His By Any Means: The Black Sheep's Inheritance. Maureen Child

mind,” he said, walking toward her in long, easy strides. “Let me see the addresses of those cabins.”

      She dug the paper out of her pocket and handed it over. He knew both places. One wasn’t far. The other was much higher up the mountain. “Okay, let’s go take a look.”

      * * *

      “This is Ed Jackson’s place,” Sage said as he steered Colleen down the rocky path toward the small one-bedroom cabin. The first address she’d given him was about two miles higher up the mountain from Sage’s ranch. The roads were in good repair, but the sharp curves and the straight-down drop off the edge were enough to give even the best drivers nightmares.

      And he hadn’t missed the fact that Colleen had had a death grip on the armrest every time he maneuvered around one of those curves that had been carved out of the mountain. But now that they’d arrived, the look on her face told him that she was so entranced by the setting she’d already forgotten the treacherous ride to get there. He held on to her hand as they took the narrow path to the front door, relishing the buzz of sensation that simply touching her caused.

      The flower beds had long ago gone to seed and now there were only monstrous weeds fighting each other for space. The cabin itself was well built, but the white paint on the wood-plank walls was cracked and peeling. The front porch still boasted two chairs, and he remembered coming up here as a kid to find Ed and his wife sitting side by side, talking and laughing together. But then Helen had died five years ago and Ed lived here alone, refusing to move to the city. Finally, though, age had conquered his stubbornness, forcing him to put the home he loved up for sale and move to an assisted-living apartment in Cheyenne.

      “It’s pretty,” she said, stopping to take it all in. “I love all the trees standing like guarding sentries around it.”

      “Nice spot,” he agreed, trying to keep his mind off the fact that she was close enough to touch. Close enough to— “Come on. I’ll show you the inside.”

      “We can get in?”

      “Ed always left a key above the doorframe.” He found it, unlocked the front door and stepped into the past. The furnishings were at least forty years old and the air smelled of neglect and loneliness.

      He watched as Colleen walked through the small house, checking out the tiny bedroom, the single bath and then the functional but narrow kitchen. Every window sported a view of the surrounding forest and the deep ravine that tracked off to one side of the house. “Why’s the owner selling?”

      He told her Ed’s story and watched as sympathy filled her eyes. She was intriguing. Always. He liked that she cared why a house was for sale and that she felt pity for the man forced by time to give up the house he loved. He felt a swift stab of something beyond the pulsing desire still throbbing inside him, but he ignored it and looked at the cabin through objective eyes.

      “You’d have to get a generator,” he said, scanning the interior. “Ed didn’t care about losing power, but I’m thinking you would.”

      She smiled and his heart rate jumped into a gallop. “You’re right.”

      “You’ve got a wood-burning stove, so that’s good,” he continued, slapping one hand down on the dusty cast-iron fireplace in one corner of the living room. “But those pines along the side of the house will have to be cut way back or down altogether. Too dangerous. A heavy snowfall or a high wind could bring them crashing down on your roof. Not to mention, you should have a clearing around the house in case of forest fires.”

      “But those trees have been there for years.”

      “Yeah, Ed wasn’t worried about the what-ifs, because he could patch a roof or get out there and hack out a clearing fast if he needed to.” He paused meaningfully. “You couldn’t.”

      She frowned slightly, walking through the room, running her fingertips across the backs of the chairs, straightening framed photographs on the walls.

      “Structure’s sound enough, I guess,” he mused, looking around in an effort to keep from staring at her. “But you’d have to have an inspection to be sure. County road’s at the end of the drive, so the snow would get cleared fairly quickly out there.”

      She glanced at him. “What about the drive itself?”

      He looked at her then and shook his head. “The county’s not going to clear your drive. You’d have to get a snowblower or hire someone to come in after a storm.”

      Colleen nodded and huffed out a breath as she considered everything he was saying. She was getting a hard lesson in what it meant to live so far from the city, and he almost felt sorry for her. Almost, but not quite, because he still didn’t like the idea of her being up here on her own. There were women on this mountain capable of taking care of any kind of emergency, and he knew that. But Colleen was city through and through, and she had no idea of what she might be letting herself in for.

      “You’ll want the roof checked out, too,” he added. “We had heavy snows last winter and Ed wasn’t in shape to take care of things like that himself.”

      “Right. Another inspection,” she murmured, looking around the room wistfully.

      “This lot’s on high ground, so you don’t have to worry too much about spring runoff, but you should have the gullies cleared so melting snow won’t get backed up and flood the house.”

      She laughed a little. “So I have to worry about the snowfall and then about when the snow melts.”

      “Pretty much.” He leaned against one wall and watched as she peered through the kitchen window at the surrounding trees.

      “How long did Ed and his wife live here?”

      “About forty years,” he said with a shrug. “After Helen died, Ed didn’t visit much with anyone. They never had kids—it was always just the two of them. And without her, he kept to himself. Didn’t really keep up with the cabin, either.”

      “He missed her.” She turned to look at him.

      Gaze locked with hers, he nodded. “Yeah, he did.”

      Which was yet another reason to keep to yourself. If you never let anyone in, you didn’t miss them when they were gone. He’d learned that lesson as a kid—and then again later on, when he should have known better, but took a risk, only to be slammed for it.

      “I want to look around outside,” she said and he wondered if she could read minds. She was staring at him oddly and she’d suddenly gone quiet, and that just wasn’t like Colleen.

      But he followed her out, locked the door after them and returned the key to its resting place. She walked to the end of the porch, leaned on the railing and gazed out over the rocky ravine that dropped from the edge of the porch and ran down the side of the mountain. Her hair trailed over her shoulders and as she leaned out farther, her jeans tightened over her behind, making Sage’s breathing a hell of a lot harder to control.

      Then everything changed.

      He heard a snap, then a squeak of alarm, and he was moving before he even realized it. In a blink, he reached out and caught her arm as the railing gave way. He heard the crash and rattle as the heavy wood barrier, rotted by time and weather, clattered and rolled down into the rocks below.

      Pulling Colleen tight against him, he wrapped both arms around her and held on. He felt her trembling and knew that he was doing the same damn thing. “I told you he hadn’t kept the place up.” His voice came out in a harsh rasp of tension and what felt a lot like fear. “Never lean on a railing you’re not sure about. Hell. Never lean on a railing no matter what.”

      “Good advice,” she murmured, her voice muffled against his chest. When she lifted her head and looked up at him, Sage felt the last of his control snap as completely as that rotted-out railing had.

      Her mouth was right there. Her breathing was fast and the pulse point in her throat throbbed. He knew she was