Second-Chance Christmas

It’s been nine years since Jake Hamilton broke Allison Buchanon’s heart and left town. But she’s never been able to forget the high school boy she secretly loved. Now Jake’s come home to care for his ailing grandmother, and Allison’s family will do anything to prevent a rekindled romance. Unfortunately, the connection between Allison and the green-eyed cowboy is undeniable. She believes that forgiveness is possible, especially at Christmas. But Jake cares too deeply about Allison to take her away from the close-knit Buchanon clan. Will Allison have to choose between a loving family and the love of her life?

The Buchanons: Steeped in loyalty, bound by family.

Jake saw a range of emotions flicker across Allison’s face.

Disappointment, worry, relief. He latched on to the last one. She wanted him gone.

Then why was she here? Why did she insist on pushing past his caution when absolutely nothing good could come of it?

Jake wished for the thousandth time he could erase one terrible day from their lives. He was comfortable with Allison, liked her, a dangerous thing, then and now. She made him smile. She even made him believe in himself. Or she once had. With everything in him he wanted to know this grown-up Allison, a dangerous, troubling proposition.

“You’ve grown up.” Stupid thing to say, but better than yanking her into his arms.

She tilted her head, smile quizzical. “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

For him? Very bad.

Allison had definitely grown up.

And Jake Hamilton was in major trouble.

LINDA GOODNIGHT

New York Times bestselling author and winner of a RITA® Award for excellence in inspirational fiction, Linda Goodnight has also won a1 Booksellers’ Best Award, an ACFW Book of the Year Award and a Reviewers’ Choice Award from RT Book Reviews. Linda has appeared on the Christian bestseller list, and her romance novels have been translated into more than a dozen languages. Active in orphan ministry, this former nurse and teacher enjoys writing fiction that carries a message of hope and light in a sometimes dark world. She and her husband live in Oklahoma. Visit her website, www.lindagoodnight.com. To browse a current listing of Linda Goodnight’s titles, please visit www.millsandboon.co.uk.

Cowboy Under the Mistletoe
New York Times Bestselling Author
Linda Goodnight

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Now, however, it is time to forgive and comfort him. Otherwise he may be overcome by discouragement.

—2 Corinthians 2:7

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

About the Author

Title Page

Bible Verse

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Epilogue

Dear Reader

Questions for Discussion

Extract

Copyright

Chapter One

Someone was at the Hamilton house. Someone in a black pickup truck bearing a bull rider silhouette on the back window.

Curious, with a tremor in her memory, Allison Buchanon pulled her Camaro sports car to the stop sign in a quiet neighborhood of Gabriel’s Crossing, Texas, and sat for a moment pondering the anomaly. She drove past this corner at least once a week on her way to her best friend’s home. She hadn’t seen any sign of life in the rambling old house for a long while. Not since before Grandmother Hamilton fell and broke her hip several months ago. And Jake had been gone so long no one even cursed his name anymore.

If Allison had a funny quiver in her stomach, she played it off as anticipation of Faith’s bridal shower this afternoon. As hostess, she wanted to arrive early and make sure everything—including her dearest friend—was perfect.

She glanced at the dash clock. Three hours early might be overkill.

On the opposite corner, Dakota Weeks and a half-dozen fat puppies rolled around in the fading grass while the mama dog wagged her tail and smiled proudly, occasionally poking her nose into the ten-year-old boy’s hand for a head rub. Allison grinned and waved.

A boy and his dogs on Saturday afternoon put her in mind of her older brothers. Even now as adults, rolling in the grass with a dog—or each other if a football game broke out—was a common occurrence. And today was a perfect day to be outside. The weather was that cusp season when cool breezes crowded out the scent of mowed grass, Dads cleaned out chimneys and Moms stored away the shorts and swimsuits. Or as townsfolk would say, “football weather.”

Like many small Texas towns, Gabriel’s Crossing lived and breathed high school football year round, but especially in the fall. Teenage boys in pads and helmets became heroes, not only on Friday night but every day. Golden boys. Boys of the gridiron.

Exactly the reason Jake Hamilton was no longer welcome at her mother’s table or a lot of other places in Gabriel’s Crossing.

Oh, but they didn’t know the Jake Allison had known. The Jake who carried her darkest, most humiliating secret, the one she’d never shared with another living soul.

Casting one last worried glance toward the Hamilton house, Allison convinced herself the truck belonged to a lawn service or maybe some long-lost relative looking to take over the place, not Jake Hamilton.

She eased her foot off the brake and started across the intersection. The front door to the house opened and a man walked out onto the small concrete porch.

This time Allison’s stomach did more than quiver. It fell to the floorboard and took her breath with it.

Jake.

She slammed on the brake and stared. It was him all right. Trim and tight muscled in fitted Wranglers, dusty boots and black cowboy hat, he looked as dangerously handsome as ever.

His head turned her direction, and Allison realized she’d stopped at midintersection. She started forward again. At the last possible second, the steering wheel seemed to take on a life of its own because the Camaro swung into the Hamilton driveway and came to a stop.

With the spontaneity her parents considered impulsive, Allison hopped out of the running car and walked right up to the man, her pulse in overdrive.

“Hello, Jake. Long time.” Funny how normal her voice sounded even when she stared into fathomless olive green eyes with lashes as black as midnight.

He hadn’t changed much except for a new scar below one eye, and she fought off the crazy urge to soothe it with a touch the way she’d once soothed his football bumps and bruises. He’d also grown facial hair in the form of a very short, scant mustache above a bit of scruff, and his sideburns were long. She couldn’t decide if she liked the look but then, when had Jake Hamilton cared one whit about what anyone else thought? Especially a Buchanon.

“You shouldn’t be here, Allison.” His voice was the same, a low note, surprisingly soft but steel edged as if to drive her away. The way he’d done before.

“We’re adults now. We can be anywhere we choose.”

Jutting one hip, he tipped his hat with a thumb. His nostrils flared. “Ya think?”

“You owe me a dance.”

The reminder must have caught him off guard. Something flickered in his eyes, a brief flame of memory and pleasure that died just as quickly unborn.

Jaw hard as flint, he said, “Better run home, little girl, before the big bad wolf gets you.”

Before she could tell him that nothing he’d ever done would change what she knew that no other Buchanon understood, Jake spun away from her and slammed inside the house, leaving her standing in the front yard. Alone and embarrassed. Exactly like before.

* * *

He had as much right to be in this town as the Buchanons. Maybe more. His great-great-something on his daddy’s side had founded Gabriel’s Crossing back in the mid-1800s when Texas was a whole other country and the adjacent hills of Oklahoma were wilder than any bull he’d thrown his rope over.

Jake banged his fist against the countertop of his family home. Right or not, being here would not be easy. Nearly broke, he needed to be working, and if that wasn’t enough to move him on, the Buchanon brothers were. And Allison. Especially Allison.

But Granny Pat was his only living relative. Anyway, the only one that claimed him. She’d been his anchor most of his life, but now the tables had turned. She needed him, and he wouldn’t fail her, no matter how hard the weeks and months ahead.

He’d wanted her to give up the Hamilton house to live with him in his trailer in Stephenville, but she’d wanted to come home. Home to Gabriel’s Crossing and the familiar old house that had been in the Hamilton family since statehood. He understood, at least in part. There was history here, joy and sorrow. He’d tasted both.

Granny Pat had raised him single-handedly in this house after his daddy died and his mother ran off. Grandpa was here, too, his grandmother claimed, and though her husband had been dead for longer than Jake had been alive, she missed him. Ralph, according to Granny Pat, had never liked hospitals and hadn’t visited her in the convalescent center one single time.

As if that wasn’t scary enough, who was the first familiar face Jake had to see in Gabriel’s Crossing? Allison Buchanon. His heart crumpled in his chest like a wad of paper tossed into a fire pit, withering to black ashes. Allison of the dark fluffy hair and warm brown eyes. She’d always seen more in him than anyone else had, especially her family. Foolish girl.

Although as small as a child, Allison could hammer a nail as easily as she could back-flip from a cheerleading pyramid, an action that had sent his teenage chest soaring and turned his mouth dry as dust. And she’d broken that same young man’s heart with one sentence. My family would kill me if they saw us together.

No, he’d said, they’d kill me. They’d have had every right, after what he’d done.

The rodeo circuit attracted plenty of buckle bunnies and if a man was so inclined; he could have a new girl every night. With everything in him, Jake wanted to put Allison and her family behind him, but he never had. They mattered, and the wrong he’d done lay on his shoulders, an elephant-size guilt. No matter what Allison said, he’d never been anyone’s hero.

When he’d been a lonely boy living with his grandma, the Buchanons had been his dream family, a mom and dad, brothers and sisters. A boy with none of those yearned for the impossible. For a while, for those years when Quinn had been his best friend and Allison had thought he was the moon, he’d basked in the Buchanon glow.

Allison. Why had she pulled into the driveway? And why had he been so glad to see her? Didn’t she remember the trouble they’d caused? That he’d caused?

He rubbed a hand over the thick dust coating the counters, coating everything in the musty old house with the pink siding and dark paneling.

