“She-Devil…”

“Is that what you think of me?” Lyric asked.

Trevor set his hat more firmly on his head. “Let’s just say that I don’t think much of a woman who kisses one man while engaged to another.”

“Lyle needed me—especially after the accident.”

“The car wreck wasn’t all that serious,” Trevor said with undisguised bitterness. “It didn’t maim him or call for a life-or-death operation, did it?”

Lyric hesitated. “No,” she said. “It didn’t.”

“Would you have broken the engagement and come to me…if I’d asked?”

Lyric thought of endless nights at the hospital, Lyle thinking that he was going to be all right, not realizing he was slipping further and further away…

Studying the strong, healthy man beside her, she sighed. “No. I couldn’t have come then.”

Trevor’s face hardened. “Then why the hell did you come now?”

Dear Reader,

It’s hard to believe that it’s that time of year again—and what better way to escape the holiday hysteria than with a good book…or six! Our selections begin with Allison Leigh’s The Truth About the Tycoon, as a man bent on revenge finds his plans have hit a snag—in the form of the beautiful sister of the man he’s out to get.

THE PARKS EMPIRE concludes its six-book run with The Homecoming by Gina Wilkins, in which Walter Parks’s daughter tries to free her mother from the clutches of her unscrupulous father. Too bad the handsome detective working for her dad is hot on her trail! The M.D.’s Surprise Family by Marie Ferrarella is another in her popular miniseries THE BACHELORS OF BLAIR MEMORIAL. This time, a lonely woman looking for a doctor to save her little brother finds both a healer of bodies and of hearts in the handsome neurosurgeon who comes highly recommended. In A Kiss in the Moonlight, another in Laurie Paige’s SEVEN DEVILS miniseries, a woman can’t resist her attraction to the man she let get away—because guilt was pulling her in another direction. But now he’s back in her sights—soon to be in her clutches? In Karen Rose Smith’s Which Child Is Mine? a woman is torn between the child she gave birth to and the one she’s been raising. And the only way out seems to be to marry the man who fathered her “daughter.” Last, a man decides to reclaim everything he’s always wanted, in the form of his biological daughters, and their mother, in Sharon De Vita’s Rightfully His.

Here’s hoping every one of your holiday wishes comes true, and we look forward to celebrating the New Year with you.

All the best,

Gail Chasan

Senior Editor

A Kiss in the Moonlight
Laurie Paige

www.millsandboon.co.uk

LAURIE PAIGE

Laurie has been a NASA engineer, a past president of the Romance Writers of America, a mother and a grandmother. She was twice a Romance Writers of America RITA® finalist for Best Traditional Romance and has won awards from Romantic Times for Best Silhouette Special Edition and Best Silhouette in addition to appearing on the USA TODAY bestseller list. Recently resettled in Northern California, Laurie is looking forward to whatever experiences her next novel will send her on.

Contents

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

Chapter One

Lyric Gibson felt the headache as a throb centered behind her eyes. She tried to consciously relax the tension that tightened the muscles of her forehead and those across her shoulders. That worked as long as she concentrated, but she was looking for road signs, and her attention was on that task.

“Have we passed it, do you think?” her great-aunt, Fay Gibson, asked in slightly querulous tones.

Lyric flinched as guilt joined the other emotions that swirled through her innermost self. She should have stopped in Boise for the night. Her aunt was sixty-eight years old and, although usually cheerful and persevering, much too tired from the long hours they’d spent on the road.

But it had been early afternoon—not quite four—so there’d been hours of July daylight left when they’d driven through the city. The mountain town of Lost Valley was only an hour north of there, according to her information, so she’d pushed on. They’d found the town without a problem.

The Seven Devils Ranch, their hoped-for destination, was supposed to be less than an hour west of Lost Valley, so they should have arrived by six at the latest.

It was now half past eight.

She had no idea if they were any closer to their destination now than they’d been an hour ago. Glancing at the western sky, she fought worry and the headache that accompanied it. She was no longer sure where they were. The back roads of Idaho all looked the same, and she’d obviously taken a couple of wrong turns. Or three or four.

Maybe this whole trip was a mistake. She’d been stunned when her great-aunt had delivered the invitation that had included her. Then she’d been elated. Now she was simply unsure.

“It’ll be dark soon,” Aunt Fay said, then gave an impatient tsk. “I’m sorry, Lyric. I shouldn’t have said that. I know you’re concerned about me, but this wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been lost and slept in a car.”

Lyric managed a confident laugh. “We’ll find it. We’re bound to be close. We passed a sign that said He-Devil Mountain was thataway.” She pointed toward the west. “The ranch is supposed to be within sight of the peak. We’re just taking the scenic route.”

A shiver ran over every nerve in her body as she recalled a dark-haired, blue-eyed, tall, handsome cowboy who’d once told her about his family’s ranch and its splendid view, its crystal streams and lakes, the majestic sweep of the land.

She’d longed to explore the mountains and valleys with him, but fate had intervened, temporarily at any rate.

Trevor had listened to her rushed, disjointed explanation of why she’d had to leave, first in disbelief then with growing anger. With his jaw set as hard as stone, he’d nodded as if he understood, but then he’d left. Without a word. Without a backward glance.

That had been almost a year ago.

During the endless fall and winter, through storms that brought floods to much of the southwest, she’d waited, sure he would write. But he hadn’t contacted her, not even when she’d sent a note that explained more fully. She’d given up hope. Then out of the blue came an invitation to visit the ranch. That had to mean something.

