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now.”
    This time Natalie didn’t argue. She walked beside her husband across the muddy yard, her back ramrod straight, her small chin thrust forward, her dark curls ruffled by the breeze as he marched her toward the ranch house.
    Beau watched them, his hands crumbling a piece of straw that had clung to his jacket. He hadn’t planned to stir up old memories or cause trouble between Natalie and her husband. Yet coming to the barn with her had done just that.
    Turning away, Beau gazed westward, to the escarpment that rose in rusty white buttresses above the rolling bed of the canyon. A golden eagle, riding an updraft, soared above the Caprock where the high plain began. The scene was one of peace and beauty. But the tension in Beau’s gut wouldn’t go away. Holding Natalie in his arms had reawakened all the old emotions—emotions he no longer had the right to feel.
    Â 
    Inside the barn, Lute Fletcher smiled to himself and pushed the shovel under the last bit of dirty straw and manure. A man would have to be damned near deaf not to overhear every word of the confrontation that had just taken place right outside the barn door—just as he would have to be damned near blind not to see the near embrace between Beau Tyler and Slade Haskell’s wife. And Lute Fletcher was far from being deaf or blind.
    As he tossed the shovelful of debris onto the mound already in the wheelbarrow, he wondered if that little scene he had witnessed between Beau and Natalie might prove useful to him. Maybe he’d get himself into Haskell’s good graces, because he sure as hell was tired of mucking out stalls. To emphasize his disgust with the job at hand, Lute let go of the shovel, letting it fall against the stall’s wooden partition instead of propping it up. It clattered onto the cement floor about the same time he heard the creaking hinges of the barn door opening again.
    Figuring it was Beau Tyler coming back in, Lute reached for the wheelbarrow handles. It wasn’t Beau who walked in, but Lute’s older cousin Sky Fletcher. Lute ran a skimming glance over Sky, noting the crisp white shirt he wore tucked into a pair of dark, belted jeans, a silver and turquoise bolo tie around his neck. A dressy, tan Stetson covered most of his midnight-black hair.
    Sharp blue eyes briefly locked their attention on Lute. “I thought you’d be finished in here by now,” Sky stated even as he angled toward the stall with the pregnant mare inside it.
    â€œAlmost.” Lute couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his voice over being stuck with such a menial task. “That lady vet was just here checkin’ on the mare.”
    â€œI know. I spoke to her outside.”
    The longer he looked at Sky in his clean clothes, knowing how much his own smelled like shit and sweat, the hotter his resentment grew—until it spilled out. “Don’t see why I gotta work on the day the big boss got buried.”
    Unfazed by the heat in Lute’s voice, Sky slipped into the stall, moving to the buckskin’s side. “Bull would have been the first to tell you that there’s never a day off from doing chores.”
    â€œMaybe not, but it seems like I’m always the one shoveling shit,” he grumbled. “When you hired me on last month, this sure as hell wasn’t the kind of work I figured I’d be doing. I figured I’d be out working cattle, learning the ranch business. Dammit, you’re my cousin, Sky. You know this isn’t fit work for a Comanche.”
    â€œIt’s how I started,” Sky replied, never losing his air of calm. “Eventually I worked my way up to wrangler, and now assistant foreman.”
    â€œAnd how long did that take?” Lute challenged.
    â€œDoes it matter?” Sky countered.
    â€œHell, yes! I’m twenty-one and I don’t plan on spending the next however many years it will take pushing this shovel.”
    â€œThat’s