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A thicket of yellow aspen on the outskirts of town encircled Sweet Creek’s animal clinic. Turning into its lane, Ethan squinted as the dawn light glanced off the windshield of the doctor’s van in front of the tomato-red barn.

Three minutes later, after carrying the injured eagle into the reception area, he and his longtime friend and town veterinarian, Kell Tanner, considered the bird’s wounds on an examination table.

“Can you save her, Doc?” Ethan wanted to know.

“It’ll be touch-and-go. Only blessing is she has youth on her side.” He removed the tea towels Ethan had bound around the wings. Before bringing the bird in, he’d dribbled water into its beak with an eyedropper until its glassy yellow eyes blinked open, the nictitating membranes gliding slowly across the corneas, back to front. At that point, Ethan had breathed a sigh of hope.

Gently the veterinarian carefully probed the bird’s torn thigh and shattered wing. “Damn shame.”

And then some. “Do your best, Doc. She deserves it.”

Kell nodded. “Come back in a couple hours. She’ll be in recovery then.”

“Thanks.” Ethan headed for the door.

“You realize they’re not going to like what you’re thinking here,” Kell said over his shoulder. “That one of their gun buddies might be a poacher.”

They. The law or the town council? Ethan shrugged. “Guess I’ll take the chance.”

“Good luck.”

Ethan nodded.

Outside, mellow morning sunshine warmed his face as he looked toward the trees across the road separating the clinic from the town proper where two blocks away he’d noticed her pickup at the police station’s curb. Still the early riser, Meggie?

He pulled his ball cap from a hip pocket, settled it on his head.

Time to get the show on the road.

Resolute, he climbed into his pickup and pulled out of the clinic’s graveled parking lot. In the two minutes it took to get to the station, he thought about how she would react to his information, facts that would likely separate them further if he implicated the gun club. Or her son. Well, if that was how it played out he’d take the chance anyway. This was for the raptor.

Besides, Meggie lived her own life now—though he’d observed her hire on as chief, watched her son, Beau, grow from a kid with freckles to a teenager with a bad-boy attitude.

Like you were at that age.

And he had watched Meggie date other men, even get serious about one four years ago.

Not that there hadn’t been women in Ethan’s life. He’d had his share and then some. Except none had ever measured up to dark-haired, blue-eyed, long-legged Chief Meggie.

Meg. That’s the name she used these days. Meg. Hard and headstrong. Huh. Well, she’d always be Meggie to him. Soft and sweet natured. The girl he remembered.

Heart pounding, he parked in front of the rectangular wooden structure that had been the police station for nearly two and half decades. Moments later he pulled open its door to walk into a room that took up most of the front length of the building. LED day lighting presented the brightness of July at noon.

She stood to the right, viewing a county map tacked to the wall with her second-in-command Gilby Pierce and dispatcher/secretary Sally Dunn. All three turned, pinning Ethan like the map they’d been scrutinizing.

Meggie’s eyes went wide, then she caught herself, and a smile Ethan knew was meant for the sake of her companions curved her mouth before she stepped forward.

For five long seconds he couldn’t inhale. Meggie.

“Mr. Red Wolf.”

Mr. Red Wolf. Fine. She wanted to playact, he’d give her one hell of a performance. “Chief McKee.”

Blue uniform crisp, gun slung on her belt, she was all cop in her approach. “Something we can do for you?”

He looked into those beguiling blue eyes. Well now, Meggie-girl. You’re finally looking at me for longer than sixty seconds. How’s it feel?

Hell. He had no delusion that she saw him; it was the probable complaint he’d come about that held her interest.

“There is. An eagle’s been shot on my property, and I’m wondering if it wasn’t for possible profit.”

Those fine, black brows he had traced with his mouth twenty years before arced. “Care to explain?”

“Tail and wing feathers missing. Bird’s over at Kell’s getting its thigh sewn up and its wing bones splinted.”

“It’s alive?”

“Barely.”

She studied him for a moment, assessing his words while he assessed her. Her dark chocolate hair, worn in a neat bob, was shorter than his by several inches. She wore no lipstick, very little rouge, and her gaze was direct in a way it hadn’t been when she was a girl. Regret coursed through him at the sight of the hair-fine lines caging those same eyes. She’d had her share of heartache, he surmised. Hell, maybe she still mourned for her ex—the renowned Dr. Doug Sutcliffe—these six years. Ethan shoved away the notion. Meggie thinking about a man bothered him for reasons he did not want to investigate, especially when she was no longer his. Never had been, Ethan.

