Chapter One

      “He’s here.”

      Alana McClintock kept her gaze firmly on the frying pan in front of her, though she glanced up quickly at the teenager who burst into the spacious state-of-the-art kitchen like a colt from a pasture. The black cowboy hat the girl wore just about fell from her head.

      “It’s got to be him, Alana,” the fourteen-year-old all but shouted, brown ponytail flying. “They said they’d be here around five and it’s a little after that right now.”

      The butter-and-brown-sugar mixture began to lose its viscosity, a sure sign the homemade syrup was about to boil. “Be there in a sec.”

      “But you’re going to miss it,” the girl wailed.

      There. Tiny bubbles began to form on the bottom. Alana grabbed her whisk. Timing was everything here. If she let it get too hot, it would crystallize. If she didn’t get things hot enough, it would turn into a gooey mess, and Cabe and Rana wouldn’t have anything to pour over their flapjacks. She’d never hear the end of it, either.

      “Here comes the bus right now.”

      She stirred the mixture with more and more speed, then quickly counted down. Five. Four. Three. Two...

      “Done.” She grabbed a pot holder and clutched the cast-iron skillet, taking it off the stove. “Who needs a double boiler?”

      “Hurry!”

      “All right, all right.”

      With the pan safely off to the side and the gas off, Alana turned toward Rana. The teenager had the appearance of a kid on Christmas morning. No surprise since her hero, a man Rana had looked up to since she was old enough to watch TV and, more important, the National Finals Rodeo, was about to arrive at New Horizons Ranch.

      Albeit in a wheelchair.

      “Hurry,” Rana cried, spinning on her heel and running from the kitchen, her cowboy boots leaving clumps of dirt on the floor.

      “Rana,” Alana scolded. “You know how much that drives me nuts. No boots in the house.”

      The teenager had disappeared.

      Alana followed at a more leisurely pace. Never before had Rana shown so much enthusiasm for a guest, and there’d been a lot of guests come and go over the years. They were primarily a dude ranch, one of the best in the nation, according to a review they’d recently received, yet they did more than escort people on trail rides. They specialized in guests with disabilities. Guests who couldn’t walk, guests missing limbs, guests with severe deformities. Alana provided therapy if they needed it. Sometimes it was the parents who were disabled, sometimes the children. New Horizons made sure everyone enjoyed the same types of activities: horseback riding, swimming and, most of all, the Feather River.

      But this was the first time they’d have a single guest, and he was their first official celebrity, if people in the rodeo world could be called celebrities. Rana lived and breathed rodeo. This was her first year riding for her high school team. Her best event, breakaway roping, was similar to the kind of roping seen on TV. So when she’d heard Trent Anderson would be a guest, well, there’d been no living with the child. The world-famous All-Around Cowboy was one of Rana’s all-time heroes, right behind her father, who also happened to be Alana’s boss...sort of.

      “Finally decided to join us,” teased that boss when she stepped onto the porch a moment later. Cabe smiled, a grin so much like his brother’s, Alana had to look away. Braden would have been glad to welcome Trent Anderson, too.

      “You know Alana wouldn’t miss this for the world.” Rana clutched her dad’s left hand, her gaze firmly on the bus visible through the pine trees in the front pasture. The two of them were like carbon copies of each other with their brown hair, blue eyes and small noses. They each wore blue-checkered shirts, though in different shades. Rana’s was more brilliant than Cabe’s, a shade of blue that matched their eyes. They both wore the same type of cowboy hat—flat—not like a John Wayne hat with a curled brim. More like Wyatt Earp’s. Vaquero-style, it was called, the flat hats popular in the high desert. Rana had complemented her outfit with a butterfly-blue “wild rag,” a silk bandanna that cowboys used to shield their faces from the cold. Rana had wrapped it around her neck, the ends dangling down in front of her.

      “I just hope this wasn’t a mistake,” she heard Cabe say as she walked up next to him.

      “Why would this be a mistake?” Rana tipped her head to the side to stare up at her dad.

      “Usually, we’ve never met our guests prior to their visit.”

      There was something in Cabe’s eyes that put Alana on alert. He was frowning as the bus approached.

      “It’ll be fine.” Alana gently nudged his arm.

      “I hope so.” He gave her a smile in return.

      Alana took a deep breath, filling her lungs with air that seemed scented with oregano, but was actually wild sage. They were a million miles from nowhere, in God’s country, in northern California where pine trees turned the meadows army-green and snow turned the tip of an ancient volcano a glorious white. They were in a valley, one surrounded by low-lying mountains, the volcano to her northwest, though it was so far away it was difficult to gauge just how big it really was over the tops of the whispering pine trees. Just glancing at the snow made Alana pull her black thigh-length sweater tight around her. It was late afternoon, the sun hiding behind the Douglas firs so that their trunks threw long shadows onto the ground. When the light disappeared, it’d be cold.

      “Why is Tom driving sooooo slow?” grumbled Rana.

      She followed Rana’s gaze. A yellow bus, the kind traditionally associated with schools, had turned down their driveway, the tires kicking up dust. It was almost summer, but the valley was known for its late springs, and yellow wildflowers dotted the pasture, the blooms having cropped up so quickly it was as if they celebrated the change in temperatures. Though it was California, it wasn’t uncommon for frost to wreak havoc. So the wildflowers weren’t the only living things to be glad the bitterly cold weather was over—Alana was grateful, too.

      “Do you think he’ll remember you, Dad?” Rana stood in front of her father now, her dad’s arms resting upon her shoulders. She looked up and back and shot him a wide smile. He was the center of her universe. The filling in her Hostess cupcake. The espresso in her caramel macchiato. It’d been that way ever since Rana’s mother died, and once again Alana had to look away as she thought back to those difficult days. So much tragedy. So much loss. And now, look. Rana had learned to walk again, and the ranch had a new name...and a new mission, and she...well, Alana had taken on the role of surrogate mother even though there was nothing romantic between her and Cabe.

      “Oh, he remembers me.”

      Something about the way Cabe said those words had Alana glancing at him sharply. Had there been bad blood between them when Cabe had quit the rodeo circuit to nurse his little girl? Alana couldn’t remember hearing anything. Of course, Cabe and Braden had competed at a different level than Trent. The brothers had just begun to take their rodeo careers seriously—flying to bigger, out-of-state rodeos, an eye on the National Finals Rodeo.

      And then the car accident.

      Both she and Cabe had lost loved ones. He a brother and a wife, she a future husband, and the two of them had clung to each other in their grief. There’d never been anything between them, never would be, but she’d stuck around for Rana’s