Reno shook his head. He'd made it a point to thank God repeatedly for the rain—what rancher wouldn't?—but he was working on being honest in his dealings with God, and so far he hadn't been able to say anything polite about the mud. The mud just lay everywhere, making the ground look forlorn and generally being a nuisance.

Reno had liked the first part of spring well enough. The cold of winter had eased up a little and he could walk from the house to the barn without pulling his cap down over his ears. But later, for some reason, everything had turned to mud. The mountains were no longer covered in snow, but the grass hadn't taken hold yet either. Gray clouds hung in most of the skies, and the air was wet even when it wasn't raining. The worst part was the deep clay that trapped everyone's wheels.

Reno frowned as he opened the door to his pickup. The one good thing he could say for the mud was that it matched his mood these days. If it had been a normal Montana spring with endless blue sky and those tiny purple wildflowers blooming beside the gravel roads, he wouldn't have been able to take all the love and sunshine flowing around the Redfern Ranch now that his sister, Nicki, had settled into married life.

At first Reno had wondered in alarm if he were jealous of Nicki's wedded bliss. But that wasn'