Prologue
Chase Garrett stared at his best friend’s pickup truck parked in front of Chase’s fiancée’s yellow clapboard bungalow in the wheatgrass covered foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Patrick’s black V-8 dually wouldn’t have been an unusual sight—he and Laura-Leigh had known each other since the third grade. But it was four a.m. and the house was full dark.
Chase supposed Patrick might have tied one on last night and decided against driving home. Not that the dirt roads of the Twin River Valley were diligently patrolled for tipsy cowboys. But it was a possibility.
Thing was, Chase had been away the past two weeks. He was home early and all set to surprise Laura-Leigh with news she’d been waiting for, a decision that would make her very happy.
He stepped from his pickup, firmly shutting the door, adamantly refusing to keep the noise level low. Sneaking up to the house would mean allowing for the unacceptable. It would mean he was suspicious. He wasn’t. There was a perfectly acceptable explanation for Patrick’s presence.
He thumped his boot heels on the wooden porch. If anything, he was louder than usual.
“Laura-Leigh?” he called out as he opened the front door. “Honey? I’m back.”
There was a thud and a shuffle beyond her bedroom door.
The sofa was empty and the door to the small guest room stood open.
Chase flipped on the overhead light. Its beam showed him a neatly made bed in the guest room, its champagne-colored bedspread wrinkle free, pillows untouched, the green plaid, wool blanket folded in its usual spot at the foot of the bed.
Frantic whispers sounded behind the bedroom door. Two voices, one a woman’s and one a man’s.
He thought about leaving. Then he thought about doubling up his fists. In the end, he folded his arms across his chest and waited, letting the outrage pulse its way through his brain as he struggled to come to terms with the appalling reality.
The bedroom door opened a crack.
“Chase?” Laura-Leigh’s whisper was paper dry.
She appeared in her white thigh-length nightgown. It was worn flannel, the lace on the scooped neck frayed in two places. It wasn’t what a woman wore for her first time with a man. This had happened before.
Her cheeks were flushed and her brown eyes were wide with obvious fear. And she drew the door tightly closed behind her. As if Chase would be too stupid to notice she had a man in her bed.
“You’re early,” she said, her back pressed flat against the door.
“His pickup’s in the driveway,” Chase said.
The color drained from her face.
The door opened behind her and she staggered back a small step.
Patrick wasn’t going to leave her to face Chase alone. Normally, Chase would give the man points for that. But there was nothing normal about this. Laura-Leigh was pregnant with Chase’s baby, and their wedding date was less than a month away.
“I should take your head off,” he growled at Patrick.
“You can try,” Patrick responded.
Chase clamped his fists by his side and took a step forward. His best friend might have had his back in barroom brawls from Calgary to Denver, but Chase was going to pulverize him all the same.
“Chase, no!” Laura-Leigh cried.
“You’re defending him?” Chase asked her in astonishment.
“I can handle him,” Patrick told her.
Chase had expected an abject apology from Laura-Leigh. He’d expected her to throw herself into his arms and beg his forgiveness for her indiscretion. He wouldn’t have forgiven her. What man could do that? But he had expected her to try.
“It’s not Patrick’s fault,” she cried. “It just sort of—”
“Don’t you dare tell me it just happened. Betraying your fiancé doesn’t just happen.”
“Chase, man.” Patrick stepped out from behind Laura-Leigh, one hand outstretched.
“You want to go at it?” Chase asked.
He was ready for a fight. He was more than ready. He felt like he was seeing his best friend clearly for the first time. And he hated what he saw.
“We didn’t mean for you to find out this way,” Patrick said.
“You didn’t mean for me to find out at all.” Of that, Chase was sure. “What kind of degenerate are you? We’re engaged. She’s pregnant with my child.”
Patrick and Laura-Leigh exchanged a guilty look.
Reality slammed into Chase’s skull with the force of a cinderblock.
“No!” he roared, and he lunged at Patrick.
Patrick took the first punch without defending himself.
But then he struck back. Whether it was reflex, or whether he realized that Chase was actually going to kill him, Chase couldn’t be sure. But he tasted blood from a cut lip, and he threw another punch, this one connecting with Patrick’s solar plexus.
Patrick hunched over, but had it in him to return an uppercut, which sent Chase sprawling.
“Stop!” Laura-Leigh screamed. “Stop it, both of you!”
Patrick hesitated, while Chase regrouped. He wasn’t stopping, no way, no how. Patrick deserved everything Chase was set to dish out.
But Laura-Leigh stepped in front of Patrick again, and Chase instantly pulled himself up short.
“You’re going to hide behind her?” he shouted at Patrick.
“This is getting us nowhere,” Patrick said.
“You son-of-a-bitch.”
“We tried to fight it,” Patrick said. “We tried like hell to fight it, man.”
“Obviously,” Chase drawled, his mouth curling into a sneer. “You tried so hard, you got her pregnant.”
He could feel his world slipping away. He’d just sold his spread in Lethbridge. He was coming back to his hometown full time to raise his child on his family’s land. It was what Laura-Leigh wanted, and it was what he thought she deserved.
“I thought the baby was yours,” Laura-Leigh said to Chase.
“Do you have any idea how awful that sounds?” Chase asked.
“I did a test,” she said. “Last week. And…” Her voice trailed away.
“It could have been either of ours?” Chase glared at Patrick. “What’s the matter with you? What is the matter with you?”
“I didn’t know what to do,” Patrick said, looking guilty but defiant at the same time.
Chase leaned forward. “Let me give you a tip for the future. When in doubt, you don’t screw your best friend’s fiancée.”
Since it was either go through Laura-Leigh to get to Patrick or leave, Chase turned on his heel.
He marched out of the house, slammed his way into his pickup, rammed the gas pedal, and snaked down the driveway in a hail of dust and flying stones.
He made one stop on his way out of town, at the little house where he’d grown up and lived part-time for the past five years. There was only one thing he wanted there, only one thing he needed—an unopened letter from the AEBR, the American Extreme Bull Riders Tour.
He didn’t have to open it to know what it was. It was an invitation to join the bull-riding circuit. And on the circuit was exactly where he was going. His spread in Lethbridge belonged to someone else now. And the Twin River Valley would never be his home again.
Chase was leaving, and he wasn’t coming back.