Wyoming Woman. Elizabeth Lane

find this place the same as it was three years ago, before you came here.”

      “You’re saying I should leave so you can have your nice, peaceful life back.”

      Either she’d missed the irony in his voice or she was choosing to ignore it. “My father would gladly buy you out, Luke. You could go somewhere else, with plenty of money to make a new start.”

      “Just like that.” Luke would have laughed at her naiveté if he hadn’t been choking on his own fury. “You’ve never had to fight for anything in your pampered little life have you, Miss Rachel Tolliver? You can’t even imagine what it’s like to want something so much that you’d spill your own blood to get it, and to hold onto it.”

      She raked her hair back from her face with restless fingers. “Maybe not,” she said in a taut voice. “But I know enough to recognize a stubborn fool when I see one.”

      “And I know enough to recognize a woman who thinks she can rearrange the people around her like furniture, to suit her own pleasure. Anyone who’s spoiling her pretty view will be shown the door. Well, this time it’s not going to work.”

      “Especially not with a man who’s bent on self-destruction!”

      Without waiting for his response, she stalked down the slope to where the lamb had finished nursing and was tottering away from the ewe on uncertain legs. Bending down, Rachel caught the small creature around its chest and scooped it into her arms. As she turned back to face him, a ray of amber sunlight slanted through the clouds to touch her windblown hair. For an instant her face was haloed by living, moving flame. Luke was no artist, but if he could have taken brush to canvas he would have chosen to paint her exactly as he saw her now—as a rescuing angel with blazing hair and a wounded lamb cradled in her arms.

      But Rachel Tolliver was no angel, he reminded himself. She was a willful, self-centered minx who demanded life on her own terms and gave no quarter to anyone else’s point of view. The sooner she was off his hands and back with her own kind, the better for them both.

      The vision dissolved as she moved, striding back up the hill toward him. “Let’s go,” she said. “I’ve had enough rain for one day.”

      Luke mounted and reached down for her. She passed him the lamb, then seized his free arm and allowed him to swing her up behind him. She was light and strong, like lifting a bird, he thought as she scrambled into place on the horse’s withers. Light and strong and tough. And while she’d been pushy and temperamental and annoying, not once had he heard her whine.

      Passing her the lamb, he whistled to the dogs and urged the buckskin to a trot. Overhead the skies darkened and rumbled, showing a thin streak of red above the mountains, like a bed of glowing coals glimpsed through the grate of an iron stove. The sheep were moving fast now, driven by the pressing dogs and by a sense of urgency that seemed to hover in the air around them all. Luke felt it, too, and he pushed the animals harder. He had been away from the ranch too long. There was evil afoot, his instincts shrilled. He needed to get back home before it was too late.