Charlie'd had to hire his own set of bloodsucking attorneys to deal with the insurance company, which was trying to weasel out of paying any kind of settlement.

Dallas excused himself and went over to talk to his uncle, who was speaking to a couple of other men, one he recognized as Salty Marvin, a grizzled, old-time cowhand who worked for the Circle C, the other, a guy named Lem Wilkins, one of the owners of the Flying S, Charlie's main competitor in the rodeo production business. Lem looked a little like an aging hippie, with the same mustache and sideburns he'd been wearing since the sixties.

Dallas had never really liked him. Wilkins and his partner, Jack Stiles, had been after Charlie to sell out to him for years, even going so far as to pressure Annie about it, but Charlie had always refused. Dallas wondered what the hell Lem was up to now.

"Hey, Dallas!" Charlie waved him over. "Good to see you, son." He clasped Dallas's shoulder and gave it a hearty squeeze.

"It's damned good to see you, too. Hello, Salty. Lem." He glanced between his uncle and the other two men. "What's going on?"

Charlie's smile slipped a notch. "What's goin' on is I'm thinkin' of selling a couple of Circle C bucking horses to Lem. He's offered me a damned good price for them."

Dallas frowned. It wasn't like Charlie to sell his stock unless he absolutely had to. Worse yet, he was selling it to Lem. Apparently money was tighter than he thought.

Dallas drew Charlie aside. "You're not seriously thinking of selling those horses to Lem?"

"More than serious. The truth is, we've pretty much come to an agreement."

"Listen, Charlie. You need money, I could loan you some. You know I've got a good bit saved up."

But Charlie shook his head. "I ain't takin' your money, son. Not now or any time in the future. You worked too hard to get it."

"You've helped me, Charlie. It's only fair that I-"

"I said no and that's the end of it." Charlie tugged his hat down a little lower on his forehead and Dallas didn't say another word.

"Which ones are you going to sell?" he asked, thinking how often Annie had grumbled about her hardheaded husband.

"Crawfish, Geronimo, and Spitfire."

Dallas was stunned. They were all Finals horses, some of the best buckers Charlie owned. Dallas shook his head, hardly able to believe it. "You sure about this?"

"We got some good stock coming up on the ranch. They'll be ready in a year or two. We got enough good horses to last until then."

Dallas just nodded, knowing there was nothing he could do. He let the men finish their dickering, but he didn't like what was going down. He didn't like it one bit.

"I love it!" Shari laughed as Patience moved away from the card table and sat down next to her and Stormy. "I had no idea you could play poker like that."

"To tell you the truth, it's not that I'm particularly good. It's just that those guys are all pretty bad."

Shari laughed again. "They don't really play all that much. They usually don't have time." The place was filling up with cowboys just getting into town. The jukebox played Garth Brooks's "Friends In Low Places," and a guy and his girl got up to dance. A couple of barrel racers came in and sat down at the bar. A few minutes later, Jade Egan walked in.

She strolled straight up to Dallas, bent and whispered something in his ear.

Patience's stomach tightened. It was ridiculous. The fact that Jade was sleeping with Dallas had nothing to do with her. Still, she didn't have to like it. "I think I'll head back to the trailer," she said to Shari. "That is...if Stormy wouldn't mind giving you a ride."

Stormy just grinned. "No problem."

Shari flicked a glance at Jade, who still stood next to Dallas. "You shouldn't let her get to you."

"It isn't that...Well, not exactly. I'll catch you later, okay?" Patience crossed the bar, pushed through the old-time swinging doors, and felt a rush of warm air as she stepped out into the Arizona evening. She started up the walk toward her brown pickup truck.

"Hey, Patience-wait up!"

It was Dallas. Just the sound of that soft Texas drawl made the hackles rise on the back of her neck. Instead of stopping, she started walking faster.

"Dammit-wait a minute! I need to talk to you."

She turned to face him, kept walking backwards. "Whatever you've got to say, I don't want to hear it. Why don't you go back in the bar? Jade's in there. Or if you're tired of her, I'm sure you won't have any trouble finding someone else."

She turned around and kept on walking. A tug on her arm spun her around, then she grunted as Dallas's shoulder connected with her stomach. Hoisting her over his shoulder, he started for his truck.

