Spring came early to the Sangre de Cristo mountains. The sky, surely as big and as blue as Montana’s fabled sky, was cloudless, bright and sunny, and the acres and acres of land surrounding the Walking Horse Ranch blossomed with the promise of the new season.

Ellie leaned back in the wicker rocker and propped her bare feet on the porch railing. Wiggling her toes in the early-morning sunlight, she contemplated the last ten months. Instead of the adobe house she’d expected, she’d discovered a Texas-style ranch house. Instead of a frail, dying old man she’d found Alfred, still full of vinegar, determined to fight his way back from the last debilitating stroke and welcome Tanner’s new wife properly. He’d done it, and they’d had a good, happy six months as a family before he’d died, peacefully enough in his sleep on New Year’s Day.

Tanner had had no need to marry her for Shaitan. His breeding stock was fully Shaitan’s equal, and if neither of Tanner’s stallions had a glorious black coat or quite the imposing height of Ellie’s horse, their temperaments were a decided improvement.

She wished she could say the same thing for Tanner. She’d seen it coming for the past two months, the faraway look in his eyes, the abstraction, the distance she couldn’t seem to bridge. Something was calling him, something she couldn’t fight, and she was trying her hardest to resign herself to his going.

The ranch would be fine. Even without Alfred, the place was so well-organized that it ran like clockwork. Rafael knew as much about horses as Tanner did, and the others were equally adept. It hadn’t taken Ellie long to take over the book work, and she knew she was more than capable of making any executive decisions that needed to be made while Tanner walked.

He hadn’t said a word to her yet, but then, he didn’t need to. She knew him well, knew the worst thing she could do was try to hold him back. If she fought it, if she tried to tie him to her, someday he’d walk away and never come back. If she let him go with loving hands, he’d always return to her.

The last thing he needed to hear at that moment was that she was going to have a baby. It would be one more thing pulling on him, one more thing holding him back. He wasn’t ready for fatherhood, he’d told her at Christmas when she’d asked if they could try to have a child. He wasn’t ready to face Charles Tanner’s grandchild, not quite yet. Maybe never.

Would he blame her when he found out? It hadn’t been her fault. They’d been in the barn, alone one evening, when he’d picked her up and tossed her into the hayloft, falling after her, dismissing her word of caution. If nothing had happened in Montana, surely they’d be safe this one last time.

They weren’t. And her fault or not, she couldn’t tell him. She could only touch her still-flat stomach and try to contain the strange mixture of fear and elation that swept over her at the very thought.

The coffee beside her had grown cool and oily. Apparently everyone at the ranch liked coffee that resembled paint thinner, and Ellie had learned to tolerate it. But with her stomach just the tiniest bit hesitant, she couldn’t drink much anymore.

The sun was climbing higher in the sky. Rafael’s portly wife would be dishing up breakfast before long, and it was time for Ellie to stir her indolent body. She should be in giving Melora a hand, but couldn’t resist stealing the last few moments of peace in her busy day. She cherished the early morning, with the men busy down at the barn, the smells of breakfast from the big ranch kitchen, the slowly brightening sky.

Tanner was walking up alone from the barn. She watched him approach, and once more felt the familiar clutching deep inside her, a bittersweet feeling of longing and resignation.

His hat was down low as he crossed the flat stretch of ground, but he knew she was there, watching him. There was something different about that rangy walk of his, a new ease and determination. And Ellie steeled herself for the worst.

The old porch creaked as he climbed the front steps. He usually went in the kitchen door with the other men, to wash up in the big sink out back, but today was different. He wasn’t wearing his barn boots either. He was wearing hiking shoes.

She couldn’t bring herself to look up at him. If she did she’d cry. She looked out over the peaceful setting, the early-morning sky, and waited.

He put his hand on her shoulder, the weight of it heavy and solid, and she leaned her cheek against his hand. “When are you going?” she asked quietly.

“Now.”

She couldn’t help the little spasm of pain that swept through her, and his fingers tightened on her shoulder. “Okay,” she said, and pressed her lips against the back of his hand.

“I’ll be back, you know,” His voice sounded tight, strained, as if he were the one in pain.

She looked up at him then, knowing there were tears swimming in her eyes, looked up anyway and smiled. “I know,” she said.

The end of April slipped quietly into May, and the mountains came alive with spring. Ellie passed the third month mark in her pregnancy with a sigh of relief, turning her concentration to the new generation of foals being born at the Walking Horse Ranch. Shaitan was about to become a father for the first time, and Ellie viewed the event with almost as much trepidation as she did her own upcoming parenthood. The mare, Alfred’s Folly, had refused to be covered by any stallion until she’d seen Shaitan, and Rafael had doubts about her qualifications as a mother.

Ellie had no such doubts. Alfred’s Folly, so named because of her refusal to breed, would be a fine mother. Whether she’d ever let another stallion near her was a different matter, and Shaitan was being absurdly possessive, but it wasn’t worth worrying about for now.

May turned into June, and the days grew blazingly hot. Ellie told herself she was too busy to miss Tanner, and she knew she lied. She was tired and lonely, and she sat behind the big old mission oak desk in the ranch office and thought longingly of Montana, of the hidden meadow and the cool weather.

And then she remembered the town monument, the anger and paranoia and pain and death that had haunted the town for so long. According to Maude’s letters, things were improving. The Gazette had been taken over by a young couple with two kids, Pete Forrester had stopped haunting the graveyard, and there was even some talk of a ski area being built less than twenty miles away. While it might hurt the land, it would bring jobs and people into the area, and Ellie could only be glad.

