"Let us pray…"

You go right ahead, pal. For his part, Ethan didn't feel the least bit like praying, not after this most recent spiritual kick in the teeth. To him the service simply reflected another in a series of injustices to have befallen him and his family and he believed it not only logical, but right, for his heart to have grown as bitter cold as the wind sweeping down from the glaciated Crazy Mountains. In fact, he doubted it was possible for a man to get more hostile than he felt.

He shifted his gaze from the alpine backdrop and stared at the spray of carnations on Marilee's casket, already shriveling in the devastating cold. But no matter how hard he tried to ignore all the "should haves" that pounded in his head like toppling tombstones, they wouldn't stop coming….

There should have been a way to save his sister.

His newborn niece should have been allowed to know her mama.

Just once, someone he cared about should have a chance at a full, happy life.

No, he didn't buy into the spiritual fertilizer the pastor from First Christian Church was selling. He'd stopped being that gullible years ago.

Someone cleared his throat, and he glanced up to see virtually everyone on the other side of the casket watching him with varying degrees of wariness and dislike. The Taylor coalition. He scanned the two and a half, nearly three, dozen people surrounding Noble and Ruth. Marilee's so-called mourners.

Most were strangers to him, out-of-towners, from Billings; and judging by the expressions of indifference and resentment on their faces, he would wager the majority had never said more than a dozen words to her in her entire life. Except for Melissa Avery North, who owned White-horn's Hip Hop Café, where Marilee had worked before marrying Clay Taylor. She'd been good to Marilee—but Charlie Avery's kid had her own reasons for casting him venomous looks.

The rest had to be friends and business acquaintances of her in-laws—a bunch who believed attending funerals was the politically and socially correct thing to do. Considering the number of wreaths and arrangements scattered around, Ethan guessed they'd also sent the prerequisite toasters and can openers to the wedding. Well, the hypocrites had better not get any ideas about sending any sterling-silver baby dishes and junk for Darcy, or he would be doing something besides staring them down. They might find it embarrassing to be asked questions like "Where were you when Marilee was being bullied and heaven-knew-what by her husband?"

A fluttering movement caught his attention. It was the

funeral director, waving at him and indicating the single red rose he'd been handed when he first arrived. The pantomiming and wagging of eyebrows finally jogged his memory. The show was over. They expected him to put the flower on the casket and beat it so everyone else could get back to Billings for the reception the Taylors were giving, which would probably be written off somehow as a business expense against Taylor Construction Company, Inc.

Far be it from him to hold up things. He'd said his real goodbye to Marilee earlier this morning, at the funeral parlor.

He approached the coffin, the snow and frozen ground crunching beneath his boots, and set the rose between two of the pink carnations. The contrast startled him; it reminded him of blood on skin… of why and how she'd died. Swallowing hard, he turned away, only to be trapped by Kate Randall's direct gaze.

She stood half hidden by a hedge of evergreens, as if unsure whether she had a right to be on his side. As far as he was concerned, she didn't. If she belonged anywhere, it was over with the rest of that self-righteous bunch. Noble and Ruth would welcome her with open arms; after all, money and power rarely avoided the opportunity to rub elbows with judicial clout. That was especially true now, with Marilee gone and Darcy's future in limbo. But his bitterness became muddled confusion when he saw the concern and compassion in Kate's clear gray eyes.

What was going on? Weeks ago, if Rafe Rawlings had been a more creative or coercive cop, and there hadn't been scheduling problems, she would have been the one to preside over his murder trial, instead of Matthews. She was certainly capable of such cool dispassion; they didn't call her the Hanging Judge behind her back for nothing. As a result, he had difficulty accepting this performance.

But something still reined in his impulse to strike out at her and he knew what it was. History. Theirs.

Once, in a more innocent time, she'd been his best friend's girl; back a lifetime ago, when she'd wore her hair in a long braid, instead of that prim twist he hated. Try as he did to forget it, memories of those moments the three of them had shared stuck in his consciousness like fresh flypaper. So did the promise he'd once made to Wayne about her.

