Nadia Nichols - Montana Unbranded

Big-city cop rides the Wild West...

Tracking down another criminal is not how DEA special agent Joe Ferguson expected to spend his enforced vacation while recovering from an injury. But someone is harming the wild horses of Montana, and attorney Dani Jardine is desperate to stop the culprit. Joe admires Dani’s passion for the beautiful, free-spirited mustangs, so he steps up to help her.

While working together, Joe and Dani become closer, and their attraction grows stronger—until danger from his past threatens people they both love. Joe believes the sooner he returns to Providence, Rhode Island, the better. Because some things are meant to stay free...

“You coming to my lecture tonight?”

Joe leaned closer, drawing in the scent of her, the nearness of her, the warmth of her.

“You inviting me?” Dani said, concentrating on the plate she was drying.

She was smart and beautiful and sexy—and for some reason very peeved at him.

“I think you might find it very informative and educational.”

“Really,” she commented with complete indifference, adding the dried plate to the stack on the counter and taking the washed and rinsed plate he handed her. “You must think very highly of yourself, Detective.”

“I do,” he said, thinking that the sweet smell of her hair was like the elixir of life. “And if it scores me some points, I think very highly of you, too, Counselor.”

“Really,” she repeated in that same monotone. She added another dried dessert plate to the stack.

“I do.”

“Enough to stick around for a while?”

“Maybe.”

She glanced up at him, eyebrows raised. “Really?”

Dear Reader,

Montana Unbranded explores today’s wild mustangs, and takes us back to the Bow and Arrow Ranch in Park County, Montana, and to the cast of characters who brought this historic ranch to life in Montana Dreaming, Buffalo Summer and Montana Standoff.

No other animal embodies the untamed spirit of the West as much as the iconic mustang. In our hearts they will always gallop free, manes and tails streaming behind them. Unfortunately, their reality is far different. Today, wild horses roam an ever-shrinking habitat that also plays host to ranchers and farmers whose survival is driven by the bottom line. Unbranded horses are protected by the Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971, which states they are to be “protected from capture, branding, harassment, or death; and to accomplish this they are to be considered in the area where presently found, as an integral part of the natural system of the public lands.” However, they are also subject to management by the secretary of the interior, and can be removed from their range by the Bureau of Land Management “to preserve and maintain a thriving natural ecological balance and multiple-use relationship in that area.” The conflicts are obvious.

While writing this story, news flashed across major media outlets that the BLM was planning to slaughter forty-five thousand wild horses being held in BLM holding facilities. Public outcry prevented this from happening, but the problem remains. Enter the Mustang Heritage Foundation. Their mission is to get these horses out of holding pens and into adoptive homes. To learn more, go to www.mustangheritagefoundation.org.

It was Virginia Woolf who wrote, “Blame it or praise it, there is no denying the wild horse in us.” I know it’s in me, and I bet it’s in you, too. Enjoy the ride!

Nadia Nichols

Montana Unbranded

Nadia Nichols

www.millsandboon.co.uk

NADIA NICHOLS went to the dogs at the age of twenty-nine and currently operates a kennel of twenty-eight Alaskan huskies. She has raced her sled dogs in northern New England and Canada, works at the family-owned Harraseeket Inn in Freeport, Maine, and is also a registered Master Maine Guide.

She began her writing career at the age of five, when she made her first sale, a short story called “The Bear” to her mother for twenty-five cents. This story was such a blockbuster that her mother bought every other story she wrote and kept her in ice-cream money throughout much of her childhood.

Now all her royalties go toward buying dog food. She lives on a remote solar-powered northern Maine homestead with her sled dogs, a Belgian draft horse named Dan, several cats, two goats and a flock of chickens. She can be reached at nadianichols@aol.com.

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For Dan, my horse and my friend, who has the unbranded heart of a mustang.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

PROLOGUE

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 FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

EPILOGUE

Extract

Copyright

PROLOGUE

EVER SINCE THE SHOOTING, his nights had been fractured with brief moments of consciousness, coming up out of the darkness to remember things he’d rather forget. The awful struggle to breathe. Marconi’s face bending over him. Marconi’s voice, taunting him. The taste of copper in his mouth and the smell of rotting garbage. The cold pelt of rain washing his blood into the city gutter. Rico finding him, the sound of sirens. Darkness and pain... How long that lasted, he didn’t know, but it felt like forever before the tormented struggle between life and death finally became a deep, healing sleep.

The ringing of the telephone brought him awake with an upward lunge, a movement that exploded in pain as his hand stabbed beneath his pillow for a weapon that wasn’t there. The room was dim. Shades drawn. The illuminated hands on the bedside clock read nine a.m. He’d been sleeping for twelve straight hours. Not possible, not in a hospital. He reached for the phone, his voice hoarse from sleep. “Ferguson.”

“Hey, it’s Rico, hope I didn’t wake you. I figured you’d have been up for hours, flirting with the nurses. Thought you’d want to know, the date’s been set for the court hearing. June 23. Thought you’d also want to know, Cap said you should get out of town until the hearing. Thinks it’d be safer. So do I. We all do.”

He moved his head on the pillow, back and forth, as if Rico were in the room. “I’m not running from those bastards.”

“I wouldn’t, either—I’d fly. A Boeing 747’d get you a whole lot farther a whole lot faster.”

“They won’t try anything now.”

“No? You dusted three of Marconi’s henchmen in that shoot-out, and it’s your testimony that’s going to put him away for life. You’re messing with the Providence family here, Joe. This is serious stuff.”