Familiar Showdown. Caroline Burnes

rig parked beside the barn. The trailer was in excellent shape, and the truck was well maintained for a rodeo man.

      She glanced at the interior as she walked by. Just beneath the edge of the front seat was a gun. Not a rifle, which a lot of ranchers carried, but a handgun. Something that looked modern and dangerous.

      She kept walking, unsure how the weapon made her feel. Guns were a part of life for many men. Somehow, though, she hadn’t expected it with Johnny. He was different. He communicated with the horses. Folks like him normally didn’t care to carry a deadly firearm.

      Then again, she didn’t know him. She couldn’t forget that, no matter how much she admired his technique when he worked with the horses. He was an unknown entity, and chances were he wouldn’t remain around Running Horse Ranch long enough for her to figure out who he was deep down.

      THE DAY IS OFF to an excellent start. Cowboy Johnny is dealing with the devil horse, and Miss Cowgirl found the gun in the cab of Johnny’s truck. Now, I’m not a gun aficionado, but I’ve seen a lot of weapons in my day. That is an expensive weapon. And one with some firepower. A Glock, one of the preferred weapons of law enforcement agencies and the Feds.

      Which makes me wonder about a couple of things. How did Johnny find the Running Horse Ranch? We’re miles off the beaten path. He had to drive here specifically. And he shows up with a skill set that just happens to be what Stephanie needs.

      I’ve always been told not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but what if it’s the Trojan horse? When something is too good to be true, it usually is. So now it’s up to me to do a bit of sleuthing.

      Is Johnny Kreel just a drifting cowboy, or is there more to this package than meets the eye? Stephanie has a computer. I can start there. With my private investigator knowledge, I can check a few Web sites and start a background check on this guy.

      But first some breakfast. I catch the aroma of bacon. While I’m normally a seafood kind of cat, I can be swayed by other dishes. A nice bacon and cheese omelet would do wonders for my hungry tummy.

      Then off to work.

      LIFTING THE OMELET from the skillet, Stephanie served the cat and then began making breakfast for Johnny. He’d finished with Black Jack and she’d called him in before he started work on the other two horses.

      He sat at the table, though he’d offered to help cook. She kept looking at him, his dark hair slicked back and his face freshly shaved. With his strange gray-green eyes, he seemed to take in everything.

      She put the omelet in front of him and sat down to finish her coffee and toast.

      “Not hungry?” he asked.

      “I don’t normally eat breakfast,” she said, “but Familiar let me know he was ready for something.”

      “Smart cat.” Johnny glanced at the shelf where she kept her cookbooks and several framed photographs. “Is that your husband?” he asked, indicating a picture of Stephanie and a handsome man on a beach.

      Stephanie didn’t have to look at the photo to know what it was. It had been taken only weeks before she moved to South Dakota. She and Rory had been at Gulf Shores, Alabama, a last fling in the Southern sun before moving north. It was the last weekend Rory had been alive.

      “My fiancé,” she said. “He died in a plane crash.” Normally that put the kibosh on further conversation.

      “I’m sorry,” Johnny said. “You two look so happy. When was the crash?”

      She almost told him to mind his own business, but she stopped herself. “About four months ago. He ran a charter airline business out of New Orleans. His plane went down somewhere in the Darien Jungle.”

      Johnny stopped eating. “That must be terrible for you.”

      To her surprise, she found her eyes clouding with tears. “Rory was a good man. We were going to run this business together.”

      “He was giving up his charter business?”

      She nodded. “He loved flying, but he could have kept one plane and done a part-time business here. Mostly, though, we wanted to focus on the horses.”

      “So he was a trainer, too.”

      Stephanie smiled. “Not really. But he wanted to learn. That’s the important thing, isn’t it? To want to learn a different way of relating to an animal.”

      “If more folks were willing to open their minds, it would be a different world,” Johnny said. He wiped his mouth with a napkin. “I should get to work, but first…” He picked up his plate and went to the sink, where he ran the hot water and began washing up.

      “That’s not necessary,” Stephanie said.

      “Probably not. But you cooked, so I’ll clean up. It’s not a fifty-fifty distribution of work, but it’s more fair than your doing it all.”

      She leaned back in her chair and sipped her coffee, watching him as he efficiently tidied the kitchen. He knew his way around housework, which was more than surprising for a cowboy.

      “How long do you expect to be in these parts?” she asked.

      Johnny didn’t turn around. He rinsed a plate and set it in the drainer. “I’d thought a couple of weeks, but I’m in no hurry to leave. Nobody is expecting me anywhere down the line.”

      “That’s good to know,” she said. Winter was coming. While the ranch work was hard enough in the summer heat, the winter was going to be long and cold and even more difficult. “Maybe, if things work out, you’d want to stay around here.”

      “Let’s get to the end of the first two weeks. After that, if you like the way I work, we can negotiate a salary.”

      “Perfect.” She stood and took her coffee cup to the sink. “When you finish Dolly and Stinger, let me know. We’ll saddle up and check the fence line on the north pasture.”

      He grinned. “Sounds like a good plan. I haven’t done range work in a long time.”

      “You’ll get plenty of chances around here,” she said.

      HE RODE CUTTING PATTERNS on Stinger and Dolly. Both horses moved willingly and with total confidence. Stephanie had done a wonderful job with them. If they’d had problems, he could find no trace of them.

      When he was finished, he knocked at the back door, and Stephanie came out, ready to ride. The afternoon had warmed, and she carried a light jacket. They saddled two more horses and set out across the flatland toward the Black Hills.

      He had questions to ask. Plenty of them. But he had to be careful how he phrased them. He could see that the wound Rory Sussex had left was still raw. And if Stephanie ever found out who and what Rory really was, she’d be terribly hurt. On one hand, Johnny could understand why Rory would lie. Stephanie was a rare woman. And she’d never have willingly involved herself with a man whose entire life was a web of fabrications. It was either lie or lose her.

      But Rory had to know that eventually the house of cards would come tumbling down around him. He couldn’t simply walk away from the life he’d led and become a different person. Certainly, he may have thought that the wilds of South Dakota were secluded enough that he could build a new life. But they weren’t. And now Stephanie had been caught in Rory’s past.

      “You’re looking mighty serious,” she said as they crossed a dry creek bed. “Something wrong?”

      “Sorry. I was thinking about your fiancé and his plane crash. It’s just hard to grab hold of. Did they find out why the plane crashed?”

      Stephanie waited until her horse had scrambled up the side of the creek bed before she answered. “They never found the plane. Or Rory’s body. The control tower got a Mayday call from Rory. He was having engine trouble. That’s the last anyone heard.”

      “They never found any of the wreckage?”