“Don’t get killed,” Mina said firmly. “It will look very bad in my book.” She grinned.

“Okay,” Ry said, and he grinned back.

“OH, THE PEOPLE you know,” Sandra said with a sigh, after Vic had called in his livestock foreman to show the men where the trespassers were giving them the most trouble. It was a huge ranch. Even with fencing, it was impossible to watch the border night and day. Well, for the ranchers. Ry had a solution for that. He and his men mounted remote cameras in unexpected places and sat back to wait for results.

Their third night in residence, there was a sudden flurry of activity on the border. Ry and his men, already in sand-colored camo gear, assembled their weapons with solemn faces and went out to meet the threat.

Mina and Sandra monitored the assault on a network of monitors with night vision and audio that Ry and the guys had set up in a spare bedroom.

CORT WAS AT yet another business party, talking a trade deal with some men from Japan. Apparently, their hostess was another fan of Willow Shane, because she had a copy of SPECTRE on a coffee table, just like another businessman’s wife he’d met days before.

“She’s the most marvelous author,” the woman rattled off to a woman standing near Cort. “She actually goes on missions with this commando group into the jungle. She can use any sort of weapon that exists, and she’s a brown belt in Tae Kwon Do. In addition to all that, she runs a ranch of her own somewhere in the northwest.”

“Amazing,” came the reply. “I’d love to meet her.”

“But you can,” the other woman said. “She’ll be signing books at the Silver Bookmark, here in the city in a couple of weeks on an author’s tour!”

“She will? I’ll mark it on my calendar.”

“I can’t wait,” came the reply. The women moved away and Cort shook his head. He was lucky to be married to a woman who just wanted to knit and raise babies, not some wild-eyed author who risked her life for a story and went on tour to sell books. He wondered if the mysterious Willow Shane even had a home life. And she was a rancher? How the hell could she run a ranch and be on the road all the time, he wondered.

Well, it wasn’t his problem. He looked at his watch. He was ready to go back to the hotel and pack. With any luck, barring any further problems, he could fly home in the morning. He’d missed Mina. He recalled their one long, sweet session in bed and looked forward to more of them.

Of course, there was the morning sickness. He knew she was having a hard time right now. But he could hold her all night, even if she didn’t feel up to intimacy. He thought about the baby and smiled. What a happy difference Mina had made in his life already. He felt sorry for his father, who’d thrown away his own chance for happiness with the reporter from Vermont. Maybe someday the older man would stop philandering and really settle down. He didn’t know what he was missing.