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A Cowboy's Pride
Karen Rock
Old wounds run deepOnly the truth can heal them…Rancher Cole Loveland has no interest in dredging up the past, but his ex-fiancée, Katlynn Brennon, has other plans. To save her struggling TV show, she’s come back to Colorado to investigate the infamous Cade-Loveland feud.Trusting Katlynn again isn’t easy—she’s already chosen her career over Cole once. But he’s beginning to realize that true love, like legends, never dies.


Old wounds run deep
Only the truth can heal them...
Rancher Cole Loveland has no interest in dredging up the past, but his ex-fiancée, Katlynn Brennon, has other plans. To save her struggling TV show, she’s come back to Colorado to investigate the infamous Cade-Loveland feud. Trusting Katlynn again isn’t easy—she’s already chosen her career over Cole once. But he’s beginning to realize that true love, like legends, never dies.
Award-winning author KAREN ROCK is both sweet and spicy—at least when it comes to her writing! The author of both YA and adult contemporary books writes sexy suspense novels and small-town romances for Mills & Boon and Kensington Publishing. A strong believer in Happily-Ever-After, Karen loves creating unforgettable stories that leave her readers with a smile. When she’s not writing, Karen is an avid reader who also loves cooking her grandmother’s Italian recipes, baking and having the Adirondack Park wilderness as her backyard, where she lives with her husband, daughter, dog and cat, who keep her life interesting and complete. Learn more about her at karenrock.com (http://karenrock.com/index.html) or follow her on Twitter, @karenrock5 (https://twitter.com/karenrock5?lang=en).
Also By Karen Rock
Falling for a Rancher
Christmas at Cade Ranch
A Cowboy to Keep
Under an Adirondack Sky
His Kind of Cowgirl
A Heartwarming Thanksgiving
“Thankful for You”
Winter Wedding Bells
“The Kiss”
Raising the Stakes
A League of Her Own
Someone Like You
His Hometown Girl
Wish Me Tomorrow
Bad Boy Rancher
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
A Cowboy’s Pride
Karen Rock


www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ISBN: 978-1-474-08588-5
A COWBOY’S PRIDE
© 2018 Karen Rock
Published in Great Britain 2018
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
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www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
“I see the way you’ve been looking at Katie-Lynn.”
“What way’s that?”
“Like you’ve still got feelings for her.”
“Dead wrong.” Cole raised his bottle for a drink to shield his expression. Travis was as sharp-eyed as a hawk, reading people and situations in an instant. A good trait for a sheriff. Not so good in a brother when you were hiding something...
“I hope so,” Travis said. “Just remember what happened after she left you.”
“Nothing happened.”
“Except you disappearing for three months.”
“I was driving cattle.”
“Sleeping out on the range, never coming home...”
Cole drained the last of his dark malt and handed it to a passing waitress. “Are we done here, Sheriff?”
Travis pinned him with a steady, hard look before nodding. “You’re free to go...with a warning.”
“Which is?”
“Don’t repeat a mistake you already learned from. Anyone messes up once. Doing it twice is just plain stupid.”
Dear Reader (#uf565d4ba-a430-5d93-8122-1534b2b84435),
Have you ever wished you were part of a fictional family? Growing up, my sisters and I would call, “Good night, Jim Bob. Night, Mary Ellen,” like the Waltons, and we’d braid each other’s hair like the Ingalls sisters. The Cades and the Lovelands in my Rocky Mountain Cowboys series embody what I love most about family: love, togetherness and support...a shoulder to cry on, a forever friend, the person who always has your back, who knows you better than anyone else and loves you no matter what.
In this fourth book, these feuding families are about to be united on the eve of their parents’ wedding. Their temporary truce, however, is threatened when TV show host Katlynn Brennon returns to her hometown and enlists the aid of her ex, Cole Loveland, to solve the scandalous mystery surrounding the kidnapping, murder and priceless jewel theft that began the feud over a hundred years ago. She needs to face her difficult past to score high ratings to save her show. Cole needs to keep the woman who once broke his heart from destroying his father’s happiness. If they dig deep enough, they might just resolve their own history along the way...
I hope this story captivates you and keeps you turning pages. Stay tuned for Jewel Cade and Heath Loveland’s love story, coming soon in 2019!
Until then, with love and thanks,
Karen Rock
To “Beanie”—the best French braider, foreign-film discoverer, homeopathic health experimenter and big sister I could have ever wished for. You’re the yellow heart to my pink.
Contents
Cover (#u86b6a7c3-ece7-5be9-9f97-67bca88ec120)
Back Cover Text (#ua8bd60dc-eba0-5390-ac95-ca3efcc1abbb)
About the Author (#u65291dd7-e4a2-58a7-b004-80e80cc63fb9)
Booklist (#u519ba9c7-4ddd-5f15-b898-eece04ccb1d8)
Title Page (#u6927158c-b1fa-5d27-9bec-da0edd7dd00e)
Copyright (#u08d4cfaf-f76e-58be-8f40-029cd212a560)
Introduction (#u17df10d7-0f71-592a-985d-30a94e5f211a)
Dear Reader (#u2863855e-6103-5de5-ad13-02a4790a30ff)
Dedication (#u9e0ba9ad-7e51-5365-aa0d-bf1b0468fb3e)
CHAPTER ONE (#u3c8085fd-61d3-5f71-928e-41bf6051f0ce)
CHAPTER TWO (#u980d181a-5c4e-59e1-a129-aed299a2186f)
CHAPTER THREE (#uaa9a8b6f-f036-578f-8f3d-8f7c4dfd40c1)
CHAPTER FOUR (#u5fd4d0c0-f04e-58e5-aa14-e7d98d839043)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#uf565d4ba-a430-5d93-8122-1534b2b84435)
“ACTION!”
At her director’s prompting, Katlynn Brennon aimed her sincerest smile into the television camera, stuck out her forehead and tipped down her chin for her best angle. Her weary eyes chased the racing teleprompter all while striving to ignore her “slimming” undergarment’s malicious dig.
What number was this take?
Infinity?
“Babe Paley, the socialite wife of CBS founder, William S. Paley, once said, ‘A woman can never be too rich or too thin,’” Katlynn intoned, voice steady despite the boom mic’s close dip to her head. “However, many of her fellow glamour queens might have added that riches don’t guarantee contentment. Heiresses may even share a unique kind of adversity.”
Beneath blaring lights, Katlynn willed back the damp forming on her forehead.
Glow not glisten.
Glow.
“On tonight’s episode of Scandalous History, we’ll dig into the secret lives of seven ‘golden girls’ who inherited their share of troubles along with their fortunes.”
She paused, maintaining her pose for Editing, who appreciated extra room on the ends of takes. Dozens of eyes peered at her from the shadows.
Nope. This wasn’t awkward at all...
Perfectly natural to grin at nothing like a loony statue...
“Cut!” bellowed her director, Gabe French, and she blew out a breath. A gray-haired, slouchy man, Gabe’s heavy-lidded eyes and rumpled clothes belied his legendary perfectionism. “Great job, Katlynn. Just amazing. Now, can we do another take with you repeating the intro salaciously?”
Mary, the studio’s overzealous hair and makeup person, rushed Katlynn with a fistful of spritzes, brushes and powder. De-frizzing spray blasted in a coconut-scented cloud.
“Salaciously?” Katlynn choked out as Mary smoothed down microscopic hair wisps only an expert stylist or a circling hawk could spot.
“Like you’ve got a tasty, juicy bit of gossip to tell.” Gabe’s eyes gleamed. “Give me a knowing smile with your left eyebrow lift.”
“How’s this?” Katlynn shot him her best Mona Lisa impersonation while Mary scurried around in a cyclone of powder.
“Perfect!” he crowed before turning to the lighting director. “And can we warm up the lights? Katlynn’s skin looks like a corpse.”
“Give us a sec,” the gaffer grumbled, huddled with his crew.
Katlynn hid her wince, concealing her growing worries about aging in a youth-obsessed industry.
“And Mary, do something about those dark circles under her eyes.” The director peered at the camera’s monitor.
Mary whispered, “If he calls you a corpse one more time, I’ll put him in a grave.”
“I’m thirty-two,” Katlynn reminded Mary as she dotted concealer under Katlynn’s eyes. “Ancient by LA standards.”
“Pee-shaw,” Mary clucked. “You’re the most beautiful woman on TV. People magazine said so.”
“Five years ago,” Katlynn reminded her. Yesterday’s news. What would happen when she wasn’t young enough, pretty enough, to headline a show? Would she disappear, fall into the same obscurity she’d grown up in? Become no one again?
She shook the crazy thought aside. Six seasons and still going strong, Scandalous History was here to stay, her hosting position assured.
So why hadn’t the network confirmed next season’s renewal?
Mary lint-rolled Katlynn’s dress then hustled out of frame when the key grip lifted three fingers for the countdown. He curled down one finger, two, then pointed the third. The director yelled, “Action!”
Katlynn leaned forward, lifted her left eyebrow and curled her mouth conspiratorially as she delivered the next take “salaciously.”
One hour and eight takes later, Katlynn briskly strode from the taping room, every step agony as the heels Wardrobe paired with her tight sheath dress strangled her toes.
“Hi, Ms. Brennon.”
“Hey, Bob.” She flashed their set designer a broad smile without stopping. The minute she reached her dressing room she’d shut the door, kick off her shoes and wriggle free of the straitjacket masquerading as shapewear.
A couple of interns flattened against the wall when she approached, wide-eyed and silent as she passed.
Katlynn held her head high, soaking in the attention accompanying stardom on a major primetime show. Twelve years ago, she’d been a no one from Nowhere, Colorado. Growing up poor, the youngest of twelve children, she never had much, especially attention from her hardworking parents. She’d struggled to be seen and heard, to feel important, valued.
One time she’d even run away for two days to draw their attention. When she’d returned home, she discovered a humiliating truth. She hadn’t even been missed.
“Your new eyelashes arrived, Katlynn,” Mary huffed beside Katlynn, striving to match her long-legged stride. “If you have a sec...”
Despite her hurry, Katlynn slowed. “Sure.” She shoved down her need for five minutes of blessed quiet and a non-cinched waist. She was a professional, not a prima donna.
“Also, Jennifer would like to squeeze in a fitting,” Mary continued, referring to the show’s wardrobe supervisor. “You’re going to love this dress. It’s a sheath, which’ll show off your amazing figure. Plus, the rose color will be gorgeous with your blond hair and blue eyes. I’ve already picked out a custom lip color to match.”
“Sounds great,” Katlynn enthused, disguising her dismay. Another “body-conscious” dress. She made a mental note to call her trainer about extending her grueling workout sessions. Yay.
“I knew you’d like it!” Mary seized Katlynn’s arm and steered her toward Wardrobe.
“Katlynn!” One of the show’s producers approached, tie askew and slightly out of breath. “Tom’s calling a meeting in five.”
Alarm bells shrilled. Tom, their executive producer, usually followed a strict schedule, one that included an afternoon round of golf. What was important enough to make him miss his coveted tee time? News about their show’s renewal? Surely, he could have just emailed them, unless...
“Sorry, Mary.” Katlynn’s heartbeat sped. “Tell Jen I’ll stop by after the meeting, okay?”
“Thanks. You’re a doll.” Mary clomped away in square, comfortable-looking heels.
How long since Katlynn had worn anything practical like those to work? Even when running errands, she dressed up, maintaining the classy “brand” her PR agency insisted on, aware of lurking paparazzi eager for the “Stars, They’re Just Like Us” money shot. Since landing in the tabloids when she dated a famous actor for a hot minute, they’d stalked her...a dream for her PR team, and, she’d admit it, a thrill for her. Still, what she’d give to shop in a pair of comfortable jeans and worn cowboy boots like back home.
“Everything okay, Braydon?” she asked as they practically galloped down the corridor.