"Are you crazy? Put me down!" She pounded on his back but did more damage to her fist than she did to him.

"I'm not letting you go till you hear what I have to say."

"Damn you!"

He rounded his truck to the passenger side, clicked his car keys to open the door, then set her down on the black leather seat. "I know you're pissed. I know you saw me leaving with Jade the night of the party."

She bristled. Pissed? He didn't know the half of it, but she'd be damned if she'd let him know. "So I saw you. So what? It's none of my business who you spend the night with."

"Maybe it isn't. But that particular night was different. I wanted to make love to you. I told you that and I meant it. And I didn't sleep with Jade."

"Right." She tried to jump down from the seat, but he braced his arms across the door, trapping her inside the cab.

"The truth is, Jade got wasted that night. She was drunk, doing marijuana with a couple of rich boys in one of the upstairs bedrooms. Ruth Collins came after me, asked me to get her out of there before she really got herself in trouble."

Patience looked at him hard, trying to decide if he was telling her the truth. "So I'm supposed to believe all you did was play Sir Galahad and rescue her?"

"I guess you could put it that way."

"But you didn't sleep with her."

"I'm not interested in Jade. I haven't been for quite a while."

Patience sighed and leaned back against the seat. "It really isn't my business, Dallas. You don't owe me an explanation. I don't have any kind of hold over you."

"I know. And I'm not saying I won't sleep with a woman in the future. I just wanted you to know the truth about that night."

Patience managed a smile, but somehow it wasn't that easy. "Thanks. I appreciate that."

He helped her down from the truck and walked her over to her pickup. "So where'd you learn to play cards?"

"My dad. I watched them playing poker in the movies when I was little and I begged him to teach me. He learned just so he could. When we were growing up, he played with me and my sisters all the time."

Dallas chuckled at the image. "What about your mom?"

"She died when I was eight." Patience stared off toward the grassy square in the center of town. "Sometimes it's hard for me to remember what she looked like."

Dallas followed her gaze. "My mother died when I was twelve. I remember everything about her."

Patience studied his face, read the loss that flickered in his eyes. "What was she like?"

"My mom? She was Charlie's sister, you know. A real Texas cowgirl. She was born and raised right there on the Circle C Ranch. The Carsons were ranchers all the way back to the days of the Alamo."

"We both lost our mothers," she said. "I guess that means we actually have something in common."

Dallas reached out and touched her cheek. "So who are you, P.J. Sinclair?"

"What do you mean?"

"Tell the truth-you write for some sleazy tabloid and you're doing an article about aliens who disguise themselves as cowboys."

Patience grinned. "I hadn't actually considered that but maybe you've got an idea."

"I know-you write a lonely hearts column and you're doing a series about sex on the rodeo circuit."

She laughed. "Wrong again. Definitely not a lonely hearts column." She cast him a speculative glance. "Even if I were, you wouldn't be much help. What would you know about being lonely?"

His smile slipped a little. "You're right. How could a guy like me possibly ever get lonely?" But she thought she saw something in his face that said there were times he was very lonely indeed.

He opened the door of her truck and she climbed up behind the wheel. Dallas closed the door and she fired up the engine. As she pulled out from the curb, she could see him in the mirror, standing on the sidewalk, watching as she drove away.

CHAPTER 9.

In rodeo, the Fourth of July weekend was one of the biggest of the year. Charlie and the Circle C were producing the show in Greeley, Colorado, a big-money rodeo where Dallas would be competing before he flew out to St. Paul, Oregon, then on to compete in the Cody, Wyoming, show.

Patience was glad he was leaving.

She needed to concentrate on her thesis. She was committed to finishing it by the end of summer and whenever Dallas was around, it was almost impossible to work. She hated the way he intruded into her thoughts when he was the last man on earth that she should be thinking about.

Sitting in the booth in the dining area of the trailer, Patience worked for a while, then decided to call her father. As usual, Tracy answered.

"Patience! Good Lord, your father is practically ready to board the next plane for Arizona. Is everything all right?"

She sighed. After Tyler, she understood her father's worry; still, she wasn't thirteen anymore. "If he flies to Prescott, he'll be wasting his time. I'm in Greeley, Colorado."

