LITMIR.BIZ

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his watch, Jake discovered he’d better put some speed on. He still had to cross the pass into Hell’s Gate, where he was meeting Dillon. It was past time he stopped obsessing over a woman he knew little about. One he’d very likely end up fighting with sooner or later.

      But as he rode through the arid unfenced range land where the Cooper family had been raising cattle for four generations, Jake’s thoughts remained on Hayley. He couldn’t identify exactly what piqued his interest about her. He’d been fending off prettier women for years. Not that Mrs. Ryan was hard to look at, by any means. On the contrary, she was well put together. Small, but not so skinny you didn’t know she was all woman.

      And those eyes. Those changeable eyes that shifted from blue to the color of lavender to a deeper violet, almost purple. He’d never paid so much attention to anyone’s eyes before. His own were light gray. Wouldn’t it be an interesting experiment to see what color eyes their offspring would have?

      “Whoa, dude!” Mojave dutifully stopped dead on the trail. “Not you,” Jacob laughed, bending forward to stroke the bay’s neck. When Charcoal trotted back and sat staring up at him, Jake shook his head. “You, too, boy? Too bad you guys can’t talk. You’d tell me soon enough how crazy I’m acting over a woman who’d like nothing better than to see my backside trucking down the trail. She may have warmed up after I pulled those veggies out of the bag, but if you noticed, she didn’t request our return.”

      Jake let Mojave amble through the deer grass for a while before they crossed a dry wash and turned north. The sun beat down mercilessly. Jacob thought the humidity had climbed to seventy percent. He shucked off one leather glove, removed his hat and blotted sweat from his brow with the crook of his arm.

      “Feels like monsoon weather,” he muttered, settling the hat firm and low over his forehead. “I wonder if our Mrs. Ryan is prepared for the big rains that blow in here off the Baja. What do you think, Mojave?”

      On hearing his name, the horse whinnied and swished his ears.

      “I guess you’re right,” Jacob continued as if the gelding had spoken. “Better to keep my nose outta her business. She has Ben’s truck and trailer. The old guy must’ve given her directions. If she was stabbing in the dark, she wouldn’t have found her way to the Blue Cameo so easily.”

      The threesome covered another few miles before Jacob spoke again. “There’s just something sad looking in the lady’s eyes, don’t you agree, guys?” Jake urged Mojave into a canter up a long steep incline over the ridge into the valley known as Hell’s Gate. “But there’s the matter of her calling herself Mrs. Ryan. Where do you suppose Mr. Ryan is? What kind of husband lets his wife prospect all by herself? Even more curious, why isn’t she wearing her wedding ring?”

      The horse blew out a long breath. Cresting the hill, Mojave automatically quickened his pace. Jake knew why. In the distance Dillon’s horse, Wildfire, grazed on a picket. Dillon wasn’t yet visible. Jake figured he’d holed up in the shade of a stand of black walnut trees. Likely he was whittling a car or a truck or some part of a train set from the ever-present hardwoods he carried in his saddlebags. Their granddad Cooper had taught both boys to whittle at an early age. Dillon was much more adept at it than Jake. As kids they’d played with wooden toys; now Dillon carved a batch each year, and Eden’s church distributed them to needy children at Christmas.

      In fact, that was how Dillon and Eden had met. She’d moved to Tubac from Albuquerque to open her own jewelry store, had joined a local church and dived right into community affairs. Small-town churches loved new blood. They’d put Eden to work collecting for the yearly toy drive. One October afternoon she’d arrived at the Triple C, all golden-hair and sweet smiles to beg for a donation of Dillon’s toys. Jake recalled wishing he could carve as well as his brother did. Eden Priest was the most beautiful woman Santa Cruz county had seen in a decade. She was nice, too. And talented. Successful in her own right. Both brothers had thrown their hearts at her feet; it was Dillon’s she’d picked up.

      Jake grinned now, thinking about all the sneaky tricks he and Dillon had pulled trying to get into town without the other knowing. Some women would have strung them both along. It’d happened before. Eden wasn’t that sort of woman. She chose Dillon fair and square. She took Jake out for a cup of coffee at the local café and let him down gently.

      He remembered feeling lower than a worm’s belly all the way home. He hadn’t planned to tell anyone in the family. But his mom had either been perceptive or Eden had told her. Nell Cooper arrived home from a long day spent throwing pots to cook her youngest son’s favorite meal. Afterward she’d coaxed him into taking a moonlight walk with her, during which she convinced him there’d be a woman in his future as wonderful as Eden. Believing that, Jake had decided to shake Dillon’s hand and be happy for him. He vowed to find himself a woman who had both Eden’s qualities and his mom’s.

      It was going on two years now. There were times Jake thought he’d set himself an impossible task.

      His brother strode out from under the trees and raised a hand in greeting, even though a half mile still separated them. Unlike the volcanic terrain Jake had recently ridden though, this land was barren of all but an occasional scrub brush or cactus. Distance was hard to measure. It was why so many people who crossed the border illegally, seeking work in the larger Arizona cities, died of exposure or of dehydration. On the desert floor temperatures in the summer and early fall soared upward of 115 degrees—exactly the reason Hayley Ryan’s spring was so important to the Triple C. There was precious little hydration in the area. And not a drop of water to spare.

      Jacob covered the gap in short order.

      “Yo, brother,” Dillon called, holding his ground until Jake had galloped all the way into his makeshift camp. “Took your time getting here. I’d about decided we’d got our wires crossed.”

      “Spoken like a man who’s been forced to play the hermit against his will. You haven’t been gone from home a week. Couldn’t be you’re missing someone special, now could it?” Jake laughed and jumped back from the teasing punch Dillon threw at his left shoulder.

      “You damn well know I’m homesick as hell. How’s everything at the Triple C?” In other words, how was Eden getting along without him?

      “You know, Dillon,” Jake said in a thoughtful voice, “I think Coronado misses you. Why, it’s a crying shame how broke up that parrot’s been this week.”

      “Very funny. You know the bird hates me.” Dillon grasped Jake’s shirtfront in both hands, nearly lifting him off the ground. Charcoal charged the men, baring his teeth and barking wildly. Dillon lost no time in releasing his brother.

      “Tell me about Eden,” he pleaded. “What did she send me? And don’t hold out. She promised, and Eden never breaks a promise.”

      Jake knew when to back off and play it straight. He unbuckled Mojave’s cinch, hauled the heavy saddle under the trees and dropped it beside Dillon’s. Quickly he extracted a pink envelope from one saddlebag. So maybe he wasn’t finished teasing. He passed the scented missive under Dillon’s nose, then drew it back and pretended to take a deep whiff himself. “Mm-mm! I do believe she soaked this in pheromones. Better watch out, or every male in the animal kingdom will be swooping down on us.”

      “Give that to me.” Dillon snatched his letter out of Jake’s hand. He promptly put space between them, literally turning his back on his brother while his read it.

      Grinning like a crazy man, Jake flopped down with his back against a tree trunk and uncorked his canteen to take a long swallow of the cool water. He’d give Dillon time to read and reread his message from home. There was a limit to his pranks. But the darned thing was four pages long. Eden must have written a page for every night Dillon had been gone. Though he didn’t want to, Jake suffered a stab of jealousy.

      He supposed it was understandable. Growing up on an isolated ranch, he and Dillon had gone through all of the normal competitive stages that young boys and then young men developed. At times their poor mother had despaired of their surviving the sibling rivalry. But they had,

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