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  “That’s odd,” Clay said with a snort. “Because other than you, I haven’t seen another vehicle on the road for the last five miles.”

  Dani whipped her head around to look behind her, her truck swerving onto the shoulder with the quick movement.

  “Christ, woman!” Clay flashed his headlights at her. “Keep it between the lines.”

  Her heart pounded as she righted the truck, squinting into the rearview mirror, still not believing what she was seeing. “Are you following me?”

  “Would you be flattered if I said yes?”

  The grin in his tone might as well have been a bucket of ice water, dousing the butterflies dancing in the pit of her stomach. “If you say yes, I’m calling the cops.” She picked up the phone to do just that but stopped when his sexy laugh filtered through the speaker.

  “Calm down. I’m not following you. It’s just a small world.”

  Not small enough.

  “I’m actually headed to a ranch up near Flat Range to meet with a rancher about some wind turbines we’re looking to build in the area,” he continued. “Imagine my surprise when I saw the Falcon Ridge crest on your tailgate a few miles back.”

  Dani gripped the steering wheel a little tighter. Why hadn’t she just stayed the night in Billings and gone to that party with Molly? Or just stopped for coffee? Ten minutes. That’s all it would have taken and he would have completely missed her.

  “I’m running ahead of schedule,” Clay said. “Want to stop for an early dinner?”

  “What? Why?” Dani’s heartrate skyrocketed. She checked her lipstick in the rearview mirror, cursing herself for not wearing any, then cursing herself again for checking in the first place. Why should she care if she was wearing makeup or not? There was no way she was going to dinner with him anyway.

  Clay laughed again. “Because I’m hungry, and I thought you might be, too.”

  “I’m not.”

  “And it would give me a chance to apologize to you in person.”

  “I can’t.” The words were out before she could stop them, not that she would have said yes.

  “C’mon,” Clay urged in a flirty tone. “We can talk about that job offer we discussed.”

  Dani rolled her eyes. Clay’s company sold the latest agricultural technology systems, from automated feed stations to cloud-based herd management, seed stock DNA cataloging, and drone herd monitoring. If it was high-tech and rancher friendly, he sold it, set it up, then moved on to the next ranch. If she knew anything about selling anything, she might be interested, if anyone other than Clay Sterling was doing the offering.

  “We didn’t discuss anything,” she reminded him.

  “I know,” Clay chuckled. “I offered you a paid internship, you called me an asshole and hung up on me. I was hoping to at least get to the job description this time.”

  How many times did she have to say no before he got it through his thick skull that she wouldn’t work for him even if he was offering her the last job on the planet.

  “Fine,” Clay conceded. “We won’t talk business. We’ll just sit in silence and eat, after I apologize again, of course.”

  “Uncle Cade is having some tests done today and I’m going home to check on him.”

  “I was sorry to hear about your uncle,” he offered. “Is he taking a turn for the worse? Is that why you were crying?”

  “I told you, I wasn’t crying.” Dani drew in a steadying breath to keep from doing just that. Why hadn’t she just hung up? He was the last person she needed to be telling about Uncle Cade.

  “I see, well…” Clay was silent for a moment, and she couldn’t help but look in the rearview mirror. All she could see was his hand on the top of the steering wheel, and a faint outline of his strong jaw below the rim of his white Stetson. “I hope the news is positive,” he eventually said. “If I have time, I’ll stop by Falcon Ridge while I’m here and say hello to your dads, but in the meantime…” He took a long breath and let it out slowly. “I know what it’s like to lose someone you love, Dani. If you need to talk, I’m here.”

  Dani glanced between the rearview and the road ahead. Unwanted empathy tempered her earlier anger and tested her resolve to hate him for all eternity. Curiosity made her want to know who, but that would just lead to more questions for which she had no need of answers. At least not from him.

  “Thanks,” she said instead. Silence filled the truck cab and she wondered if he would say more. A part of her wanted him to, but when he didn’t, she took a deep breath and said goodbye. “See ya around the ranch if you come by.”

  “Yeah. See ya.”

