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Spinning around, she walked away feeling as if she’d just had a small victory. A smile even tilted the corners of her lips, if just the smallest fraction of an inch. But it was still a smile.
    By the time her ride ended, that smile would be long gone.

Chapter Six
    D ead silence was their companion as Brielle rode in the shotgun seat of Colt’s huge diesel pickup truck. The black beast boasted more bells and whistles inside the cab than her last Mercedes had.
    How could a ranch hand afford such a smooth ride?
    It was killing her not to ask him, but she refused to. She’d be damned if she spoke first. No way. No how! Brielle Storm was used to having people cater to her needs. That had been the story of her life. Well, it had been the story of her life up until a year ago, when her father had pulled her sweet Persian rug right out from under her.
    Now she was twenty-five, living in a slightly ramshackle home, owner of a failing 10,000-acre ranch, and in charge of a whole hell of a lot of men who wouldn’t even look at her, let alone listen to a word she said. This was not something Brielle was used to, and it wasn’t something she planned to ever get used to.
    Still, she was finally getting somewhere today. She was going to inspect her property, learn what ranching was all about, and when she did see her father, she wouldn’t sound like a twit. After all, the stars of all those cowboy flicks she’d watched made ranching look easy — well, when they didn’t end up in one mishap or other, that is.
    She was too smart to make a fool of herself, so she had nothing to worry about, did she?
    The truck cruised down the long Montana road without her feeling a bump. It was a much different ride than the one she’d approached the house in. Why had her father bought that old and rusty truck? Was that part of her punishment? She was sure it was. He had to be sitting back in his nice, comfy office chair with a cigar in his mouth and a grin on his face as he thought about his spoiled daughter fighting the elements and who knew what else in Montana.
    When they pulled off the roadway and Colt suddenly swung in front of a store that simply said Peggy’s in big bold red letters, Brielle looked up and down the street. Surely this couldn’t be Sterling.
    Could it?
    She was seeing a post office, a very small post office, a pharmacy, a dental office, a sheriff’s office, maybe a salon, and a small café. There were a few other small buildings scattered on the street, and what looked to be a fire station not far away, but this one little street just couldn’t be the town she was expected to live in for the next year.
    Her throat was practically burning with her need to talk, but she was still unwilling to speak first. She couldn’t! But when Colt climbed wordlessly from the truck and moved around to her side of the vehicle and opened the door, she was unable to take it any longer.
    “Where are we?” she practically shouted, clearly startling him with the decibel level of her voice.
    “Sterling,” he answered as he held out a hand to help her down.
    Ignoring the hand he was offering, she grabbed the handle above her and stepped onto the wide running board before landing on the sidewalk next to Colt.
    “This isn’t the whole town, though, is it?” Please, please, please don’t be the whole town, she added silently.
    “You’re looking at the town center,” he drawled, and she practically wept with relief until he continued. “Around the corner sits the school, and ball fields, and two churches. Then Sterling stretches for miles in each direction. We’re a ranching community with lots of cattle, wheat, and oil. We don’t need a whole heck of a lot of shops.”
    “But there are more stores than this, right?” This was what she wanted to know.
    “Nope. This is it.”
    “This can’t be it!” She began walking, reached the end of the street in less than a minute, and then spun on her heels and headed the other way, passing