The Christmas they never had.

James Cade has one priority: keep the family ranch running smoothly in the wake of his younger brother’s death. With Jesse’s ex, Sofia Gallardo, and her young son, Javi, stranded at Cade Ranch over Christmas, this task just got a lot harder. The longer Sofia and Javi stay, the harder it is to imagine the ranch without them. James couldn’t save his brother from his inner demons, but he can give his nephew a secure future. Maybe more—if he can figure out how to trust Sofia, and stop feeling like he’s betraying Jesse. Because trying to stop thinking about beautiful, determined Sofia is impossible.

“All I could hear was you, Sofia. Singing the wrong words.”

He couldn’t stop his twitching mouth any longer and gave in to a full-on smile. An unfamiliar feeling.

“Then what does the singer mean when he says he wants to get lost in the rock and roll? Huh?” Her huff made something tight inside his chest loosen.

“He wants to get lost in the beat,” he said reasonably, inhaling the vanilla-musk scent of her hair. “Here. Listen again.” He started the song over. At the chorus, he sang the correct line.

A quick glance to his right revealed Sofia’s frown. Her dark eyebrows met over her nose and that full pink mouth of hers, the one he hadn’t been able to stop staring at since they’d met last night, pursed. He forced his gaze back on the road where it belonged.

He had no business thinking Jesse’s girl was pretty.

Dear Reader,

The holidays hold unique memories for all of us. Some of them are warm and wonderful as we remember happy gatherings around a Christmas tree laden with gifts or cozy evenings eating homemade treats beside a fire while listening to carols. But for people who don’t have homes, or family, the holidays can be riddled with unpleasant memories.

For struggling single mother Sofia Gallardo, the holidays evoke a mix of emotions. Her only Christmas wish is to give her six-year-old son, Javi, a real Christmas, a home and a family to be proud of. For the Cades, the holidays are a time they pretend doesn’t exist as it brings back painful memories of a beloved family member they’ve recently lost.

I’m inspired by Sofia’s perseverance and determination to provide a better life for her child, and am moved by the Cades’ grief and need to come together as a family again. The magic of Christmas heals wounds and brings a couple and child the love and family they deserve. I welcome you to the first book in my Rocky Mountain Cowboys series and hope you find it as uplifting and inspiring as I did!

Wishing you a holiday season filled with joy, laughter and love.

Happy reading,

Karen Rock

Christmas at Cade Ranch

Karen Rock

www.millsandboon.co.uk

KAREN ROCK is an award-winning young adult and adult contemporary author. She holds a master’s degree in English and worked as an ELA instructor before becoming a full-time author. Most recently, her Harlequin Heartwarming novels have won the 2015 National Excellence in Romance Fiction Award and the 2015 Booksellers’ Best Award. When she’s not writing, Karen loves scouring estate sales, cooking and hiking. She lives in the Adirondack Mountain region with her husband, daughter and Cavalier King Charles spaniels. Visit her at karenrock.com.

To my husband and daughter, whose love is the greatest gift I receive every Christmas and the whole year through.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

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

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Extract

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

“IS DADDY DOWN THERE?”

Sofia Gallardo knelt beside her five-year-old son, Javi, on frozen grass and snuggled him close. All around them, poinsettia and pinecone Christmas wreaths bedecked the surrounding gravesites. She pulled in a ragged breath of balsam-scented air and blinked stinging eyes.

How to explain the afterlife to a child? An animated film they’d watched at a public library came to mind. “No, honey. Daddy went ‘up.’”

Javi traced the plaque’s engraved letters with a fingertip poking through his faded red glove. The white tops of Carbondale, Colorado’s nearby Rocky Mountain range breathed chill late-November air down at them. It rustled through the Douglas firs dotting Rosebud Cemetery and jingled bell-shaped ornaments looped around a wintergreen boxwood. “Like in the movie?”

“Just like that.”

“With balloons?”

“Maybe.”

Brown eyes slanted up at her beneath a drooping toque a size too big for his head. He looked thinner, she assessed, gnawing on her lip. Pale. When was the last time he’d had milk? Fruit? Two days ago?

No. Three.

Four.

“He can’t go up without balloons.” Javi pulled a creased picture from his backpack and peered at it. “And he wasn’t old like Mr. Fredisson.”

“Fredricksen,” she corrected automatically, then closed her eyes for a moment and gathered her thoughts. How to make sense of something she hadn’t yet fully processed? Outside the cemetery’s gates, the swish-hiss of a sander slipped past, ahead of this afternoon’s predicted storm.

She shivered in her sweater and wished for a winter coat, gloves and a better set for Javi, too, than his mismatched pair.

Wishes.

At least they didn’t cost a thing.

“You don’t have to be old to go up.”

Her ex, Jesse Cade, was dead at only twenty-six, gone from her life before Javi’s first birthday when Jesse relapsed into heroin addiction. Gone from this world two years ago without her knowing until a stranger, Jesse’s mother, Joy Cade, tracked her down last week and phoned with the news. Sofia had promised to meet her here during her Portland-bound bus’s layover from Albuquerque.

Her stomach knotted. When Joy had pleaded for the chance to meet her grandson, Sofia heard a mother’s pain and found it hard to refuse. After wrestling with the decision, she’d finally called Joy this morning and accepted the invite.

Not that she’d made peace with the plan.

Sofia avoided people who associated her with her own addiction history. What if Joy divulged Sofia’s shameful past to Javi?

She wouldn’t be able to bear it.

Javi sprawled forward and pressed his cheek to the stone. His Batman hoodie—a dingy black thing he’d plucked from the shelter’s discard pile—rose above his waist. “I don’t want to go up. Ever.”

“You won’t, sweetie. Promise.” She brushed back his dark hair and clamped her chattering teeth. Growing up in the inner city and forced at times to live in shelters, Javi had already endured a harsher life than some adults. She’d do everything in her power to keep him safe.

Even from herself.

“But what if they don’t have free lunches in—in— Where are we going?”

“Portland.” She gathered him close and the familiar fear of not knowing where their next meal would come from curdled inside her. “No more being hungry.”

Hopefully her friend’s job lead panned out. Finding steady, decent-paying employment wasn’t easy for former felons without high school degrees. She’d run out of options in Albuquerque.

But maybe in Portland she had a chance at a position that’d last more than a few months, a career, maybe even a real home for Javi. One she’d decorate for the holidays in every inch of its space to make up for all the Christmases he’d had to do without.

It might be a pie-in-the-sky idea, but when you had nothing, you had nothing to lose by dreaming big.

She had two bus tickets and three hundred and forty-two dollars in her wallet. Since being laid off from her latest job and evicted from another apartment, it was all she had in the world besides her little guy. Her grip tightened on Javi.

She’d made a lot of mistakes. Failing to provide for her son, making him ashamed of who he was or where he came from, would not be part of them.

This had to work.

“Never ever?”

“Never ever,” she vowed, fierce.

She would not, could not, break this promise.

Society had judged her a disgrace, as had her father when he’d tossed her out at age sixteen. What her deceased mother thought...she’d never know.

Didn’t want to know.

Most important of all, though, was how Javi would judge her someday. If he knew she was a former junkie, he might stop believing in her. Which was one reason she needed to keep Joy’s visit short—to prevent any damaging revelations.

Her “respectable mom” persona had been crashing around her ears recently. A former addict “friend” had tracked Sofia down and begged to crash at her apartment. Feeling bad for the woman, Sofia agreed to let her stay, just for a couple of nights. But then their houseguest spiraled into a drug-induced manic state where she’d threatened Javi with a gun and hollered about Sofia being a hypocrite. The woman created such a ruckus that it had caused Sofia’s eviction. It also confirmed that the only way to truly erase who she’d once been was to start over in a place where no one knew her.

No more reminders of her old ways.

Javi wriggled away and pulled a toy Batmobile from his pocket. He clicked on the red headlights. “Did Daddy love me?”

She pictured Jesse, the easygoing cowboy she’d met in court-ordered rehab and once believed she might marry. Stupid, foolish girl. “He did.”

“How come he left?”

“He was sick.” A shiver trailed an icy fingertip down her spine as the afternoon sun finally succumbed to cloud cover. Addiction was a sickness, she justified, so it wasn’t a lie.

“Did he get sick and die?”

She started to shake her head, then nodded instead. There were no easy answers when drugs and violence mixed. According to Joy, drug dealers murdered Jesse for unpaid funds.

Javi propped himself on his elbows, and his sneaker-clad feet, crossed at the ankles, swung. He pointed at the lettering again. “Is Grandma coming?”

“She said so...” Though Joy should have arrived by now.

“Will she like me?”

“How could she not?”

“My teacher doesn’t like me.”

“That’s only because you won’t stop eating all of her erasers.”

“She told Mrs. Penn she couldn’t keep bringing in paper for me anymore. She sounded angry.”

Sofia bit her lip. School supplies. Another thing she struggled to provide. “Honey, sometimes grown-ups just have bad days. I know she likes you.”

“What’s that say?” Javi pointed at the marker, switching subjects with the whiplash speed of a child.

“I’ve read it to you twice, honey.”

“Please,” he wheedled, and she sighed. Where was Joy? Their bus departed in twenty minutes. She’d breathe easier once she put this part of the world, this part of herself, in the rearview mirror for good.

“That’s a J,” Sofia began.

Javi traced the first letter at the top of the plaque. “Like me.”

“Right.” Jesse’s siblings’ names all began with J and he’d wanted to follow the tradition with Javi.

“What’s this say?”

“‘Jesse Andrew Cade. Beloved son and brother.’”

In the distance, a lone cardinal perched in a skeletal maple, bright as a leftover leaf. A gray-haired woman approached, wearing navy shoes and carrying a matching purse. A sensible-looking gray wool coat fell past her knees. Joy?

Sofia turned away, her heart picking up speed.

“Cade like me!”

She felt her smile falter. “And that says, ‘Free spirit. Roam in peace.’”

Free spirit. Yes. That’d been Jesse. The quality that had attracted her and made her believe in a better life, a better her.

“I’m hugging Daddy goodbye.” Javi rolled back on his stomach and curved his arms around the plaque. Then he leaped to his feet and slipped a hand in hers. His lone, left-sided dimple, the only trait that resembled Jesse, appeared when he smiled up at her. “How many brothers did Daddy have?”

“Four,” someone replied softly behind them.

