“I’m sorry, Annie. I didn’t think the kids would take it this hard.”

“They love you,” she said simply. “You’ve always been decent and kind to them. Lord knows, they got little enough of that from their…from Charlie.”

“I hate like hell that I’m putting them through this.”

“They’ll live. People get over all kinds of things.”

Have you? He wanted to ask, but didn’t. He carried a pile of plates to the sink, wishing things were different. That he didn’t have to leave. That these were his dishes, that this was his kitchen.

That she was his woman.

Renegade Father
RaeAnne Thayne

www.millsandboon.co.uk

RAEANNE THAYNE

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

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 1

Elbow-deep in blood and muck, Annie Calhoun Redhawk jerked her attention from the heifer she was helping through its first labor and stared at her foreman. Her insides suddenly felt as if the little Hereford had just shoved all four hooves hard into her gut.

“What do you mean, you’re taking a job in Wyoming? You can’t do that!”

Hay rustled under his boots as Joe Redhawk—her ex-husband’s brother, and once her closest friend in the world—shifted his weight. He refused to meet her gaze. Instead, those hard black eyes focused on some distant point above her head in the barn rafters. “I’ve already done it. I just accepted Norm Waterson’s offer. Told him I could start April first.”

Less than two months! How could she possibly find somebody to replace Joe in just two months?

She couldn’t, she realized with grim certainty, even if she had a year or more to look. He was the best cattleman in Montana—the best she’d ever known. He had unerring instincts when it came to the stock, knew just which animals to breed for the best genes, knew exactly the right feed ratios for the highest yield, knew when the weather was going to change days before it happened.

In the last eighteen months, he had singlehandedly yanked the Double C almost completely back into the black after the mess she had made of things.

“But…I don’t understand. You didn’t say a word about this yesterday when we went to Ennis!”

Still, he refused to meet her gaze. “I just made the decision this morning.”

How would she possibly survive without him? Greasy fear churned in her stomach at just the idea. He had been more than her foreman. He had been her rock for as long as she could remember, the one safe, constant shelter in an ugly world.

“You can’t leave, Joe. I—I need you.” Before she could yank them back, the words she had vowed never to say to him scurried out between them like beady-eyed little barn mice.

If anything, his rough-hewn features became even more remote, his dark eyes more shuttered. “You don’t need me, Annie. Not anymore. The ranch is prospering, the kids are okay. You’re doing well. I told you I’d stay until you were back on your feet and I have. You’re all fine now and it’s time for me to move on.”

As if to echo Annie’s own turmoil, the heifer bawled suddenly—a high, frightened sound—and her eyes rolled back into their sockets as she strained and pushed.

“She still having a tough time?” Joe asked.

Annie turned her attention back to the animal, swallowing down the familiar feelings of betrayal and fear. Later she would have time to give in to them, but right now she had a calf to deliver.

“Yes,” she answered, her voice clipped. “She’s been at it most of the day but doesn’t seem to be making much progress. The calf’s twisted around in there pretty good. Think I’m going to have to pull it.”

“Mind if I have a look?”

Without waiting for an answer, he removed the black Stetson he always wore and shrugged out of the thickly lined denim coat protecting him against the bitter weather outside. He hung both on a nail outside the stall and entered the small enclosure, rolling up the sleeves of his soft tan chamois work shirt.

As soon as he stepped inside, the bare wooden half walls seemed to close in around her. For an instant, she had a churlish urge to refuse his help. If he had his mind set on leaving, she’d have to get used to doing things on her own. Might as well start now, right?

But the heifer was in misery and needed help immediately or the calf would likely die. She couldn’t let her suffer, not when Joe might be able to help. Knowing she had no choice, Annie stepped aside.

“Looks like you’re right,” he said after a few moments, his arm up to the shoulder inside the heifer. “I can feel the back legs right here. Let me try to turn it.”

Muscles bulged under the fabric of his shirt as he worked one-handed to try maneuvering what she knew from past experience would be a slick and uncooperative calf.

“Damn. Can’t do it,” he muttered after several moments of trying.

The heifer bawled again, a long, pained cry, and Joe sat back on his heels in frustration. “You have the rope?”

“Right here.” She held up a length of new, clean cord purchased just for this purpose. “My hands are smaller than yours. I might have an easier time tying it.”

While she tied a loop, Joe moved aside to make room. He easily held the heifer in place while Annie reached into the birth canal and worked one-handed to slip the loop around the calf’s tiny hind legs.

They made a good team, she thought, not for the first time. Since he’d come to work for her, they’d had plenty of chances to work together. There was never a shortage of chores on a ranch the size of the Double C—repairing fence line, going on roundup, putting up hay. She loved every aspect of it and never missed an opportunity to help where she could.

But the rhythm the two of them developed whenever they worked together on a ranch chore went back far longer than just the last eighteen months since he’d come to work for her, back to the time she always thought of as Before.

Before that nightmare day Joe killed his father and changed the course of all their lives forever.

“Got it,” she said when the rope was secured, then her hand slipped free with a loud sucking noise.

They switched places again and this time she held the heifer in place while he worked the rope. As always, he went out of his way to avoid touching her, careful to keep that discreet distance between them, like some protective barrier she could never breach.

She knew exactly why. He couldn’t stand to touch her. She could tell in the way he jerked his hand away like it had been scorched if he so much as accidentally brushed her arm.

Even though she and Joe shared a friendship that went back to the days when she was little more than a carrot-headed brat in pigtails—and even though for one brief moment in time they had shared much, much more with each other—the woman she had become was weak and pitiful, frightened of her own shadow.

Joe obviously didn’t like that woman any more than Annie did.

Since he’d come to the Double C she’d had plenty of time to get used to his constant subtle rejection, but it still hurt like an open wound.

Maybe it wouldn’t bother her so much if she didn’t crave his touch so desperately. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t ignore this constant awareness always simmering just under her skin. She couldn’t seem to control the little hitch in her breathing when he was around, or the flutter in her stomach or, of course, the memories: vivid, sun-drenched images that refused to stay buried—of fire and tenderness and skin the color of richly polished teak under her fingertips.

She closed her eyes briefly, ashamed of her weakness, that after all these years some secret part of her wouldn’t let her forget.

She had made her choice and married Charlie, she reminded herself sternly. She’d had her reasons—powerful, compelling reasons. At the time marrying him had seemed like her only option. And even though her marriage had been a bitter sham, she had been faithful to the vows she’d made.

In her heart, though, she had relived those stolen hours with Joe until every second was branded into her memory.

“Almost there,” he said suddenly, jolting her from her thoughts back to the straining cow. He had worked the legs free and now he let go of the rope and pulled the calf’s hindquarters out. A few seconds later the little calf followed in a slick, messy heap.

The little white-faced russet Hereford lay in the hay for a few moments while his mother, acting on instincts as old as her breed, licked him clean. It wasn’t long before he was stumbling to stand, eager for the colostrum so vital to his survival.

After a few shaky moments of jerking and jolting around the stall, he made it back to his mother’s side, completely unfazed by the messy trauma of birth.

Annie eyed the little calf with envy. If only she had the same resilience. But she was still wobbly, teetering on legs that felt entirely too unsteady. Eighteen months wasn’t nearly long enough to glue back together the pieces of her spirit Charlie had shattered.

“Good work,” she said to Joe, smiling a little as the calf eagerly pulled at a teat. She watched this small miracle for a few more moments then crossed to the closest sink to scrub the muck off her hands.