“What’s going on?” asked Ted, one of the show’s writers, joining them.
“He didn’t say.” Braydon stopped abruptly and lowered his voice. “But according to his secretary, Mr. Warner called him an hour ago and they spoke at length.”
“The new CEO?” Katlynn breathed, her internal alarm bells now shrieking. Recently acquired by another parent company, their network braced for changes, changes she feared included her being replaced. Out with the old; in with the new. “That’s...interesting.”
Ted crossed himself and mumbled something inaudible.
“I just saw the email about the meeting.” Their head writer, Stella, emerged from the writer’s room. “Are we canceled?”
“Not officially,” Braydon groaned as they resumed their hurried trek to the conference room.
“Stay calm, everyone,” Katlynn said through a smile when they reached the glass doors leading to the conference room. She pushed one open and glided in, projecting confidence and star power.
Never let them see you sweat.
“Katlynn, you look beautiful as usual.” Tom stood, exchanged two air kisses with her, then drummed his fingertips on the long, mahogany conference table.
Somber-faced staff filed in and slid into their seats. Katlynn’s cheeks hurt with the effort to keep her lips stretched upward. Eyes swerved between her and Tom. Someone coughed. Someone else tapped a pencil, a snare-drum sound.
Katlynn slid into her seat once everyone took their places. As the show’s star, she was looked to for direction by the staff, and she wouldn’t project fear. Beneath the table, though, her fingernails dug into her palms.
“Our acquisition by Ultima will allow us to reach a larger market share and produce a wider range of shows.” Tom paused and gulped whatever his LA Lakers’ mug contained. By the smell, Katlynn guessed whiskey.
She glimpsed Braydon pantomime slashing his throat and nudged the tip of his dress shoes beneath the table. When he mouthed, “What?” she lifted her eyebrows, a silent, “You know what.” Followed by, “Stop.” He was scaring the staff, given their wide eyes.
“We’re thrilled to be under Ultima’s umbrella,” Tom continued, looking slightly sick, his skin tinged green. “However—”
“Here we go!” Braydon exclaimed.
Chairs creaked and fabric swished as several staff members fidgeted in their seats. Someone knocked over a coffee cup. Others fiddled with their phones beneath the table, frantically contacting their agents, Katlynn suspected...something she’d need to do, too. Possibly. If the show was getting the ax.
She gulped back the sour taste of fear and lifted her chin, her expression serene.
Fake it till you make it...
“It’s not as dire as you think,” Tom assured them, dabbing at his perspiring brow. He shrugged off his jacket and draped it over the back of his leather chair, revealing wet stains beneath his arms.
Katlynn blinked. In all her years working with Tom, she’d never seen him without his suit coat. It was disconcerting, and the simple act felt like it heralded the apocalypse.
Was her dream of living in the spotlight, a person who counted, mattered and was noticed, over?
She’d arrived in LA twelve years ago with a broken heart and a job offer at a local news station. Since then she’d worked tirelessly to climb the ladder, meeting influential people, making the right connections, taking night classes to finish her broadcasting degree, even revamping her appearance and style from country mouse to LA chic. She would not go back, not when she’d come so far, sacrificed so much, including the man she’d once thought she’d love forever.
“What is it, then?” blurted their head writer, Stella. “Are we canceled?”
“No,” Tom said, and a collective sigh of relief rose from the table. Katlynn released a long, shaky breath. “However, they’re taking a closer look at the viability of some of the current programming, and Scandalous History is on the list.”
“So, what’s our status?” Braydon grabbed a mint from the bowl in the center of the table and struggled to unwrap it with shaking fingers.
“TBD,” Tom stated flatly, his lips leached of color.
To be determined—purgatory for a television show—a temporary stop before cancellation.
No.
“We have to wow them, folks, and show an uptick in ratings to avoid the chopping block.” Tom dropped his elbows on the table and leaned forward. “Let’s brainstorm.”
“That’s our department.” Stella’s protest was joined by her nodding writers.
“We’re in this together,” Tom insisted. “We need a grand slam.”
“What about Area 51? The sixties are far enough away to be history,” suggested Braydon.
Tom shook his head. “Too sci-fi. We need something that screams Americana. An unsolved mystery maybe. Something to capture the viewers’ imaginations and create watercooler buzz.”
“I like that!” Stella scribbled on a pad then peered up through the square glasses perched on the tip of her nose.
“How about a missing ship, like the USS Wasp?” suggested their gaffer. “It headed to Bermuda after the War of 1812 then disappeared.”
“Lots of great shots in the Caribbean,” their director, Gabe, mused, his eyes now three-quarters open. “Plus, we’d get to film our gorgeous star on the beach.” He squared his hands and framed Katlynn in them across the table. “The wind blowing through her platinum hair...a sarong around her bikini...”
Katlynn made a face at him, mostly embarrassed but also appreciative of the staff’s approving glances.
“I’m a serious journalist, people. Put me in a one-piece at least,” she joked, earning her a larger laugh than she deserved. Funny how fame amplified life. Everyone and everything was bigger, better, more beautiful. She no longer knew if people laughed at her jokes because they were funny, if others were nice because they liked her, or if they did favors without expecting something in return.
LA was a lonely place, despite all the attention. Still, it beat Carbondale, Colorado. She’d been invisible there except, for a brief time, when her ex-fiancé made her the center of his world. Yet, before their wedding, he’d shoved her needs aside like everyone else and broken her heart.
No.
He’d shattered it.
You could fix broken things, but shattered meant irreparable... Besides a few lackluster dates, she’d avoided romance since, determined to never open herself up to hurt again.
“USS Wasp...” Tom rubbed his chin, considering, then shook his head. “Sounds too military. We need something juicy and personal. Murder. Revenge. Stuff like that...”
Mystery. Scandal. Americana, murder and revenge. Katlynn’s body froze as an idea detonated into her mind, nuclear blast bright and just as devastating.
When a choking sound escaped her, staffers jumped to offer bottles of sparkling water.
“Are you okay?” Braydon thumped her back and appeared ready to perform the Heimlich.
She held up her hand as she swallowed a long, cold gulp of water. “F-fine.”
Only she wasn’t okay, not when she knew the perfect idea to save the show was one that might destroy her in the process.
“Anyone else?” Tom demanded.
“We could return to New Orleans,” Stella suggested. “Dig up more on the Ax Man serial killer.”
Tom’s eyebrows crashed together. “No. We need something new. Something people sitting at home can relate to. A scandalous story about a family, maybe. Star-crossed lovers. Betrayal. Anything?”
Silence descended, and Katlynn’s throat swelled, the answer to the show’s dilemma on the tip of her tongue.
“We’re sunk,” moaned one of the writers.
“Better call your agents, folks,” Stella joked, not sounding amused.
Katlynn’s heart squeezed when their sound tech, seven months pregnant with her first child, swiped away tears. She had to share an idea, which might save not only her career, but also those of this amazing group, who worked hard to make her shine.
At her throat-clearing, everyone quieted.
“Katlynn?” Tom asked, using the gentle voice he reserved for her. “Did you have a suggestion?”
She nodded, temporarily mute at the idea of returning home and seeing Cole Loveland. She’d fled Carbondale to save herself. Now she needed to return to it to do the same.
Oh, the irony.
“The Cade-Loveland feud,” she said once she trusted her voice.
Stella stopped writing and glanced up. “I’ve heard of that...”
“A juicy scandal all right,” Braydon added. “The longest-running family feud in America. Wasn’t the rumor that the feud started when the poor, younger son of one family kidnapped the other family’s heiress daughter and killed her?”
“That’s one version. Some believe there was a secret affair,” added Katlynn, recalling more details. Just last month, when her mother finally returned Katlynn’s call, she’d declared herself knocked over by a feather. Incredibly, the heads of the Cade and Loveland clans were engaged, and everyone in Carbondale speculated that a Titanic of a wedding disaster loomed.
Stella rubbed her hands together. “Ohhhhh, this is going to be juicy.”
“It has it all.” Tom nodded slowly. “Mystery, murder, betrayal, love and a jewel theft. Didn’t a famous fifty-carat sapphire belonging to one of the families disappear at the time? What was it called? Carolyn’s Tear?”
“Cora’s Tear,” Katlynn corrected, knowing the legend of the priceless stone having grown up in Carbondale, not to mention being engaged to the oldest son in the Loveland clan.
“That’s your hometown, right?” Braydon asked.
Katlynn nodded, masking her dread. After leaving twelve years ago, she hadn’t looked back. She never wanted to remember the nobody she’d been, the love she’d lost. Could she face her difficult past?
To save her show...yes. She’d have to see Cole to cover the story about his family. Only this time he’d realize he’d been wrong to ask her to give up her dreams, her ambitions. She’d learned to shine on her own so she’d never be diminished again.
“Do you have a connection with the families? An in?” Tom demanded, his voice rising. Excited murmurs circled the table.
Katlynn cleared her clogged throat with a cough. “I’m acquainted with them, yes.”
Tom’s broad smile revealed capped teeth in a flash of white. “Then it’s settled. Katlynn, you’ve saved the day.”
She lingered as the group filed out.
If she solved such a sensational historical mystery, it’d secure Scandalous History’s spot in next season’s lineup, put them on the map and might even win her an Emmy. Could she handle returning home where her family, and the man she’d once loved, had made her feel inconsequential to do it?
* * *
“SHE’S DROPPED HER CALF,” Cole Loveland informed his approaching father, pointing to the bellowing gray Brahman lying on the frosted ground. He’d herded the “heavy” into the small field adjacent to the calving shed last night when he’d noticed the beginning signs of labor. Since then, Cole had checked on the heifer every hour, concerned for the first-time mother.
“Doesn’t appear interested in her calf.” Boyd reined his brown quarter horse to a stop, and they watched the wet newborn shiver in the freezing dawn.
If the mother didn’t lick it dry soon, it’d die of hypothermia. Cole’s brown and white paint horse, Cash, sidestepped and nickered, sensing Cole’s unease.
“She’s new to it.” Cole steadied his stallion while keeping his eyes on the imperiled calf.
“Might have to pen the two and see if we can’t force them to bond.” Boyd huddled in his saddle. His fleece-lined work jacket was zipped against the arctic temperature.
Spring officially began a couple weeks ago, but frigid air still gripped their Rocky Mountain ranch. Lingering snow capped nearby Mount Sopris, and the rising sun reflected on the white peak, coloring it rose gold against the lavender sky.
“Let’s give her a minute. See if we can avoid stressing them.” Cole watched, narrow-eyed, as the exhausted heifer snorted then sank her head to the ground. Meanwhile, the newborn struggled to rise, its sodden limbs heavy and uncoordinated. It bawled, a child’s universal appeal to its mother for help. The Brahman continued to stare listlessly forward, though, as if she hadn’t heard a thing.
“Can’t afford to lose any more calves.” Boyd reached into his saddlebag and passed over an insulated coffee thermos.
Cole’s fingers, numb despite his gloves, fumbled to open the tab. He lifted it to his nose and breathed in the fortifying, pungent brew. Scalding black liquid burned his tongue as he swigged it back. Instantly, energy zapped his fatigued body, worn through after twenty-four hours of ranch work, anxious vigilance and no sleep. “Saw we got a letter from the bank yesterday.”
“Yep,” his father answered, noncommittal.
Cole slid a sideways glance at his pa’s weathered face, his expression inscrutable beneath the wide brim of his rancher’s hat. Tough old cowboy. He never gave a thing away.
“What’s it say?” Cole asked as the calf hoisted itself on its front legs before it slipped and fell again. Its mother glanced back and pushed to her knees. A sign they were beginning to bond?
“Final notice.”
His father shared the devastating news as if relaying the weather. “Cold out today,” Cole imagined him saying. “Mind the ice. And our one-hundred-and-thirty-year-old family ranch is about to be foreclosed on.”
