www.millsandboon.co.uk

      Dedicated with love to

      Leonard Novy Thelma (Novy) Weyher Norma (Novy) Benish and Virgil Frank Novy. We miss you all so much.

       Chapter One

      “The first step in initiating a successful breeding program is taking the time to observe the available animals. Begin by evaluating temperament as well as physical soundness, or the lack thereof …”

       —Successful Breeding: A Guide for the Cattleman

      From the top of the hill, Allyson Cabrerra caught sight of the black pickup as it pulled off the shimmering highway onto the graveled patch that served the old cemetery for parking. Brand-spanking-new and disgustingly expensive, the tricked-out diesel was the kind that, in the tiny town of Tangleweed, only an O’Malley would own.

      Sure enough, the dust hadn’t settled around the truck’s shiny chrome hubcaps before Troy Michael O’Malley climbed out.

      Ally stiffened—the involuntary reaction of all Cabrerras whenever they spotted an O’Malley—and glanced across the gleaming black casket at her four older brothers. None had noticed Troy yet. All stood with their backs to the road and boots firmly planted on the coarse buffalo grass that littered the hillside. Hats clasped in their work-roughened hands, their dark heads were bowed beneath the searing west Texas sun as they listened to Reverend Smith pray for their late maternal great-aunt, Eileen Hennessey.

      “Hear us, oh Lord, in our time of sorrow and grief….”

      Neither Sue Ellen Pickart nor Emma Mae Downs, contemporaries of Ally’s late great-aunt, noticed Troy, either. Sue Ellen—who enjoyed funerals almost as much as her daily soaps—had her plump face buried in a crumpled pink tissue and was sobbing so noisily even the Reverend’s deep baritone could barely be heard above her wailing. While Emma—there to cover the “event” for the Tangleweed Times—stood with wrinkled cheeks sucked in and eyes tightly closed as she concentrated on punctuating each of the Reverend’s utterances with a hearty “amen.”

      Next to Emma, Janie Smith, the Reverend’s daughter, faithfully echoed the older women’s outbursts in a faint, breathless voice. Her pale cheeks reddened from the heat and painful shyness, Janie kept her eyes fixed on the toes of her flat-heeled shoes, obviously trying to avoid drawing the attention of any of those “alarming” Cabrerra brothers.

      No one else had bothered to attend the funeral. The Cabrerra siblings weren’t especially social—discounting the brothers’ interactions with the single women in the county—and during the last twenty of her eighty-some years, Aunt Eileen had been a virtual hermit. So only Ally saw Troy stand by his truck looking toward the small funeral party before he retrieved a bunch of yellow flowers from the cab.

      Then, slamming the door shut, he headed toward the cemetery gate.

      Ally tried to ignore him, to concentrate on her feelings for her late great-aunt, but her emotions were regretfully vague. The sad truth was, Aunt Eileen had always kept an emotional distance from everyone when alive, and death hadn’t brought her any closer. Troy, on the other hand, was moving much closer. From the corner of her eye, Ally watched him as the Reverend droned on.

      “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…”

      “Amen!” declared Emma.

      “Amen,” whispered Janie.

      “Boo-hoo!” sobbed Sue Ellen, sniffing.

      “I will fear no evil….”

      Ally “amened” absently with the other women as the Reverend paused, but her attention remained on Troy. She didn’t fear him, of course—but only a fool took their eyes off a moving snake. This snake, she noted, had a hitch in his step, most likely a legacy from the awkward way he’d fallen when bull riding at the rodeo last Saturday, after beating out her second oldest brother Kyle by six points.

      “In the presence of my enemies …”

      “Amen!”

      “Amen.”

      “Boo-hoo!”

      “I will trust in the Lord….”

      You certainly couldn’t trust an O’Malley, Ally reflected, unless maybe you were one. Troy and his grandfather Mick were pretty tight; she’d give them that much. And although Troy’s second cousins had all moved out of state, they flocked back to the O’Malley homestead every Christmas, as faithful as geese migrating to a favorite pond.

      Troy must have come to place flowers on his family’s plot, Ally decided, as he strode toward well-tended grave sites surrounded by a wrought-iron railing. Like the Cabrerras, generations of O’Malleys were buried up and down the hillside, including Troy’s parents. But when Troy didn’t even pause to glance at the elaborate headstone on his parents’ grave—located a bare ten feet from the more modest one that marked her own parents'—Ally tensed again.

      He can’t be coming here, she thought, as he continued through the maze of older grave sites that bordered the cemetery. Troy might be arrogant, but