety old pickup that had definitely seen better days. A few minutes later she came out alone. He had watched her open the door to the trailer and gaze up at the stars, tiny scattered pinpricks of light against the black sky.

She looked small and vulnerable standing there, with her shoulders bowed as if they could hardly bear the weight of her head anymore.

He’d watched her for a long time until she’d finally gone back inside her trailer, leaving him unsettled, restless.

Beckstead never mentioned the dirty accountant’s widow had the kind of beauty that could bring a man to his knees. Delicate, fragile, with soft, translucent skin, a lush, kissable mouth and huge dark eyes. She had pulled her hair—the exact shade of a Montana wheat field in July—back into a tight, efficient braid, but stray tendrils had escaped to wisp alluringly around her face.

The minor fact that she was the first woman he’d been attracted to in longer than he cared to remember shouldn’t make any difference in his investigation. He couldn’t let it make a difference.

He had been on assignments involving beautiful women before. Dozens of them. But this odd protectiveness clogging his chest was definitely something new. For a minute there the night before, as her smooth, slim hands had fussed over his injury and her clean scent of peaches and vanilla had drifted past him, he had caught the dark smudges of fear under her eyes, and he had battled a completely irrational desire to do everything he could to wipe that fear away.

She was the subject of an investigation, he reminded himself sternly. He had a job to do and he couldn’t let himself be distracted by a beautiful woman with big needy eyes, even if she did smell like heaven.

A small whisper of sound drew his attention back to her trailer in time to see the door open just a crack and a little figure sneak out. Her kid—what was his name? Nicholas, that was it—crept down the steps dressed in the same desperado attire he’d been wearing the evening before. With one foot on the ground, he paused and looked around furtively, as if he were preparing to rob the local bank.

“Your mom know where you’re goin’, partner?” he asked softly.

The kid whirled toward him, his eyes wide like he expected to find Wyatt Earp himself staring him down. When he spied Colt, his bony shoulders slumped in relief “Uh, sure she does.”

“Honest?”

A flush stole over the boy’s cheeks, making the freckles stand out like dots on a ladybug, and Nicholas looked down at the flattened grass. “Well, she’s still asleep. I figured I’d be back before she even woke up.”

“Where you headin’ this early in the morning?”

“To see the horses.” The boy walked closer, his dark eyes that were so like his mother’s bright with renewed excitement. “I’m gonna be a cowboy when I grow up. You a cowboy, mister?”

“Sometimes,” Colt answered, truthfully enough.

“You got your own horse and everything?”

He fought the beginnings of a smile. “Yeah. His name is Scout. He’s stabled over at the rodeo grounds.”

“Can I ride him sometime?”

Colt studied the boy’s eager little face. He didn’t know much about kids, but encouraging the boy’s budding hero worship might be the perfect way to find out more information about the mother.

A five-year-old probably wouldn’t exactly be bubbling over with information about embezzled money and phony books, but the boy might be able to provide him with a little bit of insight into their financial status, if nothing else.

It was exactly the kind of lead he should follow up on. He’d be a fool not to—a good undercover man capitalized on every advantage he could find. So why did the idea of using the kid make him feel so sleazy?

“Maybe later,” he finally said. “I think you ought to just stick around here for now. Your mom might worry if you’re not here when she gets up. Moms can be funny that way, you know.”

The boy nodded solemnly, glumly. “Yeah, I know. I’m supposed to stay with my mom or with Cheyenne all the time. Stupid, huh? I’m not a baby. Heck, I’ll be six in fifty-three days. Old enough to go plenty of places by myself.”

The impassioned speech was punctuated by a loud, mansize grumbling from the vicinity of the little boy’s stomach that had Colt biting the inside of his cheek.

“You take time for breakfast before you headed out this morning, partner?”

Nicholas shook his head. “Nope. We got nothin’ but bran muffins over there. Bran muffins stink.”

“I’d have to agree with you there.” He paused for only a moment, knowing he had no choice but to try to befriend the boy. The quicker he finished this job, the quicker he could return to the ranch to salvage what was left of his vacation.

It still left a sour taste in his mouth, but he ignored it

“I bought some doughnuts yesterday. Think you might be able to do me a favor and help me out by eating one or two?”

“What kind?”

“Powdered with raspberry filling.”

Clearly tempted, the boy looked first at his own trailer then back at him, chewing on his lip. Colt could just imagine the internal debate whirring through his head. Dr. Rawlings probably had a typical maternal—and medical—prejudice against the kind of sugary treats that lacked any nutritional value. Powdered doughnuts likely placed pretty high up on that taboo food list, which should make them damn near irresistible to a boy who would be six in just fifty-three days.

“Sure,” he finally said. “Raspberry filling’s my favorite.”

Ignoring the twinges of a conscience he thought had withered away from disuse years ago, Colt walked inside the camper and grabbed the box off the table, then as an afterthought, poured a glass of milk from the little refrigerator. Maybe the calcium in the milk would redeem him in Dr. Rawlings’s eyes for the doughnut.

Yeah, and just maybe before they rode tonight, Scout might up and decide to recite the Declaration of Independence.

Colt handed the plate and cup to the boy. “Here you go.”

“Thanks, mister.”

“You can call me Colt. I figure a guy ought to be on a first-name basis with somebody he shares a jelly doughnut with, don’t you?”

“Sure. I guess so.”

“What do folks call you?”

“My mom calls me Nicky, ’cept when she’s mad,” the boy said around a mouthful of doughnut. “When she’s mad, she calls me Nicholas Michael Prescott.”

Prescott, not Rawlings, the alias the embezzler’s widow was using on the rodeo circuit. Either she hadn’t explained to her son that they needed to use a different last name for a while or he was too young to grasp the concept. If the boy chattered this freely with everyone, DeMarranville and his crew would have no trouble tracking her down.

Maybe they already had.

A vague sense of unease scratched between his shoulder blades and he scanned the cluster of campers and horse trailers. No one else was out this early in the morning, but that still didn’t make him feel any better.

He turned back to the boy, shaking off the disquiet. “So you want to be a cowboy, do you?”

“Yep. My mom says maybe someday I can get my very own horse. Not back in San Fra’cisco, but somewhere else.”

“You lived in San Francisco? That’s quite a ways from here. You miss it much?”

Nicky nodded and bit off another chunk of doughnut. “I had a race car bed and a great big tree house, with a trapdoor and a treasure box. My mom helped me build it. She says maybe we can build another one at our new house.”

“Where are you moving to?”

His thin shoulders lifted in a shrug. “Don’t know. My mom says we’ll know when we get there. We’re playin’ gypsies this summer, she said.” He paused for a moment. “Hey, what’s a gypsy?”

“Somebody who travels around a lot.”

“That’s what we’re bein’, all right.”

“What about your dad? Did he help you build the tree house, too?”

A sad look crossed the little boy’s face. “No. I asked him to, but he never had time. He died.”

Before Colt could answer, the door to the trailer across the way banged open, hitting the aluminum skin, then ricocheting closed. It was instantly shoved open again and a frantic voice resounded in the morning air.

