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I came because I wanted to get this reunion over with and move on. I wanted to prove to myself that I’ve been losing sleep over nothing.

But the words wouldn’t come. So she hedged.

“They’re taking bets about us at the bar.”

“Of course they are. You must have known that would happen.”

“Listen, Kade. I live a quiet life now. I don’t like to be stared at or gossiped about.” She managed to hold his gaze as she spoke.

“Since when? You’ve never cared what anyone thought.”

So much for hedging. “I cared what you thought, for all the good it did me.”

“I wanted to get married,” he said in a voice so low it was almost a growl. “You were the one who demanded more time. You were the one who said we should make sure before we took the big step.”

“I didn’t think you’d be sleeping with other women, or raising families with them.”

“It happened. I wasn’t going to walk out on her.”

Her. Libby was surprised that she felt a stab of jealousy. She tilted her head back. “You did the right thing. For her.”

“I had no choice.”

“No,” she admitted, “you didn’t.” He couldn’t have come back to her when he was having a baby with someone else. She wouldn’t have had him back.

“I still don’t know why you’re here,” he said.

“You want to know why I’m here? Because, regardless of what you think, I don’t appreciate being bet on and talked about. I’d prefer not to have people watching us to see what’s going to happen next, like we’re some kind of reality show.”

“What are you talking about?” he asked with a perplexed scowl.

“You told Jason you’d do as you damned well pleased where I’m concerned.”

Kade hooked his thumb in his belt and regarded her for another long moment. “I didn’t mean it the way it sounds.”

“Well, it’s what someone heard and it’s affecting the odds.”

“Libby …”

The way he said her name sent a small tingle through her body. And it pissed her off. “Just keep your distance and I’ll keep mine. I think you owe me that much, Kade.” She opened the truck door, putting a barrier between them. “It was nice to meet your daughter.”

Libby got in and turned the key, throwing the truck into Reverse almost as soon as the engine fired and leaving Kade standing in the driveway.

Talk about plans being derailed. She’d come on the offensive and had left on the retreat. That wasn’t the way she normally did things, but it was the way she’d done them today.

And she didn’t know why.

Libby slowed as she approached a corner. No, she did know why, and it was more than the kid being there. Seeing Kade had thrown her completely off-kilter. No matter how many times she’d told herself that she’d moved on over the past few years, it was obvious now that she’d been wrong.

She was still pissed off at Kade. And she still hated him for what he’d done.

“WHO’S THAT LADY, DAD?” Maddie asked as soon as Kade opened the trailer door.

Try as he might, Kade couldn’t say “no one.”

“We grew up together,” he said as he shut the door behind him. He glanced into the mirror that was visible through the door of the small bathroom and he grimaced. He looked like a derelict. He didn’t usually sleep this late, but Maddie had been wound up the night before and she’d talked well into the small hours before he convinced her to slide her folding door shut and get some sleep.

“Why’s she mad at you?”

“Because I hurt her feelings once.” He headed for the coffeepot.

“A long time ago?”

“Yep.”

“And she’s still mad?” Maddie blinked as she asked the question.

Kade poured coffee into a mug, took a sip. Then another. “Some people stay mad a long time, sweetie.”

“I don’t.”

“You’re lucky. Come on,” he said, jerking his head toward the stove. “I’ll make breakfast. You set the table.”

“Pancakes?”

“You bet.”

Maddie set the tiny fold-out table while Kade whipped up pancakes from a mix and started cooking dollar-size cakes in a cast-iron frying pan. Maddie loved the trailer because everything was small. She thought it was like living in a dollhouse, whereas Kade was getting a bona fide case of cabin fever after only a week. But he wouldn’t sleep in the house. He hated the feel of the place, could still feel his father’s malevolent presence.

“I want to see the blue horse before I go.”

“He’s not really blue, Maddie,” Kade replied as he flipped pancakes. His nerves were still humming from his encounter with Libby. She hadn’t changed much. She was still full of fire. Still beautiful with all that long curly hair and those flashing blue eyes. And she had obviously been unnerved by meeting Maddie.

Not that there was a chance in hell that her feelings toward his child would matter one way or the other. Libby was not, by nature, the trusting kind, and he’d done more than break her trust. He’d decimated it. But she’d also done a number on him, too, when she’d told him she wasn’t sure she wanted to get married.

