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Electronic Release: January 2013

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and occurrences are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, places or occurrences, is purely coincidental.

For Sonya, who always makes me smile. These two are for you, lady.

Much love, y’all.
BA

Prologue

“Maddie?” Addie sat out on the front steps of the Boston Library, phone to her ear, her heavy hoodie pulled up, letting the big column hide her from the rising sun, from people walking by. It was mostly joggers, this early, but the first of the blue-collar workers were heading into the city and soon the business people would be click-clacking by—all of them dressed in black or gray or navy blue, the women in pumps, the men in shiny duck-tailed shoes. It was bitter cold—too cold for October, it seemed like. She’d been in with Jim for a little over a year and it just…wasn’t home.

It wasn’t what she’d wanted when she left her position at the paper, given up her slot as photojournalist for the Morning News, walked away from and bombs and dying babies and Marines with blown-off legs and arms. She’d wanted home and peace and quiet and…. Not here. Not this cold, huge city on the harbor.

Hell, she’d wanted to move back to Hughes Springs, but Jim had found himself a good job at a firm in Boston, had been willing to give up his contract in the Middle East for her, and they’d been together for long enough that she’d felt honor-bound to give the city a chance. Give them a chance. She was beginning to think she was an idiot.

“Sister? Addie? What’s wrong? I know something’s wrong.” Of course Maddie knew. She always knew when something was up. Addie’s twin sister had texted twelve times in two hours, which was crazy. Maddie wasn’t a night owl, at all, and it was what? Six thirty here? So Five thirty at home? That meant Maddie had been texting since damn near three, and she’d have to be up in an hour to feed and work the horses. Addie guessed she was lucky Maddie was home at all. Rodeo finals would be starting soon and her twin would be on the road a lot. Maddie’d had a damn good year on the barrels; she’d be looking for the big purse in Vegas.

“I-I don’t know what to do.” Addie swallowed hard, hand on her cheek against the brisk autumn winds.

“What did that slimy motherfucker do? I swear to God, I’m going to get Daddy Chris, and I’ll be on a plane in an hour.”

“No!” She sat up, shook her head. “No, Maddie. Please. I just…I thought I was pregnant. I’m not. I wasn’t ever, but Jim saw the pregnancy test and freaked out. Called me a slut, threw me out. Accused me of cheating on him.” Put all her shit on the stoop.

She was never, ever living anywhere that had a stoop ever again.

“Did he hurt you?”

“I don’t know what to do,” she repeated.

“Oh, fuck a duck sideways. That smarmy little pussy-shoe-wearing fucktard hit you.” Maddie’s voice was like cold steel. Icy. Hard.

“He had a vasectomy. He never said. I just…the rubber broke and I was worried.”

“You’ll start tomorrow. I started today.” Addie was always—always—the day behind. Dad said it was because Maddie was born at eleven forty nine on a Friday and she came at twelve oh three on a Saturday. The only twins on earth with two dads, different birthdays, and a surrogate mom. “Wait, he didn’t tell you he was fixed?”

“No.”

“Christ, Addie, y’all are engaged!”

“Were.” The finger where he’d ripped the ring off was swollen, bruised, and she was scared it might be broken.

“Where are you?”

“Steps of the library.”

“In ?” Maddie still thought was the biggest, most violent city on earth and couldn’t be convinced that it had its lovely spots. It just wasn’t small town .

“No, Mads, in .”

“They have libraries there?”

They laughed together, sharing the moment. It faded though, just like the night was fading. “Do you think…I mean, my car has what he let me take.”

“Come home. It’s fall. It’s pretty. I’m fixin’ to be on the road for the push to finals and the dads could use company.” She could see Maddie’s smile in her mind’s eye, tired and fond and knowing. “I have two empty rooms here in my place.”

Daddy Chris had put a modular home on Bill Parker’s plot of land when the man passed, telling Maddie his girls needed a place to be, to stay.

“You sure you want a roommate?”

“Shit, sister, you’re not a roommate. I’ll expect you Thursday?”

She nodded. “Maybe Friday. I’m tired. I’ll wait until after rush hour, drive for a few hours and get some sleep.”

“Okay. I’ll tell the dads you’re coming and not to call.”

“Don’t tell them.”

“I won’t. I won’t have to.” Maddie sighed. “At least you weren’t married, huh? I mean, shit, this sucks, but there won’t need to be a lawyer or nothing.”