“Nicky? Nicky!”

Maggie stood barefoot in the doorway in an oversize T-shirt that just skimmed her knees. Her wheat-colored hair looked soft and crumpled, in direct contrast to her terrified gaze scouring the surroundings in every direction and her chest heaving in panic like she’d just outrun the meanest bull on the circuit.

Colt could tell exactly when she spied them, because a vast relief poured into those deep brown eyes, followed quickly by the beginnings of anger.

“Nicholas Michael Pres—” she faltered for just a moment “—Rawlings. What are you doing out here?”

“Eatin’ breakfast with my pal Colt.” The boy mumbled, taking another bite.

She sent a scathing look in Colt’s direction, whether at him or at the box of doughnuts in his hand he didn’t want to hazard a guess.

He nodded politely, deciding an aw-shucks demeanor might be the best course of action. “Mornin’, Doc.”

“Good morning,” she snapped, then turned back to her son. “We have talked about this, young man. You know the rules. I have to know where you are all the time.”

Nicky, in the middle of a swallow of milk that left a white mustache on his upper lip, sent her a bewildered look. “You know ’xactly where I am. Right here.”

“I didn’t know where you were when I woke up. All kinds of terrible things went through my head.”

A mischievous gleam appeared in his eyes. “Like that big ugly aliens came down in a UFO and grabbed me and took me back to their planet so I could be their slave and wash their dirty socks and stuff?”

“Something like that. A little less dramatic, maybe.” Her stern expression softened, and she pushed a lock of hair out of her son’s eyes. “You really scared me, bud. Don’t do that again, okay? Wake me up before you go outside next time.”

“Okay. Can I finish breakfast with Colt? He said maybe sometime he’d let me ride his horse. His name’s Scout.”

“I’m sure Mr. McKendrick has things to do this morning,” she said, her voice coated with a thin, crackly layer of frost.

“Not really. If the boy wants to see the horse, I’d be glad to take him down to the pens.”

“Please, Mom? I’ll come right back, I promise.”

“Not right now. Maybe I can find time to take you down to see the horses later.”

“But Mom... ”

“Later, Nicholas. You’re still in trouble for breaking the rules. Now go inside and wash your hands and face.”

The boy opened his mouth to argue, but closed it again at the implacable look on his mother’s face, a look even Colt could recognize. Smart kid, he thought, then grinned when Nicky trudged up the three metal steps of their trailer with his bottom lip jutting out in a pout a rock star would have envied.

As soon as her son was out of sight, Maggie turned back to Colt. She looked about eighteen years old in that T-shirt, he thought. That didn’t stop him from being curious about what was beneath it.

“How is it?”

He blinked at her. “How’s what?”

She looked at him like he’d taken a hard spill from a horse and landed on his head. “Your shoulder. I asked how your shoulder is feeling this morning.”

“Oh. Good. It’s good. I was thinking maybe I’d ride tonight after all, since I’m feeling just fine this morning. What do you think?”

“I think it would be extremely foolish, unless you want to reinjure your shoulder.”

“Maybe I’ll see how I’m feeling later.”

“That’s your decision, of course.” She paused for a moment, as if weighing her words, then spoke stiffly. “Look, Mr. McKendrick. Colt. I don’t want you to take this wrong, but I would appreciate it very much if you would stay away from my son.”

He stared at her. Where the hell did that come from? “I just gave him a jelly doughnut and told him he could take a ride on my horse some time, Doc. It’s not like I offered him a fifth of Jack Daniels and some smokes.”

She frowned. “I realize that. It’s just that he’s at a vulnerable stage right now. He—he lost his father recently.”

“I’m sorry.” What emotion triggered those shadows in her eyes, those lines around her mouth? Grief for the husband she had lost or fear of the men who had killed him?

He was willing to bet it was the latter. According to the dossier Lane had provided him with, she and the late accountant had been at the starting gate of what had been shaping up to be a nasty divorce.

She looked away for a moment, and when she turned back, the clouds were gone. With a cool nod she acknowledged his condolences. “Even though his father wasn’t very... involved in his upbringing, Nicky has taken his death hard. I’m afraid he’s looking for a male role model.”

“Lots of boys dream about being cowboys. I don’t see that there’s any harm in that.”

“I’m afraid I do. He’s an impressionable little boy and he doesn’t need a—a saddle bum filling his head with all sorts of nonsense about the Code of the West and a cowboy’s honor.”

So much for trying to ingratiate himself with her through a friendship with her son. He opened his mouth to defend himself but she went on as if she didn’t notice.

“He’s been through enough. Please don’t compound a little boy’s pain by encouraging a friendship that will only end in heartbreak when you move on to the next rodeo.”

With that she turned and walked into her trailer, leaving him frowning behind her.

* * *

She had sounded like an absolute idiot.

Later that night—after she’d taped a couple of bruised ribs, set a broken arm and bandaged a nasty gash from the wrong end of a bull on the final night of the rodeo—Maggie lay in her narrow bed in the trailer and replayed her conversation with Colt McKendrick.

Please don’t compound a little boy’s pain by encouraging a friendship that will only end in heartbreak when you move on to the next rodeo.

Okay, so she’d overreacted when all he had done was show a little kindness to a lonely little boy. He’d offered to let Nicky ride his horse, that’s all, not move in with him.

He was probably exactly as he appeared—a down-on-his-luck cowboy searching for glory in the arena. Older than most of the wranglers she treated, true, with a maturity in those lines around his eyes, in the confident set of his shoulders, most of them lacked.

So he was older than the norm. That didn’t mean anything. Maybe he was escaping a bad relationship, or, God forbid, the law.

He was certainly attractive, in a raw, wild sort of way. Maybe it was that dark brushy mustache that made him look like one of those outlaws Nicky had become so enamored of. Butch Cassidy, maybe, or Jesse James. Dangerous and fascinating at the same time.

Maggie rolled her eyes at herself. Didn’t she have enough to worry about without her hormones suddenly waking up from whatever internal cave they’d been hibernating in for the past few years? It was all she could do to take care of her son and perform her job each day without giving in to the panic always lurking around the edges of her mind. She didn’t have energy left to indulge in even a harmless flirtation.

He had been awfully sweet with Nicky, though. She smiled at the picture the two of them had made this morning, sprawled out on the back step of McKendrick’s old camper: two satisfied males eating their empty-calorie breakfast in the morning sun.

Nicky needed that in his life. Maybe not the empty calories, but the guiding influences of an older man. Even before she left Michael and moved them to their little apartment, he had been starved for male companionship. Michael had been too busy with his deals and his clients—and his other women, she later discovered—to pay much heed to his son.

If Colt McKendrick wanted to give Nicky a little of the attention he needed so desperately, was she wrong to stop him? No. She wasn’t wrong. She didn’t even know the man. Until she did, she couldn’t trust him. Couldn’t afford to trust him.

It was up to her to keep her son safe until she could earn enough money to help them settle somewhere.

Once she could be certain the men who killed Michael had given up searching for her, she could find a job somewhere, get an apartment for them. With her medical experience, she should be able to find work anywhere. Maybe by fall, before the new school year began.