She put the shaky elation and haunting doubts aside to concentrate on finding the right road. She didn’t want to make another wrong turn.

“I see a trail of dust,” she said, peering through her driving glasses at this welcome indication of another vehicle. It was on a side road off to the right of the county road they traveled, which was also a gravel surface. The other driver had probably seen her dust, too.

The earlier concern eased a bit. “We can stop the driver and get directions.”

“He’s coming awfully fast. Be careful. He may be a rustler or something.”

Lyric cast her aunt a partly amused, partly exasperated glance at this bit of advice.

Rustlers? Ask her if she cared.

She slowed in anticipation of flagging the oncoming vehicle at the intersection of the two roads. “At present, I’d face down the devil himself if he would help get us to our destination.”

Her aunt laughed at the quip. The older woman was like a grandmother to Lyric and her two younger brothers. Aunt Fay had never married, but she’d taken in her nephew, Lyric’s father, years ago when his parents had died in a traffic accident. She’d always treated the family as if they were her children.

“Oh!” the spinster gasped.

Lyric swung the steering wheel hard to the right as a truck tore out of the gravel side road at breakneck speed and nearly hit them. She felt the compact station wagon graze a large rock as they careened into a shallow ditch at the side of the road.

The back tires slid sideways. She turned into the skid and took her foot off the brake. The rear skittered back and forth on the loose gravel. As the tires regained traction and she had the car under control once more, a pile of stones encased in a section of fence to form a corner post loomed before them.

“Oh, no,” she said.

They hit the stones with a resounding thud.

Air bags blossomed on each side of the front seat. Lyric spared a worry for her relative as the bag hit her face, smothering her for a few seconds and pressing her glasses painfully onto her nose.

Dizzy and frightened, Lyric remembered to turn the engine off, then she thrashed her way free of the collapsing air bag and turned to her aunt. After pushing the plastic aside, Lyric searched the older woman’s face for damage.

“Aunt Fay?” she said.

The other woman didn’t answer, didn’t move.

“Hey, are you okay in there?” a male voice asked.

“My aunt,” Lyric said. “I think she’s hurt.” She snapped open the seat belt and reached for her aunt’s wrist to check her pulse.

“Don’t move her,” the man ordered.

He went around the station wagon and opened the door. With a competence that was reassuring, he checked the unconscious woman after removing her glasses, which by some miracle weren’t broken, and sticking them in his pocket.

Lyric watched his hands run gently over Aunt Fay’s head, down her neck, where he paused to check her pulse, then continue over her shoulders and along her arms. His fingers were long and slender, the skin evenly tanned to where the white shirtsleeves were rolled up on his forearms. A hat hid most of his face. He bent farther into the car and examined her aunt’s knees and legs.

Lyric looked, too, and saw red marks indicating the bruises that would be forming soon.

He raised his head. “Ms. Gibson?” he said. “Can you hear me? Can you open your eyes?”

Lyric’s heart stopped, then pounded with a fierce, staccato beat. She gasped like a heroine in a melodrama as she studied the man in disbelief.

“Trevor?”

He faced her then, his eyes, which she knew to be as blue as the summer sky, appearing dark as midnight in the fading glow of the sunset. “Yeah, it’s me.”

They stared at each other in silence, a thousand questions and memories wrapping around their frozen forms. One thing for sure—there was no welcome in his gaze.

Aunt Fay opened her eyes and focused on one, then the other of them. “Where are my glasses?”

“Here,” Trevor said. He slipped the thin gold frames gently onto the older woman’s face.

“Are you all right?” Lyric asked, searching her beloved relative’s face for signs of pain.

“I’ve felt better,” her aunt said, then gave the man a smile. “Hello, Trevor. How are you?”

“I’m okay…other than feeling like a heel. There isn’t usually much traffic out this way.”

“I’m sure,” her aunt agreed with dry humor.

“Let me check the damage to your car, then we’ll see if it’ll run. It’s only a couple of miles to the ranch.” He paused and looked at Lyric. “How did you get on this back road, anyway?”

“A seriously wrong turn, I think.”

He nodded, his face grim but otherwise without expression. After getting a flashlight from his truck, he looked over the front end of the station wagon. “A badly dinged bumper and a slightly crumpled nose, but otherwise it looks okay. The radiator seems intact. I don’t see any fluid leaking out. Crank it up and let’s see if she’ll run.”

Lyric turned on the key. The engine purred to life at once. Trevor returned to the front of the vehicle. He nodded in her direction, indicating everything looked fine.

“Back up,” he said, coming to her window. “Keep the wheels straight.”

She cautiously backed onto the road. Trevor gave the car a push when one tire slipped on the gravel and dirt in the shallow ditch.

“Okay,” he called when she was clear. “Follow me.”

After he turned his truck around, she fell into place behind him, far enough back that his dust didn’t choke them. In less than five minutes they pulled up before a horse rail in front of a sprawling ranch house, its center portion made of massive logs, the wings on either side more modern structures of stone and wood.

Trevor honked his horn, then climbed out of the truck and came to the passenger side of the station wagon. “Watch your step now,” he said to Aunt Fay. “Careful. Lean on me while we see if your legs are okay. You have pain anywhere?”

“I’m not sure,” the older woman said. “I seem to be numb at the moment.”

