Prepare yourself.

The ominous words hissed inside Ace Caldwell’s head like a pair of vipers.

He’d wrestled with the warning all night and again on the long drive from the Triple C Ranch to the Tulsa private investigator’s waiting room.

Prepare himself? How? For what? The news couldn’t get any worse. Could it?

What was the woman going to do? Slice out his black heart? Run over him with her red Toyota? Either of which he deserved and some of which she’d threatened at the time, but Marisa Foreman wasn’t the murdering type. Or she hadn’t been.

Her brother, on the other hand, should have shot him on sight. If he’d been able.

Ace heaved a long, agitated gust of air and raked a hand over his clean-shaven face. He stuck a finger beneath the hated tie and tugged. Why did he dress up in the first place? This wasn’t a funeral. He hoped.

Normally a confident guy, Ace hadn’t been this nervous since his first AA meeting in the basement of the Clay City Baptist Church. Church. A place that still made him a little antsy, as if he didn’t belong there and never would. He rubbed sweaty palms over the knees of his jeans.

Making recompense for past sins was harder than he’d ever imagined, and he had plenty to repay. Especially this time.

Forgiveness might be as free as Preacher Marcus claimed, but redemption was another matter. Redemption came with a high price tag and a hearty dose of sticker shock. Ace knew this for a fact, an agonizing, belly-crawling fact. But crawl he would if that’s what it took.

For what must have been the hundredth time, Ace pushed up from the cushy waiting-room chair and stalked to the receptionist’s desk.

“My appointment was at ten-thirty.” His throat was a load of gravel stirred by a swarm of angry hornets.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Caldwell. The first client is taking longer than expected.” She forced a smile, her brown lipstick stretching to a near grimace. And who wouldn’t be a tad touchy by now? He’d nagged her for an hour, growing more agitated and cranky by the ask. “You’re welcome to have some coffee or tea while you wait.”

He didn’t want coffee or tea. He wanted a shot of tequila.

The thought came out of nowhere and caught him off guard. He was normally pretty good at handling those random, fiery darts that shot through his brain and unloaded their poisonous temptations.

He did not want a shot of tequila, thank you very much. He wanted to talk to the private investigator, find out Marissa’s contact information, and resolve the prepare yourself comment.

He already knew the mine field that lay ahead when he found Marisa. She hated him, and for good reason. What he’d done to her brother was unforgivable.

Ace squeezed his eyes tight for two seconds and tried to erase the sudden, searing memory. If he thought about Chance too much, he’d be tempted for more than a shot. He’d want the whole bottle.

Mustering his sweet side—the one Connie said was natural, though he’d come to doubt he had a sweet bone in his athletic body—he leaned an elbow on the short counter between him and the receptionist. Nice was important. He didn’t need to add another person to his long list of Step-Nine apologies.

“Sorry. Not your fault.” He forced a smile, tried for crooked and charming, and settled for adequate. “Maybe I’ll have some coffee, after all. Thanks.”

Without waiting for the effect of his lackluster charm, Ace spun toward the credenza at one end of the waiting area. A Keurig offered options and, with a quick glance around to be sure no one was watching, he chose chamomile tea. The bunkhouse boys would have a field day if they knew the big boss of The Triple C Ranch was sipping girly tea. Even if someone held a cattle prod to his eyeballs, he’d never admit it, but the stuff calmed his jitters. If he drank any more coffee today, he’d be climbing the walls.

The tea trickled into the cup, making splashy sounds, and the pot gurgled. Antsy as an Alabama sugar bowl in summer, he tapped his fingers on top of the credenza until, at ever-loving last, the pot coughed into silence.

Foam cup cradled in his hands as if someone would, any minute, point and accuse him of drinking wimpy tea, Ace sipped the brew, took a deep breath, and blew it out. Slow and easy. Calm yourself.

“Mr. Caldwell, Mr. Buckley will see you now.” The receptionist shot him a relieved glance.

Ace sipped once more, tossed the remaining tea in the trash, and stalked into an office off the waiting area. Not much more than a desk and a computer, the room was small, but the man in the big leather chair wasn’t. At least six-six with the bulk to match, Jon Buckley would have a hard time doing anything without being noticed. But after years on the Tulsa police force, he managed to be an effective private investigator. In a dress shirt, no tie, with his jacket draped over the back of the chair, he swiveled away from the computer to face Ace.

