For Whitney, Nate saddled Spark, a blood bay mare with the temperament of a veteran who knew her job and didn’t mess around. Regardless of riding ability, which he seriously questioned, Whitney would be safe on Spark. At least she was willing to try. And he couldn’t help but be impressed that she’d plowed the firebreak. The woman had spunk.

He’d nearly had a heart attack when he’d seen how close the fire was to her back fence. All kinds of crazy scenarios raced through his head. She’d accidentally set fire to the house. The hay he’d helped her move into the barn three days ago had combusted. She and the twins were trapped, gasping for air.

But none of that had happened. She’d been securely at the Triple C with Emily and Connie. And now he was taking her out into the inferno.

Wasn’t he the mighty protector?

Giving the cinch one more tug to insure Spark wasn’t holding her breath, he stepped back.

Whitney stood at the mare’s head, stroking the gentle animal under the chin. “She’s beautiful.”

“Twice as big as those toys of yours.”

“I don’t think Sally intended her babies to be ridden.”

He huffed. “Only by munchkins and leprechauns.”

Whitney laughed, a tinkly sound that reminded him of wind chimes.

“You don’t have to do this. You’ll be safer in the house.”

Her hand paused on the bridle. “I’m not afraid.”

He was, but not of the fire. It was the crazy thoughts he was having. He wanted her beside him, with him, close.

The smoke must have addled his brain. “We may have a long night.”

“I have two babies. Long nights I can handle.”

He supposed she could. He made a stirrup with his hands. “Mount up.”

She looked at him for one long moment before sticking her foot into his cradled hands. He boosted her up and adjusted the stirrups to a perfect fit. And if his fingers lingered on her foot, he tried to pretend the touch was accidental.

With Uncle Buck geared up and eager to work, Nate swung into the saddle. Together, Nate and Whitney rode out into the smoky night. From the corner of his eye, he watched her ride. She sat the saddle with effortless form, her hands light on the reins. A speck of Nate’s tension seeped away. Maybe she actually did know a little something about horses. And maybe, just maybe, he could keep her safe.

“Don’t we need a flashlight?” Whitney’s question came as the house lights faded behind them and the swirling smoke turned them to silhouettes.

“You’ve got glow sticks in the saddle bag if you need them. Spark doesn’t. Horses have good night vision.”

“I didn’t know that.” She turned toward him in the saddle, close enough to touch. “It’s beautiful out here at night. If not for the fire…”

Nate let his mind finish the sentence, though he had no idea what her thoughts were. If not for the fire, this would be a romantic ride.

In the light of the moon, he could make out Whitney’s features, her luminous eyes, the shine of her cinnamon hair as they rode side by side.

“Even the fire has a certain beauty.” He scoffed softly. “Not that I want it burning up our winter grazer.”

“You said the fire appeared to start on my back pasture. How could that have happened?”

A shiver ran down Nate’s arms. Whitney’s voice sounded soft and mysterious. The moon, the night, the woman. All were playing havoc with his emotions. He shouldn’t have let her come along. Not only for her protection but for his. His neighbor had become a temptation, a constant thought he couldn’t shake.

Could he survive that kind of hurt again?

“We’ll ride out there tomorrow and take a closer look. Maybe a careless smoker or a spark from a car engine started the blaze.” Neither idea seemed practical, given that her land adjoined his on the inside, not at the road. “We sure haven’t had any lightning in a while.”

“I wish it would rain.”

“You and me both.” He motioned with his gloved hand. “Look down.”

In the moonlight, the scorched land cast a dark shadow. The smell, acrid and sooty, lifted with the horses’ movement.

Whitney sucked in a quick breath. “The fire was this close?”

Grimly, he nodded. “We beat it back, but I was starting to worry. Good thing you and Emily plowed that firebreak.”

She fell silent, and he knew she was wondering about her own house. He wouldn’t tell her. None of the others would either. But if not for a very fortunate wind switch, the fire would have burned her out.

Whitney’s saddle creaked as she shifted position, seeking comfort and wondering at her temerity. She hadn’t been on a horse in years and already her back and legs twinged from the effort to look like she knew what she was doing. If she was going to be a rancher, she had to learn to ride well. Not that this was the time or the place, but she’d jumped at the chance to be with Nate. The impulsive action was the kind of the thing the old, reckless Whitney would have done…and it scared her.

