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Murphy sticker under the Department of Defense decal on the windshield. That fit with the guy’s haircut and the way he stood, relaxed but with the feeling that he could snap to attention in a heartbeat.
    Dalton really didn’t want to visit with a soldier. As much as possible, he avoided everyone and everything having to do with the Army. Not easy when you lived in a military community, but he’d done his best since Sandra…
    Thinking of Sandra was another place he definitely didn’t want to go—worse, even, than thinking about Dillon. At least his brother was alive, as far as they knew. Someday he might even come home.
    Sandra was never coming back.
    “Can I help you?” he asked when he was a few yards away. His voice was gruffer than he’d intended, and he was scowling. Noah had told him just this weekend that he was turning into a scary-looking person, what with not cutting his hair or shaving and always glaring like he hated the world.
    Only fair, since he did hate it. At least, parts of it.
    The man hadn’t given any indication that he was aware of Dalton approaching, but he wasn’t surprised, either. He straightened but didn’t move away from the fence and didn’t startle guiltily. “The horses are beautiful. When I was a kid in Texas, my grandparents had a little place out in the country. Most of their horses weren’t anything special, just for working, but they had one palomino I used to ride.” He got a distant look, as if he were somewhere down south in a good memory.
    Sometimes Dalton forgot he had good memories, too—a lot of them. It was just that the last few years had been so damn hard that he didn’t know whether it would be good or bad to remember better times. On the one hand, it might give him hope that things would improve again, but on the other, the way his luck was running, it would be false hope.
    The man focused on him again. “Name’s Dane Clark. I’m assigned to Fort Murphy.”
    “I figured.” Dalton leaned against a weathered section of fence, almost directly under the arch that identified the Double D. “I’m Dalton Smith. This is my place.”
    Clark’s gaze lifted to the sign. “And here I had visions of pretty female ranchers…”
    Everyone Dalton knew, knew the story of the ranch’s name. He didn’t owe a stranger an explanation and usually didn’t give one when asked. But Clark hadn’t asked and didn’t seem inclined to go beyond the one comment he’d already made.
    With a shrug, he said, “My family settled here before statehood back in 1907—two brothers named Donald and Dooley. They thought ‘Smith Ranch’ was too plain, so they chose to use their initials. Little did they know that someday that would be used to refer to women’s breasts, though, from what I hear, they wouldn’t have minded the association. Every generation since then that’s had sons has named at least two of them to fit.”
    “There’s worse ways to get a name.” Clark’s gaze shifted back to the horses.
    They weren’t doing anything—just grazing, a few of the younger ones occasionally kicking up their heels—but watching them was one of Dalton’s favorite ways to pass the time. “Do you still ride?”
    If he hadn’t been looking, he would have missed the stiffness that spread through Clark, the way he shifted his weight and leaned on the fence for support. He freed his left hand and swiped it down the leg of his jeans—new, creased, ending in a crumple above a pair of running shoes so new the white hadn’t been scuffed yet. “Nah. Not in a long time.”
    “I don’t think you forget.”
    “I don’t know about that. It was another lifetime.” An abrupt change of subject. “You run this place alone?”
    Dalton might not know much about human behavior, but if Clark were a horse, he’d say he’d caught a whiff of something fearful. Though he was standing motionless, there was a sense that he’d bolt at the first chance.
    But it wasn’t Dalton’s business why