A Cowboy Returns. Kelli Ireland

tea or lemonade?”

      “Whatever you have is fine. I’d get it myself, but I’m too dirty to do much more than strip down and wash in the stock tank.”

      Reagan hid her grin when Carol blushed.

      Flustered, the woman fled.

      “You’re a nuisance, Ty.” Reagan finished her sandwich and leaned against the corral fence, one boot heel hung on a rail.

      “I’m harmless,” he countered, pulling his hat off and shaking out light brown hair darkened with sweat.

      “You’re as harmless as a bad case of ringworm. Treatable, but still a pain in the ass.”

      Denim-blue eyes sparkled with mischief. “Treatable, am I? Come over tonight and I’ll play patient to your doctor.”

      Reagan pulled her vaccine gun out, the massive needle glinting in the bright sunlight. “Why wait? Drop your drawers, and I’ll take care of you right this minute.”

      Ty blanched. “Not exactly the kind of action I had in mind if my pants came off.”

      One corner of her mouth curled up. “Chicken shit.”

      “Hey, if you weren’t so hot, I wouldn’t feel compelled to flirt.”

      This time she laughed. “Ty, you’d flirt with an octogenarian if she was the only woman around. You can’t help yourself.”

      His horse nosed him, shoving him toward her a step. “You know it’s all in fun.”

      She waggled the vaccine gun at him and fought the urge to smile. “Only because my gun’s bigger.”

      “That’s an unfair comparison. You’ve never seen my gun.”

      “No offense, but I’m not interested in your caliber.” Her stomach tightened at the memory of just what caliber she had once been very interested in—the same caliber that forced her off the road only hours earlier. Keeping busy had helped her forget him, but now her mind raced.

      Chewing her bottom lip, she glanced at Ty. “Today, in town, I...well, I was run off the road by...”

      He scrutinized her, and Reagan wondered what he saw. When he sobered, she knew. The barbecue sandwich that had cut through hunger pangs only moments ago now sat like a lead cannonball in her stomach. She swallowed convulsively. It took a minute to work the question around the emotion lodged in her throat. “What’s he doing here, Ty?”

      Dark brows winged down and he shoved sunglasses on to cover his eyes. “I asked Eli to come home for this thing involving Dad.”

      Her chin snapped around. “Doesn’t the fact you had to ask him to come home tell you where he stands in all of this?”

      “He should be here, Reagan. It’s his mess and his legacy as much as it is ours.” Full lips thinned. “Cade and I are going to need his help to sort out the mess Dad left us in. Our best chance at saving the ranch involves Eli...and you.”

      The blood drained from her face at being paired, even loosely, in a sentence with Eli. “You can’t be sure your herd’s got Shipping Fever until the lab results come back and I get out there and look at the steer we drew from.”

      “I grew up around this stuff. I know what it is.” He snorted and shook his head, hooking one arm through the pipe panel. “It’s going to ruin Dad’s perfect reputation.”

      “He wasn’t perfect,” she said softly, remembering how Mr. Covington had always been so cold and rigid in his expectations of Eli. Those expectations had succeeded in driving Eli away for good, and she’d never forgive the old man for it.

      Carol’s return with two sandwiches and a giant glass of lemonade interrupted the conversation. She’d also brought Ty cookies. “I thought you might want something sweet.”

      Reagan fought the urge to steal a cookie.

      As if the conversation hadn’t been deadly serious only moments before, Ty looked at the older woman and grinned wide enough to reveal a single dimple. “You’re an angel, Mrs. Jensen. You ever get tired of Mr. Jensen, you pack up and we’ll run away together.”

      She flushed prettily. “You’re incorrigible, Ty.”

      “Can’t blame a man for being attracted to a pretty woman...Carol.”

      Reagan only half listened as Ty bantered with Carol and then a few of the day workers as he ate his sandwiches. She offered absent, one-word answers when someone said something directly to her, but she couldn’t manage to tease and joke in return.

      “Hey.”

      She glanced up to find her and Ty alone again. Coughing, she nodded. “Yeah.”

      Ty ran a hand around the nape of his neck. “I probably should have warned you Eli was coming home.”

      She winced at his name.

      “I just wasn’t sure how to bring it up.”

      She waved a hand in dismissal, but the words that matched the gesture wouldn’t come. Her chest was too tight. Shrouded in panic, she pushed off the fence. It had been years since this had happened, since she’d given in to the devastating loss that had changed the course of her life and affected every aspect of it, from what she’d taken in school to five years of marriage.

      A hard gasp escaped her at the same time large hands spun her around. She said the only thing she could say to him. “Keep him away from me, Ty.”

      “You want the Bar C to use Doc Hollinsworth? I don’t want to, but if you ask, I’ll do it.”

      She swallowed convulsively. He was offering her a shameless out. All she had to do was seize it.

      “You know we’re in trouble,” he continued. “None of us are sure just how bad it’s going to get, but I’ll wager my assless chaps it’s going to get ugly. We’ve got to have a vet on call. You know that, too. I can’t imagine Eli’s going to keep his share of the cows, even if they survive. Probably ship them off as soon as we can prove they aren’t infected. If that’s the case, I can try to put off getting the shipping papers until after Eli’s gone, maybe handle that part myself—me or Cade, anyway—and just send Eli the check.”

      She straightened. “Call me when you’re ready. Hollinsworth isn’t half the man I am.”

      Ty grinned, but it didn’t lessen the tight lines at the corners of his eyes or the crease between his brows. “Hell, Reagan, not many of us are.” Curling a finger under her chin, he nudged her face up. “You’ve managed really well.”

      Her laugh was bitter. “Survival isn’t admirable, Ty. It’s the only option they ever left me with, him and Luke.”

      “Luke didn’t die on you on purpose.”

      She nodded, swiping viciously at the tears that fell for the loss of each man. “He might not have done it on purpose, but gone is gone. The only difference between Luke and Eli?” Backing away from Ty, she didn’t bother to try to hide her misery. “Luke didn’t have a choice. Eli did. But in the end? They both left me.”

      Spinning on her heel, she called hoarsely for Brisket. The dog leaped into the truck bed, and she didn’t try to coax him into the cab.

      Vaulting herself into the seat behind the wheel, she cranked the engine and took off, pretending not to hear Ty calling her name.

      There was nothing left to say.

3

      ELI MADE THE 120-mile drive to the Clayton County courthouse in average time considering his rental car was powered by little more than a two-stroke lawn-mower engine.

      His first order of business was to determine whether or not anything had been filed on his old man’s behalf