Mastered by Mavericks (Doms of Destiny, Colorado 3)

“I’ve seen that already about your town. Sheriff Wolfe is quite loyal in fact.”

He opened his eyes and began stroking her hair. “Too ethical, also, if you ask me, but that’s another story for another day. There’s so much more to see and to know, Chicago. Destiny is simple but also complicated, easygoing but quick to blows, conservative about some things but quite liberal about others. We argue with each other like cats and dogs sometimes. You should see us around election time. Sweet little old ladies have been known to pull out their pistols and fire warning shots into the air over an ongoing issue about renaming Destiny’s park.”

She grinned. “Not quite Norman Rockwall is it.”

“Not even close, but it’s home. Always will be for me. My dads grew up here, too.”

“So you’re third generation. Do you call yourselves Destonites or Destiners?”

“Destonians is what most say,” he informed.

“Has a nice ring to it. Are your grandparents still here?”

“No. They died before I was born. The O’Learys are like grandparents to us and to the others. Did Sawyer tell you about the other orphans?”

“He did. You all are close, right?”

“Like brothers.”

“And I guess the Knights and Stones think of Erica as a sister, too.”

“They do. She complains about having seven big brothers but I think she actually likes it. What about you, Chicago? Brothers or sisters?”

“Just me.” Nicole felt her tension return as her dark past clawed at the back of her mind. “Fifteen is young to lose parents, Reed. Really young.” She could relate. She’d never known her father. Her mother had vanished after dropping her off at school when she was only eight.

“I survived, sweetheart. That’s what you have to do.”

“I know, but it doesn’t always make it any easier, does it?”

He sighed. “No. The world changed that day I lost my parents.”

“It was in September, right?”

“Yes. The twenty-eighth, seventeen days after the attack on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington on nine-eleven.”

“I hadn’t thought about that.”

“Mom had. She was worried. You know they grounded all civilian aircraft until the thirteenth. I wish they’d done it for longer.” His grief seemed to fill the air. “Dad Gene was the pilot. Did Sawyer tell you that?”

“No.”

“Dad had several thousand hours in the air. He was in the Air Force and had flown fighter jets. Dad Gilbert had his license, too. Since he’d been in the Army on the ground, not as many hours in his logbook as Dad Gene, but still a few hundred. The plane was brand new. The weather was ideal.”

“What happened to cause the crash?”

“The FAA ruled it pilot error, but none of us believe that.” He stood up and Nicole saw that his hands were balled up into big fists. “Shit happens, Chicago. That’s life.”

She left her chair and came up to the giant cowboy and hugged him. “It shouldn’t be that way, Reed.” She felt her tears stream down her cheeks as his pain, his suffering, his loss filled her mind and mingled with her own sadness. “I’ve always had to be the responsible one, the self-reliant

one no matter what the challenge.”

She felt his arms come around her and pull her in tight.

“Me, too,” he said in a tone softer and more serious than she’d ever heard from him.

She had to tell him. The words had to come out. “Maybe life has been harder for us because we hold everything in. I know it was the reason for my downfall.” She closed her eyes and let the memories out that she’d shoved deep down. As ugly as her sins were, she wanted him to know all of it. She looked up into the blue eyes of the man that had once been a boy forced to grow up too fast. “You know I’m a cop. My whole family has deep roots in the department, several generations of police officers. What you don’t know is my mother broke my grandparents’ hearts. She was a drug addict. Heroin. My grandmother had a stroke and died after learning the truth about her daughter, my mother. My grandfather was too tough, but it changed him. The pride of Chicago’s men in uniform, he never said it but I always knew he felt like a failure for my mother.”

“Her shortfalls aren’t yours, baby.” He squeezed her a little tighter into him.