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hall except for her canine companion, Amanda propped the ladder against a wall and looked at it doubtfully. She wanted to examine the strip of molding across the top of the doorway leading into the den; the molding was an original part of the house, but she thought it looked peculiar where it was. If it could be taken down in one piece, undamaged, she had an idea that it would be perfect trim for the mantel she was having made for the den.
    The thing was, Amanda strongly mistrusted ladders, and this one looked more than usually rickety. She started to call for someone to come and hold it for her, but the crew members were busy in other parts of the house and both Penny and Sharon had their hands full getting rooms ready for the guests. So, anchoring the ladder as firmly as she could, she cautiously climbed up the rungs.
    She was slightly to the right of the doorway, and held the jamb with one hand while she leaned over carefully to examine the molding. She wasn't the slightest bit unbalanced, and the ladder held steady. Everything would have been fine if the front door hadn't banged open just then.
    With all his concentration apparently fixed upward on the mistress he had adopted, Nemo was startled by the sound and collapsed into one of his peculiar faints. Unfortunately his massive body brushed against the base of the ladder as he went limp.
    Amanda felt the ladder shift abruptly, and lost her balance. Things happened very quickly. She began to fall, and cried out in surprise. But instead of landing on the polished hardwood floor, she found herself caught and held in powerful arms that were like iron.
    Even in her shock at the near accident she was conscious of a sense of fatalistic certainty, and looked numbly up into the shrewd gray eyes of Ryder Foxx.

Chapter Three
     
    "You scared him!" she snapped.
    For a minute or so Ryder didn't respond to the puzzling accusation. He was struggling with another puzzle just then. He had acted out of pure instinct when he came into the hall to see this petite redhead on the point of tumbling off her ladder, but from the moment he caught her in his arms he'd been conscious of an odd sensation.
    The sensation wasn't odd in itself; he'd certainly felt desire before. But the suddenness of the attraction he felt for this woman was very unusual in his experience and more than a little baffling. She was certainly a lovely woman, and he'd always been partial to redheads, but the jeans and bulky sweater she wore was hardly sexy attire. He couldn't understand why he felt so much so suddenly.
    And aside from that, when she had first looked up at him, her bright green eyes had held the strangest expression he'd ever seen. For an instant he'd felt an urge to assure her that everything was all right because she'd looked curiously overcome, but then her expression had gone wary and her eyes had shown sparks of temper.
    "Put me down," she muttered now, more than a suggestion of gritted teeth in her tone.
    Instead of obeying the command, Ryder glanced at the dog stirring at his feet, and her earlier accusation sank in. "I scared him?"
    "Yes, you scared him. Put me down!"
    Ryder looked at her for a moment, enjoying the way she felt in his arms, then took his time putting her down. "You could have broken your neck," he told her, more than a little surprised at his own scolding tone. "Hasn't anyone ever taught you how to climb a ladder?"
    "I was doing just fine," she snapped. "If you hadn't crashed through the door and scared Nemo, he wouldn't have bumped the ladder when he fainted."
    "When he what?"
    "Fainted." She glared up at him, daring him to comment.
    Ryder glanced at the dog and decided not to say anything. "Oh. I didn't crash through the door; I nudged it with my suitcase and it flew open like something possessed. What kind of guest ranch is this anyway?"
    "One that isn't ready for guests," she said with a certain amount of relish. "However, since you and a few others chose to disregard the warning