Immediately the image of Flynn MacGregor, looking the way she’d looked the last time he’d seen her, peppered his mind. Wearing that pink dress that made her shine like a springtime tulip. Her soft, dark brown hair curling to her feisty shoulders, hands clutched into tight fists, bottom lip caught up between her teeth, her hazel eyes wide in stunned disbelief as Sheriff Clinton Trainer had handcuffed him and stuffed him into the backseat of his patrol car.

Slowly, he stabbed the strap of the Timex through
the loop, completing the cinch, the weight of it unexpectedly heavy against his wrist after all these years. The watch had stopped. Ironic when you thought about it. Stopped watch, stopped life. He wound the stem, and then looked up to meet Warden Neusbaum’s eyes.

“No,” he said. “There’s no one.”

The warden nodded as if the answer did not surprise him and passed Jesse the new, but cheaply made suit and lace-up dress shoes supplied by the state of Texas. In the pen they stripped you not only of lace-ups, but of your entire identity. For ten years he’d been nothing but a number. Now he was supposed to go out into society and became Jesse Calloway again. How was he going to do that? He’d spent his entire adult life behind bars. Framed and incarcerated for a crime he hadn’t committed.

Resentment tasted as brackish as burnt coffee beans on the back of his tongue, but he shook off the emotion. No sense getting pissed off. What was done was done. After all, revenge was a dish best served cold, and he’d been in a deep freeze for a very long time.

“For what it’s worth…” Warden Neusbaum paused and shifted his bulk, clearly uncomfortable with what he was about to say next. “I’m gonna miss you. You’ve been an exemplary inmate, and what you did for that boy…”

Jesse took a deep breath, inhaled the institutionalized smell of fear, testosterone, blood, body odor, Lysol, and badly prepared meals. The haunting smell was routine now, but he could still remember the way it had hit him the first time those cell doors had clanked closed behind him. The same
way it must have hit Josh Green. In prison, empathy was a stupid thing, and it had almost gotten him killed.

He shrugged. “Yeah, well, you know.”

“Don’t shrug it off. You put your own life in grave peril to save that boy and you stopped a prison riot.”

“Don’t go makin’ a hero out of me, Warden. I was just bucking for an early release.” Jesse flashed the grin that had once worked so well at charming the panties off young women.

“Well, you did something right for once. The kid’s alive and you got two years shaved off your sentence. Now for the standard speech. Good luck out there and don’t ever let me catch your ass back in here again.”

Jesse clenched his jaw. “That it?”

“Since you’ve got no folks coming to fetch you, a guard will put you on a bus and give you instructions about contacting your parole officer.” Neusbaum nodded toward the bathroom adjacent to his office. “You’ve earned the right to some privacy. Go get dressed.”

Jesse picked up the suit and shoes and headed toward the bathroom, not sure what he was feeling. He supposed he should have been excited. Today he would walk away from Huntsville prison a free man. But his emotions were complex.

Hollowness carved out a hole in his brain. Regret slithered along his spine. Anxiety swirled through his every breath. Resolve crouched on his shoulders. Revenge burned his gut.

But in his heart…in his
damnable
heart…he felt hope. And that’s where trouble boiled.

As much as he wanted revenge to matter more, it didn’t. Sure he wanted to get even with Beau Trainer. Certainly he ached to mete out real justice. Yes, he itched to expose the new sheriff of Twilight, Texas, for the fraud he was. But underneath it all, he wanted Flynn more.

According to Jesse’s Aunt Patsy, Beau had asked Flynn to marry him four times, but she turned him down even as she kept dating him. Jesse ground his teeth. Why? Could it be that some small part of her still harbored feelings for him?

Even after ten years? Even after he’d been to prison? Fat chance of that.

Yet the hope flickered.

Hope. What a stupid, dangerous thing.

Jesse shook off the rough cotton prison jumpsuit, letting it drop to the cement floor, and stepped into the ill-fitting Wal-Mart suit. Not much of an improvement, but at least he looked like a human being again. Good-bye prisoner number 87757310.

Once dressed, he kicked off the slip-ons, sat down on a bench, and jammed his feet into the new shoes. It had been ten years since he’d done up laces, and he wondered if he’d forgotten how to tie his own shoes.

