Книга - The Mckettrick Way

The Mckettrick Way
Linda Lael Miller


She wanted his baby…and he wanted her! Meg McKettrick longs for a baby – husband optional. Perfect father material is gorgeous Brad O’Ballivan, old flame and new owner of his family ranch. But Meg – as strong, proud and stubborn as her ancestors – wants to do things her way…the McKettrick way. And Brad feels just as strongly about the O’Ballivan way… Love, marriage, babies and a lifetime to share – that’s what Brad wants. Not a single night of passion, an unexpected pregnancy and a woman who won’t budge. For a man who never gives up, it’s a battle of wills he intends to win…and nothing matters more than claiming Meg’s wild McKettrick heart.







“Don’t believe everything youread about me,” Brad saideasily.

“Who says I’ve been reading about you?”

“Come on, Meg. You expected me to drink Jack Daniel’s straight from the bottle. That’s hype – part of the bad-boy image. My manager cooked it up.”

“You haven’t been to rehab?”

He grinned. “Nope. Never trashed a hotel room, spent a weekend in jail or done any of the rest of the stuff you believe.”

“Really?”

“Really.” Brad pushed back his chair, returned to the jukebox and dropped a few coins in the slot. An old Johnny Cash ballad poured softly into the otherwise silent bar.

Brad started in her direction. He held out a hand to her.

Meg went to him. Automatically.

He drew her into his arms, holding her close but easy, and they danced without moving their feet. As the song ended, Brad propped his chin on top of Meg’s head and sighed. “I’ve missed you.”


LINDA LAEL MILLER

The daughter of a town marshal, Linda Lael Miller grew up in rural Washington. The self-confessed barn goddess was inspired to pursue a career as an author after a school teacher said the stories she was writing might be good enough to be published.

Linda broke into publishing in the early 1980s. She is now a New York Times bestselling author of more than sixty contemporary, romantic suspense and historical novels. When not writing, Linda enjoys riding her horses and playing with her cats and dogs. Through her Linda Lael Miller Scholarships for Women, she provides grants to women who seek to improve their lot in life through education.

For more information about Linda, her scholarships and her novels, visit www.lindalaelmiller.com.



Dear Reader,

A lot of you have asked for Meg McKettrick’s story, and here it is. What happens when a McKettrick butts heads with an O’Ballivan? Well, sparks fly, for one thing. Saddle up and ride with Meg, Brad and me, along with some familiar faces from earlier books, on an adventure of romance, humour and excitement in The McKettrick Way. I promise you’ll enjoy the journey, whether the McKettricks and O’Ballivans are old friends or new.

With love,

Linda Lael Miller




The McKettrick Way


LINDA LAEL MILLER




www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


In memory of my dad, Grady “Skip” Lael.

Happy trails, Cowboy.


Chapter One

Brad O’Ballivan opened the driver’s-side door of the waiting pickup truck, tossed his guitar case inside and turned to wave a farewell to the pilot and crew of the private jet he hoped never to ride in again.

A chilly fall wind slashed across the broad, lonesome clearing, rippling the fading grass, and he raised the collar of his denim jacket against it. Pulled his hat down a little lower over his eyes.

He was home.

Something inside him resonated to the Arizona high country, and more particularly to Stone Creek Ranch, like one prong of a perfectly balanced tuning fork. The sensation was peculiar to the place—he’d never felt it in his sprawling lakeside mansion outside Nashville, on the periphery of a town called Hendersonville, or at the villa in Mexico, or any of the other fancy digs where he’d hung his hat over the years since he’d turned his back on the spread—and so much more—to sing for his supper.

His grin was slightly ironic as he stood by the truck and watched the jet soar back into the sky. His retirement from the country music scene, at the age of thirty-five and the height of his success, had caused quite a media stir. He’d sold the jet and the big houses and most of what was in them, and given away the rest, except for the guitar and the clothes he was wearing. And he knew he’d never regret it.

He was through with that life. And once an O’Ballivan was through with something, that was the end of it.

The jet left a trail across the sky, faded to a silver spark, and disappeared.

Brad was about to climb into the truck and head for the ranch house, start coming to terms with things there, when he spotted a familiar battered gray Suburban jostling and gear-grinding its way over the rough road that had never really evolved beyond its beginnings as an old-time cattle trail.

He took off his hat, even though the wind nipped at the edges of his ears, and waited, partly eager, partly resigned.

The old Chevy came to a chortling stop a few inches from the toes of his boots, throwing up a cloud of red-brown dust, and his sister Olivia shut the big engine down and jumped out to round the hood and stride right up to him.

“You’re back,” Olivia said, sounding nonplussed. The eldest of Brad’s three younger sisters, at twenty-nine, she’d never quite forgiven him for leaving home—much less getting famous. Practical to the bone, she was small, with short, glossy dark hair and eyes the color of a brand-new pair of jeans, and just as starchy. Olivia was low-woman-on-the-totem-pole at a thriving veterinary practice in the nearby town of Stone Creek, specializing in large animals, and Brad knew she spent most of her workdays in a barn someplace, or out on the range, with one arm shoved up where the sun didn’t shine, turning a crossways calf or colt.

“I’m delighted to see you, too, Doc,” Brad answered dryly.

With an exasperated little cry, Olivia sprang off the soles of her worn-out boots to throw her arms around his neck, knocking his hat clear off his head in the process. She hugged him tight, and when she drew back, there were tears on her dirt-smudged cheeks, and she sniffled self-consciously.

“If this is some kind of publicity stunt,” Livie said, once she’d rallied a little, “I’m never going to forgive you.” She bent to retrieve his hat, handed it over.

God, she was proud. She’d let him pay for her education, but returned every other check he or his accountant sent with the words NO THANKS scrawled across the front in thick black capitals.

Brad chuckled, threw the hat into the pickup, to rest on top of the guitar case. “It’s no stunt,” he replied. “I’m back for good. Ready to ‘take hold and count for something,’ as Big John used to say.”

The mention of their late grandfather caused a poignant and not entirely comfortable silence to fall between them. Brad had been on a concert tour when the old man died of a massive coronary six months before, and he’d barely made it back to Stone Creek in time for the funeral. Worse, he’d had to leave again right after the services, in order to make a sold-out show in Chicago. The large infusions of cash he’d pumped into the home place over the years did little to assuage his guilt.

How much money is enough? How famous do you have tobe? Big John had asked, in his kindly but irascible way, not once but a hundred times. Come home, damn it. I need you.Your little sisters need you. And God knows, Stone Creek Ranch needs you.

Shoving a hand through his light brown hair, in need of trimming as always, Brad thrust out a sigh and scanned the surrounding countryside. “That old stallion still running loose out here, or did the wolves and the barbed wire finally get him?” he asked, raw where the memories of his grandfather chafed against his mind, and in sore need of a distraction.

Livie probably wasn’t fooled by the dodge, but she was gracious enough to grant Brad a little space to recover in, and he appreciated that. “We get a glimpse of Ransom every once in a while,” she replied, and a little pucker of worry formed between her eyebrows. “Always off on the horizon somewhere, keeping his distance.”

Brad laid a hand on his sister’s shoulder. She’d been fascinated with the legendary wild stallion since she was little. First sighted in the late nineteenth century and called King’s Ransom because that was what he was probably worth, the animal was black and shiny as wet ink, and so elusive that some people maintained he wasn’t flesh and blood at all, but spirit, a myth believed for so long that thought itself had made him real. The less fanciful maintained that Ransom was one in a long succession of stallions, all descended from that first mysterious sire. Brad stood squarely in this camp, as Big John had, but he wasn’t so sure Livie took the same rational view.

“They’re trying to trap him,” she said now, tears glistening in her eyes. “They want to pen him up. Get samples of his DNA. Turn him out to stud, so they can sell his babies.”

“Who’s trying to trap him, Liv?” Brad asked gently. It was cold, he was hungry, and setting foot in the old ranch house, without Big John there to greet him, was a thing to get past.

“Never mind,” Livie said, bucking up a little. Setting her jaw. “You wouldn’t be interested.”

There was no point in arguing with Olivia O’Ballivan, DVM, when she got that look on her face. “Thanks for bringing my truck out here,” Brad said. “And for coming to meet me.”

“I didn’t bring the truck,” Livie replied. Some people would have taken the credit, but Liv was half again too stubborn to admit to a kindness she hadn’t committed, let alone one she considered unwarranted. “Ashley and Melissa did that. They’re probably at the ranch house right now, hanging streamers or putting up a Welcome Home, Brad banner or something. And I only came out here because I saw that jet and figured it was some damn movie star, buzzing the deer.”

Brad had one leg inside the truck, ready to hoist himself into the driver’s seat. “That’s a problem around here?” he asked, with a wry half grin. “Movie stars buzzing deer in Lear jets?”

“It happens in Montana all the time,” Livie insisted, plainly incensed. She felt just as strongly about snowmobiles and other off-road vehicles.

Brad reached down, touched the tip of her nose with one index finger. “This isn’t Montana, shortstop,” he pointed out. “See you at home?”

“Another time,” Livie said, not giving an inch. “After all the hoopla dies down.”

Inwardly, Brad groaned. He wasn’t up for hoopla, or any kind of celebration Ashley and Melissa, their twin sisters, might have cooked up in honor of his return. Classic between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place stuff—he couldn’t hurt their feelings, either.

“Tell me they’re not planning a party,” he pleaded.

Livie relented, but only slightly. One side of her mouth quirked up in a smile. “You’re in luck, Mr. Multiple Grammy Winner. There’s a McKettrick baby shower going on over in Indian Rock as we speak, and practically the whole county’s there.”

The name McKettrick unsettled Brad even more than the prospect of going home to banners, streamers and a collection of grinning neighbors, friends and sisters. “Not Meg,” he muttered, and then blushed, since he hadn’t intended to say the words out loud.