They rode for a while without conversation, eyes scanning the vast pasture. Whitney remained acutely aware of the cowboy at her side, of how much she’d grown to like him in such a short time. It was as though all her long-dead nerve endings came alive when he walked into a room. Her anxiety seeped away. Everything would be all right because Nate was there.

Leather groaned as the cowboy on her mind leaned over the saddle horn and squinted into the night. “I see something up ahead.”

He tapped Uncle Buck with his heels and smooched at him. The buckskin responded with a quick leap. Whitney easily urged Spark into a matching quick-step that rattled her bones.

As they approached a milling herd of heifers, Nate slowed the horse and moseyed closer.

“First calving heifers. Better move them up closer to the calving barn in case we have some babies resulting from this scare. We were planning to move them next week anyway.”

“How do we do that?”

“The horses do most of the work. Aim Spark toward the back of the herd. Stay slow and easy. Don’t get excited, or the cows will spook and scatter. I’ll handle the rest.”

“Right.” As if she understood what he was talking about.

She followed the cowboy’s lead, letting the little mare dip and turn and move the cattle in a slow waltz. Occasionally, one cow bawled and another answered as they ambled forward, unhurried and unstressed, dark shadows in the moonlight. The movement was smooth clockwork, an ancient rhythm of man, horse, and cattle that everyone seemed to understand and take for granted except her.

Nate’s voice was soft and as mysterious as the night sky. “Sometimes out like this at night, I think about the old west. What it would have been like to sleep under the stars for days. The dangers and adventures. No towns for miles. Only cows and coyotes for company.”

“Lonely. Scary.”

He laughed softly. “Maybe I was born a century or two too late. It sounds romantic to me.” He stopped and cleared his throat. “Not that kind of romantic.”

“I knew what you meant.” Letting Spark do all the work of moving cattle, she focused on the man. The moonlight gilded him, reflecting off the pearl shirt buttons in shiny white. He was a silhouette that glowed in the dark, a hat-shaped photograph of days gone by. “Did you always want to be a rancher?”

Nate’s hat pointed toward the cattle, attuned to their every motion. “I grew up here and, after I left, I always knew I’d return sooner or later. Preferably later.”

His answer surprised her a little. He seemed to be part of the land, as if he’d always been here. “What happened?”

“My dad died. Heart attack. I talked to him on the phone the night before, and he sounded fine.”

She heard the pain behind his words. “Nate, I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah. Bad deal. But that last conversation is a real good memory. I’m thankful God gave us that. Dad nagged me a little about getting good grades. Told me to hurry up and get my license so I could come home and fill the gap left by Doc Franklin.”

She rotated toward him. “License for what?”

“I was in my second year of vet school.” Hands light on the reins, he repositioned the gelding to head off a wandering heifer. Though the animal hadn’t escaped the herd, Nate had intuitively guessed her intent.

“I can see you as a vet. You have a way with the animals.” She smiled into the darkness. “Even the mini ones you think of as toys.”

“Animals and I understand each other, I guess.” There was a smile in his voice. “Even the toy ones.”

“So you dropped out of vet school when your dad died?” A shame. A crying shame. He would be a terrific animal doctor. He already was in many ways.

“Had to. Ace was going through some stuff and had problems of his own. I was needed here. The Triple C is our legacy. Too many big ranches are disappearing because family members lose interest. I didn’t want that to happen. Dad worked too hard to make the ranch what it is, to give us kids an inheritance.”

“What about your other brother and sister?”

“Neither of them love the land or the animals the way Ace and I do. Wyatt’s full time military. And Emily…well, Emily loves the ranch, but her heart is in her work with kids. I’m all about animals. She’s all about kids.”

“Sad she didn’t have any of her own. She told me a little about her late husband.”

“We keep hoping she’ll find a nice guy and remarry, have a couple of babies.” His teeth flashed in the darkness. “Connie most of all, but Emily’s had her heart broken a couple of times, and when Dennis died, a wall went up.”

“Grief can do that.”

“Yeah. It sure can.”

Whitney heard something in his tone and wondered if he spoke of himself. Divorce was a kind of death. Did he still grief for his ex-wife?

None of Whitney’s business, so she didn’t ask. “Do you ever wish you hadn’t left vet school?”

He didn’t answer for a minute or two while the cattle shuffled and merred and a distant pump jack beat rhythm for an oil company.

“God blessed me with this ranch, and I get to work with animals every day. Calypso has no vet, and since I know a thing or two, I help out where I can.” He slowed Uncle Buck with a gentle tug. “How can I complain about what I don’t have when I have so much and lots of folks have so little?”

