Prologue

       Last Summer

      “The truth of the matter, son, is that I’ve got a request for you,” John Randall McCafferty stated from his wheelchair. He’d asked Thorne to push him to the fence line some thirty yards from the front door of the ranch house he’d called home all his life.

      “I hate to ask what it is,” Thorne remarked.

      “It’s simple. I want you to marry. You’re thirty-nine, son, Matt’s thirty-seven and Slade—well, he’s still a boy but he is thirty-six. None of you has married and I don’t have one grandchild—well at least none that I know of.” He frowned. “Even your sister hasn’t settled down.”

      “Randi’s only twenty-six.”

      “High time,” J. Randall said. A shell of the man he’d once been, J. Randall nonetheless gripped the arms of his metal chair, often referred to as “that damned contraption,” so tightly his knuckles bleached white. An old afghan was draped over his legs though the temperature hovered near eighty according to the ancient thermometer tacked to the north side of the barn. Across his lap was his cane, another hated symbol of his failing health.

      “I’m serious, son. I need to know that the McCafferty line won’t die with you boys.”

      “That’s an archaic way of thinking.” Thorne wasn’t going to be pushed around. Not by his old man. Not by anyone.

      “So be it. Damn it, Thorne, if ya haven’t noticed I don’t have a helluva lot of time left on this here earth!” J. Randall swept his cane from his lap and jabbed it into the ground for emphasis.

      Harold, J. Randall’s crippled hunting dog, gave off a disgruntled woof from the front porch and a field mouse scurried into a tangle of brambles.

      “I don’t understand you,” J. Randall grumbled. “This could have been yours, boy. All yours.” He swept his cane in a wide arc and Thorne’s gaze followed his father’s gesture. Spindly legged colts frolicked in one pasture while a herd of mottled cattle in shades of russet, black and brown ambled near the dry creek bed that sliced through what was commonly referred to as “the big meadow.” The paint on the barn had peeled, the windows in the stables needed replacing and the whole damned place looked as if it were suffering from the same debilitating disease as its owner.

      The Flying M Ranch.

      John Randall McCafferty’s pride and joy. Now run by a foreman as he was too ill and his children too busy with their own lives.

      Thorne regarded the rolling acres with a mixture of emotions running the gauntlet from love to hate.

      “I’m not getting married, Dad. Not for a while.”

      “What’s the wait? And don’t tell me you need to make your mark. You’ve done it, boy.” Old, faded blue eyes rolled up to look at him, then blinked when rays from a blinding Montana sun were too much. “What’re ya worth now? Three million? Five?”

      “Somewhere around seven.”

      His father snorted. “I was a rich man once. What did it get me?” His old lips folded back on themselves. “Two wives who bled me dry when we divorced and a bellyful of worry about losin’ it all. No, money isn’t what counts, Thorne. It’s children. And land. Damn it all—” biting his lower lip, J. Randall dug deep into his pocket “—now where in tarnation is that—Oh, here we go.”

      Slowly he withdrew a ring that winked in the sunlight and Thorne’s gut twisted as he recognized the band—his father’s first wedding ring; one he hadn’t worn in over a quarter of a century. “I want you to have this,” the old man said as he held out the gold band with its unique silver inlay. “Your mother gave it to me the day we were married.”

      “I know.” Thorne, sensing he was making a serious mistake, accepted the ring. It felt cold and hard in his fingers, a metal circle that held no warmth, no promise, no joy. A symbol of broken dreams. He pocketed the damn ring.

      “Promise me, boy.”

      “What?”

      “That you’ll marry.”

      Thorne didn’t bat an eye. “Someday.”

      “Make it soon, will ya? I’d like to leave this earth knowin’ that you were gonna have a family.”

      “I’ll think about it,” Thorne said and suddenly the small band of gold and silver in his pocket seemed to weigh a thousand pounds.