Outlaw Marriage. Laurie Paige

with him. She didn’t know why she felt so defensive.

      For once he seemed at a loss for words. “Well, then, good.” He glanced at his watch. “I’ve got to go to a meeting on the new mall in five minutes. Blasted construction boss is a crook, if you ask me. I’ll see you Monday when I get back from New York. No, Tuesday here at the office.”

      “All right.”

      She remained standing behind her desk after he’d gone. She doubted he heard her agreement. It would never occur to him that she wouldn’t be there or that she might have other things to do. For the briefest second, resentment stormed through her, causing a lump to form in her throat.

      The telephone rang, diverting her from the strange tempest of emotion. She cleared her throat and answered. For the rest of the afternoon, she was too busy to think. At six, she went to her apartment in one of the elite Baxter Development complexes. A common-interest development or C.I.D., as it was called in the industry, it was inhabited by professional couples or those wealthy enough to afford a second home.

      The mountains around Whitehorn were scenic and the fact that the town was close to Yellowstone was an added attraction for those with children. The county was becoming increasingly popular with families from metropolitan areas.

      Her father had seen the opportunities long ago. The fact that the local people hadn’t certainly wasn’t his fault. Pulling on her bathing suit, she wondered why she sometimes felt a twinge of guilt as the company bought up mismanaged ranches and turned them into thriving strip malls, condos, golf courses and nature trails for the aging baby boomers. The mismanagement wasn’t her father’s fault.

      Swimming one hundred laps of the Olympic-size indoor pool, she dreaded the thought of calling Collin and accepting his offer. It felt like a concession on her part, which could be interpreted as a sign of weakness from their side. Neither did she like the idea of being a spy sent into the enemy camp by her father.

      She sighed shakily. She felt she no longer knew the man she’d adored as a child. They were becoming more and more estranged. It bothered her.

      From what she had seen of Collin and his grandfather, they were very close-knit. For a second, something like envy washed through her. She discarded the notion and put her efforts into propelling herself through the water that was almost as warm as a bathtub.

      At the end of an hour, feeling neither refreshed nor any happier, she returned to her place. The silence seemed to mock her as she showered and dressed in silk pajamas, then ate a salad for dinner.

      She wondered how many of the grandsons and their various families were at the Kincaid spread and imagined them crowded around a long table, laughing while Collin told them about the meeting.

      Collin returned to the dining room and the lunch he’d left to answer a summons to the phone. “Will wonders never cease?” he said to his grandfather, the seventy-three-year-old patriarch of the Elk Springs branch of the Kincaids. “Yesterday Hope Baxter refused to accept an invitation to come out and look the ranch over. Today she calls and says she will.”

      Garrett beamed. “I knew the Kincaid charm wouldn’t fail,” he said cheerfully.

      Collin had his doubts about that. It wasn’t charm that had changed Hope’s mind about coming out for the weekend. Whatever it was, he figured he could find out before the weekend was over. He would make a point of it.

      “What’s happening?” Trent, one of Larry Kincaid’s other illegitimate sons, wanted to know.

      “Collin talked Baxter’s daughter into coming out to the ranch. She’ll be here for the weekend,” Garrett told him.

      Trent glanced first at his wife Gina and then back at Collin with interest. “She’s the attorney on the case, isn’t she?”

      Collin nodded and didn’t add anything more.

      “It’s strange how the Kincaid family seems to be so totally enmeshed with the Baxters, isn’t it?” Trent continued. “Lexine, Emma’s birth mother, was married to Dugin Kincaid, Jeremiah’s younger son. Now Emma is married to Brandon, a Kincaid from the illegitimate branch of the family.”

      “And has a twin, although Emma’s mother isn’t admitting to having another child,” Gina, the private investigator instrumental in locating Garrett’s grandsons, reminded them.

      The DNA tests that had nearly convicted Emma in the death of the mayor’s daughter, Christina Montgomery, had proven she was one of a set of identical twins. Only the fact that Emma’d been inoculated against rubella and her mysterious twin hadn’t, had saved her.

      Collin thought of Hope and her embarrassment at the mention of her relative, the notorious Lexine Baxter.

      The unknown twin, who had apparently been with Christine Montgomery shortly before her death, wasn’t making herself accessible to the local authorities as requested through the news media. From what he’d seen of Brandon’s wife, Emma wasn’t anything like her mother. Was the twin?

      Gina laughed ruefully. “So. Does this mean there’s going to be one more for dinner this weekend?”

      “I’ll help with the cooking,” Trent volunteered.

      Hattie, their previous housekeeper, had recently quit. The ranch had trouble keeping help because of the supposed curse on the Kincaid land. Gina had assumed most of the planning and served as executor of household chores. Everyone had been assigned a task that contributed to the running of the homestead.

      There were moans all around and graphic reminders of charred hamburgers resembling charcoal briquettes at Trent’s last attempt at supper. He was unrepentant. “Practice makes perfect.”

      “Only if you do it right,” Collin told him. “You have to keep an eye on the grill and squirt water on the flames before they incinerate the burgers.”

      “Hey, I can do it,” Trent assured everyone.

      “Uh-oh,” Gina said, “the impatient one awakes.” She hurried from the table to answer her son’s summons.

      Collin’s grandfather chuckled. “I believe women could hear the cry of their own baby if they were at a ball game with fifty-thousand cheering fans and the child was in a nursery a mile away.” He turned his gaze on Collin. “It’s about time you were thinking of starting your family. You aren’t getting any younger.”

      “I’m only thirty-one,” Collin protested good-naturedly. He’d been hearing about marriage and children from the old man since he could remember. “Besides, I’m too busy rushing back and forth between here and Elk Springs to think about finding a bride.”

      Across the table, his half brother watched with the assured grin of one who had done his part and won their grandfather’s approbation by acquiring a wife and providing a son to carry on the Kincaid tradition in Whitehorn.

      Assuming they ever got title to the ranch.

      Collin frowned as he recalled his brief telephone conversation with Hope. He wanted to know what had happened to change her mind between their meeting yesterday, which hadn’t gone well in his opinion, and this morning.

      She had been positively horrified at the idea when he had mentioned it yesterday at lunch at the Hip Hop Café. Today she’d admitted he was probably right—she needed to see the land to know exactly what parcels had been sold off the original Baxter holdings. She was a mystery, this woman who’d had the nerve to walk out on him in the busy diner one day, then call him the next, pretty as you please, to admit she’d possibly been wrong.

      A thrum of anticipation vibrated through him. It had nothing to do with settling the case and everything to do with being alone with her as they explored the range.

      Alarms went off in his head, but he knew he wasn’t going to heed them. Ruefully he wondered what had happened to his instinct for survival.

      “So what’s the plan?” Trent wanted to know.

      Collin