CHAPTER ONE

      DREW MILLER WOKE as he hit the floor, a scream catching in his throat.

      The brilliant orange yet eerily silent flash from the blast faded into the night as his eyes snapped open. Kicking himself free of the sheets, he lay on the cold floor next to the bed, taking deep, gulping breaths. Sweat beaded on his forehead as his eyes adjusted to the moonlit loft. He pushed up to a sitting position and took in the damage. The lamp had taken another hit, and the books he’d had on the nightstand were strewn across the room.

      Shit.

      He looked at his knuckles—no blood this time—then leaned back against the bed, drawing his knees up and resting his forearms on them, letting his head fall forward. It didn’t take a whole lot of thought to connect the nightmare to the second anniversary of his wife’s death, but he hadn’t dreamed of Lissa. He’d dreamed of the roadside bomb that had taken out his convoy a year ago. As always.

      Drew never remembered the dreams themselves. Only the colors and invisible forces holding him down, shoving him back. Killing his friends. He fought back, of course. Violently.

      After getting to his feet, taut muscles protesting, he scooped up the bedding, dumped it on the mattress and then started down the ladder that led from the small loft to the living room of his grandfather’s cabin.

      He crossed the room to the clothes dryer in the alcove off the kitchen, pulled out pants, socks and a flannel shirt. After getting dressed, he turned on the generator, made his coffee. When the brew had finished percolating, he poured a cup and took it out onto the porch where he sat on the step, letting the early morning sun warm him. Calm him.

      Deb, his sister, had set up the meeting for him that morning with the equine therapy lady. He was going to go, with the sole objective of saying he had gone—but not today. Not when he looked like the crazed hermit his sister seemed to think he was. He’d call Deb, change the meeting. She’d be upset, but grudgingly oblige, because there wasn’t much else she could do other than hound him. He had no intention of engaging in any kind of therapy that was not of his own choosing. He’d done months of it before being discharged from the military and moving back to Eagle Valley to be close to his daughter. With the help of the counselors, he’d cleared up a few matters, developed some strategies, but he hadn’t been able to shake the nightmares—unless he was taking the drugs that left him useless during the day.

      Deb didn’t know about the nightmares—thank goodness. She only knew that her brother was sullying her reputation as one of Eagle Valley’s social elite by living off the grid in a rustic cabin. Well, he loved this cabin. He and Lissa had spent their honeymoon here. She’d drawn up plans to renovate it, and he was going through with them, so that someday, maybe, his daughter could actually live with him.

      Although...maybe renovating the cabin, following Lissa’s diagrams, tracing her handwriting with his finger, was also triggering nightmares.

      Drew didn’t know, but he’d damn well bet that hanging around horses wasn’t going to help him one iota. Nevertheless, he was taking the meeting, eventually. It would get Deb off his back—for a while anyway.

      * * *

      HE WASN’T GOING to show.

      Faith Hartman stirred cream into the coffee the waitress refilled on her way by, wondering how long she needed to wait before returning to the college and telling her boss, the registrar of Eagle Valley Community College, that the meeting was a no go. Not looking forward to that. Debra Miller-Hill hadn’t been happy when her brother had canceled the first meeting, and she’d probably be less than thrilled about him not showing up for this one.

      Faith dipped her spoon into the cup, then looked up as the door to the café opened and a big man in a dark gray flannel shirt stepped inside.

      Faith’s heart thumped as she dropped her gaze.

      Damn.

      She pulled the spoon out of her coffee, carefully setting it on the napkin before chancing another look at the man who was now casually surveying the café. His gaze passed over her and she felt a rush of relief.

      Not the guy she was waiting for. She could see now that he was older than the man she was expecting, and certainly not a walled-off hermit with a thousand-mile gaze, which was exactly how Debra had described her brother.

      That didn’t slow her heart down one bit. Faith knew from bitter experience that she wouldn’t feel totally safe until either the man left the café or she did. And here she’d thought she’d made such progress over the past several months.

      The guy started moving, and Faith lifted her cup with both hands, concentrating on the warmth of the ceramic against her fingers, the aroma of the coffee—anything to bring her heart rate down before the guy she was supposed to meet arrived. If he did arrive.

      “Faith Hartman?”

      The unexpected sound of her name brought her head up and she found herself staring into ice-blue eyes. It took her a second to find her voice, because this guy—this tall, dark, trigger-inducing man—couldn’t be Debra’s brother. Could he?

      She cleared her throat