Ellie Meeks hurried across the grocery store parking lot, walking as fast as she could with a toddler in each arm and a fever of one hundred two. She kept her head bowed, an icy wind driving snowflakes into her face and making her shiver. The last thing she’d needed was to get sick and miss work again.

Damned streptococcus microbes.

She didn’t have to be an RN to know that’s what it was. Daisy had come down with strep three days ago, and now she and Daniel both had fevers and sore throats. She’d had to leave her shift at the hospital early and hadn’t even made it to her car before her mother had called to say Daniel was running a fever, too.

The store’s automatic doors opened for her, a blast of warm air hitting her in the face. She carried the kids to a double-seated shopping cart, set them in their seats one at a time, and buckled their safety belts.

She swallowed—ow!—and tried to put on a cheerful smile. “Who wants macaroni and cheese for supper?”

Neither Daniel nor Daisy showed any sign they’d heard her, tears on Daniel’s flushed cheeks, Daisy sucking her thumb. That was all right. Ellie didn’t have the energy for anything else, so Kraft Dinner it was.

She moved through the aisles, trying to remember everything on the list she’d left at home. Eggs. Milk. Orange juice. Butter. Oatmeal. Bananas. Hot dogs. Two boxes of macaroni and cheese. Laundry detergent. Fabric softener. TP. A few cans of chicken noodle soup and peach slices just to be safe. More children’s Tylenol. A new menstrual cup because she’d lost the other down the toilet in an act of sheer brilliance.

Every woman needs strep and her period at the same time.

She turned toward the pharmacy window to pick up the prescriptions for amoxicillin that her father had called in for them—and almost ran into Mrs. Beech, her old high school English teacher. “Oh! I’m sorry, Mrs. Beech. Excuse me.”

She would have walked on, but Mrs. Beech came to a full stop in front of her cart, her gaze fixed on the twins. “Are these your little ones?”

No, they’re just some random kids I grabbed in the parking lot.

Ellie bit back that grumpy response. That was her fever talking. “Yes. They’ve been sick with strep throat, so you might not want to get too close.”

“How old are they?”

“They’ll be three in April.”

“Aw.” Mrs. Beech beamed at Daniel. “You look just like your daddy. He was a student of mine a long time ago. God rest his soul.”

A shard of pain lanced through Ellie’s chest. Not that Mrs. Beech had said anything Ellie hadn’t said herself. Daniel had his father’s dark hair, his blue eyes, his nose, even his smile. Still, it hurt to hear Mrs. Beech talk about Dan in the past tense.

“You must thank God every day that these two little ones came into your life. It’s a way of reminding you of Dan, keeping a piece of him with you.”

Ellie didn’t need anything to remind her of Dan. He’d been her husband, for God’s sake, the love of her life. She had to grit her teeth. “Yes.”

Daniel rested his head on his sister’s shoulder, whimpered.

Ellie couldn’t blame him. If his throat hurt as much as hers did …

She touched her hand to Daniel’s forehead. “He’s burning up with fever. I need to get them home.”

“I hope he feels better soon.”

“Thanks.” Ellie pushed the cart down the aisle, fuming.

God, she hated it when people said that—as if giving birth to twins six months after her husband’s death somehow made losing him easier to bear. Yes, she was grateful for her children and loved them with her heart and soul. But two new lives couldn’t erase the pain of another that was lost. Why was that so hard for people to understand?

She reached the pharmacy window and found herself blinking back tears.

“Hey, Ellie.” Herb Bosworth, who’d been the town’s pharmacist for the past forty years, met her at the window, carrying two small white paper bags. “You look awful. I’m sorry you and Daniel caught this, too. It’s going around.”

“Thanks.” She took the prescriptions and set them in the cart.

“Feel better soon.”

“Thanks. I’m sure we will.”

Daniel started crying in the checkout lane, and nothing Ellie could say or do comforted him. Daisy, who adored her brother and was an empathetic little girl, started to cry, too. Ellie was tempted to join them. She debated opening the acetaminophen and giving Daniel a dose right here in the store but decided against it. Daniel didn’t like taking medicine, and fighting with him in public would only upset him more.

“He’s sick,” Ellie explained to the woman in line ahead of her who turned and frowned at the kids.

The woman—a stranger—looked away without a word.

Five minutes later, Ellie pushed the cart out the front door and back into the snow, wind biting into her skin, fat flakes blowing almost horizontally. She pushed the cart through a couple of inches of accumulation to the car and got the kids buckled into their car seats. “We’re going to be home soon, and I’ll give you some medicine to make you feel better. Okay, Daniel, sweetie?”