“I know he’s not really blue,” Maddie replied airily, bringing his attention back to her. “He’s a blue roan. He has black and white and gray hairs mixed, and it looks like he’s blue.”

Maddie had had blue roans on the brain ever since Kade had told her about Blue, the stud his grandfather had given him when he was fifteen. He hadn’t told her about setting the horse free, since that was both illegal and frowned upon, instead letting her think that Blue had escaped on his own and joined a band of mustangs.

“And he’s far away. It’s a long ride.” Kade slapped half a dozen small pancakes onto a red plastic plate, handed it to his daughter, then started pouring more batter into the frying pan.

“I can make it,” Maddie said as she covered her pancakes with syrup.

“Maybe you can, but can Sugar Foot? You’re getting pretty big and riding double might be kind of hard on the old girl.”

“Da-ad.”

Kade smiled in response to her disgusted tone. He hated what his long-ago mistake had done to Libby, but never for one instant had he regretted his child. And he was doing the best he could to be a decent father, even though he didn’t have a lot of experience in that area. At least he’d hung around with his friend Menace’s huge family and Jason Ross’s smaller one enough to have some experiences of what a real family was supposed to be like.

“Maybe when I get my other horse we can ride out and see if we can find Blue.”

“Cool. When are you getting your other horse?” Maddie asked, practically bouncing in her seat. They’d been over this before, but Kade patiently repeated himself.

“As soon as I sell this place.”

“And then you’re moving back up by us, right?”

“Yeah.” I hope. It was also possible he’d have to go wherever he could find a decent job or—and he’d just started playing with this idea—where he could go to school. Get some training.

“And then I can ride the new horse all the time. Whenever I ask Mike for a horse, he says we don’t have room.”

“He has a point there, kiddo. Not many horses like living in a small backyard.”

“We can board him.”

“That’s expensive.”

“Mike’s rich.”

Not really, though compared to Kade he was. Kade refrained from commenting.

“Maybe when you move back, I can keep my horse with you?” Maddie held out her plate for seconds, having inhaled the first batch of pancakes.

“It may be a while before I get my own place.”

“I thought you’d be rich when you sell the house. You know, like you used to be.”

Or had thought he was.

“I wish,” Kade said. But if all went well, he should have enough to invest in a smaller property and pay for some kind of training. It just might not be in the immediate Elko area. “But no matter what, I’ll be close enough that we’ll get our time together, right?”

Kade’s cell phone rang just as he sent Maddie off to shower. She lingered at the door, shamelessly eavesdropping.

“This is Joe Barton of the Zephyr Valley ranch,” the man on the phone said without bothering to include a hello. “We met at the feed store.”

“I remember.”

“I apologize for being brusque then, but …”

“I understand,” Kade said. “Zero tends to be enthusiastic.”

“Yes. Exactly. And I didn’t know you from Adam. Didn’t connect the name until later. Anyway, would you be interested in riding some colts for me? I have three that need some miles.”

“I’m waiting to hear on a job.” Or three. “I’m not sure how much time I’ll have if it pans out.”

“I’m flexible. I’m sure we can work something out.”

“Zephyr Valley—” it almost hurt Kade to call the old Boggy Flat by that name “—is quite a drive from here. I’d want to have the colts here at my ranch while I’m riding them.”

“What are your facilities like? I don’t keep my horses in barbed wire.”

“Then I guess you won’t be keeping them here, unless they all stay in the one corral and you provide hay. My pastures have wire fences.”

“Do you mind if I stop by and see where you’d keep ‘em? Maybe iron out some details?”

“Sure. I’ll be home all day.”

“What do you charge a month?”

“A grand per animal,” Kade said without hesitation. He had a feeling Joe Barton wanted to tell people that world champion cowboy Kade Danning had finished his colts. And he’d discovered over the years that some people didn’t feel as if they were getting quality anything unless they paid through the nose.

“Nine hundred, if I provide the hay.”

“Agreed.”

“Who was that, Dad?” Maddie asked from the bathroom doorway.

“A guy who wants me to ride some colts for him.” And a nice surprise bit of income.

Maddie’s eyes widened. “Then I get Sugar Foot all to myself next time I visit.”

Kade smiled. “If he brings colts, you can ride Sugar Foot.”