With the gentlest of care, he escorted her aunt toward the house. The door opened and an older man peered out. His hair gleamed silver in the light from the room behind him. He was as tall as Trevor and had the same lean, rangy frame.

A total stranger would have known they were kin at a glance. The man had to be Trevor’s uncle Nick.

“What happened?” Mr. Dalton asked, realizing something was wrong.

“Accident,” Trevor said. He quickly explained about taking the old logging road and cutting the station wagon off at the county road, causing her to run into the ditch.

The older man came out on the porch, then stepped down on a giant flat granite boulder that served as the step to the front porch that ran all the way across the log portion of the house.

“My God,” he said. “Fay, is that you?”

“Yes, Nick,” her aunt replied with a smile in his direction. She clasped Trevor’s arm and walked with a decided limp toward the porch.

“I’d given up on you for today.” The Dalton uncle, wearing only socks, rushed to her other side and wrapped a supporting arm around her waist. “Call Beau,” he ordered his nephew. “He’s a doctor,” he said to Lyric’s aunt.

“Let’s get the women in the house first,” Trevor suggested with a hint of impatience.

Lyric followed behind the three, rather like a stray pup who hoped the others would take her in. She was beginning to feel very apprehensive about being here. Trevor didn’t seem thrilled to see her.

In the house, after Aunt Fay was seated in an easy chair and checked over again, Lyric stood inside the door and wondered what to do.

Finally the older man noticed her. “Are you all right?”

Lyric nodded. She had to clear her throat in order to talk. “Yes. I think so,” she amended, suddenly aware of pain in her knees, as if her body had come back to life at that instant and now reminded her of aches she hadn’t known she had.

“Nicholas?”

The Dalton patriarch turned back to her aunt and took her hand. “Now don’t you worry about a thing. We’ll have you right as rain in no time. Trevor, have you called Beau yet?” he questioned with a stern glance at his nephew.

Lyric was aware of Trevor’s gaze on her, of the tight set of his mouth, of the unwelcoming stance in his strong, lithe body. She felt terribly confused and disoriented.

He turned away. “I’m doing it now.” He went into the kitchen. In a minute she heard his voice explaining the situation to the nephew who was a doctor.

Lyric hadn’t met any of the Dalton family except Trevor, but she knew them all. Her aunt Fay had been a cousin and best friend to Milly Dalton, who had been married to Trevor’s uncle Nick. Milly had died in an automobile accident many years ago. Their daughter, Tink, had been taken from the scene of the accident and never found again.

At least, that was what was assumed. The three-year-old had disappeared. She could have wandered away and died in the wilderness, but the sheriff had concluded the child had been abducted for some reason, because the child’s body had never been found.

A tremor rushed over Lyric at the thought. One time a stranger had tried to grab her while she was on her way home from school in Austin, Texas.

She’d screamed and kicked and bit the man as hard as she could, the way her father had taught her, and had gotten free. She’d been lucky. A schoolmate on the next block had been kidnapped later the same afternoon. A month went by before the body was found in a lonely section of woods. That summer Lyric’s parents had moved to the ranch her father had inherited from his dad.

Another tremor ran down her body and lodged in her legs. Alarmed, she realized her knees were about to give way. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but…”

The words were barely a whisper.

She tried again. “I’m sorry, but…”

“Catch her,” a voice said from far away as the room became dark and mysterious.

Lyric blinked rapidly as strong arms closed around her. She knew these arms, this embrace.

Pressing her face into the clean expanse of the white shirt, she inhaled deeply and was filled with the scent of masculine aftershave, fresh-as-the-outdoors laundry and something more—a faint aroma that she recognized somewhere deep inside her. Yes, she knew this man.

She relaxed as he lifted her. She looped her arms around his shoulders and closed her eyes. Safe. She was safe. And home. Home at last.

“Here,” Trevor said, putting Lyric on the leather sofa. “Lie still,” he ordered when she started to sit up. He removed the glasses from her face, then winced at the redness on each side of her nose and running down under her eyes. The air bag had hit her hard, he realized. He laid the glasses on the end table.

A memory wafted into his mind—him removing her glasses, her laughing protests about not being able to see, his suggestion that she close her eyes, then the kisses…the hotter-than-molten-steel kisses, the fireworks that had gone off in his brain, stunning him with the force of the passion between them…and the feelings, the found-my-other-half joy of holding her….

“Get some ice,” his uncle said. “Fay needs some on her face and knees.”

“So does Lyric,” Trevor said.

His throat closed after he said the name. Last fall he’d vowed never to say it again.

He silently mouthed all the expletives he could remember while going to the kitchen and grabbing several first-aid ice bags from the freezer. The ranch always had a good supply of such items on hand for the occasional kick from a recalcitrant horse or stubborn cow.

Along with dish towels and clothespins, he took the ice bags to the living room.

“When will Beau be here?” his uncle asked.

“He won’t. He and the midwife have a difficult delivery going on. Since nothing is broken or bleeding and they’re both coherent, he said to bring them to the clinic in the morning and he’d check them out.”

“Mmm,” Uncle Nick said in his disapproving tone.

Ignoring Lyric, who now sat upright and as prim as a spinster, Trevor ministered to her aunt, affixing two ice bags and dish towels to her knees with the clothespins and advising her to put the other on her face.