Sofia whirled and came face-to-face with the gray-haired woman she’d spied. Her pale pink lips lifted slightly in an uncertain smile and a gust blew strands of her neatly clipped bob across her thin face. It was relatively unlined and pretty in an understated way, her age younger than her hair color suggested. Wire-framed lenses magnified the hazel eyes that darted between Javi and Sofia. That color...the light yellow-green surrounded by a ring of brown. She’d seen it only once before...

Her heart beat a fast tap.

“Did you know my daddy?” Javi skidded to a stop in front of the stranger and gaped up at her.

“I’m his mother,” came her quiet, tremulous voice. She pulled her purse closer to her body and her wool coat sleeve rode up to reveal an elastic-wrap bandage crisscrossing her left wrist. “And you must be...?”

“Javi!”

Joy swayed and her face paled. Concern shoved caution aside. Sofia swept an arm around the woman’s waist and guided her to a bench beneath a cluster of towering pines. “Thank you,” Joy murmured once she sat. “Now. Come closer, dear.”

She crooked a finger, and Javi clambered up on the bench beside her. His short legs dangled, scuffed sneakers kicking the air.

“Are you my grandma?” His left-sided dimple appeared in a quick smile.

Joy gasped. “Yes.”

“You don’t look so old.”

Despite the tense moment, Sofia held in a short laugh. Joy’s warm eyes met hers. “Well. I appreciate that. And how old are you?”

He held up four fingers, and Sofia shook her head. Red stained his cheeks as he peeled up one more digit.

“And do you go to school?”

He nodded. “Yesterday my teacher had a party for me. She brought in cupcakes, and they were free.”

“Javi goes to—went to—preschool in Albuquerque,” Sofia interjected.

“Education is important.”

Javi scrunched his face.

“Yes,” Sofia agreed, feeling like a hypocrite. How she wished she’d gotten her diploma. Without it, the label High School Dropout followed her wherever she went, like an invisible capital F sewn to her clothes. At least she would not fail at being a good mother, the one and only thing she was proud of.

“I have to go to a new school and make new friends.” Javi nibbled on his thumbnail, then dropped it at Sofia’s head shake.

“Are you excited about that?”

“What if they call me Free Lunch like back home?”

Joy blinked. “Excuse me?”

“Oh. It’s just something kids say,” Sofia said quickly, hating how a few children had picked on Javi for his secondhand clothes and the card he used instead of money in the cafeteria. Someday she’d give him everything that other kids had so no one would ever make fun of him again. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Yes, it does,” Javi insisted through hands covering his face. “It means we’re poor trash. Least that’s what Timmy Rice says.”

“That’s a mean thing to say,” Joy insisted, indignant. “It’s better to have no money than no heart.”

Javi peeked up through his fingers. “Is that true?”

“I swear.”

“A lady at a desk called me a waste of space. Is that true?”

“Absolutely not,” declared Joy, her voice firm.

Javi threw his arms around her. “I like you.”

Joy smiled, blinking fast. Her trembling hand passed over his hair. “I like you, too, honey. A lot.”

He angled his head to peer up at her. “How come?”

“Because you’re a Cade, and Cades always stick together.”

“Mama says the Cades ride on top of mountains and don’t ever fall off. Their hats touch the clouds. Right, Mama?”

Sofia dropped her eyes at Joy’s surprised look. Okay. Maybe she’d exaggerated a bit about Jesse’s family, but she’d wanted Javi to believe he came from good people...strong men and women...a family he could be proud of, unlike her.

“That’s right, Javi.” Time to change the subject. “Joy, I’m not sure if you ever mentioned how you found us...?”

Joy produced a cell phone with a familiar rodeo buckle cover. Jesse’s phone.

“The police returned this to us a couple years ago, but I didn’t... I couldn’t bring myself to look through it. Not until recently. Then I saw this.”

She flipped the phone around to show a picture of Sofia in a hospital bed, a newborn Javi in her arms. Jesse grinned as he crouched beside them. The name Cade was scrawled in big letters on the empty baby pen nearby.

“That’s me!” Javi exclaimed.

“Yes. Yes, it is.”

“Mama said I cried a lot. Is that why Daddy left?”

“Honey!” Sofia exclaimed. Out of the mouths of babes. Javi had been a colicky baby. True, she had worried at one point that taking care of a demanding baby had driven Jesse back to drugs, but she knew that was not the case at all.

“Mama said he got sick.”

Joy nodded. “Yes. She has the right of it.” She cleared her throat. “Javi, would you find me some holly berries?” She pointed to a patch of bushes beyond the pine bunch. “Celtics believed they were good luck.”

“Like basketball?”

“No, honey. Ancient people. They’re all gone now.”

“Like Atlantis? Mummies?”

“Something like that...”

“Got it!” Javi leaped off the bench and raced away, eager as always to help. He lived to save the day like his beloved superheroes.

“Don’t eat them, now!” Joy called.

The bushes were in their line of vision but out of earshot. Sofia admired the woman’s deft handling of this tricky moment. She pressed clammy palms on her jeans and perched on the edge of the bench. Her insides felt frozen, her heart beating in a block of ice.

“So Javi doesn’t know about Jesse’s addiction.”

“No,” Sofia said swiftly. “I don’t want him knowing about any of that.”

Joy studied her for a long moment, then nodded. “He won’t hear of it from me.”

Sofia released a breath. “Thank you.”

“I’ve been searching for you ever since I found this.” Joy tucked the phone in her purse. “I figured out who you were by searching his contacts, but your number no longer worked.”

“I’ve moved around a lot.”

And Sofia couldn’t afford a phone, or this conversation. It brought up too much of her past. She needed to leave. Now.

Joy’s eyes glistened as she studied Javi scuttling across the whitened ground on his hands and knees. The sky spit a few snow flurries. A first volley of more to come, Sofia worried. A low howl rose in her ears.

“I—I—” Sofia was struggling to think of a graceful way to extricate herself when Joy buried her face in her hands and her shoulders shook. Overhead, a pair of cooing mourning doves alighted on a branch. “I’m sorry I upset you.”

“No!” Joy lifted a tearstained face and a left-sided dimple appeared. “This is wonderful. It’s just hitting me that this is real.” She released a shaky breath. “Javi’s my first grandchild. Knowing there’s a part of my Jesse still here on this earth, well, it’s the first thing that’s made me feel alive in a long, long time.”

Sofia’s heart felt like it might explode. “I wish we could stay longer and visit, but our bus leaves soon. May I call you when Javi and I are settled?”

“I’d appreciate that. Will I see you again?” Joy rose.

“I’m not sure,” Sofia temporized. She reached for her wallet and came up empty.

Had she left it by the grave? Her eyes flew to the area and landed on Javi’s backpack. Perhaps she’d stowed it in there. The events of this anxious morning blurred. Her panicked thoughts knocked against each other, and her temple throbbed. When was the last time she’d had it?

“Javi, have you seen my wallet?” she asked, hustling to the backpack.

“Uh-uh.”

She scrounged through Javi’s backpack and her purse. Nothing.

“Our bus tickets were in there. Money. Identification...”

“Let’s retrace your steps. If we can’t find it, you’ll stay at the ranch until everything’s sorted,” Joy declared in a tone that brooked no argument.

“Wooo-hooo!” Javi shouted. “I want to see Daddy’s ranch! Can we, Mama? Can we?”

She stared into two pairs of hopeful eyes. Her throat constricted as though someone slipped a noose around it and tugged. If she didn’t find her wallet, they’d be out of options, and this small town didn’t look like it had a shelter.

Where would she and Javi sleep during the blizzard?

It’s only one night, a voice whispered. A chance for Javi to see what a real family looks like and meet his aunt and uncles.

Fine.

CHAPTER TWO

“MOVE IT! MOVE IT!” James Cade hollered as he thundered at breakneck speed alongside a stampeding herd of longhorns. His siblings’ bloodthirsty howls filled the broad valley. Pelting snow obscured his vision and froze his throat. He yanked up his bandanna to cover his nose and mouth, leaned low over his palomino’s neck and galloped flat out to redirect the rampaging group before they plunged off the bluff ahead. His heart drummed. Stinging sweat dripped in his eyes.

“Hee-yah!” pealed his younger brother Jared, his lusty shout ringing above the bellowing cattle’s din.

Their trampling hooves slapped the hard, rocky earth in a heart-pounding rhythm. At James’s finger point, Jared swerved away in the white murk and chased after a breakout group of cows and heifers, his face animated, eyes intent, back straight. He looked as unruffled as he had when they’d begun searching for the runaways who’d broken from their winter pasture hours ago. Of course, it’d take a lot more than a hundred out-of-control livestock to rattle golden-child Jared’s bone-deep confidence.

As for him? Chaos got under James’s skin, made it itch. And whenever chaos hit, James’s restless thoughts didn’t quit until everything on the family ranch he managed was in its proper, predetermined place. The rules he’d instituted after his youngest brother Jesse died and older brother, Jack, left to seek justice were needed to protect his family and their way of life. Otherwise, their carefully pieced-back world risked falling apart again.

“Yip! Yip! Yip!” hooted his sister, Jewel. She barreled at lightning speed along the right side of the cattle atop her large bay. Her dark eyes flashed, and her mouth curled slightly at the edges in a fearless smirk. She’d lost her black Stetson, he noticed, and snowflakes clung to her dark, braided hair. Red filled in the pale skin between her freckles. If she was tired after their grueling day, she wasn’t showing it. Not that she ever would.

In fact, since Jesse’s death, she’d thrown herself into ranching as if possessed. As though she could somehow make up for the shattering loss.

At James’s signal, Jewel nodded then fell back slightly. The maneuver allowed him to begin arcing the cattle her way into an open, snowy space, turning the stampede in on itself so they’d mill instead of run.

More important, it’d stop them from mingling with the Brahman herd owned by their archenemies and neighbors, the Lovelands. Their bitter family feud went back over a hundred years, beginning with a tale of deception, theft and murder, the rivalry still fresh as it played out in water access disputes and missing cattle.

James pursed his lips and whistled long and high, urging on the Border collies. They lunged at the longhorns’ ankles, dodging horns, driving the livestock to the right. With the bluff drawing alarmingly close, they needed to make the turn in the next thirty seconds or it’d be too late. Devastating tragedy. Not on his watch.

