Can't Stop Believing (HARMONY) Read Online Free

up too much dirt while he plowed too near her fence line.
    He watched her stop halfway between his barn and his parents’ old house and look around as she climbed out. He hadn’t had the time or the money to fix up the place, but right now it seemed to look worse than he thought. Imagining his farm through her eyes made him wish for more hours in the day, more days in the week, more time, period. Then he could have painted the barn, fixed up the fence, replaced the steps.
    Only it was too late to worry about it now.
    She was dressed western from her red boots to her leather vest. If some women are shiny-penny pretty, Nevada was silver-dollar beautiful.
    Near as he could remember, he’d watched her every chance he’d gotten since the day she was born. They’d gone to school together, ridden the same bus home a few times when her mom didn’t pick her up, and then in the fifth grade she’d disappeared. She’d gone away to school and he’d only seen her riding her horses now and then during vacations. When her dad let her start driving, even though she was a year away from being legal, everyone on Sunset Road tried to stay out of her way.
    Fighting down a grin, Cord remembered the half dozen cars she’d wrecked before she got driving down pat. One she’d rolled in the drainage ditch. Her parents had left it there a month, probably just to make her pass it every time she went to town. He doubted the lesson had taken.
    Pulling off her sunglasses, she tossed her long blond hair back like it was a mane and she was ready to run. He liked the way she moved, all fast and headstrong, like she owned the world—and, as near as he could tell, her family did. Talk was that when her parents died her brother, Barrett Britain, cleaned out the family bank accounts and bought a villa in France. He left her with the ranch and the oil business, saying the next time he came to Texas he’d be in a pine box. She’d taken over everything, and as she walked toward Cord, he realized he didn’t even know how to talk to her.
    “You’re home,” she said, as she stormed the porch with a large envelope in one hand and her hat in the other.
    “Yep,” he said without explaining, knowing it would irritate her. He wasn’t disappointed.
    She glared at him, as if considering turning around and leaving.
    If he wanted her to stay, even a minute, he’d better think of something. “Why are you here, Nevada? Looks like the Jeep is still running.”
    She surprised him by saying, “I was in a hurry the other day or I would have stopped in to say thanks. You got it running better than I ever remember.”
    “Guess I should be glad you didn’t bring the sheriff.” She’d called in a complaint two years ago and he’d almost been fined. If the sheriff had sent deputies, he’d have been cuffed and hauled in before they even bothered to ask questions. Every lawman in the county except Sheriff Alexandra Matheson had dropped by to warn Cord that they’d be watching him. Alexandra wasn’t friendly, but he guessed she was fair. She’d asked questions first.
    “I can’t believe you’re still upset about that. If I hadn’t sent the sheriff, you know you wouldn’t have listened to me, Cord. I left three messages on your phone before I called Sheriff Matheson. You can’t just go flying that old plane around over my land. It stampeded my horses.”
    “I don’t answer my phone.” He shrugged, accepting an ounce of the blame.
    Before he could step back into their two-year-old feud, she stopped him with an open palm like she was a crossing guard for his front porch.
    “I didn’t drive out here to talk about that. I came to ask a favor.”
    Every drop of anger and frustration went out of him even though he didn’t move an inch. “A favor?” The Britains had never asked the McDowells for anything in three generations. His grandfather said once that they started out with bad blood over the boundary between the two ranches, and the wound it left