Finished, he went to Lyric. “Put this on your nose,” he said, handing over the wrapped bag and noting the glasses were back in place. He couldn’t help but steal a glance at her left hand and the bare ring finger. Forcing his gaze to the task at hand, he knelt and, as careful as a doctor performing brain surgery, rolled up her pants.

He winced when he saw the abraded skin of her knees and the blotches that indicated more extensive bruising than her aunt had suffered. As the driver, she’d had her seat closer to the dashboard so she could reach the brake pedal and accelerator. That meant she’d hit the dash harder.

At five feet, five inches, she’d felt small and delicate in his arms. But curvy. For months after he’d come back to the ranch, he would wake from a sound sleep, clutching the pillow to his chest, and know he’d been dreaming about her, about the way she’d felt cuddled against him.

However, he and Lyric had never slept together. She’d been engaged to another guy the whole time she’d been responding to his caresses.

Mentally cursing, he forced the memory into the battered tin box of the past. He was over it now, over her and the wild emotion he’d thought was love. A cheating woman wasn’t on his list of most-wanted things.

Quickly, he secured the ice packs on her knees and moved away from the smoothness of her skin, the warmth of her body, the spicy scent of her powder and cologne.

“Have you two had dinner?” Uncle Nick asked.

“Yes,” Lyric answered.

“No,” her aunt said at the same time. The older woman continued, “Lyric was so anxious to get here that she didn’t want to stop, so we had a salad at a fast-food place in Boise. That was hours ago. If I could bother you for some toast, that would be plenty for me.”

“I recall that you like chocolate cake with ice cream,” Uncle Nick said, his eyes all soft and glowing.

Lyric’s aunt removed the ice pack from her nose and grinned at the older man. “You don’t happen to have some of that, do you?”

“Well, now, I reckon we do.” He rose from the matching chair next to the aunt’s with a big smile. “You ladies sit still. Trev and I will get it.”

Trevor refrained from rolling his eyes at his uncle’s gallant manner. If the old man sparkled much more, they could wire him up to the light bulbs and save the cost of the electricity.

He followed the other man into the kitchen and helped prepare the treat. Glancing at the freshly made cake and the homemade ice cream, he frowned, recalling the way his uncle had insisted on preparing the dessert, even though the Fourth of July had been last week, which was when they usually made ice cream, and this was Tuesday, July the eighth. Since none of the orphaned Dalton cousins that Uncle Nick had taken in and raised as his own were expected at the ranch—they were all busy with new wives and jobs and the like—he’d wondered at the reason for the unusual activity.

Setting his jaw, he admitted he hadn’t suspected a thing, even though his uncle had made it plain he hadn’t wanted Trevor to head over to a neighboring ranch for a visit that evening.

Glancing toward the living room, he said in a low voice, “You knew they were coming, didn’t you?”

Uncle Nick nodded, busily spooning ice cream onto the saucers. “Fay and I have kept in touch for years, mostly cards at Christmas. She said she was restless and lonely this past winter, so I told her to come up for the wildflowers this spring, but she couldn’t make it until her niece had time to drive her.”

“You could have told me.”

Eyes as blue as his own glanced his way. “I did. Last month, right after we got things straightened out between Roni and Adam. I distinctly recall mentioning it at Sunday dinner when everyone was here.”

In May, Roni, one of the orphaned cousins and the only girl in the family, had married Adam. His younger sister, Honey, was married to Trevor’s older brother, Zack.

Trevor sighed. The family connections were becoming complicated, with his two brothers and his three cousins all getting hitched during the prior fourteen months.

Five weddings.

He was the only bachelor left of the six kids whose four parents had been wiped out in a freak avalanche twenty-three years ago. His father and uncle had been twins, the same as he and Travis were. Uncle Nick, the oldest of the three Dalton brothers, and Aunt Milly had taken all six children in and raised them as their own.

Glancing at the older man, who was acting as frisky as a new colt, Trevor experienced a clenching in the vicinity of his heart. Uncle Nick seemed okay now, but he’d had a heart attack last spring and a couple of weak spells since then.

Trevor heaved another sigh. If his uncle wanted to invite his deceased wife’s cousin to visit, there was nothing he could do about it. Why Lyric had come with her aunt was the thing he didn’t get.

Pasting a pleasant—he hoped—smile on his face, he carried two plates into the other room and gave one to Lyric while his uncle presented one to the aunt, then took the chair beside her and attentively asked about the trip and all that had been happening to her of late.

Trevor sat on the far end of the sofa from Lyric. Neither of them said a word for the next fifteen minutes.

“Trev, would you take the plates to the kitchen and bring out the coffee?” Uncle Nick turned to Fay. “I put on a pot of decaffeinated coffee. It should be ready. I find I can’t sleep if I drink regular coffee at night.”

“I have the same problem,” she said.

Trevor met Lyric’s gaze, and they exchanged spontaneous smiles as the older couple discussed aging and the changes it brought.

Lyric’s eyes reminded him of a brown velvet dress Aunt Milly had loved to wear. As a kid he’d once stroked the soft material and observed the way the light changed when the nap was smoothed down. Lyric’s eyes were like that—changing from brown to gold as the light reflected off the golden flecks around the black pupil.

He wiped the smile off and looked away. He wanted nothing to do with her. No memories, no shared amusement over the old folks, nothing!

“I’ll get the coffee,” he said.

In the kitchen he sucked in a harsh breath and wondered how long this visit was going to last. Not that he wouldn’t get through it just fine. After all, no one in his family knew he’d made a fool of himself over a woman who had been engaged to another and, in the end, had chosen that man over him.

