“Didn’t think to see you in town this week, Miss Stuart,” Morgan said nonchalantly.

Just two months ago, he had called her Cassie, as most of her friends and family did, rather than Miss Stuart He’d also invited her to Will Bates’s barn dance on a Saturday night, and a Sunday picnic up on Willow Ridge a week later. His intentions had been clear. He’d actually been courting her. And she’d been terribly flattered — and interested. After all, the MacKauley brothers were exceptionally handsome men, every one of them, and as she’d been discovering in recent years, it was hard to find a man willing to marry her and Marabelle.

Morgan hadn’t exactly liked Marabelle, but that hadn’t kept him from courting Cassie— up until she’d meddled in his brother’s life in a way none of them were going to forgive, or forget. And after she’d become the focus of all their anger, he’d let her know that it was only her father’s ranch he’d been interested in.

Whether that was true, or if he’d only said it in anger, it had still hurt Cassie more than she cared to remember. She didn’t have much confidence to begin with when it came to men. Morgan MacKauley had made her confidence drop even lower. And the sorry fact was, she’d really liked him. She’d had such hopes there for a few weeks. Now… there was nothing left, not even the slightest stir of pleasure to be this close to him. Regret was what she felt— and a good deal of annoyance.

She wondered about his casual remark, which from recent experience she thought probably wasn’t casual at all. Warily she asked, “Why’s that?”

“Figured you’d be too busy packing.”

She should have known she couldn’t pass a MacKauley, or a Catlin for that matter, without some unpleasant reminder of her current predicament. It was the MacKauleys who’d set an actual date for her to vacate the area— and threatened, if she refused, to resort to mass destruction of the ranch with lit torches.

“So you figured wrong,” she said in a tight little voice, and attempted once more to step around him. Once more he moved so she couldn’t, prompting her to add, “You’re being obnoxious, Morgan. Let me pass.”

“First you tell me ‘bout that stranger directed out to your place this morning.”

Cassie groaned inwardly. She hadn’t had time to come up with an acceptable reason for Angel’s visit, and she needed time, because when it came to lying and avoiding issues, Cassie was hopelessly inadequate. Unless she devoted a lot of thought and rehearsal to getting it out right, anyone who knew her could spot a lie immediately.

She still had to try with Morgan. “That was nothing. He — he was just a drifter looking for work.”

“You should have sent him over to our place, then,” he replied easily. “You ain’t gonna have work for no one come the end of the week.”

Cassie stiffened at that second allusion to the deadline that had been set for her to depart the area. Somehow she had hoped that the threat to burn down her father’s ranch had been just anger talking, with no substance behind it.

These were people she had socialized with, been friends with; she’d even been courted by one of them. But all that was before she had meddled.

She skipped the subject of Angel, since Morgan had given her another to address. “I need to talk to your pa, Morgan. Tell him I’ll ride over tomorrow—”

“He won’t see you. Fact is, Clayton’s got him madder than ever, and you want to know why, Miss Stuart?”

She started shaking her head as his tone got sharper. She really didn’t want to know, because whatever the reason, she knew the blame would be set at her door whether she was actually to blame or not.

But Morgan was determined to say it, and he did, scathingly. “That fool brother of mine hasn’t been right in the head since he come back from Austin. Can’t get a lick of work out of him these days. And now he’s talking ‘bout ’rights’ and how he’s got some where his ‘wife’ is concerned. He even mentioned that he might go over and collect the Catlin girl, seeing as how they ain’t divorced yet. ‘Course, Pa whipped that notion out of him.”

Cassie was incredulous and didn’t even think to contain her reaction. “Are you saying he wants to stay married to Jenny?”

Morgan flushed bright red at that question, denying it, or the very idea of it. “The hell he does,” he practically growled. “He’s just had a taste of her, thanks to you, and now he wants another. It ain’t no more’n that.”

Cassie was flushing now because of the subject matter, which was outrageously inappropriate for her innocent ears. Morgan knew he’d just stepped over propriety’s line, but he didn’t care. He was furious with her for what she’d done, since it had put an end to his hopes of marrying her, and furious with himself for not having the courage to defy his pa and stick up for her as he’d been inclined to do. The fact was, he still wanted her.