She wrapped his favorite blanket—a blue baby blanket—around him, then put the groceries in the trunk. She would have to scrape off the windshield, but she wanted to start the car first and get the heater going. She opened the driver’s side door, got into the front seat, turned the key in the ignition and…

Nothing.

She tried again, but the engine didn’t make a sound. “Damn it!”

She closed her eyes, fought an impulse to cry.

You can’t cry. You’re the adult, remember?

She had jumper cables in the back. If she popped the hood and took out her cables, someone would see and offer to give her a jump. This was Scarlet Springs, after all. People helped each other here.

She pulled on the hood release, opened the door, and stepped out into the cold, fighting a wave of dizziness that had her leaning against the vehicle. Slowly, she made her way to the trunk and retrieved her jumper cables.

“Need a hand, ma’am?”

She turned and found herself looking at a dark parka, the man who wore it towering over her. She looked up, recognized him. He was one of the volunteers with the Rocky Mountain Search & Rescue Team. Someone had told her that he’d served as an Army Ranger. She’d seen him around town a few times. She hadn’t been able to help but notice him—especially that time she’d seen him standing shirtless on the pier at the reservoir.

Pecs. An eight-pack. Obliques.

Hey, she could still tell a hot guy when she saw one.

“Thank you so much. My car won’t start. I’ve got my twins in the backseat. One of them is sick.”

He took the jumper cables from her. “Get back in the car where it’s warmer. I’ll give you a jump.”

Relief and gratitude washed through her. “Thank you.”

She sat in the driver’s seat and shut the door, looking over her shoulder at the kids, both of whom were quiet now. “We’ll be home soon. This nice man is going to help us get our car started.”

She watched as he strode through the snow to a dark SUV and climbed inside. He drove toward her and parked his vehicle nose-to-nose with hers. Then he climbed out again, raised her hood, and got to work connecting the cables.

When they were in place, he walked over and bent down next to her window, snowflakes on long eyelashes. “Try starting it now.”

He had a touch of a southern accent, though she couldn’t place it.

“Okay.” She turned the key.

Nothing.

How could that be?

The man fiddled with the jumper cables, then motioned for her to try again.

Still, the car wouldn’t start.

Ellie closed her eyes, fighting despair. She didn’t need an expensive car repair on top of everything else right now.

When she opened her eyes again, he was standing beside her window. “It’s not your battery, ma’am. If it weren’t dark, I’d poke around and try to figure out what’s wrong, but I can’t see much, especially not with snow falling like this. Why don’t I drive you and your kids home? You can worry about the car later.”

She shook her head, reaching into her handbag for her cell phone. “I’ll call my dad. He can be here in twenty minutes.”

“I’ll have you home in ten. You can take a photo of my license plate number and send it to your father if that makes you feel safer.”

“Oh, no. It’s not that.” She wasn’t afraid of him. He was on the Team, after all. He’d probably been through a dozen background checks. “My little boy and I are sick with strep throat, and I don’t want to get you sick, too.”

“All the more reason to get you home, ma’am.” He grinned, his teeth white in the darkness. “Besides, I have a monster immune system. I don’t get sick.”

* * *

Jesse Moretti stowed away the jumper cables and transferred the woman’s groceries from her trunk to the cargo hold of his Jeep, while she got both kids buckled into their car seats in the back. He climbed into the driver’s seat and turned up the heater, looking at the children in his rearview mirror.

He hadn’t had little kids in his vehicle since, well … ever.

The little boy whimpered. His sister sucked her thumb.

“We’ll get you home. Okay?” His gaze settled for a moment on the children’s mother. Beneath the fatigue and fever, she had a pretty face, with high cheekbones, a little upturned nose, and a full mouth. There was snow in her dark blond hair, which was pulled back in a ponytail. It was too dark to see the color of her eyes. “I’m Jesse Moretti.”

“Thanks for the help, Jesse.” She gave a forced smile, clearly feeling like shit. “I’m Ellie Meeks. That’s Daniel and Daisy in the back.”

Daniel and Daisy.

Cute.

He shifted his vehicle into drive, pulled out of the parking lot, and turned left onto the highway, rush hour and snow bringing traffic to a crawl through the center of town.

“I live on Snow Creek Road just beyond mile marker—”

“I know where you live.”

That didn’t sound creepy at all, dumbass.

Did he want her to think he was some kind of stalker?

He tried again. “We’re neighbors. We share a property line. I’ve seen you playing out back with your kids.”