Livie’s smile intensified, the way it did when she had a solid hand at gin rummy and was fixing to go out and stick him with a lot of aces and face cards. She shook her head. “Meg’s back in Indian Rock for good, rumor has it, and she’s still single,” she assured him. “Her sister Sierra’s the one having a baby.”

In a belated and obviously fruitless attempt to hide his relief at this news, Brad shut the truck door between himself and Livie and, since the keys were waiting in the ignition, started up the rig.

Looking smug, Livie waved cheerily, climbed back into the Suburban and drove off, literally in a cloud of dust.

Brad sat waiting for it to settle.

The feelings took a little longer.

“Go haunt somebody else!” Meg McKettrick whispered to the ghost cowboy riding languidly in the passenger seat of her Blazer, as she drove past Sierra’s new house, on the outskirts of Indian Rock, for at least the third time. Both sides of the road were jammed with cars, and if she didn’t find a parking place soon, she’d be late for the baby shower. If not the actual baby. “Pick on Keegan—or Jesse—or Rance—anybody but me!”

“They don’t need haunting,” he said mildly. He looked nothing like the august, craggy-faced, white-haired figure in his portraits, grudgingly posed for late in his long and vigorous life. No, Angus McKettrick had come back in his prime, square-jaw handsome, broad shouldered, his hair thick and golden brown, his eyes intensely blue, at ease in the charm he’d passed down to generations of male descendents.

Still flustered, Meg found a gap between a Lexus and a minivan, wedged the Blazer into it, and turned off the ignition with a twist of one wrist. Tight-tipped, she jumped out of the rig, jerked open the back door, and reached for the festively wrapped package on the seat. “I’ve got news for you,” she sputtered. “I don’t need haunting, either!”

Angus, who looked to Meg as substantial and “real” as anybody she’d ever encountered, got out and stood on his side of the Blazer, stretching. “So you say,” he answered, in a lazy drawl. “All of them are married, starting families of their own. Carrying on the McKettrick name.”

“Thanks for the reminder,” Meg bit out, in the terse undertone she reserved for arguments with her great-great-however-many-greats grandfather. Clutching the gift she’d bought for Travis and Sierra’s baby, she shouldered both the back and driver’s doors shut.

“In my day,” Angus said easily, “you’d have been an old maid.”

“Hello?” Meg replied, without moving her mouth. Over her long association with Angus McKettrick—which went back to her earliest childhood memories—she’d developed her own brand of ventriloquism, so other people, who couldn’t see him, wouldn’t think she was talking to herself. “This isn’t ‘your day.’ It’s mine. Twenty-first century, all the way. Women don’t define themselves by whether they’re married or not.” She paused, sucked in a calming breath. “Here’s an idea—why don’t you wait in the car? Or, better yet, go ride some happy trail.”

Angus kept pace with her as she crossed the road, clomping along in his perpetually muddy boots. As always, he wore a long, cape-shouldered canvas coat over a rough-spun shirt of butternut cotton and denim trousers that weren’t quite jeans. The handle of his ever-present pistol, a long-barreled Colt .45, made a bulge behind his right coat pocket. He wore a hat only when there was a threat of rain, and since the early-October weather was mild, he was bareheaded that evening.

“It might be your testy nature that’s the problem,” Angus ruminated. “You’re downright pricklish, that’s what you are. A woman ought to have a little sass to her, to spice things up a mite. You’ve got more than your share, though, and it ain’t becoming.”

Meg ignored him, and the bad grammar he always affected when he wanted to impart folksy wisdom, as she tromped up the front steps, shuffling the bulky package in her arms to jab at the doorbell. Here comes your nineteenth noncommittal yellow layette, she thought, wishing she’d opted for the sterling baby rattles instead. If Sierra and Travis knew the sex of their unborn child, they weren’t telling, which made shopping even more of a pain than normal.

The door swung open and Eve, Meg and Sierra’s mother, stood frowning in the chasm. “It’s about time you got here,” she said, pulling Meg inside. Then, in a whisper, “Is he with you?”

“Of course he is,” Meg answered, as her mother peered past her shoulder, searching in vain for Angus. “He never misses a family gathering.”

Eve sniffed, straightened her elegant shoulders. “You’re late,” she said. “Sierra will be here any minute!”

“It’s not as if she’s going to be surprised, Mom,” Meg said, setting the present atop a mountain of others of a suspiciously similar size and shape. “There must be a hundred cars parked out there.”

Eve shut the door smartly and then, before Meg could shrug out of her navy blue peacoat, gripped her firmly by the shoulders. “You’ve lost weight,” she accused. “And there are dark circles under your eyes. Aren’t you sleeping well?”

“I’m fine,” Meg insisted. And she was fine—for an old maid.

Angus, never one to be daunted by a little thing like a closed door, materialized just behind Eve, looked around at his assembled brood with pleased amazement. The place was jammed with McKettrick cousins, their wives and husbands, their growing families.

Something tightened in the pit of Meg’s stomach.

“Nonsense,” Eve said. “If you could have gotten away with it, you would have stayed home today, wandering around that old house in your pajamas, with no makeup on and your hair sticking out in every direction.”

It was true, but beside the point. With Eve McKettrick for a mother, Meg couldn’t get away with much of anything. “I’m here,” she said. “Give me a break, will you?”

She pulled off her coat, handed it to Eve, and sidled into the nearest group, a small band of women. Meg, who had spent all her childhood summers in Indian Rock, didn’t recognize any of them.

“It’s all over the tabloids,” remarked a tall, thin woman wearing a lot of jewelry. “Brad O’Ballivan is in rehab again.”

Meg caught her breath at the name, and nearly dropped the cup of punch someone shoved into her hands.

“Nonsense,” a second woman replied. “Last week those rags were reporting that he’d been abducted by aliens.”

“He’s handsome enough to have fans on other planets,” observed a third, sighing wistfully.

Meg tried to ease out of the circle, but it had closed around her. She felt dizzy.

“My cousin Evelyn works at the post office over in Stone Creek,” said yet another woman, with authority. “According to her, Brad’s fan mail is being forwarded to the family ranch, just outside of town. He’s not in rehab, and he’s not on another planet. He’s home. Evelyn says they’ll have to build a second barn just to hold all those letters.”

Meg smiled rigidly, but on the inside, she was scrambling for balance.

Suddenly, woman #1 focused on her. “You used to date Brad O’Ballivan, didn’t you, Meg?”

“That—that was a long time ago,” Meg said as graciously as she could, given that she was right in the middle of a panic attack. “We were just kids, and it was a summer thing—” Frantically, she calculated the distance between Indian Rock and Stone Creek—a mere forty miles. Not nearly far enough.

“I’m sure Meg has dated a lot of famous people,” one of the other women said. “Working for McKettrickCo the way she did, flying all over the place in the company jet—”

“Brad wasn’t famous when I knew him,” Meg said lamely.

“You must miss your old life,” someone else commented.

While it was true that Meg was having some trouble shifting from full throttle to a comparative standstill, since the family conglomerate had gone public a few months before, and her job as an executive vice president had gone with it, she didn’t miss the meetings and the sixty-hour workweeks all that much. Money certainly wasn’t a problem; she had a trust fund, as well as a personal investment portfolio thicker than the Los Angeles phone book.

A stir at the front door saved her from commenting.

Sierra came in, looking baffled.

“Surprise!” the crowd shouted as one.

The surprise is on me, Meg thought bleakly. Brad O’Ballivan is back.

Brad shoved the truck into gear and drove to the bottom of the hill, where the road forked. Turn left, and he’d be home in five minutes. Turn right, and he was headed for Indian Rock.

He had no damn business going to Indian Rock.

He had nothing to say to Meg McKettrick, and if he never set eyes on the woman again, it would be two weeks too soon.

He turned right.

He couldn’t have said why.

He just drove.

At one point, needing noise, he switched on the truck radio, fiddled with the dial until he found a country-western station. A recording of his own voice filled the cab of the pickup, thundering from all the speakers.

He’d written that ballad for Meg.

He turned the dial to Off.

Almost simultaneously, his cell phone jangled in the pocket of his jacket; he considered ignoring it—there were a number of people he didn’t want to talk to—but suppose it was one of his sisters calling? Suppose they needed help?

He flipped the phone open, not taking his eyes off the curvy mountain road to check the caller ID panel first. “O’Ballivan,” he said.

“Have you come to your senses yet?” demanded his manager, Phil Meadowbrook. “Shall I tell you again just howmuch money those people in Vegas are offering? They’re willing to build you your own theater, for God’s sake. This is a three-year gig—”

“Phil?” Brad broke in.

“Say yes,” Phil pleaded.

“I’m retired.”

“You’re thirty-five,” Phil argued. “Nobody retires at thirty-five!”

“We’ve already had this conversation, Phil.”

“Don’t hang up!”

Brad, who’d been about to thumb the off button, sighed.

“What the hell are you going to do in Stone Creek, Arizona?” Phil demanded. “Herd cattle? Sing to your horse? Think of the money, Brad. Think of the women, throwing their underwear at your feet—”

“I’ve been working real hard to repress that image,” Brad said. “Thanks a lot for the reminder.”

“Okay, forget the underwear,” Phil shot back, without missing a beat. “But think of the money!”

“I’ve already got more of that than I need, Phil, and so do you, so spare me the riff where your grandchildren are homeless waifs picking through garbage behind the supermarket.”

“I’ve used that one, huh?” Phil asked.

“Oh, yeah,” Brad answered.

“What are you doing, right this moment?”

“I’m headed for the Dixie Dog Drive-In.”

“The what?”

“Goodbye, Phil.”

“What are you going to do at the Dixie-Whatever Drive-In that you couldn’t do in Music City? Or Vegas?”

