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CHAPTER 1
SAWYER
Sawyer only noticed how hard he was gripping the steering wheel when his hands started to cramp. After that, he forced himself to relax, finger by finger, until he was driving his car through the countryside with hands as light as a feather. The sleek purr of the sports car’s engine was a comforting thrum around him that he tried to keep his focus on. But it turned out it was hard work keeping his hands from returning to their vise-like grip on the steering wheel.
Sawyer didn’t get nervous. He could step onto a football field in front of tens of thousands of people and command every single person’s attention. He could come toe-to-toe with some of the best athletes in the world, look them square in the eye and grin, knowing that he had his own team to defend. He never wavered. He never faltered. And he was certainly nevernervous, so he refused to believe that he was nervous right now. Except his hands kept wanting to clutch the steering wheel in a death grip despite the straight, flat road without a car in sight and the sun shining up above.
It had been a long time since he had been home to Willow Ridge. He spent most of his time in Houston, and from there he traveled to all the cities where his team, the Falcons, were playing. If he wasn’t training, either on the field or in the gym, then he’d be out exploring. He’d sniff out whatever party was going on that night, the best restaurants that had a table ready and waiting, the most exclusive haunts of the rich and famous.
He was one of the best-paid and most recognizable faces in the entire football league, so just his name got him through most doors. His money did the rest. He might go on a date, only to wake up and have tabloids say it was a wholerelationship,or he’d spend five minutes talking to some actor at an event and the paparazzi would spin it into them being best friends since the dawn of time. It was always amusing to see what had been written about him and how far off the mark it was.
The point was thatusuallythere was more than enough to occupy Sawyer in his free time. Right now, there was just an empty road heading straight back home to a tiny town that didn’t even have a cinema, not the last time he checked anyways.
A few months ago, he’d come back for a day to go to his dad’s funeral, a miserable affair with appropriately gray skies as they had lowered the coffin into the ground. All Sawyer could remember of the day was thinking that the coffin looked far too small to ever hold his father. But it did, and Dad was in the ground. The only comfort Sawyer had gleaned from that day was that the old man, after a short but brutal battle with pneumonia, was back with his mom. She’d died when Sawyer was twelve, his little brother Luke only ten, killed in a car wreck one Thursday afternoon. Here one minute, and then gone in the next instant.
Before his dad’s funeral, Sawyer had barely been back to Willow Ridge since he was eighteen, and he’d just turned thirty. Therewas always something to chase, something to strive for and in his experience, it was never in Willow Ridge. When he’d started making real money through football and sponsorships, he’d sent regular bank deposits through to make sure that everyone was all right despite the questionable success of the ranch, and his conscience was cleared. Honestly, he’d had no real intention of coming back so soon either, but Luke had asked him to. Which was a shock in itself, but Luke had actuallycalled,not just texted, and spent about half an hour on the phone with him.
With their dad gone, Luke saw no real reason to keep the ranch that was now in his name. He’d stayed all these years, building a life, getting engaged, but he wanted to sell the place and move on. Trouble was it was run down, and before anyone would even give it a second glance, let alone buy it, extensive repairs needed to be made.
Which was where Sawyer came in. He was six and a half feet tall, all muscle and about as fit as an adult could possibly get. He’d be able to get things done on the ranch at twice the speed of most hired help for zero cost. And both the brothers knew that Luke wasn’t reallyasking; he was insisting. It was the off-season, and Sawyer had no legitimate excuse to say no. So here he was, driving home and dreading every second of it. But he would show up and do his best to fix up whatever needed fixing up, then he would go on his merry way back to Houston, and both he and Luke could get on with their lives.
The straight road, with barely a bend or a curve,finallyboasted signs for turns up ahead, one of them hand-painted with an arrow declaring that Butler Ranch was close. With a deep breath and no longer bothering to loosen his grip on the steering wheel, Sawyer slowed down to take the corner and pulled through thegates of the ranch he’d been born and raised on. It looked so different now…
Rattling up the long dirt driveway that led to the farmhouse, he slowed the car down to a crawl to look about. Grass was overgrown everywhere, with weeds reaching waist high and crawling over fence posts as if they were trying to reclaim the land. The fields on either side of the driveway were empty, and it was giving Sawyer the creeps, making it look like some sort of pioneer ghost town. He’d known that his brother had had to sell off all but a dozen of the cattle, but he hadn’t realized how deserted it would make the place look. No wonder the grass was out of control with no cattle to constantly wear it down.
