The drive from Willow Gap to Lindy Turk’s home on Sunday exceeded twenty minutes, more than half that time spent on the private road cutting between the fenced pastures of the family’s ranch. There were no cattle in the fields they traveled past, just pale grass that reached knee high. Jake explained to Sage that the cows used the surrounding pastures for fall grazing. The summer pastures were beyond the ridge in the distance. Despite spring not yet officially over, most of the herd was in those other fields, fattening up and already pregnant.

From the private road, Jake turned onto a paved drive that disappeared into woods populated by tall pines. The trees grew so close together that it felt like twilight to Sage as the truck slowly drifted along the winding drive.

After a few minutes, the vehicle emerged from the tree line onto the edge of a rolling meadow carpeted with wildflowers. Gaze dazzled by the riot of colors, Sage didn’t notice the house in the middle of the field until Jake pulled his truck up to the sprawling three-story building constructed of fieldstone, massive logs and big plates of tinted glass, everything topped by copper roofing.

“It’s a mansion,” Sage murmured as the front door opened. “Do they all live here?”

“No, just Lindy and Adler at the moment,” Jake answered, releasing the catch on his seat belt. With his face pointing down, he whispered a warning. “You’ve got incoming.”

Cutting a glance out her window, she saw that Adler Turk had already reached the side of the truck and was preparing to open her door. A smile ignited, then quickly burned out as she remembered it was a little too late for him to start pretending he was a gentleman. Still, she had promised herself to remain polite to this man unless he proved a threat to her family.

“Gam-gam!” Leah squealed, little legs kicking excitedly in her car seat as she spotted Lindy Turk standing on the wraparound porch. Seeing her uncle opening the front passenger door, the toddler’s arms shot out. “Addy, up Addy!”

Wearing a tight smile and her favorite blue dress, Sage accepted the hand Adler Turk extended. She stepped quickly from the truck and off to the side, her fingers sliding from Adler’s grip as soon as her feet hit the ground.

He turned his attention to the back of the cab where Leah continued to make grabby hands in his direction.

“Told you, Addy!” she admonished, mouth pushing forward into a pink bud as she pouted. “Up! Go Gam-Gam.”

“What am I, your chauffeur?” Adler asked, opening the back door and leaning in to unbuckle Leah.

Her small hand cupped his ear and then she planted a tender kiss on his cheek.

“No, silly. You my Addy.”

A lump formed in Sage’s throat. For a day and a half, she had watched the fleeting interactions between her brother and his daughter. Leah had been listless the entire time, shying away from Sage completely and only seeking her father when she needed something. Sage wanted to attribute the behavior to Leah getting sick, but the little girl had come alive once she realized the truck was headed west out of town. Seeing Leah react to her uncle’s presence, Sage wondered if Jake hadn’t fully bonded with his daughter—or if he had started pulling away after Dawn’s death, a misguided certainty filling his chest that he would soon lose Leah, too.

Not on my watch, Sage promised herself as Jake rounded the bed of the truck with Leah’s backpack over one shoulder.

Giving his arm a little squeeze, she followed her brother up onto the porch. Leah had already melted into her grandmother’s arms, one small hand tracing the shape of the older woman’s drop earrings.

“Eight!” Leah proclaimed after following the outline of the silver infinity symbol hanging from Lindy’s earlobe. Pulling back, she held up the correct number of fingers.

“Right you are,” Lindy said before peppering kisses across Leah’s face. Shifting the toddler to her hip, Lindy extended her hand. “Welcome to the homestead, Miss Ballard. Mind if I call you Sage?”

“Please do,” Sage murmured, accepting the proffered hand.

“Great. Come inside. You’re the first to arrive but the others should be along shortly.”

“Others?” Sage hadn’t been sure what to expect and Jake wouldn’t speculate. He only told her who wouldn’t be there for sure. That was the twins. At twenty-seven, they were both public servants, Sutton an enlisted soldier and Emerson with the FBI.

She hadn’t stopped marveling about that last bombshell. The baby of the clan by thirteen minutes, Special Agent Emerson Turk had never dug into Jake’s past—at least not before Sage had arrived in the middle of the night. Now that the family knew Jake had a sister, Sage wondered just how long before Emerson used his investigative experience to expose why Jake had lied.

Softly exhaling away the specter of that future day, she stepped from the porch into a large entry room filled with sunlight despite the tint on the two-story window above the front door. Lindy walked ahead, her voice soft as she answered Leah’s questions.

“See horses?”

“After dinner,” came the reply.