Joe joined her and they lathered their hands in silence while they waited for warm water to travel from the ancient water heater at the other side of the barn. Even over the strong aroma of the soap, she could smell him—the honest scents of leather and sage and hard-working male—and her stomach did a long, slow roll.

She tested the water. Still cold. “It shouldn’t be long now,” she said, anxious to fill the silence that had grown suddenly awkward.

He glanced down at her, then away again. “Look, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before I was considering this job offer. But until today I wasn’t sure I was even going to take it.”

At his words, the harmony created between them during the calf’s delivery blew away like dry leaves in a hard October wind. She shoved her hands under the faucet, heedless of the still-icy water as all the fear rumbled back. “Why now? Why did you suddenly decide you couldn’t wait to leave the Double C?”

What did I do? The thought pushed its way to the front of her mind, but she thrust it away. She was done thinking she was to blame for every single thing that went wrong in the world. Or that she could make it all better, if only she tried a little harder.

“It’s time,” he said quietly. “Past time.” With abrupt, violent movements at odds with his low tone, he yanked a paper towel from the dispenser.

“If it’s money, I can raise your salary some.”

Some, but not much, both of them knew. The blood money she had used to buy her freedom from Charlie had sapped the ranch’s resources until there was very little disposable income to increase anybody’s salaries.

Until the Double C had another good year or two, there wouldn’t be much extra for anything.

He shook his head. “It’s not about money, Annie. It’s about the future. Waterson’s offering me a chance to start my own herd, with an option to buy some prime land on the edge of his ranch for my own spread.”

“I…I could do the same as this Waterson’s doing. Make you the same offer.”

She wouldn’t beg. She was done with begging. Still, she had to try something. This was Joe. “Maybe we could work something out. I could sell you the bottom land by the river and give you part of your salary in livestock. I don’t want to lose you.”

He closed his eyes briefly, as if her words hurt him. When he opened them, they were clear and determined, but with a vulnerability that shocked her. “I need to make a new start, Annie. Away from Madison Valley. Somewhere I can be just another rancher.”

The soft intensity in his voice made her heart ache for him, made her ashamed of her selfishness.

Just another rancher, he’d said, not Joe Redhawk, ex-con, who couldn’t walk into the grocery store in town without stares and whispers following right along behind him, even after all this time.

The rest of her arguments dwindled away into dust. He wanted to leave, to make a clean break from the shackles of his past. Even if she had the kind of power that would bind him to her, she cared about him too much to deny him his freedom.

She took a shaky breath, her stomach hollow and achy. What would the kids say when they found out he was leaving? C.J. adored his uncle and would be devastated. As to Leah’s reaction, she couldn’t even begin to guess. Her daughter had become a sullen stranger since Charlie left, full of lip and resentment.

At least with Joe gone, you won’t have to worry so much about either of them stumbling onto the truth.

The thought whispered into her mind but was small consolation compared with the huge gaping hole his departure would leave in all of their lives.

She gnawed on her lip for a moment, then let out a breath, knowing she had no choice but to accept his decision to leave the Double C.

“Okay,” she finally said. She would never be able to tell him she was happy for him at the opportunity—at least not and mean it—but she knew she couldn’t argue any more.

She grabbed her coat off the rail and shrugged into it, anxious to get away from him before she did something foolish like break down. “If your mind’s made up,” she said, her voice only faltering a little, “I guess there’s nothing more I can say. You can break the news to everyone at supper tonight and I’ll start looking for a replacement.”

She might be able to hire a new foreman, she thought as she walked outside to face the bitter February wind. But she knew as surely as she knew a blizzard was howling its way toward them that she would never be able to find another man to take Joe’s place.

He watched her walk out of the barn, shoulders stiff and head held high, and fought the urge to pound a fist through the splintery old barn wall. He growled a curse, hating himself for putting that hurt and self-doubt back into her eyes.

She had been through so much. More than any woman should have to endure. She had finally begun to find some measure of peace in her life, finally begun to find her way again, and here he was shattering whatever serenity she had managed to create.

He had seen in her eyes how the news of his job offer had come as a crushing blow. He’d known it would, that she would see his leaving as just another in a long string of betrayals. While he hated hurting her, he didn’t have a hell of a lot of choices here.

He hadn’t lied about his reasons for taking Waterson’s offer. He did want his own ranch, his own herd, his own chance to start a new life away from Madison Valley.

He just hadn’t told her the whole truth.

In a furious burst of energy, he grabbed a pitchfork and started forking fresh alfalfa into the stall for the new mama. He would never be able to tell Annie why he had to leave, why the situation here had become so intolerable to him.

He had spent four years at the state pen in Deer Lodge after his father’s death—years where the only things that kept him human were the memories of Annie and his friend Colt McKendrick over at the Broken Spur and all the good times the three of them had together as kids.

As bad as his prison term was, though, it was a piece of cake compared to the self-inflicted torture of forcing himself to stay here year after year, always watching her from the edges of her life while Charlie made her life a living hell.

At first he had stayed in Ennis out of guilt and maybe some helpless, misguided effort to protect her from his brother. Then, just as he was trying to finally break away, Charlie left her high and dry on the ranch, with a mountain of unpaid bills and a ranch she had absolutely no hope of running by herself.

He leaned on the pitchfork and watched the Hereford munch the alfalfa, her calf sleeping now. He was sick to death of it. Sick of watching silently from the sidelines, sick of pining for what could never be his.

He’d been refusing Waterson’s job offer for months now, ever since he met the crusty old rancher at a stock sale in Bozeman, clear back in November. Each time he talked to him, the rancher had upped the ante, but still Joe had refused, loath to put that hurt in Annie’s green eyes.

But even as he continued to turn down the increasingly generous offers, he could feel his control around her slipping away faster than a Montana summer.

Except for one infamous day he preferred not to dwell on, he had kept an iron grip on himself for years. But this constant proximity to her—this playacting at being a family, with them sharing meals and decisions and work—was slowly driving him insane.

He was starting to feel like a coyote caught in one of the traps some of the ranchers set out, as if he would do anything to get away, even chew off his own leg.

The day before, he and Annie had driven into town to look at a new spreader for the tractor.

He had spent the whole damn day trying to keep his eyes on the road and not on her. Every time he caught a whiff of that apple-scented shampoo she used, he nearly drove the pickup into a tree.

And then he’d been stupid enough to take her to the diner for lunch, and the whispers had started before they’d even picked up a menu. Murderer. Killed his father. Spent time in prison.

He knew she heard them. Her peach-pie complexion had begun to fade, little by little, until the sprinkle of freckles that dusted the bridge of her nose stood out in stark relief.

By the time they finally made it home, he realized he would have to leave, for her sake and for his own. He just couldn’t do this anymore.

He sighed heavily and put his coat and Stetson back on. He had work to do and it wasn’t getting done while he stood here brooding.

The wind had picked up, he noticed as he pushed the door open and headed outside. It screeched under the eaves of the barn like an angry cat and swirled snow across the path between the house and the cluster of outbuildings and the house. The cold sneaked through his thick coat with mean, pinching fingers.

By the looks of those clouds, they’d get another foot or so tonight. A bad night to be a new calf.

The whine of brakes on the road out front sounded above the moan of the wind and he watched the school bus lumber to a stop near the house.

C.J. hopped down first, bundled up so only his eyes were showing and swinging his red backpack behind him. Leah followed more slowly, her straight dark hair—free of anything as sensible as a hat—twisting around in the wind and her hands shoved into the pockets of her coat.

No homework again, he noticed. No books, anyway. He frowned. She was never going to be able to get her grades back up to where they were before her father left if she never bothered to bring her books home from school.

