“Flying to Montana could get me fired,” Melissa pointed out.

“It could also get you promoted.” Susan straightened.

“Easy for you to say.”

Susan shrugged the cameras into a more comfortable position, then adjusted her cap. “Up to you. But no risk, no reward. My biggest payday was when those vandals let the lions loose at Lincoln Park.”

“That was insane,” Melissa reminded her. Susan had been clinging to the branches of an oak tree with a hungry male lion pacing below when the animal-control officer had darted the thing. Another shrug.

“Are you suggesting that if I don’t put myself in mortal danger, I’m not trying hard enough?”

Susan patted Melissa’s shoulder. “I’m suggesting if you don’t torpedo Brandon and go after that promotion, you’re not trying hard enough.”

Point made, Susan winked and sauntered away, while Melissa drummed her fingertips on the desktop.

She glanced at the pictures of the Montana ranch. Then her gaze shifted to the spacious window cubicle reserved for the new feature writer.

She pictured Seth’s expression when she presented the article. She pictured Brandon’s face when he learned of her coup. She pictured her byline on the cover of the Bizz. Then just for good measure, she pictured herself at the podium, accepting a Prentice award next January. She could wear her black-and-gold-layered gown, with the teardrop medallion she’d found last week in that funky little art gallery on Second. Take that, Brandon Langard.

Her life would be perfect. All she had to do was talk her way onto the Ryder Ranch.

Body loose in the saddle, Jared Ryder held his horse Tango to a slow walk across the wooden bridge that led to his sister Stephanie’s place. Her jumping-horse outfit was built on Ryder land up on the Bonaparte Plateau, about ten miles into the hills from the main spread at Spirit Lake. Tango’s ears twitched and his body tensed as he took in the nearly hundred head of horses grazing in the fields and milling about in the pens clustered around the main riding arena.