Damn it all, why couldn't he put all that to rest? She'd proved she didn't need anyone and could take care of herself. Hell, it would take a gun held to his head to make him admit it, but even he stayed a bit in awe of the woman and what she'd accomplished thus far in her life.

Miserable and resentful, he passed her, careful to keep his head down and his stride long. But he hadn't covered much ground before he heard her lighter step behind him. He let her follow, fuming about her nerve. Only when he reached his mud-splattered pickup did he swing around and practically snarl, "What?"

"Would you mind some company?"

"What do you think?"

His caustic tone and glare didn't seem to faze her at all. "I'd like to talk to you, Ethan."

"Can't imagine about what… unless your boy wonder Rawlings has cooked up some new theory about how I killed Charlie Avery and you want to find out if it'll stick this time."

The stinging-cold wind whipped free several strands of her dark blond hair and dragged them across her eyes. With leather-gloved hands, she brushed them away, but she didn't shiver, although her slim wool coat and scarf appeared more suitable for Sunday church than snow and near-gale-force winds. Her dressy boots were equally im-

practical, and it annoyed him to remember what slender feet and ankles she had.

"Don't be an ass, Ethan. I've never been the enemy."

He almost laughed, as much at her opinion of their relationship as at his weakness for making promises he couldn't keep—to a dead man. "Could have fooled me."

She stepped closer. He gave her points for that. Normally women avoided him. That had been the rule long before his arrest. Since his release, things had only grown worse. What made the movement more impressive was that no other single woman he'd ever known—at least none under the age of eighty—had dared to go out in public without wearing full war paint. But, as usual, Kate followed her own rules and stood before him almost barefaced; what was more, he saw no visible sign of self-consciousness. He couldn't help but admire her for that, as well—and note again that, while not magazine-beautiful, she had a clean, honest something that, combined with her inner strength and professional notoriety, made her a person to be reckoned with. On a good day, he tried to steer clear of her; this was nowhere near a good day.

"I know this is a difficult time for you."

He steeled himself against that calm, low tone that reminded him of brushed suede and quiet moments at sunset. "Do you?"

"Nevertheless, I think it's important that we speak."

Had he described her as strong? Stubborn, he corrected, shrugging deeper into the collar of his down jacket, and tugging the brim of his hat lower. "I have to get home."

"Then I'll follow you there."

He frowned. At home there were things he didn't want her to see, not that he believed for an instant she didn't already know he had the baby.

"At this time the court has no authority to take Marilee's child away from you," she told him, as though his concern were a spoken thing between them. "Nor would I consider it. Yet."

That one economical admission convinced Ethan that he needed to give her the benefit of the doubt. He would be a fool to think Noble had been sitting still and twiddling his thumbs since being chased off the Double N. Ethan wanted to find out what to expect next. Kate's implication that he wouldn't be kept in the dark deserved a gesture on his part. Just as long as she didn't ask for his trust.

"Sure you want to miss the spread over at the Taylors?" he asked, a little annoyed at himself for yielding so quickly. "I hear they're sparing no expense to console all those heartbroken folks who came to mourn my sister."

"I'm positive. Besides, I had my coffee at home, before I checked on the horses."

Ethan seasoned his smile with sarcasm. "Good move, Your Honor. Remind me that you come from the working class, too." As if he ever forgot that, although her learned father had been a judge, it had been primarily her aunt Beryl who raised her, and who was the one to build the reputation of Shadow Ranch as a source for unique saddle horses. The woman had possessed one of the best instincts for character in animals this side of the Rockies, and had been known equally for her gentle hand in bringing out their most favorable qualities. An individualist of the first order, Beryl had never given a damn what people thought of her, and not only had no one dared to call her a spinster to her face, they had never dared accuse her of being a tough businesswoman, either.

