LITMIR.BIZ

      Contents

       Cover

       Back Cover Text

      Praise

       Title Page

       Dedication

      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 FOURTEEN

       CHAPTER FIFTEEN

       CHAPTER SIXTEEN

       CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

       CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

       CHAPTER NINETEEN

       CHAPTER TWENTY

       CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

       CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

       CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

       CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

       CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

       Copyright

       CHAPTER ONE

      THERE WERE HUGE live oak trees sheltering the Donavan place from the south Texas heat. The impressive pale yellow Spanish-styled stucco house sat between barbed wire fences, far back off the ranch road at the end of a dusty, winding driveway. Kate Whittman was glad to be poking along on the old quarter horse Jason had given her instead of driving. It had been dry in this part of Frio County, Texas, for some weeks now, and the dust was much less noticeable on a slow-moving horse than in a car.

      The Donavan driveway had never been paved. The ranch covered thousands of acres and spare cash always went into buying more cattle, not into modernizing roads. In these days of low cattle prices and overwhelming interest on ranch loans, it took a business mind like Jason Donavan’s to keep the wolf away from the door.

      Her green eyes scanned the horizon. It was roundup time, Kate knew, and on an operation this size, the spread had to be broken down into sections. Each camp had its own crew and foreman, and Jason would be riding around from one to the other to keep an eye on things. During roundup, somebody always got hurt. While broken bones, burns, contusions, and abrasions were part of the usual demands of ranch work, herding cattle and branding always brought grief. This time the boss himself had run afoul of a maddened mama longhorn, and the ranch foreman had gone sneaking over to Kate’s house to fetch her. Any time Jason got hurt, they sent for Kate, because Jason Donavan wouldn’t let anybody else near him. He trusted Kate because she wasn’t afraid of his temper, and because she alone could manage him when that temper was at flash point.

      Kate sighed wistfully, thinking about all the times she’d come down this winding driveway. She and Jason didn’t date; in fact he hardly seemed to notice her as a woman. But she’d been friends with his younger brother Gene, and with the housekeeper, Sheila, long before that odd kind of friendship developed between Jason and herself, born out of an equally odd confrontation one night when he’d been drinking. He didn’t let anyone very close, even Kate, but she was allowed privileges that no one else was. He was protective of her, in a rough sort of way; a kind of unrelated older brother. Of course, that wasn’t at all what Kate wanted from him. But it was as much as she could expect from a man who kept to himself the way he always did.

      There was a lot of road between the open range with its spacious improved grazing land, green now that spring had arrived, and the house resting in its solitary nest of trees. In one pasture, cows with new calves were grazing. In another, young castrated bulls made up the steer crop. In still another, huge Santa Gertrudis bulls had been turned out with hearty longhorn-Santa Gertrudis crossbred cows for the third

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