He’d lived through worse. The death of his parents. The death of his twin’s first wife, whom he’d been half in love with all his growing-up years. The end of his rodeo career when he’d caved in several ribs and been advised by the doc to hang up his spurs. Yeah, life was tough.

Hearing steps behind him, he stopped the useless introspection and turned his head.

“I thought I would see if I could help,” Lyric said.

Her eyes searched his face anxiously, as if she sought something from him. Welcome? Understanding? Forgiveness? She’d come to the wrong place if she thought he had anything left for her.

He stifled the angry words that rushed to his tongue. “Sure. Bring the sugar bowl and cream pitcher. I’ll carry the cups on the tray.”

He picked up the walnut tray he’d made in shop class in tenth grade years ago. Part of him was keenly aware of the woman who followed him into the other room.

After the coffee was served, the two seniors went back to their conversation without a hitch, obviously interested in catching up on the other’s life since they’d last met twenty years ago. His uncle’s face beamed in pleasure, and Lyric’s aunt looked ten years younger in spite of the bruising on her face.

A lump came to Trevor’s throat. It wasn’t often that sentiment caught up with him, but he felt an overpowering love for this man whose heart had been big enough to take in six kids without a complaint, who’d buried his own wife with quiet grief no more than a year later and who’d lost his own daughter and had never known what happened to the child. Footprints and tire marks had indicated someone had taken three-year-old Tink from the scene of the wreck and left with her, but no one was really sure what had happened.

God, how had the kind, loving uncle stood the pain?

By holding on and meeting each new sunrise one day at a time, Trevor knew. Just as he’d done last fall and winter until he’d finally confined all the pain, anger and sense of betrayal to the little black box that was his soul. He’d locked it away and learned to live with it. He would keep on doing that.

Finally the group was ready for bed. He brought in luggage for the aunt and though Lyric insisted on getting her own, he determinedly took her larger suitcase and marched into the house. She trailed behind.

Uncle Nick assigned the older guest to the suite at the end of the west wing. The rose-colored room had its own bathroom and sitting area. Lyric was put in the spare room next to it.

Unfortunately his room was next door to hers, and they would have to share the bath across the hall.

Not at the same time, he hastened to add as his libido picked up on this idea. Okay, so there was still a physical attraction. So what? For a brief moment Trevor considered moving to his cousin’s old room in the other wing of the house, but knew that was stupid. He wasn’t going to let a woman make him run like a startled deer.

After he saw to the aunt’s luggage, he carried Lyric’s large case next door. She stood by the bed, her eyes taking in the furnishings.

He set the case on the cedar chest at the end of the bed. The words escaped before he fully realized he was going to say them. “So how’s your fiancé?” he asked.

She gazed at him with her soft, doe-like eyes. He saw her throat move as she swallowed, then her breasts—those gorgeous full breasts—lifted as she took a deep breath and slowly released it.

“Lyle—” she began, then stopped as unreadable emotions flickered across her face.

The name was a stab in the gut. Lyle and Lyric, as if they were a matched pair, meant for each other.

“Does it matter?” she finally asked in a strained voice.

He shrugged and left the tempting bedroom before he did something he’d regret—like grab her and crush her to him, like make good use of the bed behind them, like beg her to say she was sorry she’d chosen another over him.

And why the hell didn’t she wear an engagement ring like other women?

Chapter Two

On shaky legs, Lyric closed the door, then unzipped the smaller of her two cases. She pulled out the red ankle-length nightshirt made like a football jersey with the numeral one printed on it, a gift from her two brothers last Christmas, then sat on the cedar chest, the jersey clutched to her breasts.

Had Aunt Fay lied about her being included in the invitation to the ranch? If not, then it certainly wasn’t Trevor who’d asked for her presence. His uncle? The silver-haired rancher had never met her, so why should he?

With lethal humor, she wished she were still lost on the country roads, driving around and around in endless circles going nowhere. Because at the present moment she felt she’d crossed over into the Twilight Zone.

Lifting her chin, she decided she and Trevor would have to make the best of things. Her aunt planned on staying for the rest of the month.

Of course, she could leave Aunt Fay at the Daltons and go back home. But the hill country of Texas was a long way from Idaho. Since her beloved relative refused to fly, Lyric would have to return for her at the end of the month.

Her shoulders slumped. It was Trevor’s duty visit to her aunt—at his uncle’s insistence—that had started this whole farce. Closing her eyes, she wondered why life had to be so hard. Tears crowded against her eyes. She held on until they eased and she could think again.

She’d foolishly believed that Trevor had been instrumental in inviting her to the Dalton ranch. She’d thought this meant another chance for them and that he wanted it, too. She’d been wrong, terribly wrong.

There were two choices, she decided. She could crawl into a hole inside herself and wallow in self-pity, or she could refuse to be put off by Trevor’s lack of welcome and endure. She was good at enduring.

With a sigh she changed to the nightshirt, unpacked her clothes and put them in the maple dresser. Its beveled, triple mirrors reflected her unhappy countenance back at her from several angles. Red streaks on either side of her nose indicated the bruises that would be visible by morning.

They were nothing compared to the bruises on her heart. She recounted the tragedies life had thrown her way the past eighteen months: the putting to sleep of Scruffs, a lovable and loving stray cat she’d taken in fifteen years ago, due to kidney disease; the divorce of her parents after thirty years of marriage; and then the accident in which Lyle, who lived on the next ranch and had been a friend from birth, had been injured.