  Clay hung up, and a few minutes later she pulled off the highway, keeping her gaze on the road ahead, ignoring the urge to wave as he continued past the exit.

  Chapter Two

  The gate was open when Dani arrived home. That, in and of itself, wasn’t odd, but the two Grassland Sheriff’s Department cars parked in front of her parents’ house sent a shockwave of fresh alarm racing through her veins.

  Gravel crunched beneath the tires as she sped down the long driveway and then skidded to a stop beside one of the patrol cars. The motor had barely stopped when she jumped out and sprinted up to the front porch, where it appeared her entire family was gathered.

  “What happened?” She pushed her way past the deputies to the front door.

  “Oh, honey. It’s nothing,” her mom, Gabby, greeted her with a hug.

  “Is it Uncle Cade? Is something wrong?”

  “I’m just fine.”

  Dani turned at the sound of Cade’s voice to see him standing on the other side of the screen door.

  “Uncle Cade!” She opened the door and rushed to his side. “I’ve been worried about you all day. I tried calling at least eighteen times to see what the doctors said about your tests, but no one ever called me back.”

  “I just got all eighteen notifications about five minutes ago,” Jonah, her twin, said with a roll of his eyes.

  Cade returned her hug with a tired grunt. “Sorry, Ace. That was my fault.”

  “So, you admit to using a cellphone jammer?” the deputy asked.

  “What?” Dani glanced back at the deputy, then up to Uncle Cade.

  “Nobody’s admitting to anything, Sheriff,” her dad, Grey, insisted.

  “Of course I used it, you idiot,” Cade argued, “How else am I supposed to know if it works?”

  “I’m the idiot?” Grey’s brows rose with indignation. “I’m not the one who used an illegal signal jamming device in the middle of a hospital.”

  “I wasn’t talking to you,” Cade drawled. “I was talking to Deputy Dipshit over there.”

  “Cade!” Gran scolded him. “Please forgive my brother,” her grandmother pleaded with the sheriff. “He’s had a long day.”

  Dani choked back a snort when the deputy bristled at Cade’s insult, but the sheriff placed a calming hand on his shoulder. “What you did is against federal law, Cade. You shut down the entire diagnostics wing with that thing. Now, hand it over.”

  “No! It’s not illegal to own one,” Cade argued, “and in my defense, I didn’t know it was on when I was in the hospital. Must have snagged the power switch on my pocket or something.”

  “That still doesn’t make it okay,” the sheriff argued back.

  “It was a damn accident,” Cade insisted. “Isn’t there something better you can be doing with our tax dollars than harassing a dying man?”

  Cade’s casual words pierced Dani’s heart and she tightened her grip around his waist.

  “We’re not here to harass you,” the sheriff said, visibly uncomfortable with Cade’s blatant admission, “but I can’t just ignore this, Cade. Lord knows I don’t want to arrest you, but—”

  “Whoa, Sheriff!” Dani’s other dad, Matt, stepped in front of the lawman, glancing between him and Cade. “Ain’t nobody gettin’ arrested today. You heard him. It was an accident.”

  “He’s at least got to hand over the jammer,” the
sheriff insisted.

  “I’ve told you a dozen times,” Cade cut in. “I spent my career using stuff like this, and more like it you’ve never even heard of. It’s not illegal to own it,” he insisted again.

  A former CIA spy and security expert, Uncle Cade’s favorite hobby was tinkering with new technology. Dani had grown up watching him in his workshop toying with one device or another, always trying to improve them, or see how they worked, or turn them into unsuspecting weapons. He was their family’s very own Inspector Gadget.

  “Legal or not to own it, Cade, it is illegal to use it. Period.”

  “I’m not handing it over,” Uncle Cade said. “Do you have any idea how much one of these costs?”

  “Give me that thing.”

  “Hey!” Cade protested when Papa Daniel snatched the jammer from his husband’s hands, opened the screen door, and handed it to the sheriff.

  “You won’t have any more trouble from him,” Papa Daniel promised, casting Cade a warning glare over his shoulder.

