Remember My Touch
Gayle Wilson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

GAYLE WILSON

is a two-time RITA® Award recipient, winning Best Romantic Suspense Novel in 2000 and Best Romantic Novella in 2004. Gayle has also won a Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence in Suspense and Mystery and a Dorothy Parker International Reviewer’s Choice Award for Series Romance. Beyond those honors, her books have garnered more than fifty other awards and nominations, including a National Readers’ Choice Award for Best Romantic Suspense, won by Wednesday’s Child, a novel from HQN Books.

Gayle holds a master’s degree in secondary education, with additional certification in the education of the gifted. Although her specialty was honors and gifted, as a former high school history and English teacher, she taught everything from remedial reading to Shakespeare—and loved every minute she spent in the classroom.

Gayle was on the board of directors of Romance Writers of America for four years. In 2006 she served as president of RWA, the largest genre-writers’ organization in the world. Please visit her Web site at www.BooksByGayleWilson.com.

For Huntley Fitzpatrick,

who is both my editor and my friend, with love and gratitude

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

“WHAT’S GOING ON here, Mac?” Jenny McCullar demanded. Her voice was soft, but her dark eyes were flashing. “What kind of game do the two of you think you’re playing?”

Mac knew he probably should have been expecting his wife’s questions, except Jenny had never been one to fret or nag. And he thought she had learned a long time ago to live with the dangers inherent in his job as county sheriff.

But there had been a lot of pressure on both of them lately, unexpected stresses on a marriage that had been rock solid for the past five years. That was the reason he hadn’t told her he’d asked his brother to come home this weekend. At least, he amended, that had been one of the reasons.

“I asked Chase to come down because I wanted his advice. Nothing more than that, Jenny.”

“Just a little advice about somebody running drugs?” she questioned. The muscles in the perfect, olive-toned oval of her face were tight, a small furrow forming between the winged brows.

That would have been a reasonable assumption, since Mac’s brother had spent the last four years working for the DEA. Chase was someone who could certainly provide answers to what was going on and some advice about what Mac should expect. Jenny would have figured out eventually why his brother was here, except she hadn’t had to. Almost as soon as Chase arrived, he had spilled the beans.

His brother’s eyes had been full of contrition and apology when they’d met Mac’s, a matching set of clear McCullar blue. In Chase’s there had also been a trace of surprise. Mac knew his brother couldn’t believe he’d been keeping secrets from Jenny. “Maybe running drugs,” Mac hedged.

“In this county?” Jenny’s voice was full of the same doubts Mac himself had had when he first began to suspect what was going on.

“Better than seventy-five percent of the drugs that enter the States come across this border, and we’re sitting right in the middle of it. Why would you believe we’re immune?”

“Because…that’s never been a problem here,” Jenny said.

She was calmer now, but the fear was still in her eyes. She raised her hand, running small fingers distractedly through the gamine cut of her dark brown hair. “Why do you think…?”

The question faded as her intelligence and her knowledge of the way things worked along the border provided the answer to that unfinished question.

“They made you an offer.” She spoke that sudden realization aloud. “Oh, dear God, Mac, they’ve already approached you.”

Mac McCullar had never outright lied to Jenny, and he wasn’t about to start now. Besides, she had a right to know. If the other hadn’t been going on, he would already have told her.

The bribe he’d been offered had been huge and the warning that had accompanied it subtle, containing little overt threat of violence. That was the way it was done, of course, and not many people held out against the promise of that much money. Not given the salaries of law-enforcement officers. Not in a rural Texas county this size.

Sheriff Mac McCullar had been expecting the overture for months. It had probably been delayed only because of the location of his county, far from the Mexican cities where the drugs from South America were flown in. Or because of its distance from the major U.S. highways that led north into the American heartland.

But law-enforcement efforts were increasing on both sides of the border, squeezing the dealers who had been operating at the major crossing points. Mac had known it was only a matter of time until someone realized that this isolated stretch would be perfect for bringing drugs across.

Too many of the people who had been cooperating with the cartels had gone down in the investigations carried out by federal agencies in both the U.S. and Mexico. Some of those had been respected Texas law officers, men who had given in to the lure of the obscene amounts of money the Mexican cartels offered so freely—enormous sums that were paid them to do nothing besides look the other way when drugs were transported across their jurisdictions.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Jenny asked.

“I figured one of us worrying about it was enough.”

“Then you are worried?”

“I guess I’d be a fool not to be.”

“You told them no,” Jenny said, holding his eyes.

Mac thought maybe she was hoping that wasn’t what he had said, but she knew him better than that. “What do you think?” he asked.

Then he smiled at her, his soft brown mustache lifting to reveal a flash of even, white teeth set in the strong angles of his tanned face. She didn’t return his smile and the fear in her eyes hadn’t faded.

“I imagine you told them to go to hell,” she suggested.

“I wasn’t quite that polite,” Mac admitted truthfully, his smile widening. If he had been hoping for a lessening of the tension in her small, squared shoulders, he was disappointed.

“Why is it your responsibility?” Jenny demanded. “Where the hell is the DEA? Why aren’t they doing something?”

“It’s my county, Jenny. My job.”

“And when your job gets you killed, who’s going to look after your precious county? Who do you think cares about any of this besides you?”

“Anybody who lives here ought to care. Anybody with kids, a home, a family.”

“What about your kids, Mac? Our kids.”

“I’m working on that,” he reminded her, his lips tilting again, this time in memory. He’d been working on that with real diligence. Only that kind of pleasure—making love to Jenny—had never before had anything, really, to do with what he considered work.

Her chin quivered suddenly and that movement, quickly controlled, almost broke him. Jenny wasn’t a woman who cried. She had never used tears to get her own way. But her emotions had been on edge lately, and Mac certainly understood all the reasons why.

Once they had decided it was time to add children to the wonder of their marriage, they had pursued that goal with a willingness that had little—on Mac’s part, at least—to do with making babies. Babies were just something he had always believed would happen naturally, given enough opportunities. And those, he had willingly supplied.

Only, it hadn’t happened. Not for three long years, and despite the fact that in the past year they had finally sought professional help, it still hadn’t happened. Their lovemaking, once spontaneous and filled with joy, had taken on a clinical aspect that Mac was a little uncomfortable with. He hadn’t said anything, determinedly holding on to his patience and good humor in the face of his wife’s increasing tension.

He’d walk through fire for Jenny, without any hesitation, and he figured he could survive performing on demand if that was what it took to make her happy.

“And when they bring you home in a box, Mac, what am I supposed to do then?” she asked softly. “What happens to me?”

Her question shocked him. A man didn’t last long in this job if he worried about reprisals or reacted to threats. The thought of him dead and Jenny alone wasn’t one he’d ever considered with any seriousness. If the thought had occasionally brushed through his consciousness, he’d rejected it. He couldn’t do this job constantly looking over his shoulder.

“That’s not going to happen,” he said dismissively.

“Is that a guarantee, Mac? Are you making me a promise?”

“Jenny,” he began, and then his voice faltered. There was nothing he could say that would satisfy her fear or her anger—emotions she had a right to feel, he acknowledged. Whatever he did impacted on them both. He understood that.

“It’s my job, Jenny,” he said again, stubbornly. It was his only defense and one that even he recognized wouldn’t be much comfort to a grieving widow.

Jenny’s lips flattened and she shook her head once, the motion sharp and angry. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears.

“I’ll never forgive you, Mac. I swear to God I’ll hate you through eternity if you let something happen to you.”

“Nothing’s going to happen to me,” he said softly.

He lifted his hand, fitting the callused palm against the softness of her cheek. His thumb brushed across the tight-set line of her lips. When he felt the minute loosening of the muscle at the corner, encouraged by that response, he lowered his head.

His mouth found the smooth expanse of her forehead under the disordered silk of her hair, and he pressed a small kiss there. His other hand moved to her back, between her shoulder blades. With the heel of his hand, he pushed into the tension he found there, kneading gently.

“Want to make a baby?” he whispered.

“It’s not the right time.” Jenny’s voice was as tight as the muscles in her back and shoulders.

His lips skimmed down the slender line of her nose and settled with familiar expertise over her mouth. Despite her anger, she didn’t avoid their touch. She automatically tilted her head to allow the accustomed alignment of his mouth over hers.

He wondered how many times he’d kissed her, how many times she’d stood on tiptoe, her small frame stretching to accommodate his height, how often her body had arched to match the uncontrollable thrusts of his. Suddenly he wished he’d written them all down. Kept a record somewhere. Today I made love to Jenny. Each time carefully recorded so these memories could never be lost, never destroyed.

She put her hands on his shoulders. He loved Jenny’s hands. They weren’t manicured or particularly well cared for. They were working hands, a little rough and reddened from washing dishes and grubbing in the yard. Her nails were short and usually unpolished. The small, slender fingers were often scratched or stained with paint or the medicines she used in treating the animals.

But to Mac they looked exactly as a woman’s hands should look. Felt as they should feel. Whether gentling an injured horse or moving seductively over his own body in the darkness. And it seemed to Mac he had always known how they would look cradling the rounded, darkly-fuzzed head of an infant. His son or daughter.

That was all Jenny had ever asked him for. A baby. And not to get himself killed. And he couldn’t guarantee either, it seemed.

No promises, Jenny-Wren. I can’t make you any promises. Except to love you. And even if I end up dead, while you’re hating me through eternity for dying and leaving you, I’ll still be loving you. To the grave and beyond.

Mac bent slightly, slipping his left arm under Jenny’s knees. He gathered up his wife and carried her easily, cradled like a child against the solid strength of his chest, into the dark bedroom they had shared for the past five years.

Usually when he did something like this, Jenny laughingly protested, pounding on his chest or pushing against his shoulder, demanding that he let her down to get back to whatever she had been doing. Tonight she did neither.

He deposited her on the wide bed and stepped back to take off his shirt, not bothering to unbutton it, but simply tugging it out of his uniform pants and stripping it off over his head in one fluid motion, his undershirt along with it. He threw the garments toward the foot the bed. He stood balanced awkwardly on one foot and then on the other to tug off his boots. When he turned around, he realized Jenny hadn’t moved. She had simply been watching him, and whatever was in her face made him hesitate, his hand at the waistband of his uniform pants.

Her eyes slid downward, moving over the broad, muscled expanse of his chest and then to the ridged stomach. She looked up finally, her eyes too dark and wide, straining to deny the tears that he knew were still close to the surface. Tears that were silently pleading for a promise he couldn’t give. Not with any honesty.