He should have stuck to the rodeo circuit and stayed away from Gabriel’s Crossing for another nine or ninety years, but sometimes life didn’t give you choices. Four years ago, when he’d handed the reins to Jesus at a cowboy church in Cheyenne, he’d vowed to do the right thing from that moment on, no matter how much it hurt. Coming home to help Granny Pat was the right thing. And boy, did it hurt.

He didn’t have enough money or time to be here. He needed to make every rodeo he could before the season ended, but Granny Pat came first. He’d figure out the rest. Somehow.

Once his grandma was up and going, he’d get out of Dodge before trouble—in the form of a Buchanon—found him again.

* * *

No one in their right minds had seven kids these days. Which said a lot about her mother and father.

The next afternoon, Allison pushed open the front door to her parents’ rambling split-level house on Barley Street and marched in without knocking. Nobody would have heard her anyway over the noise in the living room. The TV blared football between the Cowboys and the Giants while her dad and four brothers yelled at the quarterback and each other in the good-natured, competitive spirit of the Buchanon clan. Her stick-skinny younger sister Jayla was right with them, getting in her two cents about the lousy play calling by the offensive coordinator while Charity, the oldest and only married sibling, doled out peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to her two kids.

“Home sweet home.” Allison stepped over a sprawled Dawson whose long legs seemed to stretch from the bottom of the couch halfway across the room.

“Hey, sis,” Dimpled Dawson, twin to Sawyer, offered an absentminded fist bump before yelling. “You missed the block, you moron!”

“I’ll do better next time,” Allison said, pretending not to understand. Dawson ignored that, too.

“Where’s Mom?”

“Somewhere.”

Brothers could be so helpful.

“Jayla?” she implored of her sister, who was scrunched on the dirt-brown sofa between Sawyer and Quinn.

Jayla, twisting the ends of her flaxen hair into tight, nervous corkscrews, never took her eyes off the game. She lifted a finger and pointed. “Backyard.”

Backyard. That figured. Mom would rather putter in her flowers, though she’d wander in and out of the huge Buchanon-built house simply to spend time with her kids.

Before Allison made the turn into the kitchen, Brady snagged her wrist. Like Dawson, he was on the floor but propped against the wall with his dog sprawled across his lap. Dawg, a shaggy mix of shepherd, lab and who-knew-what, raised a bushy eyebrow in her direction, but otherwise, like the siblings, didn’t budge.

“Aren’t you going to watch the game?”

Allison’s nerves jittered. Some things were more important than the game, although she would not share this minority opinion with any relative in the large, overcrowded living room.

“Later.”

He tilted his head to one side, a flash of curiosity in his startling cerulean eyes. Brady, her giant Celtic warrior brother who bore minimal resemblance to the rest of the Buchanons. “Everything okay, Al?”

Jake Hamilton, one hip slung low as a gunslinger, imposed on her mental viewer. “Sure.”

“Touchdown Cowboys!” someone shouted, and the room erupted in high fives and victory dances. His curiosity forgotten, Brady leaped to his feet and swirled her around in a two-step, as light on his feet as when he’d been chasing quarterbacks at Texas Tech. Allison, regardless of the worry, couldn’t help but laugh. Her brothers were crazy wonderful, her protectors and friends, the shoulders she could always cry on, except that one awful night when she hadn’t dared. Her heart swelled with love. What would she do without them? And how would they react when they learned Jake Hamilton was back in town?

Brady planted a loud smack on her cheek and turned her loose. Before he could ask any more prying questions, she high-fived her way through the elated sea of bodies and headed toward the kitchen. There she grabbed a bag of tortilla chips, one of several that yawned open on the counter next to upturned lids coated with various dips.

Allison skirted the long table for ten that centered the family kitchen-dining room to push open the patio doors and stepped out onto the round rock stepping stones installed by her brothers.

The yard was a green oasis, a retreat in the middle of a neighborhood of long time friends, of dogs that wandered and of kids that tended to do the same.

Karen Buchanon, matriarch of the rowdy Buchanon clan, looked up from repotting a sunny yellow chrysanthemum. At fifty-nine, she looked good in jean capris and a red blouse, her blond hair pulled back at the nape, her figure thicker but still shapely.

“There you are,” Mom said. “You missed the first quarter. Are you hungry?”

Allison lifted the bag of chips. “Got it covered.”

“Not very substantial.” Her mother laid aside a well-worn trowel, pushed to a stand and stripped off her green gardening gloves. “That should brighten up the backyard.”

“Mums are so pretty this time of year.”

“Why aren’t you watching the game?”

Allison crunched another salty chip. Her mother knew her too well to believe she’d abandoned a Cowboys game to talk about mums. Mom was the gardener whose skills served the Buchanon Construction Company. Allison barely knew a mum from an oak tree. Accounts payable was her area of expertise, such as it was, though Dawson often said, and she agreed, that Allison preferred all things wedding to construction.

But the family business was too important, too ingrained in her DNA to abandon in pursuit of some fantasy. Grandpa and Grandma Buchanon had built Buchanon Construction from the ground up before turning the business over to their only son—her dad. All seven Buchanon kids had known from the time they were big enough to toddle around in Dad’s hard hat that they were destined to build houses, to provide beautiful homes for families. Building was not only the Buchanon way, it was their calling.

But construction was not on her mind at the moment. Not even close. “I have something to tell you. Something important.”

Mom’s eyes narrowed in speculation. Even in shadow from the enormous old silver maple that shaded the back yard, Allison could see the wheels turning. Her mother sat down in the green-striped-canopy swing and patted the seat. “Come here. Might as well get it out. You’ve been stewing.”

“How do you always know?”

Her mom pointed. “That little muscle between your eyebrows gives you up every time.”

Allison touched the spot.

She had been stewing. Since the moment Jake turned his back and walked away, a dark worry had flown in and now hovered like a vulture over a cow carcass. She’d told Faith, of course. Except for that one shuddery secret she never spoke of, she told her best friend since first grade everything. She’d even cried on Faith’s shoulder years ago when Jake had packed a weathered old pickup and left for good.

Allison gnawed on her bottom lip. She was over him. At least, she’d told herself as much for the past few years. But she remembered, too, the terrible injustice done to a heartbroken boy.

Mom would find out anyway sooner or later. The whole family would. Then the mud would hit the fan.

She averted her gaze, watched a blue butterfly kiss a lavender aster.

“Mama,” she said. “Jake’s back in town.”

For a full minute, the only sound was the bee-buzz of hummingbirds and the faint football noise from inside the house. Down the street someone fired up a lawn mower.

Allison could feel the blood surging in her veins—hot and anxious and so terribly sorry. Not for her family. For Jake. That was the problem, as the family, especially her brothers, saw it. Allison was a traitor to the Buchanon name. Back when the pain was rawest for everyone, she’d sided with Jake. They hadn’t understood her loyalty. And if she had shared her secret, that singular defining reason for remaining loyal to Jake Hamilton, she would have caused an explosion of a different sort.

“Jake Hamilton?” her mother finally asked, voice tight.

The tone made Allison ache. “I saw him yesterday at the Hamilton house on my way to Faith’s bridal shower.”

“Why have you waited until now to tell me?”

“I stayed late at Faith’s and then church this morning...” She lifted her palms, let them down again. In truth, she’d been a coward, putting off the inevitable unpleasant reaction and the feeling of betrayal that came along for the ride. “Faith said his grandma is coming home from the rehab center.”

“Oh, Allison.” Mom’s tone was heavy-hearted. “The boys will be upset.”

That was putting it mildly.

The boys. On the subject of Jake Hamilton, her sensible, caring, adult brothers behaved like children on a playground, the reason no one, even Quinn, had mentioned Jake in a very long time.

Mama pushed up from the swing and ran a hand over her mouth, a worry gesture Allison knew well. Karen Buchanon was the kindest heart in Gabriel’s Crossing. She drove shut-ins to doctors’ offices and sat up all night with the sick. She provided Christmas for needy families and fed stray dogs, but her children’s needs came first. Always.

“That was so long ago. My brothers are grown men now. Isn’t it time to forgive and forget?”

“Some things go too deep, honey. I wish we could put all of that behind us—” she clasped her hands together and gazed toward the back door as if she could see her children inside “—but wishing doesn’t change anything. Jake did what he did, and Quinn suffered for it. Still suffers and always will.”

“I know, Mama, and I hate what happened to Quinn as much as anyone. But Jake was seventeen. A boy. Teenagers do stupid things.” She, of all people, understood how one stupid decision could be catastrophic.

She went to her mother’s side, desperately wishing to tell everything about that one night at the river. But danger lurked in revelation and she didn’t. She and Jake had a made a pact, a decision to protect the innocent as well as the guilty. “I’m not asking them to be his best friend, but we’re supposed to be Christians. The holidays are coming up soon, the time for forgiveness and peace. Don’t you think the boys could find it in their hearts to forgive Jake and move on? Couldn’t we all?”

