shadows of the late afternoon, the air turned golden.
Wishing she’d brought her camera, Priscilla couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt such peace. She’d been at the Broken Arrow for nearly two months, and in all that time, there hadn’t, thankfully, been a single attack against the ranch. She’d had time to heal…and to grow to appreciate the land of her American ancestors. And without quite knowing how it had happened, Colorado had become home.
She couldn’t, however, stay any longer. She had responsibilities in London she needed to get back to, and she was stunned to realize how much she hated the idea of leaving. How her brother and sisters would laugh when she told them that, she thought ruefully. She’d been the last to leave England, the lone holdout in the family who’d been so positive that she wanted no part of living in the wilds of Colorado. And now just the thought of leaving made her want to cry.
“You’re awfully quiet,” her sister Elizabeth said as the men called it a day and started across the field toward where the women of the family waited under the lone tree at the edge of the field. “Are you all right? Maybe you should have stayed at the house.”
“I’m fine.”
“The doctor said you were supposed to take it easy,” Katherine reminded her. The closest sister to her in age, Katherine looked just like their mother when she frowned at her in concern.
“It’s been two months since my surgery,” she replied. “I’m completely healed. Really.”
Studying her shrewdly, her sister-in-law, Rainey, said, “The removal of a spleen’s not something you get over in a week or two. And you have been helping out a lot around the ranch lately. Maybe you need to pace yourself more.”
Joining them in time to hear his wife’s comments, Buck shot Priscilla a sharp look. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she said. “Everyone thinks that just because I’m not talking much, I’m not feeling well. I’m fine. I don’t need to take it easy. I just have a lot on my mind.”
“You want to go back to London, don’t you?” Elizabeth guessed, studying her with shrewd blue eyes. “You’re homesick.”
“She is not!” Katherine retorted before she could answer. “She’s still having nightmares about the accident, and she should be. It wasn’t an accident! Someone tried to kill her. If I were her, I’d never step foot in England again.”
“She has to finish her internship,” Rainey reminded Katherine. Turning to Priscilla, she frowned. “I thought you were going to wait until the probation period on the ranch was up, then go back to London after Christmas.”
“That was my plan,” she admitted. “But I have some things that need to be taken care of now. I can’t just keep putting them off.”
“No,” Buck said firmly.
“I’ve been paying for a flat that I haven’t used for two months,” she argued. “And I don’t want to be in London anymore. I need to give up the lease, but I can’t just abandon my things. I have to go back, make arrangements for movers—”
“You can do that from here,” Katherine pointed out.
“True,” she agreed, “but I also need to talk to Jean Pierre…”
“So call him,” Elizabeth said.
“No, I need to meet with him face-to-face. I’d like to finish my internship from here, if possible, and I’ll have a better chance of talking him into that if I can sit down with him and explain my plan.”
“You’re safer here,” Buck insisted. “Wait until after the ranch is ours and we’ll all go back for awhile. I want to show Rainey where we grew up—”
“That’s another month,” she argued. “And I still don’t think my accident was anything but that—an accident!”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do! No one’s attacked the ranch since I’ve been here. If someone really tried to get to me in London, why wouldn’t they do it here?”
“Because we’re all here together,” he replied. “No one’s going to take on all four of us together. It’s when we’re apart that we’re vulnerable.”
“I’m not going back to stay,” she pointed out. “I’ll just be in London for two or three days at the most. And no one but the family even has to know I’m gone. I’ll fly out of Denver in the dead of night. No one will see me leave, and if you casually mention around town that we’ve all been staying home because a stomach bug has been working its way through the family, no one will suspect a thing.”
When he just looked at her, unconvinced, she played her trump card. “You told me in London that if I would come home with you to the ranch to recover, you wouldn’t offer a word of protest when I was ready to go back to London. I expect you to keep that promise.”
She had him, and they both knew it, but this wasn’t about winning points off each other. Over the course of the last eleven months, when they’d inherited the ranch and then found themselves under attack by the faceless enemies who were after the Broken Arrow, the four of them had grown closer than ever. She needed him and her sisters to support her decision and trust her judgment.
“I’ll be careful,” she told Buck. “I promise.”
He hesitated, his eyes searching hers, only to sigh in defeat. “Okay. But you call in every hour once you land just so we’ll know you’re safe. Understood?”
“Every hour,” she promised, hugging him. “I’ll be fine. You’ll see.”
Less than thirty-six hours later, she walked into her flat in London and found it just as she’d left it. Automatically locking the door behind her, she made a quick tour and wasn’t surprised to find the plants on her kitchen windowsill dead and the food in her refrigerator molded and sour. She hadn’t exactly had time to clean things out before she’d left. The second she’d been released from the hospital, Buck had given her ten minutes to throw some clothes and personal items into a suitcase before he’d rushed her to the airport and the States.
She’d thought about her flat often over the course of the last two months and wondered how she would feel when she returned. Would she be scared? Nervous? Happy to finally be home? Frowning, she realized, she didn’t feel any of those things. Instead, the stale air of her flat seemed to close in on her, and she found herself longing for the fresh, clean air of the ranch. Outside, London traffic rushed by, but all she wanted to hear was the low call of the cattle grazing in the pasture and the whisper of the wind through the pines.
Loneliness tugged at her heart, and she almost reached for her phone to call home. But she’d spoken to Buck the second she’d landed. He’d be worried if she called him now—less than thirty minutes later. She had things to do, anyway. She had to pack, notify the landlord that she was moving out, find a place to store her things. But first she had to call a mover.
Settling at the kitchen table with the phone book, she started making calls. She soon discovered, however, that finding the right person for the job—as well as a storage unit she could afford—took longer than she’d expected. Three precious hours later, she finally found a mover who could pick up her furniture by the end of the week. Her lease wasn’t up until the following Monday, but she’d hoped to find someone who could come while she was still there to oversee the move. Obviously, that wasn’t going to be possible. She’d promised the family that she’d be back in three days, and she was standing by her word. She’d just have to give the key to the landlord and trust him to supervise things. Resigned, she started packing.
Later, she never knew where the rest of the afternoon went. One minute, the sun was high in the sky, and the next time she looked up, the day had given way to the darkening shadows of twilight. Surprised, she glanced around and discovered the flat was littered with dozens of boxes that were packed full of books, dishes, the contents