“Why don’t you step into my office?” Turning, she led him down a short hallway to a cluttered room with a long wooden desk supporting a computer. Several filing cabinets filled the right wall while the left held another county map, a half-dozen Wanted posters, and a corner window with—irony of ironies—a view of Blue Mountain.

Daily those lake-blue eyes saw the terrain where he lived.

Where she lived a shout away.

Did that ever cross her mind?

“Have a seat.” All business, she shut the door behind them.

Ethan took the only chair free of file folders. Mere feet from his knees, she hiked a slim hip on her desk and crossed her arms. “Where’d you find the bird?”

“Across the water from my place. On the shore,” he added and observed her pinpoint the area in her mind, remembering spots where, as high school sweethearts, they had done their share of kissing.

“Anyone been using the rifle range without your knowledge?” she asked.

“The range doesn’t exist anymore, as you know.” After the town’s rental lease had expired last spring, he’d demolished the target hill and shooting stalls, removed the obstacle course used for the annual Mounted Shoot. He had wanted no part remaining of the thirty-year-old range his grandfather founded. In its place Ethan was creating a healing-horse retreat where troubled kids could find a little peace. Kids like he’d once been.

But his plans were not her affair.

“I’m well aware the range is gone,” Meggie replied. “However, that doesn’t mean people won’t try to use those twenty acres.” A corner of her mouth lifted. “Old habits die hard. I was wondering if some folks still consider the field open for target practice.”

“I’ve posted No Trespassing signs.” He shifted his booted foot several inches from her police-issued shoe. “But you’re right. It doesn’t rule out the mayor’s gun cronies.”

Her gaze didn’t waver. “What are you saying, Ethan?”

An air balloon’s torch whooshed through him. The last time his name crossed her lips…Hell, he couldn’t recall.

“I’m saying I’ve seen hunters on Blue Mountain.” And one of them was your son.

She slipped off the desk, walked around to her chair. “Who?” she asked, her fingers easy on the computer’s keyboard. All police business now.

“Couple kids.”

Her head swung around. “With rifles?”

“Twenty-twos.”

“I need names, Ethan.”

Ethan again. Twice in less than sixty seconds. “Randy Leland, Linc’s boy and the mayor’s grandson—”

“I know the Lelands,” she retorted. Her eyes softened. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to snap. It’s just…Let’s say it doesn’t surprise me.”

Of course it didn’t. Linc Leland and Jock Ralston—and sometimes her second-in-command Gilby Pierce—had blighted Ethan’s high school years, and Meggie, his noble, valiant Meggie, had tried to install herself as his shield. Until he’d had to physically fight Linc and Jock—and get his nose busted—to prove himself.

He gave her a half beat. “I also saw your son.”

“Beau?” Her pupils pinpricked. “With Randy? When?”

“Last weekend.” Labor Day weekend. “Sunday to be exact. They were popping shots at deadwood on my land.”

She typed in his response. “Did you talk to them?”

He hesitated. Her son hadn’t welcomed Ethan’s intrusion. “I told them to use the range at Livingston or Bozeman, that they were on private property now.” Her son had shrugged and said something about how Old Man O’Conner never gave a rat’s ass before, why should Ethan?

He’d told the boy if he didn’t get his ass off the property right quick, he’d find it hauled down to the chief’s office. Or words to that effect. The kid had laughed.

“Did they leave?” Meggie asked.

“They did.” Just to be sure, he’d followed them until they were in Beau’s Chevy pickup and roaring down the dirt road that wound around the lake and hooked up with the pavement to Sweet Creek’s town proper.

“Was that the only time you saw the kids on your land?”

“Beau was there once before, far as I know.”

Her expression remained bland. “When?”

“End of July. He was walking along the lakeshore around seven-thirty in the evening.”

“With the twenty-two?”

“Over his shoulder.”

“Did you talk to him at that time?”

“No. He was crossing my property line and heading up the mountain.” Foothill, actually. Blue Mountain was part of the timbered hills evolving into the Absaroka Range to the east.

