The thought depressed her, because she hadn’t always thought her brother was a skunk. When they had been kids, Tess had been right fond of him. After he left, the two of them had occasionally written letters. Their daddy had refused to hear of Sean, but Tess had loved to read of the places he’d been and the things he had done. Maybe he really did think selling the ranch would fix them both up right. But he didn’t have the feeling for the Diamond T that Tess did.

Josh nudged her. “Smile, and stop looking daggers at Sean. You’re married and happy. So look it.”

Looking married and happy proved tough. Eyes pressed in from all sides, staring at her as she nibbled on chicken and roasted corn, then following every awkward step when Ransom made her dance. He insisted, despite her telling him flat out that she didn’t know how.

“Learn,” he told her. Just like a man, always wanting to be the boss, but after a few minutes of stepping on toes and stumbling about, looking like a fool, dancing became almost fun. Tess liked the feel of Josh’s arm around her. It was a strong arm. And from close up, the man looked even better than he did from farther away. She liked his face, Tess decided. His eyes crinkled when he smiled, and when they danced, he smiled a lot. What’s more, he smelled good, like soap and leather.

Too bad she wasn’t some pretty thing like Meg Riley who had been brought up liking the idea of having a husband run her life. Tess was beginning to suspect that Josh Ransom would make a dadgummed fine catch as a husband-for a girl who wanted one.

And he’d said Tess was pretty. Imagine that. Even if it was a baldfaced lie, it was a nice lie, and mighty kind of him to say.

They waltzed by Bartlett and his wife. “You two having fun?” the legal eagle inquired.

Tess gave him a smug look. “Of course we are. Being newlyweds is very romantic.”

As the crowd of dancers swept Bartlett away, Tess felt rather than heard a chuckle deep in Josh’s chest. “Tess, I don’t think you know the meaning of romantic.”

She looked up, jaw squared pugnaciously. “I do so.”

He shook his head. “Someday, some fellow is going to have the guts to teach you, and I’m not sure I don’t envy him.”

She would have shown her contempt by sticking out her tongue, but Sean was looking their way, so she settled for a quiet snort. “Some folks don’t have time for that sort of nonsense, Ransom.”

“It doesn’t take time,” he replied. “Just heart. Or so I’m told.”

“Sounds to me like you don’t know that much about it either.”

He laughed amiably. “Maybe I don’t, now that you mention it.”

The conversation got Tess’s mind churning about how romance, real romance, would feel like. Dancing with this man, absorbing his warmth, moving to the guidance of his body, feeling his breath trickle through her hair-it all made her feel flustered and achy inside, with her heart jumping around and a couple of unmentionable parts of herself tingling very strangely. Was that romance, or did the flutter in her belly mean only that the chicken had been a little off?

When Miguel brought the wagon around, Tess discovered with some surprise that, once started, the evening had flown past. She didn’t really want to leave, but that was pure silliness, because her father had always said that wasting time jawing with the neighbors never brought the beef home or broke a green horse. Still, she wanted to try this again next month, when the Hernandez family had their annual spring gettogether. Then she remembered: next month her life would be back in its normal rut, and she would have no reason to get gussied up. Josh Ransom wouldn’t be around to make her dance, or to tell her she was pretty.

Unless…

Maybe you should try to make this a real marriage, Rosie had told her.

That was just about the worst idea Tess had ever heard. But still, it stuck in her mind like a burr.

By the time the four of them piled into the wagon for the ride home, the pleasant sprinkle of rain that had fallen all evening had changed to a pelting downpour. Luckily, Rosie had packed two canvas tarps for just this happenstance. Tess and Josh huddled under one on the driver’s box. Miguel and Rosie shared the other.

The night closed in, dark as a cave, as the horses ploddingly pulled the wagon through the storm. Under the tarp with Josh, Tess felt isolated from the whole world, acutely aware of the man next to her. Their shoulders, arms, hips, and thighs touched, pressed together both for heat and to make use of the sheltered space beneath the tarp.

The contact produced some interesting sensations in Tess. Warm, tingly, heartracing feelings, even stronger than when they had danced. She wondered, suddenly, what kissing Josh Ransom, really kissing him, would feel like. He had kissed her once, that time that Sean had shown up after their contest on Nitro, but that kiss had been a spurofthemoment taunt, a takethisandchokeonit sort of thing. But even that unexpected, annoying kiss had made her toes tingle. What would a real kiss, a thoughtout, planned, fullcooperation sort of kiss feel like?