The first time he’d seen her, he’d been standing on his back deck with his real estate agent just before buying the property. She’d been sitting on a blanket, playing with two babies too little to sit up or crawl. His realtor had told him her husband had been killed fighting in Iraq.

That was a story Jesse knew only too well.

Since then, he’d done what he could to support her, shoveling her walk early in the morning on his way to work, moving her trash bin onto the curb when she’d forgotten trash day, and keeping an eye on the house, especially during the summer when tourist season made the crime rate spike.

“You bought the old cabin?” Her face lit up with a genuine smile this time. “And you never came down to introduce yourself?”

“I guess I never got time.”

Bullshit. He had avoided it.

He’d spent ten years of his life in sustained combat operations with Alpha Company, 3^rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment in Iraq and Afghanistan, and had seen his share of death and slaughter. He had his own emotional shit to deal with. He couldn’t take on anyone else’s.

“You’re with the Team, aren’t you?”

“Yeah. I’m a primary member.” He didn’t want to brag, but he’d worked his ass off to make the cut, spending every free moment learning to climb, honing his skills on tough technical routes, even getting certified as an EMT.

“What’s it like?”

He got that question a lot but never had a real answer. How could he explain what being on the Team meant to him? “It’s busy.”

“I bet—especially in the summer.”

“Yeah.” But this past summer hadn’t been busy—not for him.

After a rescue he’d led had gone terribly wrong, Megs, director of the Team and a real hardass, had benched him, refusing to let him go out on operations until Esri, the trauma therapist who gave free counseling sessions to Team members, evaluated him. At first, he’d refused. The last thing he’d wanted was someone digging around in his head. Besides, Megs had been overreacting.

Sure, he’d been shaken up. Who wouldn’t have been? He’d watched a little girl drown and hadn’t been able to do a damned thing for her. But benching him hadn’t made things better. Far from it.

Megs didn’t understand how important working with the Team was for Jesse, how it held his world together. He’d had no choice in the end but to do what she’d demanded and meet with the therapist. It hadn’t been as bad as he’d feared. In fact, Jesse kind of liked Esri, though he’d stopped going to sessions once Megs let him go active again.

“The Team is all volunteer, right?”

“Yeah. No one who works for the Team gets paid, but being able to wear the yellow Team T-shirt feels like a badge of honor for most of us.” Jesse was almost as proud of it as he was of his Ranger tab.

“If it takes up so much time, how do you make a living?”

“I work for Scarlet Mountain Resort—ski patrol in the winter, trails crew in the summer. I handle explosives for avalanche control. My boss likes having a Team member on staff, says it makes him feel safer. He lets me take time off for rescues.”

Scarlet Springs was one of the few towns in the world that owned its own ski area—Scarlet Mountain Resort. With some first-class terrain and slopes that were only an hour-and-a-half drive from Denver, it was a favorite of locals. Let the tourists battle their way up I-70 to the big resorts. Skiers from Colorado’s Front Range came to Scarlet.

“Do you like your job?”

“It pays the bills, and I like staying active, working outdoors.” The more exhausted his body was, the less likely he was to think too much. “My dad wanted me to come back to Louisiana and work at a refinery. But I knew from the moment I set eyes on these mountains that I was here to stay.”

Why had he told her that?

“Is that where you’re from—Louisiana?”

“Born and raised.” Jesse stopped at the crosswalk as a big, shaggy figure stepped into the street, head down, walking into the wind.

It was Bear. Big like his namesake but with the mind of a child, he made his home somewhere in the mountains west of town, living off the land and the kindness of those who bought him meals or gave him change in exchange for a blessing or Bible verse. No one seemed to know where he’d come from or how he’d ended up the way he was. For decades, the residents of Scarlet had accepted and watched over him.

“I wonder how far he has to go to get home,” Ellie said. “It’s so cold.”

“Bear knows more about surviving in the mountains than the rest of us combined.” In the two and a half years that Jesse had lived in Scarlet, he’d never known Bear to ask for anything more than spare change or a warm meal.

Jesse accelerated, felt the Jeep’s rear tires slip just a little, and shifted into four-wheel drive. The snow was coming down hard now, fat flakes clinging to his windshield wipers. “How about you? Where are you from?”

“I grew up here. I moved to Kentucky to be with my husband. He grew up in Scarlet, too, but was stationed at Fort Campbell. I moved back after … He was killed while serving in Iraq. I was four months pregnant.”

Jesse tried to ignore the way her words pierced that dark place inside him. “I’m sorry. It must be hard to raise twins by yourself.”