Cole swore under his breath. The Lovelands had battled to remain solvent for generations, despite their lack of access to the Crystal River. Property lines ceding water rights to their feuding neighbors, the Cades, required longer, danger-riddled cattle drives to distant water sources, depleting Loveland herds. A recent three-year drought pushed them nearly to the point of no return.
He had to find a way to save the ranch.
And it wouldn’t be by benefiting from his father’s imminent marriage to Joy Cade, Cade Ranch’s widowed matriarch, despite whispered speculation. Lovelands made their own way, provided for their family and didn’t take charity.
Besides, Cade Ranch was jointly owned by the Cade siblings, and Joy only owned a small percentage of the property.
“How much time do we have?” As Cole watched, the new mother struggled to her feet and meandered a short distance from her crying calf, attempting to graze. Was she about to abandon it? Cole’s anxiety intensified.
“It’ll go up for auction within the month.”
“Before the wedding.” Cole passed the thermos to his father, his dismay compounding. News like this set tongues wagging. It’d further fuel rumors of his father being an opportunist who married for money.
“Yes.” The hint of despair in Pa’s voice set Cole’s teeth on edge. “Unless we accept James Cade’s offer.”
“No.” They’d never allow rivals to buy their land and rent it back to them, no matter how fair the offer. James vowed the deal would be just between them, but Cole’s pride wouldn’t let him accept.
Being talked about in public got under his skin. The child of an alcoholic parent, he’d grown up in a house full of secrets. When his mother killed herself on his sixteenth birthday, her father, a senator, fed the press fake stories and suggested foul play to pressure law enforcement to open a homicide investigation.
When the press labeled Boyd a murderous opportunist after his wife’s inheritance, it’d nearly broken him.
Now, on the eve of a second chance at love, Cole’s father might be the subject of malicious, widespread gossip and press again.
No.
He could not let that happen.
The heifer inched farther away, rutting hay scattered over the frozen ground, an eye flicking to her calf now and again. She was curious. If Cole gave them more space, would she take to mothering? Some things couldn’t be forced. Even penning them together wasn’t a guarantee. His mother had been surrounded by her children and she’d never considered them over her addiction.
His lonely father deserved happiness, a scandal-free wedding and a loving marriage with his former childhood sweetheart. Yet the Cade-Loveland family truce was temporary at best given their continued water rights and cattle disputes. They’d be fortunate to get through the wedding peacefully without outside pressure riling simmering tensions.
Tomorrow Cole would ask the loan officers to postpone the foreclosure until after summer. A rainy season might turn things around and help them replenish the herd. Despite the long-shot odds, he had to try.
He’d devoted his life to Loveland Hills, sacrificed all, including his heart, once. He’d never leave it voluntarily. Not while he still breathed. Lovelands stood by each other. His father gave up his happiness for his kids’ sakes. He’d earned their loyalty, no matter how it’d nearly broken Cole when he’d had to let go of the one person who’d meant everything to him.
The calf ominously stopped bawling, and its movements slowed to mere twitches. An arctic gust billowed Cash’s mahogany mane like a sail. Another five minutes in these conditions and the newborn would die. Cole’s fingers clenched around the reins.
“Let’s bring ’em in.” Boyd patted the rope looped on the side of his saddle. “She’s not keen on being a mother.”
Cole watched the now listless calf. His heart went out to the youngling. A mother should care for her offspring, dang it.
“Got one last idea.” He whistled for their cattle dog, Boomer. The black-and-white border collie sprang from beneath the calving shed’s eave, ears up and forward, eyes on his master. Cole ordered Boomer into the field and held his breath.
The clever dog crept across the white ground, body low. The newborn’s eyes rolled, whites showing, as it struggled to drag itself away from a perceived threat. The stream of its frantic bleats whipped the heifer’s head around. White huffed from her flaring nostrils when she spied Boomer.
“Get him, girl,” Cole urged the Brahman beneath his breath, leaning forward in the saddle. Hopefully, his gamble paid off and the “predator” nearing her offspring would arouse her maternal instincts.
“Boomer’s got her attention,” Boyd observed quietly as they watched the tense standoff.
The collie crept closer, and the heifer stamped her hooves.
Fueled by terror, the calf surged to its feet and trembled in place, its strength expended. Boomer advanced a couple more steps, and the heifer issued a loud warning bellow.
“You gonna call that dog back?” Boyd asked out of the corner of his mouth. “He’s likely to get trampled.”
“I trust him,” Cole replied firmly. As the ranch manager, he trained all their cattle dogs, including Boomer, to herd, load and drive. Despite everything gone wrong in his life—a called-off wedding, failed love life and looming foreclosure, Cole excelled at commanding his working dogs.
Cole watched as Boomer eyed the thousand-pound Brahman, sliding another paw forward, then another, drawing within bite distance of the terrified, braying calf.
Then the mother charged, fueled by maternal fury, surging at Boomer. The cattle dog expertly dodged her deadly hooves and scuttled clear.
Cole held up his hand, halting the collie’s retreat. They weren’t out of the woods yet. Best keep pressuring.
One eye on Boomer, the heifer sniffed her calf. Her tongue darted out and her rough lick tipped the newborn’s head.
“Atta girl,” Cole muttered, his chest loosening as he dragged in his first full breath in hours.
“Nicely done, son,” Boyd said and the rare praise from his stoic father caught Cole with unexpected warmth. Living life on the edge of personal and financial disaster had a way of threatening a man’s pride. He took his victories where he could. They’d saved the calf whose mother now lavished it with a thorough bathing.
Could they save the ranch, too?
“Looks like our work’s done.” Pa wheeled his horse around and nudged it into a walk down the rutted lane to their stable.
“I’ll keep checking on them.” Cole brought Cash up alongside his father’s mustang. Boomer kept pace.
Only the twittering of waking birds, and the clip of hooves striking hard ground, broke the silence. Overhead, the iridescent sky glowed. Light now striped the fallow fields awaiting this year’s planting, and their shadows rode ahead.
“I’ll stop down to First National at nine,” Cole said once they’d reached the stable and untacked the horses. The sweet smell of grain rose as he poured cornmeal into Cash’s feed bucket, a treat for the exhausted horse.
“No need to waste your time, son.” Cool water misted the air as Boyd filled the water troughs. Several horses hung their heads outside their stall doors, nosy about the early activity, nickering to the new arrivals.
“It’s not a waste.” Cole doled out halved apples to his siblings’ mounts. “If I can convince them to hold off a couple months, and we have a good season, we could turn things around.”
“I figured out another way without including the bank.” Boyd pulled the stable door shut behind them once they finished.
“Good to hear.” Cole glanced at his frowning father from the corner of his eye. Why didn’t Pa seem pleased?
“Not sure you’ll think so.” They ambled closer to the two-story homestead built by their ancestor, Colonel Archibald Loveland, an army veteran. He’d deserted from the Colorado War, married a Cheyenne interpreter and settled here over a hundred and thirty years ago, breathing life into the first of many Loveland scandals.
Must be in their blood.
“Why would I object?” Cole noticed a few green shoots alongside the fieldstone walkway to their front porch. With any luck, they might get three hay crops...
Boyd paused on the porch’s stairs. “Was approached by an outfit to do a story about our feud with the Cades. They’ll pay enough to cover our mortgage through the season if I give them access to the property.”
Cole leaned against the pine banister, absorbing his father’s news. Like the rest of the home, it’d been culled from the distant forests and hauled over great distances. Their ranch was a bastion against a landscape of forbidding mountains, its warm hearth and hand-hewn timber beams communicating self-reliance, simplicity and lack of pretentions. His heart swelled at the thought of what his ancestors had wrought.
They’d fight to their last breaths to safeguard their family’s legacy. But a story dredging up old scandals? It’d upset the tenuous peace between them and the Cades and jeopardize his father’s wedding. His hard-won happiness.
“What kind of outfit? Something local?” Cole’s hands tightened around the banister as he recalled the frenzied media who’d hounded his family after his mother’s death.
“Cable show.” For some reason, his pa seemed to have trouble meeting Cole’s eye.
“National TV?” Cole squinted into the strengthening sunshine and glimpsed an approaching black car bumping down their drive. “We don’t want them sniffing around the place, dragging out old skeletons.”
“Better than being thrown off our land before the wedding,” Pa countered.
Cole shoved his balled hands into his pockets, unable to counter the argument. “They’ll drag up stuff about Ma.”
The vehicle neared, its engine’s smooth purr sounding expensive, foreign. Out-of-towners. Someone lost?
“Got assurances to the contrary.” Boyd stepped off the porch and, to Cole’s astonishment, waved two hands overhead as if he expected whoever was driving.
“Who’s this?” Cole strode to his father’s side and peered at dark-tinted windows as the town car slid to a smooth stop.
“The show’s producer and host.”
“This is a done deal!” Cole exclaimed. “Why’d you keep it from me? Does anyone else know?”
The door opened and a fetching pair of slim, shapely legs in black heels emerged.
“Nope. You’re the first.”
A tall blonde ducked gracefully from the car. Something about her struck him as if he knew her, though he wasn’t sure with the sun backlighting her, casting her features in shadow.
“I don’t understand.”
A suited man joined the lady, and they stepped gingerly across the pebbled drive. She held her head high and stared directly at him.
“The show’s called Scandalous History,” Pa said, then hustled to greet his company.
Scandalous History... Now where had Cole heard of it?
Then it hit him, a sucker punch straight to the gut, leaving him off balance.
“Hello, Cole.”
His body stiffened at the familiar, silky-smooth voice. A flash of memory—listening to her speak as they’d watched campfires, stargazed, fly-fished—pulled a lump into his throat. He’d once thought her words sounded like lyrics, her laughter a song. He’d also thought she walked on water until she’d skated right out of his life.
He peered into the beautiful face he’d seen in his dreams, the one he envisioned while riding the range, gorgeous as ever with her perfectly symmetrical features and large blue eyes in a heart-shaped face. Only she looked different somehow. More sophisticated. Elegant. As if someone had slapped a coat of varnish over her natural beauty, making it harder to see who she really was...if he’d ever really known at all.
Old hurt stalked through him, residual anger on its heels. When she’d left, she’d nearly done him in. Was she back to finish the job? Not a chance.
His jaw clamped shut, and he spoke through gritted teeth, minding his manners for Pa’s sake until he got rid of her and the threat she posed to him and his family.
“Welcome home, Katie-Lynn.”
CHAPTER TWO (#uf565d4ba-a430-5d93-8122-1534b2b84435)
KATIE-LYNN.
Besides her family, no one had used her real name since she’d changed it to match her makeover. Katie-Lynn was another person, a ghost from her past.
In LA she was a star.
Remember that girl.
“Katie-Lynn, you’re as pretty as ever.” Boyd beamed at her as he pulled a can of coffee from a wooden cabinet. He hadn’t changed much. Sun streaming through the kitchen’s windows glowed on his thick white hair and highlighted unbowed shoulders in a flannel shirt. The extra lines on his craggy face added to his distinguished appearance.
“That’s sweet of you. Thanks. And I go by Katlynn, now.”
“Help yourself to some fruit if you’re hungry,” Boyd added. “I could make you some toast if you haven’t had breakfast.”
“No. This is great.” She leaned across the oak table, filched a cherry from a bowl and popped it into her mouth, hyperaware of Cole’s eyes trained solely on her. The sensation was unsettling. It reminded her of the buzz of anticipation accompanying a roller coaster’s first lurch, one she’d ridden before. This time, however, she knew the drops, twists and corners ahead.
Her limbs stiffened, and her jaw clamped as she fought the crazy urge to squeeze her eyes shut. She practically lived under a microscope in California; why did Cole’s scrutiny fluster her?
She squashed the disturbing question—he had no sway over her anymore—and glanced across the table at the inscrutable rancher. Cole Donovan Loveland, the first man she’d ever loved, and the only man who’d ever broken her heart.
