“I’m not making promises for anything,” he said when he could break away. “What with Gladys and Polly both busy, Jill and I are going to have our hands full. Give my apologies to your grandmother for leaving early, and I’ll see you around,” he said as he made a hasty retreat to his truck.

A couple of men waved him through the cattle guard, and he could have sworn he saw a redhead in the back of a truck barreling down the highway at breakneck speed on his way back to the main road. But Betsy was in the house with her family, and there was no way Jill Cleary would be headed for Wild Horse.

* * *

Quaid drove right up in front of the bunkhouse, held the truck door open for her, and walked her up to the porch.

“Again, I’m sorry for all this,” he said.

“Not a problem. Stuff happens in all families,” she said.

She had two hours to change clothes and get ready for supper on the Gallagher side of Fiddle Creek. What she really wanted was a long, long nap and a big thick book to read until she fell asleep, but a promise was a promise. And once she’d done her duty at Wild Horse, then she’d never set foot on either ranch again.

He removed his hat and held it in one hand while he ran the back of his other one down her cheek from temple to chin. “I want to spend more time with you, Jill. Next time we’ll take a drive around all of River Bend, and I’ll show you where Kinsey and I call home. We’ll steer clear of the feuding business.”

His green eyes went all soft and dreamy. She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue a moment before the kiss. It was a good kiss, a man’s kiss who’d honed his craft to an art; one that left no doubt that Declan wasn’t the only black sheep on River Bend. One hand had tangled itself into her hair for leverage. The other had slid down below belt level on her slim-cut denim skirt to cup her butt. Her hormones should have been humming, but there wasn’t a peep out of them.

“Until next time. I’ll be by the store tomorrow,” he whispered seductively.

“Then I’ll see you tomorrow.” She took a step back and opened the door.

He brushed a sweet kiss across her lips and settled his hat back on his blond hair.

The second one didn’t stir up anything more than the first one did. Not even one little hitch in her heartbeat. Maybe there was something drastically wrong with her.

Chapter 6

“Cinderella made it home, did she?” Sawyer peeked over the back of the sofa. His dark eyes still had sleep in them, and his face showed slight amusement. “Did poor old Quaid get a good-bye kiss, or was the afternoon so good that it was a see-you-later kiss? I heard that you had to cut your dinner short, since there was a pig incident.”

She pushed his legs off the sofa and melted into the corner. “You should have been there, Sawyer, instead of up there in the big house, eating dinner with the Gallaghers. The Brennans figured out that the pigs had been stolen, and Mavis tried to kick the shit out of one of Naomi Gallagher’s grandsons.”

Sawyer’s skin turned scarlet. “You’re shittin’ me, and I missed it all for a damn steak that wasn’t even good.”

“How’d you get home before me, anyway?”

“I made the excuse that I needed to do the evening chores early. Hey, did I see you in a truck headed toward the Gallagher place?”

She pushed him on the shoulder. “You probably did, because I was.”

He grabbed his shoulder and faked injury. “Don’t be mean to me.”

“I wouldn’t do that to a man I’m livin’ with,” she said. “If you can get me out of this next date, I’ll clean the whole bunkhouse next week.”

“Sorry, sweetheart. You gave your word. Tyrell will be here with roses in his hand in fifty-five minutes, but I do make this promise. I’ll do my damnedest to run interference, so you won’t have to go out with them again, if you’ll do the same for me. Looks like we are going to have to watch each other’s backs, or we’ll both go down as collateral damage in this war. Now tell me more about this pig thing.”

“I’m tired. I don’t want to go. I don’t want roses. I’d rather stay here and tell you what happened when they fired the first shot of the pig war,” she whined.

“You’ve got enough time to do both.” He grinned. “So start talking. Gladys laughed when she called me and said the same thing, that it would be known as the pig war.”

Jill told the story from start to finish, omitting the kiss at the end. “Now tell me how it looked from the other end.”

“I wouldn’t know. I must’ve left just before the fireworks. Betsy felt me up under the tablecloth, so I faked a phone call. I’m supposed to be pulling a calf right now, but I don’t think God will lay the sin of lying to my charge when it comes to Betsy. Lord, that woman is brazen.”

Jill gasped. “You are kiddin’ me. She actually did that?”

“Yes, she did. Right up my knee to…”

She slapped her hands over her ears. “Hush! That goes beyond brazen. Did she kiss you too?”

“If you call that grinding of two lips against mine, then I guess she did. You didn’t answer me about Quaid. Kiss or no kiss?”

“Kiss. Not bad. Not good. Generic, I guess. Rub my feet, and tell me that you’ll call the Gallaghers and tell them I have an intestinal flu and can’t go to their place.”

“Nope. I have to go listen to the Brennans bitch because their hogs have been stolen, so you have to go to the Gallaghers. Take off your high heels and throw those feet up here. Poor little things. The way you women punish them with those kinds of shoes should be a sin.”

Chapter 7

Sawyer rubbed her feet until her eyes grew heavy, and she was almost asleep before he set them on the cold floor. “Get your cute little ass up off this sofa and go do whatever it is you women do to be gorgeous for a date. Next Sunday, I’m figuring that we need to go to Gainesville right after church to pick up supplies. We could get them at the store, and we will, but we will forget milk or eggs or even sugar, and Lord knows we can’t live without whatever the hell we forgot until Monday morning.”

“That won’t take all afternoon,” she groaned.

“They’ve got motels. We’ll split the price of a room with two beds. You can read, and I’ll take my earphones and watch television all afternoon.”

“Isn’t that running from our problems?” she asked.

“Hell, no! It’s well-spent money on hours of peace and quiet. You bring the cookies, and I’ll bring a case of beer. We’d spend that much on dinner and a movie if we were dating, which we sure as hell aren’t,” he said.

She sat up slowly. “Aunt Gladys says that you can endure anything as long as there’s an end in sight. I’m tough. I can do this. But why the hell aren’t we dating?”

“You’re not my type. I don’t date women who point shotguns at me. I don’t date women who can’t cook, even though you make a hell of an apple pie. There’s only one little bitty piece left in there.”

She flipped around to face him. “You ate half a pie after a dinner at the Gallaghers?”

“Nope, I ate half a pie after I didn’t finish my dinner at the Gallaghers.” He grinned. “Shoo!” He flipped his hands out to motion her away. “Go change clothes six times and stand in front of the mirror. I’ll tell you if your jeans make your butt look fat.” He flopped back down on the sofa, shut his eyes, and stretched out his long legs until his feet rested in her lap.

She shoved them off and stood up. “You are horrible.”

“I’m your roommate, darlin’, not your relationship. Roommates are honest with each other.”

“In that case, darlin’,” she said, “your soup needs a little more picante sauce to make it good.”

“Ouch!” He opened one eye. “You don’t have to talk mean about my soup because your butt looks fat in them low-ridin’ jeans.”

She flounced off to her room. He made her mad, but at the same time he kept her from thinking about another long evening, trying to remember people’s names that she had no intention of ever seeing again outside of the store and the bar.