The man stood, and Ace, who boasted six feet in socks, felt dwarfed.

“Just checking my stocks,” Buckley said.

The men exchanged handshakes.

“Nasdaq’s up.” As CEO of a major spread like The Triple C, Ace kept an eagle eye on their investments. Cattle markets weren’t the only thing this cowboy invested in.

“Yeah. Looking good lately.” The PI motioned toward a chair. “Sit. Relax.”

“Easy for you to say.” But he sat anyway.

“Well, then, I’ll cut to the chase. You’re not paying me to be your broker.” Jon offered a self-satisfied grunt as he settled back into his chair. The leather groaned. “As I told you on the phone the day of your brother’s wedding, we found her. The surprise is she was easy to locate. She’s in Clay City.”

“No way.” Clay City was less than fifteen miles from Calypso and The Triple C. “I checked her old place a couple months back. Someone else lives there, and the neighbors had no idea where she’d gone or when she’d return.”

He’d also phoned her old cell number, only to discover she’d changed it. Probably because of him.

“She’s back now. Different address, but she’s there.”

Ace gripped the chair arms and leaned forward. “Where has she been? Is she okay? Where’s Chance? How’s he doing?”

He had a hundred questions, most of which only Marisa could answer.

The PI scooted a manila file folder across the tidy desk. “Everything we learned is in here, but the upshot is this. Shortly after he was stabilized at St. Francis, Marisa moved Chance to an out-of-state rehab facility that works specifically with spinal cord injuries. They released him a few weeks ago.”

Hope spurted like the original Spindletop oil well. Chance had been released. “So if they’re back in Clay City, the rehab must have helped. Is he on his feet again?”

God, please let the answer be yes. Let Chance be the strong, athletic man he was before the accident.

“After eighteen months of therapy, he stopped making progress. He’s in a care center in Clay City.”

Hope took a death spiral.

“Care center? As in a nursing home?” Though not unexpected, the news slammed Ace in the gut with more force than a mule’s kick. Hadn’t he hoped? Hadn’t he prayed? And hadn’t he procrastinated finding Marisa because he feared exactly this?

“Marisa works there. From the financials I ran, they’re wallowing in debt, and she’s working two jobs to keep her head above water. The medical bills are astronomical.”

“I paid the bills in Tulsa.” Ace swiped a hand over his face. “Then I lost track and… Can you get me that information?”

“She won’t let you.”

“She can’t stop me. She needs the money, and I have it. Or can get it. She blames me for Chance’s injury, and I owe her. Get me that information.”

“Will do. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“Right.” As if he would. He knew how independent and determined Marisa could be, traits he’d once admired that now frustrated him and had since the day she’d offered him a police escort out of St. Francis Hospital.

Not his most shining moment.

Eager to do what had to be done, Ace shoved out of the chair, grabbed the folder, and headed toward the door. Get it over with and put this horrible episode behind him. Except Chance couldn’t. Not ever.

“Ace. Wait. There’s something else.”

Ace paused at the door to glance over one shoulder. This must be the prepare yourself part.

“Miss Foreman has asked that out of respect and decency—her words, not mine—you do not contact her. She doesn’t want to see you. In fact, she was furious I had tracked her down and even threatened to move again. She can’t afford to, but she might do it anyway. She was that upset.”

All the energy drained from Ace. Since the last day at the hospital, she’d avoided him, hid from him, hated him. And rightfully so. He’d paralyzed her brother. Drunk and stupid, the man who’d claimed to love her had betrayed her in a way that would haunt them all the rest of their lives.

With one curt nod, Ace stalked out of the office.

Marisa didn’t want to see him. No surprise in that, only a sharp, hot pain. Some days he struggled to look in the mirror and see himself.

Stewing, half-praying, though he wondered if either did any good, Ace climbed in his truck and leaned his arms on the steering wheel until his heart quit pounding and the blood in his temples settled into a low swoosh instead of a Niagara-Falls roar.

A man with as many sins as he had compiled in thirty-six years would spend the rest of his life making things right. Step nine was a long and seemingly never ending list of failures, of wrongs against decent people. All in the name of a good time that wasn’t so good, after all.