But Mama was already shaking her head. “Don’t do this, honey. Stirring up the past will only cause hurt and trouble. Jake may be back in town—and I pray his visit is short—but for everyone’s sake please don’t get involved with him again.”

Allison thought of the young Jake she’d known in grade school, though he’d been a whole year older and more mature, at least in her adoring eyes. Jake had been Quinn’s best friend, a nice boy with sad eyes and a needy heart. The first boy she’d ever kissed. The one who lingered in her heart and memory even now.

Then she thought of Quinn. Her moody, broody brother. Her blood. Buchanon blood. And blood always won.

So she gave Mama the only possible answer. “All right.”

But with sorrow born of experience, Allison knew this was one promise she wouldn’t keep.

Chapter Two

He’d rather tangle with the meanest bull in the pasture than try to drive a wheelchair.

Jake yanked the folded bunch of canvas and metal from the bed of the pickup and shook it.

“How is this thing supposed to work anyway?” he said to exactly nobody.

Metal rattled against metal but the chair didn’t open. He wished he’d paid more attention when the nurse—a puny little ninety-pound woman no bigger than Allison—folded the chair and tossed it into the back of his truck with ease. Getting the thing open and functioning couldn’t be that difficult.

A hot summer sun roasted the back of his neck while Granny Pat waited patiently inside the cab with the AC running. She wasn’t happy because he’d driven the truck right up next to the porch. She had fussed and complained that he’d leave ruts with those massive tires and ruin her yard. As if that wasn’t enough, she’d been telling all this to Grandpa, a man who’d been dead for twenty years.

Jake’s day had been lousy, and his head hurt. Last night, he’d barely slept after the meeting with Allison. He kept seeing her smile, her bounce, her determined kindness.

He didn’t want to remember how much he’d missed her.

Then today, he’d made the trip to the convalescent center, a place that would depress Mary Poppins. If that and Granny’s running conversations with Grandpa weren’t enough to make his head pound, he’d stopped at Gabriel’s Crossing Pharmacy to fill an endless number of prescriptions, and who should he see crossing the street? Brady Buchanon. Big, hot-tempered Brady.

Seeing a Buchanon brother was inevitable, but he planned to put off the moment as long as possible. So like a shamefaced secret agent, he’d pulled his hat low and hustled inside the drugstore before Brady caught a glimpse of him.

He hated feeling like an outcast, like the nasty fly in the pleasant soup of Gabriel’s Crossing, but he was here, at least through the holidays, and the Buchanons would have to deal with it. So would everyone else who remembered the golden opportunity Jake had stolen from Quinn Buchanon and this small town with big dreams.

Then why did he feel like a criminal in his own hometown?

Granny Pat popped open the truck door and leaned out, her white hair as poufy as cotton candy. “Grandpa wants to know if you need help?”

Jake rolled his eyes heavenward. The sun nearly blinded him. “Be right there, Granny. Don’t fall out.”

At under five feet and shrinking, Granny Pat didn’t have the strength to pull the heavy truck door closed and it edged further and further open. She was slowly being stretched from the cab.

Jake dropped the wheelchair and sprinted to her side, catching her a second before she tumbled out onto the grass. “Easy there. That door is heavy.”

“I know it!” Fragile or not, she was still spit-and-vinegar Pat and clearly aggravated at her weakness. “I’m useless. Makes me so mad.”

“Let’s get you in the house. You’ll feel better there.”

“Get my wheelchair.”

“The chair can wait.” Forever as far as he was concerned.

With an ease that made him sad, Jake lifted his grandmother from the seat and carried her inside the house.

“Where to, madame?” he teased, though his heart ached. Granny Pat had been his mama, his daddy and his home all rolled into one strong, vital woman. She’d endured his wild teenage years and the scandal he’d caused that rocked Gabriel’s Crossing. For her body to fail all because of one broken bone was unfair.

But when had life ever been fair?

“Put me in the recliner.” She pointed toward one of two recliners in the living room—the blue one with a yellow-and-orange afghan tossed across the back.

He did as she asked.

Granny Pat tilted her head against the plush corduroy and gazed around the room with pleasure. “It’s good to finally be home. I’ll get my strength back here.”

Her pleasure erased the sorrow of seeing Brady Buchanon and the nagging worry over finances. Granny Pat needed this, needed him, and he’d find a way to deal with the Buchanons and his empty pockets.

“You want some water or anything before I unload the truck?”

“Nothing but fresh air. Open some windows, Jacob. This house stinks. I don’t know how you slept here in this must and dust.”

As he threw open windows, Jake noticed the dirt and dead insects piled on the windowsills. “Maybe I can find a housekeeper?” His wallet would scream, but he’d figure out a way.

“I don’t want some stranger in my house poking around.”

“Nobody’s a stranger in Gabriel’s Crossing, Granny.”

“Grandpa says something will turn up. Don’t worry.”

A bit of breeze drifted through the window, stirring dust in the sunlight.

“Granny Pat, you know Grandpa—”

“Yes, Jacob, I know.” Her tone was patient as if he was the one with the mental lapses. “Now go on and bring in my belongings. I want my Sudoku book.”

Jake jogged out to the truck, eyeing the pain-in-the-neck wheelchair he’d left against the back bumper. Granny Pat needed wheels to be mobile, and as much as he wanted to haul the chair to the nearest landfill, he was a man and he was determined to make the thing work.

He was wrestling the wheels apart when a Camaro rumbled to the stop sign on the corner. Precisely what he did not need. Allison Buchanon. He refused to look in her direction, hoping she’d roll on down the street. She didn’t.

Allison, tenacious as a terrier, rolled down her window. “Having trouble?”

He looked up and his stomach tumbled down into his boots. The soft brown eyes he’d never forgotten snagged his. A sizzle of connection raised the hairs on his arms. “No.”

Go away.

As if he wasn’t the least interested in the wheelchair, he leaned the contraption against the truck and reached inside the bed for one of Granny Pat’s suitcases.

The Camaro engine still rumbled next to the curb. Why didn’t she mosey on down the road?

“You can’t fool me,” she hollered. “I remember.”

And that was nearly his undoing. He could never fool Allison. No matter what he said or how hard he tried to pretend not to care that he was the town pariah, Allison saw through him. She’d even called him her hero.

“Go home, Allison.” He didn’t want her to remember any more than he wanted her feeling sorry for him.

She gunned the engine but instead of leaving, she pulled into the driveway and hopped out.

Hands deep in her back jeans pockets, she wore a sweater the color of a pumpkin that set off her dark hair. He didn’t want to notice the changes in her, from the sweet-faced teenager to a beautiful woman, but he’d have to be dead not to.

Her fluffy, flyaway hair bounced as she approached the truck, took hold of the wheelchair and attempted to open it. When the chair didn’t budge, she scowled. “What’s wrong with this?”

Determined not to be friendly, Jake hefted a suitcase in each hand and started toward the house. He was here in Gabriel’s Crossing because of Granny Pat. No other reason. Allison Buchanon didn’t affect him in the least.

And bulls could fly.

Something pinged him in the back. A pebble thudded to the grass at his feet. He spun around. “Hey! Did you just hit me with a rock?”

She gave him a grin that was anything but friendly. “I figured out what’s wrong with the chair.”

He dropped the suitcases. “You did?”

“Come here and see for yourself. Unless you’re scared of a girl.”

He was scared of her all right. Allison Buchanon had the power to hurt him—or cause him to hurt himself. But intrigued by her claim, he went back to the chair.

A car chugged by the intersection going in the opposite direction. Across the street a dog barked, and down the block, some guy mowed his lawn, shooting the grassy smell all over the neighborhood. Normal activities in Gabriel’s Crossing, though there was nothing normal about him standing in Granny Pat’s yard with a Buchanon.

Man, his death wish must be worse than most.

He crossed his arms over his chest, careful not to get close enough to touch her. He didn’t need reminders of her soft skin and flowery scent. “What?”

She went into a crouch, one hand holding up the chair. Her shoes were open toed and someone had painted her toenails orange and green like tiny pumpkins.

“That piece is bent and caught on the gear. See?”

He had no choice but to crouch beside her. There it was. Her sweet scent. Honeysuckle, he thought. Exactly the same as she’d worn in high school. Sweet and clean and pure.

Jake cleared his throat and gripped the chair. He needed to get a grip, all right.

“I got it,” he said, thinking she’d leave now. She didn’t.

He reached in and straightened the metal piece with his fingers, using more effort than he’d expected. A deep rut whitened along his index finger.

“Pliers would have been easier,” she said. Then she grabbed the oversize wheels and popped open the stubborn wheelchair. “There. Ready to roll.”

Jake stepped around to take the handles. Allison climbed up on the truck bumper and started unloading Granny Pat’s belongings.

“I can get those.”

“I came to see Miss Pat.” She handed him a plastic sack of clothes. Granny had collected a dozen shopping bags filled with clothes along with her suitcases and medical supplies. Where a woman in a convalescent center acquired so much remained a puzzle. But then, women in general were a puzzle to most of the male species and Jake was no exception.

“You shouldn’t have come.”

“Let her be the judge of that.”