C.J. spotted him first and waved wildly in greeting, then headed toward him. Leah barely acknowledged his existence with a curt nod before walking into the house. Nothing unusual there, but damned if he could figure her out. She used to always have a shy smile and a hug for him, but she’d been colder than that bitch of a wind ever since Charlie took off.

“Hey, Joe!” The boy’s voice sounded distorted through his heavy scarf.

“How was school?” he asked.

He pulled the muffler down. “Good. We watched a movie about reptiles. It was awesome. Did you know there’s this lizard some place in Asia that can grow to be ten feet long? Ten feet! I think it’s called the Komodo dragon or somethin’ like that. It can eat goats and deer and even people if they get too close.”

“No, I didn’t know that. Thanks for the warning. I’ll keep it in mind if I ever run into one.”

The boy snickered. “You won’t unless you’re goin’ over to Asia sometime soon.”

Nope. Just Wyoming. His fingers clenched inside thick gloves. “It’s cold out here. You’d better go inside and get to your homework.”

C.J. made a face, but turned obediently back to the house. He took a few steps, then turned back. “Hey, Uncle Joe,” he said, raising his voice to be heard over the howling wind, “Nick told me a new joke on the bus today. Wanna hear it?”

He gave an inward groan. Colt’s stepson told even cornier jokes than C.J. “Sure,” he said. “Lay it on me.”

“Knock knock.”

Great. A knock-knock joke. His favorite. He winced but gave the requisite answer. “Who’s there.”

“Impatient cow.”

“Impatient cow wh—”

“MOOOOO,” C.J. cut him off before he could finish his part of the joke, then started giggling hysterically. “Get it? The cow’s too impatient to wait for you to say ‘who.”’

No matter how many times Annie tried to set him straight, C.J. always insisted on overexplaining his jokes. Joe smiled anyway. “I get it. That’s a good one.”

C.J. giggled again, then with a final wave of a mitten, he trudged through the blowing snow into the house, pausing only long enough to greet Annie’s best cow dog, Dolly.

Joe watched until the boy climbed the steps to the back porch and closed the back door behind him.

He rubbed a fist over his suddenly aching heart. Damn, he would miss the little rascal. And Leah, too, even with this new frosty attitude of hers. He loved both of them as much as if they were his own kids instead of his brother’s.

The future stretched out ahead of him, a bleak and solitary landscape, without Leah’s smart mouth or C.J.’s corny jokes, or that soft, hesitant smile of Annie’s that transformed her from an ordinary woman into someone of rare beauty.

What was he thinking to move hundreds of miles away? He would hate Wyoming without them. He should call Waterson and tell him the deal was off, that he’d changed his mind about the whole damn thing and wasn’t coming after all—

He caught himself. He wouldn’t do anything of the sort. He had to leave, and soon. If he didn’t—if he gave in to the low throb of desire—Annie would run from him faster than a mule deer caught in the crosshairs.

He had already screwed up her life enough by forcing her into his brother’s arms. He refused to screw it up any more.

Chapter 2

“Shut up, you little brat. It’s none of your business whether I do my homework or not.”

“Leah, that’s enough. C.J., stay out of this. It’s between me and your sister.”

Annie stirred the spaghetti sauce simmering on the stove with one hand and pinched at the bridge of her nose with the other, futilely trying to squeeze out the killer headache that had formed with Joe’s announcement in the barn two hours earlier and had since swollen to enormous proportions.

Thorny tendrils of pain converged behind her eyes, then snaked out in every direction throughout her head, threatening to crush the life out of any coherent thought she might have.

“Well, he is a little brat,” Leah snapped. “I’m sick and tired of him always butting in where he doesn’t belong.”

“This discussion is about you, young lady. This is the third phone call I’ve received from the school this month. You’re seriously in danger of flunking algebra if we don’t do something about it.”

“What do I care?” Leah studied purple fingernails resting on the kitchen table, her mouth set in heavy, sullen lines. “Mr. Sandoval’s a dork.”

“He’s a concerned teacher who cares enough about you and your grade to call me and inform me you’re still not turning in your assignments.”

“So what?”

“So you lied to me, for starters. You told me you’ve been finishing all your work in study hall.”

“Algebra’s stupid.”

“I like math,” C.J. piped in.

“That’s because you’re stupid, too.”

“Leah, that’s enough,” Annie snapped again, feeling whatever shreds of patience she had been clinging to disappear as the headache began to writhe down her spine. “Apologize to your brother.”

“I’m sorry you’re stupid.” Leah smirked.

With his innate sense of self-preservation, C.J. stuck his tongue out at his sister, grabbed a chocolate-chip cookie out of the boot-shaped jar on the counter, and headed for the family room.

Annie refrained from pointing out they would be eating in just a few minutes—she wasn’t up to another battle, especially when his exit left her alone with the twelve-year-old daughter she barely knew anymore.

She hated this. Absolutely hated it. Leah used to be so sweet and good-natured, always eager to please, with a kind word for everyone. In the months since Charlie left she’d turned into this moody little monster with an attitude to match. She closed herself off in her room every day after school and shunned all of her mother’s attempts to get to the root of the behavioral changes.

This guilt didn’t help matters. Annie pinched at the bridge of her nose again.

She’d like to think this constant defiance was just a natural part of growing up, just Leah testing her boundaries as she prepared for teenagedom in a few months. But she couldn’t help wondering if her daughter was reacting out of latent rage and hurt at her, if somehow she had completely warped her daughter’s psyche by putting up with Charlie for so long.

She couldn’t think that way. Or at least she couldn’t let her guilt over her own weakness affect her treatment of her daughter.

“You’re grounded.” She tried not to grind her teeth at the pain in her head or at the pain in her heart. “For lying to me and for not taking care of your responsibilities. You won’t be able to go to Brittany’s birthday party this weekend or to any other activities with your friends until you’re completely caught up in school—not just in algebra but in language arts and social studies as well.

“And,” she went on, knowing this was a much worse punishment to her daughter than curtailing her social activities, “you’ve lost your riding privileges starting right now. Stardust is now off-limits until you manage to bring your grades up.”

Leah’s mouth dropped open and her eyes narrowed into a killing glare, though her lips quivered like she wanted to cry. “That completely reeks! Stardust is my horse. I raised her. You can’t keep me from riding her!”

“Watch me.” Annie turned back to add spaghetti to the now-boiling water on the stove and to hide the quiver in her own lips.

“This is so not fair! I hate you!” Leah cried, then stomped up the stairs to her bedroom. A few seconds later, her door slammed shut with a resounding crack that echoed through the house, making Annie flinch.

“Uh-oh. Rough day?”

She glanced toward the mudroom to find Joe’s broad shoulders filling the doorway, his hands rubbing the woven band on his Stetson. She had a fierce, powerful urge to fall into his arms, to bury her face in the folds of that soft chamois shirt and weep for the daughter she didn’t know how to reach anymore.

But her days of leaning were done. Joe was leaving and she would have to stand on her own two feet.

“How long have you been there?”

“Long enough to hear you ban her from that horse of hers.”

“You think it’s too harsh?”

He was silent for several seconds. The only sound in the kitchen was the ticking of the clock above the refrigerator and the burbling coming from the pots on the stove. “I think it’s probably the only punishment that would mean a thing to her,” he finally said. “She loves that horse more than just about anything.”

“I had to do something. She’s going to have to repeat the seventh grade if I don’t.”

“She doesn’t really hate you. You know that, don’t you?”

