Midnight Faith. Gena Dalton

throw them a great big one. There’s five hundred people with their feelings hurt….”

      But he couldn’t let well enough be. He’d distracted her and now he had to bring her back.

      One of the young men appeared to be asking Cait to dance. She was shaking her head and smiling a refusal.

      “What does being Black Irish have to do with being a world-class horsewoman?”

      Faylene flashed him an incredulous look.

      “The Irish have an affinity for horses, you know that. Their emotions and their spirits run deep and they have a strong connection with things unseen.”

      Clint had to grin at her seriousness.

      “The Comanches had a connection with horses,” he said.

      “Same with them,” Faylene said promptly. “Close to the earth—the Comanches and the Irish.”

      “Giving no quarter, like the Texas Rangers.”

      “Right!”

      She beamed at him.

      He laughed and hugged her as Delia’s fiddle finally sang out the last note.

      “Thanks for the dance and the information, too, Auntie Fay,” he said.

      “Any time, lovey.”

      Then the question on his mind came off his tongue of its own accord.

      “Why do you think she married John?”

      Faylene narrowed her blue eyes and stared up at him.

      “Nobody but Cait knows that, sugar,” she said. “Whatever I’d say about it would only be speculation.”

      Clint grinned.

      “Well, I wouldn’t want to push you into speculation,” he said dryly, “since everything else you’ve told me tonight has been ironclad fact.”

      “That’s exactly right,” she said, twinkling at him.

      Then she patted him on the arm and hurried off, waving at Jim Prescott. Suddenly she stopped and looked back.

      “Sometime she might tell you herself, sweetie,” she said.

      Oh, sure. Sometime when he and Cait became best buddies.

      Immediately, without so much as a glance toward Cait and her admirers, he started looking for Larry. The reason Cait had married John was totally immaterial to him and he had no idea why he’d asked that question out loud.

      He didn’t even want to know. All he wanted was to make the Rocking M the premier breeding station in the reining-horse industry, and in the meantime come up with new stallions to take over the cutting-and pleasure-horse market, too.

      And he also wanted to make some waves with his cattle. Might as well dream big. He was the oldest brother, and he’d always been the most responsible one, so perhaps the whole ranch was meant to fall on his shoulders. Jackson was the next oldest, and he was here on the Rocking M and, in time, might come to share the burden.

      Monte, the third one born, had always been the wildest, and John, the baby brother, had always been the gentlest, the kindest, the best. Maybe it was true that the good die young.

      Maybe it was true that even if both of them were still here, neither would want to make the ranch his main concern for all his life. He, Clint, would just have to accept life the way it was.

      Maybe if he made his challenges big enough, and took big enough risks to try to meet them, he’d forget all about this lonely funk he was in, and the ridiculous riding school, too.

      The whole time he was visiting with Larry, though, he couldn’t keep from glancing around for Cait from time to time. Just out of curiosity as to how she was handling herself. She did finally escape from the younger men but, just as she tried to slip out into the kitchen, his grandfather’s old friend Mac Torrance caught up with her. Clearly he was asking her to dance but she refused him, too.

      Finally he and Larry sealed the deal to book his three best mares and Clint moved on to visit with some other guests. The next thing he knew, the band was playing a fast song, LydaAnn and her friend Janie were starting a line dance and Cait had disappeared.

      The noise level in the room rose another notch. At least it sounded like a merry Christmas Eve on the Rocking M, in spite of all the sadness of the year just past.

      Bobbie Ann came by with a fresh platter of tortilla chips and her famous salsa dip.

      “You’d better go get in that line and dance,” she said. “Or your sisters will be on your case.”

      “I danced with Faylene. That’s enough dancing for tonight.”

      “Delia and LydaAnn are trying so hard to make this be Christmas, Clint,” she said, frowning. “Help ’em out all you can.”

      Irritation stabbed through him.

      “I’ve been working this crowd like a politician,” he snapped. “What more do they want?”

      “How about a smile?” she said. “I’d like to see one of those from you, myself.”

      Thoroughly annoyed, he glanced away.

      And there was Cait, standing alone in the book-lined alcove that held the Remington sculpture, thumbing through a book she’d opened on the table.

      “Now, there’s a family member—according to you, Ma,” he said. “Why don’t you go tell her to do her duty and get out there in line?”

      Bobbie Ann gazed at him thoughtfully.

      “She even refused to dance with poor old Mac,” Clint groused. “It embarrassed him. And she hasn’t talked to anyone but those kids with the Carmacks.”

      “I’m thinking this is all a bit overwhelming for Cait,” his mother said softly. “Don’t you think so? What with her background and all?”

      Shame hit him again, like a fist to the gut. When it came to Cait, he was just piling up the guilt.

      But he couldn’t take his eyes off her. Standing there so still, looking down at that book so intently, she held her head at a vulnerable angle. The soft light limned her beautiful neck and shoulders, shadow fell across her face. She studied that book without moving a muscle.

      “She isn’t accustomed to big social gatherings,” Bobbie Ann said softly. “Our Cait is a bit of a loner.”

      Our Cait. Clint didn’t even challenge that. He was too busy trying to fend off the unnameable feelings washing through him as he looked at this Cait he’d never seen before.

      Finally she felt his gaze. She glanced up and looked straight at him for a fleeting moment, acknowledging his existence with the most noncommittal of looks and for the barest fraction of a heartbeat in time.

      Much as she had done when she first came into the room.

      This time it stabbed him even deeper.

      Then she looked at Bobbie Ann and smiled before she went back to slowly turning the pages.

      “Let her be,” Bobbie Ann murmured. “She likes to see the pictures of the family.”

      Only then did he notice that the large-paged book was not a picture book of Western art. It was one of the big leather photo albums embossed with the Rocking M brand that held the history of the McMahans.

      Cait sat on the floor in the shadow of the huge Christmas tree and reached out to touch the papiermâché cowboy ornament. He was twirling his red rope above his head in a perfect, huge loop. He was so old that the gold thread he was supposed to hang by from the center of his hat had worn in two and he stood bowlegged on a thick branch instead.

      “I’ll be very careful not to knock you off balance,” she whispered.

      No one was around to hear her,