LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter One

      “Recalculating.”

      Casey Brand had been lost in thought until the portable GPS interrupted her daydream. She tightened her grip on the steering wheel of the moving truck, hands placed firmly at ten and two, before she glanced at the GPS screen.

      “Recalculating.”

      “No!” Casey argued with the machine. “We are not recalculating!”

      “Recalculating.”

      The map on the screen of the GPS had disappeared, replaced by a single word: searching. She hadn’t been to her uncle and aunt’s ranch since she was a teenager, so finding it by memory wasn’t a viable option. She needed the GPS to do its job. Casey took her eyes off the road for a second to tap the screen of the GPS.

      “Darn it!” She was going to have to pull over.

      Her trip from Chicago to Montana had been fraught with setbacks: violent thunderstorms, road construction, bad food, horrible menstrual cramps and a rental truck that struggled to maintain speed on every single hill. Not wanting to risk stopping on an incline, Casey punched the gas pedal several times to help the truck make the climb to the top of the hill.

      “Come on, you stupid truck!” Casey rocked back and forth in her seat. “You can do it!”

      Halfway to the top of the hill, the check-engine light flashed and then disappeared.

      “Don’t you dare!” Casey ordered.

      Three quarters of the way up the hill, the orange check-engine light appeared and, this time, it stayed.

      Casey groaned in frustration. With every tedious mile, it felt like the universe was telling her that her trip was ill-fated. At the top of the hill, she turned on her blinker, carefully eased the truck onto the gravelly berm and shifted into Park.

      “Recalculating.”

      “Oh, just shut up,” Casey grumbled as she shut off the engine.

      “You wait here,” she said to the teacup poodle watching her curiously from inside a dog carrier that was secured with a seat belt. “I’ll be right back.”

      She pulled on the lever to pop the hood and jumped out of the cab. At the front of the truck, she was immediately hit with a strong, acrid smell coming from the engine. The hood of the truck was hot to the touch; Casey yanked her baseball cap off her head and used it to protect her fingers while she lifted up the hood.

      “Holy cannoli!” Casey covered her face with the cap and backed away from the truck. A moment later, she ran back to the cab of the truck and grabbed the dog carrier, before she put distance between herself and the rental.

      A small electrical fire had melted several wires in the engine; it looked as if the fire had already put itself out, but she couldn’t risk driving the truck now. For the time being, she was stuck on a desolate road, with her sister’s worldly possessions in the back of the broken-down rental, a teacup poodle and angry black storm clouds forming overhead.

      Casey pulled her phone out of the back pocket of her jeans to call her sister.

      “Come on, Taylor...pick up the phone.”

      When Taylor didn’t answer, she called again. She was on her third attempt when a fat raindrop landed on the bridge of her nose. She looked up at the black cloud that was now directly above her.

      “Really?” she asked the cloud.

      Her sister wasn’t answering, for whatever reason, so she needed to move on to plan B. She was about to dial her aunt Barbara’s cell number when she noticed a horse and rider galloping across a field on the opposite side of the road. She didn’t think, she reacted.

      “Hey!” Casey ran across the road, waving her free arm wildly. “Hey!”

      The rider didn’t seem to hear her or see her. At the edge of the road, Casey looked down at her beloved Jimmy Choo crushed leather Burke boots and then at the rider. There was mud and grass and rock between her and the rustic wooden fence that surrounded the wide, flat field. Her boots had only known city sidewalks and shopping malls. She didn’t want her beautiful boots to get dirty, but there wasn’t a choice—she had to get the rider’s attention. She ran, as softly as she could manage, through the mud and wet grass to the fence. She put the dog carrier on the ground so she could climb up onto the fence.

      “Hey!” Casey yelled again and waved her hat in the air. “Help!”

      This time, the rider, a cowboy by the look of him, saw her. He slowed his muscular black horse, assessed the situation and then changed direction.

      “He sees us!” Casey told her canine companion. The closer the cowboy came, the more familiar he seemed. Casey stared harder at the man galloping toward her, sitting so confident and erect in the saddle.

      “Wait a minute. I know you!”

      * * *

      Brock McAllister was galloping toward home, racing the rain clouds gathering to the west, when he spotted a woman perched on his fence, waving her arm to get his attention. Brock slowed his stallion and assessed the situation before he decided to change direction. As he came closer, he could see that the woman wasn’t as young as he had thought. She had a slight build, borderline thin, and appeared to be in her midthirties.

      “Brock! It’s me—Casey,” the woman called out to him with another wave. “Casey Brand.”

      The moment Casey added the last name “Brand” to the equation, Brock made the connection. He had worked on the Brand family’s ranch, Bent Tree, since he was a teenager, and had worked his way up to ranch foreman. Taylor, Casey’s older sister, was married to his stepbrother, Clint, and had just given him a niece. So he’d heard through the grapevine that Casey was coming to Montana to help her sister with the new baby, but he hadn’t given her much thought one way or the other until he found her climbing on his fence.

      Lightning lit up the gray clouds hanging over the mountains in the distance and the once-sporadic raindrops were coming with more frequency. He only had a few short minutes to stay ahead of the storm. If Casey needed rescuing, it was going to have to be quick.

      “You have perfect timing!” Casey gave him a relieved smile when he halted his horse next to the fence. “Would you believe it? The engine caught on fire!”

      Given that information, Brock made a split-second decision that he couldn’t leave Casey behind in the rental while he went back to the farm to get his truck.

      “We need to get out of the way of this storm.” Brock walked his horse in a small circle so he could get closer to the fence.

      “Is there someone you can call to come get me? I tried my sister, but she didn’t answer.”

      “You can’t stay here. We’re under a tornado watch.” Brock halted his horse and held out his gloved hand to Casey. “You need

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