on the back fence that coiled around the pasture of her family’s ranch. It was that particular fence and a tripped security sensor that’d caused Rayanne to ride out and have a look. She’d figured a cow had gotten out.
She darn sure hadn’t expected to find him.
Even though he was a good twenty yards away and had his face partially concealed with a low-slung white Stetson, Rayanne had no trouble recognizing him.
Blue McCurdy.
Just the sight of his ink-black hair, rangy body and chiseled face sent her stomach churning. An invisible meaty fist clamped around her heart, squeezing and choking until her chest was throbbing like a toothache.
The memories came. All bad.
Well, mostly bad, anyway.
Rayanne pushed aside the ones that were good, including the little tug of relief at seeing Blue alive.
She cursed both her reaction and the man himself. Blue was the last person on God’s green earth she expected or wanted to see, and yet here he was on McKinnon land.
The question was, why?
This couldn’t be about the baby.
Could it?
Rayanne opened her mouth to shout out that why as to the alive part and remind him that he was trespassing. But a sound stopped her cold. The soft rumble of some kind of engine, and it was moving along the fence line.
Blue reached beneath his leather vest and pulled a gun from the back waist of his jeans.
That got her heart thumping, and not in a “relieved you’re alive” sort of way. Rayanne drew her Colt, too, and stepped behind a live oak. As a deputy sheriff, she’d had more than her share of experience in dealing with bad guys.
Blue McCurdy included.
If he was up to something shady, and it was pretty clear that he was, then Blue had brought trouble practically to her doorstep. That was another why, and Rayanne hoped she got answers soon.
The engine sounds stopped, and Blue adjusted his gun. Whoever was out there had put him on edge. He certainly wasn’t jumping out from those rocks to greet anyone.
Mercy.
If this was trouble worse than Blue himself, then things were going to be bad.
She wanted to watch for a few more seconds to try to figure out what was going on here, but just in case things went from bad to worse, she’d have to fire off a text to someone who could respond from the ranch house. There wasn’t good enough phone reception in this part of the property for a call, but a text would usually go through. She’d learned that during the three months she’d been back here at Sweetwater Ranch while awaiting her mother’s murder trial.
That put the clamp on her heart again, and she cursed it, too.
Blasted feelings!
Why the heck did they have to keep messing with her head and every other part of her? It had to be the pregnancy hormones, because she’d never felt this moody and whiny before.
Rayanne thankfully didn’t have time to dwell on that, because she saw the movement in the trees behind the fence. Blue must have seen it, too, because he ducked lower.
Waiting.
Not hiding.
It was a subtle enough difference for Rayanne to ready her Colt. She didn’t want Blue dead before he could explain to her all those whys that kept racking up.
Including why he’d left her naked in bed nearly five months ago.
Rayanne cursed him again and cursed herself for allowing any man to get that close to her. It wouldn’t happen again, and as soon as she found out what Blue wanted, she’d send him on his way.
Or maybe arrest him.
Another flicker of movement, and this time she got a glimpse of a man dressed in dark clothes. Tall, marine-like build. Definitely not a friendly sort.
That got her tugging her phone from the back pocket of her jeans, and she sent a quick text to her stepbrother, FBI agent Seth Calder, to request some backup. Hopefully, he was still at the ranch and hadn’t left for work yet, so he could get there in a hurry.
“McCurdy?” someone shouted.
But Blue didn’t answer.
The shouter yelled Blue’s surname again, and this time Rayanne got more than a glimpse. She saw his face and picked through the features to see if she knew him.
She didn’t.
But apparently Blue knew the guy well enough to hide from him.
“We know you’re here,” the man added. “And we’re not leaving until someone dies.”
That felt like a punch to her chest. Yes, she was a cop, but that didn’t mean she enjoyed diving into gunfights, especially now that she had someone else to consider.
Her unborn baby.
Plus, she wasn’t exactly keen on taking a huge risk like this to save a man whom she hated.
“Damn you, Blue,” she mumbled, and debated if she should identify herself. It might get the gunman running.
Or not.
It was just as likely to get him to start shooting. Because it was clear this guy wasn’t a cop out to arrest Blue. Cops didn’t make threats like that.
Not good cops, anyway.
She glanced back at the paint gelding that she’d ridden in on. He was grazing on some pasture grass and would maybe stay put. Rayanne didn’t want him in the middle of, well, whatever the heck this was.
Keeping her gun ready, she crouched down and hurried behind another tree. Then another. Moving closer to a dry spring bed that was deep enough to give her some cover. It was also closer to Blue. When she slipped behind a third tree, Blue snapped his head in her direction.
Their eyes met.
Rayanne’s narrowed.
His eyes widened.
Blue didn’t seem any happier to see her than she was to see him, and using just his left hand, he made a sharp palm-down gesture that Rayanne had no trouble interpreting.
Stay put.
Something he darn sure didn’t do.
She could have sworn that her presence changed whatever plan Blue had had in mind, because he appeared to curse, and then he maneuvered toward the end of the line of boulders. Away from her. And closer to the big guy who’d warned him that someone was going to die.
At the rate he was going, that someone would be Blue.
She saw the man’s hand snake out. Gun clutched and
