Beef. Usually, their arrangement worked out well. She liked the city and loved the daily challenge of running a multimillion-dollar corporation.
But she was still a rancher at heart. As soon as she had heard about the stable fire, she’d had to be here. Hadn’t even taken the time to change her business attire—teal silk blouse, black wool suit with a pencil skirt and high-heeled boots.
As she climbed the three stairs to the veranda that stretched across the front of the house, she was confronted by a cowboy with a rifle.
“Who are you?” she demanded.
“I work for Longbridge Security, ma’am.” He pointed to a trefoil patch on the arm of his denim jacket.
“Did my brother Dylan hire you?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He held open the front door for her.
She considered the presence of a bodyguard to be a good sign. At least Dylan was taking action. They couldn’t really expect the Delta County sheriff’s office to patrol the thousands of acres they leased for grazing.
Leaving her laptop and briefcase by the coatrack, she went down the hallway toward her brother’s office. The door was ajar and she heard voices from inside—angry voices.
Her brother’s wife of five years, Nicole, stormed from the room. Her blue eyes were furious. Her jaw clenched. “I’m sorry you had to hear that, Carolyn.”
“I just got here.” She liked and respected Nicole. Considered her more like a sister than a sister-in-law. “I was just getting ready to yell at Dylan myself.”
“Be my guest.”
“First, we could go out to the kitchen and have a cup of tea. Or something stronger if you like.”
“Right now I just want to be alone.” Nicole went to the front door. “I’m going to take a ride down by the creek.”
The door slammed behind her.
Carolyn’s first impulse was to follow her, but Dylan stepped into the hall. “How the hell did you get here so fast?”
“I chartered a chopper. After you finally got around to telling me about the fire, I wanted to see for myself that Elvis was all right.”
“Your horse is fine. He’s in the corral by the barn.”
She’d intended to read him the riot act, but he already looked miserable. His shoulders slumped. His pale green eyes—identical to hers—were red-rimmed. “We need to talk.”
“You missed Thanksgiving. Again.”
“I had to work.” And she wasn’t going to let him guilt her out for shirking family responsibilities. Her every waking thought was devoted to running the family business. “What happened, Dylan? Was it arson?”
“There’s nothing you can do.” He stepped back into his office and shut the door.
Good old Western stoicism. Closed doors all around. Never show emotion. Never share what’s really wrong. Never ever cry. That cowboy ethic might have worked in the Old West, but this was the twenty-first century with psychologists on every corner.
In search of a sympathetic ear, Carolyn left the house and headed toward the outdoor corral attached to the big barn with stables in the back. If she hurried, she could catch Nicole who was probably still getting saddled up. Instead, Carolyn looked for her version of a shrink. Elvis.
Reaching over the top rail of the corral, she stroked the white blaze on her horse’s forehead. His upper lip curled in the trademark sneer of his namesake. He batted his long lashes, shamelessly flirting though he was over sixteen years old and had expanded his girth since she last saw him.
“No more sweets for you, Elvis.”
He whinnied in protest.
She tugged a forelock of his black mane. “If you get any fatter, you won’t fit into your white jumpsuit.”
As she watched Nicole head out, Carolyn shivered. She should have grabbed a jacket before she came out, but the weather was pleasant enough—probably in the mid-fifties—and her blood still boiled with anger. She had a bad feeling about Nicole riding alone. It didn’t seem safe. Not if there was an arsonist on the loose. A few minutes later, a man wearing a jacket with the Longbridge Security patch rode from the barn to follow her.
She turned her attention to Elvis. The horse listened while she talked about her worries about the ranch, about Dylan and Nicole. They’d always seemed like the perfect couple. If they couldn’t make it, what hope did Carolyn have of finding a mate? She was thirty-three with no special man to warm her bed. Her last date had been a disaster and…
A noise distracted her. A snap that ricocheted across the valley. A rifle shot?
Carolyn peered across the field. The bodyguard and Nicole were nowhere in sight.
The grizzled ranch foreman, Lucas Mann, came around the corner of the barn, moving faster than his usual bowlegged saunter. “Carolyn, did you hear that?”
“Hush.” She listened hard. A volley of shots echoed from far away, like pebbles being dropped in a metal bucket. Sound traveled great distances in the thin mountain air and she couldn’t tell where the gunfire was coming from. “Lucas, give me your gun.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
Lucas handed over his sidearm. Though he looked like an old-time cowboy, the weapon he carried in his belt holster was a brand-new Glock nine millimeter.
Carolyn tucked the gun into the waistband of her skirt. “We need to find Nicole and make sure she’s okay. She was headed southwest toward the creek. I want you to saddle up. Bring one of those security guards.”
“What the hell are you fixing to do?”
“Take care of business.” If someone had fired on Nicole, she needed backup. And she needed it now.
In her high-heeled boots, Carolyn climbed the corral fence, tore the slit on her wool skirt and slung her leg over Elvis’s bare back. As soon as Lucas unlatched the corral gate, she rode through. Digging her heels into Elvis’s flanks, she took off across the field.
Riding without a saddle wasn’t easy, especially not with the horse’s bristly coat snagging her panty hose and an automatic pistol digging into her side. She wouldn’t have attempted this ride with any other mount, but Elvis’s gait was as familiar as her own jogging style. Her body adjusted instinctively to the rhythm of his gait. In her teens, she and Elvis had won dozens of trophies and blue ribbons for calf roping and barrel racing in local rodeos.
She clung to his mane and directed him with pressure from her knees and verbal commands. The chilly December wind sharpened her tension as she rode toward the area where the valley merged into rocky hillsides covered with forests of ponderosa pine.
She hadn’t heard any other shots. If there had been a gunfight, it was over. The damage was done.
What if Nicole and the bodyguard were shot and bleeding? Can’t