His eyes were still that unnerving shade of clear, glacier blue. Clipped black hair showed no signs of gray or thinning. And he was still crazy tall—obviously—people don’t shrink in their thirties, least of all a Loveland.
Katlynn’s toes tapped the wide-planked floor.
Cole was as mountain-size and rugged as his surroundings, and he still radiated his enigmatic, I’m-the-puzzle-you’ll-never-solve vibe. Oh...no. This was not good.
“Katie-Lynn?” Tom’s nose scrunched as if he smelled something bad. In his polished Italian loafers and custom suit, her producer appeared out of place in this rustic setting. Hollywood called him a shark, but in the Rockies, he resembled a beached guppy.
“I didn’t have a say in picking my name,” she said beneath her breath. “Then.”
Cole’s narrow-eyed gaze darted between them.
“Don’t you think she looks pretty, Cole?” Boyd persisted, dumping ground beans into an old-school coffeemaker.
At Cole’s noncommittal grunt, her shoulders squared inside the tasteful black dress she’d carefully selected for today.
For Cole.
To impress him; to show him how far she’d come from the mouse he’d once dismissed. To earn his approval...
Why?
Because you’re an idiot.
An empty watering can atop a mat in the center of the table snagged her eye. In a flash, she was seventeen again, picking daisies with Cole to fill it.
“Here’s one for your hair.” He’d tucked a flower behind her ear. “Though you’re the one making it look pretty.”
And she’d blushed, amazed the popular, athletic boy in high school had even noticed her, let alone made her his girlfriend. She’d felt special. Important.
“How about some coffee?” Boyd’s question pulled her back to the present with a jolt, her stomach tipping side to side.
A roasted-bean aroma erupted from the gurgling coffeemaker. Over Boyd’s shoulder, a brick hearth covered most of the back wall. Her mouth twitched as she recalled a disastrous strawberry-rhubarb pie-making attempt with Cole using one of the baking slits. They’d spent hours scrubbing goo off those stones...and had a fun time doing it.
How her tastes had changed.
Refined.
A good time nowadays meant a glass of Dom Perignon, preferably White Gold, while attending a star-studded event to see and be seen.
“None for me.” Tom stabbed at his cell phone then circled it overhead, searching for a signal.
Her eyes lingered on the coffeemaker’s glass carafe. One pot for everyone. No individual cup allowances for mint chocolate coffee or hazelnut vanilla... Here, coffee was coffee. Period. There was a simplicity about it she found refreshing. Sometimes when you had too many choices, you focused on the little things and lost sight of the big picture. Her eyes flicked to Cole again then scurried off, circling the room, landing anywhere but on the magnetic cowboy.
“Katie—I mean, Katlynn?” Boyd gently prompted, as considerate a host as ever. “Coffee?”
“Sounds great.”
“It won’t be fancy like Starbucks,” Cole drawled, his deep, Johnny Cash baritone as gravelly as she remembered. Her heart added a couple extra beats.
“I’m sure it’ll be great,” she replied firmly, striving to stay “mindful” and in the present moment as her life coach advised. Deep breath in, anxiety, frustration, despair, out.
Deep breath in, returning attraction and insecurities regarding ex-fiancé, way out.
“Are you staying at the Holsford?” Boyd asked, referring to the small town’s only hotel.
“They’ve double-booked my suite.”
“You’re welcome to share mine.” Tom’s perfectly shaped eyebrows twitched in the limited way his Botox allowed.
Cole’s lips pressed into a flat line.
“Or you could stay here.” Boyd cast a quick glance at Cole.
Sunlight glinted off Boyd’s silver and turquoise bolo tie, the one he donned for special occasions. How sweet that he’d dressed up. “We’ve got plenty of room now that Cole’s living in one of the cabins and Maverick’s out on his PBR tour,” Boyd beamed. “Oh—and Daryl got hitched a while back. He and his wife have a cottage not far from here. You’re welcome to stay.”
From a professional standpoint, staying on Loveland Hills gave her immediate and frequent access to the investigation as well as her location shoots. From a personal standpoint, it’d mean spending too much time around Cole.
Too dangerous.
“Thanks, but I’ll stay at my folks’ place.” She crossed her fingers on her lap. Hopefully...if her mother would return her calls...
“Where can I get a signal?” Tom scooted his spindle-backed chair from the table and stood.
“Signal?” Boyd stared at him, confused, the line between his brows deepening.
“For his cell phone.” Cole jerked his thumb at the door. “Try the porch.”
Tom mumbled his thanks as the screen door clicked shut behind him.
“We don’t have cell service.” Boyd poured coffee into a World’s Best Dad mug.
The upward tug of Cole’s full lips snared her attention. He looked so handsome sitting across from her, his broad shoulders filling out his thermal shirt, his lightly bristled jaw begging to be touched. He cocked his head and caught her staring. Katlynn dropped her eyes, sure everyone could hear her heart thundering in her chest.
“It got him out of our hair at least.” His thick-lashed eyes gleamed at Katlynn when her gaze darted his way again, and he arched a challenging brow.
Was he planning on getting rid of her next?
She lifted her chin. Well, he could try. She wasn’t as easy to discard as she used to be.
“Cream? Sugar?” Boyd held up a pitcher of foamy, fresh milk.
“Do you have skim milk? Artificial sweetener?” she asked with a sigh. After failing to zipper Jennifer’s rose sheath, Katlynn vowed to lose five pounds on this trip.
“No. But I could run to the store.”
“She’ll survive without fake sugar,” Cole asserted, folding muscular arms even a personal trainer would envy. “And a few extra calories would do her some good.”
Was he calling her skinny? She was a size six—practically obese in her industry, hence the necessary evil of slimming undergarments. Speaking of which, she shifted in her seat to alleviate their cruel pinch.
“I’ll just have it black.” She sucked on another cherry, the action seeming to fascinate an intently staring Cole.
“Cole? Want a cup?”
“I’ll fix it.” He snagged a cup out of the cupboard and banged it down on the counter. As he added a generous amount of cream, his lips twisted in a sardonic grin aimed her way.
“Hope it’s not too plain for you.” Boyd handed over the coffee then seated himself beside her.
She sipped her drink, enjoying the rich, unvarnished flavor, so different than her usual nonfat latte with a caramel drizzle. Boyd’s concerned face relaxed at her smile and nod.
“Really good, Mr. Loveland. Best cup I’ve had in years.”
“Well, now...” Boyd cleared his throat gruffly, looking embarrassed, then switched topics. “Glad to have you back home. We’ve missed seeing you around the place. Haven’t we, Cole?”
“You’re back to film a show about my family?” he asked instead of answering his father.
Her eyes lingered on his body as he leaned against the counter—tall, broad and thick with muscle. Cole was dressed in jeans, a thermal shirt and a down vest, pretty much the same thing he’d always worn, if memory served. And her memory seemed to be disturbingly clear where Cole Loveland was concerned.
She gave herself a little shake followed by a coffee chaser.
Get it together. You’re a professional. Not a high school girl crushing on the homecoming king.
Not anymore.
“You’ve heard of my show, Scandalous History...?” How strange to talk to Cole again, to drink coffee and behave civilly, like she’d never been in his arms, kissed those lips, cried those tears.
It takes grace to remain kind in cruel situations...
Cole shrugged, and the simple motion communicated one simple truth. She was as irrelevant to his world as ever. Well. Fine, then, since her world had outgrown his.
“Like I told your father,” she said smoothly, drawing on her vocal training to sound strong, assured, impervious, as if breathing the same air as her ex had no residual effect. “We do investigative reports about American history.”
“Where’s the scandalous part come in?” Cole sauntered back to the table and grabbed his seat.
Her muscles tensed. Boyd rushed to her defense. “No harm in speculating about old news—it doesn’t hurt anyone.”
“Most of your subjects are dead, correct?”
At her nod, Cole turned to his father. “Our situation’s different.”
Concern spiked. Was Cole thinking about his mother and the media frenzy? “No one will be harmed because of the show.”
“Katlynn’s only focusing on the feud.” Boyd dropped more sugar into his coffee. His spoon clanked against the mug’s sides as he stirred.
“What guarantee do we have?”
She met Cole’s direct stare head-on, determined to win him over for her show’s sake. “My word.”
“You gave me your word once before,” he said slowly as though the words were razor blades, slashing his mouth as he released them. They cut her deep, too. “I haven’t forgotten how that worked out.”
“Neither have I.”
Boyd’s eyes flicked between them in the tense silence. “That’s water under the bridge, kids.”
A muscle jumped in Cole’s jaw, and she carefully pried her clenched fingers from her mug handle.
Boyd was right. Their broken engagement was yesterday’s news. Not worth covering. Or revisiting. No matter how the journalist in her wished to excavate their history for the answer to a basic question:
Why hadn’t he loved her enough?
“Katie-Lynn? What are you doing here?” A tall, dark-haired man dressed in a tan sheriff’s uniform appeared at the bottom of the stairs leading from the second-floor bedrooms. In three giant strides, Cole’s younger brother and Carbondale’s local sheriff, Travis, swept her into his arms for a tight hug.
“She goes by Katlynn now,” Cole said.
“Your father gave my show permission to shoot some episodes about your feud with the Cades.” She eased away and grinned up at Travis extra wide, since it seemed to get under a fidgeting Cole’s skin.
“Scandalous History, right?”
At her nod, Travis turned to his father. “Why didn’t you say something?”
“Wanted Cole to know first.”
Travis’s broad smile fell and his chiseled features, slightly more refined than Cole’s, sobered. “Right.” He shot his brooding older brother a long look before heading to the coffee machine. “What’ve you learned so far?”
“We’re still in preliminary stages, so I don’t know much beyond what I grew up hearing. I plan on interviewing family members, consulting with local historians and digging through old town records for land surveys and such.”
“Will that clear up our water rights dispute?” Cole asked.
She remembered the restrictions keeping the Lovelands’ ranch on the brink of bankruptcy back in high school. “It’s something I’m going to investigate.”
“I’ll see if the sheriff’s office has anything.” Travis poured himself a cup of coffee and drank it black, his hip propped against the counter.
“That’d be a big help. Thanks.” Katlynn settled back in her chair and peered at the three handsome men. Lovelands were legendary for their incredible good looks and their willingness to lend a hand when needed. They were strong, principled men of action few dared to cross. “Would any of you know if correspondence between Maggie Cade and Everett Loveland exists? Letters? A journal Everett might have kept?”
Boyd shook his head slowly. “Not that I know of, but you’re welcome to check through the house and property.”
“We’ve also got cabins that once housed ranch hands. Some haven’t been occupied in decades.” Travis drained his mug and rinsed his cup. “If Maggie and Everett met in private, one of those might have been the spot.”
“A lover’s nest...” Boyd mused.
Her nose tingled, itching as it always did whenever she caught scent of a lead. “Great. No telling where the clues are, but I’m determined to uncover what happened between those two.”
“It’s not a mystery,” Cole said. “The Cades, hotheaded as always, jumped to conclusions when they discovered Everett by their runaway daughter’s lifeless body and their family brooch...”
“Cora’s Tear,” Travis supplied.
“Right, and the jewel missing.” Cole passed a hand over his thick black hair. “Then they strung up Everett, no questions asked, since they decided he must have coerced their innocent daughter to steal the priceless heirloom. They dispensed prairie justice like outlaw vigilantes.”
“And the murderers broke out of jail and hid in the mountains, harassing our ranch for years.” Travis squinted out the window at nearby Mount Sopris as if wishing he could travel back in time to apprehend them personally.
Hopefully, she’d bring the family closure and justice.
“Are you planning on digging up our property to search for the jewel? It’ll disrupt operations during our busy season.” Cole leaned forward, elbows bent.
