Chapter 1

Chapter One

D awson Rhinehart pulled into the parking lot at the Three Rivers community center, coming to a stop right beside his parents. He got out and opened the back passenger door to collect the two pans of breakfast casserole his mama had made for this morning's New Year's Day breakfast fundraiser.

His father labored to get out of the truck only a pace away, and Dawson fought the desire to abandon the food and help his daddy. He succeeded, and he moved at the pace of a sloth behind his father as he took slow, stilted steps up to the sidewalk. He used the hood of the truck to help him get up that step, and then Daddy looped his arm through Mama's and used her strength to stabilize himself.

Inside, a flurry of activity told him where to take the food, and he handed it off to Ramona Whitely, who smiled and said, "Thank your mother, Dawson."

"Yes, ma'am," he said, wishing he could turn around and walk right back out to his truck. He didn't care about this fundraising breakfast for the fire department, and he figured they'd already gotten the money for his ticket whether he ate or not.

He did want a bigger, nicer truck, as sometimes the wildfires out here in the Texas Panhandle could throw flames twenty feet in the air, if the summer season was long and dry and people didn't take proper precautions around their homes, farms, ranches, and vehicles.

Stuffing down his irritation at something that hadn't even happened yet, Dawson paused in the doorway and waited for a family to go by him. He had some errands to run after this breakfast, and because he couldn't put it off any longer, he joined the flow of people moving past the entrance to the kitchen and into the big gymnasium where he'd played basketball as a child.

His sports career had lasted until third grade, when he'd realized he didn't have the greatest hand-eye coordination—and his daddy wasn't going to drive him down to town for multiple practices each week, plus games on Saturdays.

He'd stuck to farm work after that, inventing games with his younger brother in the equipment shed, the barns, the stables, and simply the wide open land on the Rhinehart Ranch. Technically called Hidden Hills Ranch, Inc for the taxes, Dawson loved working his family land that they all called the Rhinehart Ranch.

They had good neighbors and good soil, and Dawson would rather be up there than down here. He wasn't exactly a people-person.

Still, he moved to the doorway of the gym and looked inside. People teemed around the long tables set up for the breakfast buffet. People moved along all the circular tables set up for eating. People laughed; people talked; people people people.

Dawson took a steeling breath and took the first step into the gymnasium. He couldn't see his mama or daddy, but he figured they'd saved him a spot. Perhaps if he just wandered around, they'd find him.

He nodded to family friends, then Judge Glover and his wife, then he veered over to Micah Walker. He was a decade older than Dawson, but they'd worked on building Mama's cabinetry together, and Micah had rebuilt the barn on the ranch after the summer flooding from a couple of summers ago.

"Howdy," he said to perhaps the one person he'd call a friend in Three Rivers. He had brothers, and Duke was married to a Glover, so Dawson had never hurt for company if he wanted it.

"Dawson." Micah half rose and shook his hand. "Are you looking for a place to sit?" Each table held eight, and Micah and Simone only had three children. No one else had sat with them, and Dawson nodded over to their oldest. Trap had finished high school last spring, but he'd been working with his father for years even before that.

"My folks are here," he said, glancing around. "Somewhere." He looked at Micah for a moment. "I was just wondering if you got that new cherry wood in. I want to try a cutting board with it."

"Not yet," Micah said. "Simone's been selling a lot of our checkerboard charcuterie boards at her shows lately."

"Yeah?" Dawson glanced over to Trap, who nodded.

"Cherry and oak," he said. "One lady bought one to use as a checker board."

"Light and dark," Dawson said, smiling at the younger man. He knocked on the table and straightened. "Good to see you guys."

He looked over his shoulder and found his mom with her hand in the air. "There's my mama. Enjoy breakfast."

"It's cold pancakes and burnt bacon," Micah said, to which Simone swatted him and said, "Shh."

Dawson chuckled as he walked away, because Micah had just vocalized his feelings about the breakfast. He moved over three tables and took his seat beside his daddy. "You're in the back," he said, working hard to keep the question mark off the last word. He managed too, in his mind.

"Yep," Daddy said. No further explanation. He never said more than necessary, and Dawson had definitely inherited that trait from his father.

No buffet ever had the back tables start first, and Dawson settled into his seat and folded his arms, ready to deal with his grumbling stomach until he could get it some flaccid bacon and cold pancakes.

"You savin' any of these?"

Dawson shook his head at the Bellamores while Daddy said, "Nope, all yours." He immediately started engaging Brit Bellamore in conversation about their winter crops, and Dawson listened with vague interest.

"We're ready to begin," someone said into a microphone. "Please raise your hand if you have seats at your table, as we have more people coming in."

Dawson dutifully raised his hand, and a woman pointed toward him. She turned a little girl in that direction, and another woman came behind her. He put his hand down and nodded at the woman, whom he didn't recognize.

"These are open?" she asked.

"All yours," he said, and she pulled out the chair next to Gabi Bellamore. As she shifted, the woman behind the little girl came into view, and Dawson's flesh and muscles dang near flowed out of his skin.

Caroline Thompson.

Dawson felt everything inside him blazing, and as their eyes met, he wondered what she saw. Him, obviously, as she froze. The little girl, who was probably six or seven years old, took the seat in the middle of the remaining three available while the other woman took her seat next to Gabi, and that left the only open seat next to Dawson.

Caroline's eyes narrowed then, and she practically stomped over to the chair and yanked it out. "Hello, Dawson," she clipped out.

