Lone Star Rancher Read Free Page B

and quiet. You will keep an eye on her, won’t you? I mean, in case the stalker shows up?”
    He exhaled heavily. “Yes.”
    â€œPromise?”
    â€œPromise.”
    With that, she said her farewells and hung up. He realized he’d forgotten to congratulate her on the article in the medical journal, which their mom had sent a couple of months ago. Not that there wouldn’t be other chances in the near future. If he knew his little sis, she would hound her friend into coming out, then she would hound him about looking after the visitor.
    He grabbed a beer from the fridge, which held very little else, and went out on the patio to enjoy the twilight and the cool evening air. The cattle in the two thousand acres of pasture that comprised the ranch were grazing peacefully or bedded down while they chewed their cuds.
    The quiet appealed to him. No cars were on the paved county road. The interstate highway, I-35, that ran up the middle of the state through San Antonio, Austin and points north was too far away to be heard.
    He liked the distance to the horizon, as if one could ride into the sunset forever. He appreciated the vastness of these wide open spaces that were so different from New York where he’d grown up.
    Years ago, his mother had declared the triplets to be cowboys at heart. She said she’d known it from the moment they’d been born. Instead of crying, they’d come into the world yelling, “Whoopie-ti-yi-yo.”
    Or so she’d said many times with an almost perfectly straight face.
    He smiled, then took a long draught of cold beer. Sometimes he missed his mom, he admitted. When she came to the ranch, she fretted about the house and its lack of a feminine touch and worried about the boys’ love lives as well as their eating habits. She was into tofu and soybeans and healthy stuff. Married men, she pointed out, lived longer, healthier lives than bachelors.
    She especially worried about him. When he’d returned from Dallas, alone and still single, he’d told his family his fiancée had died in a car accident and had never mentioned it again. His mother probably thought his heart was still broken.
    Little did she know, as the saying went. He’d locked that unreliable organ away for good. The Flying Aces was the love of his life. It was enough.
    Clyde smiled again, then frowned as he remembered his promise to his sister. Steven wouldn’t care a whit if Jessica visited. Miles would flirt like mad with her when he was at the house, but most of the time he would be out on the back forty of the ranch, handling that part of the roundup.
    That would leave him to watch after their guest.
    He said a very bad word and was glad his mother wasn’t there to hear it. He would have to guard his tongue if and when the visitor arrived, too.
    Taking a long, long drink of the crisp, cold microbrew, he realized something else and nearly choked.
    â€œDamn,” he muttered, then gave a snort of laughter. “It figures,” he said to Smoky, a dog that had drifted by last year and decided to stay, and now, attracted by the laughter, ambled over for a pat on the head.
    He wondered if his sister had noted the day of the month when she’d called. That would be so like her.
    It was Friday the thirteenth.

Two
    T he wings of the airplane dipped first one way, then the other, as the flight approached San Antonio. Jessica closed her eyes and concentrated on keeping the soda and pretzels down. She wasn’t sure whether it was better to have a full stomach or an empty one when flying in bad weather.
    Lightning crackled, and several people gasped. A little girl screamed. So did her mother.
    St. Elmo’s fire danced along the front edge of the wing. Jessica thought the fuel tanks were located in the wings. Could they catch on fire?
    Summoning up her courage, she reflected on the idea of leaving New York to keep from being killed by a stalker, only to go down in an