LITMIR.BIZ

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been going through. He sensed things about her, things that would have turned another man away and yet if anything made him even more protective.

      Her heart went out to him, but she didn’t move. Didn’t dare. She couldn’t let him think she was falling in love with him. She’d given her heart away at twenty-four to Buckmaster Hamilton, and it was still his. Maybe would always be his.

      Unless there’d been another man in her life during the past twenty-two years that she couldn’t remember. That thought made her hug herself against the chill that raced up her spine. Had there been a man? She shuddered to think what kind of man he would have been, given her flashes of memory.

      “I brought you strawberries,” Russell called, making her smile as he reached into the back of the truck and brought out a cooler. “I wanted to bring ice cream, but I knew it would melt before I got here.”

      He started toward her. She waited, anxious to know if he’d heard from Buck, but not wanting it to be the first thing out of her mouth.

      Russell didn’t ask how she’d been doing, because he already knew, as she led him into the small but modern cabin.

      She felt guilty for involving him in her messy life. He’d been so kind. “I’m so sorry I—”

      “Stop,” he said, putting down the cooler and stepping to her. His big hands cupping her shoulders felt warm, reassuring. “I couldn’t be happier helping you. Wasn’t it obvious that I was at loose ends when you came into my life? I desperately needed a diversion.”

      Was that what she was? She feared he wanted more than that from her and needed to warn him what a mistake that would be. It wasn’t just that she was still in love with Buck. No, her reasons, along with her fears, ran much deeper.

      “Ready for your doctor’s appointment?” he asked.

      He hoped the neurologist would be able to determine what had caused her memory loss. She feared he might be right. “What if he tells me...”

      “We’ll face whatever he tells you together,” Russell said quickly and reached for her hand.

      “Still, I’m afraid that I will bring something dangerous into your—”

      “I can handle whatever you bring.” His gaze locked with hers. “I will protect you no matter what. Believe that.”

      She could see that he meant every word. Russell would protect her to his dying breath, and that scared her even more. She hated that she’d put him in that position. Like her, he sensed that something scary from her past would ultimately find its way to Beartooth. His fear for her safety made her all the more frightened that it was only a matter of time before her past found her.

      * * *

      JACE HAD HOPED Buckmaster Hamilton was right and Bo was headed back to the ranch. But by the time he’d saddled up that afternoon, leaving his pickup and horse trailer at the Hamilton Ranch, there was still no sign of Bo. Even as he rode through the foothills and into the tall pines, winding his way up into the formidable Crazy Mountains, he still hoped to run across her.

      It didn’t take him long to pick up her tracks. The trail into the mountains was on Hamilton Ranch property, so no one else had ridden this way recently.

      He knew there could be a good excuse why she hadn’t shown up. She could have gotten injured. Or her horse could have. Either would have kept her in the mountains longer than she’d planned. But the fact that she’d gone camping knowing that she had a meeting with the auditor first thing Monday morning made him suspicious that neither of those was the case.

      Bo Hamilton grew up rich and insulated. This was probably the first real adversity she’d ever had in her life—and her way of handling it had been to run. That didn’t surprise him at all given their past. As he rode, he became more angry with her. How could she leave her employees to face the mess at the foundation? It would be all he could do not to turn her over his knee when he found her. Instead he would take her back to face the consequences.

      He hated to think what this might do to his sister. Em had a problem with trusting the wrong people. Hadn’t he feared that Bo Hamilton would let her down, just as she had him? Worse, when he’d heard about the work Bo had been doing at the foundation, he’d wanted to believe she might really have changed, grown up, no longer acted on impulse. But if she’d ridden up into the mountains to hide... He’d wring her neck when he found her. And he would find her.

      “Are you crazy?” his best friend Brody McTavish had exclaimed a few hours earlier when Jace visited to tell him where he was going. Brody had shoved back his Western straw hat to gaze at him with amused blue eyes. “You’re doing this for your sister?” He’d laughed good-naturedly and with a shake of his head had turned back to mucking out his barn.

      “This has nothing to do with Bo Hamilton other than the fact that I have to find her and make this right.”

      “Make this right? Or rewrite the past? Jace—” Brody turned to look at him, his face suddenly serious. “What if she took the money? What if she rode up into those mountains to meet someone, and they are miles from here by now?”

      “There is only one way to find out. Would you mind watering and feeding my animals while I’m away? I should be back by tomorrow afternoon at the latest.”

      “You know you can count on me,” Brody had said. “But be careful. That family seems to attract trouble like bald tires pick up nails.”

      Jace had chuckled and given his friend a slap on the back. “Thanks for your help and your advice.”

      “Went in one ear and out the other, didn’t it?” Brody sighed. “You just can’t seem to get over her, can you? But I’m not going to tell you this is a fool’s errand if there ever was one. Just don’t make me have to come looking for you, too. There’s a storm coming and we both know what that means in the Crazies.”

      Now, as Jace rode higher up into the mountains following the trail Bo Hamilton had left behind, he breathed in the fresh smell of the pine trees and told himself he knew what he was doing. It was the same thing he’d been doing since his parents had died, leaving a teenager with an already wild and out-of-control kid sister to raise. He was trying to save Emily.

      A breeze groaned high in the treetops. Nearby he could hear the rush of water in a small creek. He tried to concentrate on the wildness of the country, the beauty and the incredible views. He loved riding into the Crazies, loved the cool air under the heavy pine boughs, the quiet broken only by the sounds of nature, the isolation. The mountains released a calm in him that he could find in no other place.

      That had been something he and Bo shared.

      He shoved that thought away, anxious to hear the sound of another horse. Another person. Today he was the hunter. He wondered how Bo Hamilton would react when she realized she was his prey.

      Mostly he hoped to hell he wasn’t making a huge mistake, since he really had no idea what he was going to find up here.

       CHAPTER FOUR

      ALEX ROSS COULDN’T HELP worrying about the young woman who’d come into Big Timber Java coffee shop this afternoon. Normally she had a smile for him, her blue eyes bright as stars and her laugh...well, he’d fallen for her laugh the first time he’d heard it—even before he’d connected the laugh with the tattooed, pierced young woman.

      Not that he hadn’t been surprised when he’d finally put the laugh with the face of the young woman now mulling over her coffee. She was nothing like he’d expected and certainly not his type. That’s why he’d never talked to her, even though he’d wanted to since the first day he’d heard her laugh.

      Now, though, unable to stop himself, he quickly picked up a dishrag from behind the counter and headed for her table.

      “Usually all it takes is coffee to put a smile

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