CHAPTER ONE
Addy Collins stood near the edge of the hillside overlooking the town and took a deep breath. Haven, Montana.
She closed her eyes as the clear, crisp mountain air hit her lungs. She loved it. Loved the feel of the sun on her face, the bite of the remnants of winter in the air. She heard a bird cry and, when she finally spotted it, smiled at the eagle as it flew overhead.
This is what she lived for. She’d never felt freer than standing in nature by herself.
When she heard a twig snap behind her, she frowned. Who would dare ruin this moment for her? She guessed it was another one of her eco-warriors who, no doubt, had the same idea. To be alone.
When she turned to see who it was, she had to shield her eyes against the sunlight.
All she could see was an outline of a man, but that’s all it took. She knew instantly who it was.
Trent McGowan.
Shit.
Shit, shit.
He was one of the reasons she hadn’t wanted to return to Haven. She’d come into town with the sole purpose of protesting his family’s oil business. She’d tried to stay focused on her goals. But the McGowan brothers had always been a very handsome distraction. So far this trip, there had been plenty of disturbances from the brothers.
With Trent being the biggest diversion of them all.
She squared her shoulders and raised her other hand to deflect the rest of the sunlight.
“Morning.” Even his voice was too sexy for this early in the day. Instantly her body reacted.
Triple shit.
“What are you doing here?” She frowned again, wishing she’d thought before she’d spoken. She wanted to blame it on the lack of coffee, but the fact was she’d given up the sugary black goodness almost a year ago—after some of her team members had traveled to Brazil to protest coffee growers cutting down rain forest.
Instead of answering her, Trent just smiled. He didn’t move closer or get out of the path of the bright sun. So she stood there, both hands shielding her eyes, trying to get a better look at the sexiest man alive.
At least in her book.
His hair was always a little longer than his brothers’. Currently it was long enough that thick, dark chunks of it fell into his eyes. Those pools of deep mahogany drowned her in memories of the years she’d spent fantasizing about him. His six-foot-plus height forced her to crane her neck to look up the length of his long, lean body to reach those eyes. He must have forgotten to shave that morning, as his face was sprinkled with dark stubble. An even more dangerous look.
“Same as you,” he said, finally breaking into her assessment of him.
“What?” She blinked a few times, unable to remember what it was that she’d said. Thoughts of her Haven mission flashed through her mind. If her friends had their way, his company would suffer. Any entity that made millions off destroying land and the environment for oil or any other natural resources should be put out of business. Vaguely she wondered if he’d still stop on the side of a mountain to talk to her if that happened.
Just looking at him made her go all gooey. How was she supposed to do her job when he looked so damn sexy?
His chuckle broke her from the spell. Squaring her shoulders, Addy dropped her hands and turned around to look out over the view. Closing her eyes, she took two quick breaths to clear her mind of Trent.
“I bet it’s nice to be back,” he said from directly behind her. Which meant he’d moved closer.
“Not really,” she said under her breath. But outwardly she shrugged her shoulders.
She’d been back in Haven for a few weeks. Except for a quick trip to North Dakota, she’d been stuck here, back in her small hometown.
Not that she was being forced to stay. She could leave whenever she wanted. But duty and pride had won out. She would remain in town as long as she was needed.
“Why are you back if you don’t want to be here?” Trent asked.
She glanced at him and sighed. He was beautiful. Something deep in her heart sank. Sure, if they were the only two people on the side of a mountain, he’d stop and talk to her. But other than that . . .
She shrugged her shoulders again. “I go where I’m needed.” She noticed the signs of their small town waking up. Cars could now be seen hurrying around the empty streets, and smoke was coming out of a few chimneys.
“Do you like it?” Trent asked. The question threw her off. She gave him a quizzical look. “Do you like what you do?”
“I love it.” She smiled and nodded as she thought more deeply. “It’s what I was made to do.”
He stepped up next to her, his wide shoulders blocking the view of the mountains. “What exactly do you do?” He shuffled his feet, which he’d done since grade school when he was frustrated at himself. “I mean, besides make signs and block our property.”
She chuckled. “There is more to protesting than signs and standing around.”
“Like what?” His hands were shoved deep into the pockets of his jeans.
“Organizing where more than a hundred people are going to live during cold winter days and nights. What they’re going to eat and drink. Where they’re going to shower, go to the bathroom. Gathering the materials and seeking out sponsors to help pay for it all. Setting up interviews so we can reach out to the public. Deciding what to say during those interviews. Attending town hall, county, and state meetings, and getting on the dockets at those meetings so our voices and concerns can be heard. Researching the businesses we’re protesting and digging deeper into their practices. Looking at companies for future efforts. Reaching out to companies and voicing our concerns before we would begin protesting them, all while raising more money and organizing for more protests—”
“Okay,” he interrupted with a smile, raising his hands to stop her. “I get it.” He took a deep breath. “I was thinking about your job the way I used to think about my dad’s.” He turned back to the view. “I mean, all our lives we believed Dad just went to work.” She watched as sadness flooded his eyes. “But after losing him, we discovered exactly what it was he did. He wore so many hats, working in the oil fields, laying pipe, managing all the workers, not to mention running the business and a family.”
