Chapter One

E xcept for that one time when he was a teenager and he fought with his dad on the morning he died, Nathan Lohmen had never questioned his place in the family more than he did right now. Or that he was the right brother to be the foreman of the family horse ranch. Even though Jonas and Blake had both come home, and over the years since they left keeping the Triple L going hadn’t been easy, he was still the best brother for the job. Now that he was mostly healed, he was more than ready to get back to running the ranch.

Sure, unfortunate events since his parents’ passing, first his dad and then two years later his mom, had toppled the family ranch’s fortunes. At this point, he couldn’t see a way forward, but if his brothers could come up with a fix he hadn’t already tried to correct the Triple L’s downward spiral, he would get on board.

They would need his cooperation. Today, his hips hurt, and he wasn’t in a cooperative mood. Still, while he thought his nurse, now his brother Blake’s fiancée, was being overcautious, he would do as she said and hang back while she, Blake, and the kids moved the few things she’d brought with her when she hired on to nurse him through his recovery.

He didn’t like taking a backseat, but until he completely healed, he guessed he had to be patient. That wasn’t one of his strong suits. He was tired of lying around and wanted to get in there with Jonas and Blake to fight for the Triple L.

He stood back and watched. The day was already warm and the sky blue and cloudless. When Blake and the kids were done loading Malorie’s Bronco, Nathan joined them to wish her happiness in the house she’d decided to rent in Strawberry Ridge until she and Blake got married.

He still had to use a cane but if he had anything to do with it, not for long. He had no intention of being an invalid for more than another week, at the most. Malorie saw him coming and frowned.

He didn’t give his future sister-in-law a chance to scold him, though if he was honest, that was his favorite part of their nurse-patient relationship. “Don’t give me that look. I’m fine, and you’ve told me more than once that exercise is good for me,” he teased. He quickly hugged her while Blake watched, his expression going blank. Just to tweak his brother, he hung on a few seconds longer than he should have before stepping back. “I’ll visit your new home as soon as I can drive.” He leaned close to her ear to say, “I wish you all the happiness you deserve.”

A heavy hand landed on his shoulder. “You don’t have to wait that long. Blake or I would be glad to take you,” Jonas said from behind Nathan.

When he looked over his shoulder, his oldest brother’s gaze held more than his usual share of quiet humor.

So, big brother was on to him. It was one of the things that made Jonas a successful attorney but an irritating brother to deal with.

Quite honestly, he did kind of wish Malorie had chosen to give him her heart rather than Blake. A deeper part of him was glad. He’d only had feelings for her for a very short time before he realized she didn’t return them and that even if she had, something serious between them wouldn’t have lasted long. He was carrying around too much baggage that had been buried deep for too long. It was unlikely he’d make an easy partner anyway. And her soul was too kind to call him on his BS.

Blake punched him in the arm—not hard enough to hurt—for his impudence, then slinging an arm around Malorie’s shoulder, buckled her in behind the wheel of her Bronco before climbing into his Wrangler to follow her to town.

Nathan shook his head. No good deed goes unpunished—okay, whispering in Malorie’s ear wasn’t exactly his best deed, even if he was just wishing her well. He frowned. It also wasn’t the worst thing he’d ever done.

The kids, all three of them, Blake’s Timmy—his young brother-in-law now son, and Malorie’s twins, Andee and Reece, leaned out of the windows of the Wrangler, waiving at him and Jonas as they disappeared down the drive.

Watching his step, Nathan headed slowly back toward the house.

Jonas kept pace. “Blake will be back after dinner. He wants to discuss something to do with the finances and then brainstorm our next move to put the ranch on more solid footing.”

Joy , Nathan sneered inside his head. This was not a discussion he was looking forward to. “Wasn’t adding riding lessons enough?”

“Nope,” Jonas confirmed Nathan’s thoughts on the matter. “Are you hungry? I’m making burritos with chips and dip.”

Against Nathan’s objection, Blake had put an ad in the Strawberry Ridge Journal a couple of weeks ago. He’d taken on a couple of students as a result but those few weren’t enough to add much to the ranch’s bank account. Nathan didn’t need his brothers to tell him that. He’d figured that out on his own.

Wanting to argue that he’d done the best he could to keep the ranch going while his brothers were gone, he stayed quiet. He’d been the one responsible for the ranch. The buck stopped at his doorstep.

There was one thing they all agreed on. None of them wanted to lose the Triple L just because the ranch could no longer support itself. What they disagreed on was how to bring their home back from the brink of a quick sale.