If she did, it would be no less than Annie deserved. For most of her daughter’s life, their home hadn’t been the safe haven every child deserves but a place of prolonged tension and then sharp, sudden outbursts of temper. Why shouldn’t Leah hate her for the choices she’d made?

The hell of it was, if she had it all to do over again, she would probably make the same choices.

She glanced up to find Joe studying her, expecting an answer. Since she couldn’t very well tell him her thoughts, she just nodded. “I know she doesn’t hate me,” she said, without conviction.

He looked like he wanted to pursue it, but to her relief, he changed the subject. “Have you told the kids about my new job?”

The new job. The reminder sent fresh pain slithering to the base of her skull.

She shook her head, wincing a little at the movement, while she pulled out a fragrant loaf of garlic bread from the oven. “You’re the one leaving. You’re the one who can break the news.”

He frowned at her shortness. “Annie—”

“This is almost ready. Where’s the rest of the crew?” She cut him off, not wanting to hear more apologies or explanations.

A muscle flexed in his jaw but he let the matter rest. “Patch was just about finished in the barn and I think Ruben and Manny are right behind me.”

“What about Luke?”

“I think he went back to the trailer to get gussied up for you. Said something about putting on a clean shirt.”

She looked up from stirring the spaghetti sauce, just in time to catch his rare grin. She gazed at it, at him.

The smile softened the harsh lines of his features, etching lines along the edges of his mouth and the corners of his eyes. He was beautiful, in a raw, elemental way with those glittering black eyes fringed by long, thick eyelashes, that sensual mouth and that coppery skin from his Shoshone heritage stretched over high cheekbones.

She blinked, suddenly breathless. “Don’t tease him, Joe. He gets enough from the rest of the men.”

“He wouldn’t if the kid didn’t make it so easy for us. He follows you around like he’s a puppy dog and you’re a big ol’ juicy bone he wants to sink his teeth into.”

“He does not.” She felt her face flush from more than just the heat rising off the pans on the stove.

She was very much afraid Joe was right, that their newest ranch hand made it painfully obvious to everyone he had a crush on her. She had done her best to discourage him but he seemed oblivious to all her gentle hints. If it was causing problems between him and the rest of the help, she was going to have to be more stern.

“Does so.” Joe flashed another of those rare grins. “We practically have to lift the boy’s tongue off the floor every time he looks at you.”

She managed—barely—to lift her own tongue off the floor and yanked her gaze away from that smile she suddenly realized she would miss so desperately.

She stirred the spaghetti sauce with vigorous motions. “He’s just a little overenthusiastic. He’ll get over it. Besides, don’t you remember what it was like to be twenty-two?”

As soon as the words escaped her mouth, she wanted to grab them and stuff them back. The year he had turned twenty-two, she had been eighteen, and she had given him her love and her innocence on a sun-warmed stretch of meadow grass on the shores of Butterfly Lake.

Now, after her hastily spoken words, he was silent for one beat too long and she finally risked a look at him over the steam curling up from the bubbling pasta. That muscle worked in his jaw again and his dark eyes held a distant, unreadable expression.

“I do,” he said softly. “Every minute of it.”

Her breath caught and held, but before she could think of a reply, the outside door opened, bringing a gust of icy air, and the Santiago brothers tromped through the mudroom. The kitchen was soon filled with the sound of scraping chairs and melodious Spanish.

“That storm’s gonna be a real bi…er, beast,” Patch McNeil entered the kitchen behind them, his leathery cheeks red and wind-chapped above the white of the handlebar mustache he was so proud of. “I’m afraid we’re gonna lose some stock tonight.”

She barely heard the old cowboy, still flustered from the intense exchange with Joe. What could he have meant by those low words? Was she reading too much into it? Could he simply have been referring to being twenty-two or was he also haunted by the memory of those hours spent in each other’s arms? After his release from prison, he had never given her any indication he even remembered the encounter that had forever changed the course of her life.

They had never talked about it, about the day of her father’s funeral when he had come in search of her and found her lost and grief-stricken at the lake they’d spent so many hours fishing when they were younger.

While he was alive, her father had been stiff and un-affectionate, impossible to please, but she loved him desperately. He was the only parent she ever knew and his death had left her a frightened eighteen-year-old girl responsible for a six-hundred-head cattle ranch.

Joe had started out comforting her but she had wanted more from him. She had always wanted more from him.

She knew he regretted what they had done. He couldn’t have made it more clear when he left Madison Valley that night for a new job on a ranch near Great Falls, taking her heart with him.

In the years since, that hazy afternoon had become like the proverbial elephant sitting in the parlor that both of them could clearly see but neither wanted to be the first to mention.

Her mind racing, she drained the pasta with mechanical movements and spooned the sauce into a serving dish. She finally turned to set the food on the big pine table that ran the length of the kitchen and was startled to find all the men watching her, wearing odd expressions.

“What’s the matter?”

“I asked twice if you wanted me to round up C.J. and Leah.” Joe sent her a long, searching look and she hoped like crazy he couldn’t read her thoughts on her face.

“Um, yes. Thank you.”

Luke came in from outside just as Joe returned to the kitchen with C.J. riding piggyback and Leah trudging behind, resentment at her mother still simmering in her eyes.

As they began to eat, Annie thought about how much she had come to enjoy these evening meals with her makeshift family. It hadn’t always been like this. During her marriage, meals had been tense, uneasy affairs that she usually couldn’t wait to escape.

The first thing she had done after Charlie left was give notice to the crew he surrounded himself with, men whose insolence was matched only by their incompetence.

The second thing had been to steal Patch back from the ranch he’d gone to after she married Charlie so she could split kitchen duty with him.

In her father’s day, Patch had been the camp cook. In those days, the Double C had fixed one meal a day for its hands, usually supper. The ranch provided the food for the other meals but left it up to the men to prepare their own in the bunkhouse.

Charlie, though, had insisted Annie cook a full breakfast, dinner and supper for the men. It was just another of his many ways of keeping her in her place, of reminding her who was boss.

She had never minded spending time in the kitchen when it was voluntary. But because he was forcing her to do it, she had grown to hate it. Her cooking responsibilities had become symbolic of the mess she had created for herself.

Freeing herself from the kitchen had been almost as liberating as freeing herself from her sham of a marriage. Maybe it was a true sign of how far she had come that she had started to once more enjoy cooking on the nights when it was her turn.

Most of the time she enjoyed these evening meals, she corrected her earlier thought. This one wasn’t exactly the most comfortable of suppers. Leah said nothing, just glowered at everyone and picked at her food. None of the other men seemed in the mood for conversation and if not for C.J.’s constant chatter to Joe about his day, they all would have eaten in silence.

Finally Luke Mitchell wiped his mouth with his napkin and cleared his throat. “Tastes delicious, Miz Redhawk. As usual.” He must have finally worked up the nerve to speak, and he punctuated the compliment with a shy, eager smile across the table.

Out of the corner of her gaze, she saw Ruben and Manny exchange grins and she felt a flush of embarrassment begin at the nape of her neck and spread up. She was really going to have to do something about him, and soon.

“Thank you,” she murmured.

“I mean it,” he persisted. “You make a real good spaghetti sauce.”

The fact that it was her night to cook had completely slipped her mind until she had returned from the barn after delivering the calf. She hadn’t had time to do much more than open a jar of store-bought sauce and mix it with ground beef, but she didn’t want to embarrass the eager ranch hand by pointing out the obvious so she just smiled politely.

