As he neared the old Beaumont place, it was impossible not to think about the woman he’d almost crashed into earlier, sitting in the middle of the road. Fool city girl, he thought, shaking his head again. Thinking about her took his mind off the heat bearing down on him.

He hadn’t paid that much attention to her. Even now he couldn’t recall her exact hair color. Something between russet and mahogany, but then it had been hard to tell with the sunlight firing it with gold.

Nor could he recall the length, the way she had the weight of her hair drawn up and secured in the back. He idly wondered if it would fall past her shoulders should the expensive-looking clip come loose.

He did remember her size when he’d bent over her, no more than five-six or seven without those heels, and recalled the impression he’d gotten that while her body was slim, she was rounded in all the right places. He’d sensed a strength about her, or maybe it had just been mule-headed stubbornness, that belied her stature and her obvious city-girl background.

Realizing the path his thoughts had taken, Russell shook them off like water from a wet dog. He must be suffering from heatstroke, he told himself. No woman had monopolized his thoughts this long in recent memory.

He told himself he wasn’t even going to look as he passed to see if she was still parked in front of the old farmhouse. It was too hot to save her from herself, even if she had wanted his help.

But he did look and told himself it wasn’t disappointment he felt at finding her gone. It was relief that she wasn’t in some trouble he would have to get her out of.

He slowed the four-wheeler as he noticed the fence lying on the ground. With a curse, he stopped and got off to close it. The woman had a lot to learn about private property and leaving gates open, he thought.

Glancing at the house, he was glad to see that nothing looked any different. Not that the woman could do much damage to the place. No way could she have broken into the house—not with those manicured fingernails of hers.

He’d never paid much attention to the old Beaumont place, although he’d passed it enough times since the land just beyond it was Corbett property and seeded in dry-land wheat.

Standing next to the gate, he stared at the old house, recalling someone had told him there’d been a murder there and the house had been boarded up ever since. People liked to make houses seem much more sinister than they actually were, he thought. He was surprised he hadn’t heard rumors of ghosts.