“No regrets, then?”

He chuckled softly. “Plenty of those, but not about ranching or vet school. I’m content. What about you? What did you want to do other than watch goats faint and try to keep Clive from escaping?”

She heard the teasing in his words and kept her answer light. “What more could a girl want?”

But her thoughts flashed back to the girl she’d wanted to be. Like most teenagers, she’d had dreams. When an older guy came along and captivated her immature heart with promises of love and excitement, she’d thought he was the fulfillment of those dreams. She’d run away with him. In the process, she’d broken her parents’ hearts, and she hadn’t even cared. Life was fun, exciting, and when Ben hadn’t worked out, Elliot waited in the wings.

She’d learned the hard way that every action has consequences.

How did she tell a solid man like Nate, a man who always seemed to do the right thing, about a life that had gone off the tracks?

Nate eased his horse closer to hers. “Did I bring up a bad subject? You got really quiet.”

“No, no.” Except he had. She gave a little laugh. “When I was in high school, I wanted to be a teacher, but then I discovered boys.” And a lot of other things that weren’t good for her.

“And got sidetracked?”

“You could say that.” She bit down on her lip and stared into the smoke-scented night.

“Want to talk about it?”

Did she? And let him know what a loser she was?

Maybe she should. Given the emotions he stirred, the best thing she could do was scare him off. “I left home at seventeen. Ran away.”

“That’s really young. Bad home life?” His voice was soft, understanding, and invited confidence.

“I wish I could say it was, but no. Maybe mine were not the most involved parents and certainly not strong disciplinarians, but I was the problem. Rebellious, foolish. Of course I didn’t think so at the time. I met an older guy. I was madly in love. Mostly with myself.”

“Ah, now, lots of kids go through a rough patch. You couldn’t have been that bad.”

“I was.” She swallowed down the thick knot of regret. “So bad that my parents eventually cut me off for good. They were done.”

“Harsh.”

“Not really. They never heard from me unless I wanted money or was in trouble. They finally stopped taking my calls.”

“At all? When was this? Before or after the twins?”

“They knew I was pregnant because I asked them for money to leave Elliott. That was the last time we spoke.”

“Elliott? The twins’ father?”

Whitney nodded, hair brushing the tops of her shoulders. “We’d been together for a couple of years, so when I got pregnant, I pushed him to marry me. After that, everything went downhill. He hated the idea of marriage. Told me to get rid of the problem, as he called the babies, but I couldn’t do that. Then I gave my life to Christ and started to change, and things really got bad. My old ways felt tawdry, wrong. We fought so much, I was scared. I wanted to leave, but I was totally dependent on Elliott for support. No education. No skills. And we had babies coming. Or rather I did. He’d made it clear, he wanted no part of parenting.”

“Having the twins was the last straw?”

“Yes.” She shook her head sadly, remembering the hurt and shock of having nowhere to go. “Before I got home from the hospital, he’d changed the locks on the house and left my clothes in trash bags on the sidewalk.”

Whitney pressed a hand to her lips. What had come over her? She’d never told that story to anyone. Why had she told Nate, of all people? He was a Christian who’d probably never done a bad thing in his life.

She sneaked a peek in his direction. Was he disgusted? Revolted? And who could blame him if he was? She was disgusted with herself.

He moved the horse closer until his leg brushed hers.

“Hey. I’m sorry.”

So was she. “My own fault.”

“We all mess up. That’s why we need Jesus.” Tone gentle, he gave her knee a comforting squeeze.

“He sure had a lot to forgive when He got me. I don’t know where I would be today if I hadn’t found Him.”

She could still remember how she felt, three months pregnant, stumbling into a Christian pregnancy center after a major fight with Elliot, desperate and scared. That was where she’d found the greatest source of help in the universe—a relationship with the Savior.

“Now you can work on forgiving yourself.”

“Is that even possible?”

He was quiet for a second. When he spoke, his soft reply barely reached her ears. “I sure hope so.”

Then he turned Uncle Buck with a click of his tongue and circled until his back was to her.

Had she revealed too much and lost his respect?

Not that she deserved anyone’s respect, certainly not a salt-of-the-earth man like Nate Caldwell.

“Got a straggler.”He pointed with his chin.

A straggling cow. Not a rejection of her.

Breathing a relieved sigh, Whitney squinted to make out the dark bovine shape in the distance. “She’s not moving at all.”

