Swordsman's Legacy. Alex Archer

eyes locked together. His looked dark and clouded with multiple layers of memory, and she knew he would have to define “the beginning” the same way as she did—the day, last September, when they’d first met…

       Chapter Two

       L ucas Halliday had no problem with buying a ranch for his father. He’d already bought four of them, over the past two years. All four had proved good investments, with his own regular visits to oversee things, and with the right people in place to run them.

      This new purchase, however, was different. Dad’s latest wife—the third since his long-ago divorce from Lucas’s mother—had developed a very pretty fantasy about buying a real cattle ranch to use as a fourth home. Fifth, if you counted the yacht.

      Raine wanted watercolor mountain views, a Vogue Living log cabin, movie soundtrack mooing steers—odorless, naturally—and a Fountain of Youth fishing stream. Dad was happy to go along with all of that, as long as the ranch paid its own way, just like the others did.

      Lucas had been tasked with locating this impossible combination. He’d narrowed the search to southern Wyoming, because of its relative proximity to Colorado ski resorts and the airline hub city of Denver, and eliminated two properties, sight unseen. If he couldn’t give Dad and Raine a good report on Seven Mile he planned to tell them they could continue the quest on their own. He preferred cool-headed corporate takeovers to fantasy fulfilment for spoiled stepmothers, any day.

      Having told the realtor that he would need three days to look over the place properly, he intended to be out of Wyoming and on a plane back to New York within half a day if Seven Mile fell short of Broadbent’s glowing description.

      He got into Denver on a late flight, rented a car, drove north through Fort Collins to Laramie to get a better impression of the region, then southwest to Biggins. By the time he’d checked into the town’s best motel and eaten a late and surprisingly good meal in the quietest corner of the Longhorn Steakhouse, he was pretty convinced he’d be heading out of here tomorrow.

      Biggins had no clothing boutiques, and no craft galleries or antique stores. There were just three motels, two options for dining and a single beauty salon. Raine expected big city amenities at a stone’s throw from rural beauty, but she wasn’t going to get that here.

      Jim Broadbent knocked on Lucas’s motel room door at eight-thirty the next morning, and they drove out to Seven Mile together. It was a pretty drive. The Medicine Bow Range dreamed in the distance. Rolling grasslands filled the foreground. The September grass was colored in the morning light like yellow chalk and fresh honey and clear-varnished pine floors.

      Jim kept his conversation down to an intermittent trickle of facts about cattle breeds, growing seasons and water rights. An experienced realtor in his early fifties, the man gave the impression that he wouldn’t find this ranch too tough to sell, even in the unlikely event that Halliday Continental Holdings didn’t want it. He probably conveyed this same impression with every property he handled, and Lucas ignored it completely.

      The mountains got closer. They passed the entrance to another property, and he had time to glimpse the name McConnell on the gate. Jim crossed a wide, shallow stream where the water ran silver over the rocks. Lucas knew that whatever attributes and advantages the Seven Mile Ranch might or might not have, it was going to be beautiful.

      They turned onto a dirt road, and rumbled across several cattle guards. Ahead he saw a cluster of corrals and farm buildings, neat and modest and well-maintained. From this angle, they were almost lost beneath the enormous, soaring sky and looming mountain range.

      “Who’s giving me the tour?” he asked Jim, as they approached the long, low ranch house, painted a faded barn red. “You?”

      “I’m going to leave you with Joe Grant. Or his daughter.” Broadbent swung around and parked in the front yard at a crooked angle, then added, “Looks like it’s the daughter. Rebecca. Reba, everyone calls her.”

      Rebecca Grant must have been sitting on the porch steps, waiting for their arrival. When Lucas caught sight of her emerging from the morning shadow cast by the house, she was still slapping her hands back and forth across the butt of her jeans to get rid of the dust.

      She hadn’t dressed to impress, he noted, as her body hit the sun. Old Wranglers, scuffed boots, plaid flannel shirt. A swathe of dark hair hung around her face and partway down her back, glossy and healthy and natural.

      As Lucas watched, she dragged a red circle of elastic from her pocket and pulled the mass of hair into a high ponytail at the back. The movement lifted her breasts inside the rumpled shirt and showed a glimpse of shadow on soft skin. She’d just completed the final twist of the elastic when she reached them.

      “Hi,” she said. A wide smile jerked tight on her face and faded too soon. Mistrustful, ocean-toned eyes glinted like water.

      “Reba,” answered Jim. “Beautiful morning.”

      The realtor made introductions, and Reba chopped a hand in Lucas’s direction for him to shake. He complied, and felt the startling contrast of long, fine-boned feminine fingers and palms callused like cardboard.

      “Is your Dad around?” Jim asked.

      “He’s taken Mom into Cheyenne.”

      “Doctor?”

      She nodded, but didn’t say anything further on the subject.

      “So you have a program mapped out for Mr. Halliday?”

      “I thought we’d focus on the business side of the ranch today. The infrastructure. We’ll look at the recreational amenities tomorrow, Mr. Halliday, if you’re still interested in the place. We can take a drive down to Steamboat Springs, tour the far boundaries of the property. There’s a little cabin higher up, and you can get an idea of the fishing and gaming possibilities. If you’re still here after all that, we’ll take a closer look at the cattle.”

      “Sounds good.”

      “For now, we’ll start with the house,” she said, “since Mom’s not here to get disturbed by us coming through. Then the corrals, machinery sheds.”

      “Forget about the house,” Lucas said, thinking aloud—insofar as he was thinking at all. Raine would be unimpressed with the ranch’s primary residence. She’d want it bulldozed to make way for something much grander. “It’ll have to come down, anyhow.”

      Rebecca flinched and pressed her lips together, making her chin jut, and he realized that his statement had been cruel. She’d probably called this place home her whole life.

      He couldn’t imagine what that would be like. Since his parents’ divorce when he was three, his mother had lived in four different homes, and his serially divorced and remarried father in…he’d lost count. At least seven. Lucas himself had shuttled back and forth between most of these so-called homes until going away to college at eighteen, but he’d never put down roots in any of them.

      At one level, it had been fun, and yet… A faintly remembered sense of bewilderment and loss blew over his spirit, and for a few moments he almost envied Rebecca Grant.

      Neck and jaw muscles tight with regret, he considered an apology, but that would only make his mistake worse. He wasn’t used to this kind of situation. His purchases and his takeovers didn’t usually have the power to hurt someone like this, on a personal, individual level.

      The meaning of her jerky smile, mistrustful eyes and abrupt handshake became clear to him.

      She didn’t want to sell.

      “Would you like to stop in for coffee before we start, Jim?” Reba asked the realtor, but he shook his head. He was anxious to get out from under the awkward weight of atmosphere, probably.

      “You’ll drop Mr. Halliday back to town when he’s ready, Reba?”

      “Or Dad will.” Her voice was a little husky, and deeper than Lucas would have expected. It seemed to curl around