Meggie got out of her chair and walked to the corner window where the strengthening morning sunlight fell in a block on the floor. Ethan envisioned her conjuring pictures of her boy on the mountain beyond. “Still doesn’t mean those kids shot that eagle.”

“You’re right,” he conceded. “It doesn’t.”

It could have been someone else, an adult, a poacher or poachers trafficking eagle parts. Off and on such stories had been on the nightly news, in the papers. Stories relaying the profit of wildlife products such as bear claws, teeth and gall bladders, antler velvet, hooves from elk and deer.

Of feathers and talons from birds of prey.

Or it could it have been a brash sixteen-year-old proving a point to his mother, officer of the law.

She returned to the desk. “I’ll need a statement from you. Please,” she added, and again the severity in her eyes lessened. “When Beau gets home from school this afternoon, I’ll talk to him.”

Ethan didn’t envy her the job. He’d heard the rumors, the gossip. Over the past year and a half, Meg McKee’s boy had transitioned into the classic badassed teenager.

The way he’d been once.

Old history, Ethan.

Except, people didn’t forget. Not in this town. Restless to leave, he took the pen and notepad she dug from a desk drawer.

“The room across the hall’s more private,” she said, and he saw something in her eyes. Something that had him wanting to reach over, touch her hair, that sleek short bob skimming to her chin. So different from when she’d been young. When touching had been easy and natural and they’d been crazy about each other.

Ethan shoved back his chair and stood. He’d seen the nameplate on the door of the interview room when he stood on the threshold of her office. The office of Meg, the cop. Meg, the woman he barely recognized.

She rose with him. Their eyes held. A long moment passed and all he could think was how nearly two decades had altered little of her physique. She retained those same long lean bones, but, tall as she was, the top of her head still remained below his chin.

He turned and walked across the hall, flicked on the light.

“Ethan,” she said as he rounded the small, stark table marred with dozens of scuffs and scratches and initials. “I’ll get to the bottom of this.”

“I know you will.”

She leaned in the doorway, her chief’s badge glinting in the ruthless lighting. She had something on her mind, he could see, something that bowed between them, eye to eye, and he remembered days long past when tension between them was as foreign as a bluebird nesting in winter.

“It’s…” she began. “It’s been a long time since…”

Since they’d stood within each other’s proximity. Since they’d talked, actually talked.

What do you want me to say, Meggie? That I haven’t forgotten what we had once? That I wish your best friend hadn’t died during prom week? That, God help me, I wanted so badly to soothe your grief, heal your heart?

“How’ve you been?” she asked softly, and he saw the question was genuine and came from a history long past.

“Good. Real good.” Same old mundane response.

Swallowing the sudden lump in his throat, he glanced at the paper in his hand, focusing on his reason for being here—because if he didn’t, he’d step across the confined space and haul her into his arms. “Look, I should get this done.”

She straightened from the doorjamb. “’Course. Just leave it with Sally when you’re finished. And Ethan? Thanks again.” With that, she walked across to her office and closed the door.

He stared at the page. In his chest, his heart hammered. Well, it was a start, this dialogue between them. The proverbial ice had been broken. So where did he take it from here?

Think about her later.

He set aside her pen, drew the ever-present pencil from his shirt pocket. Trouble was, he’d never stopped thinking about Meggie McKee.

He drove with the window down, left arm on the sill, shifting the gear shift effortlessly on curves and hills. She watched his booted feet work the clutch and gas.

A small waterfall streamed through her abdomen at the sight of his bare brown calves and knees, forearms and biceps. She imagined their strength, the texture of compact muscle, how his skin—the color of dark-roast coffee with cream—would contrast against the paleness of her own.

Snapping around, she viewed the tiny lake skimming through the trees beyond the side window. What was she doing, thinking of skin and muscle and color—of Ethan Red Wolf—this way? She had trained herself never to think of men sexually, not for seven years, not since Doug Sutcliffe and before him…

Ethan.

Young and stupid, that’s what you were back then, believing you had what it took to entice a man. Believing that, no matter what, a man would see you as a woman.

Laughable, was what it was. Laughable because here she was in what much of the world still deemed a man’s job, toting a gun, wearing a mask of authority. Hiding.

