Chapter One:
Sissy Longston adjusted the temperature in the brand new administration building, the air conditioner actually working a little too well. She hadn’t dressed for such chilly conditions, and she wished she had a sweater to put on.
To remedy her icy hands, she stepped outside into the brilliant California sunshine. May really was the most beautiful month in the state, and she faced east, out into the openness of Last Chance Ranch.
She took a deep breath, the good, earthy smell of the air clearing her mind. Well, at least a little. She worked long hours, yes, but she sure did love the ranch she’d landed at a couple of years ago.
She’d usually had a seething, insatiable need to move on after two or three years, but she didn’t see that happening here. Maybe her gypsy heart and wandering spirit had finally found a place to call home.
She inhaled and exhaled again, her fingers and toes tingling as they warmed up beneath the sunshine. She pulled out her phone and logged into the dating app she’d started using a few months ago. She wasn’t terribly active, and most of the time, men messaged her and she didn’t get it for days.
But she’d been chatting with someone named CowboyDan, and he’d asked her out three days ago. Just dinner, he’d said. Nothing fancy. If it’s a no, it’s a no.
She’d liked that he wasn’t too terribly clingy, but she still hadn’t answered him. The reason was Tom Rosser, the man she’d been out with a couple of times now. She hadn’t spent a whole lot of her adult life dating, choosing instead to buy airplane tickets and travel the world, but she knew she couldn’t go out with more than one man at a time.
Tom was good-looking and sweet, but the spark between them felt like one of those cheap fireworks children lit. Fire and pop for about fifteen seconds. Then just smoke, darkness, and a bad smell.
She tapped out a quick message to Tom, hoping to let him down easy. I’m sorry. I don’t think this is working out. Thanks for everything.
Tom had bought her two meals and driven up to the ranch once to pick her up when her car wouldn’t start. She’d had Hudson look at it since then, and it was humming along just fine now.
Sissy sighed, her head pounding, and she hoped she wasn’t coming down with a summer cold. After all, there was nothing worse than being sick when the weather was good.
“Hey, Sissy,” Amber called, and Sissy lifted her hand in a wave. Amber was a pretty woman who had taken to wearing a cowgirl hat whenever she wasn’t in the volunteer building. Sissy had been going to goat yoga every morning for months, simply to be around people. She’d never had any problem fitting in, but she was starting to wonder if she’d been focusing on all the wrong things, for far too long.
She’d always put adventures and experiences above relationships. Having a home, a family, or a husband had never been a priority—until now. And at forty-three-years-old, she feared she’d waited too long. Visited Greece one too many times when she should’ve gone out with Tanner Duplaix instead.
Or Dave Merrill. The thought poisoned her mind, and she tried to push it away. She and Dave had started at Last Chance Ranch in the same week, and she’d almost quit. But she’d liked Scarlett too much, and she had nowhere else to go. Her two weeks notice had already been put in at the corporation where she led the accounting department.
She didn’t want a life in the city. So she’d stayed. Dave simply avoided her, and she didn’t speak to him. Or look at him at ranch functions. If she saw him coming, she made a detour. It was a system that had worked for almost two years.
She knew she’d hurt him all those years ago. They’d been serious—diamond-ring serious—and she’d even worn his ring for a week before giving it back and breaking up with him.
She lost track of him after that, but the man wasn’t stupid. He knew she’d gone back to her old boyfriend—not that that relationship had panned out. Sissy had disappeared to South America for a month after everything, and she’d come back to a different job. A new adventure.
Now, she was just tired.
She navigated to CowboyDan’s message and said, I’m free tonight. Doable?
He didn’t respond right away, and she went back inside to work through the budget for Horse Heaven. They’d gotten seven new equines from Forever Friends, and that meant several more mouths to feed.
Scarlett Adams, the owner of the ranch, trusted Sissy to approve budgets and make sure the ranch had enough money coming in to maintain animal care and staff salaries. She and her husband, Hudson, had worked tirelessly to make Last Chance Ranch into what it was, and the ranch, the animals, and the people who lived here were thriving.
Sissy didn’t live on-site, but about three out of every five days, she wished she did. It warmed her heart to see so many people building lives here, and she’d witnessed three weddings last year. Scarlett and Hudson lived in the homestead, and everyone loved them.
