“Lord knows you’ve given us both enough excuses—muddy boots, soiled gowns, disgraceful tattered Levi’s that no woman should ever be caught dead—”

“Yes, yes, Mother, I know,” she said, silencing her with a kiss on the cheek.

“I’m a wretched hoyden, the bane of your existence, and the most unrefined lady in the entire territory of New Mexico.”

Collie sighed with exasperation. “You don’t have to sound so proud of it.”

Rayna chuckled as she stripped off her gloves. “Mother, you’ve been trying to domesticate me for twenty-four years and haven’t succeeded yet. When are you going to face the fact that I’ll never be anything but the son you and father always wanted? Skylar is the domestic one.”

Collie wished she could debate the issue. She loved both her children dearly, but they were as different as night and day. Skylar was quiet and shy.

She had mastered the fine art of running a household and was in all ways a dutiful daughter. Rayna, on the other hand, was stubborn, headstrong, and willful. She had inherited her father’s business sense, and her only desire was to someday assume the responsibility of running Rancho Verde. If Raymond 9

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Templeton had ever once discouraged his daughter from such an unladylike pursuit, Collie hadn’t been within earshot when he’d done it.

“Marie is preparing your bathwater, dear,” she said, resigned to the knowledge that nothing she could say would change her daughter’s deportment. “I may not be able to domesticate you, but I can at least make certain you don’t appear at the dinner table smelling like a horse stall.”

“Thank you, Mother.” Tugging at the strip of rawhide that held her blond hair into a tight queue, Rayna glanced into her sister’s room and found it devoid of life. “Where’s Skylar?”

A small frown furrowed Collie’s brow, but she kept her voice carefully neutral. “I believe she went out to the Mescalero encampment.”

Rayna wasn’t fooled by her mother’s even tone. “Why does that upset you?

She’s always felt a special connection with the Apaches at Rancho Verde.”

“I know that, dear. But she’s spending more and more time with them lately. She goes out to the encampment every day now.”

“Really?” Rayna stopped in front of her bedroom door.

“You didn’t know?” Collie asked. Usually Rayna knew far more about what her sister thought and did then either of her parents. Since the day Raymond had brought Skylar home, the two girls had been virtually inseparable.

“No, I didn’t,” she replied, her own brow furrowed with worry now. It wasn’t like Skylar to keep things from her.

“I believe Gatana is teaching her some sort of ceremony.”

Her voice was laced with sadness, and Rayna finally realized what was upsetting her. Collie felt betrayed because she feared that all the advantages she’d given Skylar hadn’t been enough for her adopted daughter. She had loved her and protected her as best she could from the inevitable prejudice the girl had faced. She had seen to it that she received an excellent education back east that had broadened Skylar’s horizons far beyond the scope of most other young women in New Mexico, white or Apache.

Unfortunately a connection to her heritage was the one thing Collie couldn’t give her daughter, but it was the one thing Skylar seemed to want most.

Rayna searched for something to say that would lift her mother’s spirits, but she couldn’t think of anything. She knew that Skylar loved her adopted family, but there was a certain sadness in her that seemed to be growing stronger every day. Rayna thought she understood it, but she knew she could never explain it to the woman who had raised Skylar with the same love and devotion she’d bestowed on her flesh-and-blood daughter.

“I wouldn’t worry about it, Mother,” she said, trying to sound reassuring.

“She’s probably just looking for a little diversion to ease her boredom. I know that if I had nothing to do but change bed linens and embroider sofa cushions every day, I’d go stark raving mad.”

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“Yes, but you’re not your sister,” Collie retorted, then fanned the air to shoo away the words. “I’m sorry, dear. I’m just being silly.”

“Yes, you are,” Rayna agreed. “Learning a Mescalero ceremony isn’t going to change the way she feels about you. You’re her mother. She loves you.”

“I know she does, dear.” She started to pat Rayna’s arm, then remembered the layers of dirt and the clean sheets she was carrying. She withdrew her hand so quickly that both of them laughed.

“Oh, go ahead, Mother,” Rayna teased. “I’d love to see Consuelo threatening to skin you alive.”

“Collie!” Raymond’s deep voice reverberated through the courtyard, startling his wife and daughter.