Losing a breast to cancer tended to make a woman a tad more self-conscious. Especially when the man she’d married—the doctor she’d married—saw her as an altered person postsurgery.

And she would bet her badge, if Ethan knew, he wouldn’t draw pictures of her with silk locks and youth on her side. He would not remember moments from an era long dead.

And he damn well wouldn’t be glancing across the cab of his pickup with those eyes that embraced the secrets of the earth, and set her pulse off-kilter.

Well, to hell with him. To hell with them all. She’d gotten this far, hadn’t she? Did her best to raise her son, create a secure and loving home for him, whether or not he appreciated those aspects in his hormonal, independence-seeking stage. Hadn’t she?

Damn it. She just needed to stop smelling the man beside her, needed to quit inhaling the scent the sunwarmed breeze brought through the window: that musk of hard work cleaving to skin.

You’re sniffing like a dog, Meg.

God, she needed a life.

Eight minutes later they arrived at Ted’s Landing, a dilapidated pier so called because it had once anchored the float plane of Ted Barns—until Ted sold the plane and relocated to Kentucky.

Ethan brought the truck to a stop, dug out two iced water bottles from the glove box. After handing her one, he shoved open the door and climbed down. “We walk from here.”

“I know,” Meg retorted, uncapping her bottle and following him around the hood.

Did he think she couldn’t recall the rugged topography around Blue Lake? And that Ted’s Landing and a couple of other isolated flat acres were the only areas upon which people had built cottages and cabins? Before Ted’s Landing existed, this very spot had been hers and Ethan’s place to park, their spot to begin hiking two miles through dense bush to their boulder.

She stared across the miniature body of water that was more lagoon than lake. On its opposite shore, a bounty of autumn robes sheathed the rugged hills. Softening her voice, she asked, “Do you come this way often?”

He lifted a shoulder. “I circle the lake four or five times a week with my camera and sketchpad.”

Almost twenty miles on foot over some of the roughest geography within the county. But then, he’d always been a man at home in the outdoors, capturing beauty others missed. In her home office, Meg had hung this year’s calendar, printed with his photographs. September offered her favorite, a ladybug on a single blade of blueeyed grass sprouting amidst a cluster of river stones.

Evidently done with talking, Ethan cut through the tumbling rock and willows edging the lake, and Meg, focusing on his back, hurried into the woods after him. Twenty minutes later, hoping the sweat under her arms lay invisible on her gray short-sleeved shirt, she followed him into blue-sky sunshine once more.

The first thing she detected was how much the place had retained its identity over the past decades, and the countless details he’d sketched in the interview room. The elephant-sized boulder still nudged the shoreline, though cattails now led the way into the water. Behind the big stone, the cliff caught the late-morning sunshine, while willows and shaggy shrubs ascended the rock-embedded bank to the ledge that housed an immense eagles’ nest. From this angle, Meg had always thought it resembled one of those behemoth ladies’ hats popular in the 1920s.

“That thing must weigh a ton,” she remarked, staring up eighty feet. “Do they still come back every spring?”

From under the bill of his ball cap, his eyes were mystic. “It’s not the same pair, Meggie.”

That had been here when they were teenagers. Kissing on that rock.

“Of course not. I was just wondering if this spring’s pair returned the way the others did.”

“The nest was empty for a lot of years with the shooting range so near. This spring is the first I saw a pair return to nest.”

“I’m sorry, Ethan. I know how much you loved the eagles.”

His eyes were fathomless under the cap’s visor. “So did you.”

She had. As teenagers, they’d hidden among the trees and between kisses observed the birds with telescopes and binoculars, recording hatching times and feeding times and behaviors of both parents and young.

Taking a swig of her water, Meg stepped toward the boulder. “Show me where you found the injured bird.”

They went through the procedure step by step, she clicking pictures and rewriting the statement, he describing again what he’d discovered, where he had spotted her son and Randy Leland shooting at the deadwood along the shore. She snapped close-ups of the splinters in the driftwood, then of the twenty-two shells strewn among the rocks.

When it was done she presented the statement of his verbal explanation. “Mind reading it over, ensure it’s correct?” She pointed below the last paragraph. “Sign at the X.”

He reached over, slashed his name across the bottom of the last page.

“You’re not reading it?” She had expected him to examine every nuance of what she’d written.