“I was sorry to hear about his passing.” She paused. “Do you love what you do?”
He looked over at her and nodded. “You know what the kicker is?”
“What?”
“The fact that it takes three of us to fill our father’s shoes. I mean, we’ve come a long way in the past six months. Tyler’s finally gotten his shit together, Trey is . . . well, Trey.” He shook his head.
“What about you? You’ve changed too.”
He nodded, looking out over the town. “You have to. If you don’t, you’re likely to get stomped on. Then how would you take care of your family?”
“You’re a better person than I remember,” she said after a moment of silence.
He turned toward her again. “How so?”
She looked him square in the eyes. “You used to be an ass.”
He laughed. “Why do you say that?”
“You were busy chasing every pretty girl around. Too busy to be nice to girls like me.”
His chuckles died. “Yeah, I guess we’ve all changed.” He moved around her. She turned, keeping him in front of her. “You’ve changed a lot too. No more hiding behind thick glasses?”
“Lasik,” she supplied after a moment, taken aback that he noticed.
“Or bangs.” His gaze moved up to her hair.
Addy was a little surprised he’d remembered the bangs. The awful bangs her mother used to make her wear. Her mother used to pay the local hairdresser tons of money to keep her hair above her shoulders in a very unstylish hairdo. Then, once they made it home, her mother would take her own scissors to Addy’s bangs and lop them shorter. Straight across her forehead.
She’d always wondered why her mother had done the last bit herself. One time she’d asked and was rewarded with a long answer of how her mother didn’t trust the hairdresser to make the bangs straight enough. Perfection. Her mother had always demanded it in everything.
She’d hated it. One of the first things she’d done when she’d gone to college was to grow her hair out.
How to get him off the topic of her appearance? His deep-brown eyes were evaluating her, almost laughing as they ran over her face.
“Your freckles are still there.” His fingertip touched her left cheek and she felt her entire body heat.
It was a gut reaction, the giant step she took backward. What she hadn’t calculated was the fact that there was a sheer cliff directly behind her.
Two things happened in the next moments. First, the wind was knocked out of her when Trent’s arms wrapped around her waist. Second, she overcorrected her position, causing them to go tumbling violently away from the precipice.
She felt every inch of that godlike chest against her as his backside hit the gravel on the trail. She landed hard, directly on top of him. She heard and felt the air knocked from his lungs, then the groan that followed.
Addy was so preoccupied with the feeling of his arms around her that she didn’t realize quickly enough that her knee had landed in a very inconvenient place. For him.
As she tried to move, a louder moan escaped his lips, and she watched his eyes close with pain.
“Don’t,” he warned her in a husky voice, his arms tightening around her. But she was too concerned that she was damaging his balls, and she continued to struggle against his hold so she could remove her weight from him. “Addy, you’re killing me,” he finally groaned. “Let me.”
Hearing the plea in his voice caused her to still. Her breath was coming out in tiny puffs and her heart was racing so quickly she couldn’t count the beats.
She looked down into his eyes to see the pain had been replaced with humor. He was actually laughing at her.
Her eyes narrowed. She gripped his shoulders, taking just a moment to enjoy the feel of them under her hands, and met his eyes.
“What. Is. So. Funny?”
A chuckle escaped his lips and he relaxed his hold. “You. You haven’t changed that much. You’re still a klutz.”
“I am not.” She pushed herself off him, no longer caring where her knee landed.
Once free, she sat in the dirt next to him, breathing hard.
“I take it back,” she said between breaths.
“What?” he said from his position next to her. He still had that damn smile on his face, causing her teeth to clench.
She turned slightly toward him. “You’re still an ass,” she said, then got up, dusted off her jeans, and started walking back down the trail as his laughter echoed behind her.
Trent couldn’t help it. He picked himself up off the ground with a groan and followed her back down the hillside. He’d lucked out earlier when he spotted her white Jeep parked at the base of the trail.
Addy had been back in Haven for almost a full month, docking her small travel trailer at the state park and only moving it when she took small trips to North Dakota.
He’d bumped into her a few times. Once at the grocery store and a few times at the diner. But so far, this had been his only time to actually talk to her. Alone.
Her hips swayed as she made her way down the jagged path. With hiking boots almost as worn as his, she dodged rocks like a pro. Watching her walk away in those tight jeans she was wearing sent his libido into overdrive.
He stumbled on a rock and thankfully caught himself before he took a header down the path. His gaze only returned to her once he was on more stable ground.
She reached the mouth of the trail seconds before he did. Which he’d planned.
“Heading into town?” he asked, catching up with her and leaning against her Jeep.
She glared at him, that chin of hers jutted in defiance.
“What’s it to you?”
He laughed. “Addy, I thought we were making headway.” He nodded back toward the top of the trail.
He watched her take a couple of deep breaths and noticed her blue eyes soften.
“How about I make it up to you by buying breakfast?”
She shook her head. “Can’t. I have four dozen mouths to feed.” She glanced down at her watch. “And a meeting after that.”
