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stopped talking, she hung up and looked at her sisters.
    “Speak,” Mike demanded. “Who was that?”
    Jo took one deep breath after another until she felt control slip back into her system. She banked her inner fury until it was a nice, contained blaze. When she was sure she could speak without shrieking, she looked at first Sam, then Mike. “Seems like our little brother does have one friend after all.”
    “Yeah?” Sam asked. “Who?”
    Fisting her hand around her cell phone in a grip tight enough to turn charcoal into a diamond, Jo only whispered, “Cash Hunter.”

Three
    The so-called road to Cash Hunter’s house was so narrow and rocky, it was little more than a trail.
    Jo’s teeth rattled as she stubbornly steered her black truck between the overhanging branches of trees, bushes, and God knew what else. Her hands fisted on the steering wheel, she clenched her jaw and braced for impact as the truck jounced along this stupid track. “Couldn’t the man take care of the damn road? Is he really so busy out seducing women that he can’t take a day off to hack a way through this jungle?”
    Okay, she told herself, maybe she ought to try to calm down a little before meeting up with Cash. Sure. No problem. All it should take is about thirty years and way more patience than
she
was known for. No matter how she tried to keep the man at a distance, he kept finding a way back in. What was that about?
    “It’s not like I’m falling at his feet or something,” she muttered, and grunted when her right front tire dropped into a pothole the size of Kansas. “Damn it!”
    The toolbox in the back of her truck jostled and clanged from the lockup box directly behind the cab. In fact, the whole damn truck was shaking as if it wereat the epicenter of an 8.1 earthquake. Which did nothing to improve her mood.
    The trees were thick here, their branches stretched out across the road, thick and leafy, and just filling out as winter slid into spring. Sunlight stabbed its way through the overhanging tree limbs to lie in tiny, bright splotches of gold on the dirt road.
    It felt as if every plant in the world were deliberately trying to hold her back. Keep her from reaching her destination. And if she were a big believer in signs, like her sister Sam, Jo would have turned the truck around and headed back to the house.
    Unfortunately,
she
was the logical one. The organized one. She believed that people made their own destinies. Their own luck. Their own problems.
    She winced as an old memory darted through her brain, dragging pain and shame behind it. Took her a minute or two, but Jo pushed that memory back into the dark recesses of her mind. She’d survived. That was all that mattered.
    And memories could only hurt you if you actually gave them that power.
    Well, Jo was never going to give away her power again. Not to anyone.
    “Okay, focus,” she muttered thickly, concentrating on what Cash Hunter laughingly referred to as a “road.” A minute or two farther along the rutted lane, she passed the turnoff for the little guest cottage she and her sisters had renovated several months ago.
    That had been a long couple of months, she remembered. Every time she turned around, there was Cash. Closing in on her personal space. Insinuating himself into her day. Smelling good and looking even better.Reminding her that he was all male—as if any woman with two good eyes would need reminding—and in general making himself a pain in the ass.
    Of course, her sisters hadn’t seen it. Oh no. All he’d had to do was bring a newly pregnant Mike a glass of water, or help Sam down from the roof, and they were charmed. But then, they were both married and he hadn’t been using his big guns on them.
    He saved
that
ammunition for Jo.
    And why, for God’s sake?
    He could plainly see that she wasn’t interested—okay, that was a lie. She
was
interested, she was just not going to do anything about it. She couldn’t. She’d come up against a man