Tanner was standing in the kitchen, his back to her, when Ellie came back downstairs. He was staring out the window, out into the morning sunlight, and the faded chambray shirt stretched across his shoulders. His dark-blond hair hung below the collar of the shirt, and tension radiated through his finely muscled body. She stopped in the doorway, watching him, knowing he knew she was there, knowing he was letting her watch. And still she couldn’t stop herself.

His legs were long, encased in jeans that had seen hard wear, and his hips were narrow, sexy. Everything about him was sexy, and she would be a fool to pretend otherwise. She sighed, a small, quiet sound of resignation that nevertheless traveled across the huge dark kitchen. He turned then, his blue eyes cool and assessing as they took in her appearance.

She kept her expression bland, as she’d taught herself years ago, but she wondered what he was thinking. She’d braided her hair in one thick, loose plait, and she was dressed pretty much as he was, in a denim shirt and faded jeans. She’d spent almost five minutes buttoning and unbuttoning her shirt, finally saying “The hell with it!” and leaving three buttons unfastened. If he looked closely enough he’d be able to see the remnants of the sun from her shirtless ride two days ago. Knowing Tanner, she had no doubt he’d look.

His eyes didn’t linger on her chest, her hips or her face, despite all her hard work. They dropped to her feet, encased in sensible riding boots. “That’s probably a better idea than riling an already riled population,” he said. “Are you going to let me ride Shaitan?”

Simple and direct and easy to answer. “Forget it,” she said sweetly.

If Tanner’s laugh wasn’t particularly mirthful, it was better than that distant, haunted expression that shadowed his eyes. “We’ll see,” he said. “I’ve worn down harder women than you.”

“I’m stubborn,” she said.

“So am I.” And they weren’t talking about horses.

They were halfway out to Maude’s before he brought up the subject that hadn’t been far from either of their minds. “Has this happened before?”

She turned to look at him. It was a bright, warm day, and she was wearing sunglasses, the smoked lenses giving her an infinitesimal measure of protection from Tanner’s gaze that saw far too much. “What happened before?” she asked warily.

“Animals being shot. Apart, of course, from my dear departed father’s nasty habits,” he said, his voice low and bitter.

“Not that I know of,” she mumbled unhappily.

“Great,” said Tanner savagely. “What else did he do? What else have we got to look forward to? Is anyone absolutely certain he died that day? Maybe he’s been lurking up in the mountains, waiting to come back.”

“He died that day,” Ellie said, her voice strained. “I saw his body.”

He was silent for a moment. “All right,” he said finally. “We can rule out the return of Charles Tanner. I suppose we can rule out ghosts. So what possibilities does that leave us with? Another madman, waiting to wreak havoc on the innocent town of Morey’s Falls? Or a malicious newcomer, out to ruffle a few feathers?”

“You didn’t do it.”

“Thanks for that vote of confidence. I don’t know if anyone else will agree with you,” Tanner said evenly. “I could have done it. I had your car, and the whole night stretched in front of me with nothing to fill it. After all, you’d sent me away in favor of a bridge game.”

“You don’t even know where those people lived.”

He shrugged. “I could have just picked random farms.”

“You don’t know how to use a gun.” She heard her own voice sounding a little panicked. It was a game she didn’t want to play; she didn’t want to have to suspect him when she’d been so certain.

“I could have been lying about that,” he said reasonably. “You saw how shocked your rent-a-cop was when I told him I didn’t hunt. Maybe that was to throw everyone off the trail.”

“Tanner, you didn’t do it. I know it, and at least Doc knows it.”

“So who does that leave? Come on, Ellie, it’s a reasonable enough question. It needs to be asked.”

“You’re right. Unfortunately, I don’t have any answers.”

“No other lonely hermits living on the edge of town and madness? No human time bombs waiting to explode?” Tanner pushed mercilessly.

“Not that I know of. And it’s a small town, Tanner. I’d know.” She turned into Maude’s long winding drive.

“Well, then,” he said with a shrug and that charming smile that never reached his eyes, “I guess that leaves me.”

And Ellie, unable to think of any way to refute it, was silent.

Maude was standing on the porch of her house, watching for them. “Are you coming in for coffee?” she called to them, her voice brittle and cracked with age, “or do you want a thermos to take with you?”

“We’ve already made our lunch, Maude,” Ellie answered, wishing she could warn the old woman, wishing she could tell her not to look at Tanner with such sad, hungry eyes.

