The Restless Virgin. Peggy Moreland

that she didn’t want her father to know about the attack didn’t surprise Gabe. Lucas McCloud wasn’t a man long on comfort. He shrugged out of his denim jacket. “Okay. Okay,” he said soothingly. “Settle down now. I’ll see you home safe.” He draped the jacket across Sam’s shoulders. As he started to rise, pulling her up along with him, the overhead lights popped on, their glare blinding after the moonlit darkness of a moment before.

      “What the hell is going on in here?”

      At the sound of Lucas’s angry voice, Gabe turned to look at Sam. The absolute terror in her eyes had him tightening his hold on her. Lucas’s temper was legendary, and the fact that his daughters caught the brunt end of it more often than not was common knowledge among the ranch hands. “It’s me. Gabe. And Sam,” he added, knowing there was no escape for her now.

      There was a muffled curse, followed by the sound of determined footsteps, then Lucas appeared in the opening of the stall. Sam clutched tighter at the jacket and Gabe quickly stepped in front of her, offering her more concealment.

      “What the hell is going on?” Lucas demanded again.

      Heaving a sigh, Gabe explained. “I caught Reed in the barn with Sam and he was—” He paused, searching for a gentler way, for Sam’s benefit, to explain the incident. “Well, he was giving her a hard time. But everything’s under control now,” he assured Lucas. “The boys have taken Reed back to the bunkhouse to pack his gear, then they’re going to escort him off the Double-Cross.”

      Lucas’s face reddened, veins throbbing to life at his temples and on his neck. His entire body trembled with barely suppressed rage as he tightened his hands into fists at his sides. “Who the hell gave you the authority to fire one of my wranglers? Reed Wester is the best damn horse trainer in the state, and you damn well know it.”

      Gabe had always known Lucas’s heart was made of stone, but the idea of him coming to the defense of a lowlife like Reed Wester when his own daughter had almost been raped by the man galled Gabe to no end. “He came dang close to rapin’ her, Lucas. If I hadn’t heard her scream, I don’t—”

      Lucas snapped his gaze to Sam, his look scathing. His face turned an even darker shade of red. “So, you’re the cause of all this. I should’ve known.” He took a threatening step closer. “What did you do to provoke him?”

      Sam hadn’t thought anything could hurt as much as the punishment she’d received at Reed’s hands. Her father’s words proved her wrong. But she’d be damned if she’d let him see how much he’d hurt her. “Nothing,” she replied, lifting her chin. “Absolutely nothing.”

      Lucas narrowed his eyes, sucking in air through his teeth. His mouth curled into a snarl of disgust while a muscle on his jaw flexed. “Get to the house,” he ordered.

      “Now, Lucas—” Gabe began, ready to defend Sam.

      Lucas wheeled on him. “Don’t you ‘now, Lucas’ me! It’ll be your head that rolls if we lose Reed over this.”

      Gabe’s back stiffened at the threat, but the rising color on his boss’s face made him momentarily set aside his own anger. Ever since Lucas’s oldest daughter Mandy had announced that she was carrying Jesse Barrister’s baby, his boss’s temper—erratic at best—had taken on the volatility of a Texas twister, mowing down anything or anyone who happened to be in his path. And since Mandy’s return to the ranch with the baby, things had only gotten worse. Gabe himself had persuaded Lucas to see a doctor, but the stubborn old rancher ignored the doctor’s advice, refusing to change his diet or take the medication prescribed. “You need to calm down, Lucas,” Gabe warned. “Gettin’ upset like this ain’t gonna help your blood pressure none.”

      Sweat glistened on Lucas’s face as he lifted a fist and shook it. “To hell with my blood pressure! I’ve got to find Reed and see if I can salvage this mess y’all’ve made. Where is he?”

      “I told you,” Gabe replied patiently. “The boys took him to the bunkhouse and—”

      Before Gabe could repeat his explanation, Lucas swayed, grabbing for the stall gate with one hand while clutching at his chest with the other. Gabe made a move to help, but Lucas waved him away. “Leave me be,” he growled, his breath coming in short, sharp gasps. Sweat poured down his face and he dipped his head into the crook of the arm braced against the stall door. As he tried to straighten, his knees buckled beneath him. Gabe lunged forward, but before he could reach him, Lucas crumpled to the floor, his fingers sliding down the gate’s metal rails, each hit a loud pinging thump in the silent barn.

      “Daddy!” Sam screamed, running to drop down beside her father.

      Gabe nudged Sam aside, flattening his hand over Lucas’s chest, feeling for a heartbeat. When he didn’t find one, he turned to her, his expression grave. ‘Call for an ambulance. I’ll stay here and work on him.”

      Slowly, Sam pushed herself to her feet, her eyes riveted on her father’s slack face. As she ran for the phone in the lab room, the memory of her father’s words chased her.

      So, you’re the cause of all this. I should have known. What did you do to provoke him?

      Those would be the last words that Lucas McCloud would ever say to his daughter...yet the guilt heaped on Sam’s slender shoulders that night would last a lifetime.

      One

      Austin, Texas

      1998

      

      Sam frowned at the scribbled directions she held, trying her darndest to decipher her nephew’s scrawled handwriting. When she got back to the Double-Cross, she promised herself, she was going to make arrangements to have a separate phone line installed for her veterinary practice and invest in a good answering machine. And this time she meant it! Unraveling the messages taken by whoever happened to pick up the phone at the main house on the Double-Cross Heart Ranch was a royal pain in the butt.

      She glanced up, peering through her truck’s bug-splattered windshield at empty pastures duck with overgrown weeds and cedar saplings. Snapped barbed wire coiled crazily along the fence line like a home perm gone bad, while sparrows splashed in a rusted water trough. Above the crumbling limestone pillars flanking the gate, a faded sign swung.

      “Rivers Ranch,” she said aloud. Since the name matched that on the message her nephew Jaime had taken, she figured she must have the right place.

      And if this is how Nash Rivers takes care of what’s his, she added mentally, it’s no wonder he’s got a sick horse.

      But his abilities as a rancher weren’t her concern, Sam reminded herself. Only his livestock were. Still, having been raised on a ranch, the sight of so much neglect was a hard thing for her to abide.

      Setting her jaw against her client’s poor management of his land, Sam turned onto the pitted road beneath the warped and faded sign and headed for the barn she could see in the distance.

      An S-600 Mercedes sedan was parked at an odd angle to the barn, its silver-and-chrome body catching the sunlight and shooting it back, nearly blinding Sam. As she drew nearer, she saw a man pacing between the car and the barn. At the sound of her truck, he stopped and turned, watching her approach from behind a pair of dark sunglasses. Dressed in a gray pinstriped suit, he seemed at odds with the rustic setting around him...but well matched to the sleek, expensive car parked in front of him.

      The dark scowl he wore sent a shiver down Sam’s spine. She quickly shoved back the dread of having to deal with him, and forced herself to focus instead on the animal that needed her care. Anxious to get to her patient, she parked and hopped down from the cab of her truck, pausing to grab her vet bag from the toolbox in back. “Nash Rivers?” she asked as she approached him.

      He continued to scowl at her. “Yes?”

      “I’m here to see about your horse.”

      Nash slipped his sunglasses to the end of his nose and