Chapter One
The hottest guy I ever saw was playing “Pop Goes the Weasel” on the piano while fifteen cagey preschoolers circled fourteen chairs. My father-in-law’s annual Fourth of July shindig—the biggest event of the year—was a family picnic. We’d set aside a play area for the littlest kids and I’d volunteered to supervise, but the piano man blindsided me and I nearly missed an outrageous hair-pulling incident.
Like a too bright pair of headlights on a moonless night, he was all I could see.
Mayor Calder Hamilton—a cartoon bear of a man with a white handlebar mustache—snuck up on me with one of those painful backslapping man hugs. “Ryder Dent, you son of a bitch. Which one is your boy?”
“That’s Jonas.” I pointed out my son. “Blue plaid shirt, cowboy hat. Crass determination to win?”
“I know that look, I see it every day when I look in the mirror. But how can that be him? Last time I saw him he was half that size.”
Why do people always say that? Is it some rite of passage? Am I going to be surprised kids grow someday too? “We had to buy him a new pair of cowboy boots just last week.”
“He’s a fine-looking boy. Where’s Andrea?”
“She doesn’t come to these things to hang around with me.” I glanced toward the windows. “You’ll find her wherever there’s dancing.”
“She leaves you in charge of Jonas?”
“Gosh, yeah. Andi’s the social one. She likes to kick up her heels and I don’t mind if she wants to have some fun.”
“So have you met our new doctor yet? Isn’t he something? I have never seen anyone play piano like that.”
“That’s Doctor Winters?” The doc had started playing “Pop Goes the Weasel” like a Russian folk dance, all the while yelling Hai! Hai! Hai! Hai! The music stopped and the chaos started. Jonas ended up on another chair.
“Go, Team Jonas!” I pumped my fist like a goofball.
“Yeah. Go, boy, go!” Hamilton was already tipsy enough to be unaware he was shouting right in my ear. It didn’t matter; I was going deaf from all the kids squealing anyway. “I’d like to ask your help with something.”
“Sure thing, Mayor. Shoot.”
“I need you and your family in a campaign ad.”
“My family?” Good grief. Bitterroot’s founding fathers would shit in their graves at such an idea. “I don’t think we’d make a very good ad.”
“C’mon.” He punched my arm. “You and Andrea are both attractive. Jonas is a cute kid. You had to make some tough choices in the beginning, but look where you are now.”
“Uh . . . I don’t think—”
“I need a family exactly like yours to represent my campaign to the twenty-somethings. I need them to believe they’re important to me.”
Me and Andi? My stomach did a full 360, front to back, as if I was on a Six Flags ride. Mayor Hamilton wanted some picture-frame perfect family, and we were not it. Plus, we hadn’t exactly voted for him. “I’ll ask Andi about it, but—”
“Andrea’s dad just told me he’s backing me all the way again this next election.”
“Is he?” That figures. Her dad likes politicians to owe him.
“So you just tell her you’re doing it, okay?”
“Sure, I’ll mention it, but—”
Hamilton’s wife, Sally, came up to collect him. “C’mon Cowboy. There’s someone I want you to meet.”
She grabbed his hand and, after a good-natured tug-of-war, they left together. I breathed again. Andi’s dad ran one of the most successful ranches in the area. If he wanted to see my family on a billboard, I’d have to figure a way to get out of it or learn to say “cheese.”
It was pretty hard to say no to Sterling Chandler. I’m not sure he understood the word.
Shit.
The new doc managed to make “Pop Goes the Weasel” sound like a funeral dirge and the children all lurched around like little zombies. Then he turned it into a raucous honkytonk song. Who was this guy?
Jonas got eliminated fourth from last but he wasn’t crushed by the loss. His attention shifted right away to the buffet, where the cater-waiters had installed several trays of Texas-sized cookies, all colored with red, white, and blue sugar crystals in honor of the holiday.
