Chapter One

      Spending his afternoon at a kid’s first birthday party normally wouldn’t have made it anywhere near Jason McAndry’s to-do list. As this party was in honor of his buddy’s little girl, he didn’t have a choice.

      From his seat on one of the windowsills of the screened-in back porch, he rested his beer bottle on his knee and looked through the sliding glass doors into the house.

      Near the crowded dining table, the proud papa hugged his birthday girl, who was all dressed up in pink ruffles with a tiny bow in her nearly nonexistent hair. After one last kiss to her cheek, Greg handed the star of the show over to her mama.

      Jason tried for a smile. The man sure did dote on his daughter.

      In the three years since they’d met, he and Greg had put in a lot of miles traveling on the rodeo circuit. Back in those early days, they had both been single and fancy-free till Greg had first gotten roped by a woman, then hog-tied into becoming a daddy. Yet his buddy didn’t seem to see things that way.

      From that point on, their trips included frequent slide shows as Greg thumbed through the latest photos his wife sent to his cell phone.

      Jason shoved his hand into the back pocket of his jeans. His fingertips brushed the edge of his wallet. He had no photos on his phone, carried no pictures except his own on his driver’s license. But in that wallet he’d tucked a now worn and permanently creased copy of another child’s birth announcement.

      Greg stepped out onto the porch and slid the glass door closed behind him. He frowned. “What are you doing out here, guarding the beer locker?”

      He had left the house to get some space, some breathing room. But he couldn’t say that. “Just came out for a refill.”

      Greg nodded at his half-empty bottle. “Doesn’t look like you got one. Or are you ready for another already?”

      “No, this one’s still good. And I’ll be driving soon.” He moved to sit in one of the wooden porch benches and set the bottle on the wide arm. “Take a load off. All this master of ceremonies stuff must wear you out.”

      “Never.” Greg took a nearby chair. “I’ve got lots of lost time to make up for.”

      He meant his absence this season when they had been on the road, competing in rodeos across the country. Mere weeks away in total, while by comparison, Jason hadn’t been back to his hometown in years. He didn’t want to consider why or how he’d left Cowboy Creek. Yet, lately, both had been taking up too much space in his thoughts.

      “We’re talking about me hanging up my spurs,” Greg said quietly.

      “Giving up rodeo?” He might have done the same at one point. Now he couldn’t imagine making that choice. But Greg had his family to come back to. He had...himself.

      Inside the house, both sides of Greg’s family had gathered around his wife and little girl, all of them making too much noise for them to overhear this conversation, even with the windows wide-open on this mild January day. But, like his buddy, he kept his voice low. “You really want to leave your share of the winnings to me?”

      Greg laughed. “Yeah, I wouldn’t mind. You’re welcome to them. I don’t want to miss out on any more of my daughter’s life. And we want more kids. Soon, not down the road.” He swallowed a mouthful of beer, then continued, “Do you ever regret what happened with you and your wife?”

      He stiffened. The question had come out of nowhere. Sure, he’d told Greg a long time ago that he’d gotten divorced before he’d hit the rodeo trail. What he hadn’t told him was that had come to pass partly because of his refusal to hang up his spurs. That was only one item on a long list of his ex-wife’s grievances.

      After that lone conversation, he and Greg had never discussed it again. He had a feeling he knew why his buddy had brought it up now. “Listen, you may be settling into a rut as an old married man, but don’t go getting any ideas about me joining you in the trenches.”

      “There’s a lot to be said about having a family to come home to.”

      “Yeah, and there’s a lot I don’t need to say about that.” On that long-ago night over a few too many beers, he had told Greg all about the girl he’d left behind. The high-school-sweetheart-turned-wife who’d turned against him after their last rip-roaring fight. The wife who had wound up kicking him out of their apartment, the only place that had ever felt like home to him. He should have known better than to expect that to last. “Best day of my life, when I started following the rodeo.”

      “I thought that, too, once upon a time.”

      He rolled his eyes and exhaled heavily. “And if you’re planning to practice your storytelling skills on me, I may just take off again right now.”

      “Can’t do that. We haven’t even had the cake yet.” Greg glanced into the house at the crowd around the table in the direction of a leggy redhead, one of his wife’s friends. “How’d the hot date go last night?”

      Jason glanced at her, too, then away again. “It went cold fast,” he said shortly. He took another swig from his nearly empty bottle, partly to get the last mouthful of beer but mostly to distract Greg from more questions.

      When he’d rung the doorbell of the woman’s apartment last night, she had come to the door dressed to kill. Her shiny blouse wouldn’t have needed more than a touch to slide right off, but the skintight leather pants sure would have required some assistance. Of course, considering her friendship with Greg’s wife and the fact it was a first date, his run around those bases would have happened only in his dreams.

      “That was our first and last date,” he said firmly to Greg.

      His interest had worn off quickly when she stepped out into the hallway. She began to pull the door closed so abruptly, she would have crushed her little boy in the gap—if Jason hadn’t yelled a warning at her. In her defense, the kid had appeared out of nowhere. And that’s just where she had sent him off to again.

      The boy looked about five, not nearly old enough to be left alone, Jason knew. He’d been seven the first time his mother left him on his own, and even that wasn’t old enough. But after the first half-dozen times, he’d toughened up fast.

      Yet this woman simply gave the boy an order to step back before she closed the door. No goodbye kiss or cuddle, not even a last-minute rumpling of his hair. And without a sign of anybody else in the house.

      “You want to settle him in before we leave?” he asked while they still stood outside her apartment.

      “Don’t worry about him. I’ve got a sitter.”

      Her offhand care of the child left him wanting to shake his head in wonder. And then to cringe in shame. Who was he to criticize? And yet, the incident had left a sour taste in his mouth. Their evening had gone downhill from there, ending in an early night. When he arrived at the party this afternoon, they had nodded at each other as if they’d just met, then went their separate ways. No problem there. He’d become an expert at moving on.

      Greg eyed him. “Don’t you think it might be time to forget about your ex and—”

      “Long forgotten already,” he said firmly.

      “—find yourself another woman? This time next year, you could have a little girl or boy of your own.”

      “Already got one.” Dang. He hadn’t meant to blurt that out. He owed the slip to his unease over last night and to the months Greg had been preoccupied with his baby. Thoughts of his own child had been on his mind so often lately, the words had come out almost naturally.

      Greg