Nathan was the lone holdout. Jonas and Blake didn’t know the ranch like he did. He didn’t want to turn the ranch into a business he no longer recognized or to change that feeling of it being the thriving mom-and-pop ranch he remembered from his childhood. Everything that Blake had done or suggested so far wasn’t anything new.

He hadn’t just been sitting back and twiddling his thumbs while he watched the ranch fade. Two months before his dad passed, Adam had sold off half the Triple L’s land and put the money into buying Rangerbred breeding stock and enlarging the barn. His dad had a dream but hadn’t lived long enough to see it through. Crop failures several years in a row due to unrelenting high summer temperatures that wouldn’t let up had further decimated the ranch’s reserves. One piece at a time, aging farm machinery had given up the ghost, making the finances even tighter when he had to replace them. The next year, he’d lost two of his dad’s prize mares giving birth. The vet bills were almost the last straw, so he’d taken up training horses and barrel racers. After that, the ranch limped along while he made a name for himself in the barrel-racing community.

He’d just started to breathe easy when he had the harebrained idea to start a goat’s milk business. It would have worked, too, if the bottom hadn’t dropped out of the market. The final blow was when the epidemic hit, and he had no other choice but to put his training business on hold and ride out the storm.

He wasn’t proud of having to sell off the last of his dad’s horses and subsequently laying off his few remaining ranch hands to keep expenses down, but he had to bite the bullet and make the hard choices. It still sat heavily on his shoulders.

He was just about to restart his training business with a refresher course for his previous clients and seeing what Rangerbred stock was available—the five horses they had that included the two mares Jonas had recently bought wouldn’t get them far—when he’d taken the tumble off Duke and fractured his hip.

So here he was fighting to heal, arguing with his brothers over how to fix the ranch’s financial problems, and fighting a mountain of regret that was almost more debilitating than all the other things.

He’d been adopted at three months old, before Adam and Zelda Lohmen found out they were pregnant with Blake. Even though they said, in their hearts, he was their son as much as his brothers, all his life he’d been fighting with the feeling that he was the outsider. Darker skin, black hair, black eyes, not as tall as Blake and Jonas. His half-Guatemalan ancestry could not be hidden or denied. So, he’d stuck close to his adopted parents until they both passed away by the time he was eighteen and learned everything he could about running the ranch. It hadn’t been enough, just like Blake’s horse-riding lessons weren’t either. He rubbed the dark beard he never quite shaved off.

Jonas held open the door and waited until he went into the main house first. Man, he hated not being one hundred percent in top shape.

“Have a seat in the chair,” Jonas indicated the overstuffed armchair near the hospital bed Nathan had crawled out of that morning. “Do you want a soda?”

“I can get my own soda, Jonas.” Concealing how tired he was from the short walk to the parking area in front of the barn, Nathan followed his brother into the kitchen and pulled a bottle out of the fridge. He held it out to Jonas. “You want one?”

“Thanks.” Jonas took the drink and leaned against the counter.

Closing the fridge with a disgruntled sigh, Nathan sat at the table. “I want to dismantle the hospital bed and return it to the medical supply company this afternoon.”

“Are you sure about that?” Jonas asked, a brief, hard stare pointed in Nathan’s direction before his brother got into the fridge and pulled out the ingredients he needed for the burritos. “Just because Malorie has left, doesn’t mean that you can push yourself too far.”

Leaning back in the chair, his soda left unopened on the table, Nathan crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m not. I just think it’s time for things to get back to normal.”

Whatever normal looked like. He hadn’t seen normal for a long time. Maybe not since losing his parents.

And where were his brothers been when he needed them the most during that time? Hell-bent on going to law school, Jonas couldn’t wait to escape the ranch after their mom had died. He’d only hung around that long to help pick up the slack left by their dad’s passing.

And Blake... well so lost in his grief, Nathan hadn’t known what happened to Blake after he was kicked off the ranch by his brothers. Before bringing him back, Jonas had admitted his ignorance too.

Nathan could have been a better brother, except why hadn’t Blake tried to come back after he’d cooled off? Instead, he’d gone on with his life, married, helped raise his young brother-in-law, then lost his wife, all before finally returning to the Triple L at Jonas’s insistence that he take care of the ranch while Nathan was recovering.

As far as he could tell, Blake had never planned to come back, so why did he care so many years later about what happened to their parents’ dream?

He didn’t have to look far for the answer. Blake wanted Timmy to finish growing up on the ranch near family. Nathan couldn’t argue with that. He loved that kid. Grudgingly, he gave his brother points for being a good dad. If he ever had kids of his own, or when he did, he hoped to follow in Blake’s footsteps and be a good father.

What he didn’t want was the tongue-lashing he was about to get that evening. He was the one who’d stayed, the one who did everything he could to preserve their heritage.

