The Consummate Cowboy. Sara Orwig

oldest.

      As she blew dry her hair, pulling the brush through her thick reddish-golden hair, the curls springing back in an annoying tangle, she mulled over Amber’s call. She hadn’t taken a vacation in three years. She could wind up the latest adoption and ask for time off to go to New Mexico and see what help Amber needed. She didn’t know where in northern New Mexico, but she expected another wild call from Amber. And more than likely, the trouble involved Amber’s second husband, Zach Durham, who was a rancher in New Mexico. Otherwise, why would Amber be in that state? The last call Emily had received from her sister had been from Acapulco, where Amber was celebrating her latest marriage to Raimundo Morales. That had been eight months ago. Maybe Raimundo and Zach were fighting over Amber.

      Although Emily knew she could use some time off work, she didn’t want to spend it tied up with Amber’s problems. But she also knew she couldn’t ignore Amber’s plea for help. She let out a long sigh.

      “Chump,” she grumbled into the empty darkness.

      One

      How long can someone live after a rattlesnake bite? Emily wondered. It hadn’t happened yet, but she half expected to hear a sinister rattle at any moment or feel fangs sink into her ankle. Now she wished she had worn boots instead of sneakers.

      “Ouch!” She bit her lip and yanked her sleeve free from the barbed-wire fence. A perfect place for dying, she thought morbidly. Wind whistled through the regal aspen, their white trunks pale in the July moonlight, as she ignored a No Trespassing sign and climbed between the strands of the fence into a forbidden pasture.

      Spruce and aspen cast black shadows across the ground and she could imagine various deadly threats hidden in the darkness. Like snakes. She loathed them. She had also seen pictures of bulls on the property, and prayed there wasn’t one in her vicinity. And out here in the wilds of New Mexico, there could be mountain lions, wild dogs, wild pigs. She preferred the streets of Chicago any night to walking alone here.

      Looking back across the fence, she saw her car pulled off the side of the divided highway and parked in the shadows of a spruce.

      Remember why you’re here, she reminded herself as she moved cautiously along the fence, heading toward the road that passed through wide, locked gates.

      For a quarter of a mile along the highway in either direction from the ranch’s secured gates stretched chain-link fencing. Not a friendly place. A chill ran down Emily’s spine. Zach Durham and the Bar Z ranch were as inviting as a pit of snakes.

      She walked swiftly, staying in the shadows, but she felt vulnerable in the darkness. She stayed parallel to the highway, but feared she might be seen from the road. Even more she feared the wild land on her side of the fence.

      Too aware of the noise she was making as she moved through high grass toward the ranch road, she tried to bank her dread about what might come out of the shadows. Her back tingled. She was almost there. As soon as she reached the road, she turned away from the locked gates and the highway. The road had to lead to the ranch house—and to Zach Durham.

      As the road curved, trees crowded the border. Her feet made soft thuds, and her heart was pounding so loudly that she barely heard her footfalls. She slowed, almost tiptoeing, her palms damp, while she tried to keep her imagination under control.

      The night seemed interminable. When she came out of the forest, she was startled by the brightness of the night. A full moon rose high above her, and she almost groaned aloud. She hadn’t given thought to whether it would be a full moon or a new moon. Among the trees, the darkness had been a cover, but in the open, silvery moonlight illuminated the land. Even dressed in a navy long-sleeved T-shirt, jeans and navy sneakers, with her hair tucked under a baseball cap, there would be no hiding beneath the bright beams bathing the earth. With a grim desperation she plunged ahead.

      Did the man live at the opposite end of the state? She felt as if she had been walking for hours, yet reason told her it was only a little over an hour since she had pulled her car off the road, locked up, and become a trespasser.

      And she worried about the man whose property she was trespassing on. She recalled the comments of the people in the nearby small town of San Luis when she had asked about Zach Durham.

      “Zach’s a loner.”

      “He keeps to himself.”

      “We don’t see much of him.”

      Several men mentioned that they’d seen Zach talking to Amber at a bar in town only a week earlier. That same weekend the police had found Amber’s burned, abandoned car, and begun an official search. They’d contacted Emily because her name was found on a slip of paper near the vehicle. The sheriff confirmed what the men had told her. Zach was the last person seen with Amber.

      A bird’s clear whistle sounded, a high, melodious note that carried on the whisper of wind through the pines. She could detect the damp smell of spruce, and under other circumstances might have been able to enjoy her surroundings, but at the moment they held a foreboding.

      Another quarter of an hour passed before she rounded a bend in the road. Ahead, yellow light shone through the trees. Her pulse jumped. She was close to her destination. Now she wished there had been some way to contact him by phone. His number was unlisted, and she hadn’t been able to pry it out of anybody in town. Uncertainty struck her.

      She intended to look at the house, get a peek at him, see if she could discover any reason for Amber to be so fearful, and ascertain her missing sister’s whereabouts. Now in the dead of night, the idea seemed foolish. She wished she had come during broad daylight and confronted him directly. Yet in the light of day when she’d looked at his locked gates and No Trespassing signs, that idea had seemed unsatisfactory.

      With a sigh, she moved forward. Now that she was here, she might as well see what she could discover about her reclusive ex-brother-in-law, a man she’d met only once.

      She spotted the house tucked among tall spruce and pines and aspen a few yards later. Only two lights shone through windows, both on the ground floor to the rear. Emily wiped her damp palms on her jeans and strode forward. Her heart drummed as she approached the house. It was a tall Victorian structure, forbidding in the night.

      She patted the bag she carried, feeling the doggie treats, wondering if treats would hold a ferocious guard dog at bay. Didn’t ranchers always have dogs? She might soon know.

      She pulled out the bag of treats, ready to toss them, expecting an animal to charge at any moment Leaving the road, she stayed in the shadows, inching closer to the house. Her heart pounded violently. A twig snapped and she jumped.

      Even if Zach Durham was an honest, upstanding citizen, he could shoot her for trespassing, or mistake her for a burglar. If he was not honest and upstanding, the consequences could be worse. But she had to find her sister, and Zach Durham was the last man Amber had mentioned during her frantic phone call. She could remember Amber’s warning about him. Emily wanted to see him, see inside his house, see what she could learn.

      She had to cross a stretch of yard that was splashed in moonlight and that looked as bright as daylight. Grimly she rushed across it, flattening herself against the wall of the house, her pulse racing. She listened, fully expecting a shot to ring out or guard dogs to come bounding at her, fangs bared.

      Edging along the side of the house, she moved toward the patch where light spilling through the glass illuminated a bright rectangle of ground. Emily reached the window, and turned to peer inside. Even at five-eleven, she had to stand on tiptoe to see anything.

      She was looking into an old-fashioned kitchen with glass-fronted cabinets and a round oak table. At the sink stood a bare-chested man in jeans, his back to her. For just a moment she forgot her fear and her mission as she looked at a muscled back that tapered from broad shoulders to a narrow waist and slim hips. Her ex-brother-in-law. The man looked muscular and fit...and dangerous.

      She remembered their one brief meeting after Amber’s wedding. Amber had called and announced that she was passing through Chicago on her honeymoon,