that had seemed to help right away. Putting Peter on a schedule that still provided him lots of downtime had helped even more. By the time the school year had ended, he’d been doing so much better and their relationship had become downright rosy.
Now, however, the prolonged time they’d been spending together over summer vacation was beginning to take its toll. So was the fact that Peter missed his uncle Jax; even if he didn’t know the real reason Jax had left last year, he was confused by Jax’s failure to visit or call. Peter missed him, and he was bored with just her and Josiah for company. And Rachel? She missed her brother, too. Missed him terribly. She was also tired from working the ranch. From working Jax’s appeal. From her frequent battles with Peter. It made her feel guilty, but she wanted summer to be over. Wanted the heat gone. Wanted Peter back in school where he could sass his teachers for part of the day instead of her.
She stepped into a worn but clean pair of Levi’s jeans and pulled a tank over her still-dripping hair, knowing it wasn’t fair to compare Peter to what her brother, Jax, had been like at ten but doing it, anyway. Jax had been...easy. Then again, Jax hadn’t had ADHD. And, when Jax had just turned ten, their parents were still alive and she was in her first year in college; she probably wouldn’t have noticed if Jax had given her parents attitude, anyway. Afterward, with their parents gone before he turned eleven, Jax had been so grief-stricken it had taken months before he’d smiled again, let alone thrown attitude.
Peter, on the other hand, had been offering up enough sass to fill a silo. The way he’d turned his back on her earlier when she asked him to stop shooting the pellet gun and fill up the alpacas’ water trough had just about driven her out of her skin. She’d had to walk away before she lost it and started yelling at him.
She grabbed her boots but stopped when she heard something.
Peter calling her. The tenor of his high-pitched voice came through the open bedroom window, urgent and scared.
Her heart leaped into her throat. Her baby needed her.
She didn’t bother with the boots, and instead rushed down the stairs and burst out onto the porch, looking for her son.
There, racing from the western fence line where she’d left him only fifteen minutes ago, came Peter. And coming toward him from the opposite direction, in a cloud of red dust, rode a stranger on a galloping chestnut quarter horse.
“Peter!” she screamed, and ran to him. She stumbled as the rocks on the drive bit into her feet but kept on going.
“Mom, you’ve gotta help!” Peter cried out when she reached him. He wrapped his arms around her and sobbed into her shoulder.
Heart pounding, Rachel held her son tight and faced the rider who brought his horse to an ungainly stop next to them. He seemed about her age, or maybe just a few years older—maybe early thirties. Wide shoulders, legs long against the barrel of the horse. Blue jeans, a plaid snap-front long-sleeved shirt rolled to the elbows and his Stetson said cowboy, yet his unscuffed boots and the clean felt of his hat screamed of falsehood.
Wait. She knew his horse: Ginger. A horse from her neighbor Aaron Jacobson’s herd. The same neighbor harassing her about the fence line. Hell. Today of all days she didn’t need to deal with a stupid land dispute. And she didn’t need some city slicker to give her a hard time about the spring.
“I don’t know who you are or why Aaron sent you to hassle my kid,” she snapped out at the stranger, “but I swear to God, if you don’t get off my property, I’ll call the sheriff on you. You and Aaron leave my kid alone,” she nearly growled, holding a sobbing Peter even tighter. “Whatever issues that man has with the property line can be handled in court—not by intimidating a child.”
The man slid off Ginger in an awkward motion and stepped forward, palms held upward in a universal gesture of peace. He came closer and she stood shaking, watching his every step, until he stopped a few feet in front of her. His deep blue eyes were steady and without malice. Didn’t matter. He was tall—at least six foot two—and he towered over her and Peter; his wide shoulders and military posture screamed intimidation.
But she was a mother. She wouldn’t let him intimidate her. Not when her kid was crying against her shoulder.
“My name’s Dylan, ma’am,” the man said. “Dylan Rooney. And I’m not here about your neighbor. I was riding the ridge, uh, bird-watching, and I saw the kid playing with his BB gun. Next thing I knew I heard him screaming and running to the house. I figured something had happened and came down the hill to help. Kid—” he directed his statement to Peter, who’d raised his tear-streaked face away from her shoulder “—are you hurt?”
Peter pulled away from Rachel and swiped futilely at the tears that kept streaming down his face. “No, it’s not me. It’s...it’s...” Anguish froze his expression, his mouth gaping and open, shutting off whatever he’d been about to say.
Rachel reached for him, but Peter took another step away from her. The distance, a mere two inches, ripped yet another hole in Rachel’s heart. He’d needed her—and then he hadn’t. She couldn’t help thinking of all the family she’d lost—her parents and even her brother in a way. She swallowed the lump of emotional pain down and said, “I heard you ask for my help, Peter. What’s wrong?”
The man—Dylan—came forward and placed a solid hand on Peter’s shoulder. Somehow the masculine grip held Peter together in a way Rachel’s soft hold hadn’t, because Peter took a shaky breath and the tears stopped flowing.
“It’s Josiah...”
Josiah. Her ranch hand. And friend. A sensation like a cold hand slid up her back. Twenty minutes ago she’d checked in on him as he repaired the fence on the property line she shared with Aaron Jacobson. Had Aaron gone too far this time? Was Aaron causing Josiah trouble?
Her neighbor had been a real pain in the neck ever since he discovered a natural spring right on her side of the fence line a couple of years ago. He’d been digging around the courthouse records, trying to prove the spring was actually on his own land. She’d been too preoccupied with running the ranch, keeping Peter in line and working on the appeal process for her brother to deal with Aaron’s constant haranguing, but she’d finally referred him to Julia Rickel, her friend and lawyer, who’d threatened lawsuits and police action and whatnot if Aaron didn’t back off. Aaron had made it clear he hadn’t liked what he considered to be Julia’s threats.
She opened her mouth to speak, but the stranger beat her to the question she was about to ask.
“Kid,” Dylan said, “what happened? Where’s Josiah?”
Peter hitched a breath and pointed back to the fence line. “He’s over there. B-b-but it’s too late. We’re too late.”
The cold hand on Rachel’s back now gripped her throat. No.
“Too late for what, Peter?” she whispered.
“Too late to help. Josiah’s dead.”
Rachel’s face had turned so white that Dylan expected her to faint at any moment. He reached out a hand, offering to steady her, but she waved him away. Of course she did. He was a stranger. She had no reason to trust him.
He turned to Peter, whose expression was still alight with panic. Had Jackson Kincaid snuck on the property without Dylan noticing? Seemed unlikely, but...
He followed the kid’s pointing finger with his line of sight.
The boy’s voice shook as he said, “Way up the fence line, next to the spring.”
“Did you see anyone up there with him?” Dylan asked.
The boy shook his head.
“Are you certain he’s...dead?” Rachel’s voice came out on a whisper of a breath.
Peter