Prologue

      Sage Freeport vowed never to trust a man again.

      Not after the way Trace Lanier had treated her. Promises of love and happily ever after—until she’d gotten pregnant.

      Then those promises had evaporated, like rain on a strip of scorching-hot pavement.

      Her three-year-old Benji had never met his father. She’d worried about him not having a man in his life and done her best to be two parents in one. Still, she couldn’t throw a softball worth a darn, and baiting her own hook to go fishing at the pond literally made her feel faint.

      Then Ron Lewis had come along a few months ago and swept her off her feet with his kindness and intelligence—and treated Benji like his own son.

      Her gaze strayed to the tabletop tree she and Benji had decorated just yesterday. Together they’d made ornaments to hang on the tree, and when he was asleep last night, she’d wrapped his gift. He was going to be ecstatic on Christmas morning to find the softball and glove he’d asked for.

      She pulled a pan of homemade cinnamon rolls from the oven to let them cool before her guests at the B and B she owned surfaced for breakfast, then went upstairs to check on her son.

      Benji was normally up by now, underfoot in the kitchen when she was cooking—chatting and asking questions and sneaking bacon as soon as she took it off the pan.

      But when she opened Benji’s door, he wasn’t in bed. A few toys were scattered around the floor, a sign he’d gotten up to play after she’d tucked him in the night before.

      Figuring he was playing some imaginary game, she darted into his bathroom.

      But he wasn’t there,