Chapter One

      Desperation kept Shelley Young plowing through the blinding snow. Of course, she’d seen the weather forecast, but she’d left Boulder anyway, praying that she’d outrun the storm as she headed down Route 76 toward Yuma. In other words, the middle of nowhere. A part of Colorado she’d avoided since she’d broken up with Matt Whitlock five years ago. She’d been in love with him, but she’d finally figured out that he couldn’t give her the things she wanted most—marriage and children. Walking away from him had wrenched her heart, but she’d made a clean break, moving her accounting business a hundred and forty miles away to Boulder, where she’d been living ever since.

      “It’s all for the best,” her mom would have said. For a while Shelley had believed it, but she’d been wrong. Because now she was back—to beg Matt Whitlock for help. Only she’d gotten caught in a storm that blanked out every recognizable feature of the flat eastern Colorado landscape.

      This was an area of sudden, violent weather. Thunderstorms in the summer and snowstorms in the winter.

      Like now. But what did she expect? In the time it took to read a couple of heart-stopping sentences, her life had fallen to pieces—and plowing through the blinding snow was just one more trial she had to get through to put it back together.

      If she could put it back together.

      Although the windshield wipers swept back and forth in front of her, they didn’t help much. If only she’d noted the odometer reading when she’d left Boulder, she’d have a better idea where she was, but she’d been too focused on getting here to check anything on the dashboard besides the gas gauge.

      She almost missed the turn-off for the Silver Stallion Ranch, but from the corner of her eye, she caught sight of the familiar metal archway above the stone gateposts.

      Skidding as she applied the brakes, she peered up the narrow drive that led to the ranch complex. There were no tire tracks, which meant no one had been up or down the access road since the storm had started.

      Her heart gave a painful lurch. After she’d come so far, was Matt away? Or was he just holed up in the ranch house, waiting out the bad weather?

      Clamping her hands onto the wheel, she turned in between the gateposts and started up the lane. Once this had been familiar territory. Now she might as well be traveling through an arctic wasteland.

      When the car skidded on hidden ice, she cautiously tapped the brake, wondering when Matt had last plowed the drive. It felt as if he hadn’t spread a fresh layer of gravel since she’d been here.

      What did the lack of upkeep mean? Was he low on funds? Or had he withdrawn even more into the shell she’d watched him building around himself?

      With a sick feeling, she looked back over her shoulder, questioning her decision to come here in the first place.

      But she’d had nowhere else to turn, and retracing her path would be tricky.

      She managed to drive perhaps another fifty yards before the car hit an obstruction hidden in the snow. When she tried to back up, she fishtailed into the ditch at the side of the road.

      If she’d been a man, she would have responded with a string of curses, but she made do with one ladylike “damn.”

      She was good at keeping her temper under control. Maybe that was part of her problem. She was too polite to make a fuss, which was one of the reasons she hadn’t contacted Matt five years ago when …

      She took her bottom lip between her teeth, unwilling to finish the thought. She’d have to get to that soon enough.

      Her cell phone was in her purse, but when she pulled it out, she got another nasty surprise. Usually she charged it overnight, but that was one more detail she’d neglected in the past few days. Now the battery was dead as a tree stump.

      “Damn!”

      She’d just have to walk the rest of the way to the ranch house.

      With a sigh, she looked in the back seat. Her overnight bag was there, but carrying it through the snow was out of the question. After slinging the strap of her purse across her chest, she yanked her wool hat down more firmly over her dark hair, pulled her scarf up over her nose and climbed out of the car.

      Immediately, the wind whipped against her slender frame, making her grab the car door to brace herself. When she felt steady on her feet, she raised her arm to shield her eyes from the stinging flakes and started plodding up the drive, glad that at least the snow wasn’t higher than the top of her boots.