Chapter One

      Jake McAbee didn’t know much, but he did know when he was in the middle of nowhere.

      A place he’d been before. Many times, in fact. Like the derelict trailer park where he’d grown up. Or the jagged peaks of an Afghan mountain range. And today on a deserted road somewhere in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina.

      He slowed the truck, going as far as the pavement allowed on the dead-end road. Performing a U-turn, he cranked the wheel hard. If only getting free of his dead-end life was as easy as turning his truck around.

      Sighing, he palmed the wheel and headed out the way he’d come. He should’ve gone left at the fork. A mistake soon rectified. If only everything else wrong in his life was as easily fixed.

      Jake set his jaw. No more of that. The past needed to stay in the past. He was on his way to meet his baby girl for the first time. A child he’d learned about just a few months ago.

      Her mother had kept Maisie’s existence from him, a fact that opened a hollow place in his heart. He’d missed the first two and a half years of her life.

      But when Tiffany died—too young—of breast cancer, her best friend, Callie Jackson, had notified him that he had a daughter. He had been on a mission in a remote region of Afghanistan, so it had taken the army a while to get ahold of him.

      Gripping the wheel, he veered at the fork. He owed Callie big-time. Not only had she cared for his ex-wife during her illness, she’d also practically raised his daughter by herself in the last few months since Tiff’s death.

      He let out a breath, uncurling one hand. Flexing his fingers, he released his death grip on the steering wheel. Trying to relax. Trying to breathe.

      Even now, he could hardly believe he had a daughter. The thought filled him with both elation and fear. Fear that he’d fail Maisie as he’d failed her mother. But also joy for his precious daughter and the new beginning he was determined to make for them.

      A brand-new, wonderful life with his child.

      The towering peaks of the tree-studded Blue Ridge flashed by on either side of his truck. Descending into the valley, he emerged into slightly gentler terrain. The rolled hay bales of late summer dotted grassy meadows. Horses grazed in the pastures, and there was row after row of orchards. Callie had said the area was known for its apples.

      Per her directions, he skirted the town and its welcome marker proclaiming Truelove, North Carolina—Where True Love Awaits. But after his failed marriage—once burned, twice shy—the only true love he was interested in was the love of the daughter he had yet to meet.

      A couple of miles later he spotted the turnoff. Apple Valley Farm, a weathered sign read. He