  “Thank you.” The sheriff tipped his hat, passing the device off to his deputy with instructions to take it back to the station and make sure it was disposed of properly before he ended his shift. “Now, you cantankerous old coot, are you going to invite me in for a cup of that coffee I’ve been smelling since I got here and tell me what the heck the doctors had to say?”

  Cade narrowed his eyes, but eventually waved the sheriff inside.

  “I’m going to head home,” Gran said, fishing her keys from her purse. “Joe, Nate, and Jake will be worried if they haven’t received any of my calls.”

  Dani rushed back outside to give her grandmother a hug. “Tell the papas I’ll be over to see them after dinner tonight.” After all her worrying on the drive home, she held on to her grandmother a little longer, hugged her a little tighter. If it weren’t for getting an update from Uncle Cade, she would rush over to their house that instant just to hug her three grandfathers, too.

  “Will do, honey. They’ll be glad to see you.”

  “Let me take your hat,” Gabby offered the sheriff as he stepped inside, followed by her three dads, Jonah, and Papa Daniel.

  Anxious for the news, Dani followed them into the kitchen where they gathered around the long picnic-style table, and her other dad, Mason, poured and disbursed several cups of coffee.

  Uncle Cade and Papa Daniel shared a knowing glance before Papa Daniel retrieved a bottle of whiskey from the cupboard.

  “That bad, huh?” the sheriff asked as Daniel poured a generous shot into Cade’s coffee.

  Cade took a sip, his silent nod barely noticeable before he shrugged. “About what I expected.”

  Dani’s stomach rolled and she pushed from the table. Now that she was there, she didn’t want to know. Couldn’t.

  “Ace, wait.”

  If it had been anyone else but Cade asking her to stay, she would have bolted, but Dani stopped in the doorway, keeping her back to her family until she was sure she wouldn’t cry.

  “Dani.”

  Her chest aching, she forced her gaze from the floor and turned around.

  “Come here.” Uncle Cade waved her over and she shuffled to his side. He wrapped his arm around her. “What are you doing here?” he asked her. “I thought you weren’t coming home until tomorrow.”

  Dani shrugged. “I was worried.”

  “I’ve told you before, Ace. I don’t want you missing out on life waiting around for this old man to get older.”

  “I’m not missing anything,” she insisted and tried to pull away, but Cade tightened his grip. “It was only one day.”

  “We still have time,” Cade insisted.

  “How much?” she choked through the knot in her throat.

  “The doctors won’t say anymore.” Papa Daniel slid between them and pulled her into his arms. “He’s already defied the normal expectations.”

  “So, the medicine is working then?” Dani asked with some reluctance.

  Uncle Cade had refused chemotherapy and any other traditional treatments. After weeks of trying, Con and Car’s wife, Breezy, finally convinced him to take the meds his oncologist offered to help slow his weight loss. She’d warned them all not to get their hopes up, though.

  Uncle Cade nodded, but Dani caught the worried look in her mom’s eyes. Cade was lying, dammit.

  Cade took a sobering breath. “Doc didn’t have any worse news than he did last time you dragged me out of my workshop to have me poked and prodded like a newborn calf.”

  “Told you all along,” the sheriff said with a shake of his head, “you’re too damn ornery to die.”

  The middle finger Cade gave the sheriff pulled Dani’s lips into an unwilling grin.

  “I’m gonna die one day or another, just like the rest of you. Until then…” He turned to Dani. “I won’t have the lot of you moping around here like I’m already gone. Understand?”

  Dani gave him a reluctant nod. He’d told them all from the day he was diagnosed not to fuss and worry over him. He wanted life to go on as usual, until it couldn’t. She wanted to honor his request, but every passing week made doing so more and more difficult. Now that she was home, watching a man she’d loved since the day she was born die a little every day right in front of her, it seemed impossible.

  “You got that package your friend Ash sent me?” Cade asked.

  A low rumble rattled in Grey’s chest at the mention of Ash’s name. Dani rolled her eyes. “Ash is just a friend, Daddy.” For the bazillionth time.

  Not that she’d seen much of Ash since winter break. After he’d helped her set up the electronics in the calving barn for the herd monitoring project she and Clay had been working on, he’d left in the middle of the blizzard that had blown in. She’d finally cornered him in his computer lab a few weeks later and he’d all but blown her off, until last week when he showed up out of the blue at her apartment with an envelope for Uncle Cade.

