“He’s beautiful,” he said, indicating her mount.

She smiled. “His owner died and he was mourning. They had him at the sale barn. He saw me and trotted right over to the barrier and lowered his head against mine. I knew he belonged to me. My cousin gave him to me as a birthday present.”

“Your cousin?”

She nodded. “Rogan Michaels. He owns a cattle station in Australia with Jake McGuire, who has a ranch outside Catelow, too.” She laughed softly. “Their ranches make mine and Bart’s look like hobby farms.”

He knew Rogan Michaels. They both owned shares in an oil venture in Oklahoma. “Is he around?” he asked idly.

“No. Cousin Rogan has itchy feet,” she said on a sigh. “He’s back in Australia. He hates snow. His cattle station—well, his and Mr. McGuire’s—borders on desert. No snow.”

“I like snow,” he commented, his eyes sliding over the white pastures. “Where I live, it’s like desert most of the year. We get snow occasionally. Never enough to bother us.”

“Do you work on a ranch there?” she asked.

He nodded, his Stetson slanted over one eye. “I work with purebred Santa Gertrudis cattle on a ranch in West Texas.”

She glanced at him. “Bart has another cousin who’s sheriff of our county,” she said.

“That would be Cody Banks,” he said. “He has a cousin down in San Antonio who’s a Texas Ranger.”

“My great-grandfather was a deputy U.S. Marshal,” she said. “And my father used to be a policeman in Catelow, when I was a little girl.” Her face tautened.

He frowned. “Is he still alive?”

She laughed shortly. “Who knows? I haven’t seen him since I was nine. He ran off with another woman. I’m not sure my mother even noticed that he was gone.”

She was as tense as a taut rope. “You don’t like your mother,” he commented.

“My mother died the year I graduated from high school.” It was a flat statement.

“Of some illness?”

“You might call it that,” she said quietly. “Her boyfriend was drunk. He ran them into a telephone pole. They died instantly.”

Boyfriend. He was getting a cold feeling about her life, her past. Drunk. Did the boyfriend drink? Was he violent when he drank? It might explain her behavior earlier. He felt guilty that he’d brought it up.

“My father married a model,” he said as they rode toward Bart’s house. “She only wanted what he had—well, it was a small ranch,” he lied, “and she thought he was rich. She managed to alienate his eldest son, my brother, and we didn’t speak for years. In the meantime, Dad found her out and divorced her.” He laughed. “He played the field. We had women all over the place.”

That explained his cavalier attitude toward women, which reminded her of the happy divorcée he’d gone home with the night before. She felt less comfortable with him.

“He’s married now,” he added. “A former newspaper reporter tripped over him and he fell head over heels in love. He moved to Vermont with her, to be near her family. Her brother recently died of terminal cancer and she wanted to be near her relatives while they got over the grief.”