Wildfire Read Free

beckoning motion to the riders following her. She touched the brim of her Stetson hat and nodded as she passed by.
    It had been stupid, coming out here to seek out Tessa as an ally. Thinking he could shelve his old emotions easily as a stack of old and inconsequential photographs.
    Because just as before, he felt a flicker of his old, soul-deep attraction to her.
    And all he really needed was to be alone.

     
    During the following week, Tessa led several overnight pack trips—a group of teachers who came out for a weekend under the stars, then three fly fishermen looking for cutthroat trout up in the higher elevations, where the spring run-off hadn’t turned the water brown with silt.
    Today, she’d gone out alone to check cattle, and things hadn’t been good.
    Gus hobbled out of the main horse barn when she dismounted. “Find the cattle?”
    “I found thirty head loose, about a mile northwest of the summer pasture. The fence was down.” Tessa hauled the saddle and blanket from her gelding’s back and settled them on the hitching rail, then took off her gloves and slapped them against her chaps to shake off the dust. “Ten are missing.”
    He tipped the brim of his hat up with a forefinger. “What did they do, just plow through it?”
    “Nope. The fence posts were upright, but it looked like the barb wire was cut.”
    “Figured there was trouble, just from the look on your face. I know for a fact that those fences were solid just a few weeks ago.”
    Gus had ridden up there alone, something that had worried her from the moment he left until the minute he returned to the ranch, but she’d been busy with calving, foaling and customers who had flown in from Oklahoma, and she’d had no choice but to let him go. Someone had to ride fence on the summer range before they drove cattle up there, and it should have been Ray, her much younger hired hand.
    But Ray had abruptly quit the week before, and there’d been no answers to her advertisement in the local paper. None from the job listing on the ranch’s Web site.
    Today’s disappearance of ten valuable cows was just one more aggravation added to many—and would mean days of searching for them. Meetings with the sheriff. Endless rounds of phone calls and faxes to sales barns in a four state area.
    But it wasn’t only the fence and missing cattle that were bothering her. Gus had been more like a protective uncle than an employee, since her childhood. There was no sense in getting him riled up at hearing that Josh Bryant was in the area. With luck, Josh was already on his way out of Wyoming, and wouldn’t be back.
    “It’s only May 15th,” she said. “Seems too early to be having much trouble with campers, and I don’t think anyone else is starting pack trips up into the high country until the end of next week. Too much snow.”
    “You think it’s them thieves that were over at the Langley ranch?” Gus scratched his jaw. “Five, maybe six head of their black baldies disappeared.”
    “I’ll call Michael.” She untied Dusty and led him over to the pasture gate a few yards away. “There’s a definite advantage to having a brother-in-law who’s a sheriff.”
    Gus nodded. “Good man.”
    And he was right. Michael had been a homicide detective before accepting a job as acting sheriff last year, and had won a special election held in January, when the former sheriff decided to retire due to poor health. He’d certainly brought big-city skills and ideas to this county, something that had been long overdue.
    When he and Tessa’s sister Janna married last month, they’d invited the entire town, and the crowd had nearly overwhelmed the Community Church where most of the McAllisters had attended for generations.
    Claire hadn’t gone in years, just on stubborn principle.
    Tessa hadn’t been much better.
    She gathered up her saddle, bridle and saddle blanket, and lugged them into the tack room just inside the barn. After so many hours in the saddle, her