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  It would be a difficult conversation to have and she wasn’t quite ready yet.

  But she was here. So there was time.

  It wasn’t a quick visit at an event that had nothing to do with her. That had been part of her debate over whether or not she should come for Olivia’s wedding two years earlier. She didn’t want to take her sister’s big day and make it about her.

  But neither had she wanted to miss her twin’s wedding.

  Everything had worked out fine in the end. At least, as fine as it could have.

  Her parents had been uncomfortable, but that they’d been at Olivia’s wedding had likely shielded Vanessa. Of course, nothing seemed to shield her from Jacob Dalton’s insightful gaze. Nothing seemed to be able to shield her from the reality of the fact that her past had come barging into her house to put out a fire.

  If she were a little bit less stunned she might be able to come up with an appropriate metaphor for the situation.

  “Do you want some lemonade?”

  He looked at her, his lips working upward into a half smile.

  He was so handsome. She had always thought so.

  She had seen him around town, over the years, tall and rangy and possessing that Dalton charm that they were famous for. Or maybe just their father was famous for it. And everyone naturally applied it to his sons as well. After all, they were handsome, and they were those exceptional men who could never blend in, even if they tried. Paramedics, rodeo riders. All-American boys.

  There was something different about him now. The years, she assumed.

  She could see a few of them around his eyes, etched into the grooves around his mouth. But it was more than that. There were things written on his skin, visible in his eyes that she couldn’t quite put her finger on.

  “I’m Vanessa Logan,” she said, realizing she hadn’t introduced herself. She knew him, so she hadn’t thought of it. His face didn’t change at all when she said her name. “I made lemonade,” she continued. “Not for you. For me. But now you’re here, and you kept my house from burning to the ground, so it seems like maybe I should give you some.”

  “I appreciate it. But I’m probably just going to head on up the hill.”

  “You live up there?”

  “About two miles up, yeah.”

  He gave her a strange look, as if her wanting to make conversation after he had just put a fire out in her chimney made her the weird one. She personally thought dashing off without saying three words was weird.

  Then, in many ways, she was behind on interpersonal interaction. She’d spent a lot of years cultivating toxic relationships. Her first being with alcohol and getting blackout drunk because that had been such a great way to lose herself. And then there had been her ultimate. The one. Her personal love affair with opiates.

  Once she had come out of that tunnel, she’d had to figure out who she actually was, what relationships she legitimately prized and valued. What she wanted. Because for a whole lot of years she’d wanted one thing.

  To get high.

  And after it had turned dark, to get high how she’d used to. To recapture the feeling from the beginning. To have fun with it, instead of just taking it to keep from suffering bone-cracking withdrawals.

  But she’d stopped. And she’d dug herself out and gotten on with the business of being Vanessa.

  And everything else had fallen underneath that priority. Because how could she function, how could she do anything when that need loomed large above her? When it overcame every other appetite. Every other desire. Thinking about it now made her feel almost panicky. She hated it so much. That reminder of how much she had been controlled. Of how much her life had not belonged to her. It made her feel weak and sad. Terrified. And she wasn’t going to think about it anymore.

  “Well, it’s nice to know that I have very competent neighbors,” she said, “you know, neighbors who can put out an emergency fire if need be.”

  “There is a whole fire department for that. And next time you should probably put in a call.”

  “Seems like it might be easier to just put in a personal call to you,” she quipped.

  The expression on his face wasn’t really amused, and she couldn’t quite understand why. He seemed irritated.

  “I’m kidding,” she said. “I’m not actually going to call you instead of the fire department if I have a fire. I just hadn’t gotten around to it because I was kind of still in shock that I had managed to do that to myself. My parents had a fireplace. But the apartments that I’ve lived in for the past few years have not. And you didn’t need to know that, probably.”

  “No,” he said.

  She was desperate to know if he remembered her. In kind of a strange, morbid-fascination sort of way. She hoped that he didn’t. Of course, she had gone and made it clear she knew who he was, but he hadn’t really missed a beat over that.

  As if he expected it.

  But she imagined that the Daltons did.

  And anyway, he hadn’t asked who she was. She’d offered it up. But she was identical to her sister... Well, as identical as two people who’d not spent any time in each other’s presence over the past decade could be. They had made different style choices. And Olivia had fuller curves. Though Vanessa hadn’t used in quite some time, she remained a bit on the thin side.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I’m really glad my house didn’t burn down.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Me too. I mean, this is kind of what I do, so that would be a bad look. Though usually I fight wildfires, not kitchen fires.”

  She had no idea why it sounded both dangerous and sexy. Well, she knew why it sounded sexy actually, it was just that it sounded sexy because it was dangerous that confused it.