Facing the people he’d hurt was the hardest part. People like Marisa. Like Chance. But face them he would. It was the only way to defeat the demon living inside him. The one that said a bottle of tequila would cure everything. It wouldn’t. God knew he’d tried after the accident. If not for family—Nate and Emily, Connie and Gilbert—he might have drunk himself to death.

Thanks to them and to God, he’d crawled out of his despair and gotten sober. Fifteen months and counting. And he’d never go back. Never. The cost was too high.

One way or the other, he would see Marisa. He would see for himself the damage he’d done to her and to her brother. This time he’d be sober. He’d face his guilt head on, and somehow he would find a way to make amends.

With a determined huff, he fumbled in the console for a cinnamon candy, popped it in his mouth, and cranked the engine on his big diesel truck. Then, fighting a serious case of shakes, he headed toward the interstate and the woman who never wanted to see him again.

Marisa scraped her hair into a tight ponytail and secured it with four twists of a pink hair band. She stuck an extra band in the pocket of her scrubs, along with a pen, a tube of Chapstick and her prepaid cell phone. She glanced at her watch, a cheap twelve-dollar device that worked fine for her purposes. She wasn’t picky. Couldn’t afford to be.

Forty-five minutes until she had to be at work. For once, she might have time to eat something before her shift. She straightened the items on the small vanity and reorganized the overhead medicine cabinet again. Confident the tiny bathroom was neat and she wouldn’t come home exhausted to a mess, she headed into the kitchen. Last night’s pasta salad sounded good.

She took the bowl from the fridge just as a knock sounded at the door. Since bringing Chance back to Clay City, the neighbors had proved friendly, occasionally appearing on her step with food or an offer for their church group to visit her brother at the Care Center. The latter she refused for now. Chance was in no mood to see anyone. He was mad at God, mad at the world. She’d thought bringing him home to the familiar would help, but if anything, his depression seemed worse.

She didn’t know what do for him anymore. She prayed, she worked, and she tried to stay positive. But positive was hard to find these days.

The neighbors, however, cheered her, and she was thankful to have found a safe neighborhood of older people and aging homes like hers where the rent was reasonable. Last week, Mr. Sims, the elder gentleman in the other side of the duplex, mowed her lawn while she was at work. She’d repaid him with a plate of oatmeal cookies and an afternoon listening to stories of his late wife. He was a nice man, but lonely.

Smiling and expecting to see his wrinkled, friendly face, she went to open the front door.

A shock wave reverberated through her body and crash landed at her feet. She wished the sky would open and a UFO would suck her into the clouds.

Ace Caldwell. The man she’d prayed to forget and to forgive lest she lose her own soul in hating him stood on her stoop, looking handsomer than ever.

That was just wrong.

She slammed the door in his green-eyed face.

The knocking recommenced, harder this time. “Marisa, I only want to talk to you.”

Marisa leaned her back against the door and fought not to slide to the hardwood. Sweat broke out. She clenched her fist and her teeth. She hated him, hated him, hated him.

“Marisa, please. Open the door.” He knocked harder and raised his voice.

Really? Just like that he thought he could show up at her door and be welcomed in with a big, cheery smile. Not in this lifetime.

Furious, she turned her face to the wood and shouted, “Go away and never come back.”

He didn’t.

Instead, he must have use both fists, and the knocks grew louder. He pounded. Banged. And he yelled. Loud enough that deaf Mrs. Francis at the end of block would hear him. “I’m not leaving until we talk. So you might as well open the door.”

His voice elevated with each word. And the door quivered from his incessant pounding. If he kept that up, he’d disturb the entire neighborhood, older neighbors who treasured peace and quiet. Maybe they’d blame her, think she had a wild boyfriend.

The thought should have been funny, but it wasn’t. She’d had a wild boyfriend. Two years ago. Ace Caldwell. A wild and fun cowboy with a party attitude.

He hollered louder, punctuating each word with a hammering fist.

He was still a wild man. Probably drunk. And still everything she could not have in her life.

“I’m not leaving, Marisa!”

Oh, yes he was.

She yanked the door open. If eyes were bullets, she hoped hers were firing on all cylinders. AK-47s.