“With that wind chill, we’re supposed to dip down to minus twenty tonight,” Joe interjected before Luke could say anything else. “That means we’re going to have to drop another load of hay after dinner. Mitchell, you and I can take the cows and calves up on the winter range. Manny, Ruben, you can take care of the bulls and yearlings down by the creek. Patch, can you handle the animals in the barns by yourself?”

The grizzled old cowboy nodded. For the next several moments, Annie listened with only half an ear to them discuss ranch business and the constant struggle to keep the livestock warm for the night. The rest of her waited, nerves twitching like a calf on locoweed, for Joe to tell everyone he was leaving.

He seemed to want to drag it out, though, while they discussed vaccinations and the yearly race to be the first ranch in the area to have the calving over with and how many of last year’s steers they would take to auction in a few weeks.

She waited all through dinner but it was only after the men cleared their plates and she had dished up leftover apple pie for dessert that Joe set his fork down with a clatter and pushed back his chair.

“I have an announcement,” he began. Damn. This was harder than he expected it to be. As he studied the faces around the table, his gut clenched and he scrambled for words.

“I’m, uh…I’m leaving the Double C,” he finally just said bluntly. “I’ll be taking a new job in Wyoming come April.”

Everyone was silent for several moments. He saw varying degrees of shock on everyone’s expression except Annie’s—from profound surprise in Patch’s good eye to what he could only describe as an odd kind of glee on Luke Mitchell’s smooth-cheeked features.

To his surprise, Leah was the first to react—Leah, who acted like she couldn’t stand him most of the time. She slid her chair back from the table so abruptly it tipped backward as she stood. She didn’t bother to right it again, just looked at him out of dark eyes wounded with an expression of complete betrayal, like he’d suddenly up and slapped her for no reason, then she rushed out of the kitchen.

The sound of her pounding up the stairs seemed to break the spell for all of them and everyone began talking at once.

“You’re gonna run out right in the middle of planting season?” Patch exclaimed.

“Where in Wyoming are you going?” Ruben asked.

“I guess that means Miz Redhawk’s gonna need to find herself a new foreman,” Luke said.

It was C.J.’s plaintive cry that pierced through the buzz of questions, and brought the men’s conversation to a grinding halt. “You can’t leave, too, Uncle Joe! You can’t!”

Awkward silence echoed through the kitchen while he scrambled for something to say to make things right. Before he could figure out a way to achieve the impossible, Patch cleared his throat, discomfort plain on his face. “Uh, boys, we’ve got some feed to put out if we want to spend the worst of that storm out there where it’s warm and dry. There’ll be time to talk about this later.”

Eager to avoid the scene they all must have known was inevitable, the men murmured their thanks to Annie for the meal then trooped out of the kitchen, leaving him alone with her and her son.

The boy was trying valiantly not to cry but a tear trickled from the corner of his eye anyway, leaving a watery path down the side of his nose. His fingers trembled as he swiped at it, damn near breaking Joe’s heart.

“C.J.—”

Whatever he was going to say was lost as C.J. cut him off. “You promised you’d take me campin’ and fishin’ on the Ruby this summer. You promised!”

He flashed a look toward Annie and found her watching her son out of green eyes filled with compassion and pain.

“We can still go.” His voice sounded hoarse. “I’ll try to get away for a weekend and come up and take you.”

“It won’t be the same.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

More tears followed the pathway of that lone trail-blazer and Joe felt small and mean for putting them there. He wanted to gather his nephew close, to try to absorb his pain into him if he could, but he sensed the boy would only jerk away.

“Just because I’m leaving doesn’t mean I’ll stop being your uncle,” he said quietly. “That’ll never change. We can still talk on the phone and write letters. I promise, I’ll take you on that fishing trip this summer and maybe you can even come stay with me for a while once I get settled.”

“It won’t be the same,” C.J. cried again. His whole face crumpled. “Why do you have to go?”

How could he explain to a seven-year-old how a man sometimes ached for more than he had, more than he would ever have? And how sometimes the lack of it, this constant, aching emptiness, was like a living thing chewing away at him until he couldn’t breathe?

C.J. didn’t wait for an answer, which was probably a good thing since he didn’t have one to offer. The boy stared up at him, and there was a world of disillusionment in his eyes. “You’re no different than him. I thought you were, but you’re not.”

The impassioned words—and all the heartbreak behind it—sliced into him like a just-sharpened blade. No different than him. Than Charlie. The man who had spent every one of C.J.’s seven years destroying his faith in everything.

It was his greatest fear—that he and his half brother were more alike than he wanted to believe. That somehow the genetic makeup they had in common was stronger than his own self-control.

They weren’t, he reminded himself. He had done his damnedest throughout his life to make sure of that. Charlie was a drunk and a bully who delighted in terrorizing anybody smaller than he was. He wasn’t anything like him.

Oh no, he thought with sudden bitterness. Nothing at all. He was just an ex-con who served four years in Deer Lodge for killing his father.

He thrust the thought away and tried to concentrate on the crisis at hand. “C.J.—” he began, but the boy turned away.

“If you leave, I don’t want you to come back. I don’t want to go to the Ruby with you. I don’t want to go anywhere with you.” And for the second time in just a few minutes, the room echoed with the sound of feet pounding up the stairs and the slam of a bedroom door.

At the sound, Annie froze for just an instant, then she stood abruptly and started clearing away dishes with quick, jerky movements, as if she was suddenly desperate to keep her hands busy.

He scratched his cheek. “That went well, don’t you think?”

She fumbled with a plate, catching it just in time to keep it from smashing to the floor, and sent him a baleful look. “Great. Just great. With all these slamming doors, I’m surprised none of the windows are broken.”

His laugh sounded raw and strained. “I’m sorry, Annie. I didn’t think they’d take it this hard.”

“They love you,” she said simply. “You’ve always been decent and kind to them. Lord knows, they got little enough of that from their…from Charlie.”

“I hate like hell that I’m putting them through this.”

“They’ll live. People get over all kinds of things.”

Have you? He wanted to ask, but didn’t. He carried a pile of plates to the sink, wishing things were different. That he didn’t have to leave. That these were his dishes, that this was his kitchen.

That she was his woman.

Chapter 3

What a mess.

With her hands curled around a mug of lemon tea, Annie sighed and looked out the kitchen window at the snow whirled around by the shrieking wind. Hours after Joe’s announcement at dinner, her head still ached, her nerves still in an uproar, and nothing seemed to help.

C.J. was finally asleep after crying most of the evening. She had a feeling if she checked his pillowcase, it would be damp with more tears.

He couldn’t understand why the man who had been more of a father to him in the last eighteen months than his own father had been for his whole life could just walk away. All her efforts to console him only seemed to sound hollow and trite.

She had knocked on Leah’s door a few minutes earlier to tell her to turn the lights out and had received just a grunt in return. Her daughter was no longer speaking to her, but she didn’t know if it was due to Joe’s impending departure or because of their earlier battle over homework and riding privileges.

Had she been this difficult when she was twelve? She didn’t think so. She had been a handful, certainly, always tumbling into trouble with Joe and Colt, but she’d always tried hard not to disappoint her father, anxious for the love he had such a hard time demonstrating.

Of course, by the time she was twelve, Joe and Colt had been in high school and too busy with sports and school and girls to pay much attention to the wild-haired tomboy from the ranch next door who used to follow them everywhere.

She sighed again. If she didn’t stop woolgathering, she was going to be up all night trying to finish this blasted help-wanted ad. She wanted to be able to call it into the newspaper and some of the ranch periodicals in the morning.

She read what she’d written so far: “Wanted: Experienced foreman to oversee six-hundred-head Hereford operation. Prefer long-term commitment and extensive ranching background. Salary based on experience. Must be loyal and hard-working.”