Maggie gazed up at the dingy, water-stained ceiling of the trailer, suddenly struck by a powerful craving for her old life back. For the safety, the security she’d always taken for granted.

She hadn’t been happy, married to Michael. Oh, she had loved him once. Or thought she did, anyway. She had been vulnerable when she’d married him, she now admitted—had been in her last year of residency when her mother introduced them, just a few months before Helen died after a long battle with cancer.

Throughout her last days her mother had dropped not-sosubtle hints about what a fine young man he was—wealthy, successful, handsome—until Maggie agreed to go out with him more to make her mother happy than because she was interested in dating him.

After Helen died, Michael had been a constant, supportive presence. He had been charming and attentive, and she had soaked it in like a flower starved for rain.

She had known almost from the first that she had made a grave mistake, but by then she was pregnant with Nicky, so she’d done her best to make the marriage work.

For all the good it did her. All that had changed six months ago when she’d found out about the lies, the women. And the safety of her life had been destroyed forever when she had watched Michael topple to the floor of his office with a bullet hole in his forehead three weeks ago.

She didn’t want to think about that night, the night when everything she thought she could count on had crumbled to ashes. She had rushed to the house of Rosie Vallejo, her former housekeeper and Nicky’s long-time care provider, and her first thought had been to call the police to report the murder.

She remembered waiting, shivering in delayed reaction, in Rosie’s humble living room, for the officer to arrive. But when the car pulled up, some latent survival instinct prompted her to look out through the curtain. To her horror, the men climbing out of an unmarked late-model sedan in the driveway were the two she had seen from the elevator after the murder.

The only explanation she could come up with for their presence at Rosie’s house was that they must have found out where she was from her call to the police.

She’s a loose end. You know how much I hate loose ends, the older man had said in that cold voice.

She had barely managed to grab Nicky and flee out the back door. Maggie frowned now, remembering the terror. She still didn’t know who the two men were. Maybe this DeMarranville person the two killers had talked about had sent them as some sort of backup to Carlo and Franky. A grim contingency plan.

Regardless, she had rushed back to her apartment to grab some belongings and had discovered a message from Peg on the answering machine. Rawlings Stock was providing the animals for a show a few hours away from San Francisco, and Peg wanted to come to visit.

The call had seemed heaven sent. Peg wielded a great deal of influence in the rodeo world, and Maggie had no doubt she could help her find work on the circuit, even mucking out stalls.

She hadn’t had to resort to that, fortunately. Peg had known of an opening in one of the rodeo sponsor’s sports medicine program, and her years of experience working at the clinic had qualified her for the position.

She had jumped at the chance. It was the perfect opportunity for her and Nicky to hide from DeMarranville’s men until she could earn enough money to make a new start somewhere safe. Amid the transient life of the rodeo circuit, she could become anonymous, with a new assignment in a different town every week.

She hoped it would be the last place anyone would think to look for her, since Michael had insisted she keep that part of her past—the summers she spent on the road with her rough-and-tumble father—a secret. It didn’t gel with the image he wanted his wife to portray, of quiet, wealthy elegance.

He didn’t even like to talk about her work at the clinic, preferring instead to focus on her mother’s world of country clubs and society teas. The world where Maggie had never belonged.

She shifted in the narrow bed as familiar shame pinched at her. She allowed Michael to completely dominate her present when she was married to him. How could she have let him so completely take over her past, as well, rewriting it to meet his own expectations?

She had loved those times with her father. Maybe she had turned to the rodeo circuit as an escape now because it represented the best part of her childhood. A safe haven, even then. She had looked forward to her summers with Billy Joe with as much excitement as a prisoner handed a three-day pass to the outside. It was worlds away from the coldness, the studied politeness, of her life with her mother.

She rolled over and punched at her pillow. The reasons weren’t important. The only thing that mattered was Nicky’s safety. If it meant keeping him safe, she would dress up like a rodeo clown and go head-to-head with Corkscrew, Peg’s nastiest bull.

She yawned and glanced at her little travel alarm clock. Nearly 1:00 a.m. and they would be leaving early in the morning for the long drive to Butte, Montana.

She needed sleep. Needed it and feared it at the same time. During the day she could forget, could block from her mind the memory of Michael’s death. But in sleep she was powerless against the terrors that stalked her subconscious.

She fought it as long as she could, but finally her exhaustion won out. The nightmare crept up on her, more terrible because it was all so real. Michael falling again, the blood oozing from his wound like wine trickling from a spilled bottle. Those agonizing moments when she had cowered in the washroom while the men who killed him talked casually over his body, as if they were discussing stock prices or baseball scores.

And then running, running.

In her dream it was as if she were stuck on an out-ofcontrol treadmill, always running and never making any progress, while Carlo with the dead eyes pursued her. He moved inexorably closer to her and, try as she might, she could do nothing to escape.

When he had nearly reached her, he veered away, and she thought she had escaped but suddenly Nicky was there in his arms, kicking and struggling, his little fists pounding against the stranger who held him. Terror and fury and raw fear erupted inside her, and she screamed her son’s name just as Michael’s killer reached into his pocket and pulled out a wooden pistol like Nicky’s.

Even though it looked like a toy, she knew it would be as deadly as the real thing. She cried out and grabbed for it, just as a terrible clanging noise erupted from the pistol.

She awoke in a rush, her heart pounding and the blood rushing in her ears. It was so real! She could still hear the echoes of her cries, still taste the fear in her mouth.

What had awakened her? For long seconds she lay in the darkness and listened to the stillness of the night, forcing her muscles to relax, her breathing to slow.

Thunder rumbled in the distance, long and low, like a slow, steady drumroll played by ghostly hands. That was it. She must have heard the warnings of the impending storm.

Lightning flashed outside the window, and the sky immediately growled again. This time it was joined by something much closer, a clang very much like what she’d heard in her dream, followed by muffled cursing.

It wasn’t the storm that had awakened her, she realized as all the fear came surging back.

Someone was out there!

Chapter 3

Lingering visions from her nightmare chased themselves through her mind. Could Michael’s killers have found her? Panic exploded in her chest, and she thrust the light quilt aside to scramble out of bed, consumed with a wild, frantic urge to gather Nicky and flee into the night.

After an instant she forced herself to breathe deeply and try to think through it all rationally. How could they possibly have found her? She had been excruciatingly careful to leave no clue about her whereabouts. She hadn’t tapped into any of her bank accounts. She hadn’t told anyone at the clinic where she was going. She hadn’t even told Rosie.

It was probably just some drunk cowboy. A bronc buster or bull rider who celebrated the rodeo’s end with one too many beers at a honky-tonk somewhere and now was simply trying to find his way back to his bed.

Maggie stared at the ceiling. Though she dearly wanted to stay here and hide in her bed—to pretend she hadn’t heard anything but the gathering storm—she knew she had to check out the commotion.

It was the responsible thing to do, and Margaret Elizabeth Rawlings Prescott always did the responsible thing.

