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won’t find that she has many friends in these parts.”
    Janna instinctively wanted to argue and defend her mother, but she’d grown up here and knew he was speaking the truth. “Maybe so, but that’s something I can’t fix right now. Just let me know when I can pick up the contracts.”
    When she stepped out the front door, Main Street was empty save for a few dusty pickups parked in front of the tiny grocery store at the end of the block.
    Still, she felt the eerie sensation that someone was watching her.
    She glanced back at Wade’s office, then studied the storefronts on both sides of the streets. Scanned the shadows of the pines at both ends of two-block-long business district.
    There was no one in sight.
    Setting her jaw, she strode to her pickup with all the confidence she could muster. Maybe Wade was right, but whatever the local opinions were, she’d come here to start a new life for herself and her daughter.
    And no matter what anyone said, that’s what she was going to do.

     
    Four days in Wyoming, and he was already bored out of his mind.
    Ian flipped through a magazine. Tossed it on a growing stack of discards by his bed, then rolled over on his back and stared at the pine-paneled ceiling of his room which had twelve knotholes, including one that bore a striking resemblance to his grandma Mary. The lodge sucked.
    No TV reception.
    He’d left the power cord to his PlayStation at home.
    And other than the crabby old lady who’d glared at him over breakfast, the woman who ran the place, and her little brat, there probably wasn’t another person for fifty miles. A hundred.
    He might as well be stuck in jail…and the irony of the whole situation almost made him want to cry, because maybe that’s where he deserved to be.
    With a gut-deep sigh, he levered himself off the bed and pulled on his shabby Nikes. He thundered down the lodge staircase and burst out the front door to the wide, sweeping covered porch. A pair of chipmunks scattered down the steps at his approach.
    He knew how to bridle a horse. Maybe he could just hop on that old gray one and take it for a spin, and no one would be the wiser.
    He felt his shoulders slump under the weight of the consequences if Dad found out about that. Ever since the accident, he’d been coddled and watched over like a three-year-old kid, and there was no way Dad would miss the telltale sign of a stray horse hair somewhere. Sometimes Dad just knew things—like he had ESP or something. And he’d made Ian promise to stay close to the lodge until the investigation was over.
    A lane led through the pines and up a hill toward the cabins, where at least he might be able to explore a little. His heart lifted at the thought of seeing wildlife or maybe finding some old arrowheads.
    He’d made it to the farthest cabin before he gave in to the stiffness and pain in his leg and had to sit down on a log to take long, slow breaths, his eyes squeezed shut.
    Quick little footsteps hurried up the road, and a second later, Rylie plopped down on the log next to him.
    Her eyes were alive with curiosity when she smiled up at him, and he steeled himself for the inevitable questions.
    The questions that had made him want to avoid school forever…because there he was a curiosity. A freak. Even to the guys he’d known before the wreck.
    “My mom is working on your cabin,” she announced cheerfully. “Are you glad to be here?”
    Glad? It was so far from the truth that he felt his mouth curl into a derisive snarl. “Oh, yeah. Really.”
    She pulled back a little, her eyebrows drawing together. “It’s pretty here.”
    He rolled his eyes but didn’t answer, hoping she’d take the hint and go away.
    “And your cabin is really nice inside. Mom says—”
    He stood abruptly, ignoring the pain that knifed through his knee at the sudden motion and the brief haze of black spots that danced in front of his eyes.
    Rylie was still at his heels when he stepped over the barricade of pine