“Lunch?” he asked, unsure of why he felt the need to persist.
Her eyes moved back up to his. “I’m heading out to North Dakota again.”
“Oh?” he said, still leaning against her Jeep. “Why?”
She rolled her eyes. “You have heard about the planned oil pipeline.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yeah.” He shrugged. “So why do you have to go there?”
“I don’t have to,” she said.
“Then don’t,” he suggested before she could continue. “Are you done here in town, then?” A strange sensation of panic filled his chest and he had to lean forward until it passed.
“No, I just have . . .” She dropped off and looked over his shoulder. He heard a vehicle drive up but didn’t glance over. “I have to go.” She pushed him away to open her Jeep door.
“Dinner?” he asked with a grin.
When she looked at him and smiled, he knew she’d forgiven him.
“Maybe someday, McGowan.” She shut the Jeep door and drove off.
“Having a hard time getting a date?” From just the sound of the work truck’s engine, Trent had known that it was his brother who had driven up.
Glancing over, he saw Tyler resting against the truck.
“Screw off,” he said with a smile. “Don’t you have a woman to keep you warm and out of my hair?”
His brother’s grin was quick. “She’s resting.”
Trent knew Kristen had been through a lot in recent weeks. Her mother, Trisha, was still staying at his own mother’s place, making the house a little too crowded for his liking.
Now that he knew he was sticking around Haven, he figured it was time to find somewhere more permanent to sleep than in his childhood bedroom.
Tyler was currently clearing his plot of land adjacent to the family acreage with high hopes of starting construction on his home this summer. Trent had been thinking about following his brother’s lead since all three of them had been given an equal share of the land in their father’s will.
Having Kristen’s mother there was giving him the nudge he needed to get moving on doing something of his own. For the past few days, he’d been house-plan hunting. But instead of building his own place, he was looking at hiring a crew to put together one of those log home kits.
So he’d driven into Helena the other day and had walked through a couple of model homes. He was leaning toward the three-thousand-square-foot place. It had massive log beams crossing the lofty ceilings, a two-story stone fireplace, hardwood floors throughout, large glass windows, and a full wraparound porch.
Not to mention the five bedrooms, three and a half bathrooms, and an impressively sized kitchen.
Plus it could be set up and delivered within five to eight months. Assuming he could get his land and a driveway cleared. Which meant more backbreaking work.
Trent had been helping Tyler clear his land for the past few weeks. They’d made huge progress and he really enjoyed driving the backhoe. The wood chopping he could live without.
Now, however, his brother’s work on his place had stopped so that Tyler could spend all his time with Kristen. They were about to embark on moving her and her mother’s belongings out from New York.
“How’s she doing?” Trent asked.
“She says she’s fine.” Trent could see the worry in Tyler’s eyes. “But she still wakes up screaming every night.”
“It’ll take time.” He leaned against the truck next to his brother. “Not that I would know what it was like to be kidnapped.”
It still got to him.
“I wish I could have been the one to . . .” His brother’s statement dropped off. Trent watched him sigh and roll his shoulders.
He figured a change of subject was in order. “How’s the investigation into the accident going? Heard anything new yet?”
Tyler sighed again and shook his head. “No, other than it was sabotage, nothing more. Our new security cameras seem to have scared off whoever was messing with us. At least nothing else has happened since. I’m starting to lean toward the possibility that it was someone who tagged along with the protesters. A lot of them have come and gone lately. Maybe whoever did the damage has already moved on.”
“Yeah,” Trent said after a moment. “Or maybe they’re just lying low? I kind of wish something else would happen. You know, so we can catch whoever was screwing with us in the act.”
“When they destroyed my office,” Tyler said, “I had a feeling it was Brian Laster. It just seemed personal.”
“Ditto,” Trent said, thinking of all the times Brian had been a burden in his life, starting in grade school. The man had returned to town a few weeks ago with the protesters. “Part of me thinks it’s him or Darla.” Darla was sex in heels and rotten to the core. She worked at the local strip club and seemed to have her claws in a lot of men in town.
“She was acting up there for a while when you and Kristen started . . . you know.”
Tyler chuckled. “Seeing one another?”
Trent glanced down the road that Addy’s white Jeep had taken.
“It’s still hard to take it all in at once,” Tyler continued. “First, Dad dies, then when things start going well, Kristen comes in, then all the funny stuff starts, like the destruction of my office and our equipment, and then, to top it off, there was all she was forced to go through.”
“Yeah,” Trent agreed.
“Well, I guess I’d better go on my damn walk.” Tyler nodded to the trail. “Clears the mind.”
“And gets some of that pent-up anger out as well.” Trent nodded. “Why do you think I’m here?”
Tyler smiled. “Well, I thought you were chasing tail.” He nodded in the direction Addy had driven.
“Take your damn walk.” Trent moved to his truck as his brother laughed.
“Maybe you need another hike . . . you know, to release some of the pent-up sexual frustration.”
Trent turned like he was going to go back and kick his brother’s ass, but Tyler jogged up the head of the trail, laughing the entire time.
“Ass,” he called after him.
“Love you too,” Tyler called back.