"Easy there, Nosy. That wound has to be cleaned up or you're going to be dead or three-legged, which amounts to the same thing out here. And that would be a shame. You're the best-looking kitten that ugly old mouser has sired."

Bemused by the picture man and kitten made, Diana opened her arms. Pounce took the hint, leaped gracefully to the floor and vanished into the house. Drawn against her will by the kitten's need, Diana bent over Ten's hands.

"What's wrong with it?" she asked.

"She was just living up to her name. Nosy. Either one of the chickens pecked her, or a hawk made a pass at her and she got free, or one of the bunkhouse dogs bit her, or…" Ten shrugged. "Lots of things can happen to a newly weaned kitten on a ranch."

"Poor little thing," Diana murmured, stroking the kitten with a fingertip, noticing for the first time that the fur on the animal's left haunch was rucked up over a knot of swollen flesh. "What do you want me to do?"

"Hold her while I clean her up. Normally her mother would take care of it, but she went hunting a week ago and didn't come back."

Diana looked up for an instant and received a vivid impression of diamond-clear eyes framed by thick black eyelashes that any woman would have envied. The eyelashes were the only suggestion of softness about Ten, but it reassured Diana in an odd way.

"Show me what to do."

The left corner of Ten's mouth tipped upward approvingly. "Hold your hands out. That's it. Now hold Nosy here, and here, so I can get to the haunch. Hold on a little harder. You won't hurt her. She's still at the age where she's all rubber bands and curiosity."

The description made Diana smile at the same instant that warm, hard fingers pressed over her own, showing her how much restraint to use on the kitten.

"That's good. Now hold tight."

In the silence that came while Ten gently examined the kitten, Diana could hear her own heartbeat and feel the subtle warmth of Ten's breath as he bent over the furry scrap of life she held in her hands.

"Damn. I was afraid of that."

"What?" she asked.

"I'll have to open it up."

Ten reached toward the counter with a long arm. For the first time Diana noticed the open first aid kit.

The sound of the wrapper being removed from the sterile, disposable scalpel seemed as loud to her as thunder.

Gray eyes assessed Diana, missing nothing of her distress.

"I'll get Carla," he said.

"No," Diana said quickly. "I'm not squeamish. Well, not horribly squeamish. Everyone who works at remote sites has to go through first aid training. It's just…the kitten is so small."

"Close your eyes. It will make it easier on all of us."

Diana closed her eyes and held her breath, expecting to hear a cry of distress from the kitten when Ten went to work. Other than a slight twitch, the animal showed no reaction. Diana was equally still, so still that she sensed the tiny currents of air made when Ten's hands moved over the small patient. The words he spoke to Nosy were like the purring of a mama cat, sound without meaning except the most basic meaning of all-reassurance.

There was the sharp smell of disinfectant, the thin rasp of paper wrappings being torn away and a sense of light pressure as Ten swabbed the wound clean.

"Okay. You can open your eyes now."

Diana looked down. The kitten's haunch was wet, marred only by a tiny cut. Most of the swelling was gone, removed when Ten lanced the boil that had formed over the wound.

"Thorn," Ten said, holding up a wicked, vaguely curved fragment. "Wild rose from the looks of it."

"Will Nosy be all right now?"

"Should be."

Long fingers slid beneath the kitten, moving over Diana's skin almost caressingly as Ten lifted the animal from her hands. Her breath froze, but Ten never so much as glanced at her.

"C'mon, Nosy," he said, cradling the kitten against his neck with his left hand. "You've taken up enough of the lady's time. What you need now is a little sleep and TLC."

"TLC? Is that a medicine?"

The corner of Ten's mouth curved up again. "Best one in the world. Tender Loving Care."

As he spoke, Ten stroked Nosy's face with a fingertip that was as gentle as a whisper. After a few strokes the kitten looked bemused and altogether content. Within moments Nosy's eyelids lowered over round amber eyes. There was a little yawn, the delicate curl of a tiny pink tongue, and the kitten was asleep.

With a feeling of unreality, Diana looked at the ramrod's hard hand curled protectively around the sleeping kitten and remembered that same hand breaking a man's wrist and then slamming him into unconsciousness before he could even cry out in pain.

Ramrod. The name suits him.

But so did the sleeping kitten.

3

Dinner was on the table at six o'clock, straight up. By long-standing custom, no one waited for latecomers. That included Luke, who was still on the phone talking to the sheriff. No one took Luke's place at the head of the table, but formality ended there. Cash and Carla sat facing Diana and Ten across the table. Diana had managed to secure a seat just to the left of the head of the table, ensuring that she would have only one person seated next to her. Even so, she felt crowded, because that one person was Ten.

To Diana's eyes, the long dining table was supporting enough food for at least twenty people. Five cowhands sat at the other end of the table. There was room for five more men and seven men in a squeeze, but the Rocking M was shorthanded. Only nine people were seated at the moment. Then the outside door banged and a new cowhand called Jervis rushed in and snagged the platter of pork chops before he had even sat down.

"Where's Cosy?" Jervis asked as he slid into a chair and began forking pork chops onto his plate.

"Garbage run," Ten said.

Jervis hesitated, looked around the table and said to Ten, "Baker, huh?"

Ten grunted.

"Who gave him the good word?"

"I did."

"How'd he take it?"

"I didn't hear any complaints."

Cash half strangled on laughter and coffee.

"Something funny?" asked Jervis.