Musical Chairs, the Survivor edition, came down to two particularly crafty-looking femme fatales. One wore a jeans skirt, cowboy boots, and a pretty white blouse, and the other had on a daisy-printed sundress with lacy socks and jelly shoes. Lacy socks girl won by body-checking white blouse girl out of the way and pouncing on the last chair. She gripped the seat so tight with both hands no one could get her off it for a good three minutes, even to give her the prize. Good times.
The new doc consoled the runner-up with a box of big-block Legos and gave the winner a play set with pink and purple Ponies but it seemed she thought she was getting the chair as her prize. Eventually her mom pried her up and they all wandered off to join the party outside.
Doc Winters was left to tidy up. I figured I ought to help, being family and all. Plus, it might get me out of small talk outside. But the doc was the best looking man I had ever seen up close. I was bound to mess up and say something super stupid, and Andi was going to hear about it, and then she was going to tease me for the rest of my life, because she was just waiting for me to lose my shit over some guy.
And Doc Winters, M.D., The Yankee Doodler?
He could be the guy.
Should I say something? He wasn’t looking at me. I might be able to put up the chairs while he fiddled with the piano. I might even be able to leave the room before he turned around.
Too late. Too late. Too late!
He’s looking.
“Hello.” His cheerful little wave blasted a great big hole in my cool.
I swallowed. “It’s all fun and games until you get to that last chair. How’d you get roped into this gig?”
“Sterling made a rather large donation to Logan’s Dream Foundation. I’m on the board. He could probably ask me to jump through a flaming hoop.”
“He’s got me for that.” A little too much honestly, there.
“And what do you owe Sterling Chandler?”
I smiled tightly. “Not a damn thing.”
One of his eyebrows arched like it was trying to hide under his hair. It was awfully nice hair. Curly. Brown. “So why would you jump through flaming hoops for him?”
“I said, he would ask, not that I’d do it.”
Doctor Winters’s answering smile was a tractor beam of warmth and concern. He was freakishly clear-eyed. He probably saw right through my little lie. I could not look away.
“Listen, you want to join me for a game of Twister later this evening?”
“The game? T-twister?” My voice used to be a lot deeper, didn’t it? “The one where you spin a dial and—”
“Yes, the game.” He laughed at my confusion. Or because I sounded like I’d secretly been sucking the helium out of the balloons. “I’m organizing several games of Twister for midnight. I’m sure everyone will be well lubed up by then.”
“Excuse me?” He could not have said what I thought I heard.
“With alcohol.” His eyes sparkled like he knew the best secret ever.
“Oh.”
“I’m going to need a lot of players for this. There’ll be a ten-dollar buy in per game, with the proceeds going to Hill Country Assisted Living, where Leon lives now.”
“Who?” I couldn’t keep up with the man. First the game, now what?
“The doc? The one whose practice I took over? Aren’t you from around here? I thought everyone knew Doc Frazier.”
“I did. I do. I never knew his name was Leon. He’s always been Doc Frazier to me.”
“And who’s your doctor now?” His head gave a tilt to one side, like he was sizing me up for one of those paper gowns.
“I haven’t been to the doctor since high school. I don’t get sick.”
“Never?”
“No.”
“Ever? Not even a cold?” he asked.
“Nope.”
“Are you trying to put me out of business? This is a small town. I figure I’ll need each person in it to spend at least five business days sick per year in order for me to make a go of things. If you’re not doing your part someone else is going to have to take up the slack. Do you want someone else to get sick because of you?”
“Are you serious?”
“No.”
“Oh.” I laughed, and then I wasn’t sure if that was actually a joke or if he was making fun of me. Goddamnit. I’m not usually slow, but I felt slow next to him. I’ll bet cheetahs felt slow next to him.
“Hey.” His face did this kindly thing that probably came in handy when he was seeing patients. “That was meant to be a joke. You take things pretty literally, don’t you?”