“You know what I mean, Allison. Don’t be muleheaded.”

She hopped off the bumper, plopped a bag of plastic medical supplies into the wheelchair and went back for another. When he saw she wasn’t leaving no matter what he said, he joined her, unloading the items, much of which fit in the wheelchair.

“So, how have you been?” she asked, her tone all spunky and cute as if no bad blood ran between her brothers and him.

“Good.”

“What does that mean?”

He squinted at her over the tailgate. “You’re not going to give up, are you?”

“We were friends once, Jake. I believe in second chances.”

Friends? Yes, they’d been friends, but toward the end, he’d been falling in love with his best friend’s sister.

He shook off the random thought. Whatever had been budding between two teenagers was long dead and buried.

“How’s Quinn?”

He hadn’t meant to ask, hadn’t intended to open that door, but he held his breath, praying for something he couldn’t name.

“He’s the architect for Buchanon Construction now.”

“Granny Pat told me he went to Tech with Brady.” He didn’t say the other; that Quinn’s full-ride football scholarship had disappeared on a bloody October morning. “Does he ever talk about—”

“No, and I don’t want to either.” She glanced away, toward a pair of puppies galloping around the neighbor’s front yard, her eyebrows drawn together in a worried frown. “Quinn has a decent life here in Gabriel’s Crossing. Maybe the path wasn’t the one he’d expected to take, but he survived.”

Jake slowly exhaled. “That’s good. Real good.”

Quinn was okay. The accident happened long ago. Maybe Jake was no longer the hated pariah. People moved on. Everyone except him and he’d been stuck in the past so long, he didn’t know how to move off high-center. “What about you? Why aren’t you married with a house full of kids?”

He hadn’t meant to ask that either.

She shrugged. The pumpkin sweater bunched up around her white neck. “I’ve had my chances.”

He was sure she had, and he wondered why she hadn’t taken them. “Still working for your dad?”

“In the offices with Jayla.”

“Little sister grew up?”

“We all do, Jake.” She smiled a little. “I keep the books, do payroll, billing. All the fun numbers stuff.”

“Put that high school accounting award to good use, didn’t you?”

Her eyes crinkled at the corners. “You remember that?”

He remembered everything about her, his cheerleader and champion when life had been too difficult to live. “Hard to forget. You wore that medal around your neck for months.”

“Fun times.”

Yes, they were. Before he’d destroyed everything with one stupid decision.

“Faith’s getting married,” she said.

Faith Evans, her sidekick. The long and the short, as the guys had called them. Faith had grown to nearly six feet tall by sixth grade, and Allison had barely been tall enough to reach the gas pedal when she’d turned sixteen. “Yeah? Who’s the lucky guy?”

“They met in college. Derrick Cantelli. I’m coordinating her wedding.” She tilted back on the heels of her sandals, her warm brown eyes searching his. “Granny Pat told me you live in Stephenville now.”

“Land of the rodeo cowboys.”

“Do you like it there?”

“Sure.” He glanced away, afraid she’d read the truth in his eyes. “We better get this in the house before Granny Pat starts hollering.”

He gave the wheels a nudge with his boot.

“Unlock it,” Allison said.

“It has a lock?” He poked around and found the lever, released the device with a snap, and incredibly, the chair rolled a few inches. “How did you know that?”

“Brady had knee surgery his last year at Tech.”

Just that quick, the elephant was back in the room. “I watched him play on TV a few times. He was good.”

But not as good as Quinn. No one in the state had been as good at football as Quinn Buchanon. Quinn, with the golden arm that had turned to blood.

He gave the wheelchair a shove and rolled toward the front door.

* * *

He’d gone quiet on her again. When Allison thought they’d moved past that awkward stage, past his determination to be the rude, don’t-care cowboy, he had clammed up again. Between his reluctance and her brothers’ animosity, she wondered why she kept trying.

But she knew why. Though she was a Buchanon with every cell in her body, her brothers were wrong to hold a grudge. Anger would not restore Quinn’s arm to normal. Anger would not regain his chance at an NFL career. All bitterness had ever done was make them miserable.

Like now. If they knew she was here, her brothers would have a fit. Just as they would have a fit if they’d known about the other thing. They’d have done something crazy.

But she was as drawn to Jake Hamilton today as she had been in high school. He was her buddy, her first love, and foolish though she might be, she yearned to help him, to be his friend again, to repay a debt of love and loyalty.

If he’d revealed her secret nine years ago, maybe her family wouldn’t despise Jake so much. But he’d kept silent because she had begged him to. And he’d suffered for his loyalty.

He could walk off and leave her in the yard every time she visited, but she wouldn’t stop trying. He meant too much to her.

If that was pathetic, so be it.

Grabbing a small black suitcase Jake had left behind, she followed him into the house. Her stomach sank like a brick in a pond when she spotted Miss Pat in the big blue corduroy recliner. The once vital, high-energy woman had shriveled to child-size in the months since her hip surgery. She looked a hundred instead of in her early seventies.

“Hi, Miss Pat.”

“Look here, Ralph, it’s little Allison. Isn’t she pretty as a picture?”

Ralph? Who was Ralph? She looked to Jake for help but he’d moved around behind his grandmother and simply shook his head at her. Allison got the message and didn’t press the subject.

She pulled a worn leather ottoman close to the recliner and plopped down. “How you feeling, Miss Pat? Can I do anything for you?”

“You sure can, sweetie. I am useless as a newborn.” Her strong voice didn’t match her body. “Get my purse over there on the table where Jacob stuck it, and then find my Sudoku book in all that mess of sacks.”

“I can do that.” Allison hopped up, amused but pleased that Miss Pat’s personality hadn’t faded like her body, a good sign she had the grit to stage a fourth quarter comeback. “Would you like for me to unpack and put everything away? I’d be pleased to do it.”

“Now, there’s a fine idea. See, Jacob.” She tilted her head back to gaze up at her grandson. “Your grandpa said something would turn up and here she is. Allison will help get this place in order. Won’t you, Allison?”

“Well, sure I will, if that’s what you need.”

“Good. This house needs a cleaning from top to bottom.”

“I can do that.” Never mind that her brothers would go ballistic to know she was in the Hamilton house with Jake. She was here for Miss Pat. Helping a friend was the Buchanon way. And yes, she admitted, she wanted to get to know Jake again. He was a memory that wouldn’t go away. “I can’t tonight, but I’ll come by tomorrow after work. How’s that sound?”

“She’s a jewel, isn’t she, Jacob? Just like in high school when she was sweet on you.”

Jake looked as if he’d swallowed a bug. Allison’s face heated, but she grinned. Miss Pat never minced words.

“Come on, Jacob,” she said, teasing him about the seldom-used name. “Help me find that puzzle book.”

Reluctantly, and with his expression shuttered, he started crinkling plastic sacks. Allison fetched the handbag, handed it off to Miss Pat and joined Jake in the hunt for that all-important puzzle book.

Each time she looked up, their eyes met. Every bit as quickly, one of them would look away. She was acutely aware of his masculine presence, his cowboy swagger, his manly, outdoors scent. Aware in a way that disturbed her thinking.

She found the thick Sudoku pad in the bottom of an ugly brown plastic washbasin.

“Here’s your puzzle book, Miss Pat. Need a pencil?”

“Got one in my purse.” Miss Pat had already extracted a cell phone and was scrolling the contacts. “No, Ralph, it’s not time for my meds.”

Jake glanced at a square wall clock hanging next to an outdated calendar, a sad reminder that no one had lived here for several months. “Another hour, Granny.”

“That’s what I told Ralph. I’ve got to text Mae at the prison and let her know I survived the ride home.”

Jake rolled his eyes. “Carson Convalescence was not a prison.”

“A lot you’d know about it.” Using an index finger, she tapped a message on the phone’s keyboard. “Ah, there we go. Poor Mae. Stuck in that prison through Christmas.”

With a resigned shake of his head, Jake grabbed two suitcases and lugged them through a doorway. Allison followed with an armful of crinkling Walmart sacks.

“Do you know where everything goes?” she asked.

“No.”

“We’ll figure it out.” Allison opened the closet and took out some empty hangers and then started unpacking the mishmash of belongings.

Jake edged around her, looking uncertain and a little thunderous. “You don’t have to do this.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Why?” He paused in hanging up a dress to stare at her across Miss Pat’s dusty dresser.

Every nerve ending reacted to that green gaze, but Allison refused to let her jumbled feelings show. “Because Ralph said I would.”

He grinned. Finally. He had a killer grin beneath olive eyes that had driven more than one girl to doodle his name on the edge of her spiral notebook. Including Allison. But that was in high school. That was before the insanity of a football-focused town had heaped so much condemnation and hurt onto a teenage boy that he’d run away with the rodeo.

“Ralph was my grandpa. She talks to him a lot.”

“Did the doctors say anything?” Allison folded a blue fleece throw into a neat square. “About her mental state, I mean?”

“No. I’m worried, though. I wonder if she’ll be able to live alone again.”

“You’re not planning to stay?”

“Not long. Maybe until after Christmas.” He jerked one shoulder. “I gotta make a living.”