He squeezed Trigger’s heaving sides and rode harder still, James’s body steaming and slick beneath his plaid shirt and flannel-lined jean jacket. He ignored the deep ache in his shoulders and the way his teeth ground with each jarring stride. All around him rose the thick, musky scent of animals. Their eyes rolled and they bleated loudly, showing no signs of slowing.

Out of the worsening blizzard, his youngest sibling Justin emerged, a lone, dark figure between the herd and the bluff’s edge.

“Get out of there!” James bellowed.

He ripped off his bandanna and waved at his reckless brother. Immediately, the wild swirl of icy wind and blowing snow snatched away his breath. Anger and concern roared in his bloodstream. Cool, unaffected Justin, however, didn’t budge. He sat slim and ramrod straight in the saddle and stared down the charging herd as if he dared them to mow him over. The fool. Their departed father taught them better when they’d begun working the family’s ten-thousand-acre ranch as kids.

Some said Justin had a death wish. Given his reckless antics since losing his twin, Jesse, James agreed. But he wouldn’t let anything happen to his little brother, to any of them, ever again. However, when he got Justin to safety, he’d kill him.

James kicked Trigger with his heels, dragging forth the blowing horse’s last bit of steam. At his command, Trigger neighed, then veered directly at the lead cow, obeying without hesitation. Make-or-break time. James flashed his red bandanna at the cattle, flaunting the “fish” to make them more afraid of him than whatever had spooked them.

The livestock balked, then broke to the right. The rest of the herd dashed pell-mell after their leaders, turning back. Confused and confronted by themselves, they slowed, raising the snow, tearing the naked brush, letting out hoarse bawls as they began to mill and spread farther down the white valley, no longer in danger. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Justin chasing off any stragglers who approached the bluff. James released a long breath.

Jared flashed by, effortlessly driving the group he’d wrangled back into the now-organized mob. Jewel pulled her mount around in a neat circle, scooped up her trampled hat, then trotted up beside James. After rounding up the last of the strays, the Cades corralled the bawling, red-and-white-spotted herd and guided them back on the long trail home.

Silence reigned as the herd’s lowing dropped down to its usual buzz. The Cades settled into their saddles and thoughts. Thick snow poured from the sky and clung to their hat brims, their noses and shoulders. They followed a meandering, beaten trail down the mountain slope.

The pungent scent of spruce filled the air and seeped into James’s nose, making his shoulders drop, his rigid spine bend and flex. He felt pummeled, his muscles tender and worn out the way he liked best. This was the right kind of tired, the type that followed a long, honest day’s work. It sometimes let him escape his worries about the ranch, his siblings and his grieving mother by falling into oblivious sleep.

The world dimmed further as the sun, buried underneath heavy-bellied clouds, slipped behind Mount Sopris’s craggy top. The valley floor billowed away, raw and untamed, growing gray in the dawning dusk. Walls of ice on stone, gleaming with the last of the light, enclosed the valley, stretching away toward the long, low Elk Mountain range.

The place was wild, beautiful and open with something nameless that made the highland spaces different from any other country to James. That made it home. The isolation, the vast, untouched stretches of valley and bluffs, soothed his restless spirit, lowered his guard and gave him peace.

He felt a bone-deep kinship with the land. It configured his DNA. His ancestors had labored, sacrificed and fought to protect it, to claim it as their own. It was his responsibility to maintain that legacy and pass it on to the next generation. No threats would cross its border again, not so long as he drew breath, he vowed, his own personal cowboy’s prayer.

The horses nickered as they clomped past barren aspen clumps, tails swishing. “That was fun,” Jewel drawled. She swayed in perfect rhythm with her enormous steed. It was the ranch’s largest mount, which, of course, made it the only one the petite roughrider would mount.

“Then you don’t get out much,” Jared said, then flinched to avoid Jewel’s trademark shoulder jab.

“Just wait till we get home. We’ll see how tough you are,” Jewel huffed. She rammed her misshapen hat on her head and pulled the brim low over her braids.

“I’m a lover, not a fighter,” Jared protested, riding with the easy grace born of years in the saddle. His perfect white teeth flashed in his lady-killer grin.

The family’s Romeo had left a swath of broken hearts across the valley. Jared’s ease at meeting women, at achieving anything in life, was downright irritating. Opportunities like college football scholarships and a starting NFL position seemed to fall into the small-town hero’s lap.

“That’s your excuse? Pathetic.” Jewel rolled her eyes and brushed snow from her horse’s forelock. “Don’t know why girls throw themselves at you.”

“Must be desperate,” Justin said through a yawn, looking ready to fall asleep despite today’s excitement. A thick belt of snow encircled his hat brim.

“Who is it this time?” teased Jewel, wagging a finger. “Mandy? Mindy? Mona?”

“It’s Melanie,” Jared clarified. He rubbed the back of his neck, then gave a rueful laugh. “Nope. It’s Melody.”

“See.” Jewel snapped her fingers. “They’re all starting to blur together. Even for you.”

She burst out laughing and Justin joined her. “Seriously, dude. Pick a girl. Any girl.”

“They pick me, bro.”

A wild howl pealed down the slope and Trigger’s ears shot up. It was loud and harsh, then softened to a mourn, lonely and haunting. The hair on the back of James’s neck rose. Wolf.

A pack of coyotes barked in answer, a sharp, staccato yelping chorus, the piercing notes biting on the chilly early-evening air. Trigger sidestepped, nickering, and James swiftly brought him under control on the slippery terrain.

“You’re so full of yourself,” scoffed Jewel once they’d settled their jittery horses. Their hooves clattered against the frigid slope.

“And you’re so full of—”

“Knock it off.” James’s fingers tightened around the leather straps in his left hand. “We’ve got more important things to worry about than Jared’s love life.”

Had his mother gotten out of bed this morning? Eaten? Dressed?

“At least I’ve got one, big bro.”

James opened his mouth but the denial dissolved, bitter on his tongue. Jared was right. Since Jesse’s murder, he’d worked nonstop to shore up the ranch and didn’t have time for anything, or anyone, else. He loved his family. That was enough.

So why did he sometimes wish for a confidante? A hand in his? A person to hold...someone to share a bag of peanuts with at a football game. The pelting snow slackened.

“Let’s pick up the pace or Ma’s meat loaf will be cold,” he said, needing to deflect, hoping that by saying those words they might be true and she’d had a good day.

“If Ma’s cooking... Didn’t see her up this morning.” A line appeared, bisecting Justin’s brow.

“Yesterday wasn’t one of her good days.” Jewel patted her horse’s sweat-streaked neck. “She was going through Jesse’s phone again. She still thinks those pictures are his son.”

James shook his head. “If that was true, Jesse would have told us.” Jesse had messed up a lot, but James didn’t believe his brother capable of turning his back on his own child. Besides, Jesse loved kids, all living things, in fact... Jesse keeping his child a secret made no sense. There had to be another explanation for the photo.

“I don’t like Ma getting her hopes up,” Jewel fretted.

“Obsessing is more like it,” James worried out loud. “Like when Jesse was alive.”

A collective moan rose from his siblings. Their mother’s fixation on healing their brother had taken a horrible toll on her physical and emotional health.

James’s hands tightened on the reins. He’d convince her to put away the phone and stop torturing herself. With the holidays approaching, this false hope came at an already painful time.

Jared deftly guided his horse away from a depression in the snowy field. “Should we get Ma help?”

“No. She’s getting stronger,” James insisted. They didn’t need outsiders poking through their business. Once they got through Christmas, Ma would improve. He’d make sure of it. “She’s been mostly keeping up with routines.”

“And that’s all that counts, right?” Justin asked out of the side of his mouth. “That she follows your schedules?”

“They keep things running smoothly,” James protested. A night wind hummed softly through the gnarled, stunted cedars they passed.

Yes. He was a micromanager. No denying it. But if he’d been more vigilant, he would have spotted the threats to Jesse, like his connections to the Denver-based drug group who’d tracked him to Carbondale, then killed for unpaid debt.

And then there was his own, more direct role in the tragedy—a failure he’d never forget—or forgive. “I’m protecting us. Plus, the schedules help Ma.”

He closed his eyes against the sudden vision of Jesse, pale and still in his coffin. They’d all struggled to make it through that day and every day since, especially around the holidays when he’d passed away.

Giving his mother direction, a routine, gave her a purpose, something positive to focus on. Seeing her wander the house, or worse, staying in bed, with that empty look in her eye as if her heart had been scraped right out, broke him in two.

“Meat loaf,” Justin said solemnly. “Yeah. That right there is a real lifesaver.”

James nudged Trigger and trotted ahead, leaving his siblings behind in the gathering darkness. They meant well, and he wouldn’t trade them for anything. But they didn’t understand the need to keep a tight rein on the ranch, the family and especially Ma. He didn’t give two hoots if they ate meat loaf. They’d lost too many Cades already. With his mother lumbering through life like a zombie, he feared they’d lose her, too, if he wasn’t extra careful. Better to worry too much than not enough, he’d learned in the hardest way possible.

He would always be vigilant in preventing negative forces from infiltrating their clan as they had with Jesse.

His brothers and sister quieted and joined him a moment later, fanning out on either side, their solid support palpable. Despite the tweaking, quarreling and outright brawling, especially Jewel and that fierce uppercut of hers, they always had each other’s backs.

The terrain grew gentler, rolling. Below, on the level floor of the valley, lay the rambling old ranch house with cabins nestling around and the corrals leading out to the soft, snow-dusted hay fields, misty and gray in twilight. A single light gleamed like a beacon.

Home.

His spirits lifted.

An hour later, showered and ravenous, he tromped up the front porch of his family’s main house. Built with rough-hewn cedar, it seemed to spring from the earth, a part of the landscape, its lines as majestic as its surrounding mountains.

Log pillars held up a steep, snow-covered portico and peaked gables broke up the roofline. Numerous windows gleamed in the dark. They must have cost a fortune when they’d been installed. 1882. The year his gold-mining, prospecting ancestor stumbled on a lucky strike that’d made his fortune and allowed him to purchase the property.

He pushed through the screen door and stopped short at the scene before him. No set table. No meat loaf. Where was his mother? She must have had another tough day. His chest squeezed.

Then his eyes alighted on his ma holding hands with a dark-haired young woman.