“I wish Sugar Foot was all coal black with a white star. That’s what my next horse is going to be. Or maybe a blue roan.” She swung the door back and forth as she talked, then suddenly she stopped moving. “Hey. When you get the colts, then we can go see Blue with the wild horses.” Her eyes got even rounder as the idea began to gel. “We can camp out! And put ropes around our sleeping bags to keep snakes away and hobble the horses, like in my Phantom Stallion book.”

Kade fell back on one of those parental phrases he found he used over and over again. “We’ll see.”

“It’ll be so much fun.”

As much fun as horse camp? Somehow he thought not. A trip to the mustangs would be one or maybe two days at the most. Horse camp was three weeks. Hard to compare the two.

He couldn’t wait until he had this place sold and he could move closer to Maddie—close enough to fight for the time that was legally his.

Libby would probably organize a parade to celebrate his departure.

CHAPTER THREE

JILLIAN AND MIKE PULLED into Kade’s yard around four that afternoon. Mike was an accountant for one of the big mines in Elko. Quiet and unassuming. Kade had to admit that Mike was better for Jillian than he had ever been, but when Maddie ran and gave him a big hug Kade found it a little hard to take. She really did have two dads, and Kade sometimes had a sneaking suspicion that he wasn’t number one.

But he wasn’t giving up. Maybe he had some stuff to make up for, but for the most part he’d been there for his daughter—and he would continue to be there.

Jillian eyed the house, with its peeling paint and dirty windows, while Mike loaded Maddie’s purple suitcase in the trunk of the car. Her expression was pained.

“We stayed in the trailer,” Kade said.

“Good. I don’t want her exposed to hantavirus.”

Like he would let his kid be anywhere near mice. “Give me some credit, all right?”

Jillian sniffed. “When Maddie comes back here in June, will she be staying in the trailer? Or will the house be ready for habitation?” She smoothed her wind-ruffled hair away from her face as she spoke. It was a lighter brown than it had been when they’d been married. And streaked in a classy kind of way.

“I plan on having the house done by the time she gets here. If not, well, we’ve stayed in the trailer before.”

“But not for weeks, Kade. And when are you going to tell her she won’t be going to horse camp?”

“I’m not, Jillian. You’re the one who set that up—you explain it to her.” Kade was in a lose-lose situation, thanks to his ex-wife, and when they’d finally discussed the matter over the phone she hadn’t been one bit repentant.

“I get Maddie for two months every summer. It’s part of the agreement,” Kade continued.

“It’s not in her best interest. I thought you would understand that. Whatever happened between us, you always put Maddie’s well-being first.”

That’s it, Jillie. Slap down the guilt card.

“I allowed you to reduce child support,” she said with a tilt of her head.

“That was temporary. And I made it up.”

“But I cooperated.”

“Jillian, I want to see my daughter for the summer, as per the agreement. I don’t want to have to get a lawyer.”

He couldn’t afford a lawyer, and unfortunately, due to his having to temporarily lower his child-support payments while he’d fought his way out of the financial bind his crooked ex-accountant had left him in, she knew that.

“Do what’s best for Maddie, Kade. I’ll give you a couple days to think about it and then we’ll talk again. Oh … you really don’t need to send the support checks this summer, if it’s a burden.”

“Are you trying to buy me off?”

“I’m trying to do what’s best for my daughter.”

“Our daughter.”

“Do you have a means of support?”

“I’m doing all right.” Kind of.

“Well, if you’re working, then who’ll take care of Maddie?”

“Damn it, Jill …”

She started walking. “I’ll call in a few days, Kade, and we can discuss this some more.”

She got into the car, where Mike was waiting behind the wheel and Maddie was arranging her nest of blankets and pillows in the backseat beside the twins, leaving Kade seething. He faked a smile and raised a hand to wave to Maddie as they drove away. Mike waved back, too. Jillian didn’t.

Okay, maybe he wouldn’t go to work until after Maddie left. That was the way things would probably pan out, anyway, since he’d checked with every place he’d sent an application to and there were no bites so far. But on the bright side, riding colts for Joe Barton would help immensely, plus it was something he could do while Maddie was there and he’d still have time left to work on the house. Besides that, Maddie would only be there for a matter of a few weeks, unless he got tough with Jillian. But what kind of father kept his daughter from going to horse camp? Even he wasn’t delusional enough to imagine that riding with Dad would be as much fun as spending three weeks with other girls and lots of horses. There’d probably be campfires and marshmallows and girl talk.

