LINT BARCLAY, YOU HAVEN’T heard a word I’ve been saying.” Nettie Phillips poked him in the arm as all around them, chattering people laughed, drank lemonade and elderberry wine, and watched the dancers doing a country jig across the Mangleys’ candlelit parlor.

“I asked you why you don’t just go over there and ask Emily Spoon to dance,” Nettie said as the sheriff turned distracted eyes upon her.

“Any fool can see you’re going to burst if you watch one more cowboy take her for a whirl around the floor.”

Her words penetrated the dark hell of Clint’s thoughts. He tore his gaze from the sight of Emily dancing with Fred Baker and glowered at the frank-talking woman beside him.

“She doesn’t want to dance with me.”

“How do you know if you don’t ask?”

“I did ask. Twice.” Clint’s lip curled dangerously. “She told me no. Then she danced with Homer Riley and Doc Calvin. Then she disappeared with a bunch of ladies, gabbing all the while about muffs and parasols. Then she danced with Hank Peterson and Chance Russell. She wouldn’t even talk to me.”

“Serves you right,” Nettie told him as Agnes Mangley bustled by, making a beeline for Carla and Lester Spoon, huddled in a corner whispering to one another as if they were the only two people in the house.

“You kept that girl in the dark, after all, when you could have saved her a lot of grief if you’d only told her what was going on. Oh, she told me about it,” she added airily at his startled glance. “Poor girl needed someone to talk to.”

Of course, Nettie reflected, Emily hadn’t exactly confided everything to her—she hadn’t come out and said she was so in love with Clint Barclay she couldn’t see straight—only that she planned never to speak to him again—but her feelings for the sheriff were plain as day, at least in Nettie’s opinion. She hadn’t even planned on attending the Mangleys’ party until Nettie shrewdly pointed out that if she didn’t come, it would look like she was avoiding him, since the Spoon men and the sheriff were all guests of honor. Did she want to let Clint Barclay know that he could scare her away from attending parties and town functions and dances just because he would be there? Did she want the man to think he had even a thimbleful of power over where she went and what she did?

That had done the trick and Emily had changed her mind about the party. Now the rest was up to Clint, Nettie thought, as she glanced sidelong at the handsome sheriff who had done nothing but scowl and toss back whiskey and prowl the Mangley house like a hungry, restless cougar since the moment Emily Spoon and her family arrived.

“Men,” Nettie said pointedly. “You always think you know best for a woman, insead of letting her decide for herself. One of your more foolish and irritating traits, if you ask me. The smart ones learn from their mistakes. Why, my Lucas learned the hard way the first month we were married that…”

Clint heard no more as Nettie rattled on—his attention was caught by the sight of Emily being brought a glass of lemonade by Cody Malone.

Was there a man in the room she hadn’t spoken to, danced with, smiled upon—except for him? He doubted it. And he doubted his own ability to survive this night without hitting someone.

Trouble was, she wouldn’t even give him a chance to explain or to apologize. A chance to even hint at what was in his heart. It was driving him crazy. Feelings he hadn’t ever thought he’d feel tormented him. Jealousy, loneliness, despair. Over a woman.

Not just any woman. The one woman he’d discovered he needed in his life was the one woman who wanted nothing to do with him.

Well, I reckon we’ll just see about that, he decided, his jaw tightening. He didn’t give up when he was on the trail of some low-down smelly outlaw, or a gang of wily scavengers like the Monroe gang or the Barts—he wasn’t about to give up on the woman he loved.

That he loved her Clint could no longer deny. That he wanted her in his arms and in his bed and in his heart for the rest of his life was an indisputable fact.

That he’d win her over was an iffy matter. No one he’d ever met had a temper and a will and a knack for holding a grudge like the enchantingly hot-tempered Miss Emily Spoon.

As if she felt his gaze burning into her, Emily looked up at that moment, across the room, and directly into his eyes.

But as he excused himself from Nettie and started purposefully across the room toward her, she turned away and immediately disappeared behind a knot of people.

Clint walked faster, his eyes searching the crowd, and all the while he was completely unaware that he was the object of much attention and conjecture by several other guests at the party.

Hamilton Smith and Hoss Fleagle watched open-mouthed as Clint approached the Spoon girl yet again.

“You see what I see, Ham?” Hoss shook his head in disbelief.

