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Except when—
    No, that’s ridiculous.
    --except when he’d stared at me at the ranch with that I want you look. And then again, with added lust, right after I’d come my brains out in the saddle.
    “There!” Russ yelled. “By the lake!”
    He pointed and I followed his finger. Far below us, down by the shining silver of a sun-kissed lake, I saw her. A beautiful mustang with a glossy red-brown coat. She was beautiful, and I understood immediately why Russ had wanted to go after her. And then I saw her legs tremble and twitch and my stomach clenched tight. She was definitely ill, just as Russ had said. We needed to get down to her— fast.
    Russ coaxed his horse into as fast a trot as he dared on the narrow path, and I fell in behind him. Adrenaline slammed through my veins, making me focus, all thoughts of my stupid crush forgotten.
    Russ took the fastest—which meant the steepest—route. The horses had to skitter down loose stones, snorting their disapproval. We had to coax them around narrow paths that wound along cliff tops, too close to the edge for me to comfortably think about. Instead, I convinced myself that there was ground running beside the cliff—nice, soft, grass-covered ground, maybe three feet down. With daisies. I tried not to think about how many seconds it would take to hit the bottom, if I got thrown out of my saddle or if Constantine went over with me still in my stirrups. I tried not to think about cold, jagged rocks far beneath. I just focused on Russ ahead of me and followed, wishing I had my own set of blinkers to wear.
    After two hours of nerve-jangling, heart-stopping descent, we made it to the lake. And the horse was nowhere to be seen.
    We’d lost sight of it almost as soon as we’d started to descend, but we’d been hoping that the illness would slow it down and keep it in the same area. We’d been wrong.
    “Damnit!” yelled Russ, sliding from his saddle. He turned a full circle, taking in the shining lake and the wooded valley. We could see a good distance in all directions, but there was no sign of the horse. He swept his hat off his head and ran his hand through his hair. “She can’t have gone far!” It was the angriest I’d ever seen him.
    I looked up and down the valley. “But which way? If we pick the wrong one, we could trek for hours without finding her, then come back here and not know if we went far enough.”
    “We have to do something!” I could see the frustration in his eyes and I could understand it because I felt it too. But right then, he needed me to do what he’d hired me to do. He needed me to think like a vet.
    I looked around again. “We should wait here.”
    “What?!” He looked at me, aghast. “Damnit, Amanda, we can’t just wait here! She’s sick!”
    I forced my voice level. “If it is Triple-E, she’s running a fever. She’ll keep coming back to drink, probably this evening. Staying here is our best shot.”
    He looked once more around him, eyes searching every break in the foliage, every opening in the rocks. “You sure?” he asked at last, his voice tight with frustration.
    “Yeah.” I was fighting the same instinct he was—the need to run around and do something in an emergency. ”That’s my official opinion, as your vet. Wait here, rest the horses, stay out of sight and wait for her to come back.”
    He gave me a long, long look…and then nodded, rubbing a hand across his face. “Okay,” he said. “Yeah, okay. You’re right. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you.”
    “You didn’t snap at me,” I said. “Relax.”
    “This horse has just got me all….” He trailed off, looking at the ground, and then looked at me.
    “What?”
    “I’m going to go crazy if I can’t have her,” he said.
    We stared at one another, his eyes burning into mine. I could feel every muscle in my body drawing tight, singing like a plucked string.
    I quickly slid down off my horse and started leading him to the water so that he could