One

      Dallas Fortune left his pickup truck parked near his sprawling adobe house, located not far from the ranch’s main house where his father lived, and walked the short distance to the barns and corrals. It was a sunny, clear day in late November, and the midday air was pleasantly warm. He’d been up since five and had already put in hours of work with the ranch hands.

      More and more, Dallas was taking over duties that his father, Ryan, had once enjoyed doing, which was fine with Dallas for several reasons. First of all, he loved the Double Crown Ranch as none of his siblings did. Matthew was a doctor of medicine, Zane preferred working in the family’s corporation, Fortune TX, Ltd., and the twins, Vanessa and Victoria, had chosen careers that had nothing at all to do with the ranch or the family.

      A second reason for Dallas’s dedication to the ranch’s operation was his father. Ryan’s plate was pretty full, considering the nasty divorce he was going through, the fact that Matthew and Claudia’s baby son Bryan had been kidnapped right from under everyone’s noses during a family get-together for the child’s christening, and last but certainly not least, Ryan was crazy in love with Lily Redgrove Cassidy and couldn’t marry her until his divorce was final.

      But Dallas’s third reason for putting in long hours and deliberately exhausting himself so he could sleep nights was deeply personal. His wife Sara had died two years ago while giving birth to their stillborn son. The double tragedy still haunted Dallas—and a third tragedy was that he didn’t give a damn that it did. He’d become a loner, a man lost in his own past, and he often shunned social events and people, both friends and family, because some had the unmitigated gall to say right to his face that he had mourned long enough. Their attempts at matchmaking sickened Dallas. And the women who paraded themselves before him to get attention caused exactly the opposite reaction.

      Dallas did have a