Kate was a chip off the old block in more ways than one, except that as much as she loved the animals, the law was

her passion. She left most of the training to her foreman, Jorge Cantu, just as she left the general care of her home to his wife, Eva. But there was no denying that she put in her time helping out with the endless chores that went along with ranching. Another reason why he wasn't surprised to see her gray eyes chill to a flinty silver at his remark.

"Don't make me regret coming to see you, Ethan."

Because he knew she'd let him push and provoke farther than most people dared. He shrugged. "C'mon, then, if you're that set on it."

He watched her on and off the entire twenty-five-mile trip from Whitehorn to his place. It helped him keep control of the emotions that kept threatening to burn his eye sockets deeper and a new orifice in his belly. Marilee was gone and he had to accept that. The time they'd lost couldn't be salvaged, nor could the unspoken words of concern and caring be voiced. He would never forget, and maybe he didn't deserve to forgive himself for jumping to too many conclusions; but he couldn't afford to mope about it now. He had new worries to deal with, new responsibilities.

He sighed and scanned the horizon. Since the storm a few days ago, central Montana had a new, cleaner layer of snow blanketing the land, and it visually softened the alternately rolling, then sharp, terrain. As he drove west out of town, he eased around the Crazies, as he called them, the fifty-million-year-old formations that were considered a good twenty million years younger than some of the giants beyond them. To him, the Crazy Mountains always signified freedom; the freedom he felt like a sigh of relief when he was putting civilization in his rearview mirror.

Despite the lingering clouds, the sharp wind off the mountains, along with the traffic, had done a good job of eating much of the packed snow and ice off the roads. It

was time to remove the tire chains. Maybe he would get around to it this afternoon. Hopefully. It all depended on how long the twig slept. He could ask John Mountain to tackle the chore for him, but the sooner he got himself organized and adjusted to the changes in his life, the better.

It amazed him how, after only two days of having a newborn under his roof, all his old routines were shot to hell—and it wasn't because of any fear in handling the kid. Shoot, he'd been eleven when his mother gave birth to Marilee, and because she'd had a rough time with the pregnancy, his mother had relied on him to fill in wherever possible. If that meant pacing in front of the fireplace with a colicky baby half the night in order for her to get a few hours sleep, he'd done it. He'd changed his share of diapers, too. The way he saw it, there wasn't anything a six-pound-seven-ounce baby could serve up that a calf hadn't presented to him first.

But he was no longer eleven, and Vietnam had changed his sleeping habits; as a result, what rest he usually managed was being cut back by the twenty-inch bundle of energy he'd taken into his home. On the upside, Darcy was already proving to be a cute kid, and while he would have taken a kick in the ribs from an ornery cow before admitting as much, it gave him a strange peace to sit in the recliner with her at night and watch her sleep.

Some might call him a contradiction, but he saw nothing illogical about enjoying having a baby around, and at the same time finding adults more of a hassle than they were worth. To him, life was best if kept simple. As with cattle, babies had fairly basic needs, needs he found easy enough to fulfill.

Grown-ups were another matter entirely. They insisted on complicating everything, and seasoning those compli-

cations with ulterior motives and selfishness. Give him solitude over that bunk anyday. His life might not be perfect, but it beat living with ulcers and alimony.

Almost forty minutes after leaving Whitehorn, and a few miles beyond the entrance of Kate's Shadow Ranch, he drove over the cattle guards marking the Double N. Years ago, his mother had insisted on the abbreviation, after his father—unsure of their future as cattle ranchers—dubbed their spread No Name Yet. His mother had been horrified, fearing people would laugh them all the way across the Great Divide, back into Idaho and a tedious existence as potato farmers. She'd never shared his father's sly sense of humor; and despite her willingness to work hard, she'd also been vain about her hands. An accomplished seamstress, she'd much preferred doing custom sewing and alterations after a long day of helping with the stock, if it meant avoiding those potato fields. She'd been an ambitious woman, and Ethan doubted she would have liked the way he'd abandoned her plans for the place.