  She wondered at that small kick of adrenaline inside herself. If it was something related to that flawed part of herself that seemed to want and crave a little bit of self-destruction. Or if it was just one of those things. Because women were often attracted to dangerous men. Even women who didn’t have an unhealthy relationship with controlled substances.

  It was difficult to say.

  She hadn’t had a real relationship since high school. And she hadn’t been with a man sober in...ever.

  Something about the idea of being with a man, while standing directly in the presence of Jacob Dalton made her hands feel a little bit clammy. Made her heart thunder like a dull ache inside her.

  “You don’t want any lemonade,” she confirmed.

  “No,” he said.

  “Okay. Well, thanks again.”

  “Just doing my job,” he said, nodding his head, and she had the feeling that if he’d been wearing a cowboy hat he would have tipped it.

  But then, that would be gentlemanly. And while gentlemen might exist in the world at large, they never seemed to be involved in Vanessa’s world.

  And they certainly didn’t turn intense blue gazes onto her and look at her as though they actually saw her.

  “Maybe I’ll see you around,” she said.

  His lips tipped upward. “Doubt it. Anyway, I hope not. You know, considering that if you did—”

  “Myself or my house would be on fire?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “That.”

  And without another word, Jacob Dalton turned and walked out of her house, leaving Vanessa feeling strange and empty.

  She wasn’t sure how she felt about the fact that her home was already the sight of an exciting incident. She had been looking forward to a quiet life. A normal life.

  She turned a circle in the living room, gazing at the wicker furniture, the floral cushions.

  It looked like the sight of a normal life.

  But suddenly, Vanessa felt very strange within it. Wrong.

  As if her surroundings knew that she could never be normal. That she could never have normal.

  She rolled her eyes at herself. To hell with that. She’d had way too much therapy to go sliding into this kind of self-pity without a little bit of self-awareness. She w
as freaking out because she had changed things. And she was making innocuous everyday instances into signs and wonders.

  There was no such thing.

  There was only life. And the choices you made within it. The choices you made in response to what was happening around you.

  The choice was with her.

  The choice had been with her for the past five years.

  And she would make sure that she kept it that way.

  She had chosen to come back home to Gold Valley. And a little chimney fire was not going to shake her resolve.

  And neither was Jacob Dalton.

  * * *

  WHEN JACOB GOT back up to the cabin, he immediately got himself a cold beer. He hadn’t been counting on running into Vanessa Logan.

  Now or ever.

  He still couldn’t quite credit why he remembered her so clearly. Obviously he knew her from around town. But as an emergency call... He never could figure out why that night lingered in his head the way it did.

  Her terror, mostly. Her terror and pain, something that had shaken him to his core.

  That she’d been alone. That stuck with him. For all that his family was a bit of a fragmented disaster. Illegitimate children, affairs and burning trucks on the lawn... They were there for each other. They always had been.

  He looked around his cabin, three rooms and total isolation, and nearly laughed at that thought. No one was here for him now. But that had more to do with him than it did anything else. He was the one who had changed. Not his family. And that was between him and God, he supposed. Or maybe him and his best friend’s ghost. It didn’t matter either way. Because there were no answers to be had.

  His phone buzzed in his pocket, and he looked down at it, seeing his brother’s name flash up on the screen.

  He thought about not answering. But he knew Gabe would just keep calling until he did. Ever since he’d confided in him about wanting to start the school, he’d been slowly getting more and more involved in Jacob’s isolated-by-design life. And since Jacob was trying to be better, he was making an effort to not just tell his brother to jump in a lake.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey yourself. You coming in tomorrow?”

  Jacob paused and tamped down the irritation that coursed through his veins. “I said that I was. I don’t go back on my word.”

  “Fair enough. It’s a big day at the ranch, and I just wanted to make sure—”

  “I’m not leaving you high and dry,” he said. He was aware that his irritation had amped up to a degree that it probably didn’t need to be. But he took it personally. His brother questioning whether or not he would follow through. He didn’t leave things to chance. Not anymore. When he was supposed to be there, he showed up.

  Because damn, not showing up...

  He took a swig of his beer.

  “It would be good for you to focus on something else.”

  “Something other than wildfires?”

  The work that he did traveling around the country putting out fires during the dry season paid his bills for the whole rest of the year. The fact of the matter was...he didn’t really need to work on the family ranch. But whether or not he let his brothers into his daily life or not, they were the constants that remained in his world. And they were... They were family. Blood despite whatever else was going on.

  “I’ll be there tomorrow, ready to do whatever you need me to do. I said it. I meant it.”

  “All right. Is there... Is there anything that I can do to be there for you?” Gabe said.

  Jacob chuckled. “What’s all this earnest crap? Is this because you’re in love?”

  “Maybe. I have to talk about my feelings. A whole lot more now that I’m with Jamie. Because if I don’t, no one will.”