“Maybe.” The back of my neck got a little hot. “If by that you mean when someone tells me something with a straight face I believe them. Yeah.”
“Fair enough.” He held out his hand. “Let’s start over. I’m Declan Winters. I’ve taken over Doc Frazier’s practice.”
“Ryder Dent.” I took his hand and gave it the manly shake expected of me. God, his hand was perfect. Clean and long-fingered with buffed nails. Those hands would never be rough like mine. They could never be sweaty or callused or scabbed up.
“I have a patient named Dent. Kid called Jonas?”
“That’s my son.” I turned to look for him. He wasn’t at the cookie table where I thought he’d be. “He was here a minute ago.”
“Wait—” The doc narrowed his eyes. “Isn’t he Sterling Chandler’s grandson?”
“Yeah.”
“So . . . Andrea Chandler is your . . . ?”
“Wife? Got it in . . . how many was that, three? Why are you looking at me like that?”
“No reason.” The words came too fast. Of course there was a reason. “Just putting it all together.”
“Dad. Dad!” Jonas tore back into the room just as we put the last chair away. “I saw Mommy dancing with some ladies. They’re laughing real loud.”
“Are they now?”
“I took her cookie, but she said it’s okay if I eat it. Do you want one? If you don’t, then I could eat yours too.”
“No way are you going to eat my cookie. Can you get me one?”
“Is it okay if I get another one for me?”
“How many have you had?”
“Um . . .” He held up one . . . two . . . three fingers, and then frowned. “I don’t know. Sheesh. Some.”
“One more. There’s going to be ice cream later.”
“I’ll be back with your cookie.”
“I want a whole one, no bites taken out of it.”
Jonas ran off again.
“Great kid.” The doc and I watched him run away.
“I think so, but I’m pretty partial.”
“I guess you would be.”
Jonas returned with two cookies and he let me choose one. I picked the one with white chocolate and macadamia nuts. “Thanks, chief.”
“That’s not the one I wanted anyway.”
“It’s getting dark. You ready for fireworks?”
Jonas clapped his hands. “Sparklers!”
Winters looked from me to Jonas and then back to me. He still wore a smile, but it didn’t look as shiny.
I got that kind of look a lot. I’d like to have said it didn’t bother me anymore, but that would be a lie. I don’t know what made the doc’s eyes glaze over, since he was new in town and he probably hadn’t had a chance to hear folks talk much yet. But he’d hear everything soon enough.
Folks in Bitterroot thought Andi and me were too young to have a kid Jonas’s age, and some figured—given who Andi’s daddy was, how popular she’d been, and how pretty and all—Jonas couldn’t possibly be mine. Especially those people who, like the doc, might see his brown eyes and add them together with Andi’s and my blue ones and come up with shenanigans.
Some would love to actively shun us, but if you shun Andi, you shun Sterling Chandler, and for that you pay a high price around Bitterroot and the Rocking C Ranch.
If the doc was going to be judgmental, too bad. I tipped my hat and shot him a smile because that’s what I do, no matter what. “Nice meeting you, Doc.”
Chapter Two
I’d promised that this year, Jonas could hold his own sparklers, so I carried him to the area Andi’s dad set up for the littlest kids, where some of the dads were teaching them to hold a sparkler carefully and put the hot discards into a bucket of water.
When I was Jonas’s age, my folks gave me a box of fairly safe fireworks and a lighter and then they taught me how to use them right, but as a dad, I couldn’t help seeing all the possible disasters. I held on tight to Jonas. He was only five, and a small five at that. I wasn’t sure about all this . . .
“S’okay, Ryder.” Jack Cantrell had seen me hesitate. He had a daughter Jonas’s age but he was several years older so you couldn’t call us friends. “It’s safe. We’re keeping an eye on them. Bring Jonas on up here and I’ll get him set up.”
“I’ll take care of him.” I set Jonas down and we approached. His little face was lit up with delight and dread when got our box. “Okay, son. This is serious business. Remember, fire burns, all right?”