Was Maddie old enough for girl talk?

It kind of tore at him to think that even if she wasn’t now, she soon would be. Kids grew up fast—faster than he’d ever dreamed. So why had his childhood seemed to last forever?

Must have been the fear factor.

Kade stared at the evil house in which he’d planned to spend the day, then turned his back on it and walked to his truck. The house would keep. Right now he was going to attend to some other unfinished business. Libby might not want to hear what he had to say, but he needed to say it.

LIBBY HAD JUST finished filling her horses’ water troughs when she heard a vehicle pull into her yard. Buster and Jiggs, her Australian shepherds, shot around the side of the barn at the sound of tires on gravel.

Libby wiped her damp hands down the sides of her jeans and followed the dogs, hoping she was about to come face-to-face with a traveling salesman—anyone other than Kade.

No such luck. Kade was crouched next to his truck, petting her traitorous dogs, who were taking turns licking his face.

“To the porch,” Libby ordered. The Aussies slowly obeyed, slinking away from Kade and casting Libby dark canine glances as they headed for the house.

Kade stood up. A good ten feet separated them. It didn’t feel like enough space. “You fixed the place up nice,” he said.

And she had, pouring all the work into it that her parents never had, due to their addictions. The barn had a proper roof now, and the pastures were well fenced. Her small house wasn’t the greatest, but she’d planted flowers all around it and someday she’d redo the inside. Someday.

“Yeah. Thanks.” Libby shoved her hands into the back pockets of her worn jeans. One of her fingers poked out of a hole that had worn through because of her fencing pliers. “Why are you here?”

“There’re still some things I want to straighten out.”

Libby shook her head. “I believe that everything between us is as straight as it’s going to get.”

“I beg to differ.”

“Differ all you want. And while you’re differing, maybe you could get into your truck and drive away.”

He advanced a couple slow steps forward. Libby held her ground, which wasn’t easy since every nerve in her body seemed to be screaming at her to back up.

“You came to see me,” he said in a reasonable tone once he’d come to a halt.

She pulled her hands out of her pockets, crossed them over her chest. “I came to tell you that I didn’t want you stirring up gossip.”

“Bull. You’ve never been concerned about gossip in your life.”

He had her there.

“All right. I’ll admit it—I wanted to get the damned reunion over with, since we were bound to run into each other sometime. I didn’t want an audience when it happened. Okay? I didn’t come to make friends with you.”

“Libby, a lot of stuff has happened since—” He gestured with one hand, but Libby cut him off before he could start talking again.

“I don’t want to hear about it.” She kicked a pebble with her foot, watched it bounce a couple times and then looked up at him, determined to get things straight once and for all, if that was truly what he wanted. Then maybe he’d leave.

“Here’s the deal, Kade. I trusted you. You were my lover and I trusted you.” She stopped, surprised that the corners of her mouth had started to quiver. It only took a second to regain control, but Kade had noticed. “I never thought you’d let me down.”

“There were circumstances.”

“Circumstances?” She couldn’t believe the force of anger that surged through her. “Circumstances? What circumstances led you to screw another woman—and knock her up?”

“Stop.”

He meant it. His face had turned pale. Libby shoved both hands through her curls, tilting her chin and squeezing her eyes shut, trying to get a grip. He probably didn’t want to think of his daughter as the result of knocking someone up. Even if it was true.

She opened her eyes but didn’t look at him. Instead, she focused momentarily on the gravel at her feet.

“Kade, I can tell you right now we’re not going to talk this through. We’re not going to shake hands and let bygones be bygones. I can’t do it.” She finally met his gaze. “I don’t even want to try.”

And then she turned and headed for the house, reinforcing her words with action, hoping Kade had the good sense to get in that truck and drive away. If he didn’t, things might get ugly.

Fortunately Kade knew trouble when he saw it. She heard the truck door open and shut, then the engine chug to life.

Libby kept walking.

AS SOON AS HE got home, Kade backed up to his dad’s old stock trailer. A few minutes later the trailer was hitched and he was out in the pasture slipping a halter on his horse.

