LITMIR.BIZ

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her. “Dinner’ll be ready in half an hour.”

      “Sorry,” said Ellie. “I’m not going to be here.”

      Jenna crumpled a napkin into her lap. “Oh, Ellie.”

      “Can’t be helped.” She finished the lemonade and turned to rinse the glass in the sink. “Got to get some more horses out to Cougar Butte by dawn.”

      “Is that why Wayne called?”

      “Yep.”

      Behind her, she could hear Jenna’s long suffering sigh. She opened a cabinet door and reached for the aspirin, battling back a fresh layer of guilt. Pleasing Jenna was one of life’s priorities, and it stung every time she failed.

      Twenty years ago, Jenna had taken one look at undersize, underweight eleven-year-old Ellie Connors and had simply taken her in, into her life and into her heart. When Ellie’s nomad of a father had packed their bags after a six-month stint at Granite Ridge, Jenna had quietly pulled Ellie’s duffel from the back of his truck and carried it through the front door of the big ranch house.

      Ellie had known what that meant—she’d likely never see her real father again.

      But she’d also known it meant no more aimless searching for an easier life over every horizon. No more switching towns in the middle of the school term and falling another grade behind. No more standing off to one side in the school yard, afraid to make a friend she’d soon part with. She’d stood dry-eyed in the wide, dusty ranch yard, watching her old life disappear down the road as her new mother’s hand had fallen, soft and steady, on her shoulder and her new father’s voice, just as soft and steady, had asked her to come in to dinner. Her new sister had grinned at her from the front porch and, inside the tall white house, a handsome college-aged brother had grinned at her from family photos.

      She’d traded up that day, gifted with a permanent foothold in a shifting world. But she’d also traded up to an adult’s set of worries and an adult’s burden of guilt. The worries varied from day to day, but the guilt was a constant, gnawing ache.

      She shook a couple of aspirin into her palm and hoped they’d work off some of today’s sore spots before she started working on tonight’s. “I’ll go say good-night to Jody before I head out.”

      “Is Will going with you?” Jenna waited for Ellie’s nod. “Then I’ll pack a sandwich for him, too.”

      ELLIE STOOD IN JODY’S DOORWAY for a minute. The sight of her long-legged daughter draped over a pink and ruffled bed made the stresses and strains of the day slip away. She sure took after her father—coltish and confident, as foamy and fun as cold beer in a tall glass on the Fourth of July. She was every bit as impulsive and trusting as her father, too, just as quick to gift a stranger with a piece of her heart and just as likely to see it tossed aside or trampled. Dreamers, the pair of them.

      Ellie had always been the one who soothed the pain and patched up the pieces. But knowing that Jody would always have a home, that she would always be secure in her family’s love—that’s what made the work and the worries worth the effort.

      The phone was getting its battery recharged in the cradle on the nightstand, and Jody was sprawled on her back with her nose tent-poled up inside some newsprint tabloid. Teen magazines were strewn across the spread. Wasn’t it just last week she’d been working her way through Jenna’s collection of children’s classics?

      Ellie studied the nearest magazine cover, searching for a conversation topic in one of the neon-print headlines. “So, who’s hot and who’s not?”

      “Oh, you know—the usual.” Jody dropped the gossip paper on the floor and scrambled to her knees to gather the mess on her bed into a neat pile. She clutched it all to her chest with a defensive glance at Ellie. “Gran bought these for me.”

      “That’s fine, hon.”

      Ellie shifted from one foot to the other, feeling as uncomfortable as her daughter looked. She didn’t like the idea that Jody might want to hide things from her. And worse, she didn’t know how to talk to her daughter about the need for deceptions. It was as if she and Jody were slipping away from each other, too fast, too far, as if the same mysterious metamorphosis that was turning Jody into a grown, independent woman would also turn her into a stranger.

      Ellie grasped at the few moments she could spare for her daughter tonight, longing to share a sliver of whatever Jody thought was important. She walked into the room and sat on the edge of the bed. “Is there anyone in particular who’s hot right now?”

      Jody hesitated, and then pulled a tabloid from the middle of the stack and set it on the bed. Fitz Kelleran’s handsome face grinned up at them both. “Is he here yet?”

      Ellie nodded. “Yep.”

      “Oh, my God.” Jody edged closer. “Have you seen him?”

      “Talked to him just a while ago.”

      “Oh, my God.” Jody stared at the cover. “What does he look like? I mean, you know, does he really look like this?”

      “I’ll tell you exactly what he looks like.” Ellie lifted a hand to fan her face. “Oh. My. God.”

      Jody shrieked and flopped across the bed to sweep the tabloid off the floor. “Listen to this,” she said, flipping pages until she found what she was looking for. “‘Bond Bombshell Samantha Hart gave live-in boyfriend Fitz Kelleran a kung-fu kick in the teeth when she announced on nationwide television that she was leaving him. Fitz heard the news on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno while sitting at home in his TV room, along with several million of his fellow dumpees. Samantha’s been spotted in several Hollywood hot spots, with several Hollywood hotshots, while Kelleran’s howling his Hart out with the coyotes, shooting on location in the Montana wilderness.’”

      Jody glanced up. “This isn’t exactly the wilderness.”

      Ellie picked up the magazine with Fitz’s cover. He suddenly seemed a little more interesting—and a lot easier to deal with—now that she knew that spectacular exterior masked a dumpee’s interior. Still, it was a bit unsettling to be staring at this glamour shot of the flesh-and-blood man she’d been speaking to an hour or so ago. “You believe everything you read in these things?”

      Jody rolled her eyes. “No.”

      She leaned over Ellie’s shoulder and pointed to a photo of Fitz in his Justice, D.O.A. attorney’s suit—tie askew, hair falling over his forehead, a briefcase dangling from one hand and a gun clutched in the other. “Are his eyes really that blue?”

      “Bluer.”

      “Whoa. Does he look, you know—” Jody wrinkled her nose. “Kind of mean?”

      “Like in this picture?”

      “No, I mean, like, mean. Scary.”

      Ellie remembered that smile searing a hot trail through her midsection and felt another blush coming on. Oh, yeah…scary. She shook her head at her foolish reaction and handed the magazine to Jody. “No, he doesn’t seem that way at all.”

      Jody smoothed her hand over the cover. “I can hardly wait to meet him.”

      “Jody, we talked about this.” Ellie shoved to her feet. “You know I don’t want you bothering those people.”

      “I wouldn’t be, honest. Trish even asked me to help.”

      “I especially don’t want you getting in Trish’s way. She looks like she’s got more than she can handle as it is.”

      “Aw, Mom—”

      “I really don’t want to have this argument again.” Ellie closed her eyes for a moment to block out her daughter’s mutinous glare. “I came up to say good night. Will and I are heading out to round up some more stock for the second unit work in the morning.”

      Jody tossed the magazines on the

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