lady dressed in a bright red pantsuit and a fellow in cowboy boots, jeans, and a white shirt set about roping off the three areas with brightly colored crepe paper streamers. When they finished the lady rang a bell on the porch to get everyone’s attention. The man who’d helped her picked up the cowbell and held it over his head. “Okay, kiddos. On your mark. Get set. Everybody ready?” Everyone yelled and held up their baskets. He rang the bell loudly and yelled, “Go!” It looked like a swarm of bees in a bed of clover as the children took off in a run, gathering eggs into their various colored baskets until they were overflowing. “Granny got the biggest kick out of watching them. She called them greedy little varmints but she’d laugh and clap her hands. She especially liked the little ones,” Rye said. A pang of jealousy shot through Austin. Rye had experienced so much more with her grandmother than she had and she had no one to blame but herself. He touched her arm. “You look sad. This is supposed to be fun.” His touch sizzled on her skin like cold rain on the top of a sheet metal roof on a hot afternoon. Damn and double damn! How could her world be turned inside out so much in just two days? “It really is fun. I was thinking about Granny.” He hopped down off the tailgate and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her so close that she could hear his steady heartbeat. “I didn’t mean to make you sad. She loved you, Austin. Talked about you all the time.” She fit perfectly into his arms. Short women made him bend so far that it gave him a backache. The few tall ones he’d dated intimidated him. But Austin was just the right height and just the right amount of soft curves and sweet scents and he wished the moment could last forever. He would love to two-step all over a dance floor with her or just stand there and hold her until the sun set that evening. He took a step back before he kissed her right there on the Main Street of Terral and made an utter fool of himself in front of a whole crowd of curious folks. “You ready to go on to Ringgold?” he asked hoarsely. She nodded, not trusting herself to say a word. If there was a Holiday Inn in Ringgold she would almost be willing for a side trip on the way, and for a moment she let her imagination run wild with images of tangled sheets and bodies intertwined in ways that made her heartbeat speed up and her mouth go dry and other parts of her go decidedly moist. She shook her head to get herself back under control and sighed. Ringgold had lost half its houses to a fire a few years before, leaving it with about a hundred people. And that was raking up everyone and their cousins in a ten-mile radius. No Holiday Inn for her today. “Are you sure your folks won’t mind you bringing in an extra?” “Honey, everyone in the whole area will stop by sometime today. Friends as well as the neighbors. It’s old home week at the O’Donnell place.” “You told me a casual family affair with only ten people,” she said. “That’s for dinner. Afterwards is open door and free leftovers.” It took ten minutes to drive two miles south of Ringgold on Highway 81. Rye slowed down and turned into an oak tree–lined gravel lane with a big white two-story house at the end of the driveway. It had a porch surrounding three sides topped off by a widow’s walk at the top with doorways opening out onto it. “Welcome to the O’Donnell horse ranch.” “Horse?” “Dad is Irish and loves the ponies. He and Mother raise quarter horses, and my brothers help him.” She kicked off her running shoes and slipped her feet into the spike-heeled sandals and was instantly sorry that she hadn’t come better prepared. The shoes didn’t go with the outfit she had chosen. And she’d forgotten to spray on perfume. Her hair was a fright from hiding eggs and the majority of her makeup had sweated off. His touch on the small of her back made her even more