He flapped his arms. “I want to hold it.”
“And I’ll let you. Just a minute. You’re gonna hold this part here and I’ll light the top. Don’t ever grab the part that glows, even after it’s out, cause it stays hot for a while, yeah? And don’t touch anyone else with the sparks. You stay clear of your friends while it’s burning and you put it in the water bucket when you’re done, okay?”
“Light it,” Jonas begged. “Please light it.”
“Alright.” The little booger could be mighty impatient. Still, he’d said please and he didn’t grab and my heart spun like a pinwheel. I got out my Zippo and flicked off the hood. “Ready? Here you go.”
The sparkler caught, and Jonas gasped, trapped between awe and terror. He froze, holding it as far out in front of him as possible, watching it burn, until it finally winked out. That went pretty much as I’d expected. The first time he ever tried anything new he was always hesitant. I was sure by the end of the evening he’d be running around with the other kids, waving his sparkler in the air, and my heart would fly to my throat like a bottle rocket.
“Want another?”
“Please!”
I gave him another and lit it and, sure enough, he waved that one around. “Can you make a circle in the air? See how it looks like the light hangs there for a few seconds? Isn’t that weird?”
“Round and round.” He did it until the thing petered out.
Now there would be no stopping him until his box of sparklers was empty. I just let him go, making sure he stayed well clear of his pals and that he practiced safe sparkling. I saw his mom come off the dance floor. She caught my eye and waved. Jonas waved at her with his sparkler.
“Look Mama, I made you a heart!”
“Thank you, baby.” She waited until his wire sizzled into the bucket and then swung him up onto her hip. “Whoa. You’re so big now, I can’t hardly lift you anymore.”
This delighted him, at least until she stumbled. I caught them both, preventing a fall. “Watch it, honey,” I warned her. “Ground’s uneven there.”
She laughed that off. “What you’re too gentlemanly to say is your boy’s mommy has been drinking al-co-hawl.”
I laughed, cause, yeah. That’s the part I’d left out. Andi likes to step pretty close to the edge of inebriation at her dad’s parties, and I didn’t like calling anyone’s attention to it. She swung Jonas around and then handed him back to me.
“Imma go over there with my girlfriends.” She turned back to wave even as she sashayed off in the direction of the refreshments tent. “Dancing’s thirsty work.”
“Bye, Mommy. I’m doing more sparklers with Dad.”
“I’ll be watching.” She turned around and stumbled again, but her friend Brooke caught her and they broke into a giggly run.
“Mommy’s funny.” Jonas wrinkled his nose.
“She likes all that line-dancing stuff. You and me, we gotta see to the fireworks, right?”
“Right.” When he gave me a nod, his cowboy hat bobbed on his head. It had been a present from his grandpa, and it was a little too big still. I picked it off and let him shake out another sparkler. He went back to being mesmerized by the fire. I watched for a while, content to see him master something new.
You had to hand it to kids. Every day they learned a hundred—maybe a thousand—new things. They soaked up language and culture like little sponges. Sometimes I had to write a phone number on my arm, or a grocery list because I’d forget half of what was on it, even if there were only ten things, but Jonas was just learning new things all the time.
“Andi’s got high spirits tonight.” Jack Cantrell had apparently watched our exchange. He was looking at me like he didn’t know whether to pity me or call me a fool. I was used to that look. Folks had been giving me that look since I’d married Andi Chandler back in high school.
Andi was a wild, wild girl all right. There was no doubt about it. But she was as beautiful and talented as she was high-spirited. She was larger than life—larger even than Sterling Chandler’s massive slice of Texas and all the shit he owned on it.
“She’s having a good time.” I found her in the crowd again, back on the dance floor. “She looks forward to cutting loose every so often.”