“You wouldn’t understand,” Brad said. “And I can’t say I blame you, because I don’t really understand it myself.”

Back in the day, he and Meg used to meet at the Dixie Dog, by tacit agreement, when either of them had been away. It had been some kind of universe-thing, purely intuitive. He guessed he wanted to see if it still worked—and he’d be damned if he’d try to explain that to Phil.

“Look,” Phil said, revving up for another sales pitch, “I can’t put these casino people off forever. You’re riding high right now, but things are bound to cool off. I’ve got to tell them something—”

“Tell them ‘thanks, but no thanks,’” Brad suggested. This time, he broke the connection.

Phil, being Phil, tried to call twice before he finally gave up.

Passing familiar landmarks, Brad told himself he ought to turn around. The old days were gone, things had ended badly between him and Meg anyhow, and she wasn’t going to be at the Dixie Dog.

He kept driving.

He went by the Welcome To Indian Rock sign, and the Roadhouse, a popular beer-and-burger stop for truckers, tourists and locals, and was glad to see the place was still open. He slowed for Main Street, smiled as he passed Cora’s Curl and Twirl, squinted at the bookshop next door. That was new.

He frowned. Things changed, places changed.

What if the Dixie Dog had closed down?

What if it was boarded up, with litter and sagebrush tumbling through a deserted parking lot?

And what the hell did it matter, anyhow?

Brad shoved a hand through his hair. Maybe Phil and everybody else was right—maybe he was crazy to turn down the Vegas deal. Maybe he would end up sitting in the barn, serenading a bunch of horses.

He rounded a bend, and there was the Dixie Dog, still open. Its big neon sign, a giant hot dog, was all lit up and going through its corny sequence—first it was covered in red squiggles of light, meant to suggest catsup, and then yellow, for mustard. There were a few cars lined up in the drive-through lane, a few more in the parking lot.

Brad pulled into one of the slots next to a speaker and rolled down the truck window.

“Welcome to the Dixie Dog Drive-In,” a youthful female voice chirped over the bad wiring. “What can I get you today?”

Brad hadn’t thought that far, but he was starved. He peered at the light-up menu box under the chunky metal speaker. Then the obvious choice struck him and he said, “I’ll take a Dixie Dog,” he said. “Hold the chili and onions.”

“Coming right up” was the cheerful response. “Anything to drink?”

“Chocolate shake,” he decided. “Extra thick.”

His cell phone rang again.

He ignored it again.

The girl thanked him and roller-skated out with the order about five minutes later.

When she wheeled up to the driver’s-side window, smiling, her eyes went wide with recognition, and she dropped the tray with a clatter.

Silently, Brad swore. Damn if he hadn’t forgotten he was famous.

The girl, a skinny thing wearing too much eye makeup, immediately started to cry. “I’m sorry!” she sobbed, squatting to gather up the mess.

“It’s okay,” Brad answered quietly, leaning to look down at her, catching a glimpse of her plastic name tag. “It’s okay, Mandy. No harm done.”

“I’ll get you another dog and a shake right away, Mr. O’Ballivan!”

“Mandy?”

She stared up at him pitifully, sniffling. Thanks to the copious tears, most of the goop on her eyes had slid south. “Yes?”

“When you go back inside, could you not mention seeing me?”

“But you’re Brad O’Ballivan!”

“Yeah,” he answered, suppressing a sigh. “I know.”

She was standing up again by then, the tray of gathered debris clasped in both hands. She seemed to sway a little on her rollers. “Meeting you is just about the most important thing that’s ever happened to me in my whole entire life. I don’t know if I could keep it a secret even if I tried!”

Brad leaned his head against the back of the truck seat and closed his eyes. “Not forever, Mandy,” he said. “Just long enough for me to eat a Dixie Dog in peace.”

She rolled a little closer. “You wouldn’t happen to have a picture you could autograph for me, would you?”

“Not with me,” Brad answered. There were boxes of publicity pictures in storage, along with the requisite T-shirts, slick concert programs and other souvenirs commonly sold on the road. He never carried them, much to Phil’s annoyance.

“You could sign this napkin, though,” Mandy said. “It’s only got a little chocolate on the corner.”

Brad took the paper napkin, and her order pen, and scrawled his name. Handed both items back through the window.

“Now I can tell my grandchildren I spilled your lunch all over the pavement at the Dixie Dog Drive-In, and here’s my proof.” Mandy beamed, waggling the chocolate-stained napkin.

“Just imagine,” Brad said. The slight irony in his tone was wasted on Mandy, which was probably a good thing.

“I won’t tell anybody I saw you until you drive away,” Mandy said with eager resolve. “I think I can last that long.”

“That would be good,” Brad told her.

She turned and whizzed back toward the side entrance to the Dixie Dog.

Brad waited, marveling that he hadn’t considered incidents like this one before he’d decided to come back home. In retrospect, it seemed shortsighted, to say the least, but the truth was, he’d expected to be—Brad O’Ballivan.

Presently, Mandy skated back out again, and this time, she managed to hold on to the tray.

“I didn’t tell a soul!” she whispered. “But Heather and Darlene both asked me why my mascara was all smeared.” Efficiently, she hooked the tray onto the bottom edge of the window.

Brad extended payment, but Mandy shook her head.

“The boss said it’s on the house, since I dumped your first order on the ground.”

He smiled. “Okay, then. Thanks.”

Mandy retreated, and Brad was just reaching for the food when a bright red Blazer whipped into the space beside his. The driver’s-side door sprang open, crashing into the metal speaker, and somebody got out, in a hurry.

Something quickened inside Brad.

And in the next moment, Meg McKettrick was standing practically on his running board, her blue eyes blazing.

Brad grinned. “I guess you’re not over me after all,” he said.


Chapter Two

After Sierra had opened all her shower presents, and cake and punch had been served, Meg had felt the old, familiar tug in the middle of her solar plexus and headed straight for the Dixie Dog Drive-In. Now that she was there, standing next to a truck and all but nose to nose with Brad O’Ballivan through the open window, she didn’t know what to do—or say.

Angus poked her from behind, and she flinched.

“Speak up,” her dead ancestor prodded.

“Stay out of this,” she answered, without thinking.

Puzzlement showed in Brad’s affably handsome face. “Huh?”

“Never mind,” Meg said. She took a step back, straightened. “And I am so over you.”

Brad grinned. “Damned if it didn’t work,” he marveled. He climbed out of the truck to stand facing Meg, ducking around the tray hooked to the door. His dark-blond hair was artfully rumpled, and his clothes were downright ordinary.

“What worked?” Meg demanded, even though she knew.

Laughter sparked in his blue-green eyes, along with considerable pain, and he didn’t bother to comment.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

Brad spread his hands. Hands that had once played Meg’s body as skillfully as any guitar. Oh, yes. Brad O’Ballivan knew how to set all the chords vibrating.

“Free country,” he said. “Or has Indian Rock finally seceded from the Union with the ranch house on the Triple M for a capitol?”

Since she felt a strong urge to bolt for the Blazer and lay rubber getting out of the Dixie Dog’s parking lot, Meg planted her feet and hoisted her chin. McKettricks, she reminded herself silently, don’t run.

“I heard you were in rehab,” she said, hoping to get under his hide.

“That’s a nasty rumor,” Brad replied cheerfully.

“How about the two ex-wives and that scandal with the actress?”

His grin, insouciant in the first place, merely widened. “Unfortunately, I can’t deny the two ex-wives,” he said. “As for the actress—well, it all depends on whether you believe her version or mine. Have you been following my career, Meg McKettrick?”

Meg reddened.

“Tell him the truth,” Angus counseled. “You never forgot him.”

“No,” Meg said, addressing both Brad and Angus.

Brad looked unconvinced. He was probably just egotistical enough to think she logged onto his Web site regularly, bought all his CDs and read every tabloid article about him that she could get her hands on. Which she did, but that was not the point.

“You’re still the best-looking woman I’ve ever laid eyes on,” he said. “That hasn’t changed, anyhow.”

“I’m not a member of your fan club, O’Ballivan,” Meg informed him. “So hold the insincere flattery, okay?”

One corner of his mouth tilted upward in a half grin, but his eyes were sad. He glanced back toward the truck, then met Meg’s gaze again. “I don’t flatter anybody,” Brad said. Then he sighed. “I guess I’d better get back to Stone Creek.”

Something in his tone piqued Meg’s interest.

Who was she kidding?

Everything about him piqued her interest. As much as she didn’t want that to be true, it was.

“I was sorry to hear about Big John’s passing,” she said. She almost touched his arm, but managed to catch herself just short of it. If she laid a hand on Brad O’Ballivan, who knew what would happen?

“Thanks,” he replied.

A girl on roller skates wheeled out of the drive-in to collect the tray from the window edge of Brad’s truck, her cheeks pink with carefully restrained excitement. “I might have said something to Heather and Darleen,” the teenager confessed, after a curious glance at Meg. “About you being who you are and the autograph and everything.”

Brad muttered something.

The girl skated away.

“I’ve gotta go,” Brad told Meg, looking toward the drive-in. Numerous faces were pressed against the glass door; in another minute, there would probably be a stampede. “I don’t suppose we could have dinner together or something? Maybe tomorrow night? There are—well, there are some things I’d like to say to you.”

“Say yes,” Angus told her.

“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” Meg said.

“A drink, then? There’s a redneck bar in Stone Creek—”

“Don’t be such a damned prig,” Angus protested, nudging her again.

“I’m not a prig.”

Brad frowned, threw another nervous look toward the drive-in and all those grinning faces. “I never said you were,” he replied.

“I wasn’t—” Meg paused, bit her lower lip. I wasn’t talking to you. No, siree, I was talking to Angus McKettrick’s ghost. “Okay,” she agreed, to cover her lapse. “I guess one drink couldn’t do any harm.”

