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me,” she said. He was a poker player; if he didn’t know a bluff when he saw one, well, that was his problem, not hers.
    “Dammit, Chloe, if this is another one of your tricks—”
    “What tricks would those be?” she asked sweetly, as Becky returned. Sarah was back, too, carrying their plates on a tray.
    Jeb was pale; she’d gotten under his skin for sure. Interest and hostility glinted in his eyes, and Chloe almost wished she was carrying his child. It would have served him right, after what he’d put her through, to see her make a grand exit on an outbound stagecoach, to bear and raise the baby elsewhere.
    “Are Sarah and I interrupting something?” Becky asked lightly.
    “No,” Jeb said, uncharitably.
    The food was delicious, and Chloe didn’t even try to pretend she wasn’t hungry. She didn’t say two words throughout the meal, though, and Jeb probably didn’t either, but Becky filled the space with chatter about the furniture she’d ordered for the new part of the hotel, a dress she’d bought for Emmeline, over at the mercantile, and the shameful price of bed linens.
    They had barely finished eating when Rafe came striding in off the street, dressed for a long, cold ride and looking annoyed. His gaze sliced straight to Jeb.
    “There you are,” he said, without a trace of cordiality.
    Jeb shifted in his chair, his face hardening. “Rafe,” he said, by way of a greeting.
    “Begging your pardon, Becky,” Rafe said, and acknowledged Chloe with a terse nod, “but I’ll have to deprive you of such genial company.” He glowered at Jeb. “You see,” he went on pointedly, “we’ve got a ranch to run, and with that new herd of cattle just in from Texas, we need every hand we can scrounge up. Even the slackers, like my little brother, here.”
    Jeb hesitated, plainly wanting to stare Rafe down, but in the end he pushed back his chair, with a loud scraping sound, and stood up.
    Chloe smiled broadly.
    Jeb paused beside her chair, leaned down, and spoke directly into her face. “Don’t look so smug, Miss Chloe,” he drawled. “I’m not through with you, by any means.”
    Having said that, he walked out.
    “Sorry,” Rafe said, though whether he was addressing Chloe herself, or Becky, there was no telling. He followed Jeb onto the street, spurs clanking.
    “So there are people who can cow Jeb McKettrick,” Chloe said, with some satisfaction.
    “Rafe is foreman on the Triple M,” Becky answered. “For the time being, he gives the orders.” She smiled into her coffee cup, hesitated. “I can’t say John didn’t warn me,” she said musingly. Then she moved to the chair Jeb had occupied, across from Chloe. Her expression, full of merriment only moments before, turned solemn, and a hint of tears shone in her eyes.
    The change alarmed Chloe; something dreadfully important was about to be said, her instincts told her that, and suddenly she felt like fleeing or putting her hands over her ears. She did neither.
    “What is it?” she asked, very quietly.
    Becky pulled a lace-trimmed handkerchief from the sleeve of her dress and dabbed at her eyes. “It’s about John,” she said.

5
     
     
    H is booted feet propped on a gaming table, Jack Barrett sat alone in the smoky back room of Tombstone’s Broken Stirrup Saloon, pondering the divorce papers he’d taken from one of Chloe’s hatboxes before her hasty departure for Indian Rock. This was all he meant to her, he reflected, a single document, signed by a lawyer and a judge. Resentment surged through him, but he quelled it quickly; a man in the grip of his emotions, he believed, was a man who could be taken by surprise.
    He hated being taken by surprise.
    With a slow smile, he pulled a wooden match from the inside pocket of his silk vest, struck it against the edge of the table, and set the decree aflame. When the fire got too hot, he turned in his chair and dropped the blazing sheets of vellum into a spittoon.
    He watched idly as Chloe’s