The speculation sent of bolt of wet heat from the top of her head to the ends of her toes. Enough of that! Tess decided. Such thoughts were downright dangerous. They led to thoughts even more wild, like what might happen between a man and a woman who were truly married-not just the stuff in the bedroom, which Tess regarded as something a woman just had to put up with, but the good stuff, like sharing work and worries during the long days, sitting side by side in front of the fire in wintertime, or in the hot summer drinking Rosie’s lemonade out in the courtyard, listening to the men tell tall tales.

Damn but these were dangerous thoughts. When a woman dressed in lace and bows, she stopped thinking with anything like common sense. Likely the corset Rosie had laced so tightly had cut the blood flow to her brain.

When they arrived at the ranch, lamps burned in the bunkhouse and barn. Rosie and Miguel promptly jumped off the back of the wagon and headed into the dark house, still holding the tarp over their heads. But something anchored Tess to the hard wooden seat, there under that tarp with Josh sitting so close beside her. He didn’t move either. Tess didn’t know what his excuse was. She was the one losing brainpower to a corset, not him.

But he stayed, while the horses stood patiently in the rain and the wind tried to snatch the tarp from their hands. He stayed, and she stayed, and the tension that had been building between them all night shimmered like heat. If he tried to kiss her, Tess decided, she would let him. A girl should have a real, noholdsbarred kiss once in her life. He moved closer, and her heart jumped clear up into her throat. Without actually telling herself to present her face, kisser foremost, she did. In the dim light that spilled from the barn, his eyes looked smoky, his focus singleminded. Closer, closer, until she could almost feel the burn of his lips on hers. Then…

“It’s about time you got home, bosslady. We got us a problem!”

They sprang apart like guilty children caught with hands in the cookie jar. The wind grabbed the tarp, snapping it smartly and sending a cascade of cold rainwater into their warm, cozy world.

“Henry!” Tess snapped, exasperated. “What the hell?”

“We got about a hundred head of stupid, blockheaded goddamned beeves stranded on a sandbank down in the river, and the river’s rising like hell itself opened the floodgates. Luis and me and the dogs have been trying to move ’em, but we need help.”

The spell of the night broke as the ranch laid its heavy hand upon her, drawing her back to the real world. “Saddle Ranger for me,” she told Henry. “I’ll get into some real clothes.”

When she got to the barn minutes later, a dripping wet Henry, looking cold to the bone, stood with a blanket over his shoulders while Josh adjusted the saddle cinches of both Ranger and Jughead.

“You don’t have to help,” Tess told Josh. After all, this wasn’t his ranch, and she’d paid him to marry her, not risk his neck trying to move ornery cattle through a rising river before they got their silly selves drowned.

He didn’t say anything, just swung aboard Jughead. Tess wasn’t about to argue. If the man wanted to help, she wouldn’t turn him down.

They rode for twenty minutes alongside the churning San Pedro before Luis’s cussing, the dogs’ barking, and the bawling of frightened cattle carried to their ears. Tess cursed the darkness. All she could see were blackonblack shadows. She could make out Luis only because his shadow rose taller than the cattle’s. Frantic barking pierced the night above the pandemonium. Bold cattle dog Rojo must have crossed when the water was lower. Tess doubted he would be able to fight the current now. Rojo’s son Chief, not as bold as his father, barked in frustration from the near bank.

Without saying a word, they all three headed straight for the water. Ranger was Tess’s favorite mount. The big buckskin gelding would go anywhere or do anything she asked, which didn’t say much for his brains but spoke volumes for his heart. He didn’t hesitate, but plunged into the flood. Josh, mounted on the somewhat smarter Jughead, had a fight on his hands, but he finally goaded the horse into the swirling water. Henry’s mare, already tired from a night’s work and having already swum the river a time or two, absolutely balked. No amount of spurring would send her down that path again.

Ranger swam steadily while Tess tried not to think of unseen dangers the swirling current might send careening toward them. Whole trees torn from the bank could ride the flood and spell death for an unlucky rider. Whirlpools and eddies could suck horse and rider beneath the churning water. Floating mats of vegetation could sweep them downstream like a lethal broom. Crossing such a flood during the day was dangerous. At night it was just damned foolhardy.