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The High Country Rancher
Jan Hambright
The High Country Rancher
Jan Hambright
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Table of Contents
Cover Page (#u8ee84cda-f050-576f-9233-7c6612b995f5)
Title Page (#u74d89cb1-4ac4-5739-aab2-ccab18931422)
About the Author (#u9fd8853a-57d6-55cf-8a32-09ccfdc412f1)
Chapter One (#u353ee0eb-b178-5428-b141-e3a1805629d2)
Chapter Two (#ua8fa69f8-8fb2-5cc5-8f0d-a839e8981623)
Chapter Three (#u4ecc7c54-81a2-5fb6-a47e-5449df37e29f)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
JAN HAMBRIGHT penned her first novel at seventeen, but claims it was pure rubbish. However, it did open the door on her love for storytelling. Born in Idaho, she resides there with her husband, three of their five children, a three-legged watch dog and a spoiled horse named Texas, who always has time to listen to her next story idea while they gallop along.
Jan can be reached at PO Box 2537, McCall, Idaho 83638, USA.
To my editor, Allison. Thank you for making me push myself.
To my family, who endured too many chili nights while I worked late. You’re the best! Love Ya.
And to my friend Ellen, for the great pictures you took of my horse Texas, who may or may not have made the book’s cover. Smiles.
Chapter One (#ulink_2b364ab4-ad8d-5710-9e4c-19487c370fa8)
Baylor McCullough flipped the collar of his oilskin duster up around his neck, and spurred his horse into the wind raging from the north in icy waves.
Snow pelted his face, stinging like tiny BBs, but he focused instead on the lay of the land, trying to define it in the blizzard swirling around him.
The warming pen in the barn brimmed with early spring calves, too young to survive the freak storm hammering the Salmon River high country.
Only one was missing. A bald-faced calf he’d seen with its mother yesterday afternoon before the sky clouded to murky white and the air temperature dipped below freezing.
Reining in his horse, Texas, he paused, spotting an outline in the snow just below the border of ancient ponderosa pines that lined the driveway leading into the ranch. The shape disappeared as the wind shifted, smearing his vision.
“Get up.” He tapped his heels against the horse’s flanks and rocked forward in the saddle, aiming for the trees less than twenty yards away.
Night would fall soon; the storm was intensifying. Nothing would survive after dark. He was running out of time.
Texas’s hooves thudded against the frozen earth as he searched for traction in the blowing snow and plowed through the drifts accumulating and dissipating like sand dunes on the Sahara.
Baylor forced his hat down hard on his head and steered the horse around a tangle of branches that had been ripped from one of the ponderosa. He’d be lucky if the storm didn’t take out the power before it spent its fury on the Bellwether Ranch.
“Whoa.” He eased back on the reins, stopped the horse and climbed down out of the saddle. Kneeling in the snow, he brushed hard, exposing the hide of the bald-faced calf he’d seen only yesterday, but he was too late.
He straightened. It was only one calf, only one in his herd of hundreds, but it was a loss. A knot clinched in the pit of his stomach. He mounted up, and turned Texas for the ranch a quarter of a mile away, fighting for every breath he dragged into his lungs from the blasting wind.
The pine branches he’d passed earlier whipped and jerked in the gale, like sheets on a clothesline.
Texas spooked and skittered sideways.
Baylor kept his seat in the saddle, bringing the scared horse under control.
For an instant the snow cleared, giving him a view he hadn’t expected.
Concern slid through his veins, driving him forward. He bailed off his horse and went to the ground, digging into the snowdrift piled up against the limb, looking for the thing he believed he’d seen for a brief second, and praying he was wrong.
Brushing away the last of the snow, he stared down at a human hand.
He jerked off his leather glove and pressed his fingers to the wrist, feeling for a pulse. It drummed beneath his fingertips, faint and thready.
Still alive. But not for long if he didn’t do something.
Baylor pushed to his feet and rushed to his horse.
Texas’s eyes went wide. He took a couple of steps back.
“Easy boy.” Hand out, Baylor touched the horse’s neck, calming him, before he fumbled with the laces and untied his lariat from the saddle.
He trudged back through the snow and looped the noose of the rope around the thick base of the limb.
Striding back to his horse, he mounted up, wrapped the rope around the saddle horn and urged Texas back.
“Easy…easy.” He coaxed, hoping to keep the spooked animal from an all-out bolt.
Three feet. Five feet. Ten feet. Clear.
Baylor dismounted, unwrapped the rope from the saddle horn and coiled it up as he lunged back to the spot where the limb had fallen, trapping someone.
Dropping the rope, he went to his knees and started digging. Panic drove him, until he found the hand again. Reaching down, he judged where the body was and locked his arms around it. In one pull it came free, sending him backward onto his backside with his arms wrapped around a body, and a face full of snow, but it was the sight of a slender body, and a wisp of long blond hair sticking out from under a stocking cap that fisted worry in his gut.