“Don’t be mad, Jenny-Wren,” he said softly, lowering his big body onto the bed beside her. His lips nuzzled along the skin under her jawline. He could feel the lifeblood pumping steadily beneath its satin surface. He caressed that small, pulsing movement with his tongue, for the first time forced to think about the precious stability of their lives, to think about how lucky they were.

He had never worried about anything happening to either of them. He supposed men didn’t think that way, never anticipating, as women apparently did, some terrible thing happening to the ones they loved. He had just accepted that this was their life and that they would go on this way forever, loving each other.

Loving each other. Until finally they would be old and beyond these needs, beyond the endless desire that sometimes woke him, his body hard and achingly lonely for the feel of Jenny’s, even if he had made love to her only a few hours before.

Jenny’s hand found his chin, and she pushed his head away from hers so she could look into his eyes. “Anything but that, Mac,” she whispered, and the truth of it was in her eyes. “I could bear anything but losing you.”

He smiled at her, the slow movement of his lips an invitation, and reassurance, he hoped. “Nothing’s going to happen to me. I’ll ask Chase for advice. I’ll call in the feds, I swear. Will that make you happy?”

“It would make me happy if you just got out. We could run cows again. Or sheep. Raise spinach if we have to.”

He laughed, but he knew from the quick pain in her eyes that it had been a mistake. She hadn’t been joking. Jenny was scared, and he hated himself for making her afraid. This was why he hadn’t told her before. She didn’t need this to worry about.

“At least it’s safe,” she argued.

“This isn’t the movies, Jenny. Or TV. You know nothing ever happens here. It’s not going to now. They’re just putting out feelers. Somebody will bite, and they’ll pass this county up like they always have before. They’re not going to try anything where the law has bowed its back against them. There’s no need. There are too many folks more than willing to cooperate with them for the kind of money they’re offering. I’ll put out the word that the feds are moving in and nothing will happen.”

“You swear you’ll get some help?” she asked. “You’re not just saying that to pacify me?”

“I promise, Jenny. First thing tomorrow. Chase can tell me exactly who to call.”

Again she held his eyes, trying to read what was in them, he guessed. He had nothing to hide. He would do what he’d said. He would never break his word to Jenny.

Finally, she nodded. Her hand moved, following the line of his jaw. Her fingers touched the softness of his mustache and then traced up the high cheekbone, thumb brushing across the long, dark lashes, feeling them move as his blue eyes closed in response to her touch.

Her fingers spread, threading into the slightly curling, sun-touched hair at his temple. They cupped the back of his head, pulling his mouth downward to hers, which opened to the caress of his tongue.

His mouth was warm and sweet. So dearly familiar. His tongue teased across her lips and then invaded them, suddenly demanding. Hot and hard. Evoking memories of his body moving above hers in the darkness.

Waking her from sleep. Or coming up behind her to cup his hands under her breasts and trail wet, pulling kisses down her throat as she stood at the kitchen sink, up to her elbows in dirty dishwater. Pushing his arousal into the softness of her bottom. Once Mac had pulled her panties off and simply unzipped his jeans, thrusting into her as she lay where he had placed her on his grandmother’s kitchen table.

Making love to her because that was what he wanted to do. Whenever he wanted to do it. Unthinking. Unplanned and unstudied. Sometimes quick and sometimes endlessly, heartbreakingly slow. This was what their lovemaking had once been. And in her demands for a baby, they had lost this gift.

Perhaps sensing her stillness, Mac lifted his head. His blue eyes were luminous in the darkness. Questioning.

“Make love to me,” she invited softly.

“What the hell do you think I’m doin’, Jenny-Wren?” Mac asked. The soft humor she loved was back in his deep voice.

Please, dear God, she prayed. Don’t let anything happen to Mac. Please, God, keep him safe.

Her eyes burned again, but she blinked, determined not to let him see her cry. He was right. It was his job, and he wouldn’t be the man she had married, the man she loved, if he didn’t do it. At least he had promised to let someone know what was happening. And Chase was home. Chase wouldn’t let anything happen to his brother.

Mac’s big hand found the elastic band of her slacks and began pushing inside, moving awkwardly because of the restriction.

“I can take them off,” she offered without moving. Her face was in the hollow between his shoulder and the strong brown column of his neck, her breath moving against the man-fragranced warmth of his skin. “I can take them off,” Mac said. “I’ve about forgotten what it feels like to undress you.”

“It feels slow,” she said, suddenly inclined to giggle at the unromantic discomfort of her slacks, their waistband rolled and twisted, canted to one side as he struggled to pull them down.

“Damn it,” he breathed, his big hands tangled in the offending garment.

“You used to be better at this,” she teased.

“Your butt used to be smaller,” he parried.

“I can’t believe you said that.”

But she pushed her heels into the mattress, obligingly lifting her bottom off the bed, and felt the slacks and her panties slide downward, guided by his hands. Then his hands deserted her for a moment, and she used her bare feet to push her clothing the rest of the way off her legs.

She was just in time. Mac’s hips and thighs lowered between hers, spreading them. His hand had found her breast, thumb flicking over the cotton-covered nipple that hardened into an tight, aching bud with the first stroke.

She could feel the cloth of his pants against her bare legs and the roughness of that texture was sensuous. Sensual. Teasing and tantalizing her as were his long fingers, which had caught the pearled nipple and were rolling it between them. Rolling it with hard, demanding pressure. Almost to the edge of pain.

The sound that feeling evoked came from deep within her throat, aching with want. With need. He responded immediately, pushing into her so strongly that it literally took her breath. She was a little surprised to realize how ready she had been for his entrance. Wet. So wet for him.

Her heels pressed again into the mattress, lifting her body upward to meet the hard downward thrusts of his. It hadn’t been like this between them in a long time. Almost primitive. Need-driven. No whispered endearments. No laughter or “old married” teasing. Just need. Desire. Hot and hard and aching for each other.

She was so empty. Only Mac could fill her. Only Mac could satisfy the aloneness that she hadn’t even been aware of. The awful black aloneness of even thinking about having to try to exist without him.

She blocked the horror of that thought, denying it, and arched upward again. The sound she made this time was guttural, a response to her desperation to enclose him. To hold him to her. To keep him with her forever.

She locked her legs around his waist, her bare ankles twined, and then closed her mind to everything but the sensations that grew and expanded in her body as his strained above her in their familiar darkness. When she felt the beginnings of his release, she thought it was too soon, and she tightened her hold on him, trying subconsciously to slow him, to slow what was happening.

There was no need. Her own response was again a surprise, its force exploding in shivering torrents throughout her lower body, sensations spreading upward through veins and nerves and muscles like warmed honey. She could hear her own gasping breath above the harsh panting of his. Could feel, despite the chill of the December night, the sweat on his face, its masculine roughness tight-pressed against her cheek.

Slowly, slowly, the sensations faded, retreated, his body stilled, and the world shifted back to its familiar focus. The room was dark and slightly chilled. She shivered involuntarily, either from the temperature or from the aftereffects of their lovemaking. Mac rolled onto his back, muscled arms locked around her body to carry her with him. She lay on top of him, half clothed and totally relaxed, and listened to his heart beat just beneath her ear.

“I love you, Jenny-Wren,” he said softly.

She heard the words, not in the night air that surrounded them, but the sound of them rumbling through their very skins, slick with commingled sweat and still joined. Always joined.

“I love you, too,” she whispered. Her fingers moved across the hair-roughened contours of his chest.

She lay and listened to his breathing, slow and even as his body gradually relaxed under hers. His arms loosened their hold, and she knew finally that he slept.

Still she didn’t move away, and it was a long time before she closed her eyes. She stared instead into the darkness, thinking about what he had promised. Thankful the hot tears that seeped onto the broad, dark chest pillowing her cheek didn’t wake him.

JENNY DIDN’T HAVE ANY idea what time it was when the phone rang. It wasn’t all that unusual for them to get a call in the middle of the night, and Mac’s voice when he answered was calm and official, if not yet fully awake.

She lay and listened to his monosyllables and soft questions without really hearing them. He’d tell her what was going on when he hung up. She closed her eyes and snuggled her bare bottom against his hip. She realized Mac was still wearing his pants, and it wasn’t until the incongruity of that attire penetrated her sleep-fogged consciousness, that she remembered last night.

She sat up, but Mac was already moving out of bed. He stood and put the phone he had been holding back into the cradle on the nightstand. He reached out and grabbed the shirt he’d discarded last night from the foot of the bed and, turning it inside out, began to pull it on over his head.

“Who was it?” she asked.

“Somebody who’s got folks on his property who aren’t supposed to be there.” Mac’s deep voice was muffled momentarily by the shirt.

“What does that mean?”

“That’s what I’m going to find out.”

“Drugs?” she asked, feeling a viselike tightness invade her chest. “Are they—”

“Somebody wants me to check out some trespassers. That’s all I know.”

“Call Chase,” she said.

He had sat down on the edge of the bed and had begun to pull on his boots, but he paused and slanted a look at her over his shoulder.

“What for?” he asked.

“Because…I asked you to,” she suggested. That alone should be reason enough, she thought, and he already knew all the others.

The blue eyes studied her face for a moment before he nodded.

SHE DIDN’T HEAR WHAT he told Chase. He had made that call from the kitchen, and she guessed that had been deliberate. At least he had called. This might not have anything to do with what they had talked about last night, but it didn’t hurt to be careful.

“Chase is coming over here,” Mac said.

She opened her eyes and found him standing in the doorway to the bedroom. His body blocked most of the light that was filtering around him from the distant kitchen.

“I can make coffee,” she offered.

“Don’t get up,” he said. He walked across the floor, his boot heels echoing on the hardwood. “Chase said for you to have breakfast ready when we get back.”

“‘Chase said,’” she teased.

“I thought you wouldn’t let your brother-in-law go hungry.”

“But I would let my husband,” she said.

“I hoped not, but I figure I’ll get better if you know we’re having company.”

She smiled at him, reaching up to catch his fingers in hers. She held them for a moment, still remembering last night.

“Chase sounded strange,” Mac said.

She looked up from his hand. “Strange how?”

He shook his head. “Just…strange. I don’t know. Different. He didn’t want me to go over there and pick him up. Said he’d come here. That’s when he said you could fix breakfast.”

“Ulterior motive,” she suggested, smiling at him.

“I guess.”

