PROLOGUE

NINE MONTHS AGO

D UB

“Thank you so much for coming to visit with me in person. I was amazed when I saw your listings online, but they pale in comparison to what you brought over. The pieces you delivered today absolutely took my breath away, so I’m going to look through your catalog and choose some I’d like to keep on hand here,” the gallery owner, who was some sort of distant relation to my friend Si, said as she walked me toward the door. “Will you be driving back to Colorado this afternoon or staying in town?”

“I’m actually traveling through, but I won’t be leaving until after lunch with some of my family who lives here in town. As a matter of fact, I should go so I’m not late.” I stuck my hand out to shake hers and said, “It was a pleasure meeting you, Ms. Lincoln. I look forward to doing business with you.”

She shook my hand and said, “Call me Lexi. I have a feeling we’re going to have a long and successful partnership, and I’d like to start out as friends.”

“Thanks, Lexi. I’ll be in touch.”

“By the time you get back to your studio, I’ll have the list of items I would like to hang in the studio and the beginning of a custom order as well.”

“Really?”

Lexi smiled before she said, “You just took care of half of my Christmas list if you can finish what I need in time.”

“I guarantee you that I will do my very best. When you look at my catalog, you’ll find that I’ve got plenty of Christmas ornaments to choose from and take custom orders for those too.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No, ma’am.”

“That’s excellent,” Lexi said as the front door opened and a customer walked in. “Have a safe trip, Mr. Kingstone.”

“Thank you.”

I left the gallery walking on cloud nine, hopeful that this partnership - and the one that I had with a gallery in Springblood already - would become a lucrative business. I had never dreamed that a hobby could turn into a career, but with my sister’s encouragement, I’d given it a try and been pleasantly surprised.

The ride to the diner where I always met with my family was a short one, and I enjoyed looking around at the town where they lived. It wasn’t a small town by any means - roughly the size of Colorado Springs - but its small-town vibe was undeniable. There were lots of places in Texas that felt that way. After I was released from prison, I’d spent a few years here and loved the vibe of the place, even if the heat was a little much for a mountain-raised man like myself. The people I’d met during my stay in Texas had become lifelong friends and I went to see them often - sometimes only staying a day or two but longer when I could.

I parked in front of the diner next to a motorcycle I recognized as belonging to my cousin’s husband, so I knew Zeke and Lisa must already be inside. I hurriedly got off my bike and walked toward the diner, ready to have some great food while I hung out with my family.

◆◆◆

“How are you feeling?” I asked Pop, my friend who had helped me get on my feet when I was released from prison after serving sixteen years. When I went in, I was only sixteen years old, a naive child considering my background, but when I came out, I was a hardened criminal who had seen too much to ever be a regular citizen.

Pop and the rest of the men I’d become friends with understood my mentality and how hard it was for me to adjust to the outside world. They helped me do just that by giving me a safe place to live, a job that gave me a sense of pride, and friends I could rely on - something I’d never had growing up.

Since my sister was settled in Colorado with her husband, I stayed in Tenillo for a few years and never planned to leave. However, when Charlotte and Si decided to start a working ranch, I moved back to Colorado to help her get it started and ended up making it my home again. Luckily, it was only about ten hours away, a drive I could make in a day if I didn’t dawdle along the way like I had yesterday.

I had originally planned to leave Rojo in time to get to Tenillo, but our lunch turned into a three-hour chat that ended with an impromptu dinner party at my cousin's that included her brother and sister and all of their children and grandchildren. As nice as it was to catch up and see how well they’d done after leaving the compound where we grew up, I was glad to get on the road this morning for a little peace and quiet.

I was really glad to be at Pop’s now and excited to be staying with an old friend of mine until I left for home tomorrow morning.

“I feel just fine, but I’ve still got everyone up my ass about what I need, as if I don’t know myself. I haven’t lived this many years without being able to take care of myself, and I don’t think that’s changed in the last year.”

“You’re not exactly a spring chicken, Pop, and you did get shot a while back. I’ve been shot, and it wasn’t nearly as bad as what happened to you, yet it still took me a while to recover.”