“We might excavate a few areas if we have a strong lead,” Katlynn said. “I’ll follow the facts where they lead me.”
“Spoken like a true investigator.” Travis shot her a smile, donned his hat then opened the door. “Y’all have a good day.”
“The jewel isn’t on this land,” Cole insisted.
“Guess we’ll see.”
“What makes you think Everett took it?” Boyd asked.
“He was the last one seen with Maggie, and the Cades don’t have it... If your family took the jewel, it’d explain the bump in business for Loveland Hills after Cora’s Tear went missing. Some say your family may have sold it and used the money to expand your operation. In that case, the jewel would be long gone... However, my preliminary research reveals no transactions or sightings of the infamous piece.”
“This investigation might stir up trouble between our families again. Discord we don’t need.”
Her heart squeezed when she spied Cole’s concerned expression, his gaze on his father. Boyd had gone through a lot, and Cole was loyal to those he loved.
When push came to shove, he’d picked his family, his ranch, his old life, over a new one with her.
“The truth will set you free,” Boyd said. “We need to lift this cloud. It’s been hanging over us for too long.”
“If Katie-Lynn proves Cora’s Tear was here, and our ancestors sold it—which I doubt—then we may as well give James Cade our ranch. We couldn’t pay back its worth.”
Katie-Lynn.
He refused to use her new name, see the person she’d become. Knowing Cole, this would be an ongoing battle of wills. “What’s James Cade got to do with it?”
At her question, Cole shot his father a warning look. “Pa...”
“She may as well know all.” Boyd’s lips drooped in the corners. “We’re on the brink of foreclosure. A while back James Cade privately offered to buy the ranch at full market value and rent it back to us. It’s a more than fair offer, considering what the bank would get at auction. We’ve put off giving him our answer, but we received the bank’s final notice yesterday. Your show’s compensation buys us a few more months. Otherwise we’d be deeding this land to James.”
“Keep that between us.” Cole’s face paled beneath his farmer’s tan.
A heaviness filled her at the thought of the proud, hardworking Lovelands losing their land. It’d be devastating, especially for Cole, who’d sacrificed for it. He’d wanted it above all else. Even her. “I promise. It’s off the record.”
“I trust Katlynn,” Boyd vowed. “She was almost family.”
Almost. Her eyes stung at his staunch support. She would have loved to be a part of the tight-knit Loveland clan, so unlike her own.
“If the public discovers our financial status, people will think Pa’s marrying another rich woman for her money.” Cole’s fingers drummed on the table.
Tom stomped inside. “Who’s marrying for money? Sounds interesting.”
“Just debating causes for the feud,” Katlynn temporized, and the tip of Cole’s boot touched her foot beneath the table. Her eyes flew to his, and she melted a little at the glimmer of warmth in their blue depths.
“Throw in as much scandal as you can, and we’ve got America hooked.”
Cole’s eyes narrowed on Tom, shooting sparks.
“We’ll only report verifiable facts,” she hurried to assure Cole and Boyd.
“And speculate on those we can’t,” Tom cut in, not helping at all. “And you’re right, Katlynn. We are in the middle of nowhere. Can’t get a signal.”
“Could use the landline.”
Boyd pointed to a rotary phone mounted on the wall beside a cuckoo clock as old as the house.
Tom studied it a moment, then gingerly lifted the handset, turning it every which way. “Where are the buttons?”
Cole lifted an eyebrow as the left edge of his lips tipped up in an amused smile, his silent “can you believe this” look.
She flared her nose and scrunched her eyes, her old expression for “Shut it.” Then she flattened her lips to keep from smiling back at him.
She was here to work. Not flirt. Especially with an ex capable of shaking her hard-won confidence.
Tires crunched on the rocky drive outside. Tom peered through the window then whirled. “Good. The director’s found us. Mr. Loveland, would you show us the lay of the land? We need to scout the property for potential shots.”
“You got it.” Boyd grabbed his coat and shoved his arms through its sleeves. “It’d be a relief to resolve the feud before the wedding.” Boyd settled a wide-brimmed brown rancher’s hat over his head. “I’m hoping to make us all one happy family.”
“I should have said congratulations right away, Mr. Loveland.” She hugged Boyd and breathed in the comforting smell of his Old Spice cologne.
“Katlynn, you know to call me Boyd. Could have been Pa if you two had worked out.”
Tom’s openmouthed expression was quickly replaced by a speculative stare. “You were engaged to him?” He pointed at Cole, who rose to his full, towering height. “I mean. That’s a surprise. No judgment.” He backed through the door away from the advancing giant. “I’ll meet you outside, Mr. Loveland.” And with that, he scurried away.
“Twitchy guy, ain’t he?” Boyd observed, pulling on his gloves.
“Twitchy?” Katlynn almost laughed to hear the Hollywood power player reduced to those terms. Must be the Rocky Mountains effect. It put everything into perspective.
“Pa’s got it right.” Cole’s boots clomped on the wide-planked floor as he neared. “Want me to ride out with you?”
“No. Check on the heifer and calf after Katlynn’s finished her coffee.”
“I’m done with it.” Panic rose at being alone with Cole. “I’ll ride with you.”
Boyd’s gaze dropped to her designer heels. “You’re not dressed for the climbing we’ll be doing, let alone riding. Besides, you said you wanted to start interviewing family. Sierra will be in some time this morning. Daryl, too.”
“Thanks, Mr.... I mean, thanks, Boyd.” She turned to Cole with a sinking heart.
Great.
Just great.
Who didn’t want to rehash ancient history with the man who’d shattered her once fragile heart?
* * *
COLE MANEUVERED THE ATV around another rut a few minutes later, careful not to bounce the vehicle or spew dirt up at Katie-Lynn—Katlynn—since her dress probably cost more than he made in a month. Maybe two. Or three...
What did he know about dresses?
But this one looked expensive, like every inch of the new version of her he hardly recognized. Although, he had to admit she looked fine in the fitted black dress, her legs as long and sleek as he remembered.
“I’m sorry to hear your ranch is struggling,” she shouted over the roaring engine, her smooth platinum hair now wild, whipping around her flushed face in a golden-white stream.
“It’s not as bad as Pa made out,” his pride prompted him to holler back. Katie-Lynn was beautiful, successful and famous and who was he? A soon-to-be homeless cowboy with no prospects. Not exactly a catch by anyone’s standards, let alone a star like Katie-Lynn.
Not that he was looking to get caught...
But her knowing how low his family had fallen, financially, stung him hard.
He had to turn the ranch around without selling family secrets to the highest bidder and risking his father’s happiness. And he sure wasn’t selling to the Cades.
Katie-Lynn turned and mouthed something to him; he caught the word, “Foreclosure.”
He shook his head, keeping his eyes dead ahead in case they betrayed him, a trick he’d learned from a childhood spent keeping secrets. Katie-Lynn, on the other hand, had always lived her life out where anyone could see it, the good, the bad and the ugly, open and unafraid.
He’d admired that about her once.
Loved her for it.
Only now that trait might come back to bite him. If she revealed too much about their financial situation, shared it with the world, the Lovelands would never hold their heads up again in Carbondale, and his father’s chance at happiness might vanish if Joy changed her mind. He had to convince Katie-Lynn to back off the story.
He peered at her, briefly, from the corner of his eye, taking in the delicate slope of her nose, the soft curve of her cheek, the rounded point of her chin, and his heart eased. Beneath the war paint, she was still the girl who’d held his hand at his mother’s funeral, who’d kissed away his tears and listened as he’d rambled, raged and ranted during the most difficult time of his life. They used to climb up an ancient gnarled oak they’d dubbed their Say Anything tree and shout their problems to the wind, speaking everything they couldn’t say to anyone else.
Would she listen and agree to kill the story? Put him and his family ahead of her ambitions and career? She hadn’t before, but it was worth a shot.
A couple minutes later he parked the ATV by the calving shed, hurried around to Katie-Lynn’s side and helped her out. For a moment he stared deep into her blue eyes, and his heart stopped, the birds silenced, the wind stilled, and the entire world narrowed down to just her and the feel of her soft skin against his. He breathed in her expensive perfume and recalled her clean, cottony scent that used to remind him of laundry hung on a line to dry. Fresh and full of life.
“I miss the way you used to smell.”
He realized he said it out loud when her long lashes—artificial and alien-looking—blinked up at him. “You remember how I smelled?”
He forced himself to release her hand and nodded to the field behind the shed, heat stinging his cheeks. “The new calf’s over there,” he said gruffly.
She tilted her head and considered him for a long moment before nodding. “Let’s see it.”
His hand settled on the small of her back as he guided her across the uneven terrain. When they stopped at the fence, she climbed up one slat, heels and all, to lean over the top rail.
“Oh! He’s beautiful, isn’t he?” she breathed then turned her sparkling smile on him, full wattage. His mind seized like an overheating engine. Total meltdown. Speaking was clearly not an option. Luckily for him, Katie-Lynn had always been able to talk enough for them both.
“I love Brahmans,” she babbled on, and he closed his eyes and let his ears drink in the rushing, soothing sound. “They’ve always been my favorite. Their gray coats. The hump in their backs. So unique. Plus, they have the best temperaments. Look how sweet his mother is being to him. He’s nursing like a champ. When did you say he was born? Cole? You in there?”
His lids flew open. “A couple of hours ago.”
“Were you up all night watching her?”
He nodded.
Her nails, perfect red ovals to match her lipstick, lightly scraped his hand when she patted it. “You must be exhausted. I remember pulling those all-nighters with you. Remember the time when the calf was breach, and we turned it with the rope?”
“Surprised you remember.”
“There isn’t much I’ve forgotten about us.” She ducked her head and fiddled with the short zipper on the side of her dress.
He glanced at her bare ring finger, picturing the small, heart-shaped diamond he’d once placed there...the one still resting in his bedside drawer. “You’re not married?”
“No. Too busy for romance. You?”
He exhaled the air stuck in his lungs. What was it to him if she dated anyone? Yet it mattered, more than it should. “Same.”
They watched the nursing calf in silence. The loamy smells of fresh earth and dew-tipped grass was in the air, and a crisp wind blew down from the mountains. “You got rid of the pool.”
“The year after you left.” He hid his wince, recalling their first date at his sixteenth birthday party and his mother’s drowning. Katie had been by his side when he’d found his mother.
Back then Katie-Lynn had chattered when he couldn’t speak, held him when he couldn’t stand and touched him when he couldn’t feel. She’d acted as his buffer, allowing him to deal with the world from a distance, filtered through her sunshine.
“A lot has changed since then.” The Brahman heifer bellowed when she spied them on the fence, protective of her newborn.
“Your freckles,” he observed, watching the calf suckle.
“Freckles?”
He cocked his head and studied Katie-Lynn’s smooth, flawless skin. It resembled porcelain—fragile and untouchable—so unlike the country girl-next-door he’d known. Loved. “What happened to them?”
“My plastic surgeon lasered them off.” She said it like someone might say, “My dentist cleaned my teeth.” As though having a plastic surgeon was no big deal, and maybe it wasn’t in Hollywood.
“Why do you have a plastic surgeon?”
“To make me beautiful.”
He shook his head, marveling. “You already were pretty.”
He preferred pretty to beautiful the way he liked a daisy better than an orchid. One was fresh, open and bright. The other was perfect, waxy and exotic, which was why people prized them, he guessed. He’d always been more partial to natural wonders.
“Not pretty enough. Not by Hollywood standards.” She ran her hands through her tousled strands, smoothing them flat to her skull like a ribbon of golden silk.
“Why’d you dye your hair?”
“Platinum looks better on screen. You don’t like it?” Her teeth appeared on her bottom lip, white against scarlet, and he had the crazy urge to kiss her lipstick off to reveal her natural rose mouth underneath.
“It’s different. I liked it darker. Honey-brown.”
She tilted her face to the sun and closed her eyes. “I’m different.”