She slipped from her bed and crept through the darkness to the window at the front of the trailer, underneath the loft where Nicky slept noisily, making sweet little huffing breaths in his sleep.

Although swollen black-edged clouds hid the moon, faroff lightning arced across the sky just long enough for her to make out a dark, hulking shape crouched by the passenger side of her pickup.

Great. The drunk cowboy was throwing up on her truck.

Again she had the completely childish urge to crawl into her bed and pull the covers over her head. But what if it wasn’t a drunk cowboy? What if it was somebody trying to break into her truck? She didn’t have much of value inside it, but she was damned if she would let somebody take what little they had left.

She needed a weapon, if only to scare the intruder away. A quick scan of the trailer turned up a cast-iron frying pan in the dish drainer. A frying pan. What a cliché. She only needed a headful of curlers to look just like Alice Kramden from The Honeymooners, taking on Ralph after he stayed out too late with the boys. Still, it would probably make any drunk cowboy think twice before tangling with her.

Before she could talk herself out of it, Maggie grabbed the pan by the handle, rummaged through a drawer for a flashlight, then opened the door quietly. She sidled along the length of the trailer until she reached the truck’s bumper.

“If you leave right now,” she called out softly, “I won’t phone the police.” She clicked the flashlight beam on and aimed it right into the would-be thief’s eyes, then gasped when Colt McKendrick’s baby blues blinked back at her. “You!”

“Yeah. Me.” He sounded disgruntled. “Who’d you think it was?”

“I don’t know. A drunk cowboy, maybe, being sick on my truck.” She squinted at him. “You’re not throwing up, are you?”

“Don’t think so. Thanks for asking, though.”

“What are you doing, then?”

“You mind moving the flashlight a little? You’re blinding me here.”

She shifted the beam to the ground. “Sorry. What are you doing?” she repeated.

She sensed, rather than saw, his shrug. “I was on my way to bed and noticed you had a flat. Figured I’d fix it so you wouldn’t have to deal with it in the morning.”

She stared at him. “You just took it upon yourself to start fixing it without talking to me first?”

“Um, could you move that flashlight again?”

Maggie flushed when she realized she had instinctively aimed it into his eyes once more. She pointed the light to the ground again, where it now illuminated a jack propped next to a tire that sagged forlornly. “Why are you doing this?” she asked.

“It seemed the neighborly thing to do.”

He wasn’t breaking into her truck, he was going out of his way to fix her flat tire. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone had done something so genuinely kind for her. A burst of warmth flooded through her, trickling over her shoulders and down her back.

Her opinion of Colt McKendrick suddenly seemed to shift and slide around inside her. She didn’t want to soften toward him, though. She didn’t dare.

“You really don’t have to do this,” she mumbled. “I’m perfectly capable of changing a flat tire.”

“I’m just saving you the trouble. Just look at it as my way of paying you back for patching up my shoulder yesterday. Nice frying pan, by the way. Odd time of the night for making pancakes, if you don’t mind me saying.”

Embarrassed heat soaked her skin at the flash of his grin in the darkness. She dropped the frying pan to her side. “You never know what sort of riffraff you could run into in the middle of the night.”

“True enough.”

Lightning suddenly seared across the night again, and the air smelled of ozone and that peculiar musty smell of a summer storm about to be unleashed.

McKendrick glanced up at the sky. “Looks like I’d better get a move on if I’m going to beat that. You know, I could probably make better time if you’d shine that flashlight over here.”

“Oh. Of course.” She clicked it on and watched him jack up the truck and quickly, efficiently, replace the flat tire with her spare.

When the last lug nut had been tightened, he hefted the flat into the bed of the pickup. “You’ll want to get this tire repaired before you go too much farther. I wouldn’t want you to be stranded on the road somewhere without a spare.”

“I’ll do that.” She frowned. “I wonder what happened to it. It wasn’t flat earlier this evening.”

He busied himself gathering up the tools. “Maybe you picked up a nail or something. Had a slow leak for a couple days that finally finished the thing off. Or you could have—Damn!”

“What is it?” She aimed the flashlight at him and saw him cradling one hand with the other.

“Blasted jack cut my hand.”

“Let me see.”

He wiggled it as if he could shake off the pain and picked up the crowbar. “It’s okay. Nothing that hasn’t happened to me dozens of times on the ranch.”

She gazed at him, momentarily diverted. “You have a ranch?”

He looked away as if he were too embarrassed to meet her gaze. “Uh, I used to.”

Compassion swept through her. He must have fallen on hard times and lost his ranch, the same fate suffered by countless other ranchers during the recent run of lousy beef prices and high feed costs. Maybe that’s why he was on the circuit. For a good cowboy, a summer spent rodeoing could be a quick route to ready cash to help rebuild a ranch.

She swallowed her words of sympathy, somehow knowing they wouldn’t be welcome. “Still,” she said quietly, “I would feel better if you allowed me to take a look at that hand.”

Before he could argue, she dropped the frying pan into the dirt and grabbed his fingers. As her hand met his skin, hardened and rough from hard work, heat raced between them every bit as powerful as the lightning sizzling across the sky.

Unnerved, Maggie cleared her throat and dropped his hand. “That looks deep. You should put some disinfectant and an antibiotic on it.”

He shoved the injured hand into the back pocket of his jeans. “I’ll be all right.”

“I insist, especially since it was my tire you were fixing. Come on. I’ve got some iodine in the trailer.”

“I wouldn’t want you to wake up your kid. I’ve probably got something I can use at my place.”

She frowned at him. “You might as well accept my help. I’m not going to be able to sleep until I know you’ve put something on that.”

“Fine, Doc. Whatever you say. Since you’re so set on it, you can come and watch to make sure I stick the Band-Aid on right side up.”

As he led the way to his camper, the skies finally opened and began to spit huge drops that plowed into the dusty ground like bullets. They made it inside just as the storm began in earnest.

“Welcome to the McKendrick hacienda,” he said, flipping on a light above the little stove. Maggie instantly realized she had made a mistake by following him.

A huge mistake.

The camper was no more than eight feet wide and a dozen feet long, small and compact and intimate, especially with the storm playing a symphony on the thin aluminum skin of the roof.

Her nerves were in entirely too much turmoil for her to be comfortable in such close quarters with Colt McKendrick. She couldn’t breathe without brushing against him, but she inched as far away as she could manage. “Um, where’s your disinfectant?”

“It’s in here somewhere. Why don’t you sit down, and I’ll see if I can rustle it up?”

He bent to rummage through a drawer, highlighting thin spots where his jeans had worn almost white from all the time he spent in the saddle. She caught herself staring and jerked her gaze away.

What on earth was the matter with her, gawking at the man like she was some kind of buckle bunny on the make for a good-looking cowboy? Embarrassed, she slid onto one of the vinyl bench seats around a little gray-speckled Formica table

To distract herself she studied the interior of the camper, looking for some clue into McKendrick’s personality. It appeared to be about the same general era as the trailer she had bought with the proceeds from selling her Volvo The decor was straight out of the 1970s, all orange, yellow and dark green tones. A well-used rope, coiled neatly, hung on the back of the door. A pair of worn boots, an older twin to the pair he was wearing, waited by the bed.