“James!” Ma exclaimed and stood, as did the stranger. She was slim and tall, her midnight hair a thick tangle around a beautiful face the color of a candle’s glow, her obsidian eyes wide. They shifted out from under his direct gaze, her nervous reaction instantly jangling his suspicious nature. A child stopped waving a wooden spoon like it was a sword and stared with large, unblinking eyes, as though sizing up a threat.

“Is it that time already?” His mother’s hand fluttered to her cross necklace and she twisted it. “We must have gotten sidetracked. Sofia, this is my second eldest, James. James, this is Sofia Gallardo, mother of Jesse’s child, Javi, my first grandson and your nephew. Isn’t it a miracle?”

And just like that, the safe haven he’d labored to create turned itself inside out.

CHAPTER THREE

PULL BACK. STEADY. Steady. Don’t come off the vein.

Blood rushed in the half-full syringe, curling red. Sofia held her arm still and slowly pushed the plunger. She wanted to make this last. Anticipation sizzled over her nerves.

Pull it out again. The blood swirled back inside.

Now. Squeeze.

This was what she wanted. Yes. Here it was. The rush. It flooded up her arm and tingled.

Then it hit. It was like a mini explosion of unadulterated pleasure.

Everything turned blissful and beautiful. And she loved everything. It was a pure joy to be alive, to have a body; a heavenly awareness.

The hand of God, cradling her to sleep.

Sleep.

No.

Don’t go to sleep.

Don’t. Go. To. Sleep.

Sofia lurched upright in bed, and her gasp cracked through the small, dark room. Her heart thrummed, deafening in her ears, almost painful. Was she having a heart attack?

Had she taken a bad hit?

She groped for the syringe and came up empty. Where? Where? Where?

“Mama?”

She shoved her hair from her hot face and peered at the small shape hovering by her bed.

“Javi?”

His eyes looked as big as saucers. “Are you okay?”

“Yes.” She hoisted him up and pulled him close. “I just had a bad dream.”

Terrifyingly real.

Remembering the good was worse than the bad.

“A monster?”

“A big one,” she said, recalling the horrible creature she’d once been—thinking of nothing, no one, but her next fix.

She rested her cheek on Javi’s head and strove to calm her breathing. Kids needed their parents to protect them, but in her case, it felt the other way around. She’d gotten sober for Javi, and because of him she stayed on the straight and narrow.

“I can sleep with you till you feel better,” he whispered around what sounded like his thumb. A flash of worry popped inside. The old habit reappeared whenever he felt stressed.

“I’d like that, sweetie. Thanks.”

Ten minutes later, Sofia stared up into dark and listened to Javi’s soft, regular breathing.

Another addiction dream.

She squished her pricking eyes shut. Foolish her for hoping the nightmares would end after she’d left her drug-ridden neighborhood. She’d finally escaped, yet her addiction followed, a zombielike thing lurching toward her up US 285 from Albuquerque to drag her and Javi down.

No.

She had to stay one step ahead and get farther away than Colorado. Another coast. Maybe even a different country.

You cannot fall.

Though you could, whispered another voice. You know how easy it would be. An innocent mistake, even. Never meaning harm, exactly...

Prescription pills were more addictive than heroin.

She clamped her hands over her ears, a useless move since the taunting rose from within, the horrible refrain of her lonely life. She blew out a breath, disentangled Javi’s limbs from hers and slid out of bed. She needed air.

After slipping on a thick robe and slippers, Sofia eased out of the room. She padded down the staircase, pushed open the screen door and stepped onto the porch.

The black night folded around Cade Ranch like velvet, as cold and soft as a bat’s wing. The storm had cleared, and overhead, glinting stars clustered. She inhaled the aroma of the rich, slumbering earth. It seemed to hold the mystery of nature and life, a smell that, in a strange way, soothed her some, gave her a tiny bit of hope. As if she, like the rest of the world, could afford to settle down, too, for a bit.

She leaned on the banister and peered into the night. Her heart lifted at the majestic vista. The Rocky Mountains’ shadowed outlines scaled the distant horizon. They surrounded the ranch’s valley in a semicircle, stone sentinels guarding against the outside world, shielding and protecting this isolated countryside.

But could they protect her—and Javi—from herself?

It was a constant gnawing fear.

One she bore alone.

But how strong could one person be?

Why didn’t you ever tell them about us? she silently asked Jesse, her eyes on the sky, her leaden heart at her feet. Why didn’t you come back for us? Were you ashamed? Incapable? Afraid?

She wished she and Javi could settle here, but Jesse’s tragedy was also her tragedy. His addiction story hers. Shared history. She could never be someone else, someone worthy of being Javi’s mother, around a family who’d already lost a drug-abusing son, people who knew who she really was, who she might turn into if she wasn’t careful.

At a light cough, she jumped. A dark figure detached itself from the shadows, and she stumbled back, panic scrambling over her skin. A newel post stopped her flight. When she spun around, a firm hand landed on her upper arm and checked her momentum.

“It’s me. James.”

His rich baritone cut through her flustered fog. James. One of Jesse’s older brothers. The strict, reserved one. He hadn’t said much earlier as she and Joy had slapped sandwiches together to feed the rest of the boisterous Cade clan. In fact, he hadn’t spoken at all. As he ate, he’d simply watched while his siblings peppered her with questions. They’d seemed to accept her and Javi immediately. James, however, had held back, his shuttered expression hard to read.

It’d made her nervous.

He made her nervous.

Her past experience with controlling men like her father had taught her to be wary of them as triggers for her addiction.

She shivered and crossed her arms. You’re free now, she reminded herself, firmly. Javi got you sober. No more worrying.

Right?

Her recent nightmare, however, told another tale.

And now she stood alone with James in the dead of night. Anxious awareness zipped along her nerve endings.

“What—what are you doing out here?” she gasped, her words full of air and apprehension.

Moon rays illuminated the tall, rangy man. He had wide shoulders, a slightly crooked nose and incredibly long eyelashes that would have made a handsome man look effeminate. Instead, they made this rugged cowboy a tiny bit beautiful. His full lips twisted. “I live here.”

She checked her eye roll. “Right. Well. Night.” She turned to leave but his voice stopped her.

“Tell me about Jesse.”

“What do you mean?”

“The stuff you left out earlier because Javi was listening. Why didn’t Jesse tell us about you?” He leaned against the railing, folded his arms on his chest and peered down at her from his great height. She could make out the pronounced curve of his biceps beneath his white thermal shirtsleeves. He looked strong. A man used to getting what he wanted... And now he wanted her to talk about a time she’d rather forget.

Not happening.

Thinking, talking, reliving her darkest hours was like walking backward on broken glass, each word drawing blood.

She licked dry lips. “I don’t know why he kept us a secret.”

You threw him out... Told him never to contact you again until he was sure he was completely sober...heartless woman...

“Jesse loved children.”

Not Javi...not more than drugs, anyway, and the pain of that thought pierced her side. “Jesse’s not here to explain himself. There’s nothing more I can tell you.”

“Or nothing more that you want to tell me.”

“Excuse me?” she asked, stung by his answer. It struck too close to the truth.

“I’ve been called a lot of names in my life.” He squinted at her. “Fool isn’t one of them.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“That you’re hiding something.” He leaned a hand on the newel post behind her, his proximity hemming her in. She ducked from beneath his arm and spoke over her shoulder, avoiding him, just as she dodged all confrontations. Physically remove yourself from bad situations, her rehab counselor had told her, before you explore other ways to escape.

She’d hung on to those words all these years. They were some of the rare bits of sobriety advice she’d received, given she’d never attended any NA meetings. Without childcare, she’d struggled to go. Besides, she’d told herself she didn’t need extra help when she only had to look at her child to know why she had to stay sober. “I’d better go in.”

“Please stay.”

“No, really, I—”

“Humor me. You are under my roof...”

She bristled at his tone, recalling it from her youth, the oppressive sound of her father. She’d checked out of her prison-like, motherless childhood the only way she thought she could, starting with prescription pills a school friend promised would take everything away, including a painful sports injury. It’d seemed innocent at first. Fun. Rebellious without causing any real trouble. Who didn’t have pills in their bathroom cabinets? And the painkillers had taken away everything...including herself. When her need to stay numb had gotten too expensive, she’d turned to heroin, a cheaper, deadlier fix.

“This is Joy’s home,” she protested to James, projecting calmness despite the pressure building inside.

“I run the place, and I’m part owner with my brothers and sister.”

“Joy invited me. I’m her guest.”

“And how did that happen?” He lifted one of his thick, slanted eyebrows.

“I lost my wallet. Otherwise we’d be in Oregon.”

“You didn’t plan on meeting the rest of us? Even for your son’s sake?” Suspicion edged his voice.

“No. It’s just that I...we didn’t have time.”

“Right. The tickets to Portland.” The way he drew out the city’s name made it sound like a fictitious place, a destination she’d fabricated. “Who do you know there?”

“That’s none of your business,” she murmured through rigid lips. The wind picked up and fluttered strands of hair in her face. She shoved them behind her ears.

“It is, if it involves a relation of mine.”

“Javi’s your nephew,” she gasped. So now he didn’t believe Javi was Jesse’s son? Fury corroded her tongue. She hated feeling backed into a corner. Trapped like she had been during her childhood.

“I only have your word for it.” His sober voice descended on her, as heavy as a gavel.

“And his birth certificate.”

“And where’s that?”

“My wallet.”

“The one that’s missing...” He cocked his head, studying her.

“I’m leaving.”

He held out a hand. “You misunderstand me.” Something about the plea in his voice halted her feet. She’d heard it before, in her own head, that same desire for someone to understand her. “I don’t know you, where you come from or who your people are. Since Jesse’s murder, I don’t trust strangers.”

Her eyes met his, and she gnawed on her lower lip, thinking fast. She wasn’t about to talk about who her people were. Bringing up her father was another trigger, and she wouldn’t compound this tense moment by invoking his name. “I’m just passing through,” she said, knowing it sounded weak. But it was the best she could do.

He nodded slowly, his dark eyes shiny and a touch sad. The moon sank beneath a scuttle of clouds and the world seemed to collapse in on itself. A black hole.

“I’d like your promise to be on the Portland bus tomorrow. If you delay, Ma will get attached. She looks strong, but she’s fragile, especially this time of year.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll be gone tomorrow. I’m definitely not staying for the holidays.”

Though how she wished, just once, that she could give Javi a real Christmas.