"Ten had Baker laid out cold in six seconds flat," Cash said casually, reaching for the gravy. "He's probably still wondering what hit him."

"Can't say as I'm sorry," Jervis said. He dished a mountain of potatoes onto his plate before he turned and looked Ten over. "Not a mark on you. You must be as much an outlaw as Cosy said you were. That Baker did a lot of bragging about what a fighter he was. Talked about men he'd busted up so bad they pi-er, passed blood for months."

Ten glanced at Diana before he gave the cowhand an icy look. "Jervis, why don't you just shovel food and leave the dinner conversation to Carla. Miss Saxton isn't used to anything less polished than a faculty tea."

"Sorry, ma'am," Jervis said to Diana.

"Don't apologize on my account," she quickly. "Life at remote archaeological sites isn't as polished as Mr., er-"

"Blackthorn," Ten said politely.

"-Blackthorn seems to think," Diana finished. "I don't cringe at a few rough edges."

"Uh, sure," Jervis said, trying and failing not to stare at the noticeable gap that had opened up between Diana's chair and Ten's.

The other cowhands followed Jervis's look. Snickers went around the table like distant lightning, but not one man was going to call down their ramrod's ire by being so rude as to point out that the university woman was politely lying through her pretty white teeth.

Diana didn't notice the looks she received, for she was grimly concentrating on her single pork chop, scant helping of potatoes and no gravy. Despite her usually healthy appetite, her empty stomach and the savory nature of Carla's cooking, Diana was having trouble swallowing. Even though none of the other men at the table were as big as Cash-and Luke wasn't even in the dining room-she felt suffocated by looming, uncivilized, unpredictable males.

"Miss Saxton," Ten continued, "will be here for the summer, working at the September Canyon site." He glanced at the woman, who was at the moment subtly hitching her chair even farther away from him, and drawled, "It is Miss, isn't it?"

Carla gave Ten a quick glance, caught by the unusual edge in his normally smooth voice. Then she noticed what the cowhands had already seen-the gap that had slowly opened up between Diana's chair and the ramrod's.

"Actually," Diana said, "my students call me Dr. Saxton and my friends call me Di."

"What does your husband call you?" Ten asked blandly.

"I'm not married."

Ten would have been surprised by any other answer, a fact that he didn't bother to conceal.

"Dr. Diana Saxton," Ten continued, "will be spending most of her time at the September Canyon digs. In between, she'll be living at the old house, which means that you boys better clean up your act. Voices carry real well from the bunkhouse to the old house. Anybody who embarrasses the lady will hear from me."

"And from me," Luke said, pulling out his chair and sitting down. "Pass the pork chops, please." He looked at Diana, saw the gap between her chair and Ten's and gave the ramrod a look that was both amused and questioning. "Didn't you have time to shower before dinner?"

The left corner of Ten's mouth lifted in wry acknowledgment, but he said nothing.

"When are you leaving?" Carla asked quickly, turning toward her brother, Cash. She didn't know why Diana kept edging farther away from Ten but guessed that she would be embarrassed if it were pointed out. By and large the cowhands were kind men, but their humor was both blunt and unrelenting.

"Right after we play poker tonight," Cash said.

"Poker?" Carla groaned.

"Sure. I thought I'd introduce Dr. Saxton to the joys of seven-card stud."

Smiling politely, Diana looked up from her plate. "Thanks, but I'm really tired. Maybe some other time."

The cowhands laughed as though she had made a joke.

"Guess they teach more than stones and bones at that university," Jervis said when the laughter ended. "Must teach some common sense, too."

Diana looked at Carla, who smiled.

"My brother is, er, well…" Carla's voice faded.

"Cash is damned lucky at cards," Ten said succinctly. "He'll clean you down to the lint in your pockets."

"It's true," said Carla. "His real name is Alexander, but anyone who has ever played cards with him calls him Cash."

"In fact," Luke said, pouring gravy over mounds of food, "I'm one of the few men in living memory ever to beat Cash at poker."

Cash smiled slightly and examined his dinner as though he expected it to get up and walk off the plate.

"Of course," Luke continued, "Cash cheated."

Cash's head snapped up.

"He wanted Carla to spend the summer on the Rocking M," Luke said matter-of-factly. "So he suckered her into betting a summer's worth of cooking. Cash won, of course. Then he turned around and carefully lost his sister's whole summer to me." Luke ran his fingertip from Carla's cheekbone to the corner of her smile before he turned to Cash and said quietly, "I never thanked you for giving Carla to me, but not a day goes by that I don't thank God."

Diana looked at the two big men and the woman who sat wholly at ease between them, smiling, her love for her husband and her brother as vivid as the blue-green of her eyes. The men's love for her was equally obvious, almost tangible. An odd aching closed Diana's throat, making an already difficult dinner impossible to swallow.

"I hope you know how lucky you are," she said to Carla. Without warning, Diana pushed back from the table and stood. "I'm afraid I'm too tired to eat. If you'll excuse me, I'll make it an early night."

"Of course," Carla said. "If you're hungry later, just come in the back way and eat whatever looks good. Ten does it all the time."

"Thanks," Diana said, already turning away, eager to be gone from the room full of men.

Nobody said a word until Diana had been gone long enough to be well beyond range of their voices. Then Luke turned, raised his eyebrows questioningly and looked straight at Ten.

"Are you the burr under her saddle?" Luke asked.

There was absolute silence as all the cowhands leaned forward to hear the answer to the question none of them had the nerve to ask their ramrod.