Morgan hadn’t noticed her very much the first time she’d come to visit her father. She had been eighteen then and nothing much to look at, could just barely be called pretty, and Caully had its fair share of pretty women, beautiful women even. And she was much too tiny and childlike for Morgan’s tastes. There was simply nothing passion-inspiring about her, or so he’d first thought.

But there was something damn strange about Miss Cassandra Stuart, something that made her more interesting and attractive each time you saw her. She sort of grew on you — at least her looks did. You began to see that although she might be small in stature, there was nothing childlike in the way she was put together. And the more you saw her, the prettier she actually seemed to become.

Morgan had found himself thinking about her a lot before her visit ended last year, and he’d been in a fighting mood all that summer because he hadn’t realized before she left that he wanted her. Then she hadn’t come last winter and his interests had turned elsewhere, nothing serious, but he’d buried his feelings for Cassie, forgot about them — until she’d showed up again.

Strangely, upon his seeing her again, it was like the first time, nothing much to make a man sit up and take notice. He thought he must have been a bit crazy the previous year to have let her into his thoughts and even his sexual fantasies. But it had taken less than six months for his feelings to turn around this time. He was back to wanting her within the first month of her arrival, and he was serious enough about it to ask his pa’s permission to marry her.

It was telling of R. J. MacKauley’s hold over his sons that his approval was the only one they considered needful for whatever they wanted. Charles Stuart’s blessing on the courtship of his daughter was secondary, Cassie’s not even considered. MacKauley men were unbelievably arrogant when it came to taking some things for granted.

That was one of the things R. J. held against Cassie, that she’d managed somehow to convince his youngest son to break from tradition and do as he damn well pleased, without R. J.‘s permission. That what Clayton “pleased doing” was with an enemy just threw salt on the open wound. But Morgan’s wound was open and festering, too, because he still wanted Cassie and knew he’d never have her now.

He didn’t blame his father, who was too rigid and set in his ways to change. He didn’t blame a feud that he didn’t even know the cause of, but that had been going on for as long as he could remember. He blamed Cassie for butting her nose in where it didn’t belong. If he had married her, he would have broken her of that interfering habit she had. Now he’d never have the chance.

But she’d never know how he still felt about her. Not by look or deed would he let her know. And come the end of the week, she’d be gone, and he could get on with the business of forgetting her again. Looking at her now, he decided it couldn’t happen soon enough to suit him.

Cassie wasn’t paying attention to the fact that Morgan’s green eyes were drifting over her diminutive form as they stood there. Despite the embarrassing way he’d put it, she pounced on the possibility that Clayton MacKauley might be regretting returning his bride to her family. The idea was so unexpected, so guilt-relieving, she grasped it and hugged it to her breast. It meant her instincts hadn’t been so far off the mark after all. It meant her plan to join the two families in marriage to end their feud still might work— eventually. Of course, she wouldn’t be around to see it happen.

“What are you doing with that, Cassie?”

She focused her eyes back on Morgan to see him frowning at the rifle in her hand. He was surprised enough at seeing it that he’d forgotten to call her Miss Stuart. But then, this was the first time she had run into him since she’d started arming herself.

“I had some trouble with… actually… never mind what I’m doing with it,” she ended on a stubborn note.

But she was chagrined with herself for still trying to keep the peace between the two families, as she’d been in the habit of doing before the trouble started, when it was just as likely that Morgan wouldn’t get upset over what the Catlin hired hands had done to her if she mentioned it now. He would probably applaud them instead for the fright they’d given her. So she wouldn’t mention it.

But Morgan’s frown just got deeper as his eyes fixed on hers. “What kind of trouble?”

She didn’t answer him. She tried one more time to walk past him. And he didn’t move to block her this time. He grabbed her arm instead, which was much more effective in stopping her.

“Answer me,” he demanded.

If she didn’t know better, she might think he was displaying some unexpected concern over her welfare. But when his own family intended to come and set fire to the Double C at the end of the week, that just couldn’t be. Perhaps it simply annoyed him that the Catlins had her more worried than the MacKauleys.