She winced. Was she advertising for a foreman or a dog? She scribbled the last part out and was trying to come up with something better when she heard a soft knock at the back door.

A quick glance at the clock over the stove showed it was nearly ten—a little late for company.

Maybe Joe had some unfinished ranch business he needed to discuss. It wasn’t unusual for him to stop by after the evening chores were done to talk about what needed to be done the next day—a gesture she appreciated but which she’d tried to tell him repeatedly wasn’t necessary. She trusted his instincts completely.

It would take a long time to build up that kind of trust with whomever she finally hired to replace him. She set the pencil down so hard the lead snapped off, and went to answer the door.

To her surprise, it wasn’t Joe she found in the light of the back porch at all but Luke Mitchell, looking nervous and edgy and, if possible, even younger than normal.

“Luke! Is something wrong?”

“No. I just…” the ranch hand shifted his weight, “I wanted to talk to you tonight. Are you busy?”

“No. Just trying to write an ad for a new foreman. Come in.”

She helped brush snow off his black slicker in the mudroom, then led the way into the kitchen. “Can I get you something? I was having a cup of tea and there’s plenty more hot water.”

He shook his head. The movement seemed to remind him of his manners because he abruptly yanked the cowboy hat from his head, leaving a flat line haloing his blond hair.

She took her seat again and pointed to another chair. “Why don’t you sit down, then.”

He shook his head again, a quick, restless gesture. Shoulders tense, he stood in the doorway and began measuring the brim of his hat with his fingers. Round and round he went, first in one direction then the other, over and over until—given her lingering headache and the uproar of her emotions—she had to fight the urge to yank the blasted thing away from him and throw it on the table.

He opened his mouth to speak twice, but both times he jerked it shut again, and she could tell he was trying to work up his nerve for some kind of major announcement.

Fiddlesticks. She had absolutely no energy left to deal with this after the day she’d had. “It’s late,” she finally said, when it looked like he was going to stand in her kitchen fidgeting all night. She should probably try to be more patient, but she just wasn’t in the mood tonight. “What can I do for you, Luke?”

“I’d like to apply for the foreman job,” he blurted out, so loudly it startled both of them.

The foreman job? She stared at him, shocked, watching a flush creep up those baby-smooth cheeks. Of all the possibilities racing through her head about what he might be doing there at ten o’clock at night, the idea that he wanted Joe’s job never would have occurred to her.

“I know I’m young and all but I’m a hard worker. Joe’s always sayin’ so. I’m strong and I’m willing and I’ve been around cattle all my life. If my daddy hadn’t had lost our spread because of the damn banks—excuse my language, ma’am—I’d be on my way to runnin’ my own place by now.”

Like so many ranching families, the Mitchells had been hurt by the recent run of low beef prices. They had run a pretty big spread near Big Sky and she knew his father slightly.

She heard he was trying to support his large family by working in a ranch supply store over in Bozeman now. It had been one of the reasons she’d taken a chance and hired Luke two months earlier, in an effort to give the family one less mouth to feed.

Compassion for the eager young man washed over her. To grow up thinking he would take over the reins of the family ranch someday and then to lose it all with the bang of an auctioneer’s gavel must have been devastating. Heaven knows, it was one of her own biggest fears.

“You could do a whole lot worse, ma’am,” Luke went on, “if you don’t mind me sayin’.”

Drat Joe for putting her in this position. She rubbed suddenly clammy hands on her jeans beneath the table. The last thing she wanted to do was hurt his fragile pride by telling him she didn’t think he was man enough for the job.

Especially when life had already dealt him a rough hand—and when he had more than a slight crush on her. “I… You’ve been a real asset to the Double C, Luke.”

“Thank you.” His wide grin made him look not much older than C.J. “I could be even more of an asset as foreman. I have some real good ideas about improving things around here. Not that Joe hasn’t done a good job, mind, but I’ve been reading about these fancy new low-cholesterol breeds they got out there and I think it might be worth your while to look into it.”

He went on for several minutes about the direction he’d like to take the Double C. She listened with only half an ear, trying to figure out how she could let him down gently. Finally she realized he had wound down and was waiting expectantly for an answer.

She cleared her throat. “I have to say, those certainly sound like interesting ideas.”

“Does that mean you’re willing to give me a chance?”

She paused, feeling like she was about to drop-kick a puppy, then finally drew in a deep breath and took aim. “Luke, you’re a good cowhand. Like you said, you’re a hard worker, always willing to dig in and do what has to be done, no matter what. And while I’ll certainly keep you in mind for the foreman’s job, I have to be honest with you. I was hoping for somebody with a little more experience.”

“I told you, I’ve been around cattle all my life. That’s twenty years of experience right there.”

Twenty years. Oh mercy. He wasn’t even as old as she had thought he was. She felt like a shriveled up old lady compared to all this youthful exuberance.

“It’s more than just experience.”

She fumbled for words for a few moments, then decided she would just have to be blunt, as much as she hated it, and as much as it might hurt. “The foreman of a ranch like the Double C has to have a certain…authority. Not just with the hands who work on the ranch, but out in the community, too—with other ranchers, with our suppliers, when we take stock to auction. He has to be able to command respect in the ranching community and that’s something that comes not just with experience, but with age.”

And something Joe still struggled with, at least with the ranchers around Madison Valley who couldn’t forget his history. She frowned, wondering if that was one of the reasons he was leaving, if he thought his presence was somehow detrimental to the Double C’s bottom line.

“So what you’re sayin’ is you’re not gonna hire me because I’m too young?” The boy couldn’t have looked more offended if she had just told him his horse was ugly.

“I’m not saying you could never be foreman of the Double C,” she answered. “But I have to be honest with you. I just don’t know if it’s a responsibility you’re ready for yet.”

Hurt flickered in his pale blue eyes and with it she glimpsed a deep anger that somehow made him look much older. Just as quickly, the anger disappeared and she wondered if she had imagined it.

“I see.” His voice was low in the hushed kitchen, so quiet she could barely hear him. “So that’s it?”

She nodded. “I’m sorry, Luke. I’d like nothing better than to hire you for the job right now. Maybe in a few more years, though.”

“You’re wrong.” Though he spoke in the same quiet, intense voice, he gripped his hat so hard it creased the soft brown felt. He shoved the hat on his head. “I could do a helluva lot better job than Redhawk. I could prove it to you if you’d only give me a chance.”

He didn’t wait for an answer but stalked out of the kitchen and into the storm.

She watched through the window as he made his way back to the bunkhouse, shoulders hunched against the wind and whirling snow. Just as he went inside the doublewide trailer he shared with Patch and the Santiago brothers, a flicker of movement near the barn caught her gaze.

The vapor light on the power pole between the house and the outbuildings wasn’t powerful enough to completely pierce the darkness or the whirling snow, but she thought she could just make out the figure of a man standing motionless, his attention focused on her, on the house.

For just an instant, her heart stuttered, and old feelings of dread and helplessness came roiling back, and then the figure moved out of the shadows and she recognized Joe’s black Stetson and broad shoulders. Unlike Luke, he walked unbent in the wind, oblivious to the storm raging around him as he came toward the house.

“Everything okay in here?” he asked after she opened the door off the mudroom to his knock.

She shrugged. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

“I saw Mitchell walking back to the trailer. Just wanted to make sure he wasn’t pestering you.”

“Pestering me?”

He cocked his head. “I told you at supper, it’s no secret the boy’s got it bad, Annie. He makes moon-eyes at you every time he gets within spitting distance. I wouldn’t want him to make a nuisance of himself.”