“I noticed.” She’d changed, and he hadn’t, living a hermit’s life except for volunteering at Fresh Start, a local rehab and mental health facility, and working the ranch with two of his siblings, Heath and Daryl. The chasm that’d opened between him and Katie-Lynn when they’d argued over their wedding yawned again at his feet, still too wide to be spanned.
“Wow! I forgot what cold felt like!” Katie-Lynn’s dress collar lifted in the wind and she hugged herself, shivering. His arm wrapped around her shoulders protectively, settling her against him, warm and snug. The remembered feel of her, the seamless fit, the sense of completeness, returned to him, sharp and sweet. Then she ducked away and slid a small distance down the fence. “I’m sorry your dad sprang me on you.”
“If I’d known, I never would’ve let you come.”
She fussed with the black-and-white concentric rings encircling her neck on a silver chain. “Why’s that?”
He hesitated a second. “Because I would have asked you... Heck...I am asking you to stop this production before it starts.”
Her perfectly shaped eyebrows came together as she frowned. “I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. You’re the star.”
“I don’t have that kind of power.”
His breath hissed between clenched teeth, and he forced himself to simmer down. “Who came up with this idea?”
She stiffened. “I did.”
Her words knocked thought clean out of his head, so he stared at her, mute.
“I’m sorry, Cole. I am.” She sighed and stuffed her hands in her pockets. “I would never have come back unless...”
“Unless what?” he managed, reeling. She’d dealt his family this blow on purpose. She’d caused it, just like the wound she’d inflicted when she walked away from him and the life he’d offered.
“Nothing.” She stared straight ahead again. Overhead, barn swallows swooped and dived against a cloudless sky.
“Katie-Lynn—”
She held up a hand, interrupting him. “It’s Katlynn now.”
“Not for me. Because Katie-Lynn knows, better than anyone, why my family doesn’t need media digging up old secrets. Tell them you did some investigating and the story’s fake.”
“You’re in foreclosure. You need this money.”
He looked down at her; she was staring at the mother and calf. “I need my pa to have a peaceful, happy wedding. Quiet and uneventful.”
“Sounds like the one you wanted for us.”
He pointed to Mount Sopris, where one lonely hawk circled. “On a mountaintop, just our families and the preacher. What was wrong with that?”
Their disagreements while planning the wedding had revealed fundamental differences. Katie-Lynn wanted a large affair too showy for him. Worse, he would have gone into debt funding it given his family’s limited means.
“You knew how much I wanted a big wedding. Lots of people.”
“Lots of strangers,” he interjected. “People just coming for cake and booze. Why want them there?”
“Because I wanted them to know I was there. No one ever noticed me, and I wanted my wedding to be different. Just one day where I felt special, but you didn’t understand that, or me.”
“You wanted everyone’s attention. I wasn’t enough.” Because of their wedding arguments, he’d sensed, deep down, she’d never be content with the quiet, humble life he was prepared to offer.
“It’s the other way around,” she insisted. “You didn’t love me enough to move to LA when I got the job offer.”
“You knew me better than anyone else. Tell me...would I have liked it in LA?”
Just weeks before their nuptials, she’d received a major network job offer she couldn’t resist. When he told her he didn’t feel comfortable leaving the ranch, which had hit a rough patch, they’d called off the wedding. She couldn’t understand why he felt more responsible for taking care of the ranch than being with her, and he couldn’t understand why she cared more about a job than him... Clearly their priorities hadn’t been in sync.
Now as much as then it seemed...
They studied each other for a long moment then she shook her head, her face an open wound. He was pretty sure he didn’t look much better. “You’d hate it there.”
“And you hated living here. Deep down I knew this wasn’t the life you wanted. You love the spotlight and I’m...”
“Closed off,” she finished for him. “We were too young to make such a big decision.”
A gust of wind fluttered a strand of hair across her face, and he gently tucked it behind her ear. “We’re lucky we avoided making a big mistake.”
“Very lucky,” she said quietly, sounding immensely sad.
“Will you talk to someone about canceling the episode?”
“I can’t.”
He reined in his frustration. “Then promise me this won’t turn into a circus. You’ll stick to the feud story and nothing else. Not my mother’s suicide or the ranch’s troubles.”
“I’ll follow wherever the story takes me, and I’ll do my best to prevent anything from harming your pa’s big day. I care about him, too.”
“I guess we still have that in common at least.”
Then she smiled, just a flash, and something moved in Cole’s chest. Something warm, and something he hadn’t felt in a long time. “Let’s go back,” she said, jumping from the fence.
He paused to study the mother and calf a moment longer, his mind on Katie-Lynn and the danger she posed...not just to his family, but to his susceptible heart if he wasn’t careful.
CHAPTER THREE (#uf565d4ba-a430-5d93-8122-1534b2b84435)
LATER IN THE AFTERNOON Katlynn knocked on her parents’ screen door and peered into the modest, cluttered home. Strange how small it looked. Foreign. She was the outsider looking in.
“Hello?” she called for the third time. “Anybody home?”
She paused and listened for footsteps.
In the distant kitchen, red-orange flames curled beneath a kettle set on a gas stove. Open cereal boxes, empty bottles of soda and scattered corn chips littered the counters. Flies buzzed around a thawing package of ground beef. When was the last time this place had been cleaned? She made a mental note to contact a local housekeeping service for her arthritic mother.
“It’s Katlynn!” she hollered.
Steam rose from the kettle, and her nose curled at the smell of burning plastic. What was cooking? White foam frothed over the pot’s lid and spilled down its sides, sizzling when it hit the grate.
“You’re going to start a fire!” Katlynn dashed inside. She leaped over children’s toys as she crossed the living room’s obstacle course, skidded to a stop before the stove and flicked off the burner.
The volcano of lather settled, revealing baby bottles, teething rings and, inexplicably, one warped plastic flip-flop.
“Fire? Who said fire?”
Katlynn twisted around and spied her mother. Her short hair was smashed flat against one side of her skull as if she’d been sleeping or lying down. White frizz sprung from the opposite side, fluffy as a seeded dandelion. An oversize housecoat covered all but her sharp collarbones, bony elbows and swollen ankles.
“I handled it, Ma.” Katlynn bussed her mother’s creased cheek. “Why are you boiling a flip-flop?”
“Frankie’s teething. It’s his favorite chew toy.” Her mother brushed past Katlynn and poured the kettle’s contents into a strainer perched atop a stack of dishes in the sink. “What are you doing home? You didn’t lose your job, did you?”
“I’m taping episodes here.”
Katlynn used every facial muscle trick to keep her expression neutral. Lose her job... What a crazy idea...only it wasn’t, not with Scandalous History on the chopping block. Everyone associated with the show, from the producer down to the maintenance crew, depended on her to pull off a hit, a story brimming with intrigue and scandal, all the while not harming the Lovelands’ truce with the Cades or creating a media storm.
She’d promised.
And she never went back on her word.
Except once, as Cole reminded her.
Spending time with him this morning had been like stepping into the past. She’d felt disoriented, her perspective turned upside down, her body, her feelings, her thoughts, drawn to Cole. When he’d held her, briefly, she’d wanted to lay her head on his broad shoulder and share her troubles the way she once had. But that’d be owning up to failure, something her pride wouldn’t allow.
“This is a nice surprise.” Her mother pulled open the fridge and stooped to rummage inside it. A moment later she produced a box of animal crackers.
“You refrigerate those?”
“Timmy likes to eat them cold.”
As if on cue, Katlynn’s nephew galloped past her and tugged on his grandmother’s hem. “Are you gonna play with me, Grammy?”
“Hey, Timmy.” Katlynn scooted down to his height and mussed his wispy brown hair. “I’m your aunt Katlynn.”
The four-year-old buried his face in her mother’s housecoat then peeled back the material to peek at her, one-eyed.
“Who’s that?” he whispered loudly.
“Your aunt, honey.” Her mother smoothed down his cowlick. “Why don’t you give her a hug?”
“No.” Timmy snatched the animal crackers and bolted down the short hall to the house’s three bedrooms.
“Don’t mind him. He’s just never seen you before.” Her mother motioned for Katlynn to follow her into the living room then shoved a pile of coupon flyers off the couch, clearing a space.
The sofa sagged to the ground as Katlynn dropped into it. She hauled herself back to the edge and examined the shabby furnishings, dismayed by the conditions. Crate boxes served as a TV stand for the old set. A shadeless table lamp, its lightbulb exposed, stood on the floor beside a torn armchair. Stuffing spilled from the back of the seat and covered the matted maroon carpet as if it’d snowed.
“How are you, Ma? Did you get my check last week?”
“Keeping busy. Haven’t had a chance to deposit it yet, but thank you. Though you know you don’t have to do that.”
“I know,” Katlynn assured her mother. “It makes me feel good to help out.” Since her father’s work injury a couple years ago, her parents survived on his disability checks and Katlynn’s contributions, which, she now saw, were woefully inadequate. She’d instruct her assistant to send three times the amount.
What would happen to them if Katlynn’s show was canceled? Her determination to nail this episode rammed into a higher gear. The Cade-Loveland segment would be the show of the season...no...the series.
Her ma patted Katlynn’s knee with a gnarled hand, the sight raising her alarm. Her crooked fingers looked worse than she remembered. “You’ve always been a hard worker. Had your first job when you were, what? Eleven?”
“Ten,” Katlynn corrected, gripping her mother’s stiff hand.
“That’s right. You were cutting lawns with that old rotary push mower you found in the shed. Never knew how you had the strength to haul it around the neighborhood.”
“We all pitched in back then. Pa said every bit counted. Is he here?”
“Keith ran him to Denver for an MRI.” Ma pinched a couple of yellow fronds from a fern plant in a ceramic baby shoe.
“Is his back worse?”
“Same. It’s just an annual checkup.”
“Did you get my messages?” Katlynn glanced around for the phone but spied only an empty jack. “I called the landline and your iPhone. You still have it, right?”
“Sorry, honey. I know it was a Christmas gift, but I couldn’t figure it out. Plus, we hardly ever get reception out here so I gave it to John.”
Katlynn’s oldest brother—who hadn’t relayed her voice mail messages. Typical. “I’ll buy you another while I’m in town and show you how to use it.”
Her mother shook her head. “I don’t want you wasting your money on us. It’s best if you keep it in the bank. You never know when you’re going to need it.”
Katlynn stared at her. When was the last time anyone refused her gifts? How strange to be around someone who wanted nothing from her. “Let me worry about that, Ma.”
Still. Her mother had a point. If the show was canceled, she’d be out of work for who knew how long before she landed her next gig. She’d gotten lucky to even win an audition for Scandalous History. After her agent’s mother’s bridge partner mentioned her son’s project, a historical investigation show, she’d sent in Katlynn’s head shots and CV, which included her double major in broadcasting and history.
During the audition, Katlynn and the executive producer connected over their shared love of Wild West lore, a conversation that continued over lunch and ended in her being offered the plum job the following week.
Digging into an old-time-Western family feud was exactly the kind of story to fire her imagination and, hopefully, the audience’s. Regardless of her irritating attraction to her ex, she’d savor this project, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to solve a historical mystery.
“Can I get you anything to eat?” Ma’s deep-set eyes ran over Katlynn. “You look too thin.”
Her mouth dropped open before she caught herself. “I’m good, thanks. Don’t go to any bother.”
When was the last time she’d eaten a home-cooked meal?
The stick-to-your-ribs kind?
Every LA restaurant seemed to be vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free places where ordering a steak felt like a felony.
Her mouth watered just thinking about juicy barbecue.
“It’s no trouble. Hardly ever have time to spend with any one of my kids, so when I do, it’s a treat.”
Katlynn’s eyes stung, and she threw her arms around her mother, pulling her close, smelling the fresh scent of the outdoors on her housecoat.
“What’s that for?” Ma asked when Katlynn released her, smiling.
