Skye looked around and was surprised to see that she recognized the road they were on. Now was as good a time as any to start making some new memories.
âWhat?â Jake asked in alarm as he slammed on the brakes.
âWe used to park here, remember?â She undid her seat belt and slid over to him. âWe used to stop here on the way home.â
She grinned nervously at him. Yes, she wanted to get home to Grace, but sheâd been in a bedâby herselfâfor the past four months. It was time to fix that starting right now.
Jake was stiff in her arms. âWe did,â he said through gritted teeth.
âAre you going to kiss me, Jake Holt?â she whispered against his lips.
He turned his head. âThe doctor saidâHe said we shouldnât stress you out too much. Physically.â
Skye sighed in disappointment. âNot even if I want to be stressed? Just a little? Not even a kiss?â
Jake didnât reply for a moment. Then he sort of chuckled and said, âWhen we used to stop here, I donât remember it ever being just a kiss.â
* * *
His Lost and Found Family
is part of the Texas Cattlemanâs Club: After the Storm seriesâAs a Texas town rebuilds, love heals all wounds â¦
Award-winning author SARAH M. ANDERSON may live east of the Mississippi River, but her heart lies out west on the Great Plains. With a lifelong love of horses and two history teachers for parents, she had plenty of encouragement to learn everything she could about the tribes of the Great Plains.
When she started writing, it wasnât long before her characters found themselves out in South Dakota among the Lakota Sioux. She loves to put people from two different worlds into new situations and to see how their backgrounds and cultures take them someplace they never thought theyâd go.
Sarahâs book A Man of Privilege won the 2012 RT Reviewersâ Choice Award for Best Mills & Boon>® Desireâ¢. Her book Straddling the Line was named Best Mills & Boon>® Desire⢠of 2013 by CataRomance, and Mystic Cowboy was a 2014 Booksellersâ Best Award finalist in the Single Title category.
When not helping out at her sonâs school or walking her rescue dogs, Sarah spends her days having conversations with imaginary cowboys and American Indians, all of which is surprisingly well-tolerated by her wonderful husband. Readers can find out more about Sarahâs love of cowboys and Indians at sarahmanderson.com.
To my agent, Jill Marsal, who saved this book and quite possibly my career by keeping calm and carrying on, even when I couldnât. Youâve made me a better writer, and itâs a joy to work with you!
One
Jake Holt could not believe his eyes. What on Godâs green earth had happened to Royal, Texas?
Yeah, heâd been gone for four years after cutting off all contact with his family and his hometown. He expected some things to have changed. But this? He drove down what had been the main commercial drag. Fast-food restaurants and big-box stores all looked like someone had run over them with a freight train. He passed the hospital, where it looked as if a whole wing was missing.
Jesus. It looked as if a bomb had gone off here. Or...
Or a tornado had blown the town to bits.
The thought made him nervous. Jake cast a withering glance at the papers in the benign-looking envelope on the passenger seat. Divorce papers. Skye had sent him divorce papers. He probably shouldnât be surprisedâhe hadnât spoken to her in almost ten months. Heâd been out of the country, setting up an IT at a new oil site in Bahrain. Heâd been busy and sheâd made her feelings clear.
Part of him knew the marriage was over. They wanted different things. He wanted to be free of their families and their never-ending feud over land. He wanted to wash his hands of Royal, Texas, for good. Heâd wanted to get his business, Texas Sky Technologies, off the ground, which required a lot of hard work. Heâd wanted to be a success and give her everything she wanted.
Except he couldnât. Skye wanted the impossible. She hadnât been able to let go of the crazy notions sheâd had about coming back home and resolving the family feud and somehow bringing the Taylors and Holts together. He didnât know why. Maybe so they could join hands and sing in perfect harmony and share a soda together.
No matter what her reasons, it wasnât going to happen. The Taylors and the Holts had been arguing, suing and occasionally shooting over the same piece of land for at least a hundred years and nothing Jake did or said was going to change that. Hell, he couldnât even get his own family to accept that heâd fallen in love with Skye Taylor. How was he supposed to convince her parents to accept him as a son-in-law?
Easier just to pick up and start over somewhere new.
Or it had been, until it all fell apart.
Still, Jake could not believe that sheâd actually had him served with divorce papers. Skye had been his world for so long. Theyâd sacrificed everything to be together once.