She felt herself blush. “I can handle it.”

“Well, let me know if he gets to be too much of a bother and I’ll have a word with him.”

Why did he always assume she couldn’t take care of things by herself? Probably because she had a pretty lousy track record in that department, she admitted.

“He wasn’t pestering me or making moon-eyes or anything like that. If you must know, he was applying for your job.”

For a long moment, he just stared at her, the only sound in the kitchen the ticking of the clock and the whirring of the furnace spewing warm air out of the register, then he tilted back his head and laughed, low and long and deep.

The sound of it—so rare coming from him—slid over her nerve endings like silk.

“He wants to be foreman?” He laughed again and flipped a chair around to straddle it, removing his hat and tossing it onto the table in the same motion. “I hope you didn’t encourage him.”

There he went again, thinking she didn’t have a brain in her head. “Of course I didn’t. I told him I was looking for somebody with a little more experience.”

He snorted. “I’m sure that went over well.”

“About like you’d expect.”

“How could he think you’d be willing to hire a twenty-year-old kid to run a big operation like the Double C?”

“Maybe he thought I’d be desperate, with you leaving and all.”

He studied her for a moment, then looked away. “How’s the boy?”

“Sleeping. Finally.”

“I hate like hell that I hurt him like this.”

“Of course he’s hurting! Did you think you could just walk away and it wouldn’t affect any of us?”

“I guess I was hoping it wouldn’t.”

“You’re part of the Double C, Joe. More than that, you’re part of this family. What you do affects all of us. C.J. loves you—of course he’s upset you’re going to leave. And Leah is, too, although she shows it differently.”

“What about you? Are you upset I’m leaving?”

He didn’t know why he asked it. Maybe because she looked so damn beautiful here in her warm, cozy kitchen, with the light from above the stove turning her hair red-gold and making her eyes look soft and welcoming and her mouth about the sexiest thing he’d ever seen.

Or maybe because he’d been more annoyed than he had a right to be when he saw Mitchell sneaking out her back door so late at night.

Whatever his reason for asking, her answer was clear. “You know I am.” She spoke in a low voice and then lifted eyes the color of brand-new aspen leaves to his.

He was shocked to his bones at the depth of emotion there—if he didn’t know better, he could swear there were tears lurking in those green depths, but Annie hardly ever cried.

Even if she had been the watering-pot sort, his brother would have fixed that in a hurry.

He reached out and grabbed her hand. It was rougher than it should have been, almost as nicked-up and callused as his own. She was killing herself trying to turn the Double C back into the ranch it once was. And he sure didn’t help matters any by taking off.

Her fingers trembled in his and he realized too late why he did his best to avoid touching her—just the simple contact of her hand in his filled him with wants and needs he had absolutely no business wanting or needing.

What would she do if he reached across that scarred pine table and pulled her to him, if he dug his fingers into that sinful hair and devoured that luscious mouth of hers like he imagined doing a dozen times a day?

Easy. More than likely, she’d kick him off the ranch herself. She’d barely survived being tangled up with one Redhawk brother and she sure didn’t need the other one messing things up for her now.

But wasn’t he doing just that by taking this job in Wyoming? Putting her to the trouble of having to find a new foreman and leaving her to deal with two upset kids?

He shifted on the hard chair. “Maybe I ought to just call Waterson and tell him to forget it.”

Relief flickered in her eyes for just a moment, then she shook her head vigorously. “I won’t let you do that. You’ve sacrificed enough of your life for us. You’re right, you need to move on and this sounds like a wonderful opportunity for you, a real chance to make a new start. It will be good for you. And whether we like it or not, it will be good for us not to depend on you so much.”

She was ready to cut him loose, he thought as he said his goodbyes a few moments later and headed back out into the blizzard. So why was he suddenly not so sure he wanted to be free?

She was becoming a pretty darn good liar.

Her conversation with Joe the night before ran through her head over and over while she tried to catch up on the mounds of paperwork that seemed to pile up like January snow.

Since the kids were still in school and the men were out repairing damage from the storm the night before, she had the ranch house to herself. She should have been able to make a real dent in that month’s bills, but she couldn’t seem to concentrate on much of anything.

On anything except a dark-eyed Shoshone who would be blowing out of her life on the last of the winter storms.

She sighed and forced herself to concentrate on all the work she had to do. It wasn’t doing her any good to brood about Joe’s leaving. If she didn’t stop it, she would be completely worthless for the two remaining months she had left with him.

She was just wincing over the check she had to write to the vet when the door off the mudroom suddenly creaked open, sounding abnormally loud in the stillness of the empty house. Just as abruptly, it closed again with a quiet click.

She glanced at the digital clock on the command line of the computer. Odd. The kids weren’t due home from school for several hours and Joe said he thought the men would be tied up most of the day fixing the roof of the hay shed in the far pasture. They’d taken lunch with them but maybe they forgot something or finished up earlier than expected.

“Hello?” she called out. “I’m back here in the office.”

She was met by silence, unbroken except for the low, ubiquitous whir of the furnace. A shiver sneaked down her spine and she frowned. “Hello?” she called again.

No one answered.

Was somebody playing some of kind of trick on her? She didn’t think any of the men had that kind of cruel streak in them, but Patch could be mischievous and his sense of humor sometimes veered off into warped territory.

Puzzled, she rose from the computer and walked out of the office, through the empty family room and toward the kitchen at the other side of the house. In the thick silence, her pulse sounded loud and strident in her ears. She was more edgy than she cared to admit, a realization that sent fresh anger coursing through her.

This house, with its softly weathered logs and its wraparound porch, was her haven now. She had no reason to be afraid here anymore and she hated that someone could dredge up all these old feelings. If it was Patch playing a trick, she planned to give him an earful he wouldn’t soon forget.

She walked into the big kitchen, expecting somebody to jump out any minute with a gleeful “boo,” but the room was empty.

She scratched the back of her head, baffled and uneasy. Was she going crazy? She had heard the door open and close, hadn’t she?

Maybe not. Maybe she was hearing things. Maybe she was just overwrought from all the stress of the day before.

It was the only explanation, since there was obviously no one in the house and a quick glance out the kitchen window showed no one between the house and the outbuildings except a few chickens scratching through the snow looking for lunch.

She couldn’t see any tracks on the walk either, but C.J. had cleared most of the snow away this morning and the rest was so packed it probably wouldn’t show anything.

This was too creepy. Maybe she ought to go take a look upstairs….

The phone suddenly jangled loudly in the silence, sending her jumping at least a foot into the air. She grabbed at her chest where her heart threatened to hammer through her rib cage. “It’s just the phone, you big baby,” she chided herself, and crossed to the wall unit next to the refrigerator.

“Hello?” Despite her best efforts to calm herself, her pulse still fluttered wildly.

“Hey. I hear you’re on the lookout for a new foreman.”

She slumped against the counter at the familiar voice of her closest neighbor and pushed away the rest of her lingering unease. “Hey, Colt. News travels fast.”

“It does when it’s bad news. What the hell is Joe thinking? He can’t leave you in the lurch like that, right before spring planting.”

“He’s given me two months’ notice—more than anyone else would. I can’t ask for more than that.”

“I can. I’m coming over to talk some sense into him.”

She ground her teeth. Lord spare her from arrogant men who didn’t think she was competent enough to brush her teeth without them standing over her checking every last inch of enamel.

