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  He was a lawman.

  He faced dangerous people with guns and knives and every sort of weapon they could get their hands on. But none of them had shaken him the way that this woman did…. He desperately wanted to put his hands on her arms or shoulders—anywhere, so long as he was touching her.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked quietly.

  The nearness of his voice surprised her….

  She whirled around and backed her hands behind her on the edge of the sink. She wanted, no, needed, for the meal to be over and for Deputy Daniel Redwing to be gone. Otherwise she would be unable to keep her eyes from straying to his lips, her senses from remembering every reckless second she’d spent in his arms…and her heart from wishing that things could be different.

  Dear Reader,

  It’s hot and sunny in my neck of the woods—in other words, perfect beach reading weather! And we at Silhouette Special Edition are thrilled to start off your month with the long-awaited new book in New York Times bestselling author Debbie Macomber’s Navy series, Navy Husband. It features a single widowed mother; her naval-phobic sister, assigned to care for her niece while her sister is in the service; and a handsome lieutenant commander who won’t take no for an answer! In this case, I definitely think you’ll find this book worth the wait….

  Next, we begin our new inline series, MOST LIKELY TO…, the story of a college reunion and the about-to-be-revealed secret that is going to change everyone’s lives. In The Homecoming Hero Returns by Joan Elliott Pickart, a young man once poised for athletic stardom who chose marriage and fatherhood instead finds himself face-to-face with the road not taken. In Stella Bagwell’s next book in her MEN OF THE WEST series, Redwing’s Lady, a Native American deputy sheriff and a single mother learn they have more in common than they thought. The Father Factor by Lilian Darcy tells the story of the reunion between a hotshot big-city corporate lawyer who’s about to discover the truth about his father—and a woman with a secret of her own. If you’ve ever bought a lottery ticket, wondering, if just once, it could be possible…be sure to grab Ticket to Love by Jen Safrey, in which a pizza waitress from Long Island is sure that if she isn’t the lucky winner, it must be the handsome stranger in town. Last, new-to-Silhouette author Jessica Bird begins THE MOOREHOUSE LEGACY, a miniseries based on three siblings who own an upstate New York inn, with Beauty and the Black Sheep. In it, responsible sister Frankie Moorehouse wonders if just this once she could think of herself first as soon as she lays eyes on her temporary new chef.

  So keep reading! And think of us as the dog days of August begin to set in….

  Toodles,

  Gail Chasan

  Senior Editor

  REDWING’S LADY

  Stella Bagwell

  To my dear sister-in-law, Dorothy Sutmiller.

  Love you!

  Books by Stella Bagwell

  Silhouette Special Edition

  Found: One Runaway Bride #1049

  † Penny Parker’s Pregnant! #1258

  White Dove’s Promise #1478

  †† Should Have Been Her Child #1570

  †† His Defender #1582

  †† Her Texas Ranger #1622

  †† A Baby on the Ranch #1648

  In a Texas Minute #1677

  †† Redwing’s Lady #1695

  Silhouette Books

  The Fortunes of Texas

  The Heiress and the Sheriff

  Maitland Maternity

  Just for Christmas

  A Bouquet of Babies

  † “Baby on Her Doorstep”

  Midnight Clear

  † “Twins under the Tree”

  Going to the Chapel

  “The Bride’s Big Adventure”

  Silhouette Romance

  Golden Glory #469

  Moonlight Bandit #485

  A Mist on the Mountain #510

  Madeline’s Song #543

  The Outsider #560

  The New Kid in Town #587

  Cactus Rose #621

  Hillbilly Heart #634

  Teach Me #657

  The White Night #674

  No Horsing Around #699

  That Southern Touch #723

  Gentle as a Lamb #748

  A Practical Man #789

  Precious Pretender #812

  Done to Perfection #836

  Rodeo Rider #878

  * Their First Thanksgiving #903

  * The Best Christmas Ever #909

  * New Year’s Baby #915

  Hero in Disguise #954

  Corporate Cowgirl #991

  Daniel’s Daddy #1020

  A Cowboy for Christmas #1052

  Daddy Lessons #1085

  Wanted: Wife #1140

  † The Sheriff’s Son #1218

  † The Rancher’s Bride #1224

  † The Tycoon’s Tots #1228

  † The Rancher’s Blessed Event #1296

  † The Ranger and the Widow Woman #1314

  † The Cowboy and the Debutante #1334

  † Millionaire on Her Doorstep #1368

  The Bridal Bargain #1414

  Falling for Grace #1456

  The Expectant Princess #1504

  The Missing Maitland #1546

  Because of the Ring #1589

  STELLA BAGWELL

  sold her first book to Silhouette in November 1985. More than fifty novels later, she still loves her job and says she isn’t completely content unless she’s writing. Recently, she and her husband of thirty years moved from the hills of Oklahoma to Seadrift, Texas, a sleepy little fishing town located on the coastal bend. Stella says the water, the tropical climate and the seabirds make it a lovely place to let her imagination soar and to put the stories in her head down on paper.

  She and her husband have one son, Jason, who lives and teaches high school math in nearby Port Lavaca.

