Then again, this was supposed to be an adventure, something to remember the rest of her life. She ran her tongue nervously over her lips and watched the hunger creep into his eyes.

"If I say yes, will you promise to think about riding and not what you're thinking right now?"

He laughed. "If you say yes, thinking with anything other than my little head is going to be almost impossible."

"We are talking about supper here, aren't we?"

"Sustenance of some sort, at any rate."

"Dallas..."

"All right, supper, then."

"Concentrate on your ride and I'll give you my answer once you're safely back on the ground."

He nodded. "Okay. I guess that's fair enough. I'll ride this one for you, darlin'." Tugging on the brim of his hat, he leaned down and grabbed his saddle. "Don't move. I'll be right back."

Hoisting the saddle over his shoulder, he started walking away, the fringe dancing on his chaps as he moved along the line of chutes being filled with bucking horses. Patience tried not to stare at the worn seat of his jeans.

She watched him climb up on one of the chutes. From a distance, she could see him working with Lee Henderson, the Asian cowboy she had met some weeks back, trying to get the big spotted horse saddled and ready to go.

"Ladies and gentlemen," the announcer said, "please turn your attention to chute number three. Our first contestant is the current World Champion All Around Cowboy-Dallas Kingman. He's the top saddle bronc rider in the world and he's drawn a horse called Timber Rattler. This is a National Final's horse and, man, he's got a mean look in his eye this afternoon."

Settling himself deeper in the saddle, Dallas tugged on his glove, then took a slightly shorter grip on the braided rope attached to the horse's halter. He jerked his hat down, turned to the boys on the ground, and nodded.

The gate swung open. Fifteen hundred pounds of horse-flesh burst out of the chute as if it had rockets attached to its hooves.

"When he rides they call him The King!" the announcer shouted, and once more Dallas lived up to the name.

He might have been sitting in a rocking chair instead of on the back of a plunging, bucking, wildly twisting bronc. Rattler leaped, kicked his back feet straight up in the air, then all four feet hit the ground with a jolting, bone-jarring impact. The horse twisted right, bucked and twisted left. Dallas countered his every move as if he knew them before they occurred.

The crowd thundered its approval. Feet stamped, hands clapped, people cheered. Even the hot dog vendors roaming up and down the stands stopped to watch Dallas's ride. The eight seconds ticked past but the horse never slowed, a keg of dynamite exploding beneath the man on top of him. Dallas stayed glued in the saddle, his left arm in the air all the way to the whistle. He pulled leather and rode a few seconds longer while the pickup men caught up and boxed the horse in.

Dallas leaned over the pickup man's horse and caught hold of the big cowboy's shoulders. He slid out of the saddle and landed neatly on his feet.

He grinned and waved his hat in Patience's direction, then turned and waved at the crowd. It occurred to her that she hadn't seen him smiling that way since the livestock truck had been wrecked and sympathy for him tightened her chest.

"You saw it, ladies and gentlemen. The judges saw it, too. Ninety-two points for a championship ride on a championship horse. That's gonna be the number these cowboys have to beat."

Dallas appeared at her side a few minute later, still smiling, obviously pleased with himself.

"Congratulations."

"You brought me luck." Bending down, he brushed a kiss over her lips. "Now let's see if it was good enough to win the money."

Standing together, they watched the rest of the bronc riding. Lee Henderson was the only other contestant who came close to Dallas's score, riding a horse called Jughead for eighty-nine points, putting him in second place. A Wyoming cowboy ended up in third, but there would be more riding after the show when they bucked off the slack, so it was too soon to tell if Dallas's score would win.

The calf roping followed. While Junior clowned in the center of the ring, Dallas headed off to collect Lobo and get ready to make his run.

"That was some ride Dallas made." Blue Cody walked up beside her, lean and black-haired, handsome as sin. He propped a boot up on the fence and his spurs jingled, but the sound didn't make her heart stumble the way it had before. Blue shoved his black felt hat back, revealing his striking Navajo features, the smooth dark skin and dark eyes, the high, carved cheekbones. Women flocked after Blue the way they did Dallas, though he didn't seem to notice it much.

"He was incredible, wasn't he?"

"He's been off a little lately," Blue said. "Worried about Charlie, I guess. Hard to ride when you got problems on your mind."

"I imagine it is."

Both of them heard Dallas's name just then, blaring over the loudspeakers, and turned their attention toward the calf-roping chute. Hat pulled low, Dallas sat in the saddle, Lobo collected and ready to go. He nodded toward the gate. It sprang open and the calf shot out. An instant later, the big palomino leapt forward. Hooves pounded. Dallas's arm swung up, whirling the loop above his head.