“Especially on nights like tonight.” She turned her face away from him, looked out the window. “My parents have been a big help. My mom watches the twins when I work. My dad is a pediatrician, so I get free doctor’s visits and house calls. People in Scarlet set up a scholarship fund for the kids for college. My neighbors have been great, too. They shovel my walk, move my trash can, help with yard work. I don’t even have to ask. They just do it.”

He suppressed a smile. “That’s good. When someone lays down his life for his country, people ought to do more for his family than just offer condolences.”

He glanced over at her, found her looking at him.

“Yes—and thanks.”

They made the rest of the short drive without talking, Daniel’s whimpers and the squeak of the wiper blades breaking the silence.

Jesse pulled into her driveway and parked. “You take care of the kids. I’ll get the groceries.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

He climbed out into the wind and made his way to the back of his vehicle, icy flakes biting his cheeks. He retrieved her groceries and started toward the house, only to find her sitting, half in and half out of the vehicle, clinging to the door.

“I’m just … dizzy.”

It was time to get tactical.

Arms full of groceries, he walked over to her. “Do you have your house keys? I’ll carry the groceries in, then come back for you and the kids. You shouldn’t be carrying them if you’re dizzy.”

She fumbled in her pocket, pulled out the keys and handed them to him.

Jesse trudged through the snow to the front door, stomped the snow off his boots, then unlocked the door and stepped inside, flicking a light switch. He carried the groceries to the kitchen, then strode back outside to his vehicle.

She was right where he’d left her.

“Can you make it inside on your own?” He didn’t want to leave such small children alone in his vehicle or the house.

She nodded. “I think so.”

He steadied her while she got to her feet, then watched as she walked inside. When she was safely through the door, he opened the passenger side door to discover that the twins had unbuckled themselves. “Hey, Daniel and Daisy. I’m Jesse. I’m going to carry you inside.”

Jesus, Moretti. That’s the best you can do?

Really, it was.

He reached for them, half expecting them to back away from him in horror. Instead, they came easily into his arms, Daniel with his blanket, Daisy with her thumb in her mouth, their trust strangely touching. He lifted them out of the Jeep, kicked the door shut, and carried them inside to where their mother stood, still in her parka, waiting, her pretty face white as a sheet.

He set the children down at her feet. Daisy toddled off in tiny snow boots, while Daniel leaned against his mother’s leg, blue blanket clutched in a little fist.

“You should sit down and…” His gaze met Ellie’s, and his brain went blank for a moment, his breath catching.

Green.

Her eyes were green.

She shook her head. “I need to put this stuff away and make dinner.”

Trying to act like the earth hadn’t just shifted beneath his feet, Jesse stepped back and looked around him. Her home was warm and cozy, toys scattered across a braided area rug in front of the sofa, wood stacked next to a fireplace with a wood stove insert. On the mantel sat a display case holding a folded American flag—the flag from her husband’s funeral—along with several service medals and …

Adrenaline hit his bloodstream.

A USASOAC patch.

Son of a bitch.

Her husband had been a pilot with the 160^th SOAR—the Special Operations Aviation Regiment.

Well, shit.

“I’ll go get the car seats.” He walked back outside, fighting an impulse to run, torn between getting the hell out of here and wanting to do more to help her.

What the hell is wrong with you?

He clamped down on his emotions and retrieved the car seats from his vehicle. Back inside, he found her on her knees, wrestling the kids out of snow boots, mittens, hats, and coats.

He set the car seats down on the polished wood floor. “I’d be happy to look at the car tomorrow when I get off work. I’m good with engines.”

She got unsteadily to her feet. “That’s kind of you, but I’ll just have it towed to the garage.”

He reached into his jeans pocket, pulled out his wallet, and took out a business card. “Here’s my phone number. I’m only a minute away if you need anything.”

She accepted the card, a blond eyebrow arching, a smile tugging at her lips. “Boat repairs? Do you get much business in Scarlet?”

He understood her amusement. Colorado was a landlocked and arid state with few bodies of water big enough to accommodate boating. “I grew up on the Gulf Coast and love the water. I’ve got a speedboat that I take out on the reservoir every summer. I’ll have to take you all out sometime.”

What had he just said?

She smiled. “Thanks again, Jesse.”

He gave her a nod. “You’re welcome, ma’am.”

“I just hope we don’t repay you by getting you sick. Be sure to wash your hands.”

“Don’t worry about me. Like I said, I don’t get sick.”

“These are pediatric germs—kid germs, the worst.”

“Get some rest and feel better soon.” He stepped out into the wind and walked through falling flakes back to the car, grateful for the cold.

Jesus.

Ellie was a SOAR widow.

Now that he thought about it, Jesse was pretty sure he’d known her husband.