Bart nodded. “I was in Afghanistan,” he said after a minute. “I spent my whole tour of duty sleeping on the ground with a rock for a pillow, dodging snipers, hiding out from insurgents who were stalking us. When I first got home, I was so nervous that I’d jump out of my skin if a car backfired.”

Cort cocked his head. “I didn’t know you’d gone overseas.”

“We didn’t talk much until the past two years,” he reminded his cousin.

“That’s true. Imagine running into each other at a cattle convention and realizing we were related,” Cort chuckled. “That was one for the books. We were like brothers by the time we went home. Think of all the years we missed being friends, because we never knew one another.”

“You came up to see Cody a time or two, but that was while I was overseas,” Bart said.

“Yes, it was. Poor Cody,” he added quietly. “He’s still not over his wife dying.”

“She was a good doctor, they say,” Bart replied. “I guess he’ll mourn her for the rest of his life. He doesn’t date anybody. Lives with that dog she gave him the year she died.”

“Well, being alone isn’t so bad,” Cort replied. “I’ve got the ranch all to myself except for rare visits from my brothers. Even Dad was usually away in pursuit of some woman most of the time. It was just me and the cattle.”

“That’s how it is here. Just me and the cattle.” Bart grinned. “You’re right. It’s not so bad. They never complain. They never want me to buy them things. They don’t even pout when I ignore them for a whole day.”

Cort threw back his head and roared with laughter. “I never thought of it like that,” he confessed.

“Now you have,” Bart returned.

THAT NIGHT, Mina had dreams. Nightmares. They came back with a vengeance, probably because of what had happened in her friend’s pasture with the calf. She got up at three in the morning and made coffee.

The house was lonely. She had cats who lived in the barn to keep away rats, but she didn’t have a pet indoors. She thought about getting a dog, but they required a lot of attention and she was having to travel on occasion to promote books. It would mean boarding a pet for long periods of time. So she went out to pet the barn cats when she was particularly lonely. Just not at three in the morning, in the dark.

She sat down at the kitchen table and sipped coffee. That man, Cort, had yelled at her and brought back terrible memories. He’d been sorry afterward. It finally dawned on her that he’d been afraid that he couldn’t save her from the charging mama cow. Imagine that, she thought to herself with a faint smile. He’d actually been afraid for her, after all the insults they’d traded back and forth.

She couldn’t go soft on him, however. That way lay disaster. Just because he’d saved her from a goring didn’t make him an object of romantic dreams. He was just a cowboy, and she knew from experience that many of the single ones were drifters, who never stayed put. They liked variety not just in work, but in women as well. Cort had a very sensual way of looking at a woman, and it didn’t take much guesswork to know that he was experienced. He’d spent the night with the happy divorcée, which tainted him in her eyes. Everybody knew the woman’s reputation. She was a man killer. Well, Cort was a lady-killer, from what his cousin said. Maybe they were a match made in heaven, the jaded man and the promiscuous woman.