  UTE LEGEND OF THE BEAR DANCE

  The origin of the Bear Dance can be traced back to the fifteenth century, when the Spaniards first came upon the Utes in springtime. As the Ute legend goes, two brothers were out hunting. When they became tired and lay down to rest, one of the men noticed a bear standing upright and facing a tree. The animal was dancing and making a noise while clawing the tree. The one brother ignored the animal and went on hunting, while the other brother continued to be mesmerized by the bear. The bear taught the young man the song he was singing and the dance that went with it. He told the young man to return to his people and teach them the dance and the songs of the bear. The songs would show respect for the spirit of the bear and that respect would make his people strong.

  Each spring, the Bear Dance allowed the Ute people to release their tensions. After the fourth day of great celebrating, the men and women would leave a plume on a cedar tree, which meant they could leave their troubles behind and start life anew.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter One

  Deputy Daniel Redwing skidded to a stop in front of the rambling log ranch house and jumped from the pickup truck. Red dust continued to boil up from the tires, settling on his black Stetson and the khaki shirt stretched across his broad shoulders. It was late spring in northern New Mexico and already the high desert was thirsting for rain.

  Maggie Ketchum was fumbling wildly with the latch of her yard gate. As he strode quickly in her direction, he noticed how the hot afternoon breeze was blowing bright red strands of her h
air into her face.

  He was halfway there when she finally managed to fling open the gate and rush toward him. She looked terror stricken as she exclaimed, “Deputy Redwing! What are you doing here?”

  Daniel stopped short. Maybe the call had been a hoax, he thought hopefully. This was one time he wished like hell it had been. “Didn’t you telephone the sheriff’s office for help?”

  Swiping a hand at her tangled hair, she nodded vigorously. “Yes! But I thought Jess was coming. I specifically asked for him!”

  Daniel flared his nostrils slightly, but that was the only outward emotion he displayed at her comment. Jess Hastings was Maggie’s brother-in-law and a damn good undersheriff for San Juan County. But Daniel wasn’t inept. Or maybe she hadn’t meant to imply that at all. He tried to be fair. The woman was obviously stressed to the point of breaking. Having her brother-in-law with her at a time like this would be more of a comfort than the chief deputy of the San Juan County Sheriff’s Department.

  “Sorry,” he told her. “I figured you knew Jess was out of town. He and Sheriff Perez are down in Santa Fe at an emergency management meeting.” He stepped closer. “The dispatcher said your call had something to do with Aaron missing. Have you found him yet?”

  Aaron was Maggie’s nine-year-old son and the only child she’d had with Hugh Ketchum before he’d been killed in a ranching accident with a bull. This woman had already been through one tragedy in her young life. Daniel couldn’t imagine her going through two.

  “No!” she wailed, then lowering her head, she pressed a hand over her eyes and muttered, “Oh God, Daniel, I don’t know what to do! I’ve looked everywhere—the ranch hands are scouring the mesa, but they haven’t found him!”

  A sob stuck in her throat, but she choked it back and lifted her head to look at him with pleading blue eyes. At that moment Daniel wanted to step forward and pull her into his arms. But then, that was something he’d wanted to do with the Ketchum widow for months now—ever since he’d come to the T Bar K to investigate Noah Rider’s murder.

  For several years now, he’d known of Maggie Ketchum. Every now and then he would spot Hugh’s pretty widow in town, going about the business of shopping and running errands. She was a member of the rich Ketchum family, a family that had settled in San Juan County more than sixty years ago and established the T Bar K Ranch, a range of property that took up a big hunk of northern New Mexico. Three sons and one daughter had been born to Tucker and Amelia Ketchum: Hugh, Seth, Ross and Victoria. Only the last three members of the family were living, and they co-owned the ranch, along with Maggie, who had inherited Hugh’s share after his untimely death.

  Daniel had never expected to meet Maggie face-to-face. She was hardly the type of woman who moved in a county deputy’s social circle. But almost a year ago, the remains of Noah Rider, a one-time foreman of the T Bar K, had been discovered on the Ketchum property. As a result, Daniel had been handed the job of interviewing some of the family members who lived on the ranch. Maggie had been one of them. And he hadn’t been able to forget her since.

  “Calm down, Maggie. We’ll find him. But first I need to ask you a few things. Let’s go to the porch—out of the sun,” he suggested.

  She nodded jerkily, and he took her by the upper arm and led her through the wooden gate and across a small yard kept green by sprinklers. One end of the elevated porch was shaded by a ponderosa pine. Daniel guided her to the cooler shadows where rattan furniture was grouped in a cozy circle.

  After helping her into one of the chairs, he took a seat to her right and eased his Stetson off his head.

  Watching his slow, purposeful movements caused Maggie to erupt with impatience. “We’re wasting time sitting here like this!” she argued. “We need to be out looking! And I still would have been searching if I hadn’t taken the time to come here to the house to call the sheriff’s department!”

  Seeing she was on the verge of becoming hysterical, Daniel reached for her hand and gripped it tightly. “Look, Maggie, it doesn’t do any good to run about searching here and there without any sort of direction or reason.”