He raised his right leg up to the bench. The laces felt thick and clumsy in his fingers. Freedom was within his grasp. The flavor of it was on his tongue, and it tasted like Flynn. Sweet, with just the right amount of underlying tartness; juicy, warm, and welcoming.

There was that hope again.

Jesse tried to crush it. Reminded himself that she’d been sleeping with his mortal enemy, but he
couldn’t manage to summon up any anger toward her. He reserved that for Trainer. All he really wanted was to see Flynn again.

What if she doesn’t want to see you?

She probably didn’t. If he was smart, he would forget all about her. But if he was smart, he wouldn’t have landed in here in the first place. He looped the laces, pulled them tight, his fingers regaining their memory.

Flynn
.

The woman he’d dreamed about every night. The image of her smiling face had saved his sanity inside these prison walls.

Flynn
.

He tugged the knot, making sure it held secure. He was breathing heavily now. Hope fluttered around in his heart like some damn butterfly. Christ, he was acting like a schoolgirl.

Flynn
.

Had he completely fabricated the feelings they’d had for each other? Had it all been in his head, lopsided and pathetic? Doubt smashed the butterflies. Fear kicked hope in the teeth. Who was he kidding? He wasn’t good enough for her. He’d known it then and nothing had changed.

Yet she hadn’t married Trainer. Why not?

“Calloway,” Neusbaum called to him.

Jesse stood up and looked down at his perfectly bound shoelaces. New beginning. New start. He opened the door and stepped back into the warden’s office.

“Guard’s here to escort you to the bus.”

The guard waited for him in the hallway. Neusbaum clasped Jesse’s hand, told him good-bye.

Unshackled for the first time in ten years, Jesse followed the guard out into the light.

“Where you headed?” the guard asked. “Home?”

“I’ve got no home,” Jesse said. “Never have, never will.”

“I gotta know where you’re going. For the bus ticket.”

“I’m headed for Twilight.”

“Twilight?” The guard looked confused.

“Twilight,” he confirmed. “It’s a town, outside Fort Worth.”

“What’s in Twilight? A job? A woman?”

“A wrong that needs righting.”

“Hey,” the guard said, “don’t do anything to send your ass back here. That’d be stupid.”

Stupid it might be, but Jesse didn’t care. His plan had been ten long years in the making. He was going back to the town where it all began. Back to even the score with the man who’d ruined his life. Back to collect the justice he’d been denied.

Back to claim the woman who should have been his.

Flynn MacGregor pulled her clunky old Ford Ranger out of the parking lot of Froggy’s Marina Bar and Grill. The café hunkered on the banks of the Brazos River at the juncture where it flowed into Lake Twilight. She’d grown up on this river and she was as much a part of it as the sand cranes and snapping turtles. The smell of the water was in her blood; this place anchored her heart. The early evening mist cloaked the valley in a moisture shroud, causing Flynn’s hair to frizz like a 1970s Afro.

Yeah, okay, she loved the river; the humidity, not so much.

She raised a hand in a vain attempt at taming her unruly locks, forgetting all about buckling up her seat belt. Dammit, she’d spent an hour last night ironing it straight. Naturally curly hair and river life didn’t mix. She had half a mind to say, “Screw it,” and stop the ironing, but Beau preferred her hair sleek and tamed. Honestly, so did she, but battling nature was hard work.

So was getting ready for the Friday night all-you-can-eat-catfish dinner crowd at Froggy’s. Especially since her father had yet to show up for his shift and she was due to host the Sweethearts’ Knitting Club at their house in half an hour. Flynn tried not to assume the worst, but she immediately started worrying. Had Floyd fallen off the wagon again?

He’s been clean and sober for a year. Take a deep breath. He’s probably got a very good reason for being late
.

Still, that didn’t stop her from making a beeline for home—which lay just half a mile north of Froggy’s. She had to get there before the ladies from the knitting club started arriving and found Floyd half into a bottle of Wild Turkey, doing his best imitation of Tom Cruise in
Risky Business
, sliding across the hardwood floor to the tune of some Elvis ditty. Last time it had been “Burning Love.” Flynn cringed at the memory of her father in his underwear, crooning into a hairbrush, as dotty octogenarian Dotty Mae Densmore applauded and asked if he was available for bachelorette parties,
while the rest of the knitting club had looked on in stunned shock.