  “Since when are you and Ash friends?” she asked Cade as she pulled the envelope from her front pocket, slapping it into his hand before she made her way to the half-empty coffee pot.

  “And what kind of harebrained contraption are you building now?” Matt asked Cade as he handed Dani his cup. “Since you’re up, darlin’,” he said with a sly grin and a wink.

  “Sure, Dad.” She gave Matt a peck on his cheek as she took his cup. “Missed you.”

  “I did some checking on your friend while he was here last winter,” Cade continued with a raised brow as he opened the envelope and inspected its contents. “Imagine my surprise when I found out Ash turned down a scholarship to M.I.T.”

  Dani paused in the middle of the kitchen. What did he just say?

  “The guy is a tech genius,” Cade continued, “but I’d have to kill you if I tell you what I’m working on.”

  “I didn’t hear that,” the sheriff mumbled before taking another sip of his coffee.

  “He’s not killing anyone,” Papa Daniel said with a playful nudge to Cade’s shoulder.

  Mug in hand, Dani rounded on Cade. “You did a background check on Ash?”

  Uncle Cade locked gazes with Grey. It was quick and subtle, but long enough for her to know exactly why.

  “What the hell, Daddy! Why would you do that?”

  “The kid’s a moron,” Grey mumbled around the rim of his coffee cup before taking a long sip. “Who turns down a scholarship to M.I.T.?”

  “Someone whose mother had a stroke, and he’s the only one she has to take care of her,” Dani argued.

  Grey cast a sideways glance at Cade. “You didn’t tell me that part.”

  Cade shrugged. “You didn’t pay me for that part.”

  “Grey, you didn’t!” Gabby said with a gasp.

  “Seriously?” Coffee forgotten, disbelief propelled Dani toward Grey. “You paid Uncle Cade to spy on me?”

  “Not on you. On Ash,” Grey explained. “And we weren’t spying.”

  “You went behind my back, behind Ash’s back
! You invaded my privacy for no reason!”

  “You don’t know him,” Grey argued.

  “And you don’t know me!” At Dani’s impertinence, Grey pushed from his seat, but Dani wasn’t backing down. Not on this. Not this time. “I’ve never given you a single reason not to trust me. Ever!”

  “I didn’t say I didn’t trust you.”

  “You don’t have to! God!” Dani shoved her hands through her hair. “This is why I’ve never had a boyfriend. Not unless you count kissing Brian Elderman behind the concessions at the fall festival my sophomore year, which I do not.”

  “Dani—”

  “I didn’t even go to senior prom.”

  “You hated prom,” her dad, Mason, argued. “We tried to convince you to go, but you refused.”

  “Because I knew there wasn’t a chance in hell I’d get asked to go even if I wanted to. Not with the three of you glaring over my shoulder at any guy who dared get within five feet of me. And when you weren’t there, you sent my goon squad brothers to constantly hover.”

  “Hey,” Jonah protested from across the room. “I never hovered. No hovering over here.”

  Dani narrowed her eyes at her dimwitted twin. “That’s priceless, coming from a walking brick wall,” she said with a snort, motioning to Jonah’s almost seven feet of muscled frame. “You don’t have to hover. All you have to do is walk into a room and any guy who’s attached to their balls is put on notice, which is pretty much all of them in my experience.”

  “Calm down, Ace. It was just a preliminary records search.”

  Dani spun on her heels, her rebuke for Uncle Cade on the tip of her tongue, but she bit it back. She couldn’t be angry with him, though she knew she should be. She turned back to Grey instead.

  “I have never done anything but what you’ve asked of me,” she said, standing toe-to-toe with Grey. “I made straight A’s in every class. I never missed your ridiculous curfews. I called when I was supposed to call, not that any of you answer my calls anymore. I never snuck out of the house, lied about where I was going, or who I was with. I’ve worked by all of your sides every day of my life, learning everything I could about running this ranch like you’ve always wanted me to. And for what?”