“What are you doing here?” Teeth tight, she forced the words. “You are not welcome. I don’t want to talk to you or see you. I told that to the man you had following me. Which is a violation of my privacy, by the way. Don’t do it again.”

Ace removed his gray Resistol, pretending to be a gentleman, and held it in both hands. “He was a legitimate private investigator. I had to find you.”

“You found me. Now leave.”

“Not until we talk.”

Marisa’s lip curled. “You must be drunk. As usual.”

The man with the perennial tan blanched a sickly beige. “I don’t do that anymore.”

She laughed, a bitter sound even to her own ears. “Or any less, I imagine.”

Had she ever once been with him that he hadn’t smelled like alcohol?

The Holy Spirit tapped at her conscience. She wasn’t acting much like a Christian, but then, she never had around Ace. He’d led her down the wrong path, and she’d followed like a hungry puppy in order to be with him. The things she’d done in the name of love shamed her even now. She’d loved him, and her adoration had cost her brother his mobility.

“I want to help him.” He twisted the hat until she thought he’d rip it in half. “And you.”

“We don’t need your help.”

“Yes, you do.”

She bristled. The truth, spoken with soft words, only upset her more.

If any human could grow porcupine quills, she thought she might be the one. “You paid the hospital bill against my will. I tried to reject it, but the hospital refused to let me.”

“I know.” His voice was soft, wounded. She wouldn’t fall for his pitiful act of contrition. “I wanted to help then. I want to help now. Any way I can.”

“I don’t want your money.” Blood money. That’s what it was. He was trying to buy his way to redemption. “Neither of us do.”

“How is he?”

“How do you think he is?” Bitterness welled in her throat, spilled out between her tight lips. “An athlete with so much potential. New in his career but happy and successful. A young man who thought you hung the moon.” Like her. She’d thought the same, and she’d been so weak that even after the accident, she’d wanted Ace to hold her and tell her everything would be fine. But it wasn’t fine. It never would be.

“I want to see him.”

“No.” She started to shut the door again.

He stuck his boot toe inside. “I’m trying to make amends, Marisa.”

“Amends? Amends?” Her voice rose on each word. She leaned forward, livid now. “There are some things money can’t buy. Take legs for instance. Can you buy Chance new legs? Can you reconnect his spinal cord?”

The cruel words hit their mark. He stumbled back, head down, shoulders slumped, his hat dangling at his side.

Marisa slammed the door, expecting to feel better, vindicated. If the rattling in her chest was any indication, she felt worse. Way worse.

One eye to the peephole, she watched the cowboy. He’d stepped off the square piece of concrete she called a porch and stood in the sunlight, sculpted jaw still pointed toward her door, the temples of his black hair surprisingly shot with gray. He was only in his thirties. How could he be turning gray?

Finally, he replaced the cowboy hat, stared for another second or two as if contemplating another knock, then turned away and walked slowly to his big, fancy pickup truck.

Rich cowboy who thought money could solve everything. It couldn’t, though God knew, she needed more of it than she could make at two entry-level jobs.

“Oh, Lord, what am I supposed to do now? You know how bad he is for me, for Chance. Why did he have to come here?”

Anxiety tightened her shoulders to the point of fracture. In search of calm, she straightened the pictures on the wall. She and her brother at Chance’s college graduation. The other of Chance in his first coaching job, surrounded by his baseball team. She’d been as proud as a parent. All her years of hard work to get him through school and then through college had finally paid off.

And then she’d introduced her precious brother to her boyfriend.

Ace Caldwell had been the love of her life. Or so she’d thought. But in the end, he’d been part of the twisted psychological pattern she’d promised never to fall victim to. A child of alcoholics falling for a man heading in that direction as fast he could go.

Her fault. Her fault. Her fault. She could blame Ace all day long, but she was guilty too. After protecting her younger brother all his life, she’d handed him over to disaster.

Appetite gone, she went into the kitchen and put the bowl of pasta back in the fridge, pausing to reorganize the condiments into alphabetical order.

She’d sworn to never date a man who so much as drank a beer. And what had she done? One nod from that handsome cowboy, and she’d tumbled like an Olympic gymnast. Never mind that he’d been leading her brother down the wrong path and her as well. She’d fallen for him, loved him wildly, and paid for her sins with her brother’s future.