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him weak. He needed to stay off his feet, at least until tomorrow.
    After he’d slipped away she had lingered a moment, looking down at him. In sleep he’d looked strangely vulnerable—tawny hair tumbling over his forehead, mahogany lashes lying still against his tanned cheeks.
    Where the shirt had been cut away, his skin was like warm ivory. A ray of sunlight, falling between the curtains, made a golden pool in the hollow of his throat. He was a beautiful man, Clara thought—as beautiful in his own way as the stallion he rode.
    But who was he and what was he hiding?
    Resisting the urge to touch him, Clara had unfolded an afghan from the back of a chair and laid it over his sleeping body. Then she’d tiptoed out of the room and closed the door behind her.
    Before leaving, she’d unsaddled Galahad and loosed him in the corral with Mary’s two geldings. The power of the big stallion had thrilled her. Tomorrow she would bring her two mares to the farm and turn them out together in the same pasture. When they were ready to breed, the stallion would know what to do.
    She could only hope Tanner would stay around long enough for it to happen.
    She was putting way too much trust in the man, Clara lectured herself. For all she knew, he could disappear some night, taking her mares with him.
    But that didn’t sound like Tanner. The scenario would be too simple, the crime too easily solved. Tanner had said he wasn’t a thief, and she was inclined to believe him. But other secrets lurked behind his intriguing manner. Clearly he wasn’t the man he pretended to be.
    She passed through the opening in the fence where Tanner had planned to build a gate. Seeing the place again brought home the memory of lying on her back, opening her eyes to the sight of his face. For that one heart-stopping instant, his blue eyes had pierced her, held her, touched her in some deep place. Then he’d spoken angrily, shattering the spell.
    What had she agreed to when she’d accepted his bargain? An open promise in exchange for the use of the stallion—she must have been out of her mind! He could ask any favor of her and she’d be honor-bound to grant it.
    What would that favor be?
    Tanner had stepped in to save her and her grandmother. But that didn’t mean he was a good man. For all she knew, he could be plotting something wicked and scheming to make her a part of it. When he’d urged Mary not to call the marshal, she had backed him. But it was her heart, not her head that had made the decision. Tanner was a compellingly attractive man, the stuff of a young girl’s dreams and fantasies. But she couldn’t allow herself to be naïve about him any longer.
    It was possible that she really had made a bargain with the devil.
    Across the pasture, the two-story Seavers home rose above a flowering orchard. Painted pale cream, with tall windows and dark green shutters, the spacious house was as stately as it was comfortable. Beyond it, the barn, sheds and stables stretched toward the far paddock. Clara had grown up here, with her parents and her younger brother and sister. There was no place on earth she would rather be than here on the ranch, surrounded by her beloved horses and her family.
    Slowing Foxfire to a walk, she pondered how much to tell her parents. Judd and Hannah Seavers were protective of Mary and would welcome any excuse to pluck her off the farm and settle her in their home. But Mary was fiercely independent. She’d insisted that Clara not tell them about the two men who’d come by. Clara had reluctantly agreed. But sooner or later, her parents would have to know about Tanner.
    Say too much, and they’d go flying over to Mary’s to make sure she was safe.
    Say too little, and they’d suspect her of keeping something from them. Either way, there could be trouble.
    Clara was still weighing her words as she approached the open pasture gate. The sight of milling men and horses surprised her until she remembered. This was the day her