Earlier in the day she had noticed that the pickup and horse trailer both looked fairly new and in much better condition than the camper. Wasn’t that just like a cowboy? Worry about his horse and his truck but not about where he laid his own head at night.

The only somewhat jarring note that kept the inside of the camper from being completely stereotypical was a stack of books on the window ledge. She studied their authors. Larry McMurtry, Louis L’Amour, a couple of mysteries. Just what she might have expected. But she suddenly did a double take at the slim volume at the bottom of the stack. Descartes? A cowboy who reads philosophy?

Before she could ask him about it, he emerged from the cupboard with a battered first aid kit lifted victoriously in his hand. “Here we go. I knew this was in here somewhere.”

He slid into the seat across from her and thrust out his hand. “Okay, Dr. Rawlings. Do your worst.”

She eyed his hand with trepidation. After what had happened outside when she touched him—that odd, silvery shower of sparks—she was reluctant to make contact again.

This is ridiculous, she thought, and forced herself to take a deep breath. She was a professional. She could handle putting antiseptic on a man’s hand without getting all fluttery over it. Couldn’t she?

Her nerves firmly in check, she picked through the first aid kit until she found a small dark bottle of iodine, then reached for his hand. The sparks threatened to return, but she sternly suppressed them and examined the injury. His hand was a testament to years of hard work, with a varied collection of nicks and scars.

Instead of a new injury, as she had assumed, it looked as if the jack had ripped open an existing wound, a jagged, ugly cut that traced the curve of his lifeline. “What did you do here? Before tonight, I mean.”

He looked at it for a moment and she could swear he was being evasive again. “Uh, a cowboy’s curse. I was putting up fence line and snagged it on some barbwire.”

“Looks like it was painful.”

He grunted in response and she managed not to smile. “Oh, I forgot. You macho cowboys don’t feel pain like the rest of us. Now if you weren’t a cowboy, I’d tell you this is going to sting a little. But since you are, I won’t waste my breath.”

Cowboy or not, he stiffened as she poured the iodine on, and Maggie winced. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have teased you.” She instinctively blew on his palm to cool the burning.

He grinned. “Now there’s a mother for you, thinking you can make it all better by blowing on it. My mother used to do the same thing when I was a kid.”

She couldn’t stop her smile, intrigued by the idea of him as anything other than the completely adult, completely masculine person in front of her. “Sorry. It’s a habit I picked up with Nicky. You’re lucky I didn’t kiss it to make it feel better.”

“Am I?” he murmured.

Was he flirting with her? She’d been out of the manwoman scene so long she simply couldn’t tell. She shot him a glance under her lashes, but his strong, chiseled features remained impassive.

Unsure how to respond, she cleared her throat and opted to change the subject, even though the one she picked didn’t make her any more comfortable. “Speaking of Nicky,” she began, “I wanted to apologize for this morning. About calling you a saddle bum and all. I overreacted. It’s just that I panicked when I woke up and he wasn’t there. I’m afraid you bore the brunt of that lingering fear.”

“No harm done.”

“No, I shouldn’t have lashed out at you like that. It’s just...I tend to be a little overprotective of Nicky.” She forced her gaze away from his to the bandage she was wrapping around his hand. “It’s too bad today was the last day of the rodeo and we’re moving on tomorrow. If we had more time, I would have let you take Nicky up on your horse. If you were serious about your offer, that is.”

“Would I lie to a big, bad outlaw like Nicky the Kid?”

She couldn’t help her laugh, one of the few genuine ones she’d enjoyed in quite a while, then instantly regretted it when he gave her an odd look that sent her pulse skittering.

“Where’s your next assignment?” he finally asked. “Maybe we’ll run into each other down the road.”

“Butte, Montana. The Butte Vigilante Rodeo.”

“Now there’s a coincidence. I just sent in my entry fee for the same show this morning. They have a nice calf-roping purse I’ve got my eye on, so I’ll be heading into Montana ’round about Wednesday. I’d be happy to take your little guy up on Scout one day next week.”

She shouldn’t have this little hitch in her stomach at the idea of seeing him again. Darn it, she knew perfectly well she shouldn’t. “I’m sure Nicky will look forward to it.”

“Maybe you and I could get together, too, before the show one night. I know a great steak place in town.”

He was definitely flirting with her. Oh mercy. What was she supposed to do now? “I don’t... That is, I haven’t...”

“Relax, Doc. You don’t have to decide tonight.” He twisted his bandaged hand and rubbed a rough thumb over her knuckle. She felt hypnotized by his grin, like a rabbit caught in the hard, killing glare of headlights. “Just think about it.”

She carefully gathered her composure around her and tugged her hand away. “We’ll see,” she managed to say, then slipped from the seat and headed for the door. “Thank you again for fixing my tire. It was a very nice thing to do.”

To her confusion, he scowled. “Niceness has nothing to do with it, Doc. Not one damn thing.”

She gave him a puzzled look, but he didn’t seem inclined to explain. If the man wanted to keep his secrets, who was she to argue? Lord knows, she had enough of her own. “Well, good night, then. I suppose I’ll see you in Butte.”

He was still scowling when she walked out into the rain. He swore under his breath and lifted the moth eaten curtains to watch her hurry into her own trailer. A light switched on inside, but the trailer went dark again after only a few moments.

Colt let the curtain fall. What the hell was he supposed to do now? Any degree of objectivity he might have claimed going into this assignment had just died a quick and painful death when Maggie Rawlings laughed back there, sweet and unaffected.

Unless she was the world’s greatest actress, the woman was about as innocent as a newborn calf. No way could she be a party to the illegal activity of her husband. Nobody with that much vulnerability in her eyes could be involved in the ugliness of Michael Prescott’s world. He would be willing to bet the entire Broken Spur she didn’t know what her husband had been involved with, that she was just running scared from the men who had killed him.

He thought of the stunned amazement in her dark eyes when she had found him changing the flat tire on her truck—the tire he’d purposely punctured himself.

His plan was to quietly fix the tire and leave a note about it for her to discover in the morning, in another attempt to insinuate himself into her life. Instead, she’d awakened and come out armed with a cast-iron skillet and a flashlight, ready to take on a drunk cowboy.

His mouth twisted in a wry grin. The woman had grit, he’d give her that much. Another few seconds and she would have beaned him.

Instead, she had been pathetically grateful when she discovered he was repairing the flat tire. His scheme couldn’t have worked better. So why did he feel no satisfaction, just this guilt churning around in his gut for deceiving her?

Maybe because he was inexplicably drawn to the woman, in a way he hadn’t been to anyone since his wife walked out five years ago.

With another oath at the thought of his ex-wife, he dug through the briefcase carefully hidden in a cabinet under the bench where Maggie Rawlings had been sitting. He picked up his slim cellular phone and quickly punched one of the preprogrammed numbers.

Beckstead sounded tired when he answered—it was after midnight, California time—and wasted no time on pleasantries. “How is the assignment progressing? Are you any closer to Maggie Rawlings?”

