Izzy sank back in the seat and resumed staring out the back window.

“If you won’t have the surgery, then you have to survive with what you have,” he told her. “That’s where I come in. I teach you how to make it. You’re staying with me until you can be on your own.”

“What if I don’t want to be on my own?”

“You think your sisters want you hanging around all the time? They have lives. You’re what? Twenty-five? Twenty-six? You ready to give up so fast?”

“Go to hell.”

“I’ve already been there.”

He turned onto the familiar paved, private road and drove toward the two-story main house. He’d bought the run-down ranch nearly eight years before. Neighboring ranchers leased his pasture for their cattle, while he used the twenty acres of wilderness for his retreats. He kept a dozen horses in the big barn and had built several guest-houses where clients stayed. There were meeting facilities, a restaurant-grade kitchen that could serve up to fifty at a time and a big media room that rivaled a multiplex.

Not that Izzy would deal with much more than the barn. He planned to work her hard enough that she didn’t have time to feel sorry for herself. The little he knew about her told him she would fight him every step of the way, but he didn’t care about that. He would win, as she put it, in the end because he had to.

He parked in front of the house and turned off the engine.

“We’re here,” he said in the silence.

Izzy folded her arms across her chest and stared out the window.

“When I let you out, you can run if you want. We’re about a mile from our closest neighbor and ten miles from the nearest town. But if you want to go looking, I won’t stop you. The temperature is close to a hundred. Without water, you’ll last maybe three days. Assuming you don’t get bit by a rattler and die sooner.”

“Oooh,” Izzy said, still not looking at him. “I’m all tingly with fear. Want to threaten me with whips and chains next?”