She nodded, but she was going to start crying again if she spoke. Maddie was right, she guessed. At least there wasn’t a marriage.

Or babies.

Or trust.

Just a screaming match, a slap, one broken finger and most of her shit in the back of a Dodge Charger.

She stood up, wiped her eyes and headed down the steps. Coffee first, then .

Chapter One

Addie sat, swinging her legs on the barstool in the most amazing dive bar she’d visited in all her travels. It was also what passed for the only club in town. Good thing the town was her hometown. With old pleather stools, flickering neon beer signs and a black-and-white checkered dance floor the size of a postage stamp, it was perfect.

Almost as perfect as Mr. Unlucky sitting three stools down.

Her phone beeped, and the evil ex, Jim’s, name popped up, and she rolled her eyes and hit reject call. God, it had been damn near six months since she’d left . You’d think the nutty fucker would lose her number. She wasn’t interested in a single thing the asshat had to say.

He could be happy and cold in fucking .

She turned her attention back to Mr. Hot, Stoic and Drinking. He was in here every Wednesday night, just like clockwork. Maddie had informed her Wednesday was when the cowboy wandered into town, did his feed store shopping and his weekly beer run, then stopped to have two longnecks at the bar before heading back to his twelve-hundred-acre ranch to work some of the finest Beefmaster cattle in Morris county.

Did that make her obsessed?

Nah. Hell, she was a photographer and investigative reporter still, right? In the time she’d been back in town, she’d found out everything any girl could want to know about what Bodie Reaver had been doing since she’d left—that he would be thirty-two in January and was, as yet, unmarried and that he had become something of a local legend.

The poor guy had lost two fiancées in the last twelve years. The first one had died in some kind of car accident back when she was at the end of high school, and the other had succumbed to cancer some three years ago. The rumors swirled around him like smoke; he was a black widower, a witch, cursed, or just the unluckiest guy on earth.

She didn’t believe any of the above, and even if she did, Addie thought Bodie was hot as hell. She was also bored to tears hiding out at her sister’s house in this tiny town and looking for something to do while she took pictures, lived off her savings and helped exercise horses. Why not him? She stood up and sidled over to his stool.

“Did you know frowning that deep will give you wrinkles?”

Bodie started a little, then turned to glance behind him before looking back at her and raising one almost-black brow. “You talkin’ to me, honey?”

“I most definitely am.” He was long and lean, with leather-tanned skin and bright blue eyes. Hoo, yeah. She was so talking to him.

His frown shifted into a smile, which gave him even better lines. “Well, then, I got to tell you, no one has cared about my lines in years.” Those pretty blue eyes were checking her out, though, making her blood pump faster.

“Too bad. That sounds like an incredible waste of one hell of a mouth.” Why pretend to be shy? Addie knew being the retiring type was not one of her failings, so to force it now would be silly.

The smile lines got deeper, the expression reaching his eyes. Gracious. That was lethal.

“Thank you, ma’am. Whatcha drinkin’?”

“Shiner,” she said, and winked. “I’m back in Texas. Might as well have the good beer.”

From Guatemala to Ghana, Moscow to Mozambique. She’d been and done it all. Now she wanted home and spring and bluebonnets and hot cowboys in her bed.

“Cool. Another Shiner for the lady, Carl.”

Carl, a skinny old cowboy with a three-inch lift in his left boot, nodded, staring at her with wide eyes. Obviously, he expected her to drop dead on the spot from talking to Bodie. When she didn’t, he grinned, the look pure shit-dipped evil. “Lord, that ain’t no lady. That’s Chris and Brandt’s youngest girl, Addison.”

Oh, she hated to be called by that name. She rolled her eyes, rubbed the bridge of her nose with her middle finger, then turned back to Bodie.

“Addie. Thanks for the beer, cowboy.” She let herself look, obvious and slow, admiring all the way along.

“Not a problem. Have a sit.” He motioned at the stool next to him, and she wasted no time plopping down.

“So, tell me something odd about yourself. Something I couldn’t guess.”

“I like cotton candy.” He grinned again before taking a swallow of his beer, his tanned throat working in an addictive way. “What about you?”

“I’m a wildcat in bed.” She winked, flirting outrageously. “Oh, wait. That’s not something you couldn’t guess, right?”

He laughed out loud when Carl choked behind the bar, sputtering hard. “I could figure that, yeah.”

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