even once? I mean really in love?” Jonah asked, mildly annoyed by his friend’s remarks.
“Hell, no, not like you were. And I’m not going to be, either. No marriage chains for me. Lighten up.” With a flash of white teeth, Boone Devlin grinned. “The world has lots of beautiful, exciting women. You need to get out and about and forget her.”
“Sure,” Jonah answered dismissively, remembering what a playboy Boone was.
“And don’t bury yourself on a ranch, although there’s small danger of that. You’ll sell your inheritance as fast as I intend to sell mine.”
“Maybe not. I’m going to think about it and look the place over.”
“What do you know about cattle ranching?”
“I told you that my grandfather had a ranch, and I spent every summer there when I was growing up,” Jonah replied.
“You move to a ranch and you’ll be a hermit,” Boon warned, jiggling his car keys in his hand.
“As if I socialize a lot out in the oil field.”
Boone laughed and opened the door of his car. “See you at the hotel.” Each climbed into his rental car and drove out of the lot.
Jonah shoved those April memories aside and smiled at the clerk behind the rental counter. Moments later, he strode out of the San Antonio airport into bright sunshine on a cool, early June morning. After quitting his job and selling the home he owned in Midland, Texas, he was back in San Antonio to look at his inheritance for the second time.
He wanted to work the ranch, and from the time he’d made his decision, his eagerness to make the move had grown.
In the space of time between his first trip to San Antonio and this one, another shock had transpired. Savannah Clay, the lawyer who had read John Frates’s will to them, had married Mike Remington—a marriage of convenience to give Frates’s baby girl a mother and father. Jonah was surprised, and wondered how happy Mike was with the arrangement.
As Jonah neared the gates to the ranch, however, he forgot about Mike Remington. Green fields spread endlessly to the horizon. Stands of oaks gave shade to the hills, which were bright with patches of wildflowers. All land he owned…Then Jonah spotted two spirals of gray smoke rising against the deep blue sky, and he wondered what was burning.
As he drove along, watching the plumes of smoke darken and expand, Jonah had a gut feeling that something was wrong. The ranch hands could be burning off a field, but he didn’t think so.
Clamping his teeth together, he pressed the accelerator, speeding along until he reached the turn to the ranch house, then bouncing over the cattle guard. The ominous black smoke increased and he gunned the engine, skidding on gravel along the drive.
In the distance he heard sirens that only confirmed his suspicions. Another few seconds of driving and he saw bright orange tongues of flame spiraling in the sky. He caught up with a pickup truck speeding ahead of him.
Then, at another turn, the ranch house, barn and outbuildings came into view. Trees burned in two areas while flames shot up one wall of the barn, Jonah saw, but the roof hadn’t yet caught and men were pouring water on the blaze. Men fought the three blazes.
Other men carried equipment out of the barn. The wail of sirens grew louder as Jonah ran to help save the barn.
He approached the gang pouring water on the barn fire. Jonah took a hose from one of the men to relieve him, and directed ranch hands where to turn other hoses. He yelled for someone to get a ladder, and in seconds he’d braced the ladder against the barn wall. He climbed to the roof, tugging the heavy hose up with him and then motioning to a man on the ground to turn the water on again.
Flames danced in front of Jonah’s face, but he knew if they could keep the roof from going up they could contain the fire.
Two pumper trucks had arrived and started to spray big streams of water on the blaze. They could easily reach the roof, so Jonah tossed down his hose and climbed back down the ladder.
When he reached the ground, he took the hose and ran around to the entranceway, planning to go into the burning barn.
“Mr. Whitewolf! Don’t go in there!” Scott Adamson, the barrel-chested foreman, yelled at him.
Jonah shook his head and charged into the barn, where he spotted flames in a far corner. Dragging the hose, he ran forward and turned the hose on the conflagration.
A cowboy arrived to help him, and Jonah motioned to the loft. “I’m going up,” he yelled above the roar of the fire.
“That blaze could consume the loft in minutes,” the man warned, but Jonah was already climbing. “Pass the hose to me,” he called.
The man climbed behind Jonah, then handed him the nozzle. Jonah tugged on the hose and turned it on the flames.
Sweat poured off him and he could hear men yelling outside, but within minutes the blaze inside seemed under control.
When he climbed down from the loft, there were four other men in the barn, fighting the dying fire. He looked at the charred structure and knew the corner would have to be rebuilt, but the flames would be doused in minutes and the barn had been saved. The other fires had been brought under control.
He handed the hose to one of the cowboys. “I want to look around in here,” he said, skirting smoldering embers. “Keep the water flowing, because this could all burst back into flame.”
It took him only five minutes to find where he thought the fire had started. He straightened up and strode outside, past firemen who kept hoses trained on the charred and blackened wood. Cowboys had turned off the spigots to the ranch’s well water, no longer needed now.
Scott Adamson walked up to Jonah and shook his hand. “Thanks for your help, but you shouldn’t have put yourself at risk by going into the building.”
“It was safe enough,” Jonah said, brushing aside his foreman’s concern. “I need to talk to one of the officials about the fire. It was deliberately set.”
“Aw, hell!”
“You don’t sound surprised or shocked,” Jonah said, his eyes narrowing.
Adamson took his hat off to wipe sweat from his brow and rake his red hair back from his face. “We’ve had bad things happen lately. Some sick cattle—someone put poison in a water tank—some smashed fences. I thought it was kids doing pranks that got out of hand, but now I don’t know. This happened in broad daylight. Plus it was three separate fires. Someone set them. Fortunately, one of the men spotted the fires when they had just started and we had men close at hand to fight the flames.”
“It doesn’t look like the work of kids.”
“C’mon. I’ll introduce you to Tank Grayson. He’s the man you need to talk to. He knows fires, but then I guess you do, too.”
Jonah spent the next thirty minutes with the thin, blond fireman, who went inside the barn with him and confirmed Jonah’s suspicions.
“We’ll have an official analysis, but you’re right. This was started with kerosene and rags.
