“Always,” Karen said, but her expression turned thoughtful. “Of course, there might have been a problem when Caleb decided to marry me. I think Maggie Fletcher had her eye on him, and her father really wanted the match.”
Grady nodded. “Jealousy. That’s always a good motive for revenge, but Maggie doesn’t strike me as the type of woman to go around poisoning cattle or cutting fences. How about you? What do you think of her?”
Karen considered the woman who’d made no secret of her infatuation with Caleb. Tall and slender, with a no-nonsense manner, Maggie had always been polite, if distant, with Karen. There had never been any question of them becoming close friends. Even if Caleb hadn’t stood squarely between them, their personalities were unsuited. Maggie wore a perpetually dour expression, made worse by the realization that she would never have the man she loved.
“I feel sorry for her,” Karen said. “I think she really did care for Caleb. I know she was distraught at the funeral.”
“Would she have tried to ruin him for not marrying her?”
“No,” Karen said slowly. “She might go after me, but never Caleb. I was the one she blamed for destroying her chances with him.”
Grady’s expression turned thoughtful. “Then she could be seeking revenge on you now,” he suggested.
“But why? Caleb’s gone. What does she have to gain?”
“She might still be hoping for some sense of satisfaction that she was right all along, that you were wrong for Caleb and that she would have been the better choice,” Grady said.
“I suppose,” Karen said, but it didn’t ring true. “But that wouldn’t explain the earlier incidents. Remember, those happened before Caleb died.”
“What about Maggie’s father? Would he have wanted to get even with Caleb for spoiling his plan for uniting the two families?”
“Possibly,” Karen admitted, though she had a difficult time imagining either of the Fletchers deliberately trying to sabotage her cattle. “Let’s think about the Oldhams for a minute. There was a feud between them and the Hansons a zillion years ago. Something about water rights, I think.”
“Is it still going on?”
She shook her head. “It was settled ages ago. They have access to the creek that flows through our property. Caleb’s grandfather wrote up the agreement himself.”
“But if they had this land, the issue could never come up again, right?”
“True.”
“I’ll visit them tomorrow,” Grady said. “Maybe they don’t want to take a chance that you might renege on the agreement.”
“If you go, I’m coming with you,” Karen insisted. “This is my ranch that’s being targeted.”
“Fine. We’ll go right after we get the chores done in the morning.”
Once again, Grady’s assumption that the chores were his to share took her aback. At the same time, it gave her a warm feeling in the pit of her stomach to know that she was no longer facing everything—not the daily grind, not the battle to keep the ranch afloat—alone.
Grady rubbed a hand across his face. “It’s late. I’d better get out of here.”
Karen considered offering to let him stay in the guest room, the room they had almost shared earlier, but thought better of it. Her resolve where Grady was concerned was weak enough. It wasn’t fair to keep putting him in the position of having to hold back whenever their hormones got the better of them. She couldn’t let him stay here until she was ready to let him share her bed.
“It’s a long drive,” she said eventually. “How about another cup of coffee before you head out?”
He shook his head. “I’ll be fine, and the sooner I go, the more rest I’ll get, and the sooner I can get back here in the morning.”
She walked him to the door. He reached out and cupped the back of her head, then bent to kiss her gently on the forehead. “We’re going to get to the bottom of this. I promise you.”
But then what? she wondered when he had left. Was he only helping her to solve the puzzle, to tie up loose ends, so that the land would be free and clear of problems when he got his hands on it? That was possible, she told herself. Even likely. And yet, somehow she could no longer make herself believe it.
If discovering that she had feelings for Grady had surprised her, if the depth of her desire for him had startled her, then the discovery that she trusted him was the most shocking thing of all. Feelings—lust—had nothing to do with common sense or logic. They were matters of the heart.
But trust, especially when it involved an old enemy, required more. It meant that both her heart and her head had examined the facts and found Grady Blackhawk trustworthy.
But what if you’re wrong? a tiny voice in her head demanded. What if Grady is simply sneakier and more clever than you ever imagined?
Then she would pay a terrible price in guilt and self-recriminations, she concluded. But it was her decision to make, not the Hansons’, not even Caleb’s.
And the bottom line was that she had learned to trust her instincts where Grady was concerned. He might want her ranch, but he was not the one out to hurt her.
Someone was, though, and she intended to find out who.
* * *
Though the prospect was very distasteful to her, Karen called Caleb’s parents in Arizona first thing in the morning. They knew more about the old feud between the Oldhams and the Hansons than she did. They also knew more about the high hopes Maggie Fletcher had had where Caleb was concerned.
When Caleb’s father answered the phone, she couldn’t hide her relief. He would give her straight, thoughtful answers, not a diatribe against Grady, which was all she could have expected from Mrs. Hanson.
“This is old news, but I assume you’ve got a reason for asking about it,” Carl Hanson said.
“There’s been another incident,” Karen told him. “The fence along the highway was deliberately cut this week.”
“That’s a pretty obvious place for a person who wanted to