Feeling a chill up his spine, Sawyer sped up and aimed to get to the house as fast as he could, away from the empty fields. Not that the house, once it was in view, was much more of a welcoming sight as Sawyer pulled to a stop and looked out at his childhood home. It had always been a shabby sort of place, held together with spare nails and patched paint jobs. It was an old farmhouse, after all, two stories tall and over a hundred years old. But now… now it looked almost abandoned. The paint was coming off in strips, and the whole place looked like one good storm would knock it right over.
Here, at least, the grass was under control. A truck and an ATV were parked out by the side with tools spread everywhere in the middle of some sort of project. Luke had said he needed help fixing the place up to sell, but Sawyer had thought he’d meant maybe fixing a fence post or two, maybe some fresh paint in one of the bedrooms, but this… He tried to ignore the guilt that started bubbling away in his stomach. He hadn’t known things had gottenthisbad. Not that he’d really bothered to ask…
Sawyer pulled his black sports car up next to the truck in what had always been the unofficial parking lot of the place. Despite so much open space, it suddenly felt claustrophobic, which was why Sawyer had always avoided coming back. It had the strange ability to feel so big and so small all at the same time. Still sitting in the driver’s seat, he took a deep breath. He felt like he was in his own little bubble, separate from all of this as long as he stayed in the car. He could even start the ignition again, turn around and drive all the way back to Houston. But then he saw Luke emerge from the house and he knew there was no going back.
Suck it up, man, Sawyer told himself and opened the car door. He smiled as his brother approached, happy to see him no matter what, and Luke offered his own thin smile. God, he lookedtired. Covered in dirt and engine grease, his dark hair was slicked back off his head and his usual flannel shirt, jeans and boots were just as dirty as the rest of him. Sawyer was taller and broader than Luke — always had been — but Luke was still a tall man, lean and wiry with muscle built up from life on the land. Sawyer kept his hair buzzed close to his skull, mostly so it wasn’t annoying under his helmet. But Luke’s hair was getting long to the point that he needed a haircut.
“Little brother,” Sawyer said, his smile faltering a little now that Luke was close enough to see the bruise-colored circles under his eyes.
“Thanks for coming,” Luke said and held out a hand to shake. Sawyer took it, squeezing firmly and anticipating maybe getting pulled in for a hug, but the tug to pull him forward never came. In fact, Luke let go of Sawyer’s hand rather quickly. Sawyer tried not to let his smile falter too much, shoving his hands in his pockets, not sure what to do with them.
“How’s Sandy?” he asked, reaching for any sort of safe topic. At the mention of his fiancée, Luke’s face finally lit up a little.
“She’s good. Working at the diner today. A whole bunch of new farmhands are in town for harvest, so they’re run off their feet feeding them all.”
“Glad to hear business is good,” Sawyer said, meaning every word. Sandy wasn’t exactly his biggest fan, but she was the best thing that had ever happened to Luke. He was glad her family’s diner was doing well, though he had yet to see the place.
“Well, things are good for you too, I hear,” Luke said, that light in him fading a little now that they’d moved on from talking about Sandy. “From what I hear from the tabloids anyways.”
Sawyer resisted the urge to shuffle his feet awkwardly, as if he was getting in trouble with his dad. So he liked to let loose on his off weeks, so what? Who didn’t like to go to a party if you were invited? And Sawyer was invited toa lotof parties. It wasn’t his fault that the press liked to follow him around to each one.
“Uh, yeah,” Sawyer muttered, not sure what else to say. Words had never really been his strong suit.
They both turned as another vehicle pulled up to the house, and Sawyer raised his hand to Sandy behind the wheel. She gave him a tight-lipped smile as she parked beside Luke’s truck, and Sawyer could feel his fists clenching in his pockets. He hadn’t been expecting a marching band and fireworks, but he also hadn’t been prepared for howcoldhis reception was going to be. Maybe he should have been though; it might have stung, but it wasn’t like he could act surprised. He barely talked to his brother anymore, even at the funeral. This was the most they’d had to do with each other in years.
Sandy jumped out of her jeep, carrying grocery bags, her blond hair piled in a messy bun on the top of her head, still wearing a name tag from the diner.
“Hey, Sandy,” Sawyer said.
“Hey,” she said. “Thanks for coming out at such short notice.”
The words were stilted, but it was better than nothing. Nobody had insulted each other yet or started a fight; that was something. Luke was staying silent, sharing a glance with Sandy that Sawyer couldn’t interpret.
