Prey by Linda Howard Page B

can’t,” she blurted, her refusal just as blunt as his invitation.
    She didn’t have time to explain. He gave a curt dip of his head, turned around, and walked to his truck before she could get another word out.
    And that was that. When she’d returned from the guide trip, tired, with another million things to do before yet another group of clients came in, she’d nevertheless raced into the house to check her answering machine, to see if he’d called during her absence. There had been a couple of calls, but his hadn’t been one of them. As days turned to weeks, and weeks to months, he still hadn’t called. Disappointed, after a while she’d stopped expecting him to.
    During that time, she noticed her business falling off, and because the community was so small she inevitably heard about the people who were hiring Dare Callahan as their guide, and several of the names were ones she recognized as people she’d previously guided. He was stealing her business! Okay, not stealing, because it wasn’t as if he’d accessed her files and called those people; they’d have searched him out, not the other way around. Still, the end result was the same.
    He had asked her out again, months after that first time, and by that time she was so angry she’d simply given him a clipped “No, thanks” and walked away. Go out with him? She’d rather stake him out over an anthill.
    Yet no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t completely forget that moment of first meeting him, the sensation of being in free fall as every cell in her body seemed to be supercharged. She tried, but even though she kept her attention focused forward, on getting things done, she was always aware on some level of what might have been.
    Nothing. That’s what might have been: exactly nothing. And she had to remember that. Regrets were a dime a dozen.

Chapter Five
    Harlan was pensive as he drove back along the narrow dirt road that snaked several miles from Angie’s place toward a blacktop. A couple of different things bothered him. He liked Dare Callahan, loved Angie the way you loved a kid you’d known most of her life, and it made him uncomfortable that he was stuck in this situation between them.
    His professional loyalty was to Angie; she was the one who had signed the contract with him, she was the one paying his commission. He’d present her counteroffer to Dare, no problem; in fact, he was relieved she’d made a counteroffer at all, instead of turning Dare down flat, which was what he’d been afraid she would do. He didn’t butt in where it wasn’t his business, but what he’d seen yesterday in the parking lot below his office had made it plain the two weren’t on good terms. Watching them had been like watching two boxers in the ring, trash-talking before the swinging began.
    He didn’t know what their problem was and in this part of the country people minded their own business. He’d never heard anythingabout a disagreement between them, but sometimes people just disliked each other and that was all there was to it. Angie kept more to herself now, after that problem at her wedding, than she had before it all happened, and Dare wasn’t a happy-go-lucky type, period. With the bristles they both toted around, it wasn’t a surprise they’d evidently managed to stick each other; more surprising was that no one had noticed it before now.
    Another thing that was bothering him, which was silly because it wasn’t as if the situation was anything new, was Angie going off with two men she didn’t know. Never mind that one was a repeat customer; he sounded like a wimp, and wimps could be dangerous because they tended to go along with whoever was stronger, and not take a stand in a bad situation.
    Realistically, Harlan knew this situation was nothing unusual, that Angie had been running the business for three years now and routinely guided people, mostly men, whom she didn’t know. But logic had nothing to do with a gut feeling, and his