"Caroline," he said easily. He hadn't seen her since their impromptu breakfast together at the diner a few months ago. He hadn't filed any paperwork either, which was probably why Caroline now shot ninja stars at him from her eyes.

She'd also texted him a time or two—not about owls or paperwork—that had left him confused, and he hadn't answered her. Maybe she was surly about that too.

Their breakfast together had been fine, in his opinion. They hadn't talked much once the food had come, and he'd managed to maintain his dignity as they'd walked out together. He'd tipped his hat at her and gone to his truck while she went to hers. She'd sent him her half of the bill before he'd even gotten the air conditioning blowing in his truck, and she hadn't pestered him again about the missing paperwork.

They didn't have owls at the Rhinehart Ranch, plain and simple. And she couldn't make him file without proof of the endangered animals. She'd tried to say the ranch was prime habitat for the burrowing owls, and she needed him to file paperwork saying he wouldn't disrupt their habitat, but he'd ignored her.

In fact, he'd looked up the law, and he didn't have to file anything about a habitat, not even for an endangered animal—until the animal was there. Then, they couldn't remove the animals and destroy their habitat, but until the little owls chose the Rhinehart Ranch as their home, Caroline couldn't force Dawson to do anything.

"Thanks for coming to the firehouse fundraising breakfast," someone said. "We're going to go ahead and get started. Thank you for your support of our firemen and our efforts to improve our emergency services for the people of Three Rivers."

After a quick prayer, where silence descended on them, the noise broke out as people stood and started talking. And talking, and talking, and talking.

Dawson should have something to say to Caroline, but for the life of him, he couldn't think of a single thing. He looked at the little girl next to her and found they had the same hair color.

"Your daughter?" he asked, not sure why he'd gone there. If Caroline Thompson had a daughter, she could have a husband, and that would mean Dawson's fizzing crush on the woman indicated he'd gone insane.

He glanced over to the other woman sandwiching the girl, and she looked like Caroline too.

"No," she said, but she didn't offer up any information about who the girl was.

"Niece?" Dawson tried again.

Caroline glared at him. "Yes, Mister Rhinehart. This is Judy. She's my niece."

He managed to smile at the girl as she looked at her aunt and then him. "Nice to meet you. I'm Dawson."

"Hi, Dawson," Judy said in a cute, high-pitched, little-girl voice. She looked over to her mama and back to him.

"I'm Dawson," he said again as he reached his hand across the table to Caroline's obvious sister. "You must be?—"

"My sister," Caroline barked, cutting him off. "Belle. She's going to be living with me for a while."

Another smile manifested itself. "That's great," he said, shaking her hand. He pulled it back and noticed the two sisters exchange a glance. He ignored it and indicated his mama and daddy. "My parents. Wade and Abby."

"Great to meet you," Belle said. "How do you know Caroline?"

"Well, uh." Dawson shifted in his seat, wishing they'd somehow call their table up to get food. His eyes tracked over to the table where people had just gotten up, and they still had three to go until he could reasonably stand. "We had breakfast together once."

"No," Caroline said. "He's one of the ranches who won't file the endangered habitat paperwork."

Dawson looked over to his father, whose frown lines had deepened between his eyes. " Ranches can't file paperwork," he said quietly. " People file paperwork."

Caroline scoffed, but she didn't correct herself.

"Where are you guys from?" he asked Judy and Belle.

Belle didn't seem to have any of the tight-lipped qualities of Caroline, and she started telling him and everyone at the table about their move from Phoenix. She never mentioned a husband, and Dawson didn't have time to ask before their table became eligible to go get in line for breakfast.

He expected to be separated from Caroline then, because his parents didn't move fast at all these days, and he wouldn't just leave them in the dust. But Judy didn't move fast either, and with all the tables and chairs and people, they ended up joining the line in the same order where they'd been sitting at the table.

Which put Dawson right behind Caroline, with his frowny father hot on his heels. He wanted to say something to her, but all of the things that came into his head would embarrass him greatly.

Do you want to go to breakfast again? My treat.

Couldn't say that.

Your hair sure is pretty down like that, Caroline.

He hallucinated and pictured himself reaching up to tuck it behind her ear just before he kissed her. Certainly couldn't say or do that .

I'll file the paperwork, okay? Just don't be mad at me anymore.

But he'd been stubborn for too long about the paperwork, and he couldn't back down now. Caroline was a smart woman, and she'd want to know why he'd suddenly decided to file. He couldn't tell her it was because he found her gorgeous, even as unrelenting as she was.

She clearly didn't like him, though he'd never known someone to get so worked up over burrowing owls and paperwork before. She wasn't the first Wildlife Conservation Officer he'd worked with, for crying out loud.

"Oh, my goodness," she muttered ahead of him, and Dawson blinked to get himself out of the fantasy where he and Caroline held hands and shared intimate things about their lives—like the real reason her sister had come to stay with her in Three Rivers.

"This is a crime against potatoes," she muttered, some limp shreds falling off the spoon. They were white and obviously cold, not a stitch of browned, crispy goodness anywhere.

Without thinking, Dawson looked up and handed his paper plate of cold scrambled eggs to the woman standing there. "Can you take this?" he asked. She did, a squeak of surprise coming from her that wasn't really a protest.

He took Caroline's plate and handed it to her too. "Thank you." Then he took Caroline's hand, his skin burning where it touched hers, and said, "Come with me."