In a Cowboy's Arms. Rebecca Winters

touch. “Are you sure?”

      “Of course I am.” Liz kissed Ryan’s cheek. “Since you flew in yesterday, we’ve been getting to know each other, haven’t we?” She plucked him out of Sadie’s arms. “Come with me, little baby brother, and I’ll get you something to eat.”

      At first he protested, but eventually his voice grew faint. Liz had a loving way about her. Sadie knew he was in the best of hands.

      Zane walked up to her. She saw the compassion in his blue eyes. “It was a lovely service. Your father is being laid to rest with all the dignity he would have wanted.”

      “He wanted Mother with him, but I’m glad she’s buried with Tim. He brought her the joy she deserved in this life.”

      “You brought her joy the day you were born, and she’d be so proud you’re raising Ryan. I plan to help you any way I can. I hope you know that.”

      “You’re a wonderful man, Zane. Ryan is so lucky to have you in his life.”

      “He’s a little Tim.”

      “I know. Those dimples get to me every time,” she told him, smiling.

      “Yup. Don’t forget he’s my life now, too!”

      “As if I could forget.”

      Zane, she knew, had reached an emotional crossroads in his life and was still struggling to find himself. There’d been so many losses in his life, her heart went out to him. Thank heaven they had Ryan to cling to.

      The afternoon sun caused Zane to squint. “Everyone’s gone inside the house. I’m going to help Liz. If you need us, you know where to find us.”

      She nodded. The mortuary staff was waiting for her to leave so they could lower the casket and finish their part of the work, but she couldn’t seem to get up from the chair they’d brought for her. Since the phone call from Millie five days ago, her life had been a blur. She barely remembered the flight from San Francisco to Billings, let alone the drive in the rental car with Zane and Ryan to the ranch. Someone could use her for a pin cushion and she wouldn’t feel a thing.

      Sadie counted a dozen large sprays of flowers around the grave site. Such kindness for a man who’d made few friends humbled her. The huge arrangement with the gorgeous purple-and-white flowers kept attracting her attention. For as long as she could remember that color combination had been her favorite.

      Needing to know who’d sent the floral offering, she stood and walked around to gather the cards. She recognized every name. So many people who’d touched their lives and had loved her mother were still here offering to help in any way they could. When she pulled out the insert from the purple-and-white flowers, her breath caught.

      Sadie,

      Your mother and father’s greatest blessing. Let this be a time for all hearts to heal.

      Love, Ralph Bannock and all the Bannocks—including the good, the bad and the ugly. Hope you haven’t forgotten I’m the ugly one.

      She could hear Ralph saying it. He could be a great tease and she’d forgotten nothing.

      A laugh escaped her lips as she put the cards in the pocket of her suit jacket. How she’d loved and missed him and Addie! Sadie had sent purple-and-white flowers when Addie had passed away, and today he’d reciprocated. She would have come for his wife’s funeral if there’d been any way possible, but fear of what her father would do to Jarod if she came back had prevented her from showing up.

      There could have been so much loving and happiness in her family, but her father’s demons had put them through years of grief that affected the whole community. Suddenly she was sobbing through the laughter.

      Needing to hide, Sadie hurried over to the granddaddy pine where she used to build nests of pine needles beneath its branches for the birds. She leaned against the base of the trunk while she wept buckets. How was she going to get through today, let alone tomorrow?

      Her father’s flawed view of life, his cruelty, had occupied so much of her thinking, she didn’t know how to fill that negative space now that he was gone. She felt flung into a void, unable to get her bearings. And then she heard a male voice behind her. A voice like dark velvet. Only one man in this world sounded like that.

      “Long ago my uncle Charlo gave me good advice. Walk forward, and when the mountain appears as the obstacle, turn each stone one by one. Don’t try to move the mountain. Instead, turn each stone that makes up the mountain.”

      Jarod...

      She hadn’t heard that voice since her teens, but she’d recognize it if it had been a hundred years ago. His sister, Avery, had once told Sadie he was known in the tribe as “Sits in the Center” because he was part white and straddled two worlds of knowledge.

      Since he’d just picked up on Sadie’s tortured thoughts, she couldn’t deny he had uncanny abilities. But too many years had passed and they were no longer the same people. The agony of loss she’d once felt had been replaced by a dull pain that had never quite gone away. Wiping the moisture off her cheeks with the backs of her hands, she turned to face him.

      He was a twenty-nine-year-old man now, tall and muscled, physical traits he’d inherited from his handsome father, Colin Bannock. But the short hair she remembered was now a shiny mane of midnight-black, caught at the nape with a thong. His complexion was bronzed by the sun and she picked out a scar near the edge of his right eyebrow she hadn’t seen before. No doubt he’d received that in the truck accident that left him unconscious.

      He wore a dark dress suit with a white shirt, like the other men, but there was something magnificent about his bearing. The powerful combination of his Crow and Bannock heritage meant no man was Jarod’s equal in looks or stature.

      She sensed a new confidence in him that had come with maturity. The coal-black of his piercing eyes beneath arched brows the same color sent unexpected chills down Sadie’s spine.

      The whole beautiful look of him caused her to quiver. Once she’d lain in his arms and they’d made glorious love. Did he ever think about that night and their plans to marry the day she turned eighteen?

      After she’d fled to California, she’d prayed he would ignore the words in her note and call Millie. Once he’d left the hospital and got her number in California from the housekeeper, she’d expected his call so she could explain about the traumatic episode at the ranch with her father.

      But Jarod hadn’t called Millie, and there had been no word from him at all. Learning that he was out of the hospital and on his feet again, she’d prayed she would hear from him. But after a month of waiting, she’d decided he really was relieved they hadn’t gotten married, so she hadn’t tried to reach him.

      That’s when she’d given him another name: Born of Flint. The Crow nation referred to the Pryor Mountains as the Hitting Rock Mountains because of the abundance of flint found there, which they chipped into sharp, bladelike arrowheads. Jarod’s silence had been like one of those blades, piercing her heart with deadly accuracy.

      “It’s good to see you again, Sadie, even if it’s under such painful circumstances,” he said. “Ned warned me not to show up, but my grandfather’s been ill and asked me to represent him.”

      And if he hadn’t asked you, Jarod, would you still have come?

      “He’s too tired to go out. Do you mind?”

      Did she mind that Jarod’s unexpected appearance had just turned her life upside down for the second time?

      “Of course not. Liz told me Ralph has suffered recurring bouts of pneumonia. I love him. Always have. Please tell him the flowers he sent are breathtaking.” She plucked a white-and-purple flower from the arrangement and handed them to him. “These are from me. Tell him I’ll come to see him Tuesday evening. By then I’ll be more settled.”

      He grasped the stems. “If I tell him that, then you have to promise you