Brad climbed into his truck. The door of the drive-in crashed open, and the adoring hordes poured out, screaming with delight.

“Go!” Meg told him.

“Six o’clock tomorrow night,” Brad reminded her. He backed the truck out, made a narrow turn to avoid running over the approaching herd of admirers and peeled out of the lot.

Meg turned to the disappointed fans. “Brad O’Ballivan,” she said diplomatically, “has left the building.”

Nobody got the joke.

The sun was setting, red-gold shot through with purple, when Brad crested the last hill before home and looked down on Stone Creek Ranch for the first time since his grandfather’s funeral. The creek coursed, silvery-blue, through the middle of the land. The barn and the main house, built by Sam O’Ballivan’s own hands and shored up by every generation to follow, stood as sturdy and imposing as ever. Once, there had been two houses on the place, but the one belonging to Major John Blackstone, the original landowner, had been torn down long ago. Now a copse of oak trees stood where the major had lived, surrounding a few old graves.

Big John was buried there, by special dispensation from the Arizona state government.

A lump formed in Brad’s throat. You see that I’m laid to rest with the old-timers when the bell tolls, Big John had told him once. Not in that cemetery in town.

It had taken some doing, but Brad had made it happen.

He wanted to head straight for Big John’s final resting place, pay his respects first thing, but there was a cluster of cars parked in front of the ranch house. His sisters were waiting to welcome him home.

Brad blinked a couple of times, rubbed his eyes with a thumb and forefinger, and headed for the house.

Time to face the proverbial music.

Meg drove slowly back to the Triple M, going the long way to pass the main ranch house, Angus’s old stomping grounds, in the vain hope that he would decide to haunt it for a while, instead of her. A descendant of Angus’s eldest son, Holt, and daughter-in-law Lorelei, Meg called their place home.

As they bumped across the creek bridge, Angus assessed the large log structure, added onto over the years, and well-maintained.

Though close, all the McKettricks were proud of their particular branch of the family tree. Keegan, who occupied the main house now, along with his wife, Molly, daughter, Devon, and young son, Lucas, could trace his lineage back to Kade, another of Angus’s four sons.

Rance, along with his daughters, was Rafe’s progeny. He and the girls and his bride, Emma, lived in the grandly rustic structure on the other side of the creek from Keegan’s place.

Finally, there was Jesse. He was Jeb’s descendant, and resided, when he wasn’t off somewhere participating in a rodeo or a poker tournament, in the house Jeb had built for his wife, Chloe, high on a hill on the southwestern section of the ranch. Jesse was happily married to a hometown girl, the former Cheyenne Bridges, and like Keegan’s Molly and Rance’s Emma, Cheyenne was expecting a baby.

Everybody, it seemed to Meg, was expecting a baby.

Except her, of course.

She bit her lower lip.

“I bet if you got yourself pregnant by that singing cowboy,” Angus observed, “he’d have the decency to make an honest woman out of you.”

Angus had an uncanny ability to tap into Meg’s wavelength; though he swore he couldn’t read her mind, she wondered sometimes.

“Great idea,” she scoffed. “And for your information, I am an honest woman.”

Keegan was just coming out of the barn as Meg passed; he smiled and waved. She tooted the Blazer’s horn in greeting.

“He sure looks like Kade,” Angus said. “Jesse looks like Jeb, and Rance looks like Rafe.” He sighed. “It sure makes me lonesome for my boys.”

Meg felt a grudging sympathy for Angus. He’d ruined a lot of dates, being an almost constant companion, but she loved him. “Why can’t you be where they are?” she asked softly. “Wherever that is.”

“I’ve got to see to you,” he answered. “You’re the last holdout.”

“I’d be all right, Angus,” she said. She’d asked him about the afterlife, but all he’d ever been willing to say was that there was no such thing as dying, just a change of perspective. Time wasn’t linear, he claimed, but simultaneous. The “whole ball of string,” as he put it, was happening at once—past, present and future. Some of the experiences the women in her family, including herself and Sierra, had had up at Holt’s house lent credence to the theory.

Sierra claimed that, before her marriage to Travis and the subsequent move to the new semi-mansion in town, she and her young son, Liam, had shared the old house with a previous generation of McKettricks—Doss and Hannah and a little boy called Tobias. Sierra had offered journals and photograph albums as proof, and Meg had to admit, her half sister made a compelling case.

Still, and for all that she’d been keeping company with a benevolent ghost since she was little, Meg was a left-brain type.

When Angus didn’t comment on her insistence that she’d get along fine if he went on to the great roundup in the sky, or whatever, Meg tried again. “Look,” she said gently, “when I was little, and Sierra disappeared, and Mom was so frantic to find her that she couldn’t take care of me, I really needed you. But I’m a grown woman now, Angus. I’m independent. I have a life.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Angus’s jaw tighten. “That Hank Breslin,” he said, “was no good for Eve. No better than your father was. Every time the right man came along, she was so busy cozying up to the wrong one that she didn’t even notice what was right in front of her.”

Hank Breslin was Sierra’s father. He’d kidnapped Sierra, only two years old at the time, when Eve served him with divorce papers, and raised her in Mexico. For a variety of reasons, Eve hadn’t reconnected with her lost daughter until recently. Meg’s own father, about whom she knew little, had died in an accident a month before she was born. Nobody liked to talk about him—even his name was a mystery.

“And you think I’ll make the same mistakes my mother did?” Meg said.

“Hell,” Angus said, sparing her a reluctant grin, “right now, even a mistake would be progress.”

“With all due respect,” Meg replied, “having you around all the time is not exactly conducive to romance.”

They started the long climb uphill, headed for the house that now belonged to her and Sierra. Meg had always loved that house—it had been a refuge for her, full of cousins. Looking back, she wondered why, given that Eve had rarely accompanied her on those summer visits, had instead left her daughter in the care of a succession of nannies and, later, aunts and uncles.

Sierra’s kidnapping had been a traumatic event, for certain, but the problems Eve had subsequently developed because of it had left Meg relatively unmarked. She hadn’t been lonely as a child, mainly because of Angus.

“I’ll stay clear tomorrow night, when you go to Stone Creek for that drink,” Angus said.

“You like Brad.”

“Always did. Liked Travis, too.’ Course, I knew he was meant for your sister, that they’d meet up in time.”

Meg and Sierra’s husband, Travis, were old friends. They’d tried to get something going, convinced they were perfect for each other, but it hadn’t worked. Now that Travis and Sierra were together, and ecstatically happy, Meg was glad.

“Don’t get your hopes up,” she said. “About Brad and me, I mean.”

Angus didn’t reply. He appeared to be deep in thought. Or maybe as he looked out at the surrounding countryside, he was remembering his youth, when he’d staked a claim to this land and held it with blood and sweat and sheer McKettrick stubbornness.

“You must have known the O’Ballivans,” Meg reflected, musing. Like her own family, Brad’s had been pioneers in this part of Arizona.

“I was older than dirt by the time Sam O’Ballivan brought his bride, Maddie, up from Haven. Might have seen them once or twice. But I knew Major Blackstone, all right.” Angus smiled at some memory. “He and I used to arm wrestle sometimes, in the card room back of Jolene Bell’s Saloon, when we couldn’t best each other at poker.”

“Who won?” Meg asked, smiling slightly at the image.

“Same as the poker,” Angus answered with a sigh. “We’d always come out about even. He’d win half the time, me the other half.”

The house came in sight, the barn towering nearby. Angus’s expression took on a wistful aspect.

“When you’re here,” Meg ventured, “can you see Doss and Hannah and Tobias? Talk to them?”

“No,” Angus said flatly.

“Why not?” Meg persisted, even though she knew Angus didn’t want to pursue the subject.

“Because they’re not dead,” he said. “They’re just on the other side, like my boys.”

“Well, I’m not dead, either,” Meg said reasonably. She refrained from adding that she could have shown him their graves, up in the McKettrick cemetery. Shown him his own, for that matter. It would have been unkind, of course, but there was another reason for her reluctance, too. In some version of that cemetery, given what he’d told her about time, there was surely a headstone with her name on it.

“You wouldn’t understand,” Angus told her. He always said that, when she tried to find out how it was for him, where he went when he wasn’t following her around.

“Try me,” she said.

He vanished.

Resigned, Meg pulled up in front of the garage, added onto the original house sometime in the 1950s, and equipped with an automatic door opener, and pushed the button so she could drive in.

She half expected to find Angus sitting at the kitchen table when she went into the house, but he wasn’t there.

What she needed, she decided, was a cup of tea.

She got Lorelei’s teapot out of the built-in china cabinet and set it firmly on the counter. The piece was legendary in the family; it had a way of moving back to the cupboard of its own volition, from the table or the counter, and vice versa.

Meg filled the electric kettle at the sink and plugged it in to heat.

Tea was not going to cure what ailed her.

Brad O’Ballivan was back.

Compared to that, ghosts, the mysteries of time and space, and teleporting teapots seemed downright mundane.

And she’d agreed, like a fool, to meet him in Stone Creek for a drink. What had she been thinking?

Standing there in her kitchen, Meg leaned against the counter and folded her arms, waiting for the tea water to boil. Brad had hurt her so badly, she’d thought she’d never recover. For years after he’d dumped her to go to Nashville, she’d barely been able to come back to Indian Rock, and when she had, she’d driven straight to the Dixie Dog, against her will, sat in some rental car, and cried like an idiot.

There are some things I’d like to say to you, Brad had told her, that very day.

“What things?” she asked now, aloud.

The teakettle whistled.

She unplugged it, measured loose orange pekoe into Lorelei’s pot and poured steaming water over it.

It was just a drink, Meg reminded herself. An innocent drink.

She should call Brad, cancel gracefully.

