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headed right for him.
    Lucas laid the coil of rope across the saddle horn and urged Bodacious forward. He rode to meet her halfway.
    She slowed her horse as he approached and gave him a shy half-smile. “They look good,” she said with a nod toward the cows and their calves. “Thank you for all your hard work.”
    Lucas turned his horse’s head so he could walk beside her. They weren’t his cows and it wasn’t his ranch, but he felt a swell of pride just the same. He swallowed the lecture he’d planned to give her. “You’re welcome.” He caught the appraising look she shot his way. “Something on your mind?”
    Syd opened her mouth, but closed it again as if reconsidering what she’d planned to say. He watched her give an odd little shake of her head. “Why don’t you have your own ranch? I don’t mean to be rude. It’s just that you’re so good at this. You know exactly what to do. It’s second nature to you.” She glanced up at him again. “You were born to this life.”
    Lucas shrugged. “It’s a long boring story.”
    “Well, I don’t mind listening, or you can give me the abridged version if you prefer.”
    “It’s very simple,” he said. “My father had three sons, but only one ranch. I have two older brothers. They divided the ranch between them. A three-way split would have been impossible and I was just seventeen when my father passed away.”
    “How, uh, if you don’t mind my asking, how old are you?”
    “I turned twenty-nine on April first. I was an April Fool’s baby, born in a late spring blizzard. My brothers are eighteen and twenty years older than I am.” He grinned at her raised eyebrows. “My father married late in life. He’d intended to be a bachelor but realized in his mid-forties that if he didn’t have children he’d lose the ranch. The land was first settled by my great-great grandfather and my dad wasn’t about to sell it off. I guess you’d call my mother a mail-order bride. She married him sight unseen. He was forty-six, she was twenty-five. The two of them didn’t waste any time having kids.”
    “But they hadn’t planned on a third, so…”
    “So I hired on with my brothers.” He finished her sentence.
    “Is your mother still alive?”
    He nodded. “She lives in the main house. Has her garden and her chickens and her precious milk cow.”
    Syd lifted her face to his. “She sounds like a wonderful woman. I wouldn’t mind a milk cow myself.”
    Lucas snorted. “She is an interesting woman. Hard to believe she’d never left Baltimore until she came west to marry my dad.”
    “So she’s from Baltimore?”
    He nodded. “She went to Johns Hopkins. Has a Master’s Degree in neuroscience.”
    Syd’s mouth dropped open. “She has a Master’s in neuroscience from Johns Hopkins but she gave it all up and came west to marry a rancher twice her age?” She blew out a breath. “Wow. How’d that work out for her?” Syd laughed. “Sorry, I’m just… That kind of came out of left field.”
    He laughed. “It worked out fine. She’d always dreamed of marrying a cowboy.”
    “Every little girl dreams of marrying a cowboy,” she said.
    Lucas teased her. “I thought every little girl dreamed of riding a horse.”
    “Well, why do you think we want to marry cowboys?”
    Both pulled their horses up at the sound of thunder. A sharp gust of wind whipped Delia’s tail forward, startling the mare. Syd gripped the horse tight with her thighs and managed to keep her balance, but just to be on the safe side Lucas leaned over and grabbed the mare’s bridle. Lightning flashed overhead and thunder crashed, making them all jump.
    “Give me your reins,” he ordered.
    Syd tossed them over without hesitation. Lucas reached for her with his free arm and slid her onto his horse, balancing her across his lap. Thick black storm clouds poured over the mountains, bearing down on them. A sharp, cold hailstone stung the back of his neck and he knew they had to find