The same instant his hand shot out, he glanced in her direction. The rope stalled an instant longer than it should have. The calf veered left and the rope glanced off its shoulder, flicking backward to land in the dirt.

Dallas muttered something only he could hear and pulled back on Lobo's reins. He didn't go for a second loop, just sent a dark look in Patience's direction and started collecting his rope. Blue chuckled as Dallas turned his horse and trotted out of the arena.

"I think you distracted him," Blue said.

"Me! I didn't do anything!"

Blue just grinned. "On second thought, I guess it was me." He turned to see Dallas riding toward them, the dark look still on his face. "I think I'll catch you later." Grinning, Blue sauntered off whistling. Not long after, Dallas walked up, holding onto Lobo's reins.

"Where's Blue?" were the first words out of his mouth.

"Blue? He left a few minutes ago. Why?"

"What'd he want?"

"He didn't want anything. He said you made one helluva ride and I agreed. Why are you frowning? What's the matter with you? What happened out there?"

He took a deep breath, exhaled it slowly. He wasn't wearing chaps, just his faded blue jeans. He slid his hands into his back pockets, then pulled them out again. "I don't know what happened. Whatever the hell it was, I don't like it."

"Dallas, you aren't making sense."

"You're telling me," he grumbled. Reaching over, he caught her hand, started tugging her away from the fence. "Come on. You can keep me company while I unsaddle Lobo."

"But-"

He glared down at her from beneath the brim of his hat. "Unless you'd rather stay here and wait for Blue."

"Blue? Don't be ridiculous. Blue is just a friend."

"Fine." He started hauling her forward. "I just hope Blue is smart enough to know it."

The following morning, Patience sat in front of her computer, still wearing the borrowed Every Woman Loves a Cowboy-or Will T-shirt she usually slept in. Lately, it was beginning to annoy her.

Yesterday, after the rodeo, once Dallas had officially won first place, they had gone to supper at a restaurant called The Cattle Company to celebrate. It was packed to the rafters-an hour wait to get in-but the steaks were hot and medium rare and she had enjoyed the time with Dallas.

Still, when they returned to the trailer, she wound up sleeping alone. Well, sleeping was a stretch. More like tossing and turning, having erotic dreams of Dallas that left her covered with perspiration. But Dallas hadn't pressed her last night, and though Shari and Stormy had a room at the edge of town, Patience hadn't invited him in.

Whether or not to resume their affair was a monumental decision-at least for her.

Still, she was beginning to wonder who was torturing whom.

As the morning wore on, she worked on her thesis, then read a few more entries in her great grandmother's journal. Lucille Sims's disappearance still bothered her, just as it had Adelaide Holmes. It occurred to her that Lucky had disappeared during the rodeo in Cheyenne and an idea crept into her head.

Shutting down her computer, she picked up her purse, dug out the keys to the pickup, and left the trailer.

It didn't take long to reach downtown Cheyenne. Patience smiled as she drove past the old brick buildings along the railroad tracks, remnants of a town that had once been called "Hell on Wheels."

Back in the late 1860s, the first businesses to arrive at the railhead followed the track of the Union Pacific, a motley collection of false-fronted tents, mostly gambling halls or houses of prostitution-thus the name. It was a different, more modern town now, but hints of the old Wild West remained.

Patience headed for the local newspaper office, the Wyoming Tribune Eagle on Lincoln Street, and parked the Chevy truck in the parking lot.

The Tribune, she discovered, had been in Cheyenne, under myriad names, since 1867. Its archives were numerous, some of the oldest newspapers bound in volumes, wrapped, and stored away in a room that smelled of dust and printing ink. But old papers didn't hold up very well and most of them were now on microfilm. She was told they'd been moved to the state archives downtown.

It didn't take long to get there. Patience spoke to the desk clerk, flashed the press pass Charlie had given her that first day in Texas, and a chubby little woman named Rose led her into a back room lined with drawers and files.

"You know how to work one of these?" Rose asked, leading Patience toward a row of microfilm reader machines.

"Yes, thank you. I've done a considerable amount of research over the years."

A blunt hand reached over and flicked on the machine. "Film is in those metal file drawers over against the wall. They're all in chronological order. There's also a master index for each decade that sorts by names and places, that kind of thing. You need help, you let me know."

