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in a western saddle was he? Western saddles weren’t meant for jumping. She didn’t even know if the horse he rode knew how to jump. Starfire was the only one of her horses that had been trained in both English and western disciplines.
    Slowing Starfire, she slid off his back and ran across the meadow to Nick’s side. He wasn’t moving.
    Panic coursed through her limbs, making her tremble. She shouldn’t have tried to race him, shouldn’t have brought him out here. She knew he had been in no condition to ride after his work in the saddle all day. What if he’d suffered a concussion? Or broken his neck?
    He lay face up with his eyes closed, and didn’t appear to be breathing. She had trouble breathing herself as she pressed her fingers to his throat and checked for a pulse.
    Thank God, he was still alive. She recalled the new medical guidelines she’d seen on the Internet and gave him thirty hard, fast chest presses to keep his blood circulating. Then she tilted his chin up and opened his mouth with her finger. Nothing seemed to be blocking the airway. She pinched his nose closed. Took a deep breath. Lowered her mouth to his to perform CPR.
    She was about to blow air into his lungs when the world rolled over, placing Chandler on top, with a very dark, calculating look in his eyes.
    Jenny thrust Chandler off to the side, pulled out her boot knife, and sprang to her feet. “You faked that fall!”
    â€œAnd you ,” he said, pointing to the crazed horse prancing about the field, “deliberately put me on that beast to torture me. What are you going to do now? Stab me?”
    She followed his gaze to the tip of her boot knife, its sharp point glistening orange from the setting sun. What was she thinking?
    â€œI—I’m sorry,” she said, and trembled as she sheathed the knife beneath the hem of her jeans. “You seem to bring out the worst in me.”
    â€œOh, well, you know what they say,” Chandler said, pulling himself off the ground.
    â€œWhat?” she demanded. Had the townspeople been talking about her again? “What do they say?”
    â€œThere’s a fine line between love and hate.”
    â€œIn your case,” she said, hardening her expression, “that fine line is a brick wall.”
    She walked away from him and headed toward a giant apple tree fifty feet away.
    â€œWhere are you going?” Nick asked, following her.
    â€œThe cemetery.”
    There was no gate. Jenny swept her gaze over the names carved into the headstones, and knelt beside the newest, the one without any moss or age spots. The grave of her father, George O’Brien.
    â€œThere’s so many of them.”
    Chandler’s voice was filled with awe. What did he expect from a family cemetery?
    Jenny tossed away a few of the apples that had fallen from the tree above and landed on the grass beside the graves. Then she pointed to the oldest stone, which was also the smallest. “My great-great-grandfather Shamus O’Brien left Ireland in eighteen seventy-six with his wife and young son. He traveled across America to Washington State, built the ranch, and then died in eighteen eighty, during the area’s second short gold boom.”
    â€œThe man with the gold,” Nick commented.
    Jenny pointed to another grave farther to the right. “This is my grandfather, Sean O’Brien. When I was little, he sat me on his knee and told me the reason they buried family on the property was to ensure the land would never be sold—never slip into the hands of developers. He said he’d rest easy knowing the land would always belong to one of his descendants.”
    â€œThat’s why you won’t sell,” Nick said, and ran a hand through his hair.
    â€œNo, I won’t sell,” Jenny said, and turned to face him straight on. “So if you think you can come here, and marry me, and sell the land out from under me, you can forget