  She stared at him with wild blue eyes. “That’s easy for you to say! You don’t have a child! You don’t know what it’s like to think he might—”

  “Stop it, Maggie!” he interrupted roughly. “If you want to find Aaron you’ve got to get a grip on yourself and help me. Do you understand?”

  His sternness seemed to get through to her, and her shoulders sagged as she nodded dutifully. “Yes. I’m sorry, Deputy Redwing. It’s just that I’m so worried and—”

  He squeezed her hand. “You called me Daniel a minute ago,” he said gently. “Why don’t you keep it that way? And there would be something wrong with you if you weren’t worried. So now that we understand each other, tell me when Aaron went missing.”

  She drew in a deep, shuddering breath, then released it. “I don’t know.”

  “Okay,” he said, then started over again. “When was the last time you saw your son?”

  “About eleven-thirty. He finished his lunch and then asked me if he could go down to the ranch yard to visit with Skinny. I gave him permission and told him to be back home by one.”

  Skinny was the oldest ranch hand on the T Bar K. Somewhere in his seventies, the man had worked for the Ketchum family for as long as he and everyone else on the ranch could remember. The old cowboy was good at telling tall tales, and all the kids loved him. Daniel figured it wasn’t unusual for Aaron to go for a daily visit with Skinny.

  Glancing at his wristwatch, he noticed it was nearly three. “Does Skinny know when Aaron left the ranch yard?”

  She shook her head. “He says that Aaron never showed up. So I can only assume that for some reason or other he never went there.”

  The T Bar K Ranch was an enormous property of more than a hundred thousand acres with the ranch house and working headquarters nestled among the foothills of the San Juan Mountains. The nearest neighbors lived miles away, and since none of them had children, Daniel doubted very much that Aaron had headed to any one of the bordering properties, but there was always a remote chance.

  “Do you think someone might have picked him up…and…and kidnapped him?” Maggie stammered out the fearful thought that had been going around in her head all afternoon.

  No doubt about it, the Ketchums were a rich family, Daniel thought. They’d be able to pay a huge ransom to get one of their own back into the family fold. But Daniel didn’t believe any such evil thing had happened, and he quickly shook his head to allay Maggie’s fears.

  “No. The only strangers who come here on the ranch are cattle or horse buyers—not perverts out to kidnap a little boy.”

  She gripped his hand and leaned toward him as though she needed to be closer to make him understand her fears. Daniel could have told her he was already feeling her pain. It radiated from her eyes and emanated from the rigid lines of her body.

  “But how can you be so sure? Noah Rider was murdered on this place, and nobody knew it for a long time! And even then—”

  “Maggie!” he gently scolded. “Forget about all that. It’s in the past. Noah was killed by an old acquaintance—Rube Dawson. He was a blackmailer who didn’t want to lose his illicit income. Rube’s serving his time in prison, and that crime has nothing to do with Aaron. Now tell me, were you and your son getting along all right at lunchtime? Was he angry at you about anything in the past few days?”

  Going still, she looked him directly in the eye. “You think he’s run away.”

  Daniel nodded, and as soon as he did, he could see tears flood her blue eyes. The sight cut him right through the heart.

  “Maybe.”

  She looked away from him and swallowed hard. “Aaron didn’t seem to be upset at lunch,” she said in a strained voice. “He seemed fine. But he was angry with me yesterday. I wouldn’t allow him to go on a weekend camping trip with a group of boys.”

  “Why?”

  She frowned. “What d
oes that have to do with anything? It won’t tell us where Aaron is.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not,” he said smoothly. “Right now I need every bit of information to go on. And I mean everything,” he repeated firmly.

  Once again she breathed deeply and tried to brace herself against the swell of terror washing over her. “All right. I didn’t allow Aaron to go because the trip was going to be with a group of teenagers. And since Aaron is only nine, I didn’t really want him to be exposed to the language and behavior that would be going on behind the chaperones’ backs.”

  “He’s got to hear it sometime.”

  Maggie grimaced. “Yes. But I’d rather it be later. So I told him he couldn’t go and to forget about it. Of course he came back with the usual things that kids say when they’re angry. That I was mean to him. That I didn’t want him to have any fun. That I wouldn’t let him do anything because I—”

  She suddenly stopped, and her eyes fell to their coupled hands. Daniel wondered if she was noticing the stark difference between their skins. His, dark copper-brown; hers, milk-white. Daniel was a Ute Indian, from the Weeminuche band, something he didn’t much think about—until he was with this woman.

  “Because you what?” he prodded.

  Her head shook slightly back and forth. “Because I was too scared—that I was afraid he would be killed in an accident—like his father.”

  Whether that was true or not didn’t matter at the moment, Daniel decided. Aaron obviously believed his mother was overprotective, and he figured the boy had lashed out at her by disappearing.

  “We’ll find him, Maggie.” Rising from the chair, he helped her to her feet. “Did you see him when he left the house to go down to the ranch yard?”

  “No. I heard the back door slam. I didn’t bother to look. I was busy in the kitchen.”

  Daniel frowned. “You say the back door? If he were going to walk down the road to the ranch yard, the front door would have made more sense. Would you take me around to the back of the house so I can have a look around there?”