Maude cackled suddenly. “You two look like you’ve done a lot for only ten o’clock in the morning. Did you spend the night together?”

Ellie sighed. “Why does my private life have to be town business?”

“Because you decided to become the town pet,” Tanner said in a cool undertone. “No, Maude,” he pitched his voice louder. “She sent me home so she could play cards.”

“I always said the girl had no sense,” Maude said, nodding. “Jamie’s already fed the horses, including that beast of Satan. Have a good time. I won’t expect you till I see you.”

They headed toward the horse barn, Maude still watching them. Tanner was walking at a loose, easy pace, but Ellie still had to struggle to keep up with him. She had her cane with her, the gold-headed one that clearly grated on Tannr’s nerves, and she did the best she could. She would have been boiled in oil before she asked him to slow down. He hadn’t smoked a cigarette since they’d left, and if he could be forbearing so could she.

“What do you think of Maude?” She hoped she sounded as casual as she wanted to be.

If nothing else it made him slow his walk just a bit. “Maude?” he echoed, puzzled. “I like her. She’s a character, for one thing, and for another, she’s one of the few people who’s welcomed me. Why?”

She hoped the heat in her cheekbones came from the blazing sun. “Just curious. Some people find her a bit overwhelming.” She moved ahead of him, into the cool darkness of the barn. “You saddle and bridle Hoover while I take care of Shaitan. The tack’s in the corner.” And she walked away before he could ask any more uncomfortable questions.

By unspoken consent they headed up the path, back to the meadow where they’d first met. There were other trails, other meadows, other streams just as lovely, and for a moment Ellie had considered suggesting an alternative. Considered, then rejected the notion. The high meadow had always been her special place. Its sanctity had already been breached. If she didn’t go back now with Tanner himself, she’d never feel comfortable there again.

Not that it was really an issue, she reminded herself as Shaitan picked his sure, delicate way up the narrow path. In less than two weeks she’d be gone, she’d never see that meadow again. There would be other mountains for her, other meadows.

The path widened, and Tanner brought Hoover up beside her. Shaitan sidled nervously, his eyes rolling in his head and his ears flattening as he hissed a warning. Hoover reacted with typical nerves, but Tanner had him firmly under control.

He did know his way around horses, there was no question of that. He’d saddled and bridled a strange horse in less time than it took her to ready Shaitan. To be sure, Hoover was relatively docile, and Shaitan was high-strung. But there was no gainsaying the fact that he had a way with him. Hoover was responding almost as well as his overbred stablemate, moving with the slightest pressure from Tanner’s long legs, arching his head and almost prancing. Tanner looked as if he’d been born in the saddle.

But he wasn’t. He had been born in that cabin, with no one but Charles Tanner and Maude to help Marbella that night so long ago. She wondered if he knew.

“So why don’t you tell me,” Tanner drawled softly, “why you spend your life doing nothing in a hick town like Morey’s Falls?”

She looked over at him. He’d pitched his voice low, and Shaitan’s ears had come up again, accepting the interloper. Which just went to prove that Shaitan had no taste in human beings. He’d tried to bite Poor Lonnie’s hand off the last time she’d made the mistake of inviting anyone to go riding with her.

“Why do you think?” she countered.

“Well, if the Judge didn’t leave you money you’d have to work, and I haven’t seen any signs of that. Just your Lady Bountiful act for the peasants. But if he left you money I’d think you’d be long gone.”

“I’m intending to be long gone,” she said, stifling the irritation Tanner always managed to call forth. She was getting used to that annoyance, getting almost to like it. At least it proved that she was alive. “I don’t work because this is a very poor town. Any job I took would be taking food away from some family who needs it.”

“Did you go to college?”

“For a semester. The traveling got to be too much. I went to a branch of the University of Montana in Bozeman, and the drive was more than two hundred miles each way. My leg couldn’t take it.”

“You could have stayed there—come home during vacations.”

“The Judge didn’t think it wise for me to be gone so long.”

“You could have driven an automatic, like the monstrosity you own now.”

“The Judge preferred manual transmissions back then,” she said calmly.

“Back when he still wanted to own you.”

“He always wanted to own me,” Ellie said, surprising herself. The words were out, it was too late to call them back, and she might as well continue. “He just grew surer of me as time went on. Sure enough to buy an automatic transmission, at least.”