A couple of hours in the mountains and then he’d go to work on the house, when he wasn’t so frustrated and pissed off that he could barely see straight. He’d had it in his mind to do two things when he moved back to Otto—make peace with Libby, or at least attempt to make peace, and find Blue. Obviously he wouldn’t be making peace with Lib, but maybe he could find his old horse and see if he’d managed to do one thing in life that hadn’t later turned to crap.

Kade parked the trailer and unloaded his horse in almost the same spot where he and Libby had parked their “borrowed” horse trailer fourteen years ago. There was a very real possibility that something had happened to Blue since they’d released him, but Kade was hoping that wasn’t the case. He wanted to see the stud running free, with many red and blue roan foals at the sides of his mares.

He smiled at the image, the tension in his muscles easing as he recalled the exhilaration, the sense of empowerment he’d felt when he’d turned Blue loose, slapping him on the butt and sending him off the hill to join the mustang herd.

Take that, Dad.

He and Libby had known enough about herd dynamics to realize Blue wouldn’t be welcome, but would hang about on the periphery until he’d managed to steal a few mares of his own. They’d discussed the possibility that Blue might not survive, but to Kade, young as he was, he thought it would be better for Blue to die in the wild than to be abused by an angry man. Kade’s father.

So they’d borrowed a trailer from Menace’s dad, taking it late at night without permission, and then they’d led Blue through the pasture and out the far gate to load him in the trailer on the county road so there’d be no suspicious tracks. A two-hour drive over to the Manning Valley, with Libby sitting close to him. They’d arrived at dawn, released Blue and been back in town by six o’clock. Menace’s trailer was back behind the barn and Libby had her dad’s truck in the garage before he’d come home from the bar. Kade had climbed in through his bedroom window and sprawled across his bed. Fifteen minutes later his dad had slammed the door open and told him to get his sorry carcass out of bed and go feed. Which Kade had done, coming back in a few minutes later to tell his dad that the blue stud was gone.

Kade had spent the rest of that day hovering between the satisfaction of knowing that the stud was safe and out-and-out fear. He’d been unable to meet up with Libby for several days, due to his old man’s fury. His dad hadn’t let him out of his sight.

Now Kade mounted and started up a road that would soon deteriorate into a rocky trail. A mustang trail. He sucked in a deep breath of mountain air. It had been too long since he’d been out here. He and Maddie had ridden around his rented property in Boise before he’d sold his second horse, but other than that, he hadn’t spent enough time in the saddle. He’d be rectifying that.

When he topped the pass leading into the next valley, he paused to let his horse have a breather. The meadow below was greening up, but the junipers and brush around it were little more than twisted black snags—evidence of a fire. The creek still ran through the meadow, pooling up at one end, but he could see that this was no longer the mustangs’ watering hole. In fact, he hadn’t seen a single sign of the herd.

He made a slight movement with his rein hand and his mount started to pick her way down the rocky trail to the meadow. If the mustangs weren’t watering there, where were they?

He drew his horse up and reversed course. He’d ride the ridge line and check the next drainage. They had to be somewhere close. Mustangs kept to their own range.

Six hours later he dismounted at the trailer. Both he and his horse were exhausted and he was by now certain that the mustang herd no longer resided in this valley.

Had some natural disaster wiped them out? There were fire scars. Disease? Had someone shot them?

Libby was a wild horse specialist. She would know.

And she’d be so happy to see him.

Maybe he’d wait a day or two before he asked.

ALMOST A WEEK had passed and Libby was still stewing over Kade’s recent visit. And it didn’t help that she couldn’t stop forming a mental picture of Kade and his daughter whenever she looked across the field and saw the lights of his trailer. The girl holding on to his belt, Kade putting a protective hand on her thin shoulder. Those little silver hearts and hot-pink kitties on the pjs.

Kade was a dad. He knew about parenting and diapers and midnight feedings. He’d experienced things that Libby was beginning to think she never would experience. Sure, she dated. She liked men. But every time someone got close, she felt the need to send him packing. Togetherness made her freeze. As a consequence, she generally didn’t didn’t date guys who wanted to put down roots.

She wasn’t certain if her commitment phobia was a character flaw or the result of Kade screwing around on her. Or if it went back even further than that, back to the time she’d finally figured out that not all parents were so busy drinking that they didn’t have time for their kid.

