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heard my mom actually laugh since I came home three months ago.” His face tightened, and the frown reappeared. “She went into a kind of depression when Bob was killed, and we can’t seem to get her out of it.”
    “I’m sorry about your brother, Mitch,” she said softly.
    He nodded. “So’m I.” A wry grin came and went, and he looked beyond her, squinting off into the sunset, his voice harsh. “Sometimes I’m damned mad at brother Bob for dying and leaving me holding the bag with this ranch and all. Bob always got along with the old man a hell of a lot better than I did, and for all I know he even liked raising pigs and sheep and staying in one place...”
    Sara didn’t understand all that he was saying, but she heard the trace of bitterness in his tone clearly enough. He was still holding her arm, and not knowing what to say, she simply stood and looked at him for long, endless moments, recording the high forehead and endearingly crooked nose, the hard, sensual mouth and strong chin. He was such an ap pealing man. They’d had fun together.
    Yet he’d said things at dinner that made her want to break Ruth’s dinner plates over his well-shaped, thick skull. But now his words touched her. This other Mitch was struggling with his inner s elf the same way she had countless times in her life, and it made her feel close to him, in a way that could only prove to be dangerous.
    She didn’t need or want the complications of romance at this particular stage in her career, and his words made it clear that settling down was the last thing he wanted or needed. He was a cowboy at heart, a rover. She’d do well to stay as far away from Mitch Carter as she could get. And with total female irrationality, she found herself hoping that maybe he was about to kiss her.
    The awareness between them arced for one dangerous, endless second. Then he dropped her arm as if it scalded him and took a step back.
    “Anyhow, Sara, what I wanted to know was, would you maybe stop by if you’re around this way and have a coffee with Mom? Just if you’re in the area.”
    Disappointment trickled through her. He only wanted company for his mother, then. Well, she liked Ruth.
    “Sure, Mitch. Thanks again for holding the pigs.” She hopped in the truck, and in the process of backing and turning, she deliberately avoided looking his way. As she drove off down the long la ne, though, she peered into the rearview mirror. He was still standing there in the yard, cupping his hands around a match to light a cigarette, in that way that suggested a winter gale instead of a breathless midsummer twilight.
    He was a lonely figure, poised there in the sunset. A cowboy, strong in going and weak in staying.
    One of Gram’s favorite sayings popped illogically into Sara’s head as the truck hit a pothole, forcing her to pay attention to the gravel road ahead. “Never fall in love with a man thinking you’re gonna change him.”
    Sara snorted and determinedly kept her attention on avoiding the worst of the ruts until she turned the corner and knew Mitch was lost to view.
    That would be the day when she, Sara Wingate, doctor of veterinary medicine, fell in love with a Montana cowboy who probably thought a woman’s place was in the kitchen. Barefoot, probably. Pregnant, certainly.
    Sara felt a wave of heat envelope her that had nothing to do with the weather and a wh ole lot to do with the biological processes involved in becoming pregnant by Mitch Carter.
    That would be the day.

Chapter Three
 
     
    Mitch was slowly getting used to waking up each morning in the same place. For the first weeks after he had left the rodeo life and come home to stay, he’d spent his groggy waking moments, as he always had to do on the rodeo circuit, trying to figure out where in hell he was, the name of the town, the location of the nearest diner for breakfast.
    Now, as morning followed morning on the Carter ranch and the gentle dawn of a Montana summer brightened the