Tanner nodded. If he was startled by her sudden openness he didn’t show it. There was a speculative look in the back of his eyes, a curiosity he hadn’t yet put into words. Ellie could only hope he’d continue to be circumspect. She neither wanted to answer that question nor lie.

To her relief Tanner changed the subject. “It’s hard to believe Morey’s Falls is just a couple of miles away,” he said, looking around him with dreamy approval. They’d reached the edge of the meadow, and the beauty of it drifted into their senses. “It sure would be nice to forget it existed.”

Ellie made a noncommittal sound of agreement. It was even warmer than it had been two days earlier, and the wildflowers dotting the field were nodding in the soft breeze. The sky—the famed big sky of Montana—was cloudless, and the jagged peaks of the mountains surrounded them like a fairy ring. “We can stop and eat over by the waterfall,” she said. “There’s a pool of water there for the horses.”

“All right.” He was watching her, that mischievous, speculative expression on his face. “You mind if I take off my shirt? It’s hot today.”

She wanted to blush, to laugh, but managed to keep a calm, unruffled demeanor. “Go right ahead. Just don’t expect me to do the same this time.”

“Why not? There’s no one around to look, and I’ve already seen it,” he taunted lightly.

“Not up close, you haven’t,” she countered in a sober voice. “If you did, I’d never get rid of you.”

He threw back his head and laughed out loud, and the sound was wonderful on the soft summer air. Shaitan whickered nervously, but Ellie had him in perfect control. She grinned back at Tanner, fighting the sudden knot of sorrow that had tightened in her throat. It was such a beautiful day, a beautiful place, a beautiful time. Tanner was beautiful, too, with amusement dancing in his blue eyes and his thin, sexy mouth lit with a grin. And Ellie would have loved for life to have stayed that way, just a little while.

He reached up and began to unbutton his shirt. “Maybe I’m running the same risk,” he said.

“You strike me as a man who takes risks,” she said.

“And you strike me as a woman who doesn’t.”

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

He looked taken aback for a moment. He shrugged out of the shirt, tying it around his waist, and his dark skin glowed in the bright sunlight. It wasn’t the tan of beaches or sunlamps; it was the color of a man who worked long hours outside in the sun. His rough, callused hands and the long, corded muscles in his arms and chest attested to that. “So you are,” he said finally, and his tone was cool. “I’ll race you to the pool.” And before she had time to gather her bemused wits he’d taken off across the field.

Shaitan was the faster horse, but Tanner had the head start. He was already loosening Hoover’s saddle when she reined in. She slid off the stallion’s back and busied herself with the girth strap, all the time aware of him behind her. “Don’t come any closer,” she warned. “Shaitan won’t like it.”

Tanner stayed where he was. She didn’t have to turn to know the expression on his face. It would be calm, patient and slightly predatory. He could afford to wait. For a moment Ellie rested her head against Shaitan’s warm, black side, accepting his strength and comfort. And then she turned to face Tanner.

She didn’t know what she’d expected, she thought several hours later as they rode back down the narrow trail. Some sort of pass, perhaps. Maybe a full-fledged seduction attempt that would have been difficult, perhaps impossible to fight off. At least some sort of verbal come-on.

But once more Tanner had confounded her. He hadn’t so much as touched her, when part of her was longing to be touched. He’d smiled sweetly enough, and occasionally his cold blue eyes would smile, too. He’d drawn her out, in subtle ways she’d recognized only afterward, so that he knew her far better than she knew him. She told him of herself, he told her of things.

One of those things was the horse ranch, high up in the Sangre de Cristo mountains, where the sky was almost as big and blue as it was in Montana, where the pinion pines grew scrubby and the land rolled in a warm red color. He told her about the horses, about Orfeo and Hammer and Magda and Gypsy, of the foals with their long, spindly legs and the yearlings with their incredible grace. He told her of the rambling adobe ranch house and the people who lived there, of Melora and Red and Jimmy and Rafael. And he’d told her of Alfred, and for the first time Ellie heard love in his voice.

She hadn’t wanted to go back, so of course she’d been the one to suggest it. Tanner had agreed readily enough, so readily that paranoia began to mount in the back of her brain. It was a new and evil emotion, one she had no experience in fighting, and as they rode down the mountain she toyed with it, prodding herself with little jabs of self-inflicted torture.