But she’d made her own family ties by then, attaching herself to Jason’s and Menace’s families, as had Kade. Since she and Kade had the most in common, however, and lived closest to one another, they’d hung together the most, understood each other the best—which was exactly why she’d never comprehended what had happened between them. She’d decided long ago that she wasn’t going to waste any more of her life trying to figure it out. The past was just that, and she was moving forward—if she could just get that damned father-daughter snapshot out of her head and stop feeling the jabs of pain that came with it.

Libby finally gave up and closed the computer file she’d been working on. She wasn’t accomplishing anything while her thoughts were all over the place, and she needed to concentrate as she tabulated the research results of a two-year range study. Then, as soon as she was done with the tabulations, she would write her section of a report that weighed the effects of animal usage, including cattle, native herds of deer, antelope and elk and mustangs. Which animals had the most impact on the land, which needed to be cut back during certain negative conditions. And most importantly, the optimum numbers that the range could sustain.

Glen, her former boss, had started the project the year before he retired, and she, Stephen and Fred, her coworkers, had spent the past eighteen months gathering data, as well as searching archived reports for information. Now, with no end to the drought in sight, the findings would be used as the basis for making some serious land-usage decisions. Libby wanted to be as careful and accurate as possible with her part of the report—which meant that this was not the time to work on it.

She reached for the phone and dialed the number for Menace’s service station. “This has been one long week,” she said as soon he answered.

“You at work or home?”

“Home.” Such as it was. Libby glanced around her living room, thinking she really had to spend less time in the barn and more time making her house a home. But right now her animals were more important to her than new curtains or furniture.

“Lucky you,” Menace grumbled.

“I did four ten-hour days this week,” she retorted. And thanks to Ellen and a series of “important” yet useless meetings, it felt as if she’d worked six ten-hour days. “So … are we on for this evening?”

“What do you mean, are we on?” Menace asked, sounding shocked. “It’s chorizo night at the bar. Of course we’re on.”

Chorizo night. Great. Libby wasn’t really a fan, but the Basque sausages were a local favorite, and she’d much rather lose herself in a crowd than sit at home and brood about what was. And wasn’t.

“I only asked because I heard you’ve made a new friend and I thought you might have other plans,” she said.

Menace coughed. “Uh, what new friend?”

“Your new female friend.” The one the waitresses at the café had been buzzing about when Libby had stopped to pick up dinner on her way home the night before. The new owner of the hardware store. Ginger someone.

“No plans,” he said stiffly.

“I’d like to meet her.”

“I’m taking it slow. Don’t want to scare her off, you know?”

“Good idea.” And it was about time. Menace had dreadful luck with women, and part of the problem was that his enthusiasm at actually being with a woman often overwhelmed the new girlfriend. “See you around eight?”

“Sure. But what if, you know, Kade shows up, too?”

“We already cleared the air.” Sort of. Enough for him to stay away from her, she hoped.

“Any broken bones?” Menace was only half joking.

“No,” Libby said with a sigh. If only it had been that simple.

“Glad to hear it,” Menace said. “You can’t go living your life being mad at someone.”

“I never said I wasn’t mad,” Libby said softly. “See you tonight.” She hung up and went to the back porch, where she slipped into her barn boots, whistled for the dogs and went out to feed her horses. Four hours to burn. Four hours to think too much. Maybe it was a good time to muck out the stalls.

JOE BARTON SHOWED up with three beautiful colts late Friday afternoon, colts that radiated breeding and money. Joe had come to inspect the premises before allowing his animals to stay with Kade, but since Kade had put in two backbreaking days bringing the corrals up to standard, fixing the sagging gates and rebuilding the mangers and wind shelters, Joe had no problem with what Kade had to offer. He’d stayed while Kade started ground work with the first colt, a black Appaloosa with a splashy blanket.

“I can see this will work out just fine,” Joe said when Kade released the colt and caught the second. “I’d heard good things.” He smoothed his mustache with a forefinger. “You know, I was in the stands the night that bronc beat the snot out of you. I apologize for not recognizing you at the feed store.”

“Not one of my better nights,” Kade said, tying the colt to the hitching rail. “And I don’t really want to be remembered for being beat up.”

“You came back.”

“I did.” He just hoped he could do it again, prove he wasn’t a loser.

“You don’t mind if I stop by to check progress?”