CHAPTER ONE

      NICOLETTE ASHTON’S FATHER was always trying to get her to go out on dates. She loved rocks. Men, not so much. She was an introvert, shy and quiet with people she didn’t know. She had a lovely face, a complexion like peaches and cream with long, soft, platinum-blond hair and eyes the color of a foggy September morning. Her figure was equally pretty. But she refused dates right and left. There was a man in her life. He just didn’t know it. He thought she was too young. Sadly, that didn’t keep her from longing for him.

      Because of that, she kept to herself. She’d avoided dating all through college by going out with her girlfriends. But her friends said she needed involvement. They insisted that she needed to get out in the world and date somebody. They meant well. Perhaps she did need to get out more. It wasn’t as if the object of her affections was ever going to reciprocate them.

      So as the end of the semester neared, they set her up with this man. She didn’t know him. He wasn’t from Catelow, Wyoming, where she lived on her father’s cattle ranch. Her date was from Billings, Montana, where she went to college. At the moment, she wished she’d never agreed to the blind date.

      He was inconsiderate and frankly rude, especially when she insisted on being brought home to the family ranch, instead of going to her date’s apartment. The ranch wasn’t so far away, just about a twenty-minute drive. But Niki knew what was likely to happen if she agreed to go home with the man. However out of fashion it might be among her fellow college students in Billings, she didn’t go with the crowd. Harvey, her date, refused to believe that any girl would refuse his advances. After all, he was a football