Prologue
October
Billy stood out on the deck, the baby monitor in his back pocket. She’d probably sleep for at least an hour, maybe even two. He hoped so anyway, for her sake as much as his. She was a much happier baby after her afternoon nap. If she didn’t wake up on her own at the end of two hours, he’d wake her.
Dottie, his mother, told him he should never wake a sleeping baby, but he didn’t listen. By then, he’d miss her so much that watching her sleep wouldn’t be enough. He’d want to feel the warmth that thawed his body when she smiled at him, kicked her feet, and put her head on his chest—like she did at the end of every nap.
Plus, when Willow was awake, he didn’t think about Renie as much.
Today marked eight months since he’d seen her, and next week his baby girl would be celebrating her first birthday. He never dreamed they would be doing it without the woman he swore he couldn’t live without.
It had also been eight months since Renie had seen her horse. He’d been sure having Pooh stabled at his ranch would mean she’d come. Another thing he never dreamed—that Renie would go this long without even asking about her horse. Asking would have meant Renie had to talk to him, something she refused to do.
The woman he thought he knew better than any other person on the planet had turned into someone he no longer recognized. And all because of an innocent baby girl.
October in Monument, Colorado meant that yesterday was a beautiful seventy-degree day, and today the weather report called for snow. The cold front brought ten-degree temperatures with it. He welcomed it. In nothing but his jeans and a short-sleeve shirt, the outside of his body was numb. He wished it would numb him straight through, to dull the ache of missing her. He’d gotten used to it, that constant pain no pill took away.
The only time he experienced joy was with Willow, his beautiful baby girl who had the same blue eyes and flaxen hair as Renie. He’d be willing to bet that Willow looked a lot like Renie had when she was a baby. He didn’t have any photos to look at though, to find out for sure.
Eight months. It didn’t seem possible. Soon, Willow would be walking. She already made her way around the room, holding on to anything that would get her from one place to the next. And Renie wouldn’t be here to see it. Why had she left him? He asked himself that question a thousand times a day.
1
Previous January
“Damn that Liv Fairchild,” he muttered. Billy slammed the barn door shut behind him, and stomped to the house. She wasn’t Liv Fairchild anymore, now she was Liv Rice, but that didn’t change how mad he was at her.
When she came to him and asked whether he wanted to buy her ranch, the answer was obvious. Of course he did. His family’s ranch bordered hers, and they’d wanted to buy this land since he was a boy. His family didn’t begrudge Liv’s—the Pattersons had been leasing grazing rights since they bought the place. And her house, well, it was one of the nicest houses he’d ever seen.
She named a fair price, and he certainly could afford it. It was the side deal she made with him that was the problem. Liv had been boarding horses for years, and she didn’t want to let the families down who counted on her, so she made Billy promise to keep the boarding stables open.
How he’d do that, was beyond him. He traveled as a saddle bronc rider on the rodeo circuit, and sometimes he was away for two or three weeks at a time.
He told Liv’s daughter, Renie, she could keep her horse there for as long as she wanted. She had four years of school to finish before she got her degree and became a large animal vet. He wouldn’t have asked her to move Pooh, the fourteen-year-old mare she’d had since she was ten. But taking care of her horse, along with all the others, wasn’t something he signed up for.
Liv told him to hire somebody. Plenty of ranch hands worked Patterson Ranch, his parents’ place, but he doubted a job this small would entice anyone.
&
nbsp; He was almost years old, and this was the first time he had a place of his own. It wasn’t that he hadn’t wanted to before, he just hadn’t had any good reason. He was on the road so much, and when he was home, his parents’ place was big enough. His room was on the lowest floor of their tri-level house, and he had plenty of privacy, not that he’d ever taken advantage of it.
“You need to move out Billy,” Renie said to him. “You kinda seem like a loser, still living with your parents.”
He knocked her into the water trough when she’d said it. He thought that might teach her, pain in the ass that she was.
“You should hire Blythe,” she said, trying to help him come up with a solution for the stables.
“Blythe who?”
“Blythe Cochran.” Paige and Mark Cochran were her mother’s best friends. She and Blythe had been friends since they were five years old.
“Why would I hire her?”
“Because she’s home. She quit school and doesn’t have anything to do.”
That didn’t sound like the best reason he’d ever heard to hire somebody. The fact that she quit school didn’t fill him with confidence, either. The last thing he needed was to get a phone call while he was out on the road, telling him she was quitting. What the hell would he do then?
“Why’d she quit?”
“She decided she didn’t want to be a nurse. You shouldn’t look down your nose at her Billy. I quit school too.”
“You did? Since when?”
“I quit Dartmouth.”
“You transferred, you didn’t quit.”
“I quit the medical program.”
“You changed your major to vet medicine, because you decided you’d make a crappy people doc. That isn’t quitting, Renie.”
“Since when are you such an expert on college?”