“We’re almost to the gate. We’ll haze these through and come back for her.” He edged around the herd and rode ahead to open the gate, leaving Whitney to wonder. What was he thinking now that he knew her ugly history? Was he sorry he’d befriended her? This was supposed to have been her fresh start, her break from the past. And now he knew the truth of it.

She shouldn’t have told him.

Why did his opinion matter so much anyway?

With a low groan, Whitney lifted her face toward the sky and wished for the millionth time that she could go back in time and start her life over. But she couldn’t, and God had given her this opportunity to move forward. Time to stop fretting and get busy.

With no encouragement from her rider, Spark nosed the herd forward. Once the leaders started through the opening, the rest followed easily.

Metal clanked as Nate shut the gate, and in minutes they’d returned to the lagging heifer. By now, the animal was on the ground, big eyes gleaming in the moonlit.

Nate slid from his horse and knelt on the dry grass next to the heifer.

“Is she sick?”

Cowboy hands stroked the animal, feeling her massive belly. “In labor. I’ll need the flashlight out of my saddlebag.”

“I’ll get it.” Slowly, painfully, Whitney dismounted and walked stiffly to the buckskin. Every muscle in her legs and back ached. She didn’t even want to think about how she’d feel tomorrow.

Spark turned her head to watch the humans but made no attempt to wander away. Like Nate’s gelding, the mare wasn’t tethered and yet she waited patiently for her rider. The horses had done this before.

“How do we help?” Whitney asked.

“I’d like to get her up and move her to the barn.” Nate glanced in the direction of the fire. “I don’t see flames anymore. Hopefully, the men have it under control, but I don’t like to take any chances. If she’s down calving and fire sweeps through here—”

He didn’t have to complete the gruesome thought. Whitney got the idea.

“Do you think the blaze is out?”

“Hard to tell from this far away.” He took the flashlight from Whitney and shined it on the heifer. Gently, he pushed at the animal’s hips. “Come on, Bee, get up.”

“Bee?” Gingerly, Whitney squatted beside him, fighting not to groan at her sore thigh muscles.

“Her tag number. B56.”

“Bingo!” Whitney stifled a giggle. She was getting giddy with fatigue.

Nate glanced up with a tired smile. “She’s too far along to get to the barn.”

“What do we do?”

“Stay with her. Make sure nature does the right thing.” He motioned toward Spark. The mare stood at Whitney’s back, snuffling her shoulder. “Can you find your way to the house?”

“I think so. Why?”

“You should go. I’ll stay.”

She shook her head. “No.”

He pushed up from the ground and ambled toward his horse, two shadowy hulks in perfect tune. “I’ll likely toss a blanket on the ground. Could be a long night. You’ll be more comfortable at the house.”

“I want to stay.” She backed against the mare, feeling the solid heat of horseflesh. “I need to learn these things, Nate. All my animals are pregnant, and you may not be around when one of them gives birth.”

The thought struck pure terror in her soul. Nate certainly did not need her help, but the opportunity to learn was real.

She didn’t examine the other reason.

He studied her in the dim light before his head bobbed once. “Okay, then. If you’re sure. Good a time as any to learn.”

She let out a breath, aware she’d expected him to send her away, and even more aware that she wanted to be with him. “I am. Thank you.”

His head tilted. “For?”

She circled a hand in the air. “Everything. For being so nice. For being…” Her voice trailed away as Nate stepped closer.

“For being what?” His breath was warm on her cheek, his brawny body blocking the chill in the smoky wind.

Warm horse behind, warm man in front, she was cocooned and comfortable. Safe. Secure. Two things she hadn’t been in years.

“For being you.”

He laughed softly. “Yeah, I’m really something.”

Didn’t this incredible man know his value? Or had his walk-away spouse worked a number on this cowboy’s self-esteem?

Empathizing, Whitney touched his chest with the tips of her fingers. “Yes. You are. You said God blessed you with this ranch. Well, he blessed me with mine, too, and with you to teach me the things I have to know to get through this next year. I don’t take that lightly. You’ll never know how very much your generosity means.”

His gloved hand captured her fingers, but when she thought he’d push her away, he simply held on. Not pushing away, not pulling forward.

The air shifted. Each seemed to ponder the other, taking stock, wondering.

Behind her, the mare shuffled, nudging at her back. Whitney rocked forward. Nate caught her, and suddenly, they were heart to heart. She laughed, self-conscious, but didn’t step away. Neither did Nate.

So she was not a bit surprised when he lowered his head and brushed his lips across hers.

She was, however, surprised at the rocket of emotion exploding in her damaged heart.