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her very much.
    Or not at all.
    “Why’d you let her come back?”
    He shrugged. “She’s got trouble, needs a place to stay.”
    “And she felt she’d be safe with you?”
    He shot her a glance. “Safe as a woman like Marlena can be. Safer than in Calgary, with a loan shark on her trail.”
    God, could that be how Marlena was going to die? At the hands of a loan shark’s thug? Then she realized Cal was still talking and forced her attention back to his words.
    “Seems like she breezed through her divorce settlement a trifle faster than expected.”
    “I see,” she said, but her mind was whirling with questions.
    He laughed. “No you don’t. You’re wondering why in hell I’d tolerate her under my roof after everything that happened. And you’d be right to question my sanity.”
    Okay, maybe she had been wondering that. “So why did you let her stay?”
    “I don’t rightly know.” He shrugged, that eloquent lift of his shoulders she was becoming so familiar with. “I guess ’cause I used to love her once. And she hasn’t had it as easy as it might seem.”
    His words arrowed right under her defenses. “I guess I can appreciate that.”
    “Well then.” He lifted his hat and mopped his brow with the sleeve of his shirt, then replaced the hat. “What say we pick it up? I’m starved.”
    Just like that, the subject was closed. She’d been lucky to get that much out of him, but there was so much more she wanted to know. The problem was, did she want to know it for the investigation or did she want to know it because she wanted to know him?
    “Yeah, let’s go,” she said, urging Buck forward.

    Cal cursed silently as he trailed the small procession. Whiskey and women. He didn’t know which was worse. They could both loosen a man’s tongue and make a fool out of him. He’d certainly made a fool of himself with Lauren. Looking into those blue eyes, he’d told her the whole sordid story of his lousy marriage. For the life of him, he still didn’t know why.
    Not for sympathy, that’s for damn sure. It had taken a long time before people stopped looking at him with that infuriating, mute pity. He never wanted to see it again.
    So why had he spilled his guts?
    Because you want to know her , he answered himself. Because you want her to know you.
    “Jesus,” he breathed. For a moment, the idea scared him spitless. The woman was making him think things he hadn’t thought about in a long, long time.
    Better to just think about sex. That was safer. No opening up required. No having the skin peeled off your heart while it was still beating.
    Then again, what did he know about women like Lauren anyway? Yes, she was attracted to him. Yes, she’d flirted with him a little. But that didn’t mean she was prepared to fall in bed with him. His experience thus far in life had been gleaned from rodeo groupies. All they’d cared about—besides how long he could last on a twisting ton of malevolent animal—was how long he could last between the sheets. Mind you, that had been enough for him. Hell, he’d gone and married a rodeo Annie, hadn’t he?
    Brady’s shout brought Cal’s head up. He scanned the terrain ahead as it sloped to the valley floor, spotting the problem immediately. Marlena was hurtling down the ridge, pushing her mount recklessly. Exultant laughter rose up to goad him.
    “Dammit, Marlena!” At his command, Sienna sprang forward. Lauren’s face was a blur as he raced past her. Likewise Brady’s. Reaching the steepest part of the slope, he eased up, letting Sienna pick her path. The mare, God love her, hardly slowed.
    He caught Marlena a minute later. Snatching the sorrel’s reins, he brought both horses to a dust-churning halt. He was so mad, his sides heaved almost as deeply as the horses’. Marlena glowed with excitement, but her mount’s eyes rolled.
    Seeing red, Cal gripped one of her wrists. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
    “What’s it look like I was