A Montana Cowboy by Rebecca Winters Page B

some lightning and thunder. Content they were all right, he went back in the house and found a couple of sandwiches waiting for him.
    She was amazing. He decided there wasn’t anything she couldn’t do in spite of her pain.
    After he’d finished eating, he started down the hall to his room when he heard anguished sobs coming from the other side of Cassie’s door. It tore his guts out. He felt guilty as hell.
    Not only had he devastated his father with his unwelcome news on that first night, Trace was now forcing Cassie to find a new job while she was still grief-stricken over the loss of her husband. But no one could bring Logan Dorney back.
    No one could give Trace a new eye so he could continue to fly.
    No one could make his father ten years younger so he and Ellen could enjoy the ranch together.
    No magic formula could take away Nicoletta’s pain because the work he needed to do was here in the United States. Their dream to live in Italy had been shattered by that laser.
    No wrinkle in time could put Trace’s family back together before the divorce.
    Some things weren’t fixable.
    Full of grief himself, he left the house and walked around to the garden, thankful his father had Ellen to cling to at this time in his life.
    The rain had stopped and the storm clouds had moved on. In the distance loomed the shadow of the Pryor Mountains. They were sacred to the Crow Nation whose people called them the Hitting Rocks Mountains because of the abundance of flint.
    The Pryors weren’t as high or as spectacular as the Italian Dolomites where he’d done a lot of mountain climbing and skiing, but they had their own unique beauty. Over the years he and his father had ridden into them hundreds of times. They would wind around the canyons where wild horses like Masala roamed free. The sight of them thundering through a gully took your breath.
    Trace walked down one of the rows of fruit and reached for some strawberries that had ripened. The rain hadn’t hurt them. They were delicious. Cassie’s jam was to die for. So were her rolls and the roast and meatloaf she’d cooked last week, the kind he’d eaten as a boy. He hadn’t had much of an appetite since his injury. But the food he’d enjoyed since coming to the ranch had conjured memories of home long ago when his life had been intact, and he’d found he couldn’t get enough of it.
    Food could do that to you—send you to a place in your mind. Trace had been around the world. Every country had its own specialties. But only one place served food that reminded him of his childhood. Today at the lake, tonight in the barn tending to the horses, he was shaken by emotions he hadn’t allowed to surface for a long time. They would smother him if he didn’t do something concrete about his situation.
    First thing in the morning he would contact Bud Hawksworth, the Realtor in Billings, and ask him to keep his sights out for someone who wanted to buy a ranch like Rafferty’s. No putting it on the multiple listings. With the fall hunting season coming up, this time of year would be the best time to make the most of a profitable sale.
    Cassie had turned him down flat when he’d suggested the Realtor would be able to help her find a place. It could kill two birds with one stone, but she wasn’t having any of it. He shouldn’t have said it. Cassie was fiercely in charge of her own life. His respect for her continued to grow.
So did his attraction
. That alarmed him.
    When he’d pulled her against him at the lake, it had taken every bit of willpower not to turn her around and kiss her whether he had her permission or not. To do that would end any trust and she’d be out the door and gone in a shot.
    He needed to put the desire to make love to her behind him. They’d start fresh at breakfast. But when he got up the next morning and eventually went to the kitchen after a shower and shave, he discovered