“I guess some people are harder to know than others,” he conceded. “But I don’t need to hit a woman to feel like a man. And I have a very low opinion of men who do.”

“So does our cousin Cody,” Bart chuckled. “He took a domestic call one Saturday night when all his deputies were tied up. A three-year-old boy had bruises all over him. His mother was bleeding and crying and her husband was drunk and aggressive and tried to fight Cody.”

“That would have been interesting to see,” Cort mused.

“It truly was. Cody made the man walk every step of the way to town and threw every charge he could think of at him. There was this really avid public defender who thought he could come in here to circuit court and throw his weight around.” He whistled.

“He learned some things, including some brand-new words that Cody taught him after the man’s client was sent to jail for five years.”

“Hardly sounds like enough,” Cort murmured.

“I’m not finished. He got five years on two of the felony counts. But it seems that he was on parole for an assault that he served time for. After he serves the five years here, he goes to Montana to serve the parole violation. Cody made sure he would.”

Cort chuckled. “Our cousin is a bad man to rile.”

“Yes, he is.” He cocked his head and smiled at Cort. “He’s not the only one.”

Cort just shook his head. He looked at Bart curiously. “How old is Mina?”

“Twenty-four,” he said. “But she looks younger, doesn’t she?”

“A lot younger.” He was surprised at her age. Bart seemed to think that she had no interest in men, but he couldn’t believe that a woman could be innocent at the age of twenty-four. Surely she’d had some experiences that Bart didn’t know about. He laughed to himself. Mina Michaels was probably as experienced and jaded as he was and didn’t like men because she’d had her fill of them. Innocence in this day and age was a joke, he was absolutely sure of it. And Mina, whatever else she was, was no innocent.

MINA WAS INTERVIEWING men for the full-time position on her ranch. She wasn’t happy about having to do it, or about the applicants themselves. She had an attorney’s investigator running background checks on the men. Two had been fired for stealing from their employers, although the ranchers hadn’t been able to prove it. Another was wanted for child custody payments that he’d been dodging.

Out of the five contenders, only one stood out. He was an older man with thinning gray hair and dark brown eyes. He looked as if he’d never smiled in his life. He wasn’t wearing expensive clothing, but he was nicely dressed and very clean. He had a soft voice and a pleasant personality. He came with several job references from ranchers who had employed him. None were unfavorable. It was the oddest thing; there was something familiar about him, as if she’d seen him somewhere. But he was from Arizona, he said, and she’d never been there.