“I’m fine, boy. All the men around here have fallen like dominos, but I’m lucky enough to be their women’s favorite old guy, so they treat me like a king. But that’s enough about me. Tell me what’s going on in your life, Dub. Have you found a good woman and settled down yet?”

“No.”

“All of you boys need to take a look at your lives and find what really matters. The love of a good woman makes every day better than the last. And it’s not too late for you to have children of your own.”

“I’ve got plenty of kids around me, Pop. My sister has half a dozen of my brothers living with her right now, and last year my mother and two youngest sisters moved in with me.”

“Those are your siblings, though. I’m talking about children of your own, and you know it.”

“I’m not sure I have room for a wife and kids at this point.”

“There’s always room for things that are important enough.”

“Do you get all over the other guys about settling down or just me?”

“Some of them are too far gone, so I don’t even try.”

“Which ones?”

“I’m not carrying tales. They might surprise me and settle down yet. I suppose we’ll have to wait and see.”

“I guess so.”

“You still riding?”

“Of course. I brought my truck this time because I had some business to take care of on the way.”

“Business?”

I blew out a long breath and smiled at my mentor. “You won’t believe what’s happened, Pop.”

“From the look on your face, I can tell that it’s all good.”

“It’s fantastic. I wouldn’t be where I am today without the helping hand you gave me to get started.”

“Bullshit, Dub. You’re a damn good man who got dealt a shit hand from the get-go. It’s about time the clouds cleared, and you found some sunshine in this shit world.”

“I’ve started taking in a steady income, and I have a home I’m proud to live in. I’d say that’s some sunshine.”

“Now you just need a good woman to share all that with.”

“And here we go again . . .”

◆◆◆

ELIZABETH

“I’ve made a final decision about your proposal,” I said as I looked down at my plate, moving around the food because I was too upset to eat. Sobie’s fork was almost to his mouth when he stopped and stared at me like a statue while Sway inhaled sharply and tensed in his seat. “Relax, guys. I’m not gonna melt down right here in the middle of the diner.”

“If you need to do that, we’ll keep you safe while you work through your emotions,” Sobie assured me.

I burst out laughing and asked, “Are you sure you don’t want to follow in your Aunt Val’s footsteps?”

Sobie’s smile lit up the room when he said, “I changed my major.”

“You’re kidding!”

“No. I’m gonna do it.” Sobie winced and said, “Well, I’m going to try to do it.”

“You’ll make a great psychologist, Sobie,” I assured him.

“You can do it, bro,” Sway said at the same time. Since this wasn’t news to him, Sway turned the conversation back to what we’d been talking about and said, “We’ve been trying to give you space to think about it, but we’re both dying to get things started, Beth.”

Sobie put his elbow on the table and leaned forward with a concerned look as he said, “I know you said you would never consider going back, but when we told you the plans we’d been mulling over, you seemed very interested.”

“We’ll back you regardless of what you decide. We just want you to do what makes you happy.” Sway assured me.

“I talked to a lawyer,” I admitted.

“Which one?” Sway asked, knowing it was likely someone he knew, considering there were several attorneys in his extended family that lived here in Rojo.

“My friend Trinity made an appointment with Petra for me, but she brought in Marcus since he’s done work in Colorado before.”

“And what did Uncle Marcus say?” Sobi asked before he took a sip of his orange juice.

“He said that he’d already spoken to your mom and drafted a contract for me to look over.”

Sobie smiled as Sway asked, “And did you?”

I sighed deeply before I said, “He gave me a copy, I read it at least a hundred times, and then I obsessed about it for a few weeks.”

“Crazy how that happens, huh?” Sway asked with a pointed look toward his brother.

The twins were as different as night and day in both looks and personality. Sway’s hair had turned dark auburn as he got older, but Sobie’s had stayed the same blue-black he’d inherited from me. Their facial features were much the same, a perfect blend of myself and the man whose DNA they shared. The older they got, the more of myself I saw in them. And even though I hadn’t raised them, there were times I recognized their habits and mannerisms as my own too.