“Want anything special?”

“Uh-huh, but I don’t think I’ve got time for it before Chase gets here.” He put his knee down on the bed and the mattress dipped under his weight. He leaned down and kissed her on the cheek.

“Sanchez ranch,” he said, his breath warm against her face. “In case anybody needs me.”

She nodded. She wanted to tell him to be careful, but she’d done enough nagging. Mac had promised, and if he told her he’d do something, he would.

“I’m going to wait out in the truck. Go back to sleep.”

He pulled the sheet and the quilt over her shoulders, tucking them around her. She listened to his footsteps fade away over the wooden floors and the sound the front door made as he closed it behind him.

She shrugged off the covers he’d tucked in and pulled his pillow into her body, resting her cheek against the soft cotton of its case. It smelled of Mac. He didn’t use cologne. This was soap. Shampoo. Always the same no-name-brand brands. Or maybe this was just the familiar, beloved scent of his skin.

She closed her eyes, willing herself not to think about anything but that. About last night. After the argument.

It was possible that she had gone back to sleep. She could never say for sure whether she had been awake or asleep when she heard the explosion. But she had known at once what it was. There had never been the least doubt in her mind, not from the first sound, exactly what she was hearing.

Chase would sometimes say that he could close his eyes and see Mac’s truck exploding, his brother’s burning body thrown out onto the ground. Jenny had no clear memory of any of that. The horror for her always began and ended with that sound.

The rest of it simply blended into the endless black nightmare she had always known living without Mac would be.

CHAPTER ONE

Five years later

“YOU GOING TO the wedding?” Chase McCullar asked his sister-in-law. His blue eyes were directed downward toward the coffee cup he held, rather than at Jenny, and his voice was almost innocent of inflection.

“Of course,” Jenny said, glancing at him over her shoulder. “Aren’t you?”

“You think I’ll get an invitation?”

“I think a better question might be, do you want one?”

“What makes you think I wouldn’t want an invitation?”

She laid the dishcloth she’d been using on the counter beside the sink and turned around to face him. Chase was sitting at her kitchen table, a table that had been in his family for three generations. He must have eaten tens of thousands of meals at its scarred wooden surface. Maybe that was why he looked so right sitting there, as if he still belonged here, living in this house instead of the one he had built on his half of the McCullar land.

Or maybe he looked so right, she acknowledged, because he always reminded her of Mac. They even had the same way of sitting, forearms on the table and broad shoulders slightly hunched, both hands wrapped around a mug, as if savoring against their fingers the warmth of the coffee it held.

She banished that memory as she had so many others in the past few weeks. She had even dreamed about Mac last night, dreamed about him making love to her, and that hadn’t happened in a very long time.

There had been too much upheaval lately, too many disturbances in her usually placid existence, she supposed. The kidnapping of Chase’s daughter and his belated marriage to her mother, Samantha Kincaid. Rio’s return from prison. Doc Horn’s brutal murder.

Apparently those things, as unlikely as it seemed, had somehow rekindled the memories of those nearly perfect days with Mac. Or maybe seeing Chase and Samantha finally together had made her remember her own marriage. Or perhaps that had been triggered by the way Rio looked at Anne Richardson, the two of them sitting at this very kitchen table, whatever had been in Rio’s black eyes so much like the way Mac used to look at her. Or, at least, she amended, the way she always remembered his look.

Most things were better replayed in memory than they had been in actuality. The reality of long-ago events faded, and the remembrance of them had a tendency to become more perfect with the passage of time, she reminded herself, trying to be fair to Trent. Anne Richardson’s brother, Trent, was the man she was fortunate enough to have in love with her now. A good man who wanted to marry her. A man who deserved not to have to fight against all those perfect memories.

Not that she minded having only good memories of her marriage, of course. However, she now admitted that savoring those had prevented her from moving on, from getting on with the business of living her life, and she was determined to change that. She had loved Mac McCullar with every fiber of her being, but Mac was dead. He had been dead for almost five years, and she knew it was time for her to begin living again.

She remembered that she had once accused Chase of doing that—of trying to crawl down into that grave with Mac. And instead she had discovered that she was the one who had been guilty of that sin. Once she had had the courage to make that admission, to face what her life had become, she had decided it was time to do something about it.

She realized suddenly that Chase was waiting for her answer, his blue eyes—eyes that were just like Mac’s—studying her face as she stood, lost in memory and regret.

“You and Rio haven’t exactly been…” She hesitated, searching for the right word, thinking about the strange relationship that existed between the half brothers.

“Not exactly bosom buddies,” Chase suggested caustically.

“Not exactly brothers,” she countered. “At least you haven’t acted like brothers.”

“I thought he killed Mac. At least had a part in Mac’s death. How did you want me to treat him?”

“You thought?” she asked, emphasizing the past tense, which was, to her, the pertinent part of that statement. “But you don’t think that anymore?”

“Hell, Jenny…” Chase began, and then he hesitated. “Sometimes even I don’t know what I believe anymore.” He shook his head, eyes lowering again to the steaming coffee. “It just doesn’t…” He shook his head again.

“Feel right to hate Rio any longer? Or to blame him for Mac’s death?” Jenny suggested.

Chase looked up. “You think I was wrong about that.”

“Yes,” she said simply.

Chase’s mouth tightened. It would be hard for him to make that admission, she knew. Almost as hard as it had been for her to make the unwanted one about her own life that she’d recently made.

“If that’s true,” Chase said, “then he probably hates me.”

Rio had tried to warn his half brother about what was going to happen to Mac. He had ridden across the river to tell Chase about a snatch of drunken conversation he’d overheard in a Mexican cantina. Only, he had made that ride the same night Mac’s truck had exploded, and the two events had become inextricably linked in Chase’s mind.

Chase hadn’t believed Rio’s claim that his mission that night had been a warning. Instead, he had interpreted his bastard half brother’s words as threat and had viewed Rio as the messenger of whoever had killed Mac. In the months following the murder, Chase had poured every ounce of his energy into seeing that Rio Delgado was punished for his part in that crime.

“You cost him five years of his life,” Jenny acknowledged. “If he is innocent, as he’s always claimed…”

“Then the wrong man got punished. And whoever killed Mac got away with murder,” Chase added bitterly. “I didn’t stop looking for them, Jenny. I always thought something would turn up. I never believed Rio was the mastermind. I thought he was just their damn messenger boy.”

“But he was the only one of them you could identify.”

Jenny understood all Chase’s motives in pursuing Rio. She had always understood them. She, too, had wanted somebody punished, but knowing Rio now, she had gradually come to realize that he hadn’t had anything to do with what had happened.

“Buck told me nothing else has ever come to light about that night,” Chase said. “There was never any indication that anybody was transporting drugs through this county. Or had even been planning to.”

Buck Elkins had been Mac’s deputy as well as his friend. He had been appointed sheriff after Mac’s death and had thoughtfully kept Jenny informed about the county’s progress, or in this case, its lack of progress, until she had finally asked him not to make any further reports to her about the investigation. There seemed no point in constantly being told that nothing else had been uncovered about her husband’s murder.

“Rio doesn’t seem to think too much of Buck’s detective skills,” Jenny reminded her brother-in-law.

“Couldn’t find his ass with both hands,” Chase said, repeating his half brother’s colorful assessment. Unconsciously, his lips moved, almost into a smile.

“Maybe Rio’s right,” Jenny said, “but I know Buck tried. Mac was his friend.”

“Elkins thinks Mac was wrong.”

“About what?”

“About everything. About the drugs.”

“Somebody approached Mac,” Jenny said, remembering, almost against her will, the argument they had had that night. The night Mac had died. “Somebody made him an offer.”

“Mac didn’t give me any details. Or anyone else, apparently. Not even Buck.”

“He didn’t have time. He would have told you. That’s why he asked you to come down here that weekend. And he had promised to contact the DEA. Officially, I mean. He promised me that night.”

“And instead… Hell, Jenny, we’re no closer than we were five years ago to knowing what really happened.”

The frustration she heard in his voice had played a role, she knew, in Chase’s determination to make certain that Rio, at least, paid for his part in his half brother’s death.

“And in the meantime,” he continued, his tone containing a thread of self-castigation now, “I got my half brother sent to prison for a crime neither of us believes anymore that he had anything to do with.”

“Have you told Rio that?” Jenny asked.

Chase pushed his cup away from him, the sudden motion strong enough to cause the coffee it contained to slosh out over the side. “How the hell am I supposed to tell a man that I’ve just realized my bullheaded stupidity cost him five years of his life? How do I do that, Jenny? How the hell do I ever make up for that?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know that you can make up for it, but I do know that admitting you were wrong would be a good first step.”

Chase’s laugh was short and harsh. “Somehow that doesn’t seem to be quite enough,” he said. “It damn well wouldn’t be enough for me.”

“But then you’re one of those hardheaded McCullars. Maybe Rio…” She hesitated, realizing that Rio was a McCullar also, that unmistakable heritage from his father stamped as indelibly on his beautiful Latino features as it had been on the faces of his two half brothers.

“Maybe Rio’s a better man than his brother,” Chase suggested quietly.

“A more forgiving one,” Jenny said, finally smiling at him. “At least I hope so. And you didn’t answer my question. Do you want an invitation to Rio’s wedding?”

The depth of the breath Chase took was visible and audible, but he still didn’t respond.

“If it’s any help to you in reaching that decision,” she said, “I’d really like for you to be there. I think Trent would appreciate your showing up.”

“Trent’s not too thrilled about this, I guess. About Anne marrying Rio.”

“I think he’s trying to make the best of what he’s bound to see as a bad situation.”

“Senator Richardson’s beloved little sister marrying an ex-con.”

“Who shouldn’t have been an ex-con,” she reminded him quietly, feeling the need to defend Rio, even from Chase.

“And who wouldn’t have been, except for me,” he acknowledged.

“That sounds like justification enough for you to feel obligated to show up at his wedding.”

“Obligated,” he repeated bitterly. He pushed his chair away from the table and stood.

“They wore hair shirts in the Middle Ages,” Jenny said, working at keeping her own lips from tilting, although the teasing note was clear in her voice. “All you’ll need to put on is a suit.”

“You don’t think Rio will throw me out?”

“If you show up, you can probably even dance with the bride.”

“I think I’ll settle for dancing with the groom’s sister-in-law,” he said.

“Samantha will be delighted to hear that, I’m sure.” Chase’s wife, Samantha, was one of Jenny’s best friends and had been long before she married Chase McCullar.