The woman was tall, like her oldest son, her build similarly robust but distinctly feminine. A touch of silver ran through dark red hair and the gaze was as green as the pale grass the truck had passed in the fields.

Stepping into a great room with multiple couches and a fireplace, Lindy set her granddaughter down. Leah immediately moved to Sage and tugged on the sleeve of her dress.

“Yes, Honey Bee?”

The nickname slid off Sage’s tongue without thought. It was something her mother had used for Sage and Jake because of their blond hair and frequent swarming. Hearing it from her own lips brought a tightness to her chest, the pressure increasing at Jake’s soft grunt.

“Honey Bee?”

The question came from behind, the voice feminine. Sage turned to find a female somewhere in her twenties. No taller than five-five, her body was all curves wrapped up in jeans and a red plaid shirt over a blue tee. Fancy boots that looked like they had never walked through a field covered her feet, a scroll of vines and leaves embossed in the leather and painted red. Long black hair spilled down the young woman’s back.

Sage risked stroking the top of Leah’s head, running the toddler’s hair through her fingers as she did so.

“Something I called Jake because of his hair. Their coloring is the same.”

She hoped the partial lie wasn’t evident in her voice. She had never called her brother that, but she knew mentioning their mother would invite a host of questions Jake didn’t want answered.

“Well, it’s better than Monkey Butt,” the woman said with a roll of her dark brown eyes at Adler Turk.

Sage lifted her chin at the rush of warmth flooding her cheeks. This young woman with the mischievous smile was Siobhan Turk, the 911 operator who had tried to pry Sage’s personal details out of her during the call. It hadn’t occurred to her that the woman would be present at dinner.

Should Sage acknowledge that she recognized Siobhan’s identity?

Another pull at her sleeve, this time with the soft stamp of a small foot, erased the question. She looked down at Leah, the delicate face turned upward, the budlike pout once more in place.

“What is it, Honey Bee?”

Seeing she had her aunt’s attention, the toddler curled her fingers around Sage’s and began to lead her down a side hall. Sage looked over her shoulder to see Lindy with her hand on Jake’s arm and Siobhan standing next to him.

Only Adler followed, his midnight blue gaze hooking and holding Sage as securely as the toddler had captured her hand.

The hall felt as long as the drive through the trees. But they came at last to a set of open double doors. Beyond them, what might have been a small library at one time had been converted to a large playroom. There were beanbags on the floor, two toy chests, and a daybed covered with frilly pink pillows and a cream-colored blanket. The built-in bookcases held more attractions for children. There were books, of course, a few movies, dolls, stuffed animals, and plastic replicas of the kind of creatures that populated the ranch.

Bypassing the dolls, Leah led Sage straight to the stuffed animals. Reaching up, she pulled down a rabbit, a squirrel, and a great ape.

“This Rilla,” Leah announced, putting her hand up the toy’s backside to reveal it was a puppet. Finding opposing patches of Velcro on the arms, she stuck them together, pulled the arms over her head like the toy was hugging her, then reached for the rabbit.

“What’s his name?” Sage asked. She beamed a silly grin at the girl, Adler forgotten in the hall as Leah opened up to her for the first time.

“Quigly,” Leah answered. “‘Cause he fast. This Swirril.”

Leah made the squirrel dance. Sage thought her heart would explode. She hadn’t done the babysitting thing as a teenager. She hadn’t done the dorm thing at college, either, nor had she finished her degree. She hopped jobs out of necessity. So she had never really bonded with women who went on to produce tiny versions of themselves.

Now she understood exactly what she had been missing—and what Jake had been keeping to himself for almost two years.

Leah put the stuffed animals back on the shelf then reclaimed Sage’s hand. She led her aunt through a side door in the room, the once-upon-a-time library connecting to an office complete with a big desk, a love seat against the opposite wall, a filing cabinet, and a computer.

Leah crawled up onto the desk chair. “Mommy work.”

More than just a computer, the desk sported a landline, some pads of paper and several photograph frames. Leah grabbed the largest frame and handed it to Sage.

The picture inside was less than a year old. Leah was younger but not by much. Anchored on each side of the little girl were Jake and Dawn.

Sage looked up from the image to see Leah watching her with eyes grown suddenly sad.

“Oh, Honey Bee,” she whispered, lifting the little girl into her arms.

Forgotten in the hall, Adler cleared his throat. “Sounds like Walker and Barrett have arrived. I guess I should introduce you to my brothers.”

Sage lifted a brow. She couldn’t be sure, but Adler sounded like he wanted to keep her away from his brothers. She hoped it was just her ears playing tricks on her. Otherwise, the next member of his family he tried to keep from her might be Leah.