He’d been turned off by the scars. Well, of course he had. She’d shown him on purpose, to try to force a little compassion from him. And he’d been horrified, for all he tried to hide it.

He’d kissed her the night before, kissed her as no one had ever kissed her in all her life. Given the perfect opportunity to follow up on that kiss, he’d made no move at all.

Maybe her obvious lack of experience had turned him off. Combine that with the scars and maybe he’d thought better of his pursuit. Maybe she’d misunderstood that pursuit; perhaps it had only been a reflex. The man was a tease, there was no question of that. Every woman who met him melted a little bit under those seductive eyes and that practiced smile. Because no one had ever dared flirt with her before, she’d probably just overreacted.

Ginger had left early the previous evening. Had she gone out to the cabin and assuaged Tanner’s loneliness? It would be just the sort of thing Ginger would do, but if so, why would Tanner have showed up so early that morning? And wouldn’t she have been able to tell?

She was getting neurotic in her old age. So Tanner had kissed her. Just because a man kissed her didn’t mean he wanted her. If Ginger had told him about her abortive love life, then he was simply being kind—

“What are you torturing yourself about?” he drawled, coming up beside her as the path widened once more.

She blushed again. “Just thinking.”

“Well, whatever it is you’re thinking about, stop it. It’s got to be something unpleasant.”

She sighed. “It’s not that easy.”

“No, I suppose it isn’t,” Tanner said, looking straight ahead.

Maude’s ranch was already in sight, their time together was ending, and frustration and despair raced around in Ellie’s heart. She wanted to reach out and put her hand on Tanner’s, wanted to pluck at the sleeve of his recently donned shirt. She wanted to turn in the saddle and ask him to ride away with her, back up to the meadow, across the mountains and never come back again.

“It’s late,” she said instead. “And we’ve wasted the day.”

“Have we?”

“We didn’t get any further on your quest. You don’t know anything more about this town and who the people are,” she pointed out.

“I know more about you. That’s something.”

She opened her mouth to refute his claim, then shut it again. She was being gloomy and emotional. She needed a good dose of sensible Maude to cheer her up.

Maude was waiting on the porch. “Doc’s been trying to find you,” she called out as soon as they were within hearing distance. “You’d best come in here and call him as soon as you can.”

The knot in her chest tightened further. Without a word she dismounted, leading Shaitan into his stall in the cool, dark stable and loosening his girth. She shut the door behind him and raced across the yard, feeling that doom was lurking over her head like a thundercloud. Weren’t things bad enough today, with the dead animals? What could Doc want?

Tanner watched her run. She managed pretty well without the cane. Before he left he was going to break the damned thing. All it did was remind her that she needed it. If she weren’t reminded, she wouldn’t need it—another simple equation.

He worked swiftly, efficiently, unsaddling Hoover, giving him a small drink of water and brushing the sweat from his coat. Shaitan was standing in his stall, deceptively docile, awaiting his beloved mistress. Tanner could see the sweat staining his beautiful black coat.

“Sorry, old boy,” he said softly, and Shaitan’s ears went back in alarm. “Your mistress would cut my heart out if I touched you.”

Shaitan snorted, a derisive sort of sound, and Tanner gave Hoover one last affectionate pat on the rump before leaving the stall. He stood outside Shaitan’s box, staring at the beautiful stallion, and a frown creased his face. “What would you do, boy?” he murmured in a low, beguiling voice that had magicked more than one restive stallion. “Would you take those nasty hooves of yours and try to trample me? I’m an old hand at dodging hooves. I bet you couldn’t do it.”

Shaitan’s ears had lifted slightly, but his eyes were still threatening. “Of course,” Tanner continued softly, “you’ve still got that nasty-tasting bridle in your mouth. And even if your mistress loosened your girth, that saddle must be hot and heavy. I could take that blanket off you and brush you down, and you’d feel wonderful. Besides, what have I got to lose? I think she’s already cut my heart out.” It was a low, seductive litany, and as always it was working. He opened the stall door and slipped in beside the stallion. Shaitan shied nervously for a moment, and his ears went back, but Tanner just continued his soft, soothing croon.

If they weren’t exactly friends when he finished, they were at least tolerant of each other. He stepped out of the stall, carrying the leathers and saddle with him, and shut the door behind him. “We’ll put you out to pasture later, old boy. In the meantime...”

“In the meantime,” said Ellie, her voice as cold as ice, “you can tell me what the hell you were doing with my horse.”