The band swung into the intro of a song Andi loved and she whooped loud enough to wake up her ancestors. I knew what was going to happen next. Everyone knew. Andi was going to jump up on that stage and commandeer the microphone or die trying. When she got up there, the Hanks welcomed her. Well, they would, wouldn’t they? She could sing like a fallen angel. That’s another thing everyone knew about Andi.
“That’s Mommy!” Jonas tried to scrabble up my body. “Mommy’s singing. I want to see.”
Two things happened at once. Sterling Chandler made a furious beeline for me with a look of pure pain-in-the-ass written on his face, and my son pushed his red-hot sparkler into the palm of my hand.
My shocked shout tore through the air, but then I clenched my teeth to keep from cursing. The pain was fucking awful, so I yanked my hand back. Some of the skin pulled right off. Christ.
“Daddy!” Jonas gave a startled cry. He’d seen what happened and knew it meant he’d hurt me. He was going to cry too, I could see it coming. “I’m sorry, Daddy.”
Sterling, who’d seen the incident, marched over and picked him up like he was a wayward barnyard animal. “Drop the wire, son. You’ve done enough damage for one night.”
Jonas let the spent sparkler fall into the bucket, put his head down on his grandfather’s shoulder, and sobbed.
“It’s all right, chief.” I cradled my hand against my chest. “Just a little ouchie. No worries.”
Sterling ignored Jonas’s tears. “You need to get over there and keep Andi from making a fool of herself.”
“Why? She’s doing great as far as I can tell. You know how she likes the spotlight.”
“Go get her. Let someone else watch Jonas.” He handed my son over to Jack. “Jack, can you keep the boy busy for a minute while my son-in-law collects his wife?”
I bristled. “Just let her finish the song, Sterling.”
He lowered his voice. “She’s a drunken mess, and she’s going wild in front of all my friends. Go get her before she does something I’ll have to pay for.”
I gritted my teeth against the searing agony from my hand. “I’ll see to my burn and then collect her.”
Sterling turned toward the stage, where Andi was singing with the lead guitarist. Maybe she was sexing it up a little. Tomorrow everyone would be gossiping about this. I couldn’t care less. Nobody understood her like I did—least of all her father. God knew what he saw when he looked at her. I saw a girl doing the best she could. I always had.
“She’s turning out just like her mother,” Chandler said grimly. “Unless you want her to make a laughing stock out of you, you’d better let her know who’s boss right now. You’re not kids anymore.”
“That’s your daughter you’re talking about.” I hated the way he talked about her.
“I know she’s my goddamn daughter.” He folded his arms. “If she wasn’t, she wouldn’t be welcome here any more.”
“Fine.” Hopefully, Jonas hadn’t heard that exchange. “Jonas, I’ll be back in a minute.”
“Okay, Daddy.” His lip quivered. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s nothing. I’m going to go inside and put a little butter on it.” Christ, oh, Christ it hurt. I gave him the best smile I had. “Back in a minute. Get ready to head on out.”
He swallowed hard and gave me a nod. I picked his hat up from the ground where I’d dropped it and popped it back on his head. After that, I jogged toward the house. With every step, my scorched hand throbbed and the pain grew worse. I burst through the door to the kitchen, past the cater-waiters, and shoved my hand under the tap.
“Shit.” The cool water stung like a bitch and I put my head on the granite counter. Tears stung my eyes as I ranted my ass off. “Oh shit oh shit oh shit fucking shit, shit, shit. Fucking goddamn shit fucking shit shit shit . . .”
“You kiss your wife with that mouth, Ryder Dent?” The amused voice made me lift my head. Oh, fuck me. Of all people, Bitterroot’s new doctor.
“Sorry, Dr. Winters.” I’m sure I flushed to the tips of my ears. “I burned my hand.”
“I can see that. Every year I try to tell people that fireworks are best left to the professionals, and every year, somebody gets hurt. Usually kids.” His words, delivered in his flat northern accent, had the strange effect of raising the hair on the back of my neck.
