LITMIR.BIZ

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he leaned against the stall door as he listened to the ranch truck pulling away. Young Chipper Jenkins had been torn, excited about being trusted with the new truck, yet a bit disgruntled at being sent on such a non-cowboy errand to pick up some dude-type woman in town.

      “Hey!”

      Startled, Grant grabbed at his dark brown Stetson, suddenly canted forward over his brow. He whirled as a nicker that could only be described as amused came from the big horse behind him.

      “Darn it, Joker, knock it…off.”

      He ended the exclamation rather sheepishly as he heard his own words in the context of what the big Appaloosa stallion had done—gleefully nudged the wide-brimmed hat down over Grant’s eyes until it hit the bridge of his nose.

      He glared at the horse. The stallion shook his head vigorously, his black forelock flopping over the white patch above one eye, the unusual marking that gave him a faintly clownish look, matching the unexpectedly playful personality that had given rise to his nickname of Joker. The horse snorted, and bobbed his head as if in pleased enthusiasm for the success of his prank.

      And Grant’s glare became a grin.

      “Darn you, you worthless nag,” he muttered.

      He didn’t mean it. The beautifully marked stallion was one of the most nearly flawless horses he’d ever seen. Perfect conformation, power, speed, endurance, he had it all—coupled with a heart as big as the Rockies, a personality that charmed, and the apparent ability to pass his quality on to his foals. The big Appy was any horseman’s dream.

      And a dream Grant McClure had never expected to come true in a million years.

      Thank you, Kate, he whispered to himself, not for the first time. I don’t know why you did it, but thanks.

      “Come on, you big clown,” he said, reaching up to rub his knuckles under the horse’s jaw in the way he’d learned early on the big animal loved. “Let’s get you some work before you go soft on me.”

      Joker snorted in agreement, and bobbed his head eagerly. Or so it seemed, Grant amended silently, wondering at his continuing tendency to anthropomorphize this animal, something he never did. Except maybe with Gambler, the quick, clever Australian shepherd who was as much a hand on the M Double C ranch as anyone else. But the big Appy seemed to invite the human comparisons, and after a year and a half of dealing with the horse, Grant had finally quit fighting the impulse.

      Nearly two hours later, as satisfied as any man could be with Joker’s willing, polished performance, he turned the horse out for a well-deserved romp in the big corral behind the main barn. It would make for a bigger cleanup job after the horse inevitably rolled in the dirt, but he’d earned the back-scratching pleasure, Grant thought. Besides, it was late November, and once they’d eaten the Thanksgiving turkey down to the bone, cold weather was generally here for good in the Wyoming high country; soon there’d be nothing but snow to roll in. It was a little surprising that they’d had few storms already, and far enough apart that the snow had time to melt in between.

      But it wouldn’t be long before the white stuff was here to stay, and lots of it. And then he and all the hands would be working to sheer exhaustion just to keep the stock alive through the Wyoming winter, and the last thing he needed was to have to nursemaid some big-city girl who—

      The sound of the ranch’s truck returning cut in on his thoughts.

      “Here goes,” he muttered to himself, slinging Joker’s bridle over his shoulder and reversing his steps to go greet his visitor; it had been rude enough not to go himself to pick her up, but he had—perhaps childishly—drawn the line at dancing to Kristina’s manipulating tune there.

      He saw Chipper first. Standing beside the driver’s door of the mud-spattered blue pickup, the young man was grinning widely, his face flushed, and looking utterly dazzled. Grant frowned. And then he saw the obvious reason for the young hand’s expression; the woman who had scrambled without help from the high truck’s passenger seat. Long blond hair, pulled back in a ponytail, bounced as she walked around the front of the truck. She was wearing jeans and a heavy sheepskin jacket, and was seemingly unbothered by the briskness of the air.

      She came to a halt when she spotted him, her eyes widening slightly. Grant knew he was staring, but he couldn’t help himself; he hadn’t expected this.

      She was small, at least from Grant’s six-foot viewpoint, and not just in height; from her pixieish face to a pair of very small feet encased in tan lace-up boots, every inch of her looked delicate, almost fragile. And the dark circles that shadowed her eyes only added to the overall air of fragility. She looked tired. More than tired, weary, a weariness that went far beyond the physical. Grant felt an odd tug somewhere deep inside; his father had looked like that in the painful days before his death five years ago.

      She was looking at him, that fatigue dimming eyes that should have been a vivid green into a flat dullness.

      “Hello, Grant.”

      Her voice was soft, husky, and held an undertone that matched what he’d seen in her eyes.

      “Hello, Mercy,” he said quietly.

      She smiled at the old nickname, but the smile didn’t reach those haunted eyes. “No one’s called me that since you quit coming home summers.”

      “Minneapolis was never my home. It was just where my mother was.”

      She glanced around, as if trying to take in the vastness of the wild landscape with eyes used to the steel-and-concrete towers of the city, not the granite-and-snow towers of the Rocky Mountains.

      “No, this was always home for you, wasn’t it?” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

      “Always.”

      His voice rang with a fervency he didn’t try to hide. He’d known from the time he was a child that this place was a deep, inseparable part of him, that its wild, elemental beauty called to something so intrinsic to him that he would never be able to—or want to—resist.

      “So this is what you always had to go back to. I think I understand now.”

      She sighed. It was a tiny sound, more visible than audible. He’d thought, when Kristina told him Meredith Brady had become, of all things, a cop, that she must have grown a lot since that last summer, when she was a pesky, tenacious fourteen-year-old and the same height as his two-years-younger half sister. She hadn’t. If she’d gained more than an inch in the twelve years since, he’d be surprised. She couldn’t be more than fifteen-two, he thought, judging with an eye more used to calculating height on horses than on people. Especially women.

      “You’ve…changed,” he said. And it was true; he remembered her as a live-wire girl who had looked a great deal like his half sister, except for green eyes in place of Kristina’s pale blue, a girl with a lot of energy but not much stature. The stature hadn’t changed much, but the energy had; it seemed nowhere in evidence now.

      “Changed, but not grown, is that it?” she said, sounding rueful.

      “Well,” he said reasonably, “you haven’t. Much.”

      “Easy for you to say. You’re the one who grew four inches in one summer.”

      Grant’s mouth quirked. That had been an awkward summer, when his fifteen-year-old body decided now was the time and shot him to his full six feet in a spurt that indeed seemed to happen in a three-month span. He’d been embarrassed at his sudden gawkiness and the clumsiness that ensued, and the fact that none of his clothes fit anymore, but even more embarrassed by the fascination the change seemed to hold for his half sister’s annoyingly omnipresent best friend.

      “Amazing I grew at all, with you glued to my heels, Meredith Cecelia.”

      She winced. “Ouch. Please, stick with just Meredith. Or Meri.”

      She gave him a sideways look. He read it easily, and laughed.

      “Or Mercy?” he suggested. “Or

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