Even Lonnie was slowly improving. For six months he’d sat in the state hospital and spoken not a word. Now he was talking, working things out. Whether he’d ever be well enough to live a normal life was still up in the air, but Ellie, remembering the good years, remembering the real sweetness that lay beneath the anger and madness, could only hope so.

She hadn’t told Maude that Tanner had left, but she knew she couldn’t put it off much longer. Maude was itching to visit, demanding to know when she was going to be a great-grandmother, wanting to know what was going on in New Mexico. Morey’s Falls was boring nowadays, she wrote. Even Ginger Barlow had settled down, marrying a meat salesman and becoming downright domestic. Doc hadn’t been feeling too chipper lately, but there was a new widow in town, one who seemed to think she was just what he needed, and maybe there’d be another wedding before long.

There’d been no word from Tanner, but then, Ellie hadn’t expected there to be. All she could do was wait and accept it.

It was another early morning on the ranch. Ellie was dressed, but just barely, carrying her coffee out onto the front porch when Rafael came charging up, panting heavily. “It’s Folly,” he wheezed. “She’s ready. Better come quick.”

Ellie set the coffee down hurriedly, ignoring the pain as the scalding liquid splashed on her hand. “Shouldn’t we call a vet? I’ll go…”

“No way. Foals get born in five to ten minutes—there wouldn’t be time for anyone to get here.”

“But what if she has trouble?” Ellie protested. For some reason Folly’s pregnancy had taken on enormous importance to her, as if it were a precursor of her own.

“If she has trouble, we’ll have to take care of it,” Rafael said. “And we’ll have to pray.”

“I can manage that much,” Ellie said. “Let’s go.”

Rafael hadn’t exaggerated. Folly was already down. Ellie and Rafael knelt in the straw, near enough to reach her if needed, careful not to get in the way.

Ellie didn’t know when he came in, so intent was she on the miraculous drama that was unfolding so very quickly in front of her. For a moment the light from the door was blocked out, and then it was bright again. And Tanner was beside her in the straw, not touching her, watching with the same silent intensity.

Rafael grinned over his shoulder in welcome, accustomed to Tanner’s comings and goings. Ellie remained motionless wanting to scream and cry in joy, wanting to rage and hit him.

In the end it took Alfred’s Folly seven and a half minutes to give birth to an impossibly long-legged colt with the ease and dispatch of a pro. Ellie scarcely breathed as it tried to struggle to its feet.

“We don’t consider it a live birth until it’s standing and drinking from its mother,” Tanner said, his voice a deep rumble in the quiet barn.

“What if she won’t let him drink?” Rafael fretted, still not trusting the recalcitrant mare.

“She will,” Ellie said firmly.

It took another endless few minutes, and for a moment it looked as if Ellie’s trust was misplaced, as Folly stared at her gangly offspring with suspicion.

“Come on,” Ellie muttered under her breath. She reached out, knowing Tanner’s hand would be there, and held it tightly. “Come on, Folly.”

“Well, I’ll be,” Rafael breathed. “She’s nursing him.”

“Of course she is,” Ellie said smugly, ignoring her moment of panic. “She just needed a moment or two.” She turned and looked into Tanner’s eyes, those distant blue eyes she hadn’t seen in almost six weeks.

“Another one of your charity cases, Ellie?” he murmured. “One more walking wounded?”

“Are you mocking me?”

“No,” he said. “I love you.”

She managed a brief, tremulous smile before turning back to watch Folly nurse her colt. There it came again, that strange fluttering in her womb, that she’d first thought was nerves. It was the first time she’d felt her baby move. “I only hope,” she said deliberately, “that I have as easy a time of it as she did.”

Rafael had vanished by this time, tactful enough to let them have their reunion in private. “When?” asked Tanner, his voice rough with an emotion she was afraid to guess at.

“December.”

“You knew when I left and you didn’t stop me?”

She turned to face him again. “I didn’t want to hold you if you didn’t want to stay. It had to be your decision, not because of duty or guilt or responsibility. I’ll always let you go when you need to.”

“Will you always let me come back?”

“Yes.”

The tension suddenly drained from his taut shoulders. His dark-blond hair was too long, his face too tired, his body too weary. But he smiled at her, a tender, infinitely dear smile, and the last tiny bit of sorrow and hurt left her. “I won’t go again.”

“You don’t have to promise me.”

“I’m not promising. I’m just telling you the truth. I couldn’t stand it. The first night away was bad, the second was worse, the third was pure hell. I kept going, kept walking until I was sure the wanting would stop. But it never did. I just kept seeing you wherever I went, dreaming about you, missing you. A hundred times I picked up the phone to call you, a dozen times I turned around to come back.”

“Why didn’t you?” she cried.

“I couldn’t until I was sure, Ellie. That’s why I had to go one last time. I had to make certain the walking, the running was over.”

“And is it?” Her voice was soft, beseeching, unable to hide her desperate hurt and longing anymore.

He reached out his long hands and cupped the sides of her face. “Oh, Ellie,” he whispered, “I know for sure now. I’ll never leave you again.” And he kissed her, her soft, trembling mouth, her tear-drenched eyelids, her chin, her breasts, her slightly rounded stomach, as he pulled her down into the sweet-smelling hay.

Folly, nursing her colt, looked at the foolish humans whispering in her stall and whickered softly. And Shaitan, unexpectedly docile for the first time in his life, looked over from the adjoining stall and whirruped in reply, as the bright morning sun flooded the barn with new life and joy. A new day had begun.