“You’re not saying I told you so, are you? ’Cause that would be adding insult to injury.”
He lifted his eyebrows. “Do I seem like the kind of man who’d do that?”
“Um. Yes?” I admitted.
“Maybe I would, if I thought anyone would listen next Fourth of July. Let me take a look.” He held out his hand. “C’mon.”
“No.” I drew my hand back. Folding my fingers into a fist hurt like a bitch, but there was no way I was letting Dr. Winters take my hand.
“Are you scared of me?” His eyes were very kind.
“Yeah.” I hissed out a breath and put my hand back under the flow of water. “Also I’ll feel like a dumbass.”
“I have a first-aid kit in my car. Keep running cold water over your hand while I go get it.” He leaned over to get a good look at the burn. The flesh was torn and blistered. “That looks bad. Be here when I get back or I will hunt you down.”
Through the window, I heard the Lanky Hanks and Andi start up another number. Sterling was not going to be happy with me. In an odd way, that’s what made me decide to take my time. “All right. If you don’t mind.”
“I’ll be right back.”
While I waited in the kitchen for Doc Winters to return, I let cool water stream over my blistered hand. Outside the window, Rainey Cliff, the cashier from my family’s feed store, drifted by with one of Sterling’s hands. Tad something . . . Bowler?
“Oh my God. Andi has taken over the stage again,” she was saying. “That girl never did pass up a chance at the spotlight.”
“Nope.”
“You know Andi pretty well, I take it?”
He leered. “Ain’t a hand at the Rocking C that don’t know Andi.”
The nasty implication to his words made my stomach churn.
“She does spend a lot of time out here, doesn’t she?” Rainey leaned against the deck support and Tad put his hand over her head, curving his body into hers, making her go all soft beneath his arm. “Seems like Ryder’s alone half the time.”
“She works with the cutting horses, but yeah. Whether it’s for the horses or the hands, she spends more time out there than I’d allow if she was my wife.” His laugh was low and cruel.
“Should I be worried you like her?” she asked. “’Cause I thought you an’ me were kind of working on something here.”
“You don’t have to be worried about Andi, honey.” He cupped her face and tipped her head back. “That girl’s still as reckless as they come. She’s way too wild for me. I like a nice girl.”
My face flamed, but before they said any more, Winters came back inside carrying a black doctor’s bag made of handsome, tooled leather.
“You look like an official country doctor carrying that.” My hand still smarted but the water had cooled it down some. I was hesitant to pull it out from under the stream—now that the pain was bearable.
“Let’s see what we’ve got here.” He started pulling out supplies: gauze and bandages and creams. He was all business this time, laying out his things just so and snapping on exam gloves before he even glanced up at me again.
“You’re prepared for anything, huh?” I stalled.
He shrugged and held out his left hand. “I’m a first responder. I’ve got to be prepared.”
There was no help for it; I laid my hand on his, palm up. Casually, he sort of twined his thumb and little finger with mine so I couldn’t flinch back. Tricky bastard . . . I’d have to remember that move. Jonas was a serious flincher. I’d had to chase him around with tweezers to get a splinter out of his finger just the day before.
Doc Winters gently dried the palm of my hand. I’d been right, some of my skin had torn away, and that area glistened, burning painfully when the air hit it. Tomorrow it would be all crusty and crack whenever I flexed my hand, and I had to work. Shit.
“How’d it happen?”
I shrugged. “I put my hand on a hot wire without thinking.”
I don’t know why I didn’t tell him Jonas’s part in the incident, but I figured it didn’t matter exactly how it happened. I winced as he cleaned the skin.
“Smarts a bit, does it?”
I let out a shuddering breath. “Yep.”
“Sorry.” His blue eyes met mine and God, how had I missed those eyes when I’d talked to him before? They were as blue as the Wedgewood holiday ornaments my stepmother collected, set in a face as chiseled and fine as a marble statue. His skin was flawless exc
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