“I want out.”

He could practically hear his boss’s frown over the phone. “What happened?”

Maggie Rawlings, and her big eyes, happened. He couldn’t very well voice the thought, though. “Nothing’s happened. I just don’t think I’m making any progress gaining the woman’s trust,” he lied.

“You’ve been on the job less than a week. Give it some time.”

“I don’t want to give it time. I just want out. I’m too damn old to rodeo.” That, at least, was the truth

His boss laughed. “You’re thirty-six, McKendrick. I think you have a few good rides left in you.”

“I’d rather be taking them on my ranch than in the arena against a bunch of twenty-year-olds ”

“Haven’t we had this conversation already? Look, the net is tightening on DeMarranville. I know you want to put him away every bit as much as I do, and all my instincts are telling me Dr. Rawlings is the one person who can help us do that.”

“Let me go at DeMarranville another way. Maybe I can work on a couple of his men who might be ready to cut a deal against him. Last I talked to Joey Perone, he sounded like he could be bought.”

“No dice. I need you there. Right where you are.” Beckstead paused. “You realize there’s more at stake here than just the disk, don’t you?”

“What do you mean?”

“We both know it’s only a matter of time until DeMarranville tracks her down.”

“If he hasn’t already.”

“He hasn’t. Our sources inside his organization are quite clear on that. Not for lack of trying, though. His people are looking everywhere.”

“Damian is nothing if not efficient.”

“He doesn’t know she witnessed the hit on her husband—if he did, she never would have made it this far—but he wants the disk more than we do. He’s going to be very unhappy if she doesn’t give it up.”

“What if she doesn’t have it?”

“Do you think he’s going to play nice if he thinks she’s holding out on him? If she really doesn’t know what her husband was involved with, I’d hate to see her or the kid get caught in the crossfire.”

Son of a bitch. Colt stared out through the rain streaking down the window like tears. He hated to think of Maggie or her son in DeMarranville’s hands.

“I’d feel better knowing one of our agents was close to her, to offer some degree of protection,” Beckstead went on.

What would his boss say if he knew exactly how close Colt wanted to be to the accountant’s widow? “Okay,” he growled, pushing the thought away. “But the stakes just went up. I want three months away from the Bureau when I’m done here.”

“We bring down DeMarranville and you can have as much time as you want.”

But would it be enough to make him forget Maggie Rawlings, with her big eyes and her outlaw son?

Somehow he doubted it.

Chapter 4

Her kingdom for a decent shower.

With apologies to William Shakespeare, Maggie fought shivers as she turned off the trickling little spray that was all the Butte, Montana, campground facilities offered and reached for the thin towel she had hung over the stall door just a few moments before.

A month ago, if someone had told her the idea of a pounding hot shower would come to symbolize the height of luxury to her, she would have laughed hysterically.

Funny how she had taken so many things for granted before her life degenerated into chaos a month ago. A decent shower topped her list—with all the hot water she could dream of and complete, heavenly privacy instead of these flimsy shower stall doors between her and the rest of the world, this thin barrier that left her feeling entirely too vulnerable.

She could barely remember what it had been like to shower as long as she wanted, without this constant, nagging worry at leaving Nicky sleeping in their locked trailer for even these few stolen moments. What would she do if she had time to do more than just scrape her hair back into a wet braid and apply only the bare minimum of makeup?

Might as well wish for the moon while you’re dreaming, she scolded herself and slipped quickly into the clean clothing she had brought over from the trailer. This wasn’t so bad, anyway. It could be much, much worse. She and Nicky had clean, warm clothing to wear, food in their stomachs and a roof over their heads—even if it was a thin aluminum roof with a tendency to leak when it rained.

Besides, in a big city, what were the chances of your neighbor stopping to fix a flat tire in the middle of the night so you wouldn’t have to deal with an unpleasant surprise in the morning?

A picture of Colt McKendrick in the watery darkness back in Wyoming the week before crystallized in her mind and she smiled softly as she tugged a comb through her wet, tangled hair.

In the four days since she had found him fixing her flat, she couldn’t seem to shake the man from her thoughts. He sneaked in whenever she wasn’t looking, with that teasing grin, his strong shoulders and those shockingly blue eyes.

How long had it been since she had felt her pulse skitter and hop like that just by a heavy-lidded look from a man like Colt McKendrick? She laughed aloud at the absurdity of her question. When had she ever even had a heavy-lidded look from a gorgeous man before that night the weekend before in his camper?

Of all the times for her to develop an attraction for a man, when she was so strung out on nerves. Nothing could possibly come of it, after all. Even if she were the sort of woman who could interest a rough and rugged rodeo cowboy—which she most certainly was not, despite his flirtation the week before—she couldn’t spare the energy for this. She needed all her wits about her just to survive.

Besides, her emotional bank balance matched her real one—completely empty. She didn’t have anything left to give any man.

If he showed up and followed through on his invitation to dinner, she would simply have to turn it down. It was the safe, sensible thing to do, she knew it perfectly well. So why did the knowledge leave her with a little ache of regret in her chest?

She sighed. No sense worrying about it now. He’d probably forgotten all about them. On a whim, she decided to leave her hair loose, then gathered her clothing and walked out of the rest room into the early-morning air that smelled tart and fresh, of pine pitch and newly cut grass.

Maybe all this angst was for nothing. Maybe their paths wouldn’t cross again. He said he planned to compete in the Butte rodeo, but maybe he had changed his mind. Tonight was the opening round, and she had yet to see his fancy blue truck with the beat-up cab-over camper.

It probably would be for the best if he didn’t show up, although it would break Nicky’s heart. He had his sights set on riding Colt’s horse, and when her stubborn little boy decided he wanted to do something, changing his mind could be a nightmare.

Wondering how she would possibly deter him, she rounded the corner of the little cinder block building housing the rest rooms, but any thought of Nicky was completely wrenched from her mind when she smashed headlong into a solid wall of flesh.

She swayed from the impact and her bag of toiletries tumbled to the ground. Her heart stuttered in sudden fear when hard hands clamped around her forearms, holding her immobile.

She couldn’t see who held her, could only focus on the wide male chest in front of her, but her survival instincts immediately kicked in, adrenaline gushing through her in hot, roiling waves.

Escape. She had to escape. Fighting and struggling against the taut grip, she tried fiercely to jerk away.

“Easy. Easy, now, Doc. I’m not gonna hurt you.”

Gradually, like water through porous sandstone, reason seeped through her panic and she drew a ragged breath, stilling her frantic scramble to freedom.

She recognized that soft drawl—it belonged to the cowboy she had just been thinking about. Tilting her chin up, she found those startling blue eyes watching her carefully.

He gave her arms a reassuring squeeze then released her. “There now. That’s better. Sorry if I scared you, Doc. I was just trying to keep you from falling over after you came barrelin’ around the corner.”

Her fear ebbed, leaving embarrassment in its wake. Heat soaked her cheeks and she fought the urge to press her hands to them. Okay, so she had overreacted just a tad. What must he think of her, fighting and clawing at him like he was some kind of mad rapist on the loose?