“What is it, dear?” Collie stepped closer to the gallery railing and found herself looking down on the top of her husband’s balding head.

Raymond twisted around and looked up. “Riders coming in.”

Rayna joined her mother at the rail, her unbound hair spilling over her shoulders. “Who is it?” Visitors were rare and always a source of excitement because they varied the routine of ranch life.

“Looks like Ben Martinez and that Hadley fellow from the newspaper in Malaventura.” Raymond grinned up at his daughter. “Hullo, missy. Hear you had a little trouble with Samson again.”

“You don’t have to look so smug about it, Papa. You’re the one who hired that no-account drifter who claimed to be a blacksmith.”

“Live and learn, missy. Live and learn. Gil’s already given him his walking papers.”

“Well, if he leaves on a horse he shod himself, we can expect him back by nightfall.”

Raymond’s hearty laugh bounced off the walls of the courtyard as he made his way toward the parlor at the front of the hacienda. “Are you two ladies going to come down to greet our guests, or not?”

“I’m on my way, Papa,” Rayna said, tossing her saddlebags and hat on the chair just inside her door before heading for the stairs.

But Collie had other ideas. “Not until you’ve had a bath and changed into proper clothing, young lady,” she said sternly. “You cannot receive visitors looking like a common cowhand.”

“Don’t be silly, Mother,” she replied without stopping. “I’ve worked the herd right alongside Ben Martinez during roundup for the last six years. If he saw me in anything other than Levi’s and boots, he’d have a fit of apoplexy.”

She was right about that. Ben was Rancho Verde’s nearest neighbor, and he was well acquainted with Rayna’s unusual habits. The man with Ben was another matter entirely, though. “That may be, but Mr. Hadley is a fine gentleman from Boston. You should greet him properly.”

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When Rayna realized what her mother was getting at, she stopped at the head of the stairs and gave her the most wicked grin in her repertoire. “You mean he’s a fine unattached gentleman from Boston, and I should pretend to be the delicate flower we both know I’m not.”

Collie sighed with exasperation. “You do have manners and breeding, Rayna. It’s just a matter of recognizing the appropriate time to display them.

This is one of those times.”

“Sorry, Mother, but I’m not about to trot out my best behavior for that Boston dandy,” she said, continuing down the stairs. “He can’t even sit a horse properly.”

“There’s more to life than sitting a horse!”

“Not my life,” Rayna replied.

“I give up,” Collie muttered, hurrying down the gallery. She had raised two of the most beautiful young women in the territory of New Mexico, and both, it seemed, were destined to remain spinsters—Skylar by circumstance of birth and Rayna by choice, or just plain stubbornness, Collie wasn’t sure which.

For safety’s sake, Rancho Verde had been situated in the center of the valley so that riders approaching from any direction would be visible long before they reached the hacienda. That gave Collie ample opportunity to dispose of the bed linens and instruct Consuelo Rodriguez, the Templetons’ housekeeper, to prepare refreshments for the guests. Then she went in search of her husband and daughter. She found them on the front veranda watching the riders approach. Rayna was telling her father about the unbranded cattle she’d discovered and the merry chase they had led her on.

“It’s fortunate Samson didn’t lose that shoe until after I’d corralled the herd.”

“Fortunate for the blacksmith,” Raymond commented with a chuckle. “I’d hate to see what you’d have done to him if you’d lost that yearling.”

Rayna didn’t share her father’s mirth. “Rest assured, Papa, if that had happened there wouldn’t have been enough left of that charlatan’s hide to—”

“That’s enough, Rayna.” Collie said, then turned a stern eye on her husband. “And that’s enough out of you, too. If you didn’t encourage her—”

“Oh, now, Collie . . .” Raymond threw one arm over her shoulder. “You oughta know by now that nothing either one of us says is going to discourage Rayna from speakin’ her mind or doing what she wants to do around the ranch.” He winked at his daughter. “And she does it so well that I can’t hardly complain, now, can I?”

Though Rayna smiled at her father and the affectionate way he gathered Collie to him, the mild disagreement between them made her uncomfortable.

The only real quarrels she’d ever heard them engage in had been over her.

Her earliest memories were of her father teaching her to ride and her mother protesting because she was too young. The same had been true when he taught her to use a rifle and a revolver.