Adele and Carson were the ranch’s cutest couple, and they lived in a tiny cabin next to Gramps on the edge of the homestead’s lawn, and Sissy may or may not have had to fight off the jealousy every day as she drove by the house Jeri had built for her and her husband, Sawyer to live in.
The two-story beauty sat just a few feet inside the fences of the ranch, right on the main road, and Sissy had never wanted a house as much as she wanted that one. It was then that she’d realized she did want to be a wife, a mother, and a homeowner, all things she’d never done in her life.
Not even once.
The door to the administration building opened, and Sissy looked up from her desk though there was a lobby and she was working in her office. No one else worked here, though, so if someone had come, they’d come to see her.
She arrived in the lobby just as Dave said, “This is the admin building. Our accountant works here.” He turned to leave, his eyes catching on hers.
They both froze. His voice had done that to her, and she watched the storm roll across the man’s handsome features. It seemed impossible that she’d had a hold over his heart for all these years, but he scowled at her and added, “Here she is. Cecilia Longston.”
The other cowboy with him stepped around Dave, and Sissy almost went into cardiac arrest. “Gray?” she asked.
“Oh, you two know each other?” Dave looked back and forth between Sissy and Gray as a smile spread across Gray’s face.
“We sure do know each other,” Gray said, swaggering forward and tucking his shirt into his jeans, though it was already tucked perfectly fine. “We went out two or three times a few years ago.” Gray leaned against the desk in the lobby. “How are you, Sissy?”
“It was twice,” Sissy clarified for Dave as well as Gray. “Five years ago. And I’m fine.”
Dave’s jaw clenched, and she wanted to make him relax. She’d do anything to get him to forgive her. Her heart wailed it was beating so fast under the weight of his glare.
“Gray’s our new hire,” Dave said, his voice definitely on the stiff side.
“And what will you be doing here at Last Chance Ranch?” Sissy asked.
“Agriculture specialist,” he said as if he’d just been elected President of the United States.
“You have a degree in that, I believe,” Sissy said, hearing the quick intake of air from Dave’s direction. She looked at him, silently begging God and him to hear her prayer.
Please forgive me.
Help him to forgive me.
“That’s right.” Gray’s gaze dripped down Sissy, and she didn’t like it. Not one little bit.
“Well, we have to go,” Dave said. “Loads more to see, man.” He tapped Gray on the shoulder, glared one last dagger at Sissy, and turned to leave the building.
Gray lingered, and even went so far as to ask, “Are you single, Sissy? Want to go to dinner tonight?”
Dave spun back toward them, his whole face dark and dangerous. How he could make her heart pitter-patter still, all these years later, wasn’t lost on her. They’d met when he was still active in the Army, and she’d fallen fast for him. Fast, and hard.
But she’d always had so many doubts, especially when she was younger, and she’d barely been twenty-five when Dave had proposed. She’d seen nothing of the world. Experienced nothing but college and a boring job in a boring No-Name Hollywood office.
Going back to Teddy had been a mistake. But Dave hadn’t heard any of those explanations. Once she’d broken off their engagement, he’d cut off all contact.
“I’m busy tonight,” she said with a smile, silently begging Gray to just go. Please go. “Sorry, Gray.”
He knocked twice on the desk in front of him and opened his mouth to say something else.
Dave got to him first, saying, “Dude, come on. She’s busy, and we’ve got other places to be.”
Their eyes met again, and Sissy mouthed the words Thank you to him. Dave didn’t react at all, other than to turn and walk out of the building, Gray behind him this time.
Sissy sagged into the doorframe, the adrenaline coursing through her the only thing keeping her upright.
But hey, progress—Dave had done something for her. Said her name without biting it off and spitting it out.
Her phone bleeped out the three-toned alert that she’d gotten a message on Christian Catch.
Sure, CowboyDan said. I’m free tonight.
Sissy smiled at the message, turning to go back into her office, glad the air conditioner had stopped blowing. She spent the next twenty minutes making arrangements to meet CowboyDan in a red sweater at a popular bistro in Pasadena, close to where she lived.
She never met men anywhere but Scooter’s, as she knew a couple of waitresses there, and they were always busy.
With a date with a new man—someone she’d had good online conversations with—on the horizon, she managed to put both Dave and Gray out of her mind.
For a few minutes, at least.
Then Dave came roaring back, just like he had been for eighteen years now.
