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“Because I want you to know how I feel. I was bitter once and it’s probably true that I should hate Brig Chambers, but I don’t. I’ve tried to and I can’t. And now that he might be dead . . .” her voice broke under the strain of her churning emotions.

For a moment sorrow and regret flashed in Dean’s opaque blue eyes. It was gone in an instant. “There’s no way I can understand how you still feel anything for that louse, and I think you had better prepare yourself: Brig might already be dead. As for Gypsy Wind, I think we have ourselves one insurmountable problem.” His face softened slightly and for a fleeting moment, through the shimmer of unshed tears, Becca once again saw her brother as he had been during her childhood, the adolescent whom she had adored. The callused and bitter man had faded slightly. His expression altered and she could feel him closing her out, just as he had for the past few years. Now, when she needed him most, he was withdrawing from her. “Come on, Sis,” he said tonelessly. “Buck up, will you?”

He opened the door to the office, and as quickly as he had burst into the room over the stables, he was gone. Becca heard his boots echoing hollowly against the worn steps. Slowly she followed her brother outside. She stood on the weathered landing at the top of the stairs. Holding her hand over her eyebrows to shade her vision, Becca watched the retreating figure of her brother as he sauntered to his battered pickup, hopped into the cab, engaged the starter, and roared down the dry dirt road, leaving a dusty plume of soil in his wake.

* * *

The late afternoon sun was blinding for Northern California at this time of the year, and the wind, when it did come, was measured in arrid gusts blowing northward off Fool’s Canyon. The charred odor of a distant forest fire added to the gritty feel of weariness that had settled heavily between Becca’s shoulder blades.

He can’t be dead,she thought to herself as she remembered the one man who had touched her soul. She could still feel the caress of his fingers as they outlined her cheek or pushed aside an errant lock of her hair. She closed her eyes when the hot wind lifted her hair away from her face, and she imagined Brig’s special scent: clean, woodsy, provocatively male. Idly she wondered if he’d changed much in the last six years. Were his eyes still as erotic as they once were? It had been his eyes that had held her in the past and silently held her still. Eyes: stormy gray and omniscient. Eyes that could search out and reach the farthest corners of her mind. Eyes that understood her as no one ever had. Eyes that touched her, embraced her. Eyes that had betrayed her.

“He can’t be dead,” she whispered to herself as her palm slapped the railing. “If he wasn’t alive, I would know it. Somehow I would know it. If he were dead, certainly a part of me would die with him.”

Slowly she retraced her steps back into the stuffy office and reached down to pick up the remains of the coffee cup. Her movements were purely mechanical as she straightened the papers and placed them haphazardly on the corner of the desk. She wiped up the coffee, but her mind was elsewhere, lost in thoughts of a happier time, a younger time. Though she sat down at the desk and attempted to concentrate on the figures in the general ledger, she found that the mundane tasks of keeping Starlight Breeding Farm operational seemed vague and unimportant. Images of Brig kept lingering on her mind, vivid pictures of his tanned, angular face and brooding gray eyes. Becca recalled the dimple that accompanied his slightly off-center smile and she couldn’t help but remember the way a soft Kentucky rain would curl his thick, chestnut hair.

Deeper images, strong and sensual, warmed her body when she thought of the graceful way he walked, fluid and arrogantly proud. Her cheeks burned when she imagined the way he would groan in contentment when he would first unbutton her blouse to touch her breasts.

“Stop it!” she screamed as she snapped the ledger book closed and pulled herself away from the bittersweet memories of a love that had blossomed only to die. “You’re a fool,” she muttered to herself as she pushed the chair backward and raced out of the confining room. She had to get away, find a place in the world where traces of Brig’s memory wouldn’t touch her.

Her boots ground into the gravel as she ran past the main stables, across the parking lot, and through a series of paddocks, far away from the central area of the ranch. She stopped at the final gate and her clear green eyes swept the large paddock, searching for the dark animal who could take her mind off everything else. In a far corner of the field, under the shade of a large sequoia tree, stood Gypsy Wind. Her proud head was turned in Becca’s direction, and the flick of her pointed black ears indicated that she had seen the slender blond woman leaning against the fence.

“Come here, Gypsy,” Becca called softly.

The horse snorted and stamped her black foreleg impatiently. Then, with a confident toss of her dark head, Gypsy Wind lifted her tail and ran the length of the back fence, turned sharply, and raced back to the tree, resuming her original position. Dark liquid eyes, full of life and challenge, regarded Becca expectantly.

A sad smile touched Becca’s lips. “Showing off, are you?” she questioned the horse.

Footsteps crunched on the gravel behind Becca.

“I thought I might find you here,” a rough male voice called as a greeting to her.

Becca looked over her shoulder to face the rugged, crowlike features of Ian O’Riley. He was shorter than she, and his leatherish skin hid nothing of his sixty-two years. Becca managed a thin smile for the ex-jockey, but nodded in the direction of the spirited horse. “How did the workout go this morning?”

The bit of straw that Ian had been holding between his teeth shifted to one side of his mouth. “’Bout the same, I’d say.”

Becca sighed deeply and cast a rueful glance at the blood-bay filly. As if the horse knew she was the center of attention, she shook her dark head before tossing it menacingly into the air.

“There’s no way to calm her down, is there?” Becca asked her trainer.

“It takes time,” Ian replied cautiously, but his words were edged in concern. “It’s hard to say,” he admitted. “She’s got the spirit, the ‘look of eagles,’ if you will . . . but . . .”

“It might be her undoing,” Becca surmised grimly.

Ian shrugged his bowed shoulders. “Maybe not.”

“But you’re worried, aren’t you?”

“Of course I’m worried. History sometimes has a way of repeating itself.” He noticed the ashen pallor of Becca’s skin and thought that he was the cause of her distress. He could have kicked himself for so thoughtlessly bringing up the past. He wanted to caution Becca about the Gypsy, but he had to be careful not to disillusion her. In Ian’s estimation, Becca Peters was one of the finest horse breeders in the country, even if her brother was worse than useless. Ian attempted to ease Becca’s mind. “Gypsy Wind just needs a little more work, that’s all.”

Becca wasn’t convinced. “She does have Sentimental Lady’s temperament.”

“The spirit of a winner.”

“It was Lady’s spirit that was her downfall.”

Ian waved dismissively and his face wrinkled with his comfortable smile. “Don’t think that way, gal. Leave the worrying to me; that’s what you pay me for.”

“If I paid you for all the worrying you do, I’d be broke.”