Colton McKendrick grew up on the adjacent ranch, the Broken Spur, where Joe’s father had worked. And just like Joe, he thought it was his mission in life to watch out for her. Even though she had been four years younger than the boys, they were the only other kids for miles so the three of them had been inseparable, always tumbling into one scrape after another.

Before her divorce, Joe had run the Broken Spur for him while Colt devoted himself first to the military and then to FBI undercover work, trying to outrun his ghosts.

She loved him dearly and was thrilled that his days of running were over, but she wished just once he and Joe would both realize she was all grown up and could take care of herself.

Most of the time, anyway.

“Colt, stay out of it. This is something Joe wants to do and I’ve accepted that. You should, too.”

“Bull. You need him.”

“I need a foreman,” she answered. “But it doesn’t necessarily have to be Joe Redhawk.”

“He’s the best there is. Dammit, how can he just run out on you like this?”

“You’ll have to ask him that.”

“I plan to, right now. I’m on my way.”

Colt severed the connection before she could argue with him. She had barely returned the phone to the receiver and put more coffee on when she heard the crunch of truck tires on snow out front, followed by a vehicle door slamming.

She opened the mudroom door before he could knock and was pleased to see Colt helping his very pregnant wife up the walk.

“What did you do, call from the mailbox?” she teased when they were safely inside.

“Just about. Aren’t cellular phones something?” He grinned and pulled her into a quick hug.

When he released her, she turned to his wife. “No office hours today, Maggie?”

“I don’t have any patients scheduled until this afternoon since I had my own appointment with Dr. Marcus.”

“And what did he say?”

“Everything’s fine. He moved my due date up to mid-April. It won’t be a moment too soon, as far as I’m concerned. I feel as big as one of those Herefords out there.”

Annie smiled. Colt and Maggie had married just weeks after her divorce and in the time since, she had come to love Colt’s sweetly elegant wife almost as much as she did him. There was a bond between the two women, forged of shared pain and rare understanding.

“You look absolutely radiant,” Annie said.

“Everybody always says that to fat old pregnant women.”

“Because it’s true.” It was. Maggie’s eyes were soft, serene, and her skin glowed with an inner tranquility that had to come from knowing her husband adored her and was thrilled about the child they had created together.

For just a moment, Annie tasted bitter envy in her mouth. She hadn’t experienced that contentment with either of her pregnancies. Instead, she had known only that trapped, powerless fear.

Dammit. She wanted to pinch herself, hard. Couldn’t she even be happy for two of her closest friends in the world over the upcoming birth of their child without this blasted self-pity taking over? She had two beautiful children, a ranch some men would kill for, and good friends like the McKendricks. Why couldn’t she let that be enough?

“Where’s Joe?” Colt asked.

She swallowed the envy and poured coffee, black the way he liked it. Maggie, she knew, was staying away from caffeine for the baby’s sake, so she put water on to boil for herbal tea.

“We lost the roof on one of the hay sheds in the wind last night,” she answered. “The men are doing their best to patch it together. What about the Broken Spur? How did you fare in the storm?”

“Lost three calves but it could have been a lot worse.” He sipped his coffee. “Now suppose you tell me what burr Joe’s got in his britches about taking some fool job in Wyoming.”

She busied herself rifling through the cupboard for the tea bags. “It sounds like a good opportunity for him.”

“What does he think he’s going to find at some stranger’s ranch in Wyoming that he can’t get in Madison Valley?”

“You’ll have to ask him that,” she said quietly.

“I’m asking you. What happened between you two?”

“Nothing.” She shut the cupboard door with a little more force than necessary. “Absolutely nothing. Why would you think that? Things are just fine between us.”

Unless you count the way he couldn’t stand to touch her and the way he sometimes went out of his way to avoid even looking at her.

“So why is he in such a big hurry to leave?”

She thought of those moments in the barn the day before and that rare vulnerability she had glimpsed in Joe.

Would she be breaking a confidence to talk to Colt about it? No. Colt cared about Joe. The two men shared a friendship closer than blood. Maybe if he knew the truth, Colt wouldn’t push him to stay against his will.

She almost laughed. Was she really going out of her way to defend Joe for taking a new job? Yes. She wanted him to stay, but she wanted him to find peace more. “He has a chance to start his own herd and to buy land of his own. I can’t match this Waterson’s offer, and I’m not sure I would even if I had the means.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Colt, he told me he wants to start over some place away from Madison Valley.” She paused. “Somewhere he can be just another rancher, just like everybody else.”

He was silent for a moment, his mouth set in a hard line, then he swore softly, pungently. “How can we argue with that?”

“Exactly.”

“I don’t understand,” Maggie interjected with a frown.

Colt turned to his wife. “You know what it’s like for him in town. How people talk. He tries to pretend it doesn’t matter, but it obviously affects him more than any of us thought.”

The kettle whistled suddenly, shrilly, and Annie rose from the table to pour water for Maggie’s tea. “It just makes me so mad,” she muttered. “Why can’t people forget, just stop judging him for what happened years ago, for heaven’s sake? Why can’t they look at the man he’s made of himself?”

“We don’t have all that many murders around here, Annie. Of course people are going to remember it.”

“It wasn’t murder and you know it! And so does everybody else in town.”

“Not everybody. There are a lot of people who think Joe killed his father in cold blood and got off easy.”

In cold blood. It was an odd term to use for something as violent as taking the life of another human being.

“It was an accident.” She couldn’t help her vehemence, even though she knew she was preaching to the choir. “That’s why he pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter. The only reason he served prison time at all was because he had alcohol in his system, even though it was under the legal limit, and because he was already on probation for that stupid bar fight when he was just a kid. Everybody with a brain in his head knows Joe was trying to protect his mother after Al beat her half to death.”

“You’ve heard the rumors that there was more to it than that.”

Yes, and she knew exactly who was behind them. She frowned. Charlie had kept his promise after he married her and hadn’t gone to his boss at the sheriff’s department with his version of events that night. But he hadn’t had any qualms whipping up the rumor mill in town.

Just another sin to lay at the door of her ex-husband.

She knew Joe hadn’t meant to kill his father when he had delivered that fateful punch. But even if he had, Albert Redhawk deserved everything he got and more.

He had spent his whole life and two marriages physically and emotionally abusing his entire family, turning one son into a mirror image of himself and the other into a stoic little boy who buried all his emotions so deeply it took nothing short of a cataclysmic event to ever bring them gushing out.

“It’s funny what people choose to remember of the dead.” Colt’s low voice jolted her back to the conversation. “Selective memory, I guess. Al was a real son of a bitch to just about everybody, but if you listened to some people in town, you’d think he was the next best thing to Santa Claus.”

“Is it any wonder Joe wants to make a fresh start somewhere else.”

“I guess.” Colt sipped his coffee glumly. “So what are we gonna do about it?”

She rested a hand on his shoulder. “Nothing we can do. Just miss him, I suppose. Just miss him.”

Colt and Maggie didn’t stay long after that, only long enough to finish their coffee and tea. When she had the house to herself again, she forced herself to stay in the office until she could make inroads toward finishing her paperwork.

The mysterious door opening completely slipped her mind until hours later, after Leah and C.J. came home, strewing their customary clutter throughout the mudroom and kitchen.

She was picking up backpacks and mittens and school books when she saw what looked like a white square of paper under one of C.J.’s wet boots near the back door. She gave an exasperated sigh. It was probably a permission slip for a school field trip or something equally important.

She lifted the boot away and picked up the soggy paper, then felt her whole body go stiff and cold.

It wasn’t a permission slip at all, but a photograph.

A Polaroid taken through her office window that afternoon, of her sitting behind her desk doing paperwork.

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