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into her throat and every flighty molecule she possessed scream for caution. Despite his irresistible wrists, she was nowhere near ready for a relationship. If her failed engagement had taught her nothing else, she had learned this much: She was a terrible judge of men. Always had been. And this one was looking at her as if his interest in the Lazy had nothing to do with boredom or needy teenagers or a dozen other reasons she had invented over the long winter months. It made her heart seize up and her palms sweat.
    â€œColt . . .” she began, desperate to clear the air, but he interrupted her.
    â€œThere she is.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œThe mother-to-be,” he said, pointing toward the east door. “I think that’s her.”
    She turned reluctantly away, knowing she should voice her concerns before her nerve abandoned her completely. “Where?” she asked instead.
    â€œJust to the right of that trio there. See her?”
    She scowled into the poorly lit distance. Colt had risked life and limb propping a twenty-foot ladder against the rafters to replace the burned-out bulbs only a few weeks earlier, but the barn seemed to absorb the sparse light like a black hole, casting most of the building into shadow. Half the ewes seemed to have a mark of something or other on their backs. “I think so. Maybe.”
    â€œIt’s a little hard to tell. But you head around that way. I’ll cut to the right. We’ll trap her between us and check it out. Easy as pie.”
    It was a decent plan, Casie thought, and did as suggested.
    In the end, easy wasn’t exactly the term she would have used, but the ewe with the red mark had been captured. The animal stood motionless, pink-tipped nose held high by Colt’s right hand as his left kept her from backing away.
    â€œWhatcha think?” he asked. He was breathing a little heavily. The ewe had not been partial to being captured and stood wide-eyed and resentful in his grasp. Her comrades had scattered to the edges of the barn like chaff in the wind, leaving a wasteland of scattered straw between them and the intruders.
    Casie scowled down at the ewe in question. She was almost identical to the others, round as a barrel with spindly legs sticking out below her like a woolly hors d’oeuvre on toothpicks. But maybe her belly was a bit more distended than her peers’. Casie dropped to her knees, the better to examine the animal’s udder, and sure enough, it did look engorged.
    She pursed her lips as she rose to her feet.
    Colt grinned. “You can cuss if you want to.”
    She did want to, but her cursing ability had been impugned in the past, and with three teenagers ensconced on the Lazy, this probably wasn’t the perfect time to try to improve her prowess.
    â€œHow could this happen?” she asked instead.
    Colt straightened a little, careful not to loosen his grip on the ewe. “Maybe you should talk to Em about that.”
    She scowled at him. “I meant, they weren’t supposed to be cycling in . . .” She counted back on her fingers. Sheep were considered short-day breeders, which meant they shouldn’t be ready to mate until fall. “July.”
    Colt shrugged. “Maybe she got her months confused.”
    She gave him a look.
    He grinned. “Life’ll make a liar out of you nine times out of ten.”
    â€œLet’s get her in the pen,” she said, but in the end Colt did most of the work. She merely followed behind and shut the gate once the ewe had entered a small wooden cell at the north end of the barn.
    â€œWhen do you think she’ll drop?” she asked.
    Colt shook his head as he stepped through the makeshift gate. During the regular lambing season, dozens of these little crates would be set up along the walls, but right now only a few remained for this type of emergency. “Couple of days maybe. A week on the outside. Least that’s my guess.”
    She blew