Or, better yet, she could just stand him up. Not show up at all. Just as he’d done to her, way back when, when she’d loved him with all her heart and soul, when she’d believed he meant to make a place for her in his busy, exciting life.

Musing, Meg laid a hand to her lower abdomen.

She’d stopped believing in a lot of things when Brad O’Ballivan ditched her.

Maybe he wanted to apologize.

She gave a teary snort of laughter.

And maybe he really had fans on other planets.

A rap at the back door made her start. Angus? He never knocked—he just appeared. Usually at the most inconvenient possible time.

Meg went to the door, peered through the old, thick panes of greenish glass, saw Travis Reid looming on the other side. She wrestled with the lock and let him in.

“I’m here on reconnaissance,” he announced, taking off his cowboy hat and hanging it on the peg next to the door. “Sierra’s worried about you, and so is Eve.”

Meg put a hand to her forehead. She’d left the baby shower abruptly to go meet Brad at the Dixie Dog Drive-In. “I’m sorry,” she said, stepping back so Travis could come inside. “I’m all right, really. You shouldn’t have come all the way out here—”

“Eve tried your cell—which is evidently off—and Sierra left three or four messages on voice mail,” he said with a nod toward the kitchen telephone. “Consider yourself fortunate that I got here before they called out the National Guard.”

Meg laughed, closed the door against the chilly October twilight, and watched as Travis took off his sheepskin-lined coat and hung it next to the hat. “I was just feeling a little—overwhelmed.”

“Overwhelmed?” She’d been possessed.

Travis went to the telephone, punched in a sequence of numbers and waited. “Hi, honey,” he said presently, when Sierra answered. “Meg’s alive and well. No armed intruders. No bloody accident. She was just—overwhelmed.”

“Tell her I’ll call her later,” Meg said. “Mom, too.”

“She’ll call you later,” Travis repeated dutifully. “Eve, too.” He listened again, promised to pick up a gallon of milk and a loaf of bread on the way home and hung up.

Knowing Travis wasn’t fond of tea, Meg offered him a cup of instant coffee, instead.

He accepted, taking a seat at the table where generations of McKettricks, from Holt and Lorelei on down, had taken their meals. “What’s really going on, Meg?” he asked quietly, watching her as she poured herself some tea and joined him.

“What makes you think anything is going on?”

“I know you. We tried to fall in love, remember?”

“Brad O’Ballivan’s back,” she said.

Travis nodded. “And this means—?”

“Nothing,” Meg answered, much too quickly. “It means nothing. I just—”

Travis settled back in his chair, folded his arms, and waited.

“Okay, it was a shock,” Meg admitted. She sat up a little straighter. “But you already knew.”

“Jesse told me.”

“And nobody thought to mention it to me?”

“I guess we assumed you’d talked to Brad.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because—” Travis paused, looked uncomfortable. “It’s no secret that the two of you had a thing going, Meg. Indian Rock and Stone Creek are small places, forty miles apart. Things get around.”

Meg’s face burned. She’d thought, she’d truly believed, that no one on earth knew Brad had broken her heart. She’d pretended it didn’t matter that he’d left town so abruptly. Even laughed about it. Gone on to finish college, thrown herself into that first entry-level job at McKettrickCo. Dated other men, including the then-single Travis.

And she hadn’t fooled anyone.

“Are you going to see him again?”

Meg pressed the tips of her fingers hard into her closed eyes. Nodded. Then shook her head from side to side.

Travis chuckled. “Make a decision, Meg,” he said.

“We’re supposed to have a drink together tomorrow night, at a cowboy bar in Stone Creek. I don’t know why I said I’d meet him—after all this time, what do we have to say to each other?”

“‘How’ve ya been?’” Travis suggested.

“I know how he’s been—rich and famous, married twice, busy building a reputation that makes Jesse’s look tame,” she said. “I, on the other hand, have been a workaholic. Period.”

“Aren’t you being a little hard on yourself? Not to mention Brad?” A grin quirked the corner of Travis’s mouth. “Comparing him to Jesse?”

Jesse had been a wild man, if a good-hearted, well-intentioned one, until he’d met up with Cheyenne Bridges. When he’d fallen, he’d fallen hard, and for the duration, the way bad boys so often do.

“Maybe Brad’s changed,” Travis said.

“Maybe not,” Meg countered.

“Well, I guess you could leave town for a while. Stay out of his way.” Travis was trying hard not to smile. “Volunteer for a space mission or something.”

“I am not going to run,” Meg said. “I’ve always wanted to live right here, on this ranch, in this house. Besides, I intend to be here when the baby comes.”

Travis’s face softened at the mention of the impending birth. Until Sierra came along, Meg hadn’t thought he’d ever settle down. He’d had his share of demons to overcome, not the least of which was the tragic death of his younger brother. Travis had blamed himself for what happened to Brody. “Good,” he said. “But what do you actually do here? You’re used to the fast lane, Meg.”

“I take care of the horses,” she said.

“That takes, what—two hours a day? According to Eve, you spend most of your time in your pajamas. She thinks you’re depressed.”

“Well, I’m not,” Meg said. “I’m just—catching up on my rest.”

“Okay,” Travis said, drawing out the word.

“I’m not drinking alone and I’m not watching soap operas,” Meg said. “I’m vegging. It’s a concept my mother doesn’t understand.”

“She loves you, Meg. She’s worried. She’s not the enemy.”

“I wish she’d go back to Texas.”

“Wish away. She’s not going anywhere, with a grandchild coming.”

At least Eve hadn’t taken up residence on the ranch; that was some comfort. She lived in a small suite at the only hotel in Indian Rock, and kept herself busy shopping, day trading on her laptop and spoiling Liam.

Oh, yes. And nagging Meg.

Travis finished his coffee, carried his cup to the sink, rinsed it out. After hesitating for a few moments, he said, “It’s this thing about seeing Angus’s ghost. She thinks you’re obsessed.”

Meg made a soft, strangled sound of frustration.

“It’s not that she doesn’t believe you,” Travis added.

“She just thinks I’m a little crazy.”

“No,” Travis said. “Nobody thinks that.”

“But I should get a life, as the saying goes?”

“It would be a good idea, don’t you think?”

“Go home. Your pregnant wife needs a gallon of milk and a loaf of bread.”

Travis went to the door, put on his coat, took his hat from the hook. “What do you need, Meg? That’s the question.”

“Not Brad O’Ballivan, that’s for sure.”

Travis grinned again. Set his hat on his head and turned the doorknob. “Did I mention him?” he asked lightly.

Meg glared at him.

“See you,” Travis said. And then he was gone.

“He puts me in mind of that O’Ballivan fella,” Angus announced, nearly startling Meg out of her skin.

She turned to see him standing over by the china cabinet. Was it her imagination, or did he look a little older than he had that afternoon?

“Jesse looks like Jeb. Rance looks like Rafe. Keegan looks like Kade. You’re seeing things, Angus.”

“Have it your way,” Angus said.

Like any McKettrick had ever said that and meant it.

“What’s for supper?”

“What do you care? You never eat.”

“Neither do you. You’re starting to look like a bag of bones.”

“If I were you, I wouldn’t make comments about bones. Being dead and all, I mean.”

“The problem with you young people is, you have no respect for your elders.”

Meg sighed, got up from her chair at the table, stomped over to the refrigerator and selected a boxed dinner from the stack in the freezer. The box was coated with frost.

“I’m sorry,” Meg said. “Is that a hint of silver I see at your temples?”

Self-consciously, Angus shifted his weight from one booted foot to the other. “If I’m going gray,” he scowled, “it’s on account of you. None of my boys ever gave me half as much trouble as you, or my Katie, either. And they were plum full of the dickens, all of them.”

Meg’s heart pinched. Katie was Angus’s youngest child, and his only daughter. He rarely mentioned her, since she’d caused some kind of scandal by eloping on her wedding day—with someone other than the groom. Although she and Angus had eventually reconciled, he’d been on his deathbed at the time.

“I’m all right, Angus,” she told him. “You can go. Really.”

“You eat food that could be used to drive railroad spikes into hard ground. You don’t have a husband. You rattle around in this old house like some—ghost. I’m not leaving until I know you’ll be happy.”

“I’m happy now.”

Angus walked over to her, the heels of his boots thumping on the plank floor, took the frozen dinner out of her hands, and carried it to the trash compactor. Dropped it inside.

“Damn fool contraption,” he muttered.

“That was my supper,” Meg objected.

“Cook something,” Angus said. “Get out a skillet. Dump some lard into it. Fry up a chicken.” He paused, regarded her darkly. “You do know how to cook, don’t you?”


Chapter Three

Jolene’s, built on the site of the old saloon and brothel where Angus McKettrick and Major John Blackstone used to arm wrestle, among other things, was dimly lit and practically empty. Meg paused on the threshold, letting her eyes adjust and wishing she’d listened to her instincts and cancelled; now there would be no turning back.

Brad was standing by the jukebox, the colored lights flashing across the planes of his face. Having heard the door open, he turned his head slightly to acknowledge her arrival with a nod and a wisp of a grin.

“Where is everybody?” she asked. Except for the bartender, she and Brad were alone.

“Staying clear,” Brad said. “I promised a free concert in the high school gym if we could have Jolene’s to ourselves for a couple of hours.”

Meg nearly fled. If it hadn’t been against the McKettrick code, as inherent to her being as her DNA, she would have given in to the urge and called it good judgment.

“Have a seat,” Brad said, drawing back a chair at one of the tables. Nothing in the whole tavern matched, not even the bar stools, and every stick of furniture was scarred and scratched. Jolene’s was a hangout for honky-tonk angels; the winged variety would surely have given the place a wide berth.

“What’ll it be?” the bartender asked. He was a squat man, wearing a muscle shirt and a lot of tattoos. With his handlebar mustache, he might have been from Angus’s era, instead of the present day.

