The Rancher's Blessed Event. Stella Bagwell

her damp forehead, then stood on shaky legs to pull the burgundy velour robe over her bare arms and shoulders.

      Knowing sleep was out of the question now, she headed to the kitchen to make herself a cup of cocoa and switch on the radio. Snow had been predicted in the mountains around Alto, Ruidoso, Lincoln and Hondo. An hour ago when she’d gone to bed, the sky over the ranch was low and gray, but no snow had yet fallen.

      Halfway to the kitchen Emily stopped in her tracks. She was certain she’d heard a rattling noise outside. Perhaps something other than her troubled thoughts had interrupted her sleep? It could have been a piece of loose sheet iron whipping in the wind, but an inner feeling told her something or someone was out there.

      Quickly tightening the sash of the robe around her waist, she hurried to the nearest window and pulled back the curtain. Throughout the ten years she’d lived on the Diamond D, she couldn’t remember them ever having a prowler or anything stolen. But now that Kenneth was dead someone might view the place as easy pickings. The ranch was located on a lonely stretch of land north of the valley where the mountains turned to desert. Certainly no one came here unless they meant to.

      The noise came again and this time Emily decided it was definitely the rattle of a stock trailer. What in the world was going on? Her father, Harlan, would never drive over here in the middle of the night unless it was an absolute emergency. At ten, she’d spoken to him briefly on the telephone and he’d been on his way to bed. As for the rest of her family, they would never show up in the middle of the night without calling first.

      An uneasy chill swept through her as her mind began to spin. Her uncle Roy was the sheriff of Lincoln County. She could call him. But he and Aunt Justine lived a good thirty minutes away. She didn’t want to disturb them unless it turned out to be a real emergency. Besides, if a thief was already out there, he could drive off with a whole trailer load of cows and horses by the time the law could get here.

      Her jaw grimly set, she walked quietly but quickly back to the bedroom and took a .30.30 rifle down from a rack on the wall. A box of bullets was in the nightstand. Her heart tripping over itself, she loaded the rifle full, then jacked a shot into the barrel. She didn’t intend to shoot anyone. But she wouldn’t hesitate to scare the hell out of them.

      Rifle in one hand, she pulled on a pair of cowboy boots, then dropped a cellular phone into the pocket of her robe. If she did find more trouble than she could handle outside, she would at least be able to call her uncle Roy for help.

      Moments later, she slipped soundlessly from a door at the back of the house. Wind was blowing from the north and Emily realized the mist stinging her face was actually bits of snow too fine to see in the dark.

      Shivering from cold and fear, Emily made her way to the corner of the house, then carefully peeped around the edge toward the barn. The yard lamp at the corner of the corrals would normally have illuminated the front of the barn, but the light had been broken for months. What little moonlight there might have been was blotted out by the clouds. The most she could discern was the back of a two-horse trailer.

      Realizing she had no one but herself to handle things, Emily stepped away from the shadow of the house and moved stealthily toward the barn.

      Whoever had driven here was more than likely in the barn, looking for saddles or tack to steal, she decided. A good saddle was always worth several hundred dollars. Especially if the saddle had been handmade as were the ones on the Diamond D. She’d be damned before she’d let someone take them!

      Inching forward, she could see the club cab pickup pulling the horse trailer. It was a fairly late model with Texas plates. This thief was obviously a long way from home. Not to mention traveling in style.

      She was creeping closer to the open doorway of the barn when suddenly a light flared on inside the building. Stopping dead in her tracks, she held her breath and waited. Only a bold thief would turn on a light.

      A few more seconds passed. A horse nickered, but nothing else stirred. With sudden decision, she stepped into the open doorway of the barn, the rifle aimed and ready.

      “Who’s in there?” she called loudly. “Come out or I’m going to shoot!”

      Two horses Emily had never seen before were tied to the top rail of a nearby stall. Both animals, a bay and a gray, skittered nervously at the sound of her raised voice.

      To the left of her, hinges creaked. Her head twisted in the direction of the sound and her heart beat like a drum in her throat as she watched the door to the feed room slowly swing forward. When the man finally stepped out and into the dim light, she stared in shock as the room seemed to tilt around her.

      “Cooper? Is that you?”

      The man slowly pushed the brim of his Stetson back off his forehead, then turned to face Emily head-on. Inclining his head toward the .30.30, he asked, “Is that the way you greet people on the Diamond D now, or just me?”

      It suddenly dawned on her that she was still pointing the barrel of the rifle straight at him. Lowering the weapon, she drew in a bracing breath and took a couple of shaky steps toward her brother-in-law.

      “No one prowls around in my barn at this time of night. What are you doing here?”

      Cooper didn’t miss the my in her answer or anything else about the woman standing a few steps away from him. It had been a long time since he’d seen her. Ten years to be exact. Yet he would have known her in a crowd a thousand miles away from this place.

      “This was as soon as I could get here.”

      Emily hadn’t expected him to get here at all. And the fact that he had stunned her ability to think, to do anything but continue to stare at him. Slowly and purposely her eyes took in everything between his brown boots and gray hat.

      He looked as he had ten years ago, she decided, only a little older. His hair was still a tangle of sable brown curls against the back of his neck. Beneath the gray down jacket he wore, she could glimpse his trim waist and muscled thighs. If he’d put any weight on his six-foot frame, she couldn’t see it.

      Cooper had never looked anything like his brother Kenneth, who’d been blond with a heavier build and smooth, almost classical features. The difference in the two men struck her even more as her gaze settled on his lean face. Cooper could not be called a handsome man. The bone structure of his face was roughly chiseled, his lips thin and his eyes hooded. Yet put all together he had a striking, masculine appearance. One that she had certainly never been able to forget.

      “Kenneth’s funeral was two days ago,” she said bluntly.

      His gray eyes caught and held her blue ones. “I figured as much. But the news of his accident didn’t catch up to me until yesterday. I’ve been driving ever since.”

      If that was supposed to make her feel better, it didn’t. His few hours on the road to get here didn’t make up for ten years of neglect.

      “I really don’t know why you bothered to come at all.”

      Cooper’s gaze slid over the silk curtain of blond hair lying against Emily’s shoulders, the slender curves of her body beneath the heavy robe. She had to be thirty-five or six now. The same age as himself. Yet she looked far younger. And oh so achingly beautiful.

      “Kenneth was my brother. That’s why I bothered.”

      So he wasn’t here because of her. Emily had known that, but hearing him say it cut her anyway. Which was ridiculous. Cooper had never really cared for her. She’d known that for a long time now.

      Gripping the rifle, she said, “I’m cold. I’m going in. Are you staying here tonight?”

      Her question brought a twist to his lips. “You might not think so, but the Diamond D is still my home.”

      Her brows arched with disbelief. He’d not stepped foot on the Diamond D once in ten years. She couldn’t see how he could still consider it his home. As far as she knew, the man didn’t have a home.

      “That’s debatable,” she said