“I...it’s not your fault,” she mumbled. “You just startled me. I wasn’t watching where I was going, and I guess I didn’t expect anybody else to be out this early in the morning.”

His mouth creased into a smile. “No harm done.”

She bent to pick up her scattered toiletries, and he immediately crouched to help. “Here. Let me get this.”

“I can do it. Really.”

“It’s no trouble.”

They worked in silence for the few moments it took to pick up her things. It was unnerving, having him help her collect her most intimate belongings: her razor, toothbrush, the scented peach soap she indulged in.

He must have just come from the men’s shower himself. His hair was damp, his cheeks and his chin freshly shaved. In the pale, thin hush of the morning she became acutely, painfully, aware of him: the blunt tips of his fingers clutching her delicate things. The scent of his aftershave, a subtle, erotic combination of leather and sagebrush. The layer of crisp dark hair on his arms, the little scar at the corner of his mouth that curved up like an extension of his smile, and those deep blue eyes that reminded her of a clear, pristine mountain lake.

She had no business noticing anything about Colt McKendnck, let alone the mountain-lake color of his eyes. She yanked in her thoughts sharply and cleared her throat. “When did you arrive?” she asked. “It must have been late—I didn’t see you come in before I went to sleep last night.”

Those eyes took on a teasing glint. “You weren’t watching for me, now, were you, Doc?”

Drat her fair complexion that showed every emotion. She felt her cheeks flood with color again. “Nicky was,” she mumbled.

It was the truth, if not the complete truth. Since the moment they arrived at the campground the day before, her son had watched every rig pull in with an eagerness usually reserved for Santa Claus or birthday parties. He had become increasingly dejected as the day wore on when none of the arrivals turned out to be his new pal.

What Maggie didn’t add—what she couldn’t possibly admit, even to herself, except in her most secret of hearts—was that she had watched each newcomer with the same eagerness as her son. And been just as disappointed when he didn’t show up.

Somehow Colt McKendrick had seeped into her subconscious, and she couldn’t seem to shake him loose. She would definitely have to do something about it.

When her things were finally collected and stored safely in her rattan bag, they both stood. Colt rested one of those blunt-fingered hands on the cinder block wall of the rest rooms, blocking her way as effectively as if he still held her in those muscled arms. “Now that we’ve got that settled, Doc, how about you tell me what’s got you so jumpy.”

Startled, she met his gaze. His eyes held curiosity and a concern she didn’t want to see there. She quickly looked down at the ground. “I don’t know what you mean,” she lied.

“Come on, Doc. You’re more skittish than a broomtail in a nest full of diamondbacks. Is it me?”

Just like that, her nervousness disappeared. She pursed her lips and gave him a quelling look at his arrogance. “Pretty full of yourself, aren’t you, McKendrick?”

He grinned, unrepentant. “Just thought I’d ask. Knowing your feelings about us saddle bums and all.”

The grin faded and he studied her for a moment, those blue eyes entirely too perceptive. “You know, if you need somebody to talk to, I’ve been told I can be a pretty good listener.”

If only she could talk about it. The desire to unload some of her burdens was so powerful she wanted to weep. Maybe if she could share it with someone, this constant fear would ease, would lose its hold over her every waking moment.

He would protect them.

The thought slipped into her mind, more seductive than any physical attraction she could ever feel for him. Somehow she knew Colt McKendrick would do everything in his power to keep them safe.

She opened her mouth, searching for the words to begin, then snapped it shut again. What was she doing? She couldn’t tell him, couldn’t tell anyone. Her troubles weren’t something she could just blurt out to a virtual stranger. I cowered in the bathroom while two men executed my husband in cold blood and now they’re after me and I jump out of my skin any time someone says “boo” to me and I’m ashamed of myself for it but I can’t seem to help it. Oh, and thank you for asking.

Besides, this was not his problem. She couldn’t drag him or anybody else into the mess she had made of things. She absolutely refused to put anyone else in harm’s way.

No, she wouldn’t tell Colt McKendrick anything. “I’ll keep that in mind,” she said instead, fingers clutching her bag tightly. She couldn’t ease her grip any more than she could keep her voice from sounding distant and polite, as if she were refusing tea in the drawing room of one of the society mansions her mother used to drag her to. “I’m sorry, but...I have to go. I left Nicky sleeping back in our trailer, and I wouldn’t want him to wake up alone.”

He lifted his hand from the wall and straightened to give her room to pass. “I mean it, Doc. If you need to talk, you know where to find me.”

She gave a quick nod and began to walk quickly away.

“Hey,” he called after her. “If you aren’t busy later this morning, I’d be happy to give your little desperado that ride I promised him on Scout. The exercise would be good for him after travelin’ all day yesterday.”

“For Nicholas or for Scout?”

He grinned again. Despite all her efforts to restrain it, her traitorous heart fluttered in her chest, and she returned his smile with a small one of her own.

“Both, probably,” he answered.

“I know you promised, but you really don’t have to do that.”

“Eleven o’clock work for you?”

She did a quick assessment of her schedule. She had to prepare the exam trailer for any injured riders from tonight’s competition, but that wouldn’t take her much time. An hour, tops.

And Nicky wanted to ride Colt’s horse so badly. How could she refuse her son this one small thing, after she had dragged him away from all that he loved, forced him to give up everything secure in his little life?

“Yes,” she finally answered. “I suppose eleven would be fine.”

“Meet us at the practice racetrack. You know where that is?”

She nodded. “I think so.”

“Good.” He smiled that teasing grin she was beginning to find entirely too addictive. “I’ll see you then.”

* * *

He didn’t think they’d show up.

Colt kept one eye on the pathway from the campground while he checked Scout’s tack and adjusted the stirrups to an appropriate length for an almost-six-year-old.

It wouldn’t surprise him if she stayed away. She had been so skittish this morning, avoiding his gaze and hanging on to that bag like it was filled with gold.

Even nearly four hours later, Maggie’s tantalizing peach scent still filled his senses. Fresh-scrubbed from the shower, with her skin as dewy as the morning grass and her hair still damp, she’d been damn near irresistible.

When she’d come barreling around the corner and landed in his arms, it had taken every last ounce of his self-control to keep from stealing a little taste.

He wanted her more than he could ever remember wanting a woman. The desire pulsed under his skin and left him itchy and uneasy. It had sure as hell complicated what was supposed to be an easy assignment.

He had to put a lid on it. Simple as that. He wanted DeMarranville too much to let something as insignificant as simple lust screw it up for him. He was bound to make mistakes if he let his hormones do the thinking for him, so the trick would be figuring out a way to keep his distance from the beautiful Dr. Rawlings at the same time try to coax her to open up emotionally.

A warm breeze puffed out of the mountains, ruffling the hair at the base of his neck. It made him think of home and the ranch and the simple joy of working out in the morning sunshine.

To his surprise he felt little more than a passing twinge. He ought to be feeling lousy right about now since he was missing out on his vacation. The idea of spending uninterrupted time at the ranch was all that had kept him going through those last miserable weeks on the Spider Militia case. So why wasn’t he feeling worse?