He pushed the notebook more securely into her hands. “I trust you, Meggie.”

How could she respond to that? Trust was not something she expected from men. Ethan hadn’t trusted her in the past when she’d needed him after the death of her best friend Farrah, and Doug hadn’t trusted Meg’s oscillating emotions after her surgery, and Mark, the man she’d dated four years ago…He had understood even less than Doug or Ethan.

“Call me Meg,” she said, focusing on the present, the tangible, the necessary, hoping annoyance would set in so she could have an excuse to leave. “I don’t go by Meggie anymore.”

He tilted back his head, took a swallow of water, eyeing her all the time. As he recapped the bottle, his mouth twitched. “You’ll always be Meggie to me. Meg is the cop. Meggie is the woman.”

A spear of heat pricked her stomach. She turned to go. “They’re one and the same. I’m not the person you knew back then, Ethan.”

His biceps brushed her shoulder as he fell in step beside her. “Can’t promise to remember that.”

“Well, try. By the way, thanks for coming here with me.” For giving me a statement I can file.

“I don’t think your son shot the eagle.”

“That remains to be seen. He’s been—” She cut off the direction of thought. Ethan Red Wolf was no longer part of her life, and she had no business burdening him with her woes about a teenager dipping his toes in dark waters.

“Been what?” Ethan prompted. His stride slowed to match hers across the uneven, tricky landscape.

She paused in the cool shadows bordering the timberline. Across the water a loon bugled its lonesome call. “Let’s just say Beau has a rebellious streak.”

“Normal for teenagers.” The flicker of fun resurfaced. “I recall us having a streak of rebelliousness when we were sixteen.”

“We weren’t irresponsible,” she retorted. We didn’t flick cigarettes out car windows or write graffiti on the sides of buildings. “If we had, our parents would’ve kicked butt.”

Beneath the cap, his eyes laughed. “Oh, Meggie. You forget so easily. What about the time we did doughnut spins in my old truck across old man Freeley’s hay field? And the time you drove your dad’s pickup to the drive-in without permission. He sent the cops looking for us.”

Her lips pursed to hide a smile. “That was different.”

“How so?”

“We did it for fun. Beau’s got ten miles of attitude. He does things with intent.”

Ethan frowned. “You’re talking like a cop, not a mother.”

“Maybe I can’t separate the two.”

“Like you can’t separate the cop from the woman?”

She walked away from him, into the forest. “This conversation’s over.”

“Why, because I hit a nerve?”

“Because my relationship with Beau is none of your concern.”

“What about the relationship between you and me?” he called.

“A two-hour reunion isn’t a relationship.”

Several seconds later his fingers closed around her forearm. A pinch of fear rushed through Meg. He’d come up behind her, quick and silent, and they were on a mountainside, but most of all she had no tool of comparison for this somber-eyed Ethan to the one she’d suppressed in the memories of her past.

Scowling, he released his grip and stepped back. “Christ, Meggie. You know I’d never hurt you.”

Shame warmed her cheeks. He always could read her emotions. “It’s not that.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Look, this is my point. We no longer know each other.”

“We have a history,” he argued. “A long history. Which you chose to throw away by running off and marrying some other man.”

“I did not run off or throw away anything. You chose not to understand.”

“I understood full well. Your best friend committed suicide six days before prom night and you were so distraught all you wanted was to eradicate the memory. ‘Please, Ethan,’ you begged. ‘Help me erase the memory. Give me something else to put in its place.’ Well, sorry for not having the enthusiasm to take your virginity just so you could grab what I thought should be a sweet and tender first time for both of us, just to use it as a crutch in your grief. I loved you, Meggie. Didn’t that mean anything to you?”

From a far distance in her mind, the up-and-down motion of his chest registered. He breathed as if he’d sprinted a mile uphill. Resurrected, that night still bothered him.

Suddenly, she saw herself as he had. Walking away, crying and cursing him in the same breath. Without empathy for his broken heart, his gentle soul. Farrah had been his friend, too—along with Kell Tanner. Four kids growing up together. “Buds all the way,” they’d repeated on a thousand and one occasions, like a mantra.

Until Farrah made them a trio and life as they knew it died at the end of a rope in that closet with her.

As Meg stood looking up at Ethan, she remembered, too, the taunting words she’d said, words no better than those Linc Leland and Jock Ralston uttered years ago….