“Her heart’s been broken too many times by...”

“Jesse,” she murmured.

When James averted his face, the firm cut of his jaw drew her eye. A day’s worth of dark stubble shaded it, giving him a dangerous edge, yet she also sensed a profound loneliness in him that echoed her own. There was nothing worse than feeling alone in crowds of people. He’d held himself back during the boisterous family dinner, his vigilant eyes rarely straying from his mother. He wanted to protect her, and Sofia admired his determination, especially since she was equally resolute in shielding her son.

Wind chimes jangled from a corner of the porch, their silvery notes shivering on the breeze. “Jesse caused Ma a lot of pain. Still does.”

“You love your mother a lot.”

“She’s the greatest person I know.”

Sofia ached at his simple, heartfelt declaration. All her life she’d wished for a mother to love and knew she’d have been just as protective and loyal as James. “Jesse’s addiction must have been hard on her.”

He turned and his dark eyes glimmered in the gloom. “Were you an addict, too?”

“Jesse and I got clean together.”

And when he relapsed, you kicked him out. You never gave him the support you should have.

“How long have you been sober?”

“Six years.” Did he think her a closet junkie bent on taking advantage of his family?

Her throat tightened at his possible bad opinion, though why it mattered, she hadn’t a clue. Nearly everyone she’d ever met assumed the worst, so why would James be different?

Maybe the reason stemmed from her long-held wish for Javi to be a part of Cade Ranch, a world she never got to experience: one full of strong values and family, where he’d be safe and secure—even if she slipped again. Every night, she told him Rocky Mountain cowboys’ bedtime stories, describing legendary men to make him proud of his dad.

And now James’s suspicious manner made her want to flee. He reminded her of who she was, not who she wanted to become.

“No relapses?” he pressed.

“Nope.” She forced a pained smile and spoke through her clenched teeth. “See. Not rotting. I’m not a meth head.”

“What about your arms?”

She extended one, and he slid her sleeve up over her elbow to peer at her track lines, scars that disfigured her, showed the world the ugliness that lurked within.

A shivery tremble began in her lower stomach as his calloused fingers grazed her marks. His gaze lifted and locked with hers. Instead of the disgust she expected, his face fell. A crazy urge to wrap her arms around him and hold him up seized her.

“Seen enough?” Her voice broke.

When he didn’t answer, she shoved up the other sleeve and extended the scarred underside of her elbow.

“Enough.” He lifted his hands, then dropped them, backing away, looking slightly stunned.

“They’re not fresh,” she insisted, shaking inside.

His chest rose and fell with the force of his sigh. “But you were with Jesse when he relapsed.”

“Yes,” she answered fast, relieved to get past this awkward moment of physical awareness.

“Were you friends with his dealer?”

A bitter laugh escaped her as she pictured her neighborhood’s thugs. “Hardly.”

“But you knew them.” He looked her dead in the eye, and she nodded, unable to hold in the truth at the anguish she glimpsed in their depths.

“Did you know Jesse’s murderers?”

“Of course not. I was raising a child.” And trying, trying, trying to move on with her life. Guilt flashed inside over how she’d had to push Jesse away to do that. If she’d stuck by him, been stronger for him, would he be alive today?

James studied her and the stern planes of his face softened. “Heroin ruined Jesse’s life.” His voice seemed to vibrate across the short space between them, bending the frigid night air, making her insides jump. “I won’t have anyone associated with drugs here at the ranch.”

The old, familiar shame of being an addict, a felon, a homeless teenager and single mother dredged through her. It raked over her hopes to become something more.

“My addiction cost me my dreams. Single-parenting added another challenge,” she divulged. “But I’m going to make something of myself and have a fresh start.” One she delayed every minute spent in Carbondale. She needed to begin again where no one knew the bad in her.

“I hope you do.”

“I’ll leave once I find my wallet. A couple of the places I wanted to check yesterday evening were closed. I’ll visit them first thing tomorrow.”

“And I’ll accompany you after I’ve finished my chores.”

“What? Why?!”

“To help you get that fresh start.” A ghost of a smile appeared on his face, a faint dimple denting his left cheek like an innocent child’s memory. “Good night, Sofia,” he said, his voice a deep rumble between them. Then he turned, trotted down the stairs and strode toward one of the cabins.

She watched his large frame stalk across the snowy field, unsure whether to call the Cades friends or foe.

Certainly not family, as much as she wished otherwise.

Joy wasn’t the only one in danger of getting her heart broken. Sofia could fall for this warmhearted clan—minus haunted, brooding James—as quickly and painfully as she had for Jesse. Hopefully, she’d find her wallet tomorrow and be on her way before any real damage was done.

CHAPTER FOUR

JAMES SLUGGED A hot draw of black coffee the next afternoon and set the thermos in his truck’s cup holder. A boot-stomping country-rock tune blared from his sound system and Sofia perched beside him, her arms hugging her knees to her chest.

Sofia sang softly, a low sound he found himself straining to hear. They were lyrics to a familiar song that she nearly had right...

“It’s ‘beat boys,’” he corrected, mouth curling, unable to stop himself. An annoyed breath of air escaped him. After spending too much time dwelling on the strange effect the feel of Sofia’s scars had on him, he’d vowed to interact as little as possible with her today.

“And feet off the seat, please.” He angled his head side to side, working the kinks that’d formed in his neck after another sleepless night. Layered brown, tan and beige mesas flashed by his window, rising above the white-banked Colorado river that followed alongside I-70. The hum of his tires, eating up the miles to Carbondale, were a bass note accompaniment to the thumping tune.

Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed the swing of Sofia’s thick black hair as she dropped her feet to the mat and twisted around to face him. “It’s the Beach Boys. You know? Like the group?”

“Might have heard of them,” he drawled, biting back a grin. “But the lyrics are ‘beat boys.’”

“Uh-uh. Listen again.” She restarted the song and then sang “Beach Boys” on the chorus. “See?”

“All I could hear was you. Singing the wrong words.” He couldn’t stop his upward twitching mouth any longer and gave in to a full-on smile. An unfamiliar feeling.

“Then who does the singer mean when he says that he wants to ‘get lost in the rock and roll’? Huh?” Her annoyed huff made something tight inside his chest loosen.

“He wants to get lost in the beat,” he said reasonably, inhaling the vanilla-musk scent that rose from her hair. The soft, shining tresses curled close. “Here. Listen again.” He started the song over. At the chorus, he sang the correct line.

A quick glance to his right revealed Sofia’s frown. Her dark eyebrows met over her nose, and that full pink mouth of hers, the one he hadn’t been able to stop staring at since they’d met last night, pursed. He shoved down the unwanted attraction and forced his gaze back on the road where it belonged. He had no business thinking Jesse’s girl was pretty.

Focus on your mission: retrieve Sofia’s wallet and put her and Javi on the next train to Portland. ASAP.

“Play it again.”

When the song finished, she punched off the player and flopped back in her seat, arms folded over her chest. She plunked her heels on the seat again and dropped her chin on top of her knees. “How come no one corrected me before?”

“Maybe they were afraid of you,” he teased, then sobered at her horrified expression. Had he struck a nerve? Why?

Without a word, she jerked around to face the window and rolled the glass lower. Crisp, crystal-fresh air flowed inside the cab. It carried a hint of smooth pine and diesel. Red cones appeared as they crested a small hill. A cordoned-off lane indicated upcoming roadwork and he slowed, dialing the radio tuner until he caught a Broncos away game against his favorite team, the Cowboys.

They rode in tense silence for a few minutes.

“Jesse used to do that,” he said. “Sing the wrong words.”

“Whenever he sang ‘Hush Little Baby’ to Javi, he’d change all the gifts around.” She spoke without turning her head. “He’d always ask, ‘Now, what’s a baby gonna do with a diamond ring?’”

That caught him with an unexpected warmth. “Sounds like Jesse. What’d he swap them for?”

“I think it was something like, ‘Daddy’s gonna buy you a quarter horse. And if that quarter horse won’t canter, Daddy’s gonna buy you an alligator.’”

A short laugh escaped him. “Yep. That’s Jesse all right.”

“He was good with Javi.”

James squinted his eyes and kept his expression stone. “Jesse always loved babies. So, he never gave any reason for leaving you two?”

She bit down on the corner of her thumb for a long moment, then said, “I didn’t give him much choice when he relapsed. Didn’t want drugs around Javi—”

Her voice broke off, and he shot her a swift look. Her hurt seemed genuine... Had his brother abandoned his child? It went against everything James knew about Jesse. Then again, his brother had kept a lot of secrets, though never one as big as this.

“Why are they playing Jackson?” Sofia exclaimed, dragging him from his thoughts.

Surprised she knew the name of the Cowboys’ starting wide receiver, he met her large, intelligent eyes briefly, then forced his gaze forward again. “Not a fan?”

“After last week’s backward punt return fumble?” she exclaimed. “We need to pull the plug on him.” She jerked her bent thumb out the open window. With her hair blowing wildly around her heart-shaped face, her upward-tilting nose flaring over her rosebud mouth, she knocked the breath right out of him.

“You saw that game?”

Her shoulders, encased in a puffy white ski jacket his sister used to wear, lifted and fell. “The diner I worked in had a radio and the owner was a Cowboys fan. You sound surprised.”

Eyes on the road, he chanted in his head. “I guess I’m just used to my family. They’re die-hard Broncos fans.”

A scoffing noise erupted from the passenger side. “Guess they have to be, living up here and all.”

He lifted his hat, then settled it on again, curving the brim in a C. “Yeah, it’s practically a requirement.”

Her quick bark of laughter warmed his blood. “So how’d you turn traitor?”

“Michael Irvin.”

“The Playmaker.” She whistled. “Three Super Bowl titles.”

“And three All-Pro selections. The man was a legend.”

“A Hall of Famer.” She lifted her chin slightly. “Caught seven hundred and fifty passes.”

“Sixty-five touchdowns.”

“He was Jesse’s favorite, too.” An appalled silence descended. “I’m sorry.” Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed her reach out, as if to touch his arm, and stop. His body tensed. The sudden wish for that touch staggered him.

He cleared his throat. “Right. Just me and Jesse. Otherwise it’s all about the Broncos. My brother Jared, you probably know, was their starting wide receiver until he tore his ACL six months ago.”

“Which one is Jared again?”

James puzzled over how best to distinguish among his dark-haired siblings and went for the obvious. “The handsome one.”