It was a sensitive subject, for him anyway.

“Your bedroom’s upstairs. Are you able to go up and back down?” Jonas was a persistent son of a gun.

Past the point of being polite, he cast a side look at Jonas that didn’t invite any more discussion of the matter. “I want to sleep in my own bed.”

All the bedrooms were upstairs, including the primary with an attached bathroom. That was his room. Nathan didn’t care if the stairs became problematic. He would work it out.

The remaining two rooms shared a bath. When Jonas was in town, he stayed in his old room. Blake had decided he and Timmy would continue to stay in the apartment over the barn until he and Malorie got married. That left Blake’s childhood room empty.

“All right,” Jonas agreed with a shrug before focusing on building the burritos. “We’ll get started after lunch.”

Nathan let his breath out in relief. One argument down and a gazillion to go.

They’d finished loading the dismantled bed into their dad’s classic truck when Blake parked beside the baby-blue 1955 Ford pickup that Blake had crashed the night of their mother’s funeral. With the help of the kids, Blake had just finished the restoration.

He pocketed the keys to his Wrangler as he approached. “What are you guys up to?”

“We’re taking the hospital bed back to the medical supply company,” Jonas said, closing the tailgate.

Blake stared at them both. Nathan could imagine what was swirling behind his blank expression. Nathan honestly didn’t care. He was tired. Fatigue was probably written all over his face. And he’d left his cane inside the house, so he had nothing to lean on but his own two feet and pride. He shoved his hands in his back pockets.

Clearly biting his tongue, Blake took a deep breath but didn’t comment, which was good because Nathan was not interested in proving he didn’t need to be coddled.

“Blake can go with you. I have some work to do in the house,” he said, cutting his brother off before Blake lost the fight to keep his opinion to himself and launched into whatever it was he was trying not to say.

“What kind of work?” Blake and Jonas said together.

Nathan turned on his heel and tossed over his shoulder. “Laundry. If that’s okay with you boys.”

He heard them mumble but didn’t try to catch the words. As the engine started, determined not to fall flat on his face, and without looking back, he carefully made his way to the porch, up the stairs, and into the house. He grabbed his cane from where he’d left it just inside the door.

Wouldn’t that be hilarious? Nathan Lohmen, foreman of the Triple L, not even able to get around on his own without tripping and making a complete fool of himself.

By the time he came near the couch on the way to the laundry room, he couldn’t go a step further. Forget washing clothes.

He lowered himself to the cushions and stretched out. His cane dropped to the floor. It would take Jonas and Blake an hour to go to Strawberry Ridge, drop off the bed, and come back. A short power nap was all he needed. Before Nathan knew it, he fell asleep with images of the ranch as it used to be when his parents were alive pushing away his fatigue and the twinge in both of his hips.

*

Nathan woke with a start as the front door clicked shut. Jonas and Blake were having a rousing discussion, their voices getting closer and louder as they moved further into the house.

Scrubbing his face, he grabbed his cane and sat up. Taking a steadying breath, he lumbered to his feet, moving as quickly as he could without stumbling to meet his brothers in the kitchen.

Blake looked up, studying him closely. “We brought pizza home for dinner.”

Nathan caught a glimpse of his face in the window. His hair was sticking straight up. Making it to the sink, he shoved a hand beneath the water and finger-combed the tousled mess before he grabbed plates from the cupboard. “Smells great. What are you guys waiting for?”

Jonas pulled out the orange juice and glasses clinked on the stone countertop. Blake got napkins, stacking them by the pizza box.

“Where’s Timmy?” Nathan asked as they sat at the table. He wasn’t normally a procrastinator, but—Not about to touch the elephant in the room, he placed a slice of pizza on his plate.

Blake wasn’t as inclined to hold back. “He’s staying at Malorie’s so we can talk about the ranch and what we’re going to do.”

It was a losing proposition to want the Triple L to remain the same simple horse ranch it was when he was a kid and part of a happy family. Nathan knew that. He was a grown man. He had to move on. But that didn’t change how he felt or how much he missed his parents and the old days. Or, not from lack of trying, how much he wanted to make up for his failure to keep the ranch safe.

“I don’t want to lose the ranch,” he said plainly, pushing his plate away.

Blake retrieved two beers from the fridge. He gave one to Jonas and the other he sat in front of Nathan. Blake didn’t drink anymore, probably a testament to his courage in the face of either changing his life or watching it go down the toilet after he was pushed off the Triple L.

Blake resumed his seat. “Neither do we, so let’s figure this out. But first”— here it comes —“we have to talk about the discrepancies in the financials. About five years back. The numbers don’t add up.”

