CHAPTER TWO

      A PROMISE MADE was a promise kept.

      That was Addison McDowell’s credo.

      It was the only reason she was at this damned party tonight. She’d promised her financial advisor and her attorney—her Texas advisor and her Texas attorney—that she’d show up, so she had.

      Doing what you said you would do was The Proper Thing. And doing The Proper Thing was important. She’d stuck with that ever since she’d decided that she was an Addison, not an Adoré.

      Girls who grew up in run-down trailer parks might be given that awful name, but she’d left those days far, far behind.

      She had become all that the name Addison implied.

      She was successful. Sophisticated. She owned a Manhattan condo. Well, she had a fat mortgage on one, anyway. She had a law degree from Columbia University. She dressed well.

      Only one fly in the ointment the last few months.

      Her reputation was better suited to an Adoré than an Addison, and wasn’t that one hell of a thing after all her efforts to escape that miserable trailer park and its sad heritage of silly, round-heeled women?

      Addison raised her glass to her lips and took a sip of merlot.

      If only Charlie had not left her that damned ranch.

      If only he hadn’t died.

      He’d been the best friend she’d ever had. The only friend she’d ever had. He hadn’t wanted her for her body, he’d wanted her for her intelligence, and to hell with what people thought.

      Charles Hilton, the multimillion-dollar lawyer, had liked her. Respected her.

      They’d begun as business associates, though she’d been only a junior member of his legal team, but as they’d gotten to know each other, Charlie had looked past the obvious: the glossy, dark hair she wore severely pulled away from her face; the silver eyes; the curvy figure she did her best to disguise within severely tailored suits.

      Charlie had seen the real her, the one with intelligence and the determination to succeed. He’d become her mentor.

      She hadn’t trusted his interest. Not at first. But as she’d gotten to know him, she’d realized that he loved her as the daughter he’d never had. In return, she’d loved him as the father she’d had and lost.

      And when he’d grown frail and ill, she’d loved him even more because he’d needed her, and being needed was a wonderful feeling.

      There had never been anything even remotely intimate between them, unless you counted rubbing his aching shoulders near the end of his life.

      It was obscene even to consider.

      But blogs and gossip columns didn’t care about truth, not when fiction was so much more juicy, not in Manhattan or, as it had turned out, not in Wilde’s Crossing, Texas.

      She’d kept a low profile since coming to Wilde’s Crossing, but that didn’t mean a thing.

      People watched her whenever she showed up in public.

      She’d known tonight would be the same, no matter what the Wilde brothers said.

      People would stare. Or try to be stealthy about it.

      Either way, eyes would be on her.

      “Wrong,” Travis Wilde had said.

      Addison sipped at her wine.

      The one who’d been wrong was Travis.

      She was getting lots of looks. And, hell, maybe she deserved them.

      She’d started out wearing a business suit. Too New York, she’d decided; she’d stand out like the proverbial sore thumb.

      So she’d ditched the suit for jeans, a silk blouse and boots.

      A glance in old man Chambers’s cracked bathroom mirror told her she looked like a New Yorker dressed for a Western costume party….

      And wasn’t it amazing that she’d fallen into calling Charlie’s ranch, her ranch, by its former owner’s name the way everybody else still did?

      Finally, she’d looked in the mirror and said, “To hell with it.”

      The sound of her voice had set a mouse to scampering in the walls.

      Good thing she wasn’t afraid of mice, she’d thought, or bugs, or the big snake she’d swept off the porch of the miserable pile of shingles she now owned.

      She wasn’t afraid of anything.

      That was what had taken her from Trailer Park, USA, to Park Avenue, New York City.

      So she’d changed to a black silk Diane von Furstenberg wraparound dress. It was very ladylike until you noticed how low the neckline dipped, and how the silk clung to her when she moved. Black kid, sky-high Manolo Blahniks were the finishing touch.

      Another look in the mirror and she’d tossed her head.

      Stories about her had reached Wilde’s Crossing before she did.

      When she’d questioned the Wildes, they’d both blushed.

      The sight of grown men blushing had some charm, but Addison wasn’t interested in charm. She was just damned tired of people talking about her.

      Tonight, no matter what she wore, people would stare. Why not give them something to stare at, never mind that her dress and stilettos wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow back home.

      She’d suspected that most of the women would wear jeans or what she thought of as tea dresses—frilly, flowery prints that only looked good on six-year-olds.

      Right on all counts, Addison thought now, as she swapped her empty wineglass for a full one from the tray of a passing server.

      Right about the women’s clothes and the town’s attitude. The women were the real pains in the ass because they weren’t just judgmental, they were holier-than-thou.

      Like the one watching at her right now.

      Frilly dress? Check. Too much lipstick? Double check. And big hair. Did Texas wives not know that big hair looked good on Dolly Parton and nobody else?

      Addison flashed the smile a cat might offer a mouse.

      The woman flushed and looked away.

      Pleased to meet you, too, Addison thought coldly, and then she also thought, Why did I come here tonight?

      Because Travis and Caleb Wilde had asked her.

      Back to square one.

      They’d asked, and in a moment of uncharacteristic weakness, she’d told them she’d do it, she’d go to their brother’s homecoming party, which wasn’t supposed to be a party at all.

      “Just family and a couple of old friends,” Caleb had said.

      “Well, maybe one or two more,” Travis had added.

      Right, Addison thought, with a mental roll of her eyes.

      Just family and old friends. She should have known better. When Travis fell into that good-ole-boy drawl of his, anything was possible.

      What looked like a zillion “old friends” had gathered in the enormous great room at El Sueño.

      El Sueño. The Dream.

      Addison hid a wry smile in her wineglass as she lifted it to her lips.

      In