Riley broke the spell when she moved to stand beside Avery. “This is why I didn’t want my friends involved,” she said to Boone. She took Avery’s arm. “Come on, let’s go.”
Walker almost reached out to stop them. Racked his mind for something else to say that would keep Avery here with him longer.
In the end, he kept quiet. Either Avery would be as curious about him as he was about her—or she wouldn’t.
He kept hold of her gaze, though. Refused to look away. Hoped she could tell he wanted far more than this moment with her.
She flushed a little under his scrutiny. Looked him up and down again.
Stay, he willed at her. Give us a chance.
She hesitated, but in the end she turned and faced Boone. “You don’t deserve Riley” was her final salvo. She let her friend drag her away, the fight gone out of her. She didn’t look back, but he thought she wanted to.
She was tough—but fragile, too. He had to remember that. To take care—
A thought struck him, one painful enough to take his breath away.
He was going to hurt her, he realized. He wouldn’t mean to, but it was almost inevitable, given his circumstances.
Almost.
There was just a sliver of a chance he could pull this off without doing so.
Determination filled him, and Walker swore he’d do everything in his power to prevent Avery from ever learning he’d been promised to another woman when he fell for her. He’d do what it took to hunt down Elizabeth Blaine and free himself from her once and for all.
“Now what do we do?” Jericho asked, his gaze on Savannah’s retreating back.
Boone lifted his hands in defeat and walked away.
Looking after him, Clay shrugged. “We’re screwed,” he said.
Walker wasn’t ready to accept that. “We’re screwed only if we let ourselves be.” He regretted his words when they turned to him. Hadn’t he been filled with doubts about this project only minutes ago? Who was he to rally them?
He watched Avery toil up the hill with the other women and knew he’d always be able to pinpoint her in a crowd from here on in.
He was a man who’d fallen hard for a woman at first sight. A man who wanted the chance at a future with her.
“We’ll do everything it takes to convince them to give us a chance,” he said, his will rising to meet this new challenge. “Everything.”
Chapter One
‡
Present day
“Walker, something’s wrong!”
At the sound of Avery’s voice, Walker sprang into motion before he was fully awake, out of his sleeping bag, into jeans and boots and halfway across the floor before it dawned on him that she was fully dressed and calling him from outside the open bunkhouse door. Had she already started her morning chores?
He was losing his touch.
Walker was still untangling his dreams from reality as he followed her outside. She darted ahead of him, the forest green of her work gown contrasting with the wide, white apron she wore over it. After nearly a year spent with a ranch full of women in Regency garb, he still had to smile to see Avery pick up her long skirts and run toward the closest pasture, but his smile was short lived. She was heading for the bison.
Was something wrong with them?
They’d already been let out once this year by someone trying to sabotage their chances to win Westfield Ranch. Were the bison gone again? Would they need to wake everyone and call all their friends in town to help round them up?
No. There they were, a herd of prehistoric-looking animals in the gloom of an early April morning, their shapes mingling with tendrils of fog.
“It’s Ruth. Something’s wrong with her,” Avery tossed back over her shoulder, still running. She stopped only when she reached the fence.
Walker prided himself on a keen eye, but Avery had him stumped with the way she could discern one bison from another in the herd. The animal she was pointing to stood some twenty yards from the fence, motionless while her herd-mates cropped the pasture around her.
“What’s wrong with her?” Walker caught up with Avery, as edgy with the desire to get close to her as he always was when she was around, especially these last weeks when she’d held herself so aloof.
He’d messed up—big time. Accused her of stealing a family heirloom, a traditional Crow fan used in ceremonial dances that had been handed down for generations and given to him by his father. He’d thought he had proof. Clem Bailey, one of Base Camp’s directors, had showed them footage of her committing the crime.
He still wasn’t sure why he’d believed the man.
“She’s just standing there. She won’t eat. She isn’t moving, except she’s—I don’t know. She’s shaking now and then, and she’s making these strange sounds.”
As Walker watched, a ripple ran over Ruth’s shaggy body, and she emitted a kind of painful lowing sound that must have been what sent Avery running to find him. He didn’t blame her; it was like nothing she would have heard from the beasts before. He’d heard it plenty of times, though. There was a bison herd on the Crow reservation, and he’d grown up taking note of all their behaviors.
“She’s calving.”
Avery’s mouth opened, and she turned to him, her face pale in the gray light of dawn. “Calving? Isn’t it too early? Her baby isn’t due to come for another two weeks.”
He smiled at her belief in the punctuality of nature. He knew Avery had been studying about all the animals she helped care for on the ranch. She’d named every one of them, and heartache was bound to follow, given this was a working ranch, not some petting zoo. Avery had hidden