“I know.” With a soft sigh of resignation, Nathan leaned back in his chair. He would much rather be thought a dunce with numbers than a failure at running the ranch. “Maybe I can’t do math.”

“Come on, Nathan, you know that’s not true. And so do we,” Blake said, apparently not willing to cut Nathan a break. “You’re better than the two of us combined.”

Blake’s admission caught Nathan by surprise. His brothers waited for his explanation.

Leaning forward, he took a bite of his pizza, slowly chewing and swallowing before he gave them one. He stared at Blake. “If you check out the tax forms from that year, you’ll get your answer.”

Blake’s brows shot up. “Why don’t you save me time and just tell me.”

He pushed the unopened beer aside. There was no escape except to tell his brothers what he’d done and how that one move had been the beginning of the slow dive to financial ruin for the Triple L.

He shrugged; pushed to his feet with his cane and went to stare out the kitchen window where he could see the mountains bordering the ranch in the distance. Behind him his brothers were silent.

Finally, he faced them. “The ranch started to get in trouble about seven years ago. We lost two mares while giving birth. The foals survived, one of them was Duke. The vet bills drained the accounts. The farm machines needed to be replaced. When I had to sell what remained of Dad’s horses and let go of some ranch hands to make ends meet, I decided to try something we hadn’t done before. I got a small goat herd. The plan was to market the milk. There was a growing interest in goat milk in Denver. I thought by trying my hand at that and a making a few adjustments to operations, all the ranch’s problems would be solved. I was wrong,” he admitted angrily.

“It was a good try though. So, what did you do?” Blake asked quietly.

Leaning against the sink, Nathan folded his arms across his chest. “Sold the goats for as much as I could and then went to the back for a loan. The balloon payment is what we’re stuck with now.”

“Then why are you so dead set against trying things that could bring in more money?” Blake demanded.

“Because”—Nathan took a step toward his brothers—“I’ve already tried the things you’re suggesting. As I knew it wouldn’t, giving riding lessons hasn’t made a big splash.”

“Then we’ll come up with something else and keep trying until we get it right,” Blake insisted. “What about a wind or solar farm?”

Wincing, and leaving little room for arguments from his brothers, Nathan said, “Absolutely not!”

“Why not?” Blake demanded.

“Because—”

“Okay, you guys.” Jonas stepped between him and Blake. “Simmer down.”

Nathan squared his shoulders. He would not be defeated. Not by the circumstances that had gotten them to this place. Not by the fracture of his pelvis. And not by his brothers’ improbable ideas of how to fix their problem.

If he hadn’t just spent seven weeks recovering from his accident, he would take on both of his brothers, but in his mind, he could hear his dad’s voice. Fighting doesn’t solve a thing, son. Use your brain to solve your problems with your brothers.

And if that didn’t work there was always drawing high card.

“So, what do you suggest, then,” he asked Jonas as he leaned heavily on his cane. “I don’t want to do anything that will destroy the livability of the ranch. And I especially don’t want to be overrun with wind turbines or acres of solar panels, or tourists every time I turn around.”

“Sit.” Jonas pointed at both of them. “Those are good points, Nathan. We’ll keep in mind as we come up with a plan. It just so happens I have an idea in mind.”

Nathan reluctantly returned to his chair. Blake followed suit and pulled out his phone. “How much money do we have to put back into the ranch? I got the advance for Timmy, the Superhero Comes Home . Some of that can be earmarked for the Triple L.” His fingers moved quickly over his phone as he took notes, then looked up at Nathan expectantly.

Jonas beat him. “It’ll take a while to build a new law practice in Strawberry Ridge, but some of the money I got from the sale of my Denver practice can go to the ranch too.”

When they both stared at him, Nathan huffed out a breath. He hated that they were having this discussion. More than that he hated to admit they had to work together to keep the ranch going. “Normally, I use my earnings from training barrel racers to pay on the loan and the ranch’s monthly expenses. I’ll have to build up my business again, but several riders have contacted me to get on a list to brush up their skills for the Strawberry Ridge Rodeo coming up at the end of September. I’ll get in touch with them and get started this week.”

Blake’s brows pulled together. “Are you sure you’re up to that?”

Nathan just stared at Blake. Just because he was out of commission for seven weeks now, that didn’t mean he was incapable. With his brothers gone, he’d gotten the ranch this far, hadn’t he? Even if there were more hard decisions to be made.

“It’s time to bring in someone skilled at saving businesses from financial ruin,” Jonas said, looking pointedly at Nathan.

He had one response for his older brother. “We don’t need an outsider to fix the ranch.” Their dad would not have asked for outside help.

