Abbie And The Cowboy. Cathie Linz

and time. They lost track of it, the same way they lost track of money and women. It was now July.

      Still, if Dylan had been a friend of her uncle’s, she wanted to break the news of his death as gently as she could. While she struggled to find the proper words, he impatiently demanded, “Who are you?”

      “I’m Pete’s niece.”

      “No way! His niece is a starchy librarian in the big city.”

      Gritting her teeth, Abigail strove to ignore the starchy part of his description as she silently reflected on the ironic fact that both her chosen professions were rife with misconceptions. “I’m a librarian. Or at least I was until a few weeks ago.”

      Dylan eyed her from head to toe as if suspecting her of lying. “You don’t look like any librarian I’ve ever seen,” he replied.

      “Really? And when was the last time you were inside a library?” she countered sweetly.

      Dylan had visited the hospital library plenty while laid up, although he wasn’t about to tell her that. He preferred to think about her, wondering what kind a librarian rode a horse called Wild Thing. One he wanted to get to know better, Dylan decided. She was all long legs and sleek curves. And her hair reminded him of curly ribbons of silk. It had caressed his face like a slender, seductive rope trying to lasso him and capture his heart—clinging to his rough skin with gentle abandon, rich with the scent of lily of the valley, his favorite flower.

      Realizing that he was staring at her mouth without hearing a word she’d said, Dylan murmured, “What?”

      “Never mind.” Ignoring him, she ran her hands over Wild Thing’s chest and withers, then her legs and hooves, even inside the horse’s mouth, checking her for anything suspicious. Abigail’s first search turned up nothing; the bay mare wasn’t injured, thank heavens. The horse was still quivering slightly, but her limbs weren’t swollen or cut. A more thorough search, after removing the saddle, provided the answer Abigail had been looking for. “I knew it!” she exclaimed. “I was set up!”

       Two

      “What are you talking about?” Dylan demanded.

      “I knew Wild Thing wouldn’t take off like that for no reason. Look at this!” She showed him the burrs attached to the saddle blanket. Sure enough, there were matching marks on the horse’s flank, although her mahogany color made them difficult to see at first. “You poor baby,” Abigail crooned, making Dylan wish she’d talk that way to him instead of her horse.

      “Didn’t you check your rig when you saddled her?” he asked.

      “Of course I did. Those burrs weren’t on that blanket then. It may have taken a while for them to work far enough under to really irritate her, but when they did, she bolted. And there’s no way I could have picked up burrs in that location on the saddle blanket unless someone deliberately put it there.”

      “Did you leave the horse unattended after she was saddled?”

      “Just for a minute. I got a phone call on my cellular phone…”

      Dylan rolled his eyes.

      “It was my editor from New York,” she continued. “But I only stepped away for a few minutes, no longer than five.”

      “Long enough for someone to mess with this blanket,” he said, reaching out to rub the mare’s nose.

      “Wild Thing doesn’t like total strangers touching her,” Abigail warned him.

      “Like her owner that way, is she?” Dylan countered, soothing the skittish horse with his large hands, calmly reassuring her. The mare, darn her traitorous soul, ate up the extra attention.

      Remembering the feel of that hand on her cheek, Abigail shivered. Dylan’s fingertips had been work roughened. She didn’t have to look at the palms of his hands to know they’d be callused and nicked. This was no city cowboy. He was the real thing.

      “So why do you think someone would want you thrown from your horse?” Dylan turned to ask her.

      “I don’t know. Maybe because I refused to sell out to Hoss Redkins, the local bigwig bully.”

      “Sell out?” Dylan repeated with a frown. “You may be his niece, but this is still Pete’s ranch and there’s no way in God’s green earth he’d sell to an overblown buffoon like Redkins.”

      Abigail bit her lip, realizing she still hadn’t told him about her uncle’s death. “My uncle passed away two months ago,” she said quietly. “His attorney called me and told me he’d left the ranch to me.”

      “I thought he disowned his family when they sold out to Hoss.”

      “He did. Over the years, I tried to stay in touch.”

      “Yeah, I’m sure you did,” Dylan retorted. “You’d want to stay in the good old guy’s graces, after all.”

      “Meaning what?”

      “Nothing,” Dylan said wearily, taking off his hat and shoving his hand through his hair before setting the Stetson back on his head again. It shook him to realize that Pete was dead. Dylan had met him at a local rodeo where Pete had supplied some of the horses. The old man might have been about as friendly as a grizzly caught in a bear trap, but Dylan had enjoyed his company over the past ten years—since he’d moved west, in fact. Pete had taught him a lot. It pained him to think that Pete wouldn’t be sharing any more tall tales of the “good old days” with him over a steaming cup of coffee generously laced with whiskey.

      “So what are you going to do with the ranch now?” Dylan asked.

      “Why, keep it, of course.”

      “Keep it? Like some kind of science project? Do you have any idea how much work it takes, not to mention money, to run a ranch, even one as small as this one?”

      “I have a good idea, yes. I did a lot of research before I came up here.”

      “At the library down in Great Falls, no doubt,” he said mockingly.

      “That’s right. And don’t forget that I grew up on the ranch next door.”

      “Decades ago.”

      Stung, she said, “It wasn’t that long ago!”

      “Yeah? How old are you?”

      “How old are you?” she retorted.

      “Twenty-eight.”

      My God, he was just a baby! Well, maybe not, she amended, noting the fit of his jeans. He was definitely all grown-up. But he was a good four years younger than she was.

      Thirty-two had never felt so old to her before, but then she’d never been attracted to a younger man before. She was also vastly irritated by him, she reminded herself, lest her hormones incite a temporary memory loss.

      “Let me guess, a gentleman never asks a lady her age, right?” Dylan said. “So, Ms. Librarian, are you and your horse going to come along quietlike, or am I gonna have to lasso you?” Seeing her startled look, he continued, “I’ve got a double horse trailer parked a short ways away. It’s attached to my pickup, and I can give you both a lift back to the ranch house.”

      “If you think I’m going to hitch a lift with a stranger-”

      “I’m not the stranger, you are. You know my name. I still don’t know yours.”

      “It’s Abigail,” she replied, staring him right in the eye, the tilt of her chin a challenge and a dare. “Abigail Turner.”

      “See, that wasn’t so hard, now, was it?” he teased her, but she was no longer paying attention.

      It