grand disaster that had happened after. The way it had ruined her relationship with her father. And that thorn in her heart constantly felt like it was being worked in deeper.
That first time she had run into Liam when he had come back...
She had walked into Ace’s bar, ready to have a drink with Lindy after a long day of work, and he had been there. She hadn’t even questioned whether or not it was him. He looked different, older, deep grooves bracketing the side of his mouth, lines around his eyes.
His chest was broader, thicker. And there had been tattoos covering the whole of his arms. But it was Liam. It was most definitely Liam, and before her brain had been able to process it, her body had gone into a full-scale episode.
Her heart had nearly lurched into her throat, her pulse racing and then echoing between her thighs, an immediate reminder of how it had always been to be near him. A tragic confirmation that her memory had not blown those feelings out of proportion.
Because, after enough years of unexciting good-night kisses and attempts at physical relationships that hadn’t gone any further than a man putting his hand up her shirt while sitting on his couch, she had started to wonder if she had really ever felt anything close to the intensity that she’d associated with Liam. For sure, she had started to think, her memory had exaggerated it, and was actively sabotaging her now.
But such hopeful notions had been demolished when she had seen him again.
And with that attraction had come anger. Because how dare he? How dare he show up in her part of Oregon again, after abandoning her the way that he had. How dare he come back to Copper Ridge and invade her space like this? He was supposed to stay away.
Mostly, she was angry that he had the nerve to come back even sexier than he’d been before. If there was any justice in the world he would have lost his hair, gotten a beer gut and had his face eaten off by a roving band of rabid foxes. Yeah, those things combined might have worked together to make Liam Donnelly less appealing to her.
But there were never any rabid roving foxes around when you needed them.
The door to the winery tasting room opened again, and in walked her sister, Beatrix, who was holding a large cardboard box that she was staring down into worriedly. Her hair was sticking out at odd angles, a leaf attached to one of the wayward curls.
At twenty-two, Beatrix sometimes seemed much younger than that, and occasionally much older. She was a strange, somewhat solitary creature who defied any and all expectation, and was a source of incredible frustration for their parents.
Sabrina had spent a great many years trying to be exactly what her parents wanted her to be. Beatrix had never even tried. And somehow Bea wasn’t the one their father wouldn’t speak directly to.
Not that she could hold it against Bea. No one could hold anything against Bea.
“What do you have in the box, Bea?” Dane asked.
“Herons,” Beatrix responded. “Green herons. They got kicked out of their nest.”
Lindy’s forehead wrinkled. “Beatrix, could you not bring wildlife into the dining room? We have food in here.”
“I just wanted to see if you had an extra dropper. I have one, but I can’t find the other one.”
“I don’t think I have a dropper in my dining room,” Lindy said.
“The kind you use for medicine,” Beatrix pressed.
“Yes,” Lindy said, “I actually did understand what you meant.”
Beatrix looked fully bemused by the idea that Lindy did not have a dropper readily at her disposal.
“Okay. I guess I’m going to have to go down to town.” Which, Sabrina knew, Beatrix didn’t like to do.
“I have to go down later,” Dane said. “I’ll get one for you, Bea.”
Beatrix brightened, and her cheeks turned slightly pink. “Thank you.”
Sabrina occasionally worried that Beatrix did not see Dane as a brother, which was fair enough, since he wasn’t even actually their brother-in-law. But Dane was not the kind of guy for a sweet girl like her, and anyway he was far too old for her. About ten years and a whole other lifetime of experience.
She would worry more than occasionally if she thought that Dane returned Beatrix’s feelings at all. Fortunately, his attitude toward her was entirely appropriate. He saw her as a younger sister, as he should.
But that didn’t seem to change the fact that Beatrix’s entire face illuminated whenever he spoke to her.
“Come on, I’ll help you find a safe place for your herons so you can stick close to them today.” Beatrix followed Dane out of the tasting room, leaving Lindy and Sabrina alone.
Lindy didn’t say anything, but she did lift one eyebrow. Sabrina had a feeling she wasn’t the only one who had observed Beatrix’s response to Dane.
In some ways, it hurt Sabrina to see it. She had to accept the fact that she might actually be projecting. Because there had been one summer when she had followed a man around like that. Looked at him like the sun rose and fell on his broad shoulders.
And she had confided in him. Her hopes, her dreams. Her secret fears. And they hadn’t mattered to him at all.
In the end he had made a fool out of her.
She looked at Lindy again, and noticed that her sister-in-law had some fresh lines on her pretty face. She had to wonder if she was having similar thoughts right now too.
“Good thing we know better,” Lindy said finally. “Huh?”
Sabrina laughed, and even she thought she sounded a little bit bitter. “I suppose so.”
But that was the thing, she did know better. It was the one good thing about everything that had happened with Liam all those years ago. She had trusted her heart’s wants. Fully. Completely.
And no matter how her body might react to him now, she had learned her lesson.
She would not be making that mistake again. Ever.
BY THE TIME Liam pulled back into the Laughing Irish Ranch he was feeling pretty good about the venture with Grassroots. As far as he could tell Lindy was a good businesswoman, and she had something to prove, which would help fuel the fire.
Liam wasn’t immune to the need to prove things. He’d come back to town and swung by Jamison Leighton’s lake house—which had turned out to be a home built near a man-made lake, in a neighborhood along with about twenty other homes, not a cabin set in the pristine wilderness, and it was splitting hairs to notice, but Liam did, because he was pissed and willing to be petty—to write the old man a check. To pay him back, with interest, for the money he’d gotten to leave in the first place.
The look on his face had been worth the trip out to Copper Ridge all on its own.
He pulled up in front of his family’s ranch house and his truck skidded to a stop, the fine coating of ice over the gravel making traction a bit of an issue. He got out and looked up to see his brother Finn standing by the porch smiling, a gold wedding band gleaming on his left hand.
Liam had never seen anyone so happy to be tied down. Except for maybe his older brother Cain, and his younger brother, Alex. They were pretty damn happy to be tied down too.
Liam was...well, kind of ambivalent about all the romance he was surrounded with at all times.
Alex and Clara had moved to her ranch, though Alex continued to work at the Laughing Irish. Cain and his wife, Alison, and Cain’s daughter, Violet, lived in another house on the property that Cain had refurbished for them out of an old barn.
Which left Liam,