anything, but when it came to love and romance, CJ was an absolute hot mess, a train wreck, as his neighbor’s teenage daughter would put it. CJ would just say, Well, what was I supposed to do? Propose? She just wasn’t the one. The Morrow brothers had been in Blue Gulch all of one month, and at least ten young women hadn’t been “the one.”
Jake couldn’t relate to all this hankering for “the one.” He’d been able to once, though. Five years ago he’d even gotten down on one knee and proposed with a skywriter spelling out the words in puffy white across the dusky sky. But his girlfriend Samantha wouldn’t say yes without certain conditions being met, difficult conditions that Jake had realized she was probably right about and so had tried to meet. Jake was adopted and had no knowledge of his medical history. Samantha didn’t feel comfortable starting a future, which would include children and a lifetime together, without knowing what was in that history. And so Jake, not quite comfortable with digging into a past he wasn’t all that interested in, had gone through his late parents’ documents, looking for information on the adoption agency that had handled his case so he could contact them.
What he’d found among those papers had shocked him.
Jake had a biological twin brother who’d been adopted by another family. The scrawled notation on a document didn’t say anything else.
A twin brother—out there in this world.
Jake had lain awake night after night, thinking about the twin, wondering if they were identical or fraternal. If they were similar despite being raised apart. His curiosity burned with a fundamental need to know more. And so five years ago, he’d written a brief letter to his birth mother, sent it to the adoption agency to be placed in his file, and put the search in motion.
CJ had freaked out. He’d only been seventeen then and they’d recently lost their parents; suddenly his older brother wanted to find his birth mother and twin. It had been too much for CJ. Samantha had thought that CJ was being a spoiled brat who would simply have to deal with it. Problem was, Jake had understood both sides. They’d both been right—CJ to feel...threatened, and Samantha to want to know how her future, how her children, might be affected by Jake. But after CJ had broken down one night, sobbing, unable to even speak, his grief, his fear speaking for itself, Jake had told Samantha now wasn’t the time for him to find his birth mother, that maybe in six months, he could broach it again with CJ.
Samantha had flipped. You’re putting CJ first, she’d shouted, pointing a long nail at his chest. The man I marry will put me first. She’d stormed out, and that was the last Jake had seen of her.
But his birth mother hadn’t responded to the letter anyway—until just two months ago. Out of the clear blue sky on a rainy March afternoon, he’d received a call from a private investigator in Blue Gulch about how his birth mother had read his letter five years ago, was sorry for the long delay and hoped to make contact. At first Jake had said he wasn’t interested and practically hung up on the investigator. But then his birth mother, Sarah Mack, had written him a short letter, assuring him that when he was ready she’d be there, and he’d been unable to stop thinking about her. Who she was, what the circumstances of his birth were, what she might know about his twin. And so he’d called Sarah Mack, who lived clear across Texas. Three meetings in Blue Gulch later, Jake had developed a real kinship with Sarah and with the quaint ranching town. And since Jake had been dealing with a bitter uncle who felt the Morrow family ranch should have passed on to him and was constantly filing lawsuits, Jake brought up the idea to CJ of just walking away and starting over in Blue Gulch; he’d seen a ranch for sale that had felt like home the minute he stepped on the land. CJ, who as usual had been dealing with an angry ex who liked to pass by with a rifle out her car window, had quietly agreed but had made it crystal clear that Jake’s birth family wasn’t a subject he wanted to talk about.
Sarah Mack had told him the only thing she knew about his twin was that they were fraternal. Thirty-two years ago, at a home for pregnant teenagers, she hadn’t been able to hold either baby, let alone see them, but she’d overheard a nurse comment on it. She didn’t know anything about who might have adopted him. There was nothing in the twins’ file to indicate he wanted to make contact, but Sarah had left her own information for him. Lately, the idea of finding his twin was consuming Jake to the point he couldn’t sleep at night.
Now he glanced over at CJ in the barn, his brother grinning while telling a dirty joke that had even shy Golden doubling over with laughter. Jake wasn’t sure if he should start the search on the down low or talk to CJ about it first. Since his brother had agreed to move to where his birth mother lived, where her family lived, CJ had to have come around somewhat. But something told him his brother wouldn’t be comfortable about Jake trying to make contact with his twin, even if CJ wasn’t that grieving seventeen-year-old kid anymore.
“Speaking of dinner tonight, who’s on duty to cook?” Jake asked Hank, gesturing at the other cowboys; CJ and Golden were checking on Frodo, the very old gelding Jake had rescued, while Golden cleaned up the barn for the night.
Hank pulled out the little notebook he carried everywhere. A folded up schedule of the month of May. “Tonight is CJ. Guess we’re having burned burgers and charred beans.”
Again. Except last night, on Golden’s turn, the burgers were mostly raw and the beans hard as a rock. “I need to find us a cook,” Jake said for the hundredth time. He’d put an ad in the local free weekly and stuck a notice up on the town green’s bulletin board, but none of the applicants were right for the job, and Jake wasn’t all that picky. Most had issues with the early morning breakfast hour, which was five sharp at the Full Circle, meaning arriving for work at four thirty before the birds were even awake. He’d added “live-in” to the ads, noting the job would come with room and board, but of the bunch who’d applied, two had turned up drunk for the interview and five had no cooking experience and couldn’t even tell Jake how to make scrambled eggs. The last applicant, a woman with real experience as a sauté cook in the steak house in town, broke into tears during the interview and confessed she didn’t really want the job—she only wanted to be close to CJ, who’d dumped her after two dates.
“Oh hell, I’ll cook tonight,” Jake said, craving a steak grilled just right, a baked potato with sour cream and chives, and cold, fresh salad with croutons and his favorite dressing, blue cheese. All that times five meant dinner would be a while, and he still had phone calls to return, invoices to pay and auction sites to look over for livestock.
He sent Hank to tell Golden, still a rookie, that he’d put Starlight’s saddle backward on its stand, then turned toward the house and the kitchen. He had a mind to sneak into Hurley’s Homestyle Kitchen tomorrow and offer to pay any one of their cooks double their salary to come work for him. But then he wouldn’t be able to show his face there again, and he craved their po’boys too often for that. Plus, no one messed with Essie Hurley, who owned the place.
His phone buzzed with a text—from Fern, who’d sold him the goats earlier. That flock of sheep we talked about? I’m selling it to the LoneStar Ranch instead. Their foreman doesn’t tell me I smell like cow crap.
Oh hell, he thought for the millionth time, shaking his head.
* * *
Emma Hurley had been through a trying time or two in her twenty-six years, but nothing compared to locating one very handsome, slippery cowboy who clearly did not want to be found. Well, I finally did find you, Joshua Smith, and I’m coming whether you like it or not!
She’d been trying to track down the guy for six weeks now, ever since she’d discovered she was pregnant. Once the shock had worn off she was filled with a deep-down happiness about the baby, but she still wondered how on earth she could have been so careless to sleep with a stranger—a ridiculously good-looking, smooth-talking stranger who’d said all the right things, including that of course he would use a condom. The condom had torn, apparently. If Joshua had noticed, he hadn’t said anything. But maybe he had noticed. And maybe that was why he was gone without a word in the middle of the night, no note, no cell phone number, no nothing.
Once she knew she was pregnant, she tried to find him by asking around the rodeo circuit,