That night, after they’d changed from prom finery into jeans and sweatshirts, they had come here and she’d accused Ethan of letting them get to him, letting them victimize him. Like Farrah had been victimized.

Farrah’s death shouldn’t be the reason, he’d said. Shouldn’t be the reason to make love. To which Meg had responded, So, don’t let it scare you away.

And here she was, nineteen years later, the one scared away.

Scared of righting wrongs with Ethan. Of getting involved in a relationship. Most of all, most of all, scared of being a woman. A woman whose disease could return with a vengeance.

Oblivious of the turmoil in her head, Ethan stroked her cheek, a first in forever. “It’s long past,” he said quietly. His hand dropped. “Come on, let’s head back.”

She trailed him through the rugged, sun-speckled woods. And, watching the beacon of his white T-shirt amidst the shadows, she couldn’t help but think how once, long ago, she would have followed him into eternity.

Meg wanted to see the extent of the eagle’s injuries and ask veterinarian Kell Tanner what he was able to determine.

After parking the police cruiser, she pushed through the front door of Sweet Creek’s Animal Clinic, clinking the bell at the top of the jamb. In a short hallway beyond the reception area, Ethan stood with the vet; their heads turned upon her entry.

From under his ball cap, Ethan’s dark serious eyes latched on Meg. A cold sweat swiped her skin. Had the eagle died?

“Hey, Meg,” Kell said, eyes smiling. “Come to see my newest patient?”

Still alive. She breathed easier. “How’s it doing, Doc?”

“There’s a fifty-percent chance for survival. My bet is on the survival fifty.”

“Good to hear.” Her eyes wove back to Ethan, hoping to convey her relief for his sake. Rescuer that he was, the bird’s wounds would weigh on his heart. Turning to Kell, she asked, “What were your conclusions on the injuries?”

He jerked his head toward the rear door. “I was just about to tell Ethan. Why don’t you both come to the aviary and I’ll explain.”

They walked down the hall, Ethan tall and rangy beside her as they followed the doctor. Their hands brushed once. Outside, a roofed walkway linked the main structure to a small edifice. A sign reading Aviary hung above its door; inside, a birdcage contained the eagle.

Kell went to a small refrigerator, took a few bits of raw meat from plastic bag and walked to the raptor. White bandages wrapped its thigh and wings, and a plastic shield banded its neck. Yellow predator eyes watched them cautiously.

Ethan stood behind her shoulder, igniting a current of warmth between their bodies. He said, “Great job, Kell. As always.”

“Thanks. Barring infection, this little gal should make it.”

“Was she shot by a twenty-two?” Meg asked.

Kell pushed a piece of chicken through the wire mesh; the eagle gobbled the chunk. “I’m not an expert, but from the appearance of the exit wound in the thigh and from the minimal number of traumatized wing bones, it likely wasn’t a high-powered weapon.”

“And the tail feathers?” The bird had none.

“They were plucked, not molted.”

Which meant a poacher or someone with a sadistic bent. “Thanks, Kell. Let me know if her condition deteriorates.”

“Will do.”

Meg walked out of the aviary.

“Meggie,” Ethan called as he followed her outside into the breezeway.

She swung around. “Was the eagle unconscious when you found her?”

“Out cold. Probably hit her head on the rocks when she fell.”

Meg studied the trees surrounding the clinic. A wind eddied autumn leaves into the air and along the ground. “It’s possible they thought the bird was dead.”

Ethan said nothing.

She slanted him a look. “You don’t think so?”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Which says more than words, Ethan. You always were quiet.” And observant.

His mouth hinted at a smile. “Not around you.”

Once, perhaps. Once they would’ve discussed every detail of their lives and feelings, shared hopes and dreams and planned their future—until she’d forced a separation between them.

Disillusioned, she turned to walk around the main building, for her truck.

“If it’s any consolation,” he said, walking beside her, “I’ve waited a long time for this day. I don’t like how it’s come about with the injury of wildlife, but I’m glad we’re talking again.”

She stopped at her vehicle. “Me, too.” Without the old weight of silence, her heart felt lighter. Opening the truck’s door, she got in behind the wheel. “See you later.”

“Count on it.” He walked back into the clinic, back to his eagle.