“I wasn’t talking about Samantha,” Chase said. He crossed the small distance between them and leaned down to press his lips lightly to Jenny’s cheek—something she couldn’t ever remember him doing before. Then, without another word, he went out the kitchen door.

Jenny turned back to the dishes in the sink, but she was smiling, and as the long afternoon passed, she found herself remembering that unexpected brotherly kiss, and smiling again.

It was good to have Chase home. And Rio, another of Mac’s brothers, whom she had really never known until he, too, had come back home. Rio had arrived at her ranch, angry and vengeful, determined to make Chase McCullar pay for what he had done, and instead he had ended up becoming part of Jenny’s family.

Two men who were, in spite of all the bitterness and betrayal that lay in their past, finally becoming brothers. She only wished there was some way Mac could know about that. She really believed Mac would have approved.

HE TOOK ANOTHER LOOK into the motel’s mirror. Doing that wasn’t something that ever gave him pleasure, although he thought he had probably done the best he could with his appearance this afternoon. His thick brown hair, brushed with gray at the temples, had just been trimmed. The suit he wore was new and expensive, and it had been expertly tailored to fit the tall, lean body. The white shirt was also a recent purchase, as was the maroon silk tie, its darkly subdued pattern very appropriate, they had told him, for an afternoon wedding.

These weren’t the kinds of clothes he was accustomed to wearing. Not like any he’d ever worn in his life, but then that was really what this was all about, he thought. Disguise and deception. He hated them both, hated the necessity of them, although he couldn’t deny that they were necessary. Just as he knew the brown contact lens he wore was necessary.

Before he left the room, he took the clipping he’d been carrying around with him for the last couple of months out of his wallet and laid it on the top of the dresser, carefully smoothing the creases with his left hand until it lay perfectly flat.

Knowing that he would need the courage it would provide, he made himself read it again, slowly, although by now he knew the words by heart. At least he knew the ones that mattered. The ones that had finally brought him to San Antonio today.

The newspaper column he had so carefully preserved contained the announcement of the engagement that had led to the wedding he would attend this afternoon. An engagement between Anne Richardson, Texas State Senator Trent Richardson’s sister, and a man named Rio Delgado. That announcement had been the crux of the column, but that hadn’t been what had caused him to read and reread this well-worn clipping.

It had been the two-sentence teaser the society writer had included at the bottom that had been branded into his consciousness, that had gnawed at his gut since he’d first seen it. The words he had read over and over concerned the impending nuptials of Senator Richardson himself. To the widow of slain Texas lawman Mac McCullar.

The man’s gaze lifted again to the mirror. He didn’t recognize the reflection there—the black patch that hid the empty socket of his right eye; the strange, reconstructed features; the deliberately altered color of his remaining eye. A stranger in a stranger’s body, and he guessed that was the way it should be. He felt like a stranger.

He picked up the clipping, which was beginning to come apart along the creases from the number of times he had unfolded the paper to reread those words, and he held it for a long time, thinking.

He had given up any rights he’d ever had to interfere in Jenny’s life, he acknowledged, given them up by conscious decision. He shouldn’t be here. He had no right to be. That had been the guiding principle of his life for the last five years. And then…and then he had seen this, and all the reasons he had known and understood had seemed to fade into insignificance in the face of those two sentences.

Finally, he took a breath and allowed his long, brown fingers to close around the small piece of paper, crumpling it between them. He wadded the clipping into a ball, and on his way out the door, he pitched it accurately so it landed in the metal trash can the motel had thoughtfully provided.

CHASE MCCULLAR WAS leaning against the wall watching the crowd at the wedding reception. The dancers were hugging the postage-stamp-size dance floor, working to avoid the long, lace-and-flower-covered tables that were filled to overflowing with finger foods and punch and wedding cake. The other guests were standing, balancing glass plates and cups, most of them managing to talk and eat at the same time, despite those burdens.

“You thinking they’re gonna let an ugly old cowpoke like you kiss the bride?”

Chase glanced up at the soft comment. The man who had asked that sardonic question was standing beside him. He was tall and broad-shouldered, yet whipcord lean, without an ounce of excess fat on his body. And his face was unfamiliar. Eerily unfamiliar.

Chase couldn’t prevent the telltale reaction that might have given him away if anyone had been paying the least bit of attention to either of them. Chase’s blue eyes had widened, the dark pupils dilating suddenly, and his heart had literally hesitated a few beats before resuming its steady rhythm. “What the hell are you doing here?” he asked softly, his breathing uneven from shock. He pulled his gaze away from the man who had spoken and made himself focus instead on the crowd, automatically picking out the figures of his wife and his sister-in-law, who were engaged in an animated, laughing conversation on the far side of the room.

“I’m crashing a wedding,” the stranger said, his tone barely audible under the noise of the crowd, certainly audible only to Chase. “Think somebody’s gonna throw me out?” he asked casually.

That wasn’t something that he seemed to be concerned about, and he was probably right not to be. Given the size of the crowd and considering the impeccable cut of the charcoal gray suit, and the white shirt and maroon silk tie the gate-crasher was wearing, it was certainly unlikely that would happen.

At any wedding of this size, the bride’s friends would assume anyone they didn’t know belonged to the groom’s party, and vice versa. And at this particular wedding, since Rio knew almost no one in the throng, the groom was unlikely to protest the presence of one more strange face.

The features of the man who was now leaning against the wall beside Chase were, in fact, the slightest bit strange. There was nothing obvious, other than the black patch that hid his right eye, but still the alignment of the underlying bone structure was unusual. The angles were strong, almost harsh, and although he was clean shaven, the texture of the skin that stretched over those strong bones was as subtly different as the bone structure itself. What made them unusual, however, would have been difficult to articulate. It wasn’t an unpleasant face, but it was hard, and the black patch gave it an air of danger that was somehow in keeping with the rest.

He looked like a man who had seen a lot, who had endured a lot, Chase found himself thinking, his eyes skimming over the features again as if he had never seen them before. He had, of course, but they were always disconcerting.

“Well?” the stranger asked. The left corner of his mouth moved, twitching with amusement at whatever he saw in Chase’s face.

“Well, what?” Chase asked, deliberately forcing his eyes back to the crowd. Samantha and Jenny had moved away from the place where he had spotted them before, and now he couldn’t find either of them in the colorful, shifting patterns of the mob.

“You think they’ll let me kiss the bride?” the stranger asked.

The same amusement that had briefly touched the harsh features was in his voice. It, too, was unusual. Deep and almost hoarse, like someone getting over a bad case of laryngitis. “That’s not why you’re here,” Chase said sarcastically.

“It just seemed as good a time as any,” the stranger said laconically, his own gaze drifting over the throng.

“To do what?”

This time the corner of the thin mouth lifted, and the one-sided smile revealed genuine amusement. “Renew old acquaintances,” he said softly. The single brown eye continued to move over the crowd, as if searching it. “I heard somewhere that this might be a double wedding.”

“You heard wrong,” Chase said. He turned at that comment, his gaze focused again on the man beside him. His anger was apparent in the set line of his mouth. “I would have told you if that had been the case.”

“You tried to tell me. I wasn’t listening.”

“But you are now?”

“I am now,” the stranger agreed calmly.

Chase took the breath he had missed while he’d waited for that reply. “It’s about time,” he said softly. “What the hell changed your mind?”

“That,” the man said. His gaze was now following one of the couples moving on the crowded floor. A handsome man, tall and blond, his features remarkably well put-together by anyone’s standards, was guiding a small brunette in a slow waltz. They moved together flawlessly, despite the difference in their sizes. Her fingers were on his shoulder, the soft rose of her nail polish distinct against his jacket.

Chase nodded, knowing that there was probably nothing else in the world that would have brought this man here today. Nothing but the feelings that were revealed now in his face as he watched the attractive couple circling the small floor.

“Well, it’s about time,” Chase said again, speaking almost to himself. “It’s about damn time.”

“DID SOMEONE GIVE YOU birdseed?” Jenny McCullar asked. It was a question she had asked, it seemed, a thousand times. The decorated wicker basket over her right arm, which had once been full of packets of seed enclosed in small squares of tulle and tied tightly at their tops with narrow satin ribbon, was almost empty.

The cake had been cut and eaten, the reception line dismissed, and the bride had gone to change clothes for the honeymoon journey. It was almost time to shower the departing newlyweds with the traditional onslaught of rice. Nowadays, of course, the more ecologically correct birdseed had taken the place of grain.

The man she addressed had been standing in the narrow doorway that led from the reception-room hallway to the front of the country club. He was almost isolated from the excitement of the waiting guests who had gathered on the steps below. He hadn’t joined them; instead he stood alone, simply watching the commotion.

From the back, Jenny had been aware of nothing but his height and the width of his shoulders, which almost filled the narrow opening. And when he turned in response to her question, Jenny hoped her shock wasn’t too apparent. Mac used to warn her that she should never play poker because every emotion she ever felt was revealed in her features—as she was afraid they had been this time, revealed at least for an instant before she regained control.

She couldn’t say now why she had found his face so disconcerting. It was…unusual, she thought. There was a hint of gray in the brown hair and weathered skin stretched over strong bones, with a small fan of white lines around his eyes. Eye, she amended.

Maybe that was what she had found shocking. Jenny realized she had never known anyone who wore an eye patch. Those were for cover models on pirate romances, she thought, almost smiling at that sudden image, superimposed over the six-foot-four hunk of male reality standing before her. He probably would have made a damn fine pirate, she thought.

But of course, the patch hadn’t been all she’d reacted to, she realized, her eyes still fastened—fascinated, somehow—on his face. The texture of his skin was different, too. Slightly rough and maybe even…scarred? The light in the hallway was so poor that she couldn’t really be sure about that. She found a smile for him, trying to soften her rudeness if he had noticed the effect he had just had.

For some reason it wasn’t the forced, automatic smile she had been giving to strangers all afternoon as she tried to help Trent see to it that Anne and Rio’s wedding went smoothly. That wasn’t her responsibility, or really any of her business, she admitted; but at some time during the hurried preparations for this wedding, she had begun to feel like the mother of the bride. Or maybe the mother of the groom, she thought, her lips tilting upward a little more when she remembered that Rio still called her “ma’am.”

“Birdseed?” the man questioned, his gaze reacting to the upward tilt of her mouth. The brown eye was suddenly touched with amusement. As was his voice.