A massive wave of disappointment drenched her good mood. A short stay was better, safer, sensible, but Allison didn’t like it.

A stack of nighties in her hand, she pondered her reaction. She was an adult now, not a dewy-eyed teenager in love with the only boy who’d ever kissed her.

Like that made one bit of difference when it came to Jake Hamilton.

* * *

Jake saw a range of emotions flicker across Allison’s face. Disappointment, worry, relief. He latched on to the last one. She wanted him gone. Out of sight, out of mind. Away from the town that revered Buchanons and loathed Jake Hamilton.

Then why was she here? Why did she insist on pushing past his caution when absolutely nothing good could come of it?

He zipped open a tired blue suitcase, a throwback to the sixties, to find a stack of underwear. Not his favorite thing to unpack with Allison in the room.

His brain had a sudden flashback, a suppressed memory of pink and lace he never should have seen.

He glanced at her. Did she remember, too?

Allison was beside him in a second. “Let me do that.”

She grabbed the stack from his hands as he crouched toward the opened drawer. They knocked heads.

“Ow!” Allison sat back on her haunches and laughed. “Hard head.”

“I was about to say the same thing.” In truth, her head was harder on the inside than on the outside. The woman never gave up, a trait that would leave her disappointed and hurt.

They were a foot apart in front of Granny Pat’s oak dresser, on their toes, both holding to a stack of ladies’ lingerie, and Jake wished for the thousandth time he could erase one terrible day from their lives. He was comfortable with Allison, liked her, a dangerous thing, then and now. She made him smile. She even made him believe in himself. Or she once had. With everything in him he wanted to know this grown-up Allison, a dangerous, troubling proposition.

“You’ve grown up.” Stupid thing to say, but better than yanking her into his arms—an errant, radical thought worthy of a beating from the Buchanon brothers.

She tilted her head, smile quizzical. “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

For him? Very bad. But instead of admitting the truth, he tweaked her flyaway hair and pushed to a stand, distancing himself from the cute temptation of Quinn Buchanon’s sister. “I’ll drag in more of Granny Pat’s stuff while you put this away. Okay?”

As if he wasn’t already struggling not to touch her, Allison reached out a hand. What could he do except take hold and help her up?

A mistake, of course.

Her skin was a thousand times softer than he remembered and smooth as silk. His rough cowboy hand engulfed her small one. He was nowhere near as tall as her brothers, but he towered above Allison. What man wouldn’t understand this protective ferocity that roared in his veins?

Allison had definitely grown up.

And Jake Hamilton was in major trouble.

Chapter Three

Monday morning, Jake drove the dusty graveled road past rows and rows of fence line leading to the Double M Ranch two miles and a world away from Gabriel’s Crossing. Multicolored Brahma brood cows grazed peacefully in this section of Manny Morales’s pasture land. Not one of them looked up as Jake roared by and pulled beneath the Double M crossbars.

In the near distance, a sprawling ranch house sat like a brick monument to the success of a Mexican immigrant whose work ethic and cattle smarts had created a well-respected bucking bull program. Jake knew. He’d worked for Manny before the Buchanons and the rodeo had given him reason to leave Gabriel’s Crossing.

Dust swirled around the truck tires as he parked and got out. Manny, short and stout and leathery, stood in the barn entrance, white Resistol shading his eyes.

“Manny!” Jake broke into a long stride, eager to see his friend and mentor.

“Is that you, Jake boy?” The older man propped a shovel against the barn and came to meet him.

With back slaps and handshakes, they greeted one another. “Manny, it’s good to see you.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you was coming?”

“Why? Would you have cooked for me?”

Manny laughed. He could wrangle a cow, ride a horse and haul a dozen bulls all around the region, but he couldn’t boil water. “Paulina will be crazy happy. She’ll want to cook cabrito and have a fiesta!”

Jake laughed for the first time since his arrival three days ago in Gabriel’s Crossing. “No need to kill the fatted goat. I’ll be satisfied with some frijoles and her homemade tortillas.”

“Sure. Sure.” Manny clapped him on the shoulder again. “But first you got to see your bulls.”

“How are they doing?”

Manny’s black eyes crinkled at the corners. “You see for yourself. They’re good.”

Together they made their way inside the enormous silver barn where Manny’s dark green Polaris ATV was parked. In minutes, they’d bumped across grassy yellowing fields to a pasture where a dozen bull calves grazed.

“I moved the big boys to the west pasture, closer to the house so I can keep an eye on them,” Manny said as he climbed out of the Polaris. “Mountain Man is cranky sometimes so he has his own lot. You saw him buck in San Antonio.”

Jake nodded. Chance meetings at rodeos were one of the perks of having a friend in the stock business. “He’s a good bull. Some of the cowboys are afraid of him.”

“Ah, he’s not so bad.”

Jake differed in opinion. Mountain Man, a white monster of a bull, was big and bad with the horns to end any discussion. He was also an athlete, hard to ride and keeping his owner in tamales. Manny hauled him to rodeos every week during the season.

“There are your sons,” Manny said as he propped a boot on an iron gate and pointed toward the herd.

His sons. Likely the only ones he’d have for a long time. Not that he wouldn’t love a family. A stray like him had dreams. A big ranch and plenty of money. Then a woman to love and a few kids. Maybe a lot of kids. If Allison Buchanon intruded on those dreams at times, he’d learned to shut her out and focus on the first part. A ranch. His bulls.

Over the past several years he’d searched out and bought the best young calves he could afford and partnered with Manny to finish and train them.

Their expense, along with the cost of the brood cows, meant a tight budget most of the time but eventually, he’d reap the benefits of his sacrifice. He’d start a ranch of his own and hopefully be able to retire from the circuit. The past couple of seasons had taken a toll on his body and his bank account. At twenty-seven, he was still fit, but a bull rider never knew how long before the constant pounding ended his career. Even now, his shoulder predicted rain before the meteorologists.

“How’s the training going?” he asked. “Is Big Country about ready for the circuit?”

Though Jake had borrowed heavily to buy him, Big Country was the animal Jake counted on to make his name in the stock contracting business.

“You’ll have to stick around Gabriel’s Crossing for a while and find out for yourself, my friend.”

“Can’t stay long, Manny.” He tried to keep the worry from his voice. “But I’m here until Granny Pat is better.” Even if it meant dealing with the Buchanons and dwindling cash flow.

“Maybe you stay for good this time. Gabriel’s Crossing is your home.”

Jake looked out over the cattle—his cattle—and thought of how often he’d longed to go back in time before he’d ruined everything. Before regret and rodeo were his daily companions. Back when he’d been a part of this town and the big Buchanon clan.

“Water under the bridge, Manny. The rodeo can’t get along without me.” Which wasn’t exactly true. Most seasons, he made a living, and arena dust got in a man’s blood. But he was sick and tired of the travel and the loneliness.

Manny’s dark gaze pierced him. “Still the bad blood?”

No point hiding from Manny. “Buchanons practically own this town. Coming back, even for a while, isn’t easy.”

Manny sighed and folded his brown, leathery hands on the iron railing. “The Buchanons are good people. By now, they will forgive you. Huh? You talk to them. Find out. Maybe you carry a burden for nothing.”

“I don’t think so, Manny. I talked to Allison.”

“You still sweet for that Buchanon girl?”

Jake felt a lot of things for Allison Buchanon that he couldn’t put a name to. Things he couldn’t allow into the conversation. Now or ever. “That was a long time ago. Before I ruined everything.”

If time healed wounds—and he prayed every night the Buchanons would heal—they didn’t need reminders of him to rip open the scab.

He swallowed the taste of regret. He didn’t like thinking about the accident, the worst day of his life, but the burden rode his back like a two-ton elephant. He could never forget it. Ever.

The accident or the girl.

* * *

Buchanon Construction was nothing more than a metal warehouse full of equipment with an office tacked on to one end. Inside that office at a U-shaped desk, Allison entered data for the Willow Creek project into her computer while blonde Jayla fielded phone calls and met with vendors selling ceramic tile or the latest eco-friendly appliances. The place was messy, practical and, other than the desk, bore little resemblance to a business office.

Not that she was thinking about business today with Jake Hamilton lurking in every thought.

Jake. The time at Miss Pat’s had been fun and eye-opening. She liked the handsome cowboy as much as ever. His gentle concern for his grandmother tugged at her, but more than that, being with him reminded her of what they’d had, of what might have been.

Jake was unfinished business.

Her twin brothers, Dawson and Sawyer, ambled in from the warehouse, smelling of sweat and doughnuts. “Mirror” twins, her brothers were lady magnets with black hair, blue eyes and bodies honed by years in the hands-on construction business.

Dawson’s dimple was on display because both men wore possum grins as if they knew a secret. Allison was relieved to see them smiling this morning. If they’d heard about Jake’s return, they wouldn’t be smiling.

“You can’t hide those from me. I have a nose for fresh-baked anything.” Allison held out a hand. “Gimme.”

“Greedy, isn’t she, Dawson?” Sawyer pulled a doughnut box from behind his back and held the white container above his head. At nearly a foot taller than Allison’s five-one, he had a distinct advantage.