If he didn’t know better, he might even make the mistake of thinking he was enjoying himself on this case.

“Colt! Hey, Colt!”

The high-pitched shout dragged him from his thoughts, and he turned to find Nicky peeking through the rails of the fence, his big brown eyes bright with eagerness.

A grin split Colt’s face at the sight of the little boy decked out in that Wild West getup again.

“Well, howdy. If it isn’t my old amigo, Nicky the Kid.”

Maggie’s son beamed and stuck out his thin chest. “I’m all ready to ride. Got my chaps on and everything.”

“I can see that. You look like a regular bronc buster.”

“Mom tried to get me to just wear jeans but I told her I had to wear my chaps or I’d get saddle sore, isn’t that right?” the little boy said.

“Smart move.” Colt bit down on his smile and turned his attention to Maggie, standing a few paces behind her son. She wore tan jeans and a pale pink T-shirt that made her skin look pearly, almost translucent. Her long hair, loose and unrestrained, swayed like wheat dancing in the wind when she walked forward.

Despite his best intentions, his mouth started to water.

Oblivious to his sudden sharp hunger, she propped her elbows on the top rail of the fence. “What’s a mom supposed to say to that kind of argument? I wouldn’t want him to get saddle sore, after all.”

Her voice was as cool as ice cream in July. Damn. She’d put up those walls between them again. He’d been so close to gaining her trust. This morning he had sensed she was desperate for someone to share her concerns with, that she wanted to tell him what had her running scared. It would make his job so much simpler if she would confide in him. For every inch of progress he made, though, she forced him back another two.

At least the kid was on his side. “Well, partner,” he turned to the little boy, “you ready to saddle up?”

Nicky nodded and scrambled through the fence. “You betcha.” He skidded to a stop near Scout’s forelegs and, thumbs hooked in his belt loops, took the big gelding’s measure.

Up close the horse must have looked a whole lot bigger than he had from the fence, because Nicky stared at him, gnawing his bottom lip and frowning.

“Uh, Colt...”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t think I can climb up there.”

“I’ll help you.” He lifted Nick and swung him onto the saddle. The boy looked incongruously small atop the big horse, but he sat in the saddle like he’d been born to it. He reached forward and patted Scout’s neck. “Hi there, Scout. My name’s Nicholas.”

“Okay now, I’m comin’ up Hang on.” Colt grabbed the horn and swung up behind him. The boy settled into his arms and gave a little squeal of excitement when Colt spurred Scout forward

“Mom!” he yelled to Maggie, watching from the fence. “Look, Mom! I’m ridin’ a horse!”

“I can see that,” she called back. “Hang on.”

They were the only ones using the practice race track, and Nick chattered excitedly as Scout moved along at a steady walk. Colt smiled at one of the boy’s funny little observations and was astonished at the pleasure he found in his excitement.

He’d never thought about having a child before. Not that he was consciously opposed to the idea; he’d just never had the opportunity. Cynthia hadn’t exactly been the maternal type, and he’d never had strong feelings either way.

Besides, during their two-year marriage he’d been so completely focused on the job he’d never given the idea of bringing children into the world a second thought.

With the soft weight of Maggie’s son in his arms pressing against his chest, though, he couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to have a kid of his own, to be teaching his own boy how to ride.

His father had taken him up on a horse just like this before he could walk. It was one of his earliest memories of Jack McKendrick: his father’s rough, scarred hands on the reins, his gravelly voice in his ear, telling him how to hold the reins and guide with his knees.

The ache in his throat took him completely by surprise. Jack had been gone nearly fourteen years, after all, since Colt was twenty-two. He thought he’d long ago become accustomed to the realization that he’d never be able to make things right with his father.

“Hi, Mom!” Nicky suddenly yelled. While he was busy woolgathering, Scout had carried them back around the track to where Maggie stood watching. She waved and smiled, and the breeze caught strands of her hair, twisting them around her face.

Lord, she was beautiful. The unique thing about Maggie Rawlings was that she seemed completely oblivious to her appeal. There was a shy kind of innocence about her.

Unless he was a hell of a lot better at concealing it than he thought, she had no idea of the heated little darts of desire that sizzled beneath his skin that would have been obvious to another woman.

He thought again about his vow to contain his growing attraction. He was fairly sure he could handle the physical end of things. It was the emotional tug he felt toward both Maggie and Nick that scared the hell out of him.

“Can we go around again?” Nicky asked.

Colt looked at Maggie for permission. She shrugged. “It’s up to you. It’s your horse.”

“I hate to disappoint a customer. Hang on.” He spurred Scout to a trot and was rewarded with a shriek of glee from the boy.

The warm summer sun warmed her back as Maggie leaned on the fence watching Colt and her son. Nicky was absolutely eating this up. Already, he was imitating everything the cowboy did, from his slow—and she had to admit, very sexy—drawl, to the the way he cocked his dark head when he grinned.

She wasn’t exactly sure how that made her feel. Amused, certainly. And maybe a little bereft, too, as if Nicky was pulling away from her.

She did know it shouldn’t move her so much to see the big, rough cowboy being so gentle with her son. Colt sat with one hand around Nicholas’s belly to hold him in place and the other on the reins. As they came around the track again, she could see him dipping his dark head as he talked to Nicky. A few moments later he handed him the reins to let him control the horse for the rest of the ride.

Soon they reined in the horse in front of her again.

“Did you see me, Mom?” Nicky nearly bubbled over with excitement. “I rode Scout, and Colt didn’t even help me. Well—” honesty compelled him to admit “—not very much.”

“I watched you. You make a good wrangler.”

“That’s what Colt says. He says maybe I can ride Scout again tomorrow. Can I, Mom?”

“We’ll see.”

He was still chattering when Colt hefted him down from the saddle and set him on the ground.

Colt glanced up at the sun, now high overhead. “Looks like it’s about lunchtime. How would you two like to go somewhere for lunch?”

The invitation took her completely by surprise. “I don’t—”

“Please, Mom!” Nicky asked, obviously loath to leave his new hero’s side.

Refusing would sound churlish, especially after he had been kind enough to take them riding, but she knew he couldn’t have much money or he wouldn’t be desperate enough to ride on the circuit.

And heaven knew she didn’t have much, not even to go Dutch for fast food.

“Why don’t I make us some sandwiches?” she offered, knowing even as she said it that she would regret it later. “We could take them over to the park across the way and have a picnic.”

“Sounds great,” he replied. “Nick, why don’t you help me take care of Scout, here, and then the two of us can see if we can rustle up something to drink.”

Yes, she was definitely going to regret this, she thought as she watched Nicky’s eyes light up with excitement. How was she supposed to keep distance between them when her son obviously adored the man?

Chapter 5

Would two sandwiches be enough for Colt? Knife in hand, Maggie studied the bread laid out in front of her, then pulled two more slices out of the bag. Better safe than sorry. And she hoped he liked turkey, since that was the only lunch meat she had.

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