It was the first time since a riding accident had taken his beloved Mary away from him the year before that he’d found much of anything fascinating. He realized as the blood zinged through his veins for the first time in months just how boring and predictable he’d allowed his life to become.

He’d left the running of the ranch mostly in Cody’s hands, just as his youngest son had been itching for him to do for some time. Harlan spent his days riding over his land or stopping off in town to have lunch and play a few hands of poker with Mule or some other friend. His evenings dragged out endlessly unless one or the other of his sons stopped by for a visit and brought his grandbabies along.

For a rancher who’d crammed each day to its limits all his life, he’d been telling himself that the tedium was a welcome relief. He’d been convinced of it, too, until the instant when he’d seen his truck barreling down Main Street.

Something about the quick, hot surge of blood in his veins told him those soothing, dull days were over. Glancing down at the ruffian by his side, he could already anticipate the upcoming encounter with any woman bold and brash enough to keep her in hand. He suddenly sensed that he was just about to start living again.

Janet Runningbear gazed out of the window of her small law office on Main Street and saw her daughter being ushered down the sidewalk by a man she recognized at once as Harlan Adams, owner of White Pines and one of the most successful ranchers for several hundred miles in any direction. Judging from the stern expression on his face and Jenny’s dragging footsteps, her daughter had once more gotten herself into a mess of trouble.

She studied the man approaching with a mixture of trepidation, anger, and an odd, tingly hint of anticipation. Ever since her move to Los Piños, the closest town to where her ancestors had once lived, she’d been hearing about Harlan Adams, the man whose own ancestors had been at least in part responsible for pushing the Comanches out of Texas and onto an Oklahoma reservation.

The claiming of Comanche lands might have taken place a hundred years or more ago, but Janet clung to the resentment that had been passed down to her by her great-grandfather. Lone Wolf had lived to be ninety-seven and his father had been forced from the nomadic life of a hunter to the confined space of a reservation.

Even though she knew it was ridiculous to blame Harlan Adams for deeds that had been committed long before his birth or her own, she was prepared to dislike him just on principle. What she hadn’t been prepared for was the prompt and very feminine response to a man who practically oozed sex appeal from every masculine pore.