“You want me to hop and jump and try to reach them while you laugh at me, don’t you?”

“Torment is our game. Hop, little sister.”

When she propped a hand on one hip and glared, he wiggled the box and said in a cajoling voice, “Come on. Hop. You know you want a hot, fresh doughnut from The Bakery.”

“Well, okay, if I must...” But instead of playing her brother’s ornery game, she poked a finger in his relaxed belly. His six-pack abs tightened, and when he curled inward with a “Hey!” Allison laughed and snatched the still-warm doughnut box.

“Greedy and sneaky,” she said as she popped open the box. “Yum. Maple with coconut. Did you bring milk?”

“Quinn’s supposed to be making fresh coffee in the back.”

“He’s so domestic.” She bit into the sweet dough and sighed, her mouth happy with the warm maple goodness.

“Don’t let him hear you say that.”

“Those things will give you a heart attack.” This from Jayla who held a palm over the telephone receiver. “I’m on hold about the Langley license.”

None of her three siblings paid Jayla any mind.

“Hey, Quinn,” Sawyer yelled toward the back of the warehouse. “What’s the holdup on that java?”

Quinn’s head appeared around the door leading into the warehouse. Golden haired and pretty, Allison thought he resembled a younger, bigger Brad Pitt.

“Some people work for a living.” He gave them all a scowling once over and disappeared again.

“I guess I’ll make the coffee.” Dawson headed into the warehouse, returning a short time later with a full carafe and a stack of disposable foam cups. “He’s in a happy mood today.”

“Which means he’s not,” Jayla said. “The Bartowskis asked for changes to the plans he finished over the weekend. Major changes.”

Sawyer snarled. “I hate when that happens.”

“He threatened to let Dawg bite them.”

“He is in a bad mood. Dawg wouldn’t bite a hot doughnut. Well, maybe he would, but you get the point.” Dawson leaned around the opened doorway. “Hey, Quinn, want a doughnut? Guaranteed to sweeten you up.”

A muffled reply about exactly what Dawson could do with his doughnuts had the siblings stifling snorts that would not be appreciated. They were loud enough, however, that Quinn stalked into the room, hazel eyes shooting sparks. “Something funny?”

Dawg low-crawled from behind Quinn and collapsed at Allison’s feet. “You’re scaring Brady’s dog. Where is Brady anyway?” She tossed the mutt a hunk of sweet roll. He snapped it in midair and tail-thumped in expectation of more.

“Open your mouth, Quinn,” she said, “and I’ll toss you a chunk.”

Quinn fisted a hand on his hip and allowed a grudging lip twitch. “You’d miss.”

“Can’t miss something that big.”

“Old joke, sis.” But with his better hand, he took a chocolate-covered pastry from the box. “Pour me a cup?”

Dawson obliged, handing the steaming brew to his brother. Quinn shifted the doughnut to his weaker right side to accept the coffee.

“Stinks about the plans.” Dawson lifted his ball cap and scratched at his unruly black waves.

“Part of the job.” As architect of Buchanon Construction, Quinn developed all their housing concepts, a recent turn of events, considering the slide into depression that had taken him away from home for too long. Even now, he wasn’t the most social Buchanon. “Those plans were exactly what they asked for. Now they want changes. I have a feeling this project may not be our favorite.”

“We could subcontract the entire project if the Bartowskis become a problem,” Dawson said.

“That would only make things worse. If a sub messes up, we’re responsible.”

“Put Charity on them.” Sawyer studied the Bavarian cream inside his doughnut. “This stuff is good.”

The oldest of the siblings at thirty-three, Charity was the real estate whiz, slick as a used car salesman, a trait Allison found out of sync with the sweet-faced wife of a deployed navy pilot and the mother of a six-and an eleven-year-old.

“Nah, I’ll make the changes. Once.” Quinn ripped off a piece of his chocolate doughnut and tossed it to Dawg. Pathetically grateful, dog sat at his feet, begging for more. “Where are we on the Willow Creek project? Any news on the permits?”

Jayla’s long hair swayed as she thumped the telephone receiver into its cradle and swung around to face them. “That was Brady. Permits are ready. He’s at the courthouse now, and says he will meet you two—” she pointed at Sawyer and Dawson “—at the job site. Bring Dawg.”

Quinn crossed the small space and kissed the top of her head. “You’re amazing.” He ripped off another piece of doughnut and held it in front of her nose. “Eat this.”

She made a horrified face and squeezed her eyes closed. “Death in a doughnut. I’ll pass.”

He laughed and popped the bite into his mouth. “Don’t know what you’re missing, baby sister.”

They were hassling Jayla about her rigid eating habits when the front door slammed open, and Brady strode inside.

“Weren’t you going to the job site?” Jayla’s question fell into the sizzling air and withered away, unanswered.

If a man could spit nails, Allison thought this might be the time to duck and run. With his warrior size, Brady was as dangerous as a rattler when stirred up. And something had definitely stirred him up this morning.

Allison was afraid she knew the cause.

The other siblings exchanged looks. The twins shrugged in unison. No one else had a clue to Brady’s fury.

With a dread heavier than a forklift, Allison put her half eaten doughnut on a skinny strip of napkin and waited for the ax to fall.

Voice tight and low, steam all but pumping from his ears, Brady asked, “You haven’t heard, have you?”

Quinn set his mug down. “Heard what?”

Blood rushed against Allison’s temples. Oh, yeah, here came trouble.

“Jake Hamilton is in town.”

Sawyer’s jaw hardened. “What?”

“You heard me right. Jake’s back.”

“Where did you hear that?” Quinn’s voice was quiet. Too quiet.

“Courthouse.” Brady fisted huge hands on his hips. “I saw the lowlife with my own eyes. Miss Pat’s out of the nursing home and Jake’s moved in, supposedly to take care of her.”

All eyes swung toward Quinn. Like the rest of them—except Allison—he looked stunned. A long beat passed while they absorbed the news. Then, without a word, Quinn spun on his steel-toed boots and left the room.

Chaos erupted.

As if the russet-haired Brady had announced an eminent asteroid collision with downtown Gabriel’s Crossing, everyone talked at once. The general consensus was outrage. Outrage that Jake Hamilton would strut into town years after the fact and behave as if nothing had happened. As if he hadn’t ruined a man’s life.

“Don’t you think you’re overreacting?” As soon as the words were out, Allison clapped a hand over her mouth. Why had she said that?

Silence descended in a dark, pulsating curtain. Three pairs of eyes aimed at her like hot, blue lasers.

She swallowed. Let reason prevail. Please Lord. “Jake’s been gone a long time. His grandma needs him now. We’ve moved on. Quinn’s...okay. We don’t even talk about the accident anymore. Can’t we let the hard feelings end here and now?”

“You were always on his side.” Sawyer’s accusation hurt.

“That’s not fair. We were all heartbroken for Quinn, even Jake. Quinn was his best friend! He’s not some kind of evil monster.”

Dawson slapped his cap against his thigh. “Tell that to Quinn.”

Sawyer nodded in agreement. “I think the brotherhood needs to pay the hotshot bull rider a little visit.”

Brady crouched to pat his dog. The shaggy mutt rolled onto his back, feet in the air. “I’m in.”

Allison exhaled a nervous, worried breath. Her doughnut lay like a rock in her belly. “Just because a man you don’t like comes to town to care for his grandmother is no reason for the four of you to go ninja grudge match.”

Brady rubbed Dawg’s belly, his eyes on Allison. “When that one man destroys my brother’s future, I’m not likely to ever forget.”

That was the problem. She came from a long line of grudge holders. Granddad Buchanon and his brother didn’t speak for the last fifteen years of their lives. All because of a dispute over a used tractor. They were supposed to be Christians, but a Buchanon could sustain anger for a very long time.

Allison saw no point in arguing with her brothers. They were as immovable as a concrete slab.

“You should let sleeping dogs lie. That’s all I have to say.” She turned and headed around the counter to her computer. “We have work to do.”

Brady followed her around the desk, Dawg at his side. His voice had calmed, but his tone held reinforced steel. “We’ll handle Jake Hamilton this time, Allison. You stay away from him.”

Allison gave him a mutinous glare. She was getting real tired of hearing that.

Chapter Four

The next morning Jake made the rounds in town. First, to the post office to redirect Granny Pat’s mail where a friendly postal clerk he remembered slightly inquired about his grandmother. Then to the bank and finally to the grocery store.

Gabriel’s Crossing was a lazy stir of business this early, sunlit morning. Townspeople wandered in and out of stores. Doors slammed. Cars and pickups puttered down a five-block main street still paved with the same bumpy red bricks put there eighty-five years ago.

A truck with a Buchanon Construction sign on the door rolled past. Jake watched it, curious and wary, though the morning sun blasted him in the eyes, so he couldn’t clearly see the man at the wheel.

Allison had been at the house again last night. Her visits stirred him up and interfered with his sleep. Her and the musty smell of sheets he should have washed before bringing Granny Pat home. A man didn’t always think of those things, especially a man who was accustomed to sleeping in his truck or cheap motels along the rodeo circuit.