She spread her hands. “That doesn’t help. You’re all good-looking. Genetic mutants, really.”

“Ha,” he scoffed. At her continued silence, he glanced at her, taken aback by her serious face. “Everyone says he looks like Orlando Bloom.”

She flicked a graceful hand. “Pretty boy, then. I prefer a Jon Snow, personally.”

He felt, rather than saw, her eyes land on him and it did something funny to his gut.

A roar sounded through the speakers, and he gripped the wheel. Sofia dropped her feet to the mat and leaned forward. “Come on, come on. Get to the end zone,” she chanted. Then they both hollered.

“Touchdown!”

“Wooo-hooo!”

“This puts them in playoff contention.”

Despite speaking over each other, he heard every one of her words perfectly, as if they were the keys in some old-fashioned typewriter, pressing into his brain, leaving an indelible mark.

“There’s the bank!” she exclaimed once he’d exited the interstate and onto Main Street. They cruised down the quaint downtown thoroughfare filled with a continuous line of two- and three-story brick and stone facades. Ma claimed many were the original structures built back when Carbondale became a depot town, servicing ranchers and prospectors in 1887.

It certainly had a rustic, Western atmosphere. Boot-and-cowboy-hat-clad residents thronged the wide sidewalks. Overhead, Christmas wreaths bursting with greenery, pinecones and bright red ribbons dangled from black streetlights.

As they parked and exited the truck, he inhaled the tangy scent of barbecue wafting from Shorty’s, a family restaurant run by an old high school friend. A marquee broadcast a country-western concert taking place later that night, Heath Loveland listed as one of the performers, and the Festival of Lights, Carbondale’s holiday season kickoff event set for next week. He hadn’t been to it since Jesse’s passing.

Sofia’s animated face seemed closed now that they’d hit the street. She ducked her head, and her eyes darted left to right, her hands shoved deep into coat pockets. What had happened to his lyric-substituting football enthusiast? Back was the cagey woman who’d raised his suspicions last night. It reminded him not to let down his guard, no matter how easily she disarmed him.

A couple of hours later, after checking various establishments for Sofia’s wallet, James fed another coin into the parking meter, then joined her at Timeless Gifts’ front window.

“Javi would love this.” The wistful note in her voice caught at him, as did the still way that she stood, as if breathing wasn’t a given.

A miniature train rattled by. It barreled through a replica Christmas village.

“We had a set like this when we were kids. We were obsessed with it, especially Jesse. Every birthday and holiday, we’d beg for new tracks, buildings, landscape, accessories until it’d taken up most of the living room. We even changed it up with the seasons, and Christmas used to be our favorite time to transform it into a wonderland.”

Where was it now?

Probably moldering in the attic with the rest of the decorations since Jesse’s passing. He should toss the items. Just thinking about them was like worrying a cavity, his thoughts running over them this time of year automatically, unconsciously, checking to see if the memories still hurt.

They did.

“It sounds amazing.” She dabbed at her red nose with a tissue. “I never had toys like that.”

“How come?” He tucked in the loose end of her scarf, his fingers lingering on her throat’s silken flesh.

Her expression grew guarded. “It’s getting colder,” she said, her silent I-don’t-want-to-talk-about-it equally clear.

He squashed down his rising curiosity. “Any other place you might have visited yesterday?”

“No. That’s it.” She shoved her hair off her face and her forehead scrunched as if she had a headache. “I thought we’d find it at the diner. It’s the last place I remember using it.”

“No one turned it in yesterday or today.”

When the driver of a passing pickup honked, he waved, then dropped his hand quick. It was Boyd Loveland and his adopted son, Daryl. They passed by in a beat-up Chevy with the number 812 painted on its doors. Must be entering it in tonight’s smashup derby, he mused. The last of the season. If so, Justin would be gunning for them.

“What am I going to do?” Sofia asked quietly, eyes closed, only speaking to herself.

“Let me pay for the tickets.” It was the perfect solution, one that’d save his mother from becoming more attached the longer Javi and Sofia stayed.

“No.”

“What?” He gaped at her.

“I don’t take handouts.”

“Then pay me back once you’re settled and begin your new job.”

“I—I can’t. You see, I need my wallet.”

Her intensity took him aback. As did her pinched expression. She looked afraid. But of what? Did she have pills in there? Drugs? She’d reassured him of her recovery last night, but this desperation brought back bad memories of Jesse and the frantic lengths he’d go to for his next fix.

“You can get new IDs. I’ll give you money beyond the fares. Enough to help you have your fresh start. Nothing is irreplaceable.”

Except drugs. He would not allow another abuser near his mother.

“Some things are. Please take me back to the ranch.”

“Then let’s at least report it to the police,” he insisted. What was she hiding? “You can send them your Portland information once you’re settled. They’ll let you know if it turns up.”

Her tan skin turned a sickly yellow, and she backed up a step. “No. No cops.” She turned in a small circle, her eyes darting. “Please take me back to the ranch.” She ran a shaking hand through her locks. “I need to think.”

He nodded, resigned, then led the way to the truck, his doubts rising. Based on her erratic behavior, his gut told him she threatened his ranch’s peace. He held open the door and breathed in Sofia’s light vanilla scent as she scooted up onto the seat.

She was a damsel in distress, yet he couldn’t be her hero. He’d never get close to a wild card like Sofia. So why was he attracted to a woman he couldn’t trust? One with a child who might—or might not—be his nephew? Clearly, Jesse had cared about the child enough to sing him lullabies. That fact, however, didn’t make Javi his son.

Or a Cade.

To believe in Sofia, James needed solid proof. Without it, he’d put his mother at risk. His thoughts returned to Sofia and how she’d charmed him earlier.

Was his mother’s heart all he needed to worry about?

CHAPTER FIVE

“DOGGONE IT!”

At a clattering bang, Sofia stopped tossing a salad and whirled from her place at the ranch’s granite kitchen island. Javi peered up from a coloring book spread across an oval table before a bay window. Over his shoulder loomed Mount Sopris. The setting sun gilded its jagged, snow-covered peak gold.

Joy gaped at an upended kettle and cradled her Ace-wrapped wrist. Steaming brown stew spilled onto the red Native American–style rug covering the pine floor. The mouthwatering smell of bay leaves, cooked carrots and braised beef, already filling the vaulted kitchen, intensified.

“Let me help.” Sofia grabbed the pot and dropped it into one of the countertops’ built-in stainless-steel sinks. She flipped on the garbage disposal and dumped the ruined dinner down the grinding mechanism. James had mentioned looking forward to beef stew on the drive home earlier. Would he be disappointed? And why did she care?!

Clearly, he was suspicious of her. After she’d refused to visit the police, a trip that would have triggered bad memories and risked revealing her old felony, he’d barely spoken to her.

“I want to help!” Javi scampered over, his face glowing, his compact body practically vibrating with excitement.

Resistance was futile. The kid lived to help.

She ruffled his hair and handed him a couple of paper towels. “Get down with your bad self.”

“I’m using my superpowers.” Javi sank to the floor, the tip of his pink tongue clamped between his teeth as he concentrated. His long sweeps smeared the stew farther into the small spaces between the wood planks.

“Supper’s ruined.” Joy sighed when she returned from the laundry room, where she’d dropped off the rug. “I wanted to make tonight special for you.” She leaned against one of the natural wood cabinets that matched the floor and the exposed-beam, slanted ceiling. Her apron tie knot unraveled in her hands.

Javi sat back on his heels and waved a dripping towel. “I don’t like beef stew anyway. Celery is bleh.”

“Hush,” Sofia hissed, mortified. They were guests here, at least for one more night, while she figured out her options.

Her wallet couldn’t have just disappeared. Someone had to have it. Worse, Javi and Joy seemed to be joined at the hip already, spending every minute forming a bond that was becoming harder and harder to imagine severing when they left.

Was a lasting relationship with the Cades possible? At least from a distance? Joy seemed to be comforted by Javi, and Javi bloomed under his grandmother’s doting.

Or would staying in touch keep her chained to her past?

“It is kind of bleh,” Joy said, her tone conspiratorial. A sparkle brightened her eyes. “Don’t tell anyone I said that.”

Javi moved close and dropped his voice. “It’s our secret?”

“Exactly.”

“I don’t like secrets.”

Sofia cringed inside.

Please, oh, please, don’t ever learn about mine.

“Honesty’s a good policy to have, young man. And you can put those paper towels outside in the trash.”

“What else can I throw out?” Javi picked up a chipped ceramic saltshaker. “This is old.”

“It is. It came all the way from Chicago when your great-great-great-great-grandfather ordered it from the Sears and Roebuck catalog over a hundred years ago.”

“What’s a catalog?”

“A book with pictures of different things you can buy.”

“What kinds of things?”

“Oh, anything back then. You name it. Rifles, chickens, fur coats, even a house. There’s one in town I can show you someday if you’re still here. They decorate it like it’s a Las Vegas casino. Blinking lights everywhere, a singing snowman and Santa on the roof.”

When her hopeful eyes met Sofia’s, Sofia hurried to the broom closet. She had plenty of reasons to stick around, the most disturbing of which was her sudden interest in James Cade. When he’d smiled at her bungled lyrics, her breath had caught for a second, long enough for interest in the man to take hold.

“Santa doesn’t like me.” Javi raced out the back door. A thunderclap of joyous howls rose from the Border collies.

“He thinks Santa doesn’t like him?”

“I’ve tried telling him that Santa loves all kids the same, even if they don’t get a visit, but...” Her words stumbled to a halt. It pained her to think of all the holidays they’d had to do without, the times she’d had to explain to Javi why Santa hadn’t come that year. Or the next.

“Well, now. That’s a sad enough thing.”

“We have each other. Plus, Javi’s never known anything different.”

“Christmas used to be Jesse’s favorite holiday.”

They smiled faintly at each other. “I remember.”

“Guess we haven’t done much celebrating here, either, not since...” Sadness weighed down Joy’s friendly face, making her seem older and less present somehow. It was like looking at a hologram. Sofia’s heart went out to her.

“Anyway,” Joy said, straightening, brisk. “Here I am thinking of myself, when you’ve only just learned about Jesse. I wish you hadn’t had to find out this way.”

“Yes.”

“Where did you and Jesse meet?”