Even that was unusual. Deep, but…strained? Jenny wasn’t accustomed to having to search for words, but she was finding it hard to think right now, and she suspected it might have something to do with the intensity of the look this man was directing downward at her. He was taller than Trent. Taller even than Chase, she thought.

“Instead of rice,” she offered.

The left corner of his mouth moved, slowly lifting, and Jenny’s stomach reacted, tilting just as slowly. She couldn’t even decide whether that sensation was pleasant or not.

“No cleanup,” she explained. The words were a little breathless, and she broke contact with that disconcerting dark gaze by looking down into her basket.

She picked up one of the ribbon-tied bundles with her left hand and realized that her fingers were trembling. Recognizing that she didn’t have another option, she held the packet of seeds out to him, willing her normally competent and cooperative hands to stillness.

“The birds eat the seed, and then no one has to worry about sweeping up.”

“Cheap labor,” he said.

“Exactly,” Jenny agreed, smiling at him again, relieved that he’d grasped the idea from her muddled explanation.

He hadn’t reached out to take the little bundle from her fingers, and she realized belatedly that they were still vibrating. Obviously vibrating. She took a breath, striving for control.

What in the world was the matter with her? He wasn’t even handsome—not in Trent’s league by any stretch of the imagination. Her reaction was childish and ridiculous, she chided herself.

“Of course, throwing rice at the newlyweds is considered to bring good luck.” She offered the conversational gambit with the best intentions, just to keep talking until she grew up.

However, her voice was barely above a whisper and she thought he was bound to notice. Despite the crowd, they were almost alone here. Most of the guests had moved down the steps and onto the sidewalk where the car was awaiting Rio and Anne.

“I thought it had something to do with fertility,” he said.

“I…” She hesitated. Fertility? She didn’t think she had ever heard that before, but then she wasn’t thinking too straight right now, and she still couldn’t imagine why.

“Did they throw rice at your wedding, Mrs….?” His voice rose slightly at the end of the question, waiting for her to fill in the blank he’d deliberately left.

“McCullar,” she supplied obediently.

His left hand caught hers, which was still holding out the tulle-covered packet of seed. The smallness of hers was almost lost in the grasp of his long, tanned fingers. He turned her hand over, and they both looked down on the plain gold wedding band she still wore.

She had worn it for almost ten years, since the day Mac had slipped it on her finger. She had never thought about taking it off, not even when she had begun to give serious consideration to accepting Trent’s proposal.

“Mrs. McCullar?” he said.

Her eyes moved slowly up to his face. Its features were less strange now. Less off-putting. As a matter of fact, she found herself wondering what she had found so disconcerting before.

His lips moved, only the left corner inching up. “Did they throw rice at your wedding?” he asked again.

Suddenly there was a thickness in her throat, and her eyes stung. Ridiculous, she thought again. She was about to say yes to planning her second wedding, and an offhand question from a stranger had made her want to cry about her first.

“I don’t remember,” she lied. “That was a very long time ago.”

She pulled her fingers from his. At their first movement, he released her. But his hand didn’t drop to his side. Instead, it opened in front of her, palm up.

For the birdseed, she realized. She placed the tiny package on his outstretched hand.

“I don’t think I’ll be able to manage the ribbons,” he said. “If you wouldn’t mind doing that for me?”

Because his fingers are too big? she wondered. The narrow satin streamers she and Samantha had tied did look absurdly small in comparison to his hand. And absurdly feminine against its hard masculinity. Without comment, she pulled on one end of the bow and slipped the ribbon from around the gathered neck of the tulle, which fell open.

“Unless you think the newlyweds would like to be showered with the net as well as the seed, you might want to remove that, too,” he suggested.

She lifted her eyes to his, questioning. Whatever hint of amusement had been in his face and in his voice was gone, wiped out and replaced by an emotion she couldn’t read. She shook her head, her eyes still questioning.

“My right hand doesn’t work too well. Certainly not well enough to pick up something that small. That demands a kind of coordination my fingers no longer have.”

Again she was forced to fight the revelation of her feelings. There was a hollowness in the pit of her stomach when she heard those words, created not by the words themselves, but by whatever had been in his eyes when he’d said them. She fought to keep her gaze on his face, and not to let it drop to his other hand.

He would hate that, she knew instinctively. It was obvious that he wasn’t comfortable even talking about whatever was wrong with his hand. Jenny was sensitive enough to realize that that quiet confession hadn’t been lightly made.

“Of course,” she said. She lifted one corner of the tulle and slid the small pile of seed into his palm.

“Thank you.” The tightness in his deep voice had eased, and she took a breath in relief.

“You’re very welcome.”

She knew that it was time to leave, although, since he was blocking the outside door, she hadn’t quite figured out how she was going to accomplish that. She had already begun to turn back toward the interior of the club, deciding that discretion might really be the better part of valor in this case.

“Was that Mr. McCullar?” he asked. “The blond man you were dancing with?”

She hesitated, again schooling her features before she turned to face him.

“My husband’s dead,” she said. Her voice spoke the words evenly and calmly, words she had learned to say during the past five years without revealing any emotion. It was something that should have gotten easier with time, but it really hadn’t. “I’m a widow,” she added, finishing the rest of that practiced explanation.

There was a minute movement of his head, almost a nod of agreement. For what seemed to be an eternity their gazes held, and then, again breaking the spell, Jenny turned and retreated. She looked back when she reached the shadowed sanctuary of the door on the other side of the big reception room. The man was still standing in the other doorway, looking out on the milling guests, his left hand closed around the birdseed she had poured into his palm.

But by the time she reached the front of the club once again, the doorway where he had stood was empty, and no matter how often her eyes searched the crowd of guests, she couldn’t find any sign of the stranger.

CHAPTER TWO

“THIS IS MATT DAWSON, Samantha. He’s an old friend of mine. He’s going to be staying with us.”

As Chase McCullar made the required introduction of the man he had brought home with him from the wedding, his face was almost guileless, but his wife knew him too well to be fooled by that look of innocence.

Samantha and Amanda had stayed behind in San Antonio to help Jenny with the presents that had thoughtlessly been brought to the wedding and to decide what to do with the food left over from the reception. The arrangement had been that Chase would drive back to the ranch alone, and she and Mandy would ride with Jenny.

Which would give her a good excuse to go home, Jenny had explained to Samantha, without having to chance hurting Trent’s feelings. Having been in San Antonio for several days before the wedding, Jenny was obviously more than ready to get back to the ranch.

All those arrangements had been understood by everyone involved. Samantha and Chase had certainly discussed them beforehand. What she didn’t understand was why Chase had brought home a guest without giving her any warning. The small house was big enough for the three of them, but there was no room to spare, and certainly no spare bedroom.

Samantha remembered the condition in which they’d left the bathroom this morning, all three of them in and out of it, trying to get ready for the wedding. She also remembered that the dirty breakfast dishes were still in the sink. Her green eyes met Chase’s with an “I’ll-get-you-later” look, before she smiled and held out her hand to the tall man who was standing beside her husband in her suddenly narrowed kitchen.

“Mrs. McCullar,” he said, nodding slightly. He didn’t return her smile.

When Samantha realized he was ignoring her outstretched hand, her eyes flicked to Chase’s face again, just in time to catch the barely discernible sideways motion of his head.

“What Chase is trying to tell you, with his usual lack of subtlety,” the stranger explained, “is that I don’t shake hands.”

Her eyes went back to his face. Samantha had noticed the patch, of course. She would have to be blind not to have noticed. And she wondered what other surprises were in store. I’m going to kill you for this, Chase McCullar, she thought, before she smiled at the man again, allowing her own hand to fall—naturally—she hoped, to her side.

“Did Chase offer you something for supper, Mr. Dawson?”

“Matt,” he said. “And Chase has already taken care of supper.”

Samantha’s eyes moved to the sink. More dishes had been piled on top of the ones that she had left there. Matt Dawson was probably feeling sorry for Chase right now, saddled with such a wife.

“I’m surprised you survived that experience,” she said with a touch of asperity. Chase could boil water, but just barely. To his father, anything that went on in the kitchen had been women’s work. Chase and his brother Mac had worked like dogs on their father’s ranch, but none of that work had ever been done in the kitchen.

“I’ve survived worse things than Chase’s cooking,” Matt Dawson said, his voice amused. One corner of his thin mouth moved upward, inviting her to relax and stop worrying.

Yes, you certainly have, Samantha thought, trying to keep that conclusion from being reflected in her face. It was good, she supposed, that he could smile about whatever had happened to him. And something obviously had, although it was just as obvious that whatever had occurred had been a long time ago and someone had done some good repair work. Except for his hand, she supposed.

“We had hot dogs,” Chase said. “I stopped for the stuff on the way home.”

At least she’d been right about the boiling water, Samantha thought—all the cooking skill that had been required for Chase’s choice of menu.

“We’ll try to do better than that for breakfast, Mr. Dawson. Are you going to be in our area long?” she asked, trying to think about sleeping arrangements. She supposed she could move Mandy into their room on a pallet if this was only for tonight.

“Matt’s going to sleep on the couch,” Chase explained.

“Which couch?” Samantha asked, her eyes deliberately surveying Matt Dawson’s height.

“We don’t have but one,” Chase said.

“I thought maybe you’d picked up one of those on the way home, too. He’s not going to fit on the couch, Chase. You couldn’t.”

“I’ll be fine, Mrs. McCullar,” Matt Dawson said. His lips were carefully controlled this time, but it was obvious he was amused by their small, politely phrased argument, maybe even amused by her discomfort over having an unexpected guest foisted on her. She hoped she hadn’t made him aware of that, despite her genuine annoyance with Chase.

“You won’t sleep worth a damn,” she said bluntly. “You can have Mandy’s bed. She can sleep on the floor in our room.”

Chase’s eyes widened slightly when he realized the obvious consequences of that. It served him right, Samantha thought. That was something he should have thought of before he brought home a guest without giving her any prior notice.

“In our room?” Chase repeated softly, as if he couldn’t believe she had just said that.

Samantha smiled at him sweetly before she turned to his friend. “And how long will you be staying, Matt?” she asked.

“The couch will be fine, Mrs. McCullar,” he said instead of answering her question.

DEA? she wondered, trying to place him, trying to remember every friend that Chase had ever mentioned. Was this someone Chase knew from back then? He certainly looked the part. He appeared to be as tough as an old boot, despite the patch and whatever was wrong with his hand.