He both dreaded and longed for evening when Allison would return. She’d promised Granny. Why had she done that? And why couldn’t he find the initiative to be somewhere else when she arrived?

Heaviness weighed on his shoulders like a wet saddle blanket. That’s what Gabriel’s Crossing did to him. When he was on the road or in his trailer in Stephenville, he seldom dwelled on the tragedy. He’d learned to let it go or go crazy. But here, in Gabriel’s Crossing, where memories lingered around every corner and Allison popped in unexpectedly, he thought of little else.

He felt as trapped as a bull in a head gate, unable to go forward, and he sure couldn’t go back.

Inside the quiet IGA, Jake pushed a shopping cart down the produce aisle. He wasn’t much of a cook but Granny Pat needed nourishing foods to rebuild her strength. A woman who’d cooked from scratch her whole life wouldn’t stand for frozen dinners or pizza delivery either. He added a head of lettuce, some tomatoes and a bag of carrots to the cart. Salad. He could do salad. And steak. Big, juicy T-bones with loaded baked potatoes.

He tossed in a bag of potatoes and headed for the meat. The aisles were narrow, a throwback to earlier times, but he’d not been in the mood for the supercenter this morning. Too many people. Too many opportunities to run into someone he didn’t want to see.

He wasn’t afraid to climb into the chute with an eighteen-hundred-pound bull, but he was a coward in his hometown. The knowledge aggravated him so much Jake considered reshelving the groceries and driving out to the supercenter. If he hadn’t promised to meet the home health nurse in an hour, he would have.

As it was, he threw a few more items into the cart and headed for the checkout. A flaming redhead with a snake tattoo down one arm and a dragon from neck to chin rang up the purchases. Gabriel’s Crossing had certainly changed. But then, so had he.

The redhead gave him a friendly smile. “Coach Hammonds brought in the football schedules yesterday. Want one?”

She offered a small cardboard card similar to the wallet schedules he remembered.

“I’m good.” He would not be attending any football games.

“Oh, well. They’re free.” She tossed the schedule inside one of the grocery sacks. “You must be new in town. I don’t think I’ve seen you around.”

Jake was not about to make a fuss over a high school football schedule even though the red-and-white piece of card stock was a reminder he didn’t want.

“Visiting my grandma.”

“That’s nice.” The register beeped as she slid lettuce across the conveyer. “Are you a real cowboy?”

“Nah, I just found the hat.” He softened the joke with a smile.

Her hand paused on the T-bone package. She giggled. “You’re teasing me, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, I am. Sorry. I ride bulls.”

Her eyes widened. “No way. That is so scary.”

If he lived to be a hundred, he’d always enjoy that kind of reaction, as if he was something special because he wasn’t afraid to get on a bull. “Only if I don’t stay on.”

Which had happened way too often this season.

Another customer pulled into the lane behind Jake. Bolstered by the friendly cashier, he turned to acknowledge the woman, and his heart tumbled.

“Allison.”

“Jake, hi.” Her wide smile did crazy things to his head. “What are you doing?”

“He’s visiting his grandma,” Tattoo Girl said as the register beeped and plastic crinkled. “Isn’t that sweet?”

Allison’s eyes danced with merriment. “He’s a sweetie, all right. Are you shopping for Miss Pat?”

“I’m not much of a shopper, but yeah, sort of. I wasn’t sure what to buy.”

“She made a list. Didn’t you bring it?”

Ah, man. The note was sticking on the refrigerator. “Forgot about it.”

Allison backed her cart out of the checkout. “I remember. Go ahead and pay out and then we’ll go again.”

He should refuse, but he couldn’t. When it came to Allison Buchanon he didn’t have a lick of sense.

Jake glanced at Tattoo Girl who hiked one shoulder and said, “Why not?”

He could think of a lot of reasons.

By the time he paid out and found Allison, an easy task in the small family-run store, she was pondering the brands of laundry soaps.

“I can’t remember if she said Tide or Cheer.”

Jake studied the detergent as though they mattered. “Pick one. I don’t care. I’ll be doing the laundry.”

“Do you know how?”

“Allison.” He grabbed a box and sent it thudding into the basket. “Single guys learn to do laundry or go dirty. I prefer not to smell like the bulls I ride.”

“But you don’t cook.” So small she barely reached his shoulders, she gazed up at him through big brown eyes he’d never forgotten. Did she have any idea how pretty she was?

“How do you know I can’t cook?”

“I saw your shopping cart.” She made a cute face. “Steaks and salad are a guy’s go-to meal. And then you’re done.”

Jake let a smile creep up his cheeks. “Wise guy.” Though she was anything but a guy. Little Allison had grown up. “I don’t suppose you’d take pity on a man for eating out a lot.”

She tossed in a box of fabric softener sheets and pointed to the west. “Next aisle over. Come on. We’ll stock the cabinets.”

“Who’s going to cook?”

Her answer nearly stopped his heart. “Me.”

So much for avoiding Allison Buchanon.

* * *

Allison left the warehouse office at five-thirty, stopped at The Bakery to discuss Faith’s cake with Cindy, the best and only wedding cake decorator in Gabriel’s Crossing, and then headed toward Faith’s house.

Jake’s truck was noticeably absent as she drove past the Hamilton place, and if she was disappointed, she tried not to be. She’d see him tonight, though she questioned her sanity, as well as her family loyalty. At the same time, she wanted to be there for Miss Pat, a woman who’d taught all the Buchanon kids in first grade. And Allison loved to cook. Buchanon women were noted for their kitchen gifts.

Right. As if Jake had nothing to do with the buzz of energy racing through her system. A buzz that had begun the moment she’d seen him again and hadn’t let up.

She passed two little girls pedaling bikes and pulled to the curb outside the faded red brick where Faith had lived alone with her mother since her parents’ divorce twenty years ago.

“The topper is in,” she said without greeting when her BFF pushed open the smoked glass door. Tall and narrow, Faith was a bleached blonde with a long face and gray eyes who could play the fiddle and clog at the same time, a feat Allison found both charming and hilarious considering her towering height.

“Did you take a picture?”

“Do birds fly?” Allison whipped out her cell and scrolled to the photo. “The next time you’re not tutoring after school, you should stop by and check it out. The cake is going to be gorgeous.”

“Ooh, I love this.” A pair of silver and crystal hearts twined on a silver base engraved with the initials of the bride and groom. “That’s exactly what I had in mind.”

“Only the best is good enough for my bestie. How did the dress fitting go?”

Faith made a face. “Let’s put it this way. Don’t tempt me with ice cream or pizza until after the wedding. One more pound and Clare will have to paint the dress on.”

“Tell that to Derrick. He’s the one who wines and dines you like a princess.”

“One of the many reasons I love the guy.”

“Derrick is the steadiest, most dependable man in Texas. You’ll be a princess forever.”

Faith grinned. “From stork to princess. I love it.”

Faith’s superior height had made her the object of too many jokes through the years. Though Derrick was two inches shorter, he adored his fiancée the way she was.

Every girl wanted a man like that.

Ever present in her thoughts these days, Jake flashed into her mental viewer. He’d been entertainingly inept at the grocery store, and he’d made her laugh over a can of spinach.

“Stop calling yourself a stork. You know how many times I’ve wished I was tall enough to reach the second shelf in the kitchen cabinet?”

“I can change a lightbulb without a chair.”

“Lucky duck.”

Faith laughed and hooked an elbow with Allison. “Come on. I have a stack of RSVPs to go through. Let’s see who’s coming to the biggest party in town.”

With the wedding in three weeks, time was running out for all the last-minute details. “I touched base with the band and the caterer this morning, and scheduled the final fitting with all the bridesmaids.”

“And?”

“Everything’s a go. The caterer even managed some vegan dishes for Jayla and her friends after I sent over some suggestions.”

“She’s a genius.” They settled side by side on a fawn-colored couch. “So are you. How do you find time for all this?”

“The perks of working for family. When the office is slow, I make calls or run errands.”

“Saturday for the bridesmaids, right? What time?” Faith chewed the edge of a fingernail.

“Stop that.” Allison swatted her friend’s hand. “Ten o’clock. Which reminds me, are you going for acrylic nails or natural?”

“Do you actually think I can keep my hands out of my mouth in the weeks preceding the most important day of my life?”

“Not a chance. Acrylic it is. Have you made the appointment? What about your hair?” Allison went down the list she’d checked and rechecked dozens of times. Faith had been known to forget the details. Allison was a detail girl.

A stack of wedding RSVP envelopes—in the same white pearl as the mountain of invitations the two of them, along with Faith’s mother, had addressed weeks ago—waited in a box on the coffee table. “Have you opened any of them?”

“I was waiting for you.”

“Good. I want to keep a list.”

“And you know I’m lousy with lists.”

“Part of your charm. You’re marrying a statistician. You don’t have to worry about lists anymore.” Allison grabbed a stack and a letter opener. “Put acceptances in the white box, rejections in the blue one.”