Sofia glanced at the shut door and lowered her voice. Her heart pounded. How she hated dredging up this old stuff, but she couldn’t deny another mother details about her son. “At the Alano House.”

“Six years ago.”

“Yes.”

Joy’s chest rose and fell with the force of her sigh. “Jesse couldn’t stay sober. And Lord, but I couldn’t help him, either. He lived to assist others but couldn’t take care of himself.”

“He was good with Javi.”

Joy’s face brightened. “He always loved kids. We used to joke that moms had to watch out, or Jesse would steal their children. He’d carry off any old baby he could get his hands on without even checking if it was okay with the parent, when he was sober, of course. When he wasn’t...”

Sofia winced, remembering a strung-out Jesse pacing her apartment, hands over his ears as Javi had screamed and shrieked. “Yes.”

“How did you two break up? It’s hard thinking Jesse left his own child and then didn’t even tell us about Javi all these years.”

Sofia struggled to keep the hurt off her face. She wouldn’t run down a son to his own mother. “I told him not to contact me unless he was sober. He was probably waiting to get clean.”

She ran a mop over the floor, careful not to dampen Joy’s rose-pink heels. Given she wore a beaded necklace in the same color, along with a headband in an identical shade, Joy had a color story going on that Sofia didn’t want to mess with. Especially now that the kind woman had lost hours’ worth of work literally down the drain.

“And it never happened...not long enough for him to be sure of his sobriety, I’m guessing.” Joy dabbed at her eyes, not placing blame as Sofia had feared, her acceptance filling Sofia with unexpected warmth.

“How’s your wrist?” she asked to break the emotionally fraught moment.

“Getting worse.” Joy’s elbows jerked as she scrubbed the pot. White, frothy water bubbled over the metal sides. Sofia stowed the mop and grabbed a dish towel, its pattern a mirror image of the rugs scattered around the room. “The steroid shots aren’t working on my rheumatoid arthritis. Dr. Billings says I need to stop postponing surgery.”

Joy’s glasses slipped down her nose, and Sofia pushed them back up. They exchanged a quick smile. For a moment, Sofia imagined what it’d be like to have a mother like Joy. Or a mother at all, given hers had died in childbirth.

Her father must have blamed her for the loss, she’d often thought during those awful and numerous times when she was consumed with guilt. It explained his constant anger and dismissal. No matter what Sofia did, it was never good enough to make up for his beloved wife.

While she didn’t know what it felt like to be a loved daughter, she’d always be the best mother possible to Javi. Everything she’d missed, she gave. Tenfold.

Sofia grabbed the rinsed pot and began drying it. “What’s stopping you from getting the procedure?”

Joy shrugged. “I’d be out of commission for four to six weeks, depending on how fast I heal. Who would look after the family?”

Concern for kindhearted Joy rocketed through Sofia. “Your kids?”

“The ranch takes up all their time.”

“A relative could step in maybe?”

“My husband and I were both only children. Our parents have passed. But not to worry, dear. I’ll get by. I always have. Unless...”

“Unless...?”

“There’s any chance you might be willing to help out,” Joy said, offhandedly, though a light now filled her eyes, an undeniable wish, easy to read, that she wanted them to stay.

Sofia froze.

“If you could spare the time,” Joy babbled on in the awkward silence, her glasses slightly foggy around the edges. “I’d insist on compensating you. You could save up for Portland. Though I don’t mean to pressure.”

“Thank you, but...”

Here was Sofia’s chance to explain why she couldn’t say yes...to confess her secret fears. Yet she hesitated. She didn’t want Joy to see her as weak. A potentially bad parent.

How she wished Javi could be part of a real family for the first time in his life. And have guaranteed meals. A warm house. A bed of his own to sleep in over the holidays. Even if the Cades didn’t celebrate them any longer, it’d be a step up from anything she and Javi ever experienced.

All pros.

But the con? She’d have to live with the constant drumbeat of her past failings. Plus, what if the Portland job lead dried up? The position, a receptionist post held by a pregnant doctor’s wife, needed to be filled soon. Although they were flexible on the start date, according to Sofia’s friend Mary, and were willing to wait for Sofia, as they were happy to help a struggling single mother, she couldn’t impose on their patience forever. At the very least, she’d need to call them with an updated arrival date and hope they didn’t see her as unreliable and change their minds.

“But I don’t...”

The back door flung open and Javi skidded through it, accompanied by a frigid gust. “Guess what I found!”

“What, honey?”

“This!” Javi held up a stocking nearly as big as he was. Red glitter emblazoned the letter J across the top.

“Where did you find that?” Joy asked, her voice faint.

“It was by the trash. Can I keep it, Mama? It’s so big. Maybe Santa will see it, and he won’t forget me this year.”

“Oh. Honey.”

“Of course Santa won’t forget you.”

“He doesn’t come for kids who don’t have houses. Will we have one in Portland?”

Joy placed a hand over her heart.

Sofia thought of the struggle they’d have getting started in that new city, especially if she didn’t have their IDs or cash. Javi would go another holiday without.

She took a deep breath and turned over her options. Perhaps, in the short term, she could put aside her insecurities to help a deserving woman and give Javi a real Christmas with family.

“We can stay, but only for a month and maybe an extra week or two, at most,” she hedged, looking at Joy.

“Thank you!” She threw her arms around Sofia and tears sprang to her eyes. Javi whooped and raced around their legs.

She returned Joy’s hug, breathing in the light floral scent that rose from her neck, overwhelmed at the rush of emotion and the sense of rightness. If only this could be forever.

Shutting down her own pity party with a firm hand, she hustled to the refrigerator and evaluated possible ingredients for a replacement meal.

Tomatoes. Red onion. Cucumber...

Her time on Cade Ranch had a shelf life she needed to remember lest she grow too attached. And that included one very masculine member of the Cade clan as well, she firmly reminded herself.

Bell pepper, garlic, Worcestershire sauce...

Joy joined her at the fridge, swiping damp cheeks.

Sofia cleared her throat. “How does gazpacho sound?”

Joy cocked her head. “I’d like to try it. Not sure about James, though. He doesn’t like different.”

Of course he didn’t. “Well, he’ll learn to like it. Do you have jalapeño peppers?”

“They’re Justin’s favorite snack.”

An hour later, Sofia sat across from James at the eat-in kitchen’s table. She felt his dark eyes on her and her cheeks grew warm. He shouldn’t stare. Was he staring? She glanced up and caught his gaze. Great. Now she was staring.

She poured Javi another glass of milk, then passed the cold glass pitcher to Justin. His resemblance to Jesse unnerved her, despite the beard, mustache, cuts, bruises and scars transecting his face. It raised the specter of Jesse and her past. Why, oh, why, had she volunteered to stay at Cade Ranch?

“This is good.” Jewel dipped her spoon in the gazpacho. “I like it. Spicy.” The light cast from an old-time wagon wheel fixture gleamed on her French braids and glinted on the arrowhead pendant tied around her throat.

“It’s different.” James held his spoon aloft, eyeing the dripping red concoction.

“And we know how much you love different,” drawled Jared, the good-looking one, James had said. She eyed Jared’s sculpted features. His fine-boned nose and high cheekbones. She guessed he looked like Orlando Bloom, though it did nothing for her.

Now, James, on the other hand... Her eyes drifted to the rugged cowboy, met his gaze and dropped again. He was a dramatically attractive man. Lean strength and work-rumpled sexiness. He was getting under her skin in the worst way.

And what was so “different” about gazpacho?!

“Weren’t we supposed to have stew tonight?” he asked in his low baritone; his direct way of looking at her, his squint, jumbling her thoughts.

Jared coughed, “Schedule,” behind his fist, and Jewel chucked a bread roll at James. He snatched it easily out of the air, split it and began buttering, the nonchalant move comical. At her quick snort of laughter, he smiled at her, lines deepening on either side of his brown eyes with their ridiculous eyelashes. She felt an urge to run her fingers over his thick brush of hair.

“Joy dropped it. Blam!” Javi jumped in his chair. “Can I call you Grandma?”

“Javi. Eat please.” Sofia eyed her son’s untouched bowl, the dark circles beneath his eyes, the hollows of his cheeks.

“You can call me anything you like, honey.” Joy reached out and guided Javi back down into his seat.

James’s smile faded. “Was it your wrist again? You’ve put off your surgery too long and—”

“I’m scheduling it for next week,” Joy cut in, a tad breathless.

The Cade siblings slowly put down their spoons and glasses.

“It’s about time.” Jared reached across the table and patted his mother’s hand.

“That’s wonderful, Mama!” cried Jewel. “And I’ll help with the housework like I promised,” she added slowly, dragging the words from her throat. “Maybe I can finally learn how to cook. I could make those Christmas cookies. The ones with the frosting. You haven’t made those since...since...”

“Noooooooo,” groaned Jared and Justin.

Joy shook her head. “You stay in the saddle where you’re needed, honey. Sofia kindly offered to stay on and help us out.”

Amid the exclamations of gratitude, Sofia noticed one very silent and very disapproving Cade.

James. His opinion shouldn’t matter, but for some insane reason she wanted him to be just the tiniest bit happy that she would be sticking around.

* * *

SOFIA AND JAVI...staying another month...

James let out a held breath, rinsed off the last plate and stowed it in the dishwasher, his thoughts in an unpleasant tangle.

Were his suspicions that she’d lost a drug stash and wouldn’t leave Carbondale without it correct? She’d refused to report her missing wallet to the police. Why? And if she deceived him regarding that, what else might she be lying about? Jesse being Javi’s father? He looked nothing like Jesse, save for the left-sided dimple, which, admittedly, was a Cade trademark.

He wiped his hands on a dish towel, then carefully hung it on the oven door handle beside its matching counterpart. He straightened it, squared the edges and eyed the conformation until satisfied that all was back in its rightful place.

Confusion.

The enemy of an orderly, safe life.

Everything Sofia represented. His brother had taught him not to trust addicts. The temptation to use was too strong, and someone with years of sobriety could still relapse. Even if Sofia was clean, she might resume old habits, do anything for a fix, including breaking his mother’s heart.

Across the room, he spied Sofia coaxing an uninterested Javi to finish a bowl of grapes. All evening, she’d waged an unflagging war to get him to eat fruit and vegetables. Despite his misgivings about her, he admired her determination. Her devotion, too. Yet her opaqueness discomfited him.