“But you admit the ranch needs help,” Blake jumped in.

Nathan could feel the steam starting to come out of his ears. There had to be a way to stop his brothers from steamrolling over what he considered was right for the Triple L. Unfortunately, he had to acknowledge they weren’t completely wrong. The ranch needed some—not a lot—of work and more importantly, an income stream or two besides the three brothers’ monthly contributions.

He shrugged. The nonverbal agreement was all he could give Blake, who, if Nathan was being honest, had the ranch’s best interests at heart.

After a brief nod of understanding (that was like nails scraping on a blackboard for Nathan) Blake went to the fridge and took out a soda. “We all want to return the Triple L to her former glory, but with a balloon payment coming due, we can’t afford to drag our feet any longer. I just got the bank statement. It’s not good.” He stopped at the end of the table, facing Nathan. “Malorie has a friend—”

Unable to sit any longer, Nathan grabbed his cane, and paced, as well as he was able, in a circle until he faced his brothers again. His hips hurt and he was exhausted, but he would be danged if he’d let Blake and Jonas know. “We don’t need Malorie’s friend.”

“Look. You can’t stop this,” Jonas joined Blake, two against one . “Malorie told her how much trouble we’re in and the lady, Izzy Payton, agreed she would come to the ranch and see if she can offer any suggestions.”

“How do we know she’s qualified to know what’s best for the Triple L?”

“Malorie says she’s nothing short of a miracle worker.” Blake squared his shoulders, his temper starting to show. “We can get references, but in the meantime, it can’t hurt to interview Ms. Payton. Will you at least think about it?”

Blake might be right, but it was still a hard pill to swallow. A stranger couldn’t love the Triple L as much as he did.

Going to the kitchen junk drawer, he pulled out a deck of cards and limped back to the table. Moving the pizza and their plates out of the way, Nathan fanned the cards out on the flat surface. “High card decides if we hire an outsider or not.” High card wins was something their dad had started way back to settle his sons’ arguments. He paused for a second, determined to make sure he was being clear. “If any changes are made to the ranch, high card will have final say whether to implement or not. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” Blake and Jonas said together.

Nathan drew a card but didn’t look at it. Blake and Jonas both took cards. They turned them over at the same time. Jonas had the ten of clubs. Blake, the jack of diamonds. Nathan closed his eyes for a brief second, then finally looked at his card. king of spades.

For the first time in a long time, he felt lucky. “Okay. I say there will be no interviewing this Izzy person.”

“You are being completely unreasonable!” Jonas practically shouted as he slapped his card on the table.

Nathan stepped back. In the sixteen years since Jonas had kicked Blake off the ranch, he’d never seen his easygoing brother shout or lose his temper.

This time it was Blake who did the separating. “Okay, guys, be reasonable—”

Blake looked mad, too, but was holding it together better than Jonas. A surprising turn of events. Nathan wasn’t sure he had it in him to be that reasonable. Maybe after a good night’s sleep. In his bed and not a hospital bed, there was a slim chance.

“No more talking tonight. I’m tired.” Nathan leaned on his cane.

“Excuse me,” a feminine voice said behind Nathan. “I knocked, but no one answered, and I could hear—Did I come at the wrong time?”

Nathan swiveled and looked into the prettiest blue eyes he’d ever seen. Red hair fell in thick, wavy curls past the woman’s shoulders. She was dressed in form-fitting jeans and a gauzy pale green shirt that made him think of spring and summer, all rolled into one.

Her gaze flicked to his brothers, then came back to Nathan. She held out a hand and walked toward him. “Hi. I’m Izzy Payton. I’m here to visit my friend Malorie and thought on my way to her place I’d stop by to see if I could make an appointment to talk”—when their palms touched, her cheeks turned pink—“to Mr. Lohmen...”

Catching himself staring at their clasped hands, Nathan instantly dropped the hand that fit so well in his. “I’m Nathan Lohmen. Those two lugs are Blake and Jonas.”

She must have heard the last part of their argument. How could she not? Cheeks still pink, she leaned sideways so she could see his brothers and waved. “Hi, Blake.”

Blake came to stand next to Nathan. His temper had fizzled out. But then he hadn’t been frustrated with his fiancée’s best friend. “You made it. Any troubles on the way?”

“Nope. It was an easy drive.” Her gaze flicked to Nathan’s filled with a curious humor.

Of course, she hadn’t caught him on his best behavior. This was a pickle, as his mother used to say, wasn’t it? Except it didn’t have to be. Nathan didn’t need the pretty lady to like or approve of him, although at some point he would have to give in and work up an apology. Just not tonight.