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touched by her interference.
    “It sounded to me like you were losing,” she pointed out with a grin, as she crossed the room toward their father. She seemed utterly confident of Blackjack’s acceptance of her presence, despite his order to get out. Sure enough, as her arm slid around Blackjack’s waist, his arm circled her shoulders. She stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek, then grinned and said, “You know I’m right, Daddy.”
    Blackjack made a grunting sound in his throat, but he didn’t contradict her.
    No wonder his sister was such a brat, Trace thought. She had their father wrapped around her little finger.
    “Why can’t Trace start a quarter horse operation?” Summer asked, her candid hazel eyes focused up at Blackjack.
    “He wouldn’t know a good cutting horse from a nag,” Blackjack said. “How can he hope to breed a winner?”
    Trace bit his tongue rather than defend himself.
    Summer winked at Trace, then said, “Well, Daddy, there’s one sure way to settle the matter.”
    “What’s that?” Blackjack asked.
    “I’d be willing to bet you Trace can pick a horse that makes it into the top ten at the Open finals of the Futurity in Fort Worth.”
    Blackjack laughed. “There must be a thousand horses entered in that competition.”
    “More like twelve hundred,” Summer said with a grin. “And my bet is still on the table.”
    “What are the stakes?” her father asked, his eyes narrowed.
    “If Trace’s horse finishes in the top ten, you fund whatever operation he wants here at Bitter Creek.”
    “And if it doesn’t?” Blackjack asked.
    “You don’t have to fund the operation,” Summer said with a shrug.
    The fact that his father was playing this sort of game with his sister convinced Trace that it wasn’t the idea of a breeding operation Blackjack objected to, so much as the fact that it was Trace who’d come up with it.
    “The stakes aren’t high enough,” Blackjack said.
    Summer shot a look at Trace that warned him he’d better win, then said, “All right. If Trace’s horse doesn’t make it into the top ten, you don’t fund the operation and I’ll go back to college
and
get my degree.”
    Trace watched his father eye Summer speculatively. “If I thought you really meant that—”
    “I do,” Summer interrupted.
    “If I agree to this bargain of yours, I’m going to hold you to it,” Blackjack warned.
    “You know I’d never welsh on a bet, Daddy. You’ve taught me better than that.”
    Trace watched as his immovable rock of a father let himself be shifted like a handful of pebbles by his only daughter’s irresistible charm.
    “What do you say, Daddy? Is it a deal?”
    “Deal!” Blackjack said, reaching out to shake her hand.
    “Wait a minute,” Trace said. “How the hell am I supposed to come up with a horse that can finish in the top ten at the Futurity barely five months before the event? And why should I have to?”
    Blackjack turned to Trace and said, “I’m giving you a chance to have things your way. Take it or leave it.”
    Trace hesitated, shot a look at his sister, then stuck out his hand. “I’ll take it.”

Chapter 2
    C ALLIE C REED M ONROE COULD COUNT ON ONE hand the number of regrets she’d accumulated in twenty-eight years of living. Ever since that first gigantic leap off a cliff without looking to see where she’d land, Callie had lived a reasoned, cautious, carefully considered existence. But she deeply regretted not branding the four registered quarter horses that had been stolen from Three Oaks the night before.
    It was bad enough losing the horses, because her family lived on a knotted shoestring, and this disaster had broken it for about the last time. But to Callie’s horror and dismay, Owen Blackthorne had shown up at the horse barn at dawn, wearing a badge, asking questions, and giving her father answers he didn’t want to hear.
    “What the hell do you mean you can’t find them if they weren’t branded,” her father was