The tears pressed close again. She’d cried enough this past year and a half to flood the Rio Grande. Her aunt had told her it was time she put the past behind and started over, that she was young and had all the future before her.

Lyric gave a soft laugh, but it wasn’t a happy sound. She hadn’t felt young in ages.

Except for one delirious three-week period when a rangy, blue-eyed cowboy had visited Austin for the stock sale. Trevor was twenty-eight to her twenty-four. He’d made her laugh with his jokes and teasing. He’d thrilled her with the way he’d stared at her. She’d done the same, both unable to take their eyes off the other. And his kisses…

A shiver ran over her as she remembered their kisses. Even though they’d had to be careful because of his broken ribs, she’d never been kissed like that, had never responded the way she had to him. It had been wonderful…exciting…and terribly confusing.

She’d never felt that way about Lyle. That fact had added to the uncertainty in her, that plus the quarrel she and Lyle had had the previous month.

She’d refused to set a date for the wedding or to wear his ring. Lyle had been angry. Before he’d gone out of town on business, he’d told her to make up her mind about them before he returned. Or else.

She’d told him then that she wasn’t sure she could go through with the marriage. She wasn’t ready to be tied down.

Tied down. That seemed an odd way to describe what should have been one of the most exciting times in a woman’s life. It wasn’t until she met Trevor that the doubts became focused and clear as to why she couldn’t marry her old friend. She didn’t love him that way.

But then there had been the accident. Trevor had been at her house, having dinner with her, her mom and Aunt Fay when the call came.

“That was Lyle’s mother,” she’d said to the other three when she’d hung up the phone. “He’s been in an accident near San Antonio and is in intensive care. She said I should come to the hospital at once. He’s asking for me.”

“Who’s Lyle?” Trevor had asked.

“Her fiancé,” her mom had answered.

Lyric would never forget the shock, the disbelief, then the fury on Trevor’s face as he absorbed this news. “Is that true?” he’d asked.

“No, not exactly. Lyle’s been out of town on business this past month,” she’d said, stumbling over the words, anxious to wipe the anger from his eyes, the disgust now curling his lips, the accusation in the question.

“How convenient,” he’d said.

She realized he thought she was a cheat and deceiver of the first order. “We weren’t officially engaged. I was supposed to be thinking it over while he was gone.”

“One last fling before tying the knot,” Trevor had murmured sardonically, his eyes black pools of anger.

“No—”

“We’d better go, Lyric,” her mother had interrupted. “The accident sounds serious.”

“Yes. We have to go,” she’d said to Trevor, knowing she had no choice.

With her aunt hovering anxiously, and Trevor standing as still as a statue, she and her mom had rushed off into the night, arriving at the hospital an hour later.

Lyle’s mother had been distraught. A widow with no immediate family, she’d needed them desperately. The doctors had discovered a tumor in her son’s head, one that was inoperable. That was why he’d passed out while driving.

“Trevor,” Lyric now whispered to the absent cowboy who’d filled her heart with delight for a short time, “how could I have left him then?”

After talking to the doctors and knowing Lyle would never recover and that his future was very uncertain, she’d known she couldn’t desert him.

Trevor had left the state before she could get back to him. It was just as well. She’d been going to ask him to wait for her, but she knew whatever Trevor had felt for her had turned into hatred. She’d seen it in his eyes tonight when he’d given her the ice bag.

Gathering her toiletry case, she admitted she couldn’t have done otherwise and lived with herself. Not even for a man who’d made her heart sing could she have turned her back on her friend’s need.

Morning came early on a ranch. Lyric wasn’t naturally an early riser, but living on her father’s ranch had made her one. Last year, after the divorce, her mother had moved to Austin. Lyric divided her time equally between the two homes and had visited frequently with Aunt Fay who also lived in the city.

As administrator of a four-family trust set up by her grandparents and three other couples who were all friends and whose parents had founded an oil company together in the early 1900s, Lyric had had a busy life since college, spending her time approving grants and participating in various charity functions for the trust foundation. It was a job she could do from anywhere on her laptop computer.

Forcing her reluctant body from the comfortable bed, she went into the bathroom to shower. At once her senses were assailed by a familiar aftershave, by the clean smell of balsam shampoo and soap, and by the memory of being enveloped in Trevor’s arms.

She’d loved snuggling her nose against his neck and feeling his arms around her, holding her close, as close as his poor injured ribs could take.

At times during the long, dreary winter, she’d ached to crawl into his embrace and rest there, too weary to ever move again. Trevor, her strong, gentle love…

But none of that was to be, she reminded the longing that rose to choke her. As some wise person had observed long ago: you made your bed; you slept in it. Alone.

She pulled off the jersey and stepped into the shower. Twenty minutes later, hair dry and held off her face in a ponytail, wearing jeans, a knit top and a determined smile, she went into the kitchen.

“Good morning, Lyric,” her aunt greeted her.

“Did you sleep okay?” Trevor’s uncle asked.

She smiled at the two who lingered at the table with coffee and the newspaper. “Good morning, Aunt Fay, Mr. Dalton. Yes, I slept like a log. Your air is much cooler and conducive to sleep up here,” she said.

“It’s the mountains,” the uncle said. “And Mr. Dalton was my father. Everyone calls me Uncle Nick.”