Making matters worse, she’d pledged to help on the ranch as his mother recuperated from the surgery. He couldn’t refuse the offer, especially since his ma had begun smiling again and seemed, for the first time in a long time, to be a tiny bit happy.

Yet the unsettled feeling of being outmaneuvered churned in his gut. This time of year turned his mother inside out. They got through the holiday season by ignoring Christmas while the rest of the world erupted in celebration of hearth, home and family, something they’d never fully get back.

“How about you eat a grape for each one that I catch in my mouth, little man?” he heard Jared say as he joined the group in their two-story living room.

A floor-to-ceiling stone hearth dominated one end and he pictured it bedecked in Christmas stockings and lit boughs the way it had once been. They used to hang red and green ornaments from the massive set of mounted elk antlers above it. A warm, crackling fire spewed hickory-scented puffs of heat. How long since they’d burned a yule log? He dropped into a high-backed blue armchair and eyed his family. Too long.

“Okay, deal!” Javi laughed. He leaped up on one of the tan couches grouped around a crosscut tree-trunk coffee table. When Sofia didn’t correct him, James shook his head at the child. Javi’s knees buckled, and he perched on his heels instead.

“You don’t know what you’re in for,” Joy warned, seating herself on Javi’s other side. She plumped a blue-and-tan-checkered pillow and placed it behind her back. “Jared doesn’t miss often.”

“I bet I can catch more.” Jewel leaned over the living room’s loft railing, ready as ever to compete with one of her brothers.

“Ladies first, then,” Jared said easily, looking characteristically unperturbed when it came to competition. He won so many, he had every reason to back up that confidence.

“Watch and learn.” Jewel jogged down the open spiral staircase and grabbed the bowl. “Whoever gets the most out of ten wins.”

Javi bounced on the couch, then stilled at James’s small, corrective frown. Admiration sparked inside for the child. He was boisterous, like all kids, but he wanted to do right. If only James could be equally sure about Sofia.

Jewel caught the first four, missed the next three, caught another two, and the last bounced off her nose. “I meant to do that.” She chuckled and passed the bowl to Jared. “Good luck.”

“It’s all skill, sis,” he said with a wink, then caught ten in rapid succession. No surprise there.

“You su—” Jewel cut off at Joy’s swat. “I mean, you duck,” she amended, glaring at Jared. “You really, really duck.”

“Quack you very much,” Jared rejoined and the brothers guffawed, the family rhythms returning, temporarily loosening the pressure valve that’d been present since Jesse’s death.

James had given up hoping things would ever return to the way they’d been. A time when his mother hadn’t cried at odd times of the day, Jewel hadn’t retreated into her saddle, Jared hadn’t spent all his free time away from the ranch, Justin hadn’t risked his life with his reckless antics and Jackson had been home...

No. This was their new normal. Though it didn’t stop James from missing the old days—especially during the holidays. He wished December would disappear right off his calendar to end another painful year.

Javi climbed on Jared’s lap and patted his cheeks. “Can you teach me?”

“Sure.”

“After you eat your ten grapes,” James said, feeling a growing sense of duty to this child who might be a Cade.

“Ugh. Always the lecturer,” Jewel groaned.

“A man honors his word,” James insisted.

“As does a woman,” Sofia added. They exchanged a quick searching glance and the morning’s easy rapport returned to him, followed by her inconsistencies about her wallet.

A car revved outside and backfired. The sound cracked through the air like a gunshot. Javi jumped, spilling the bowl of grapes. He bolted around the back of the couch and started crying.

The family swapped concerned glances as Sofia crouched by the small space. “It’s just a car, honey.”

“Justin’s hunk-a-junk,” Jewel said over Sofia’s shoulder. “He’ll show it to you before he goes to the demolition derby.”

“No,” Javi sobbed. “Shooting.”

“Honey. You’re safe,” soothed Sofia.

“No,” he choked out, hyperventilating, by the sound of it.

It amazed James how quickly Javi had gone from rambunctious to fearful. Spirited to terrified. What had happened in his life to make him react this way? No one should ever feel afraid on Cade Ranch, especially not a child.

He leaned over and spoke firmly, steadily. “Javi. I want you to take a deep breath in through your nose, then push it out through your mouth. Can you do that ten times, bud?”

“Yes.”

Sofia gripped the back of the sofa and the sides of their hands touched. The urge to thread his fingers in hers, to reassure her, seized him.

Javi’s breathing slowed.

“Okay. Now. When I say a body part, I want you to squeeze it hard, then relax it.”

“With my hands?”

“No. Just use your muscles.”

He guided Javi through the relaxation technique he’d learned while on his first tour of duty in Afghanistan. It’d helped him get through those dangerous months, and sometimes, it even helped him sleep...or doze...at least.

“Your head...” he concluded, after having Javi work his way up from his toes, tensing, then releasing the muscle groups. He felt rather than saw Sofia’s eyes on him.

“I can’t squeeze my head,” Javi said with a giggle. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Sofia’s relieved smile and returned it.

“That must mean you’re a knucklehead,” he joked, and to his relief, Javi emerged from behind the couch.

He shook his finger at James. “I heard that.”

“Well. At least that means you don’t have cotton between your ears.”

Javi giggled again and wriggled free of his mother’s embrace.

“Do you want to check out Justin’s hunk-a-junk with me?” he asked, an urge to connect with Javi taking hold.

“Okay.”

A small hand slipped into his and a feeling of protectiveness surged. Such a trusting gesture. Tender. Vulnerable. A child’s faith could slay the most stalwart dragon, he marveled, and he felt the walls he’d built up about the boy begin to crumble.

He led Javi out on the porch and Sofia followed.

“Thank you,” she said to him softly, a heartbreaking smile on her face. A sliver of pink gum showed above her top teeth.

Justin leaned out of the driver’s-side window of a rust-brown, banged-up Chevy Impala, the number 212 spray painted on its side. The engine rumbled in the night air. James’s nostrils stung from the spewing exhaust.

“Ma! You coming? I need to get moving if I’m going to take out Daryl Loveland in the first round.”

Joy’s hand fluttered to her hair, her necklace. “Actually, I don’t think I’ll go out after all.”

James exchanged concerned glances with his siblings behind his mother’s back. She’d seemed so animated before.

“Suit yourself. Hey, kid.” Justin beckoned Javi. “Want a ride before I head to the demolition derby?”

His teeth flashed stark white against his dark beard, his grin more pirate than rancher. Justin’s many speeding tickets, accident reports and wrecks came to mind.

“No,” James insisted. He met his family’s surprised stares, chin raised. Heedless Justin was the last person he trusted to drive Javi. “I’ll take him.”

“Do you want to go, honey? You don’t have to.” Sofia brushed back Javi’s hair. James’s heart somersaulted at the tender gesture.

Javi nodded, his eyes on the muscle car.

“Want me to go with you?”

Javi peered down at his hand clasped in James’s and shook his head. “Can I ride up front?”

“Yes. But only because I’m going to go very slow, and you’re wearing a seat belt.” He met Sofia’s eye. “Okay, Mom?”

She smiled tightly. “Just don’t go far.”

“We won’t. Let’s go, Javi.”

And a moment later, he guided the Impala down one of the dirt roads that separated pastures. The sports coupe growled and whined, bouncing over potholes, kicking up clouds of white snow, dust and pebbles. His thoughts and feelings swirled around his head like quicksilver, unpredictable and reluctant to coalesce. As he drove alongside barbed wire fences and stared at the white-crusted land illuminated by his headlights, he allowed himself to think about Jesse. Was Javi really Jesse’s son? And if so, had he disavowed the child? Why?

Although he didn’t imagine he’d ever have children, he knew he’d never turn his back on his own. He’d always take responsibility and protect what was his.

He shut down the traitorous thought of his brother. Believing Javi was Jesse’s son meant accepting his sibling had acted worse than he’d imagined, hurting not just his family, but inflicting pain on an innocent child. On Sofia.

He cast a sideways glance down at the wide-eyed boy beside him. Javi huddled in the passenger seat, fidgeting with the large seat belt that crossed his lap. Cool air streamed in through the open window and he breathed in the bovine scent that mingled with the hay they’d tossed out to the livestock earlier.

Javi was quiet. Too quiet. Concern rose. “Want me to turn around?”

“No.”

“Where do you want to go?”

Another moment of silence. Then, “Home.”

“You miss your family.” It was more statement than question.

Javi shook his head. “I don’t have any.”

“No grandparents?” Was Sofia an orphan? If so, then who’d raised her? Curiosity rose, swift and urgent.

“Joy. I mean, Grandma’s my first one besides Mama. Do you think she likes me?”

“Yes,” he said, his voice gruff. Encouraging Javi to feel a part of the family was wrong until he had proof he was truly a Cade. Yet his convictions dwindled in the face of this child’s wish to belong.

“No one ever likes me except Mama.”

“I’m sure that’s not true.” James turned down a left loop that would carry them back to the house. A row of wind turbines rotated slowly on a distant hill.

“A lady behind a desk once called me a waste of space.”

James’s fingers tightened around the cracked leather steering wheel. “That was a bad thing to say.”

“Mama said her panty hose were too tight.”

That pulled a laugh right out of him.

“What’s panty hose?”

Before James could think of how to explain, Javi asked, “Was Daddy bad?”

James’s throat swelled. “Jesse tried his best. He was a good man, but he sometimes did wrong things.”

“Mama says he went up.”

James pressed on the brake when a ginger cat broke from some brush and scuttled across the road. “That’s true.”

“You only get to go up if you’re good,” Javi said to his clasped hands.

James flipped off his lights as they neared the glowing ranch house. “That’s why it’s important to be on our best behavior.”

“But it’s hard,” moaned Javi.

He grinned and ruffled the boy’s hair. “Yes, it is.”

They pulled up to the front porch and there stood Sofia, just where they’d left her, as if she’d been frozen in place.

She yanked open the door the moment they rolled to a stop.

“Javi!” She swung him up into her arms. “I missed you.”

James joined them as she set Javi on his feet.

“Look what just got delivered!” Joy strode down the steps with a wallet held out toward Sofia.

“Who?” Sofia grasped the small clutch bag that served as her wallet then opened it and peered inside.

“A neighbor. He was having coffee at the diner when they found it wedged between the booth and the wall. He dropped it off on his way home.”

If Sofia had her wallet, did she have drugs inside—her reason for not going to the police?

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