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    Coop was right. What did he have? Tag stared past the man who’d been more a father to him than anyone else, living or dead. He pictured the miles of taut wire fencing, the barn he’d just reroofed, the cattle grazing on over a thousand acres of good pasture, and tried to imagine life without the Double Eagle.
    There’d been a big article about Tag and some of the other ranchers in the valley in the latest issue of Western Horseman . The writer’s flowery prose suddenly filled Tag’s mind:
    Taggart Martin, one of a dying breed in the great American West. His love for his land is elemental, a piece of the fabric that makes him as much a part of the Double Eagle as the Double Eagle is of him. An honorable but lonely man, battling the elements, the government, and the threat of encroaching civilization.
    Tag almost snorted. The guy left out battling Gramma Lenore. She was a bigger threat than everything else combined. Scratch honorable, too, he thought. Considering the current scheme in progress, that description was questionable. The writer had gotten one thing right, though. The part about being lonely. Briefly, Tag wondered what it would be like to share all this with a real wife, a partner in every way, not some stranger who needed a change in her life and a few extra dollars cash money.
    Never. He’d never risk having a life like his father’s, tied in marriage to a woman who didn’t love him or the son she bore, drinking away the best years of his life until he finally had one drink too many before climbing behind the wheel of his truck.
    Tag always wondered why he’d been spared, when both of his parents had died. Even more confusing, he couldn’t figure out why the grandmother who’d loved him and raised him would want to force him into a loveless marriage.
    An overwhelming sense of exhaustion swept over him. Tag closed his eyes, sighed once again, reconsidered his choices, then, feeling more tired than he could ever remember, knocked quietly on the bedroom door.
    There was no answer.
    He glanced at Coop. The old cowboy shrugged.
    Tag knocked a bit louder, waited a moment, then slowly opened the door, just far enough to peek inside.
    He had to remind himself to take another breath.
    Coop was right. She did clean up real good.
    The woman slept soundly, lying on her side, the covers tucked up under her chin. A tiny frown marred her smooth skin and her full lips were parted, as if she’d drifted asleep on a sigh. Her hair, still damp from her bath, clung in dark auburn waves to the column of her throat and fanned out beside her on the pillow. Her eyebrows were the same dark color, arched and prominent as a robin’s wing, and her thick lashes shadowed dark half-moons across her cheeks.
    There were a few scratches and bruises, most notably an egg-sized welt across her forehead, partially hidden by her hair.
    She hadn’t said anything about an accident. She’d been so muddy when she arrived, Tag hadn’t even noticed her injuries. He frowned, suddenly aware she hadn’t explained why she’d been walking instead of driving to the Double Eagle in a rainstorm.
    Well, he’d find out soon enough. Tag swallowed deeply, loath to disturb her rest but aware of the clock ticking, his future waiting.
    He cleared his throat, then stepped into the room with Coop following silently behind. She came awake slowly, stretching both arms above her head. The blankets slipped away from her chin, revealing the full creamy swell of her breasts, the darker nipples achingly visible beneath the silky blue wisp of nightgown she wore.
    It took every bit of strength he possessed to focus on her troubled green eyes. “Uh, Miss . . .”
    His tongue felt tied in knots, so much so that he could barely say the words out loud.
    In barely an hour, this woman was going to be his wife.
    Kind of.
     
    WHAT A strange dream. Tall skyscrapers, blaring taxis, a river of chocolate milk rushing and tumbling by just in front of her face, and a crowd