Brad ordered a cola as Meg forced herself across the room to take the chair he offered.

Maybe, she thought, as she asked for an iced tea, the rumors were true, and Brad was fresh out of rehab.

The bartender served the drinks and quietly left the saloon, via a back door.

Brad, meanwhile, turned his own chair around and sat astraddle it, with his arms resting across the back. He wore jeans, a white shirt open at the throat and boots, and if he hadn’t been so breathtakingly handsome, he’d have looked like any cowboy, in any number of scruffy little redneck bars scattered all over Arizona.

Meg eyed his drink, since doing that seemed slightly less dangerous than looking straight into his face, and when he chuckled, she felt her cheeks turn warm.

Pride made her meet his gaze. “What?” she asked, running damp palms along the thighs of her oldest pair of jeans. She’d made a point of not dressing up for the encounter—no perfume, and only a little mascara and lip gloss. War paint, Angus called it. Her favorite ghost had an opinion on everything, it seemed, but at least he’d honored his promise not to horn in on this interlude, or whatever it was, with Brad.

“Don’t believe everything you read,” Brad said easily, settling back in his chair. “Not about me, anyway.”

“Who says I’ve been reading about you?”

“Come on, Meg. You expected me to drink Jack Daniel’s straight from the bottle. That’s hype—part of the bad-boy image. My manager cooked it up.”

Meg huffed out a sigh. “You haven’t been to rehab?”

He grinned. “Nope. Never trashed a hotel room, spent a weekend in jail, or any of the rest of the stuff Phil wanted everybody to believe about me.”

“Really?”

“Really.” Brad pushed back his chair, returned to the jukebox, and dropped a few coins in the slot. An old Johnny Cash ballad poured softly into the otherwise silent bar.

Meg took a swig of her iced tea, in a vain effort to steady her nerves. She was no teetotaler, but when she drove, she didn’t drink. Ever. Right about then, though, she wished she’d hired a car and driver so she could get sloshed enough to forget that being alone with Brad O’Ballivan was like having her most sensitive nerves bared to a cold wind.

He started in her direction, then stopped in the middle of the floor, which was strewn with sawdust and peanut shells. Held out a hand to her.

Meg went to him, just the way she’d gone to the Dixie Dog Drive-In the day before. Automatically.

He drew her into his arms, holding her close but easy, and they danced without moving their feet.

As the song ended, Brad propped his chin on top of Meg’s head and sighed. “I’ve missed you,” he said.

Meg came to her senses.

Finally.

She pulled back far enough to look up into his face.

“Don’t go there,” she warned.

“We can’t just pretend the past didn’t happen, Meg,” he reasoned quietly.

“Yes, we can,” she argued. “Millions of people do it, every day. It’s called denial, and it has its place in the scheme of things.”

“Still a McKettrick,” Brad said, sorrow lurking behind the humor in his blue eyes. “If I said the moon was round, you’d call it square.”

She poked at his chest with an index finger. “Still an O’Ballivan,” she accused. “Thinking you’ve got to explain the shape of the moon, as if I couldn’t see it for myself.”

The jukebox in Jolene’s was an antique; it still played 45s, instead of CDs. Now a record flopped audibly onto the turntable, and the needle scratched its way into Willie Nelson’s version of “Georgia.”

Meg stiffened, wanting to pull away.

Brad’s arms, resting loosely around her waist, tightened slightly.

Over the years, the McKettricks and the O’Ballivans, owning the two biggest ranches in the area, had been friendly rivals. The families were equally proud and equally stubborn—they’d had to be, to survive the ups and downs of raising cattle for more than a century. Even when they were close, Meg and Brad had always identified strongly with their heritages.

Meg swallowed. “Why did you come back?” she asked, without intending to speak at all.

“To settle some things,” Brad answered. They were swaying to the music again, though the soles of their boots were still rooted to the floor. “And you’re at the top of my list, Meg McKettrick.”

“You’re at the top of mine, too,” Meg retorted. “But I don’t think we’re talking about the same kind of list.”

He laughed. God, how she’d missed that sound. How she’d missed the heat and substance of him, and the sun-dried laundry smell of his skin and hair…

Stop, she told herself. She was acting like some smitten fan or something.

“You bought me an engagement ring,” she blurted, without intending to do anything of the kind. “We were supposed to elope. And then you got on a bus and went to Nashville and married what’s-her-name!”

“I was stupid,” Brad said. “And scared.”

“No,” Meg replied, fighting back furious tears. “You were ambitious. And of course the bride’s father owned a recording company—”

Brad closed his eyes for a moment. A muscle bunched in his cheek. “Valerie,” he said miserably. “Her name was Valerie.”

“Do you really think I give a damn what her name was?”

“Yeah,” he answered. “I do.”

“Well, you’re wrong!”

“That must be why you look like you want to club me to the ground with the nearest blunt object.”

“I got over you like that!” Meg told him, snapping her fingers. But a tear slipped down her cheek, spoiling the whole effect.

Brad brushed it away gently with the side of one thumb. “Meg,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”

“Oh, that changes everything!” Meg scoffed. She tried to move away from him again, but he still wouldn’t let her go.

One corner of his mouth tilted up in a forlorn effort at a grin. “You’ll feel a lot better if you forgive me.” He curved the fingers of his right hand under her chin, lifted. “For old times’ sake?” he cajoled. “For the nights when we went skinny-dipping in the pond behind your house on the Triple M? For the nights we—”

“No,” Meg interrupted, fairly smothering as the memories wrapped themselves around her. “You don’t deserve to be forgiven.”

“You’re right,” Brad agreed. “I don’t. But that’s the thing about forgiveness. It’s all about grace, isn’t it? It’s supposed to be undeserved.”

“Great logic if you’re on the receiving end!”

“I had my reasons, Meg.”

“Yeah. You wanted bright lights and big money. Oh, and fast women.”

Brad’s jaw tightened, but his eyes were bleak. “I couldn’t have married you, Meg.”

“Pardon my confusion. You gave me an engagement ring and proposed!”

“I wasn’t thinking.” He looked away, faced her again with visible effort. “You had a trust fund. I had a mortgage and a pile of bills. I laid awake nights, sweating blood, thinking the bank would foreclose at any minute. I couldn’t dump that in your lap.”

Meg’s mouth dropped open. She’d known the O’Ballivans weren’t rich, at least, not like the McKettricks were, but she’d never imagined, even once, that Stone Creek Ranch was in danger of being lost.

“They wanted that land,” Brad went on. “The bankers, I mean. They already had the plans drawn up for a housing development.”

“I didn’t know—I would have helped—”

“Sure,” Brad said. “You’d have helped. And I’d never have been able to look you in the face again. I had one chance, Meg. Valerie’s dad had heard my demo and he was willing to give me an audition. A fifteen-minute slot in his busy day. I tried to tell you—”

Meg closed her eyes for a moment, remembering. Brad had told her he wanted to postpone the wedding until after his trip to Nashville. He’d promised to come back for her. She’d been furious and hurt—and keeping a secret of her own—and they’d argued….

She swallowed painfully. “You didn’t call. You didn’t write—”

“When I got to Nashville, I had a used bus ticket and a guitar. If I’d called, it would have been collect, and I wasn’t about to do that. I started half a dozen letters, but they all sounded like the lyrics to bad songs. I went to the library a couple of times, to send you an e-mail, but beyond ‘how are you?’ I just flat-out didn’t know what to say.”

“So you just hooked up with Valerie?”

“It wasn’t like that.”

“I’m assuming she was a rich kid, just like me? I guess you didn’t mind if she saved the old homestead with a chunk of her trust fund.”

Brad’s jawline tightened. “I saved the ranch,” he said. “Most of the money from my first record contract went to paying down the mortgage, and it was still a struggle until I scored a major hit.” He paused, obviously remembering the much leaner days before he could fill the biggest stadiums in the country with devoted fans, swaying to his music in the darkness, holding flickering lighters aloft in tribute. “I didn’t love Valerie, and she didn’t love me. She was a rich kid, all right. Spoiled and lonesome, neglected in the ways rich kids so often are, and she was in big trouble. She’d gotten herself pregnant by some married guy who wanted nothing to do with her. She figured her dad would kill her if he found out, and given his temper, I tended to agree. So I married her.”

Meg made her way back to the table and sank into her chair. “There was…a baby?”

“She miscarried. We divorced amicably, after trying to make it work for a couple of years. She’s married to a dentist now, and really happy. Four kids, at last count.” Brad joined Meg at the table. “Do you want to hear about the second marriage?”

“I don’t think I’m up to that,” Meg said weakly.

Brad’s hand closed over hers. “Me, either,” he replied. He ducked his head, in a familiar way that tugged at Meg’s heart, to catch her eye. “You all right?”

“Just a little shaken up, that’s all.”

“How about some supper?”

“They serve supper here? At Jolene’s?”

Brad chuckled. “Down the road, at the Steakhouse. You can’t miss it—it’s right next to the sign that says, Welcome To Stone Creek, Arizona, Home Of Brad O’Ballivan.”

“Braggart,” Meg said, grateful that the conversation had taken a lighter turn.

He grinned engagingly. “Stone Creek has always been the home of Brad O’Ballivan,” he said. “It just seems to mean more now than it did when I left that first time.”

“You’ll be mobbed,” Meg warned.

“The whole town could show up at the Steakhouse, and it wouldn’t be enough to make a mob.”

“Okay,” Meg agreed. “But you’re buying.”

Brad laughed. “Fair enough,” he said.

Then he got up from his chair and summoned the bartender, who’d evidently been cooling his heels in a storeroom or office.

The floor felt oddly spongy beneath Meg’s feet, and she was light-headed enough to wonder if there’d been some alcohol in that iced tea after all.