“Uncle Nick,” she repeated. Spotting mugs on a rack beside the coffeemaker, she poured a cup and sipped the hot brew that was just the way the ranch cook made it in Texas. “Mmm, delicious.”

“Trevor left pancakes and sausage in the oven,” the uncle told her.

For the briefest second, she hesitated, then she opened the oven door and removed the plate. Perfect golden circles edged by two links of sausage were ready for eating. Her tummy rumbled, reminding her she hadn’t had much food the previous day. She’d been too tense and excited to eat.

So much for great expectations.

“There’s milk in the refrigerator,” Aunt Fay told her, peering over her glasses.

Lyric poured a glass and took it, along with the coffee and food, to the table. The older couple moved newspaper sections to give her room. She ate in silence while they read and exchanged tidbits from the news.

“Trevor and Travis are in the paddock,” Uncle Nick told her when she finished. “They’re working with some green cutting horses. Do you need to go to the doctor?”

“No, thanks. I’m stiff but everything works.” After refreshing everyone’s coffee, she donned a hat and sunglasses, then carried her mug outside and ambled over to the wooden railing of the paddock beside the stable.

The man astride a beautiful bay gelding with black tail and mane looked exactly like Trevor. She knew in a glance that it wasn’t. “You must be Travis,” she said, leaning on the top rail.

“You got it right in one guess,” he told her, his smile brilliant against his tanned face and heartbreakingly like his twin’s. “What tipped you off?”

“Your smile is friendly.”

He guided the horse around the longe post and stopped it near her. “My brother’s isn’t?”

She wished she hadn’t been quite so candid. “Maybe I take things too personally,” she finally said in a light tone as if she were only joking.

The stable door opened. Trevor ducked his head and rode into the paddock on a magnificent black stallion.

“Oh,” she murmured.

“Beautiful, isn’t he?” Travis nudged the gelding closer to the rails as Trevor put the stallion through several routines such as spinning in a circle and backing, then standing beside a gate while his rider opened it. The two, moving as one, rode out into the pasture.

“What’s his name?” Lyric asked, gazing after Trevor and his mount.

“Boa’s Ebony. Eb for short.” Travis glanced toward the pasture, then back at her. “You ride?”

“Does Texas have cactus?” she countered.

“I’ll cut you out a sweet little mare,” he said and followed his twin into the pasture.

Five minutes later, he returned with a roan mare. Lyric joined him in the stable. She picked out a saddle and waited while Travis outfitted the mare, then he offered her a leg up. She left her coffee mug on a shelf and swung into the well-used saddle, ignoring the pain in sore muscles.

“Feels good,” she said.

He nodded. “Let’s go.” He led the mare outside to where he’d tied his mount.

The mare didn’t need guiding. She dutifully followed the gelding along a dirt track across an adjoining meadow.

They were heading toward a tree-lined ridge, Lyric realized. The ridge defined the beginning of forest and hills that rose ever upward. In the distance one peak stood above several others.

“Is that He-Devil Mountain?” she called to her escort.

He followed her line of sight. “Yes. There are seven peaks that form a sort of semicircle along Hells Canyon. He-Devil is the highest at a bit over 9300 feet.”

Hearing the staccato beat of hooves, Lyric looked over her right shoulder in time to see Trevor and the big stallion leap the stock fence of the pasture. They made a perfect picture against the brilliant azure of the sky as they sailed over the fence with a foot to spare.

Her heart rose with them and lodged in her throat, making it all but impossible to breathe.

“Trev was quiet for a long time after he returned from the rodeo circuit last October,” his twin remarked in a musing tone. “Some of us figured he’d met someone and fallen hard. Was that someone you?”

She tried to smile as if the idea was absurd, but it wouldn’t come. “What makes you think that?”

“Vibes. Or maybe it’s just that he’s quiet again this morning. I don’t think your aunt is the cause, so that leaves you.”

“There isn’t anything between us,” she managed to say.

His eyes, as blue as his twin’s, narrowed as he studied her. “I think there is.”

“He hates me.” The words, spoken aloud, were stark.

“Why don’t you two talk it over and clear things up?”

“I…I tried. I wrote him.”

Travis heaved an audible breath. “Yeah, he’s hard-headed. Don’t give up on him,” he advised.

“I’m only here because of my aunt. She wanted to visit.” The lie nearly stuck to her tongue. “Where are we going?” she asked to divert attention to their journey.

“The Devil’s Dining Room,” Travis said just as his twin rode up.

The stallion pressed close to the mare, crowding between her and the gelding as if establishing his claim. Trevor’s booted foot brushed hers. Even that brief contact was enough to send needles of fire along her leg.

She reined the mare away. “There seems to be a pattern of black markings on your ranch.” She spoke to Travis, but it was Trevor who answered.

“There is,” he said, letting the stallion take the lead while his twin fell in behind them on the gelding. “Your mount and the gelding are both out of a retired stud. The mare will be bred to Eb here when she’s ready.”

Lyric nodded stiffly. While familiar with all aspects of ranching, breeding and all that it implied were not topics she wanted to discuss with him.

The stallion tossed its head and pranced.

“He wants a run,” Trevor called. “You game?”

She considered her aches, but nodded anyway.

“Ready, set, go,” Travis yelled behind them.

The mare took off a split second after the stallion did, almost taking her rider by surprise. Lyric leaned forward as excitement gripped her.

