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name was Clint Harrigan. So much for Deirdre’s plan to avoid men wearing Stetsons. Loni hadn’t even realized he was behind her in line.
    How she knew his name, she wasn’t sure. Normally she didn’t pick up on people’s names when they touched her, only images and thoughts and sensations. But the punch from Clint Harrigan had been the strongest she’d ever felt, the images hitting her so hard and fast that she’d almost collapsed.
    His little boy was in terrible danger. The instant Clint Harrigan had touched her, Loni had seen an orange raft capsizing in river rapids. Two adults, a man and a woman, had been thrown into the water along with the child and a Saint Bernard, but only the boy and the dog had resurfaced. Cold, such a horrible cold. The huge canine had seized the chest strap of the child’s life preserver in its teeth and swum toward shore.
    Still trembling, Loni sat back and stared through the windshield. Trevor. That was the little boy’s name, and the faithful family dog was called Nana, after the lovable Saint Bernard in Peter Pan. Oh, God, oh, God. The adults hadn’t survived. Though Loni hadn’t been seeing through their eyes, she felt certain they hadn’t resurfaced. Instead they had been sucked under by the powerful currents and carried downstream.
    The knowledge made her feel sick. Two people had either just died or were about to die very soon. Yet when she gazed across the parking lot, shoppers went about their business, oblivious to the tragedy she’d just witnessed. A young mother was opening a box of animal crackers for her toddler before taking groceries from the cart and putting them into the back of her SUV. A middle-aged man was thrusting his arm through the partially open window of a Mazda to pet his miniature schnauzer before going inside the store. Loni felt so alone, so horribly alone.
    She guessed the woman in her vision was the child’s mother. Sandra. That was the name that whispered in her mind. She wasn’t sure who the man had been. The boy’s stepfather, maybe? Loni only knew that Clint Harrigan, her dream cowboy, was Trevor’s biological father. And though it made no sense, she also knew Clint Harrigan was the only person—the one and only person—who’d be able to save the child’s life. Crazy, so crazy . But Loni had long since learned not to question her visions, only to believe in them.
    She jumped with a start when Clint Harrigan emerged from the market and walked across the parking lot toward a blue Ford pickup. After she’d envisioned him in her dreams for most of her life, it felt eerie to be watching him now. He walked with unhurried ease, yet covered a lot of ground with his long, loose-jointed stride. He wore a light blue work shirt stained with dirt at one shoulder, the sleeves folded back over thick, sun-bronzed forearms. A hand-tooled leather belt rode his lean hips, its large silver buckle flashing in the sunlight with every step he took.
    Loni studied him with detached fascination, taking in his faded jeans and the way his thighs bunched under the denim with each push of his booted feet. For some reason she’d always thought he’d be taller, possibly because she’d first dreamed of him when she was a child and all men had seemed huge to her. But instead of towering like a pine, he put her more in mind of the shorter juniper trees indigenous to the surrounding high desert terrain—rock hard to the very core and tough enough to withstand almost anything.
    His jet-black hair needed a cut, lying in lazy waves over his forehead and caressing the collar of his shirt under the brim of his hat. His features, burnished to teak by exposure to the sun, might have been chiseled from granite, the blade-sharp bridge of his nose jutting out from between thick black eyebrows, high cheekbones underscoring his intense brown eyes. His square jawline, roped with muscle, angled to a deeply