  That made Jacob laugh genuinely. He could see his brother’s fiancée not being overly touchy-feely the way that he tended to think women were. Jamie was all grit. But she seemed to soften for Gabe. But only Gabe.

  Jacob liked that about her.

  Jacob had never seen much evidence that romantic love could be anything other than a toxic wasteland or broken heart waiting to happen. But Gabe and Jamie showed him that there might be a little something else it could be, and he enjoyed feeling unusually optimistic about something. Anything.

  “I’ll be there tomorrow,” Jacob said. “And the next day. And the next. Because I said I would.”

  “I trust you,” Gabe said.

  “Good.”

  “And I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I guess you will.”

  When he hung up the phone he did his level best to keep on thinking of the ranch. To keep his mind on anything other than Vanessa and that night all those years ago.

  Though if there was one thing he could say for that night, it was that he had managed to keep her safe.

  It was more than he could say for his dead best friend.

  Clint was just dead. And no matter what anyone said, Jacob was never going to be able to do anything other than blame himself.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THERE WOULD BE no students in her class today. Today, Vanessa was simply going to familiarize herself with her surroundings. But when she got to the driveway, and saw the grand archway that stretched over the top of it, her heart sank.

  The Dalton Ranch.

  How had she not connected all those dots when she’d talked to Ellie last night? The ranch and then the mention of Jacob living up the road. And of course Ellie would assume that Vanessa would know whose ranch it was.

  She felt like an idiot.

  It was like some big cosmic hand had grabbed hold of her and decided that all that disconnected, airy-fairy stuff she thought about facing her past was going to become very real, very concrete very quickly.

  Well, she’d already seen Jacob.

  None of the Daltons were more personal to her than that.

  It was just that Jacob Dalton, whether he knew it or not, was the only one who actually knew what she had been through all those years ago. At least, he knew a piece of it.

  Her family didn’t know. She had never told her parents about the painful, terrifying miscarriage she’d suffered on their bathroom floor while they’d been out of town.

  A miscarriage for a pregnancy she’d been steadfastly ignoring and denying in spite of the fact that she had been rapidly running out of ways to continue to live in denial. Some part of her had believed if she just didn’t take the test, her nausea, weight gain and lack of periods could all be due to something else.

  A pregnancy that had come from a sexual encounter she didn’t even remember.

  Her stomach turned.

  Everything felt closer to the past here. Perhaps because it was the jumping-off point of her past. The place that made her.

  For better or for worse.

  And frankly, for most of her life it had been worse.

  Not now, she told herself. It’s not worse now. You are different. And there’s nothing—no ranch, no town—that’s going to break you.

  Following the directions Ellie had texted her that morning, she eased her car along the narrow dirt roads that lead through the ranch, spidering out around various outbuildings. Many of which were new. The art room stood apart, nestled away from many of the other structures. It was made almost entirely of windows, allowing the maximum amount of natural light to filter in. She’d never had access to a place like this, either to paint herself or to conduct lessons.

  She had worked either in her old, cramped apartment or in a rec center.

  And it had been good. Anything that had allowed her to escape into art had been good for a very long time.

  But this was something else. Something more than escape.

  This was beauty. The kind of thing you allowed yourself when you could move past basic survival.

  She got out of her car and made her way toward the tiny structure. There was no one around, but when she tested the door it opened easily. The door itself was a s
mooth glass panel, like the rest of the walls. There were counters, a sink and a blank section that she imagined was for the easels that were stacked up against the wall.

  There was a pottery wheel. The supplies were all neat and organized, and looked as if an art store had been bought in its entirety and configured into the building.

  She had given Ellie a supply list, but this went beyond that basic supply list by quite a bit, and immediately she itched to make something. To do something.

  “Sorry,” Ellie said, rushing into the room. “I meant to meet you here. It just took me a little bit longer than I anticipated getting Amelia settled in with the sitter.”

  “It’s fine,” Vanessa said, looking around the space in awe. “This is beautiful.”

  “I’m glad that you like it. I think Gabe has done an amazing job. This is a really meaningful project for him.”

  “I can tell,” Vanessa said. “Something with this much attention to detail has to be a project that comes from the heart.”

  “The Daltons are good men,” Ellie said. “I know they have some conflict with their dad, with both their parents, really. But they’re a good family. And they support each other. It’s nothing like I grew up with.”

  “My family is...great,” Vanessa said softly.

  Complicated. They were great to each other, and had sometimes been less great to her. Complicated. Good. That seemed to be the theme of her life lately. Or maybe it was the theme always and it was only now that she was able to deal with the imperfections as well as the good things, without throwing out the whole rose just because it had a thorn.

  That had been her method for most of her life. Particularly when she’d been using. When she couldn’t separate out the good from the bad, she would throw it all out. Because it was too hard to do complicated. It was too hard to feel. So she had aimed for nothing. Aimed for numb. And she had been a bit too good at that.