Too Hard To Handle. Rita Rainville

was, by default, the lady.

      He was more than large, she decided with a blink. Caught between her and the glare of the late-May sun, he looked very big. Huge. And hard as granite, if the thighs gripping his saddle were any indication. He was, with his broad chest and shoulders wide enough to fill a doorway, more than a tad intimidating.

      Before Christy could utter a word, a motor home, the last of their caravan, trundled off the road and up the grassy slope in their direction, smoke pouring out the front grille. Slamming to a stop well behind the other vehicles, the driver leaped out and dashed toward the cluster of people. Before he had gone ten feet, the motor home’s chrome grille erupted and flames shot out, blistering the paint and shooting up a plume of dark smoke.

      Swearing, the large cowboy swung off his horse and pointed to the hill behind him. “Move,” he shouted to the stunned observers. “Now. To the other side. The damn thing’s going to blow.”

      Christy took a last look at the blazing motor home then turned to check the people swarming up the hillside. Noting they were all accounted for, she slid her arm protectively around the petite woman beside her. “Come on, Aunt Tillie. The man said to move.”

      “We’ll be fine, dear,” the older woman murmured, hiking up her long skirt and obediently trotting up the hill after her friends. “Just fine.”

      “Not if we don’t hustle.”

      “Oh!” Tillie skidded to a stop and turned back. “My bracelet. It’s gone.”

      Halting beside her, Christy wrapped her fingers around her aunt’s wrist and tugged. “Come on, it’ll be there when we get back.”

      “But it’s Walter’s. I mean, the one he gave me. His last gift.”

      Christy closed her eyes and sighed. After four days on the road with her lovable, exasperating aunt, she recognized the determination beneath her breathy voice. Come hell or high water, Tillie would go back for that bracelet. “Where is it?”

      “There.” Tillie pointed to a spot twenty feet behind them where the gold band glittered in the sun.

      “I’ll get it. You keep moving.” Christy nudged her aunt toward the others and waited until they crested the hill before she turned back.

      From behind them, Shane McBride watched with mingled fury and disbelief as the trim redhead reversed herself and dashed back toward him and the inferno. Not on my land, he thought grimly, angling to cut her off. No way. She might be a UFO-hunting trespasser, but if she was hurt on his property, she could tie him up in a legal snarl for months. He launched himself at her just as the RV exploded.

      A gust of hot air hit him with the force of a sledgehammer, throwing him off balance just as he snagged her. Fiery cinders rained on his back.

      Shifting his weight to break the redhead’s fall, Shane rolled with her across the grass, coming to a stop with her pinned beneath him. He held her there, hip to hip, sinking into her softness, waiting for the adrenaline to stop roaring through his body, feeling the swell of her breasts press against his chest.

      Instead of rolling aside and tugging her to her feet, pure physical appreciation kept him where he was a few seconds longer than necessary. It had obviously been too long since he’d been with a woman, he thought wryly, because she felt damn good. Way too good.

      Struggling for air, she shoved at his shoulders. “I can’t…breathe.” Looking up, she blinked at the lick of flame in the man’s dark eyes, so close to her own. It was gone in an instant. Muttering a curse, he shifted to her side, rising to his feet with a fluid power that had her blinking again. It took her longer to move. His hard body had imprinted itself on hers, and she shivered at the aftereffect of heat, flexing muscles and a bar of rigid flesh pressing into her belly.

      He leaned over her, extending a large hand. Waiting until her fingers touched his palm, he tightened his grip and pulled her smoothly to her feet. “Are you hurt?”

      “No.” Dazed by her racing pulse and the heat from his body, but not hurt. Christy shook her head as she looked around the grassy knoll. “I’m fine. I think.” Taking in the bits of twisted metal and smoldering grass, she shivered and turned back to him, impulsively squeezing the hand she still held. “Thanks for your help. I’m Christy Calhoun, and I’m really sorry about all this.” She gestured vaguely at the shambles around them. “I know it sounds crazy, but I was after my aunt’s bracelet, not trying to get blown up.”

      Turning away to conceal his aroused state, he scowled at the gaggle of older people at the top of the hill then down at her. “Shane McBride. I own this land. If you haven’t figured it out yet, you’re trespassing.”

      “Welcome to my world,” Christy muttered.

      “No, ma’am, you’ve got that wrong.” His deep voice had an edge of lethal softness. “There’s no welcome on this ranch for trespassers or idiots looking for UFOs. I’ve had all the broken fences, burned grass and campers that I intend to deal with. So I’d advise you to turn your cute little butt around, go back out the same cut fence you came in and travel on down the road.”

      Looking around at the disaster area, she said, “We didn’t cut the fence. It was already down.”

      “I know,” he said with strained patience. “It was done yesterday by a tourist who claimed he was running away from a UFO. He zigzagged on and off the road and took down nearly a quarter mile of fence. My fence.”

      “Well, we won’t do anything like that,” she assured him, lifting her hands in a universal gesture of innocence. “Honest, we’re really a law-abiding group of…” He half turned, raising his brows when she stopped, flushing, apparently remembering where she was.

      “What I mean is, we didn’t know we were trespassing when we pulled over. We thought it was open land since…there wasn’t a fence.” As her words dwindled away beneath his skeptical gaze, Christy’s thoughts darted to her aunt who, as leader and navigator of the group, had made the decision to stop precisely where they were.

      Aunt Tillie.

      A nasty suspicion drew her thoughts even further back to a conversation she’d had with one of her cousins two weeks earlier.

      Brandy would know what to do, she had thought at the time, waiting for her cousin to answer the phone. After all, hadn’t Brandy been the latest victim among the cousins? Hadn’t she—

      At the sound of a sunny contralto greeting, Christy had said, “Brandy? Thank God!”

      “Christy? Hey, I’ve been meaning to call. How’s the fianceé?”

      “Ex-fianceé. But that’s not why—”

      “Ex?” Brandy cleared her throat. “Isn’t that the third man you…? Never mind. How’s the job going?”

      “Gone, but that’s not why—”

      “Gone? When?”

      “Actually, the same day I got rid of fianceé number three. I was more upset about the job.”

      “But you’ve been writing for that magazine for the last two years.”

      “Yep, but it got caught up in a merger, and it’s dead meat,” Christy said succinctly. “Brandy, that’s not why—”

      “So what are you going to do?”

      This time, Christy’s sigh was long and loud. She should have known she wouldn’t control this conversation; she never did when talking with her cousin. “Sorry,” she said quickly. “I’m a little stressed here. When my magazine bit the dust, the editor of a travel magazine called me with an offer.”

      “Christy, that’s terrific!”

      “You haven’t heard about my first assignment.”

      “Nothing can be that bad,” her cousin said in a firm voice. “In the major scheme of things, a year isn’t that long.”