Tate McCade stood in the middle of the Alaskan ski lodge, watching the giant screen television with the crowd of fifty or so people who’d gathered around for the big event.  On screen four women, all blond, all pretty, all wearing daredevil smiles and neon-pink snowsuits prepared to jump out of a helicopter––with nothing but wildly colored snowboards strapped to their feet.
     The Alpine Angels were at it again.
     Like many of their stunts, this one included lots of snow, rarely traveled mountain peaks and a high degree of risk.  Today, the girls were jumping out of the helicopter from fifty feet in the air, each landing on her own mountain and leaving her “signature,” the trail left in the pristine snow by her snowboard, on the face of the mountain.  The four mountains weren’t overly tall, but they were sheer as hell.  From the peak to the base, the run was almost straight down.
     Damn.
     Someone needed to step in and throw a lasso around those ladies and hold tight or none of them would live to see their thirtieth birthdays.
     Tate had planned to arrive early enough to lasso at least one of them before she got on that damned chopper.  But his flight, like half the flights in the country, had been late.  So now, he was stuck here, standing helplessly with nothing but spit and hope the women made it to the bottom in one piece.
     Tate shifted his gaze from the giant picture to the small family that stood directly in front of the screen.  At least there was a halfway decent reason behind this madness.  Like most of the other hare-brained stunts the Alpine Angels women had performed in the last three years, this one was a fund-raiser.  The recipient was the ten-year-old boy sitting in the wheelchair front and center, flanked protectively by his parents.  He needed a bone marrow transplant and his family had no insurance to cover the cost.
     Tate studied the boy.  He was small for his age, pale, and looked as if they couldn’t start the procedure any time too soon.  But he was a cute kid with a killer smile and there was a sparkle in his eyes that said he was living this minute for all it was worth.  If those fool women chose to risk their lives, Tate supposed they couldn’t have picked a better reason.
     But he wasn’t fooling himself.  People who pushed the envelope as hard as the Alpine Angels did were usually looking for a way to self-destruct.  He hoped to God they wouldn’t manage to do it today.  It was the last thing the boy needed to see.  And besides, Tate had a promise to keep.
     He shifted his attention back to the screen.  In total Surround Sound, the whir of the chopper’s blades filled the room and vibrated beneath their feet.  The scream of the Alaskan wind howled in their ears.  It was probably quieter in the damned helicopter.  But even over the steady thump in the floor, he could feel his heart pounding, hear it over the roar of the helicopter blades as the first woman moved into jump position.
     At the helicopter’s open door, the statuesque blonde turned to the camera, smiled and gave a thumbs-up.  She took a moment to prepare herself and then jumped into nothingness with a shrieking war cry.
     Tate couldn’t remember the women’s name, Mattie or Tasha or...something.  She wasn’t the Alpine Angel he’d come to see.  But he held his breath for her, just the same, and prayed for a good landing.
     The screen suddenly flashed, splitting into two portions.  Three-quarters of the giant picture remained on the three women left in the heliocopter.  But a separate picture in the upper right hand corner showed the woman who’d just jumped.
     She hit the steep face of the mountain hard, snow flying in all directions, completely obscuring her from view.  But when the white powder settled she was on her feet, swooshing down the terrain heading for the bottom of the mountain at breakneck speed.
     He sighed in relief.  One down.  Three to go.
     The helicopter flew to the next two mountains, dropping a smiling blonde at each, the big screen splitting into more squares with each jump.  The three women who’d already made successful landings were screaming down the sheer faces of their mountains in living Technicolor.
     Tate shifted his gaze to the left bottom square.  The last woman was in place now. Leaning out of the helicopter checking the terrain below.  Crissy Trevarrow.  Or as she knew herself, Crissy Albreit.  The woman he’d come to bring home.
     She looked back at the camera, her sensuous lips smiling widely, her light green eyes sparkling with excitement and her long curly blond hair blowing in the wind.
     His breath caught in his throat and the same sensation he’d gotten the first time he’d seen her picture, not twenty-four hours ago, hit him hard.  It was a feeling not unlike one of his wild mustangs delivering a hard kick to the gut.  But this sensation was lower, harder and twice as powerful.  He wanted her.  Like a stallion scenting a mare, he wanted her.  Irrational and startling.  But undeniable.
     And equally unwelcome.
     Because Warner Trevarrow, just before he’d died, had made Tate promise he’d not only bring Crissy back to her father’s ranch, but he’d make sure she had everything that was good and wonderful and bright.  And no matter how you saddled that horse, an ex-con didn’t fit into any of those categories.

     Fresh powder still clinging to her snowsuit, Crissy gave the boy in the wheelchair a giant hug.  “Hey, Chad, what did ya think?”  She’d just come in off the mountain, and excitement and adrenaline poured through her system.
     The young boy beamed at her, his smile reaching from ear to ear.  “Stoking, man.  I want to do that some day.”
     “Yeah, well, I’ll tell you what, you get your new bone marrow, spend a year getting strong and this board is waiting for you.  Okay?”  She handed her snowboard off to his parents, then shot him a teasing smile.  “But you start on something a little tamer.  Got it?”
     The boy nodded.  “It’s a promise.”
     “Okay then.”  She gave him another hug.  “Got get ‘em, tiger.  Listen, I’ll be back in a minute. I’ve got to get something to drink.  You want something?  Coke?  Grape soda?”
     The boy shook his head.  “Nah.  But I want to hear about the run, so hurry back.”
     “You got it.”  Smiling, she turned and started through the noisy crowd on her way to the bar.  Her run, like the other girls’, had been good.  Which meant she hadn’t fallen and messed up the clean, carved line her snowboard had left in the snow––or broken her neck.
     Which also meant the Geneveve Corporation, who’d pledged fifty thousand dollars for each clean “signature,” was on the hook for two hundred thousand dollars.  Enough to cover the main expense of Chad’s bone marrow transplant.  Add to that the contributions by the people in this room and the Coopers weren’t going to have to sell their home or go bankrupt to save their son.  It was a good day.
     “Crissy!”
 She turned, searching for the caller.  She spotted the lodge’s owner, his wild red hair flying, pushing his way through the crowd toward her.  She waited for him to reach her side, then pitched her voice above the crowd.  “What’s up, Boyd?”
     “A man’s looking for you.”
     She cocked a brow.  “Yeah, who?”
     The burly owner hooked a thumb toward the lodge’s big picture windows.
     A lone man stood in front of the giant glass that looked out over the rugged Chugach mountain range.  A man whose brown-eyed gaze watched her from across the room with electrifying intensity.
     Heat and pure feminine awareness slid through her.
     His sheer size and power and strength dwarfed the mountains behind him.  But it was the man’s clothes, and the way he wore them, that caught her imagination.
     A dark blue, western, Saturday-night-let’s-go-dancing shirt, complete with black piping and mother-of-pearl snaps, covered his broad shoulders and accented his narrow waist.  A black Stetson with a snakeskin band dangled from one hand.  A pair of old, but spit-polished, cowboy boots added a few extra inches to his already overwhelming height.  And lastly, a pair of worn, but spotlessly clean Wranglers covered his long, strong legs.
     Man, oh man.
     Her pulses fluttered, her heart throbbed.  What was it about cowboys that made her imagination run wild?......