And then she heard the
whoop-whoop
blast of a squad car siren, saw red and blue lights twirling behind her pickup truck.

Oh crap, now what?
Feeling just a bit cheesed off, she pulled to the side of the road. The cruiser snugged in behind her.

The trooper swung out of his vehicle, cocked his Stetson back on his forehead, sank his hands onto his hips, and sauntered up to her window. He looked like a cross between Dudley Do-Right and The Terminator—precision military haircut, large firm jaw, shoulders you could iron a linen shirt on, service weapon strapped to him more securely than a body part. The twinkling star on his chest confirmed his identity—sheriff of Hood County, Texas.

“Ma’am,” he said, leaning in to rest his forearms on her windowsill.

He was playing a familiar little sex game, but honestly, she wasn’t in the mood. “Listen Beau, I gotta go. Floyd didn’t show up for work and I’ve got the knitting club on the way and—”

“Flynnie,” he interrupted. She wished he wouldn’t call her that, but he seemed to enjoy it so much that she’d never worked up the courage to tell him she didn’t care for the moniker. “Take a deep breath and be in the moment. You’re letting your mind run away with you again.”

She hated how well he knew her. It was almost as irritating as it was comforting.

“Deep breath,” he insisted.

Rolling her eyes, she took a deep breath.

“Good girl. Now how come you didn’t have your seat belt on?”

“Is that what this is about?”

He pulled his ticket book from his back pocket.

“You’re not serious.”

“Click or ticket, ma’am,” he said with a deadpan face.

He was still playing the game. Or at least she hoped he was. Beau was such a straight arrow it was often difficult to tell when he was teasing or when he was toeing the line beyond all reasonable human expectations.

Flynn batted her eyelashes at him, playing along just to get this over with so she could go home and make sure Floyd was not blitzed on the Jägermeister she suddenly remembered her sister, Carrie, kept hidden behind the paint thinner underneath the kitchen sink.

“Oh, Officer, is there anything I can do to get out of this ticket?” Flynn asked.

“Are you attempting to bribe an officer of the law?”

“Um…no…not at all. Unless it’ll work.”

“Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to step out of your vehicle and follow me to my patrol car.”

She sighed, resigned to playing out the scenario. She opened the door, followed him to his patrol car, and got into the passenger seat.

“Your hair’s frizzing,” Beau said, back to being himself as he got in beside her.

Flynn reached up to tuck a wild strand behind her ear. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“Hey, you don’t have to apologize. You can’t control the weather. It’s just that it makes you look wild.”

Maybe I wanna be wild for once.

“Um, could we please get the show on the road? I’ve got a lot to do and—”

“Flynnie,” he interrupted, “We’ve got something really important to discuss.”

“I know, I know, I should have worn my seat belt.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about, but yeah, you should have.” He shook a chiding finger.

“Can’t it wait?” She waved a hand in the direction of her house. Flynn could see it from here—down-home farm-style, painted buttercup yellow, wraparound veranda. Rocking chairs on the front porch. Bucket of colorful yarn parked beside the rocking chairs to keep up the appearance that she actually knew how to knit. “Floyd, the Sweethearts, Froggy’s…”

“I know you’re stretched thin, but I need for you to focus. Take another deep breath.”

She complied.

“Good girl,” he said again, and she halfway expected him to pat her on the head and give her a liver treat. Then he took something out of his pocket that made her heart vault up into her throat.

A black velvet ring box.

“Beau…” She was shaking her head before he ever cracked the box open.

He raised a finger. “Before you say anything I want you to just hear me out. Can you do that?”

She nodded mutely, overwhelmed by the tightness in her chest. She did have a tendency to shoot
her mouth off without knowing all the details.

Beau opened the box. This time the ring was a three-carat marquise cut surrounded by a flotilla of baguettes. It must have cost him at least six months’ salary. It was twice as big as the last one. She had to bite down on her tongue to keep her promise of hearing him out.

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