"Thank you, I will." Eager to get to work, Patience walked over and began to examine the four-drawer metal files, her eyes lighting on the drawer that contained the newspaper records for the period from 1910 to 1913. She checked the index under the last name Sims, found only one entry, and located a brief article dated the tenth of August, 1912.

The disappearance of a woman named Lucille Mae Sims has been reported by the sheriff's office. The twenty-one-year-old Miss Sims, a resident of Wichita Falls, Texas, was a participant in the annual Frontier Days Rodeo, competing in the cowgirls' relay races. According to the report, she has blond hair and brown eyes, stands approximately five-foot three inches tall and weighs one hundred and thirteen pounds. Any person with information regarding Miss Sims's disappearance should contact the sheriff's office.

There was nothing else in any of the papers during that period and no other word of Lucky Sims. Patience returned the film and grabbed the next roll, which carried her through the period ending December 31, 1918. Still, no mention of Lucille Sims. She tried a third roll, ending the decade, but again had no luck.

She tried to think what other indices might hold clues to the disappearance. Addie Holmes believed something terrible had happened to her. Patience went back to the first three years of newspapers on the film. She considered looking under the reference Jane Doe-a woman who had died but never been identified-but it was probably too modern a term. Instead she went through the police blotter, a section of the paper that reported anything that had been filed by the police.

In the first three-year period, three unidentified bodies popped up. Two of them were men, transients who died at the local county hospital. The third was a woman who was trying to hop a freight train and was killed when she fell beneath the wheels. None fit the description of Lucky Sims.

It wasn't until June of 1918 that Patience found something of interest. Two fourteen-year-old boys reported finding the badly decomposed body of a woman in a ravine not far from an old, closed-down theater at the edge of town. It appeared the earth and branches under which the body had been buried had been eroded away by flooding over the years.

In those days, with forensic science still in its fledgling stage, not much could be told about the victim. But the sex was known, her height estimated at somewhere between five-foot-two and five-five. The authorities guessed her age between eighteen and thirty, and her hair appeared to have once been blond. There was no way to determine the manner of death, but the report estimated it had happened five to ten years earlier-which could fit the time Lucky had disappeared.

Patience searched ahead, her heart pounding, trying to find out if the sheriff had ever connected the unidentified body to the disappearance of Lucille Sims. But six years had passed and according to her grandmother's journal, most people believed Lucky had run away with one of the rodeo cowboys. Like a lot of the women performers of that day, Lucky had no family, no one to really pursue the matter.

Though Patience searched the records for two more hours, she never found another reference to the body that was found, or to Lucille Mae Sims. It really wasn't surprising. When Lucky went missing, Cheyenne had been a small, isolated country town.

Patience's chest felt heavy as she drove the pickup back to the fairgrounds. The case might have been left unsolved, but Patience believed she had found the answer to the mystery of her grandmother's friend's disappearance.

She thought of the man who had been following the show and couldn't help wondering if he was the man who had murdered Lucky Sims.

There were only two days of rodeo left. All of the cowboys were tired, exhausted by the long days of tough competition. Yet when the time came for them to compete, each man continued to give it his all.

Dallas had ridden well all week. He was ahead in the standings for the overall and determined to take home the money. After his ride that afternoon on a big black bronc called Indigo, he was in the lead again today, but he had reinjured his shoulder on the dismount and twisted his knee when he hit the ground. He hobbled out of the arena, favoring his left leg, but refused to stop by the ambulance and let the EMTs take a look at him.

"I'm fine," he said. "Just wrenched it a little, is all."

"You hurt that same shoulder before," Patience said. "If you don't take care of it, you might do permanent damage."

He looked down at her and smiled. "I think I like it when you worry about me."

Patience gave up a frustrated sigh. "Dammit, Dallas-"

"I'll be fine," he repeated. "I promise." His injuries were just one more thing for him to worry about. All week he'd been on edge, concerned about Charlie and constantly on guard, watching the arena and the area behind the chutes for any sign of trouble. He'd been gruff and a little bit short with everyone.

Everyone but her.

Instead, whenever they were together, he was amazingly sweet, surprisingly thoughtful, and subtly relentless.

He wanted her. He made no secret of it. Whenever he wasn't competing, doing rodeo publicity, or speaking for one of his sponsors, he took her out to eat or sat with her during the show. Dallas wasn't a man to take no for an answer and he was completely determined in this.

Mounted on Button, cooling the horse down for Shari after the show, Patience spotted him walking next to Charlie. Ever since the wreck, he'd been staying as close to his uncle as his busy schedule allowed. Even with his bad dismount, Dallas had scored well today. Stormy had taken a third in the calf roping, so he was happy.