“If I’m going to call you Matt, I think you might call me Samantha.”

“You’re Sam Kincaid’s daughter.”

“Do you know Sam?” Samantha asked, with more genuine warmth in her voice than before, despite her efforts to be hospitable. It was certainly possible that he did. Her father knew almost everyone in south Texas.

“I’m afraid not. Only by reputation.”

“Believe only half of what you hear about my father, Matt.”

“The half about his horses,” he suggested, his mouth lifting again at the corner.

“No, you can believe anything you hear about Sam’s horses,” Samantha said. The Kincaid ranch was noted worldwide for the incredible horses they produced, both Thoroughbreds and quarter horses. “Do you ride?” she asked.

She was aware that Chase had moved, some physical reaction to that unthinking question. She had asked it out of habit, never thinking about its possible awkwardness in this situation.

Guests on the Kincaid ranch were always asked if they’d like to ride. People hesitated to make that request themselves, and yet riding one of the magnificent Kincaid animals was often the highlight of a visitor’s stay. Once Sam had figured that out, it had become ranch policy to invite them to ride.

Samantha hadn’t had many guests at the small house Chase had built, but the breeding stables she had started here with Kincaid stock almost five years ago produced horses of such excellence that even her father had admitted to being impressed, and it took a lot to impress Sam Kincaid.

Matt Dawson’s “I’d really like that” fell almost on top of Chase’s “Matt doesn’t ride.” Samantha laughed. She couldn’t help it, not given the looks on their faces.

“Well, you two can work out which it is between you. I’m going to fix Mandy a pallet in our room. I’ll see you in the morning, Mr. Dawson. Matt,” she amended.

“Good night, ma’am,” he said.

“’Night, Chase,” Samantha said. Then she added, “Be real quiet when you come to bed so you don’t take any chance of waking Mandy.” The look she gave him with that admonition spoke volumes on its own.

THERE WAS A LONG SILENCE in the kitchen after Samantha left. When Chase was sure she was far enough away that there was no chance that she might overhear, he said, “You aren’t serious, are you?”

“About sleeping on the couch?” Matt’s question was as full of innocence as Chase’s introduction had been.

“About trying to ride.”

The single, suddenly cold eye held Chase’s. “Are you telling me I’m not welcome to ride one of your fine Kincaid-bred horses?” he asked softly.

“You can damn well have any horse out there, and you know it. I’m just telling you that it would be a hell of a note if you broke your neck now.”

Matt Dawson laughed. “I’ll choose one with short, arthritic legs. Will that make you happy?”

“It’ll make me happy if you let me come with you. There’s a mare Mandy rides that should be perfect for starters.”

“I rode my starter horse about thirty-five years ago. I don’t think I need Mandy’s,” Matt said. A trace of his amusement lingered at the corner of his mouth.

“I think you need your head examined,” Chase said, his voice full of frustration.

“Hell, you’ve thought that for a long time.”

“You’re damn right, I have, but I’m just now finding out how right I was. Mandy’s room is down the hall, second door on the right.” Chase started across the kitchen, the length and quickness of his stride clearly denoting his anger.

“Be careful you don’t wake Mandy,” his houseguest reminded, but he controlled himself until Chase was out of the room, and even then his laughter was soft enough that no one else in the small house heard it.

JENNY TRIED TO THINK how long it had been since she’d saddled her horse and set off by herself for a dawn ride. A month? she wondered, spending a few futile seconds trying to pinpoint the last time she’d done this. Maybe it had been even longer than that. At any rate, she decided, as she rode out of the yard, it had certainly been far too long.

The air was cool, still touched with the chill of the desert night, although the sun was already pushing yellowed streaks upward across the horizon. Almost anywhere else in the world, she thought, a woman might be afraid to be out alone at this time of day.

She couldn’t ever remember having been afraid out here, not even as isolated as the ranch had been during the brief period when there had been no one living in the small house Chase had built a couple of miles down the road. And not even lately, when the violence that seemed to be the norm in the outside world had now touched the people of this south Texas county.

She guided her horse toward the river, savoring how wonderful it was to be outdoors, to breathe deeply of clean air. She had been enclosed, surrounded so much lately by people, that only now did she realize how much she had missed the sprawling, empty vastness of the desert.

Yet the ranch house had felt empty last night when she had returned from San Antonio. For the first time in memory, it had seemed to her to be too quiet out here. And she had been lonely.

She had just gotten too accustomed to having company, she supposed. First Anne had come to stay with her. And then Rio, she thought, remembering that time with pleasure. It seemed almost as if she had had a family again during the weeks he’d lived here. Then these past few hectic days had been spent at the Richardsons’ big house in San Antonio helping out with the wedding preparations.

Last night, when the wedding was all over and she had returned to the isolation of the ranch, it had seemed like a letdown rather than a homecoming. There had been something unsettling about finding herself suddenly alone. She had once been used to that, she thought, had truly enjoyed the silence that surrounded this place. But last night the house hadn’t seemed peaceful. It had just felt empty, way too empty.

And she knew one reason why. She had not been able to get her encounter with the stranger at the wedding out of her head. Even when she thought she was fully concentrating on something else, the image of his face would suddenly appear in her mind’s eye, effectively interfering with whatever she was doing.

Determined to escape from the slight depression she seemed to be falling into, Jenny touched Spooner with her heels and the quarter horse obeyed, breaking into a gallop. The resulting rush of air across her cheeks felt invigorating, even though she knew that, despite the chill of late fall in the air, within a few hours, that breeze would become a hot wind. But of course, she wouldn’t be out here then.

She was approaching the river, the gleam of its shallow water almost silver in the thin morning light. She would ride downstream toward Chase and Samantha’s and then cut cross-country to the dirt road that joined the two houses. The time it would take her to do that would be about as long as the dawn coolness would last.

She had covered more than half the distance to her brother-in-law’s spread when she realized there was a horse standing near the river, almost at the ford. The animals Chase and Samantha raised were too valuable to be running loose out here, and she knew it wasn’t one of her horses. They were accounted for back at the ranch, even Rio’s big black, which she had agreed to keep until he had time to make some other arrangements.

She was still trying to figure out what the horse was doing out here when she realized the animal was saddled—and, more important, that it had a rider, a man who had dismounted and was bending down to examine something on the ground.

She pulled up her mount, trying to recognize either man or beast. The rider apparently sensed that he was no longer alone. Even as she hesitated, watching him from this distance, he straightened and turned toward her, the horse’s reins held in his left hand.

Since she had been seen, she realized that her options had narrowed: Confront the rider or turn tail and run. She’d be damned if she’d leave, she thought, damned if she’d be the one to run away. This was McCullar property, and he was the trespasser.

She urged Spooner forward. The man made no attempt to remount. Obviously, he didn’t intend to leave any more than she did. He simply waited for her as she closed the distance between them. Finally she was near enough to recognize the animal he was holding.

It was one of Samantha’s—her beloved Lighthorse Harry, a stallion that she’d brought from the Kincaid ranch when she’d moved out here. Horse thief? flitted through Jenny’s head, but that was pretty unlikely, given the fact that the man would have had to saddle and ride that valuable animal out, under Chase and Samantha’s very noses.

By the time Jenny had come to that reassuring conclusion, she was also close enough to recognize the rider. Her identification was instantaneous, with no doubt in her mind as to who he was. Not a single doubt, not even given the poor quality of the dawn light and the distance. It was the man from the wedding.

And he was watching her, she realized. Although she was not yet near enough to distinguish his features, she felt his gaze focused on her with the same intensity as yesterday. Her own reaction was almost the same as it had been then—a slow, hot, roiling in the lower part of her body.

There was no shock from seeing his face to explain that feeling, as there had been before. But still there was reaction, undoubtedly a reaction to him. She put that realization aside for the time being, promising herself that she would take it out and examine exactly what her reaction was. Later, she thought, taking a breath and pulling her horse up in front of him.

“You’re on private property, I’m afraid,” she said. “This is McCullar land.”

“’Morning, ma’am,” he responded. His voice was just as she had remembered it, deep and pleasant, despite the graveled hoarseness. And it was calm. Obviously, he wasn’t disturbed by her unwelcoming comment.

She had chided Rio for calling her “ma’am,” making her feel like his mother because she was a few years older than he. But that wasn’t the case with this man. You, I’m not older than, she thought, and that falsely polite butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth “ma’am” had grated. Far more than it probably should have. Despite her teasing comments to Rio, Jenny McCullar hadn’t really considered her age in relationship to a man’s in a long time.

“Private property,” she said again.

“This is your land, Mrs. McCullar?”

He pushed the Stetson he was wearing upward, off his brow, with his gloved left thumb. The thumb of his right hand, the hand he had told her didn’t work, was hooked into one of the belt loops at the front of his jeans.

He was wearing a denim shirt that looked as if it had been washed as many times as his faded Levi’s, which fitted the long legs like a second skin. The jeans covered the tops of worn boots. Her eyes must have traced down the length of his legs, she realized, to have discovered those. She fought the almost-unbearable urge to allow them to retrace that journey, moving upward this time. Moving upward to…

Out of an instinct for self-protection, she glanced instead toward the road that connected the two McCullar ranches, although she could see nothing of either of them from here. Only arid desert grassland stretched toward the horizon. And of course, technically, she admitted, this part of it wasn’t hers.

She looked back down and met the impact of that single dark eye. She reacted even to that, breath faltering, gloved fingers trembling against the reins as they had trembled yesterday.

The strengthening light of the morning sun was less kind to his face than the subdued lighting of the reception-room hallway had been. She had been right about the scars. Her throat tightened as she tried not to think about what might have caused that kind of scarring.

“This belongs to my brother-in-law,” she managed.

“Then it’s okay,” he said. “I have Chase’s permission to be out here.”

“You have…Chase’s permission?” she repeated. Was he someone from Chase’s days with the DEA? Or someone associated with his security firm? The possibilities about where her brother-in-law might have known this man were almost endless, given the aura of danger and quiet strength that clung to him, that fitted him almost as well as those worn jeans.

Neither Chase nor Samantha had mentioned to her that they were expecting a houseguest. That in itself was surprising, considering their closeness.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said.

“You’re a friend of Chase’s?”

Why did everything she said to this man have to make her sound like a half-wit? First that fascinating dissertation on rice and now the implication that Chase might give a stranger permission to ride on his land.

“Chase and I go back a long way,” he acknowledged.

