Chapter One

      Jake McKenna felt a vibration beneath the soles of his worn cowboy boots. He lowered the tip of the pitchfork to the floor and held very still, his ears straining, his gaze trained on the patch of McKenna land visible through the wide barn door. The vibration increased. It was either a tornado, a stampede, or...

      Aw, hell. He threw down the pitchfork and tore out of the barn. It was a storm, all right. A human cyclone. Sky Buchanan was racing up the lane on his horse, shoulders and head hunkered down, his hat whipping behind him, held to his body only by the cord around his neck.

      Swearing under his breath, Jake rushed to the gate and swung it open five seconds before Sky rode through at breakneck speed. “Dammit all, Buchanan!” he growled as Sky pulled to a stop a few feet short of the broad side of the barn. “One of these days I’m not going to get here fast enough and I’ll end up scraping you off that wood with a chisel.”

      Skyler Buchanan dismounted neatly, then turned on his heels in one fluid movement. Jake narrowed his eyes and sneered. “You ever decide to turn in your cowboy boots for ballet slippers, you got the turns down pat.”

      Sky’s smile grated on Jake’s already frayed nerves. Leading his horse by the reins, Sky said, “You’re trying to pick a fight That means it’s either a day that ends in y, or the reading of your old man’s will didn’t go so well.”

      Inside the barn Jake swiped his black Stetson off his head and kept the string of four-letter words running through his head to himself. Cramming his hat back on again, he retrieved the pitchfork and picked up where he’d left off.