The Lone Rancher by Carol Finch

was on again. Just when she had accepted the inarguable fact that she found him attractive and enjoyed his companionship he had betrayed her feelings for him.
    â€œYou want that I should saddle up and check around to find your missing Herefords?” Ches asked.
    â€œNo. I’ll tend to that task myself,” she managed to say without biting off the cowboy’s head. She shouldn’t kill the messenger, just because she felt like blowing the deceptive Quin Cahill to smithereens. “Please saddle my dapple-gray gelding. I’ll be down at the barn in a few minutes.”
    Cursing Cahill with every step, Adrianna whirledaround, then bounded upstairs to fetch her boots and pistol.
    â€œWhere are you going with that?” Butler asked when he saw the weapon she had clutched in her fist. “This isn’t Boston, but I doubt you can blast someone to kingdom come without serious repercussions, even in Nowhere, Texas.”
    â€œWe’ll find out,” she growled as she barreled downstairs.
    Butler blocked her path at the bottom of the staircase. “You better not be planning to shoot someone, Addie K…. If you are, is it anyone I know?”
    â€œYes, that rattlesnake named Quin Cahill,” she muttered.
    Butler’s brows shot up his forehead. “I thought we liked him now.”
    â€œNo, he was pretending to be nice, but that snake shed his skin. Damn men everywhere. Easterners or Westerners, they are all the same!”
    Butler clamped his hand around her forearm when she tried to veer around him. “I hope you are excluding me, my dear girl. If you can count on nothing else, never doubt that Bea and Elda and I are loyal to you—”
    His breath came out in a whoosh when Adrianna impulsively hugged him zealously. “I know. It has comforted me greatly for over a decade, Hiram. I’d be lost without you.”
    She stepped back, tucked the pistol into the band of her breeches, then strode toward the door.
    Behind her, Butler called out, “If you decide to shoot him for whatever it is he’s done this time, don’t kill him.You would not look good behind bars, m’girl. Please try to restrain yourself this once .”
    Adrianna nodded without looking back. She headed to the barn, serenaded by the rat-tat-tat of the carpenters nailing down the rafters for her new addition. She should borrow one of their hammers and pound some sense into that devilish cowboy, she thought spitefully. She had allowed Cahill to make a fool of her because she had fallen for his suave charade. Heavens, she had seen through the practiced charm and silver-tongued flattery of enough adventurers and charlatans in Boston. How humiliating to be fooled by that rugged cowboy!
    â€œYou sure you’ll be all right riding off by yourself?” Ches asked worriedly when she bounded onto Buckshot’s back, then reined east. “There’s bears and lobos lurking around this area, even during daylight hours.”
    â€œI’ll be fine.” She gouged the dapple-gray gelding in the flanks to race toward the fence separating her ranch from the 4C. “My cattle had better not be in Cahill’s pasture,” she growled as she raced off.
    Â 
    Quin glanced up and glared at Boston, her hair billowing around her as she flew across the pasture like a witch on her broom. The long-legged gray thoroughbred ate up the ground in graceful strides, he noted. Quin would have admired Boston’s horse and her riding skills if he weren’t so furious with her latest prank. As it was, he stared at her through a red haze and waited for her to approach so he could bite her head off.
    â€œGet off my property, you thief!” she yelled at him as she brought Buckshot to a skidding halt.
    â€œMe?” he roared, then made a stabbing gesture toward a dozen longhorns grazing in her pasture. “How many of your men did you pay a bonus to burn your brand over my fresh