frown deepened as they headed out to Wilson Cattle, where Olivia planned to pitch in wherever she could with the return of Grey’s cattle. At Ted’s shop, she’d thought Nick was simply bored and cranky. Then she’d assumed he felt terrible about the broken vase, though he’d said nothing after his brief apology. Now she wondered. Was he just tired? Doubling down on the sulking because he’d have to do added chores to pay off part of the debt? Or was it something else?
She drove faster, trying to run through the numbers to adjust her offer to Ted but worrying more about Nick as she neared Barren.
“It really hurts,” he said with a groan.
Her pulse suddenly pounding, Olivia checked her rearview mirror. Nick’s face was ashen, worse than it had been last night. She wanted to pull over, but traffic on the interstate made that a dicey proposition. She’d risk getting hit while parked on the shoulder.
She gripped the steering wheel. “Hang on, baby. We’ll be there soon.”
She tried to tell herself he just needed something for the pain, that this was normal after what he’d been through last night. It wasn’t an emergency, was it?
She glanced again in the mirror.
Nick had slumped to one side. Dozing, as he’d often done in the back seat since he was a baby? Or had he passed out again?
Panic hit her as if a rock had been thrown through the windshield. “Nick!”
His eyes opened, then closed again. “I’m sleepy.”
A quick look at her GPS told Olivia they were nowhere near the hospital.
She grabbed her cell phone from the seat beside her and called Doc but only got a recorded message. Gone fishing. If you have an emergency, contact Dr. So-and-So... Olivia barely listened and missed the name. But no one answered at the clinic on Main Street, either.
She didn’t have a choice. The ranch wasn’t far now.
She hit Speed Dial for the Circle H and asked for Sawyer.
SAWYER DIDN’T TAKE the black ranch pickup. An hour or so after Willy and Tobias had ridden out, he saddled up Sundance, then started over the hill to Wilson Cattle. Although he hadn’t ridden in years—unless he counted the few house calls he’d made in Kedar, climbing the side of a mountain on a tough Asian pony—he relished the feel of Sundance’s much bigger, warm horseflesh between his legs.
The steady, rhythmic clop of iron-shod hooves on the hard dirt path of summer, the feel of leather reins guiding the horse around stony obstacles or out from under the occasional tree branch, made him happy for the first time since the landslide.
All by himself, Sawyer grinned. Once, he’d loved this place and never wanted to leave. Funny, the different trails life takes you on, he thought as he crested the low hill. For the first time since he’d walked into his brother’s wedding reception last night, he wasn’t thinking about Kedar or even Olivia.
That is, until he realized he was riding the same path he had with her years ago. Below, the neighboring ranch was a bustle of activity. Trucks parked everywhere. People milling about. Laughter and talk rising into the heated air. He spotted Everett Wilson with his new wife, Liza. They must have decided to stay longer instead of flying right back to Dallas after yesterday’s wedding.
A rig towing a stock trailer had just rolled in, stirring up dust and filled with bellowing cattle. Sawyer wondered if they were irritated at being herded into a metal pen on wheels with the others or if they were calling out in recognition that they were home again.
Wearing a black Stetson clamped over his light brown hair, Grey met him at the bottom of the hill. “You here to join the fun? We could use more help.” As he said the words, two other monster pickups with slat-sided trailers barreled along the driveway to the barn.
“Whatever you need me to do,” Sawyer said. He saw Willy and Tobias heading for the first truck and nodded in their direction. Willy tipped his straw cowboy hat as if to acknowledge the worn jeans and Western-style shirt Sawyer had filched from Logan’s closet. “Looks like you nearly lost a big bunch of cattle, Grey. How many?”
“A good percentage of my herd,” Grey agreed. “I’m more than glad to have them back.” He couldn’t seem to stop grinning, his blue-green eyes alight but not only for the cattle, Sawyer noted. The dark-haired woman he had seen with Grey the night before was coming across the ranch yard with the little girl who’d alerted everyone to Nick’s fall. As she came closer, Sawyer finally recognized the child’s mother—Grey’s long-ago girlfriend.
Grey scooped her close to his side, then ruffled the girl’s hair. “You remember Shadow?” he asked. “And this is Ava. Our daughter.”
Sawyer glanced at the diamond ring on Shadow Moran’s hand. He didn’t see a wedding band, so... “Congratulations. I knew you before I left the Circle H. You were behind me, though, in school. What, three, four years?”
“Five.” Her dark eyes warmed. “At first, when I crossed the yard, I thought you were Logan—then I remembered he and Blossom are on their honeymoon.”
Ava gazed up at him. She looked like her mother except for her eyes, the color of Grey’s. “You and Logan are just the same.”
“Yes, we are,” he said, then pointed at the small scar by his right eye. “You can always tell me from him because of this.”
“How did you get it?”
“Doing something I shouldn’t have been doing.” He touched her shoulder, then turned back to Grey. He wondered why Grey was just now getting around to marrying Shadow, though it was none of his business. “Point me in the right direction. I did work the Circle H before Sam decided to run bison instead of cows, and I don’t think I’ve forgotten how to handle them.” He hoped not. “Nice-looking Black Angus you have, by the way.”
“Thanks, Sawyer.”
He had started toward one of the trucks to help unload when he stopped again. “Who stole these cattle, anyway?”
Shadow shifted in Grey’s embrace. Her mouth turned down. “My own brother—and two other men.”
“One of them a ranch hand of mine.” Grey kissed the top of her head. “The sheriff’s not happy with them, and they may still be in trouble with the law, but I refused to press charges. Shadow’s baby brother got off on the wrong foot in life. We’ll try to change that if we can.”
Sawyer was still digesting that when a car coming up the drive cut around several pickups and stock trailers, then braked to a stop right near him, spraying dirt everywhere. The cloud of dust choked Sawyer and he was coughing when Olivia got out. Eyes wide, she left her door flung open and charged up to him.
“Nick!” she managed to say, then pointed at the car.
In the dim light inside, Sawyer could see the boy leaned over in his seat, eyes closed, his body limp. Sawyer’s pulse jumped.
“I called the Circle H,” she said
