Jake met Adler at the front gate of Chandler’s ranch, no doubt tipped off by Sage that Adler was on his way.

Adler pulled to a sudden stop, the truck kicking up dust on the unpaved road. He killed the engine then just sat for a few seconds as Jake watched him with a wary gaze.

Getting slowly out of the truck, he took the sheets of paper from Sage’s notebook, slammed them down on the hood of his vehicle then walked around to the tailgate. He wasn’t sure Jake deserved the chance to read them in a semi-private setting, but Adler didn’t trust his own temper to watch the man’s face while Jake took in the enormity of what Sage had considered doing.

He let the tailgate down and took a seat, his hands balled into fists pressed hard against his thighs. He had given her no time to explain, so his mind still reeled from how she had been so calm most of the time at the water stations. Just thinking about what she planned had his mind and body spinning in circles.

Relaxing his hands long enough to unball his fists and curl his fingers around the edge of the tailgate, Adler looked over his shoulder in search of Jake. The man was still standing in front of the truck. What looked like fresh grief contorted his strong features, the expression just a little less devastated than the one he had worn at Dawn’s funeral.

“You gonna drag your tail over here?” Adler growled. He was in no mood to give his brother-in-law any quarter. He was certain Sage would have answered all his questions but for her loyalty to Jake.

Adler admired loyalty, especially to family. He regretted the hard words he’d spoken, especially those carrying the implication that he didn’t trust her to leave with Leah. The love she already felt for the child lit her gaze each time they were together.

But those pale purple sheets filled with her elegant, self-destroying script had shaken him to his core. Did she really care for his niece as much as he thought if she could leave like that, cutting the little girl out of her life in an instant? And she certainly couldn’t feel anything for Adler.

He’d been a fool for a pretty face to think she had.

Looking over his shoulder again, he slammed his hand down on the tailgate, the metal ringing with the force of his blow.

“Get over here, kid.”

Jake was only five years his junior, but men don’t lie. Scared kids were a different story.

Moving in slow motion, Jake came around to the back of the truck, stopping far enough away that he was outside the reach of Adler’s arms and fists.

“I’m not gonna punch you, kid.”

Jake just stared at him.

Fine. Adler stared back with a tight grin.

“You proud of what she wrote? That what you want, your sister to walk out of your life, out of Leah’s? Does she have any family to go back to or were you telling the truth about your mother and father being dead all those years?”

Jake eased a hand into his back pocket, pulled out his phone and activated the device. He swiped through to an app, typed a few words then made another selection before handing the phone over to Adler.

A picture of a man in his sixties stared out from the screen. The face, small in the format rendered, was slightly familiar, but he couldn’t attach a name to it. He scrolled down to the article that accompanied the photo.

The man glowering through the screen was Congressman Steve Templeton. Before that, he had been Senator Templeton, his seat lost when the first of his affairs had been exposed. From there, he had moved on to an undefended seat in the House.

“That’s from when he was running for election in the House. I doubt anyone would remember when the news broke about his affair with my mom. Heck, I was barely sixteen. He got voted out of the Senate. Can’t run on a family values platform when you don’t have any.”

At a loss for words, Adler handed the phone back in silence. Did Jake really think Dawn or the rest of the family would have rejected him because his father was a walking, talking piece of excrement?

“Of course, it all got dredged up again when he decided to run for the House,” Jake monotoned. “Opposition researchers and tabloids started stalking me and Sage. That’s when I left the East Coast, finding work where I could just hire on with nothing but a first name. Picked lettuce for a season in California, started drifting north.”

Back teeth locked together to keep from interrupting, Adler sat there and listened to Jake pour everything out. He figured after almost four years of concealing the truth, there was a lot to unload.

Silently cursing himself, he put Jake’s age in perspective. He had been twenty-four when he started courting Dawn. Adler could barely remember what he had been like that young. Folks had said he was a fine young man back then—but their words didn’t make him a man, just one in training. How differently would he have behaved if it was his father plastered all over the tabloids?

“I thought…” Jake continued with a misery-laden laugh. “I thought it was all winding down, but then he went and got some other woman pregnant. Maybe you remember that one?”

Adler thought back. If Jake figured there was a reason for Adler to remember the event, then there probably was. He sifted through memories until he hit upon the afternoon leading into a Sunday dinner. Jake was there, the television on, news playing in a lull between football games.

Always hungry for ratings and the next foul-tasting bit of gossip, the television channel had done a breaking report about the newest scandal in Congress. Not only had Steve Templeton fathered another child, he had allegedly diverted campaign funds to the infant’s mother. Of course, that last bit was never proven and the man still held his seat. The media had been so focused on the new, far younger mistress and the potential violation of election laws that they had only mentioned in passing that there were other children from another mistress. They hadn’t named them in that broadcast or any other broadcast Adler could remember.

But Jake, already reclusive, had been stiff as a board the rest of that Sunday. And while Dawn had dropped hints to her oldest brother for a full week that she expected Jake to ask Brody for her hand in marriage that Sunday, Jake was quiet until two Sundays later—after the news channels and tabloids had moved on to something else.

“Yeah,” Adler answered. “I remember it being on television when you were there.”

“Do you remember what was said?” Jake asked.

Adler hung his head. What was said never would have passed his mother or father’s lips if they had known even the outline of Jake’s past as a boy with a blank spot on his birth certificate where his father’s name should have been printed.

“I remember,” Adler confessed again. “Daddy said he wouldn’t want to be the wife or children of that man. And Mama…she said she felt bad for the wife and all of the kids but didn’t have an ounce of pity for…”

“My mother,” Jake finished. “And my half-brother’s mother.”

“Yeah,” Adler rasped. He chewed over everything he had just learned about the man standing in front of him.

Sliding off the tailgate, he thrust his hand forward then waited for Jake to step closer and clasp it.

“I’m sorry for my part in everything,” Adler said. “You were always a good husband and father. I want you to know I never faulted you for that.”

Saying nothing, Jake swallowed roughly as he withdrew his hand from Adler’s.

“Far as I’m concerned, the only person you might have done wrong by is Sage. But I’ve only known her a little while. Maybe you were right to cut her out.”

Adler couldn’t keep his gaze from drifting to the front pocket of Jake’s jeans where an edge of the colored paper with Sage’s writing on it poked out. He couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to cut her out of their lives, but maybe he was a fool who could only see the good in her.

“You’re right,” Jake admitted. He rubbed at his arm like fire ants crawled over the skin. “I did wrong by Sage. And Dawn, if she was still with us. They would have been great friends.”

Adler nodded, his gaze locked on the ground as he struggled against the swell of fresh grief. When he finally looked up, he saw the same emotions mirrored on Jake’s face. Without a thought for what he was doing, Adler stepped closer and wrapped his arms around his brother-in-law’s shoulders, hugging him as he would his parents or his siblings.

Hugging him like he was, at long last, family.