The Steakhouse, unlike Jolene’s, was jumping. People called out to Brad when he came in, and young girls pointed and giggled, but most of them had been at the welcome party Ashley and Melissa had thrown for him on the ranch the night before, so some of the novelty of his being back in town had worn off.

Meg drew some glances, though—all of them admiring, with varying degrees of curiosity mixed in. Even in jeans, boots and a plain woolen coat over a white blouse, she looked like what she was—a McKettrick with a trust fund and an impressive track record as a top-level executive. When McKettrickCo had gone public, Brad had been surprised when she didn’t turn up immediately as the CEO of some corporation. Instead, she’d come home to hibernate on the Triple M, and he wondered why.

He wondered lots of things about Meg McKettrick.

With luck, he’d have a chance to find out everything he wanted to know.

Like whether she still laughed in her sleep and ate cereal with yogurt instead of milk and arched her back like a gymnast when she climaxed.

Since the Steakhouse was no place to think about Meg having one of her noisy orgasms, Brad tried to put the image out of his mind. It merely shifted to another part of his anatomy.

They were shown to a booth right away, and given menus and glasses of water with the obligatory slices of fresh lemon rafting on top of the ice.

Brad ordered a steak, Meg a Caesar salad.

The waitress went away, albeit reluctantly.

“Okay,” Brad said, “it’s my turn to ask questions. Why did you quit working after you left McKettrickCo?”

Meg smiled, but she looked a little flushed, and he could tell by her eyes that she was busy in there, sorting things and putting them in their proper places. “I didn’t need the money. And I’ve always wanted to live full-time on the Triple M, like Jesse and Rance and Keegan. When I spent summers there, as a child, the only way I could deal with leaving in the fall to go back to school was to promise myself that one day I’d come home to stay.”

“You love it that much?” Given his own attachment to Stone Creek Ranch, Brad could understand, but at the same time, the knowledge troubled him a little, too. “What do you do all day?”

Her mouth quirked in a way that made Brad want to kiss her. And do a few other things, too. “You sound like my mother,” she said. “I take care of the horses, ride sometimes—”

He nodded. Waited.

She didn’t finish the sentence.

“You never married.” He hadn’t meant to say that. Hadn’t meant to let on that he’d kept track of her all these years, mostly on the Internet, but through his sisters, too.

She shook her head. “Almost,” she said. “Once. It didn’t work out.”

Brad leaned forward, intrigued and feeling pretty damn territorial, too. “Who was the unlucky guy? He must have been a real jackass.”

“You,” she replied sweetly, and then laughed at the expression on his face.

He started to speak, then gulped the words down, sure they’d come out sounding as stupid as the question he’d just asked.

“I’ve dated a lot of men,” Meg said.

The orgasm image returned, but this time, he wasn’t Meg’s partner. It was some other guy bringing her to one of her long, exquisite, clawing, shouting, bucking climaxes, not him. He frowned.

“Maybe we shouldn’t talk about my love life,” she suggested.

“Maybe not,” Brad agreed.

“Not that I exactly have one.”

Brad felt immeasurably better. “That makes two of us.”

Meg looked unconvinced. Even squirmed a little on the vinyl seat.

“What?” Brad prompted, enjoying the play of emotions on her face. He and Meg weren’t on good terms—too soon for that—but it was a hopeful sign that she’d met him at Jolene’s and then agreed to supper on top of it.

“I saw that article in People magazine. ‘The Cowboy with the Most Notches on His Bedpost,’ I think it was called?”

“I thought we weren’t going to talk about our love lives. And would you mind keeping your voice down?”

“We agreed not to talk about mine, if I remember correctly, which, as I told you, is nonexistent. And to avoid the subject of your second wife—at least, for now.”

“There have been women,” Brad said. “But that bedpost thing was all Phil’s idea. Publicity stuff.”

The food arrived.

“Not that I care if you carve notches on your bedpost,” Meg said decisively, once the waitress had left again.

“Right,” Brad replied, serious on the outside, grinning on the inside.

“Where is this Phil person from, anyway?” Meg asked, mildly disgruntled, her fork poised in midair over her salad. “Seems to me he has a pretty skewed idea on the whole cowboy mystique. Rehab. Trashing hotel rooms. The notch thing.”

“There’s a ‘cowboy mystique’?”

“You know there is. Honor, integrity, courage—those are the things being a cowboy is all about.”

Brad sighed. Meg was a stickler for detail; good thing she hadn’t gone to law school, like she’d once planned. She probably would have represented his second ex-wife in the divorce and stripped his stock portfolio clean. “I tried. Phil works freestyle, and he sure knew how to pack the concert halls.”

Meg pointed the fork at him. “You packed the concert halls, Brad. You and your music.”

“You like my music?” It was a shy question; he hadn’t quite dared to ask if she liked him as well. He knew too well what the answer might be.

“It’s…nice,” she said.

Nice? Half a dozen Grammies and CMT awards, weeks at number one on every chart that mattered, and she thought his music was “nice”?

Whatever she thought, Brad finally concluded, that was all she was going to give up, and he had to be satisfied with it.

For now.

He started on the steak, but he hadn’t eaten more than two bites when there was a fuss at the entrance to the restaurant and Livie came storming in, striding right to his table.

Sparing a nod for Meg, Brad’s sister turned immediately to him. “He’s hurt,” she said. Her clothes were covered with straw and a few things that would have upset the health department, being that she was in a place where food was being served to the general public.

“Who’s hurt?” Brad asked calmly, sliding out of the booth to stand.

“Ransom,” she answered, near tears. “He got himself cut up in a tangle of rusty barbed wire. I’d spotted him with binoculars, but before I could get there to help, he’d torn free and headed for the hills. He’s hurt bad, and I’m not going to be able to get to him in the Suburban—we need to saddle up and go after him.”

“Liv,” Brad said carefully, “it’s dark out.”

“He’s bleeding, and probably weak. The wolves could take him down!” At the thought of that, Livie’s eyes glistened with moisture. “If you won’t help, I’ll go by myself.”

Distractedly, Brad pulled out his wallet and threw down the money for the dinner he and Meg hadn’t gotten a chance to finish.

Meg was on her feet, the salad forgotten. “Count me in, Olivia,” she said. “That is, if you’ve got an extra horse and some gear. I could go back out to the Triple M for Banshee, but by the time I hitched up the trailer, loaded him and gathered the tack—”

“You can ride Cinnamon,” Olivia told Meg, after sizing her up as to whether she’d be a help or a hindrance on the trail. “It’ll be cold and dark up there in the high country,” she added. “Could be a long, uncomfortable night.”

“No room service?” Meg quipped.

Livie spared her a smile, but when she turned to Brad again, her blue eyes were full of obstinate challenge. “Are you going or not—cowboy?”

“Hell, yes, I’m going,” Brad said. Riding a horse was a thing you never forgot how to do, but it had been a while since he’d been in the saddle, and that meant he’d be groaning-sore before this adventure was over. “What about the stock on the Triple M, Meg? Who’s going to feed your horses, if this takes all night?”

“They’re good till morning,” Meg answered. “If I’m not back by then, I’ll ask Jesse or Rance or Keegan to check on them.”

Livie led the caravan in her Suburban, with Brad following in his truck, and Meg right behind, in the Blazer. He was worried about Ransom, and about Livie’s obsession with the animal, but there was one bright spot in the whole thing.

He was going to get to spend the night with Meg McKettrick, albeit on the hard, half-frozen ground, and the least he could do, as a gentleman, was share his sleeping bag—and his body warmth.

“Right smart of you to go along,” Angus commented, appearing in the passenger seat of Meg’s rig. “There might be some hope for you yet.”

Meg answered without moving her mouth, just in case Brad happened to glance into his rearview mirror and catch her talking to nobody. “I thought you were giving me some elbow room on this one,” she said.

“Don’t worry,” Angus replied. “If you go to bed down with him or something like that, I’ll skedaddle.”

“I’m not going to ‘bed down’ with Brad O’Ballivan.”

Angus sighed. Adjusted his sweat-stained cowboy hat. Since he usually didn’t wear one, Meg read it as a sign bad weather was on its way. “Might be a good thing if you did. Only way to snag some men.”

“I will not dignify that remark with a reply,” Meg said, flooring the gas pedal to keep up with Brad, now that they were out on the open road, where the speed limit was higher. She’d never actually been to Stone Creek Ranch, but she knew where it was. Knew all about King’s Ransom, too. Her cousin Jesse, practically a horse-whisperer, claimed the animal was nothing more than a legend, pieced together around a hundred campfires, over as many years, after all the lesser tales had been told.

Meg wanted to see for herself.

Wanted to help Olivia, whom she’d always liked but barely knew.

Spending the night on a mountain with Brad O’Ballivan didn’t enter into the decision at all. Much.

“Is he real?” she asked. “The horse, I mean?”

Angus adjusted his hat again. “Sure he is,” he said, his voice quiet, but gruff. Sometimes a look came into his eyes, a sort of hunger for the old days and the old ways.

“Is there anything you can do to help us find him?”

Angus shook his head. “You’ve got to do that yourselves, you and the singing cowboy and the girl.”

“Olivia is not a girl. She’s a grown woman and a veterinarian.”

“She’s a snippet,” Angus said. “But there’s fire in her. That O’Ballivan blood runs hot as coffee brewed on a cook-stove in hell. She needs a man, though. The knot in her lasso is way too tight.”

“I hope that reference wasn’t sexual,” Meg said stiffly, “because I do not need to be carrying on that type of conversation with my dead multi-great grandfather.”

“It makes me feel old when you talk about me like I helped Moses carry the commandments down off the mountain,” Angus complained. “I was young once, you know. Sired four strapping sons and a daughter by three different women—Ellie, Georgia and Concepcion. And I’m not dead, neither. Just…different.”

