New Year’s Day dawned bright and cheerful—the sky was bright and clear, the air crisp and the mountains beautiful—none of it raising Dani’s spirits a single bit.

She’d spent New Year’s Eve alone, staring at her phone. It sat on the couch between her and Kitty, loudly not ringing. In the week since Travis had left, it hadn’t rung once, no matter how hard she stared at it.

She’d gone to work as usual, even though most of her family had taken the week off. She couldn’t stand sitting in the cabin alone, and it was all she could think of to do. She saw Travis everywhere she looked, and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t get Kitty to sit on her lap. At least the cat had stopped laying by the door and purring, as if she expected Travis to walk in any moment.

He wasn’t going to. Dani dropped her head in her hands as she remembered the look on his face when she’d walked away. She’d wanted to go with him, almost asked him to take her with him, but as she stared at the picture of her family that sat on the counter, she also remembered why she couldn’t, why she knew she had to stay. Kelsi would be having her baby not too long from now, and she didn’t want to miss it, and she didn’t want Kelsi to miss her.

She’d gotten so used to her phone not ringing that she actually jumped when it did.

“Hi, Kelsi,” she said as checked the display and clicked it on. “Happy New Year.”

“Good grief, you sound awful,” Kelsi said. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing. Just celebrating the beginning of another horrible year.”

“Dani Weston, stop. Bad enough you didn’t come last night to celebrate. Snap out of it.”

“Easier said than done.” Kitty jumped on the counter and rubbed against her cheek, and it was all Dani could do not to burst into tears—not a feeling she was accustomed to at all.

“All right, this is silly. We’re over at the Main House, in the TV room. We’re just having a family breakfast. Please come.”

“I don’t think I can.”

“If you don’t get dressed right now and come over, I’m sending Jaclyn.”

Dani took in a sharp breath. “No, don’t. I’ll get dressed and be right over.”

The last person she wanted to see was Jaclyn. She’d gone over their last conversation in her mind a million times, and no matter how right Jaclyn thought Travis was for her, and she for him, she couldn’t change the facts. He had to be away from River’s End Ranch and she had to stay. She wanted to stay. No two ways about it.

She pulled on some jeans and her boots, grabbing a sweater from her closet. “I won’t be gone long, Kitty,” she said as she set a small bit of tuna in her dish. She could at least do that for Kitty since Travis couldn’t anymore.

She trudged to the Main House, barely feeling the cold. All her brothers’ vehicles were there, as well as Shane’s sheriff’s truck. She didn’t remember them mentioning they were having a New Year’s Day party, but she could have easily been told and she didn’t remember.

The first thing she did was pour herself another cup of coffee, hoping it might pull her out of her funk. It took her a moment to notice that her family was piled in the TV room, all staring at the monitor. She poked her head in the kitchen, reached in the bakery case and grabbed a donut before she headed down to where they were sitting, pulling up a chair in the back.

“What are you all doing?” she asked as she plonked down on the chair and took a bite of her donut. “Since when did you all watch races?”

“Not just any race, silly. Look. It’s Travis’s race.”

Dani’s stomach dropped into her shoes as she turned toward the TV. She’d told herself all week she wouldn’t watch the race, and she was pretty positive she’d told her whole family that she wouldn’t watch the race. They’d really set her up and she wasn’t at all happy about it.

“No, thanks,” she said as she pushed the chair back and stood. “I don’t want to watch.”

Kelsi reached out for her hand and held on tight. “Please? For me?”

“Why? Just to make it worse?” She pulled her hand back and searched Kelsi’s eyes, which were so much like her own.

“Trust me, Dani. Please.”

The rest of her family turned back toward the TV as she sat down. The race must have started a while ago, and she couldn’t turn away as it neared its end. Travis had a strong lead, and she closed her eyes, imagining him in the car having the time of his life.

She was happy for him, she really was. She knew he loved what he did, and she wouldn’t begrudge him that—although she missed him more than she thought she would.

Her family erupted in cheers when he won, and she found herself clapping along with them, standing in the back of the room with a smile as wide as she’d ever had.

“That was fantastic,” Wade said, Maddie sitting beside him. “He’s really good.”

“Yes, he is,” Dani said, as her memory rushed back to their exhilarating ride on the snowmobile, on the torch-lit course—and the kiss that followed.

They watched on TV as he pulled his car up to the winner’s circle and hopped out, waving to the crowd. She could tell that he was happy, in his element. She’d thought he was happy at the ranch, but she could tell now that this was what he was meant to do.

“Hey, wait a minute,” Wyatt said as Travis walked toward the podium and stopped to talk to an older couple. “Is that Mom and Dad?”

“What?” Dani said as she walked closer to the TV. They all sat silent as Travis stood in front of them, on TV in Florida, and their parents both hugged him, and he hugged them right back.

“What’s happening?” Dani said as Travis reached for a phone her mother held out to him and looked like he was calling someone. He shrugged his shoulders and held the phone up to her mother, who frowned and stared at it.

“Dani, where’s your phone?” Kelsi asked, her voice a little higher pitched than normal.

Dani felt in her pockets. “I don’t know. I must have left it at home,” she said as Kelsi’s phone rang and she fished it out of her purse. She smiled when she looked at it, clicked on the call and said, “Hang on a second,” before she handed the phone to Dani.

She stared at it a moment before she took it and quietly said, “Hello?”

“Daniella. It’s me, Travis,” she heard and her knees almost buckled as she turned to the TV. The commentators were talking about the race so nobody could hear what he was saying but her. The camera was on Travis, where he stood with her parents. Her mom and dad. It was surreal.

“Hello, Travis. Congratulations,” she said as her family pretended they weren’t listening, but not doing a very good job of it.

“Oh, you’re watching?” he asked, and she laughed as he waved at the cameras, and her parents did, too.

Kelsi hugged Shane as they both smiled at her, Kelsi looking like a cat who’d swallowed a canary.

“Daniella, I—I need to know. If I come back...well, can I come back? I miss you. I left my heart there at the Ranch. With you. And I need it back.”

Dani waved at the TV, even though somewhere in the part of her brain that was still working, she realized he couldn’t see her.

“Yes. Yes, please. Come back.”

“See you soon,” he said before he clicked off, and she watched him turn to her mother and hug her again, her mom planting a big kiss on his cheek.

He strode over to the podium, and her family cheered as he announced his retirement, right then and there, in front of all of them.

Her knees finally did buckle as the TV went to a commercial, and she buried her face in her hands as Kelsi wrapped her arms around her twin. She looked up into her blue eyes and wiped away a tear, the first she’d shed since Travis left.

“You knew about this, didn’t you?”

“Maybe,” she said as Shane came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her. “I just want you to be as happy as I am, Dani.”

“We all do,” Jaclyn said as she leaned against the door jamb. “Guess there are second chances, after all.”