“I love you.”
“I love you, too, honey. Wish I’d known you were coming. I’d have cleaned up the place. It’s been a little crazy around here lately, plus my arthritis is acting up. The change in weather always gets me.”
“I wish you’d let me fly you out to LA. I know some wonderful doctors who—”
“Dr. Walker’s treated our family for generations. He knows me better than any of those fancy doctors. I’m just fine, honey. So, tell me about you. What kind of story are you doing here?”
“I’m investigating the Cade-Loveland feud.”
Her ma’s hands rose to cover her rounded mouth. “Have you seen Cole?” she said through her fingers.
“Yes.”
“How’d it go?”
“Fine. We’re both adults.”
Liar. You mooned over him the moment you saw him again.
“As long as you’re okay. Always hoped you made the right choice, but here you are, famous and all. Guess you got what you wanted in the end.”
“Right,” Katlynn agreed briskly. If she’d gotten everything she wanted, though, why did she spend thousands talking to a life coach and a therapist about her loneliness?
“I have to meet with my production team in a bit, but I wanted to stop by and ask if I could stay here while we’re filming. The Holsford Hotel double-booked my suite, and they don’t have any other rooms.”
“Did you talk to Frank or Joanie?” her mother asked, naming the owners of the small town’s only hotel. It’d been in operation for almost a hundred years and conjured up a glimpse of the Old West with its painted facade and saloon-style reception area.
“Yes, and they apologized for the mix-up and offered to boot the other people who booked it. Except it’s a newlywed couple, and I can’t ruin their honeymoon.”
“I see.” Her mother chewed on her lip a moment, and the horizontal lines cleaving her forehead deepened. “It’s only... Michelle and her three kids just moved back. She caught Benny cheating on her. Again. And your brother Martin lost his job, so I put him up in the basement. Keith still hasn’t moved out, so...”
“You don’t have room for me.”
“I’d put you up on the couch, only Keith’s friend Steve is sleeping on it. They’re starting up a medicinal cannabis operation.”
“Cannabis?” Katlynn echoed, noticing grow lights piled in the hall along with clay pots.
Her mother nodded, pride lighting her eyes. “He’s finally found something he’s passionate about. Said it’s his calling. Plus, it’ll help lots of people. Who would have thought your brother would go into farming? Once he gets the plants started, he’ll transfer them into the field behind the corn. Says they grow better in the middle of another crop.”
“You realize cannabis is the scientific name for marijuana, right?”
Her mother’s eyes bulged. “Like the drug?”
“Just like it.”
“That bugger...” Red flamed in Ma’s cheeks. “And here I told the church knitting group all about it. They’re fixing to be Keith’s first customers, after me, since he said it’s good for arthritis. Now what’ll I tell ’em?”
“Plans changed. Plus, it’s legal in Colorado. Just make sure Keith has a license to sell it.”
Her ma sank back into the couch. “How’d you get so smart?”
“It’s genetic.” Katlynn kissed her mother’s cheek and rose.
A baby wailed, a startled cry as if waking from a nap. With a heave, her mother freed herself from the sofa and stood. “Shoot. That’s Frankie. I watch the kids during the day while Michelle’s at work. She got a promotion, you know. Heading up the bakery section at the grocery store.”
Katlynn smiled at her mother. She took equal pride in her children’s accomplishments, no matter what they did. How strange to be treated like everyone else. No one rushing to compliment her, fetch her favorite drink, roll out the red carpet... If she’d expected a big fuss, a celebration to welcome the returning, prodigal child, she was very mistaken.
Yet it didn’t hurt like she’d imagined. Instead, the sense of being no one special, out of the limelight’s glare, loosened her muscles and made her breathe easier, despite her evil shapewear. “Michelle was always the best at birthday cakes.”
The baby’s wails escalated into a screech.
“I’ll be by tomorrow, if that’s okay.”
“Anytime, honey, you know that. Only, your brother John’s working a double, so I’ll have his four kids. And your aunt Betty’s dropping by because her grandchildren like to play with two of John’s boys so—”
“It’ll be busy,” Katlynn finished for her, resigned to the fact that her mother’s schedule was, as always, too full to fit her. “How about you call me when things are a little less crazy. You have my number.”
Her ma pointed at a scrap of paper stuck to the cluttered refrigerator by a marijuana leaf magnet. “I’ll fix your favorite meal. Chicken and biscuits.”
“Thanks, Ma. That’d mean a lot,” Katlynn said, even though Michelle was partial to the meal, not her. “And you know the magnet’s a marijuana leaf, right?”
“Keith got them at some convention in Denver...” Her mother’s eyes widened. “And I gave some out at the church group. What’ll they think of me?”
“That you’re a sinner in need of penance.”
“Glory be.” Her mother sighed. “You sure you’ll find a place to stay?”
Katlynn opened the screen door, stepped outside and turned. “I’ll be just fine. No need to worry about me.”
Her mother patted her on the cheek. “Nope. Could always count on you to never give us a moment’s worry. It’s what made you special.” And with that, she hurried after the baby, leaving Katlynn staring after her, mouth agape.
Not needing her parents’ attention, not causing them concern, had made her stand out? She’d always done her best not to add herself to their list of things “to handle,” but it’d never occurred to her they’d noticed.
Inside her rented sedan, she reviewed her housing choices.
Staying in a Denver hotel meant an hour-plus commute every day, not to mention her hair and makeup team remained at the Holsford Hotel.
Tom had offered to share his suite with her, but he had a reputation, as well as two ex-wives. She’d been in the business long enough to understand offers like his also came with expectations and gossip-rag headlines.
Which left Boyd’s offer to stay at Loveland Hills. Eyes on her back-up monitor, she reversed out of the twisting driveway and onto the gravel road. The powerful engine purred as she pressed on the gas and zipped around the shoulderless curves.
If she accepted, she’d have greater access to the story—a plus. On the other hand, she’d also be near Cole, and the show demanded all her focus—a big negative.
Could she stay at Cole’s house and keep her professional distance?
She met her eyes in the car mirror, her nerves jumping in her stomach. She’d worked too hard, on herself and her career, to be swayed by an old flame. Whatever feelings she’d experienced today were just echoes from the past. They had no bearing on her life now...she wouldn’t let them.
She blew out a long breath then spoke to the car’s AI system.
“Siri, dial Loveland Hills Ranch.”
* * *
“KATIE-LYNN’S STAYING HERE?” Cole paced in his family’s kitchen, clenched hands shoved in his pockets.
“Her mother doesn’t have room for her.” Boyd swiped a washed plate with a towel and slid it into the rack above the sink.
Cole grabbed a dish towel and thrust it inside a glass, swirling it as he imagined Katie-Lynn sniffing around the place, exposing all their secrets. “I don’t like it.”
“I think it’s awesome!” Sierra breezed into the kitchen in a cloud of her orange-blossom scent, her blond hair wet from her shower, her red cowboy boots matching the sleeveless blouse topping her floral, ruffled skirt. She plucked the dried cup from Cole’s hand and stowed it in a glass-fronted cabinet. “Finally, another female to balance things out around here. Plus, she was my friend before you stole her, Cole.”
“What’s your objection?” Boyd slid another plate into its slot on the drying rack. “Do you still have feelings for her?”
“No!” He choked out his response, his throat tightening around the automatic denial.
Sierra thumped him on the back. “Not buying that, big brother.”
“I haven’t thought about her since she left.” He swiped at his stinging eyes, filled a glass of water and drained it.
“Then why haven’t you dated anyone else?” asked his younger brother Heath, joining them. He carried his six-string slung across his back, one of the guitars he handcrafted as a hobby when he wasn’t ranching or gigging at local honky-tonks.
“Too busy keeping track of you troublemakers.”
Heath shook longish bangs out of his purple-blue eyes. “That’s your story?”
“Yep. And I’m sticking to it.” Cole caught Sierra’s eye-roll. Why did they think he pined for Katie-Lynn all these years?
Because you have been...
The heart-shaped diamond engagement ring still in his nightstand called him out—just as loudly as Sierra and Heath.
But seeing her today, noticing how much she’d changed, proved that even if he had carried a torch, it’d been for a girl who no longer existed. Katlynn was someone he didn’t know.
“I’m heading out for my sound check.” Heath donned a brown cowboy hat and curved its brim. “See you two there?”
“We wouldn’t miss it. You’re doing the new set, right?” Sierra placed the last glass in the cabinet and shut its door.
“Classics and originals.” Heath shot them a quick smile then ducked outside.
“He’s nervous,” Sierra observed, hooking a pot on the rack above their table.
“Don’t know why he wastes his time with those songs,” Pa grumped. “Ain’t like he’s going to Nashville or getting famous.”
“He’s not trying to be a country star, Pa.” Cole sprayed cleaning fluid over the cleared table and rubbed a paper towel over it, gathering crumbs.
“And what if he was? What’s so wrong about that?” Sierra huffed, one fist on her hip.
“It’s a road full of disappointment,” Pa observed quietly.
Silence swelled, heavy enough to ache, as they finished the after-dinner cleaning. Cole supposed they all thought of Ma and how her unfulfilled dream to sing professionally drove her to drink. She’d taught Heath to play guitar and fiddle, the only one of her children interested in music...or who’d shown any talent for it. The rare times Cole saw her smiling, heard her laughing, was when she and Heath played together, those music sessions usually followed by even heavier drinking.
“You kids ruined my life!” she’d scream, stumbling around the ranch, searching for her stash of booze. “I wish you’d never been born.”
Or...
“You trapped me!” She’d sometimes hit his father while hurling accusations. “Got me pregnant so I’d be stuck on this miserable ranch.”
Cole must have made a noise because Sierra’s hand pressed his, yanking him back to the present, away from the mother who’d blamed him, her oldest child, for all her woes, for holding her back from her dreams. “Cole? You okay?”
“Fine.”
“Anybody home?” called a familiar, beautiful voice.
His body clenched as if bracing for a blow.
“In here, Katie-Lynn!” shouted Sierra, still staring up into his face. “Sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine,” he muttered under his breath, needing his sister to move her eagle eye off him. “And she’s Katlynn now.”
When Katie-Lynn appeared in the kitchen, Sierra flung herself across the space and hugged her old friend tight. “Good to see you, girl!”
“You, too.” Katie-Lynn’s eyes met Cole’s over his sister’s shoulder, and he ducked his head and draped his damp towel over the drying rack. “Thanks for letting me stay, Mr. Love—”
She broke off when Boyd waved a spatula at her.
“Boyd,” she amended with a slight catch in her voice. Cole glanced up and caught the pretty flush rising in her cheeks, her eyes still on him.
“Want to come line-dancing with us? Heath’s playing, and he’s doing some originals, too.”
“Oh—uh—I’m not sure,” Katie-Lynn wavered, her gaze now shadowed by her long, lowered lashes.
“It’ll be fun,” Sierra implored.
Katie-Lynn smoothed a hand over her sleek black dress, drawing his attention to the lush curves beneath the expensive fabric. Unwelcome heat flared inside him. “I’m not exactly dressed for the Hoedown Throwdown.”
“I’ll loan you something. We’re probably still the same size.” Sierra stepped back, sizing Katlynn up. “Give or take.”
“Um. I have interviews set up in the morning, so I should probably just go on up to bed.”
“At eight o’clock?” Sierra scoffed, ever the dog on a bone when she wanted something bad enough. As the only girl among five brothers, she’d learned fast how to assert herself.
“She’s too fancy for country line-dancing,” Cole heard himself say, the words flying from his tongue without his permission.
“Excuse me?” A slight twang entered Katie-Lynn’s voice as it rose a half octave. “I’ve probably forgotten more steps than you’ll ever know.”
“Those sound like fighting words,” Boyd observed, leaning against the counter.
Cole stepped close and Katie-Lynn angled her face up to his, her chin jutting. “I don’t believe you.”