Olivia had stopped suddenly for a gate up ahead, and Meg nearly rear-ended Brad before she got the Blazer reined in.

“Different as in dead,” Meg said, watching through the windshield, in the glow of her headlights, as Brad got out of his truck and strode back to speak to her, leaving the driver’s-side door gaping behind him.

He didn’t look angry—just earnest.

“If you want to ride with me,” he said when Meg had buzzed down her window, “fine. But if you’re planning to drive this rig up into the bed of my truck, you might want to wait until I park it in a hole and lower the tailgate.”

“Sorry,” Meg said after making a face.

Brad shook his head and went back to his truck. By then, Olivia had the gate open, and he drove ahead onto an unpaved road winding upward between the juniper and Joshua trees clinging to the red dirt of the hillside.

“What was that about?” Meg mused, following Brad and Olivia’s vehicles through the gap and not really addressing Angus, who answered, nonetheless.

“Guess he’s prideful about the paint on that fancy jitney of his,” he said. “Didn’t want you denting up his buggy.”

Meg didn’t comment. Angus was full of the nineteenth-century equivalent of “woman driver” stories, and she didn’t care to hear any of them.

They topped a rise, Olivia still in the lead, and dipped down into what was probably a broad valley, given what little Meg knew about the landscape on Stone Creek Ranch. Lights glimmered off to the right, revealing a good-size house and a barn.

Meg was about to ask if Angus had ever visited the ranch when he suddenly vanished.

She shut off the Blazer, got out and followed Brad and Olivia toward the barn. She wished it hadn’t been so dark—it would have been interesting to see the place in the daylight.

Inside the barn, which was as big as any of the ones on the Triple M and boasted all the modern conveniences, Olivia and Brad were already saddling horses.

“That’s Cinnamon over there,” Olivia said with a nod to a tall chestnut in the stall across the wide breezeway from the one she was standing in, busily preparing a palomino to ride. “His gear’s in the tack room, third saddle rack on the right.”

Meg didn’t hesitate, as she suspected Olivia had expected her to do, but found the tack room and Cinnamon’s gear, and lugged it back to his stall. Brad and his sister were already mounted and waiting at the end of the breezeway when Meg led the gelding out, however.

“Need a boost?” Brad asked, in a teasing drawl, saddle leather creaking as he shifted to step down from the big paint he was riding and help Meg mount up.

Cinnamon was a big fella, taller by several hands than any of the horses in Meg’s barn, but she’d been riding since she was in diapers, and she didn’t need a boost from a “singing cowboy,” as Angus described Brad.

“I can do it,” she replied, straining to grip the saddle horn and get a foot into the high stirrup. It was going to be a stretch.

In the next instant, she felt two strong hands pushing on her backside, hoisting her easily onto Cinnamon’s broad back.

Thanks, Angus, she said silently.


Chapter Four

It was a purely crazy thing to do, setting out on horseback, in the dark, for the high plains and meadows and secret canyons of Stone Creek Ranch, in search of a legendary stallion determined not to be found. It had been way too long since she’d done anything like it, Meg reflected, as she rode behind Olivia and Brad, on the borrowed horse called Cinnamon.

Olivia had brought a few veterinary supplies along, packed in saddle bags, and while Meg was sure Ransom, wounded or not, would elude them, she couldn’t help admiring the kind of commitment it took to set out on the journey anyway. Olivia O’Ballivan was a woman with a cause and for that, Meg envied her a little.

The moon was three-quarters full, and lit their way, but the trail grew steadily narrower as they climbed, and the mountainside was steep and rocky. One misstep on the part of a distracted horse and both animal and rider would plunge hundreds of feet into an abyss of shadow, to their very certain and very painful deaths.

When the trail widened into what appeared, in the thin wash of moonlight, to be a clearing, Meg let out her breath, sat a little less tensely in the saddle, loosened her grip on Cinnamon’s reins. Brad drew up his own mount to wait for her, while Olivia and her horse shot forward, intent on their mission.

“Do you think we’ll find him?” Meg asked. “Ransom, I mean?”

“No,” Brad answered, unequivocally. “But Livie was bound to try. I came to look out for her.”

Meg hadn’t noticed the rifle in the scabbard fixed to Brad’s saddle before, back at the O’Ballivan barn, but it stood out in sharp relief now, the polished wooden stock glowing in a silvery flash of moonlight. He must have seen her eyes widen; he patted the scabbard as he met her gaze.

“You’re expecting to shoot something?” Meg ventured. She’d been around guns all her life—they were plentiful on the Triple M—but that didn’t mean she liked them.

“Only if I have to,” Brad said, casting a glance in the direction Olivia had gone. He nudged his horse into motion, and Cinnamon automatically kept pace, the two geldings moving at an easy trot.

“What would constitute having to?” Meg asked.

“Wolves,” Brad answered.

Meg was familiar with the wolf controversy—environmentalists and animal activists on the one side, ranchers on the other. She wanted to know where Brad stood on the subject. He was well-known for his love of all things finned, feathered and furry—but that might have been part of his carefully constructed persona, like the notched bedpost and the trashed hotel rooms.

“You wouldn’t just pick them off, would you? Wolves, I mean?”

“Of course not,” Brad replied. “But wolves are predators, and Livie’s not wrong to be concerned that they’ll track Ransom and take him down if they catch the blood-scent from his wounds.”

A chill trickled down Meg’s spine, like a splash of cold water, setting her shivering. Like Brad, she came from a long line of cattle ranchers, and while she allowed that wolves had a place in the ecological scheme of things, like every other creature on earth, she didn’t romanticize them. They were not misunderstood dogs, as so many people seemed to think, but hunters, savagely brutal and utterly ruthless, and no one who’d ever seen what they did to their prey would credit them with nobility.

“Sharks with legs,” she mused aloud. “That’s what Rance calls them.”

Brad nodded, but didn’t reply. They were gaining on Olivia now; she was still a ways ahead, and had dismounted to look at something on the ground.

Both Brad and Meg sped up to reach her.

By the time they arrived, Olivia’s saddle bags were open beside her, and she was holding a syringe up to the light. Because of the darkness, and the movements of the horses, a few moments passed before Meg focused on the animal Olivia was treating.

A dog lay bloody and quivering on its side.

Brad was off his horse before Meg broke the spell of shock that had descended over her and dismounted, too. Her stomach rolled when she got a better look at the dog; the poor creature, surely a stray, had run afoul of either a wolf or coyote pack, and it was purely a miracle that he’d survived.

Meg’s eyes burned.

Brad crouched next to the dog, opposite Olivia, and stroked the animal with a gentleness that altered something deep down inside Meg, causing a grinding sensation, like the shift of tectonic plates far beneath the earth.

“Can he make it?” he asked Olivia.

“I’m not sure,” Olivia replied. “At the very least, he needs stitches.” She injected the contents of the syringe into the animal’s ruff. “I sedated him. Give the medicine a few minutes to work, and then we’ll take him back to the clinic in Stone Creek.”

“What about the horse?” Meg asked, feeling helpless, a bystander with no way to help. She wasn’t used to it. “What about Ransom?”

Olivia’s eyes were bleak with sorrow when she looked up at Meg. She was a veterinarian; she couldn’t abandon the wounded dog, or put him to sleep because it would be more convenient than transporting him back to town, where he could be properly cared for. But worry for the stallion would prey on her mind, just the same.

“I’ll look for him tomorrow,” Olivia said. “In the daylight.”

Brad reached across the dog, laid a hand on his sister’s shoulder. “He’s been surviving on his own for a long time, Liv,” he assured her. “Ransom will be all right.”

Olivia bit her lower lip, nodded. “Get one of the sleeping bags, will you?” she said.

Brad nodded and went to unfasten the bedroll from behind his saddle. They were miles from town, or any ranch house.

“How did a dog get all the way out here?” Meg asked, mostly because the silence was too painful.

“He’s probably a stray,” Olivia answered, between soothing murmurs to the dog. “Somebody might have dumped him, too, down on the highway. A lot of people think dogs and cats can survive on their own—hunt and all that nonsense.”

Meg drew closer to the dog, crouched to touch his head. He appeared to be some kind of lab-retriever mix, though it was hard to tell, given that his coat was saturated with blood. He wore no collar, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have a microchip—and if he did, Olivia would be able to identify him immediately, once she got him to the clinic. Though from the looks of him, he’d be lucky to make it that far.

Brad returned with the sleeping bag, unfurling it. “Okay to move him now?” he asked Olivia.

Olivia nodded, and she and Meg sort of helped each other to their feet. “You mount up,” Olivia told Brad. “And we’ll lift him.”

Brad whistled softly for his horse, which trotted obediently to his side, gathered the dangling reins, and swung up into the saddle.

Meg and Olivia bundled the dog, now mercifully unconscious, in the sleeping bag and, together, hoisted him high enough so Brad could take him into his arms. They all rode slowly back down the trail, Brad holding that dog as tenderly as he would an injured child, and not a word was spoken the whole way.

When they got back to the ranch house, where Olivia’s Suburban was parked, Brad loaded the dog into the rear of the vehicle.

“I’ll stay and put the horses away,” Meg told him. “You’d better go into town with Olivia and help her get him inside the clinic.”

Brad nodded. “Thanks,” he said gruffly.

Olivia gave Meg an appreciative glance before scrambling into the back of the Suburban to ride with the patient, ambulance-style. Brad got behind the wheel.

Once they’d driven off, Meg gathered the trio of horses and led them into the barn. There, in the breezeway, she removed their saddles and other tack and let the animals show her which stalls were their own. She checked their hooves for stones, made sure their automatic waterers were working, and gave them each a flake of hay. All the while, her thoughts were with Brad, and the stray dog lying in the back of Olivia’s rig.





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