Chapter OnePrint this Page
"Matt!" Kayla Hamilton Radley called as she scanned the rugged Montana landscape for her missing son. "Matt, answer me!" But she heard no reply.
Fear and regret weighted her chest as she flicked her reins, urging her horse to move faster. More than an hour had passed since her nine-year-old son had shouted how much he hated her for moving him to Montana then bolted from her father's ranch house. When she'd heard the engine of the ranch's only all-terrain vehicle roar to life, Kayla had run outside just in time to see Matt race off toward the Absaroka foothills. Worried for Matt's safety, she'd immediately saddled Rascal, her father's strongest horse, and ridden out after her son.
Since then, she'd searched the rolling hills near Maple Cove, the small town where she'd grown up, to no avail. Matt and the ATV were nowhere to be found. The vast ranch property covered thousands of acres of rough terrain, from rocky mountain slopes to sprawling cattle pastures. She considered all the hazardswild animals, dehydration, disorientation, exposure. Even the smallest of roots could upend the ATV and trap her son or worseand the hazards would only increase when night fell. Finding Matt before dark was urgent.
"Matt, where are you?" Her voice echoed through the valley, answered only by the lonely screech of a hawk swooping overhead.
She understood why her son was so upset. Losing his father this year had been hard on both of them. Since his father's death in a rodeo accident, Matt had been rebellious, testing his boundariesand Kayla's patience. Matt was at a precarious age where he needed a male role model more than everone of many reasons why she'd moved back home to Maple Cove and her father's ranch. Today Matt had accused her of trying to control his life, and the echo of her past had made her snap at him, unfairly.
When she heard approaching hoofbeats, Kayla turned in her saddle to see who was coming. She held her breath, hoping the arriving rider was a messenger with news Matt had been found.
The sorrel mustang and the man atop it wearing a black cowboy hat were not from her father's ranch. And yet something about the way the cowboy sat his horse seemed familiar to Kayla. A prickle of recognition nipped her neck.
"Is there a problem, ma'am?" he called to her.
Kayla's heartbeat stumbled. She knew that voice. Intimately.
She drew a deep breath, steeling herself as he rode closer. Kayla knew the instant he recognized her because shock flitted across his face for a split second before he tensed his jaw. "Kayla." His tone was flat, unwelcoming. "What are you doing here?"
The rich baritone voice belonged to the man she'd dreaded running into since returning to Maple Cove. One of the reasons she'd stayed away as long as she had. The man with the power to break her heart. Her late husband's brother.