at her hands in her lap. “I’m so embarrassed.” She quickly rose to her feet. “I should go.”
“No, wait,” he said, unable to shake the feeling that maybe this had been fate and that he would be making the biggest mistake of his life if he let this woman walk out now.
“You know, it wouldn’t take me long to jump in the shower and change if you’re still up for a date,” he said with a grin.
She hesitated. “Really? I mean, you don’t have to—”
“I want to. But you have the advantage over me. I don’t know your name.”
She smiled shyly. “Courtney Baxter.” She held out her hand. As he shook it, Zane thought, This night could change my life.
He had no idea how true that was going to be.
Chapter Two
Dakota Lansing got the call at 3:20 a.m. She jerked awake, surprised by the sound of the ringing phone. She hadn’t had a landline in years. Glancing around in confusion, for a moment she forgot where she was.
Home at the ranch. It all came back in a rush, including her father’s death. She turned on the light as the phone rang yet again and grabbed the receiver.
As she did, she glanced at the clock, her mind spinning with fear. Calls in the wee hours of the morning were always bad news.
“Hello?” Her voice broke as she remembered the last call that had come too early in the morning.
This is Dr. Sheridan at Memorial Hospital in Great Falls. I’m sorry to inform you that your father has had a heart attack. I’m afraid there was nothing we could do. Your sister is here if you would like to speak with her.
My sister? You must have the wrong number, I don’t have a sister.
“Hello?” she said again now.
At first all she heard was crying. “Hello?”
“Dakota, I need your help.”
Her sister, half sister, the one she hadn’t known existed until two weeks ago, let out a choked sob.
“Courtney? What’s wrong?”
More sobbing. “I’m in trouble.”
This, at least, didn’t come as a surprise. Dakota had expected her half sister was in trouble when she’d asked after their father’s funeral if she could stay at the ranch for a while.
“I want to get to know you,” Courtney had said. But it had become obvious fairly quickly that her half sister wanted a lot more than that.
“Speak up. I can barely hear you,” Dakota said now.
“I can’t. He’s in the next room.”
Dakota rolled her eyes. A man. Not surprising, since Courtney had been out every night in the two weeks since their father’s funeral.
“I think he might be dead.”
Dakota came wide awake. Dead? “Where are you?” There was a loud crash in the background as something fell and broke. “Tell me where you are,” Dakota cried as she stumbled out of bed. “Courtney?”
Her father’s secret love child, a woman only two years younger than herself, whispered two words before the line went dead.
“Zane Chisholm’s.”
ZANE WOKE TO POUNDING. He tried to sit up. His head swam. He hadn’t really drunk champagne last night, had he?
Numbly he realized the pounding wasn’t just in his head. Someone was at the door and it was still dark outside. He turned on a light, blinded for a moment. As he glanced over at the other side of his queen-size bed, he was a little surprised to find it empty. Courtney had come home with him last night, hadn’t she?
As he got up he saw that he was stark naked. Whoever was at the door was pounding harder now. He quickly pulled on a pair of obviously hastily discarded jeans and padded barefoot into the living room to answer the door.
“What the hell happened to you?” his brother Marshall asked in surprise when Zane opened the door.
“I’m a little hungover.” A major understatement. He couldn’t remember feeling this badly—even during his college days when he’d done his share of partying.
“Your face,” Marshall said. “It’s all scratched up.”
Zane frowned and went into the bathroom. He turned on the light and stared in shock into the mirror. His pulse jumped. He had what looked like claw marks down the side of his left cheek. As he looked down at his arm, he saw another scratch on his forearm.
What the hell had happened last night?
“Are you okay?” Marshall asked from the bathroom doorway. He sounded worried, but nothing like Zane felt.
“I don’t know. I’m having trouble remembering last night.”
“Well, it must have been a wild one,” Marshall said. “I hope it was consensual with whatever mountain lion you hooked up with.”
“Not funny.” His head throbbed and his memory was a black hole that he was a little afraid to look into too deeply.
“You do remember that you and I are picking up horses in Wolf Point today, right?” Marshall said. “I’ll give you a few minutes to get cleaned up, but don’t even think about trying to get out of this. I need your help and we’re already running late. I told you to be ready at four forty-five.”
Zane nodded, although it hurt his head. What time was it, anyway? The clock on the wall read 5:10 a.m. “Could you make me some coffee while I get ready?”
His brother sighed. “Aren’t you getting a little too old for partying like this?” he grumbled on his way to the kitchen.
Zane stepped into the bathroom, closed the door and stared into the mirror again. He looked like hell. Worse, he couldn’t remember drinking more than a glass or two of champagne, certainly not enough to cause this kind of damage.
He thought about Courtney. She had to have done this to him. He touched his cheek. What scared him was, what had he done to get that kind of reaction from her?
EMMA CHISHOLM HAD been an early riser all her life. She liked getting up before the rest of the world when everything was still and dark. Since marrying Hoyt Chisholm a year ago, she especially liked seeing the sun come up here on the ranch.
As she stepped into the big ranch kitchen, she heard a sound and froze.
“I hope I didn’t scare you.”
Emma shuddered as a chill raced down the length of her spine. She tried to hide it but knew she’d failed when she turned to see amusement in their new live-in housekeeper’s one good eye. Up before sunrise and often the last one to bed,