"Colorado!"

"I've got to say, I really didn't realize what a grueling life rodeo people lead. They're on the road every week, heading for one show after another. One of the bronc riders said he'd done twenty shows in the last eighteen days."

"Good heavens."

"Lucky for me, Shari's schedule isn't quite that bad." Though Dallas's was definitely rough, with his public relations work and making three shows in one weekend, as he planned to do over the Fourth.

"Hang on a minute, your dad's reaching for the phone."

"Take care, Tracy."

"You, too."

Her dad's voice came on the line. "I'm glad you called. I was starting to worry."

"Everything's okay. If you're worried about Tyler, I haven't seen a trace of him. Did the police find out if he was involved in the burglary?"

"Tyler denied knowing anything about it. They didn't find any fingerprints so there's no real way to tell. But a couple of days ago, your friend Molly Jansen called the house." Patience's best friend at B.U., Molly, knew about her problems with Tyler. Patience made a mental note to drop her an e-mail the next time she got the chance.

"Molly says rumor is, Tyler has taken a trip out of town. His friends say he went to Bermuda with some girl, but no one seems to know for sure. Molly and I...well, we both thought you ought to know."

A little shiver ran through her. Tyler wasn't in Boston. For an instant, her paranoia rose up. He had found out where she was and he was coming after her. God knew what he planned to do if he found her. Then her common sense took over. Tyler had no way of knowing where she was-half the time, even her parents didn't know. Besides, he had never really done anything to hurt her. Scared her pretty bad the night he had come into her bedroom and threatened her, but never physically hurt her.

"I'm glad you told me. I don't think he's trying to find me. It's been weeks since I broke off with him. Still, if he does show up, I have a dozen of the toughest cowboys in the country to look out for me."

It was true, though she'd never really thought about it until now. Most rodeo cowboys grew up with an old-fashioned sense of right and wrong that included a protective attitude toward women. She was traveling with Shari, a member of their world, therefore she fell under their protection. Just like the day she had landed in the pen with the bulls.

She didn't mention that to her dad, however.

"Everything okay with you and Tracy?" she asked instead and could almost see her father smile.

"Everything's fine. She'll have her master's by the end of summer. I'm so damned proud of her." And so much in love with her.

Her father had loved Patience's mother that same way. They had met in college and married shortly thereafter. They'd had a fairy-tale life, until Faith Sinclair had suffered a rare kind of stroke and died.

Losing her had nearly destroyed Ed Sinclair. Then he'd met Tracy. She was six years younger, an assistant in the admissions office at B.U. They had so much in common, just as he and Faith once had. The marriage had worked, and after fifteen years, the two of them were still deeply in love.

Patience sighed. Her father had been lucky-not once, but twice. Why couldn't something like that happen to her?

"Give Snickers a hug for me," she said at the end of the call, thinking it was a pretty sad state of affairs when her house cat was the most important man in her life.

She couldn't help thinking of Tyler Stanfield, wondering if there was any chance he had gone in search of her. Surely not. Their brief relationship had never been good. She hadn't the slightest idea why he had become so obsessed with her.

Unless it was the sex.

Maybe he felt even more inadequate than she. Maybe secretly he blamed himself for the fact she hadn't been responsive. He was, after all, Tyler Stanfield, the golden boy. Women usually fell all over him. Whatever the reason, she didn't have time to worry about it.

Patience unfolded her glasses, slid them up on her nose, and opened her laptop. Entering the Word file titled Cowgirls, she started typing in the notes from the interviews she had done. When she finished, she reviewed some of her thesis work, then closed down the machine. In an overhead cupboard, she found her great-grandmother's journal, and set it down on the table.

She was reading it slowly, enjoying the odd connection she felt to a woman who had died twenty years ago at the age of eighty-one. Adelaide Holmes was dead and buried and yet with every page, every word, Patience could feel her presence as if she stood just a few feet away.

As if they shared some bond, some secret method of communication. Which, with the journal, in a way, they did.

Met a gal in Wyoming. Her name is Lucille Sims but everybody calls her Lucky. She's the new relay rider on the colonel's team and she's a darned good one. She and I got along right off, since she's from down Texas way, Wichita Falls, which is close to Oklahoma, not far from where I come from.