Sway tended to be impulsive, which wasn’t like me at all, but Sobie was an overthinker, something I’d been accused of time and time again. Sway reminded me of my much younger self with his tenacity and stubbornness, traits that drove his mom and dad nuts at times.

For the first few years of their lives, I had been too busy trying to work through my grief and trauma regarding their conception and my pregnancy to see the boys in person, but I kept in touch with their mother by phone and video chat, which let me watch them grow from a comfortable distance. Finally, I was ready to meet them, and since then, I’d kept in close contact with the twins and developed a friendship with their parents.

Our visits were always here in town until last year when I forced myself to face my fears again and traveled to Colorado for their graduation. It was held in a small town called Springblood - just over the mountain from where I’d spent the year before their birth. The trip was cathartic, and I’d been back many times since then. I thought that I’d finally been able to process the horror of what happened to me during my last year living in Colorado.

When Sway and Sobie approached me with a proposition to expand my business by moving to Colorado and working on the land they owned with their siblings, I instantly declined. Sobie and Sway understood but said they’d give me some time to reconsider and urged me to think it through. They hadn’t mentioned the offer for three months, and then, sitting here in their grandmother’s diner, they’d asked again. By then, I had mulled things over, and if I was being honest, I’d admit that it had been hard to think about anything else.

One day on my morning run, I’d finally lost control of my emotions and collapsed into a heap of sobs and tears on the track. Luckily, my friend Trinity arrived just a few minutes later, ready to get in her morning exercise while she walked with me during my cooldown. She helped me to my feet before she took me straight to my therapist's office.

In the four months since that day, I’d worked hard to process my anger about what happened to me all those years ago and the grief that had stemmed from the loss of the promising life Troy Black yanked away when he kidnapped me. I worked through the helplessness I felt during my captivity and made some hard decisions that, in turn, dredged up a lot of shame because I had waited so long to confront the issues I’d long ignored.

Emerald, my therapist and a very good friend, along with Val - Sway and Sobie’s aunt who specialized in my kind of trauma and had also become a dear friend over the years, worked together to help me find my new normal. I went through a gamut of emotions for months, ranging from rage to grief to sadness that I’d never had children of my own. I finally came through on the other side with an understanding that I needed to take control again. The best way to do that was to move forward, even if it took me closer to the place where my worst nightmares had occurred.

“I’ve looked over the plans that the two of you presented and made a few changes, but overall, it was a sound idea that I believe will be perfect for what I want to do.”

“When do you want to meet with Mom about leasing the land?” Sway asked as he picked up his phone and scrolled through his contacts to find her name.

“I’ve already talked to her,” I told them with a grin. “We got everything ironed out and . . .” I took a deep breath and blew it out before I said, “I’ll be moving to Colorado within the next year.”

“Yes!” Sway and Sobie yelled in unison.

I smiled as I looked around and realized that most of the people in the diner were looking at us now. For some reason, one particular man caught my eye, probably because he wasn’t smiling like everyone else who were watching the twins’ exuberance. We made eye contact across the room, and it seemed that his bright blue eyes could see into my soul. I felt my heart stutter before it began to race.

I wondered who the man was and felt a moment of sadness when I realized I’d probably never find out since I was about to uproot my life in Rojo, Texas to go back to Colorado Springs where my next adventure would hopefully outweigh all the awful memories that area held for me.

A split second before I looked away, the man tilted his head and a slow smile spread across his face.

“Beth!” Sway said just a second before he touched my arm.

I looked over at him and smiled before I was drawn into an excited conversation about our plans. Several minutes passed before I looked up to find the handsome man again.

I tried to brush off the feeling of sadness when I saw that his table was empty and I’d missed my chance to see him one last time. It didn’t matter anyway. My casual existence was speeding toward exciting and stressful. I didn’t have time for romantic entanglements, no matter how brief they might be.

My life was finally going in a new direction after many years wasted on things I couldn’t change. I was walking through doors that I hadn’t even considered trying to open before.

It was time to put the past behind me and venture forth into a life I had never let myself imagine and a future that could possibly hold the key to all of my dreams coming true.