“I thought I knew everyone who went ‘back a long way’ with Chase.”

“And he’s never mentioned anyone like me,” he suggested.

His voice was amused again, and some of the tension seeped out of her back and shoulders. “No,” she agreed.

“Probably ashamed to own up to knowing me.”

“If you know Chase McCullar at all, then you know that’s not true.”

He nodded, and then he smiled at her. That same slow half smile he had given her yesterday. With the growing clarity of the morning light, she realized for the first time why it was one-sided.

The muscles on the right side of his face weren’t very mobile. They moved, but not much. That partial paralysis would probably have been much more noticeable if his eye hadn’t been hidden by the patch. She wondered suddenly if that was why he wore it, and then rejected the idea. This man wasn’t vain. And whatever was wrong with him was really none of her business, she admonished herself.

“You must have made quite an impression on Samantha,” she said, groping for something to say and deciding Harry was a safe subject. Then, seeing that one-sided smile suddenly disappear, she could have bitten out her tongue.

He had certainly reacted to that, the dark gaze freezing into ice. Belatedly, she remembered her sister-in-law’s vaunted beauty, something Jenny never even thought much about anymore. Dear God, could he possibly think she was making a reference to the way he looked?

“I was talking about your horse,” she explained. “Samantha doesn’t let just anyone ride Harry.” Apparently her explanation worked. The tightness in his face eased, and he looked at the big bay standing beside him.

“She asked me if I could ride.”

He had been insulted by that question. The memory of that offense was clear in his voice, and Jenny wondered about the impairment that would prompt Samantha, one of the kindest, most sensitive people she knew, to ask it. “And you told her you could,” Jenny said.

“Better than I can drive.”

He lifted the hand that was hooked into his belt loop slightly, deliberately drawing her attention to it. Reminding her. But given his level of discomfort yesterday when he’d had to ask for her help, that reminder also seemed a little strange.

“I guess she must have believed you could, since she gave you Harry.”

He looked almost sheepish, but he answered her.

“I was out and saddled before they woke up.”

“Afraid they’d try to stop you?” she teased.

“Something like that,” he admitted. Again his mouth twitched, and she realized that really had been his reason. He’d been afraid they’d try to convince him not to try to ride the stallion.

“You’re the one who chose Harry.”

“He looked like the best of the lot.”

“He looked like the one most likely to throw you off if you weren’t up to snuff,” she suggested.

She hadn’t expected him to laugh in response to her assessment of his motives, and she was caught off guard by the undeniable spontaneity of that shout of laughter. And a little surprised by the pleasure hearing it gave her.

“You seem to be a pretty good judge of character, Mrs. McCullar.”

“I am,” she said. “But it’s funny. You don’t look like that big a fool.”

It had been a damn fool thing to do. It was just like a man, she thought. Pick out the most spirited horse in the stable to prove to yourself that, despite whatever had happened to you, you could still ride. She couldn’t have explained how she knew that had been his intent, but there was no doubt in her mind about that, either.

“Well,” he said, “looks can be deceiving. At least that’s what they say.”

“Can they?” she asked softly. There had been more to that than appeared on the surface. Something else underlay the quiet humor of his comment. “Are they deceiving?” she clarified.

“Most of the time,” he said, his voice as low as hers. Again their eyes held until Jenny determinedly pulled hers away to look down at her gloved fingers, the reins threaded loosely between them.

“You should have brought a hat,” he said. She glanced up to find his gaze still on her face.

“I didn’t intend to be out here long enough that I’d need one.”

“Then don’t let me keep you, ma’am,” he said. “I’d hate for you to get burned.”

“My skin’s pretty tough.”

He examined her skin, his dark eye moving slowly over the smoothly tanned oval of her face and then down the slender column of her throat into the deep V-neck of the shirt she wore. She could almost feel it, trailing hotly over the skin of her throat. She waited for him to make some response to the inadvertent opening she’d given him, some innuendo, some suggestive remark.

Instead, he met her eyes again. There was silence for too long, and she felt the heat of a blush pushing into her neck and cheeks, the rush of blood following the exact sequence his gaze had followed back up to her eyes. She wasn’t a blusher, and she couldn’t imagine what had prompted that sweep of color, but she knew he had to be aware of it. “Don’t let me keep you,” Jenny suggested.

“You’re not keeping me, ma’am,” he said politely.

She felt her own mouth twitch at his tone. “Did you find it?” she asked.

“Ma’am?”

“Whatever you were looking for when I rode up.”

“I’m not looking for anything, Mrs. McCullar,” he said, but his tone said something else, and he had deliberately made her aware of that. If he hadn’t intended her to know she had guessed right, then she wouldn’t have. He probably was an excellent poker player.

“Okay,” she said softly. “Whatever you say, Mr….?”

She did what he had done yesterday—deliberately left the blank for him to fill in. If he wanted to be mysterious about why he was out here, about whatever he had been looking at when she rode up, he could at least provide her with his name so she could check him out with Chase.

“My name’s Matt Dawson,” he said.

And that, too, is a lie, Jenny thought. Suddenly, it made her angry. She wasn’t certain whether she was angrier at Chase for bringing this stranger here and not telling her what he was up to, or angry at this man for doing nothing but lying to her.

“Think you can ride Harry back?” she asked. “I can follow you if you like. Just to make sure you get there safely.”

That remark was beyond the pale, she knew, and totally uncharacteristic. But he had goaded her to make it. It didn’t have quite the effect she had expected, however. He mounted Harry, swinging up suddenly into the saddle and then turning the horse to face her.

But there had been something undeniably awkward about the motion. She couldn’t decide whether whatever was wrong had occurred when he lifted his left foot to find the stirrup or when he swung his right leg across the stallion’s broad back.

The remarkable thing was that Lighthorse Harry hadn’t reacted. Despite the obvious awkwardness of his rider’s movements, Harry apparently had every confidence that the man who was mounting him knew exactly what he was doing.

“Nice to have seen you again, ma’am,” Harry’s rider said, tugging his hat down a little to shade his face. “Would you like for me to follow you home? Just to make sure you get there safe and sound?”

There was a quiet satisfaction in the question, and she knew then that he hadn’t been completely certain he could pull that remount off as well as he had. For his sake, she was glad he had succeeded.

“Oh, I think I’ll be able to make it home. Maybe I’ll see you later at Chase and Samantha’s. Are you making a prolonged visit?” she asked, matching his feigned politeness.

“Looks that way,” he said softly. “It certainly looks that way.”

He turned Harry toward Chase’s house. When they had gone a few feet, he touched his heels to the stallion, and Harry broke into a run, kicking up the dry dirt. Jenny watched until they disappeared over the small rise that led down to the river.

She realized that she was smiling, and she couldn’t quite figure out why. She was a little disconcerted that she’d ended up enjoying this encounter. Her second encounter with the intriguing stranger with the unusual face. And again she was conscious, as she had been last night, that she was now alone.

Annoyed with herself, she decided not to head back to the ranch. Instead, she directed Spooner to the area where the man had been looking at the ground when she’d first spotted him. There seemed to be nothing there, nothing but the same hardy grasses that were ubiquitous here. Just to be sure, she dismounted, as close to the spot where she thought he’d been kneeling as she could and began walking in a widening circle.

When she found the duct-tape-covered plastic bag, she realized it was no wonder she hadn’t seen it from horseback. The empty sack was half buried, and it was almost the same color as the surrounding desert. That was deliberate, she imagined. The sack itself was certainly innocent enough, the kind of debris that dotted landscapes all over this nation.

Except here. She knew exactly what this had been used for here. And what the three others she found in the next ten minutes had been used for. No matter what Buck Elkins had told Chase, somebody was bringing drugs across this river. Or had brought them across. Given the half-life of plastic bags, it would be hard to judge how long these had been here. Since yesterday or…five years ago?

Her eyes lifted, scanning the familiar barrenness of the landscape while she fought the burn of tears behind them. You weren’t wrong, Mac, she thought. No matter what they say, you damn well weren’t wrong about any of it.

CHASE WAS WAITING for him at the stables when he got back. Mac supposed that Chase’s overprotectiveness was natural, but it was an unpleasant reversal of what their roles had been growing up. And an even more unpleasant reminder that he wasn’t the man he had once been. During the few minutes he had spent with Jenny this morning, he had almost managed to forget that.

“Where the hell have you been?” Chase asked.

His brother was clearly furious, his big body stiff with rage he was trying hard to control, but his blue eyes were almost glittering with that famous McCullar temper.

“Your horse is fine, little cowpoke,” Mac said calmly. It wasn’t a comment designed to appease Chase’s anger. It was instead a less-than-subtle reminder of exactly who Chase was talking to.

“How many times did he throw you?”

“Me and Harry got along just fine,” Mac said, looking down into Chase’s tight-set face. “You disappointed?”

“With Doc gone, there’s nobody out here to patch you up the next time you decide it might be fun to try to kill yourself.” Chase grabbed Harry’s bridle, and it was only then that Mac realized his brother’s hands were shaking.

Not just anger, Mac realized. Chase had been afraid. A real deep-down fear. His brother had honestly expected him to take a fall.

“If I hadn’t thought I could ride the damn horse, Chase, I’d never have taken him. I’m not really a fool, despite what you’re thinking.”

Chase’s lips closed over whatever rejoinder he wanted to make. His eyes held on his brother’s scarred face. Finally he swallowed, the movement forceful down the tanned column of his throat. At the same time some of the tension melted out of his body, a visible relaxation of his fury.

“Get down, and I’ll unsaddle him for you,” Chase ordered gruffly.

“I did the riding. I’ll do the unsaddling.”

“You don’t have to try to be Superman.”

Mac laughed, the sound of it remarkably free of bitterness, considering. “Not that I’d have much chance of pulling that off,” he agreed.

Mac took a deep breath, dreading making a spectacle of himself after the bravado he’d been spouting. He had been surprised that he’d managed to mount the big bay as easily as he had down by the river. Most of that had been due to adrenaline and sheer determination. And a never-forgotten habit of rising to the bait of Jenny’s challenges. He had never failed to do that through the years, and although he had had no right this morning to expect to succeed, somehow he had.

It ought to be easier getting off than it had been getting on, he thought, steeling himself for the attempt. He swung his right leg over the stallion’s back, but when he put his weight on it to take the left out of the stirrup, his right knee gave way, and he was thrown against Harry’s solid flank as he grabbed at the saddle to get his balance. Luckily, the horse still seemed willing to put up with his unorthodox rider’s shenanigans, and Mac couldn’t imagine why.

