LITMIR.BIZ

      Time was something she had plenty of, and Katherine should have used it to her advantage. After all, she had plenty to do. She was an illustrator for one of the most well-known publishers of children’s books in England, and she’d brought her latest project with her. It was due in a month, and she would need every second of the next thirty days to finish her illustrations on time.

      But three days after her telephone conversation with Priscilla, she still found it impossible to focus on her work. The silence of her own company was driving her mad, and just when she thought she was getting her emotions under control, images of Nigel would float through her head uninvited, and tears would once again flood her eyes. Scotland obviously wasn’t working for her. She had to get out of there.

      For all of thirty seconds she considered going to a tropical island far, far away, somewhere where the language and food were so foreign that she wouldn’t think twice about him. In the end, however, she knew there was only one place where she would find solace, and that was the Broken Arrow Ranch, near Willow Bend, Colorado.

      She hadn’t spent much time at the ranch, and six months ago, when she and her sisters and brother had inherited the place from their long-lost American relative, Hilda Wyatt, leaving London for a cattle ranch in the wilds of Colorado was the last thing she’d thought she’d ever be interested in. It was too far away, too rugged, too different from the kind of life she’d led in England, and she’d wanted nothing to do with it. She had gladly let her brother, Buck, move to Colorado and she’d stayed in London.

      Her feelings about the ranch, however, changed drastically when her family came under attack. And it was all Hilda Wyatt’s fault. She hadn’t left the ranch to them outright, with no strings attached. Instead, through the terms of her will, she’d required someone from the family to spend every night at the ranch for a year. Buck or Katherine and her sisters could be absent from the house for one night, but not for two in a row. If they failed to meet the requirements of the will, then the ranch would go to an unnamed heir.

      Katherine appreciated the fact that Hilda respected family heritage enough to include her and her siblings in her will even though she’d never met them. She’d obviously wanted the British branch of the Wyatts to inherit the Broken Arrow, if possible.

      Unfortunately, she’d probably never suspected that once the citizens of Willow Bend learned of the conditions of the will and the unnamed heir, they would attack the legal heirs in order to drive them away from the ranch so someone else could inherit. They’d harassed Buck and Rainey, made their lives miserable. Then, while the newlyweds were gone on their honeymoon, someone had terrorized Elizabeth when she’d taken Buck’s place at the ranch. If John, the ranch foreman, hadn’t been there to protect her—and fall in love with her—she could easily have been seriously hurt, even killed, during her stay at the ranch. Someone had shot out the windshield of the vehicle she was driving and even set the hunting cabin she and John had escaped to on fire.

      Over the past few weeks, however, things had calmed down considerably at the ranch, which wasn’t surprising. Buck and Rainey had returned home from their honeymoon, and Elizabeth and John were engaged and busy rebuilding the cabin where they would live once they were married. When she arrived, three-fourths of the family would be in residence. Surely, whoever was after the ranch would realize that their odds of driving the Wyatts away from the Broken Arrow were slim to none.

      She would, she decided, be safe…and have thousands of acres to lose herself in and forget Nigel. The decision made, she booted up her computer and booked the first available flight to Colorado.