Unfortunately, Shari hadn't fared nearly so well. She'd made a solid, third place run in yesterday's perf, and come in second one day earlier in the week, but today, Button had taken the second barrel wide and her time wasn't fast enough to place in the money.

Today, Jade Egan had won.

The rodeo was over but Jade was still there, sitting on the fence next to Reno Garcia, getting ready to watch the last of the bull slack being ridden. Patience made a final circle of the arena and rode out of the ring. Jade didn't wave and neither did Patience. But Reno grinned and waved as she rode past. Handlebar mustache waxed to a sheen, he said something to Jade, then left to prepare for his ride.

Patience turned Button around to watch. Cowboys, cowgirls, and die-hard rodeo fans remaining after the show returned to the grandstands or climbed up on the fence to watch the last bulls being ridden, the most dangerous event in rodeo. Reno paused to rosin-up his rope and glove, then grabbed his gear and headed for the chutes.

He'd had some bad luck so far. His thigh was wrapped in an elastic bandage, and day before yesterday, a rank bull named Texas Red had knocked out one of his teeth. But Reno was a cocky little cowboy, a good bull rider, and today he wanted to win.

Patience reached down to pat Button's neck. The horse blew as she sat in the saddle, watching from behind the fence in an area enclosed by another lower fence beyond. She wouldn't stay long, but she was rooting for Reno. She hoped he had drawn a good bull.

And that this time he stayed on.

Minus his face paint, dressed in a T-shirt and jeans but still wearing his knee pads, Cy Jenkins waited anxiously in front of the chute, his lean, muscular legs splayed apart, his concentration fixed on the gate. Junior Reese stood farther away, but close enough to rush in if he were needed. The clowns were the best athletes in rodeo, the fastest, the toughest, the most agile of the men. They were the cowboys' life-line and there wasn't a man out there who didn't know it.

Patience sat forward in the saddle as the gate jerked open. A big black bull, Ace of Spades, surged up and out, taking Reno with him. The animal bellowed and tossed its head, flinging slobber and twisting its massive body from one side to the other. Reno clung to his back like a thorn.

It was a plunging, whirling ride but Reno made it to the whistle. His dismount was shaky. He tripped when he hit the ground and landed on his head. For a second, he didn't seem to know where he was and then Ace of Spades was on him.

Patience's heart froze. The crowd let out a terrified roar and Cy rushed forward. He threw himself in front of the bull just seconds before the big black Brahma stomped Reno into the dirt, turning the bull away at the very last instant.

Junior hurried toward Reno. Along with several other cowboys, they helped him to his feet. Reno staggered, then straightened, shook his head and appeared to be all right. Patience sagged with relief as he limped away, but Ace of Spades wasn't finished. The big bull paced the arena, nostrils flaring, horns in the air, looking like he wanted to stomp every cowboy he saw into the ground. He circled the arena, ignoring the mounted cowboys trying to shoo him into the gate leading back to his pen and instead increased his speed.

Ace of Spades roared down the fence line in front of the nearly empty grandstand, thundering like a locomotive toward the end where Patience sat on Button, acting as if the fence weren't even there. Or if it was, it didn't matter. He hadn't the slightest intention of stopping no matter how high the fence was.

Her pulse speeded up. She told herself the big Brahma would turn, that he was just making a show of being tough, but when she saw his head go up, saw his front feet lift off the ground, she whirled Button, pressed her boots into the horse's ribs, and hung on for dear life as Button leapt forward, as eager to escape the raging bull as she was.

Ace of Spades sailed over the six-foot fence, his back hooves knocking down the top rail, his big body crashing to the ground on the opposite side right behind her. Still, he didn't slow. She and Button were picking up speed, the bull still on their tail. The second fence loomed ahead, shorter than the first, maybe three and a half feet high.

Button was sleek and fast and he wanted out of there, too. Patience came up over him, leaning forward, letting him collect himself, giving him the help he needed to sail over the fence. They made a perfect, four-point landing on the opposite side, smooth and controlled, not a single missed beat. Patience grinned, her heart still racing. She patted Button's neck as she slowed him a little, thought again what a magnificent horse he was.

Strangely enough, when she looked back over her shoulder, she saw that the bull had refused to jump the second fence and now trotted back toward the arena, trying to find a spot to get in. A couple of cowboys herded him toward the gate and he slithered back around the corner. The alley leading to his pen apparently looked good to him now and he headed in that direction, bellowing and eager to get there.