“You okay?” Chase asked.

His anger had been replaced by open concern, and Mac found he was far less willing to deal with Chase nursemaiding him than he was with Chase yelling at him.

“I’ll let you know when I’m not,” he snapped.

He began loosening the girth, working one-handed. The task he’d set for himself wasn’t any easier than the awkward dismount had been, but it was easier than the saddling up. At least this time he didn’t have to resort to using his teeth.

“Why don’t you—” Chase began.

“I rode him. I’ll take care of him,” Mac said succinctly. His own voice was the one now filled with anger, but it wasn’t directed at Chase. Of course, his brother could have no way of understanding that.

He had almost fooled himself into thinking none of this mattered, Mac thought. At least he had felt that way for the ten minutes he’d spent with Jenny this morning. But this was reality, the day-to-day frustration of his body’s weakness that he’d dealt with for five years, and as he struggled with the task he’d set for himself, he acknowledged that reality was an unforgiving taskmaster.

He took a breath, thinking now about having to lift the saddle off and carry it into Samantha’s immaculate stable. At least there was no one around but Chase. If he dropped the damn thing, he knew his brother wouldn’t laugh.

Or maybe it would be better if he did, Mac admitted. That would have been more natural in their previous relationship than Chase’s damned hovering concern was.

“Don’t you have something else you ought to be tending to?” Mac asked, his gaze still on the smooth leather of the saddle and Harry’s broad back that he had to lift it over.

“Not a thing,” Chase said. “And if I did, I’d let it wait. I wouldn’t miss seeing you make an idiot of yourself for anything in this world. I always knew you were the most stubborn, muleheaded, ornery—”

In the midst of Chase’s tirade, Mac lifted, with his right hand under the saddle, but his left arm having to do most of the work, of course. The heavy saddle cleared, but barely. The weight of it when it did was far more than he’d expected. More than he had remembered a saddle weighed. But then he hadn’t ridden in over five years.

There were a lot of things you could forget in five years, he thought, carrying the saddle toward the open door of the stable. Suddenly, picturing the laughing commendation in Jenny’s brown eyes when he’d managed to get back on Harry without ending up on his ass in the cactus, Mac McCullar also acknowledged that there were a whole hell of a lot more of them that he had never forgotten. And never would.

CHAPTER THREE

WHEN JENNY APPROACHED the old cottonwood that stood in the yard of Chase’s place, she could see her brother-in-law’s familiar figure near the stables. Harry had already been un-saddled, and Chase was running a practiced hand over the stallion’s neck. There was no sign of Matt Dawson.

“Looks like Harry survived his outing,” Jenny said when she had ridden close enough for comfortable conversation.

“It wasn’t Harry I was worried about.”

Chase was angry. Jenny knew him well enough to recognize that from the cold blue steel of his eyes, which had briefly cut up to meet hers. They had already returned to their examination of the stallion before she had time to read whatever else had been in them.

“You surely weren’t worried about him,” Jenny said softly.

Evidently, that comment made perfect sense to Chase, for his eyes lifted again, this time holding hers.

“He looks capable of dealing with just about anything to me,” Jenny continued. “In spite of,” she added, acknowledging and dismissing Matt Dawson’s handicaps at the same time. “A friend of yours?”

“Is that what he told you?”

She was aware that Chase was avoiding giving her any additional information. “That’s what he said,” she agreed.

“Then I guess that’s right.” The blue eyes met hers openly now, almost daring her to probe further.

“Did you really think he was going to fall off?” Jenny asked. She didn’t try to conceal her amusement over the idea of Chase worrying about Matt Dawson.

“I thought it was a distinct possibility.”

“And you were afraid you and Samantha would be held responsible?”

“Hell, it wouldn’t be my fault if he’s too bullheaded for his own good,” Chase said, his anger finally breaking through his control.

“I told him he didn’t look like that big a fool,” Jenny said. “He didn’t seem to be too concerned with hearing my opinion, either.”

“Maybe he had just decided, ‘Nothing ventured, nothing gained,’” a deep voice suggested.

Matt Dawson was standing in the shadows of the doorway that led into the stable, watching them. At least, Jenny thought he had been watching. Obviously he’d been there long enough to have overheard part of their conversation.

“And what did you gain?” she asked, fighting the urge to smile at him.

“Probably nothing more than a few aches and pains in places I’d forgotten I have.”

“It would have served you right if he’d thrown you off on your ass,” Chase said.

“In my opinion,” Jenny said, “that seemed the furthest thing from Harry’s mind.”

The left corner of Matt Dawson’s mouth lifted minutely and then settled back into place. Despite the number of times Jenny had now seen that movement, something fluttered inside again, shifting deep within her body, warm and undeniably intriguing.

“Sheer, blind luck,” Chase suggested.

“Obviously, you two are old friends,” Jenny said, smiling.

“Obviously,” Matt agreed.

It was only what he had already told her. All he had told her. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, she decided. “A friendship from when you worked together in DEA?” she asked politely.

There was a small silence. Chase hadn’t looked at the man standing behind him, but he had wanted to. Jenny knew him well enough to have recognized that desire as well as she had recognized his anger, even before it was expressed.

“Aunt Jenny! Aunt Jenny’s here!”

The childish shout distracted Jenny, at least momentarily, from her pursuit of the shared past of Matt Dawson and Chase. She turned in the saddle and saw that Chase and Samantha’s daughter Amanda was already running down the steps of the porch to join them. Jenny dismounted quickly and prepared for the little girl’s always-enthusiastic welcome.

She bent down just in time to catch the small body that came hurtling toward her. Small, softly rounded arms fastened around Jenny’s neck, and the sweet talcum-fragrance of the little girl surrounded her. She lifted Mandy in a hug and swung her around and around in a circle.

Jenny gradually slowed and then stopped the circle, setting the child down on her toes, carefully holding on to her forearms until Mandy got her balance.

“I slept in Mama and Daddy’s room last night ’cause we have company,” Amanda announced. She was still wearing her nightgown, and her voice was full of self-importance.

“You did?” Jenny asked, smiling at her.

Mandy nodded, her blue McCullar eyes widened with the pleasure of having news that exciting to share with her beloved Aunt Jenny. “On a pallet on the floor by their bed.”

Jenny glanced at Chase’s face, and his expression was more revealing than he had intended, she was sure. Her gaze moved automatically to Matt Dawson and found the same quick amusement she had felt at Mandy’s words reflected in his harsh features.

“That’s…wonderful,” Jenny said. She had had to fight answering Matt’s amusement, had had to force her eyes to return to the little girl. Mandy’s hair was loose, tangled from sleep, blond curls trailing over the thin white lace-trimmed gown. Her eyelids were still just a little puffy with sleep and her feet were bare.

Amanda always looked just exactly as a little girl should look, Jenny thought. Small and sweet and infinitely happy. She didn’t think she could have loved a child of her own any more than she loved this one. Maybe that was because Mandy looked exactly like the babies Jenny had always dreamed she and Mac would have.

Jenny McCullar’s lips tilted slightly in remembrance of those long-anticipated babies, and then suddenly, the unexpected and unwanted surge of emotion caused by that memory caught her by surprise, making her eyes sting.

Disgusted with her seemingly constant urge these days to cry every time she thought about Mac, she looked up, determinedly blinking away the hated moisture. Her eyes met and then locked with the dark intensity of Matt Dawson’s.

There was no amusement in his features now. There was something there, some emotion, but it had been too quickly hidden for her to be certain what it had been before it disappeared.

“That was Samantha’s idea,” Chase said.

Jenny knew from his tone that it certainly hadn’t been his. “Mandy’s more than welcome to stay with me,” she offered sincerely. She put her hand on the small blond head and glanced down to smile at her niece.

“Can I, Daddy?” Mandy begged.

“We’ll see,” Chase hedged, his expression softening as he looked at his daughter, a daughter he hadn’t even known existed for almost four years. “Run on back inside and get some clothes on,” he suggested. “It’s too cold out here to be running around barefoot.”

“Yes, sir,” Mandy said. “Mama said to tell you to come in for breakfast in fifteen minutes. You and Mr….” The child paused, obviously having forgotten the unfamiliar name Samantha had told her.

“Mr. Dawson,” Jenny supplied.

Mandy’s gaze swung upward to meet her aunt’s. “Do you know my daddy’s friend?”

“We’ve met,” Jenny explained.

Involuntarily, her eyes sought the tall, scarred man standing in the shadowed doorway. She hadn’t thought about Mandy’s eyes automatically following hers, and she was the only one who could possibly have heard the child’s sharp intake of breath when they did. Jenny put her hand around Mandy’s shoulders and squeezed her upper arm reassuringly. She hoped Samantha’s training in good manners would stand the little girl in good stead.

“Mandy, this is Mr. Dawson,” Jenny said softly. “He’s your daddy’s friend.”

The little girl’s hesitation was only a fraction of a second too long to be put down to shyness. “’Lo,” she managed, her normally confident voice almost a whisper.

Matt Dawson’s gaze was on the child and no longer on Jenny. She should have been relieved, but she wasn’t. She had no doubt, despite Mandy’s gallant effort at maintaining the politeness she had been taught, that he knew exactly what the child was thinking. He didn’t respond verbally to her greeting. The tightening at the corner of his mouth was minute, and he then simply nodded.

Mandy shrank a little closer to Jenny’s jeans-covered leg at his almost-forbidding silence. “Go on inside,” Jenny urged her softly. “Mind your daddy. It is too cool out here for bare feet.”

Apparently grateful for permission to leave, Mandy turned and ran toward the small house. The three adults watched as, carefully holding up her nightgown, she climbed the low steps and disappeared through the screen door.

“That’s a pretty little girl,” Matt said into the uncomfortable silence she left behind.

Jenny turned to smile at him, but he was looking at Chase.

“She took after her mother,” Chase said.

“Then you should thank God for His favor,” Matt responded, his features absolutely expressionless.

Chase’s laughter in response to the insult reminded Jenny of Mac’s, and that memory, too, was painful, but at least Matt’s teasing comment had broken the tension Mandy’s unease had caused.

“DEA?” Jenny asked again. Her voice was pleasantly inquiring as if she were only picking up the thread of the conversation they had been having when Mandy interrupted them. Both men turned to look at her, but neither answered. “That is what you’re doing down here, isn’t it?” she prompted.

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