The mare and stallion raced side by side across the wide meadow. Their hooves pounded in time with the beat of her pulse as she urged the mare on.

“Yi, yi, yi,” she heard Trevor shout, pushing the stallion to a faster pace.

Trevor and the stallion edged forward, outrunning her and the smaller horse. Lyric didn’t ask for more. She knew the mare was giving her all. Surprisingly they closed the gap and came abreast of the other two again.

Trevor looked over at her. Her heart did a somersault at the intensity of his stare. Then the larger horse stretched out and left them in the dust.

Lyric pulled up the mare and watched as the magnificent black beast ran like some mythical creature, hardly touching the ground as it flowed effortlessly with the wind. The rider seemed part of the magic, blending every movement with that of the stallion as they made a great circle.

At last, rider and mount, at a canter now, returned to her and the mare. Trevor’s twin, she saw, had gone back to the paddock. Without direction on her part, her horse again followed the other one.

They rode for an hour in silence, until they came upon a stream.

“Let them drink,” Trevor said.

She loosened the reins so the mare could dip her head into the tiny creek that wound down the ridge. After that, they rode on, heading for the top and coming out on a flat cliff that had a wonderful view of the ranch.

“The Devil’s Dining Room,” he said, dismounting.

Lyric did the same and ground-hitched her horse when he did. Trevor let her step up on a boulder, then onto a giant flat piece of granite that jutted over the cliff before he climbed up.

When he sat on the ledge and let his legs dangle over the side, she did, too, although not without misgivings.

“This rock has held all the Daltons at once without falling,” he told her.

“There’s always a first time,” she muttered, staring down into the lovely little valley. The ranch house looked like something for a doll from up here.

Gazing west, she observed the peaks spread out into the distance. “In Texas, you said the seven peaks were named for seven devils that used to come over and eat the children of the people here until Coyote changed them into mountains.”

“That’s the legend,” he agreed.

“He-Devil is the tallest. I saw the name on a road sign. Do the others have names?”

“The Devil’s Tooth, Mount Ogre, Mount Baal, the Tower of Babel, the Goblin.”

“That’s five, plus He-Devil. What’s the other one?”

He turned those blue eyes on her. Without blinking, he said, “She-Devil.”

It was the breeze, playfully tugging at their hats that finally broke their locked gazes and the silent struggle between them.

“Is that what you think of me?” she asked softly, as if by speaking the words that way, the answer might not hurt.

He set his hat more firmly on his head. “Does it matter?”

“Yes.”

Glancing at her once more, he shrugged and rose. “Let’s just say I don’t think much of a woman who kisses one man while engaged to another.” He leaped down to the smaller boulder, then to the ground.

Lyric stood on the hunk of granite and contemplated several retorts. None seemed worthy.

“Didn’t you get my letter?” she finally asked when she, too, stood on the ground by the boulders.

He nodded without looking at her.

In the letter she’d tried to explain why her mother had thought she was engaged and why she really hadn’t been. She tried again. “Lyle and I were at an impasse. He wanted to announce a wedding date. I wasn’t sure enough about us to do that. We weren’t engaged, not really.”

“So you strung him along, then while he was out of town you experimented with me. You must have decided it was real. You stayed with him.”

“Because he needed me.”

“Yeah,” Trevor said with undisguised bitterness. “He needed you, so you stayed.”

“Trevor—”

“The car wreck wasn’t all that serious, according to the news later that evening. It didn’t kill him or maim him or call for a life-or-death operation, did it?”

She hesitated. “No,” she said. “It didn’t.”

“But you stayed with him. Where’s your engagement ring?” he demanded, lifting her hand and holding it between them so they could both see her bare finger. He dropped it as if it might contaminate him with something dreadful.

“At home.”

“Your mother said you’d set a wedding date. In June, she said.”

Lyric stared at him. “You called? When?” She clutched his arm at his nod. “Trevor, when?”

“After I got the letter. Apparently you’d changed your mind about the marriage.” He pulled away from her grasp.

“She didn’t tell me about the call.”

“I told her not to. I didn’t figure it would make any difference.” He started toward the horses, then paused. “Would it?” he asked. “Would it have made a difference if we’d spoken? Would you have broken the engagement and come to me…if I’d asked?”

She thought of silent, endless nights at the hospital, of days at Lyle’s bedside when he went home, him thinking he was going to be all right, that they would marry and produce an heir to the two ranches.

We’ll have children right away, he’d said one afternoon toward the end. Would you rub my head? These damn headaches seem to be getting worse instead of better.

His mother hadn’t wanted him to know the truth. She’d wanted his final days to be happy ones, filled with plans for the future. He didn’t seem to realize he was slipping further and further away as feeling began to leave his body.

He hadn’t even noticed when he’d closed a car door on his hand. Lyric had been horrified but had managed to hide it as she released his hand and settled him on the terrace before running to the kitchen for a towel and ice to go on his injury.

He’d become more and more docile as the days wore on, and then he hadn’t wanted her out of his sight during the last weeks. She’d slept on a sofa in his room. Often she’d held him propped up in her arms when his breathing became labored and weak. Then one night he’d whispered, “Thank you for loving me.”

Those were the last words he spoke. He’d lapsed into a coma and was gone several hours later.

Studying the strong, healthy man who glared at her as he waited for an answer, she sighed and said softly, “No, I couldn’t have come then.”

His face hardened. “Then why the hell did you come now?”

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