A woman? A hypothermic woman, a dead woman, if he didn’t get her back to the house. How long had she been lying there in the freezing cold? He mentally tried to establish a timeline as he stood up, and pulled her into his arms. She hadn’t been there at 3:00 p.m. when he’d gone out to round up his cows and calves just before the storm broke.
Putting one foot in front of the other, he maneuvered through the snow until he reached Texas, who’d calmed and stood with his head low, hind-quarters turned into the gale.
Gently, he draped her over the front of the saddle. Foot in stirrup, he mounted up and pulled her back into his arms, settling her against him.
Staring down, he saw her face for the first time. High cheekbones, a strong chin, full lips, refined, but much too still and void of color. The only thing marring her features was a bloody scrape on her right temple, probably caused by the limb when it hit her, knocked her down and trapped her.
Who was she? And what was she doing on the Bellwether?
Concern rattled through him. He might already be too late. He wasn’t a doctor, but head injuries and hypothermia were serious business.
He turned Texas for home, hoping he had better luck saving the beautiful woman in his arms than he had had with the early spring calf who lay frozen to death in the snow.
DETECTIVE MARIAH ELLIS became aware of her body one tingling appendage at a time, starting with her toes. She was cold. As cold as she’d ever been, but the air against her bare skin was warm.
Her bare skin? A hazy image accompanied her return to consciousness: a man lying next to her, his body pressed to hers, his warmth soaking into her frozen veins.
In a burst of horror and disoriented thought, her eyelids shot open and she jerked upright in the bed. A bed she didn’t recognize, in a room that didn’t belong to her.
Covered with only a sheet, she grabbed the bulky rust-colored comforter folded at the foot of the massive four-poster, and yanked it up around her neck.
Quieting, she listened for any sound of movement.
Her head throbbed, her stomach rebelling against the sudden jolt of excitement. Flopping back against the fluffy pillows, she waited for the nausea to pass.
The mournful howl of the wind blowing against the house was the only sound in the candlelit room, besides the crackle coming from a blazing fire burning in a massive stone fireplace, positioned against the wall opposite the bed.
Tension squeezed every muscle in her body as one-by-one she recovered her memories of the day’s events.
She’d come to the Bellwether Ranch to question its owner, rancher Baylor McCullough, about a missing prosecutor, James Endicott.
Was this McCullough’s home?
His bed?
Panic frayed her nerves and left her agitated.
She’d been advised to use caution where Baylor McCullough was concerned. He had been, after all, a suspect in his wife’s death a year ago.
Scanning the room, she spotted the object of her search. Throwing back the comforter, she climbed out of bed. A chill raked over her bare skin and her gaze settled on a silky robe draped over the footboard.
Mariah swallowed, took two steps forward and snatched the garment. She pulled it on, securing the belt with a tight tug.
The room spun.
Grabbing for the footboard, she steadied herself. Head pounding, she reached up and felt the gauze bandage taped in place on her right temple.
The branch. She’d been clipped by it while she’d walked along the road into the ranch after her car slid into the ditch half a mile back. Things were beginning to make sense. All but the faint memory of not being in the four-poster alone.
Had she dreamt that?
Taking several deep breaths, she focused on her service revolver and faltered forward until she reached the mirrored wooden dresser where it lay.
Wrapping her left hand around the holster, she pulled out the shiny .38 with her right, and instantly felt a surge of relief coat her nerves. A girl could always rely on her weapon.
She didn’t know what Baylor McCullough was capable of, and she didn’t want to find out. The .38 was the only deterrent between the two options, and she intended to use it if she had to.
Her feet stung as she turned around and stared at the open door that led out of the large bedroom. The flicker of candles in the adjacent darkness put her on edge.
Fighting the pain in her feet that resembled a zillion tiny needle pricks, she took a step forward, then another, shuffling until she reached the entry.
Stopping, she leaned against the doorjamb for support and scoped out what appeared to be the living room.
A fire blazed in a river-rock fireplace centered against one wall. Light from the flames ebbed and flowed, touching the articles in the room with its glow.
Somewhere in the unfamiliar house Baylor McCullough waited.
Was he armed?
Raising her service revolver, she inched forward, getting a sense of the room’s layout and analyzing it for cover.
The sound of someone’s deep, even breathing sliced into her senses.
She turned toward the sound and stopped her advance.
She spotted the room’s only occupant sprawled in a deep leather chair and focused on his denim-clad thighs, long, lean, well muscled and stretched out in front of him. His boot-encased feet were casually crossed at the ankles and rested on an ottoman.
By the time her tenuous gaze moved up his shirtless six-packed torso and settled on his face, she realized he was looking back.
“Detective Ellis.” The surety in his voice rattled her nerves worse than any high-speed chase ever had.
With a force that took her breath away, she snapped back into the reality that belonged to her. She was a cop and he was her number one suspect, if she could find her badge, and her…clothes.
“And you’d be Baylor McCullough?”