As they sorted the cards, they talked. About how hard it would be to live three hours apart. About the darling house Faith and Derrick had purchased in Oklahoma City. About the honeymoon in Saint Thomas. If Allison felt a twinge of envy mixed in with her absolute delight for her best friend, she didn’t acknowledge it.

“Derrick’s brother is pretty cute, don’t you think?” Faith’s voice was casual but she didn’t look at Allison, a sign she was trying—and failing—to be subtle.

“Yes, and nice, too, like Derrick.”

“And? He’s the best man. You’re the maid of honor. Maybe you could get something going, and we could be sisters-in-law?”

Allison laughed. “Marrying your husband’s brother would not make us related. Besides, I like being single.”

“You do not. We’ve both waited long enough. Now that I’m getting married, you should get serious about finding someone.”

She’d found someone once-upon-a-fairy-tale. But her fairy tale had turned into a horror flick.

In self-defense, she said, “I went to the movies with Billy last month.”

“Last month! Allison, do you know how pathetic that is? And you only went with him because his sister asked you to take pity on him.” Faith put the stack of envelopes in her lap. “Jake’s the problem, isn’t he? Like always.”

Was she that transparent?

“Maybe.” Probably. “But that was years ago.”

“You still have his picture in your wallet.”

“I never got around to taking it out.”

“You’ve changed wallets a dozen times since then. Which means he’s still stuck in your head and your heart. So now that he’s back you need to do something about him.”

“And cause the biggest war since the Hatfields and McCoys?” Allison shook her head. “I only want to make things easier for him. Our teenage romance is long behind us.”

Faith rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. This is me you’re talking to. You have never—I repeat never—laid to rest the issue of Jake Hamilton. Every guy is measured up against your handsome cowboy, and then you kick them to the curb like a pop can.”

Allison sighed. Faith was right. Even when she’d wanted to move on and forget her feelings for Jake, she never had. They’d been prematurely interrupted and she’d never liked unfinished business. It was so untidy. “I don’t know what to do. I wish my brothers could get over themselves.”

“If wishes were horses. Stop wishing and go for it. Your brothers should have nothing to do with your romantic life, so get to know Jake again and see what happens.” Faith ripped open another RSVP. “I have an idea. Invite him to the wedding. We still have invitations.”

Allison’s heart jumped. “He won’t come.”

“You never know until you try. Sit right there.” Faith pointed at Allison as she hurried out of the room, but stuck her head around the door facing. “Do you want anything to drink while I’m up?”

“Water would be great.”

“Got it. I hear Mom in the garage.”

While Allison opened, sorted and listed RSVP cards, a nervous pulse ticked in her temple.

The unresolved heartache of a first love that had crashed and burned pushed to the surface like a dead body in water. She had loved him as much as any teenager could. He’d seen her at her worst, her most humiliated, and had never judged her. On the other hand, he’d stood her up at the graduation dance.

Did she really want to revisit either of those places again?

She stared down at the vellum cards and thought of all the weddings she’d attended, of the tiny unacknowledged ache to find her own true love.

Faith was right. She needed to explore this thing with Jake and put the issue to rest once and for all.

“Hello, Allison.”

Deep in thought, Allison jumped when Faith’s mom, Ellen, trudged into the room wearing blue scrubs, a testament to her nursing job. She wiggled her fingers and padded on silent white shoes down the hall and out of sight.

“Your mom looks tired,” she said as Faith returned, bearing a white invitation.

“Eight twelve-hour shifts in a row take a toll.”

“Ugh. Poor woman.”

“No kidding. I’m glad I went into teaching.” With the teacher shortage in Oklahoma, Faith had easily found a new job in Oklahoma City for the spring semester. “I’m filling out this invitation right now, and I want you to hand-deliver it.”

Allison returned Faith’s grin, though hers was filled with trepidation. “That’s easy. I’m going over there when I leave here.”

“Cleaning Miss Pat’s house is a great excuse to see Jake.” Faith pumped her eyebrows.

“Helping an elderly neighbor is not an excuse to see Jake. Stop it!” Allison bit her bottom lip. “I would help Miss Pat even if Jake wasn’t there.”

“Yes, but you wouldn’t enjoy your little trips nearly as much.”

True. Painfully true.

She watched Faith write Jake’s name in her beautiful script. “Do you think he’ll accept?”

Faith slid the card into the envelope and held it out like an Oscar win. “Only one way to find out.”

* * *

He shouldn’t be here. He should get in his pickup and drive out to Manny’s.

Jake looked at the spread of vegetables on the kitchen counter and considered sticking everything back in the fridge. Then he could shut off the stove and walk out. Allison would be here any minute.

“Jacob?” Granny Pat’s voice wafted in from the living room. “Honey, did you buy cheese for the baked potatoes? Bring me a slice. I haven’t had anything but prison food in so long, I’m hungry as a starved wolf.”

At the request, Jake resigned himself to letting Allison help him cook dinner. Granny needed this, no matter how hard it was on him.

He took a chunk of cheddar to the recliner where Granny Pat had pretty much lived since coming home. Earlier, the home nurse had gotten her up and walked her to the bath, a trip that had worn her out and torn a strip from Jake’s heart.

“Here you go.” He went to his knee beside her chair. “Anything else?”

“No, baby.” She patted his hand. “You’re such a good boy.”

The comment made him snort. “Is your memory failing you?”

“I remember everything I want to.” She grinned her impertinent grin. “You were always a good boy with a big soft heart. That’s why you acted up after your mama left. And you had a right. She broke your little heart in half.”

Jake’s muscles tightened. He didn’t think about his mother much anymore. “I always wondered why she left.”

“I know you did, son. Leaving you was wrong of her.”

That was the only explanation he’d ever received. His dad was barely cold in the ground before his mother packed her bags and drove away in an old Buick. “Do you ever wonder where she is?”

Granny Pat’s winkled face saddened. “All the time, baby boy. For a long time I thought, once she’d grieved your daddy, she’d come back for you.”

But she never had. And he’d grown up with a big, gaping hole inside, waiting for his mama to come home and fill it with love.

“I’m not complaining. You took good care of me.”

She’d done her best. In between work and her grief over the loss of a son, his grandmother had done all she knew to deal with a sad little boy and later, a wild teenager. Still, he wondered what might have been.

Outside a car door slammed. Jake shook off the uncomfortable nostalgia and jerked to his feet. “Allison’s here.”

“Ralph thinks you’re still sweet on her.”

He tried to laugh her off. “You want to get me killed?”

“You’ve been trying to do that yourself for years.”

A man with nothing to lose made a good bull rider.

At the knock, he ignored his grandmother’s keen insight to let Allison in. “Hey.”

“Hey, yourself.” She shoved a bag at him. “Put this in the kitchen while I bring in the casserole.”

“Casserole?”

“Mama’s chicken spaghetti.”

Granny Pat’s voice sailed across the room. “I love that stuff.”

“I thought we were cooking.” Jake looked over one shoulder. “I already put the steaks in the oven.”

“For tomorrow,” Allison said. “You know how Mom is. She still cooks for an army in case one or two of us kids drops in. She had an extra and I ‘borrowed it.’”

Karen Buchanon had fed him for years when he’d tagged along with the four Buchanon boys. Now, he was as grateful as he’d been back then, and the throb of longing was every bit as raw.

He set the bag of what appeared to be cleaning supplies on a table beside the door and followed Allison to the Camaro. Wearing a tan skirt and crisp white shirt with a collar, her flyaway hair bounced as she walked. He liked her hair, itched to touch the silk of it and wanted to kick his own tail for even thinking about her that way.

He had to stop this. Had to stop it now.

His longer stride caught up to her quickly. “Did your mother know you were coming over here?”

“She was going to bring the casserole herself. I volunteered.”

“She must not know I’m home.”

Allison shrugged. “She wasn’t wild about me seeing you, but I make my own choices and she knows that. Besides, she and Miss Pat go way back.” She handed him the still-warm container. “Mom takes care of her friends.”

Right. Karen Buchanon would visit Granny Pat even if her grandson was Ted Bundy.

“Neither of you mentioned this little errand of mercy to your brothers, did you?”

“You’re cranky today.”

“Did you?”

“No. They might do something stupid. They’ve been threatening—” She stopped halfway to the house and slapped her hands on her hips. “I want this to stop. You got me to admit my brothers still hold a grudge, and I didn’t want to go there. Does that make you happy?”

With her face tilted toward his and her brown eyes snapping, she was cute as a kitten. Adorable and off-limits.

“Happy? Hardly.” But exactly what he’d expected. Not what he’d hoped for or even dreamed of, but exactly what he deserved.

She hadn’t intended to discuss her brothers. He could see that and understood. Now, she was furious, both at herself and him, for opening up the sore topic.

Unlike Brady Buchanon whose temper was renown, Allison’s fury wouldn’t last long. She was too good, too generous, too kind. And she was tearing him apart.

Resigned to spend the evening fighting memories, he led the way into the kitchen where the smell of broiling steak overpowered the small space.

“Better check this,” he said and peaked inside the oven. “Looking good.”

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