“You mean the way Clint keeps looking at that gal? And chasing after her?” Ham sighed over the rim of his crystal goblet filled with elderberry wine. “Mighty sad sight. All these women in town hankering to get him to pop the question, and the one girl he’s trying to talk to keeps dodging him like he was a cow pie in a basket of cookies.”

“If I ever look that lovesick, shoot me and put me out of my misery,” Hoss exclaimed.

And Doc Calvin happened by just then and added his two cents: “Clint’s a goner,” he muttered sadly.

Several of the other townspeople had taken note of the sheriff’s apparently doomed fascination with Emily Spoon as well, but many of the citizens of Lonesome had not even noticed—another development had commanded their full attention. The Spoon boys had suddenly replaced the sheriff as objects of adoration and potential matrimony among the single women of Lonesome. Thanks to their efforts to thwart the plot against the Mangleys, and incidentally saving the lives of Hamilton and Bessie Smith as well, Pete and Lester Spoon were no longer considered outlaws but were hailed as heroes, slapped on the back, welcomed into every conversation. They were congratulated and complimented, their every utterance listened to with bated breath, applauded, repeated around the room as if it were a nugget of infinite wisdom.

Even Jake Spoon, who stood with his hands in his pockets, hugging the wall, on the outskirts of the festivities, was eventually captured by the throng, hustled to the center of the parlor, subjected to toasts made in his honor, with Agnes Mangley extolling his courage, and every man in the room wanting to pump his hand.

The young women who had previously had eyes only for Sheriff Barclay suddenly were swarming over Pete Spoon like honeybees over a jar of jam. And several had tried to catch Lester’s eye, in the hope he would escort them in to supper or ask them to dance. But Lester Spoon seemed mesmerized by Carla Mangley, and she by him. The most astonishing thing about the entire party was the way Agnes Mangley raised toast after toast to the Spoons, fawned over them, insisted they sit beside her, and looked upon Lester’s captivation with Carla with obvious favor.

The outcast outlaws of the Teacup Ranch had suddenly become the darlings of Forlorn Valley society. But despite the entire town becoming wholly caught up in this phenomenon, once Pete, Lester, and Jake finally managed to escape and meet in the hallway behind the wide oak stairs, they wasted no time thinking about their new status as heroes.

They quickly got down to business.

“Anyone seen Emily?” Jake demanded. “She was right next to the widow Mangley when I saw her at the supper table, and she and that Margaret Smith were talking about some dress or other she wanted Emily to sew, but then she disappeared!”

“She’s in the garden,” Pete said. “All by herself. Lester and I saw her slip out and go around back.”

“She’s sitting right there on the swing, in the dark, no doubt mooning over Barclay,” Lester snorted. “No one’s around, so if we’re going through with this, now’s the time,” he added.

“But where’s Joey?” Pete asked.

Jake grinned. “In the kitchen. He and Bobby Smith swiped a plate of oatmeal cookies and they’re hiding out in the pantry eating them all.” He guffawed, despite the seriousness of what lay before them. “I told him to stay put—that I had a special job for him to do. So how’s about I go get him now—and you boys do your part?”

“Fine by me. This is the only part of this whole damned scheme I’m going to enjoy,” Pete said with relish.

“Me too.” Lester nodded at Tammy Sue Wells, who glided slowly by, her glance shifting from him to Pete, her hips swaying as she walked. He waited until she slipped into the dining room before continuing. “I’m still not so sure this is a good idea.”

Jake’s deep-set eyes fixed themselves first on his son, then on his nephew. “If it works,” he said gruffly, “I’m not going to like it any more than you do. But it’s what makes Emily happy that counts.”

Lester sighed resignedly. Pete rocked back and forth on his heels for a moment, wrestling with the strong, contradictory emotions tearing through him.

“Oh, hell,” he said at last, taking a deep breath. “If it makes Emily happy, I’d eat a mountain of tumbleweed. So let’s quit jawing about it and just get it over with.”

His body tensed and straightened as he spotted Clint Barclay, a cigar stuck in his mouth as he leaned against the wall of the parlor, his hard gaze scanning the crowded room, no doubt looking for Emily.

“I want to do the honors,” Pete told Lester. “She’s my sister.”

“I’ll flip you for the privilege,” Lester quickly countered.

Jake pulled out a coin.

“Heads,” Pete said. The cousins watched intently as Jake tossed the coin, caught it, and turned it over in his palm.

“Heads,” the older man announced.

As Lester swore under his breath, a cold smile touched Pete’s lips. His gaze shifted again to Barclay and he started forward.

“Let’s go.”