was a raw undertone lost in the prattle of breeze-stirred oaks. Yet, spoken in his own voice, it resounded in his mind. Like a man too long in the dark catching a glimpse of the sun, his gaze moved over her. With incredulous care, he committed to mind a memory, seeking first the differences imposed by time and living. Then the unchanging qualities six long years couldn’t sweep from his mind.
Her hair was still long. Still a mass of curls gathered brutally into a topknot by a clasp that never had a chance of holding it. The hand that pushed tumbling strands from her cheeks was still absently impatient.
Her chin still tilted in eternal determination. While her mouth curved in a smile that seemed joyfully childlike and sensual at once. Lincoln wondered if she still caught her lower lip between her teeth when she concentrated or when she worried.
Drawing himself from the aching study of her mouth and face, he matched this Linsey of flesh and blood to the woman he’d turned away from…for Lucky.
She stood tall, shoulders back, making the most of those few inches by which she topped five feet. And as the breeze that sent tiny oak leaves spiraling around him swept across the clearing, molding her supple shirt against her, Lincoln realized her breasts were rounder, fuller. A girlish innocence had given way to an earthy maturity, a beguiling voluptuousness. A metamorphosis making her jean-clad waist and hips seem slimmer.
He’d lost a girl six years ago. Today, he found a woman in full bloom.
To the rest of the world she’d always been a pretty girl full of life and courage. To Lincoln, she was breathtaking from the first. But not so beautiful as now. Never so beautiful he could hardly believe she was real, not illusion.
Just as he could hardly believe that, after hiring investigators to search all of Oregon, Montana, and as many locales in between as possible, he had found her here. Exactly where she should be, in Lucky Stuart’s South Carolina home.
The last place he’d thought to look in a month. The last place he would ever think to look, if the search hadn’t ended.
How long had she been here? One week? Two? How soon after his last stop by the farm had she arrived? “How long before you were going to let me know, Linsey?”
As relieved as he was that she was here, like a battering ram striking out of nowhere, Lincoln was filled with anger bordering on rage. Anger laced with bitter self-disgust that any of it should matter. That she should matter.
For years he’d struggled to put the past in perspective. From a passionate and desperate interlude in a shack in an Oregon forest surrounded by fire, to the day he walked her down the aisle—giving her, in an unknown father’s stead, to Lucky—he thought he’d finally succeeded in putting it behind him.
Until the letters. Then he knew his struggles and all he believed he’d accomplished had been a farce.
Farce or not, his life was on an even keel, he didn’t want it disrupted by old wounds torn open. He hadn’t stopped to think of this moment when he’d begun the search. He hadn’t thought of anything but the wishes of a dying friend. But now, after the month and a small fortune spent searching for her, after the anguish of every minute of each of those days, he was tempted to ride away as if he’d never seen her and never loved her.
Dear God, he was tempted, but he’d never broken a promise to Lucky. He wouldn’t now. Raking an arm over his face, wishing he could wipe the anger from his heart as easily as he could from his features, he lifted a hand to hail the house.
“Cade.”
Lincoln froze at the sound, hand uplifted, lips parted in a greeting he wouldn’t utter.
“Cade? Where are you, tiger? Better come inside before it gets dark.”
Shocked that she could know he was there in the shadows that deepened with every increment the sun sank, Lincoln didn’t respond. He couldn’t respond as her voice flowed over him filled with love, driving out the anger.
In that moment of stunned silence, he heard the bark of a dog, a peal of laughter, then the voice of a child. “I’m here, Mom. In the barn with Brownie.”
Before he could make sense of it, a small boy appeared at the barn door. A boy called Cade and his dog.
“Brownie.” Lincoln didn’t know why it was that name he muttered. He didn’t understand why barbwire streaming with brown dog hair twice in three days should flood his mind. But he was glad for a small boy’s simple name for a brown dog and for the mystery of the barbs’ trophies solved.
Mind candy, a mental dodge. A name and a mystery more easily understood and resolved than the one Lincoln confronted in gathering darkness beyond the clearing of the Stuart farm.
His mouth was dry, his head hurt, his heart pounded so hard he thought it might explode. He didn’t want to stay, but he couldn’t drag his gaze from the boy as he raced across the yard and skipped over the broken step into his mother’s arms.
He was a small boy, but too big for Linsey to pick up. Yet she did, crushing him to her as she spun him round and round, planting nibbling kisses on his neck. The boy’s laughter escalated to squeals and giggles, while the dog jumped in circles, trying to join in.
Breathless and panting, Linsey stopped spinning. When she was still again, Lincoln watched as the boy plucked the clasp from her hair, letting it fall beyond her shoulders.
Catching a strand in his grubby fist, he laughed in delight. “Pretty.”
Linsey laughed, too. “Ah, shucks, kind sir. I bet you say that to all the girls.”
“Nope.” The boy giggled and squirmed, and giggled that much harder when she tickled him. “Just you.”
“That will change in a few years.” Linsey’s laugh faded as she hugged him again. “You like it here, don’t you, Cade?”
“Yep.” The boy’s head bobbed. “But I was wondering.”
“Yeah?”
“Can I have a horse?”
“Hmm.” Linsey tilted her head, considering. “I suppose one day. What kind of horse would you want?”
“A humongous black one, like the tall man.”
In the shadows Lincoln tensed, waiting for Linsey to look into the falling night. The air had grown unnaturally still; every sound carried as if it were magnified. He found himself holding his breath and keeping Diablo under a tight rein as he awaited discovery.
“A tall man with a humongous horse? I don’t know who you mean, tiger.” The porch lay in shadow now, obscuring Linsey’s features. “Is this a character from TV?”
The boy shook his head with the emphatic impatience of the young. “Nope. A real man.” A finger pointed. “He was over there.”
“He was?” Linsey’s chin lifted sharply. Frowning, she concentrated on the area her son indicated. “Do you see him now?”
“Nope. I could see him from the loft, though.” The boy, whose hair was as dark as his mother’s was fair, gestured again toward the bit of deserted trail visible from the porch.
“You climbed
