Letting himself out the gate without dismounting from the mare, J.D. jogged the horse around the outside of the pens and pulled up when he reached the pair perched on the top rail. He shot Mary Lee a narrow look, withering her smile on the vine, then dismissed her without a word and turned to Will.

“You sit here hanging your butt over the fence while a man pushing seventy does your job for you? What the hell are you thinking about?”

Will’s face set in hard, tight lines to mirror his brother’s look. “I was thinking I hadn’t had two minutes’ rest since I landed on my feet this morning. I was thinking it might be polite to say hello to our guest-”

“Yeah, right,” J.D. sneered. “Like a fox just wants to say hello to a quail-”

“Well, hell, J.D., if you’re jealous, maybe you ought to do some-”

With a jab of a spur J.D. jumped his horse ahead and sideways, pinning his leg against the fence. Ignoring the pain, he cuffed Will across the kidneys with the back of his arm, knocking him from his perch into the corral.

“I’m mad as hell, that’s what I am,” he snapped. “Get off your lazy ass for once and do your job instead of letting an old man take up the slack for you.”

Will glared at him over the bars of the fence. His cap had come off in the fall and his dark hair spilled across his forehead. His face was almost as red as the T-shirt he wore, embarrassment and rage pumping his blood pressure up.

“Fuck you, J.D.!” he spat out. “I work like a goddamn dog around here-”

“When you’re not out playing rodeo or down in Little Purgatory.”

“-not that I ever see anything for it-”

“No shit, you lose it all playing poker-”

“You’re not my boss and you’re not my keeper, and if I want to take five stinking minutes to talk to somebody, I’ll do it!”

Mari watched the exchange from the uncomfortable position of outsider. She had the distinct feeling their fury had its roots in something deeper than her ability to distract Will from his work. She knew all about sibling rivalries and resentments. Growing up the odd one out among the Jennings girls, she had felt her share of ill feelings toward Lisbeth and Annaliese. The Rafferty brothers undoubtedly had their own version of the same story. Will, the gregarious, charming rascal, and J.D., so stern, so rigid-it wasn’t hard to imagine them clashing. She just didn’t particularly want to be an eyewitness while it happened, or the spark that touched it off.

“Hey, guys, look,” she said, straddling the fence, raising her hands in a peacemaking gesture, “I didn’t come here to make trouble-”

J.D. shot her a glare. “Well, you damn well managed to do it anyway, didn’t you?”

“Don’t blame Mary Lee,” Will snapped. “It isn’t her fault you’re an ornery son of a bitch.”

“No, and it isn’t her fault you think with what’s between your legs instead of what’s between your ears.”

“If my being here is a problem,” Mari said, “I’ll just go.”

“Your being in Montana is a problem,” J.D. snarled half under his breath.

The remark cut. Mari held herself rigid against the urge to wince; she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. She raised her chin a notch, looking down her nose at him. “Yeah, well, when somebody dies and makes you king, you can have me and all my kind exiled.”

J.D. set his jaw and turned away from her, not liking the fact that he felt even a little chastened by her words. A whole host of uncomfortable and unfamiliar feelings crawled like ants inside his skin. He shouldn’t have jumped on Will in front of the whole crew. Work in the branding pen had come to a standstill while everyone watched them and waited for the outcome.

This was what happened when a woman came prancing around; men lost their heads.

“Now, boys,” Tucker said diplomatically, ambling away from the empty squeeze chute. He clamped a hand on Will’s shoulder, turned his head, and spat a stream of tobacco juice. “Maybe what we all need is a good hot meal and a chance to sit on something that ain’t movin.’ I got a big ol’ pan of my famous lasagna in the oven. Ought to be ready about now. Why don’t we all go on up to the house?”

J.D. had no appetite for food or for company. He started to tell the others to go on, when his mare raised her head and stared off toward the northwest, ears up. She whinnied loudly, a call that was immediately answered by several different equine voices.

From the cover of pine and fir trees emerged a group of riders. There were six in all and a pack mule bringing up the rear. Even from a distance J.D. could make out Bryce at the front of the entourage. The sun gleamed off his long pale hair and wide white smile. He rode a handsome chestnut that danced beneath him, impatient with the leisurely pace of the rest of the group.

It took them several minutes to close the distance, but no one at the ranch said a word while they waited. At least not until the riders were close enough for all their faces to be made out.

Will’s breath caught hard in his lungs as he recognized Sam riding among the pack on a leggy Appaloosa. Her eyes locked on his for a second, then she glanced away, pulling her horse back to hide behind a dark-haired man on a bay.

“Hello, neighbor!” Bryce called as he rode up, his grin brimming with bonhomie.

“Bryce,” J.D. acknowledged, not even bothering to tip his hat to the ladies in the company, though he ran his gaze across each face.

The strong-featured blonde who was often with Bryce rode beside him now, her gaze bold and amused as she met J.D.’s eyes. Behind her was a skinny, giggling redhead in a man’s white dress shirt that she hadn’t bothered to button at all, just tied in a knot at her midriff. She leaned over in her saddle and whispered something to a dark-haired man who had “city” written all over him in spite of his western-cut shirt. Bringing up the rear with the pack mule loaded down with picnic baskets was Orvis Slokum, who had worked on the Stars and Bars for a time before he had tried his hand at robbing convenience stores. Bryce had hired him right out of prison and got his name in the paper for being a great humanitarian.

Beside Orvis, obviously trying to make herself invisible, was Samantha. She ducked her head, staring down as if the cap of her saddle horn had suddenly become the most fascinating thing in the world. But there was no mistaking the way she sat a horse or the long curtain of black hair that fell over her shoulder to obscure one side of her face.

J.D. cut a glance out of the corner of his eyes at Will, who had turned chalk white beneath the morning’s layer of dirt.

“What’s going on here?” Bryce asked, looking amused by the quaintness of it all. “A big roundup or something?”

“Work,” J.D. growled, curling his fingers over the pommel of his saddle. “You may have heard of it once or twice.”

Bryce laughed, unoffended. “Mr. Rafferty, I concede you know more about ranching than I do. But then, I know more about getting rich than you, don’t I? My friends and I are out enjoying the fruits of my past labors as it were, taking a little tour of my land.”

A muscle ticked in J.D.’s jaw. “You got a mite lost.”

The smile that curled the corners of the man’s mouth was almost feral. “Not at all.” He let the remark hang for a second, but went on before J.D. could call him on it. “We’re only passing through on our way to the Flying K.”

J.D. could hear Lyle Watkins clear his throat in embarrassment. He wanted to look to his old neighbor with accusation. See what you’re letting in here? But he wouldn’t look away from Bryce.

“We just thought we would do the neighborly thing and stop by to let you know,” Bryce said.

J.D.’s fingers curled a little tighter on the swell of his saddle. He wanted to yell at the man to get the hell off his land. He could feel the shout building in the back of his throat, but he swallowed it down. Control. He’d lost his cool once already today. He wouldn’t lose it now, not with this man.