“Want to bet?” Katie-Lynn challenged, her cool, controlled mask slipping. Before him stood the competitive country girl who used to dare him to climb trees as high as her, race horses as fast, catch as many trout. And he’d lost almost as often as he’d won. Not that he’d cared. Then.
“You’re on,” he said, unable to resist her sparkling eyes.
“It’s a dance-off!” Sierra rubbed her hands together. “And I’ll be the judge. Cole, what are you betting?”
“If I win, Katie-Lynn finds another place to stay.”
Katie-Lynn’s head shake silenced his father’s and Sierra’s protests. “No need to worry. I’m not planning on losing.” Her nose flared, and her left eyebrow twitched up.
“What’ll you get if you win?” Sierra smacked Cole with a death-by-glare look.
“TBD,” Katie-Lynn announced, her radiant expression mischievous and daring. His breath caught at the glimpse of the gutsy girl he’d fallen for years ago. “Come on, Sierra. Show me some jeans. The real kind without a designer label.”
And with that, the two women disappeared up the stairs, leaving Cole to stare after them.
“What’s TBD mean?” his father asked.
TBD. To be determined. Which could mean anything. He had to win this dance-off and get the intriguing Katlynn Brennon as far from him as possible. She’d already messed with his head and his heart enough for one lifetime.
He hung his head and peered up at his pa.
“It means I’m a dang fool.”
CHAPTER FOUR (#uf565d4ba-a430-5d93-8122-1534b2b84435)
“COLE LOVELAND?”
At his name, Cole stopped inside the Silver Spurs’ entrance and peered into the throng of country-western-dressed locals. The dim, one-room honky-tonk was packed. Overhead fans stirred humid air reeking of beer, sweat and peanuts while cowboys and cowgirls jammed the old-time wooden bar. In the far corner, his brother Heath, wearing a black T-shirt with sleeves shoved up to his shoulders, ripped through a guitar solo, sending his hovering female fans into a tizzy of squeals and shrieks.
“Is that you?” Ted Jansen, an old high school buddy, stomped up and clapped Cole on the back.
“Unfortunately,” Cole muttered under his breath. Nothing against Ted. He just wasn’t much for talking to people. Or just plain talking.
“Haven’t seen you in so long—thought you were dead or something.” Ted’s whiskey-scented laugh blasted Cole. Beside him, Katie-Lynn coughed into her hand.
“Or something,” Sierra drawled, elbowing Cole. “My brother isn’t much for socializing.”
“That’s an understatement,” Travis spoke up, joining them with their adopted brother Daryl. Travis hooked his thumbs into his belt loops and planted his boots wide on the scuffed wooden floor. “Cole only leaves home to volunteer at Fresh Start. Otherwise, he’s a hermit.”
“Recluse has a nobler ring to it.” Sierra shot Cole a sideways smile beneath the lantern lights dangling from an exposed-beam ceiling.
He could feel Katie-Lynn studying him, sensed the warm blue of her eyes touching his jaw like a caress. Slipping a finger into his shirt collar, he pulled it from his heated neck.
“Walking dead’s closer to it.” Daryl lifted his black cowboy hat to reveal brown curls plastered against his forehead before settling it on again. “Just barely alive.”
“Knock it off,” Cole growled, accepting a beer from Ted. He tossed back a long drink.
“You can dish it out, but you can’t take it,” Katie-Lynn teased.
The Western twang creeping into her voice again made him bite back the smile he’d been fighting since she’d emerged from his sister’s room dressed in faded Wranglers, dusty boots and a plaid shirt with fringe piping on the sleeves. She looked downhome and pretty, her hair back in a French braid, her red lipstick swapped for clear gloss over naturally rosy lips.
“When do I dish it out?” he protested, dragging his eyes off her pretty mouth.
“Puh-lease,” guffawed Travis.
“All. The. Time!” exclaimed Sierra.
“Like I said, no sense of humor.” Daryl turned slightly and whistled. “Katie-Lynn? You’re looking good, girl!”
“So are you. Congratulations. Heard you got married. Is your wife here?”
Katie-Lynn bestowed one of her killer smiles on Daryl. Cole pinned his eyes on the rollicking band, trying—and failing—to tune her out.
“No... I...uh...she’s not feelin’ herself tonight.” At the note of sadness creeping into Daryl’s voice, Cole turned to study his brother. Daryl and his wife’s marital troubles weren’t hard to miss given she alternated between sulky pouts and sharp put-downs on the few occasions she accompanied Daryl anywhere. But it wasn’t Cole’s business to stick his nose in, so he kept quiet. Didn’t stop him from worrying about his brother, though.
Not one bit.
“Now I see why you came out tonight, Cole.” Ted half mauled, half hugged Katie-Lynn, stumbling slightly when Cole pulled her from the man’s grip. “You two, together again. Never would have believed it.”
Travis’s eyes dropped to the arm Cole wrapped around Katie-Lynn, then rose to meet Cole’s gaze.
Katie-Lynn jerked free. “I’m here on business.”
“What kind of business?” Ted leered, winking.
“Easy.” Cole glared at Ted.
“Hey, she’s your lady.” Ted backed off. “I get it.”
“No, she’s not!” Cole hollered at Ted’s retreating back.
“Sure about that?” Travis grabbed Cole’s arm, stopping him, when the rest of the group departed for the dance floor. Katie-Lynn shot him an inscrutable, over-the-shoulder look before disappearing into the crowd.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I see the way you’ve been looking at Katie-Lynn.”
“What way’s that?”
“Like you’ve still got feelings for her.”
“Dead wrong.” Cole raised his bottle for a drink to shield his expression. Travis was as sharp-eyed as a hawk, reading people and situations in an instant. A good trait for a sheriff. Not so good in a brother when you were hiding something...
Was he covering up feelings for Katie-Lynn?
Attraction—yes. But emotions?
No.
Not a chance.
“I hope so.” Travis’s jaw squared. “Just remember what happened after she left you.”
“Nothing happened.”
“Except you disappearing for three months.”
“I was driving cattle.”
“Sleeping out on the range, never coming home...”
Cole drained the last of his dark malt and handed it to a passing waitress. “Are we done here, Sheriff?”
Travis pinned him with a steady, hard look before nodding. “You’re free to go...with a warning.”
“Which is?”
“Don’t repeat a mistake you already learned from. Anyone messes up once. Doing it twice is just plain stupid.”
“Stupid I’m not,” Cole said, eyeing Katie-Lynn’s animated face as she smiled up at another one of their old high-school friends, her hand on Lyle Carter’s arm.
It didn’t bother him. Not one bit. Yet he found himself closing the distance between them in fast, long strides. “Don’t mean to interrupt. Katie-Lynn, I believe this is our dance?”
Lyle tipped his head, returned another friend’s wave and headed to a crowded pool table.
“Hey... I was talking to him...” Katie-Lynn protested as Cole snagged her around the waist and guided her onto the dance floor.
“Who?” he asked, the side of his mouth hitching up when her expression went blank. “You don’t remember his name.”
“Of course I do.”
“Yeah? What is it?”
“It’ll come to me,” she grumbled.
“Thought you would have forgotten everything about Carbondale.”
“Not everything,” she said obliquely then lined up with the other dancers as Heath’s band swung into “Boot Scootin’ Boogie.” “In fact,” she shouted over the driving song, “I’m about to prove I remember more than you by winning our dance-off.”
“Good luck, darlin’,” Cole said in her ear. He tapped the floor with the heel of his left boot twice, then the right along with the hooting, clapping group on the dance floor. “You’ll need it.”
“Don’t think so,” Katie-Lynn hollered back, kicking her left heel up before turning with him, their bodies in sync.
“Not half bad.” They did a grapevine to the right, stopped and clapped. “For a Hollywood-type.”
Katie-Lynn rocked forward four steps, lassoing an invisible rope overhead. “What’s a Hollywood-type according to you?” she asked directly into his ear before they pivoted again.
“All about money. Fame.”
“Nothing wrong with being ambitious,” she shouted as they hopped backward. “You never got that.”
“What about fake?” he challenged once Heath strummed the last note on his six-string. “You changed who you were.”
“For the better.”
“That’s one opinion. Your freckles are scraped off.”
“Lasered.” She shoved loose strands of her white-blond hair off her glistening forehead and squared off against him. “And they’re not gone-gone. If I’m out in the sun without protection, they’ll come back.” She mock-shuddered.
“’Cause looking like your real self would be a fate worse than death, I’m supposing,” he drawled.
“Almost as bad as having to socialize with people instead of cows and cattle dogs,” she countered, her eyes glittering bright blue beneath a black fringe of lashes. “Right?”
“Guess we understand each other.”
A short, humorless laugh escaped her. “Doubtful.”
“Seein’ as we never did.”
“Except at our Say Anything tree,” she added.
Their gazes locked for a brief, heart-pounding moment before she suddenly got engrossed smoothing her shirt fringe.
Sierra gave them both a thumbs-up as Heath strummed the opening counts to “Achy Breaky Heart.” Cole clamped his jaw. He had to beat Katie-Lynn. Otherwise, he’d spend the next couple of weeks up close and personal with her while she bunked on his ranch.
Worse, he’d owe her some sort of favor.
TBD, she’d said.
To be determined...
As they slid, twirled and stomped through the Billy Ray Cyrus tune, his body was acutely conscious of her curvy form beside him. If he closed his eyes, he’d picture them doing these exact steps ten years ago, a couple in love and altar-bound. But love didn’t always guarantee happiness. His pa was a case in point. Close to the band, Boyd ushered Joy Cade through the song, repeating every step while keeping one protective hand on the small of her back.
Cole smiled at the sight of his father’s open, happy expression. It’d been a long time—if ever—since he’d seen Pa smile like that, no worry darkening his eyes, no concern deepening the lines on his face. He’d been miserable married to Cole’s mother, and deserved happiness at long last.
By reopening wounds and stirring up controversy, Katie-Lynn might mess up the former high school sweethearts’ second chance. She’d promised Pa to keep things aboveboard, but Cole wasn’t so trusting.
“You two can dance,” Sierra shouted once the song ended, fingers cupped around her mouth. “Too close to call yet.”
“Do I get extra points for style?” Katie-Lynn angled her borrowed, black, leather-tooled boots. “These feel like walking on clouds. I’m always in heels.”
Sierra laughed. “I don’t even own a pair.”
“Count yourself lucky,” Katie-Lynn insisted, sounding sincere. Cole’s forehead scrunched in confusion. Wasn’t wearing fancy clothes, looking like a star, why she’d left Carbondale? Him?
“Okay,” Heath hollered into his microphone. “This one’s for everybody who wants to be country for just one day!”
A roar practically lifted Silver Spurs’ tin roof. Katie-Lynn pressed close as people shoved by onto the dance floor. Instinctively, his arm clamped around her waist. His eyes nearly closed at the heavenly softness of her against his hard angles. How long since he’d held a woman?
Too darn long...
Not since Katie-Lynn, years ago.
A lifetime ago, it seemed.
His fingers strummed the length of her back, and she shivered, angling her face up to his, her eyes wide and hazy. The need to get her alone, to undo her braid, to kiss those lips, to smudge her polish, seized him hard.
Katie-Lynn slid left and flowed into the dance’s next move. Mind blank, Cole struggled to match her steps. Since he rarely went out, he’d never danced this newer song before.
Did that make him a hermit?
He jerked right then turned in the wrong direction, bumping into Travis, who shook his head and shot Cole an amused grin.
No. Cole was just private.
His family could tease all they wanted, but he was happy with his life.
An ache twisted through his heart as he eyed Katie-Lynn.
Happy, dang it.
“Wrong way!” His former principal, Miss Groover-Woodhouse, frowned and pointed him in the opposite direction.
When he whirled, he smacked into Katie-Lynn.

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