Micah Blaylock’s old cabin had been Tyrell’s refuge—rebuilding it had given him what he’d needed.
It wasn’t easy to move back into his family. He couldn’t forget his father’s last telephone call — Tyrell should have come home and didn’t. He’d been too busy chalking up profits for Mason Diversified.
He inhaled the fresh morning air, scented of spring. Soon there would be wild roses beginning to bud. A mountain blue bird shot across the sky, and new leaves shimmered on the cottonwood trees. And the air around him simmered with regrets. Now his parents were gone, killed in an accident on icy roads. He wondered if that ice had shrouded his heart, pictures of their crushed car in the deep canyon haunting him.
He studied the woman invading his peace. Then, with a curse, he expertly threw the ax he’d been using to cut wood; the ax handle rotated once in midair, the steel sinking deep into the trunk of an aspen tree. “If she makes it past that old rock slide, it will take her about two hours to get to the meadow, and she’s not getting past that. I came up here for peace and quiet.”
The woman, dressed in a ball cap, a dull red sweater against the morning chill and khaki shorts, placed one hand on a boulder and vaulted over it. Her small round glasses glinted, washed by the cloudy morning sun as she leaped over a stream and continued steadily upward on the rocky path. In a direct as-the-crow-flies line, she was not far from Tyrell’s cabin; however, the winding trail around a small canyon added to the walking time. From his high vantage point, Tyrell noticed her hiking boots and the slender athletic legs above them. Her backpack shifted as she vaulted over a log.
“She’ll sprain something and I’ll be stuck with her.” Tyrell had had enough of women for a long time. Hillary had left deep bruises. His ex-fiancée, the daughter of his boss, wasn’t exactly the love of his life, but she suited Tyrell’s rising financial career. After a five-year relationship, he’d expected her to believe his word against the rumor mongers’. His jaw tightened beneath his two-week beard. Someone had set out to deliberately sabotage his career, starting rumors about his private life and making insinuations about selling Mason Diversified’s lucrative client list to competitors.
An aging playboy, and jealous of Tyrell’s youth and fitness, Melvin Mason had gradually grown to resent his top man on a personal basis. Mason wanted singular control of the company, now that the firm was showing high profit.
Descended from hunters, Tyrell’s eyes jerked to a bighorn sheep, leaping on the red rock cliff above the cabin. Tyrell had expected his future father-in-law and employer of the past ten years to believe him. Insecure, feeling threatened and looking for reasons to strip Tyrell’s growing control of the company, Melvin Mason had believed what he wanted and took the rumors as truth. Melvin wasn’t the understanding sort, but then Tyrell hadn’t asked for friendship. He’d pushed Mason Diversified into a sleek, high profit company and had made millions for Mason. Tyrell liked numbers lining up to make neat profit. His colleagues hadn’t questioned his integrity; they respected him. He’d expected the same from his fiancée and an employer whom he had made rich. He hadn’t asked Hillary or her father for warmth; he’d asked them to believe him. After years of association, he hadn’t doubted that they would give him time to root out the troublemaker.
They hadn’t. Without waiting, without questioning or letting Tyrell untangle the gossip, Mason had wanted the company to himself. He wanted to play power hardball, ripping away Tyrell’s position and employee benefits. A bad move on Mason’s part — the aftershocks included Mason’s top clients calling Tyrell and asking for referrals to Mason’s competitors.
After Hillary’s and Mason’s reactions to the rumors that Tyrell had a sleazy private life, he hadn’t cared who started the trouble; he’d had enough after a long series of Mason’s attempts to undermine him. Prior to the final break, the day Mason ordered him out of the building, Tyrell’s instinct told him there was trouble. Two weeks before that day, Tyrell had moved to protect the investments and retirement portfolios of his staff and fellow workers, who wanted him to fight and who believed in him. Then, when their investments were safe and established in accounts outside Mason’s reach, Tyrell had set to work destroying what he’d built. On that final day, one touch of his finger to just one computer key, set into action damage that could not be repaired.
Descended from Apaches and Spanish conquistadors with a mix of European settler thrown in, Tyrell knew how to fight. He knew how to streamline profits and he knew how to fatten loss. He left Mason with a shell of a company, the same as it was ten years ago. Then he’d walked away, sickened by the lifestyle he had once wanted.
To mend, he’d come back to Jasmine, Wyoming, and his family, the Blaylocks. He’d sort out his disappointment and anger, in himself and in Mason, and then he’d rebuild his life.
Startled by his sudden flash of temper, Tyrell rhythmically slapped his thigh. Damn it, he wanted privacy, not visitors and chitchat or a helpless woman underfoot. The woman walked across a fallen log bridging another creek and Tyrell held his breath, hoping she wouldn’t fall. Instead she sat on a gray boulder and drew off her ball cap. Short, vibrant strawberry-red curls gleamed in the dim gray morning, her face small and pale in the distance.
“She’ll sunburn in this high mountain sun, even though it is cloudy.” Tyrell narrowed his eyes as she removed something from her backpack, stripped off her glasses and began rubbing her face and legs. “So she knows about sun protection, but there’s a whole lot more up here that can make life hard on a woman, including me. She’s not getting past my meadow.”
He glanced at the clouds and mist swirling around the blackrock jagged mountain above him. This was his element now, where he could trim his dark savage temper chopping wood and adding onto his log cabin. Rain was not far away, the air was heavy, fragrant with dampness. When the rain began, she’d change her mind and start back after resting. Then he could return to the peace he had to have....
“I want him to see me coming. I want him to know that I am Cutter Lomax’s granddaughter and that I’m taking away his family homestead.” Celine Lomax smiled tightly, coldly. After a full year of working to destroy Tyrell Blaylock, she was closing in to take away the Blaylock land. She’d spent her entire savings to finance recouping the land that was her birthright, according to her grandfather, Cutter Lomax. She knew his flaws, but they hadn’t stopped her love of him. Perhaps it was Cutter’s strength; her father and his son, Link, had been a much weaker man who failed at everything. Perhaps it was his expression when he talked about the land that had been taken from him. Or perhaps she’d always fought for the underdog, and Cutter’s lost claim appealed to that element of her nature. She, who had only two men for relatives, had held them close and dear, despite their flaws. Whatever the reason, she believed her deceased grandfather, without question.
As a surveyor, she had the skill to demolish the Blaylock claim to land Cutter Lomax said was rightfully his. She’d built her life, chosen her career, for this moment. Cutter’s revenge had been passed on to his son, Celine’s father, and she’d teethed on revenge. Now it was hers to carry out.
The unmarried, pampered, playboy baby of the Blaylocks was the perfect starting point
Today, she was edgy, tired and riding on nerves and coffee. For years, she’d worked overtime in freezing sleet, snow higher than her head and egg-frying temperatures. She’d hoarded every penny to finance tearing down the Blaylocks and their friend Boone Llewlyn. Except for long silk thermal underwear that was worth the high price, her wardrobe ran to anything she could wad into a duffel bag and wash in an icy creek. If she needed more, she stopped in a thrift shop along the way.
Light rain began and mist layered the meadow ahead of her. She shifted her aching shoulders under the heavy backpack that contained everything she owned. She’d paid her father and grandfather’s medical bills and spared nothing for herself. She’d teethed on “taking